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More images showing German soldiers playing with skulls and bones in Afghanistan have surfaced. The site had been a regular stopping point for patrols. Those who didn’t play along were considered wimps.
One image showed a soldier posing with the skull next to his exposed penis.
Let me just quote Stan Goff here:
Now, allow me to turn to a highly eupehemized scandal in Germany right now. Nine German soldiers assigned to the NATO occupation of Afghanistan have been busted for posing with the skulls of dead Afghans. “Posing.” Other accounts say “desecrating.” In fact, in at least one of the pictures, a German soldier has his dick out of his pants in the suggestion that he is about to… “skull fuck” it.
For those not in the know, I am about to break the code of omerta with the fraternity of men. This term is common military parlance, and more and more among American (and German, too, it seems) males. When you really want to prove you male “bona fides,” you talk about humiliating the enemy, by removing the eye from a corpse and “skull fucking” it.
For those newcomers and lurkers and men who don’t get it yet, how much more perfect an example could I give of the association of male sexuality with violence, aggression, and the humiliation of the (real or symbolic) female victim. And what better example of many liberal and leftist men’s cluelessness than this masculinity-donning remark by Spencer Ackerman in the context of complaining about being red-baited off of a magazine staff.
Men, language like this is not one whit more excusable or acceptable or defensible than racial epithets or ethnic slurs. But had Ackerman discussed “jewing people down” or “nigger-rigging” or any of the other shit we’ve managed to at least run off the public stage in the interest of some facade of decency, lefty blogs would be lit up like an NSA communications board, in an attempt to see who could level the harshest condemnation. Yet the implication that reception of a penis — which most men desire from women — is synonymous with the desecration of the enemy dead, seems to drift along with hardly a rustle of the leaves.
Dumping Toxic waste – the underbelly of globalization
Trafigura, the Dutch firm that dumped toxic waste in Ivory coast which killed 10 people has admitted moral, but not legal, responsibility for the incident. Trafigura says it contracted properly with an Ivorian company called Tommy to dispose of the waste which was later found to have been dumped under cover of darkness in Abidjan’s residential neighbourhoods. The following morning people awoke to a sickening stench.
“The smell was so bad we were afraid. It burned our noses and eyes.”
According to Lydia Polgreen and Marlise Simons, Tommy hired more than a dozen tanker trucks into which the sludge was pumped. Later…
The trucks fanned out, at night, to at least 18 sites across the city …according to the French cleanup crew and witnesses in several neighborhoods where the material was dumped. Later…
Several trucks went to the Abidjan landfill, in a community called Akuedo. Residents there are accustomed to foul odors, but they knew something was particularly bad about the new material. They chased and surrounded one of the trucks, forcing the driver to flee on foot, witnesses said. In other places, trucks were simply abandoned by drivers fearful of being attacked.
Ten people have died, including four children, while about 100,000 have been treated for nausea, vomiting, nosebleeds and migraines following exposure to the toxic waste which experts say contained hydrogen sulphide and also led to paralysis of the country’s public health system. According to a WHO spokesman, “This has put a double burden on the already weak health system of Cote d’Ivoire. This crisis has shown that the country does not have the capacity to deal with such an emergency.” On top of this, the environment has been destroyed and scared people have been displaced from their homes, many seeking refuge in the forests arround Abidjan.
Public furore over the scandal led to the Prime Minister and his government being forced to resign amid public belief that corruption was to blame for the dumping.
So far, ten people from Trafigura and Ivorian Tommy are in custody including 3 customs officials and a high ranking official at the Department of Transport. Customs officials went out on strike in support of their arrested colleagues which led to petrol stations closing due to a shortage of petrol caused by port closures..
“We have never handed back or refused waste before… But the crux was that Trafigura refused to pay. If they had, the material would have been treated and there would have been no problem.”
The rotten affair began in August when European tanker, Probo Koala, docked ship in Abidjan after leaving the Netherlands where it had hoped to offload the waste which was described as the ship’s slops. Amsterdam Port Services (APS) had offered to take care of the mess for €12,000 but the slops smelt so much workers were being sickened and Trafigura had also underestimated how much “waste” they were carrying. APS upped the price . It would have incurred costs of $35,000 a day as demurrage with additional penalties of $250,000 for delays. Trafigura, a company which in 2005 made €22 billion ($28 billion) in revenues balked at the price. After a brief stand off in the port, the dutch authorities allowed the tanker to take back its waste. Probo Koala then travelled on to Estonia, then Nigeria where it offloaded crude before contracting with Ivorian company, Tommy, to take the waste. To date, Trafigura have refused to reveal how much Tommy was paid to dispose of the waste.
Compagnie Tommy was formed after Probo Koala set sail from the Netherlands by Ivoirian businessmen. It received its licence to dispose of toxic waste as early as July 12th.
Both Trafigura and members of the president’s family held shares in a company called Puma Energy, which awarded Tommy the contract to dispose of the toxic sludge the ship was carrying. Officials at Trafigura’s headquarters in the Netherlands have denied any involvement in Tommy…
So far, 500 tons of toxic sludge has been discovered at 18 sites across Abidjan, including a lagoon and the public garbage dump. European waste experts say that the Ivory Coast, one of the world’s poorest countries has no facilities to deal with such waste.
