"The war-time atrocities of the Japanese have been documented and publicized, but the Bengal Famine, which was associated with horrendous civilian and military sexual abuse of perhaps hundreds of thousands of starving women and girls, has been largely written out of history."

Eight years ago I had an interesting interaction with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Unfortunately I failed to convince him of a simple truth illustrated by British colonial history in India, specifically that history ignored yields history repeated. That failure has contributed, albeit by default, to 3 million post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. Allow me to explain more fully.

I had a book published entitled Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History: Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability. [1] I had sent the manuscript to umpteen publishers but nobody was interested so I published it myself and sent copies to major libraries and to some major media and politicians throughout the world. The essential thesis was very straightforward and is summarized on the back cover as follows:

“Repetition of immense crimes against humanity such as the WW2 Holocaust is made less likely when the responsible society acknowledges the crime, apologizes, makes amends and accepts the injunction “Never again”. This book is concerned in part with the 2 century holocaust in British India that commenced with the Great Bengal Famine of 1769-1770 (10 million victims), concluded with the WW2 Bengal Famine (4 million victims) and took tens of millions of lives in between. However these events have been almost completely written out of history and removed from general perception, there has been no apology nor amends made and indeed it is generally accepted that, in the absence of effective global action, these horrors will be repeated on an unimaginably larger scale in the coming century. This carefully documented “J’accuse” addresses what the author terms the “Austenizing” of history or the deletion of awful realities from historical writing. While it was legitimate for Jane Austen, the artist, to render her exquisite novels free of the contemporary awfulness in which her connections participated, the Austenizing of British history is a holocaust-denying outrage that threatens humanity.”

In short, the essence of the book was that history ignored yields history repeated. More specifically, it demanded something more than mere Cessation of crimes against humanity – it insisted that there should be Cessation, Acknowledgement of the crimes, Apologies for the outrages, Amends made for the losses and final Acceptance that these crimes should never again be repeated. This protocol of Cessation, Acknowledgement, Apology, Amends and Acceptance of non-repetition has an acronym CAAAA (C4A) which onomatopoetically corresponds to the mournful cry of the crow, the near-universal scavenger of the dead.

The C4A protocol is exactly what the Germans did in 1945 – they surrendered and Ceased the mass murder of the Jewish Holocaust; they Acknowledged the crimes; they Apologized; they made Amends (although the aid given to Israel helped compound the Palestinian Genocide); and Accepted that this would never happen again. There are now about 0.1 million Jews living in Germany.

However, whilst Acknowledgement is readily obtained from the defeated – it is not so easily extracted from the victors who, as we all know, write history. Thus at the same time as the Jewish Holocaust was happening in Europe, another Holocaust was happening in the world, namely the 1943/44 man-made Bengal Famine in British-ruled India. This atrocity took as many as 4 million lives and was associated with a 1940s demographic deficit of 10 million in Bengal. [2] Satyajit Ray in his outstanding film “Distant Thunder” asserts that 5 million died. According to Amartya Sen (Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics) food was actually available there but cashed-up Calcutta, prosperous because of a war-time manufacturing boom, sucked food out of the rice-producing countryside. The price of rice increased 4-fold for a variety of reasons and in a free market, colonial economy and with a heartless, racist British administration, those who could not afford to buy rice simply starved.

The war-time atrocities of the Japanese, and notably their atrocities against women, have been documented and publicized, but the Bengal Famine, which was associated with horrendous civilian and military sexual abuse of perhaps hundreds of thousands of starving women and girls (30,000 in Calcutta alone), has been largely written out of history. Australians such as Colin Mason and myself have drawn attention to this failure of historiography. [3] I have argued that keeping the Indian population on the edge of survival was an effective British policy over 2 centuries for keeping a huge subjugated population subdued. [4] Indeed this was acutely recognized by no less than Winston Churchill in a speech to the House of Commons in 1936:

“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.” [5]

Colin Mason goes even further and argues that the man-made Bengal Famine may well have been due to a deliberate British scorched earth policy to prevent Japanese invasion of India from Burma. When something dreadful happens in a short space of time one can argue that there was not necessarily any deliberate intention; however when egregious abuse is sustained for several years it becomes a matter of deliberate policy. Indeed the deliberate dereliction of the British Government is well recorded by contemporary conservative players such as General Wavell, who desperately sought assistance from Churchill for India – but all in vain.

