grade two - kyle keeler ate my lunch 'by accident' so the teacher gave me HIS lunch, which was worse than 'inventing religion' or whatever everyone here is crying about

nihil wrote:Exercising power.

End of story.

+1.

plus, the "conquer" of north america and south america... that was 500 years ago and ridiculously disgusting. entire civilizations wipped of just for the gold . damn, what we can expect from civilization now after all that shit?

that damned fly wrote:worst act perpetrated by man?

all of 'em.

"we're a virus in shoes."

Yep. Thanks.

Gramsci wrote:

Andrea Doria wrote:If you could either make darfur or religion dissapear, what would it be?

Religion; it causes the kind of tribalism that results in situations like Darfur. It perverts thinking, the worst activity any sane person can engage in is "faith".

Faith = mental illness

Cheers to the bobbing kitty. It bobs its' head in time perfectly to "Beat on the Brat," which I am currently listening to on fucked headphones that only work with the right speaker, so all I hear is Johnny, Joey and drums. beautiful. though I'd probably be just as happy hearing only Dee Dee, Joey, and drums on the left speaker. Ramones first album, man...

as for the worst tragedy in the history of the world...hmm. so tough, and so disgusting, in a way, to make any one despicable tragedy the "worst" on some list of despicable tragedies. I kinda feel that it trivializes the innate horror of huge tragedies by subjecting them to a list like "ooo, who's the worst?" kind of dumb to me.

that said, the holocaust, hiroshima/nagasaki (but nagasaki in particular because it was completely unnecessary after hiroshima), armenia, the khmer rouge, rwanda and darfur all look like contenders.

I would have to say Stalin killing 21 million Russians. Way worse than Hitler, but it never gets the attention it deserves. During the cold war, information was asymmetric between the east and the west, and many Americans would probably be OK with dead Russky enemies. After the cold war, it's history, and no one seems to care too much about it.

Some would say he killed 70 million Russians due to famines caused by dekulakization. Many estimates say he killed 7-10 million...

When I studied this subject, many years ago, most scholars would agree with the 21 million number, but said this was a conservative estimate, and many more were probably killed.

simmo wrote:

Humphrey Bear wrote:

Andrea Doria wrote:The holocaust was the general consensus, although various genocides, slavery, and war related acts came up. What do you all think?

The Holocaust was no worse than any other genocide in history. It just gets more attention because the victims were jews.

There have been genocides of equal magnitude in history. The reason the holocaust gets more attention is because it happened in the 20th century, in Europe. You could make a valid point here Humphrey, but I suspect you said this just to piss people off and in the way you said it to seem like an anti-semite. You are a dick, non?

No... Stalin's mass murder of 21 million Russians happened after the holocaust. I don't think he's being anti-semteic here. It's OK to use the word "Jew". The holocause does get more attention. After all, Spielberg ain't gonna make a movie about Stalin killing 21 million Russians.

That said, both genocides were a tragedy. I am just shocked than no one else in this thread has mentioned Stalin's genocide. It just goes to show that the largest genocide of the 20th century is not well known.

yut wrote:I am just shocked than no one else in this thread has mentioned Stalin's genocide. It just goes to show that the largest genocide of the 20th century is not well known.

So true. It doesn't exist, apparently.

I saw one other post about Stalin, but the figure he posted was 10 million, which is still more than Hitler. It's debateable, but most scholars say it was in the 20+ million range. If you count the engineered famine deaths, then more like 70 million... Those count too... After all, many people in the holocaust died from malnutrition.

The thing is, Russians are (for the most part) a proud people who have endured centuries of hardship under monarchy and then authoritarianism (Soviet Russia was NOT communist -- workers were slaves and party members were the elite). So they are the last people to whine about a genocide that happened from the 30's to the 50's.

If you couple that with the cold war hatred of Russians, no one really wanted to hear anything sympathetic about the hardships they endured.

I had never heard of this genocide until I learned about it in college, and I am amazed to this day how little is known about it.

The other thing is that Hitler killed more Russians than Jews. They would just be shot, and they wouldn't even make an effort to put them in a camp and eek out labor. They would destroy whole villages and kill everyone. So Hitler and Stalin combined (and there was some diplomacy between them -- non-aggression pact) killed way more Russians than any group of people in the 20th century.

So the holocaust was tragic, but the massacre of Russians between the 30's and the 50s is beyond tragic, and so few people are aware of this.

yut wrote:

simmo wrote:

Humphrey Bear wrote:

Andrea Doria wrote:The holocaust was the general consensus, although various genocides, slavery, and war related acts came up. What do you all think?

The Holocaust was no worse than any other genocide in history. It just gets more attention because the victims were jews.

There have been genocides of equal magnitude in history. The reason the holocaust gets more attention is because it happened in the 20th century, in Europe. You could make a valid point here Humphrey, but I suspect you said this just to piss people off and in the way you said it to seem like an anti-semite. You are a dick, non?

No... Stalin's mass murder of 21 million Russians happened after the holocaust. I don't think he's being anti-semteic here. It's OK to use the word "Jew". The holocause does get more attention. After all, Spielberg ain't gonna make a movie about Stalin killing 21 million Russians.

That said, both genocides were a tragedy. I am just shocked than no one else in this thread has mentioned Stalin's genocide. It just goes to show that the largest genocide of the 20th century is not well known.

Actually I would dispute your understanding of the word "genocide." What Stalin did was indeed horrible beyond measure, but there was never the desire or attempt to wipe out the Russian people, or any of the other ethnic groups within the USSR (with the possible exception of the Chechnyans who were were forcibly re-located en masse from their homeland to Central Asia in 1944 in an attempt to to "liquidate" them) as is necessary for mass killings to count as genocide. (See http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide ... altext.htm for the crime of genocide defined by international law.) The vast majority of the people whose deaths can be attributed to Stalin died in the Soviet government-made famines that killed millions due to forced collectivization in the early 30's, during the Terror/Purges of '37-38, during WWII due to Stalin's seeming willful ignorance of Hitler's intentions to invade and then total lack of concern as to how many died in the first defensive, and then offensive actions of the Soviet armies that followed. After WWII new purges did begin, though not nearly to the extant of the pre-war ones, but the idea that Stalin killed 21 Russians between 1945 and 1953 is total fantasy. Please prove me wrong.