Saturday, March 1, 2014

The Day of Awakening is Coming, and can not be denied.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Charlie Cook of the famous Cook Report has been in the news lately. Charlie Cook raised the possibility lately of Mrs. Clinton's physical appearance while aging and asking if it would be detrimental to her campaign should she run.  Charlie's considered the dean of these political analysts and so forth.  He tends left like everybody in Washington does, sort of, for the most part establishment types.

He's got a piece today in The Cook Report, and in his piece today, he's very worried that America may have lost its nerve, that days of malaise have set in, much like in the latter years of the Carter administration in the seventies.  In this piece he asks, "What happens When the Nation Loses Its Bootstrap Self-Image?"  And he cites some polling data.  He's a pollster, and he analyzes other polling data, and he says that 63% are confident that better days for their kids will materialize.
There are people that, no matter what's happening, think it's gonna get better. I can relate to it.  I've told you many times. I can't pinpoint when, I can't tell you what the impetus is gonna be or what the tipping point's gonna be, but I, too, believe that. It's partially my genuine overall optimism.  Folks, I really do... This may sound loony, and I've thought this for 10 years.
I really think the day's coming where we're gonna be shocked at people we call low-information, people we think aren't paying much attention, people who aren't really that informed. I think that some point they're gonna have had enough of this.  Oh, 63% say it will not be.  Okay, then there's a typo.  "Sixty-three percent are confident better days..." All right.  Okay.  I take it back.
"Sixty-three percent are not confident of better days for their kids, and 53% say life will be worse for the next generation."  Okay, so Charlie doesn't agree with me.  I misread this.  Well, I didn't misread it. There's a typo.  Despite this, it is a feeling -- I'm not gonna deny that -- and there's faith.  I'm not gonna deny that.  I just think that, at some point, people are going to say, "Enough of this!"
Obviously it's gonna require some kind of leadership to spur this.  It's just not going to happen on its own, although I even think that might happen. But it would really facilitated if there were an inspirational, can-do leader that popped up.  Right now people are peppered with nothing but pessimism, and we've got a Democrat Party which wants us to believe that our better days are behind us, that this is it and, you know, "Bunker down with us!
"We're gonna do the best for you that we can, but days of American exceptionalism are over." Chuck Hagel, when announcing military cuts, said, "We're not the dominant military power anymore.  It just isn't gonna be the case."  And, yeah, the new normal is 9% employed. The new normal is 92 million, 95 million not working.  I mean, people are bombarded with this every day, and for 10 years I've been waiting for this.  Honest to God.
I don't know how else to describe it.  For 10 years I've been waiting for this national awakening, and it's done nothing but worsen.  There is nothing close to a national awakening, and I will be the first to admit it.  The closest thing to it is the Tea Party, and so to what extent the Tea Party is gonna be successful politically in winning elections and having a majority of like-minded people in elective office, that's up for grabs.
We don't know that.
We know the Democrats are gonna lose a lot of seats, but we don't know what kind of Republicans are gonna replace them.  If they're anti-Tea Party Republicans, then big whoop.  If they're pro-Republican establishment, who just think it's what it is, the government's gonna get bigger, stay big, and we're just gonna be in charge of it now, then big whoop.
I'll take it, getting rid of Democrats, but it could be better if Tea Party types -- conservatives is what I mean -- end up winning.  So Charlie Cook: 63% are not confident of better days.  Fifty-three percent say life will be harder for the next generation -- and that's, sadly, probably true. (interruption) Well, but why get out of bed?  I'm talking about attitudinally.  I'm not talking what's possible.  I'm talking about the national attitude that's been impacted. (interruption)
We are a nation of sad sacks, but look at what the sad sacks are bombarded with every day! I mean, normal food that they eat and drink can kill 'em, and for how many years have they been hearing this stuff?  Now for five years they've been hearing what a reprobate country we've always been -- what an unfair, unjust country and how we've gotta make things right and balance what's been wrong for 250 years and so forth. It's a never ending assault on people's sensibilities.
Let's add the way they're being educated, and what they're being taught from the youngest ages about this country.
END TRANSCRIPT