The identity of tanker is convoluted. According to Polgreen and Simons, it was “a Greek-owned tanker flying a Panamanian flag and leased by the London branch of a Swiss trading corporation whose fiscal headquarters are in the Netherlands.”
Trafigura Beheer BV has a checkered past. The company was found to have bribed inspectors in Iraq to purchase more oil than it was allowed under the “oil for food” scheme. Trafigura was founded in 1993 by associates of Marc Rich with his money, Business Week reported last year.
Polgreen and Simons revealed allegations that the Probo Koala had acted as an illegal, floating refinery off the coast of Gibraltar and the Spanish city of Algeciras, where it served as a sort of “bunker ship” for chemical wastes from other ships — a claim Trafigura has denied last summer, while global gas prices were soaring. Since then, Deutsche Presse-Agentur has reported that analyses of the tanker have supported those accusations. Trafigura has denied these allegations.
In a letter to the New York Times, Graham Sharp, director of Trafigura wrote on October 4th:
To the Editor:
Re “Global Sludge Ends in Tragedy for Ivory Coast” (front page, Oct. 2): We are shocked and distressed at the tragic events in Abidjan, but we do not believe that Trafigura can be held to have behaved irresponsibly or unethically.
We believe that the vessel slops we discharged in Ivory Coast were not capable of causing the harm that happened there. In particular, we are certain that they did not contain hydrogen sulfide.
A certified local company, Tommy, was contracted to removed the slops for disposal. The slops were offloaded in the port into road tankers under the supervision of customs officials, port officials and environmental officials. Trafigura began legal proceedings against Tommy on Sept. 8 in Ivory Coast.
We have traded in West Africa for 10 years and invested in sustainable development and the industry infrastructure in Ivory Coast. We intend to continue that commitment.
Trafigura also claimed in a pr release that “The slops discharged were not “toxic waste”. They were a mix of gasoline blend stock, spent caustic soda and water, as used routinely to clean gasoline cargoes.”
SPIEGEL has obtained a copy of a confidential fax the captain of the Probo Koala sent to his African partner company, in which he writes that the load was “not waste water from normal shipping operations,” but “chemical waste water” that exceeded allowable limits.
“It’s pure petrochemical waste,’‘ said Rudolph Walder, a Swiss hazardous waste expert with the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination mission. He said Tuesday the material included solids, oily substances and water _ products that could come from a refinery, from the petrochemical industry or from the cleaning of ships.
U.N. experts previously said the waste contained the potentially dangerous chemical hydrogen sulfide, the source of the rotten smell.
“It is very clear to me that (the waste) is a product that violates the Basel convention,” Walder said.
According to the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported in its September 8 situation report that the toxic waste contains Hydrogen sulphide, mercaptans, mixed aromatic and aliphatic distillates, and unspecified organochlorides. Hydrogen sulfide, which in concentrated doses can kill humans but when diffused gives off the odour of matches or rotten eggs, according to an Ivorian government health report.
“In 30 years of doing this kind of work I have never seen anything like this,” said Jean-Loup Queru, an engineer with a French cleanup company brought in by the Ivoirian government. “This kind of industrial waste, dumped in this urban setting, in the middle of the city – never.”
“The slops from the Probo Koala were handed over to a certified local Abidjan slops disposal company, Compagnie Tommy [remember the company set up to dispose of Probo Koalas waste on July 12th], following Trafigura’s communication to the authorities of the nature of the slops, and a written request that the material should be safely disposed of, according to country laws, and with all correct documentation.
“Compagnie Tommy confirmed that the slops would be correctly processed as chemical slops, with the consent of both the Ministry of Transport and the Port Authorities.”
However, Ivory Coast did not have the facilities to dispose of this waste. This is a classic example of how greedy and unscrupulous businesses are taking advantage of lax international environmental laws to offload waste in Africa that would otherwise be too expensive to dispose of in Europe. The conventions that European heads of state sign are, in effect, meaningless.
“This is the underbelly of globalization,” said Jim Puckett, an activist at the Basel Action Network, an environmental group that fights toxic waste dumping. “Environmental regulations in the north have made disposing of waste expensive, so corporations look south.”
An investigation is underway. The UN Environment Programme is seeking evidence of whether there has been a breech of the Basel Convention, a protocol which regulates the movement of hazardous waste across international borders. It is heartening that Abidjans understood clearly what was taking place here and brought down their crooked masters. Masters who were prepared to allow the dumping of hazardous waste which lead to deaths and environmental destruction.
The cleanup which has been underway for the past two months is estimated to cost $13 million, the UN has given the country some $64 million to deal with the health care crisis.
More to follow…
In a CNBC interview yesterday, Maria Bartiromo asked President Bush: “Have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?”
Bush’s answer betrays his lack of savvy when it comes to “the Internets”.
“Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can — like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some. I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email. ‘But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”
Jarvis Cocker’s latest video “Running The World”
Running The World
The lyrics…
Well, did you hear there’s a natural order?
Those most deserving will end up with the most.
That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top?
Well I say… shit floats.
If you thought things had changed,
Friend, you’d better think again.
Bluntly put in the fewest of words:
Cunts are still running the world
Now the Working classes are obsolete
They are surplus to society’s needs.
So let ‘em all kill each other
and get it made overseas.
That’s the word, don’t you know?
From the guys that’s running the show.
Let’s be perfectly clear boys and girls:
Cunts are still running the world
Oh feed your children on crayfish and lobster tails
Find a school near the top of the league.
