Re: Chomsky on East Timor (9/10/99)

>As for how "things turned out,"
>Moynihan comments that within a few months 60,000 Timorese had >been
>killed, "almost the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet
>Union during the Second World War."
This is either a printing mistake or delusion. Soviet casualties during the
W.W.II were 27 million people with million here, million there - noone knows
exactly. Total losses of all countries thus rising to 57 million. Hardly
conceivable "statistics", but still.
Proved by post-war census in the USSR.
Though I came across a figure of 850 000 casualties on ALL fronts of the
war. Strange - or, may be, not very strange manipulation with figures.
Which doesn't make the tragedy of the Timorese easier.
Respectfully,
Konstantin Borodinsky,
Minsk, Belarus