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As an European we often feel Americans are shallow, immature and childish. So far the bad news. The good news is that through the years I started to ‘like’ Americans, once you go behind all the ‘great’ ‘lovely’ ‘wonderful’ theater, Americans are pretty ‘cool’. My point is while I was admiring my American co-livers on this planet for their open, exploring and inventive nature – I suddenly had this feeling of similarity between America and Atlantis.
I once had a vision about my death as an Atlantean, for what this is worth, I consider it as a nice metaphor.
To make the story very short: I was shot by the weapon of my own father, he didn’t knew that the person he had shot was his daughter, I too had that same kind of device in my hands, being part of the ‘other’ camp, trying to save ‘locals’ from the destruction at hand. He came up to me, I had no anger no hate, we just both felt that we as Atlantis, had reached the point of no return. Being a father-daughter was even of no importance any longer. We had crossed the line and we had to pay the highest price. We just knew that when we looked at each other. And the inner question arose: FOR WHAT? And the feeling came: WHAT ARE WE DOING? But it was too late…America is holding a major key to the future of our planet. While Europe is manifesting itself as the other camp, very much related, as the old motherland and the young bright son. I hope we never have to face each other and ask FOR WHAT?
Meanwhile I keep on reading your posts and extract. A Kyrgyz woman once told me that I only will have progress thanks to foreign people. Belgium has nothing to offer other than a place to live. Indeed Belgium is my place to digest, and all you on the other side of the screen are my eyes, ears and hearts.
Living in the old motherland I enjoy and watch the young bright son exploring the universe as well Icarus reminding, it holds a danger that
in his careless attempt to reach the sun he can burn his wings and reach nothing but destruction and death.It seems we are headed for technological self-destruction due to lack of spiritual wisdom – unless the forces of natural destruction awaken us in time and force a shift in our use of technology.
That is the lesson to either be learned from atlantis, or to be replayed, once again.
m…given the scalar weaponry at hand, I am surprised nothing happened yet.
I heard once that the reason the earth’s population is accelerating along with our technological capacity is because entire human planets that were more advanced then us have already blown themselves up and where does the “universe” stick them? LOL!
True Islam is not war-minded. Sure we have to fear the consequences of the dirty actions of US government who used and abused countries and players, remember Mr. Hoessein and Mr. Bin Laden, they were very much supported by that same government, when no longer needed for their internal games (power and money), dumped. When you hurt people like that they will react. Many countries feel abused and are looking for a change to strike back.
If you don’t respect others…. true Islam is all about respect, US has no respect at all and will pay the price for that!Personally I am not so sure if the real danger is to be found in Islam itself – I much more fear the dirty play of the US itself. And I wonder how much longer the rest of the world will swallow the US bullshit.
Atlantis wanted to control the world, today America is doing exact the same thing.
This is something I wrote couple of years ago, for what it is worth:
“I am an old warrior beyond the time of books.
My body is my book and my scars are the words.
I am here to watch the dawn of a new area and to witness the fall.”Well, Americans may be “shallow, immature and childish” and we may “want to take over the world” (though I think that’s a stretch) but in any case, we’ve never done anything to match the broad scale, profit based indescriminate, racist mass murder that the Belgians carried out in the Congo. Not to mention the French, English or Germans during various parts of their history (and yes, I have considered slavery in making that statement).
America is not a perfect nation. Americans are not a perfect people. But among the great powers, the US has arguably been the LEAST brutal in the history of the planet.
And the US is also to my knowledge the only country in the history of the planet that, when finding itself in the position of unchallenged global military might, has NOT used that position for territorial expansion (and yes, I’ve considered both Iraq and Afganastan before making that statement — those are not land grabs).
While the danger of a SINGLE random chemical, biological or (quite small) nuclear incident MAY have increased marginally with the advent of global terrorism (and to be honest, I doubt it has), I think that the possiblity of global WAR involving these weapons has decreased dramatically over the last ten years.
Indeed, today it’s nearly impossible to imagine the sort of global destruction that would have happened during the cold war if Russia and the US had actually decided to go at it.
Other “technological dangers” certainly exist — global warming/pollution being among the biggest — but it’s worth remembering that technological advances are also working to fix or minimize those dangers and, at the very least, the world’s leaders now acknowledge the problem.
In short it’s hard to look at these dangers and say the world is inexorably headed for destruction.
The truth is that America is lead by the balls by Israel and because of Israel we will go to fight wars for israel and try to take over the world and blow everything up in the process and go to the jewish hell in the end.