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Lawyer Releases Video Of Man's Death In Police Custody In Moore


Abuse - Of the Police -
Posted: Feb 25, 2014 9:16 AM EST Updated: Feb 25, 2014 1:14 PM EST

News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports | 


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Lawyer Releases Video Of Man's Death In Police Custody In Moore

Posted: Feb 25, 2014 9:16 AM EST Updated: Feb 25, 2014 1:14 PM EST


The Rodriguez family's lawyer released the video of the incident during a press conference on Tuesday. The Rodriguez family's lawyer released the video of the incident during a press conference on Tuesday.
MOORE, Oklahoma -
A lawyer for the family of a man, who died outside the Moore Warren Movie Theater while in police custody, has released a video of the incident.
Luis Rodriguez died earlier this month after a confrontation with police outside the theater in Moore.
2/15/2014 Related Story: Family Says Moore Police Beat Father To Death
Police say the 44-year-old Rodriguez became uncooperative when officers questioned him about a possible domestic disturbance. Police handcuffed the man.
2/18/2014 Related Story: Moore Police Hold News Conference Concerning In-Custody Death
Rodriguez's wife and daughter say police then started beating him. Autopsy results are pending.
The Rodriguez family's lawyer released a cellphone video of the incident and a statement at a Tuesday news conference in Oklahoma City.
The video shows 44-year-old Luis Rodriguez on his stomach on the ground outside the theater with five police officers restraining him. One officer holds Rodriguez's head down and the others are on top of him as they handcuff his hands behind his back.
Rodriguez's wife, who shot the video, is later heard screaming and asking if Rodriguez is dead as he is placed on a stretcher.
We have attached the video to this story. Warning: the video may be considered graphic to some viewers.
"He was not involved in the disturbance. However, when police came, they focused their attention on Luis. Taking him face down onto the pavement, pepper-spraying his mouth, nose and eyes and putting the weight of five grown men on top of him, and then handcuffing him as he was unconscious or already dead," said Michael Brooks-Jimenez, attorney for the Rodriguez family.
Moore Police Chief Jerry Stillings said he stands behind his officers' actions and said he did not see anything inappropriate on the cell phone video as far as his officers' actions.
There is security camera footage from the Warren Theater. However, that has not yet been made available for us to see.
OSBI has taken over the investigation into the death.
Police say three officers involved in the incident are on administrative leave.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Drudge Report: PIERS MORGAN TO 'QUIT' CNN... AMERICA TURNED ON ME