In theory, I respect your right to exist
I will kill you if you move in next to me.
Ah, it stinks, Yeah, it sucks,
It’s anthropologically unjust,
Oh but the takings are up by a third,
Cunts are still running the world
The free market is perfectly natural,
Do you think that I’m some kind of dummy?
It’s the ideal way to order the world;
Fuck the morals does it make any money?
And if you don’t like it? Then leave
or use your right to protest on the street.
Yeah, use your right but don’t imagine that it’s heard
Not whilst cunts are still running the world
Cunts are still running the world
George Bush’s attempt to redefine success in Iraq by diverting attention from body counts to the provision of health-care and schools was met with disbelief by Iraqis.
“I define success or failure as whether or not the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves. I define success or failure as whether schools are being built or hospitals are being opened. I define success or failure as whether we’re seeing a democracy grow in the heart of the Middle East,” he told ABC News.
Half of the deaths that have occured in Iraq due to violence could have been prevented if proper medical care was available. The Independent reports that in the 14 months following the 2003 invasion, $20 bn of British and American funds was spent on reconstruction and reequipping Iraq’s 180 hostpitals. Half of that went missing through corruption, incompetence and criminal activity.
Since the invasion not a single Iraqi hospital has been built, according to Amar al-Saffar, in charge of construction at the Health Ministry.
In fact, no hospital had been built since the Qaddumiya hospital opened in 1986 in Baghdad, he said. When the war started it had 20 intensive care unit beds. Now it has half that, with many patients forced to buy their own oxygen supplies on the black market.
The only significant attempt to build a hospital was a project promoted by Laura Bush, the First Lady, in Basra. She frequently praised the $50 million paediatric hospital being built in the southern city. But Mr al-Saffar said that through financial mismanagement — the bane of postwar reconstruction across the country — it had never been completed.
Another senior Health Ministry official was surprised that Mr Bush had latched on to healthcare as proof of progress in Iraq. “It is the worst situation that the Ministry of Health has been in in its entire history,” he said. Healthcare had become so dire that half of those who died of injuries from terrorist attacks might have been saved, according to Bassim al-Sheibani, of the Diwaniyah College of Medicine, writing in the British Medical Journal.
While only 3000 of Iraq’s 18,000 schools have been refurbished.
56 per cent of Americans believe going to war in Iraq was a mistake; compare that to 23% who thought it was a mistake in March 2003 while 75% then thought invading Iraq was the right thing to do. More worryingly for Bush, a Newsweek poll carried out on October 5th found that a majority believe that the US is losing ground in it’s efforts to establish a stable democratic Iraq while over 50% say that they think the administration lied about WMD prior to the invasion.
The latest clarion call of the thoroughly repulsive political establishment is to root out Muslim extremists in UK universities. University staff are encouraged to report suspicious “Asian looking” and Muslim students they suspect of being extremists.
The Department for Education has drawn up a series of proposals which are to be sent to universities and other centres of higher education before the end of the year. The 18-page document acknowledges that universities will be anxious about passing information to special branch, for fear it amounts to “collaborating with the ’secret police’”. It says there will be “concerns about police targeting certain sections of the student population (eg Muslims)”.
The document, which has been obtained by the Guardian, was sent within the last month to selected official bodies for consultation and reveals the full extent of what the authorities fear is happening in universities.
It claims that Islamic societies at universities have become increasingly political in recent years and discusses monitoring their leaflets and speakers. The document warns of talent-spotting by terrorists on campuses and of students being “groomed” for extremism.
In a section on factors that can radicalise students, the document identifies Muslims from “segregated” backgrounds as more likely to hold radical views than those who have “integrated into wider society”. It also claims that students who study in their home towns could act as a link between extremism on campuses and in their local communities.
The government wants universities to crack down on extremism, and the document says campus staff should volunteer information to special branch and not wait to be contacted by detectives.
So far the document has been met with hostility by the UCU.
The University and College Union, representing academic staff, fears members “may be sucked into an anti-Muslim McCarthyism which has serious consequences for civil liberties by blurring the boundaries of what is illegal and what is possibly undesirable.”
Paul Mackney, joint general secretary, said: “There is a danger of demonising Muslims, for example by the statements of five ministers in the last couple of weeks, when actually Muslims have made enormous strides in getting more of their young people to universities and colleges.”
The universities have been accused of complacency by Professor Anthony Glees, the Director for the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, although he puts the problem of student extremists at tens or possibly hundreds. His research has been strongly criticised by other academics and university vice-chancellors as little more than anecdotal.
In contrast Kent sociologist Professor Frank Furedi urges students and academics to debate publicly rather than try to ban or suppress extreme ideas. “Islamic radicals… appear to have something to say and at public meetings often command authority. Those who associate with organisations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir are often hightly motivated, articulate and intelligent young people”, he says. A campus clampdown would be a “disaster in the making”.
This is an attack on the UK’s civil rights and human rights veiled as an attack on our Muslim community which finds support among sections of the UK. If there is no mounted attack against this authoritarian tendency, we could find ourselves in a similar situation to Germany in the 1930s.
Nobody in 1930’s Germany would have believed that in ten years time Jews would be rounded up and carted off to concentration camps. Germans did not complain initially because they were promised that the attacks on civil liberties would be directed only at Jews. The attacks on Jews were soon expanded to cover other sections of society such as communists, trade-unionists, intellectuals, the disabled.
