“I saw no evidence of a radical streak, either overt or covert, when we were together at Harvard Law School,” said Bradford A. Berenson, who worked on the Harvard Law Review with Mr. Obama and who served as associate White House counsel under President Bush. Mr. Berenson, who is backing Mr. McCain, described his fellow student as “a pragmatic liberal” whose moderation frustrated others at the law review whose views were much farther to the left.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
OBAMA IS A PRAGMATIC LIBERAL
Or so says a former colleague of his at the Harvard Law School who is also a former counselor to Pres. Fredo (from the NYT):
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Hey Steve!
How about those Columbia transcripts!
Excellent!
Hey Steve!
How about those detailed Obama medical records!
Wow!
Hey Steve!
How about those Obama clients list and billing records!
Excellent!
[I]n 1970[,] three of [Ayers'] confederates, including his then girlfriend Diana Oughton, were accidentally killed when the explosive they were building to Ayers specifications (Ayers was a bomb designer) went off during construction. As noted in Ayers' Discover the Networks profile, the explosive had been a nail bomb. Back when Ayers was being more honest about his intentions, he admitted that the purpose of that bomb had been to murder United States soldiers:
That bomb had been intended for detonation at a dance that was to be attended by army soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plan been successfully executed. Ayers attested that the bomb would have done serious damage, "tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too."
In fact, Ayers was a founder of the Weatherman terror group and he defined its purpose as carrying out murder. Again, from Discover the Networks:
Characterizing Weatherman as "an American Red Army," Ayers summed up the organization's ideology as follows: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents."
Now he wants you to think they just wanted to break a few dishes. But in his book Fugitive Days, in which he boasts that he "participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972," he says of the day that he bombed the Pentagon: "Everything was absolutely ideal. ... The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them."
And he wasn't singular. As I noted back in April in this article about Obama's motley collection of radical friends, at the Weatherman “War Council” meeting in 1969, Ayers' fellow terrorist and now-wife, Bernadine Dohrn, famously gushed over the barbaric Manson Family murders of the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and three others: “Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!” And as Jonah recalled yesterday, "In appreciation, her Weather Underground cell made a threefingered 'fork' gesture its official salute." They weren't talking about scratching up the wall-paper.
A Weatherman affiliate group which called itself "the Family" colluded with the Black Liberation Army in the 1981 Brinks robbery in which two police officers and an armed guard were murdered. (Obama would like people to believe all this terrorist activity ended in 1969 when he was eight years old. In fact, it continued well into the eighties.) Afterwards, like Ayers and Dohrn, their friend and fellow terrorist Susan Rosenberg became a fugitive.
On November 29, 1984, Rosenberg and a co-conspirator, Timothy Blunk, were finally apprehended in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. At the time, they were actively planning an unspeakable bombing campaign that would have put at risk the lives of countless innocent people. They also possessed twelve assorted guns (including an Uzi 9 mm. semi-automatic rifle and an Ithaca twelve-gauge shotgun with its barrel sawed off), nearly 200 sticks of dynamite, more than 100 sticks of DuPont Trovex (a high explosive), a wide array of blasting agents and caps, batteries, and switches for explosive devices. Arrayed in disguises and offering multiple false identities to arresting officers, the pair also maintained hundreds of false identification documents, including FBI and DEA badges.
When she was sentenced to 58 years' imprisonment in 1985, the only remorse Rosenberg expressed was over the fact that she and Blunk had allowed themselves to be captured rather than fighting it out with the police. Bernadine Dohrn was jailed for contempt when she refused to testify against Rosenberg. Not to worry, though. On his last day in office, the last Democrat president, Bill Clinton, pardoned Rosenberg — commuting her 58-year sentence to time-served.
These savages wanted to kill massively. That they killed only a few people owes to our luck and their incompetence, not design. They and the Democrat politicians who now befriend and serve them can rationalize that all they want. But those are the facts.
s others have noted, today’s New York Times carries a story on the relationship between Barack Obama and unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist, Bill Ayers. The piece serves as a platform for the Obama campaign and Obama’s friends and allies. Obama’s spokesman and supporters’ names are named and their versions of events are presented in detail, with quotes. Yet the article makes no serious attempt to present the views of Obama critics who have worked to uncover the true nature of the relationship. That makes this piece irresponsible journalism, and an obvious effort by the former paper of record to protect Obama from the coming McCain onslaught.
