Communist genocide studies needed

[DesertFox]

One sure sign that academia is failing in its mission can be seen in the lack of understanding by the young of the toll taken by communist regimes around the world throughout the 20th Century, that continues to accumulate to this very day. "Ask college students, and I have, how many Stalin killed and you get the answer, 'thousands,'" University of Pennsylvania history professor Alan Charles Kors said on June 12th at the Heritage Foundation. "That's like saying Hitler killed hundreds of Jews."

"Communism claimed 100 million victims," Emil Constantinescu pointed out in the same forum that Dr. Kors addressed. "In my country, Romania, we had one million dead and one million political prisoners out of a total population of 16 million." Constantinescu was the former President of Romania.


More (http://www.aim.org/aim_column/5558_0_3_0_C/)

[Timberwolf]

This one's a must read...and one for the archives.

"Communism claimed 100 million victims," Emil Constantinescu pointed out in the same forum that Dr. Kors addressed. "In my country, Romania, we had one million dead and one million political prisoners out of a total population of 16 million." Constantinescu was the former President of Romania.
Hmmm...makes our efforts in the ME appear wondrously benign by comparison...

"I think that you talk about the 100 million victims of communism without taking account of about 300-400 million because you are not talking about their families," Cuban Pedro Fuentes told the audience at Heritage. "My mother was told not to come to see me in prison because I was shot."
That's quite a few lives destroyed by the system embraced by modern-day liberals/progressives...I think it's high time to plant a boot in their keisters.

"What about the 60's radicals who kept pictures of Mao and Che on their walls?" Dr. Kors asks. He characterizes that act as "the equivalent of putting up pictures of Hitler and Eichmann."
Yeah...and what's disgusting is, most of the 'kiddies' who think it's chic to have Che or Mao on their teeshirts are ignorant and/or indifferent to WHO these pusbuckets REALLY are and what they REALLY did.

I might have to take up 'counseling' myself...of course, I'll have to get pointers from our resident Counselor, first. :evilgrin:

[DesertFox]

Sick thing is, there are already plenty of studies that show what Communism did everywhere it went, which was murder perfectly innocent people. The Black Book of Communism is a pretty fair summary, but the best story about it is still Solzhenitsyn's 3-volume (thick volumes, too) The Gulag Archipelago.

The studies are there, and the, er, "professors" aren't teaching them. The "professors" are little interested in the truth getting out.

[Timberwolf]

You got that right, bro'....they KNOW if the truth gets out, their butts are grass and their students are gonna be the lawnmower...

[1pro.usa]

One sure sign that academia is failing in its mission can be seen in the lack of understanding by the young of the toll taken by communist regimes around the world throughout the 20th Century, that continues to accumulate to this very day. "Ask college students, and I have, how many Stalin killed and you get the answer, 'thousands,'" University of Pennsylvania history professor Alan Charles Kors said on June 12th at the Heritage Foundation. "That's like saying Hitler killed hundreds of Jews."How can you be so sure that one academia is correct while another is wrong?

"Communism claimed 100 million victims,"
This is a distortion of facts and also includes disasters that are not a result of communism.

Finally, there has never actually been communism in the 20th century, or any other century. Russia was never communist, China is not now either. One could say that what Russia was was the beginnings of what well down the track would be proper communism, however as we know Russia was a corrupt nation.

Talking about distortion of facts, how many people understand that between 300 and 900 thousand civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S.invasion of Iraq?
Very few.

[Sarah]

Talking about distortion of facts, how many people understand that between 300 and 900 thousand civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S.invasion of Iraq?
Very few.
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Did you count those bodies yourself? Or is this from a phony statistic you read?

[1pro.usa]

Did you count those bodies yourself? Or is this from a phony statistic you read?Lancet? Haven't heard of it? Maybe look it up, should be enlightening.

The lancet study found that between 300 and 900 thousand have died as a result of the invasion. The method in which they worked the number out was disputed in public and by widespread western media, however a a forced disclosure of a secret British document revealed that the Method used is possibly the most accurate available. Many other sources of also said such.

[Sarah]

Did you count those bodies yourself? Or is this from a phony statistic you read?Lancet? Haven't heard of it? Maybe look it up, should be enlightening.

The lancet study found that between 300 and 900 thousand have died as a result of the invasion. The method in which they worked the number out was disputed in public and by widespread western media, however a a forced disclosure of a secret British document revealed that the Method used is possibly the most accurate available. Many other sources of also said such.
Yet there are no piles of bodies to back up the so called study. I'm sorry but it is going to take more than a handful of guys doing random sampling to make me believe 300-900 thousand people have died as a result of the war.

[1pro.usa]

Yet there are no piles of bodies to back up the so called study. I'm sorry but it is going to take more than a handful of guys doing random sampling to make me believe 300-900 thousand people have died as a result of the war.Have you actually read anything on it?

[Sarah]

Have you actually read anything on it?
Yes I have.