Similarly, nobody should be fooled that the attacks on Muslims will remain a Muslim affair. Attacks on Muslims represent attacks on all civil society.
Anybody who remains in doubt about this should pay attention. Iain Dale’s diary leaks Police Commissioner Ian Blair’s comments in a private meeting to the Reform Club Media Group
Sir Ian said the British people should ‘brace themselves for a truly appalling act of terror’. He said that following this act of barbarism ‘people would be talking quite openly about internment’, giving the impression that he would be leading the pro-internment lobby. No doubt he will find a willing supplicant in the tougher than tough Home Secretary John Reid.
My informant thought at first that it really was a throwaway remark but on reflection felt that it couldn’t have been made by accident. Well, either that or the Reform Club claret had loosened his tongue.
Ian Blair’s statements are meant to strike fear in the British public who will no doubt support further authoritarian measures undertaken to protect them. He implies that the police will be powerless to do anything to stop this attack, therefore, the conclusion is that we should strip away even more civil liberties. The hysteria surrounding Muslims which has been hyped up by the press with their uncritical reporting of nonexistent terror-plots is reaching fever pitch. Some are calling for the internment, deportation and liquidation of Muslim “extremists” already, check out the comments at Iain Dale’s blog. This is what your brain looks like on terror.
As Stephen Soldz commenting on “terror management theory” explains…
One of the most interesting psychological/psychodynamic theories for understanding contemporary political events is terror management theory (TMT). TMT postulates that most people, when the threat of death enters their peripheral awareness, become more conventional in attitudes, more punitive, and more intolerant of “outsiders.”
One of the exciting things about TMT is the huge empirical base, involving hundreds of studies, in its support. One of my favorites was conducted in Germany. People were interviewed regarding their attitudes towards immigrants in two locations: in front of a funeral parlor (enhanced death threat) and one block away. Those interviewed in front of a funeral parlor were markedly more anti-immigrant than those interviewed a block away.
A concrete example of this is to be found in a Yougov/Spectator (.pdf) survey carried out between 14th – 16th August, four days after the alleged terror-in-the-skies plot, individuals were asked whether Britain should change its foreign policy in response to the terrorist threat in August following the plots discovery on 10th August, 68% said they believed Britain should be tougher, more aggressive. When asked whether stricter airport security made them feel safer or less safe, 64% said they felt safer. Then when they were asked whether the govt should have done more to make air travel safer before the terrorist plot was uncovered on 10th August, 61% agreed. While 55% supported “passenger profiling.” Interestingly, respondents were more adverse to supporting a future US war with Iran; 67% said that Britain should not send troops to support further invasions by the US.
Would the establishment use far-right extremists like Robert Cottage and David Bolus Jackson to instigate a false flag terrorist event and fulfil Ian Blair’s predicted “truly appalling act of terror?” The two men were arrested following a police raid on their homes which netted a “record haul” of chemicals, rocket launchers and nuclear biological suit. They are accused of having “some kind of master plan.” This extraordinary event has not been covered by any of the mainstream media. The BBC’s excuse for not reporting the story is that it did not find out about the arrests until days later.
The terror plot you won’t hear about on the nightly news
CAMPAIGNERS accused the mainstream media on Sunday of “whipping up racist hysteria” against Muslims while ignoring growing evidence of a terror threat from the racist far right.
Activists expressed anger at the media silence surrounding the arrest of BNP members Robert Cottage and David Bolus.
The pair were arrested earlier this month after police uncovered bomb-making equipment, a rocket launcher and a chemical suit in Mr Cottage’s house.
The BNP insisted that the men were ex-members. However, Mr Cottage stood as a BNP candidate in the Pendle council elections in May.
Despite strong evidence to the contrary, Superintendent Neil Smith has insisted that what police has found “is not a bomb-making factory” and that it was not related to terrorism.
Campaigners argued that, if this kind of material had been found in a Muslim household, they would be charged under the Terrorism Act and would have made daily front-page news.
London Mayor Ken Livinstone said that too much emphasis was put on “a couple of hundred” potentially violent Muslims, while the media ignored “huge selections of bomb-making material with small numbers of English-origin extreme right-wing groups.”
A spokesman for the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight branded the BNP “a terrorist organisation, which aims to politically and physically terrorise the public.”
Media Workers Against the War chairman Dave Crouch accused the press of toeing the government line on the terror threat.
“The deeper the crisis of Bush and Blair’s ‘war on terror,’ the more shrill and concerted media attacks on Muslims have become,” he argued.
“The media constantly scrabbles around for another scare story involving Muslims, while ignoring the real scary stories, like police finding explosives in the hands of fascists.”
Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said that Muslim suspects were subjected to “trial by media” and accused the mainstream press and TV of “proclaiming them guilty before they have even been charged or tried.”
She added: “The reality is that the government cannot bomb and invade other Muslim countries and justify the deed without demonising and scapegoating the Muslim community in Britain.
“The government must own up to the disasters of its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and stop scapegoating British Muslims.”
Left blog Lenin’s Tomb complained in an email to the BBC about its failure to cover the story.
BBC TV News official Debby Moyse claimed in response that the broadcaster, with thousands of journalists across Britain and the world, had only found out about the story some days after it was reported locally.
She insisted that “reporting restrictions” placed on the story had prevented regional BBC journalists from investigating further.
