1900-2000: A century of genocides

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Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11

By Dr Gideon Polya

22 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org

The appalling Paris atrocity (130 killed) has led Hollande and Obama to call for the destruction of Islamic State i.e. genocide as defined by the UN Genocide Convention. A major report by 3 physician organizations recently estimated that 2 million Muslims had died in the US War on Terror but UN data show that Muslim avoidable deaths from deprivation in countries subject to Western military intervention in 2001-2015 now total about 27 million, this demanding peace now and ICC prosecutions of those responsible for this Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide.

President Obama (Antalya, Turkey, 16 November 2015) stated: “Tragically, Paris is not alone. We've seen outrageous attacks by ISIL in Beirut, last month in Ankara, routinely in Iraq. Here at the G20, our nations have sent an unmistakable message that we are united against this threat. ISIL is the face of evil. Our goal, as I've said many times, is to degrade and ultimately destroy this barbaric terrorist organization” [1].

President Francois Hollande (17 November 2015) stated: “France is at war. No barbarians will prevent us from living how we have decided to live. To live fully. Terrorism will never destroy the republic, because the republic will destroy terrorism'… The sponsors of the attack in Paris must know that their crimes further strengthens the determination of France to fight and to destroy them. We must do more. Syria has become the largest factory of terrorists the world has ever known. France is not engaged in a war of civilisations because those assassins don't represent a civilisation. Our democracy has triumphed before over adversaries that were much more formidable than these cowards” [2].

There has been saturation coverage in the Western media of the appalling Paris tragedy that killed 130 people on 13 November 2015, this coverage dwarfing reportage of the recent Kunduz Hospital atrocity in Afghanistan perpetrated by the US (22 killed, 2 October 2015 ), the most recent Beirut Massacre by jihadi non-state terrorists (43 killed, 12 November 2015) and the Bamako Mali Massacre by jihadi non-state terrorists (27 killed, 20 November 2015) - clear evidence of the entrenched and egregious racism of the anti-Arab anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted Western Mainstream media.

The eminent US organization Just Foreign Policy has estimated that there have been 1.5 million “Iraqi deaths due to the US invasion” and I have estimated (based on UN Population Division 2006 Revision data) that to this we should add a further 1.2 million Iraqis killed through war-imposed deprivation [4, 5]. However the ABC News of the taxpayer-funded ABC (Australia's equivalent of the UK BBC) commenting on the US withdrawal in 2011 stated: “The withdrawal ends a war that left tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,500 American soldiers dead” [6].

Another ABC News report about Wikileaks document releases states: “The founder of the WikiLeaks website says hundreds of thousands of US military documents leaked by the website show the truth about the Iraq war. The documents suggest senior US commanders turned a blind eye on torture by the Iraqi authorities and show the US has kept records of civilian deaths, despite previously denying it. The documents suggest senior US commanders turned a blind eye on torture by the Iraqi authorities and show the US has kept records of civilian deaths, despite previously denying it. It has put the death toll at 109,000, including more than 66,000 civilians. The US has criticised the release, saying the documents are classified and could lead to military and civilian deaths. But Julian Assange has defended his actions at a press conference just a short while ago, saying the release serves the public interest” [7] .

The “Iraq Body Count” project currently reports “total violent deaths including combatants 224,000”, this highly flawed estimate being unwisely based on the dodgy evidence of media and official reports [8]. The mendacious BBC which, like the endlessly lying, Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted Australian ABC, has an appalling record of malreportage [9, 10] opines: “Other reports and surveys have resulted in a wide range of estimates of Iraqi deaths. The UN-backed Iraqi Family Health Survey estimated 151,000 violent deaths in the period March 2003 - June 2006. Meanwhile, The Lancet journal in 2006 published an estimate of 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths related to the war of which 601,027 were caused by violence” [11].

Western Mainstream media under-reporting in claiming circa 20,000-200,000 Iraqi deaths due to the US War on Terror - when the true figure from top medical epidemiologists, the UK ORB organization and UN demographers is probably in excess of 2 million Iraqi deaths from violence or imposed deprivation - is genocide-ignoring and holocaust-ignoring on a massive scale. A holocaust involves the death of huge numbers of people whereas genocide is defined more precisely by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention which states that “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” [4].

Genocide-ignoring and holocaust–ignoring is far, far worse than repugnant genocide-ignoring and holocaust denial because at least the latter permit public discussion of the matter. The endlessly lying, Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted Western Mainstream media are involved in massive lying by omission, lying by commission, genocide-ignoring, holocaust–ignoring and effective genocide-ignoring and holocaust denial.

Of course this is not new. Thus, for example, generation after generations of lying journalists, politicians, and historians in the English-speaking world have resolutely ignored the “forgotten” WW2 Bengali Holocaust in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons (genocidally racist White Australia was complicit by withholding food from starving Indian from its huge wartime grain stores) [12-15]. History is written by the victors and Western Mainstream media presstitutes are resolutely committed to untruth [16, 17].

It gets worse. Iraq has been subject to repeated Western invasion in the century since British invasion in 1914 (racist White Australia is currently involved in its Seventh Iraq War and its Third Syrian War in a century) and Iraqi deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation since 1914 now total 9 million [4]. Further, Iraq is but one of 20 substantially or significantly Muslim countries variously invaded, occupied, sanctioned and /or bombed by US Alliance forces since the US Government's 9-11 false flag atrocity on 11 September 2001 in which about 3,000 people were killed [3].

All of this raises the key questions of (1) precisely how many millions of Muslims have died from violence or from imposed deprivation in substantially Muslim countries attacked by the US Alliance since 9-11; and (2) how the civilized world should respond.

Kit O'Connell (a US journalist from Austin, Texas, a Daily Staff Writer for MintPress News, and Associate Editor of Shadowproof) (2015): “It may never be possible to know the true death toll of the modern Western wars on the Middle East, but that figure could be 4 million or higher. Since the vast majority of those killed were of Arab descent, and mostly Muslim, when would it be fair to accuse the United States and its allies of genocide? A March report by Physicians for Social Responsibility calculates the body count of the Iraq War at around 1.3 million, and possibly as many as 2 million. However, the numbers of those killed in Middle Eastern wars could be much higher. In April, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed argued that the actual death toll could reach as high as 4 million if one includes not just those killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the victims of the sanctions against Iraq, which left about 1.7 million more dead, half of them children, according to figures from the United Nations [18].

Dr Nafeez Ahmed ( investigative journalist, international security scholar, author of “Zero Point” and associated with the Institute for Policy Research and Development) has concluded that “In Iraq alone, the US-led war from 1991 to 2003 killed 1.9 million Iraqis; then from 2003 onwards around 1 million: totalling just under 3 million Iraqis dead over two decades… the total Afghan death toll due to the direct and indirect impacts of US-led intervention since the early nineties until now could be as high 3-5 million” [19].

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and Physicians for Global Survival (PGS) published a detailed and documented major report in March 2015 on Muslim deaths in Western wars that has been ignored by Mainstream media but concluded (2015): “Executive Summary. This investigation come to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed [in 2011-2013] around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan i.e. a total of 1.3 million. Not included in this figure are further war zones such a Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision –makers are aware of [sic] and propagated by the media and major NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate. The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely” [20].

