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Letter to Google re anti-Science, anti-Humanity Google Censorship that threatens World

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 1 November 2008

Internet History

Risk management depends on information but Google Censors information world-wide – not just for China. The World is acutely at risk from nuclear, greenhouse and poverty threats – as indeed is the whole world, according to the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (the world’s biggest general scientific organization and publisher of the world’s number 1 scientific journal Science: http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2... ).

Dealing with risk involves (a) getting accurate data about the threats, (b) scientific analysis of the data and then (c) changing the system to minimize the threat. British occupation (see “Rational Risk Management, Science & Denial”: http://rationalriskmanagement.blogs... ). However censorship – the denying, hiding, ignoring, rubbing out of the data – fundamentally prevents scientific analysis, blocks rational risk management and accordingly represents a major threat to humanity.

A major example of this is the British Raj Indian Holocaust involving 1.5 billion avoidable deaths in the nightmare that was British-occupied India (see “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” , G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ; see also the revised and updated 2008 version of my 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) . However this carnage is largely deleted from British history in a CONTINUING process of continuing holocaust ignoring and holocaust denial.

Few Westerners would be aware of the following atrocities involving Great Britain that have been largely deleted from British history: the Great Bengal Famine (1769-1770, 10 million victims), the man-made World War 2 Bengal Famine (1943-1945, 6-7 million victims) and the real 9-11 atrocity, the 9-11 million avoidable deaths associated (so far) with the Bush Wars (1990-2008). While 4 major histories published recently by top British and Australian historians utterly IGNORE the WW2 Bengal Famine, in 2008 this atrocity was exposed in a BBC broadcast involving myself, 1998 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and other scholars (see: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot... ) . In contrast to this entrenched Culture of Ignoring, holocaust ignoring, genocide ignoring and holocaust denial in the Anglo world (Anglo-Celtia, Anglo-America and Australasia) (see “Climate Emergency, Exceptionalism & Ignoring Downunder. Letter to eminent Australians over public honesty”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/257... ), denial of the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) attracts 10 years in prison in Austria.

This Culture of Ignoring, Denial, Media Lying, lying by Omission and Commission and Censorship is now world-wide due to Google Censorship applied to the World-wide Web. Thus while the ethical and humanitarian, Canada-based but very International Media with Conscience News (MWC News) reports the horrendous crimes of the British in India and reports the horrendous , ongoing carnage of the Bush Wars (9-11 million avoidable deaths in the Bush Wars, 1990-2008) (see “9-11 excuse for US global genocide. The real 9-11 atrocity: millions [9-11 million] dead in Bush Wars”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/251... ), Google CENSORS this and similar ethical and humanitarian media, as outlined below.

In addition to explicitly censoring the Web in China (see BBC report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technol...), Google censors world-wide against the interests of Humanity. Anti-science, anti-humanitarian Google Censorship threatens the whole World.

The following Letter was sent to Google on October 31 2008 urging Google to cease censorship, including censorship of humanitarian writers, artists and sites. Censorship of the truth is lying by omission which de-rails scientific investigation and rational risk management. The scientific culture has zero tolerance for lying and in a world facing acute nuclear, greenhouse and poverty threats – most notably the Climate Emergency that acutely threatens the biosphere and billions of people - zero tolerance for lying must be observed generally. Yahoo Searches are indicated as long as anti-Science, Humanity-threatening Google Censorship persists.

Please publish or otherwise disseminate this Letter to everyone you can.

LETTER TO GOOGLE

Google
Dear Sir/Madam,

Re Google Censorship of MWC News & Humanitarian Writers

1. Preface

I am writing re serious concerns about Google Censorship of a major anti-racism, humanitarian Web magazine, Media With Conscience News (MWC News) and of expert, humanitarian articles in MWC News exposing horrendous avoidable deaths in the Bush Wars (expert assessment of medical literature, WHO, UNODC and UN Population Division data now indicate that violent and non-violent avoidable deaths in the Bush Wars, 1990-2008, now total 9-11 million: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/251... ). It must be noted that this expertly-attested carnage is in general resolutely ignored by Mainstream Media in a massive, continuing process of holocaust ignoring and passive holocaust denial – however active censorship of this expertly-attested information becomes active holocaust denial.