“It appears a reporter from BBC Radio Lancashire investigated initial reports, but the police ‘played it down’,” she claimed.
“Our regional televison centre in in Manchester found out about the story only after it was reported in the Colne Times. By this time, it was several days old.”
The blog rejected Ms Moyse’s excuses, accusing the BBC of choosing not to report the story.
“In cases of ‘Islamic’ terrorism, the BBC would be very quick to hear about it from the police and the government and no amount of ‘playing down’ would be involved,” it noted.
Update:
According to the Ministry of Truth claims by the BNP that Cottage is an ex BNP member are false.
Cottage stood as a BNP candidate in the lcoal elections in Colne in May 2006, and must therefore have been a member of the BNP at that time. According to the BNP’s own website.
Membership is for the 12 months of the calendar year – January to December but those signing up from Oct 1st through to Dec 31st qualify for the following year’s card.
…in which case his membership of the BNP does not ‘lapse’ until 31 December 2006.
Looking through the blogosphere I notice that all criticisms of the Lancet study “The Human Cost of the War in Iraq” (.pdf) are directed at the Lancet and not at the Iraqi physicians who carried out the survey and were overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, not that I am saying the physicians from Baghdad deserve criticism. No, they deserve our praise for conducting this survey in the most difficult of situations.
If you consider that the coalition has fired 200,000,000 rounds of ammunition while making Iraq safe for democracy, and if you abide by the fact that 31% of Iraqis have been killed by the coalition, while the majority are dying because of gun-fire, and then consider only 1 in 1000 rounds would have had to hit an Iraqi for John Hopkins study to be true, then to put yourself in that line of fire to carry out a survey like this is an act of supreme bravery. Especially if you are a physician trained to save lives, not take them.
The point I am making, is that those who continue to discredit The Lancet, one of the world’s top peer-reviewed medical journals, are probably people who have not read The Lancet report yet, for they would have noticed the paucity of criticism directed at the techniques used in the survey and the lack of intelligent criticism from Western politicians whose views boil down to “nothing to see here, move along now.”
“I cannot help but note that this “controversy” consists of ten parts people like you saying that there is a controversy, mixed with zero parts actual statisticians raising concerns about the utterly uncontroversial methods employed.” Daniel Davies
Why attack The Lancet when in fact, Lancet merely published the survey after it was peer-reviewed by four separate independent experts who urged publication? The reason is because the critics want to avoid dealing with the methodology, they’d trash The Lancet. Out of desperation. Period.
The study was completed in June/July and the authors submitted their paper to the Lancet where it was reviewed. The paper was considered a strong one and moved quickly into publication. The most important part of the paper is understanding the methodology used.
Professor Mike Tool, Centre for International Health, Melbourne,
another top expert has offered his opinion on the methodology employed in The Lancet study…
” The methodology used is consistent with survey methodology that has long been standard practice in estimating mortality in populations affected by war. For example, the Burnet Institute and International Rescue Committee (IRC) used the same methods to estimate mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The findings of this study received widespread media attention and were accepted without reservation by the US and British governments. The Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health’s Centre for International Health endorses this study.”
Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet praised the way the media has handled the paper. On the politicians that have attacked the survey, Horton expresses his sadness at how Bush immediately attempted to discredit the survey without having read the report; he says this shows Bush is an unthinking, superficial person.
What the researchers found was that around 654,000 people had died in the 40 months since the invasion began and of those, around 601,000 had died violent deaths, the greatest cause being gun fire. Clearly, those criticizing it have not taken the time to read the study, nor look at the methodology and are out of their depth, none more so than George Bush.
According to Richard Horton, it is not usual that the Lancet publishes any report with political significance and one that provokes an immediate response from George Bush. Horton discusses in the Lancet’s weekly podcast (linked here in .mp3 format) how the whole story moved immediately from being an issue of public health to one of politics.
“It is odd that the logic of epidemiology embraced by the press every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow changes when the mechanism of death is their armed forces.” Les Roberts, co-author of the Lancet study
It should be noted that Tony Blair, Colin Powell, and the major media accepted and cite Les Roberts previous report on the Democratic Republic of Congo conflict which used the same methodology and which extrapolated that 1.7 million people had died as a result of the conflict without challenging its findings.
Hear Les Roberts talk about how easy it would be for concerned journalists to verify the results. All they would have to do is to to to four or five villages and ask the keeper of the graveyard how many people had been buried there since the invasion 2003.
“I cannot help but note that this “controversy” consists of ten parts people like you saying that there is a controversy, mixed with zero parts actual statisticians raising concerns about the utterly uncontroversial methods employed”
Right on cue, everyone’s on message with the stock charge that the Lancet report is not credible. Australia’s PM Howard is the latest voice to join the howl of disbelief emananting from Western capitals following the Lancet report published yesterday. Howard said he just did not believe that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since March 2003 than would have died had the invasion not taken place. He scoffed, “it’s not plausible. It’s not based on anything other than a house to house survey.”
It is because the research is based on house-to-house surveys that the death toll is higher than Iraq Body Count which cites over 48,693 violent civilian deaths post 2003 invasion, its fatalities culled from deaths reported in the media. Daniel Davies disparages this figure remarking that “If you go out and ask 12,000 people whether a family member has died and get reports of 300 deaths from violence, then that is not consistent with there being only 60,000 deaths from violence in a country of 26 million. It is not even nearly consistent.” John Zogby is just as forceful, “I don’t think that there’s anybody in my business who responsibly believes that 30,000 to 40,000 or 45,000 Iraqis have been killed since March of 2003.”