The title of the article when it first appeared on the web last night was, "Obama Had Met Ayers, but the Two Are Not Close." That was quickly changed to, "Obama and the ‘60's Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths." Perhaps the first headline made the paper’s agenda a bit too obvious. Even so, the new title simply parrots the line of Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt that the two first met through an early "education project" and since have simply "encountered each other occasionally in public life or in the neighborhood." Or, as New York Times reporter Scott Shane puts it at the head of his article, since an initial lunchtime meeting in 1995, "their paths have crossed sporadically...at a coffee Mr. Ayers hosted for Mr. Obama’s first run for office, on the schools project (i.e. the Chicago Annenberg Challenge) and a charitable board, and in casual encounters as Hyde Park neighbors."
There is nothing "sporadic" about Barack Obama delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of many years to fund Bill Ayers’ radical education projects, not to mention many millions more to benefit Ayers’ radical education allies. We are talking about a substantial and lengthy working relationship here, one that does not depend on the quality of personal friendship or number of hours spent in the same room together (although the article greatly underestimates that as well).
Shane’s article buys the spin on Ayers’ supposed rehabilitation offered by the Obama campaign and Ayers’ supporters in Chicago. In this view, whatever Ayers did in the 1960's has somehow been redeemed by Ayers’ later turn to education work. As the Times quotes Mayor Daley saying, "People make mistakes. You judge a person by his whole life." The trouble with this is that Ayers doesn’t view his terrorism as a mistake. How can he be forgiven when he’s not repentant? Nor does Ayers see his education work as a repudiation of his early radicalism. On the contrary, Ayers sees his education work as carrying on his radicalism in a new guise. The point of Ayers’ education theory is that the United States is a fundamentally racist and oppressive nation. Students, Ayers believes, ought to be encouraged to resist this oppression. Obama was funding Ayers’ "small schools" project, built around this philosophy. Ayers’ radicalism isn’t something in the past. It’s something to which Obama gave moral and financial support as an adult. So when Shane says that Obama has never expressed sympathy for Ayers’ radicalism, he’s flat wrong. Obama’s funded it.
Obama was perfectly aware of Ayers’ radical views, since he read and publically endorsed, without qualification, Ayers’ book on juvenile crime. That book is quite radical, expressing doubts about whether we ought to have a prison system at all, comparing America to South Africa’s apartheid system, and contemptuously dismissing the idea of the United States as a kind or just country. Shane mentions the book endorsement, yet says nothing about the book’s actual content. Nor does Shane mention the panel about Ayers’ book, on which Obama spoke as part of a joint Ayers-Obama effort to sink the 1998 Illinois juvenile crime bill. Again, we have unmistakable evidence of a substantial political working relationship. (I’ve described it in detail here in "Barack Obama’s Lost Years."
The Times article purports to resolve the matter of Ayers’ possible involvement in Obama’s choice to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, yet in no way does so. Clearly, the article sides with those who claim that Ayers was not involved. Yet the piece has no credibility because it simply refuses to present the arguments of those who say that Ayers almost surely had a significant role in Obama’s final choice.
Steve Diamond has made a powerful case that, whoever first suggested Obama’s name, Ayers must surely have had a major role in his final selection. Diamond has now revealed that the Times consulted him extensively for this article and has seen his important documentary evidence. Yet we get no inkling in the piece of Diamond’s key points, or the documents that back it up. (I’ve made a similar argument myself, based largely on my viewing of many of the same documents presented by Diamond.) How can an article that gives only one side of the story be fair? Instead of offering both sides of the argument and letting readers decide, the Times simply spoon-feeds its readers the Obama camp line.
The Times also ignores the fact that I’ve published a detailed statement from the Obama camp on the relationship between Ayers and Obama at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. (See "Obama’s Challenge.") Maybe that’s because attention to that statement would force them to acknowledge and report on my detailed reply.
Shane’s story also omits any mention of the fact that access to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge records was blocked. What’s more, thanks to a University of Chicago law student’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, we now know that access to the documents was blocked by an old Obama associate, Ken Rolling, on the day I first tried to see them. And as a result of my own FOIA, we also have evidence that Rolling may have been less than fully forthcoming on the question of Ayers’ possible role in elevating Obama to board chair at Anneberg. In fact, Rolling seems to have been withholding information from a New York Times reporter. I’ve made this material public in a piece called, "Founding Brothers." How could a responsible article on the topic of Obama, Ayers, and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge ignore the story of the blocked library access and the results of the two FOIA requests? How could a responsible paper fail to aggressively follow up on the questions raised by those requests, and by the documents and analysis presented by Steve Diamond?