“Iraq Body Count” makes the absurd claim of 224,000 total violent Iraqi deaths including combatants since the 2003 invasion [8], this being based on media reports, an approach that has been shown by top medical epidemiologists to be severely flawed [4]. The Physicians' Report [20] estimates 1 million Iraqi deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation in the period 2011-2011 whereas the eminent US Just Foreign Policy estimates – based on data from the UK ORB polling organization and from polling by US medical epidemiologists published in The Lancet - that 1.5 million Iraqis have died due to the US invasion and comments: “The number is shocking and sobering. It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003” (noting that top US medical epidemiologists in their paper in The Lancet estimated that 90% of the deaths found were violent) [5].

Using data from the UN Population Division 2006 Revision data I have made an upper estimate of 2003-2011 Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation totalling 1.2 million, this leading to an estimate of 2.7 million Iraqi deaths from violence (1.5 million) or from war-imposed conditions as determined from differential pre- and post-invasion mortality data (1.2 million) in the period 2003-2011. This approach assumed that these 2 data sets (i.e. “deaths from violence” and “deaths from war-imposed conditions ”) do not overlap if violently killed people do not make it to hospitals etc for “official counting” – indeed the gross, up to 7-fold under-estimate of Iraqi violent deaths by “Iraq Body Count” based on “official counting” validates my approach [4]. A related approach estimates 7.2 million Afghan deaths post-9-11 from violence (1.7 million) or war-imposed deprivation (5.5 million) [21, 22].

Crucially, while the Physicians ' Report [20]. estimates “deaths from war-related conditions” as determined from differential immediately pre- and post-invasion mortality data, I assume that the historical pre-invasion trend of massive decreases in mortality in Iraq (and Syria) should have continued and indeed assume that the Iraqi mortality rate post-1990 could and should have attained the base-line rate for high birth-rate impoverished countries of about 4 deaths per 1,000 of population per year and hence given an avoidable death rate of zero (0) but for war-imposed conditions. In other words, the invasion of Iraq not only yielded violent deaths and increased avoidable deaths relative to the pre-invasion year, it also blocked a quite achievable rapid decline to zero avoidable deaths per annum [23].

Avoidable death, avoidable mortality, excess death, excess mortality, premature death, untimely death, death that should not have happened) is the difference between the observed deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics (i.e. the same birth rate and age distribution) [23]. Thus, for example, in 2015 GDP per capita is abut $6,000 for both Cuba and China and about $15,000 for both Iraq and Libya [24], but while there are zero (0) annual avoidable deaths in Cuba and China, as catalogued below annual avoidable deaths in war-devastated Iraq (population 36.4 million) and Syria (population 6.3 million) currently total 47,000 and 14,000, respectively [23].

Finally, the Physicians' Report estimate of 80,000 Pakistani war-related deaths in 2001-2011 is about 100 times lower than the 9.1 million Pakistani avoidable deaths from deprivation in the period October 2001- October 2015 as estimated (see below) using UN Population 2015 Revision data [24] and assuming a base-line mortality rate for this high birth rate, impoverished country of 4 deaths per 1,000 births per year for zero avoidable mortality that could and should have been attained in Pakistan but for US-driven militarism, dictatorship, terrorism, corruption and war.

Soap, insecticide-impregnated mosquito netting, antibiotics, immunization, basic preventative medicine, maternal education. maternal literacy, and good primary health care are vastly cheaper than drones, bombs, militarization, war and nuclear weapons, as well illustrated by the marvellous example of the terrific health outcomes in US sanctions-impoverished but well-governed Cuba which has an infant mortality rate about the same as for the US that has a 9-fold greater per capita GDP [23, 24].

T o avoid the controversy about how many Muslims have actually been violently killed, one can simply consider how many Muslims have died avoidably from Western war- or Western hegemony- imposed deprivation in the 14 year period from October 2001- October 2015 in substantially or significantly Muslim countries subject to Western sanctions, attack or occupation in that period. This approach has the benefit of being uncontroversial and conservative e.g. it ignores violent deaths in which Muslim bodies or body parts went into mass graves or otherwise did not make it to hospitals or morgues for “official counting”. Of course, whether a child is slowly and painfully killed by economically- and/or militarily-imposed deprivation or is killed quickly by bombs or bullets, the death is just as final and just as irreversible [23].

Below is an alphabetical list of 20 substantially or significantly Muslim countries variously attacked, invaded, occupied or sanctioned by the US Alliance in the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-promoted US War on Terror since the 9-11 atrocity that numerous science, architecture, engineering , aviation, military and intelligence experts believe was a US Government 9-11 false flag operation (with some suggesting Israeli involvement) [3].

Listed below for these 20 US Alliance-violated, substantially or significantly Muslim countries are (a) 2015 population [25]; (b) 1950-2005 avoidable deaths [24], (c) annual avoidable deaths (2015) from the latest UN 2015 Revision data [25], assuming a baseline mortality for high birth rate, impoverished but otherwise peaceful and well-governed countries of about 4 deaths per 1,000 of population per year (for Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Palestine with death rates close to this baseline, avoidable mortality was estimated as 1.4 times the under-5 infant deaths) [24]; (d) average-based 14 year avoidable deaths for the post-9-11 period of 2001-2015, (e) present annual per capita GDP [24], (f) % Muslim (upper estimates), (g) post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths based on Muslim percentage in each country, and (h) Western invasion dates and details.

Post-9-11 avoidable deaths in 18 countries with substantial or significant Muslim populations and variously subject to Western military operations in the post-9-11 US War on Terror:

1. Afghanistan: (a) 32.5 million, (b) 16.6 million. (c) 149,000, (d) 2.2 million, (e) $1,900, (f) 99.8% Muslim, (g) 2.2 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Afghanistan was subject to repeated UK invasions in the 19th century but finally recovered independence in 1919; after the US-backed removal of a socialist government in 1978, the Russians invaded and Afghanistan endured decades of war against the Russians (1979-1989) and thence civil war (1989-1996); in 2001 Afghanistan was invaded by the US Alliance (notably the US, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) on the false basis of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda being responsible for 9-11.

2. Burkina Faso: (a) 18.1 million, (b) 6.8 million, (c) 109,000, (d) 1.5 million, (e) $1,700, (f) 60.5% Muslim, (g) 0.9 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Burkino Faso was a French colony until 1960, post-independence French military presence and French forces boosted in 2013 as part of Operation Barkhane directed against Muslim rebels in the Sahel.



3. Central African Republic: (a) 4.9 million, (b) 2.3 million, (c) 55,000, (d) 0.8 million, (e) $600, (f) 15.0% Muslim, (g) 0.1 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) the Central African Republic was a French colony until 1960, post-independence French military presence and France further boosted forces in 2013 as Muslim Genocide expanded (almost all Muslims have been expelled from the capital).



4. Chad: (a) 14.0 million, (b) 5.1 million, (c) 147,000, (d) 1.9 million, (e) $2,600, (f) 53.1% Muslim, (g) 1.0 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Chad became ostensibly independent in 1960 but there were major post-independence French military involvements in Northern Chad and France further boosted forces in 2013 as part of Operation Barkhane directed against Muslim rebels in the Sahel.



5. Côte D'Ivoire: (a) 20.1 million, (b) 7.0 million. (c) 199,000, (d) 3.0 million, (e) $3,100, (f) 38.6% Muslim, (g) 1.2 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Cote D'Ivoire suffered major French military involvements in suppressing socialists before and after independence in 1960 and a major French re-invasion in 2002.