How has Britain and indeed the Anglo-Celtic world responded to its awful crimes of the colonial era? While millions of Australians have publicly Acknowledged the crime and Apologized (i.e. said “Sorry”) over horrendous atrocities committed against Indigenous Australians, the Australian PM, Howard, steadfastly refuses to do so and rejects what his revisionist supporters call the “black arm-band” view of history i.e. the history that sets out the Aboriginal Genocide. In 1947 Britain formally Ceased its atrocities in India (although neo-colonial economic hegemony continued). In 1997 the Queen visited India and Acknowledged the Amritsar Massacre but no Apology, no Amends and no Acceptance of non-repetition followed. And of course there was no Acknowledgement of the WW2 Bengal Famine or the 1.5 billion excess deaths (avoidable deaths) associated with 2 centuries of genocidal British rule in India. [6]

Tony Blair did Acknowledge and Apologize for the Irish famine (1.0 million starvation deaths; 1.5 million exiled abroad) - perhaps having been persuaded by his wife and his father–in-law, the celebrated “Scouse Git” of the comedy program “Till Death Do Us Part” starring Warren Mitchell as a bigoted Londoner. Britain largely Ceased its importuning in Ireland in 1922. The official Acknowledgement and Apology was given in 1997. However Amends have not been forthcoming and Acceptance of “Never Again” has certainly not been installed – the 1950-2005 “excess deaths” in countries occupied by Britain in the post-war era total 0.7 billion. [7] Britain up to about half a century ago had an Empire on which the Sun never set – the annual “excess deaths” in the world today total 16 million, with much of this disaster continuing in countries formerly ruled by Britain.

After I sent a copy of my book to Tony Blair I received a courteous reply from his correspondence Secretary whose name was Qasim. Qasim (Kasim) was also the name of the last Bengal nawab (prince) to fight the British (he was defeated and exiled in 1765). Perhaps this Qasim’s father had been a Bengal lascar in the British Merchant Navy. Amusingly, I later received a letter on similarly thick, embossed paper from the Foreign Office with a brief message: “Dear Sir, We have been instructed by the Prime Minister to read your book. We have done so. Yours etc.”

It is a pity that Tony Blair didn’t take on board the key messages of the book – that history ignored yields history repeated; that occupation of foreign countries is deadly; and that we are obliged to respond to huge human rights abuses by the CAAAA (C4A) protocol. Perhaps one message of this book he did take on board (if not necessarily from the book) was the mounting crisis in global biological sustainability due to resource depletion and global warming. I had argued in my book that Bengal, having suffered 2 immense catastrophes under the British, was facing an even more appalling First World-complicit cataclysm due to global warming and inundation. Indeed at about the same time that I published the book a substantial part of Bengal was inundated by flood-waters.

For whatever reasons that will no doubt be explored by those privy to the minutiae of Tony Blair’s life as a politician, in 2001 he responded to 9/11 in concert with Australia’s extreme right wing PM John Howard with absolute support for the violent military policies of George W. Bush. However in doing so he ignored a fundamental scientific principle (also enunciated in my book) that the scientific approach to the nature of reality involves the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses. Blair, Bush and Howard have ignored this fundamental core position of science in opting for “spin” which is the precise converse, involving the selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position. Indeed a friend of mine has coined the word “slie” for “spin-based untruths” (and hence slies, slying and sliars). I have bettered this with a Blair blather-based neologism of “blie” or “blather-based untruth” (and hence blies, blying and bliars”).

Thus in the 2002-2003 pre-invasion build-up to the Iraq War, Blair and his Coalition partners had a public position of belief in a series of assertions about Iraq that were all subsequently shown to be false e.g. Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, programs for development of these WMDs, mobile laboratories for biological warfare manufacture, uranium supplies from Niger, threat to the West, threat to the world, Al Qaeda links, terrorist threat, and the ability to strike in 45 minutes. Indeed there was no solid evidence at the time for any of these propositions and some of the propositions (e.g. links between the secular Saddam Hussein régime and the Al Qaeda fundamentalists and Iraqi involvement in a global terrorism threat) were patently false to sensible, informed observers.

Ignoring the lessons of history, ignoring the scientific approach, ignoring expert technical advice and even ignoring the legal advice from legal experts, the Coalition launched the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. As the disaster has unfolded over the last 4 years, Blair and his fellow Anglo-Celtic Coalition leaders are still ignoring the fundamental lessons (a) that history ignored yields history repeated and (b) that understanding reality is best achieved by science rather than by anti-scientific spin.

Now we have an appalling situation in which they are still ignoring reality, scientific methodology and scientific and other expert advice. The Bush-Blair-Howard position of egregious denial can be compared with the travel agent in the hilarious “Little Britain” comedy series: the female travel agent (actually a “he” in skirts) sits in front of the computer and in response to numerous customer queries replies with a dead pan: “Computer says no”.

