Alot of the developed countries you are referring to (Germany, Spain and Italy) turned to fascism post world war one. So did the US with the resurgance of the KKK (the KKK was a fascist organization, it controlled several state governments and had 3 million members in the 1920s, roughly 1/10th of the adult population at the time). But that was 1920, not 2005. The cultural attitudes towards fascism, war, democracy and human rights are light years ahead of what they were back then. The US had its post ww1 flirt with fascism the same way Germany, Italy and Spain did, but the KKK died out just like the fascist govs. in these countries.
Either way, if you guys want to believe that the actions committed by governments run by sociopaths who placed no value on individual life compared to the state eighty years ago when it was considered ok for the police to torture criminal suspects, every country had the death penalty and war was considered a noble cause (none of which apply today) are going to happen here if someone places a dirty bomb in the mall of america be my guest. I just don’t see how it can happen.
I didn’t say you did; I’m just saying that calling them mentally ill at all isn’t entirely accurate. They were evil, and that’s not a disorder that can be fixed, that’s a condition which resides in the heart of every man and woman, which we must always fight against and keep down. Saying that Hitler and Stalin were mentally ill makes them into “others,” and makes it easy to forget that they were human beings just like us, and that we too are capable of the very same inhuman (or maybe, uniquely human) behaviors and attitudes. That’s just a little semantic pet peeve of mine though.
War isn’t considered a noble cause? Torture and the death penalty aren’t supported by the state? For at least one first world country, all that stuff still applies.
It is nothing compared to how it was 60-70 years ago. Torture of criminal suspects was common in police interrogation all over the first world. The death penalty was handed out all the time w/o appeals and applied within weeks of its judgement. Today death row prisoners in the US sit in isolated cells protected from other inmates while their state appointed lawyers file multiple appeals. Consider that we are considered the most evil developed country in that regards but compared to what was normal 70 years ago we are light years ahead in regards to views on torture.
All in all, answer me this. In world war two the US interned japanese civilians. Did we massacre them in the camps? nope. We did have hundreds of thousands of german POWs die of starvation and illness though, some say we let them die on purpose. You have to consider that the US was in a war 10x more important than the war on terror in 1942-1945, that we were fighting an enemy 100x stronger, smarter and more organized and that this enemy actually posed a risk of overthrowing us and forcing us into adopting their way of life. This enemy also cost 100-1000x more to beat in manpower, lives lost and money spent. 300,000 US soldiers died in WW2 (compared to 1500 soldiers and 3000 civilians in the war on terror) and it cost 100x more to fight the war financially. Today we are fighting against a handful of stateless fanatics armed with box cutters and backpacks filled with TNT. Also consider that human rights were not nearly as important then as they are now.
Even though it can be argued that we did allow german soldiers to die by the thousand, we did not gas them or anything like that. And those were combatants, our treatment of the Japanese civilians was much better than our treatment of german soldiers (i’m not endorsing our treatment of the germans, i’m merely stating if the US didn’t gas them or the Japanese civilians, why would we gas civilians in 2005). If the US can not gas or mass murder japanese civilians in a war that is 100-1000x more expensive and important in an age where human rights meant much less than they do now I don’t see why we would do it in 2005.
I never said we would gas or mass murder our current political prisoners, in fact I think the probability of that is currently rather low. I just said that doing so would provide certain tactical advantages to a fascist state.
Bottom line to me is that this thread shows once again that people are terrible at risk assessment. They will worry themselves sick about the lowest probability disasters, like say flying in an airplane or having a meteor crashing into the earth and killing everyone, while blithely doing something incredibly dangerous, for instance driving to work every day or doing work around the house…or simply smoking, over eating or drinking and driving.
What it all boils down too is that it is incredibly improbable that the US will turn into some kind of neo-Nazi empire bent on world destruction. On the other side of the coin, the threat of world wide terrorism and terrorist groups, especially fundamentalist Islamic style terrorism is a very real threat to world peace and stability, and will continue to be so for the forseeable future. Saying that the US is a greater threat based on a fantasy scenerio that is improbable in the extreme while down playing something that IS currently a threat…well, to me this to me is just poor risk assessment. YMMV.