America is fed up of me: Morgan to quit CNN job


The New York Times: There have been times when the CNN host Piers Morgan didn’t seem to like America very much — and American audiences have been more than willing to return the favor. Three years aftertaking over for Larry King, Mr. Morgan has seen the ratings for “Piers Morgan Live” hit some new lows, drawing a fraction of viewers compared with competitors at Fox News and MSNBC.
It’s been an unhappy collision between a British television personality who refuses to assimilate — the only football he cares about is round and his lectures on guns were rife with contempt — and a CNN audience that is intrinsically provincial. After all, the people who tune into a cable news network are, by their nature, deeply interested in America.
CNN’s president, Jeffrey Zucker, has other problems, but none bigger than Mr. Morgan and his plum 9 p.m. time slot. Mr. Morgan said last week that he and Mr. Zucker had been talking about the show’s failure to connect and had decided to pull the plug, probably in March.
Crossing an ocean for a replacement for Larry King, who had ratings problems of his own near the end, was probably not a great idea to begin with. For a cable news station like CNN, major stories are like oxygen. When something important or scary happens in America, many of us have an immediate reflex to turn on CNN. When I find Mr. Morgan telling me what it all means, I have a similar reflex to dismiss what he is saying. It is difficult for him to speak credibly on significant American events because, after all, he just got here.
I received a return call from Mr. Morgan and was prepared for an endless argument over my assumptions. Not so. His show, he conceded, was not performing as he had hoped and was nearing its end.
“It’s been a painful period and lately we have taken a bath in the ratings,” he said, adding that although there had been times when the show connected in terms of audience, slow news days were problematic.
“Look, I am a British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarizing, and there is no doubt that there are many in the audience who are tired of me banging on about it,” he said. “That’s run its course and Jeff and I have been talking for some time about different ways of using me.”
Mr. Morgan said that his show, along with much of the rest of CNN, had been imprisoned by the news cycle and that he was interested in doing fewer appearances to greater effect — big, major interviews that would be events in themselves. Although a change has long been rumored, it was the first time that both he, and the CNN executives I talked to, acknowledged that his nightly show was on the way out. Plans for a replacement at the 9 o’clock hour are still underway, but Mr. Morgan and the network are in talks about him remaining at CNN in a different role.
Mr. Zucker, the former chief of NBC, inherited Mr. Morgan from Jonathan Klein, his predecessor, but it is now his problem to fix. In the year he has been there, CNN has introduced promising shows around the edges and will be unveiling documentaries along the lines of the very successful “Blackfish” to run on Thursday in the 10 p.m. hour.
But the chronic troubles of prime-time remain. Sometime before the network “upfront” events in April, when advertisers buy commercial time for the fall season, Mr. Zucker needs to signal how he will fix CNN’s prime-time problem, and that begins with Mr. Morgan, whose contract ends in September.
Mr. Morgan has some significant skills that do translate across platforms and cultures. While working as a newspaper editor and television personality in Britain, he was involved in a number of controversies, but he developed a reputation as a talented, probing interviewer. In his current role, he has shown an ability not only to book big guests — former President Bill Clinton, Warren Buffett, the real Wolf of Wall Street among them — but also to dig in once they are on set.
“I think I can credibly do news and the ratings reflect that, but it is not really the show that I set out to do,” he told me. “There are all kinds of people who can do news here. I’d like to do work — interviews with big celebrities and powerful people — that is better suited to what I do well and fit with what Jeff is trying to do with the network.”
Old hands in the television news business suggest that there are two things a presenter cannot have: an accent or a beard. Mr. Morgan is clean shaven and handsome enough, but there are tells in his speech — the way he says the president’s name for one thing (Ob-AA-ma) — that suggest that he is not from around here.
There are other tells as well. On Friday morning, criticizing the decision to dismiss a cricket player, he tweeted, “I’m sure @StuartBroad8 is right and KP’s sacking will ‘improve performance’ of the England team. Look forward to seeing this at T20 WC.” Mr. Morgan might want to lay off the steady cricket references if he is worried about his credibility with American audiences. (His endless trolling of his critics on Twitter did not exactly help, either.)
People might point to Simon Cowell as a man with an accent and a penchant for slashing discourse that Americans loved, but Mr. Cowell is dealing with less-than-spontaneous musical performances, not signal events in the American news narrative. There was, of course, the counterexample of David Frost, who did important work in news, but Mr. Frost did popular special reports and was not a chronic presence in American living rooms.
Mr. Morgan, who was chosen in spite of that fact that he had never done a live show, had the misfortune of sliding into the loafers of Mr. King, who, for all his limitations, was a decent and reliable stand-in for the average Joe.
In a sense, Mr. Morgan is a prisoner of two islands: Britain and Manhattan. While I may share his feelings about the need for additional strictures on guns, having grown up in the Midwest, I know that many people come by their guns honestly and hold onto them dearly for sincere reasons.
Mr. Morgan’s approach to gun regulation was more akin to King George III, peering down his nose at the unruly colonies and wondering how to bring the savages to heel. He might have wanted to recall that part of the reason the right to bear arms is codified in the Constitution is that Britain was trying to disarm the citizenry at the time.
He regrets none of it, but clearly understands his scolding of “stupid” opponents of gun laws was not everyone’s cup of tea.
“I’m in danger of being the guy down at the end of the bar who is always going on about the same thing,” he said. He added that he was sure there were plenty of people in the heartland angry “about this British guy telling them how to lead their lives and what they should do with their guns.”
In the current media age, no one is expected to be a eunuch, without values or beliefs, but Mr. Morgan’s lecturing on the evils of guns have clanked hard against the CNN brand, which, for good or ill, is built on the middle way.
We don’t look for moral leadership from CNN, or from a British host on a rampage. Guns, along with many other great and horrible things, are knit into the fabric of this country. There are folkways peculiar to America that Mr. Morgan is just learning, including the fact that if you want to stick out, you first have to work on fitting in.
Written by Conservative Outfitters — February 23, 2014

