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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Wharf Rat who wrote (189542)6/16/2006 2:39:13 PM
From: Sun Tzu  Respond to of 281500
 
From your own data, which I have not really delved into...

The worst genocides of the 20th Century before 1948:
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1934-39) 13,000,000 (the purges)
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945) 12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians WWII)
Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44) 5,000,000 (civilians WWII)
Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915) 1,200,000 Armenians
TOTAL: 31.2m

The worst genocides of the 20th Century after 1948:
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79) 1,700,000
Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970) 1,000,000
Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982) 900,000
Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994) 800,000
Suharto (East Timor, 1976-98) 600,000
Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1971) vs Bangladesh 500,000
Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002) 400,000
Mullah Omar - Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001) 400,000
Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979) 300,000
TOTAL: 6.6m

The worst genocides of the 20th Century false/misleading items
Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69) 49,000,000 ("great leap forward" and "cultural revolution")
Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94) 1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)
Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78) 1,500,000
Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88) 600,000


The reason these are false/misleading is that (a) the numbers are highly exaggerated (b) in these cases more people died of famine or desease than anything the government did (except for Iraq-Iran war). The Iraq-Iran war was not a genocide, so if you are going to include it, you need to include all the regional wars of the century also. Finally, missing from your data is all the attrocities of the British and French and Belgians and all the other European colonial powers in Africa and Asia, and US actions in Oceana and SEA before 1948.

...so in conclusion, I remain unconvinced that the world was a worse place during the second half of 20th century than during its first half.



To: Wharf Rat who wrote (189542)6/16/2006 3:23:32 PM
From: Sun Tzu  Respond to of 281500
 
More from your linked source that under-reports the attrocities in the first half of 20th century...We have 41 vs. 103 million dead and this is not even taking into account the increased leathal power of weapons and the population growth...and I am not even taking into account the under-reporting of the first half of 20th C. attrocities or disputing items like 3M killed during Vietnam (that I am sure some would take issue with here). The difference would be even more glaring if you looked at it as a percentage of world population, normalized for the fire power of various armies...so I hope this settles the issue for you.

>> if you think none of us would be willing to trade Israel for the lives of the victims

Sigh, perhaps when I am reborn as a Jew I too will be endowed with the grandiose-self-righteous gene. What in the world makes you think this is the case? It is simply human nature. The Israelis are here and WWII victims are not. There is no way they'd rather be living as second class citizens around the world in order to save the generations past...and by the way, I have heard some eastern Jews comment that Hitler was a punishment from God for the European Jews inter-marying the gentiles. By implication they were saying this was God's way of purifying the Jews again...Jews have just as many nut cases amongst them as anyone else.

1886-1908: Belgium-Congo Free State (3 million)
1899-02: British-Boer war (100,000)
1899-03: Colombian civil war (120,000)
1900-01: Boxer rebels against Russia, Britain, France, Japan, USA against rebels (35,000)
1903: Ottomans vs Macedonian rebels (20,000)
1904: Germany vs Namibia (65,000)
1904-05: Japan vs Russia (150,000)
1910-20: Mexican revolution (250,000)
1911: Chinese Revolution (2.4 million)
1911-12: Italian-Ottoman war (20,000)
1912-13: Balkan wars (150,000)
1915: the Ottoman empire slaughters Armenians (1.2 million)
1914-18: World War I (8 million)
1916: Kyrgyz revolt against Russia (120,000)
1917-21: Soviet revolution (5 million)
1928-37: Chinese civil war (2 million)
1931: Japanese Manchurian War (1.1 million)
1932-33: Soviet Union vs Ukraine (7 million)
1934: Mao's Long March (170,000)
1936: Italy's invasion of Ethiopia (200,000)
1936-37: Stalin's purges (13 million)
1936-39: Spanish civil war (600,000)
1939-45: World War II (55 million) including holocaust and Chinese revolution
1946-49: Chinese civil war (1.2 million)
1946-49: Greek civil war (50,000)
1946-54: France-Vietnam war (600,000)
1947: Partition of India and Pakistan (1 million)
1947: Taiwan's uprising against the Kuomintang (30,000)
TOTAL: 103 Million

1948-1958: Colombian civil war (250,000)
1948-1973: Arab-Israeli wars (70,000)
1949-: Indian Muslims vs Hindus (20,000)
1950-53: Korean war (4 million)
1952-59: Kenya's Mau Mau insurrection (20,000)
1954-62: French-Algerian war (368,000)
1960-96: Guatemala's civil war (200,000)
1961-2003: Kurds vs Iraq (180,000)
1964-73: USA-Vietnam war (3 million)
1965-66: Indonesian civil war (200,000)
1966-69: Mao's "Cultural Revolution" (11 million)
1966-: Colombia's civil war (31,000)
1967-70: Nigeria-Biafra civil war (800,000)
1969-79: Idi Amin, Uganda (300,000)
1969-02: IRA - Norther Ireland's civil war (2,000)
1969-79: Francisco Macias Nguema, Equatorial Guinea (50,000)
1971: Pakistan-Bangladesh civil war (500,000)
1972-: Philippines vs Muslim separatists (120,000)
1972: Burundi's civil war (300,000)
1972-79: Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's civil war (30,000)
1974-91: Ethiopian civil war (1,000,000)
1975-78: Menghitsu, Ethiopia (1.5 million)
1975-79: Khmer Rouge, Cambodia (1.7 million)
1975-89: Boat people, Vietnam (250,000)
1975-90: civil war in Lebanon (40,000)
1975-87: Laos' civil war (184,000)
1975-2002: Angolan civil war (500,000)
1976-83: Argentina's military regime (20,000)
1976-93: Mozambique's civil war (900,000)
1976-98: Indonesia-East Timor civil war (600,000)
1976-2005: Indonesia-Aceh (GAM) civil war (12,000)
1979: Vietnam-China war (30,000)
1979-88: the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan (1.3 million)
1980-88: Iraq-Iran war (1 million)
1980-92: Sendero Luminoso - Peru's civil war (69,000)
1980-92: El Salvador's civil war (75,000)
1980-99: Kurds vs Turkey (35,000)
1981-90: Nicaragua vs Contras (60,000)
1982-90: Hissene Habre, Chad (40,000)
1983-2002: Sri Lanka's civil war (64,000)
1983-2002: Sudanese civil war (2 million)
1986-: Indian Kashmir's civil war (60,000)
1987-: Palestinian Intifada (4,500)
1988-2001: Afghanistan civil war (400,000)
1988-2004: Somalia's civil war (550,000)
1989-: Liberian civil war (220,000)
1989-: Uganda vs Lord's Resistance Army (30,000)
1991: Gulf War - large coalition against Iraq to liberate Kuwait (85,000)
1991-97: Congo's civil war (800,000)
1991-2000: Sierra Leone's civil war (200,000)
1991-: Russia-Chechnya civil war (200,000)
1991-94: Armenia-Azerbaijan war (35,000)
1992-96: Tajikstan's civil war war (50,000)
1992-96: Yugoslavia's civil war (260,000)
1992-99: Algerian civil war (150,000)
1993-97: Congo Brazzaville's civil war (100,000)
1993-2005: Burundi's civil war (200,000)
1994: Rwanda's civil war (900,000)
1995-: Pakistani Sunnis vs Shiites (1,300)
1995-: Maoist rebellion in Nepal (12,000)
1998-: Congo/Zaire's war - Rwanda and Uganda vs Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia (3.8 million)
1998-2000: Ethiopia-Eritrea war (75,000)
1999: Kosovo's liberation war - NATO vs Serbia (2,000)
TOTAL: 41 Million