Funny you should say that, xtisme, since risk assessment was my exact purpose in starting the thread. The purpose of this thread was not to make people slap themselves on their foreheads and realize that government tyranny is twice as dangerous as terrorism. The purpose was to get people thinking about relative threat levels. Everywhere you look in America there’s an automatic assumption that fighting terrorism has to be the highest priority, and indeed the only priority in its class. This despite the fact that during the last five years, terrorism has killed fewer than six hundred people per yea in this country, on average. Compare that to tobacco, drunk driving, gang-related violence, domestic violence, car accidents, suicide, the flu, etc… I want people to start thinking about why we give terrorism such high billing, in government, in the media, and in personal security, when logically it poses a quite small risk. If a particular disease struck down six hudnred people per year on average, anyone who fretted overly much about that disease would be called paranoid.
So terrorism is “a very real threat”? By what measure? Sure, it’s likely to claim some lives in the next year, somewhere in the world, but so are lightning strikes and Lou Gehrig’s disease. The expected value for the number of deaths from terrorism, by my reasoning or any other reasonable person’s, is lower than for many other causes that we, by and large, ignore.
Well you are, anyway. If you would look at the statistics, worldwide deaths due to terrorism*average less than 1000 a year. Compare that to - oh roughly an average of *1.5 million * governmental murders yearly in the 20th century. Any person on this planet is about 1500 times more likely to be exterminated by their own government than by a terrorist.
But (I hear you cry) the U.S is different. There haven’t been any governmental murders in the U.S.! That’s true (forgetting the 800 executions in the U.S. since 1972). But the chances that any given country will turn on its own people is very strong. At least 10% of the world’s countries have enaged in mass killings of their own citizens (1000s to millions) in the 20th century alone. And they represent all parts of the globe, all cultures, and involving both first and third-world countries, as well as former enlightened democracies to dictatorships. Look back further over the centuries and you’ll see that it happens all the time. To practically every country.
It’s *such * a frequent occurrence that you really have to prove that there’s reason to believe that the U.S. is SO exceptionally stable and SO exceptionally different that it couldn’t happen here. We have, after all engaged in genocide up to the turn of the last century. We have built concentration camps for our own citizens after Pearl Harbor. It doesn’t have to be fascism, it can be any number of ideologies or catastrophes that tip the government towards violence. The point is, statistically speaking, you have virtually nothing to fear from terrorism, but what your own government is liable to do to you should give you pause.
*hard to get statistics - but I got mine from this website.
Differences, yes (the KKK and eugenics are thankfully out of fashion, now it’s true.) Light years, no. The post WWI era also gave us wilsonian idealism and the Geneva Convention (which has recently been derided as “quaint”). It was in many ways a highly idealistic moment in Western history. You should also remember that the Germany that spawned the Nazis was previously by far one of the most liberal, open and tolerant countries in Europe.
What about Israel, Israel does not respond to a suicide bombing by establishing concentration camps. The US did not respond to WW2 by setting up death camps for the Japanese. Internment camps yes, but those were nothing like the death camps you seem to be afraid of.
Do you feel other developed countries would do the same? Would Switzerland resopnd to a handful of terrorist attacks by starting up death camps or just the US?
Even if the US is hit by a nuclear weapon I still do not see our response as being ‘lets build the death camps and round up the civilians’. This will turn the whole world on us, give terrorists motivation and ruin morale domestically.
Of the countries listed on R J Rummels site as mass murderers of their own citizens only 2 were developed countries, Japan and Germany. Both cultures have a very long history of blind obedience towards leaders, intense racism placing them at the top of the totem pole (dehumanizing everyone else), rabid nationalism and were under the leadership of imperialists. None of these things exist today in the US in any real sense of the word. People may make weak generalizations to prove a point (people are blindly loyal to Bush, the US is too patriotic, etc) but it was nothing like the willingness to commit suicide for the Emperor of the 1940s.