6. Djibouti: (a) 0.9 million, (b) 141,000, (c) 8,000, (d) 0.1 million, (e) $3,100, (f) 94.0% Muslim, (g) 0.1 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Djibouti suffered a major, continuing French, US and British presence after independence in 1977; it was a base for French participation in the 1990-1991 Gulf War; French suppressed Affar rebellion in 1977-2002; France gave the former French Foreign Legion's Camp Lemonnier to the government of Djibouti, which then leased it to the US in 2001; France maintains over 1,500 troops in Djibouti and French forces in Djibouti have taken part in operations in Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Côte D'Ivoire.



7. Iraq: (a) 36.4 million, (b) 5.3 million, (c) 47,000. (d) 0.7 million, (e) $15,300, (f) 97.0% Muslim, (g) 0.7 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Iraq suffered invasion by the UK in 1914 with the UK continuing to repress Iraqi rebellion in Iraq up to and including WW2, notwithstanding ostensible Iraqi independence in 1932; Gulf War (1990-1991) in which 0.2 million Iraqis were killed; 1990-2003 Sanctions; 2003-2011 US Alliance Iraq War; renewed US and Australian military advisers and renewed bombing of Iraq in 2014 by US Alliance (US, UK, Australia, France).



8. Iran: (a) 79.1 million, (b) 14.3 million, (c) 55,000 (d) 1.0 million, (e) $17,400, (f) 99.4% Muslim, (g) 1.0 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Iran is one of the world's oldest nations and has not invaded another country for several hundred years; the US engineered a coup against the secular and democratic Mossadegh government in 1953 with the installation of dictatorship under the Shah; the US imposed sanctions on Iran after the revolution that removed the Shah in 1979; the US backed Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War in which 1.5 million Iranians were killed (Iranian 1980-1988 avoidable deaths 2.1 million); under urging from the Zionist-perverted US the UN imposed sanctions on Iran over its nuclear energy program that Iran declared to be for peaceful purposes only; the last major direct violent US action against Iran was the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by a US guided missile cruiser killing all 290 on board; US ally Apartheid Israel bombed an Iranian ship in Sudan in 2009; an estimated 68,000 Iranians have died since 9-11 from opiate drug-related causes due to the US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world share in 2001 to 93% by 2007 (1.2 million people have died world-wide since 9-11 due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry, the breakdown as of 2015 including 280,000 Americans, 256,000 Indonesians, 68,000 Iranians, 25,000 British, 14,000 Canadians, 10,000 Germans, 5,000 Australians and 500 French; about 4,000 Iranian border guards have died trying to block opiate smuggling from US-occupied Afghanistan; under urging from the Zionist -perverted US the UN imposed deadly sanctions on Iran in 2006 over its nuclear energy program that Iran declared to be for peaceful purposes only (no sanctions were applied to the nations including Apartheid Israel that actually have nuclear weapons) – these opiate-related deaths and deaths from sanctions are reflected in huge post-9-11 avoidable mortality in Iran.



9. Lebanon: (a) 5.9 million, (b) 0.5 million, (c) 1,000, (d) 16,000, (e) $18,000, (f) 59.5% Muslim, (g) 10,000 post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Lebanon suffered French occupation after WW1 and gained independence in 1944; substantially occupied by Apartheid Israel in 1982 (3,000 Palestinians killed in the Sabra and Shatila Massacre); Israel withdrawal in 2000; in 2006 Apartheid Israel attacked again killing over 1,000, making 1 million homeless and destroying infrastructure on a huge scale.



10. Libya: (a) 6.3 million, (b) 0.8 million, (c) 6,000, (d) 78,000 (27,000 in 2011-2015), (e) $15,900, (f) 94.0% Muslim, (g) 73,000 post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Libya gained independence in 1950 and under rule by Muammar Gaddafi in 1969-2011 became the most prosperous country in all of Africa, but the 2011 France-UK-US (FUKUS) Alliance bombing campaign removed Gaddafi, splintered and devastated the country, killed 100,000 people and generated 1 million refugees with annual avoidable deaths increasing 3-fold after Western intervention.



11. Mali: (a) 20.1 million, (b) 7.0 million, (c) 199,000, (d) 1.8 million, (e) $1,700, (f) 90.0% Muslim, (g) 1.6 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Mali was brutally subdued by the French in the 19th century but secured independence in 1960 but with French hegemony; in 2013, France launched airstrikes against Tuareg rebels who had conquered the northern half of the country and finally defeated them in a so-called Operation Serval. France followed up Operation Serval with Operation Barkhane dedicated to killing Muslim rebels in the Sahel countries of Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.

12. Mauritania: (a) 17.6 million, (b) 1.3 million, (c) 123,000, (d) 2.3 million, (e) $4,300. (f) 100.0% Muslim, (g) 2.3 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Mauritania was invaded by the French in the 19th century so as to consolidate French territory from Senegal to the Sudan, and Mauritanian resistance was only finally overcome in the 1930s; Mauritania became formally independent in 1960 but was subject to French hegemony and interference. France's Operation Barkhane involves thousands of air-supported French troops dedicated to killing Muslim rebels in the Sahel countries of Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.

13. Niger: (a) 19.9 million, (b) 6.6 million, (c) 111,000, (d) 1.8 million, (e) $1,100, (f) 94.0% Muslim, (g) 1.7 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Niger was conquered by France in the late 19th century but became ostensibly independent in 1960 but under French hegemony; the French Operation Barkhane involves thousands of air-supported French troops dedicated to killing Muslim rebels in the Sahel countries of Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.

14. Pakistan: (a) 188.9 million, (b) 49.7 million, (c) 660,000, (d) 9.1 million, (e) $4,700, (f) 96.0% Muslim, (g) 8.7 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Pakistan gained independence from the UK in 1947 after 2 centuries of British rule in which 1.8 billion Indians died avoidably from deprivation in the British Raj; independence in 1947 was marked by generation of 18 million refugees between India and Pakistan (half Muslim, half Hindu) and up to 1 million people were killed; in 1971 US-backed Pakistani forces killed 3 million mostly male Bengalis and raped 300,000 Bengali women in a Bengali Holocaust that marked the creation of Bangladesh; Australian-targeted US drone attacks commenced in 2004.

15. Palestine: (a) 4.7 million, (b) 0.7 million, (c), 5,000, (d) 70,000, (e) $4,900 (cf its Occupier Apartheid Israel's $33,000) , (f) 85.0% Muslim, (g) 60,000 post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Palestine has an ancient history dating back to the very start of agrarian civilization; British forces invaded in 1914 and together with Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) forces conquered Palestine; the 1917 Balfour Declaration promised Palestine to the genocidal Zionists as a Jewish Homeland; Surafend Massacre of Palestinians by Australian and New Zealand ANZAC troops in 1918; 1948 creation of the State of Israel with massive forcible expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians and Zionist seizure of about 80% of Palestine; in 1967 Israel seized all of Palestine plus part of Syria; 90% of the land of Palestine has now been ethnically cleansed and Israeli Apartheid means that of 12 million Palestinian, 6 million are forbidden to step foot in Palestine and of 6 million Palestinians living under Israeli rule only 28% ( 1.7 million Palestinian Israelis) can vote for the government ruling them – the rest have essentially zero human rights; 2 million Palestinians have died since 1936 from Zionist violence (0.1 million) or Zionist -imposed deprivation (1.9 million).