Too bad, too bad.
Shalom!Don’t feel offended there is no need, every nation, every country has a history of expansion, the danger today is the technological know-how.
The US has done and is doing great things that brings profit to the rest of the world – as stated above I admire that part.But you absolutely underestimate the ‘brutality’ of the US government, they are rudeless in holding their power.
‘We’ve never done anything to match the broad scale, profit based indescriminate, racist mass murder that the Belgians carried out in the Congo.’
Ahum, you really make me laugh…..Yes Wendy, but the US government is just a front for that which nobody wants to talk about–at least not yet! LOL!
I can’t wait for the day when the real stuff leaks out. That shit on rense.com is still not the root.
The thing that slips by everyone is WHY “it” has to operate from the shadows.
“It” operates from the shadows because if it showed itself it would be beaten senseless–BUT BY WHOM???
Who is the “WHOM” who would beat “it” senseless? 🙂
Correction of facts.
Short version:
(http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm)
(Possibly) The Twenty (or so) Worst Things People Have Done to Each Other:
Rank Death Toll Cause Centuries
1 55 million Second World War 20C
2 40 million Mao Zedong (mostly famine) 20C
3 40 million Mongol Conquests 13C
4 36 million An Lushan Revolt 8C
5 25 million Fall of the Ming Dynasty 17C
6 20 million Taiping Rebellion 19C
7 20 million Annihilation of the American Indians 15C-19C
8 20 million Iosif Stalin 20C
9 19 million Mideast Slave Trade 7C-19C
10 18 million Atlantic Slave Trade 15C-19C
11 17 million Timur Lenk 14C-15C
12 17 million British India (mostly famine) 19C
13 15 million First World War 20C
14 9 million Russian Civil War 20C
15 9 million Thuggee 13C-19C
16 8 million Fall of Rome 3C-5C
17 8 million Congo Free State 19C-20C
18 7 million Thirty Years War 17C
19 5 million Russia’s Time of Troubles 16C-17C
20 4 million Napoleonic Wars 19C
21 3 million Chinese Civil War 20C
22 3 million French Wars of Religion 16CWhat other people say:
“The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.” David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: the Conquest of the New World (1992) page x
“The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history.” Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: I – Our Oriental Heritage (1935) page 459
“Little did we guess that what has been called the century of the common man would witness as its outstanding feature more common men killing each other with greater facilities than any other five centuries together in the history of the world.” Winston Churchill
The Long Version:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm
death toll 20th century:
I defined the Hemoclysm as that string of interconnected barbarities which have made the Twentieth Century so fascinating for historians and so miserable for real people. Here, I have listed the sources for determing the body count for the Big Four — the First and Second World Wars, Communist China and the Soviet Union — which together account for maybe ¾ of all deaths by atrocity in the 20th Century.
First World War (1914-18): 15 000 000
Russian Civil War (1917-22): 9 000 000
Soviet Union, Stalin’s regime (1924-53): 20 000 000
Second World War (1937-45): 55 000 000
Post-War Expulsion of Germans from East Europe (1945-47): 2 100 000
Chinese Civil War (1945-49): 2 500 000
People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong’s regime (1949-1975): 40 000 000
Tibet (1950 et seq.): 600 000
“Growing up in the South, I heard over and over again that nobody in the history of the world suffered as much as the Southern people during the American Civil War. The following events, however, all killed more people than the American Civil War, which cost approximately 620,000 lives.
Congo Free State (1886-1908): 8 000 000
Mexican Revolution (1910-20): 1 000 000
Armenian Massacres (1915-23): 1 500 000
China, Warlord Era (1917-28): 800 000
China, Nationalist Era (1928-37): 3 100 000
Korean War (1950-53): 2 800 000
Rwanda and Burundi (1959-95): 1 350 000
Vietnam War (1965-73): 1 700 000
Ethiopia (1962-92): 1 400 000
Nigeria (1966-70): 1 000 000
Bangladesh (1971): 1 250 000
Cambodia, Khmer Rouge (1975-1978): 1 650 000
Mozambique (1975-1992): 1 000 000
Afghanistan (1979-2001): 1 800 000
Iran-Iraq War (1980-88): 1 000 000
Sudan (1983 et seq.): 1 900 000
Kinshasa Congo (1998 et seq.): 3 300 000
These cost fewer lives than the American Civil War (620,000) but more than the number of murders comitted in America during the five years from 1990 through 1994 (119,700).
