Sunday, June 12, 2011

Censored: Churchill's WW2 Bengali Holocaust killed 6-7 million

Churchill is our hero because of his leadership in World War 2, but his immense crimes, notably the WW2 Bengali Holocaust, the 1943-1945 Bengal Famine in which Churchill murdered 6-7 million Indians, have been deleted from history by extraordinary Anglo-American and Zionist Holocaust Denial.

In addition to his participation in British colonial war crimes in South Africa, the Sudan, Afghanistan and India as a soldier "just obeying orders", Churchill was deeply complicit as an Establishment politician, Minister and Leader in the political failures leading to World War 1; the disastrous WW2 Dardanelles campaign; the 1920s bombing of Iraqis and Kurds; political failure leading to World War 2; active promotion of Japanese entry into World War 2, pre-knowledge of the indefensibility of Singapore; pre-knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; opposition to Indian Independence from the crippling obscenity of the British Raj; the 1943-1945 Bengal Famine; the anti-Arab anti-Semitic war-time decision to partition Palestine in favour of racist Zionist colonizers; and promotion of Hindu-Muslim antipathy with resultant Partition carnage and the present Pakistan-India nuclear standoff.

These core crimes will be outlined and documented below (for a very detailed and referenced analysis of Churchill's crimes see the revised and updated 2008 version of my 1998 book "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability" (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ).

However Churchill's crimes through evil or incompetent involvement in these holocausts have been largely white-washed out of history by a huge body of Anglo-American, Zionist and Australian historians, journalists and politicians. Perhaps the most telling evidence for this entrenched UK, US and Zionist holocaust denial comes from a passage in Tariq Ali's recent book "Street Fighting". An Autobiography of the Sixties" (Verso, London, 2005).

In pages 96-98 of this "Street Fighting" book Tariq Ali describes an Oxford Union debate on a Condolence Motion occasioned by the death of Winston Churchill in 1966 and the response by a brilliant anti-Establishment, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist socialist Richard Kirkwood who listed the following of Churchill's crimes in opposing the Motion [my added dates in square brackets]: "It was Churchill who had been the most vociferous proponent of the armed intervention against the Russian Revolution of 1917; it was he who had justified the use of troops against the Welsh miners of Tonypandy [1910]; led the siege of Sidney Street in East London against a couple of anarchists [1911]; played the provocateur during the General Strike of 1926; backed the Greek far-right against the resistance in 1944; and opposed the Independence of India. It was for his consistent and long record of vindictiveness and hostility towards workers throughout the world that he was being mourned. For these reasons alone, shouted Kirkwood above the growing din, he, for one, would not stand and observe even a second's silence … He sat down to a chorus of boos, with some of his opponents literally frothing at the mouth. Kirkwood, however, was unmoved. As over 400 people stood up to observe the formalities, about twenty-five of us remained seated and were counted. Kirkwood was delighted. After all, he had separated the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks"

The extraordinary thing is that, due to British, American and Zionist holocaust denial, even a highly educated, anti-racist, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist in 1966 was apparently utterly UNAWARE of the immensity of Winston Churchill's crimes, of which arguably the most serious was the deliberate, sustained, remorseless starving to death of 6-7 million Indians in the 1943-1945 Bengali Holocaust – an atrocity larger in magnitude than the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation).

I have provided below a catalogue in chronological order of Churchill's crimes that are certainly on a par with those of arch-fiend Adolph Hitler in terms of avoidable deaths. Key avoidable death statistics associated with these British Imperial crimes are given in parenthesis (the default references are my books "Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History" and "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950" (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ). [One is compelled at this point to ask the questions, what if Churchill, like many of the British Establishment, had been anti-Jewish anti-Semitic as well as anti-Arab ant-Semitic and what if Adolph Hitler had been more "democratic" and played cricket?]

1. Involvement as a soldier in British imperial war crimes in India [1896-1899; compelled on advice to join his regiment in India after charges of homosexual abuse; avoidable deaths in British India 1757-1947 1.5 billion; avoidable deaths in the 1895-1897 famine about 1 million; 1899-1900 Indian Famine, 6-9 million deaths]; a stint in Sudan at the Battle of Obdurman [1989; horrendous British atrocities]; a stint in South Africa as a war correspondent and thence as a soldier [1899; Boer (Afrikaaner) Genocide (1899-1902): 28,000 Afrikaaner women and children died in British concentration camps; see: "Australia's secret genocide history" on MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/22128/42/ ].

2. Churchill was one of the more bellicose members of the British Cabinet prior to the outbreak of World War 1 [World War I Allied military and civilian dead totalled 5.7 million and 3.7 million, respectively, and the German-allied (Central Powers) military and civilian deaths totalled 4.0 million and 5.2 million, respectively; the troop movement-exacerbated Spanish Flu Epidemic killed 20-100 million people world wide: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/26587/42/ ].

3. Churchill was responsible for the disastrous 1915 WW1 Dardanelles Campaign in Turkey [that killed 0.2 million Allied and Turkish soldiers and helped to precipitate the 1915-1923 Turkish Armenian Genocide that killed up to 1.5 million Armenians – a genocide that the holocaust-denying Turks, racist Zionists of Apartheid Israel and US Congressmen refuse to acknowledge as such ].

4. Churchill vigorously promoted the unsuccessful UK and US invasion of Russia in response to the Russian Revolution [1917-1919; millions died in the Russian Civil War and the subsequent the Russian Famine; 7 million died in the circa 1930 Ukrainian Famine; and perhaps up to 20 million died overall in Stalinist atrocities i.e. a death toll comparable to that in World War 2].

5. Churchill was involved in the suppression of the Arab revolt in Iraq (invaded by Britain in 1914) and bombing of Kurdish villages [violent British occupation of Iraq involving everything from poison gas (1920s) to mass murder of children (today) occurred on and off in the period 1914 to the present; 1990-2008 Iraqi excess deaths 4 million; under-5 infant deaths 1.8 million; refugees currently 6 million].

6. Churchill was actively involved in the genocidal suppression of India and vehemently opposed Indian self-determination [1757-1947 excess deaths, 1.5 billion; Victorian era excess deaths, 1837-1901 0 .5 billion; 1901-1947 excess deaths 0.4 billion; avoidable deaths in the 1895-1897 famine about 1 million; 1899-1900 Indian Famine, 6-9 million deaths; 1943-1945 Bengali Holocaust deaths 6-7 million].

7. Churchill was again one of the more bellicose members of the British Parliament in the 1930s but is generally positively credited with warning the world about the rise of German Nazism [ World War 2 military deaths 25 million and civilian deaths about 67 million].

