Hitchens on genocide

[Max Sawicky]

>But those who view the history of North America as a narrative of
>genocide and slavery are, it seems to me, hopelessly stuck on this
>reactionary position. They can think of the Western expansion of the
>United States only in terms of plague blankets, bootleg booze and
>dead buffalo, never in terms of the medicine chest, the wheel and
>the railway...

A far cry indeed from the "glorification of genocide" we were led to
expect...
Brad DeLong

Yes, but there's still a pretty devious gloss on the human
toll from European settlement.  Land ownership may be
inherently ill-defined, but the right to life of the descendants
of indigenous settlers, whatever the sins of the latter, stands
in any case.  I presume that settlement could have been more
humane than it proved to be, and I could be wrong.

Speaking of which, what was World GDP in One Million B.C.,
and did the volcano that got Raquel Welch's tribe increase
it or decrease it?

mbs