Philippines Insurgency (1899-1902): 220 000
Brazil (1900 et seq.): 500 000
Amazonia (1900-12): 250 000
Portuguese Colonies (1900-25): 325 000
French Colonies (1900-40)
Russo-Japanese War (1904-05): 130 000
Maji-Maji Revolt, German East Africa (1905-07): 175 000
Libya (1911-31): 125 000
Balkan Wars (1912-13): 140 000
Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922): 250 000
Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and Franco Regime (1939-75): 365 000 + 100 000
Abyssinian Conquest (1935-41): 400 000
Russo-Finnish War (1939-1940): 150 000
Greek Civil War (1943-49): 158 000
Yugoslavia, Tito’s Regime (1944-80): 200 000
First Indochina War (1945-54): 400 000
Colombia (1946-58): 200 000
India (1947): 500 000
Romania (1948-89): 150 000
Burma/ Myanmar (1948 et seq.): 130 000
Algeria (1954-62): 537 000
Sudan (1955-72): 500 000
Guatemala (1960-1996): 200 000
Indonesia (1965-66): 450 000
Uganda, Idi Amin’s regime (1972-79): 300 000
Vietnam, post-war Communist regime (1975 et seq.): 430 000
Angola (1975-2002): 550 000
East Timor, Conquest by Indonesia (1975-99): 200 000
Lebanon (1975-90): 150 000
Cambodian Civil War (1978-91): 225 000
Iraq, Saddam Hussein (1979-2003): 300 000
Uganda (1979-86): 300 000
Kurdistan (1980s, 1990s): 300 000
Liberia (1989-97): 150 000
Iraq (1990-): 350 000
Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-95): 175 000
Somalia (1991 et seq.): 400 000
Zaire (Dem. Rep. Congo), Civil War (1997)
These cost more lives than the American losses in Vietnam (58,135), but not as many lives as five years of murder in America (119,700 killed 1990-94). Or another way of looking at it, each atrocity on this page killed roughly the same number of people as a single year of medical mistakes in the USA (44,000 to 98,000).
Dutch East Indies, Aceh War (1873-1914): 70 000
Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901): 115 000
Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902): 75 000
Colombia (1899-1902): 100 000
Somalia, Mohammed Abdulla Hasan (1899-1920): 100 000
Russia (1900-17): 95 000
Herero War, German Southwest Africa (1904-07): 75 000
Russo-Polish War (1918-1920): 100 000
Morocco (1921-26) 68 000
Manchuria (1931-33): 60 000
Chaco War (1932-35): 100 000
Israel (1948 et seq.): 65 000
East Germany (1949-89): 100 000
Congo Crisis (1960-64): 100 000
Angola (1961-75): 80 000
Mozambique, Anti-colonial war (1961-75)
Hartman:
3,500 Portuguese
10,000 FRELIMO
50,000 civilians
TOTAL: 63,500North Yemen (1962-70): 100 000
Nicaragua (1972-91): 60 000
Philippines (1972- )
Guerrilla Wars
29 Jan. 2003 Philippine Daily Inquirer: Killed in Communist rebellion, AFP Intelligence Service report:
Government forces: 9,867 (1971-2002)
Communist rebels: 22,799 (1971-2002)
Civilians: 10,672 (crossfire, 1969-2002)
Total: 43,338Colombia (1970s, 1980s, 90s): 45 000
El Salvador (1979-92): 75 000
Sierra Leone (1991-2002): 75 000
Algeria (1992-2002): 100 000
These wars and mass killings cost fewer lives than the American loss in Vietnam (58,135), but more that the number of murders in America in 1995 (21,597):
China, Revolutionary Era (1911-17)
S&S:
Republicans v Govt. (1911): 1,000
Republicans v Govt. (1913): 5,000
Pai-Lings v Govt. (1914): 5,000
TOTAL: 11,000Finnish Civil War (1918): 30 000
India, uprisings against UK (1919-38)
Amritsar Massacre (1919): Officially, 379 (Johnson, Gilbert) killed, but unofficially, it gets rounded upwards: 500 (Our Times) or 1,000 (Eckhardt)
Eckhardt:
Amritsar (1918-19): 1,000 civ.
(1921-22): 11,000 civ.
(1936-38): 11,000 civ.