8. Churchill actively sought the entry of Japan into World War 2 in order to involve the US and hence ensure victory [35 million Chinese avoidable deaths, 1937-1945; 6-7 million Indians perished in Churchill's deliberate scorched earth policy in Bengal 1943-1945; millions more died in the WW2 Eastern Theatre; see Rusbridger, J. and Nave, E. (1991), Betrayal at Pearl Harbor. How Churchill Lured Roosevelt into World War II (Summit, New York)].

9. Churchill knew well in advance that Singapore was indefensible [8,000-15,000 killed, 130,000 captured in the 1941 Malaya campaign; 14,000 Australian, 16,000 British and 32,000 Indian troops surrendered in Singapore; see Rusbridger, J. and Nave, E. (1991), Betrayal at Pearl Harbor. How Churchill Lured Roosevelt into World War II (Summit, New York)].

10. Churchill did not warn the Americans about the impending Pearl Harbor attack [the US authorities knew too but still did not warn their military personnel in Hawaii; see Rusbridger, J. and Nave, E. (1991), Betrayal at Pearl Harbor. How Churchill Lured Roosevelt into World War II (Summit, New York)].

11. Churchill hated Muslims, Arabs and Indians and remorselessly refused food to 6-7 million starving Indians, rejected Viceroy Wavell's pleas and blocked Canadian attempts at relief [6-7 million Indian deaths – the British Bengali Holocaust death toll being numerically greater than the 5-6 million dead in the Nazi German Jewish Holocaust; see Moon, P. (1973) (editor), Wavell. The Viceroy's Journal (Oxford University Press, London) ].

12. Churchill rejected top scientific advice and supported bombing of German cities instead of protecting Atlantic convoys [0.16 million allied airmen killed; 0.6 million German civilians killed; Battle of the Atlantic almost lost; huge impact on famine in the Indian Ocean region due to halving of Allied shipping in 1943; see Snow, C.P. (1961), Science and Government (The New English Library, London); Behrens, C.B.A. (1955), Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War (Longman's, Green, London, 1955); Taylor, A.J.P. (1975), The Second World War. An Illustrated History (Hamish Hamilton, London) ].

13. Churchill acknowledged the crucial importance of maintaining Hindu-Muslim antipathy to preserve British rule [1 million dead and 18 million Muslim and Hindu refugees associated with India-Pakistan Partition in 1947].

14. Churchill over-rode strong British military objections in 1944 to decide on Partition of Palestine [in 1948 Jews were 1/3 of the population; there are now over 7 million Palestinian refugees; post-1967 Occupied Palestinian excess deaths 0.3 million, post-1967 under-5 infant deaths 0.2 million; excess deaths in countries partially or completely occupied by Apartheid Israel now total about 24 million; 4 million Occupied Palestinians still illegally and abusively imprisoned by racist Zionist goons in their own country].

15. British, American, Zionist and Australian adoption of Churchill's holocaust denying legacy, specifically his famous "history is written by the victors", has ensured continuance of Anglo-American and Zionist atrocities involving invasion, occupation, devastation and genocide [in relation to Occupiers (in parenthesis) 1950-2005 excess deaths in post-1945 occupied countries total 36 million (Belgium) 142 million (France), 24 million (Apartheid Israel), 0.7 million (Apartheid South Africa), 23 million (Portugal), 37 million (Russia), 9 million (Spain), 727 million (the UK) and 82 million (the US); 25 million Indigenous excess deaths in post-1950 US Asian Wars; 9-11 million excess deaths associated with 1990-2008 Bush Wars; post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Iraq 2 million, refugees 6 million; post-invasion excess deaths in Occupied Afghanistan 4-6 million, refugees 4 million).

Yet, to list just s few examples of UK-US holocaust ignoring, there is absolutely NO mention of the 1943-1945 Bengali Holocaust in the biography of Winston Churchill by pro-Zionist Professor Sir Martin Gilbert (Gilbert, M. (1991), Churchill. A Life (Heinemann, London); the recent histories by leading conservative Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey (Blainey, G. (2000), A Short History of the World (Viking, Melbourne), Blainey, G. (2004), A Very Short History of the World (Viking, Melbourne), Blainey, G. (2005), A Short History of the 20th Century (Penguin, Melbourne); the recent history of Britain by pro-Zionist Professor Simon Schama (Schama, S. (2002), A History of Britain (BBC, London)); or even in an important book on Denial entitled "Denial. History betrayed" by Australian historian Professor Tony Taylor (Monash University, Melbourne; see my review ""Denial" book ignores UK and US genocide crimes": http://mwcnews.net/content/view/26450/26/ ).

Another way of gauging this extraordinary English language holocaust ignoring and the ignoring of the immense crimes of Winston Churchill is to do a Yahoo Search for "Hitler's crimes" (25,000 results) and for "Churchill's crimes" (54 results, all but a mere several of these referring NOT to Winston Churchill but to horribly persecuted American Indian Professor Ward Churchill's "Crimes Against Humanity").

Perhaps, to be fair, we should leave the penultimate words to Winston Churchill himself. Here is a succession of Winston Churchill quotes that say it all.

"In the standard of life they have nothing to spare. The slightest fall from the present standard of life in India means slow starvation, and the actual squeezing out of life, not only of millions but of scores of millions of people, who have come into the world at your invitation and under the shield and protection of British power."

(Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons about Indians (1935); 1. Hansard of the House of Commons, Winston Churchill speech, Hansard Vol. 302, cols. 1920-21, 1935; quoted by Jog (1944), p195 in Jog, N.G. (1944), Churchill's Blind-Spot: India (New Book Company, Bombay).).

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." (Winston Churchill to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India (1942); 4. Diary of Amery (Secretary for India), September 9, 1942; quoted by Ziegler (1988), pp 351-352 in Ziegler, P. (1988), Mountbatten. The Official Biography (Collins, London); see also

Moon, P. (1973) (editor), Wavell. The Viceroy's Journal (Oxford University Press, London).).

"No great portion of the world population was so effectively protected from the horrors and perils of the World War as were the peoples of Hindustan. They were carried through the struggle on the shoulders of our small Island." (Churchill (1954), vol. 4, p181 in Churchill, W.S. (1954), The Second World War. Volumes I-VI (Cassell, London) – a book in which he makes NO mention of the 6-7 million Indians he murdered in 1943-1945; his statement is a gross falsehood in view of 2.4 million Indians serving in the Allied forces in WW2 and 6-7 million Indian deaths in the 1943-1935 Bengali Holocaust).