Thus Dr Robert Pape has researched suicide bombers and found that they are primarily motivated by secular concerns of occupation of Muslim lands rather than by Islamic ideological concerns. [8] Do men hiding in caves in Central Asia really think that they can overthrow Western civilization as repeatedly asserted by Bush and Blair? Even “Little Britain” satire wouldn’t go that far. Other experts support this scholarly position of a secular motivation for Muslim-origin non-state terrorists. But for Blair et al the response is a bald, dishonest, knee-jerk “No”.

Several months ago 11 top US intelligence agencies issued a report stating that the Iraq war had exacerbated the threat from Muslim-origin non-state terrorists (a position obvious to Blind Freddy before the invasion commenced). Even the commander of British forces Chief of the General Staff Sir Richard Dannatt says the same thing, as does Australia’s highly respected General Peter Cosgrove. The Bush-Blair response: “Computer says no”.

Scholars such as myself have been attempting to tell politicians and media about the horrendous post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths; deaths that should not have happened) in occupied Iraq and occupied Afghanistan over the last 5 years. [9] They have been ignored or when mainstream media have carried particularly authoritative medical reports there has been obfuscation and bald denial.

A top US medical epidemiological research group from a top department at a top US university (Johns Hopkins) has recently published their estimate of 655,000 post-invasion Iraqi excess deaths in a peer-reviewed paper in the top medical journal The Lancet (October, 2006). [10] This estimate is consonant with estimates based on data from other authoritative sources, specifically from the UN Population Division (563,000), UNICEF (639,000) and from The Lancet (October, 2004; un-amended primary data; 791,000). [11]

Indeed the current estimate in The Lancet (2006) is an under-estimate – comparison of their “annual death rate” estimate of 1.33% for post-invasion occupied Iraq with that of 0.4% in Iraq’s impoverished but peaceful neighbors Jordan and Syria yields an estimate of 887,000 post-invasion excess deaths.

Using this latter figure for Iraq and a UN-derived estimate for Afghanistan, the post-invasion excess deaths in occupied Iraq and occupied Afghanistan total 0.9 million and 2.1 million, respectively – a total of 3.0 million deaths, 1,000 times the number of people murdered on 9/11.

These estimates are consonant with independent UN data on post-invasion under-5 infant deaths, currently 437,000 and 1,665,000, respectively, for occupied Iraq and occupied Afghanistan.

To this death toll one can add 0.5 million post-2001 global opiate drug-related deaths (including 1,600 Australians, 3,200 Britons, 1,200 Scots, 3,000 Canadians and 50,000 Americans) linked to US-Coalition-NATO restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry to a current 89% of world market share; 100,000 avoidable American under-5 infant deaths (due to warped Bush priorities - the cost of the Iraq War has been estimated at US $1-2 trillion by US Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz); and 3,000 Coalition military deaths. [12]

World’s best practice Rational Risk Management (that keeps passenger aviation and nuclear power stations safe) successively involves (a) correct information, (b) scientific analysis, and (c) systemic change to minimize risk in the face of inevitable human error even by safety-conscious professionals. [13] Unfortunately the UK, US and Australian Governments – for all their “terror hysteria” over the “terrorism threat” - have an appalling record of perverting this Rational Risk Management protocol by substituting (a) untruth and denial, (b) anti-scientific spin and (c) counterproductive and mis-directed “blame and shame” policies (e.g. of racist war, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Arab anti-Semitism and draconian violations of civil and human rights in the post-9/11 context).

The UK, US and Australian Governments have resolutely violated mandatory Rational Risk Management by denying expert, authoritative, professional advice (a) from intelligence pre-war about the absence of evidence for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; (b) from top medical epidemiologists, scientists and the UN agencies about the horrendous human cost of the Bush Wars; (c) from top military and intelligence people and scholars about the increased terrorism threat due to the Iraq War; and (d) (with the exception of the UK), from top world scientific experts over the last decade about the acute danger to the planet from global warming (the US and Australia still refuse to sign the Kyoto Protocol and the US, Australia and Canada are the world’s worst per capita greenhouse gas producers).

These and related information failures can be variously seen as ignorance, incompetence, lying, denial, spin, perjury or treason depending upon the particular circumstances and perspectives. It can also be seen as holocaust-denial – noting that holocaust-denial in relation to the Jewish Holocaust (6 million victims) is a crime in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Israel and Switzerland and that denial of the Armenian Holocaust (1.5 million victims) is variously progressing to a similar criminal status in Belgium and France.

