Honest Guv

British complicity in torture...

Craig Murray via Global Echo

Constituent: "This question is for Mr Straw; Have you ever read any
documents where the intelligence has been procured through torturous means?"

Jack Straw: "Not to the best of my knowledge... let me make this clear... the British government does not support torture in any circumstances. Full stop. We do not support the obtaining of intelligence by torture, or its use."

Right answer, Wrong question

Lara Marlowe misses several key points in what is an otherwise perceptive overview of Iraq's situation. Take for example Iraq's natural resource and the principle instigator of change, oil. Then there's the hopeful democratic elections, struggling through in spite of the coalitions best efforts to contain the process. There's the still growing insurgency, fueled by occupation not abated by it. There's the fact that the majority of insurgent attacks are aimed at occupying forces not fellow Iraqis. There's the substantial increase in US air attacks. There's the repetitive polls revealing the same things time after time. There's another horrific mass grave found, remnants of those abandoned after the first Gulf War.

Even without these topics covered one comes to the same conclusion, coalition forces will remain, but for a very different reason. It remains baffling to me how the mainstream media can contradict history and still maintain that coalition forces are only present in the Middle East to form democracies and remove allies turned despots.


US buried in Iraq with its head in the sand

IRAQ: Despite Bush's boasts, the Shia-Sunni conflict has escalated into a veritable civil war, a fact not acknowledged by Washington, writes Lara Marlowe

President George W Bush said this year "will be recorded as a turning point in the history of Iraq, the history of the Middle East, and the history of freedom". Vice-president Dick Cheney told troops the US had "turned a corner," in Iraq and that 2005 "was in fact a watershed year". US leaders base the rash assertion that "we are winning the war in Iraq" on the successful organisation of three landmark polls: the election of a transitional assembly in January, the ratification of a constitution in October, and the election of a four-year, full-term parliament on December 15th. But there is no guarantee that this month's election will improve the situation. Senator Richard Lugar, who heads the foreign relations committee, predicts it could take until April 2006 for squabbling Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties to agree on a government. In the meantime, the insurgency is likely to thrive in the power vacuum, as it did in early 2005.

continued... The Irish Times

Torture is essential and fair

Dear Madam,

Kevin Myers takes on opposition to the forces of 'right' in today's Irish Times, kindly explaining why torture is not just essential, but fair, in the battle against evil incarnate. Unfortunately this evil incarnate was once a close ally in the other clear struggle of good versus evil that Mr. Myers somehow forgets. Communism was forced back by the west with the help of one Al Qaeda. This evil incarnate that is now killing prolifically in Iraq was nurtured by foreign intervention and now draws its power from US/UK military maleficence. The rendition of both innocent and suspect citizens from around the world is characterised by methods of torture reminiscent of Inquisition era methods such as tortura del'agua. Methods that have long been known to produce results that are totally unreliable. There is solace in his words for those who have been subjected to this rendition unfairly, Mr. Myers seems willing to face this suffering in the name of the eternal fight against former allies turned despots. Let us continue fighting fire with fire.

yours etc...

An Irishman's Diary
Kevin Myers

This week the Wolesi Jirga, the Afghan parliament, met for the first time in 30 years, and last week an astonishing 70 per cent of the electorate of Iraq faced down the terrorists' threat and voted in a general election to form a government. Yet throughout the 50 previous weeks of this year, we in Ireland have been treated to endless denunciations of US policies towards both countries.

This is mad. In my entire lifetime, there has never been a clearer struggle between the forces of evil and of right as those we are witnessing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Islamo-nazi terrorists in both countries judge victory there as merely the stepping-stone to the conquest of Islamic Asia, followed by the creation of a worldwide caliphate and the extinction of infidel societies.

continued... The Irish Times

Calculating Liberal Bias

Study finds media bias leans to the 'left'.

But it really just found a comparison between 'news coverage' and 'political rhetoric'.

It really doesn't account for left/right leanings. Unless that is if they were to do another study to estimate the left/right leaning of each politician and then tie these results together.