Hitherto Google has had a fine reputation for its fantastic facilitation of public information world-wide, noting that in his recent book “The Assault on Reason” Nobel Laureate and former Vice president of the USA, Al Gore has strongly argued for an informed citizenry.

Further, I recognize that Google may be censoring sites in response to “complaints” from particular individuals or organized groups of individuals with a fanatical desire to block facts or opinions they don’t like.

Indeed, I have noted the following from a Google response to another outstanding North American human rights-oriented news medium which it had censored: “We periodically review news sources, particularly following user complaints, to ensure Google News offers a high quality experience for our users. When we reviewed your site we’ve found that we can no longer include it in Google News” (see: http://www.innercitypress.com/un1go... ).

Nevertheless, Google censorship is occurring in contravention of the spirit of the First Amendment, noting that this Constitutional Amendment is arguably one of the most important contributions of the United States to civilization, together with the great Jeffersonian Declaration that “all men are created equal and have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

2. Google Search and Google News Censorship of MWC News

In the case of Google Censorship of MWC News and my humanitarian articles therein, the action may stem from secret complaints from anonymous and fanatical complainants with an agenda inimical to human rights and freedom of speech. I have recently exposed Google Censorship of my pro-Peace Paintings in an article entitled "Google Censors "Manhattan Madonna" Painting & Art for Peace":
http://gpolya.newsvine.com/_news/20... . In short, a Yahoo Search for the Title Words of my huge, pro-Peace, 9-11 Memorial “Manhattan Madonna” painting yields article and image as item #1 out of 10.4 million links - whereas a Google Search “buries” the same article and image as #52 out of 3.8 million URLs.

Up to a few months ago, it was very convenient when discussing my Paintings for Peace with friends and acquaintances to simply say (as an alternative to writing out the link) “Just Google the words Manhattan Madonna and you’ll see my painting as number 1 on page 1 of 4 million hits” – however a few months ago I discovered that Google now “buries” the article with my painting on MWC News as item #52 on page 5. Now I have to tell my friends to search for the words Manhattan and Madonna on YAHOO to quickly find an image of the deeply humanitarian painting “Manhattan Madonna” and a detailed explanation of its profound pro-Peace message.

Indeed Google has similarly "buried" ALL of my carefully researched humanitarian articles and pro-Peace paintings published on MWC News (for a convenient set of links to all of these articles see: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya and for Paintings for Peace and a discussion of their humanitarian intent see: “Truth, Beauty & Saving the World. Science & Art versus Nuclear, Greenhouse & Poverty Threats”: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-NvVV... ).

The mechanism used by Google is probably by application of a “weighting factor” to sites and/or articles that it disapproves of ranging from 0.0 (100% censorship) to 1.0 (0% censorship). Indeed while primary articles on MWC News are “buried”, articles referring to or re-publishing these censored articles in non-censored media can appear on page 1. This censorship of MWC News in relation to Google Search results also extends to censorship of MWC News by Google News – thus a search for the words MWC News on Google News yields zero hits in the first 100 items – yet a search for the words MWC News on YAHOO yields “MWC News – a site without borders – home page” (see: http://www.mwcnews.net/ ) as item #1 on page #1 of 15 MILLION URLs (however, Google Search of the words mwc news yields the MWC News Homepage as #1 out of 0.5 million hits; and a search for mwc-news on Google News yields 95 MWC News items).