16. Philippines: (a) 100.7 million, (b) 9.1 million, (c) 270,000, (d) 2.7 million, (e) $7,000, (f) 11.0% Muslim, (g) 0.3 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) the Philippines was acquired by the US from Spain at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War (1898) but in the subsequent 1899-1913 Philippines-US War about 1 million Filipinos died; the Philippines became independent in 1946 but with retention of US bases; in the 21st century US forces returned to combat communist rebels and thence Muslim rebels in the south in Operation Enduring Freedom - Philippines (OEF-P) (many Filipinos object to this military action by the US in their country).

17. Somalia: (a) 10.8 million, (b) 5.6 million, (c) 91,000, (d) 1.2 million, (e) $600, (f) 96.0% Muslim, (g) 1.2 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Somalia was repeatedly invaded by Italy in the 19th and 20th centuries. The British took over Somalia in WW2. Independence in 1960 was followed by war against Ethiopia and civil war, the effects of which were exacerbated by drought and famine. The US invaded in 1992 and after extensive civil war an Islamic administration assumed power in 2005. However the US backed an Ethiopian invasion in 2007 and thence a Kenyan invasion. In 2009 France and Germany invaded Somali waters to retake a captured French yacht and in 2013 French special forces from Djibouti failed in an operation to rescue a captured French intelligence agent.

18. Sudan: (a) 40.2 million, (b) 13.5 million, (c) 157,000, (d) 2.3 million, (e) $4,300, (f) 97.0% Muslim, (g) 2.3 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Sudan was conquered by the UK in 1898 but eventually became independent in 1958; the US under Clinton notoriously bombed a Sudan pharmaceutical factory in 1998 (Professor Noam Chomsky estimated that 10,000 Sudanese would have died from disease as a result); US ally Apartheid Israel bombed Sudan in 2009 and such Israeli bombing attacks on Sudan are presently continuing. Apartheid Israeli arms are heavily involved in the US-backed civil war in the newly independent South Sudan.

19. Syria: (a) 18.5 million, (b) 2.2 million, (c) 14,000, (d) 190,000 (68,000 in 2011-2015), (e) $5,100, (f) 96.0% Muslim, (g) 171,000 post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) Syria, one of the oldest nations in the world, was allocated to France by the 1916 Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement that divided the Middle East between Britain and France; Syria was put under a League of Nations mandate to France in 1920; in 1944 Syria became independent and in 1945 Syria became a founding member of the UN with the last French forces leaving Syria in 1946; in 1967 the Syrian Golan Heights region was captured and largely ethnically cleansed by Apartheid Israel which continues to periodically bomb Syria; commencement of Sunni rebellion in 2011 backed diplomatically and materially by Turkey, the US, UK, France, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Apartheid Israel. The Syrian Civil War has so far killed about 0.3 million people violently, killed a similar number of people through war-imposed deprivation, and generated about 12 million refugees. Syria was once a haven of religious toleration and a world leader per capita in providing haven for refugees, but over half of its population are now refugees themselves and Syria has now been devastated in a sectarian civil war involving the Assad Government versus anti-Assad Sunni rebels (of which ISIS is the most powerful) that are variously backed by the UK, US , France, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Australia and Apartheid Israel.

20. Yemen: (a) 19.9 million, (b) 6.6 million, (c) 111,000, (d) 1.2 million, (e) $1,100, (f) 100.0% Muslim, (g) 1.2 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths, and (h) South Yemen gained independence from the UK in 1967 and North and South Yemen unified in 1989; continuing armed conflict with Australian-targeted US drone attacks in the 21st century that are continuing. Currently Yemen is being war criminally invaded by an anti-Houthi Saudi-led Coalition including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, and Sudan.

Summary and conclusions.

The post-9-11 avoidable deaths in the 20 countries violated by the West in the post-9-11 War on Terror total 34.0 million. However we can re-assess this data by considering the Muslim percentage of the population in these 20 countries and can estimate that post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths in these 20 US Alliance-violated countries total 26.8 million, noting that, as discussed above, it is likely that most of the violent Muslim deaths in the Zionist-promoted US War on Terror are not included in this estimate. About half the victims of this Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-prosecuted Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide are children.

This carnage of 26.8 million post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths is 26,800,000/130 = 206,154 or about 200,000 times greater than the 130 murdered in the recent appalling Paris massacre – however, in contrast to the saturation coverage of the appalling Paris atrocity, this Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide is resolutely ignored by genocidally racist, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-subverted Western Mainstream media.

Using data from the UN Population Division 2006 Revision of World Population Prospects it was previously determined that Iraqi avoidable deaths in 1990-2003 and 2003-2011 totalled 1.7 million and 1.2 million, respectively, and combining this data with Gulf War violent deaths of 0.2 million and Iraq War violent deaths of 1.5 million, yielded estimates of Iraqi deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation totalling 1.9 million (1990-2003), 2.7 million (2003-2011) and 4.6 million (1990-2011) [4, 22, 23]. However using the present UN 2015 Revision data [25] one estimates Iraqi avoidable deaths in 1990-2003 and 2003-2011 totalling 0.5 million and 0.4 million, respectively, this yielding estimates of Iraqi deaths from violence or violently-imposed deprivation totalling 0.7 million (1990-2003), 1.9 million (2003-2011) and 2.6 million (1990-2011). The UN 2015 Revision data on Iraq may underestimate avoidable deaths because they are based on data provided by the US-installed regime which, for example, implausibly claims that Iraq under-5 infant mortality declined after imposition of Sanctions in 1990 and declined further after the US invasion in 2003 [25].

Similarly, using 2006 Revision data it was determined that Afghan avoidable deaths and violent deaths in 2001-2014 totalled 5.5 million and 1.7 million, respectively for a total of 7.2 million post-invasion deaths from violence or from deprivation. However using the present UN 2015 Revision data [25] based on data from the government of US occupied Afghanistan one estimates that Afghan avoidable deaths and violent deaths in 2001-2015 have totalled 2.3 million and 0.7 million, respectively, for a total of 3.0 million post-invasion deaths from violence or from deprivation.

The 2015 Paris Massacre in which 130 innocent civilians were murdered by jihadis is a shocking crime that must be unequivocally condemned but is already being exploited (a) by the jihadi non-state terrorist perpetrators as a victory and evidence for more atrocities to come, and (b) by the US state terrorists, French state terrorists and US Alliance state terrorists as a “French 9-11” with calls from Obama and Holland to genocidally destroy jihadi rebels in Syria and Iraq [1, 2].

Completely missing from the continuing hysterical response to the Paris atrocity from US lackey Western Mainstream journalists, politicians and academics is any public airing of the horrendous reality of 27 million Muslims dying avoidably since 9-11 in 20 substantially or significantly Muslim countries that have been attacked by US Alliance state terrorists. Jihadi non-state terrorists must be condemned (a) for the violent crimes they personally commit against innocent people and (b) for the vastly greater crimes committed by the US Alliance against Muslims in response to jihadi outrages. Indeed jihadi non-state terrorists are among the greatest assets of US imperialism – every jihadi atrocity is another excuse trumpeted by Mainstream media for more atrocities against the Muslim world by US state terrorists and US Alliance state terrorists.