"{Churchill} cynically telling the Cabinet in February 1940 that he "regarded the Hindu-Muslim feud as the bulwark of British rule in India"" (p381, Irving, D. (1987), Churchill's War, Volume I, The Struggle for Power (Veritas, Bullsbrook, WA) ) – from which we glean (p538) "Getting America into the war remained Churchill's highest priority throughout 1941", a position consonant with the position of the 1941 UK Ambassador to Japan: "I had, moreover, given it as my considered opinion in October 1941 that Japan's former desire to avoid war with the United States at almost any cost could no longer be counted upon as a factor in the situation should Japan feel herself to be finally driven into a corner ... there can be no doubt that the absence of any British moderating influence, whether at Washington or Tokyo, increased the chances of that breakdown which eventually occurred" (Sir R. Craigie, British Ambassador to Japan in 1941, in his final report to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden (1943); Report of Sir R. Craigie (former British Ambassador to Japan) to Mr. Eden (British Foreign Secretary) in 1943, reproduced in Rusbridger & Nave (1991), Appendix I; Rusbridger, J. and Nave, E. (1991), Betrayal at Pearl Harbor. How Churchill Lured Roosevelt into World War II (Summit, New York)).

"History is written by the victor", an aphorism often attributed to Winston Churchill.

Conclusion

History ignored yields history repeated. This extraordinary holocaust commission, holocaust denial and holocaust ignoring is an object lesson of this aphorism in a 21st century in which the British Imperialism of past centuries has been transmuted into an equally violent and destructive Anglo-American imperialism (excess deaths in the 1990-2008 Bush wars now total 9-11 million). According to the prestigious American Association for the Advancement for Science (AAAS) the world is facing acutely serious nuclear, greenhouse and poverty threats – 25,000 nuclear weapons (including the 15,000 of the US and the 200 of nuclear terrorist, war criminal, racist Apartheid Israel); there is a Climate Emergency in which the current 387 ppm atmospheric CO2 is already associated with huge Arctic ice melting, mass species extinctions and coral reef death and top scientists are urging a reduction to no more than 350 ppm; and 16 million people already die avoidably each year from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease. Scientific risk management demands zero tolerance for lying.

We can no longer tolerate humanity-threatening lying – there must be general zero tolerance for lying, whether lying by omission or lying by commission. We must resolutely oppose and expose racist, warmongering, genocidal, UK, Zionist and US imperialist lying, holocaust commission and holocaust denial – enough is enough, vastly too many people have died. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity – please inform everyone you know.

Monday, January 31, 2011

The Age censors informed comment about Middle East

The Age On-line National Times section has a woeful record of censorship of informed credentialled comments about the Middle East.

Below are some examples of such censorship by what is arguably the most progressive of look-the-other-way Australia's appalling Mainstream media.

1. The Age published an article by UK-based Egyptian writer and lecturer Mona Eltahawy on the current Egyptian Revolution and entitled “All Egyptians are being liberated from the burden of history” (The Age, Melbourne, 31 January 2011: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/all-egyptians-are-being-liberated-from-the-burden-of-history-20110130-1a9qi.html ). The Age is arguably Australia’s most liberal Mainstream medium, but it apparently declined to publish the carefully researched, informed and credentialled views of Dr Gideon Polya while publishing about 20 views of mostly anonymous bloggers. This is what The Age’s Censor(s) decided that its readers should not read or know:

Excellent article. One hopes that the Egyptian people will throw out the US-backed, pro-Israel Mubarak dictatorship and achieve a genuine democracy, setting an example for the whole Arab world.

A key aspect of the dead hand of Anglo-American and Anglo-American-backed Israeli domination of the Arab world is the deadly deprivation of 300 million Arabs outside the Gulf States. This has a dreadful consequence measured as avoidable mortality (excess mortality, excess deaths, avoidable death, deaths that did not have to happen) that can be measured using UN data as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected fro a decently governed, peaceful country with same demographics.

Annual avoidable mortality in Egypt under Mubarak has been 0.22% (2003 data), this meaning today that each year 180,000 Egyptians die avoidably from deprivation out of a population of 82 million and that about 16 million have died avoidably from deprivation since 1950 (see "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950").

The annual avoidable death rate of 0.22% for Egyptians under Mubarak can be compared with 0.0% (Arab Gulf States), 0.05% for Western Europe, 0.38% (South Asia), 0.97% (non-Arab Africa) and 1.8% (Indigenous Australians).

Of acute relevance to the Egyptian tragedy is the 50% increase in international cereal grain prices in the last year (Google "World Food Situation").

Anglo-American-backed, genocidal colonization of Palestine, US-backed Israeli occupation of territory of all its neighbours, US backing of Arab dictators and the Anglo-American-imposed Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide (4.4 million dead, 1990-2011) has devastated the Arab world.

All decent folk hope that Egypt will arise again.”

Astonishingly by about 11 am The Age removed the article itself which had thus only lasted a few hours for readers who get up at 7am. Is The Age now censoring its own writers on behalf of the Zionists? If so it appears that Mona Eltahawy’s “crime” was to mention the gross and acutely relevant Israeli violation of the Palestinians in an article about the gross violation of Egyptians’ human rights by US-backed, pro-Israel Mubarak dictatorship. This appears to be an extraordinary example of Mainstream media censorship operating at several levels to maintain a pro-Zionist and pro-US narrative in the Western Murdochracies.

2. The Age published an article by UK ME reporter Richard Spencer about the Egyptian Revolution and entitled “”Gambling on life without Mubarak” (The Age On-line national Times, 1 February 2001: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/gambling-on-life-without-mubarak-20110131-1ab32.html ). By 2 pm The Age had published about 30 comments (all but anonymous) but had evidently decide not to publish the informed, credentialed comment from Dr Gideon Polya made about 6 hours previously – this is what The Age’s Censor(s) decided that its readers should not read or know:

“Decent people hope for removal of the US-backed, pro-Israel dictator Mubarak, flowering of democracy in Egypt and removal of the deadly and malignant legacy of 2 centuries of violent Western colonialism and hegemony in the Middle East.

Anglo-American-backed, genocidal colonization of Palestine, US-backed Israeli occupation of territory of all its neighbours, US backing of Arab dictators such as Mubarak and the Anglo-American-imposed Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide (4.4 million dead, 1990-2011) have devastated the Arab world.

Annual avoidable mortality (excess mortality, excess deaths, avoidable deaths) in Egypt under Mubarak has been 0.22% (2003 data) i.e. each year 180,000 Egyptians die avoidably from deprivation out of a population of 82 million. About 16 million have died avoidably from deprivation since 1950 (see "Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950").

The annual avoidable death rate of 0.22% for Egyptians under Mubarak can be compared with 0.0% (Arab Gulf States), 0.05% for Western Europe, 0.38% (South Asia), 0.97% (non-Arab Africa) and 1.8% (Indigenous Australians).

Of acute relevance to the Egyptian Revolution is the 50% increase in international cereal grain prices in the last year (due to increasing meat consumption, mandated biofuel, man-made climate change and urban expansion; Google "World Food Situation" and "Biofuel Genocide").