Saturday, February 22, 2014

North Korean Prison Camp Survivor: Starving Women Cooked & Ate Their Own Children



North Korean Prison Camp Survivor:

Kim Hye Sook Discusses Her Detention in North Korean Prison Camp

Kim Hye Sook suffered unbearable pain and emotional suffering when she was detained for 28 years in a secretive North Korean concentration camp. Brutal executions, starvation — even mothers killing and eating their children to ensure their own survival — were regular occurrences.
Kim — who miraculously escaped from the Bukchang prison camp back in 2003 – granted CBN News with the first American television news interview to discuss these horrendous conditions. She now lives in South Korea, with the details of her escape remaining classified for security reasons. This summer, she released a memoir entitled, “A Concentration Camp Retold in Tears.”
When she was 13-year-old, her tragic tale began. The year was 1975 and in the blink of an eye the young girl was captured alongside her entire family. After years of suffering, she didn’t taste freedom until she was 41-years-old. Kim explains:
“My entire family went to prison. Some were taken to the mountains; others were put in different labor camps all because of my grandfather’s one mistake: he escaped to South Korea during the Korean War.”
Kim Hye Sook Discusses Her Detention in North Korean Prison Camp
Two women are watched by a North Korean guard (Photo Credit: AP)
Today, Kim wears dark glasses to ensure that her identity remains concealed. While she lost seven family members in the re-education camp, she currently has two sisters and a brother who are still imprisoned. She described a typical day at the camp:
“I attended indoctrination classes in the morning. In the afternoon the children were sent to push trolleys in the coal mines, often without any safety gear.
People were dying in the mines. There were numerous mine collapses, so many injuries, people who lost their legs, many who were buried alive. It was horrible.
I was treated like a slave and worse. I hardly slept. It was inhuman. But I never complained. I just followed all the rules. I had to find a way to survive.”
Kim claims that the conditions were so terrible that she thought about committing suicide “hundreds of thousands of times” during her 28-year detention. But because there was always someone watching her, this simply wasn’t an option:
“Each prisoner is assigned to watch four or five other prisoners. So if anything happens, the other prisoners would alert the guards because they didn’t want to get into trouble themselves.”
While her descriptions of executions are absolutely horrendous, nothing is more disturbing than her memories about those individuals who she saw kill their children in an effort to stave off hunger. In one instance, she recalls a mother boiling her 9-year-old daughter. In another fit of desperation, a woman killed her 16-year-old son, chopped him up and took him to a butcher to obtain some corn in exchange.
Kim admits that these details are difficult to share, but she bravely proclaims, “I want the world to see these images and to hear my testimony.” In describing the conditions in the isolated and volatile nation, she says, “I am living proof that there are no human rights in North Korea.” In September, she was invited to Washington, D.C., where she testified before a congressional panel about the conditions she faced.
Watch her story, below:

Friday, February 21, 2014

Michelle Obama: ‘Young People are Knuckleheads’

She is out playing to the low information voter.... "hey yall im just like you so we are cool together, right" NO you are an evil extension of Progressive Socialist Democrats attempting to destroy American way of Life Liberty and the Freedom to do as we wish in a personal responsible manner. I can take care of me and mine and do not need you to look after my children or family thank you very much now go to some other country that wants to be under your stinking regime.







Arrested in America for no-id and Jay-Walking ?? WTF ??

