0.4 billion post-colonial Indian Holocaust - due to inherited disregard, spin & rich elites

Claus: I greatly appreciate your comments.

1. Estimating avoidable mortality.

(a) THE HARD WAY: the UN Population Division provides all kinds of demographic statistics for essentially every country in the world from 1950 onwards. Simply put, one has to determine "baseline" values which are the best "mortality rate" outcomes for countries with the same birth rate profile. "good countries" (typically but not exclusively European countries) if you plot "mortality rate" against time from 1950 onwards you can graphically estimate the minimum value reached (i.e. the best outcome) after which mortality rate increases (as the aged proportion of the population increases - we all have to die some time). For "bad countries" one has to make comparisons with "mortality rate" outcomes in "good countries" with similar demographics (i.e. similar birth rates and demographic distributions).

Thus in assessing a "baseline" for Iraq the value used is actually very similar to the present mortality rate in Jordan and Syria (neighbouring Arab countries with similar demographics but which have peace and reasonable governance despite being resource poor and impoverished). Having determined the "baseline value" (the expected mortality rate for a decently-run country with the same demographics) you can determine (year by year) the "avoidable mortality rate" in units of deaths/1000 of population - and knowing the population you can calculate the "avoidable deaths" (see: (see: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/).

(b) THE EASY WAY: It turns out that - after spending in huge amount of time carefully calculating the "post-1950 avoidable mortality" and "post-1950 under-5 infant mortality" for every country in the world - for the non-European world the "total post-1950 under-5 infant mortality" (853 million) is about 0.68 of the "total post-1950 avoidable mortality" (1,248 million). Similarly, in 2003 the "under-5 infant mortality" was about 0.7 of the "avoidable mortality" (10.4 million and 14.8 million, respectively) for the non-European world. Accordingly, if you know the "under-5 infant mortality" for a "bad outcome" non-European country in a given period - easily obtained by simple arithmetic from UN Population Division data or simpler still, provided by annual UNICEF reports (see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html) - you can simply divide this by 0.7 to get a quick, rough estimate of the "avoidable mortality" .

HOWEVER this rough method does NOT work for "good outcome" countries: thus for Hungary in 2003, the "avoidable mortality" was about 40 times greater than the "under-5 infant mortality" (something is wrong for adults in major parts of Eastern Europe); further, in many "really good" European countries (according to my methodology), the infant mortality is (as in Hungary) very low but the "avoidable mortality" is zero.

2. Bengal Famine.

Amartya Sen (1998 Economics Nobel Laureate) described this and other famines as due to lack of "entitlement" rather than lack of food - those who could not pay simply starved under a remorseless colonial administration. A number of reasons for the increase in the price of rice have been advanced e.g. loss of imports from Burma; decrease in grain imports to India during WW2; local fungal, storm, hoarding or compulsory acquisition effects on rice availability; Churchill's slashing of Indian Ocean shipping because of huge Atlantic losses; the divide-and-rule policy of giving Indian provinces autonomy over their food stocks; and a combination of these factors affecting market perceptions. In the last analysis, Calcutta, undergoing a war-time boom, had the money and the strategic backing of the British authorities, and could buy rice - the rural poor starved.

3. Low practical regard.

At least mortality actually went DOWN in post-colonial India (although they could have done much better as the example of China shows). However in post-colonial and post-Apartheid Southern Africa the mortality has gone UP. It is not good enough for people to simply say that that is because of HIV/AIDS - the AIDS catastrophe in the former British colonies of Southern and Eastern Africa was an AVOIDABLE catastrophe that occurred because of utterly incompetent indigenous governance. For all the "freedom" rhetoric, the ruling indigenous elites showed sustained scant "practical regard" for their fellow Africans. I'll have to attempt an analysis in a further article.

Claus:

We are all agreed that decent people must attempt to find out and then inform others about man-made mass mortality. 65 years ago it was the Jewish Holocaust (the actuality of which was NOT formally acknowledged by the Allies until 30 months before the end of World War 2 in Europe) [6 million deaths] - TODAY it is post-invasion deaths in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan [2.3 million deaths] and avoidable deaths in the First World-dominated non-European World [14.8 million deaths EACH YEAR].

