Iraqi society descending into a CIVIL WAR between Sunnis, Shi-ites and Kurds.

 

*

Daily Mail

Saturday, 27 May-2006.

 

SATURDAY ESSAY

 

by

 

Niall Ferguson

 

*

CENTURY OF GENOCIDE

 

The 20^th century was an era of unparalleded progress yet it was also the most violent in history. What’s truly worrying is that the causes of that mass bloodshed are all prevalent today.

 

 

[We have both Bush and Blair in the last week of May 2006 now willing to admit that they had been wrong in invading Iraq yet still insist they would do the same thing again. The following article is a timely reminder that the WORLD is a dangerous place and any disturbance to PEACE particularly in the MIDDLE EAST has and will have enormous consequences for the future of MANKIND.]

 

IT WAS the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was a century when human beings got richer than previous generations could possibly imagine. It was the century when on average, people lived longer too.

 

Breakthroughs in science and technology transformed the quality of life on earth. The average person became better fed, healthier and taller. A much smaller proportion of the world’s population was chained to the precarious drudgery of subsistence agriculture. People had roughly treble the amount of leisure time.

Moreover, thanks to the remarkable spread of democratic form of government, people were also more free.

 

YET - and this is surely one of the greatest of historical paradoxes - the 20^th century was also by far the most violent era of mankind has experienced since the dawn of civilisation, far more violent in relative as well as absolute terms than any other in history.

 

Significantly larger percentages of the world’s population were killed in the two world wars that dominated the century than had been killed in ANY previous conflict of comparable geopolitical magnitude.

 

By any measure, World War II was the greatest man-made catastrophe of all time, killing something like 60 million people, nearly 3 per cent of the world’s population in 1938.

Moreover, the World Wars were only two of many 20^th century bouts of lethal organised violence.

 

Death tolls quite probably passed the million mark in at least a dozen other wars, as well as the campaigns of extermination waged against ethnic or social minorities by the Turkish regime during World War I, the Soviet regime from the 1920’s until the 1950’s and the National Socialist regime in Germany between 1933 and 1945, to say nothing of the tryannies of Mao Zedong in China and Pol Pot in Cambodia.

 

There was not a single year between 1900 and 1999 that did not see large-scale organised violence in one part of the world or another. Estimates for the centuries total body count attributable to violence range from

 

167,000,000

 

to

 

188,000,000

 

-perhaps as many as

 

1 in 22 deaths.

 

So why were these 100 years the century of MASS DESTRUCTION

 

-       as well as the century of MASS CONSUMPTION?

 

Why did the murder rates rise almost in step with living standards?

 

To resolve this great paradox, it is not enough just to say that there were more people living closed together, or more destructive weapons.

 

NO DOUBT it was easier to perpetrate MASS MURDER by dropping high explosives on crowded cities than it had once been to put dispersed rural populations to the sword. But if those were sufficient explanations, the end of the century would have been more violent than the beginning and middle.

 

In the 1990’s the world’s population for the first time exceeded six billion

 

6000,000,000

 

- more than three tomes what it had been when World War I broke out.

 

Moreover, weaponry was vastly more destructive. But there was actually a marked decline in the amount of armed conflict in the century’s last decade.

 

In any case, some of the worst violence of the century was perpetrated in relatively thinly populated countries with the crudest of weapons: rifles, axes, knives and machetes. [Africa]

 

When I was a schoolboy, the textbooks offered a variety of explanations for 20^th century violence. Sometimes they blamed economic crises, as if depressions and recessions could explain political conflict.

 

Then there was the dreary old Marxist theory that the century was all about class conflict - that revolutions were one of the main causes of violence.

 

A third argument was that the 20^th century’s problems were the consequences of extreme versions of political ideologies, notably communisim and fascisim, as well as earlier evil ‘isms’, notably racism.

The trouble with all of these theories was that they could not tell me the answer to two simple questions.

 

Why did extreme violence happen in some places - Poland and the Ukraine, for example - but not in others, like Sweden and New Zealand?

 

And why did it happen at certain times -the early 1940’s especially - but not at other times, like the early 1960’s?

 

For the most striking thing about the 20^th century violence was how localised it was in both space and time.

 

It really was tremendously bad luck to be born in Byelorussia or Serbia in around 1904; your chances of dying a violent death were probably 50:50. But if you had the luck to be born, as I was in Western Europe in the early Sixties, you were quite likely never to hear a shot fired in anger.

 

The Depression was more or less a global phenomenon - but only a minority of countries became war-mongering dictators as a result of it.

 

There were social inequalities more of less everywhere. But only in some times did these give rise to bloody revolutions. As for the ideologies which men used to justify violence in the 20^th century, all of these were inventions of earlier periods.

 

Biological racism, the nastiest of all justifications for mass murder, was a 19^th century idea.

 

Why was it in Europe between 1939 and 1945 that this idea became the basis for a systematic policy of genocide waged against the Jewish people and other groups deemed by the Nazis to be ‘ sub-human’?

 

Why did the Germans - who in the 1920’s had been perhaps the best educated people on the planet - commit the century’s most hateful crime?

 

It is much too easy to pile the blame on a few wicked dictators: Hitler, Stalin and Mao in particular. But as Tolstoy long ago pointed out in War and Peace, you have to explain not only why meglomamiacs order men to invade Russia, but also why men obey.

 

In short, we need some better way to explain why the 20^th century, in so many ways a time of unparalleled progress, was also a time when millions of men (and it was mainly men) felt motivated to engage in lethal organised violence against their fellow beings - not just in more or less equal battlefield struggles, but also in horribly unequal massacres perpetuated against defenceless civilians.

 

And that explanation has to pinpoint both the location and timing of the bloodshed.

 

It turns out that for violence to explode into the million-plus casualty range, three things need to coincide:

 

Ethnic disintegration

 

Economic volatility

 

Empires in decline.

 

By ethnic disintegration, I mean breakdowns in the relations between certain ethnic groups, specifically the breakdown of sometimes quite far advanced processes of assimilation in multi-ethnic societies.

 

It is no coincidence that the worst violence of the 20^th century happened in countries that were ethically heterogeneous as the result of complex patterns of migration and inter-marriage.

 

Look at an ethno-linguistic map of Europe in around 1900.

 

-and you can quickly identify the future killing fields of the century.

 

In particular that triangle of territory between the Baltic, the Balkans and the Black Sea stands out as a kind of patchwork of different nationalities.

 

In the north there were Lithuanians, Latvians, Byelorussias and Russians;

 

 

In the middle , Czechs, Slovaks and Poles

 

In the south, Italians, Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, Albanians, Greeks and Turks.

 

Scattered all over the region were German-speaking communities. And language was only one of the ways the different ethnic groups could be distinguished. Some of those who spoke German dialects were Protestants, some Catholics and some Jews.

 

The striking thing is that these different groups were not strictly segregated. On the contrary, from 1900 onwards there was a remarkable blurring of ethnic lines as traditional religious communities weakened and the number of mixed marriages rose.

 

By the 1920’s, in many Central and East European cities, one in every two or three marriages involved a Jew was to a non-Jew.

 

So the question becomes:

 

What made so many of these multi-ethnic societies blow apart in the 1930’s and 1940’s?

 

Why did neighbours literally murder one another in so many different places, when it had seemed that the processes of integration and assimilation would actually dissolve the differences between Germans and Jews, Poles and Ukrainians, Serbs and Croats?

 

HERE is where economic volatility comes in - by which I mean the frequency and amplitude of changes in the rate of growth, prices, interest rates and employment.

 

The World had never experienced so many economic ups and downs as it did during the first half of the 20^th century from the boom years that ended in 1914 and 1929 to the catastrophic Depression of the Thirties.

 

The effect of these ups and downs was deeply divisive in the multi-ethnic societies of Central and Eastern Europe.

 

For it seemed to many people that the fruits of the good times were disproportionately accruing to certain ethnic minorities - not only the Jews, but also Armenians. And when bad times came, there was already some disposition to target those minorities for compulsory redistribution - and retribution.

 

The third, fatal ingredient was provided by declining empires. The world of 1900 was a world of empires. More than 80 per cent of the world’s population lived in one empire or another.

 

But the empires that ruled Central and Eastern Europe - the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and German - were fragile entities, whose rivalries ultimately blew Europe apart in

World War I.

 

It was in the wake of this first wave of imperial crises that the question of ethnic minorities became acute, for in the new nation states created after 1918 - particularly Chechoslavakia, Yugoslavia and Poland -there were numerous minorities who felt distinctly vulnerable to the newly empowered majorities.

 

The Germans, in particular, who had once been so dominant in the Autro-Hungarian empire, found themselves living as second-class citizens. Their feelings of post-imperial insecurity were a lethal ingredient in the distinctly Austrian cocktail that became

National Socialism.

 

The decline and fall of empires was a recurrent leitmotif of the 20^th century. It was not only these Central and East European empires that collapsed; the new empires that sprang up in the 1930’s - the Soviet, the Italian, the Japanese and the Nazi -also proved ephemeral.

 

World War II was ultimately just as fatal for the West European overseas empires of Britain, France and the Netherlands, which fell apart inexorably in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

 

And precisely this pattern of imperial disintegration is another reason why the 20^th century was so violent. For violence tends to peak when empires decline.

 

 

It is not during their rise and zenith that empires generate the most conflict, but when they dissolve- for it is at the moment of dissolution that the indigenous peoples have the strongest incentive to engage in civil war, in the knowledge the post-imperial spoils of independence will go to the victor.

 

The potential instability of assimilation and integration; the combustible character of ethnically mixed societies; the chronic volatility of economic life; the convulsions that marked the decline of Western dominance -these were the true causes of what I have called

 

THE WAR OF THE WORLD

 

[Does not the above description fit in with the growing unrest at the enormous growth in unlimited immigration over the last nine years particularly with many new communities settled in their own ghettos contrary to the custom of our country. The Author has done a great service in bringing such an important subject into the light where hopefully our politicians will see their errors and mind the warnings which history has offered them.]

 

To continue:

 

If I am right about what made the 20^th century so violent - ethnic disintegration, economic volatility and empires in decline - then what are the implications for this still new century we live in today?

 

I am afraid to say that they are profoundly alarming. For there is one REGION of the WORLD which already has ALL these ingredients in abundance. That REGION is the MIDDLE EAST.

 

As I write, the evidence mounts that Iraqi society is descending into potentially terrible

 

CIVIL WAR

 

-       between Sunnis, Shi-ites and Kurds, a war which could all too easily escalate beyond Iraq’s borders into a

-        

-       MAJOR CONFLICT.

 

As I write, the world economy seems to be teetering on the brink of a new era of volatility after what has been a remarkable period of stability and prosperity.

Nowhere is that volability more acute than in the

 

MIDDLE EAST

 

-       where $70-a-barrel oil enriches a tiny elite while a youthful populace frets in idleness and poverty.

 

And as I write, there is every reason to think that the last great empire of the Western world -that informal American empire which had dominated the world in our lifetimes, and which this country has too loyally supported - is losing its grip on the foreign territories it has sought to control:

 

NOT ONLY IRAQ.

 

BUT ALSO

 

AFGHANISTAN

 

The danger is very real that conflict in the

 

MIDDLE EAST

 

-       could escalate in the years ahead to levels we have not seen in the REGION since the IRAN-IRAQ war; perhaps to levels we have not seen in the northern hemisphere since the 1940’s.

 

Nor is it clear to me that our Multi-ethnic societies in Western Europe, which are being so rapidly transformed by Muslim immigration, would remain untouched by such a conflagration.