The scary thing they found is that most media outlets do not diverge from the government line much at all (the centre in this case), most having to shift coverage of it to the left.

The study inadvertently calculated how much the independent media follows political interests.

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

Date: December 14, 2005
Contact: Meg Sullivan ( msullivan@support.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-825-1046

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.

Groseclose and Milyo based their research on a standard gauge of a lawmaker's support for liberal causes. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) tracks the percentage of times that each lawmaker votes on the liberal side of an issue. Based on these votes, the ADA assigns a numerical score to each lawmaker, where "100" is the most liberal and "0" is the most conservative. After adjustments to compensate for disproportionate representation that the Senate gives to low‑population states and the lack of representation for the District of Columbia, the average ADA score in Congress (50.1) was assumed to represent the political position of the average U.S. voter.

Groseclose and Milyo then directed 21 research assistants — most of them college students — to scour U.S. media coverage of the past 10 years. They tallied the number of times each media outlet referred to think tanks and policy groups, such as the left-leaning NAACP or the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

Next, they did the same exercise with speeches of U.S. lawmakers. If a media outlet displayed a citation pattern similar to that of a lawmaker, then Groseclose and Milyo's method assigned both a similar ADA score.

"A media person would have never done this study," said Groseclose, a UCLA political science professor, whose research and teaching focuses on the U.S. Congress. "It takes a Congress scholar even to think of using ADA scores as a measure. And I don't think many media scholars would have considered comparing news stories to congressional speeches."

continued... UCLA

via... The Wide Awakes - who failed to grasp it

Herman: The State of the Nation

" Now what is the tremendous discovery that Sinclair Lewis makes so much of, and what we pay so great a price to learn? It is no other than this: that the goodly United States of America are peopled by a mighty herd, which like those earlier herds that rumbled about the plains, drives foolishly in whatever direction their noses point -- a herd endowed with tremendous blind power, with big bull leaders, but with minds rarely above their bellies and their dams. In the mass and at their own romantic rating they are distinctly imposing-big-necked, red-blooded, lusty, with glossy coats got from rich feeding-grounds, and with a herd power that sweeps majestically onward in a cloud of dust of its own raising, veritable lords and masters of a continent. But considered more critically and resolved into individual members, they appear to the realist somewhat stupid, feeble in brain and will, stuffed with conceit at their own excellence, esteeming themselves as the great end for which creation has been in travail, the finest handiwork of the Most High who spread the plains for their feeding-grounds: with a vast respect for totems and fetishes; purveyors and victims of the mysterious thing called Bunk, who valiantly horn to death any audacious heretic who may suggest that rumbling about the plains, filling their bellies, bellowing sacred slogans, and cornering the lushest grass, are scarcely adequate objectives for such immense power: a vast middleman herd, that dominates the continent, but cannot reduce it to order or decency."

Full Article: Swans

Not accepting it

Repsonse to RTE News Editor Vincent Delaney concerning a news item on 2fm news where the news reader stated that Iraqis had 'accepted' US/UK occupation. His email can be found below, under "Not quite getting it..."

Dear Mr Delaney,

Thank you for response, however I don't think it addressed my concern about the report.

Iraqis may have accepted occupation as a fact, for it is an undeniable fact, it would be fanciful not to. But they haven't accepted occupation. Pedantic as it may sound, the report implied Iraqis in Basra have accepted occupation. If they accepted occupation there would be no violent struggle, no democratic struggle etc. It is certainly not the case they have accepted it as the status quo, reference to this seems strange.

Why point out that Iraqis accept the status quo, there is a status quo because the majority of people accept it. One is dependent on the other, not the egg and the chicken. Active resistance of the methods I mentioned evidences their position more than any definition of status quo. It is not an unalterable fact, status quo is not inertial. It is as alterable as they choose it to be therefore as their right they have made it clear through democratic, peaceful and violent protest their lack of acceptance. Although they have accommodated their lives around it. They do not tolerate it, as much any other violently and illegally occupied citizens would.

The report suggested that they tolerate occupation, my contention, supported by many opinion polls is that this is not the case.