She Allegedly Went on a Simple Jog in Her Toe Shoes. So Why Did She End Up Screaming and in Handcuffs? ‘I Didn’t F**king Do Anything Wrong!’



It allegedly started with her jogging in her toe shoes and sporting headphones. It ended in video of her screaming and being led away in handcuffs. What happened in between is a matter of debate, but video showing parts of the incident is certainly gaining traction online.



“I was doing nothing wrong,” she said at first to a nearby witness while sitting on the sidewalk with her hands behind her and one officer standing over her. “I was just crossing the street.”
But as police escorted her away while pedestrians passed by, things got ugly.

Whatever the woman did to get the attention of Austin, Texas police, a witness’ video of cops detaining her on a city sidewalk Thursday morning then escorting her to a nearby squad car indicate she was not happy with their actions.

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“I didn’t f**king do anything wrong! I didn’t do anything wrong!” she yelled before being placed in a nearby squad car. She then began crying as she pleaded, “I f**king crossed the street.”

The Daily Texan, the student newspaper for the University of Texas at Austin, reported that police arrested the woman for failing to provide identification.
Student Chris Quintero, who the Daily Texan reported witnessed the arrest, said he saw the woman jogging with headphones on when police ran after her. When the woman failed to stop, the officer grabbed her by the arm and handcuffed her, Quintero said.
“She repeatedly pleaded with them, saying that she was just exercising and to let her go,” said Quintero, who also shot the video and took photographs of the incident.
The woman can be seen in the full video attempting to get up from the sidewalk and being kept down by police officers.
Austin police did not return phone calls from TheBlaze about why the woman was detained.
According to a statement to The Daily Texan from police spokeswoman Lisa Cortinas: “[In this case], the call is titled failure to identify.”






And the LiveLeak poster’s description:
Sitting at Starbucks, on the corner of 24th and San Antonio, I noticed a particularly odd situation.Two Austin Police Officers standing outside the Castilian just lingering. Every time I looked back there was a different student holding a carbon copy of what looked to be a jay walking citation. Suddenly one of the cops shouts at an innocent girl jogging with her headphones on through West Campus. He wobbled after her and grabbed her by the arm. Startled and not knowing it was a cop, she jerked her arm away. The cop viewed this as resisting arrest and proceeded to grab both arms tightly, placing her in handcuffs. She repeatedly pleaded with them saying that she was just exercising and to let her go. She repeatedly cried out, “I did not do anything wrong…just give me the ticket.” The other officer strolled over and not they where making a scene. She tried to get up. I doubt she was running away, as she was in handcuffs, but the second cop pushed her back down to the ground. Because of the commotion, they walked her to the cop car in the alleyway next to the Big Bite, where she, overcome with frustration, yelled loudly to gain attention. Because of that, the cops tightened their grip causing her to squirm and kick. Then came two bike cops from down the alley. Now we have four cops and one small, helpless girl in the back of a cop car, because she was just going for a run.
UPDATE: As TheBlaze pointed out earlier this year, citizens have a variety of rights when it comes to interacting with police, including whether or not you have to show ID, and laws vary from state to state.
According to the infogrpahic in TheBlaze story from January and other sources, in Texas you only have to show ID once you’ve been arrested, not before. If you’re lawfully detained in Texas, you do not have to provide ID. However, you cannot give false information about who you are.
It’s still unclear if the woman in the video was arrested or detained or if she had ID to show or provided information of any sort to police. TheBlaze will update this story when police provide the information.





 

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Greatest Genocides Ranked in Order of the 20th and 21st Century

You must understand when Obama and his regime use names of former leaders.  Here is a list of those leaders they respect most in history.


