Pseudo-scientific cures have been around for a very long time, and not merely in medicine.
(Public domain image from the website of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the CNN website yesterday:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe power is out \u2014 again \u2014 in Venezuela. It\u2019s the\u00a0fourth nationwide blackout\u00a0in\u00a0the South American country this year. Officials are blaming it on a hostile \u201celectromagnetic attack,\u201d but the exact cause of the outage remains unclear at this point. Power was restored to Caracas early this morning, the government said. The outages are exacerbating\u00a0a broader political crisis that has gripped the country for years. Runaway inflation and food scarcity has crippled Venezuela, with tens of thousands leaving the country in a mass exodus.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another triumphant notch in socialism\u2019s belt! \u00a0Glorious achievement after glorious achievement!<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, the problem with socialism is that it\u2019s just never been tried correctly<\/em>. \u00a0Right?<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
In that regard, socialism is rather like the nineteenth century diet based on tapeworms. \u00a0The rationale behind the diet was that you could eat as much as you wanted as long as you followed your meal up with a healthy portion of yummy tapeworm eggs. When they hatched, your inner tapeworms would consume most if not all of the food that you had just eaten. Unfortunately, though, if the tapeworm eggs actually hatched (which they often didn\u2019t, because, if the scammers behind it all ever actually sent them, they might well already be dead) those tapeworms flourishing inside you could well result in brain inflammation and seizures. \u00a0But there\u2019s an upside: \u00a0You might well have a thirty-foot-long tapeworm residing within you for the rest of your life.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But maybe, if you used those tapeworm eggs properly<\/em>, they would be a wonderful dietary supplement.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Or how about strychnine as a cure for fatigue and difficulty in focusing? \u00a0Does it result in cold sweats, loss of consciousness, rapid heartbeat, and death? \u00a0Merely accidental effects.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Le Livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, r\u00e9pression<\/i>, which was published in 1997\u00a0by\u00a0St\u00e9phane Courtois,\u00a0Nicolas Werth,\u00a0Andrzej Paczkowski\u00a0and several other European academics and which appeared shortly thereafter from Harvard University Press as\u00a0The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression<\/i>, estimates the number of people killed by Communist governments at somewhere between 94 and 100 million. \u00a0The deaths were accomplished principally via genocides,\u00a0extrajudicial executions,\u00a0deportations, brutal mistreatment in labor camps, and deliberately-created\u00a0famines. \u00a0This figure does not include the 25 million murders committed by the Nazis \u2014 the\u00a0Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0(or\u00a0National Socialist German Workers\u2019 Party) \u2014 using techniques of industrialized mass extermination that were plainly modeled on the concentration camps of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shall we try it again? \u00a0Where would be the harm?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the triumph of hope over experience.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Canmore, Alberta, Canada<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 On the CNN website yesterday: \u00a0 \u201cThe power is out \u2014 again \u2014 in Venezuela. It\u2019s the\u00a0fourth nationwide blackout\u00a0in\u00a0the South American country this year. Officials are blaming it on a hostile \u201celectromagnetic attack,\u201d but the exact cause of the outage remains unclear at this point. Power was restored to Caracas early this morning, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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