3. Holocaust-ignoring Google Censorship violates Science, Risk Management, Scholarly Ideals, Respect for Scholars, Free Speech, Human Rights & Holocaust Injunctions

a. Google Censorship Violates Science. The scientific method involves a process of successively getting accurate data; setting up and critically testing potentially falsifiable hypotheses (models) of reality; and then refining our models of reality based on this experimentation. Of course lying by omission or commission, denial, rubbing out, fudging, or otherwise censoring the data utterly de-rails the scientific process and that is why there is “zero tolerance for lying” in Science. Indeed, in a recent article on MWC News entitled ““Swan Lake” Painting. Fear, Greed, Lying & Values, Biosphere & Market Collapse” (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/258...) I argue strongly for “zero tolerance for lying” in order to save the Planet.

b. Google Censorship Violates Rational Risk Management. Rational Risk Management (that, for example, has made aviation extremely safe) successively involves (a) unfettered reportage of accurate data, (b) scientific analysis and (c) systemic change to minimize risk. Unfortunately, this process is typically perverted by frail and incompetent humanity by substitution of (a) censorship, lying by omission and commission, denial, ignoring and intimidation, (b) anti-science spin (involving the selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position), and (c) “blame and shame” (with war and genocide being the ultimate expressions of this perversion).

c. Google Censorship Violates Free Speech. As discussed above, censorship fundamentally violates scientific methodology (that involves “zero tolerance for lying’) and Rational Risk Management (that involves “unfettered reportage of accurate information”). However constraint of Free Speech not only impairs Science and sensible responses to Risk, it also violates Humanitarian Conventions and crushes the Human Spirit. Thus a key action of Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn was his May 1967 open letter to the Fourth Congress of the Writers’ Union of the USSR in which he said: “I call upon the Congress to demand and insist on the abandonment of all forms of censorship…”

d. Google Censorship Violates Scholarly Ideals. Further to points made in (a)-(c) above, censorship violates fundamental scholarly norms in all areas of truthful inquiry. This is a major contemporary problem in the interaction of mendicant academia with society that is summarized by the adage “History ignored yields history repeated”. Thus, by way of example, in a letter on the Climate Emergency, Exceptionalism and a Culture of Ignoring sent personally to thousands of variously eminent and influential Australian journalists, politicians , academics and other citizens (see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/257... ) I stated “Few Australians would be aware of the following atrocities involving Great Britain that have been largely deleted from British history: the Great Bengal Famine (1769-1770, 10 million victims), the man-made World War 2 Bengal Famine (1943-1945, 6-7 million victims) and the real 9-11 atrocity, the 9-11 million avoidable deaths associated (so far) with the Bush Wars (1990-2008). While 3 major histories published recently in Australia utterly ignore the WW2 Bengal Famine, in 2008 this atrocity was exposed in a BBC broadcast involving myself, 1998 Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and other scholars” (see: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot... ; see also my scientific, avoidable mortality-related histories “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (see: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ) and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ). Testament to this Culture of Ignoring (and of holocaust-ignoring media censorship) is that only 0.2% of this collection of thousands of the media, political, academic and other leadership of Australia have responded positively with an intention to “inform others”.

e. Google Censorship Violates Respect for Scholars. A major scholarly Ideal involves Respect for outstanding scholars but the Google Censoring of MWC News also involves the censoring and hence diminution of some outstanding humanitarian scholars e.g. Professors Bill Cook, Walter Davis, Ali Khan and Marjorie Cohn (Professor of Law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego and President of the National Lawyers’ Guild). This censoring and diminution of outstanding scholars reflects the extremist diminution of outstanding, anti-racist, humanitarian Jewish scholars and writers for criticizing human rights abuses in the Middle East, including the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Such outstanding Jewish scholars diminished and censored in this fashion include Professors Norman Finkelstein (US), Noam Chomsky (US), Bertell Ollman (US), the late Tanya Reinhart (Israel), Ilan Pappe (Israel, UK), Richard Falk (US), Steven Rose (UK), Schlomo Sand (Israel) and Peter Singer (US. Australia), Gush Shalom founder Uri Avnery (Israel), Antony Loewenstein (Australia), Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter (UK) and outstanding investor, philanthropist, Holocaust hero, Holocaust survivor and humanitarian activist George Soros (US).

