Gideon Polya, “New Orleans Tragedy Exposes US Racism & Passive Mass Murder”, MWC News, 5 September 2005.
New Orleans Tragedy Exposes US Racism & Passive Mass Murder
THE WORLD IS WATCHING. The World has been shocked by the Bush Administration's failure to provide requisite urgent assistance to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and its armed prevention of non-government organizations such as the American Red Cross from delivering assistance to the largely Afro-American survivors in New Orleans. A week after Katrina struck, 50,000 Americans are unaccounted for and the total death toll may rise to something of the order of 10,000. Even the resolutely dishonest and intrinsically racist US corporate mainstream media have had to concede the utter tardiness of the Bush Administration response.
However the unfolding New Orleans tragedy has exposed the evil racism and inhumanity of the Bush Administration and the US Establishment. When the US Establishment effectively continues to passively kill thousands of its own citizens in cold blood and before the eyes of the World there is something dreadfully wrong that demands urgent rational analysis and determined civic action.
How does the unfolding carnage in New Orleans compare with other avoidable mass mortality events in which the US Establishment has been involved? The brief, quantitative analysis below lists these mass mortality items in INCREASING order of "annual death rate" expressed as a percentage i.e. the "death rate" expressed as percentage of each particular group of people dying per year.
Western civilian deaths from non-state terrorism. 5,000 Western civilians have been murdered by jihadists or insurgents over the last 20 years (mostly on 9/11 with the remainder dying in Israel and atrocities such as Lockerbie, Bali, Madrid and London). The US Establishment (including corporate mainstream media and the military-industrial complex) has been involved through training and funding of jihadists (1979 - 1990s and possibly continuing covertly in view of the post-9/11 $500 billion extra profit to the US military-industrial complex and the immense extension of US physical hegemony in the Middle East and Central Asia; the latter has clearly exacerbated the jihadist threat according to both scholarly terrorism experts and the jihadists themselves). The population of the West is about 760 million. The "annual death rate" of Western civilians from non-state terrorism has been 0.00003% (over the last 20 years) and 0.0001% (over the last 5 years).
Post-1950 global avoidable mortality. The post-1950 avoidable mortality (technically, excess mortality) has been 1.3 billion for the whole World (average population since 1950 about 4.4 billion). All but 55 million deaths have occurred in the non-European World and about two thirds (2/3) of the deaths have been of infants under the age of 5 (under-5 infant mortality). This horrendous carnage has involved major First World complicity with the UK, the US, France, Portugal and Russia being the major culprits and their deadly impositions variously involving colonial rule, neo-colonial hegemony, economic constraint, economic distortion, malignant interference, corrupt client regimes, militarization, debt, civil war and international war. The global, post-1950, avoidable "annual death rate" has been 0.5%.
Iraq. 1.7 million Iraqis have died avoidably since imposition of Western hostilities in 1990 (average population 23.5 million) and 0.4 million in post-invasion Iraq (average population 26.9 million). The UK, the US and their Coalition partners have been responsible for this mass mortality through sanctions, war, invasion, occupation and criminal denial of life-preserving requisites in Iraq (passive genocide) in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. The "annual death rate" in Iraq has been 0.5% (since imposition of sanctions in 1990) and 0.6% (since the illegal US-led invasion in 2003).
Afghanistan. 8.1 million Afghans have died avoidably since the Russian invasion in 1979 and the subsequent US-backed resistance, civil war, US invasion and US occupation (average population 19.1 million). 1.6 million Afghans have died avoidably since the US invasion (average population 26.8 million). The US has been involved through financial support for 26 years of military violence in Afghanistan and post-invasion non-provision of life-sustaining requisites demanded by the Geneva Conventions. The "annual death rate" in Afghanistan has been 1.6% (both since 1979 and since the 2001 US invasion).
Infant mortality in the US-invaded Iraqi and Afghan Occupied Territories. The post-invasion under-5 infant mortality in Occupied Iraq has totalled about 0.3 million out of an under-5 year old population of 4.2 million over 2.5 years, corresponding to an "annual death rate" of 3%. The post-invasion under-5 infant mortality in Occupied Afghanistan has totalled about 1.3 million out of an under-5 year old population of 5.0 million over 4 years, corresponding to an "annual death rate" of 7%. By way of comparison, the annual death rate of Australian prisoners of war (POWs) of the Japanese in World War 2 was 10% (8,000 dying out of 22,000 POWs over 3.5 years).
