-- James A. Donald:
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 ridiculous.
01:02 PM 10/3/2000 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
You really are a prat aren't you?
So it is OK to be killed by a fascist bullet but not by a communist one? There are a few million dead who would have been happy had they known that before the likes of Pinochet or Franco murdered them.
Pinochet was not a fascist, not a totalitarian, and murdered only two or three thousand. Any communist ruler that murdered so few would be hailed as a living saint and the moral equivalent of Ghandi. Franco was a fascist, a totalitarian, but milder than most fascists, and most fascists are milder than most communists. Franco only murdered fifty to a hundred thousand, which would not quite qualify him for sainthood if he was a communist, but close enough. James A. Donald:
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?
01:02 PM 10/3/2000 +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
Why include the word "socialism"? Almost without exception, war is almost the only thing that ever caused a prolonged famine. The flavour of dictatorship in power at the time has very little to do with it.
Only if you define socialism as war. Socialist famines are usually imposed once the proletariat have been completely disarmed, and all resistance has been shattered. The Ukrainian famine, the hungry ghosts famine, and the recent North Korean famine are all good examples of such famines. Socialist famines are incomparably more severe and prolonged than war famines, the two greatest famines of the twentieth century being the liquidation of the kulaks, and the hungry ghosts. Socialist famines are in a sense caused by war, in the sense that socialism tends to be unending war against a disarmed and already conquered populace. 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? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG lnvt63+kFATuzbBdfp7sBHqo5VLNB3h9fUgBl0Kg 4lX0FbyttnyjptykIBLTgR2aDJiF2Ik1nFC8DF2QR