The Paris atrocity can be seen as “blowback” for horrendous crimes committed by the US Alliance against the Muslim world from West Africa to South East Asia [26, 27]. The horrible reality is that the US has a long history of false-flag operations(with 9-11 being the most immediately and subsequently deadly) [3] , supporting terrorism and exploiting terrorist acts by Indigenous insurgents lacking military industries, navies, airforces and tanks, and essentially only armed with light arms and explosives for bombs.

Indeed the US has along history of supporting terrorists (e.g. US-backed terrorists in Ecuador who would bomb Catholic churches knowing that the socialists would be blamed; the US-backed Gladio organization that committed atrocities in post-war Europe that would be blamed on communists; and backing jihadi fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s and in the Balkans in the 1990s) [28]. Indeed the US has an appalling record of replacing secular governments in the Muslim world with sectarian regimes (e.g. Afghanistan, 1978; Iraq, 2003; Libya, 2011; and now in Syria today but for Russian support for the Assad Government ) [29].

Even the appalling Western Mainstream media can no longer ignore the Elephant in the Room realities that (a) the illegal US Alliance invasion of Iraq generated sectarian warfare and the Sunni rebellion that transmuted into ISIS, and (b) support for anti-Assad rebels by the US Alliance state terrorism - US state terrorism, UK state terrorism, French state terrorism, Australian state terrorism, Apartheid Israeli state terrorism, Turkish state terrorism, Jordanian state terrorism, Qatari state terrorism and Saudi Arabian state terrorism – has led to ISIS (Islamic State, IS, ISIL, Daesh) dominating rebel-held Syria.

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent, pro-peace people must wonder what they can do in the face of appalling non-state terrorism (e.g. as exhibited by ISIS in killing 130 innocent people in this latest Paris atrocity) and the vastly worse carnage wrought by US state terrorism, UK state terrorism, French state terrorism, and Apartheid Israeli state terrorism in the Muslim world involving post-9-11 Muslim avoidable deaths in 20 US Alliance-violated countries now totalling 26.8 million. Decent people who are utterly opposed to both non-state terrorism and state terrorism must (a) inform everyone they can, (b) urge and support urgent cease-fire, dialogue and compromise between all parties to prevent a worsening catastrophe in both Iraq and Syria, and (c) urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, parties, politicians, companies, corporations and countries disproportionately involved in militarism, violence, war, genocide, non-state terrorism and state terrorism.

References.

[1]. Barack Obama, “Press conference by President Obama – Antalya, Turkey”, White House, 16 November 2015: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-of ... lya-turkey .

[2]. Martin Robinson, “France will be in a state of emergency for THREE MONTHS: Holland vows to “destroy” ISIS and pledges “no barbarians will prevent us from living how we have decided to live:”, Daily Mail, 17 November 2015: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -live.html ).

[3]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .

[4]. “Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholo ... igenocide/ .

[5]. Just Foreign Policy, “Iraq Deaths”: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq .

[6]. “US military marks end of its Iraq war”, ABC News, 16 December 2011: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-15/u ... aq/3733982 .

[7]. ABC News, “Iraki leaks show scale of civilian casualties” , 24 October 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-10-23/i ... es/2308808 .

[8]. “Iraq Body Count”: https://www.iraqbodycount.org/ .

[9], “Censorship by the BBC”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbythebbc/ .

[10]. “ABC fact-checking unit & incorrect reportage by the ABC (Australia's BBC)”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstrea ... cking-unit ,

[11]. BBC, “Iraq War in figures”, 14 December 2011: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-11107739 .

[12]. “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”, Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonp ... -holocaust .

[13]. Gideon Polya (1998), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, 2008 edition that is now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ .

[14]. Gideon Polya (1995) " The Forgotten Holocaust - The 1943/44 Bengal Famine": http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspo ... engal.html .

[15]. Gideon Polya (2011), “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”, Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[16]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstrea ... rship/home .

[17]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/ .

[18]. Kit O'Connell, “4 million Muslims killed in Western wars: should we call it genocide?”, MintPress News, 18 August 2015: http://www.mintpressnews.com/4-million- ... de/208711/ .

[19]. Nafeez Ahmed, “Unworthy victims: Western wars have killed 4 million Muslim since 1990”, MintPtress News, 9 April 2015: http://www.mintpressnews.com/unworthy-v ... 90/204182/.

[20]. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), “Body Count. Casualty figures after 10 years of the “War on Terror” Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan”, March 2015: http://www.psr.org/assets/pdfs/body-count.pdf .

[21]. “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanhol ... ngenocide/

[22]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimhol ... mgenocide/ ).

[23]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country since Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on he web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ ... ty_05.html .

[24]. “List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... per_capita .

[25]. UN Population Division 2015 Revision of World Population Prospects: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/ .

[26]. Gideon Polya,”Appalling Paris Atrocity – Non-State Terrorist Blowback For US Alliance And French State Terrorism Atrocities”, Countercurrents, 16 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya161115.htm .

[27]. Gideon Polya, "Horrendous US state terrorism and French state terrorism led to the appalling non-state terrorist Paris atrocity", Gideon Polya Writing, 2015-11-18 : https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpol ... 2015-11-18 .

[28]. Gideon Polya, “US Profits From Jihadist Terrorism”, Countercurrents, 19 November, 2004: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-polya191104.htm .

[29]. Gideon Polya, “Fundamentalist America Has Trashed Secular Governance, Modernity, Democracy, Women's Rights And Children's Rights In The Muslim World”, Countercurrents, 21 May, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya210515.htm .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 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 published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pro ... transcript

) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047- ... nians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-t ... gal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeac ... therchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .

[seemslikeadream]

No Thanks: How Thanksgiving Narratives Erase the Genocide of Native Peoples
Thursday, 26 November 2015 00:00
By Joanne Barker, Truthout | Op-Ed

This mural, Reconcile, was produced by Gregg Deal in 2014 in Washington, DC.
This mural, "Reconcile," was produced by Gregg Deal in 2014 in Washington, DC. While offering commentary on the local professional football team, the mural also puts indigenous stereotype, identity and appropriation in a historical context. (Credit: Gregg Deal)

"It was not all Thanksgiving dinners in those early days."
- Vine Deloria Jr. (Lakota)

I have nothing to say about Thanksgiving. Or maybe I should say, Thanksgiving has nothing to say to me.

Like sports mascots and hipster doofus celebrities wearing faux headdresses, Thanksgiving has nothing to do with Native American and Indigenous people in the United States. And try as Native people might, we can't seem to get rid of it or change the way it is perceived or represented. This is because Thanksgiving, like mascots and faux headdresses, serves the capitalism of empire.

Thanksgiving erases the genocide, sexual violence, land fraud and hate that defined early colonial histories and that continue to define US-Native relations.
The national holiday image of a happy extended family inviting another to generously celebrate a harvest of good food erases, distorts, shames and belittles Native people in the interest of making a buck (whether it be a dollar or the capital of cross-cultural awareness). Retailers love Thanksgiving's inauguration of the season, which promises every year to pull them out of the red (no pun intended). Sports fans love Thanksgiving and its near-constant stream of games and all of the competition (betting) and commercialism it brings with it. And self-proclaimed fashionistas love that Thanksgiving legitimates their use of headdresses as "hip" costumes. After all, how bad can it be to wear grown-up versions of those headdresses they cut out in grade school, alongside pilgrim hats and turkey feathers?

