Adventures of a Gonzo Journalist
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
After two years of bombing, the U.S. recently marked a horrendous milestone in a war with no clear end in sight.
Vocativ reported that the American-led coalition in the Middle East has now dropped 50,000 bombs in the ongoing campaign against Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terrorist group commonly known as ISIS or ISIL in the West) that began in August 2014.
The analysis noted that bombing has increased with time, peaking in June when coalition forces dropped 3,167 bombs on Iraq and Syria.
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
An analysis of terror attacks since 2002 suggests U.S. efforts to combat terrorism — i.e., the “war on terror” — have led to a dramatic increase in death and suffering from terrorism.
Published this year on Sept. 11, Paul Gottinger, a staff reporter for Reader Supported News, analyzed incidents of terrorism from George Bush declaring the war on terror in the aftermath of 9/11 through the present, and found a staggering 6,500 percent increase in terrorism. Gottinger, who used data provided by the State Department in his analysis, found that casualties have increased by 4,500 percent.
Countries occupied by or being bombed the U.S. military seem to fare worst of all:
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
Years of war and unrest devastated education in the Middle East and North Africa, leaving more than 13 million children without safe or reliable schools across the region, according to a new report from UNICEF.
The report, “Education Under Fire,” which was released on Sept. 3, details the bitter cost of war on the future of millions of children. The report focuses on nine countries where millions have been displaced by near constant conflict and bombing since 2011.
More than 8,850 schools in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen are unusable “because they have been damaged, destroyed, are sheltering displaced families or are occupied by parties to the conflicts,” the authors noted. Just in 2014, 214 schools were attacked in the region.
Posted in Journalism, and MintPress News
It may never be possible to know the true death toll of the modern Western wars on the Middle East, but that figure could be 4 million or higher. Since the vast majority of those killed were of Arab descent, and mostly Muslim, when would it be fair to accuse the United States and its allies of genocide?
A March report by Physicians for Social Responsibility calculates the body count of the Iraq War at around 1.3 million, and possibly as many as 2 million. However, the numbers of those killed in Middle Eastern wars could be much higher. In April, investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed argued that the actual death toll could reach as high as 4 million if one includes not just those killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the victims of the sanctions against Iraq, which left about 1.7 million more dead, half of them children, according to figures from the United Nations.