Most remarkably of all, Shane seems to paper over the results of his own questioning. On the one hand, toward the end of the piece we read: "Since 2002, there is little public evidence of their relationship." And it’s no wonder, says Shane, since Ayers was caught expressing no regret for his own past terrorism in an article published on September 11, 2001. Yet earlier in Shane’s article we learn that, according to Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt, Obama and Ayers "have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005." Very interesting. Obama’s own spokesman has just left open the possibility that there has indeed been phone and e-mail contact between the two men between 2002 and 2004, well after Ayers’ infamous conduct on 9/11. Yet instead of pursuing this opening, Shane ignores the findings of his own investigation and covers for Obama.
The New York Times in the tank for Obama? You bet. And sinking deeper every day.
What is the source of your concern about Obama's transcripts?
Hey, Steve!
How about those congressmen and women who said there was no need for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac oversight!
Terrific!
Watch it here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
Folks,
The Ayers dog won't hunt. The American people who count don't give a damn.
hey Steve!
Full Discloure!
Were are they?
Like, what happened at Columbia?
Why the secrecy?
Dude!
Hey Steve!
The American People Who Count!
Wow!
Elitist!
Get Ready for the Reeducation Camps!
Barack Hussein Obama II!
Hope!
Change!
Hey Steve!
JOE BIDEN’S 14 LIES TONIGHT
1. TAX VOTE: Biden said McCain voted “the exact same way” as Obama to increase taxes on Americans earning just $42,000, but McCain DID NOT VOTE THAT WAY.
2. AHMEDINIJAD MEETING: Joe Biden lied when he said that Barack Obama never said that he would sit down unconditionally with Mahmoud Ahmedinijad of Iran. Barack Obama did say specifically, and Joe Biden attacked him for it.
3. OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING: Biden said, “Drill we must.” But Biden has opposed offshore drilling and even compared offshore drilling to “raping” the Outer Continental Shelf.”
4. TROOP FUNDING: Joe Biden lied when he indicated that John McCain and Barack Obama voted the same way against funding the troops in the field. John McCain opposed a bill that included a timeline, that the President of the United States had already said he would veto regardless of it’s passage.
5. OPPOSING CLEAN COAL: Biden says he’s always been for clean coal, but he just told a voter that he is against clean coal and any new coal plants in America and has a record of voting against clean coal and coal in the U.S. Senate.
6. ALERNATIVE ENERGY VOTES: According to FactCheck.org, Biden is exaggerating and overstating John McCain’s record voting for alternative energy when he says he voted against it 23 times.
7. HEALTH INSURANCE: Biden falsely said McCain will raise taxes on people's health insurance coverage -- they get a tax credit to offset any tax hike. Independent fact checkers have confirmed this attack is false
8. OIL TAXES: Biden falsely said Palin supported a windfall profits tax in Alaska -- she reformed the state tax and revenue system, it's not a windfall profits tax.
9. AFGHANISTAN / GEN. MCKIERNAN COMMENTS: Biden said that top military commander in Iraq said the principles of the surge could not be applied to Afghanistan, but the commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force Gen. David D. McKiernan said that there were principles of the surge strategy, including working with tribes, that could be applied in Afghanistan.
10. REGULATION: Biden falsely said McCain weakened regulation -- he actually called for more regulation on Fannie and Freddie.
11. IRAQ: When Joe Biden lied when he said that John McCain was “dead wrong on Iraq”, because Joe Biden shared the same vote to authorize the war and differed on the surge strategy where they John McCain has been proven right.
12. TAX INCREASES: Biden said Americans earning less than $250,000 wouldn’t see higher taxes, but the Obama-Biden tax plan would raise taxes on individuals making $200,000 or more.
13. BAILOUT: Biden said the economic rescue legislation matches the four principles that Obama laid out, but in reality it doesn’t meet two of the four principles that Obama outlined on Sept. 19, which were that it include an emergency economic stimulus package, and that it be part of “part of a globally coordinated effort with our partners in the G-20.”
14. REAGAN TAX RATES: Biden is wrong in saying that under Obama, Americans won't pay any more in taxes then they did under Reagan.
Hope!
Change!
Hey Steve!
Barney Frank's Lover!
nqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.
So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.
Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.
Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.
"It’s absolutely a conflict," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?
"If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have - or at least what’s not in the stock market - that this would be considered germane," added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. "But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard."
A top GOP House aide agreed.
"C’mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?" the aide told FOX News. "No media ever takes note? Imagine what would happen if Frank’s political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley’s wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain’s wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation’s housing and banking laws."
Frank’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Frank met Moses in 1987, the same year he became the first openly gay member of Congress.
"I am the only member of the congressional gay spouse caucus," Moses wrote in the Washington Post in 1991. "On Capitol Hill, Barney always introduces me as his lover."
The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses "helped develop many of Fannie Mae’s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs."
Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month’s government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector.
Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher regulations on the mortgage giants. In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.
Three years later, President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was thwarted by Frank. Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the seeds of today’s economic crisis.
"I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," Clinton said recently.
Hey Steve!
Bill Clinton!
I love this part!
Let's read it again!
Three years later, President Clinton’s Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose a new regulation on Fannie, but was thwarted by Frank. Clinton now blames such Democrats for planting the seeds of today’s economic crisis.
"I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president, to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," Clinton said recently.
Awesome!
The American People Who Count!
Wow!
Elitist!
LOL! Yes, I prefer knowledgable people to run things, not empty-headed, cliche-riddled ideologues.
In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.
Certainly not good but this isn't a cause of the current crisis.
Hey Steve!
Socialism!
Hope!
Change!
Dark clouds drifted in and lightning flashed as the mother uprooted plants on a North Korean mountainside, searching for anything edible to feed her emaciated son.
She heard the cry of crows and grew anxious. After hurrying home, she made a thin soup and tried to wake her child.
"But there was no response," recalled the mother, Ok Soon Hong. "He was cold and dead. ... He was so young and so beautiful, but was gone forever. I could not do anything but cry all night in deep grievance, wondering what happened to Korea."
Hong is in the midst of a monthlong trip to the United States, including Seattle, speaking at Korean American churches about her transformation from "an ordinary housewife" to a survivor of North Korea's oppressive regime.
Her father was arrested on unknown charges and executed. Ten other family members, including two toddler nephews, were taken to a prison camp after a distant relative fell into political disfavor.
Hong and another defector, Gi Chul Park -- to protect family still in North Korea, they use pseudonyms and asked that their real names not be published -- recently spoke at churches in the Seattle area and in Vancouver, B.C. They left this week for California.
They say food is so scarce in North Korea, even tales of cannibalism aren't far-fetched. They also say that the Communist regime forces women to undergo abortions, practices infanticide and punishes citizens for communicating with a South Korean or being a Christian.
Hong, 56, and Park, 68, separately fled from North Korea in 1997, crossing the Tumen and Yalu rivers to China, where a Seattle-area pastor aided their escape to South Korea.
The pastor, a missionary for a Pentecostal denomination and a native of what is now North Korea, said he has helped more than 60 people defect in the past six years.
The work is risky. If discovered by Chinese authorities, defectors are returned home, where they face imprisonment and possible torture. Those who assist the defectors could join them in punishment.
There is "no other country that needs the Gospel more than North Korea," said the pastor, who asked that his name not be published because he plans more trips to China.
Besides spiritual restoration, he agrees with Hong and Park that helping defectors has humanitarian and political purposes, starting with saving lives of those experiencing malnutrition and starvation.
Sharing first-person accounts of life in the Communist country also may spur American support for political solutions, such as two bills in Congress that would allow North Koreans to apply for refugee status or asylum in the United States.
Nearly 2,300 Korean Americans from Seattle to Tacoma signed petitions last month in support of the legislation, said Simon Lee, an elder at Tacoma Joong-Ang Presbyterian Church.
"Many people are praying about that," Lee said.
The state Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs this month passed a resolution in support of the bills, S1336 and HR367, saying it was doing so "in collaboration with the Korean community, numbering 46,880 in Washington state."
"Once the U.S. grants asylum, the Yalu River will be flooded with refugees," predicted Park, whose monthly pay at a carpenter's shop in North Korea was equivalent to the cost of "about two chunks of bread."
But the main reason for shedding light on conditions in North Korea is nothing short of bringing down the current regime, say Hong, Park and the pastor.
They say North Koreans have been brainwashed -- to hate the Untied States and distrust South Korea -- by Kim Jong Il and his father, Kim Il Sung, who preceded him as paramount leader.