In contrast, while diminishing these outstanding Jewish scholars through censorship of media such as MWC News, Google unwittingly promotes the most awful diminution of these scholars. Thus I am merely a modest, agnostic, humanist scientist driven by the horror of the Holocaust to “bear witness” about contemporary holocausts, yet my collected writings on MWC News, while revealed by a Yahoo Search for the words Gideon Polya as item #5 on page 1 of about 90,000 URLs (see: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ), are COMPLETELY “buried” by a Google Search (this item does not appear in the first 200 results out of 24,000 sites) – however, in contrast, item #6 on page 1 from this Google Search (see: http://lighthousepatriotjournal.wor... ) is an egregiously false, grossly abusive, profoundly offensive defamation of me for reporting horrendous Indigenous Asian deaths in the Bush Wars.

f. Google Censorship Violates Human Rights. As perceived by Nobel Laureate and former US Vice President Al Gore in his book “The Assault on Reason”, our “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” crucially involves the unfettered right to information. Indeed this right is clearly set out in the Universal Charter of Human Rights both implicitly and explicitly, most notably by Article #19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” (see: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html ). Indeed the ethical, humanitarian, anti-racist and universalist Media with Conscience News (MWC News) is dedicated to this ethos as revealed by its courageous and high quality publication record and its credo “a site without borders”.

g. Google Censorship Violates Sacred Post-Holocaust Injunctions. The Nazis wiped my large and distinguished family from the face of Europe. For this reason, and of course for fundamental reasons of humanity, I resolutely adhere to the fundamental, core messages from the World War 2 Holocaust, specifically “zero tolerance for racism”, “never again to anyone” and “bear witness”. Unfortunately, those who support the invasion, occupation, devastation and ethnic cleansing of foreign lands are grossly violating these sacred injunctions that arise from the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation), the Western Theatre WW2 Holocaust in general (30 million Slav, Jewish and Roma dead) and the Eastern Theatre WW2 Holocaust (35 million Chinese dead under Japanese Occupation, 1937-1945, and 6-7 million Indians dead in the man-made Bengal Famine in British-ruled India, 1943-1945) (see BBC account involving me, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen (Harvard University) and other scholars: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot... ). Invasion, occupation, devastation and ethnic cleansing is currently the lot of a swathe of Occupied Countries including Occupied Haiti, Occupied Somalia, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Occupied Syria, Occupied Iraq, Occupied Afghanistan, Occupied Diego Garcia and robot-bombed and otherwise Western-invaded Waziristan in Pakistan (for details of this continuing catastrophe read William Blum’s “Rogue State” and my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” : http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).

In Summary, censorship, ignoring and lying by omission and commission derail scholarly and scientific inquiry and Rational Risk Management. In part because the Nazis wiped my family from the face of Europe I am inspired by the core injunctions from the Holocaust of “zero tolerance for racism”, “never again to anyone’ and “bear witness” – sacred injunctions variously violated by those advocating invasion, occupation, devastation and ethnic cleansing of foreign lands and by Google Censorship. I take great inspiration from Polish war hero Jan Karski (later a professor at Georgetown University, Washington, DC) who “bore witness” by desperately trying to inform a disbelieving world about the Jewish Holocaust as it was happening (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Karski ). My fellow scholarly writers associated with MWC News are similarly committed to “bearing witness” about horrendous contemporary human rights abuse but have been grievously censored as a result. While humanitarians, scholars and other readers can simply evade Google Censorship by using Yahoo, Google Censorship is a blot on an otherwise fine company that has hitherto made an enormous positive contribution to humanity. I would urge Google to cease censorship of MWC News, and of humanitarian writers and artists in general, and indeed to cease censorship period.

Yours sincerely,
Dr Gideon Polya
Macleod, Melbourne, Australia

Credentials. 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 recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya and http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contribution “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/oc... ). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot...). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for Peace and for Mother and Child see “Truth , Beauty & Saving the World – Science, Art & Nuclear, Greenhouse & Poverty Threats”: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-NvVV... ) .

END LETTER TO GOOGLE

Any censorship is an added risk to information flow and hence the safety of humanity. Google Censorship of scientists, writers and artists exposing horrendous crimes against humanity that are IGNORED by mainstream media is a major threat to Humanity.

What can decent people do? Sensible people wanting information should do YAHOO Searches as long as dangerous Google Censorship persists.