Australian MPs complicit in horrendous war crimes
Australia has just witnessed the end of a lengthy and hugely expensive A$25 million (and possibly A$40 million) trial involving an Australian Afghan War Special Air Services (SAS) veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith (who had been awarded the Victoria Cross (VC) for heroism) suing major Australian media organizations for defamation over allegations of war crimes and other matters. The Federal Court judge found in favour of the media organizations.
Australia has been involved in all post-1950 US Asian wars, atrocities associated with 40 million Asian deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation. The Coalition (presently in Opposition) supported all these wars and Labor (presently in Government) supported all but the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. War is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity.
The US is a horrendous serial invader of other countries. Apart from inevitable border spats, most countries in the world have not invaded other countries. Costa Rica does not even have an army. In stark contrast, the US has invaded 72 countries (52 since WW2), has committed 469 invasions from 1798 onwards, including 251 invasions since 1991 (according to the US Congressional Research Service), has 800 military bases in over 70 countries, and subverts all countries.
Careful accounting reveals 85 instances of the US attempting to overthrow foreign governments since WW2 and that the US was successful in 50 instances, with craven US lackey Australia being involved in 8 of these covert regime changes. Since the end of the Iraq War in 2011 the UK has sent special forces to 19 countries according to the London-based Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) that researches global armed violence. In the last millennium the English and thence the British have invaded 193 countries.
As a UK or US ally, Australia has invaded 85 countries, and has violated all circa 80 Indo-Pacific countries in the last 80 years, variously through military presence (most countries), covert regime change (8), and a hugely disproportionately high Australian contribution to climate change (all countries).
On 4 May 2023 I sent a detailed and documented Open Letter to Australian MPs re Australian war crimes that said in part: “The huge avoidable deaths from US Alliance-imposed deprivation of Occupied Iraqis (4 million) and Occupied Afghans (6 million) is evidence of gross US Alliance violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War) that state unequivocally that an Occupier must provide its conquered Subjects with life-preserving food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”.
Australian soldiers are alleged to have been involved in 39 unlawful killings in Afghanistan whereas the politicians who sent them there are complicit in the passive mass murder of 6 million Afghans, a 6 million/39 = 154,000 times worse crime. All war crimes should be properly investigated and all those responsible must held to account, including politicians for grossly violating the Fourth Geneva Convention in passive mass murder of millions of Iraqis and Afghans. Indeed these politicians should be arraigned for horrendous passive mass murder before any Australian or US Alliance soldiers are indicted for unlawful killings of individual Iraqis and Afghans.
However while the politician war criminals remain free, Australian and world hero Julian Assange has been abusively imprisoned for a decade in London for truth telling about US Coalition war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Silence is complicity, and failure to bear witness means being an accessory after the fact of horrendous war crimes. Please inform everyone you can.”*
The Silence has been Deafening – but for how long? The new Federal Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) will commence its operations in mid-2023 and one would expect that complicity of Australian politicians in passive mass murder of 6 million Afghans (mostly children and women) over the last 2 decades would be a major item referred to the NACC. It is shocking testament to Western racism that while the US-dominated West rightly condemns and sanctions the war criminal Russian invasion of Ukraine it ignores the even worse US Alliance atrocities outlined above, and the continuing, US-, UK- and Australia-backed, and war criminal Zionist occupation of Palestine, and the subjugation and ongoing ethnic cleansing applied to 15.5 million Indigenous Palestinians. Please inform everyone you can.
Yours sincerely, Dr Gideon Polya, Melbourne, Australia
* Gideon Polya, “Open Letter To Australian MPs Re Horrendous US Alliance Lying, War Crimes & Regime Changing ”, Countercurrents, 4 May 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/05/open-letter-to-australian-mps-re-horrendous-us-alliance-lying-war-crimes-regime-changing/ .
Gideon Polya has published 8 huge books re horrendous avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation: “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (1998, 2008, 2023), “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (2007, 2022), “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2020), and many contributions to Soren Korsgaard (editor) “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published – Dangerous Deception Exposed!” (2020).