Gideon Polya, “Picasso, Guernica, Qana”, MWC News, Picasso, Guernica, Qana – 16 September 2006, not cached by Google.
For the image of the huge painting “Qana “ (1.3 x 2.9 metres) see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/4293063550/ .
Picasso, Guernica, Qana
Western Mainstream media simply ignore the horrendous human cost of US-Israeli state terrorism and, conversely, continue to promote “terror hysteria” and Islamophobia. Now the head of the Catholic Church has threateningly joined the Bush chorus of hatred. My attempts as a humanist scientist to inform the world of the horrendous human cost of the Bush Wars (as of September 2006, 3.2 million avoidable deaths) have largely fallen on deaf ears (except for enlightened journals such as Al-Jazeerah).
When words fail one should not give up - one should just try something else. I am an artist as well as a humanist scientist. Back in the 1960s in New York we saw Pablo Picasso’s huge painting “Guernica” at the Museum of Modern Art. Picasso had painted this huge masterpiece in 1937 in response to the destruction of the Basque town of Guernica by Nazi bombers during the Spanish Civil War. Indeed we had a big “Guernica” poster in our apartment in those Vietnam War days. Years later my mentor as a painter was the Spanish artist Ignacio Marmol who knew Picasso and introduced me to classical geometrical scaffolding in painting. In short, I discovered the mathematical “secret” of Picasso’s “Guernica” (technically, a Double Golden Rectangle) and in September 2006 I painted a huge painting derived conceptually from “Guernica” but based on “Qana”, the Lebanese town destroyed in July 2006 by US-Israeli State Terrorism (USIST). For an image of my painting “Qana” and a detailed analysis see my article “Picasso, Guernica, Qana and the Da Vinci Code” in MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9547/26/ .
Lebanon only emerged from 2 decades of partial Israeli occupation 6 years ago. The Lebanon avoidable deaths (excess deaths, deaths that should not have happened) for the period 1982-2000 total about 80,000. However the latest Israeli War has killed over 1,000, wounded some 4,000, rendered 1 million homeless and made much of Southern Lebanon uninhabitable by unexploded bombs, including those deriving from the dropping of 1 million cluster bombs. It is estimated that reduction of Lebanon to a UK-US-occupied Iraq scenario through the destruction of economy and infrastructure would cause 20,000 avoidable deaths annually (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9547/26/ ). The horrendous Israeli War continues against Palestine, largely ignored by lying, racist Western mainstream media.
Of course the crimes of US-Israeli state terrorism in Lebanon are but one part of its crimes in the Muslim world. Just think for a moment – since 1945 over one hundred countries gained their independence from European colonial rule but in 2006 FIVE (5) substantially Muslim countries were under partial or complete occupation by Western armies, specifically Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is asserted that Egypt barely escaped Zionist-inspired nuclear annihilation in 1967 after the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty; Iran is currently under acute threat (the more so now that the Pope is actively promoting Islamophobia); and we have just learned from Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf that in 2001 the US threatened to bomb his country “back to the Stone Age”.
Avoidable mortality is 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 (see: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/ ). The post-invasion avoidable mortality in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories now totals 0.3, 0.5 and 2.0 million, respectively – 60 % under-5 year old infants and due to Occupier violation of the Geneva Conventions that demand that Occupiers keep their Conquered Subjects ALIVE (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9357/26/ ). Using precise, non-rounded figures, the total post-invasion avoidable mortality in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan totals 2.6 million. However the cost of Bush-Blair War on Terror (in reality a cowardly, racist War on Asian Women and Children) is greater still. Thus 100,000 American infants have died avoidably over the last 5 years due to warped Bush priorities (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/7102/26/ ) and since 9/11 0.5 million people have died globally from opiate drug-related reasons (including 50,000 Americans), largely due to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry to a present 89% of world market share (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/7102/26/ ) .
The total number of post-9/11 avoidable deaths in the Bush-Blair War on Women and Children now totals 3.2 million (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/7102/26/ ) – 1,000 times greater than the number of Coalition/NATO military deaths and 1,000 times greater than the number of people killed in the 9/11 atrocity. Indeed the number of Western civilians (including Israelis) killed by Muslim-origin non-state terrorism over the last 40 years totals 7,000 (assuming no US or Israeli complicity in 9/11). Nevertheless, lying, racist Mainstream media will simply not report the horrendous civilian deaths in the Bush-Blair Wars in a continuing process of gross holocaust denial. Conversely, the lying, racist Mainstream media actively promote Islamophobia and “terror hysteria” while ignoring the horrendous cost of UK, US and Israeli state terrorism. Even the Pope has now joined in the general Islamophobia which can be seen to relate to UK-US democratic imperialism (democratic tyranny, democratic Nazism) in the same way that anti-Jewish anti-Semitism was employed by German Nazism (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9624/42/ ).
Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We are obliged to inform others about gross abuses of humanity in any way appropriate to our skills. Shostakovich used music. Picasso used painting in his masterpiece “Guernica”. My scientific, statistical skills having largely failed, I have followed Picasso’s example - perhaps my painting “Qana” can help to mobilize the civilized world against US-Israeli state terrorism.