Logically it is not credible to state that Iraqis have accepted occupation, simply thinking about what that would mean. The accepting of a foreign force occupying your land, taking charge and soon ownership of your natural resources, the accepting of a force that holds to no recognisable law etc etc. Secondary school Irish history evidences this.

The report should, in my opinion, have read "Iraqis forced to accept US occupation." In any other form acceptance has little meaning, since Iraqis have not been able to exercise free will in this 'acceptance'.

That Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi puts the 'status quo' quite succinctly, "The Iraqi people do not understand occupation. The Iraqi people do not want to be occupied, and the mistake initially was in not creating a provisional Iraqi government that would be the ally of the United States in the war against the terrorist, fascist Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. "

In my opinion the recent elections and military withdrawal are not even remotely linked. No timetable is in place and it has long been made clear a coalition presence will be maintained for at least 10 years. Elections take place inspite of occupation.

Thanks again for your time.

Yours sincerely,

Freedom to trade

Exchange with Irish Times and Open Democracy journalist Paul MacDonnell:

Instigated with my taking issue with part of an article published in the times...

Toirtap Archive October

Me:

my quick response is that economic freedoms come, in my opinion, well behind basic freedoms such as independence and the right to defense against outside interference. Economic freedoms are equally complicated issues and I fear are not helpfully summed up with phrases like, "[t]he West and a growing part of Asia are wealthy and peaceful while many parts of Africa and the Middle East remain mired in conflict and poverty." Inequality is rampant within rich countries too and I'm sure one could, given time, prove quite easily that the supposed inverse relationship between wealth and violence is as more so a condition of the wealthy subjugating the poor than the poor creating violence out of anger, jealousy etc etc.

Paul:

[ If it is, my quick response is that economic freedoms come, in my opinion, well behind basic freedoms such as independence and the right to defense against outside interference. ]

- is very difficult to defend. 'outside' interference suggests that there exists human 'rights' at the level of groups, tribes or states. (see Karl Popper on this (open society and its enemies) Such corporate enttities are, of course, recognised by convention and states tend not to interfere with each other as a result. But They are not, themselves, equivalent to individuals that have 'rights'. Only real individuals can, in my view, have rights. It is North Korea's right to be 'free' from outside interference that allows its rulers to run the country like a giant slave labour camp. Would that that right could be effectively disregarded. When the Allies crossed the German border in 1945 were they, at that point, interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation?

Also 'economic freedom' is not defined as discrete from other rights. The right of a villager in a developing country to sell me sugar and my right to buy it trump, in my view, any other competing rights - including the rights of European farmers to stop such transactions or of the state-monopoly sugar company of whereever he/she's from, to stop us, as consenting adults from engaging in the transaction. 'Independence' is similarly problematic. The march of human rights swept Europe and the US from the 18th through to the mid 20th century unimpeded by notions of independence and freedom from 'outside' interference. In Africa it is stalled at somewhere about Europe in the early Middle ages (in truth that's an insult to Europe) because the UN and notions of nations 'rights' and PC attitudes to colonialism have paralysed the only people who could help from doing anything other than wringing their hands and offering aid whilst governments and private armies go about the business of looting, rape and mass murder in Africa itself. Meanwhile the left in the West say 'it's all out fault'.

If Africa needs one single thing it is outside interference of the right kind. Whatever your views on Iraq, that country's invastion may well prove to have been a major lotto win for its citizens.

Earlier outside 'interference' could have saved Europe's Jews.

[ Inequality is rampant within rich countries too ..]

Inequality isn't the problem. Poverty is the problem.

[and I'm sure one could, given time, prove quite easily that the supposed inverse relationship between wealth and violence is as more so a condition of the wealthy subjugating ...]

The point Gartzke makes is that TRADE is what helps peace. He says he's got the data and has controlled for various effects...I don't buy the Marxiam notion that the rich keep the poor at bay through armed force. It may describe a certain type of hispanic society at a given point in history...but again...these are not trading societies in any meaningful sense...Gartzke's point is that trade is conducted down to the level of the individual.