Oh, I’m under no illusions that terrorism is a major threat either compared to every day threats we all blithely face. I only rate it higher compared to your scenerio that the US will go fascist and go nuts attacking the rest of the world on the scale of the various regimes you mentioned in your OP. Had you made your OP that you were afraid of ALL governments, then I would have agreed with you…governments in general are certainly a threat to take seriously. However, I was addressing the improbable and highly unlikely aspects of your OP (IMHO) that the US is going to become a neo-Nazi nation hell bent on world destruction.
I hadn’t realized the US government caused 1.5 million deaths a year…could I get a cite for that perhaps? Oh (you cry) you meant in the entire world. Had you actually read what I wrote in both posts, you’d find that…I agree with you. Terrorism is not so big a threat, and governments (in general) could certainly be considered one. However, you obviously failed also to read the OP, who was talking about the US government becoming a fascist state AND launching a major war causing deaths on the order of other fascist/communist states in the 20th century. Perhaps you would like to go back and read next time before, well, replying in such a snippy way?
I disagree. Looking back on history, countries who go to extremes of politics (and who launch major wars or internally attack large segments of their populations and rack up such impressive death tolls as layed out in the OP) are nations with serious troubles. Germany, Japan, Russia, China…all nations with serious problems or going through serious social changes…or both. Show me an example of a successful and powerful nation going fascist or communist…or any other extreme political bent. Off the top of my head I can think of none…and certainly none that were also strong DEMOCRACIES. Enlighten me ugly.
Sorry, but I don’t think you’ve proved the first half of your assertion yet (i.e. that a strong nation will undergo such fundamental changes), so you are building on feet of clay to make predictions from your flawed model. The US isn’t exceptional…I can’t think of ANY strong nations who underwent such a sea change as predicted by the OP that wasn’t having serious problems. None.
As to the second half of your assertion, I agree…the individual threat of terrorism is fairly small compared to every day threats. I only rate it as high compared to the probability of the US becoming a neo-Nazi nation as per the OP. In addition, I agree with you that the threat of governments in general is higher than that of terrorism. Again, if the OP had said THAT I would have agree. Unfortunately, s/he did not. So, you seem to be trying to shoehorn me into disagreeing with an aspect of the OP that was never stated the way YOU are stating it…and who’s point I happen to agree with.
I think you misunderstand me. The US is a strong NATION. The fact we are a democracy certainly helps, but our nation is both strong and stable. If you need a cite that the US is both strong and stable then you need a cite that the sky is blue. Dislike the nation all you want, but its beyond reason not to see what is clearly evident…that the US is still THE world power, and that our government has been stable for over 200 years now…with no signs I see that this is about to change. Contrast that to the nations in the OP. The nations who underwent radical change listed in the OP, as well as any other nation I can think of (revolutionary France comes to mind) were either not strong or not stable…and in most cases weren’t either strong OR stable.
Look at the examples of nations who undergo radical and adverse changes from the past given in the OP and consider WHY they became what they became…and if those same circumstances prevail in the US. Not bits and pieces but the main reasons. Some examples of what I’m getting at:
Nazi Germany: The Nazi movement gained control of a weak and ineffective republic in a nation torn by problems after WWI. Not only did they have myriad economic woes (like their own great depression), they also had a lot of hurt pride and anger following their defeat in WWI.
Soviet Union: Arose during WWI when they were on the verge of collapse due in part at least to the misrule of the Tzars. In the early days there were constantly on the verge of collapse and they used incredibly harsh measures to keep things going. Wanted to move from an almost totally agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse.
Communist China: Arose after a long multi-sided war between various factions fighting to control China AND a protracted Japanese occupation/war. Wanted to rush into becoming an industrial power as rapidly as possible.
Imperialist Japan: Arose after a 200 year period of isolation and feudal rule by the Samurai class. Similiarly to China wanted to rush into becoming an industrial power reguardless of the cost to its culture.
Well, in my OP I estimated that the odds of the United States becoming a neo-Nazi nation were highly unlikely; 1 in 10,000 was the figure I gave. But the argument I’m trying to make is that this event isn’t so trivially small as to not be worth considering, which is what many people seem to believe.