Of course it is not just Egyptians who cry out for democracy. Of 12 million Palestinians only the adults of the 1.5 million Palestinian Israelis are able to vote for the government that currently rules all of Palestine plus bits of Lebanon and Syria. Hamas which gained 76 out of 132 seats in 2006 Occupied Palestinian elections is holed up in the Gaza Concentration Camp.”

Friday, January 28, 2011

The Age censorship re feminism, intergenerational inequity, mass infanticide & educational apartheid

On The Age newspaper online version published a sensible article by feminist Anne Summers about irrelevant public interest in the personal attributes and personal lives of female leaders. Thus there has been great media interest in the personal attributes and personal lives of Australia new Federal Labor PM Julia Gillard (49, childless, unmarried) and the new Leader of the Tasmanian Labor Minority Government Lara Giddings (38, single, childless, unmarried).

The article entitled “” Hairstyles the least of leaders’ worries” (see The Age, On-line, National Times, 27 January 2011: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/hairstyles-the-least-of-leaders-worries-20110127-1a5n8.html ) attracted 61 comments (all but 4 anonymous). However The Age declined to publish the following successive comments from a named person, Dr Gideon Polya: "Excellent article. The physical attributes, marital status and childlessness of politicians are utterly irrelevant to the performance of their job.

However one suspects that such issues might be raised, not merely from continuing ignorance, prejudice or sexism, but as "straw men" diversions to hide the real issues of the responsibilities our politicians have toward mothers and children. Examples below.

1. According to top climate scientists the world must reach zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050; Australia, a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution, must achieve this by 2020; and it can be done (see the acclaimed Zero Carbon Australia by 2020 or ZCA2020 Report. of Beyond Zero Emissions; Google BZE). Yet the Lib-Labs continue to threaten Australia's children with disaster through inaction on man-made climate change. Australia's domestic plus Exported GHG pollution was 4% bigger under Labor in 2008 than under the Coalition in 2006. PM Gillard's hairstyle, marital status and childlessness are irrelevant - the real issue is this gross failure on intergenerational equity.

2. 311,000 under-5 year old infants die annually in US-, US Alliance- and Australia-occupied Afghanistan where post-invasion infant deaths total 2.6 million.(UNICEF). Ms Gillard's childlessness is irrelevant - the real issue is that the US Alliance is violently imposing childlessness on 300,000 Afghan subject mothers annually in gross violation of the Geneva Convention.

3. Ms Gillard's elocution is grating but irrelevant to the real issue of Educational Apartheid in Australia - the 2 out of 3 Australian kids attending state schools are disproportionately excluded from university, top universities and top courses."

And:

"My carefully researched comments on this article made under my own name evidently didn't make it. In short, the personal attributes and lives of politicians are irrelevant.

Irrelevant obsession with the childlessness of particular female politicians should be replaced by trenchant criticism of these same female politicians outrageously ignoring gross violation of the rights of the child e.g.

(1) Intergenerational Inequity (Lib-Lab inaction on man-made climate change).

(2) Passive Mass Infanticide (Lib-Lab complicity in 2.6 million post-invasion Afghan under-5 infant deaths, 90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes).

(3) Educational Apartheid (the two thirds of Australian children attending state schools are disproportionately excluded from university, top universities and top courses by the Lib-Labs)."

The Age evidently didn't want its readers to be exposed to the Awful Truth of most Australian women and men - the 85-90% who are Lib-Lab voters - being complicit in bad treatment of children.

Scholars, writers & journalists on censorship

Preface.

A precursor of this alphabetical compilation was an account originally published by Gideon Polya, "Rare ethical writers expose Mainstream media lying", Countercurrents, May 2010:

http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290510.htm.


The most palpable reality in the Western democracies is that Mainstream Media massively lie by omission and lie by commission. Normally people try to cover their tracks when they lie but numerous examples show that the lying of Mainstream Media is all too readily discerned.

Thus, for example, “holocaust” is the death of a huge number of people and “genocide” is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention as “ acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ). However there are major holocaust and genocide events, past and present, that are almost completely ignored by Mainstream Media. And, of course, holocaust ignoring and genocide ignoring are vastly worse than repugnant holocaust denial and genocide denial because while denial admits of the possibility of public debate, media ignoring simply obviates any such public discussion.

I have analyzed such holocaust ignoring and genocide ignoring by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the ostensibly authoritative Australian equivalent of the UK BBC. The ABC has a search engine that allows one to “search the entire ABC site” and one can use this to compare ABC reportage with the results of Google searches. For example, in the 1943-1945 Bengali Holocaust (the first World War 2 atrocity to be described as a “holocaust”) the British deliberately starved to death 6-7 million Indians (see BBC, “The Bengal Famine”: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html ), an atrocity greater in magnitude than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million Jews killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation).

However the ABC Search results/Google Search result for the phrase “Bengali Holocaust” is 0/6,930 whereas it is 101/206,000 for the phrase “Jewish Holocaust”. A similar ABC Search/Google Search analysis has been performed in to relation to 23 past and present holocaust and genocide atrocities ranging from “Aboriginal Holocaust” (0/3,000) to Palestinian Genocide (0/44, 800) (for the shocking details see “Australian ABC ignores holocaust and genocide atrocities ”: http://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/australian-abc-ignores-huge-genocidal-realities ).

Many more examples can be given of the ABC and other Mainstream Media ignoring huge, Elephant-in-the-Room realities. Indeed I have created a website “Mainstream Media Lying” to progressively document this gross abuse of truth, ethics and morality (see: http://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/home ).




AARONS, Mark.

Mark Aarons and J. Loftus on “the holes in history” (see Mark Aarons and J. Loftus “The Secret War Against the Jews”): “The hidden parts of history, the covert sides, are far more orderly and rational, but can be seen and understood only if you are told where to look. The holes in history are what makes sense of the thing.”


AUSTEN, Jane.

Jane Austen (brilliant English novelist) had a sceptical attitude to the “official version” e.g. that Richard III had murdered the Princes in the Tower of London: “...I am rather inclined to suppose him a very respectable Man;...but it also has been declared that he did not kill his two Nephews, which I am inclined to believe true; & if this is the case, it may also be that he did not kill his wife...” (Jane Austen on Richard III in her Juvenilia writing “The History of England”, 1791). Jane Austen has also posed a germane series of questions that are directly relevant to this problem of public honesty. In her novel “Northanger Abbey” the heroine, Miss Catherine Morland, affected by the somewhat Gothic atmosphere of the Tilney family home and the romantic horrors of Mrs Radcliffe's Gothic novels, conceives the fantasy that General Tilney (the father of her beloved, Henry Tilney) has done away with the late Mrs Tilney. Henry reproves Catherine as follows:

"If I understand you rightly, you have formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to -. Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?”"