Thanksgiving is a nationalist holiday defined by the rituals of making money and self indulgence. Nationalist traditions advance the idea of the freedom to be happy by erasing the consequences of imperial capitalism.

Those traditions are certainly not about the "first Thanksgiving" in 1637. John Winthrop, governor of an English colony in what is now Massachusetts, held a feast in honor of a volunteer militia who had returned from their massacre of 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Nation. The federal holiday was established in 1863. By then, the mythic narrative had become the national truth: Pilgrims (Americans) gave thanks for surviving, thanks to the "Indians" who fed them and taught them how to grow corn.

Nothing about the myth, of course, is about Native people, neither the genocide and enslavement - nor the survival - of the Pequot Nation or other Native nations in New England. Thanksgiving erases the genocide, sexual violence, land fraud and hate that defined early colonial histories and that continue to define US-Native relations. It distorts into a magically happy scene of an extended family dinner, including the "racial other," a relationship that was and is actually based on slavery, poverty, war and rape. And it shames and belittles Native people who contest and contend the representations as wannabe politically correct, overly sensitive, "not enoughs" trying to grab onto the public spotlight for themselves.

And so Native people talk about the real "Thanksgiving" (the first and the ones that followed), the lives and struggles of Native people today for treaty and territorial rights, and the cultural significance of headdresses. And in the backlash of those discussions, Native people are told to get over it. They're being too sensitive. Ridiculous. Boring.

This is all because the "Indian" that Thanksgiving represents is not Native and does not belong to Native people. It is the "Indian" of a colonial present, created by US expansionist, extractive capitalism.

Refusing Capitalism

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
- Lilla Watson (Murri [Aboriginal Australian])

What if Natives could reimagine the challenge of Thanksgiving not as one of "correcting the history" but as one of refusing the imperial state's capitalism that this history normalizes and legitimates? What if non-Native allies could see that the issues defining Thanksgiving, mascots and faux headdresses for Native people are related to their own struggles for labor, wage, housing, immigrant and refugee rights, and other social justice issues?

I honestly do not care if people have a turkey dinner with their family. I do care if people pretend that such a day celebrates or honors Native history and culture.
Native concerns and ideas about Thanksgiving are situated within a broader political context that includes struggles for labor, wage, housing, immigrant and refugee rights, struggles against police violence and struggles for social justice. These are struggles aimed at US imperialism and capitalism, at the way the exploitation of the land and environment supports the military-police-surveillance-industrial complex, at the way that complex facilitates gender- and sexual-based violence, and at the way it legitimates political suppression for national security. In other words, US imperialism and capitalism have produced the situation in which Native peoples are erased, poor people's labor is exploited, Black people are murdered with impunity by police, immigrants are illegally detained and deported, and the land and water is destroyed in the name of oil and gas extraction.

Native efforts are not merely against Thanksgiving for Thanksgiving's sake. Their efforts are to be seen, heard and respected, for the sake of their treaty, territorial and environmental justice rights. When they are told that their concerns about Thanksgiving's erasure of colonialism are irrelevant and outdated, they are being told - and they hear - that their struggles for treaty, territorial and environmental justice do not matter.

To the extent that the colonial narrative of Thanksgiving erases Native peoples, it simultaneously erases attention on their current rights efforts to protect the land and the water from extractive, contaminant technologies and the way those efforts are linked to others' social justice concerns.

What's Honor Got to Do With It?

I haven't celebrated Thanksgiving in quite a long time. But I honestly do not care if people have a turkey dinner with their family and/or friends and watch TV on Thanksgiving. I do care if people pretend that such a day celebrates or honors Native history and culture.

I challenge everyone to find out who the Indigenous people are of the land that they celebrate Thanksgiving on, whether it be at their own residence or someone else's. I challenge them to educate themselves about the history and current struggles of that people - and to do something productive to honor them and their ancestors.

[seemslikeadream]

FEBRUARY 2, 2016
No Holocausts Without Hitlers, But What About Climate Change?
by PETER BELMONT


Can there be deliberate massive killing without some one or more people being thought responsible, perhaps as one or more “master-criminals”

Mankind has done very little to prevent the worst ravages promised for climate change and if we continue on that path there will be mega deaths. Looking ahead to this dreadful possibility, are we justified to think of those who are plunging us into this unprecedentedly awful future as criminals? And if so, who are these people?

Mass Killings Have Named Killers

The twentieth century (and 21st) have had more than their fair share of dreadful slaughters, slaughters which could be called holocausts. In general, some ogre has been identified as the author of the disaster, as a sort of master-criminal.

Hitler caused the holocaust of 6 million European Jews (which was also a holocaust for 5 million others folks).

Stalin brought on the great famine in the Ukraine (1932-33) in which 7 million people died.

America (Harry Truman presiding) caused the smaller holocausts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the USA, we like to think that Truman’s action saved lives over-all, and that he was thus a war hero rather than a master-criminal. Japanese may take a different view. But no-one doubts he was the author of those many civilian deaths.

At all events, we are used to associating mass killing with named killers, usually characterizing them as evil-doers, ogres, master-criminals.

What, Then, About Global Warming Climate Change?

What may we say, in that regard, about the projected (and rapidly on-rushing) world-wide disaster to some extent already brought about (and, of course, very much more to be brought about in the near future) by Anthromorphic Global Warming (“AGW”) a/k/a “Man-Made Climate Change”? Are there any master-criminals?

Well, the story is changing.

Until 1992 we might have said that there were no AGW criminals, because it was all so new. At least, so new to the politicians and media, which are bad listeners to things they cannot readily understand and don’t want to hear anyway.

Since well before 1992, of course, scientists have powerfully and very publicly made the case for the end of the use of fossil-fuels for power generation. Greenhouse gases (“GHGs”) produced by burning coal, oil, and natural gas along with other mostly human made gases are accumulating in the atmosphere and causing the earth-air-oceans to warm up, the oceans also to acidify, and an enormous transformation of the earth’s climate-system to begin.

If no-one was listening before 1992, it cannot be said that no-one is listening today. If the “climate deniers” are denying the reality of climate change, then they must at least have been listening!

No-one mentally alive today can make the case that he or she hasn’t heard these dire warnings. No one can say, “We didn’t know.” And it’s quite hard to understand how so many people can even say, today, “We don’t believe.” And yet there are, even today, “climate deniers.”

(If Pinocchio denied climate change today, his nose would have grown 100 feet long! By the way, since Pinocchio was made of wood, we may be interested in yet another evidence of climatic warming in tree-ring evidence from the UK. Deniers, deny it if you can! )[1]

And so it is appropriate to ask those embarrassing questions of politicians, not only “What did you know and when did you know it?” but in some cases, “And, in that case, what rational basis did you have to continue to say you didn’t believe it?”

These deniers are like people drinking the lead-laced water in Flint Michigan and saying, “Yummy, nothing like this water, so safe to drink!”

Or like the tobacco industry saying, for all those years, that smoking didn’t cause cancer!

Is It Really So Hard To Believe Things You’ve Not Yourself Seen?

Perhaps the deniers are merely ordinary people who are confused by science, who don’t realise that airplanes fly and the internet runs, and newer automobiles get 40 MPG, because some not-so-ordinary people, scientists and engineers, were not confused by science.