Carrying out door-to-door survey records deaths that are typically overlooked when sought by other means in wartime situations, according to Les Robert, who co-authored the Lancet report.
“We have gone and looked at every recent war we can find, and only in Bosnia did all governmental statistics add up to even one-fifth of the true death toll. And in Bosnia, the rate was 30 or 40 percent, with huge support for surveillance activities from the UN.”
Furthermore, he notes that in the last year of Saddam Hussein’s reign, only about one-third of all deaths were recorded at morgues and hospitals through the official govt. surveillance network. He asks if this is what it was like when things were good, what must it be like now? We know from previous wars that casualties are grossly under-reported.
Newsnight’s
Kirsty Wark interviews Les Roberts
One of the arguments that has arisen is just where are the bodies buried, if 655,000 people have died where is the evidence?
Juan Cole explains that “First of all, Iraqi Muslims don’t believe in embalming or open casket funerals days later. They believe that the body should be buried by sunset the day of death, in a plain wooden box. So there is no reason to expect them to take the body to the morgue.”
Why are the number of Iraqi deaths so difficult to pin down? Christian Science Monitor’s Dan Murphy says
The short answer is that much of the country is too dangerous for researchers or government officials to travel in search of accurate statistics. The best tally would come from counting every death certificate issued in the country in the three years before and three years since the invasion. But there is no central reporting mechanism for this in the country.
The research in Iraq was carried out in about 50 neighborhoods spread around Iraq that were picked at random. Les Roberts says
… each time we went, we knocked on 40 doors and asked people, “Who lived here on the first of January, 2002?” and “Who lived here today?” And we asked, “Had anyone been born or died in between?” And on those occasions, when people said someone die, we said, “Well, how did they die?” And we sort of wrote down the details: when, how old they were, what was the cause of death. And when it was violence, we asked, “Well, who did the killing? How exactly did it happen? What kind of weapon was used?” And at the end of the interview, when no one knew this was coming, we asked most of the time for a death certificate. And 92% of the time, people walked back into their houses and could produce a death certificate. So we are quite sure people didn’t make this up.
Expecting the media to fully account for all the dead is completely unrealistic, while house-to-house surveys are the only possible way we can with any certainty determine how many people have died in Iraq. Western journalists are clustered in 5 cities; this in a country with about 90 major towns and cities, so most of what they report in the media will come from these areas. Then, we only have to recall how Fallujah was sealed off from the outside world prior to the coalition turkey shoot. Afterwards, the press (except for the embedded type) were barred from entering Are we ever going to know how many died there? To this day, no official body count exists.
No one is going to be shocked that politicians like Howard remain vague on details of the assessments and reports on Iraqi fatalities, but it must come as a surprise to most that General George W. Casey, the top American military commander in Iraq, is unable to remember precisely which reports he has seen. He admits that he has not bothered to read the Lancet Report (.pdf) but lambasts that ” That 650,000 number seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I’ve not seen a number higher than 50,000. And so I don’t give it that much credibility at all.” It seems he did not read the Lancet 2004 report which extrapolated a figure of 100,000 plus. I want to see his and Howard’s assessments, I want to examine the methodologies used to reach the official Bush figure of 30,000. I would also like to see which surveys Blair is quoting when he insists that 400,000 Iraqis are buried in mass graves in Iraq.
Attempts to attack the reports methodology are not backed up with facts or arguments and remain non-existent. Critics can dismiss the report as lacking credibility, knowing that the media will not challenge them directly and assist by whitewashing the entire affair. For the time being it seems the warmongers are getting away with it.
Les Roberts on Democracy Now explains that the methodology used in Iraq is the standard used to determine mortality in war torn countries like Kosovo and Afghanistan. “Most ironically,” he said, “the US government has been spending millions of dollars per year… to train NGOs and UN workers to do cluster surveys to measure mortality in times of wars and disasters.”
Finally, the question this research asks us to ponder is “have coalition efforts to “liberate” Iraq been worth it?” For Iraqis, the people whose views on this subject matter, the answer is a resounding “no.” This report is a critique of the coalition’s work in Iraq. If it was unclear before why 71% of Iraqis want the coalition out of Iraq, or why the Iraqi perception is that things have got worse, this report will have clarified matters.
The number of people dying in Iraq has continued to escalate. While the proportion of deaths ascribed to coalition forces has fallen in 2006, it still remains responsible for the largest share of known deaths (31%). Gunfire remains the most common cause of death, although deaths from car bombing have increased. Factor into this the destruction of infrastructure, hospitals, clinics, water and electricity supplies and the future looks bleak for Iraq.
No good has come out of the occupation of Iraq so far. To rebuild their society, Iraqis need security and stability and as long as the coalition remains, the violence and deaths will continue to hamper their efforts to draw a line under the illegal invasion and occupation and move on. It is time for the troops to go home.
The Lancet Medical journal (pdf) reports that between 420,000 and 790,000 Iraqis have died as a result of war and political violence since the beginning of the US invasion in March, 2003. That’s 2.5% of the Iraqi population. Over 30% of violent deaths in Iraq were attributed to coalition forces.