TOTAL: 23,000Oubangi-Chari, Kongo-Wara War (1927-31)
Mbaye Revolt under Karnou: 10,000 to 100,000El Salvador (1931-32): 30 000
Turkey (1937-38)
Dersim Revolt, Govt. vs. Kurds
David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (1996): 40,000Mongolia (1939)
Nomonhan War (S&S):
USSR: 5,000
Mongolia: 3,000
Japan: 20,000
TOTAL: 28,000
Eckhardt: 28,000South Korea (1948-49) 40 000
Bulgaria (1948-89): 30 000
Hungary (1948-89)
Communist Regime
Rummel: 27,000 democides,North Vietnam (1954-75): 50 000
__________________________________________________________________________
Deaths by Mass Unpleasantness:
Estimated Totals for the Entire 20th Century————————————————————————–
How many people died in all the wars, massacres, slaughters and oppressions of the Twentieth Century? Here are a few atrocitologists who have made estimates:
M. Cherif Bassouni, from an unspecified “1996” source which I have been unable to track down (Cited in an article in the Chicago Tribune, 25 Oct. 1998)
33 million “military casualties” (That’s how the article phrased it, but I presume they mean military deaths.)
170 million killed in “conflicts of a non-international charater, internal conflicts and tyrannical regime victimization”)
86M since the Second World War
TOTAL: 203,000,000Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (1993)
“Lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage”:
167,000,000 to 175,000,000
Including:
War Dead: 87,500,000
Military war dead:
33,500,000
Civilian war dead:
54,000,000
Not-war Dead: 80,000,000
Communist oppression:
60,000,000David Barrett, World Christian Encyclopedia (2001)
Christian martyrs only: 45.5M [commentary & context]
Stephane Courtois, The Black Book of Communism
Victims of Communism only: 85-100M
Milton Leitenberg [http://www.pcr.uu.se/Leitenberg_paper.pdf]
Politically caused deaths in the 20th C: 214M to 226M, incl…
Deaths in wars and conflicts, incl. civilian: 130M-142M
Political deaths, 1945-2000: 50M-51M
Not The Enemy Media [http://nottheenemy.com/index_files/Death%20Counts/Death%20Counts.htm]
Killed through U.S. foreign policy since WWII: 10,774,706 to 16,856,361 (1945-May 2003)
Rudolph J. Rummel, Death By Government
“Democides” – Government inflicted deaths (1900-87)
169,198,000
Including:
Communist Oppression: 110,286,000
Democratic democides: 2,028,000
Not included among democides:
Wars: 34,021,000
Non-Democidal Famine (often including famines associated with war and communist mismanagement):
China (1900-87): 49,275,000
Russia: (1921-47): 5,833,000
Total:
258,327,000 for all the categories listed here.
Me (Matthew White, Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century, 2001):
Deaths by War and Oppression:
Genocide and Tyranny:
83,000,000
Military Deaths in War:
42,000,000
Civilian Deaths in War:
19,000,000
Man-made Famine:
44,000,000
TOTAL:
188,000,000FAQ: How did you get these totals?
(Note: It’s commonly said that more civilians than soldiers die in war, but you may notice that my numbers don’t seem to agree with that. Before you jump to any conclusions, however, remember that most civilian deaths in war are intentional, and therefore fall into the “genocide and tyranny” category. Many others are the result of starvation.)My estimate for the Communist share of the century’s unpleasantness:
Genocide & Tyranny: 44M
(incl. intentional famine)
Man-made Famine: 37M
(excl. intentional famine)
Communist-inspired War (for example the Russian Civil War, Vietnam, Korea, etc.)
Military: 5M
Civilian: 6M
NOTE: With these numbers, I’m tallying every combat death and accidental civilian death in the war, without differentiating who died, who did it or who started it. According to whichever theory of Just War you are working from, the Communists may be entirely blameless, or entirely to blame, for these 11M dead.
TOTAL: 92M deaths by Communism.
RESIDUE: 96M deaths by non-Communism.————————————————————————-
For Comparison:
Total Deaths During the 20th Century
Smallpox
Smoking
Abortions
Cats and Dogs
Influenza Epidemic, 1918-19
AIDS
Homicides
Disasters
Racism
Decommunization
Medical Mistakes
Eaten by TigersTotal Deaths During the 20th Century
Approximately 4,126,000,000 people have died during this century from all causes. If man-made megadeaths account for 185 million of them, then one out of every 22 (or 4.5%) human deaths during the 20th Century have been caused by fellow humans.
Sources: Nowadays, you can just open up a statistical abstract and find reasonably accurate numbers for how many people died last year. Unfortunately, that’s a very recent ability. Only industrialized countries keep vital statistics, and most of the people who have lived in this century have not lived in industrialized countries. Therefore, we’ve got a big margin of error to worry about.