People who do not understand science may think a thing is not true unless they themselves can experience it: such people (if consistent in this respect) could not, for instance, believe in heaven or hell, or in the rings of Saturn, or in the existence of Antarctica, or in George Washington—because they’d never experienced them personally.

And please recall that before the USA attacked Iraq, we heard from President Bush that Iraq was in cahoots with al-Qaeda and had (dangerous to the USA !?) weapons of mass destruction (both of which claims proved to be wrong). But most Americans and almost the entire Congress believed these things, things they’d never seen personally!

There are parts of reality where we all have to take the word of experts about things we’ve never seen. We often believe “intelligence services” despite their bad record for accuracy. How much more so should we believe scientists, who are, as a rule, pretty much on the mark.

And Ordinary People Can Do Evil

Many Republican politicians seek to escape responsibility for AGW by claiming to be “ordinary people”. “I’m not a scientist,” they say, as if that canceled out their responsibility to care for the American people in matters scientific. (How many politicians really understand antibiotic-resistant microbes? Are they therefore not responsible for supervising the (over-) use of antibiotics in the meat-production industries?)

For the record, being an ordinary person is no protection against doing great evil: Adolf Eichman, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, after trial in Israel for war crimes, requested clemency as an ordinary person—this request is a grim reminder: being ordinary is no protection against doing great evil. To the extent that politicians presenting themselves as brave “climate deniers” in order to collect money from climate denying corporations and billionaires (like the Koch brothers) are not very different, morally, from Eichman, who was “just following orders”.

We’ve Been So Slow To Begin Treating Climate Change As A Real Danger

Since 1992, politicians have mostly ignored the warnings about climate change. Oh, they have not ignored the warnings entirely, for as early as 24 years ago they began giving lip-service to the problem: 1992:UN Framework, 1997:Kyoto. But, on the whole, and even today, the active response to AGW has been anywhere between tepid and non-existent.

Our political leadership, if it acknowledged that there is a climate problem at all, has been so slow and so unemphatic in responding—responding at most “tepidly”—that one might imagine the political class to be brain-dead—or pretending, as politicians so often do, to be brain-dead. But brain-dead is not quite the same as being master-criminals, is it? Perhaps the answer to that is, “it depends on what important problem the politician is ignoring.”

However, there has also been a worse than merely “tepid” response, a deliberately inactive response, the response of the “deniers”, political folks who have denied either that there is any climate change, or that climate change is man-made, or that there is any threat from climate change, or that there is anything mankind can (or should) do about it.

The most notable assembly of such “deniers” is the current batch of seekers of the Republican nomination for USA president. Their denial is aided, abetted, and perhaps bought-and-paid-for by wealthy folks (such as the Koch brothers) and wealthy corporations (such as coal-oil-gas producers).

The Ogres Of Climate Change

I nominate these politicians (and others: most of the Republicans in the USA’s congress), the “climate deniers” as the principal ogres of climate change.

And I am not alone.

Noam Chomsky has said about the same thing:

Renowned scholar and activist Noam Chomsky declared this week that the GOP and its far-right front-runners are “literally a serious danger to decent human survival.”

Speaking with The Huffington Post on Monday, Chomsky cited the Republican Party’s refusal to tackle—or even acknowledge—the “looming environmental catastrophe” of climate change, thereby “dooming our grandchildren.”

He went to rebuke the Republican party for its “abject service to private wealth and power” and dispossession of the poor.

But Chomsky made it clear that his conviction that “the Republican Party has drifted off the rails” and must be stopped by no means amounts to an endorsement of Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton—who he has previously criticized as hawkish and opportunistic.

Chomsky also said:

Every Republican candidate is either a climate change denier or a skeptic who says we can’t do it. What they are saying is, ‘Let’s destroy the world.’ Is that worth voting against? Yeah.”

OK, The Deniers Are Ogres, But Are They Murders?

OK, so many “deniers” (mostly Republicans) are really, really, horribly, really bad, people who stand happily by and watch as the climatic conditions are set up for the deaths of millions.

But are they murderers?

Can you be a murderer when you haven’t done anything except talk and laugh? Was Nero a murderer if he really fiddled while Rome burned?

I’d say yes. Although at law some action more than talking and laughing may be required to bring on a proper judgment of murder, here we’re not talking law, but morality.

If a man who has the power to prevent a great tragedy, and who knows about the on-rushing great tragedy, and who has a fiduciary duty to prevent the great tragedy (as politicians do)—does nothing to use that power to avert the tragedy, we may fairly say that he has been a cause (if not the only cause) of the tragedy.

So, in my view, all these “deniers” are (attempted) mass-murderers. We should call them that. We should challenge them to stop attempting mass-murder.

The Media Which Give Audience To The Deniers Are Also Ogres—And Murderers

Much of the USA’s mainstream media give air-time and newspaper space to those who deny climate change. They create the “he said she said” sort of “horse-race” we are so familiar with at election time, just as if the issue of Climate Change were an “up in the air” matter where the essential truth wasn’t known, the sort of contest where readers and viewers deserved to hear “both sides” of the issue because there was good and bad aspects to both sides.

But of course this is not the case.

Scientists are agreed on the AGW basics and are fairly agreed on most of the consequences, the “fall out”, to be expected if human burning of fossil fuels (and other production of greenhouse gases) are allowed to continue unchecked.

Those who deny AGW are not doing so for rational reasons but out of ignorance or because of mental unbalance—or dishonestly for ideological reasons or because they perceive that action on AGW would be a threat to their business interests.

And media which give space to “deniers” are doing so for all those reasons, including a condemnable desire to find profits from pumping up a seeming conflict even though climate-inaction due to the perception of that conflict endangers the world and humanity.

So, yes, I add all media which give prominence to climate-deniers to my list of climate-ogres, murderers.

But What About The Tepid Non-Deniers ?

But what about all the politicians who say they believe in AGW but do nothing, or do nothing much, to prevent it? What about politicians who say that averting AGW will cost too much or that they have other things to do? What about politicians who set such distant timetables (e.g., renewable electricity by 2050) that they are effectively electing to do nothing (or nothing significantly timely)?

I’m afraid that I say about them all the same thing: you are able to get scientific advice, so get it. You are capable of understanding this stuff, it is not that hard. If you are either a “denier” or a “tepid endorser” of AGW, you are a mass murderer or an attempted mass murder. Or will be if you don’t get very busy very soon.

We don’t have much time. Although 2016 is an election year, we don’t have time to stop work fighting AGW. We cannot stop fighting AGW just because there is an election—especially when it’s a year away.

(Actually, the news creeps out that President Obama keeps doing what he can on AGW, but no-one could say that the Congress is backing him up. Quite the contrary.)

Just One Early Manifestation Of AGW

And for those who say that the ill-effects of AGW are far off in the future, think again.

We’re already seeing early manifestations of AGW, such as the Jan 23, 2016, storm that hit the USA’s East Coast. A single storm, by the way, one of several, each of which killed more people in the USA than were killed by Islamic terrorists in the USA since 9/11/2001.

Storms vs. terror: More Americans killed in blizzard last weekend than Islamic extremist attacks since 9/11.

