Re: Stalinist death toll [Virus checked]

JVDHOEK wrote:
I take issue with one of your comments though, about people committing
artrocities. By my view, all the horror stories of the 20th century are the
fault of governments. Left to their own devices I just don't see the
evidence for widespread ordinary human brutality - brutalisation and
participation yes, but the organising and initiating has always come about
as a function of government policy.


Hi.
You make a good point about "governments left to their own devices" but not 
all
of the slaughter and mayhem in the 20th Century (at whatever scale) has 
been by
governments "left to their own devices" in the 19th Century there was 
warlordism
and economic predation in China (ditto: Liberia & Sierra Leone after state
failure in the 1990s).

Similar patterns can be detected in Latin America (1980s) where the United
States essentially backed Right Wing death squads (ditto Angola: Savimbi)


Ismail Lagardien
Office of the Chief Economist and
Senior Vice President of
Development Economics
The World Bank
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