Me:

Not quite sure what you're getting at here with regard to rights. And I am relatively unfamiliar with Popper so I can't really address you properly on that.

However I would suggest there are such things as 'human rights' at tribal level. Simply look at the structure and operation of American Indian societies prior to colonisation. It was only when they were subjected to our concept of free trade that their suffering truly began. The first such well known trade, an innocuous one of friendship more symbolic of future trade than anything else, was jewels and garments for a rug infested with smallpox. An excellent if simplistic insight into the arms trade? (Howard Zinn's 'A People's history of the USA')

North Korea is of course an example of a country that resists outside interference. But there are many more examples of countries suffering the opposite fate, Burma, Nicaragua, Chile, Indonesia etc etc. This line of thought really gets into +true+ (if it can exist) humanitarian intervention. Which is much further off the point than I am already, and along way from my original point. North Korea is also not really the model on which to judge outside interference and independence. Japanese, Soviet and US politics have all contributed to the state of DBRK.

Germany as far as I am aware had basically relinquished its sovereignty in attacking, invading and occupying a foreign nation prior to US invasion. Therefore this is irrelevant.

There can't be free trade without freedom. Freedom of choice is essential to freedom of trade. If I take your example of the third world villager who intends to sell you sugar. He and you must first be able to choose to conduct a trade agreement, he must be free to produce the sugar and you must be free to earn the money to exchange for it. This is simply what I was referring to when I said independence comes before economic freedom. Free trade does not exist in a country where an occupying force controls both security and the construction of a constitution. With regard to EU farmers interfering with your right to trade, I agree. There are however (realistic) circumstances where the trade may be un+fair+, for instance if the farmer employs slave labour in the production. Or where you are in a position where the commercial risk in buying the product is offset by the protection afforded under government for that 'risk' and the tax payer eventually incurs your loss. Unless you are coming from a completely (unrealistic) individualist viewpoint I don't see the relevance. The example should be true.

Also 'economic freedom' is not defined as discrete from other rights. The right of a villager in a developing country to sell me sugar and my right to buy it trump, in my view, any other competing rights - including the rights of European farmers to stop such transactions or of the state-monopoly sugar company of whereever he/she's from, to stop us, as consenting adults from engaging in the transaction.

I agree with this theory, but I don't see how it applies to Iraq or indeed the middle east. Take for example Iraq's natural resource and the principle instigator of change, oil. The puppet (for want of a more agreeable term) government has conveniently, for the US corporation, chose to use production sharing agreements PSAs to divide up drilling rights, the problem being these deals offer huge profits for minimal risk. The deal is usually appropriate (although still questionable) where oil is unlikely to be discovered, this is not the case in Iraq. This in my view is what is generally referred to as 'free trade'. Not exactly what your theory describes.
Furthermore, watching a 'good report' from Iraq segment on 'a another' news channel last night, I was subjected to news of expensive hotels and $400,000 apartments being constructed in the quieter areas of the northern Kurdish regions. Evidence apparently of the growing economy, through foreign confidence in Iraqi property. However it did not take long for it to occur to me that the new construction is no doubt for wealthy 'Western' businessmen coming to reap the rewards of 'free trade' and new market opportunities.

'Independence' is similarly problematic. The march of human rights swept Europe and the US from the 18th through to the mid 20th century unimpeded by notions of independence and freedom from 'outside' interference. In Africa it is stalled at somewhere about Europe in the early Middle ages (in truth that's an insult to Europe) because the UN and notions of nations 'rights' and PC attitudes to colonialism have paralysed the only people who could help from doing anything other than wringing their hands and offering aid whilst governments and private armies go about the business of looting, rape and mass murder in Africa itself. Meanwhile the left in the West say 'it's all out fault'.

The problem with aid is well documented and corporations and governments are well versed in how to avail of its benefits in kind. This doesn't really compare to the funding and support 'Western' corporations provide to dictators, despots and terrorist regimes across Africa. The sale of arms for example is our gift to them while we 'Westerners' reap the rewards.

