-- At 11:52 PM 10/2/2000 -0500, Kevin Elliott wrote:
However I'll bite by asking the inverse of the question- name one large scale famine that occurred in any country not under some form of "forcible rule" (forcible rule being defined as some sort of communist, socialism, or dictatorship, for the purpose of this question). A less precise way of putting this is present one example of a country in which free election are/were taking place for a reasonable period of time, during which that country experienced mass starvation of a significant portion of it's population.
You are putting ordinary dictatorships, like Pinochet's Chile or Park's Korea, in the same category as communist dictatorships, like Castro's Cuba or Mengistu's Ethiopia. That is ridiculouys. The difference between normal dictatorships and totalitarian regimes is enormous, vastly greater than the difference between dictatorships and ordinary democracies, and the distribution of famine (excluding famines caused by war) illustrates that difference. So let us go back to the original question: Where was there a significant twentieth century famine other than those caused by war or socialism? It is absurd to use categories that put normal dictatorships in the same category as totalitarian dictatorships. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG XA5dUKG3q6hJeBTz4HeNScT8fe/40IKiok46xSjj 4VMa7FUolej7nOJCk26xL8WmXqoVPFFufxonhuwhR