Gideon Polya, “Media lying and UK-US War Crimes”, submitted 8 November 2006; no record on Google.
Media lying and UK-US War Crimes
The Ruler is responsible for the Ruled and the American Declaration of Independence (arguably America's greatest contribution to humanity) identifies some core guidelines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. However egregious, racist lying by omission by corporate Mainstream media has permitted a US-led Coalition to commit horrendous crimes in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories with impunity. The crimes of America’s Bush, Britain’s Blair and Australia’s Howard DWARF those of the dictator Saddam Hussein. Bush, Blair, Howard AND Saddam Hussein should face properly conducted war crimes trials before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Major Conventions that underlie International Law and specify the humane and non-violent conduct of global affairs also specifically demand that the Ruler is obliged to keep his Subjects ALIVE e.g. the Geneva Conventions; the Geneva Conventions relative to protection of Civilians in time of war; the UN Genocide Convention; the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and the UN Rights of the Child Convention.
More specifically, the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1950) states:
“Article 55. To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate …
Article 56. To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining , with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties …”
It is important to ask the question: how has the Coalition Ruler of Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan been performing? Has it been attempting “To the fullest extent of the means available to it” to keep its Conquered Subjects ALIVE?
How hard have the Coalition Occupiers been trying to preserve the lives of their Conquered Iraqi and Afghan Subjects?
To get an idea we can turn to authoritative UN sources e.g. the World Health Organization (WHO); the UN Office for Drugs and Crime ( UNODC); the UN Childrens’ Fund (UNICEF); and the UN Population Division.
From these sources we can see that in 2003 “total expenditure on health as a % of GDP” was 6.5% (Occupied Afghanistan), 2.7% (Occupied Iraq), 9.5% (Australia), 8% (UK) and 15.2% (the US).
We can also determine that in 2003 the “per capita income i.e. GDP divided by population” (US$) was $250 (Occupied Afghanistan), $2,170 (Occupied Iraq), $21,650 (Australia), $28,350 (UK) and $37,610 (the US).
Accordingly the “per capita total expenditure on health” (US$) in 2003 was $16.25 (Occupied Afghanistan), $58.59 (Occupied Iraq), $2,056.75 (Australia), $2,268.00 (UK) and $5,716.72 (the US).
The Occupying Coalition has clearly GROSSLY FAILED to deliver life-sustaining requisites to its Conquered Subjects – and in doing so has grossly violated International Conventions and International Law.
What has been the outcome in terms of avoidable deaths in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan?
For a succinct answer we can turn to a LETTER sent to ALL members of the Australian Federal Parliament and to Mainstream media several weeks ago after the publication in the top medical journal The Lancet of the latest expert US medical epidemiologist/biometrician estimates of post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq and - noting that “avoidable deaths” or “excess deaths” (deaths that did not have to happen) are defined as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics. The letter in part reads as follows:
QUOTE: “A top US medical epidemiological research group has recently published their estimate of 655,000 post-invasion Iraq excess deaths in the top medical journal The Lancet (October, 2006).
This estimate is consonant with estimates based on data from other authoritative sources, specifically from the UN Population Division (563,000), UNICEF (639,000) and from The Lancet (October, 2004; un-amended data; 791,000).
Indeed the current estimate in The Lancet (2006) is an under-estimate – comparison of their “annual death rate” estimate of 1.33% with that of 0.4% in Iraq’s impoverished but peaceful neighbors Jordan and Syria yields an estimate of 887,000 post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths; deaths that should not have happened).
Using this latter figure for Iraq and a UN-derived estimate for Afghanistan, the post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan total 0.9 million and 2.1 million, respectively – a total of 3.0 million deaths, 1,000 (one thousand) times the number of people murdered on 9/11.”
For detailed analysis and documentation of the horrendous civilian death toll in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan the reader is referred to recent articles in MWC News.
The above estimates are consonant with independent UN data on post-invasion under-5 infant deaths, currently 437,000 and 1,665,000, respectively, for Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan and to this death toll we should add 0.5 million post-2001 global opiate drug-related deaths (including 1,600 Australians, 3,200 Britons, 1,200 Scots, 3,000 Canadians and 50,000 Americans) linked to US-Coalition-NATO restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry to a current 89% of world market share; 100,000 avoidable American under-5 infant deaths (due to warped Bush priorities; the cost of the Iraq War has been estimated at US$1-2 trillion by US Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz); and 3,000 Coalition military deaths.
While ethical publications such as MWC News have assiduously reported these horrendous estimates from authoritative and publicly-accessible medical literature and UN sources, racist, lying Mainstream media have largely kept the awful truth from the public in a continuing act of racist holocaust denial.
What can decent people do in the face of horrendous war crimes by Western “democracies” that are remorselessly ignored or denied by lying, racist corporate Mainstream media? Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent people are obliged to (a) inform everyone of gross human rights violations and (b) act ethically in their personal and business lives by, where possible and practical, avoiding any dealings with those complicit in such crimes. While decent people can hope for a catastrophic electoral loss for the Racist Religious Right Republican (R4) Bush-ites in this week’s US elections, thanks to racist lying by corporate Mainstream media such a national cleansing is unlikely. The time has surely come for urgent international and intra-national boycotts and sanctions against those complicit in the crimes of Bush and his lackeys Blair and Howard.