Basically, to arrive at the following numbers, I set up a big spread sheet which multiplied each country’s population by its death rate for a middle year of each decade. Then, I added them together to get a global total, and multiplied by ten for a decade total. For those countries for which I did not have accurate mortality statistics, I scrounged the death rate from a nearby, similar country — using Argentine death rates for Chile, say.Decade Deaths worldwide (millions) Death Rate (per 1000) Mid-decade World Population (millions) How I calculated it
late 1990s 261 Looked up total estimated deaths in Britannica’s Yearbook, year by year.
early 1990s 252 8.6 5863
1980s 459 9.2 5000 Gathered mortality stats of 20 largest countries for typical years (1977, 1987) from UN Yearbook. Calculated average world death rate, weighted by population. Multiplied this average by mid-decade’s world population, then by 10.
1970s 481 11.7 4100
1960s 348 11.5 3030 Estimated average worldwide death rate, based on extremely scattered data for individual countries in the 1963 UN Yearbook. Multiplied this average by mid-decade’s world population, then by 10.
1950s 385 14.3 2700 Geometric mean of death rates for 1930s and 1960s. Multiplied this by mid-decade’s world population, then by 10.
1940s 318 14.3 2230
1930s 377 17.6 2138 Geometric mean of death rates for 1900s and 1960s. Multiplied this by mid-decade’s world population, then by 10.
1920s 425 21.9 1941 Geometric mean of death rates for 1900s and 1930s. Multiplied this by mid-decade’s world population, then by 10.
1910s 385 21.9 1762
1900s 435 27.1 1606 Estimated average worldwide death rate, based on extremely incomplete and scattered data for individual countries in the 1911 Britannica. Multiplied this average by world population, then by 10.
TOTAL 4126 Added.Smallpox:
Mannfred Hollinger, Introduction to Pharmacology: Half a billion people worldwide in the 20th C.
John Campbell, Campbell’s Physiology Notes for Nurses: smallpox killed 300 million in the 20th Century.
Michael Oldstone, Viruses, Plagues, and History: 300M
Albert Marrin, Dr. Jenner and the Speckled Monster: 300MSmoking:
R. Peto, “Mortality from tobacco in developed countries: indirect estimation from national vital statistics”, Lancet, 23 May 1992:
1930-59: 11,000,000
1960s: 9,000,000
1970s: 13,000,000
1980s: 17,000,000
1990s: 21,000,000
TOTAL (1930-1999): 71,000,000 tobacco-related deaths in developed countries. (US, Europe, USSR, Canada, Japan, Australia, NZ)
Note: Although the bulk of humanity lives outside developed countries, tobacco-related deaths are not as common there, largely because the average Third World life expectancy does not leave enough time to develop cancer and heart disease. Ditto for the developed world prior to 1930. Basically, smoking is a rich man’s way to die.
The World Health Organization estimates that 3 million people die each year worldwide from tobacco, which becomes 900,000 3rd-Worlders when we subtract the 2.1 million 1st- and 2nd-Worlders calculated by Peto (yearly average for the 1990s, above). This indicates some 9 million tobacco deaths in non-developed countries during the 1990s and (using the same ratio) perhaps 5 million during the 1980s. If we continue this ratio all the way back, we get an even hundred million deaths by tobacco worldwide; however, as Peto puts it, “the epidemic is generally at an earlier stage,” so the tobacco-related mortality rate in the third world was relatively low before 1980. Let’s add only another 5 million for the years prior to 1980, bringing the century total up to 90,000,000.Abortions:
29,247,142 legal abortions were performed in the United States, 1970-95. (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Vol. 47 No. SS-2)
Estimated abortions worldwide: 527M to 836M (1920-2000) [http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/wrjp333sd.html]
[Letter]Cats and Dogs
AHS: 9.6 million animals euthanized in the US, 1997 [http://www.americanhumane.org/site/PageServer?pagename=nr_fact_sheets_animal_euthanasia]
HSUS: 3-4 million cats and dogs euthanized by US shelters each year [http://www.hsus.org/pets/issues_affecting_our_pets/pet_overpopulation_and_ownership_statistics/hsus_pet_overpopulation_estimates.html]Influenza Pandemic, 1918-19:
Gilbert: 13,000,000
Encarta: 20,000,000 (also Time: Great Events of the 20th Century; also 30 June 1998 Washington Post)
Michael Howard, The Oxford History of the Twentieth Century: 20M d. in 1919 flu.