[My answers to Henry Tilney's questions are “Yes! Yes! Yes!” ]


BURCHETT, Wilfrid.

Wilfrid Burchett (outstanding Australian journalist who was severely persecuted for reporting World War 2, and the Korean and Indo-China Wars from the Communist side) writing to his brother on 12 October 1969 (see Ben Kiernan, editor, “Burchett. Reporting the other side of the world 1939- 1983): “ Thank goodness I have been able to maintain my independence throughout all these years, awfully difficult from all viewpoints though it was. To be able to speak to Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Cambodians as a friend but completely independent, enables me to do and say things others may not. But now and again this yields positive results.”


CAREY, Peter.

Peter Carey (outstanding Australian novelist) on media censorship (panel discussion on ABC TV Q&A, Monday 24 May 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2901978.htm ):

“TONY JONES [ABC presenter]: All right, let's hear from Peter [re truth and lying in public life]..

PETER CAREY: I keep on thinking about the role of the medial generally in this and how the media is always so continually hysterical about people lying and not telling the truth. And if I really think there's a big problem in our society today, it's that the media is not telling the truth to people and they know what it is. If you really want to know what's happening the world, you go out and get drunk with journalists and they will tell you what isn't in the papers. So they're living - these guys are living every day with the reality of a proprietor, say, or a corporation who owns them will not permit them to tell what they know to be true. So, okay, this guy lied. He's not a good person because he did it but I think the hysteria is about a bigger, bigger issue, which is we are not being honestly reported to. And if there was, you know, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction but...

MALCOLM FRASER [former Australian PM}: But they knew he didn't.

PETER CAREY: Yeah.

TONY JONES: They knew he didn't, you say?

MALCOLM FRASER: Yes.

PETER CAREY: Yes.

TONY JONES: You mean the Howard Government knew he didn't?

MALCOLM FRASER: It should have. I think the British Government did, the American Government did and the Australian Government should have.”


KINGSOLVER, Barbara.

Barbara Kingsolver in her great novel "The Lacuna" (lacuna meaning hiatus, blank, missing part, gap, cavity, or empty space) has Russian Communist revolutionary and theorist Leon Trotsky (Lev) and his assistant Van have the following discussion about media (part 3, p159, Faber & Faber, London, 2009 edition): ""But newspapers have a duty to truth", Van said. Lev [Trotsky] clicked his tongue. "They tell the truth only as the exception. Zola [French novelist of "J'accuse" fame] wrote that the mendacity of the press could be could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times , speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary." Van got up from his chair to gather the cast-off newspapers. Lev took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. " I don't mean to offend the journalists; they aren't any different from other people. They're merely the megaphones of other people" … [Trotsky observes to his assistant Shepherd] “Soli, let me tell you. The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know”” (p218).


MILLAR, Robert.

Robert C. Millar, a United Press correspondent covering the Korean War in 1952 (quoted by John Pilger: http://evatt.labor.net.au/news/201.html ) “There are certain facts and stories from Korea that editors and publishers have printed which were pure fabrication ... Many of us who sent the stories knew they were false, but we had to write them because they were official releases from responsible military headquarters and were released for publication even though the people responsible knew they were untrue”

PILGER, John.

John Pilger (outstanding expatriate Australian UK writer and journalist) reviewing “The First Casualty” by Phillip Knightley (Evatt Foundation, 13 March 2003. “The people don't know and can't know”: http://evatt.labor.net.au/news/201.html ): “When I read the first edition of this remarkable book twenty-five years ago, I was struck by the following quotations. During the First World War, Prime Minister David Lloyd George told C P Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: "If the people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know and can't know." The truth was reported, insisted The Times correspondent, Sir Phillip Gibbs (knighted for his services), "apart from the naked realism of horrors and losses, and criticism of the facts…Like [William Howard] Russell's, the best journalism is the first draft of history: for that we are indebted to Phillip Knightley, whose clear-sighted and principled book throws down a challenge to journalists to examine their role in the promotion of the war, in propaganda and its myths, and the subliminal pressures applied by organisations like the BBC, whose news is often selected on the basis of a spurious establishment "credibility". The following pages ought to be read by every young reporter and by those who retain pride in our craft of truth-telling, no matter how unpopular and unpalatable the truth. The rest is not journalism.”



QUAKERS (FRIENDS)


The Religious Society of Friends is a name used by a range of independent religious organizations which all trace their origins to a Christian movement in mid-17th century England and Wales. The Friends are otherwise known as the Quakers because of their commitment to pacifism. George Fox was an important 17th century founder of the Friends movement (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_Society_of_Friends ) .

The Preamble to the Quaker document “Speak Truth to Power” (1955): “Speak truth to power. A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence. A study of international conflict prepared for the American Friends Service Committee.

A NOTE TO THE READER.

For more than thirty-five years the American Friends Service Committee has worked among those who suffer, recognizing no enemies, and seeking only to give expression to the love of God in service. Out of this experience, gained under all kinds of governments and amidst all kinds of people, has come some appreciation of the problems of peacemaking in the modern world. This has led the Committee to issue over the past five years a series of studies on possible ways to ease tension and move toward international peace. The series began in 1949 with the publication of The United States and the Soviet Union. It was continued in 1951 with Steps to Peace and in 1952 with Toward Security through Disarmament. This is the fourth of the series, while a fifth, dealing with the future of the United Nations, is now in preparation.

All of these reports have been prepared for the American Friends Service Committee by study groups convened especially for the purpose. They have been approved for publication by the Committee's Executive Board-not as official pronouncements, but in the interest of stimulating public discussion of the issues raised, and in the hope that such discussion will contribute to the formation of policies that will bring peace.

The other studies have been developed on the assumption that reliance on military power is so integral in the policy of every major nation, that the most practical approach to peacemaking is to suggest specific next steps to reduce tension and thereby move gradually away from the reliance on force. Many other individuals and organizations have made similar suggestions, so that discussion of such alternatives to present policy has been fairly widespread. A large area of agreement has indeed been reached, and many Americans both in and out of government concur on the kind of constructive measures needed.

Yet American policy has continued to develop in the opposite direction. This study attempts to discover why this should be so. It finds its answer not in the inadequacy of statesmanship or in the machinations of evil men, but in what seem to the drafters of this report to be the unsound premises upon which policy is based. Most Americans accept without question the assumption that winning the peace depends upon a simultaneous reliance upon military strength and long-range programs of a positive and constructive character. They accept also the assumption that totalitarian communism is the greatest evil that now threatens men and that this evil can be met only by violence, or at least by the threat of violence. We believe these assumptions cannot be sustained, and therefore that the policies based on them are built upon sand. We have here attempted to analyze our reasons, and without denying the value of proposals that might ease present tensions, to suggest another and less widely considered alternative built on a different assumption, namely, that military power in today's world is incompatible with freedom, incapable of providing security, and ineffective in dealing with evil.