"While (Kim Jong Il) lives like royalty in Pyongyang, he keeps hundreds of thousands of his people locked in prison camps with millions more mired in abject poverty, scrounging the ground for food," said John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary for arms control and international security affairs, in a July speech in Seoul.
"For many in North Korea, life is a hellish nightmare."
Last week, a group of United Nations agencies asked for $221 million in international aid for North Korea, mostly for food.
Hong said food sent by the U.S. to North Korea is diverted to the military, leaving the average citizen unaware of aid from the West.
If starving North Koreans really knew how much better living conditions are in South Korea and the United States, she believes they would rise up and help "demolish the North Korean regime."
To publicize the cause of defectors, the pastor has gathered dozens of first-person accounts and published them in books in Korean and English.
The cover of the English version, "Axis of Evil," shows the face of Kim Jong Il suspended in the cloud of a nuclear blast, a not-so-subtle reference to North Korea's nuclear weapon ambitions.
The book includes a statement by Hwang Jang Hyup, North Korea's highest-ranking defector, who visited Washington, D.C., for the first time late last month.
"Kim Jong Il is a dictator who has starved millions of North Korean(s) to death. He also made North Korea into a gigantic prison," wrote Hyup, once chief of North Korea's Parliament.
"Axis of Evil" includes photos of skeletal adults and children and gives accounts of desperate people eating bark, weeds, pig feed -- and humans, sometimes by people who have gone insane.
Hong and Park say the reality is "worse than described" in the book.
Until recent years, "the stories of the relatively few defectors were suspect, viewed as propaganda tools of the South Korean government," the Washington Post recently reported.
But now, with defectors numbering at least in the tens of thousands, "their accounts have gained credibility by their number and their consistency, and by corroboration from the few outsiders who have worked in North Korea," the paper said, citing interviews with dozens of defectors in Seoul.
To help defectors earn money to send to their families in North Korea, the Seattle-area pastor had them make crafts that they could sell when visiting U.S. churches, including wooden crosses and cross-stitched Christian images or messages.
One cross-stitch pattern shows an outline of praying hands and the first 12 words of an oft-quoted prayer that may seem fitting for the situation in North Korea:
"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. ..."
Hey Steve!
Socialism!
Catch the Wave!
That's probably the saddest fact of the Twentieth Century. There are so many candidates for the award of top monster that we can't decide between them. Whether it's Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong or Iosif Stalin is, quite frankly, anybody's guess.
For now, let's just skip over the whole margin of error thing -- reasonable people have studied the evidence and come up with wildly differing numbers. You're free to check my sources, but for now, trust me. I've studied the matter at great length and decided that the most likely death toll for these three are:
TYRANT DEATHS
Mao 40Million
Hitler 34M
Stalin 20M
Well, that certainly looks like Mao is our man, but wait. Mao's largest crime is the Great Leap Forward, a bungled attempt to restructure the economy of China which created a famine that killed some 30M. If we confine our indictment to deliberate killings, we get this:
TYRANT KILLINGS
Hitler 34M
Stalin 20M
Mao 10M
So it's Hitler, right? Except that most of the deaths on his head were caused by the Second World War. Sure, he started it, but our society does not blanketly condemn the starting of wars (after all, we reserve the right to do it ourselves in a just cause), and we certainly don't consider killing armed enemy soldiers in a fair fight to be a crime against humanity. If we therefore confine ourselves to the cold-blooded murder of unarmed non-combatants, our table rearranges itself again:
TYRANT MURDERS
Stalin 20M
Hitler 15M
Mao 10M
This brings Stalin floating to the top. So it look like once you reduce their crimes to the unjustifiably lowest common denominator, then Stalin is worst; however, you might want to argue that dead is dead so it really doesn't matter if you give your victims a chance to fight back. Fighting an unjust or reckless war is certainly a crime against humanity, so our numbers should go back to:
TYRANT KILLINGS
Hitler 34M
Stalin 20M
Mao 10M
... and these are just the problems we'll encounter if we accept my numbers without debate. If we want to use the estimates of other scholars, we can pin up to 50 million murders on Stalin, enough to push him to the top of the list regardless of definition. Or we can whittle him down to 10 million murders if we use the low end of the margin of error, and scrounge several more tens of millions for Mao, or away from him.
What's a few million or so between comrades?
Hey Steve!
Socialism!
