Thursday, March 23, 2006

Government body count.

Professor Rummel, former Nobel Prize nominee, has devoted his life to researching the death toll caused by governments in the 20th century. This is what he refers to as 'democide' - the number killed domestically by their own governments, not including those killed in wars and battles. After further research, he has revised his estimate upwards and the number is appalling:

Among all the democide estimates appearing on this website, some have been revised upward. I have changed that for Mao's famine, 1958-1962, from zero to 38,000,000. And thus I have had to change the overall democide for the PRC (1928-1987) from 38,702,000 to 76,702,000.

I have changed my estimate for colonial democide from 870,000 to an additional 50,000,000.
Thus, the new world total: old total 1900-1999 = 174,000,000.

New World total = 174,000,000 + 38,000,000 (new for China) + 50,000,000 (new for Colonies) = 262,000,000.

Just to give perspective on this incredible murder by government, if all these bodies were laid head to toe, with the average height being 5', then they would circle the earth ten times. Also, this democide murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century. Finally, given popular estimates of the dead in a major nuclear war, this total democide is as though such a war did occur, but with its dead spread over a century.