The 'left', who/whatever that is, is generally categorised in this way, with little accuracy. The 'left' is part of the 'west' and apart from loons (every band on the spectrum has their own loons) the 'left' as I understand him/her wants only to ensure they don't hinder or impinge on the rights of others. Obviously the 'left' has been assimilated into the corporate institution now so the matter is complicated again. I won't attempt to get into that. This is again irrelevant.

If Africa needs one single thing it is outside interference of the right kind. Whatever your views on Iraq, that country's invastion may well prove to have been a major lotto win for its citizens.

Earlier outside 'interference' could have saved Europe's Jews.

[ Inequality is rampant within rich countries too ..]

Inequality isn't the problem. Poverty is the problem.

[and I'm sure one could, given time, prove quite easily that the supposed inverse relationship between wealth and violence is as more so a condition of the wealthy subjugating ...]

The point Gartzke makes is that TRADE is what helps peace. He says he's got the data and has controlled for various effects...I don't buy the Marxiam notion that the rich keep the poor at bay through armed force.

It may describe a certain type of hispanic society at a given point in history...but again...these are not trading societies in any meaningful sense...Gartzke's point is that trade is conducted down to the level of the individual.

Trade may help peace, but in my opinion it is secondary to free will.

As for lotto winners, I disagree, but this is another topic altogether.

Not quite getting it...

Response from RTE Editor to my post:

Dear ,

Thank you for your e-mail. I apologise for the delay in
replying.

I agree the US-led coalition troops and Iraqi forces
have met violent opposition...
There has also been inter-communal and faction
fighting...

However, I do not think your analysis of reports on the
situation in Basra is the only one.

I suggest there is no total unity of opposition...and
that in the absence of a united oppositition there is a
tacit acceptance of the status quo.

I think this month's elections are likely to produce a
unity of purpose including moves towards the withdrawal
of foreign troops from Iraq.

Yours sincerely,

Vincent Delaney,
Editor RTÉ News on 2FM.


Repsonse to:

Dear Editor (RTE News),

It was stated on 2fm News on Monday (31/10/05 8pm) that Iraqis in Basra, the scene of the latest suicide bombing, had 'accepted' US occupation.

The Sunday Telegraph recently reported the results of a poll undertaken by the British MoD, the results were a damning indication of the lack of support for coalition occupation. The poll found that "up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks [on British troops] and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country."

Which also supports the findings of a report conducted by The Center for Strategic and International Studies at the end of 2004. It concluded that the Iraqi insurgency was "largely domestic in character, and had significant popular support," while the number of attacks on Coalition Forces accounted for approximately 75% of all attacks. Given that the insurgency is not a single entity it is fair to say that there are varied goals among these groups, with only one single goal common to all, the expulsion of foreign troops.

While Iraqis risk life and limb to further their democratic agenda, their prerogative was made clear in the January elections where a majority chose to elect a government whose stated goal was to call for the end of occupation. The argument that the fact Iraqis voted for an interim government that made a U-turn on occupation, signifies some sort of acceptance of occupation is in direct conflict with Iraqi public opinion.

Is it quite obvious that the majority of Iraqis are actively resisting occupation, most nonviolently. They have therefore not 'accepted' it. Will you be correcting this distortion?

I look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely,


My initial thoughts:

Iraqis may have accepted occupation as a fact, for it is an undeniable fact, it would be fanciful not to. But they haven't accepted occupation. Pedantic as it may sound, the report implied Iraqis in Basra have accepted occupation. If they accepted occupation there would be no violent struggle, no democratic struggle etc. It is certainly not the case they have accepted it as the status quo.

It is as alterable as they choose it to be therefore as their right they have made it clear through democratic, peaceful and violent protest their lack of acceptance. Although they have accommodated their lives around it. They do not however tolerate it, as much any other violently and illegally occupied citizens would. Active resistance of the methods I mentioned evidences their position more than any definition of status quo. It is not an unalterable fact, status quo is not inertial.

The report suggested that they tolerate occupation, my contention, supported by many opinion polls is that this is not the case. Why point out that Iraqis accept the status quo, there is a status quo because the majority of people accept it. One is dependent on the other, not the egg and the chicken.