Professor Spagat says the Lancet paper contains misrepresentations of mortality figures suggested by other organisations, an inaccurate graph, the use of the word “casualties” to mean deaths rather than deaths plus injuries, and the perplexing finding that child deaths have fallen. Using the “three-to-one rule” – the idea that for every death, there are three injuries – there should be close to two million Iraqis seeking hospital treatment, which does not tally with hospital reports.
“The authors ignore contrary evidence, cherry-pick and manipulate supporting evidence and evade inconvenient questions,” contends Professor Spagat, who believes the paper was poorly reviewed. “They published a sampling methodology that can overestimate deaths by a wide margin but respond to criticism by claiming that they did not actually follow the procedures that they stated.” The paper had “no scientific standing”. Did he rule out the possibility of fraud? “No.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1469636.ece

[1pro.usa]

Have you read the British findings?

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2006/10/is_iraqs_civilian_death_toll_h.html
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/061018_democracy_and_debate.php
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-iraq-deaths-study-was-valid-and-correct/2006/10/20/1160851135985.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/600000_killed_is_that_a_story.html
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/145222
In a Democracy Now! interview , study co-author Les Roberts defended the methodology by noting that the method is the standard used in poor countries, that the same method was used by the US government following wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan, and that the US government's Smart Initiative program is spending millions of dollars per year teaching NGOs and UN workers how to use the same cluster method for estimating mortality rates.<sup id="_ref-41" class="reference"></sup>

[Sarah]

Have you read the British findings?

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2006/10/is_iraqs_civilian_death_toll_h.html
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/061018_democracy_and_debate.php
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-iraq-deaths-study-was-valid-and-correct/2006/10/20/1160851135985.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/10/600000_killed_is_that_a_story.html
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/145222

Just because liberals say it's true doesn't make it true.
To make that kind of claim they have to better than paying a hand full of Iraqi doctors knocking on some doors. You can come up with whatever number you wished by doing that.

Professor Burnham told The Times in an e-mail that he had “full confidence in Professor Lafta and full faith in his interviewers”, although he did not directly address the drop in child mortality. Dr Garfield also queries the high availability of death certificates. Why, he asks, did the team not simply approach whoever was issuing them to estimate mortality, instead of sending interviewers into a war zone?
Professor Rosling told The Times that interviewees may have reported family members as dead to conceal the fact that relatives were in hiding, had fled the country, or had joined the police or militia. Young men can also be associated with several households (as a son, a husband or brother), so the same death might have been reported several times.
Professor Rosling says that, despite e-mails, “the authors haven’t provided us with the information needed to validate what they did”. Another critic is Dr Madelyn Hsaio-Rei Hicks, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who specialises in surveying communities in conflict. In her letter to The Lancet, she pointed out that it was unfeasible for the Iraqi interviewing team to have covered 40 households in a day, as claimed. She wrote: “Assuming continuous interviewing for ten hours despite 55C heat, this allows 15 minutes per interview, including walking between households, obtaining informed consent and death certificates.”
Does she think the interviews were done at all? Dr Hicks responds: “I’m sure some interviews have been done but until they can prove it I don’t see how they could have done the study in the way they describe.”
I'm sorry but your study adds up to nothing more than wishful thinking.

[1pro.usa]

Just because liberals say it's true doesn't make it true.
To make that kind of claim they have to better than paying a hand full of Iraqi doctors knocking on some doors. You can come up with whatever number you wished by doing that.

[quote]I'm sorry but your study adds up to nothing more than wishful thinking.WISHFUL? Don't insult me, I want the deaths to stop, I'd rather be wrong, believe me.

To make that kind of claim they have to better than paying a hand full of Iraqi doctors knocking on some doors. You can come up with whatever number you wished by doing that.That's amazing, you have more knowledge in the situation that learned professionals that are both left and right wing.

The U.S. government use the same method in poor countries. The non-liberal British Blair government also said it is legitimate. I am not quote just liberal sources, while you seem to be just quoting 1 (one) right wing source.

[Sarah]

Just because liberals say it's true doesn't make it true.
To make that kind of claim they have to better than paying a hand full of Iraqi doctors knocking on some doors. You can come up with whatever number you wished by doing that.

WISHFUL? Don't insult me, I want the deaths to stop, I'd rather be wrong, believe me.

[q]To make that kind of claim they have to better than paying a hand full of Iraqi doctors knocking on some doors. You can come up with whatever number you wished by doing that.That's amazing, you have more knowledge in the situation that learned professionals that are both left and right wing.

The U.S. government use the same method in poor countries. The non-liberal British Blair government also said it is legitimate. I am not quote just liberal sources, while you seem to be just quoting 1 (one) right wing source.
It is wishful thinking on your part because as a liberal you want to believe the worst concerning the war. And all you can come up with is a study where a couple of guys paid 8 iraqi dcotors to knock on doors. They have no evidence of any kind to back up their claims. How scientific of them.

[DesertFox]

How can you be so sure that one academia is correct while another is wrong?When you read about a subject over a period of 40 years, as I have, you begin to know who's phony and who's the real deal.


