4.6 million dead Iraqi & Afghan infants but Oz ABC wouldn’t ask Hillary Clinton "Is the price worth it?"

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently visited Australia in November 2010 but was not asked the key question about 4.6 million post-invasion under-5 infant deaths in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan (UN data), specifically “Is the price worth it?”

Clinton’s friend and predecessor as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, had been asked the same question on CBS “60 Minutes” in 1996 (when dead Iraqi children totaled “only" 0.5 million) and notoriously replied “We think the price is worth it” (see “Madeleine Albright”, Wikipedia”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madele...) .

This failure to ask this key question of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2010, a question acceptable to mainstream American media in 1996, provides an indication of the cowardly obsequiousness of US lackey Australia and in particular of the taxpayer-funded ABC (Australia’s equivalent of the UK BBC).

Hillary Clinton only had 2 media sessions on her November 2010 trip to Australia, one with a comedy program on commercial TV and the other a public Q&A session chaired by ABC journalist Leigh Sales at the University of Melbourne before a selected, under-35 year old audience with pre-selected questions and nation-wide, prime-time broadcast by the ABC.

This is how ABC interviewer Leigh Sales (co-anchor of the ABC1 TV’s Lateline and a former ABC Washington correspondent) described this event in her diary: “”The audience is a mixture of [under-35 year old] people invited by the US Embassy, the ABC and Melbourne University. Anyone attending who wants to ask a question has sent it to our production team, which has also collected questions from Twitter and Facebook. The producers and I have gone through the list, looking for diverse questions that are a mixture of hard and soft issues. We figure we have time to take about 15, including subjects such as modern politics, gender equality and how Madam Secretary handles stress. I’m aware that foreign policy wonks will feel that it’s not concentrated enough on serious issues. But they’re not the target audience. The overriding consideration is that we need to make an hour of interesting television for general viewers. We are also limited by the questions collected. For example, I’d like one on Pakistan. There are none. Interestingly, there are also none relating to the AUSMIN meeting in Australia and defence ties — the main purpose of Mrs Clinton’s visit — which compels me to ask about that topic in the introductory section. On stage, the Secretary of State easily charms the audience with her mixture of intelligence, wit and knowledge. It’s hard not to think, watching her, that we have very few Australian politicians with such rhetorical skill and policy depth. She manages to convey an appearance of frankness without actually being very revealing at all, a skill common to the best political operators" (see The Spectator, 20 November 2010: http://www.spectator.co.uk/australi... ).

Australian feminist writer Anne Summers commented thus on the “light” questioning of Clinton on her recent Australian trip : "When the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, visited Australia recently she did just two television events, a Q&A-style group interview before a mostly youthful audience, and a one-on-one (or should that be one-on-two?) with the amiable funsters Hamish and Andy for The 7pm Project on Channel Ten. Clinton was impressive on the Q&A event but while some of the audience questions were on serious subjects they were hardly tough. This format does not allow for follow-up probing... … [Australian ABC] interrogators like O’Brien have honed their skills over years, and on the shoulders of previous giants such as Paul Murphy, Richard Carleton and Paul Lyneham. We have something special with the tradition of the tough political interview. They do not have it in the US and they clearly do not want it. Clinton made that clear with her choice of television interviewers.” " (see “Fear for the future in 7.30 Report-land”, The Age on-line, 19 November 2010: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/so... ).

I responded to Anne Summers’ article with the following comment (under my own name, of course) but The Age , for what ever reason, did not publish it. My censored comment that The Age evidently did not want its readers to see is reproduced below.

QUOTE: “The 7.30 Report and the ABC in general steadfastly decline to report Elephant in the Room news and to ask the tough questions.
Thus back in 1996 Hillary Clinton’s close friend, supporter and predecessor as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was famously asked by Lesley Stahl on a segment of CBS’s 60 Minutes program: "We have heard that half a million children have died [as a result of sanctions]. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it."
However, in 2010 the total number of under-5 year old Iraqi infant deaths under Sanctions, War and Occupation has exploded to 2.0 million and post-invasion under-5 infant deaths in Occupied Afghanistan now total 2.6 million (UN Population Division data). Yet the craven ABC declined to question Hillary Clinton on nearly 5 million infant deaths associated with 20 years of US war in Iraq and 9 years of war in Afghanistan.
Violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation now total 4.4 million for Iraq (1990-2010) and 4.5 million for Afghanistan (2001-2010; UN data), evidence of an Iraqi Genocide and an Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention, both commensurate with the Jewish Holocaust. Google the terms Iraqi Genocide and Afghan Genocide and you get 21,000 and 41,000 results, respectively, but a "search of the entire ABC site" via the ABC News yields zero (0) results - reprehensible genocide-ignoring by the ABC." END QUOTE.

