Number Propaganda
2004-10-06
We are again target of the concerted propaganda of the interventionists, who manipulate us with numbers for the Darfur region of Sudan. All over the media similar numbers are presented - more than 50,000 people dead and 1.4 million displaced (end September 2004) - which are not and probably cannot be proven or disproven easily. The Sudanese government disputes the numbers and asks for proof, which wasn't presented and probably cannot be. It's a typical case of the accused victim having to prove its innocence. And we are again asked to believe what's coming down from the authorities which promote these numbers for their own reasons. But there are no good reasons why we should do so. Let's look at some other numbers.
Unworthy Living
The biggest and most serious humanitarian crisis is poverty. For most regions, famine and poverty as the permanent and structural economic feature it is today came with the predators from Europe, who conquered and subdued lands and peoples. Mass extermination of unworthy living was always part of the colonial and imperialist order.
During the 1960s we saw neo-Malthusian theories spreading, blaming the poor for their poverty because they are too many. Lifeboat ethics promoted by those who want everything for themselves. Development monies made conditional upon accepting population control programs. Policies of preventing and exterminating life were broadly implemented. A series of political and economic measures was taken, which further monetarized life and made survival more expensive, while increasing the pressure on governments to squeeze more out of the people and reduce services.
People dying early or become handicapped because of easily preventable reasons like malnutrition, poisoning and simplest diseases. Because they don't have enough control over the necessary resources and not enough money to pay for their needs. Basic and essential needs like housing, food and water, basic health care are denied to some hundred million people and tens of millions are dying every year because of poverty-related reasons.
Extermination Examples
Following are a few examples of mass extermination through wars. The list is neither complete nor representative. It is ordered alphabetically.
Afghanistan
When Afghanistan was attacked with the winter approaching and facing serious food and energy shortages following a multi year drought period, and diseases feared to spread, it was clear that the 2001 war of aggression will result in massive dying. Humanitarian aid programs were abandoned when operations began and not really restarted until late into the winter. No one was helping the attacked with food, medical assistance, secure shelter and the like. The usually accepted numbers put out are so low that they are not even worth considering. Tens of thousands and more probably many more lost their lives as a consequence of the aggression.
Chechnya
Hundred thousands of Chechen people were displaced and killed. Tens of thousands of children alone during two devastating wars on Chechnya by Russia. Given the small size of the population in Chechnya, the relative extend of killing and displacement may be highest.
Iraq
Mass extermination on a grand scale was committed against the Iraqi people by and in the name of the UN. Iraq is the main example and symbol for the heinous and criminal character of the 'international community'. Openly and systematically a whole nation was targeted for political reasons with an estimated 2 million Iraqi people dying in consequence.
If we take together all Iraqi people killed during the invasion and under occupation through bombing, hunger, poisoning and diseases we can expect much higher numbers than for Darfur. While the relative numbers and impact cannot be assessed easily and definitely not by some foreign observers making a little trip through the affected region.
Palestine
And in Palestine the killing and displacing by Israel is continued rentlessly. Demolition of houses and cutting off villages from each other and farmers from their fields, assassinations and bombing, steeling of land and water, raiding and arresting, all kinds of collective punishment and dehumanizing measures every day resulting in some thousand killed by Israeli occupation. When can the millions of displaced Palestinians return?
Southern Sudan and DR Congo
Uganda was the main proxy used to provoke and escalate conflict and civil war into Sudan and Rwanda, and from there into the DRCongo, resulting in millions of deaths. We find the US, Britain, France, Germany and Belgium all intervening, both covertly and openly, sometimes using the UN as a tool to advance their schemes.
The civil war in Southern Sudan was kept going and fuelled for two decades taking hundreds of thousands of lives. Meanwhile, civil war in Northern Uganda likewise resulted in large numbers of deaths.
Great Power competition, mixed with UN sponsored 'Arusha Peace Accords' led to the Rwandan genocide leaving an estimated half to a million dead and resulting in the takeover of power in Rwanda by the insurgent Rwandan Patriotic Front. Many of the murderers and others flew in fear of retaliation and punishment from Rwanda into UN refugee camps mostly in Tanzania and the DRCongo. These were later used by Rwanda, together with Uganda, to justify the invasion of the DRCongo resulting in another some million deaths.
Besides the continuous extermination through hunger and diseases, the invasion of the DRCongo was probably the most deadly aggression since the end of the Cold War.
Destabilization and Disintegration
Yugoslavia
The breakup of Yugoslavia, promoted and supported mainly by Germany and the USA, displaced many people, most of them fleeing to Serbia for protection from Croatian discrimination and attacks. Croatia, supported and equipped by Germany, and Serbia moved to divide Bosnia which resulted in some hundred thousand deaths. The Bosnian war ended with joined NATO/Croatian operations and a final land grab of Serbian controlled territory.
In the south of Yugoslavia, Albanian separatist forces (KLA) were used to wage armed attacks against Yugoslav state institutions and tried to destabilize the situation in the Kosovo region of Serbia. Yugoslavia answered with usual counter-insurgency tactics and operations mostly keeping the intensity level low. After years of preparatory war propaganda, NATO was finally ready to wage war of aggression against Yugoslavia and the massive NATO bombing caused mass displacement of Kosovo people and many deaths and wounded all over Yugoslavia. The occupation of Kosovo is still going on.
Systemic Mass Extermination
There are many millions of malnourished and displaced people, most of them displaced by economic conditions forced upon them by multi and transnational corporations and through supranational organizations IMF/WB/WTO/UN.
There are many other places and cases which can be named here where people are systematically killed off. This is what the order of the Democratic Totalitarian Societies is all about: organization and use of overwhelming violence, selection and division of peoples according to economic/political criteria like profitability, integrability, disposability, expendability.