One argument is that the United States is a “democracy”, which is actually what everyone today, for some reason, calls a republic. Germany was a republic from 1919 to 1933. The Nazi rise to power was facilitated by back-to-back economic catastrophes, namely the hyper-inflation followed by the Great Depression and ensuing sky-high unemployment. Granted these were brought on by the concessions Germany was (unfairly) forced to accept at Versailles, requiring them to make huge payments to the allied countries, but that’s not the only way an economic collapse can start. Economics is a huge random system, and we aren’t at any time guaranteed that no major catastrophe will come.
Another argument is that our armed citizens eliminate even the slightest chance of a fascist takeover. But the armed citizens of Iraq never stopped Saddam. An armed populace increases the amount of force available in society, but does nothing to guarantee that force will be applied in the right direction.
Lastly there’s the argument that the modern worldview of Americans means they’ll never turn to fascism. But the Germans of the 1920’s had a worldview as modern as other western countries; it was the economic conditions that allowed the Nazi takeover. Besides which, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, much of the U.S. does not have a modern worldview. Remember how Falwell and Robertson reacted to 9/11? While I’m not one to claim that those folks are secretly running the country, you can’t deny that millions of people believe what F and R believe.
And lastly there the “we didn’t build concentration camps after 9/11” argument. But 9/11, when you get right down to it, was minor compared to events that could happen. Only a few thousand people in Manhattan and Washington were in danger, the bulk of the country was neither in peril personally norr had and family or friends who were. Once people’s actually lives and livelihoods are in danger, that’s when they become truly susceptible to mass paranoia and anger, and thus to totalitarian worldviews.
Consider this scenario. And magnitude 10.0 earthquake strikes on the New Madrid fault in Missouri. This is enough to cause massive damage across a radius of several hundred miles, with hundreds of thousands of deaths, and all essential services including electricity, water, heat, oil, and food, no longer reliably available to people in the affected area for a substantial length of time. The damage overwhelms government relief capabilities, so most people don’t get the aid they need. Then it’s easy for a talented fear-monger to use the opportunity to convince huge numbers of people that the government needs to be overthrown (“They take your taxes but can’t even help out in an emergency”, “They should have forseen this disaster and warned us”, “They should have been better prepared”, etc…)
Overthrowing the existing government is too much effort; easier, instead, to subvert the existing structure to your ends. Get yourself some scapegoats (Jews, gypsies, Muslims, liberals, etc.), a good handle on the propaganda machine, and a frightened populace, and you’re almost there.
I find it odd there is no mention of people killed due to differing religious beliefs. Did I miss it somewhere or did those slaughters get combined under the government banner?
I don’t remember the general’s name, but he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (I believe) in the 30s (I believe) and that he was selected by a dozen or so major corporations to head a coup and a force of 500,000 and oust FDR and his ‘socialist’ regime. He also asserted that this group was going to insert some form of ‘totalitarian’ or ‘fascist’ regime. This former general was previously used through Latin America and other areas to gain control of foriegn countries on behalf of corporate interests. In other words, he was most certainly the right man for the job.
Now if you want to argue that the U.S. was weak here and that supports your thesis, I think that you’d have some grounds. But you cannot argue that the U.S. has a 200 year history of stability and strength. In any event, this has nothing to do with my actual assertion, which you sort of wrongly assumed.
But before I get to that, let me get this off my chest. It would be nice if people would stop equating government criticism with a lack of patriotism or of anti-americanism. I hope you’ll agree we’d all be screwed if we couldn’t realistically assess the realities of our environment. I’ll do my best not to be an anti-american zealot, if you can not see anti-american zealot anytime someone criticises America or the direction it’s going. Do you believe a near 100% incumbent reelection rate for the House over the last two elections suggests a strong Democracy? No, I don’t think you would. Therefore, my criticism merits a little more than the obligatory, knee jerk, partisan slap in the face that has become standard operating procedure in this increasingly droll drama called politcal discourse in America in the early 21st century. OK, I’ve got that, “you’re not a patriot” slap in the face out of the way.
