The following article was originally published by Gideon Polya, "WikiLeaks scandals and media ignoring horrendous US crimes", Countercurrents, 4 December 2010: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya041210.htm .
WikiLeaks has been closed down world-wide and its heroic Australian founder Julian Assange is facing arrest. But the real WikiLeaks scandal is that while there is selective reportage of the WikiLeaks US document leaks, Mainstream media (MSM) resolutely refuse to report horrendous US crimes that involve scores of millions of deaths and which are publicly documented by readily accessed data from authoritative UN agencies.
The New Statesman has published a lawyer's view of the WikiLeaks saga. The article by lawyer and writer David Allen Green (legal correspondent of the New Statesman; shortlisted for the George Orwell Prize in 2010) legitimately praises WikiLeaks re transparency and then incorrectly damns it re accountability (non-electedness), legality and privacy: “ The release by WikiLeaks of US government cables is a sheer triumph for transparency… But transparency is not the only liberal value. There are others, and these are important, too. For example, there is the value of legitimacy: those who wield power in the public interest should normally have some democratic mandate or accountability… Another liberal value is legality: the belief that actions – especially those that affect others – should have a basis in law… A third liberal value is privacy: the belief that, in certain human affairs, private space is required… Nonetheless, WikiLeaks remains a powerful but undemocratic and unaccountable entity that shows a general disregard for both the rule of law and the practical need for certain communications and data to be confidential. So, from a liberal perspective, there is a great deal to commend WikiLeaks, but there is also a lot that should cause a liberal to be concerned” (see David Green, “WikiLeaks and the liberal mind””, New Statesman, 1 December 2010: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/12/liberal-wikileaks-transparency#reader-comments ).
David Green's legal caveats can be countered by the following not uncommon situation on the daily TV news in which a citizen who has witnessed a violent and deadly crime tells all to the media - yet lawyers would argue that the witness is unaccountable (unelected) and jeopardizes the fair trial and privacy of the accused!
WikiLeaks provides some documentary evidence with a bearing on US Alliance armed robbery and mass murder. The US with 5% of the world's population consumes 25% of its resources and to achieve this lies, suborns, subverts, threatens invades, occupies, tortures and mass murders.
The US has invaded and violently occupied some 30 countries since 1950 (see William Blum's “Rogue State”), is currently directly involved in 5 wars (in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan), is currently directly occupying 3 territories (Iraq, Afghanistan and Diego Garcia) and is indirectly involved in further wars and occupations by its allies (in Occupied Haiti, Occupied Somalia, Occupied Syria, Occupied Palestine and US robot-bombed NW Pakistan, currently operates and/or controls between 700 and 800 military bases worldwide in 63 countries, has US military personnel in 156 countries, and deploys 255,065 US military personnel Worldwide (for details see Professor Jules Dufour, President of the United Nations Association of Canada (UNA-C) – Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean branch, Research Associate at the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG), Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Quebec, Chicoutimi, and Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Québec, “The world-wide network of US military bases. The global deployment of US military personnel”, Global Research, 1 July 2007: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5564 ).
The real WikiLeaks scandal is that while Mainstream media (MSM) will publish some of the Leaks it will NOT report the horrendous human cost of US violence and hegemony, data that is readily available from UN Agencies like UNICEF and the UN Population Division (horrendous examples are given below).
1. 22 million annual avoidable deaths (mostly women and children) on Spaceship Earth with America in charge of the flight deck (UN Population Division data: http://esa.un.org/UNPP/ ).
2. 1,000 children die avoidably every day in the US Overseas Empire under Obama (see "Hey, hey, USA , how many kids did you kill today? Answer: 1,000": http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article18750 ).
3. 8 million violent deaths or non-violent deaths from deprivation in the US War on Terror, the breakdown being 2.5 million (Occupied Iraq), 4.9 million (Occupied Afghanistan) and 0.8 million (global opiate drug-related deaths due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry) (see Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ and Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/home ).
4. 1950-2005 avoidable deaths in countries occupied in the post-1945 era by the US and the UK (excluding Germany and Japan) total 82 million and 727 million, respectively (see "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950" by Gideon Polya: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/2008/08/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality.html ).
5. Annual under-5 infant deaths (90% avoidable) in US- or US surrogate-occupied countries total 916,000 (i.e. 0.9 million), the breakdown being 311,000 (Occupied Afghanistan), 19,000 (Occupied Haiti), 41,000 (Occupied Iraq; Puppet Government figures; more likely circa 100,000), 465,000 ( US robot-bombed Pakistan ), 4,000 (Occupied Palestine) and 76,000 (Occupied Somalia) (UNICEF: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html ).