 

Once again, I fear, what has seemed like the best of times -this fledgling 21^st century, with its high-speed connections and hedge funds -could turn very suddenly into the

 

WORST OF TIMES

 

[All thanks to good old

 

Tony and George

 

who have helped the possible catastrophe on the way even quicker while they feather their nests and those of their friends]

 

* * *

Niall Ferguson’s new book, The War of the World:History’s Age of Hatred, is published by Penguin on June 1-

 

[Font altered-bolding & underlining used -comments in brackets]

JUNE/06

 

*

Q&A: The Lisbon Treaty-2008 Leaders of the European Union's 27 member states meet in Portugal this week to sign what will now become known as the Lisbon Treaty.   * The abolition of Britain by The Reform Treaty - Second Reading-Passed by majority of 138 * Veteran parliamentarian TONY BENN speaks of the absolute necessity of a REFERENDUM HEAR HIM ON http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=o0I-ZdvQz1o *

*

www.noliberties.com

[Latest Addition - June07]

*

www.eutruth.org.uk

*

www.thewestminsternews.co.uk

*

 

www.speakout.co.uk

*

 

Daniel Hannan - Forming an OPPOSITION to the EU

www.telegraph.co.uk.blogs

 

*

 

 

VOTE

MAY -2007

 

TO LEAVE THE EUROPEAN UNION

WITH THE ONLY PARTY WITH A MANDATE

TO SET YOU

 FREE

 

THE

UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY

www.ukip.org

 

TO RECLAIM YOUR DEMOCRACY DON'T VOTE FOR THE TRIPARTITE PARTIES IN WESTMINSTER

BUT

SMALL PARTIES THAT SPEAK THEIR MINDS WITHOUT SPIN AND LIES.

*

 

ONLY

PRO-PORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

WILL BRING DEMOCRACY BACK TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE

*

Home Rule for Scotland

WHY NOT

HOME RULE for ENGLAND

 

*

MAY/07

 

[All underlined words have a separate bulletin]

 

