UK, Israeli And US State Terrorism Vastly Worse Than Muslim-Origin
Non-State Terrorism

By Dr Gideon Polya

13 March, 2008
Countercurrents.org

Since 9/11 the World has suffered non-stop saturation propaganda about “terrorism”. George W. Bush declared a “War on Terror” and invaded and occupied Afghanistan and then Iraq. US surrogates Israel and Ethiopia invaded and occupied Lebanon and Somalia, respectively, with the justification of “terror”. Western civil liberties have been appalling constrained, from the Patriot Act in the US to the draconian Anti-Terrorism Laws of US lackey Australia – and all in the name of the “terror threat”.

While anti-Jewish anti-Semitism deservedly became unacceptable in Western public life after World War 2, the War on Terror has opened the floodgates to a deluge of anti-Arab anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and xenophobia – and all in the name of the asserted “terror threat” from “Islamic extremists”. Indeed the sort of vile vitriol to be found routinely in Western media about “Muslims” and “Muslim extremists” would be prosecuted for egregious anti-Jewish anti-Semitism if the word “rabbi” was exchanged for “mullah”, “Jewish” for “Arab”, “Judaism” for “Islam” etc.

The better educated and more literary Westerners were offended right from the start by the semantic absurdity of a War on a “feeling”. The unease has steadily increased as society as a whole began to be exposed to revelations about the lying and conniving of the US and UK Governments and the slow realization of the immense financial and human cost of the Bush Wars. The UK and the US have been bombing Iraq since 1990 and ordinary Westerners have been seeing something of the consequences most nights on TV as they eat their dinner with a backdrop of mangled bodies and devastated streetscapes.

Enough is enough and it is high time decent people declared a War on Lies – and for starters we need to address the biggest Zionist-Bush-ite-neo-Bush-ite LIE of all, specifically that the World is acutely threatened by “Muslim terrorists”.

“Threat to human life” from a particular agency is best measured empirically by determining the actual lives lost over a period of time as a result of that agency. The results can be expressed as “the annual death rate” due to particular causes of mortality. Such estimates of “annual death rate” due to particular causes are also estimates of the “annual probability of death” from these causes.

Thus for Western societies the “annual probability of dying from cigarette smoking-related causes” is about 1 in 1,000. In such a society with a population of 10 million we expect that 1 in 1,000 people (0.1% of the population i.e. 10,000 people) will die annually from cigarette smoking-related causes. We can also express this by saying that the “annual death rate from smoking” in these societies is about 0.1%.

Some approximate estimates for a typical Western country of the “annual risk of dying” or the “annual death rate” from various causes are: lightning strike or shark attack (1 in 3 million); from attack by an acquaintance or family member (1 in 100,000); from car accident (1 in 10,000); from cigarette smoking (1 in 1,000); and from natural causes (1 in 100).

We can apply this analysis not only to countries as a whole but to particular subsets of people within a population. Thus while you have a popular conception of Australia as a nice happy, free, democratic, liberal society you will be appalled by the following statistics – the “annual death rate” is 2.2 % (for Indigenous Australians, also known as Australian Aborigines or Australian Aboriginals), 2.4% (for Australian Aboriginals in the Northern Territory of Australia), 2.5% (for Australian SHEEP), 0.4% (what it should be for the Australian Aborigines), 2.7% (for Iraqi under-5 year old infants in Australian-occupied Iraq), and 6.7% (for Afghan under-5 year old infants in Australia-occupied Afghanistan) as compared to 10.2% (for Australian prisoners of war of the Japanese in World War 2).

We should now turn our attention to the “annual death rate from terrorism” of various groups in the world, notably Americans, Israelis and Westerners as a whole (who all endlessly assert that they are threatened by “Muslim-origin non-state terrorism”) and – in order to be “balanced” - the Occupied Palestinians, Occupied Iraqis and Occupied Afghans who are quite evidently subject to threat of death from the Occupying Western armed forces.

However “avoidable death” (excess death, deaths that should not have happened) can be imposed either actively (by bombs and bullets) or passively (e.g. through deprivation of life-sustaining requisites unequivocally demanded of Occupiers by Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (see: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm ).

Post-invasion non-violent excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories can be estimated in 2 ways from UN data: (a) under-5 infant mortality in impoverished Third World countries is about 0.7 of total non-violent excess deaths (see “Layperson’s guide to counting Iraqi deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5872/26/ ) which can accordingly be readily estimated from web-accessible UNICEF under-5 infant mortality data; and (b) a more protracted and detailed process from consideration of comparative mortality data for countries with similar demographics from the UN Population Division. The 2 methods give reasonable agreement (for details see “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ; for some key regional data data see “Rational Risk Management, Science and denial”: http://rationalriskmanagement.blogspot.com/ ).

Post-invasion non-violent excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories total 0.3 million, 0.7-0.8 million and 3.3 million, respectively. Non-violent deaths in Western countries in recent decades as assessed on the same standard of comparison are essentially zero.

Post-invasion violent excess deaths total 5,037 in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (September 2000-January 2008 (B’Tselem: http://www.btselem.org/index.asp ); 0.8-1.2 million in Occupied Iraq (see: http://ruddaustraliareportcard.blogspot.com/
2008/01/rudd-australia-report-card-1-continued.html ; roughly 1:1 with non-violent deaths); and 3.3 million in Occupied Afghanistan (if we assume a 1:1 ratio of violent deaths to non-vuiolent deaths as observed in similarly US-occupied Occupied Iraq) (see: http://ruddaustraliareportcard.blogspot.com/2008/
01/rudd-australia-report-card-3-australian.html ).

Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and B’Tselem data indicate that “Israeli deaths at the hands of Palestinians” total 2,513 (1950-2008), 2,053 (1967-2008) and 1,031 (September 2000-January 2008).

About 7,000 Western civilians have been murdered by Muslim-origin non-state terrorists in the last 40 years, this figure including about 2,000 Israelis in the Holy Land that they have invaded and conquered and 3,000 Americans horribly murdered on 9/11 (although it must be noted that in November 2007 the former 7-year President of Italy, law professor, senator-for-life and intelligence intimate Francesco Cossiga asserted to a top Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that the US CIA and Israeli Mossad had done 9/11 to enhance US and Zionist interests and that major Western intelligence agencies were aware of this) (see MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/18569/26/ ).

We can now use UN Population Division data to estimate the average populations of these various countries at the relevant periods of time and can then calculate “annual excess deaths from state terrorists or Muslim-origin non-state terrorists ” for the various populations and, for comparative purposes, express these as “terrorist deaths per 100,000 of population”.

For Western countries AND for the USA the “annual excess civilian deaths from alleged Muslim terrorism” i.e. “annual risk of death from Muslim terrorism” over the last 40 years is in each case 0.025 per 100,000 (1 per 4 million) i.e. the risk of a Western civilian being killed by a Muslim-origin non-state terrorist is comparable to the annual risk of death from shark attack or lightning strike (about 1 in 3 million) but vastly LOWER than the risk of being killed by an acquaintance or family member (1 in 100,000).

The “annual risk of American death from ESTABLISHED Israeli state terrorism” over the last 40 years (the 34 US sailors killed by Israelis on the defenceless USS Liberty in 1967: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident ) was about 0.003 per 100,000, about 10 times lower than that from ALLEGED Muslim terrorists on 9/11 (noting that the Bush Administration that ALLEGES that Muslim Terrorists did 9/11 told 935 lies about Iraq alone post-9/11 and the “Bush Version of 9/11” is starkly contradicted by former Italian president Francesco Cossiga who says that the US CIA and Israeli Mossad did it )

Indeed if we regard the Bush Wars (so far 4,470 US service personnel killed) as substantially promoted by the traitorous Racist Zionist Lobby in the US and the US presence in Lebanon in 1983 (241 marines killed in the 1983 bombing) as closely related to the concurrent Israeli occupation of much of Lebanon and complicity in the Shabra and Shatila massacres of 3000 Palestinian civilians in Beirut, then some 4,500 American servicemen (including the 34 USS Liberty sailors) can be seen to have been killed in episodes variously linked to Israeli state terrorism and traitorous American Zionist support for US military involvement in Arab and Muslim lands.

The “annual risk of Israeli death from Palestinian attack” was 1 per 100,000 (1950-2008), 1 per 100,000 (1967-2008) and 2 per 100,000 (September 2000 – January 2008) i.e. the “annual risk of Israeli death from Palestinian attack” in all three periods considered is commensurate with the “annual risk of Israeli death at the hands of acquaintances or family members” (about 1 per 100,000). 

Now let us turn to victims of Western state terrorism.

The “annual risk of Occupied Palestinian violent death from Jewish Israeli attack” was 18 per 100,000 (September 2000-January 2008; 9 times higher than the corresponding Israeli figure). Further, the “annual risk of Occupied Palestinian excess death due to Israeli impositions” was 130 per 100,000 (September 2000 – January 2008; 65 times greater than the comparable period Israeli figure) and 323 per 100,000 (1967-2008; 320 times greater than the annual Israeli excess death risk from Palestinian attack in the same period).

The post-invasion “annual risk of excess death” in the Occupied Palestinian , Iraqi and Afghan Territories is 323 per 100,000 (Occupied Palestine, 1967-2008), 890-1,190 per 100,000 (Occupied Iraq, 2003-2008) and 2,100-4,200 per 100,000 (Occupied Afghanistan, 2001-2008) – VASTLY higher than the “annual risk of avoidable death from Muslim non-state terrorists” in the US, Israel or the West in general over the same periods where the risks are comparable with “annual risk of death at the hands of acquaintances or family members” (about 1 per 100,000).

Yet Mainstream media and politicians continue the BIG LIE of enormously threatening “Muslim-origin non-state terrorism” and Western societies spend huge sums on counter-terrorism domestically. Thus in Australia Government and business have spent over $20 billion on counter-terrorism since 2001 - we can balance that “terror hysteria”-driven expenditure with the horrendous 90,000 avoidable Australian Indigenous deaths in the 1996-2007 period of mis-rule by the Bush-ite Coalition Federal Government during which it UNDER-funded Aboriginal health by about $25 billion

The Big Lie of “Muslim terrorism” has grossly turned reality on its head as demonstrated by the above “annual death risks”. This Big Lie has grievously exacerbated and entrenched anti-Arab anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and warmongering in the Western democracies, trashed civil liberties and severely eroded values enshrined in major International Humanitarian Conventions.

Do YOUR bit to counter this horrible Zionist, Bush-ite and neo-Bush-ite “terror hysteria” perversion – tell everyone you can.

Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). He has just published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/1375/247/ and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).

http://www.countercurrents.org/polya130308.htm