I understand your point and agree that we are not a fertile ground for an insurgent force of the classically construed bludgeoning totalitarian formula. The key though is that it is not NECESSARY these days. I believe it was Goebbels who said that his and Germany’s greatest mistake was in not having as sophisticated and developed propaganda machine as the U.S. or Russia had. What I am asserting is NOT that we are heading toward a violent oppressive regime. The control apperatus is so much more sophisicated today that it does not need to resort to those sort of inflammatory measures. There are far more subtle ways to get everything you want if you are bent on world domination and domestic subservience. It’s much cleaner and seemless (aka, construed as a legitimate personal construct of reality) to gain willing consent than to use a bludgeon on your domestic populace and run blatently roughshod over any foreign opposing ‘foe’ (foe- read challenger, upstart, impediment, dictator gone rogue, etc). We have far better Orwelian apparatuses today (world bank, IMF, corporate media dominance, more sophisticated understanding of persuasion techniques, propaganda, etc) to doublespeak our way into any conjured reality.
I believe the American public is basically content with their lot worldwide and domestically, disconnected (or simply ignorant) from the realities of foreign policy and especially of the new geopolitics of the American neocon regime bent on world domination and ‘stability’ through an outmoded preemptive model (outmoded for 600 years). Brzezinski’s (former everything in world affairs in the U.S. over the last 30 years–in other words, highly influencial and respected), The Grand Chessboard, '97, outlines the basic geopolitical realities in the 21st century from the pespective of the world’s sole superpower as well as a roadmap to success in Eurasia, the critical region for world hegemonic domination in the present century and beyond.
I agree with the basic assertion of the OP at least as concerns the actual threat of terrorism and the price paid to meet it. The terrorist threat is rather miniscule (esp if we heed warnings and listen to the intelligence when it clearly, repeatedly, and from various sources, alerts us to attacks, as was the case on 9/11–the warnings were certainly there, the ear was amazingly deaf). Because of the persuasive abilities (and yes, I can at least be accused of being cynical of power) of our mass media system, Dem and Rep alike, I fear them far more than some CIA hatched mililtant Muslim who was merely propped up and created by the CIA anyway.
Here’s a full article from a dead link showing how the U.S. created the terrorists we are now fighting through a school textbook propaganda campaign (which is, of course, among many other manipulative means) from the Washington Post 2002. BTW, I think it is doubly ironic that we responded to the attack of the group we created by attacking the country led by another man we created. I highlighted the portions that mention the pernicious effects of our ‘Soviet’ campaign. My point here in including the article, in case it’s missed, is that the external danger was, most probably created internally which bodes well for the argument that we are to fear more than they (heck, you can even argue that our foreign policy as a whole played the primary role and was, essentially, an internal cause–but that is not my argument at all, that’s been made in plenty of other places. The present argument simply notes the clear evidence of our great role in creating the enemy directly rather than indirectly while simultaneously noting that totalitarianism may come in a milder more seemless or seemingly innocuous form, yet be just as effective in gaining geopolitical objectives and directing the populous toward the domestic objectives of an oligarchical ruling elite)
By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, March 23, 2002; Page A01
In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system’s core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.
As Afghan schools reopen today, the United States is back in the business of providing schoolbooks. But now it is wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism. What seemed like a good idea in the context of the Cold War is being criticized by humanitarian workers as a crude tool that steeped a generation in violence.
Last month, a U.S. foreign aid official said, workers launched a “scrubbing” operation in neighboring Pakistan to purge from the books all references to rifles and killing. Many of the 4 million texts being trucked into Afghanistan, and millions more on the way, still feature Koranic verses and teach Muslim tenets.
The White House defends the religious content, saying that Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the books “are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy.” Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.
Organizations accepting funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development must certify that tax dollars will not be used to advance religion. The certification states that AID “will finance only programs that have a secular purpose. . . . AID-financed activities cannot result in religious indoctrination of the ultimate beneficiaries.”
The issue of textbook content reflects growing concern among U.S. policymakers about school teachings in some Muslim countries in which Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism are on the rise. A number of government agencies are discussing what can be done to counter these trends.
President Bush and first lady Laura Bush have repeatedly spotlighted the Afghan textbooks in recent weeks. Last Saturday, Bush announced during his weekly radio address that the 10 million U.S.-supplied books being trucked to Afghan schools would teach “respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry.”
The first lady stood alongside Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai on Jan. 29 to announce that AID would give the University of Nebraska at Omaha $6.5 million to provide textbooks and teacher training kits.
AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S. government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman Kathryn Stratos said.
“It’s not AID’s policy to support religious instruction,” Stratos said. “But we went ahead with this project because the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is predominantly a secular activity.”
Some legal experts disagreed. A 1991 federal appeals court ruling against AID’s former director established that taxpayers’ funds may not pay for religious instruction overseas, said Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law expert at American University, who litigated the case for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Ayesha Khan, legal director of the nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the White House has “not a legal leg to stand on” in distributing the books.
“Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to supply materials that are religious,” she said.
Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.
During that time of Soviet occupation, regional military leaders in Afghanistan helped the U.S. smuggle books into the country. They demanded that the primers contain anti-Soviet passages. Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited U.S. interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders.
“I think we were perfectly happy to see these books trashing the Soviet Union,” said Chris Brown, head of book revision for AID’s Central Asia Task Force.
AID dropped funding of Afghan programs in 1994. But the textbooks continued to circulate in various versions, even after the Taliban seized power in 1996.
Officials said private humanitarian groups paid for continued reprintings during the Taliban years. Today, the books remain widely available in schools and shops, to the chagrin of international aid workers.
“The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school students, but the texts are even much worse,” said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, an Afghan educator who is a program coordinator for Cooperation for Peace and Unity, a Pakistan-based nonprofit.
An aid worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or passages.
The military content was included to “stimulate resistance against invasion,” explained Yaquib Roshan of Nebraska’s Afghanistan center. “Even in January, the books were absolutely the same . . . pictures of bullets and Kalashnikovs and you name it.”
During the Taliban era, censors purged human images from the books. One page from the texts of that period shows a resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung from his shoulder. The soldier’s head is missing.
Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin, who are described as obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text says.
"We were quite shocked," said Doug Pritchard, who reviewed the primers in December while visiting Pakistan on behalf of a Canada-based Christian nonprofit group. "The constant image of Afghans being natural warriors is wrong. Warriors are created. If you want a different kind of society, you have to create it."
After the United States launched a military campaign last year, the United Nations’ education agency, UNICEF, began preparing to reopen Afghanistan’s schools, using new books developed with 70 Afghan educators and 24 private aid groups. In early January, UNICEF began printing new texts for many subjects but arranged to supply copies of the old, unrevised U.S. books for other subjects, including Islamic instruction.
Within days, the Afghan interim government announced that it would use the old AID-produced texts for its core school curriculum. UNICEF’s new texts could be used only as supplements.
Earlier this year, the United States tapped into its $296 million aid package for rebuilding Afghanistan to reprint the old books, but decided to purge the violent references.
About 18 of the 200 titles the United States is republishing are primarily Islamic instructional books, which agency officials refer to as “civics” courses. Some books teach how to live according to the Koran, Brown said, and “how to be a good Muslim.”
UNICEF is left with 500,000 copies of the old “militarized” books, a $200,000 investment that it has decided to destroy, according to U.N. officials.
On Feb. 4, Brown arrived in Peshawar, the Pakistani border town in which the textbooks were to be printed, to oversee hasty revisions to the printing plates. Ten Afghan educators labored night and day, scrambling to replace rough drawings of weapons with sketches of pomegranates and oranges, Brown said.
“We turned it from a wartime curriculum to a peacetime curriculum,” he said.
How many religious massacres were there though? If the state carried them out they are just listed as state sponsored killings. Killings of individuals vs individuals aren’t listed in the 170 million.
They will worry themselves sick about the lowest probability disasters, like say flying in an airplane or having a meteor crashing into the earth and killing everyone, while blithely doing something incredibly dangerous, for instance driving to work every day or doing work around the house…or simply smoking, over eating or drinking and driving.