The study which was carried out by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and the School of Medicine at Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, has been examined and validated by four separate independent experts who all urged publication. The figures are based on surveys of 1,849 Iraqi households containing 12,801 individuals from May to July; a much larger sample than the study published in the Lancet in 2004.
“The recent survey got the same estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the early survey, which gives the researchers confidence in the methods. The great majority of deaths were also substantiated by death certificates.”
In 92% of the interviews, death certificates were produced, making it harder for the war-shills to dismiss this study; but no doubt they will try. The new study corroborates the earlier Lancet figure of 100,000 killed which was vigourously attacked by US and UK government spokesmen at the time. This report is similarly facing a tough haul.
According to the Washington Post
It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.
The report has been criticized by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, himself no expert in epidemiology, but who nevertheless found time to tell Associated Press that the figures were too high. “This is not analysis, this is politics,” Cordesman claimed before criticizing the way the report was carried out, but AP do not report what his criticisms are. He also questions the timing of the report, appearing as it does only a few weeks off the November election. However, the Lancet is a peer-reviewed journal where publication time rests on the availability of reviewers and not when the paper is first published.
George Bush has also derided the report saying at a press conference “I don’t consider it a credible report, neither does General Casey and neither do Iraqi officials. I do know that a lot of innocent people have died and it troubles me and grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they’re willing to — you know, that there’s a level of violence that they tolerate.”
Far from tolerating the violence, in a recent poll (.pdf) 71% of Iraqis said they want the US out of Iraq now, recognizing more clearly than Bush, General Casey or Iraqi puppets, the toll the invasion has taken on their country.
Furthermore, the Lancet is one of the top 3 peer-reviewed medical journals in the world. Both Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and The Lancet require very rigorous and statistically sound methods before allowing publication. Right now Bush and company are scrabbling around for reasons to rubbish the report. As the week progresses, we are bound to be treated to arguments on statistical anomalies et alia. However, the study is extremely sound.
Even the BBC’s Paul Reynolds admitted in a private email sent to Media Lens by accident that they would have to take these figures into account…
Steve
Thanks for this. Yes I noticed that the latest Lancet report emerged yesterday in the US and I immediately knew we had to do this today.
I found that Martin Asser was already across it so he is doing it.
No doubt the argument will rumble on. We will need to take account of this report in future references to Iraqi dead.
Paul
Techniques Used In The Survey
The technique employed in the survey is called “cluster sampling” and is used to estimate mortality rates in famines and natural disasters.
The authors said their method of sampling the population is a “standard tool of epidemiology and is used by the U.S. government and many other agencies.” Professionals familiar with such research told CNN that the survey’s methodology is sound.
Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method “tried and true,” and added that this is the best estimate of mortality we have.”
‘ The surveyors from the School of Medicine of Al Mustansiria University in Baghdad conducted a national survey between May and July 2006. In this survey, sites were collected according to the population size and the geographic distribution in Iraq. The survey included 16 of the 18 governates in Iraq, with larger population areas having more sample sites. The sites were selected entirely at random, so all households had an equal chance of being included. The survey used a standard cluster survey method, which is a recommended method for measuring deaths in conflict situations.
The survey team visited 50 randomly selected sites in Iraq, and at each site interviewed 40 households about deaths which had occurred from January 1, 2002, until the date of the interview in July 2006. We selected this time frame to compare results with our previous
Human Cost of Iraq War survey, which covered the period between January 2002 and September 2004. In all, information was collected from 1,849 households completing the survey, containing 12,801 persons.This sample size was selected to be able to statistically detect death rates with 95% probability of obtaining the correct result. When the preliminary results were reviewed, it was apparent three clusters were misattributed. These were dropped from the data for analysis, giving a final total of 47 clusters, which are the basis of this study. ‘
Further information by Stephen Soldz on the methodology used by the researchers in the 2004 Lancet study.
Other key points in the survey:
Burying the Lancet
Media Len’s illuminating article which examined how the media and elite attempted to subvert the 2004 Lancet study. Essential reading.
Video compiled by David Edwards, contains clips from NBC’s Today Show and CNN’s American Morning.
UPDATE
British government advisers backed methodology behind contentious Iraq death toll study – March 2007
The BBC World Service made a Freedom of Information Request on 28 November 2006 for the release of information relating to the Lancet Survey on Iraqi mortality. The information was released on 14 March 2007 and has been instantly forgotten. It can now be revealed that the government ignored its own advisors who recommended caution in publicly criticizing the study.
One of the documents just released by the Foreign Office is an e-mail in which an official asks about the Lancet report: “Are we really sure the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies.”
The reply from another official is: “We do not accept the figures quoted in the Lancet survey as accurate. “
In the same e-mail the official later writes: “However, the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.”
…the chief scientific adviser to the Defense Ministry, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as “robust” and “close to best practice.”
A memo from Anderson’s office to senior officials, obtained by the BBC World Service, said the chief scientist “recommends caution in publicly criticizing the study.”
In another document, a government official — whose name has been blanked out — said “the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.”
The ideas imbued in all Orientalist images of women were a male longing to capture, covet, objectify, and conquer Muslim women as a reflection of, or as analogous to, a desire to gain access and control of the terrain of the Orient.
The furore over Muslim women wearing the veil has been given new impetus by Jack Straw airing his personal opinions in public. Straw finds the veil alienating and a barrier that prevents him from seeing what his Muslim constituents are really thinking when they speak to him.