1. I agree with your critique - a didactically-successful method of assessing avoidable collateral death should be (a) simple, (b) publicly accessible, and (c) non-controversial (i.e. clearly derive from an authoritative source and not involve hard-to-understand assumptions or difficult to explain mathematical operations). Mea culpa.

THE EASY WAY - the simplest, most immediately understandable, most publicly-accessible, publicly-confirmable and self-empowering way - is to be preferred and advanced in terms of getting an URGENT humanitarian message across [EVERY DAY 1,300 under-5 year old infants die in Occupied Iraq & Afghanistan , 1,200 avoidably - and 29,000 in the non-European World, 26,000 avoidably].

Under-5 infant mortality figures are presented in updated UNICEF reports for essentially every country in the world (for the latest 2006 reports see: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html) - it is only a click away and for Iraq and Afghansitan tells us the following: in 2004 the under-5 infant mortality was 122,000 in Occupied Iraq, 359,000 in Occupied Afghanistan and 1,000 in the occupying country Australia (noting that in 2004 the populations of these countries were 28.1 million, 28.6 million and 19.9 million, respectively).

From this data, assuming that the figures have been roughly the same each year after invasion (they have actually got worse) we can readily estimate that the post-invasion under-5 infant mortality in Occupied Iraq over 3 YEARS has been 122,000 x 3 = 366,000 and that in Occupied Afghanistan over 4 YEARS has been 359,000 x 4 = 1,436,000 i.e. a total of 1, 802,000 [cf my "hard way" calculation of 1.8 million; quantitative demographic comparisons show that about 90% of this was avoidable].

Assuming for "bad outcome" Third World countries that "under-5 infant mortality" is numerically about 0.7 of the "avoidable mortality" ("excess mortality") we can estimate that the post-invasion avoidable mortality in Occupied Iraq & Afghanistan = 1,802,000/0.7 = 2,574,286 [cf my "hard way" calculation of 2.3 million].

As you can see, in this case the "easy, approximate method" yields essentially the same results for post-invasion Iraq and Afghanistan as my "careful, finecky, precise, scientist's method" based on UN Population Division data (see: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/).

As previously indicated, this "easy" approach really only works for "bad outcome" non-European countries - but then these are the very countries we are interested in from an urgent, humanitarian perspective ("avoidable mortality" as conservatively measured by me is zero or essentially zero in other countries - even the unusually elevated "avoidable mortality" in extremely low (i.e. excellent outcome) infant mortality Hungary "only" kills 35,000 Hungarians each year).

Since you are such an excellent and humanitarian writer I would urge you to use and popularize the "easy approach" and quote the latest UNICEF figues - the annual under-5 infant mortality data from UNICEF are only a click away but are IGNORED by Mainstream Media.

2. Pre- and post-invasion comparisons are only useful up to a point - as well illustrated by Iraq. Avoidable mortality and infant mortality was horrendous under the British and their successor indigenous royalist governments - but steadily declined under successive Ba'athist dictatorships. The return of the West in 1990 doubled these parameters which have remained high ever since - a trend to better circumstances observed in all "good outcome" countries and also in resource-rich Iraq has thus been BLOCKED FOR 16 YEARS in Iraq by sustained, CRIMINAL actions of the UK, the US and their associates.

3. "System superiority" versus "humanitarian mindset" for abolishing endemic poverty

In analyzing global avoidable mortality one finds that it is not all gloom and doom. Thus a small set of relatively poor countries with annual per capita incomes of about US$1,000-2,000 have had excellent avoidable mortality and infant mortality outcomes - this set includes the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Cuba, Fiji and Paraguay. These countries demonstrate that for excellent outcomes what is needed is peace, high literacy (especially high female literacy), good primary health care, basic good governance - and an annual per capita income of merely about US$1,000. Yet Cuba is a Communist dictatorship whereas Fiji (with twice the annual per capita income and a poorer but nevertheless impressive performance) is a conservative, capitalist, 2-race country with a one-race, democratically elected government (after successive racially-motivated essentially "bloodless" coups) - the commonality not being the "economic system" or the "political system" but a humanitarian mindset and good governance.