Our Times: 21,642,274
MEDIAN: ca. 21M
Wallechinsky: 30,000,000
R.S. Bray, Armies of Pestilence: the Impace of Disease on History (1996): 25-50M, citing Burnet & White
John M. Barry, The Great Influenza (2004)
1927 AMA study: 21M
1940s McFarlane Burnet est. 50-100M
2002 epidem. study: 50-100M
Spartacus [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWinfluenzia.htm]: >70,000,000
NOTE: Because the first outbreaks of the disease were often spread via troop movements, the temptation is to add all the world’s pandemic deaths to the death toll of World War I, thereby raising it from ca. 15M to more than 35M; however, I have never seen an actual, published history of the First World War do this. Yes, histories of the war will count the soldiers and refugees that died of the flu in camps, but obviously not the millions in, say, China or India, that died far from any battlefield, long after the armistice.AIDS:
11,700,000 deaths worldwide, 1981-98 (from 23 June 1998 report by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS at http://www.unaids.org/highband/document/epidemio/june98/index.html)Homicide:
Very, very rough estimate until I research this more fully: 8.5 million murders worldwide, 1900-1999.
What I do know so far:
Brazil: 350,000 murders in 1990s (24 Oct. 1999 Guardian)
USA 1960-96: 666,160 murders and (non-negligent) manslaughters (Statistical Abstract of the United States, http://www.census.gov/statab/freq/98s0335.txt)
USA 1900-59: 390,136 murders (Watenburg, The Statistical History of the United States, 1976)
USA TOTAL: 1,056,296 (more or less — depending on how you want to count manslaughters)
739,938 murders worldwide, 1986-90, excluding the USA (http://www.ifs.univie.ac.at/uncjin/mosaic/ccrimes/tothom.txt). The USA produced 12.5% of the world’s murders during the years 1986-90, so if we apply that ratio to the entire century, then it would indicate that 7.35M murders were committed worldwide (but outside the US), 1900-96. It looks like the century total is somewhere near 1.05M in US + 7.35M elsewhere.
Maybe this 8.5?M should be added to the wars and oppressions under the category of deaths “caused by fellow humans”, above. If you want to do this, go ahead.Natural Disasters:
According to a 20 December 1999 press release from the reinsurance company Munich Re, a total of 3.5 million people were killed in 20th Century disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and volcanos, but not drought or famine. (A total of 15M were killed by disasters during the entire Second Millennium.) [http://www.munichre.com]Racism:
Just out of curiosity, I decided to calculate the death toll of racism in the United States, and it certainly looks like non-whites suffered 3,300,000 excess deaths from 1900 to 1970.
Sources: Throughout most of American history, non-whites have had a significantly higher death rate than whites. As there’s no natural reason for whites to live longer than non-whites, the cause for this difference must be social — rooted in poverty and manifesting itself in malnutrition, inadequate public health, substandard medical care, homicide, alcoholism, suicide and drug addiction.
If we subtract the number of non-whites who would have died anyway (even at a white death rate) from the number who did die — year-by-year — and then add it all up, we get our total number of excess deaths.
Because this is just my calculations — not peer-reviewed or gathered from a reputable source — I’ll give you a lot of detail. My source for the raw numbers is Watenburg, The Statistical History of the United States (1976). As an example of my methods, consider this: in 1920, the death rate for whites was 12.6/1000, while for non-whites it was 17.7/1000. Now, if we multiply the non-white death rate by the estimated non-white population of 10,951,000, we find that there were approximately 193,833 deaths among non-whites in 1920. If they had died at the white death rate, however, there would only have been 137,983 deaths. Therefore, we’ve got 55,850 excess deaths caused by the socioeconomic handicap of not being white.Decade by decade, here are the totals: Decade Excess Deaths
1960s 65,000
1950s 200,000
1940s 300,000
1930s 535,000
1920s 630,000
1910s 735,000
1900s 835,000
TOTAL 3,300,000Escape Hatch: Since no one’s paying me to be mired in controversy, I’ll give a short list of why this calculation might not mean what it seems to mean. I’ll leave it to philosophers and statisticians to iron out these problems:
I haven’t adjusted for age differences.
I haven’t adjusted for geographic differences — specifically, I haven’t taken into account that the South has traditionally been unhealthier than the North for both blacks and whites. Since the black population has been disproportionately Southern, then this has boosted their death rates.
Suicide, drug addiction, alcoholism, etc. are often considered to be matters of free will.
Homicides are customarily blamed on the individual murderers rather than society as a whole.
To give you a chance to check behind me, here are all the calculations in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, compressed with PKZip.
