David Swanson is the co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, and has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director [...] His latest book is called War is a Lie, published in November 2010.

By William Fisher

NEW YORK, Oct 25, 2010 (Inter Press Service) – Two revelations await the reader of the Wikileaks section dealing with civilian deaths in the Iraq War: Iraqis are responsible for most of these deaths, and the number of total civilian casualties is substantially higher than has been previously reported. Read article here»»»

Siriel-Media : As already well known and reported, countless civilians have been murdered at US checkpoints and by US snipers. What is underreported is the extent of civilian deaths caused by non-US factions. All in all, these leaks support the evaluation that well over 100,000 civilians have been murdered since the invasion.

We must affirm the fact, not mentioned in this report, that the aftermath of war causes even more deaths from diseases, malnutrition, economic strife, etc. While we try to estimate people killed directly, humanitarian agencies allow us to estimate that hundreds of thousands more have died indirectly (i.e. beyond the normal death rate of course). This was also the case under the blockade imposed upon the entire people of Iraq from 1990 to 2003; lest we forget.

Muntadhar al-Zaidi (Arabic: منتظر الزيدي‎ Muntaẓar az-Zaydī) was an Iraqi broadcast journalist who served as a correspondent for Iraqi-owned Al-Baghdadia TV. Al-Zaidi’s reports often focused on the plight of widows, orphans, and children in the Iraq War.

On November 16, 2007, al-Zaidi was kidnapped by unknown assailants in Baghdad. He was also previously twice arrested by the United States armed forces.

On December 14, 2008, al-Zaidi shouted “this is for the widows and orphans” and threw his shoes at then-US president George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference.

Al-Zaidi suffered injuries as he was taken into custody and was tortured during his initial detention.

There were calls throughout the Middle East to place the shoes in an Iraqi museum, but the shoes were later destroyed by American and Iraqi security forces.

Al-Zaidi’s shoeing inspired many similar incidents of political protest around the world. On February 20, 2009, al-Zaidi received a 90-minute trial by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. On March 12, 2009, he was sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a foreign head of state during an official visit. On April 7 the sentence was reduced to one year from three years. He was released on 15 September 2009 for good behaviour, after serving nine months of the sentence.

Democracy Now, January 06, 2010

In an extended interview, award-winning journalist and activist Allan Nairn looks back over the Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security decisions over the last twelve months. “I think Obama should be remembered as a great man because of the blow he struck against white racism,” Nairn says. “But [...] the US has a machine that spans the globe, that has the capacity to kill, and Obama has kept it set on kill. He could have flipped the switch and turned it off… but he chose not to do so.” He continues, “In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year.”
Source: www.democracynow.org/2010/1/6/obama_has_kept_the_machine_set

Siriel-Media comment : Nairn gives real examples of how US and NATO forces wilfully target and murder civilians and he asks the right questions concerning how we would feel if foreign forces bombed civilians and murdered people freely in our own country. Nairn has the capacity to speak the hard truth calmly, as it is, and to look at the horrible truth beyond our self-serving lies and propaganda. A rare hard look at reality (but remember, it is a reality we can change).

Malalai Joya, elected by the people of Farah, and banned from parliament for denouncing criminals of war (though her democratic mandate was to last till the current elections), spoke to an audience of 300 at Conway Hall in central London (July 2009). She has survived five assassination attempts, had her passport taken away by Karzaï, and must constantly take various precautions in Afghanistan. We invite you to hear what a woman fighting for human rights and justice has to say…

Support our “Surge for Peace”
   The letter (appended below) to Ottawa City Council comes from an Afghan woman MP who expresses her clear opposition to the use of Ottawa facilities for any military trade shows.

Malalai Joya is an elected Afghan Member of Parliament. However, in May 2007 she was barred from Parliament for three years because she had denounced the many foreign-backed warlords and drug barons who dominate her government. While the Afghan Parliament passed a law giving immunity to all Afghan’s who have committed war crimes over the previous 25 years, it also passed a law saying that Afghan MPs could not criticise each other.

So it is permissible to have MPs in Afghanistan’s parliament who are war criminals, but it is not permissible to have MPs in that Parliament who dare to risk death threats for merely criticising the presence of those war criminals. This is the democracy that Canada helped to install and is now protecting. Canada helped the US to replace Taliban warlords with other warlords from the “Northern Alliance” who killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Kabul alone during the 1990s.

On May 21, 2007, Malalai Joya – the young MP dubbed “the bravest woman in Afghanistan” by the BBC – was unjustly suspended from the Afghan National Assembly. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Afghanistan on that day and, two years later, has still yet to make any statement about Joya’s mistreatment.

“Canada’s participation in this war in Afghanistan has been justified with rhetoric about women’s rights, yet Harper and the Conservatives remained silent when Malalai Joya was ousted from her elected position and again did nothing meaningful when Karzai signed the anti-women provision which sanctioned rape in marriage,” said Parvin Ashrafi, a women’s rights activist with the Iranian Centre for Peace, Freedom and Social Justice and a member of Friends of Malalai Joya—Canada.

What are the risks of an attack against Iran, considered completely crazy by most, according to Eric Margolis (journalist and author), Phyllis Bennis (Senior Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies, and author) and Paul Heinbecker (former Canadian Chief Foreign Policy Advisor and former Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations).

August 6, 2008

It is the 63rd anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US Dept. of Energy estimates the 5 year death toll from the bomb at Hiroshima alone to be over 200,000, the vast majority of whom were civilians. In the piece below, John Pilger readily debunks the myth that the bombing of Hiroshima was either needed or intended to end the war in the Pacific.

This anniversary has a particular significance, coming as it does at a moment when Israel is intensifying its belligerent posturing towards Iran, culminating perhaps in Benny Morris’ recent threat / prediction in the New York Times of a nuclear attack.

Pilger reminds us that we have seen this all before: the intensive disinformation campaign (in this case, a positive will to forget the International Atomic Energy Agency and US intelligence agencies’ reports that Iran does not pose a nuclear threat), and the campaign of racist vilification.

Trita Parsi talks about the effect of threats on Iranian public opinion
   Trita Parsi was born in Iran and grew up in Sweden. He earned a Master’s Degree in International Relations at Uppsala University, a second Master’s Degree in Economics at Stockholm School of Economics and a PhD in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University SAIS. He has served as an adviser to Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH18) on Middle East issues and is a co-founder and current President of the National Iranian American Council (www.niacouncil.org).

Dr. Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007).