Our title, Speak Truth to Power, taken from a charge given to Eighteenth Century Friends, suggests the effort that is made to speak from the deepest insight of the Quaker faith, as this faith is understood by those who prepared this study. We speak to power in three senses:

  • To those who hold high places in our national life and bear the terrible responsibility of making decisions for war or peace.
  • To the American people who are the final reservoir of power in this country and whose values and expectations set the limits for those who exercise authority.
  • To the idea of Power itself, and its impact on Twentieth Century life.

Our truth is an ancient one: that love endures and overcomes; that hatred destroys; that what is obtained by love is retained, but what is obtained by hatred proves a burden. This truth, fundamental to the position which rejects reliance on the method of war, is ultimately a religious perception, a belief that stands outside of history. Because of this we could not end this study without discussing the relationship between the politics of time with which men are daily concerned and the politics of eternity which they too easily ignore.

But our main purpose is not to restate the many prophetic expositions of the pacifist position. Beginning with The Sermon on the Mount, the Christian tradition alone has produced a library of enduring religious statements, and the same can be said for the literature of other great faiths. The urgent need is not to preach religious truth, but to show how it is possible and why it is reasonable to give practical expression to it in the great conflict that now divides the world.

In recent years, outside of theological circles, and infrequently there, there has been little able discussion of the pacifist point of view. Pacifism has been cataloged as the private witness of a small but useful minority, or as the irresponsible action of men who are so overwhelmed with the horror of war that they fail to see that greater evil sometimes exists and that the sacrifices of war may be necessary to turn it back. Whether condemned or in a sense valued, pacifism has been considered irrelevant to the concrete problems of international relations.

This study attempts to show its relevance. It is focused on the current international crisis. It begins with a survey of the same concrete problems with which any discussion of world affairs must deal. It is concerned with problems of security, the growth of Russian and American power, the challenge to American interests presented by Soviet Communism. It recognizes the existence of evil and the need to resist it actively. It does not see peacemaking as the attempt to reconcile evil with good. It speaks to the problem of inevitable conflict.

We believe it is time for thoughtful men to look behind the label "pacifist," to deal fairly with the ideas and beliefs which sustain those whose approach to foreign policy begins with the rejection of reliance upon military power. We speak to the great majority of Americans who still stand opposed to war, who expect no good of armies and H-bombs. Their reluctant acceptance of a dominantly military policy has been based on the belief that military power provides the necessary security without which the constructive work that builds peace cannot be undertaken. They are for a military program because they feel they must be. "There is no alternative."

We have tried to present an alternative and to set forth our reasons for believing that it offers far greater hope and involves no greater risk than our present military policy. Our effort is incomplete, but we believe it is a step toward the serious examination of a nonviolent approach to world problems. Is there a method for dealing with conflict which does not involve us in the betrayal of our own beliefs, either through acquiescence to our opponent's will or through resorting to evil means to resist him? Is there a way to meet that which threatens us, without relying on our ability to cause pain to the human being who embodies the threat?

We believe there is a way, and that it lies in the attempt to give practical demonstration to the effectiveness of love in human relations. We believe able men, pacifist and non-pacifist alike, have taken this initial insight, developed it, demonstrated it, and built understanding and support for it in field after field of human relations. In view of this, it is strange that almost no one has made a serious attempt to explore its implications in international affairs. There is now almost no place in our great universities, few lines in the budgets of our great foundations, and little space in scholarly journals, for thought and experimentation that begin with the unconditional rejection of organized mass violence and seek to think through the concrete problems of present international relations in new terms. It is time there was.

New conditions demand new responses. We have tried here to suggest a new response. We hope the reader will bring to it an open mind, and if in any way challenged, will join in a serious effort to explore farther the lines of thought we have suggested.

Submitted to the Executive Board and approved for publication March 2, 1955.

STEPHEN G. CARY, Chairman

JAMES E. BRISTOL
AMIYA CHAKRAVARTY
A. BURNS CHALMERS
WILLIAM B. EDGERTON
HARROLP A. FREEMAN
ROBERT GILMORE

CECIL E. HINSHAW
MILTON MAYER
A. J. MUSTE
CLARENCE E. PICKETT
ROBERT PICKUS
NORMAN J. WHITNEY.” [1].

[1]. Friends (Quaker) document “Speak Truth to Power” (1955): “Speak truth to power. A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence. A study of international conflict prepared for the American Friends Service Committee, 2 March 1955: http://www.quaker.org/sttp.html .


RATHER, Dan

Dan Rather, eminent American journalist speaks out on journalist and Mainstream media self-censorship.

Daniel Irvin "Dan" Rather, Jr. (born 1931) is an American journalist, former news anchor for the CBS Evening News and now managing editor and anchor of a television news magazine, Dan Rather Reports, on the cable channel HDNet. Rather was anchor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years, from March 9, 1981, to March 9, 2005. He also contributed to CBS' 60 Minutes. Rather was involved in controversy about a disputed news report involving the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, subsequently left CBS Evening News in 2005 and left the CBS network altogether after 43 years in 2006 (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Rather ).

Dan Rather on press self-censorship to the National Coalition Against Censorship (2008): “Therein, I believe, lies the central challenge of this cause to defend First Amendment rights: To make it understood from sea to shining sea, in towns big and small, that the First Amendment is not some scoundrel’s refuge for elites real or imagined, but a bulwark against tyranny for all Americans.

In the case of the press, the guarantee of a free press represented the Framers’ implicit understanding that journalists had an essential role to play in our democracy—that without the raw material of information, We the People would not be able to govern ourselves wisely or well.

So it is not for the press but for the people that we fight for access to the corridors of power, as the people’s surrogates. It is not for the press but for the people that we pressure our elected representatives and our candidates for office to answer the questions that the people might ask, if they had the opportunity. And it is not for the press but for the people that we defend (and call for our publishers and news owners to defend) our right to print and broadcast the truth—straight, no chaser.

If journalists hope to enlist our fellow Americans in the defense of the Constitutional rights that are there for all of us, we must inspire in them a sense that we are using these rights with a sense of Constitutional purpose. That is not to say that they are in any sense a privilege, rather than inalienable rights; it is to say that these rights will be taken seriously—and we will be taken seriously—only to the degree that we put them in practice towards serious ends.

And we might recognize that, when we work towards trivial ends, we undermine our case and we play a hand in eroding our hard-won freedoms.