The worst genocides of the 20th and 21st Centuries

by Piero Scaruffi | Email TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Here is a tentative list of modern mass murderers and the estimated number of people killed by their orders (excluding enemy armies). In many cases (notably Stalin's and Mao's cases) one has to decide how to consider the millions who died indirectly because of their political decisions. The Chinese cultural revolution caused the death of 30 million people (according to the current Chinese government), but many died of hunger. Stalin is held responsible for the death of millions by Ukrainians, but "only" half a million people were killed by his order. Khomeini sent children to die in the war against Iraq, but it was a war.
Read the bottom of this page for frequently asked questions on controversial actions such as the atomic bombs, the Iraqi war, etc (that always involve the current superpower and usually the current president of that superpower).
I welcome feedback if i forgot anything or posted the wrong data, but please always provide reliable sources: webpages are gossips, not sources (and the worst one is Wikipedia, edited by anonymous people). Reliable sources are books written by professional historians who spent decades researching the event.
An impressive number of readers don't seem to know what "20th century" means and keep sending me emails about the Atlantic slave trade, the Native Americans, the Irish famine, etc.
See also Wars and Casualties of the 20th and 21st Century.
Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50)49-78,000,000
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945)12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians deliberately killed in WWII plus 3 million Russian POWs left to die)
Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908)8,000,000
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39)7,000,000 (the gulags plus the purges plus Ukraine's famine)
Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44)5,000,000 (civilians in WWII)
Ismail Enver (Ottoman Turkey, 1915-20)1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20)
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79)1,700,000
Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94)1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)
Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78)1,500,000
Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970)1,000,000
Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982)900,000
Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994)800,000
Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88)600,000
Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1980) 570,000
Suharto/Soeharto (Indonesian communists 1965-66)500,000
Fumimaro Konoe (Japan, 1937-39)500,000? (Chinese civilians)
Jonas Savimbi - but disputed by recent studies (Angola, 1975-2002)400,000
Mullah Omar - Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001)400,000
Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979)300,000
Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71) 300,000 (Bangladesh)
Ante Pavelic (Croatia, 1941-45) 359,000 (30,000 Jews, 29,000 Gipsies, 300,000 Serbs)
Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII)300,000
Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97)?
Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996)220,000
Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000) 200,000
Suharto (Aceh, East Timor, New Guinea, 1975-98)200,000
Ho Chi Min (Vietnam, 1953-56)200,000
Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972) 150,000
Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-99)100,000
Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999)100,000
Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79) ?
Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974)70,000 (Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians)
Efrain Rios Montt - but disputed by recent studies (Guatemala, 1982-83)70,000
Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71)60,000
Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic, 1930-61)50,000
Bashir Assad (Syria, 2012-13)50,000
Francisco Macias Nguema (Equatorial Guinea, 1969-79) 50,000
Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990)40,000
Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, 1947)30,000 (popular uprising)
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20)30,000 (dissidents executed)
Francisco Franco (Spain)30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war)
Fidel Castro (Cuba, 1959-1999)30,000
Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968)30,000
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez (El Salvador, 1932)30,000
Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000)25,000
Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89)20,000
Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe, 1982-87, Ndebele minority)20,000
Rafael Videla (Argentina, 1976-83)13,000
Guy Mollet (France, 1956-1957)10,000 (war in Algeria)
Harold McMillans (Britain, 1952-56, Kenya's Mau-Mau rebellion) 10,000
Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997) 6,000
Osama Bin Laden (worldwide, 1993-2001)3,500
Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973)3,000
For a list of casualties in wars, see this page.