Meanwhile, socialist dictatorships kill far more than any other. They also have a much greater tendency to invade their neighbors and to export their dysfunctional dogmas.
Here is a small selection of socialist mass murderers and their main crimes:
Socialist Mass Murderers [4]
Hitler and German Socialism 15 million murdered outright, with another 19 million killed stopping his attempts to take over the world. Hitler invaded Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Russia, and a few other places.
Stalin and Russian Socialism 20 million murdered outright. The Soviet socialists also exported ‘revolution’ to tens of countries around the world, with inevitable results. The Soviets also directly invaded Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.
Mao and Chinese Socialism 10 million murdered outright. Another 30 million killed by a famine directly resulting from Mao’s policies. China, like Russia, exported and continues to export revolution around the world, with similar results. The Chinese also directly invaded Tibet, India and Vietnam, as well as constantly threatening invasion of most of its other neighbors. The Chinese are arming and funding the Islamist Sudanese government currently engaged in an ongoing genocide believed to have killed at least 2 million people so far.
Castro and Cuban Socialism Castro is an unusual socialist in mostly murdering people outside ‘his’ country. He was directly involved in almost all the socialist revolutions (failed and successful) in Central America, South America and Africa. A count of his murders would have to take into account those killed by socialism in Congo, Yemen, Eritrea, Egypt, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Algeria, Ethiopia, Iraq, Chad, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Argentina, Uruguay, Guyana, Grenada, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Haiti, Venezuela, Peru, Angola, and probably a few others! Castro also helps Islamist murderers, especially the PLO/Fatah. He is almost certainly the fourth most successful socialist mass-murderer. Castro’s murdering sprees were of course funded and armed by the Soviet socialists. Castro has of course also murdered many Cubans.
Kim-il Song & Kim Jong-il and North Korean Socialism 1.7 million murdered outright in North and South Korea. Kim-il Sung also invaded South Korea. Another 2.8 million were killed in stopping that attempted conquest. Kim Jong-il’s famines have caused another 3.5 million deaths. His starvation of ‘his’ people is ongoing.
Ho Chi Minh and North Vietnamese Socialism 3.5 million killed - approximately half in the war to stop their socialist invasion, and half two years after the US coalition left and the socialists once more invaded and enslaved the South. The Vietnamese also invaded Cambodia. Approximately half a million “boat people” fled socialist Vietnam, many died in the attempt.
Pol Pot and Cambodian Socialism 1.65 million murdered outright in a period of three years. In that short time, the Cambodian socialists managed to invade Thailand, Vietnam and Laos - all of its direct neighbours. Their democide [5] was stopped they were in turn invaded by socialist Vietnam!
Saddam Hussein and Iraqi Socialism 300,000 murdered outright, including the use of poison gases and biological weapons on the Kurds and Shias, and the draining of the southern wetlands. 1 million killed in his invasion of Iran. Saddam also invaded Kuwait, threated Saudi Arabia, funded terrorism against Israel and caused two of the worst environmental disasters of modern times.
Idi Amin and Ugandan Socialism 300,000 murdered outright. Amin exported terror across Africa and the Middle East. The Ugandans also directly invaded Tanzania.
The Derg and Ethiopian Socialism 1.4 million dead, 1 million of that by famine caused by the Derg’s “scientific socialism”. Unusually the Derg didn’t manage to invade any neighbours, mostly because they spent their reign constantly fighting to keep their regions under control.
The MPLA and Angolan Socialism 550,000 dead in decades of war, attempting to bring the ‘revolution’ to the people. Like with Ethiopia’s Derg, their uncooperative victims meant that they had little chance to invade their neighbors.
Gaddafi and Libyan Socialism Gaddafi runs one of the most repressive regimes in the world and has done so for decades. His regime is so repressive, that it is hard to get any sort of estimate for how many he has murdered within Libya. Gaddafi played a subordinate role in almost all of Castro’s African revolutions. He was also one of the most blatant sponsors of Islamist terrorism worldwide.
Mussolini and Italian Socialism As well as cooperating with Hitler’s mass murder and invasions, Mussolini independently invaded Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia), killing 400,000 in the process.
Socialism!
Part of Western Civilization!
Hey Steve!
Socialism!
It's So Excellent.
MICHAEL FOOT, the former leader of Britain's Labour Party, was once asked to name the nearest earthly approximation of the socialist dream. Foot replied, "Wartime Britain.'
