Science,
Humanity And
The Iraq Holocaust
By Gideon Polya
18 April, 2006
Countercurrents.org
This
essay is a message of solidarity from an Australian scientist and writer
sent to the Brussells Tribunal (see: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/
) on the occasion of the Madrid International Seminar on the Assassination
of Iraqi Academics and Health Professionals, 22-23 April 2006 (see:
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/SeminarMadrid.htm
).
Sensible people want to change
things for the better. Indeed that is how Man became sensible. The extraordinary
intelligence of human beings evolved through the Darwinian selection
of genetic variants who had improved survivability through enhanced
ability to understand their environment and improve their circumstances.
There was a trade-off, a price to be paid for the resultant increased
brain size, and that was infant birth after 9 months’ gestation,
the long-term helplessness of infants and their critical dependence
on parents during postnatal brain development and enlargement. Associated
with the co-evolution of increased intelligence and infant helplessness
was evolution of survival-enhancing behavior patterns that resulted
in our present behavioral fundamentals of parental affection, altruism
and respect for Mother and Child.
As cogently argued by Richard
Dawkins in “The Selfish Gene”, Man also transmits behavior
non-genetically from generation to generation through sets of learned
behaviors, culture and ideas he describes as “memes” in
contradistinction to the DNA-constructed “genes”. The DNA-based
“genes” are mutated, ”shuffled” through genetic
recombination and sex and are thence subject to natural selection. In
contrast, “memes” are passed on in oral and written traditions
from generation to generation, are selected through societal success
and can over-ride genetic behavioral imperatives. Thus gene- and meme-determined
social behaviors relating to “not killing” and to “doing
unto others as you would have them do unto you” were codified
in writing as “thou shall not kill” but conflicting ideological
memes relating to nationalism, racism and power readily overcome this
fundamental imperative.
Scientific approaches have
dramatically improved Man’s lot since the beginnings of sophisticated,
agriculture-based civilization in the Fertile Crescent encompassing
lands from Egypt to present-day Iraq. The scientific approach involves
truth, reason, sensible communication and the critical testing of potentially
falsifiable hypotheses. The scientific approach was implicit in the
process whereby the earliest farmers carefully selected seed for sowing
and applied a process of reiterated selection to eventually yield the
cereal staples that became the mainstay of humanity. Lying, un-reason,
censorship and fraud may serve narrow power interests but are ultimately
self-defeating. Thus non-reportage of man-made mass mortality may serve
the short-term interests of those responsible but simply ensures continuance
of such catastrophes – history ignored yields history repeated.
Whether it is selecting better
animal and plant breeds, developing better medical protocols or simply
improving society generally, the basic approach involves minimizing
risk. The best “risk minimization” protocol, which is applied
most successfully in high risk areas such as heavy industry and aviation,
successively involves (a) acquisition of information, (b) scientific
analysis of the data, and (c) sensible systemic change to minimize risk.
Unfortunately, in many areas of human activity this protocol is perverted
by (a) lying by omission and commission, censorship, intimidation and
self-censorship, (b) anti-scientific “spin”-based approaches
involving the selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan
position, and (c) “blame and shame” punishment of suitable
victims with no sensible, risk-minimizing systemic change.
The tragedy of post-colonial
Iraq since the return of Western armies in 1990 illustrates the perversion
of humanitarian values, scientific approaches and rational risk assessment.
The bottom-line parameter in any discussion about social policy is the
human cost. According to the latest, Web-accessible UN Population Division
data (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/
) and UNICEF data (see: http://www.unicef.org/index.html
), the "under-5 infant deaths per 1,000 births" in oil-rich
Iraq versus impoverished Syria were 200 vs 170 (1953), 50 vs 44 (1990)
and 125 vs 16 (sixteen) (2004) i.e. infant mortality decreased enormously
under the dictator Saddam Hussein but increased hugely after 1990 due
to Western intervention. The post-1990 under-5 infant mortality in Iraq
under war-criminal UK-US sanctions, bombs and occupation now totals
1.6 million and the post-1990 excess deaths (i.e. avoidable deaths)
now total 2.2 million. The 1990-2003 under-5 infant mortality and excess
mortality in Iraq under sanctions and bombing totalled 1.2 million and
1.7 million, respectively; the 2003-2006 figures for post-invasion Occupied
Iraq are 0.4 million and 0.5 million, respectively. In comparison, the
post-invasion under-5 infant mortality and excess deaths in Occupied
Afghanistan now total 1.4 million and 1.8 million, respectively (see
MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5948/26/
).
These tragedies could have
been averted by commitment by the responsible Western democracies to
the scholarly and scientific ethos of truth, reason, sensible communication
and application of the scientific method. Everyone is now familiar with
the numerous, outrageous lies that preceded the illegal Coalition war
on Iraq in 2003. However relatively few are familiar with the above
mortality statistics – while deriving from authoritative, publicly-accessible
UN and UNICEF reports just a click away on the Web, this crucial information
is comprehensively ignored by Mainstream Media in a continuing process
of racism, lying by omission and holocaust-denial. The horrendous under-5
infant mortality in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan (1,300 infants dying
every day, 0.5 million infants dying each year and with 90% of these
deaths avoidable) is occurring because of the non-provision by the Occupying
UK-US-led Coalition of the life-preserving requisites demanded unequivocally
of Occupiers by the Geneva Conventions (see: (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm).
Indeed these horrendous crimes constitute “passive genocide”
and are the subject of formal complaints to the International Criminal
Court (see Countercurrents: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-polya211205.htm).
The appalling, continuing,
avoidable mass mortality of infants in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan
Territories is a gross violation of the fundamental human behavioral
imperative of respect for Mother and Child and reveals the semantically-absurd
War on Terror as in actuality a War on Women and Children. While this
carnage has been occurring, the very people who can save societies from
irrational perversion have been targeted, threatened and killed in Coalition-occupied
Iraq, namely Iraq’s intellectuals, academics, lawyers, scientists,
teachers and health professionals. According to the eminent Brussells
Tribunal, about 220 Iraqi academics have been killed, hundreds of have
been forced into exile, hundreds of Iraqi teachers have been murdered
and there is evidence for targeting of professionals by death squads
(see: http://www.brusselstribunal.org/academicsList.htm
and http://www.brusselstribunal.org/SeminarMadrid.htm
). What can decent people do in the face of the racism, violence, unreason
and untruth exhibited by the UK-US-led Coalition countries over Iraq?
Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We
are all obliged to INFORM everyone about gross abuses of humanity. Having
read this, please inform everyone you know.
Dr Gideon Polya,
Melbourne, Australia
(see: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html
and http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/).