Decommuniziation:
Jerry Hough, LA Times 18 August 1998 Op-Ed: With the collapse of communism in Russia, poverty and death rates soared, and some 3 million people in Russia died who would have been alive if the old life expectancy rates had been maintained. [http://www.brook.edu/views/op-ed/hough/19980818.htm]
The Times (London) 27 Jan. 2000: The Russian population is roughly six million lower than if birth and death rates had stayed constant since the fall of communism.
28 Dec. 1994 Plain Dealer: 360,000 more Russians died in 1993 than in 1992.Medical Mistakes:
According to a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine, 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die unnecessarily every year from medical mistakes made by health care professionals. (30 Nov. 1999 Washington Post, 30 Nov. 1999 AP, or pretty much any news source that day.)Eaten by Tigers:
According to official statistics [http://dsal.uchicago.edu/statistics/], 34,075 people were killed by tigers in British-administered India, 1875-1912. That includes 11,423 k. 1900-1912.————————————————————————-
FAQ
How did you get these totals?
Simple — I added everything up. If you sum the first five of the century’s top 30 atrocities, you get a bit over 142M. Summing the first 10 brings the total to 157M, while the sum of the first 20 is 171.7M. It may look like, at this rate, we’ll shoot past 188M in no time at all, but notice how the body counts get smaller at each level — from 142M for the 1st 5 to 15M for the next 5 to a mere 14M or so for the next 10. Pretty soon, we get to the point where a single atrocity doesn’t noticably shift the total at all.
Copyright © 1999-2005 Matthew White
Just in case you didn’t get to the end of that last bit of information, here are some more facts on the 20th century (I can’t vouch for accuracy). I also don’t mean to belittle the suffering that an individual goes through as a result of any one of these events.
For Comparison:
Total Deaths During the 20th Century
Smallpox
Smoking
Abortions
Cats and Dogs
Influenza Epidemic, 1918-19
AIDS
Homicides
Disasters
Racism
Decommunization
Medical Mistakes
Eaten by TigersTotal Deaths During the 20th Century
Approximately 4,126,000,000 people have died during this century from all causes. If man-made megadeaths account for 185 million of them, then one out of every 22 (or 4.5%) human deaths during the 20th Century have been caused by fellow humans.Smallpox: smallpox killed 300 million in the 20th Century.
Smoking:
1930-59: 11,000,000
1960s: 9,000,000
1970s: 13,000,000
1980s: 17,000,000
1990s: 21,000,000
TOTAL (1930-1999): 71,000,000Abortions: Estimated abortions worldwide: 527M to 836M (1920-2000)
Cats and Dogs
AHS: 9.6 million animals euthanized in the USInfluenza Pandemic, 1918-19:
MEDIAN: ca. 21MAIDS:
11,700,000 deaths worldwideRacism:
Just out of curiosity, I decided to calculate the death toll of racism in the United States, and it certainly looks like non-whites suffered 3,300,000 excess deaths from 1900 to 1970.
TOTAL 3,300,000Natural Disasters:
According to a 20 December 1999 press release from the reinsurance company Munich Re, a total of 3.5 million people were killed in 20th Century disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and volcanos, but not drought or famine.Medical Mistakes:
According to a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine, 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die unnecessarily every year from medical mistakes made by health care professionals. (30 Nov. 1999 Washington Post, 30 Nov. 1999 AP, or pretty much any news source that day.)Eaten by Tigers:
According to official statistics [http://dsal.uchicago.edu/statistics/], 34,075 people were killed by tigers in British-administered India, 1875-1912. That includes 11,423 k. 1900-1912.On Colonization:
“Where exploitation of a colony’s natural resources or portering was carried out by forced labor (in effect slavery of a modern kind), as it was in all the European and Asian colonies, then the forced labor system built in its own death toll from beatings, punishment, coercion, terror, and forced deprivation. These colonizers turned Africa into one giant gulag, with each colony being like a separate camp.
As a result of this research, I’m willing to estimate that over all of colonized Africa and Asia 1900 to independence, the democide was something like 50 million.”
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COMM.7.1.03.HTM
On Slavery:
(This does not mention the individual torture, rape and everyday hell that people endured, and america lives with in its legacy as a result)
Slavery
African American Slavery
In American Holocaust (1992), David Stannard estimates that some 30 to 60 million Africans died being enslaved. He claims a 50% mortality rate among new slaves while being gathered and stored in Africa, a 10% mortality among the survivors while crossing the ocean, and another 50% mortality rate in the first “seasoning” phase of slave labor. Overall, he estimates a 75-80% mortality rate in transit.In Slavery A World History, Milton Meltzer estimates that 10 million slaves arrived in the Americas. This would be the residue after 12.5% of those shipped out from Africa died on the ocean, 4-5% died while waiting in harbor, and 33% died during the first year of seasoning.