I responded to the total censorship by The Age of the above sensible comment as follows (surprisingly The Age did publish this second comment).

QUOTE: “A much-published, 5-decade career scientist still teaching a major course at a major university, I made a very detailed, succinct and informed comment on Anne Summers’ article and under my own name but it has evidently been found to be "not fit to print". However if this present comment survives the moderator, interested readers will be able to read my censored comments on the US Newsvine [ http://gpolya.newsvine.com/_news/20... ].

The great thing about America is freedom of speech which is why Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked in 1996 on CBS 60 Minutes whether she thought that with 0.5 million dead Iraqi kids the Iraq Sanctions were "worth it" (she replied affirmatively).

In contrast, Australia suffers from appalling academic, political and media censorship and self-censorship, which is why in 2010 in Australia nobody was prepared to ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that with 2.0 million dead Iraqi infants and 2.6 million dead Afghan infants whether continued US aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan was "worth it".

Mainstream media censorship (most notoriously by the US-owned Murdoch media and the cowardly ABC) sucks the air from informed public discussion and rational risk management for Australia." END QUOTE.

Australian academic Hamish Ford was very critical of the ABC Hillary Clinton Q&A session, stating bluntly: “Throughout, no one challenged Clinton on the purpose or impact of her nation’s unprecedented global power. It beggars belief that your average room of youngish university folk wouldn’t contain at least some who were capable and willing of sterner stuff “ (see Hamish Ford, “Questions Hillary Clinton wasn’t asked on her date with Australia”, The Age, 10 November 2010: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/po... ).

Remarkably, The Age permitted my comment on Hamish Ford’s article to be published; it is reproduced below.

QUOTE: “Excellent article by Hamish Ford. The questions put to Hillary Clinton at the University of Melbourne were evidently pre-selected by the Americans or the cowardly, pro-US ABC resulting in a surely utterly false image of Melbourne Uni students and under-35s as ignorant and spineless. Here are some further questions that Clinton should have been asked.

1. One supposes that most women in historically fiercely independent Afghanistan would want an Afghan ruler of Afghanistan. Yet under US Alliance occupation US puppet Karzai was the only presidential candidate. Why does the US violate the democratic aspirations of Afghan women?

2. One supposes that over 99% of Afghan women would want survival of their children but UNICEF tells us that 311,000 Afghan infants die annually from deprivation in US-occupied Afghanistan (90% avoidably and due to US Alliance war crimes in violation of the Geneva Convention). Why does the US so grossly violate the rights and wishes of Afghan women?

3. Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton and who campaigned for Hillary Clinton for president was famously asked on 60 Minutes in 1996 whether the half million dead Iraqi children under Sanctions was "worth it" (she notoriously replied "we think the price was worth it"). In 2010 with dead Iraqi infants now totaling 2.0 million (1990-2010) and dead Afghan infants totaling 2.6 million (2003-2010) one must again ask, was it worth it?

4. 3,000 Australians have died opiate drug-related deaths since 2001 linked to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry (from 6% of world market share in 2001 to over 90% today). Was this worth it?” END QUOTE.

Of course, the “soft’ questioning of Hillary Clinton by the derelict Australian ABC is just a small but revealing part of the lying by omission and lying by commission in Murdochracy Australia and indeed in the other Murdochcracies of the war criminal US Alliance.

According to UN data, the ongoing Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide (genocide as def9ined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention) has been associated, so far, with 4.4 million violent deaths and non-violent deaths from deprivation, 1990-2010, 5 million refugees and 2.0 million under-5 infant deaths, as compared to 5-6 million deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (1 in 6 dying from imposed deprivation) (see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqi... ).

According to UN data, the ongoing Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide (genocide as def9ined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention) has been associated so far post-invasion non-violent avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation of 3.7 million, post-invasion violent deaths of about 1.2 million, post-invasion under-5 infant deaths of 2.6 million, and refugees totaling 3 million plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated in NW Pakistan by war criminal Obama (see “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afgha... ).

However this carnage, reported dispassionately by the UN Population Division (see: http://esa.un.org/UNPP/ ) and UNICEF (see: http://www.unicef.org/ ), goes utterly unreported by the Mainstream media of the US Alliance Murdochracies in a continuing process of Orwellian lying by omission, lying by commission, holocaust ignoring and genocide ignoring. One notes that holocaust ignoring is vastly worse than holocaust denial, because at least the latter admits the possibility of public debate.

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. What can decent people do in the face of remorseless and horrendous US Alliance holocaust commission and holocaust denial?

Decent people must (a) inform everyone they can and (b) urge Sanctions, Boycotts and criminal prosecutions applied to the citizens, corporations, countries, media and politicians of the war criminal US Alliance.