Main sources:
Notes:
  1. Note: this website has been banned in China and Turkey since 2006. Please help boycott these countries.
  2. The crimes committed by right-wing dictators have always been easier to track down than the crimes against humanity committed by communist leaders, so the figures for communist leaders like Stalin and Mao increase almost yearly as new secret documents become available. (to be fair, the numbers for Stalin have decreased in recent years by admission of the Ukrainian authorities). To this day, the Chinese government has not yet disclosed how many people were executed by Mao's red guards during the Cultural Revolution and how many people were killed in Tibet during the Chinese invasion of 1950. We also don't know how many dissidents have been killed by order of Kim Il Sung in North Korea, although presumably many thousands.
  3. I often get asked if Hiroshima/Nagasaki qualify as a genocide. I disagree. First of all, why only nuclear weapons? The carpet bombing of German cities and of Tokyo killed the same number of people. Second, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman did not start that war: they ended it. It is even debatable if these bombings killed or saved lives: Hiroshima probably saved a lot of Japanese lives, because a long protracted invasion like the one that took place in Germany would have killed a lot more people (Germany lost 2 million people, Japan only 300,000, because Japan was never invaded, while Germany was invaded from all sides). Actually more Japanese died in two weeks of battles with the Soviet Union in Manchuria than in the two nuclear bombings. I suspect a nuclear bomb on Berlin would have killed 100,000 people but caused Germany to surrender right away, thus saving many German lives. (I know, it is gruesome to count dead bodies like this; but, again, i didn't start that war, the Germans and the Japanese started it). The USA had a casualty rate of 35% in the battle of Okinawa: they expected to lose one million soldiers in a land invasion of Japan, and the estimates were that Japan would lose the same number of soldiers and many more civilians. Most historians believe that it was the atomic bomb to convince Japan to surrender, and it was the second one: after the first one, there were still members of the Japanese cabinet that were opposed to surrender (the cabinet had to be unanimous in order for the emperor to surrender). The dissenters who wanted to continue the war even tried a coup to overthrow the emperor rather than obey the order to surrender. After the first bomb, Nishina (head of the Japanese nuclear program) was asked if it was possible that the USA could build another atomic bomb within six months: obviously the people who asked him the question were not going to surrender unless a second bomb was possible. Koichi Kido, advisor to emperor Hirohito, said: "We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war." Hisatsune Sakomizu, chief secretary of Cabinet, said that the atomic bombs were a "golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war." Thus the Japanese themselves (those who wanted to surrender) seem to indicate that the two atomic bombs were indispensable to end a war that was killing hundreds of thousands of people per battle (the battle of Okinawa killed more Japanese than the atomic bomb on Nagasaki). It is also estimated that throughout Japan-occupied Asia about 200,000 civilians were dying every month (of disease, hunger, etc): if the atomic bombs helped Japan surrender even just six months earlier, that saved the lives of one million Indonesians, Indochinese, Philipinos, Chinese, etc. (Notable dissenting voices were the two most powerful USA generals, Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, who both felt that the atomic bombs were unnecessary to finish Japan).
    People die in wars. During the previous world-war, millions died of everything from guns to chemical weapons. The fact that a more or less efficient weapon is used to fight a war does not constitute genocide, per se.
    It is not the weapon, but the intent. Churchill's and Truman's intent was to end the war, not to exterminate the peoples (which they could have done easily, had they wanted to). In fact, i think that Churchill and Truman are exemplary of how to treat a defeated enemy: instead of annihilating the enemies, they helped Germany and Japan to rebuild themselves and become stronger wealthier than they had been before the war. It may have been the first time in history.
    Furthermore, we know that Werner Heisenberg in Germany and Yoshio Nishina in Japan were working on an atomic bomb: what if they had had the time to complete one? Heisenberg in Germany had failed to correctly calculate the critical mass of uranium required to sustain a chain reaction, but Nishina in Japan had just done that in 1944. It was a matter of time before German and Japanese scientists would find out the right recipe. Thus the first bomb saved a lot of lives, probably millions of lives (not just Japanese lives, but lives of all the nations that were being massacred by the Japanese). Last but not least, the USA dropped 720,000 leaflets on Hiroshima and other cities two days earlier, warning of the impending destruction of the city.
    It is certainly debatable, instead, if the second atomic bomb was necessary. The USA only waited three days to see the effect of the first atomic bomb and of its leaflets. Today sitting in our living rooms we can calmly debate this issue forever. Of course, it was a different kind of decision for the man sitting in the White House in the middle of a world war that had been raging for four years.