In “The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust” (Is the Holocaust Unique, A. Greebaum, ed., 1996), Seymour Drescher estimates that 21M were enslaved, 1700-1850, of which 7M remained in slavery inside Africa. 4M died “as a direct result of enslavement”. Of the 12M shipped to America, 15%, or 2M more, died in the Middle Passage and seasoning year.
Jan Rogozinski, A Brief History of the Caribbean (1994): “[A]s many as eight million Africans may have died in order to bring four million slaves to the Caribbean islands.”
In The Slave Trade, Hugh Thomas estimates that 13M left African ports, and 11,328,000 arrived. Here are a few other numbers from Thomas:
No year-by-year stats, but by piecing together scattered decade stats, I figure that 5M slaves were shipped in the 18th Century.
Shipboard mortality among slaves:
Mercado in 1569 estimated an average shipboard mortality of 20%
Brazilian historians: 15-20% in 16th C; 10% in 19th C.
English trade:
1680s: 24%
early 18th C: 10%
1780s: 5.65%
Hugh Thomas: 9% reasonable est. for 18th C.
19th C
Cliffe: 35%
House of Commons: 9.1%
Thomson: 9%
Hotham: 5%
In the chapter on African population in the Atlas of World Population History (1978), Colin McEvedy estimates that 9.5 million African slaves were imported into the Americas between 1500 and 1880. He also suggests a 15% mortality rate on the ocean.Rummel estimates a total death toll of 17,267,000 African slaves (1451-1870)
Among slaves going to Orient: 2,400,000 dead
Among slaves staying in Africa: 1,200,000 dead
Among slaves going to New World: 13,667,000 dead
Fredric Wertham claims that 150,000,000 Africans died of the slave trade.My Estimate:
Looking at all the scholarship on the subject, it looks like, at the very least, 35% of those enslaved in Africa died before they were ever put to work in America. On the other hand, at least 20% of them survived. Between these extreme possibilites (35-80%), the most likely mortality rate is 62%.In terms of absolute numbers, the lowest possible (and only barely possible at that) death toll we can put on the trans-Atlantic slave trade is 6 million. If we assume the absolute worst, a death toll as high as 60 million is at the very edge of possibility; however, the likeliest number of deaths would fall somewhere from 15 to 20 million.
Here are some uncomfortable facts to consider:
http://www.fas.org/asmp/fast_facts.htm“Since 1992, the United States has exported more than $142 billion dollars worth of weaponry to states around the world.[1] The U.S. dominates this international arms market, supplying just under half of all arms exports in 2001, roughly two and a half times more than the second and third largest suppliers. [2 ] U.S. weapons sales help outfit non-democratic regimes, soldiers who commit gross human rights abuses against their citizens and citizens of other countries, and forces in unstable regions on the verge of, in the middle of, or recovering from conflict.
U.S.-origin weapons find their way into conflicts the world over. The United States supplied arms or military technology to more than 92% of the conflicts under way in 1999.[3] The costs to the families and communities afflicted by this violence is immeasurable. But to most arms dealers, the profit accumulated outweighs the lives lost. In the period from 1998-2001, over 68% of world arms deliveries were sold or given to developing nations, where lingering conflicts or societal violence can scare away potential investors.[4]
Of course, a loss of investment opportunities is not the only way Americans are impacted by the weapons trade. In addition to paying billions of dollars every year to support weapons exports, Americans may also feel the impact of increasing instability overseas. The United States military has had to face troops previously trained by its own military or supplied with U.S. weaponry in Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, and now in Afghanistan. Due to the advanced capabilities these militaries have acquired from past U.S. training and sales, the U.S. had to invest much more money and manpower in these conflicts than would have otherwise been needed.
There are few restrictions on whom the government may export arms to. One notable exception is the Leahy Law, which prohibits U.S. military aid or training to foreign military units known to have committed human rights abuses. Under the Pentagon’s interpretation of the law, however, these restrictions may be lifted if the foreign government filters out the “few bad apples” in that particular unit. An International Code of Conduct on Arms Sales is also being negotiated with other arms exporters in the hopes of creating a common set of export criteria. Read on for more facts.”
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