Caused by warming air (from warming oceans) which caused more moisture to be in the air (ready to fall as rain or snow) together with a huge warming of coastal waters due to a complex effect known as the slowing of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, itself caused by melting of the Greenland ice sheet, itself caused by general oceanic warming. (This will not be on the quiz, but read about it in the Washington Post.)

Politicians: Make the Choice Not to be a Murderer

There is still time, although less time than there was 20 years ago, to do your best to slow, to fight, to diminish, the ill-effects of AGW.

Aim at 100% electric generation in the world (at least in the USA) by 2030 (no, not 2050)! Do not depend on “markets” to do what requires governmental exertion. Generate money for needed investments by taxing the very rich—billionaires and multi-millionaires and giant corporations.

Or just print money! The USA came up with lots of money in 2008 to bail out the banks and the insurance giant (AIG), and it came up with at least $1T to fight the Iraq war, which was not a necessary expense—so it can jolly well come up with the money to fight AGW, which is a necessary expense!

End all subsidies now paid to fossil-fuel producers-marketers-users and get subsidies going for private folks to build rooftop solar installations and meantime help cities and states to build transmission lines and solar-panel fields and wind farms.

Get going! No time to lose! If capitalism can help, let it help. Where it cannot help, do an end-run around it, but get the job done! This is War! Make sure there are, indeed, war-profiteers. This time we need them, because, unlike the stupid and unnecessary $1T Iraq war, we need this war! Pour money into the renewable-electric-generation business and the science and engineering R&D will get done!

And to start with, let all the “endorsers” of AGW meet together to settle upon a teaching method to bring the public on board. If all (Democratic) candidates for president can agree to a single position on AGW-action, and can agree to put that message out there—in part to point out the Republican candidates’ (murderous) “denialist” nonsense, and in part to help President Obama get more action going—all to the good. And I would say, necessary.

Go to it! Nuff said.

Notes.

[1] past variability has been associated with large volcanic eruptions and changes in the amount of energy received from the sun.

The new finding, that temperatures over the past 30 years lie outside the range of these natural variations, supports the conclusions reached by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that recent warming is mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels – in other words anthropogenic, or man-made, activity.

[seemslikeadream]

They're Under Threat of Genocide, and Nobody Is Paying Attention
If we do nothing, the world will wake up to a genocide on the scale that shocked the world in Rwanda in 1994.
By Azeem Ibrahim / Hurst Publishers July 13, 2016


The following is an excerpt from the new book The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar's Hidden Genocide by Azeem Ibrahim (Hurst, 2016):

The reality facing the Rohingyas, a Muslim confessional ethnic group living in Rakhine province in western Myanmar, is the threat of genocide. Ever since Burma became independent in 1948 they have been targeted whenever ambitious (or desperate) politicians need to deflect attention from other matters. Both government officials and party leaders have called for their expulsion from their homeland, and the main opposition ignores their plight. The build up to the elections in late 2015 witnessed the final destruction of their civic rights in Myanmar (completing a process that began with the 1947 Constitution) and increasingly they are detained in what are now permanent internal refugee camps, where they are denied food, work and medical care.

If the regime fails to reign in the persecution of the Rohingyas (which only sustained international pressure will achieve) we will see a repeat of the by now familiar refugee crises, as the Rohingyas flee oppression. Moreover it is almost inevitable that there will be further inter-communal violence, aimed at forcing the remaining Rohingyas either to run away or succumb to mass murder. The charge of genocide is a serious one to make; the current situation in Myanmar fully justifies the use of this word.

Till recently the Rohingyas had attracted relatively little attention from the international press, even in the critical period leading up to only the third round of parliamentary elections to be held since 1990. If there is a common narrative it is that Burma (the name ‘Myanmar’ was adopted as part of a new set of laws in 1989) was a closed country of little direct interest to the world; that Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), having endured years of house arrest, is fully committed to a democratic future for all of Myanmar’s ethnic and religious groups; and that instances of inter-ethnic or inter-confessional violence are to be expected in a country making the difficult transition from authoritarian military rule to democracy. The problem is that all three of these beliefs are false.

Burma may have turned its back on the British-led Commonwealth when it gained independence in 1948, but it maintained substantial external links as a democracy (until 1962), under military rule (1962–2011) and subsequently. It is just that those links have been essentially pragmatic (especially under military rule), designed to allow the ruling elite to make money by trading away the country’s wealth while at the same time buying arms. As we will see, the military regime (which remains essentially in power despite the notional return of democracy and the electoral defeat of its political party in 2015) does not like international criticism of its actions, but is far more responsive than is often believed. This means those who decide not to criticize it, or to set it red lines, are failing in their duty under international law.

As in its response to the political dynamics in regions such as the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the Western media likes to identify clear heroes and villains. In Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi clearly fits the hero category for this type of analysis. She has spent over twenty years of her life imprisoned in her own home, she has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and she leads the main opposition party. However, as so often in the former Soviet Union, our chosen heroes are actually far more nuanced than our narratives demand. The other side of the story is that Aung San Suu Kyi herself is part of the Myanmar elite. Her father fought for the Japanese during World War II (albeit reluctantly) and was one of the leaders of the independence movement; her mother was a government minister from 1948–62. The NLD’s deputy chairman was the commander in chief of the Burmese Army until 1976 when he was ousted after leading a failed coup. Equally, while the NLD may aim for democracy, in an ethnically complex country its electoral support comes almost entirely from the ethnically Burman community. Thus, in terms of its senior officials and the ethnicity of its electorate, the NLD shares much with the regime and the wider elite, and has had a difficult relationship with the ethnic minorities in Burma ever since independence. In particular, Aung San Suu Kyi has usually opted to avoid direct comment when the question of the systematic persecution of the Rohingyas is raised.

Another easy assumption is that Buddhism is a peaceful religion that shows no sign of the intolerance to other faiths that scars some forms of Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. Unfortunately this is not the case. Some who subscribe to Theravada Buddhism (which is also dominant in Sri Lanka and Thailand, where it is also associated with inter-communal violence) argue that for Buddhism to be safe all other religious beliefs must be eliminated. They also tend to look to the state for support and in a few extreme cases regard those who are not Buddhists as less than human.

In Myanmar, extremist Buddhist organizations have been at the heart of inter-communal violence ever since the return to relative democracy in 2011. Both the major political parties (the regime’s Union Solidarity and Development Party, USDP, and the opposition NLD) are reliant on these organizations for much of their electoral support, giving them substantial influence over the political process. Equally there is emerging evidence that the old military regime funded and supported one major faction among the extremists to foster unrest. In turn, the existence of inter-communal violence keeps open the possibility of a return to military rule—in order, of course, to save the nation from violence.

This matters, as it means that Myanmar is not on a clear road to democracy. The violence against the Rohingyas is not an unpleasant, though predictable, side-effect of a society moving from authoritarian rule to liberalism. The repression of the Rohingyas is orchestrated, in part by those who believe there is no place in Myanmar for anyone who is not a Buddhist (and especially if they are Muslim), in part by ethnic extremists in other communities who want a racially pure state, and in part by the military regime, which is content to see a degree of unrest.

Global indifference supports the regime and is leading to genocide. There is nothing to gain from not challenging the military and the notional opposition since, if they are left unchallenged, each year will see refugee crises, which are already destabilizing the region. And, sooner or later, the world will wake up to a genocide on the scale that shocked the world in Rwanda in 1994.