100,000 "...dead at Saddam's command", MichaelP, I'm still waiting for something verifiable. [Just like a majority of the rest of the world]
<...> Jihadist violence has taken roughly about 5,000 Western civilian lives over the last 20 years, with most of the victims dying on 9/11 (about 3,000) and the remainder including murdered Israeli civilians and the victims of atrocities such as Madrid, Lockerbie and Bali.
However this jihadist violence has had immensely bloodier consequences through the hysterically and dishonestly promoted War on Terror that has been associated with post-invasion avoidable deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan alone that total 1.6 million.
The War on Terror has substantially helped to produce a post-9/11 extra profit for the US military-industrial complex of about $US500 billion. The annual world death toll from car accidents and smoking-related causes is about 1 million and 5 million respectively. One can see why there is no War on Cars nor a War on Cigarettes. <...>
Ockham's Razor:28 August 2005 - Australian Complicity in Iraq Mass Mortality
[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm]
Robyn Williams: Today’s talk will make uncomfortable listening. You may disagree with some of the learned Professor’s conclusions, even some of his terms. But Gideon Polya, who has been a Professor of Biochemistry at a university in Melbourne for many years, has taken the trouble to do some original research, this time on the deaths of children and their significance.
The science is straightforward, if chilling. It’s the political consequences one can argue about.
Professor Gideon Polya.
Gideon Polya: The fundamental process of science successively involves considering all the data, setting up testable models of reality, gathering new data to test such potentially falsifiable hypotheses, and then refining our models to accommodate the new data set.
A fundamental rule for scientists is that you cannot rub out the data; this will simply derail the scientific process.
‘Rubbing out’ is particularly dangerous when the data have a direct bearing on human mortality. History ignored yields history repeated, and a ‘rubbing out’ or denial of huge mortality events such as the Jewish Holocaust will surely greatly increase the probability of their recurrence.
Indeed some countries, notably Germany, have made Holocaust denial illegal, albeit only in relation to the Jewish Holocaust.
Nevertheless an extraordinary feature of the post-war world has been the resolute refusal of Anglo-American media to report avoidable mass mortality and other atrocities linked to Western activities. Thus in 1943-44 a man-made, market-forces famine killed an estimated four million Hindu and Muslim Bengalis in British-ruled India, but most Australians will simply never have heard of this ‘forgotten holocaust’.
According to Amartya Sen, the 1998 Economics Nobel Laureate, prosperous, wartime Calcutta sucked food out of a starving countryside, those who could not afford the fourfold increase in the price of rice simply perished. Civilian and military sexual abuse of starving females involved some 30,000 victims in Calcutta alone and probably hundreds of thousands throughout Bengal. The famine-enforced sexual exploitation of starving women and girls in the British Military Labour Corps demands comparison with the ‘comfort women’ abuses of the Japanese Imperial Army.
To reiterate, history ignored yields history repeated, but unfortunately lying by omission is entrenched in Anglo-American mainstream media.
I have been researching and writing a book on post-1950 avoidable global mortality. This has involved using United Nations data to calculate the avoidable mortality, (or technically, excess mortality) for every country in the world since 1950. Avoidable mortality is the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics.
The post-1950 avoidable mortality has been 1.3 billion for the world, 1 billion for the Third World and 0.5 billion for the Muslim World, a Muslim Holocaust 100 times greater than the Jewish Holocaust or the contemporaneous but ‘forgotten’ Bengal Famine in British-ruled India.
These figures are horrendous and demand some kind of corroboration. To achieve this I have independently calculated the post-1950 under-5 infant mortality for every country in the world. The post-1950 under-5 infant mortality has totalled about 0.9 billion for the world, 0.8 billion for the non-European world and 0.4 billion for the Muslim world. One can calculate from United Nations demographic data that about 90% of the non-European under-5 infant mortality has been potentially avoidable.
When considered country by country, the horrendous post-1950 ‘avoidable mortality’ and ‘under-5 infant mortality’ correlate with impositions of First World countries (principally the UK, US, France, Portugal and Russia) that have variously included colonial occupation, neo-colonial hegemony, economic exclusion, economic constraint, malignant interference, corrupt client regimes, militarisation, debt, civil war and international war.
Time does not permit a detailed analysis here of avoidable global mortality. However I have written widely on this matter and a Google search for ‘Gideon Polya’ will allow ready access to this information.
For example, the post-1950 infant mortality in Asian and Pacific countries in which Australia has been involved militarily in that period totals 34 million.
Australia is involved militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is important to assess the human cost of the US-led intervention in these countries. However, when questioned at a recent Senate Estimates Committee hearing, both a minister and a top Intelligence chief denied knowledge of such information.
