Re: terrorism, what it is and what should never be
----- Original Message -----
From: Greg Burch
To: extropians@extropy.org
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 1:59 PM
Subject: Re: terrorism, what it is and what should never be
----- Original Message -----
From: Smigrodzki, Rafal
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 10:54 PM
> I do not believe that ancient claims to
>land should be acknowledged in any way -
>the only claim to land is one gained by
>growing up there or by being accepted by
>the land's current owners. If you leave your
>land (under duress or on your own accord),
>your children who are born somewhere else have
>no claim to that land anymore.
This can't be right, Rafal. I come to your home with a gun and tell you that I have decided that I like your house and the land upon which it sits. I've decided that you must leave, so that I can have it. I back up my argument with the gun in my hand. Wisely or unwisely, you leave, and I take possession of your house.
Let us assume that you had good title to your land and house, for which you paid money. Now, let us assume that you have children after leaving your house at gunpoint, and then you die. You are saying that your children have NO claim to the property you were forced to vacate, simply because I or my descendants continue to believe that my forced expropriation was somehow right?
This result is not the law in any civilized society, and thus the children of, for instance, people from whom the Nazis stole works of art are able to recover them from, for instance, museums that now hold them.
The critical variable here for most legal systems is time. Since virtually all title to land ultimately derives from forcible appropriation, to allow the descendants a claim on it in perpetuity is practically impossible for many reasons and would lead to other injustices. The solution in English law is to allow title if the possessor can show the land was held or acquired legally "from time out of mind" i.e. beyond the memory of the oldest person alive in that part of the world. In practical terma, about 70-100 years. Every legal system that I know of has a similar rule. This would mean for example that most of the white farmers in Zimbabwe would not have true title to the land since it was acquired by force in the 1920s/30s, well within living memory. For the situation in Israel, some of their property rights could be established in this way but others could not, since they derive from forcible acquisition in 1848 or later. The fact that some of the ancestors of the current Israeli population may have had valid claims in that part of the world before 70 or 153 AD has no bearing on the matter - it's simply too long ago. Of course all this would have to change if immortality arrived ... Steve Davies
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