The total estimated human loss of life caused by World War II was roughly 72 million people, making it the deadliest and most destructive war in human history. The civilian toll was around 47 million, including 20 million deaths due to war-related famine and disease. The military toll was about 25 million, including the deaths of about 4 million prisoners of war in captivity. The Allies lost approximately 61 million people, and the Axis powers lost 11 million.

I think everyone’s paid quite enough, don’t you?

Thanks for your post on my blog. As for the dollar and economic matters, you wont be the same after you watch Sheikh Imran Hosein break it down :

http://drmaxtor.blogspot.com/2008/05/best-lecture-ever.html

“A truly wealthy nation would be one with easy access to plentiful supplies of cheap energy with a well educated populace, hard working, who produced products other people wanted to buy.”

By that measure, which I agree with, how wealthy is the UK?

I think we’ll be finding out the answer to that question soon enough

This is the exact attitude I wanted to take when oil prices were going sky high a month back or so, and it appeared that the spike was being caused by speculation in the “paper-barrel” market. My car (a 1-litre Daewoo Matiz) was costing (possibly still costs) more than £30 to fill up. I can’t understand why our governments, especially the UK’s, are obsessed with this notion that they cannot bring the speculators and other usurers to heel while they hold the whole of western civilisation to ransom. They tell us to worry about terrorists while these crooks destroy our society from within, and we pay them for it!

This country has got the laxest attitude to ownership of British assets of probably any western country. Recently the company I’ve been working for was taken over by a big French-owned electrical company, and they’ve been closing branch after branch to concentrate business in fewer, big shops and warehouses, and there are signs up around the warehouse in Park Royal saying that this is beneficial for the company. Also see this page (fifth section down) in last Sunday’s Observer.