“Scheherazade” Painting, Heroines And The Bush War On Women
By Gideon Polya
26 August, 2007
Countercurrents.orgCountercurrents has an outstanding record of publishing the Awful Truth about the Bush War on Terror that is in horrible actuality a War on Women and Children, more specifically a War on Arab, Muslim and Asian Women and Children and which has widened with the US-backed Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia into a War on Third World Women and Children.
However the War on Women and Women’s Rights continues. Peace is the only way and the Pen is mightier than the Sword - but words having failed, I have asked the question: is the Brush mightier than the Pen?
“Scheherazade” is a HUGE painting I have created to promote East-West amity, womens’ rights and peaceful advocacy against the Bush War on Women (FOR EXPANDABLE IMAGE see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/16294/42/ ).
Scheherazade you recall was the Persian heroine who volunteered entered the King’s chamber after he had executed his wife and thence 3,000 virgins (one every day). Sheherazade told King Shahryar One Thousand and One morally-instructive stories over One Thousand and One Nights (the “Arabian Nights” we adored as children), reformed the murderous King, became Queen and they all lived happily ever after.
Consult UNICEF (see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html ) and you will discover that 0.5 million under-5 year old infants die every day in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories, 1,300 daily or ONE EVERY MINUTE (90% avoidable and due to gross Occupier violation of the Geneva Convention that demands that Occupiers keep their conquered subjects alive).
The latest UN and top medical data indicate that (as of March 2007) post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories total 1.0 million and 1.9 million, respectively, and that the post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.5 million and 1.9 million, respectively (90% avoidable, mostly Women and Children and due to gross Occupier war crimes) (see: “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007): http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).
Yet Western Mainstream media and politicians refuse to tell the Awful Truth in a continuing process of horrendous lying by omission and racist holocaust ignoring.
Why are so many women – and men – silent over these continuing atrocities? Arundhati Roy in “The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile” has commented thus on this simultaneous First World holocaust commission and holocaust denial:
“the ultimate privilege of the élite is not just their deluxe lifestyles, but deluxe lifestyles with a clear conscience.”?
However some courageous latter-day Scheherazades ARE telling the truth. Who are the women telling the truth in the War on Women today? Arundhati Roy (outstanding Indian writer), Taslima Nasrin (courageous Bangladeshi writer), Shirin Ebadi (Iranian Nobel laureate) … and in the United States Cindy Sheehan (mother of a dead soldier), the Dixie Chicks (singers) and Jane Fonda (still fighting for Peace).
Because my words have failed, I have been painting huge paintings to promote East –West amity, and respect for Woman and for Mother and Child: Scheherazade (http://mwcnews.net/content/view/16294/42/ ), Sydney Madonna: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10865/26/ , Manhattan Madonna: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/10766/26/ , Truelove:
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/11031/254/ , Melbourne Madonna:
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/13950/26/ , Qana (conceptually related to Pablo Picasso’s 1937 antiwar masterpiece Guernica about the Nazi bombing of the town of the same name): http://mwcnews.net/content/view/9547/26/ , Isfahan Matisse: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/14417/26/ , Alhambra Pollock: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/14082/42/ (that is explained by the Acronym PEACE – Pólya, Escher, Alhambra, Cultural Ecumenism - after the cultural conflations involved), Terra (http://mwcnews.net/content/view/15671/42/ ) and Bundoora Arabesque (http://mwcnews.net/content/view/15960/42/ ).Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We are OBLIGED to inform others about gross abuses of human rights just as Polish hero Jan Karski tried to tell an unbelieving world about the Jewish Holocaust as it was happening. As Nobel Laureate Albert Camus wrote in an essay entitled “Neither Victims nor Executioners” (1946):
“Over the expanse of five continents throughout the coming years an endless struggle is going to be pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a struggle in which, granted, the former has a thousand times the chances of success than that of the latter. But I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions.”
The Pen is mightier than the Sword – but is it possible that the Brush is mightier than the Pen? If you think that there is some merit in that possibility, please send the links to the image of my “Scheherazade” painting and to my other “Paintings for Peace” to everyone you know. Please inform all your associates and please feel free to reproduce “Scheherazade” (http://mwcnews.net/content/view/16294/42/ ) and these other “Paintings for Peace” and their attendant messages with attribution in the interests of Women, Children and Humanity.
Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 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 just published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ ).
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