Non-Reportage Of Mass Murder
By Gideon Polya
24 December, 2004
Countercurrents.orgThe latest updated UNICEF report (December 2004) reveals massive under-5 infant mortality in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan totalling over 0.4 million for the year 2003. However Anglo-American-dominated global media will simply not report this horrendous mortality in these US-occupied countries.
The US-led invasion of Iraq was not UN-sanctioned and was ostensibly based on three palpable falsehoods, namely that Iraq posed a threat to remote Anglo-Celtic countries such as the US, UK and Australia; that there were Al Qaeda-Iraq Government links; and that Iraq (like the US, the UK and others) possessed biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
Millions of sensible, humane people around the world were utterly unconvinced about these propositions at the time of the invasion and their sensible, honest assessments were subsequently borne out. The invasion by the US-led Coalition of a remote, non-threatening and economically and militarily crippled country constituted an egregious war crime.
The massive, avoidable mass mortality in the US-conquered Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories, as now confirmed by the latest UNICEF report, represents excessive civilian mortality in conquered countries that in turn also constitutes an egregious war crime.
Indeed some months ago I and others separately lodged formal complaints to the International Criminal Court about US Coalition war crimes in Iraq on the basis of illegal invasion and excessive civilian mortality in a conquered country.
Six months ago my conservative assessment that the post-invasion avoidable mortality in Iraq was of the order of 100,000 per year was based on straightforward analysis of publicly-available UN and UNICEF demographic data and is in agreement with the latest updated UNICEF figures.
However what is profoundly disturbing is the extraordinary refusal of Anglo-American-dominated, mainstream global media (with a notable few exceptions) to report this publicly-available, expert evidence of massive post-invasion avoidable mortality (or “excess mortality”).
In late October 2004 the prestigious UK medical journal The Lancet published an expert study with data indicating a post-invasion excess mortality of up to about 300,000 (i.e. 180,000 per year). However there was only limited subsequent mainstream media reportage of a lower estimate of post-invasion excess mortality of 100,000 (arrived at by deleting mortality data from the Fallujah area as being unrepresentative).
The same US and UK governments which had falsely claimed imminent long-distance Iraqi threats, the existence of Al Qaeda-Iraq links and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction now disputed the veracity of peer-reviewed, scientific research on Iraq mortality in a top medical journal. The US-installed Iraq puppet government was extraordinarily eager to minimize the extent of Iraqi casualties - just as it has been obscenely eager to help the US wreck Fallujah (an Iraqi city of 300,000) “in order to save it”.
The UK Government Foreign Minister Straw put up what is termed a “straw man” argument (an actually irrelevant proposition) based on only considering post-invasion avoidable mortality to be “violent civilian deaths”. Since the US military do not bother counting the civilian casualties of their barbarity, the magnitude of “violent civilian deaths” remains difficult to ascertain in war-wracked Iraq.
Of course the reality is that whether a child dies violently (the “straw man”) or dies of disease as a result of destruction of the economy and infrastructure, the end result is the same and the culpability the same.
My calculations published in Australasian Science in June 2004 indicated that since the beginning of US-UK attacks in 1991 the excess mortality in Iraq had been 1.5 million and the under-5 infant mortality 1.2 million. My conservative estimate that excess mortality and under-5 infant mortality were of the order of 100,000 per year since the final invasion in March 2003 is consonant with the latest UNICEF report (December 2004) and the data in The Lancet paper (late October 2004).
The continuing dishonesty and lack of urgent humane concern of the US, UK, Australian and puppet Iraq Governments are what one would expect of inhumane, war criminal regimes. However the refusal of the Anglo-American-dominated global mass media to report publicly-available, horrendous infant mortality data from the UN and UNICEF constitutes egregious holocaust denial (noting that such denial of the Jewish Holocaust is deservedly a crime in France, Germany and some other countries).
At what level of magnitude would mass mortality become “news” if only for 24 hours – before being supplanted by Hollywood, Business or Sporting scandals?
Thus one can imagine the following extreme scenario - there are 6 billion people in the world and the last American survivors of some catastrophe might like to hear of the demise of the rest from a prestigious US news medium.
I am a dedicated biological scientist who has laboriously spent a year calculating avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality for every country in the world since 1950 using publicly available UN and UNICEF data.
Thus the total post-1950 avoidable mortality (excess mortality) has been 1.3 billion for the World, 1.2 billion for the non-European World, 0.5 billion for the Muslim World, 5.2 million for Iraq and 16.2 million for Afghanistan.
News fit to print for Americans, Britons or Australians? No way!
Since it is Christmas time, with special reverence for infants and mothers, perhaps the total post-1950 under-5 infant mortality would be “newsworthy” – 0.9 billion for the World, 0.8 billion for the non-European World, 0.3 billion for the Muslim World, 3.3 million for Iraq and 11.2 million for Afghanistan. But again global mainstream media are unmoved.
Unfortunately, on average 90% of the under-5 infant mortality in the non-European World since 1950 has been avoidable and substantially linked to violent and malignant First World impositions - most notably at present from the “democratic imperialism” of the US and the UK in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thus according to the latest UNICEF report (2004), in 2003 the under-5 infant mortality was 110,000 in US-occupied Iraq (population about 24 million), 292,000 in US-occupied Afghanistan (population 22 million) and 1,000 in the invading and occupying Coalition country Australia (population 20 million) – see http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/
The Ruler is responsible for the Ruled. This continuing, horrendous avoidable infant mortality is mass murder of innocents by three of the world’s most long-lived democracies, namely the US, the UK and Australia. This is not merely “democratic imperialism” as touted by its exponents but actually an insidious “democratic Nazism”.
The awful truth will never go away – even though Anglo-American-dominated global media continue to lie by omission over this massive avoidable human mortality. Arundhati Roy has succinctly summarized the apparent moral blindness of the rich perpetrators in “The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile” (Harper Perennial, London, 2004): “the ultimate privilege of the elite is not just their deluxe lifestyles, but deluxe lifestyles with a clear conscience”.
Peace is the only way – continuing war and mass murder by the rampant US Coalition must eventually be contained by resolute exposure, sanctions, boycotts and bans applied by an indignant World against all the guilty countries.
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" (Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently writing a book on global mortality – see http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/
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