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THIS YEAR’S MICHAEL MOORE
George Galloway—who thinks Muslims and progressives “have the same enemies”, despite evidence to the contrary—names the planet’s worst killers:
Bush, and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation, through their support for Israel, and through their support for a globalized capitalist economic system, which is the biggest killer the world has ever known. It has killed far more people than Adolph Hitler. It has killed far more people than George Bush. The economic system which these people support, which leaves most of the people in the world hungry, and without clean water to drink.
Maybe George should start a charity to help them. Or maybe he could attack the real enemy, as described by Andrew Kenny:
Ideology comes in three colours: red, brown and green, representing Marxism, fascism and environmental extremism. Judged on sheer evil, the worst crime in history was brown, the Nazi genocide, although the reds slaughtered more people. The death toll (difficult to measure) is roughly, Hitler’s holocaust 6 million, Stalin’s famine and terror 8 million, and Mao’s famine 30 million. But the greens have topped them all. In a single crime they have killed about 50 million people. In purely numerical terms, it was the worst crime of the 20th century. It took place in the USA in 1972. It was the banning of DDT.
I have heard not one word of pity or regret from any green organisation about the vast loss of human life caused by the ban on DDT. On the contrary, they seem to regard it as a glorious triumph. The likely reason was spelled out with chilling clarity by Charles Wurster of the Environmental Defence Fund in the USA in 1971 when it was pointed out to him that DDT saved the lives of poor people in poor countries. He said: ‘So what? People are the main cause of our problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them and this is as good a way as anything.’
Capitalism is even more effective, according to Galloway. Greens should therefore embrace it.
UPDATE/CORRECTION. The above quote is completely denied by Wurster:
Environmental Defense says that the remark “has absolutely nothing to do with any position that we ever held, it’s a complete and utter fabrication.” Dr. Wurster, the alleged orator, is now retired. Reached at his home in Long Island, he says “Not only did I never say it, I never thought it.” The quote “pops up at least once a year. It has a life of its own.” He says a disgruntled lawyer fabricated it in the late 1960s to explain why he left the Environmental Defense Fund after the group fired him. Since then, it has become a popular right-wing canard.
On a point of detail, surely Stalin’s terror killed far more than 8 million people, 20 million is probably nearer the mark in Russia and the Ukraine although there are much larger numbers cited these are probably exaggerated.
The larger cost of communism would need to take account of the vandalism in politics and intellectual life in every country in the world stirred up by communists and fellow travellers.I don’t have the figures, but I’m also curious about where past baddies such as Pol Pot, Mao, Milosevic, and current ones as Saddam and Mugabe would rank. How many have of their own people have the “noble insurgents” in Iraq taken down in the name of jihad?
It’s like a cornucopia of badness, no? How to choose, how to choose…
It’s better press to denigrate those few countries trying to do good than call attention to the rest who cannot or will not act on anyone else’s behalf, much less their own.
And we wonder why the US nixed Germany coming onto the UN Security Council? Deutschland today is so far removed from its Wehrmacht roots that I doubt they would take up arms for ANY reason. It’s easy (and fun!) to call the French “cowardly cheese eating surrender monkeys”, but the German lack of resolve to do anything with their military is embarassing.
Muslims and progressives, take note.
Sadly, Rebecca, I think that they have taken note of George “Loonie” Galloway. And they love him.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 09 at 07:39 PM • permalinkbut the German lack of resolve to do anything with their military is embarassing.
Actually, we’ve been bitten by the same “UN peace corps” bug that has infected the Canadians. Our esteemed social democratic party in government (well, until September anyway) likes to call this goal “Friedensmacht Deutschland”, i.e. they want Germany to become a “peace power” as opposed to a military power.
Works about as well as it does for the Canucks, as you can probably imagine.
I dunno. Considering what they have tended to do when they got into military mode in the past, the idea of peaceful, non-fighting Germans just doesn’t bother me. (Sorry, PW.)
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 06 09 at 11:01 PM • permalinkIt occurs to me that I’ve screwed up the tenses in my own native tongue there. Eh, it’s been an exhausting week.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 06 09 at 11:02 PM • permalinkThe link to the ban on DDT leading to increased malaria is a no brainer, its an urban myth, DDT resistance is well documented. To eradicate DDT you must eradicate ALL malarial mosquitoes before they build up resistance otherwise you are worse off.
Same with TB, they used streptomycin until it was almost wiped out and now we have a resurgence of drug resistant TB, hard to treat.
The cotton industry became aware of this some years ago and developed sophisticated control programs (Integrated Pest Management). This has led to much reduced insecticide/herbicide use and less resistant insects/weeds resulting in $ savings and decreased environmental impact.
According to RJ Rummel, who has apparently done the most research on this, the totals are approximately:
Hitler: 21,000,000 killed
Stalin: 40,000,000 killed
USSR pre/post Stalin: 20,000,000 killed
Mao/PRC: 35,000,000 killed
Mao’s agricultural reforms: 25,000,000 killed inadvertently
Other Commies: 10,000,000 killedTotals do not include those killed in combat.
See his excellent blog for more info:
http://freedomspeace.blogspot.com/Oh, I agree, Andrea. Personally, I’m rather ambivalent about the gradual dismantling of the German military myself; what I do have a problem with are the continued delusions of grandeur by our politicians that the country can still be a bigtime player in world politics without a decent military (hence my comparison to Canada where the same delusion has taken hold). People over here are actually surprised that the Bush administration hasn’t come out in favour of the German bid for a permanent Security Council seat, geez.
And independent from that, I’m also pissed that our politicians insist on sending our boys over to places like Afghanistan with 30-year old equipment because the switch from “military power” to “peace power” has been taken as license for continued demolishing of the defense budget. In other words, they’re not actually interested in doing the peace power thing well...it’s merely a sideshow by people who clearly hate anything military-related, and who apparently figured that, if they can’t get rid of the thing completely (yet), they might as well use it to appease their lefty base a bit and send the troops off for bluehelmet duty.
Unlike Michael Moore, Galloway is an elected official, which is even more scary.
Posted by Torontosteve on 2005 06 10 at 07:03 AM • permalinkPW - I was stationed in Germany for a little over three years around 1988 - 1991 (Gulf War 1 timeframe). We would play with/against the Bundeswehr occasionally in small exercises and REFORGER.
As an Armor officer, I was impressed by German tanks and soldiers but never got the impression that the Bundeswehr would ever be truly let loose by the government in a crisis. Too much history, too much guilt, too much pacifism hindering things.
Still, Amis (US Army) were much better liked by the average German citizen the closer he/she lived to the East German border.
As an aside, my recollection of Canadian troops was they were a bunch of wild men. During the REFORGER I participated in, we heard all sorts of stories about the Canucks running amok in the German countryside. We were impressed and more than a little jealous…
...my recollection of Canadian troops was they were a bunch of wild men.
I recall much the same thing from my tour in the early 1980’s. Hell on the battlefield, and a terror in the gasthaus. I attended the NATO Engineer School in Muenchen; there were 3 Canucks in the class, and they worked hard all day, and partied all night. I think they recuperated during lunch.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 10 at 07:11 PM • permalink‘So what? People are the main cause of our problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them and this is as good a way as anything.’
Reminds me of the lefty of my acquaintance, who just cares so much, whose straight-faced response to AIDS in Africa was, “Well, maybe the lions and rhinos will finally have a chance.”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 10 at 08:37 PM • permalink
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Where’d you get that second quoted paragraph from in the Andrew Kenny story? Is it just me, or do I not see it at all in that link?