Unless it was intended to show that Iraqis have a firmer grasp of the situation than the occupation forces, that they realise they are powerless to command withdrawal. While the occupiers are apparently ignorant of the fact their occupation negates their withdrawal, because it adds to the violence that challenges stability, unless however the occupation does not intend to do as it publicly professes?

Logically it is not credible to state that Iraqis have accepted occupation, simply thinking about what that would mean. The accepting of a foreign force occupying your land, taking charge and soon ownership of your natural resources, the accepting of a force that holds to no recognisable law etc etc

The report should, in my opinion, have read "Iraqis forced to accept US occupation." In any other form acceptance has little meaning, since Iraqis have not been able to exercise free will in this 'acceptance'. They have accepted it as much as any other citizens of violently occupied territories would.

That Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi puts the status quo quite succinctly, "The Iraqi people do not understand occupation. The Iraqi people do not want to be occupied, and the mistake initially was in not creating a provisional Iraqi government that would be the ally of the United States in the war against the terrorist, fascist Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein."

The point about elections bringing about withdrawal is not worth commenting on, as if the two are even remotely linked.

Lowest, Highest, Who Cares

Dear Mrs. Kennedy,

Denis Staunton reports in today's Irish Times (13/12/05) that a study in The Lancet suggested that as many as 100,000 Iraqis could have died in the present conflict. This is incorrect, the study found that up to 285,000 Iraqis could have died in the first 18 months of the invasion. The conservative estimate of 100,000 dead was found to be the most likely +lowest+ figure. It should be noted that concentrated areas of particularly heavy fatalities such as Fallujah, Ramadi, Tallafar and Najaf were excluded from the survey. The figure President Bush has latched on to, most likely from Iraq Body Count, is a compilation of reported deaths only.

Yours sincerely,


For more information: (A letter from Les Roberts, Lancet author, to the Independent)"

Dear Mr. Kirby and Ms. Dejevsky,

"I was disappointed to hear that you felt our study was in some way dismissed by Jack Straw's anemic response to our report in the Lancet last November. Serious reviews of our work and the criticisms of it were run in the Financial Times, the Economist, the Chronicle of Higher Education (attached above) and the WSJ [Wall Street Journal] Online on August 5th. Closer to home, John Rentoul of the Independent solicited a response to the Jack Straw letter last Nov. 21st and we responded with the attached letter [Not provided here]. I am told that it was printed by your paper.

"Many people, like Ms. Dejevsky, have used the word extrapolation to describe what we did. When I hear people use that word they mean what is described in my Webster's Unabridged: '1. Statistics. to estimate the value of a variable outside its tabulated or observed range.' By this definition and the one I hear used by everyone on this side of the Atlantic, we did not extrapolate. We did sample. We drew conclusions from within the confines of that universe from which we sampled. Aside from a few homeless and transient households that did not appear in the 2002 Ministry of Health figures or households who had been dissolved or killed since, every existing household in Iraq had an equal chance that we would visit them through our randomization process.