ISPY:

You have chosen a powerful example.

Noam Chomsky uses this example in his book "September 11" (Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2001; see pages 43-54 in which Chomsky adduces the Sudan raid in defending his comment that the US is a "leading terrorist state"), Chomsky analyses the consequences of the US bombing in August 1998 of the Al-Shifa plant in Khartoum, Sudan by Bill Clinton. This plant was assertedly a "terrorist factory" but in reality was the major producer of cheap life-saving anti-malarial, anti-TB and other medicines for the Sudanese people. The bombing also interrupted the peace process to end the appalling civil war. [The "avoidable mortality" and "under-5 infant mortality" in the Sudan are still extremely high - in 2003 alone: 256,000 and 102,000, respectively; post-1998 totals: 2.0 million and 0.8 million, respectively]. Clinton was clearly COMPLICIT in the avoidable deaths of an upper limit of 2 million Sudanese (a complicity much more immediate and substantial than that of Austrian Kurt Waldheim as an Axis military officer in the Jewish Holocaust).

"Avoidable mortality" and "under-5 infant mortality" are parameters FUNDAMENTAL to any sensible discussion of national or global policies - but are scrupulously IGNORED by lying, holocaust-denying Mainstream Media.

Clinton, Madeleine "it was worth it" Albright, Bush Senior, Bush Junior, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Blair, Dr Condoleezza Rice (DR DEATH) and their confreres should be in shackles before the International Criminal Court for their complicity in the deaths of millions - the lately ICC-arraigned late Slobodan Milosevic had complicity in the deaths of "only" 0.2 million in the Balkans War.

I SPY:

Thank you for the link to European and Japanese atrocities in China - they should never ever be forgotten.

The British opium trade to China had horrendous consequences in China (notably the Opium wars and the Tai Ping rebellion period associated with an estimated 20-100 million deaths through famine and social disruption). However this trade also had horrendous consequences in the source country British India as indicated by my British India avoidable mortality statistics - the destruction of indigenous schools and colleges; destruction of indigenous textile industry; foodcrops displaced for opium and indigo production; mercantile spread of cholera from Bengal (25 million 19 th century Indian cholera deaths); mercantile spread of the plague between China and India (19th-20th centuries). The Chinese have estimated the 1937-1945 war dead at about 35 million.

Concerning reference to the Jewish Holocaust: I appreciate your cautionary note but I refer to the Jewish Holocaust with good reason in the context of man-made mass mortality. Every genocide is distinct but the Jewish Holocaust is peculiar in modern "global "culture in that there is essential UNANIMITY about its evil i.e. it is a useful reference "standard" to use in a world that resolutely IGNORES other man-made atrocities (e.g the circa 1900-1905 South West African Herero genocide [0.1 million victims but proportionally horrendous] by the Germans; the circa 1915-1918 Armenian Genocide [1.5 million victims] - it is a crime in Turkey today to assert its reality but a crime in Belgium to deny it; post-invasion avoidable mortality in Occupied Iraq & Afghanistan [SO FAR 2.3 million victims]. Even the term "holocaust" was possibly applied first to the WW2 Bengal Famine in 1944 by Indian writer N.G. Jog (N.G. Jog, Churchill 's Blind-Spot: India; New Book Company, Bombay, 1944) and this is another "forgotten holocaust".

The fundamental points are that ignoring mass mortality and gross abuse of humanity simply ensures continuance - and that history ignored yields history repeated.

I SPY: The Germans had already DONE this in South West Africa in the early 1900s - in 1904-1907 the indigenous Hereros and Namas - men, women and childen - were simply driven into the desert to die; those refusing to go were shot [see: Chalk, F. & Jonassohn, K. (1990), The History and Sociology of Genocide. Analyses and Case Studies (Yale University Press, New Haven) & Lindqvist, S. (1992), Exterminate All the Brutes (Granta Books, London, 2002)]