6. For impoverished countries avoidable deaths are approximately 1.4 times the under-5 infant deaths and accordingly annual avoidable deaths in US- or US surrogate-occupied countries total 1.3 million, the breakdown being 435,000 (Occupied Afghanistan), 27,000 (Occupied Haiti), 57,000 (Occupied Iraq; Puppet Government figures; more likely circa 140,000), 651,000 (US robot-bombed Pakistan), 6,000 (Occupied Palestine) and 106,000 (Occupied Somalia) (UNICEF: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html ).
7. For Spaceship Earth subject to First World (largely USA) hegemony, 1950-2005 avoidable deaths (excess deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) totaled 1.3 billion (the World), 1.2 billion (the non-European World) and 0.6 billion (the Muslim World), the latter statistic revealing a Muslim Holocaust 100 times greater than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) or the “forgotten” WW2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million Indians starved to death by the British in the WW2 Bengal Famine (see "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950" by Gideon Polya: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/2008/08/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality.html ; “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” by Gideon Polya: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ; and Gideon Polya, “The forgotten holocaust. The 1943/44 Bengal Famine”: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/2005/07/forgotten-holocaust-194344-bengal.html ).
8. Consonant with the above data, 1950-2005 under-5 infant deaths totaled 0.88 billion (the World), 0.85 billion (the non-European World) and 0.4 billion (the Muslim World) (see "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950" by Gideon Polya: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/2008/08/body-count-global-avoidable-mortality.html ).
9. The world is facing a worsening climate emergency due to man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution. Both Dr James Lovelock FRS (Gaia hypothesis) and Professor Kevin Anderson ( Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester, UK) have recently estimated that fewer than 1 billion people will survive this century due to unaddressed, man-made global warming. Noting that the world population is expected to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, these estimates translate to a climate genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people this century, this including 6 billion under-5 year old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis (see “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ ).
The Mainstream media (MSM) that boldly report the sensational WikiLeaks document scandals resolutely refuse to report the above statistics in an appalling process of continuing holocaust ignoring genocide ignoring, holocaust denial and genocide denial. Indeed the very terms variously used by scholars to describe some of these horrendous events Bengali Holocaust, Iraqi Holocaust, Afghan Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide, Afghan Genocide, Palestinian Genocide and Climate Genocide are totally eliminated from Mainstream discourse (e.g. for a detailed analysis see “ Australian ABC ignores holocaust and genocide atrocities ”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/australian-abc-ignores-huge-genocidal-realities ).
One has to turn to fiction for analysis of this extraordinary perversion of the Mainstream media. Barbara Kingsolver in her great novel "The Lacuna" (lacuna meaning hiatus, blank, missing part, gap, cavity, or empty space) has Russian Communist revolutionary and theorist Leon Trotsky (Lev) and his assistant Van have the following discussion about media (part 3, p159, Faber & Faber, London, 2009 edition): ""But newspapers have a duty to truth", Van said. Lev [Trotsky] clicked his tongue. "They tell the truth only as the exception. Zola [French novelist of "J'accuse" fame] wrote that the mendacity of the press could be could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times , speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary." Van got up from his chair to gather the cast-off newspapers. Lev took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. " I don't mean to offend the journalists; they aren't any different from other people. They're merely the megaphones of other people" … [Trotsky observes to his assistant Shepherd] “Soli, let me tell you. The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know”” (p218).
Jake in “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” by Carson McCullers put it more succinctly: “But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie.”
The extraordinary lying by omission of the Mainstream media of the “democratic fascist” Western Murdochracies and Lobbyocracies is on a par with the lying by omission of totalitarian societies.
Indeed Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin famously declared “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
Nazi German dictator Adolph Hitler coined the phrase “the big lie” in his book “Mein Kampf”: “in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.” (for a detailed analysis of media lying see Gideon Polya, “Rare ethical writers expose media lying”, Countercurrents, 29 May 2010: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290510.htm ).
WikiLeaks has been closed down world-wide and World hero and WikiLeaks principal, Australian Julian Assange, is facing arrest with nowhere to hide in a neocon-dominated World committed to lying and to The Big Lie. The lying, pro-war, pro-Zionist, pro-US Australian Government promises that Julian Assange will be arrested if he returns to Australia . Yet the brutal government-corporate censorship of WikiLeaks hides the horrendous lying by holocaust-denying Mainstream media, politicians and academics in the Western Murdochracies . One can estimate that post-1950 violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation in countries variously occupied by the US in the post-1945 era total about 90 million, a death toll greater than that of World War 2 in both the Eastern and Western theatres.
Decent people everywhere must be inspired by the example of World hero Julian Assange and (a) tell everyone they can about horrendous US crimes and (b) urge Sanctions and Boycotts against all Mainstream media, politicians, countries and corporations complicit in The Big Lie.
Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contribution “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/
bengalfamine_programme.html ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .