Never mind Merv and Alistair - it could be worse for you!

Kohoutek

Yes, but the problem in the UK is we have fewer and fewer unskilled and semi-skilled jobs and more of a demand for highly skilled/professional ones. Our educational system seems completely inadequate to lift children out of welfare dependent families.

kennyboy66_2

Generali wrote: »

How many died in that 'famine'?

Stalin did for about 20,000,000 during collectivisation. Mao killed 25,000,000 in a 2 year period IIRC. Pol Pot caused about 1/6th of the country's population to die from starvation.

As for what's going on in North Korea? We won't know until these despots (hopefully) get the Mussolini treatment* but it is highly unlikely to have been a positive time in Korean history.

Are you seriously trying to defend these people? More people died in Communist famines than in the Nazi massacres/genocides - I condemn them both and find it very hard to see why so many apparently well educated posters seem to want to defend the former while they would never think of defending the latter.

Why do you think that Communists deliberately starving their own people to death is a good thing ninky?


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It is not a case of defending the indefensible, however Mao's great leap forward did not set out to create a famine - whereas Hitler clearly tried to exterminate a race of people (plus plenty of others).

Generali

kennyboy66 wrote: »

It is not a case of defending the indefensible, however Mao's great leap forward did not set out to create a famine....

...however, it's continuance once the results of the policy became clear was an amoral adherence to ideology over human life. And that's probably the nicest description of the policies of the time. What do you think happened to people that pointed out the deaths?