The top ABC journalist, Tony Eastley, concluded: ‘The Australian Government has admitted it doesn’t know how many civilians have died in the Iraq war, and neither it, nor US authorities, are trying to find out.’
Indeed US authorities have repeatedly stated that they do not keep records of civilian casualties. However, as with the children overboard, the weapons of mass destruction and the torture of Iraqi prisoners, the truth eventually emerges.
The latest UNICEF report in 2005 estimates that for the year 2003 the under-5 infant mortality was 110,000 in occupied Iraq, 292,000 in occupied Afghanistan and 1,000 in the invading and occupying country Australia (noting that these countries have populations of about 25-million, 24-million and 20-million respectively).
Using publicly available United Nations and medical literature data one can readily calculate that there have been about 0.4 million avoidable deaths in post-invasion Iraq.
In 1991 the UK recommenced military action against Iraq that had kicked off in 1914. In 2003 the US, UK and Australia illegally invaded and conquered Iraq. I have calculated that the under-5 infant mortality was 1.2 million for Iraq since 1991; 0.2 million for Iraq since the 2003 invasion; and 0.9 million for Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.
US military technologies and strategies minimise politically unpopular military casualties at the expense of civilian deaths in US-invaded countries. There have been about 1,000 US combat deaths in post-invasion Iraq and Afghanistan and one can accordingly calculate that the ratio of avoidable, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths to US combat deaths has been about 1,000 to 1.
The US, UK and Australia are clearly complicit in horrendous avoidable mortality and infant mortality in a swathe of invaded Asian countries in the post-1950 era. This now raises the philosophic issue of responsibility.
The occupying ruler is responsible for the ruled, (noting ‘occupation’ includes military, economic and political hegemony and rule by client indigenous regimes). Further, whether an adult or child is killed violently or dies non-violently from deprivation or avoidable disease, the end result is the same and the culpability the same.
In 2004 the estimated per capita medical expenditure was only $US37 in occupied Iraq, but $US3,100 in the invading and occupying country, Australia. This roughly one-hundredfold difference in per capita medical expenditure is reflected in a one-hundredfold difference in under-5 infant mortality. The provision of grossly inappropriate medical assistance in occupied Iraq at only about 1% of the per capita level in the occupying Coalition countries is criminal and genocidal.
Professor Peter Singer, formerly at Monash University Melbourne, and now Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University in the US, has been widely acclaimed as the most influential living philosopher.
Professor Singer has generated enormous controversy over his advocacy of ‘active’, painless, non-voluntary euthanasia for severely disabled infants. However his comments over ‘passive euthanasia’ are relevant to ‘passive genocide’ by the Coalition in Iraq. ‘Doctors who deliberately leave a baby to die when they have the awareness, the ability, and the opportunity to save the baby’s life, are just as morally responsible for the death as they would be if they had brought it about by a deliberate positive action.’
Professor Peter Singer has further stated the following moral generality ‘We are responsible not only for what we do but also for what we could have prevented … We could consider the consequences of what we do and what we decide not to do.’
Jihadist violence has taken roughly about 5,000 Western civilian lives over the last 20 years, with most of the victims dying on 9/11 (about 3,000) and the remainder including murdered Israeli civilians and the victims of atrocities such as Madrid, Lockerbie and Bali.
However this jihadist violence has had immensely bloodier consequences through the hysterically and dishonestly promoted War on Terror that has been associated with post-invasion avoidable deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan alone that total 1.6 million.
The War on Terror has substantially helped to produce a post-9/11 extra profit for the US military-industrial complex of about $US500 billion. The annual world death toll from car accidents and smoking-related causes is about 1 million and 5 million respectively. One can see why there is no War on Cars nor a War on Cigarettes.
To conclude, rubbing out the facts prevents rational, scientific solutions to major problems, including avoidable mass mortality. My solution to the continuing global mass mortality holocaust can be summarised by the acronym CAAAA: Cessation of the violence and the lying; Acknowledgement of the human cost: Apology for First World complicity in continuing Third World mass mortality; Amends by aid, debt relief and economic decency; and Assertion that this holocaust will stop and never be repeated.
Silence kills. Silence is complicity. Please inform everyone, discuss this with your associates and then act as responsible citizens. We cannot walk by on the other side.
Robyn Williams: That entreaty from Gideon Polya, who was until recently Associate Professor of Biochemistry at one of our universities in Melbourne.
Next week, if you are sent away as part of the Australian Army in, say Afghanistan or maybe East Timor, what’s in your kit for breakfast, lunch or dinner? Chris Forbes Ewan in Launceston presents a menu for your delectation.
Guests on this program: Dr Gideon Polya Author and Former Associate Professor of Biochemistry Melbourne
Presenter: Robyn Williams Producer: Brigitte Seega
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