New Orleans. About 100,000 people (mostly poor Afro-Americans as well as other poor people and elderly, infirm and disabled citizens) did not make it out of the disaster area before Katrina hit from a population of about 1 million . 50,000 Americans are still unaccounted for due to non-provision of requisite assistance by the Bush Government and continuing prevention of aid and aid workers from NGOs such as the Red Cross from entering New Orleans. Assuming a death rate of 10% over 2 weeks without adequate water, food and shelter, the avoidable death toll may reach 5,000. Expressing 5,000 deaths out of 1,000,000 people over 2 weeks as a death rate on an annual basis, the calculated "annual death rate" for comparative purposes is 13%.
It is likely that the "avoidable death rate" in New Orleans will greatly EXCEED that of other major tragedies of the last half century in which the US Establishment has been complicit. Indeed the total man-made avoidable death toll in New Orleans is likely to be much greater than the deaths on 9/11 that were used as an excuse by the lying and incompetent Bush Administration to illegally invade Iraq and Afghanistan with a subsequent avoidable mortality of 2 million Muslim lives (80% infants under the age of 5) and 2,000 US military lives.
To reiterate, the US Establishment (including corporate mainstream media and the military-industrial complex) has been involved in all of the above tragedies through training and funding of jihadists and exacerbation of the terrorist threat by illegal invasions and occupations of Muslim countries; criminal Western military and economic dominance over much of the non-European World; sanctions, war, invasion, occupation and criminal denial of life-preserving requisites (passive genocide) in Iraq; financial support for 26 years of military violence in Afghanistan and post-invasion non-provision of life-sustaining requisites demanded by the Geneva Conventions; and non-evacuation of poor and infirm Americans prior to Katrina, grossly tardy provision of help to Katrina-devastated states and armed prevention of aid entry from NGOs.
The common features of US Establishment complicity in the horrendous mass mortality events outlined above are racism, violence, disregard for international law and human rights conventions, corporate greed and massive lying and war-mongering aided by egregiously dishonest and racist mainstream media.
The combination of military violence coupled with dishonest mainstream media hysteria is dramatically seen in the unfolding New Orleans tragedy - the survivors urgently need clean fresh water but instead of providing the hundreds of thousands of bottled water requisites (that could and should have been airlifted in on Day 1), tens of thousands of heavily-armed soldiers have been deployed to shoot Afro-Americans "breaking the law" by getting bottled water and food for themselves, their loved ones or the disabled.
We have to go back to the Nazi era to find a regime with a similar murderous contempt for "non-Aryans", the infirm and the disabled. The supporters of the horrendous Anglo-American global violence have justified it in terms of spreading "democracy" and indeed use the term "democratic imperialism". The racist, militarist and fascist Nazis had major national and corporate backing (including corporate support from Bush's grandfather) and were democratically elected before embarking on a 12 year spree of human rights abuse, war and genocide. I would accordingly prefer to describe UK-US "democratic imperialism" as UK-US "democratic Nazism" and their egregious global violence as UK-US "state terrorism" (as distinct from the UK-US initiated, trained, funded - and now grievously exacerbated - jihadist "non-state terrorism").
It is one thing for the US Establishment to kill millions of foreigners off-shore - another thing entirely to murder thousands of fellow Americans in cold blood in New Orleans by non-provision of dirt cheap, buoyant and easily air-lifted bottled water - and by armed prevention of others from doing so. The victims of this domestic mass murder are overwhelmingly poor Afro-Americans but also include infant, infirm, elderly and disabled Americans trapped in New Orleans. It is likely that this racist tardiness of the Bush Administration has passively killed more Afro-Americans in New Orleans than over a century of nation-wide violence by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
Peace is the only way. America is a democracy and accordingly ALL Afro-Americans and ALL elderly, infirm, parent, disabled, carer and minority group Americans - and indeed ALL decent Americans - should practice ZERO TOLERANCE and UTTER AVOIDANCE in their voting, business and personal dealings with ANY Democratic Nazi Americans (DNAs) such as the war-mongering Religious Right Republicans (RRRs).
Unfortunately, entrenched lying by omission in the corporate mainstream media ensures that decent Americans will not be aware of the appalling statistics outlined above. Accordingly, some key documents relating to US-complicit avoidable mass mortality are listed below for the benefit of concerned readers:
[1] Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality (ABC Radio National 8.45 pm 28 August 2005 but taped much earlier): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm
[2] UNICEF report (2005):
[3] Global Avoidable Mortality:
http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/
[4] UN Population Division, 2005:
http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=1
[5] Gideon Polya website:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html
[6] UN, World Tribunal & Arundhati Roy expose UK-US war crimes in
Iraq:
http://blogmark.mg.co.za/?q=node/1553
[7] Iraq coalition casualty count:
[8] Japanese & UK-US war crimes:
http://blogmark.mg.co.za/?q=node/1543
[9] Declaration of Jury of Conscience, World Tribunal on Iraq:
http://www.worldtribunal.org/main/?b=91
[10] Office of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva
Convention relative to protection of civilian persons in time of war: