Thursday, June 09, 2005
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.