There are about 15 million references on the internet.
And millions more if you add “aboriginal”.
Wherever it started, South Africa, Australia or Canada, it is a long-overdue concept which benchmarks our notions of civilisation.
It is also a magnet for fluffy liberal feelgood thinking and the inevitable bureaucracies which will follow.
But how do we intend to make it work?
Sadly, it has taken decades for the Haves around the world to even make eye-contact with this desperate need, to even think about listening to the voices of legions of dispossessed and abused who live in the world of Have-not-but-used-to-have .
How do we measure progress from such inquiry?
It seems those who sponsor and manage it will be the most obvious beneficiaries with travel expenses, perdiems and resume additions. 
This is not to criticise their efforts and rewards, but to ask how reconciliation can follow once the cat of truth is out of the bag?
Can we reasonably expect people who have been horribly wronged and abused such as Japanese-Canadians, Irish rebels, innocents in Guantanamo and countless others to feel forgiving and magnanimous towards the perpetrators at the end of the process?
And are the white landowners in Zimbabwe right in declaring that history has given it to them, whoever came before should get used to it?
They are just one instance of land-robbery in our times.
If Truth and Reconciliation takes wings as it should, compensation and restoration must surely follow.
Will they?
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I agree.
But Iran is still attempting to come to terms with its past. The majority is suppressed and rational policies are still absent from the scene.
It seems to me that the western powers need to engage more with Iran in order to persuade that country’s leaders to find better ways of moving forward.
When you live in fear of attacks against you, you do irrational things like sentencing political protesters to death. It won’t work.
In this respect both Iran and Israel are reading from a similar playbook.
In this respect both Iran and Israel are reading from a similar playbook.
How very true. As a citizen of the world we need to promote security for all and for all fundamental human rights such as water, food, shelter and justice. But at the moment, we have one huge mess on our hands gratis of George W Bush-actually his V.P. was the true evil- and others.
Well I don’t know about the radical left, which doesn’t include me…but your quotations sound a lot like the Christian idea of “end of days”.
All of the big 3 religions have “end of days” chapters in their so called holy books. That’s why the unholy lands have a few problems augmented by Europe, especially Britain and France.
All of this revelations stuff is all well and fine as long as some fundamentalist doesn’t attempt to turn them into a self fulfilling prophesy.
Thank god I live in a country where one can think things through,express one’s opinion, and contribute to the debate. And thank god a second time, that we can hold our governments to some account via the media.