Of course the involvement of Tony Blair in mass death associated with the illegal invasion of Iraq raises serious legal issues. The 2005 Nobel Laureate for Literature, British playwright Harold Pinter, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech entitled “Art, Truth and Politics” (delivered by videotape on 8 December 2005) accused US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair of war crimes in Iraq. After detailing the huge human cost of decades of violent US interventions in Central and South America, Harold Pinter described the invasion of Iraq as “an act of blatant state terrorism” and called for the arraignment of Bush and Blair before the International Criminal Court, declaring: “How many people do you have to kill before you qualify as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought.” [14] 3 million? More than enough, I would have thought.

However there is a fundamental flaw in Tony Blair’s administration that needs to be exposed in the interests of public safety, specifically his selective use of advice and information in gross violation of sensible scientific and risk management procedures. C.P. Snow wrote an excellent account (entitled Science and Government) of such dereliction by Winston Churchill (our hero) during World War 2. Churchill ignored the advice of many physicists and insisted on taking the advice of Professor Lindeman to bomb Germany back to the Stone Age. The consequence was the loss of huge numbers of Allied airmen over Europe, huge losses of unprotected Allied shipping in the Atlantic and of course the deaths of huge numbers of German civilians. [15] This sequence of events had a big impact on the Bengal Famine because Churchill was forced in 1943 to cut back Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean which consequently made a big contribution to the elevation of Bengal food prices and the subsequent 4 million deaths in the “forgotten” Bengal Holocaust.

Blair has been a disaster for Britain, the Anglo-Celtic world and the world in general because of the fundamental dishonesty and denial outlined above. He is not alone - gross departure from Science and Rational Risk Management by Bush-ite politicians, public servants and media constitutes a major threat to the citizens of Australia, the UK and the United States, to their conquered subjects in the occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories and indeed to the world. The world is a much more dangerous place thanks to Bush and Blair and the bottom-line message from this on-going disaster is that there must be zero tolerance for official lying, untruth and denial.

Dr Gideon Polya has published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text, Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds (Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003), and is currently editing a completed book on global avoidable mortality. Numerous articles on this subject can be found on his websites:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html
http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/

Endnotes

1. Gideon Polya, Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History: Colonial Rapacity, Holocaust Denial and the Crisis in Biological Sustainability (Polya, Melbourne, 1998).

2. Polya, Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History; Paul Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal: The Famine of 1943-1944 (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines. An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); Satyajit Ray, Distant Thunder (Movie; Bengal, India, 1973); N.G. Jog, Churchill’s Blind-Spot: India (Bombay: New Book Company, 1944).

3. Polya, Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History; Colin Mason, A Short History of Asia: Stone Age to 2000AD (London: Macmillan, 2000).

4. Polya, Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History.

5. Winston Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons (1935), Hansard of the House of Commons, Winston Churchill Speech, Hansard Vol. 302, Cols. 1920-21, 1935; quoted by N.G. Jog, Churchill's Blind Spot, 195.

6. Gideon Polya, ‘QEII and British war crimes’, MWC News, March16, 2006.

7. Gideon Polya, Body Count: Global Avoidable Mortality since 2005 (unpublished book manuscript, 2006).

8. Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005).

9. Gideon Polya, ‘Iraqi Death Toll Amounts to a Holocaust’, Australian Scientist, June 2004, 43; Gideon Polya, ‘Global Excess Mortality, Bengal and the Muslim Holocaust’, Muslim & Arab Perspectives Vol. 11, 2004, 113-128; Gideon Polya, ‘Iraq and Afghanistan: How Many Have Died?’, in Ken Coates, ed., Haditha Ethics – From Iraq to Iran? (London: Spokesman, 2006), 78.

10. Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy & Les Roberts, ‘Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-sectional Cluster Sample Survey', The Lancet, October, 2006.

11. Gideon Polya, ‘0.6 Million Iraq Deaths’, MWC News, October 12, 2006.

12. Gideon Polya, ‘Cost of Bush Wars – 2.7 million dead and $1-2 trillion’, MWC News, March 19, 2006.

13. James Reason, ‘Human Error: Models and Management’, British Medical Journal Vol. 320, 2000, 768-770.

14. Harold Pinter, Art, truth and politics, Nobel Prize for Literature Acceptance Speech, Stochkholm, 2005 (see: Countercurrents, December 8, 2005).

15. C.P. Snow, Science and Government (London: The New English Library, 1961).