Foot was probably thinking less of the rationing, shortages, queues, and curtailed liberties of the war than of the esprit de corps that made the English put up with such constraints. But his answer pointed to an essential feature of socialism: its militarization of economic life.
Brian Crozier and Arthur Seldon, who divide the sections of Socialism: The Grand Delusion between them, focus attention on socialism as an economic principle. They spend little time on the atrocities of Communist regimes, since they are interested here in describing the normal functioning of socialism rather than in totting up what the Left would call the "excesses' of socialism. The normal performance, after all, is bad enough.
Socialism has failed everywhere, and the Crozier-Seldon thesis is that it's time to stop judging it by its dreams and start judging it by its fruits. Seldon wrote the first third of the book; Crozier the rest. The whole book is a brief overview, not a thorough study. Seldon writes as an economist, whereas Crozier provides a sort of pocket history of socialist regimes.
"The ineradicable flaw of socialism,' Seldon writes, "as long as it remains real, orthodox, centralized socialism, is that it has no mechanism for measuring satisfaction. It normally measures the performance of its so-called five-year plans by quantities: numbers of shoes, boxes of oranges, dozens of shirts, tons of coal, miles of passenger journeys--all of which may tell us very little or nothing unless we also know they are what the people want and are prepared to pay for in preference to other products.'
Moreover, Seldon doesn't buy the argument that only a socialist regime can eliminate the third-party effects (economists call them "externalities') of capitalist transactions. Socialism, he argues, produces its own externalities --high taxes, surpluses, shortages, wasted time, disincentives, bureaucracy, and dozens more, nearly all of them baneful. And he's not even counting mass murder.
Of course, socialism that fails is never "true' socialism--the mirage that keeps hope alive in the bosoms of capitalism's malcontented children. It's obviously no use arguing at this point that socialism has "failed,' since everyone who's interested in the facts knows it. Socialism has been a roaring success as a vehicle for other sorts of interests.
Most people who still lean to socialism are well aware that free economies outperform socialism by nearly every quantitative measurement. Capitalism should be defended more often in terms of its capacity for providing more nuanced satisfactions than the GNP can intimate. A new edition of Tolstoi in Moscow brings out long lines until the mass-produced supply is exhausted. But in New York the diligent bookhunter can find nearly any book imaginable. Capitalism shouldn't just mean limousines, mansions, and other things intellectuals despise. It caters to finer tastes than any commissar can be bothered with. Why should the central planner care if some highbrow wants an old copy of James Gould Cozzens? The market cares, though.
Crozier, as usual, writes incisively. He begins with Robert Owen and brings the story right up to Deng Xiaoping--quite a span. It's good to de-emphasize the horrors of socialism, and to show that it would be a disgrace even if it had never killed an innocent soul. If you take the tragedy out of socialism, what remains is farce: the scientific pretensions coupled with the absurd deifications of "leaders,' the excuses and buck-passing for the recent past followed by boasts about the imminent future, the hairsplitting distinctions over doctrine combined with insane blindness about the facts of life.
There's a nostalgic pleasure in seeing all the old names again: Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, Blanqui, Bakunin, Lassalle, Kautsky, Zinoviev, the Webbs, MacDonald, Blum, Attlee, Bevan, Crosland, and, lest we forget, Chernenko. What a legacy! Criminals, dupes, bunglers, demagogues, quacks, eccentrics, con men, sectarians, Machiavels, and earnest fools, not one of whom has a serious claim to be regarded as a benefactor of mankind to rank with whoever invented the can opener, but all of whom were full of prescriptions for directing the progress of industrial society. Each in his own way was an avatar of the great secular superstition of modern times.
Now what? The only thing harder than building socialism is dismantling it. The Labour Party demands "a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favor of working people and their families.' Crozier comments: "If this aim is ever achieved--that is, if "irreversible' socialism is introduced--then indeed the liberties of the British people will have been extinguished.' Even in our own bastion of capitalism, repealing social programs is a job for a political Hercules. You can't turn back the clock, you know--or, as Leonid Brezhnev put it, "What we have, we keep.' That's about the only plausible claim of socialists everywhere.
Part of Western Civilization!
Hope!
Change!
Did I Mention Hope?
How about those detailed Obama medical records!
We really do need much more access to Granpa's records.
Hey, Steve!
How about those congressmen and women who said there was no need for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac oversight!
Back in 2004, there wasn't much need, except for more internal comtrols.
Socialism has failed everywhere,
Socialism got us out of the Great Depression.
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