  4. I've been asked why i blame the USA only for part of the civilian deaths in Vietnam while i blame the Soviet Union for all of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The USA "invasion" of Vietnam is not as clearcut as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan:
    1. Even today many in Vietnam think that the aggressor was North Vietnam, not the USA, at least at the beginning, whereas everybody in Afghanistan blames the Soviet Union for that invasion. Nobody welcomed the Soviet Union, whereas about half of Vietnam welcomed the USA.
    2. When the Soviet Union withdrew, almost no Afghani followed them, whereas, when the USA withdrew, about eight million Vietnamese left with them and about three million ran away from Vietnam in the following decades risking their lives (the "boat people").
    3. There are documented large-scale atrocities by the North Vietnamese against their own population (read the Black Book of Communism) while i haven't seen evidence of any large-scale atrocity by the Afghani fighters against their own population
    4. The Soviet Union tried to invade the WHOLE of Afghanistan. The USA never tried to invade the northern part of Vietnam: it simply fought the Vietcong that wanted to annex south Vietnam to north Vietnam (if you read the history of the country, north and south Vietnam have fought wars for more than 1,000 years: go to the Timeline of Indochina and look for Annam and Champa. the ancient names of the two kingdoms). When the USA bombed civilians in North Vietnam, then i consider it a war crime.
  5. The most frequently asked questions are always about current unpopular USA presidents: Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II... The moment the USA elects a new president, i start receiving emails asking to add him to the list of "genociders". The moment the president leaves office the same people forget about him and jump on the next one. Can we consider President Bush a genocider due to all of the civilians killed in Iraq under his watch? I don't think so, because the vast majority of civilians killed in Iraq were NOT killed by US troops. It is genocide, but the "genociders" are others, and the situation is still too murky to decide who exactly killed those 100,000 civilians. (If Bush is indirectly guilty of it, then certainly Islam is too). The USA bears some clear responsibilities for the chaos, but ineptitude, miscalculation, ignorance, etc do not qualify as genocide. Otherwse the United Nations and France would be responsible for the genocide in Rwanda (900,000 people). Even if one wanted to count all the civilians killed in that civil war as Bush's and Blair's responsibility, it would be (as of 2013, long after the USA and Britain withdrew) 120,000 people in ten years, i.e. 12,000 a year. In 20 years Saddam Hussein was responsible for the killing of 600,000 people (that he personally ordered), an average of 30,000 a year. Therefore, technically speaking one could argue that the war, by removing Saddam, saved and is still saving 18,000 lives a year. Putin would be a better candidate for "genocider", since the vast majority of Chechen civilians killed under his watch were killed by Russian troops. However, i have never received a single email nominating Putin...
  6. Specifically about Bush II (the hot topic between 2003 and 2008). I have seen no evidence whatsoever that he or anybody working for him or the British prime minister or the Australian prime minister wanted to kill Iraqi civilians. And even less evidence that Iraqi civilians were killed in any large number by US soldiers. The Iraqi civilians killed by US soldiers are estimated at about 4% of all deaths, which is a little over 5,000. With all due respect for those families, a seven-year war that kills only 5,000 people (less than 1,000 a year) does not register anywhere in the history of the world. All the other civilians were killed by militias, suicide bombers, etc. and almost always in the name of Islam (so it would be more appropriate to vent your anger at that religion than at the USA). In fact, all the documents show that some caution was taken by the US and Britain to avoid mass civilian casualties. Compare with Vietnam, when the US bombed densely populated areas knowing that thousands of civilians would die. In fact, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan might be the first large-scale wars in which the winners went out of their way to avoid mass civilian casualties. Compare with any other war. Future generations (who will face other crises and will be more concerned with their presidents than with Bush II) may see more clearly who is responsible for those killings. Most of them were killed by fellow Iraqis or at least fellow Muslims, not by US soldiers. Once we remove all the personal emotions against this or that politician, it is self-evident who/what killed those Iraqi civilians. If you simply scream hysterically against the president of the USA, you are not helping solve the real problem of those places.
  7. Coming to more serious issues, Lothar von Trotha massacred the Herero and Namaqua in Namibia in 1904-1907. That episode is not listed here (despite the large number of victims) because the German government never ordered those massacres. Once the facts became known, outrage in Germany among the political class forced the Kaiser to fire Von Trotha. So i consider this event the folly of one overzealous and racist man rather than a real genocide.