Saturday 7 September 2002

The first Tranzis?

If you're getting too much sleep may I suggest that you read The Black Book of Communism, originally published in France in 1997. By then, it was estimated that communism had killed 100 million of our fellow human beings.

Turn now to the griefometer which rates disasters using the deaths of Princess Diana and Jill Dando as benchmarks (thanks to Samizdata for the link) and fill in the form for the disaster that was communism.

I rated "average cuteness of dead" at 5% - let's face it, people exterminated for owning a couple of sheep or turning up late for work at a Ukrainian collectivised farm don't come too high up on the "cuteness" scale. Similarly, I gave 5% for "importance of location." The communist holocaust didn't occur in London, Paris or New York so the location couldn't be all that important, could it? I also put in 5% for "visual impact" which is probably too high. It's not as if it was on CNN every day. Giving the commies a fair chance, I assumed that the mass murder was on the front pages every day since 1917, that's some 29,220 days. Now click submit. Communism scores 0.8 "Dandos", less than one "Diana". Giving cuteness, location and visual impact ratings of 100% increases communism's score to 14.4 "Dianas".

Now, this griefometer is just a silly game, isn't it? A bit sick perhaps? Well, consider this: 100 million killed over 80 years is about 3,422 per day.

Or one "World Trade Centre".

Every day for 80 years.

What's really sick is that the communists' ideological soulmates infest almost every academic institution in the western world. And I am still waiting for them to apologise.