"I understand that you feel that the sample was small: this is most puzzling. 142 post-invasion deaths in 988 households is a lot of deaths, and for the setting, a lot of interviews. There is no statistical doubt mortality is up, no doubt that violence is the main cause, and no doubt that the coalition forces have caused far more of these violent deaths than the insurgents (p<.0000001). "In essence this is an outbreak investigation. If your readers hear about a sample with 10 cases of mad cow disease in 1000 British citizens randomly tested, I am sure they would have no doubt there was an outbreak. In 1993, when the US Centers for Disease Control randomly called 613 households in Milwaukee and concluded that 403,000 people had developed Cryptosporidium in the largest outbreak ever recorded in the developed world, no one said that 613 households was not a big enough sample. 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. "The comments of Ms. Dejevsky regarding representativeness '(it seemed small from a lay perspective (i remember at the time) for the conclusions being drawn and there seemed too little account taken of the different levels of unrest in different regions. my main point, though, was less based on my impression than on the fact that this technique exposed the authors to the criticisms/dismissal that the govt duly made, and they had little to counter those criticisms with, bar the defence that their methods were standard for those sort of surveys.)' are also cause for concern because she seems to have not understood that this was a random sample. "By picking random neighborhoods proportional to population, we are likely to account for the natural variability of ethnicity, income, and violence. Her words above strongly suggest that the Falluja numbers should be included, rather than being used to temper the results from the other 32 neighborhoods. Please understand how extremely conservative we were: we did a survey estimating that ~285,000 people have died due to the first 18 months of invasion and occupation and we reported it as at least ~100,000. "Finally, there are now at least 8 independent estimates of the number or rate of deaths induced by the invasion of Iraq. The source most favored by the war proponents (Iraqbodycount.org ) is the lowest. Our estimate is the third from highest. Four of the estimates place the death toll above 100,000. The studies measure different things. Some are surveys, some are based on surveillance which is always incomplete in times of war. The three lowest estimates are surveillance based. "The key issues are supported by all the estimates that attribute deaths to the various causes: violence is way up post-invasion and the Coalition is responsible for many times more deaths than are the insurgents. The exact number is less important that these two indisputable facts which helps us to understand why things are going badly and how to fix them. I hope these thoughts are helpful. Sincerely, Les Roberts" burying_the_lancet_part1

France, Algeria and Haiti

Dear Geraldine Kennedy,

The Irish Times reports yesterday (5/12/05) of the French National Assembly arguing over the need for further "[exhausting] repentance and self-flagellation" [3] with respect to Algerian forgiveness. Not for their past imperial plundering, but for their revisionist history of that plunder, it is noteworthy that their present responsibilities in Haitian 'politics' will no doubt find them with this awkward footing at some future date. When revisionists can again argue over the merits, or lack of, in the violent disruption of democratic process by outside forces for the purpose of the destabilisation of a government unwanted by 'the West', but otherwise popular with it's people.

The killing of 15 residents of Site Soley and the reporting of 28 more shot by Doctors Without Borders, amidst heavy firing by MINUSTAH (UN Mission for Stabilization in Haiti) who using tank-like machines and automatic weapons in densely populated civilian neighbourhoods have seemingly invited death, is just another addendum to France's colonial meddling, which no "exhaustive repentance and self-flagellation" will heal. [2]

Paul Chéry of the Confédération des Travailleurs Haitiens explains the present situation; "After the coup of 29 February, 2004, the general situation has deteriorated a great deal. It is a crisis without precedent, our population has not known a situation this grave since the founding of the country. There is the appearance of life, but in reality, there is no life."

Revisionist history and revisionist reporting go hand in hand. It is apparently the media's job to report the news, not to ignore it and leave the first revision for those with the most reason to suppress the truth.

The International Coalition of Independent Observers, which monitored Haiti's elections, declared that "Free, fair and peaceful elections were held despite neglect from the UN, OAS, and the United States. Haitian voter participation was largely misrepresented in the international press." [1]

Days before President Aristides 'removal' Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin claimed he was keen to get Haiti "on the right track."

The first draft of history is being written as we speak and the mainstream media is neglecting to put a spin of reality on it.

Yours sincerely,

1. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=9060

2. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=9245

3. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2005/1205/2818090439FRPARISLETT.html

4. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=54&ItemID=5091

Chavez not to be contended?

Dear Madam,

In response to today's article (1/12/05) concerning Venezuela's Hugo Chavez lack of opposition in the upcoming elections, apparently to be his ninth victory in even less years, I would like to point out that the only 'independent' observation to be printed was that of Sumate. For those that aren't aware, Sumate was awarded a hefty grant in 2003 by the US funded National Endowment for Democracy for the purposes of 'electoral education', "which some observers took to mean that the group was backed by the U.S." Therefore it would negligent to assume this view is reliable.

An alternative source could have been the Organization of American States (OAS) who said, with regards to the main issue of contention, the use of fingerprint scanners, that with the removal of the scanners the voting machines were completely safe and reliable to use. An OAS spokesperson said on Monday, "The secrecy of the vote in this process will not be violated."

Yours sincerely,