IRAQI MASSACRE IGNORED BY MEDIA
MWC News
March 5 2009
Lying over Iraqi Genocide
The core messages from the WW2 Jewish Holocaust are surely "zero
tolerance for racism", "never again to anyone", "bear witness" and
"zero tolerance for lying", injunctions ignored by Mainstream media
and by Obama in relation to the ongoing Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan
Genocides.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio National recently
reported thus from Mainstream media sources and a Washington
correspondent:
"More than 4,200 Americans have been killed, tens of thousands of
Iraqis have died and the conflict has cost hundreds of billions of
dollars …
[quoting Barack Obama]:"Let me say this as plainly as I can, by
August 31st 2010 our combat mission in Iraq will end" … The vast
majority of troops will not be withdrawn this year because the Iraqi
elections are due in December. Instead many will start to leave next
year. And between 35,000 and 50,000 American troops will stay behind
after August next year to help train the Iraqi forces and to undertake
counter terrorism missions. President Obama has announced his Iraq
withdrawal timetable at Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base in North
Carolina. He’s praised the efforts of the US military and he’s also
promised to have all US troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011." [1].
However expert observers have a completely different view of the
"reality" presented by the ABC as outlined below.
1. "More than 4,200 Americans have been killed" ignores other US
Alliance deaths and huge numbers of wounded.
According to Iraq Casualties 4,253 Americans have been killed and
31,010 have been wounded (such as not to return to duty within 3 days);
US and US Alliance deaths total 4,571. [2].
2. "Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died" is a 100-fold lower
estimation of the reality of about 2.3 million violent and non-violent
Iraqi post-invasion excess deaths.
Just Foreign Policy (an organization of eminent US scholars and US
elected representatives) says 1,311, 696 Iraqis have been killed
post-invasion, this regularly updated figure being based on the
survey data published in the top medical journal "The Lancet" by
distinguished US medical epidemiologists from Johns Hopkins and
Columbia Universities and corroborated by an independent survey by
the top UK commercial polling organization ORB. [3].
However those dying avoidably since the US Alliance Occupation include
not only those killed violently but those killed non-violently
through deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease. These
non-violent avoidable deaths can be estimated from comparative UN
Population Division mortality data. As of March 2009, the post-invasion
non-violent excess deaths (non-violent avoidable deaths) total 984,000
(1.0 million). [4].
The report also ignores the 630,000 post-invasion Iraqi under-5 infant
deaths (about 0.1 million every year, 270 daily, largely avoidable and
due to egregious US Alliance war crimes and equivalent to the 9-11
death toll every 11 days according to the UN Population Division,
plus an estimated 6 million refugees (as estimated by the eminent,
international BRussells Tribunal. [5].
3. "The conflict has cost hundreds of billions of dollars"
underestimates the real accrual cost of $3 trillion by a factor of 10.
2001 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia
University) and his Harvard University colleague Professor Linda
Bilmes have estimated that the accrual cost of the Iraq war has been
$3 trillion. [6].
Of particular interest to the million of newly unemployed around the
world (and potentially hundreds of thousands of Australians losing
their jobs because of US-caused economic recession) is the expert
view of 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz that
the Iraq war has bankrupted America. [7].
4. Obama’s "by August 31st 2010 our combat mission in Iraq will end"
is an outright Obama lie according to "35,000 and 50,000 American
troops will stay behind after August next year to help train the
Iraqi forces and to undertake counter terrorism missions"
5. "He’s [Obama’s] praised the efforts of the US military" means Obama
accepts complicity in the Iraq War, the Iraqi Holocaust and Genocide.
The invasion was illegal under International Law and based on egregious
falsehood. According to a News.com article re US Center for Public
Integrity: "US President George W Bush and other top officials issued
almost one thousand false statements about the national security threat
from Iraq following the September 11 attacks, according to a study by
two not-for-profit organisations". Outstanding writers referring to
the Iraqi Holocaust and/or Iraqi Genocide include Dr Mark Weissbrot
(Just Foreign Policy), Dr Paul Craig Roberts (conservative Father
of Reaganomics), John Pilger (Australian-UK writer) and Tariq Ali (
Pakistani-UK writer). [8].
6. "He’s [Obama’s] also promised to have all US troops out of Iraq by
the end of 2011" is contradicted by US military who have foreshadowed
endless involvement.
According to the US Huffington Post, 1 March 2009:
"Despite Obama’s declarations Friday and the celebrations they have
sparked on the liberal blogosphere, the Pentagon certainly seems to
believe its forces may well be in Iraq after 2011. NBC’s Pentagon
correspondent Jim Miklaszeswki reported on Friday that "military
commanders, despite this Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi
government that all U.S. forces would be out by the end of 2011,
are already making plans for a significant number of American troops
to remain in Iraq beyond that 2011 deadline, assuming that Status
of Forces Agreement agreement would be renegotiated. And one senior
military commander told us that he expects large numbers of American
troops to be in Iraq for the next 15 to 20 years." [9].
How can Australia’s taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting
Corporation (ABC) continue to get it so utterly wrong over US
involvement in Occupied Iraq? This is a question that should be
asked by an Australian Federal Parliamentary Senate Committee of this
taxpayer-funded organization and by the Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission (ACCC) of the commercially-involved Australian
Broadcasting Corporation.
I can certainly testify to any Senate Committee of inquiry or any
ACCC Investigation that the ABC has been variously involved in
deliberate, knowing and sustained holocaust ignoring in relation to
the Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Genocide – I have been assiduously
informing the ABC of the increasingly horrendous dimensions of these
Australian-complicit atrocities on a monthly basis for years, but
the silence has been deafening.
Thus the following authoritative estimate from late 2008: "The Bush
Gang should be prosecuted over mass murder before the International
Criminal Court (in absentia if necessary) for their involvement in
the ongoing Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Genocides (post-invasion
non-violent excess deaths 0.3 million, 1 million and 4 million,
respectively; post-invasion violent excess deaths 10,000, 1 million
and possibly 2 million, respectively [if the Occupied Afghanistan
violent/non-violent excess death ratio is half that in Occupied Iraq];
post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths 0.2 million, 0.6 million
and 2.1 million, respectively; refugees totalling 7 million, 6 million
and 4 million, respectively – Genocides as defined by Article 2 of
the UN Genocide Convention". [10].
Concerned about continuing lying, holocaust ignoring and denial in
the teaching of history in Australian schools, I recently made a
detailed and lengthy submission in response to the draft Australian
National History Curriculum Framing Paper, stating in small part:
"Holocaust denial is wrong and utterly repugnant for 3 major reasons:
(1) it is falsehood; (2) it is profoundly offensive to the memory of
the victims, survivors of such atrocities, their loved ones and indeed
to all of decent humanity; and (3) it increases the probability of
repetition of such awful crimes – history ignored and history denied
yields history repeated. Indeed one supposes that it is for these
sorts of reasons that Germany recently proposed a measure for the
EU that would criminalize not only those who deny or diminish the
Jewish Holocaust but those belittling any relatively recent genocide,
mass murder, war crimes and other crimes against humanity.
Already denial or minimization of the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust
is a criminal offence attracting up to 10 years of imprisonment in
Austria, 5 years in Germany and custodial punishment in many other
European countries. Indeed denial of the Armenian Genocide (up to 1.5
million Armenians murdered in Turkey in the period 1915-1923) is an
offence in both France and Belgium … Of course, when "holocaust
ignoring" persists after those involved have been authoritatively
apprised of holocaust occurrence then "holocaust ignoring" transmutes
into morally repugnant "holocaust denial", inviting disapprobation,
Sanctions, Boycotts and legal and administrative sanctions. If the
National History Curriculum, authoritatively apprised about "holocaust
occurrence", were to persist in a program with a possible outcome
of effective "holocaust ignoring" then the consequences (e.g. legal
and business) for Australia and particular individuals might well be
draconian." [11].
We have recently seen the public rebuke by the Holy Father, the
Pope, to Bishop Williamson for his offending 20-fold diminution
of the extent of the Jewish Holocaust (authoritative scholarly
estimates are of 5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation;
see Gilbert, M. (1969), Jewish History Atlas (Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
London); Gilbert, M. (1982), Atlas of the Holocaust (Michael Joseph,
London)). However the Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead) was part
of a wider WW2 Holocaust (30 million Slav, Jewish and Roma dead) and
wider still WW2 Holocaust also including 35 million Chinese killed
under Japanese occupation and 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved
to death by Churchill in the man-made 1943-1945 Bengal Famine. Yet
the non-Jewish holocausts of WW2 have been largely written out of
history to the extent that "the Holocaust" is typically taken to
refer to the Jewish Holocaust despite the reality that the "forgotten"
WW2 Bengal Holocaust was the first WW2 atrocity to be described as a
"holocaust" (by N.G. Jog in his 1944 book ""Churchill’s Blind-Spot:
India", New Book Company, Bombay). [12].
Clearly holocaust ignoring and holocaust denial is well entrenched in
the English-speaking world in relation to holocausts other than the
World War 2 Jewish Holocaust. The "news report" analyzed here is just
"normal reportage" for the ABC and merely the very tip of the tip of
an iceberg – Australia’s national taxpayer-funded media organization,
the ABC, needs to be subjected to intense public scrutiny for its
sustained, highly offending holocaust ignoring and other failures of
factual reportage.
Indeed the ABC is merely the very tip of the tip of the iceberg
of lying, racist, holocaust-ignoring reportage by the US Mainstream
media of the Western Murdochracies. Tell all your friends to eschew the
racist, lying, Zionist-beholden Mainstream media and to get factual and
balanced reportage from the likes of AlterNet, Bellaciao, Democracy
Now, Information Clearing House, Countercurrents, Counterpunch and
MWC News.
References
[1]. Australian ABC Radio National, Saturday AM (Saturday 28 February
2009, "The end in sight for American forces in Iraq".
[2]. Iraq Casualties: .
[3]. Just Foreign Policy:
deaths.html ).
[4]. UN Population Division: ; see
also "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950"
(G.M. Polya, Melbourne: and
.
[5]. UN Population Division : ; BRussells
Tribunal (see: .
[6]. "US economy a "$3 trillion" casualty of war in Iraq ", The New
Zealand Herald, March 2008; see also Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda
J. Bilmes "The Three Trillion Dollar War", Norton, New York, 2008..
[7]. "Award winning economist says America has bankrupted
itself with the Iraq war ", ABC Lateline (5 May 2008) :
6161.htm .
[8]. "George Bush, White House told 935 lies after September 11",
News.com, 23 January 2008 .
[9]. Huffington Post, 1 March 2009.
[10]. "9-11 excuse for US global genocide. The real 9-11
atrocity: millions dead (9-11 million) in Bush wars (1990-2009)":
/25184/42/ ); also see "Obama betrays
humanity: 1,460 die avoidably daily in Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi
and Afghan Territories", Bellaciao, 1 March, 2009.
[11]. Response by Dr Gideon Polya to the Australian National History
Curriculum Framing Paper.
[12]. For details of this "forgotten" Bengali Holocaust of WW2
see the 2008 BBC broadcast in which I participated together with
1998 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen, Harvard
University, medical historian Dr Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Wellcome
Institute, University College London, and other scholars; see also
"Media lying over Churchill’s crimes. British-Indian Holocaust":
6713/42/ .
Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Chief political editor, published
some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a
huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant
Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London,
2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality —
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