I will say, in closing, that one of the most pernicious ways in which we do this is through self-censorship, which may be the worst censorship of all. We have seen too much self-censorship in the news in recent years, and as I say this please know that I do not except myself from this criticism.

As Mark Twain once said, “We write frankly and freely but then we ‘modify’ before we print.” Why do we modify the free and frank expression of journalistic truth? We do it out of fear: Fear for our jobs. Fear that we’ll catch hell for it. Fear that someone will seek to hang a sign around our neck that says, in essence, “Unpatriotic.”

We modify with euphemisms such as “collateral damage” or “less than truthful statements.” We modify with passive-voice constructions such as “mistakes were made.” We modify with false equivalencies that provide for bad behavior the ready-made excuse that “everybody’s doing it.” And sometimes we modify with an eraser—simply removing offending and inconvenient truths from our reporting.” [1].

[1]. Dan Rather's remarks at NCAC's Annual Celebration of Free Speech and Its Defendents, National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), 29 October 2008: http://ncac.org/Dan-Rathers-Remarks-at-the-Annual-Celebration .


ROY, Arundhati.

Arundhati Roy (brilliant humanitarian Indian writer) on simultaneous First World holocaust commission and holocaust denial (see Arundhati Roy in “The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile”): “the ultimate privilege of the élite is not just their deluxe lifestyles, but deluxe lifestyles with a clear conscience.”


RUSSELL, Howard.

William Howard Russell, who was sent by The Times (UK) to cover the Crimean War, in a letter to his editor (see: http://evatt.labor.net.au/news/201.html ) : “Am I to tell these things? or am I to hold my tongue?" To which his editor Delane replied, "Continue to tell as much truth as you can."


SUGIMOTO, Yoshio.

Professor Yoshio Sugimoto commenting on press censorship via the “reporters' clubs” in Japan (see his book “An Introduction to Japanese Society”, Cambridge University Press, 1997; pp211-215): “ Japan 's mass media tend to be docile because of the way in which information-gathering units are based on government and business-establishments. Government ministries, prefectural and municipal governments, police headquarters, and business and union organizations all provide reporters of major print and electronic media with office space called kisha kurabu (reporters' clubs). These clubrooms are normally equipped with telephones and other communications machines, service personnel, and other facilities. Media organizations use them free of charge. In almost all cases, club membership is restricted to the reporters of major news organizations and is not open to journalists from minor presses or to foreign journalists. …By constantly feeding information to reporters in this environment, representatives of the institutions which provide club facilities can obliquely control the way in which it is reported to the public. Reporters cannot risk being excluded from their club because they would then lose access to this regular flow of information.”


VOLTAIRE

Voltaire's "Candide" criticizes corruption of English freedom of speech by "party feeling and party spirit"



François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a brilliant and prolific French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of belief. His polemical novel “Candide” is critical of the passivity and acceptance induced the philosophy of optimism, that this is the best of possible worlds (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire ).



In Chapter 25 of Voltaire's novel "Candide", entitled "Visit to Lord Pococurante, Venetian nobleman"
: "Martin noticed some shelves laden with English books. "I trust", he said, "that a republican must take pleasure in the majority of those books written with so much freedom". "Yes", replied Pococurante, "it's a fine thing to write what one thinks; it's the privilege of man. In all Italy people write only what they don't think; those who inhabit the native land of the Caesars and the Antonines don't care to have an idea without permission of a Dominican. I would be happy with the freedom that inspires the English geniuses if party feeling and party spirit didn't corrupt everything estimable in that precious freedom."

The Australian censorship re man-made climate change & extreme events

THE AUSTRALIAN newspaper censorship re man-made climate change & attendant disastrous extreme events

The Australian newspaper is the national flagship of the Murdoch News Limited Media Empire in Australia. The Murdoch Empire controls about 70% of city dailies in Australia and has a disproportionate influence on Australian public life – hence the term , originally coined by outstanding expatriate Australian journalist John Pilger, “Murdochracy” to describe Western democracies in which Murdoch is the effective “king-maker”.

The pro-war, pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-oil, pro-fossil fuel, pro-US, pro-Zionist Murdoch media in Australia- most notably The Australian and the Melbourne tabloid newspaper The Herald-Sun - are notorious for climate change denialism.

On 17 January The Australian published an article about the devastating Queensland floods and the demand by Greens leader and senator Dr Bob Brown that the coal industry be taxed to help pay for the cost of such extreme events linked to greenhouse gas pollution. The article was entitled “Miners attack Greens leader Bob Brown over call for coal producers to fund flood clean-up”: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/queensland-floods/miners-attack-greens-leader-bob-brown-over-call-for-coal-producers-to-fund-flood-clean-up/story-fn7iwx3v-1225989350682 .

The Australian published 88 comments about the article (all but 7 anonymous) but did not publish the following carefully researched, informed, credentialed comment from a 5-decade career scientist, Dr Gideon Polya, submitted under his own name: “Dr Bob Brown is essentially correct. Fossil fuel burning successively increases atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs), sea temperature, evaporation and precipitation.

We know that breathing in pollutants from the burning of coal, gas, oil and cigarettes is associated with lung disease but we cannot prove that a specific case of lung cancer is due to any of these causes.

Similarly, while man-made global warming has been associated with a huge increase in extreme flood events throughout the world, because the weather is variable one cannot attribute a particular event such as the La Nina-linked Queensland floods to climate change.

However the message is clear from scientists that to avoid lung disease and extreme weather events such as the disastrous Queensland floods we must stop burning coal, oil and gas and remove the resultant atmospheric pollution (atmospheric CO2 must be urgently reduced to about 300 ppm; see "Climate change & flooding" c/- 300.org).”

What Dr Brown said: “Burning coal is a major cause of global warming. This industry, which is 75 per cent owned outside Australia, should help pay the cost of the predicted more severe and more frequent floods, droughts and bushfires in coming decades.”

For 50 expert, science-informed, referenced opinions about the link between man-made global warming and increased precipitation events see the following detailed compendium c/- 300.org and entitled “Climate change & floods: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/climate-change-floods .

The Age censorship re Australian intellectuals

THE AGE censors informed, credentialled intellectual comments on Australian intellectuals

Ask any forthright scientist and you will discover concern about the huge gap between scientific perception and public perception (notably over man-made climate change).

Part of the problem lies with scientists and academics in general – they are mostly intimidated from speaking out by well-founded fears in relation to institutional or corporate Codes of Conduct; sullying hard-won scientific reputation through involvement in the hurly-burly of public debate; and loss of research grants. In addition, scientists are highly focused on their research targets and are very busy people working 6-7 days per week.

For a detailed analysis of intellectual self-censorship in ‘look the other way” Australia see Dr Gideon Polya, “ Current academic censorship and self-censorship in Australian universities”, Public University Journal, Volume 1, Conference Supplement, pp20-24 (2003): http://www.publicuni.org/journal/volume/1/jpu_1_s_polya.pdf .

For a further hard-hitting analysis of academic censorship and self-censorship see Dr Gideon Polya, "Crisis in our universities", ABC Radio National , Ockham's Razor, 19 August 2001:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s347931.htm .

A major part of the problem is Mainstream media (MSM) censorship of scientists and intellectuals – even if scientists and intellectuals are prepared to comment the MSM may censor them. Some examples involving The Age newspaper (Melbourne), arguably Australia's most progressive Mainstream medium, are provided below.

1. Australian writer and journalist Brigid Delaney wrote an amusing article entitled “Bogan benefits lost on smug intellectuals” (The Age On-line National Times, 28 December 2010: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/bogan-benefits-lost-on-smug-intellectuals-20101227-198g0.html?comments=80#comments ) in which she compared the lumpen proletarian, plebeian “bogns” with the “intellectuals”, the latter being dismissed thus: “As there are more intellectuals than there are intellectual jobs, they have to share the spoils. Thus we have intellectuals doing part-time gigs teaching at La Trobe, undertaking part-funded, postdoctoral work at Melbourne Uni, writing for broadsheets over the summer break, being casual producers at Radio National or novelists on the dole. The junior intellectuals deeply resent the older intellectuals who took all the good jobs - the staff writers, tenured academics, the Booker Prize-nominated author, the film reviewer for The Monthly.”

The Age published 80 comments on the article (all but 5 evidently anonymous) but failed to publish the following successive informed and credentialed comments from a named academic intellectual Dr Gideon Polya, which could, accordingly, be taken as representative of what The Age does not want its readers to read or know.

(i) Very droll indeed but there is a deadly serious side to intellectuals in Australia as opposed to the "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi" Lib-Lab yobs.

1. To state the obvious, it is an increasingly dangerous world and we need to think hard about how to get out of the looming climate catastrophe. Indeed Australian intellectual and Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty has stated "We are in real danger"; intellectual Professor Peter Seligman (bionic ear electrical engineer, University of Melbourne) has published a book "Australian Sustainable Energy - By the Numbers" (100% renewable energy for Australia by 2030 for $250 billion); and 20 engineer intellectuals of Beyond Zero Emissions have published their much-acclaimed ZCA 2020 Report (100% renewable energy for Australia by 2020 for $370 billion).

2. Of course intellectuals don't just include Nobel Prize-winning medical scientists and Planet-saving engineers - also included are the roughly 25% of Australians who are university graduates (from university-educated taxi drivers to brain surgeons). And don't forget TAFE graduates (e.g. my plumber belongs to Probus) - indeed the people in addition to university students to whom I give lectures about climate change are intellectuals (e.g. University of the Third Age, Probus and climate action group intellectuals). Remember also the Aboriginal intellectuals who kept Australia's now-devastated flora and fauna intact for 50,000 years.

3. Australia leads the world in intellectuals - Google "Education Index" and discover that we top the world together with New Zealand, Finland, Denmark and Cuba.

4. 50% of undergraduate university tuition in Australia is done by impoverished, part-time "contract" intellectuals.

(ii). Censorship limits bogan and societal improvement. My earlier comment didn’t make it – a self-censored version below.

1. To state the obvious, it is an increasingly dangerous world and we need to think hard about how to get out of the looming climate catastrophe. Indeed Australian intellectual and Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty has stated "We are in real danger"; intellectual Professor Peter Seligman (bionic ear electrical engineer, University of Melbourne) has published a book "Australian Sustainable Energy - By the Numbers" (100% renewable energy for Australia by 2030 for $250 billion); and 20 engineer intellectuals of Beyond Zero Emissions have published their much-acclaimed ZCA 2020 Report (100% renewable energy for Australia by 2020 for $370 billion).

2. Of course intellectuals don't just include Nobel Prize-winning medical scientists and Planet-saving engineers - also included are the roughly 25% of Australians who are university graduates (from university-educated taxi drivers to brain surgeons). And don't forget TAFE graduates (e.g. my plumber belongs to Probus) - indeed the people in addition to university students to whom I give lectures about climate change are intellectuals (e.g. University of the Third Age, Probus and climate action group intellectuals). Remember also the Aboriginal intellectuals who kept Australia's now-devastated flora and fauna intact for 50,000 years.

3. Australia leads the world in intellectuals - Google "Education Index" and discover that we top the world together with New Zealand, Finland, Denmark and Cuba.

4. 50% of undergraduate university tuition in Australia is done by impoverished, part-time "contract" intellectuals.

The Age censorship re US Alliance & 20 million Muslim refugees

THE AGE censors informed comments about refugees & Australia's complicity in US Alliance generation of 20 million Muslim refugees


The Age recently published an article by humane Australian writer David Marr entitled “How did this boat get so close to the coast?” about the December 2010 Christmas Island tragedy in which possibly 40 refugees perished as their boat was dashed to pieces on the cliff (The Age On-line, National Times, 16 December 2010: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/how-did-this-boat-get-so-close-to-the-coast-20101215-18ya6.html ).

The Age published 142 comments (all but 9 anonymous) about the article but evidently did not want its readers to read my carefully researched comments on “cause and effect” in this disaster:

"Excellent, humane article by David Marr.

Missing from public "cause and effect" discussion is who created about 20 million Muslim refugees in the first place, the breakdown being roughly 7 million Palestinians, 5-6 million Iraqis, 3-4 million Afghans, 2 million Somalis and 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated in NW Pakistan by US Alliance war policies.

Former PM Kevin Rudd described those trying to find a safe haven for desperate Muslim refugees as "scum of the earth who should rot in hell". How then does one describe the Zionist and neocon warmongers of the US Alliance responsible for generating over 20 million Muslim refugees?

Also ignored in "cause and effect" public discussion is what the refugees are fleeing. Post-invasion violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories (ignoring Occupied Somalia, Occupied Haiti, robot-bombed Pakistan etc) total 0.3 million, 2.5 million and 4.9 million, respectively, these estimates being consonant with post-invasion under-5 infant deaths of 0.2 million, 0.8 million and 2.6 million, respectively (UN Population Division data; Google Muslim Holocaust, Muslim Genocide).

Violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths associated with the US Alliance War on Terror now total 8 million as compared to 5-6 million Jews killed in the Jewish Holocaust (1 in 6 dying from deprivation; see Professor Sir Martin Gilbert's "Atlas of the Holocaust").

The annual death rate is 7% for under-5 year old Afghan infants under US Alliance Occupation as compared to 4% for Poles under the Nazis and 5% for French Jews in Nazi-occupied France in WW2. Reality: US Alliance and Australian holocaust commission and holocaust denial."