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Picasso & Polya Paintings for Peace
ON 26 APRIL 1937 Nazi German and Fascist Italian bombers attacked the Basque town of Guernica. They generated a firestorm that destroyed three quarters of the town and caused huge civilian casualties (estimates ranging from 300-1,600 dead). Many believe that this was in part a trial run for the Nazi Luftwaffe. Thus at his post-war Nuremberg trial German Luftwaffe chief Göring stated: “I urged him [Adolf Hitler] to give support [to Franco] under all circumstances, firstly, in order to prevent the further spread of communism in that theater and, secondly, to test my young Luftwaffe at this opportunity in this or that technical respect ” (see: HERE). The bombing of Guernica prompted Pablo Picasso to paint his huge painting “Guernica” for the 1937 Paris Exposition (Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, International Exposition for Art and Technology in Modern Life). Picasso’s “Guernica” masterpiece has become THE iconic anti-war painting – and competes with Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” as THE iconic painting of the 20th century. On 27 January 2003, just prior to the impending war with Iraq, UN officials SHROUDED of the UN’s copy of “Guernica” in New York. This copy of “Guernica:” was shrouded while US Secretary of State Colin Powell was presenting arguments (later proven to be based on FALSE information) for the Invasion of Iraq. This is, in part, what Australian Labor Party (ALP) Opposition parliamentarian Laurie Brereton said in a speech to the Australian Federal Parliament on 4 February 2003. “On 26 April 1937, German bombers attacked the town of Guernica in northern Spain. The village was left in ruins with sixteen hundred civilians killed or wounded. This act of terror - the first large scale aerial attack against a civilian population centre - outraged the world. It compelled Picasso, then living in Paris, to begin the work that would become his testament against the horrors of war and one of the greatest artworks of the twentieth century.
This may be the official explanation, but the same media reports quote unnamed diplomats observing that it would not be appropriate for the US Ambassador at the UN John Negroponte or Secretary of State Colin Powell to talk about war with Iraq against a backdrop depicting images of women and children and animals crying with horror and showing the suffering of war. Whatever the reasons, there is a profound symbolism in pulling a shroud over this great work of art. For throughout the debate on Iraq, whether at the UN, in the US, or here in Australia, there has been a remarkable degree of obfuscation, evasion and denial, and never more so than when it comes to the grim realities of military action.” The rest is history. In vain, millions demonstrated around the world against the impending disaster. 150,000 people (including me, friends and family) demonstrated in Melbourne, Australia against the coming invasion of Iraq. On 20 March 2003 the US, UK and Australia invaded the remote, non-threatening, oil-rich but sanctions-crippled country of Iraq in gross violation of the UN Charter and of International Law. Four years on in Occupied Iraq the post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that should not have happened) total 1.0 million; post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths total 0.5 million; and there are now an estimated 4 million Iraqi refugees out of a population of 27 million (see MWC News). This now amounts to an Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide (as defined by the UN Genocide Convention) that is being perpetrated by the American Bush Administration with the assistance of Racist Bush-ite (RB) governments around the world (notably those of the UK, Australia and Canada) and the support of the Racist Zionists (RZs) of the Western Israel Lobbies and the Racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel (AI). The War on Iraq is ONE part of 21st century US or US-backed invasion and occupation of typically weak and impoverished countries around the world, specifically Haiti, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The accrual cost (i.e. the long-term committed cost) of just the Iraq and Afghanistan part of the Bush War on Terror has been estimated at $2.5 TRILLION by 2001 Economics Nobel Laureate US Professor Stiglitz (Columbia University ) and Professor Linda Bilmes (Harvard University). The post-invasion excess deaths in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories now (April 2007) total 0.3. 1.0 and 2.4 million, respectively; the post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2, 0.5 and 1.9 million, respectively; and there are over 4 million Palestinian refugees registered with the UN, 4 million Iraqi refugees and 3.7 million Afghan refugees (see MWC News). We are seeing an ongoing Palestinian Genocide, an Iraqi Genocide and an Afghan Genocide – while the world simply looks on. Since the invasion of Iraq I have been writing around the world as a humanist scientist (most notably on the ethical and humanitarian MWC News), attempting to inform an unresponsive world about the horrendous consequences of Bush’s War on Terror that has so far been associated with 3.4 million post-invasion deaths in Occupied Iraq and Afghanistan – mostly of Women and Children and mostly due to deliberate US and US Alliance war crimes. Indeed in terms of horrendous actuality, the Bush War on Terror is in reality a cowardly and racist war on Women and Children, a War on Arab Women and Children, a War on Muslim Women and Children, a War on Asian Women and Children and a War on Non-European Women and Children. The carnage continues. The WORDS of little people such as myself or of great people such as UK Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter have failed to convince an unresponsive world. Inspired by Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” I have a painted a huge painting “Qana” to commemorate the Apartheid Israeli bombing destruction of the Lebanese town of Qana in mid-2006. This painting is based on a “double Golden Rectangle” underlying geometry (as is “Guernica”) but is one third the size of “Guernica” and also differs in being very colourful and deliberately painted so that it will not scare children (see MWC News). The world in practice ignored the URGENCY and PAIN of Picasso’s masterpiece “Guernica” – it plunged into WW2 with the invasion of Eastern and Western Europe by the Nazis, the 35 million dead in China, 20 million dead in Russia, 6 million dead in Poland, the Jewish Holocaust with 6 million victims, the London Blitz, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Rape of Nanjing – and, albeit RUBBED OUT OF HISTORY, the man-made, WW2 Bengal Famine that killed 4 million Bengalis in British-ruled India. Similarly, my modest offering of my huge “Qana” painting and the like protests of millions of anti-war demonstrators around the world are ignored by the Racist Bush-ites (RBs) and Racist Zionists (RZs) – the killing continues and there is acute threat of conventional or even nuclear attack on peaceful and remote Iran (population 70 MILLION) by the forces of US-Israeli State Terrorism (USIST). I have now tried a different tack, painting a huge and colourful painting called “Alhambra Pollock” that conflates pure medieval Islamic Art with the radical, post-war abstract expressionism of American Jackson Pollock – the argument being that if such radical cultural extremes can be unified then there is absolutely NO excuse for the hatred, violence, anti-Arab anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, war and mass murder of so many millions of innocents (see MWC News ). Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Tell all your friends about “Guernica”-inspired “Qana” and about the glowing “Alhambra Pollock” painted for Arab-Islam-West amity. Can LOVE and BEAUTY succeed where words and even polemical paintings have failed?
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 Dr Gideon Polya, MWC News Chief political editor, 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), and is currently writing a book on global mortality ---
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