July 30, 2006

FREE SPEECH is something that has made America great. Americans are very lucky in having the First Amendment that guarantees freedom of speech. In the British Commonwealth World defamation laws have compromised free speech.  The "sedition" sections of recent anti-terrorism laws in Australia provide for 7 years in prison for saying things the authorities don’t like - although anti-violence, peace-loving commentators such as myself have been personally assured that these laws are only going to be used against "terrorists" or  "terrorist sympathizers". However it now appears that comment on Zionist war crimes are automatically being censored in the US and the UK by automatic, robotic rejection of anything containing a particular word (the Z-word) linking Zionist and Nazi war crimes (for the Z-word that I do NOT want to use now, see MWC News ). Let me amplify.    

I had an interesting experience recently in writing a comment in the UK Guardian’s "Comment is free" on Israel’s war on the People of Lebanon and Gaza. The Israeli war crimes are so horrendous that comparison with other war crimes becomes inevitable. The "gold standard" for war criminality is that of the Nazis in World War 2. Thus an upper estimate for the current Israeli War  is that about 950 Palestinians and Lebanese have been killed (so far) as compared to about 50 Israelis, this  giving a "death ratio" of 950/50 = 19.

By way of comparison, 335 Italian men and boys (including 75 Jews) were executed in the Ardeatine Caves Massacre in Italy in March 1944 in reprisal for the killing of 33 German soldiers by Italian Partisans. This gave a "death ratio" of 10, exactly what was ordered personally by arch-fiend, Nazi leader Adolph Hitler. Indeed the "Allied civilians deaths"/"Axis military deaths" ratio achieved by the Nazis and their Axis allies in World War 2 was only about 9. These Nazi figures are half of those achieved by the Israeli Wehrmacht in Gaza and Lebanon (so far).

However if Lebanon and Palestine are bombed back to a "UK-US-occupied Iraq" situation, it is estimated that the annual avoidable under-5 infant deaths will total about 26,000 and the total annual avoidable mortality will be about 43,000 (man-made of course).

 The number of Israelis killed by Palestinians each year BEFORE the present escalation was about 190. Accordingly after "peace" is established over shattered Palestine and Lebanon, the Holy Land "Arabs killed" /"Israelis killed" death ratio returns to the pre-Escalation value of about 1,000/190, and Bush, Blair and Dr Condoleezza Rice (Dr Death) are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the ongoing "Arab deaths"/ "Israeli deaths" ratio will be 44,000/190 = 232 – about 25 times greater than that achieved by the Nazis in World War 2.

However to be fair to the Israelis we should consider other contemporary wars.  Thus the "post-invasion Occupied Iraq avoidable deaths"/ "Coalition military deaths" =  0.5 million/3,000 = 167 (rather less than the predicted Israeli score for its "patch" of the Middle East killing fields). However the "post-invasion Occupied Afghanistan avoidable deaths"/ "Coalition/NATO military deaths" = 2.0 million/200 = 10,000. These horrendous avoidable deaths (excess deaths) are evidence of gross Israeli, UK, US, Coalition and NATO violation of the Geneva Convention which demands that the Occupier does everything within its power to preserve the health and life of the conquered Subjects (see: here ).

At all events, comparisons of Nazi war crimes with the contemporary war crimes of Israel, the UK, the US, Coalition countries and complicit NATO countries would appear to be quite reasonable on the basis of these appalling figures.

However some people have used the Z-word  transmutation of the word "Zionism" to describe the horrendous crimes of Israel against the Palestinians over the last 4 decades – the post-invasion avoidable mortality (avoidable deaths) and under-5 infant deaths in the Occupied Palestinian Territory have totalled 0.3 million and 0.2 million, respectively (see MWC News ).

The Z-word transmutation – which I will NOT use for reasons that will become apparent - involves inserting "az" between "Zion" and "ism" and constitutes an efficient conjoining of the terms "Zionism" and "Nazism". "Zionism" has involved the race-specific colonization of Palestine as a race-specific Jewish-dominated ethnocracy,  this involving 20 years of non-state terrorism followed by 60 years of Israeli state terrorism, 39 years of colonial subjugation of the West Bank and Gaza, 6 major wars, and massive ethnic cleansing to produce 6 million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East alone. "Nazism" also involved wars, occupation and genocide – including industrial genocide such as that at Auschwitz and elsewhere – but had a Continental theatre.

However the Z-word  has been made verboten by the Zionists and the Israel Lobby. Thus read the following account of censorship of this presently quite accurate descriptive (see: "Google site bans slurs against Jews not Arabs" by Paul Kilduff ) - this increasingly appropriate term is verboten but terms such as "Islamofascist" are quite OK.

NOW for my recent experience. The UK Guardian has an initiative called "Comment is free" that enables readers to comment on articles written by a "stable" of journalists and other writers they permit through the "media gate".  This is an excellent innovation. Thus racist, lying Mainstream media will simply NOT report the horrendous post-invasion avoidable mortality (avoidable deaths) in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories that now total 0.3, 0.5 and 2.0 million, respectively (e.g. see MWC News ) – but via "Comment is free" such important information can at least be "formally" presented to whoever in a Mainstream audience chooses to read such a "comment" buried among a hundred or so other comments for each article.