Gideon Polya, "Media lying over Iraqi Genocide. Obama & Media ignore Iraqi Holocaust", MWC News, 4 March 2009.
Media lying over Iraqi Genocide. Obama & Media ignore Iraqi Holocaust.
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 Zionist-beholden Mainstream media and by Uncle Tom 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as plainly as I can, by August 31st 2010 our combat mission in Iraq will end“ … The vast majority of troops will not be withdrawn this year because the Iraqi elections are due in December.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 Iraqi 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 (outstanding Australian-UK writer) and Tariq Ali (outstanding Pakistani-UK writer). [8].
7. “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 Genocide, Iraqi Genocide 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 holocaust 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 Bush-ite-, neo-Bush-ite- and racist Zionist (RZ)-beholden 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.
[1]. Australian ABC Radio National, Saturday AM (Saturday 28 February 2009, “The end in sight for American forces in Iraq”: http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2503934.htm .
[2]. Iraq Casualties: http://icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx .
[3]. Just Foreign Policy: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html ).
[4]. UN Population Division: http://esa.un.org/unpp/ ; see also “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ .
[5]. UN Population Division : http://esa.un.org/unpp/ ; BRussells Tribunal (see: http://brusselstribunal.org/about.htm .
[6]. “US economy a ”$3 trillion” casualty of war in Iraq “, The New Zealand Herald, March 2008: http://www.uncle-scam.com/Breaking/march-08/ich-3-4.pdf ; see also Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes “The Three Trillion Dollar War”, Norton, New York, 2008: http://www.amazon.com/Three-Trillion-Dollar-War-Conflict/dp/0393067017 and http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3419840.ece .
[7]. "Award winning economist says America has bankrupted itself with the Iraq war ", ABC Lateline (5 May 2008) : http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2236161.htm .
[8]. “George Bush, White House told 935 lies after September 11”, News.com, 23 January 2008: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23098129-401,00.html .
[9]. Huffington Post, 1 March 2009: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-scahill/obamas-iraq-all-troops-ou_b_170765.html .
[10]. “9-11 excuse for US global genocide. The real 9-11 atrocity: millions dead (9-11 million) in Bush wars (1990-2009)”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/25184/42/ ); also see “Obama betrays humanity: 1,460 die avoidably daily in Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories”, Bellaciao, 1 March, 2009: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article18454 ).
[11]. Response by Dr Gideon Polya to the Australian National History Curriculum Framing Paper: http://nationalhistorycurriculum.blogspot.com/ .
[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: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html ; see also "Media lying over Churchill's crimes. British-Indian Holocaust": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/26713/42/ .