"Communism claimed 100 million victims,"
This is a distortion of facts and also includes disasters that are not a result of communism.Nope. The Black Book of Communism in every case takes the smallest estimate of the number of deaths per country in the Commie countries. Realistic guesstimates run as high as 150 million. My sensing is that 150 million is on the low end, but of course we'll never know. What I do know is that totalitarian systems who declare entire groups of their own citizens to be "enemies" think nothing of butchering large numbers of people every day before going home to supper and the wife and kiddies. Such systems attract people without conscience to whom killing a person is no different than stepping on an ant. That was the nature of the Communist systems up until Khrushchev in the Soviet Union (and until the deaths of the rest in most cases), and there is no reason whatsoever to give that kind of unfeeling, inhuman, murderous system any benefit of any doubt.

Finally, there has never actually been communism in the 20th centuryThis is a silly objection. It was under "the specter of Communism" that Marxism, and then Leninism, and then Maoism, and Kimism, and Titoism, and Ceausescuism, and Ulbrichtism, and Hoxaism, and Castroism, and Pol Potism, etc ad nauseum, inflicted the gruesome wounds on humanity that Leftists now want to distance themselves from. Call it what you will, Communism was claimed by them as the animating premise of their ideology, and the word works perfectly well to identify them by.

It's the same story with those who erroneously call America a capitalist economy. Our economy hasn't been capitalist since the Civil War, if not before. But capitalism is the idea our economy was originally based on, and that word works to differentiate our economy from the command economies of the Communist and feudal nations of the earth.

Finally, you obviously know nothing about the Israeli kibbutzim. They were as purely communist as it's possible to be. And they kept breaking down and having to start over, for the simple fact that no one wants to be like everyone else. Unlike ants, we are wired biologically to want to stand out, to be different, based on the need to attract a mate (or many mates). That fundamental drive means communism never has a chance anywhere at any time because it is fundamentally at odds with human nature.

Talking about distortion of facts, how many people understand that between 300 and 900 thousand civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S.invasion of Iraq?:biglaugh: Yeah, that's a distortion of the facts, alright. It's a flat out lie. Two flat out lies, in fact. First, I seriously doubt more than 100,000 Iraqis have died since America invaded. I'd be surprised if it's more 50,000.

Second, you state that as if American GI's had killed those numbers of Iraqis. Yet it's obvious to anyone who takes an honest look that more Iraqi civilians are killed by fanatic bombers than were ever killed by Americans.

Honesty is a requirement for living a worthwhile life. As one who is nearing the end of his own life, I recommend you devote your energies to purging yourself of dishonesty in all its many forms. Lies only survive as long as the person who tells them, and if you build your life on them, as you are now doing, you will one day die and no one will even know who you were.

[Timberwolf]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/the-iraq-deaths-study-was-valid-and-correct/2006/10/20/1160851135985.html

a cross section of 13,000 people in a country of 28 MILLION gives an accurate mortality rate....right...ya know, after reading that drivel, it would be a waste of time to read the rest.

DF...he DOES like to embellish, don't he?

[Wyatt_Junker]

I counted 38,887 bodies personally. I used a frog gig and squished it into the deads' face, just above the bridge of the nose, so that I would eliminate redundancies.

It was tough going, however, because a lot of the 'civs' were wearing the exact same clothes as the ex-feyadeen, which is to say, dirty nightshirts and what could only be described as Underoos(superhero & star wars pajamas). They don't wear green wool army uniforms. But, what the hell, I counted them along with the 'civs' to give the libs the benefit of the doubt. Its all the same shit in the end.

I went everywhere. I tipped over fallen concrete standies, I checked unerneath collapsed falafal stands and tanning salons and around highway overpasses. In my left hand I held an abacus. All my daily feeds went directly into Daily Kos via an email blast ticker.

I even used the infamous sigma from stats class, multiplied a bunch of shit by Pi and rounded up. Siamese twins were counted as '2' even though they shared a similar heart.

Still, only 38,887. Darn. I really wanted another zero really fukin bad. So, finally, I just threw one in fer shits. Why not?

In the end, I still wasn't able to par out the war dead with the pre-war invasion when Saddam had killed over 500,000 children due to insufferable sanctions. Of course, the war stopped that, but let's not focus on that. Its not the issue. American-caused deaths is the problem. That's where the focus needs to be.

[HomeschoolrsRUs]

Talking about distortion of facts, how many people understand that between 300 and 900 thousand civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S.invasion of Iraq?
Very few.

Prove it. Credible links are requested. And while you're at it, provide the information regarding how many terrorists have been captured or killed since the beginning of the campaign too, along with how many plots have been thwarted. Oh and read up on the good that is being done over there, you seen to be in need of a little "fairness doctrine," you should, as Paul Harvey would say, check out the rest of the story.

[Timberwolf]

...and the Queen of Bubbaland lays the smackdown on yet ANOTHER clueless libidiot...ding!