Elections in the British One Party State If you vote Conservative, Labour, Lib-Dem, UKIP or the BNP, you'll be voting for the EU dictatorship. All five party leaderships are EU controlled. That's why your vote doesn't make a difference - all these five parties have the same policies: the EU's policies. The 17 most senior politicians in the Conservative, Lib Dem and Labour parties, including Ken Clarke, Francis Maude, Cameron, William Hague, George Osborne, Nick Clegg, Brown, David and Ed Milliband, Ed Balls, Peter Mandleson are Bilderbergers, the 140 strong band of ultra senior Freemasons who are bribed by the EU to build the EU dictatorship. No Bilderberger, Freemason or Common Purpose graduate should ever be allowed to hold public office. UKIP and the BNP are honey traps to neutralise activists: UKIP is riddled with Freemasons and Common Purpose like a cancer, and the BNP controlled by the Edgar Griffin (father) and son Nick Freemasonry family. The 350,000 freemasons and the 40,000 strong Common Purpose Organisation are the (mostly unknowing) foot soldiers of the EU in Britain. (Which makes the BNP the easiest party to clean up - get rid of the Griffins, and put in a real anti-EU leadership.)  For more details go to :http://eutruth.org.uk IF YOU ARE A MEMBER OF UKIP  OR  INTEND TO JOIN THEM TAKE NOTE OF THE MESSAGE ABOVE     THE EDP HAS BEEN CRITICAL OF THE MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP OF THE UKIP FOR SOME TIME NOW AS IS SHOWN IN A NUMBER OF BULLETINS  OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS WHERE WE HAVE CRITICISED THEIR LACK LUSTRE PERFORMANCE AS THEY FAILED TO MOTIVATE THEIR MEMBERSHIP TO A MORE DETERMINED CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE CAMPAIGN WHICH WOULD HAVE MADE THE GOVERNMENTS TREMBLE BUT THEY HAD NO WORRY BECAUSE THEY HAD THEIR OWN PERSONS IN CHARGE AT THE TOP OF THE ORGANISATION.  THIS FIGHTING SPIRIT HAS BEEN LACKING AND WE CAN CONFIRM THIS OURSELVES BECAUSE WE HAVE BEEN OUTSIDE PARLIAMENT WHEN A MARCH WAS CANCELLED - AND WATCH THE FARCE WHEN CANDLES WERE HELD AND THOUSANDS OF LETTERS SENT TO MPS WHO KNEW WHERE TO DISPOSES OF THEM -AND ALL TO NO AVAIL.  IF YOU ARE A MEMBER OF UKIP YOU HAVE BEEN BETRAYED BY YOUR OWN LEADERSHIP SOME APPEAR ON THE ALEX JONES SHOW WHICH HAS BEEN UNDER CLOSE SPOTLIGHT RECENTLY AS BEING CLOSE TO AN ISRAELI SECURITY FIRM DETAILS ON OUR WEBSITE .    IRONICALLY IT WAS A CHANCE LOOK ON THE INTERNET A FEW YEARS AGO  TO COME UPON THAT SITE WHICH OPENED OUR MIND TO THE ILLUMINATI.   THOUGH WE HAVE SOME DETAILS OF THE BILDERBERGERS ON OUR SITE  A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO WE FAILED TO DO MORE RESEARCH- WE ALL HAVE TO LEARN.  THE FAILURE OF UKIP WE HAVE SUSPECTED  FOR MANY YEARS   THAT MANY AT THE TOP OF THEIR ORGANISATION MIGHT BE UNDERCOVER MEMBERS OF THE ILLUMINATI.  IT IS A FAVOURITE TRICK OF THEIRS TO SUPPORT ANY PARTY OR ORGANISATION AT THE OUTSET WHATEVER ITS POLICY AS IT ALLOWS THEM TO PUT THEIR OWN PEOPLE IN TO CONTROL ITS POLICES AS THEY BEHIND THE SCENES SUPPLY THE VITAL FINANCIAL SUPPORT.   Our intention is not to benefit from this disaster as since the 1999 European Election we have NOT! accepted a DONATION! from ANYONE! and we closed membership also because we did not wish to split the vote for UKIP but have stated in the past that we would contest another election if it was ever necessary to enter into the affray again and with the reputation of UKIP under scrutiny we will keep our options OPEN!   As we mentioned some time ago we have been almost two decades on the campaign trail to free our once FREE INDEPENDENT NATION STATE of ENGLAND from the SATANIC EU and those who have for centuries have planned for an EVIL ONE-WORLD CORPORATION/GOVERNMENT and EXTERMINATE! at least 5 BILLION of the WORLD'S POPULATION and therefore if we are right about those mentioned above they are not only TRAITORS to their COUNTRY but also a THREAT to WORLD PEACE.   However, of late, matters have NOT! been going well for the ILLUMINATI as you will observe BELOW.   WHAT A WAY TO WIN A WAR     BENJAMIN FULFORD   More! [WORKS] * SEEKTHETRUTHANDWISDOM   * Bank Of England « The Banking Swindle   More!   More!   PATRIOT or TRAITOR to HIS COUNTRY +More!    More!   +(More!     THIS YOU MUST SEE IT CONCERNS  YOUR PLANET! AND  YOU!     NO NEED TO PANIC!   'Others shall sing the song, Others shall right the wrong,- Finish what I begin, All all I fail of win. Hail to the coming singers! Hail to the brave light-bringers! Forward I reach and above All that they sing and dare.   The airs of heaven blow o'er me; A glory shines before me Of what mankind shall be'- Pure, generous, brave and free, I feel the earth move sunward, I join the great march onward, And  take, by faith, while living, My freehold of thanksgiving.-   WHITTIER   MAY-2012   TOP OF PAGE       ADDED - MAY-2012