“It is about personal choice, and I think it’s quite important that we should think about the implications, because seeing people’s faces is fundamental to relationships between people.
“I’ve been struck by the discussions I’ve had with Muslim ladies – only a few, but it’s an increasing, if low, trend – about why they wear the veil and about whether they’ve thought about implications for race or religious relations – it’s their decision.
“Interestingly, the Muslim Council of Britain have made it clear there’s great controversy among Muslim scholars about whether it is obligatory or not; you obviously have to respect all these schools of thought.”
At least Straw recognizes that it is about choice. If he really is listening then he will have encountered this view:
“We want to stop men from treating us like sex objects, as they have always done. We want them to ignore our appearance and to be attentive to our personalities and mind. We want them to take us seriously and treat us as equals and not just chase us around for our bodies and physical looks.”
The veil is misconstrued as a symbol of Muslim oppression, but how can it be if wearing one is not compulsory? It is an act of empowerment for a woman to wear a veil to avoid being treated as a sexual object.
As war in the Middle East continues unabated and Muslims become the target of racism, the battle to force Arab women to submit to Western patriarchal values by removing their veils just as Arab men must submit to imperial cruise missiles is, in fact, oppressive.
Abraham Foxman is at it again. He threatened to smear the Polish consulate in every paper in the city of New York if they went ahead and allowed NYU professor Tony Judt to make a speech on the Israeli lobby and US foreign policy at an event held at the Polish Consulate in New York just hours before the event was to have taken place. Judt says
I was due to speak this evening, in Manhattan, to a group called Network 20/20 comprising young business leaders, NGO, academics, etc, from the US and many countries. Topic: the Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. The meetings are always held at the Polish Consulate in Manhattan.
I just received a call from the President of Network 20/20. The talk was cancelled because the Polish Consulate had been threatened by the Anti-Defamation League. Serial phone calls from ADL President Abe Foxman warned them off hosting anything involving Tony Judt. If they persisted, he warned, he would smear the charge of Polish collaboration with anti-Israeli anti-Semites (= me) all over the front page of every daily paper in the city (an indirect quote). They caved and Network 20/20 were forced to cancel.
Whatever your views on the Middle East I hope you find this as serious and frightening as I do. This is, or used to be, the United States of America.
The New York Sun reports it slightly differently. Foxman claims he only called the embassy to look into the matter and saw no objection to the speech when he was told that the consulate was merely renting space to an outside group. He feigns surprise when told of the cancellation. Judt says that the ADL pressured the consulate all afternoon.
In true macchiavellian style, Foxman accuses those who believe that he is to blame for the cancellation as “the conspiratorial nonsense that Mearsheimer and Walt are spinning with the support of Tony Judt.”
Mearsheimer and Walt addressed this very tactic in their paper on the Israeli lobby claiming that the Lobby works ruthlessly to suppress questioning of its role, to blacken its critics and to crush serious debate about the wisdom of supporting Israel in US public life.
“Silencing skeptics by organizing blacklists and boycotts — or by suggesting that critics are anti-Semites — violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends,” Walt and Mearsheimer write.
David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee chimes in “The Polish government made up its own mind… Tony Judt can try and frame this however he wants for his own marketing purposes… No one is stopping the event from being held elsewhere.” Nope. But the Jewish Lobby stopped the event from happening at the Polish Consulate.
So why then did the Polish Consulate wait until the afternoon of the day the talk was scheduled to cancel?
Why it pays to read articles right to the end. This one declares that many Americans oppose ground troops in Iran, however it is not until you reach the end of the article that you discover 42% of Americans would support an attack on Iran if it was carried out by Israel!
No Ground Troops in Iran, Say Americans
October 1, 2006Many adults in the United States think it would be a mistake to launch direct military action against Iran, according to a poll by Zogby International released by Reuters. 70 per cent of respondents oppose the use of U.S. ground troops in the country.
After being branded as part of an “axis of evil” by U.S. president George W. Bush in January 2002, Iran has contended that its nuclear program aims to produce energy, not weapons. In June 2005, former Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won Iran’s presidential election in a run-off over Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani with 61.6 per cent of all cast ballots.
In May, European Union (EU) foreign policy representative Javier Solana presented a package of incentives designed by Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the U.S. to achieve negotiations with Iran on the reach of its nuclear program. The most contentious topic of the proposal calls for Iran to temporarily halt its uranium enrichment activities.
In July, the five permanent members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council agreed on a resolution which calls for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment before the end of August, or face the threat of sanctions. Iran ignored the deadline.
On Sept. 19, Bush discussed the situation in Iran during his speech to the UN general assembly, saying, “Iran must abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. Despite what the regime tells (the Iranian people), we have no objection to Iran’s pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program. We’re working toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis.”
In 1981, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike in Iraq to destroy the Osiraq nuclear reactor. 42 per cent of respondents would support a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities carried out by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
Buried deep within the torture bill is this:
… no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien detained by the United States who–
`(A) is currently in United States custody; and
`(B) has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.’.
(b) Effective Date- The amendments made by subsection (a) shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply to all cases, without exception, pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Act which relate to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of detention of an alien detained by the United States since September 11, 2001.
In English: Any war crime committed by the Bush administration since 9/11 cannot be prosecuted.
Nice job congress.
