Monday, January 31, 2005
My sister Anne
I'm proud of her! "Best of Seattle" , Best defender of the Police for 2004 in the Seattle Weekly.
Ghost War
"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam."
- Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, 'U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' September 4, 1967.
Taken from William Rivers Pitt's FYI.
- Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, 'U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' September 4, 1967.
Taken from William Rivers Pitt's FYI.
Is the Jonger on the way out?
Kim Jong il's Dissolving Kingdom -- from the Sunday edition of the London Times.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Iraq election success
Looks like the elections in Iraq are a unqualified success. Reuters reported earlier that they had 72% turnout. Astonishing. I heard a report an hour ago or so that 36 Iraqis had been killed by suicide bombers. While terrible, that is just an average day for Iraq. Cautious optimism is the call.
The Washington Post has the tragic story of a popular Army platoon leader felled by a sniper's bullet as he encouraged Iraqis to vote. Pulitzer material.
The Washington Post has the tragic story of a popular Army platoon leader felled by a sniper's bullet as he encouraged Iraqis to vote. Pulitzer material.
Friday, January 28, 2005
Researchers Who Rushed Into Print a Study of Iraqi Civilian Deaths Now Wonder Why It Was Ignored
Remember that study in the British journal "The Lancet" three months ago that determined that about 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a direct result of the Operation Iraqi Freedom? Seems it was buried in the pre-election news. Now the researchers are wondering why their carefully researched study was ignored.
The researchers saved the most dangerous location for last. On September 20, Dr. Lafta went to violence-racked Fallujah with the only interviewer willing to travel there. The researchers had done a haunting bit of calculus before the journey. Given that the chance was high of an interviewer's or researcher's getting killed there, the study would be better served by getting the other data first.
The Fallujah data were chilling: 53 deaths had taken place in the study's 30 households there since the invasion commenced, on March 19, 2003. In the other 32 neighborhoods combined, the researchers had counted 89 deaths. While 21 of the deaths elsewhere were attributable to violence, in Fallujah 52 of the 53 deaths were due to violence.
The number of deaths in Fallujah was so much higher than in other locations that the researchers excluded the data from their overall estimate as a statistical outlier. Because of that, Mr. Roberts says, chances are good that the actual number of deaths caused by the invasion and occupation is higher than 100,000.
Scientists say the size of the survey was adequate for extrapolation to the entire country. "That's a classical sample size," says Michael J. Toole, head of the Center for International Health at the Burnet Institute, an Australian research organization. Researchers typically conduct surveys in 30 neighborhoods, so the Iraq study's total of 33 strengthens its conclusions. "I just don't see any evidence of significant exaggeration," he says.
Read the whole article here.
The researchers saved the most dangerous location for last. On September 20, Dr. Lafta went to violence-racked Fallujah with the only interviewer willing to travel there. The researchers had done a haunting bit of calculus before the journey. Given that the chance was high of an interviewer's or researcher's getting killed there, the study would be better served by getting the other data first.
The Fallujah data were chilling: 53 deaths had taken place in the study's 30 households there since the invasion commenced, on March 19, 2003. In the other 32 neighborhoods combined, the researchers had counted 89 deaths. While 21 of the deaths elsewhere were attributable to violence, in Fallujah 52 of the 53 deaths were due to violence.
The number of deaths in Fallujah was so much higher than in other locations that the researchers excluded the data from their overall estimate as a statistical outlier. Because of that, Mr. Roberts says, chances are good that the actual number of deaths caused by the invasion and occupation is higher than 100,000.
Scientists say the size of the survey was adequate for extrapolation to the entire country. "That's a classical sample size," says Michael J. Toole, head of the Center for International Health at the Burnet Institute, an Australian research organization. Researchers typically conduct surveys in 30 neighborhoods, so the Iraq study's total of 33 strengthens its conclusions. "I just don't see any evidence of significant exaggeration," he says.
Read the whole article here.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Seymour Hersh: We've been taken over by a cult
In the transcript to a live interview, Sey Hersh, who first exposed the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in the New Yorker magazine in April 2004 and author of "Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib", who also broke the My Lai story 35 years ago in Viet Nam, says,
There's a lot of anxiety inside the -- you know, our professional military and our intelligence people. Many of them respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as much as anybody here, and individual freedom. So, they do -- there's a tremendous sense of fear. These are punitive people. One of the ways -- one of the things that you could say is, the amazing thing is we are been taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed the government. Just how and why and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much later historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease. It does say something about how fragile our Democracy is. You do have to wonder what a Democracy is when it comes down to a few men in the Pentagon and a few men in the White House having their way. What they have done is neutralize the C.I.A. because there were people there inside -- the real goal of what Goss has done was not attack the operational people, but the intelligence people. There were people -- serious senior analysts who disagree with the White House, with Cheney, basically, that's what I mean by White House, and Rumsfeld on a lot of issues, as somebody said, the goal in the last month has been to separate the apostates from the true believers. That's what's happening. The real target has been “diminish the agency.” I'm writing about all of this soon, so I don't want to overdo it, but there's been a tremendous sea change in the government. A concentration of power.
Be sure and read the whole thing though here. Combine Nationalism, an uneducated populace, hyped up propaganda (Fox News) and a team of crazies at the top consolidating power and this is what we get.
There's a lot of anxiety inside the -- you know, our professional military and our intelligence people. Many of them respect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as much as anybody here, and individual freedom. So, they do -- there's a tremendous sense of fear. These are punitive people. One of the ways -- one of the things that you could say is, the amazing thing is we are been taken over basically by a cult, eight or nine neo-conservatives have somehow grabbed the government. Just how and why and how they did it so efficiently, will have to wait for much later historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease. It does say something about how fragile our Democracy is. You do have to wonder what a Democracy is when it comes down to a few men in the Pentagon and a few men in the White House having their way. What they have done is neutralize the C.I.A. because there were people there inside -- the real goal of what Goss has done was not attack the operational people, but the intelligence people. There were people -- serious senior analysts who disagree with the White House, with Cheney, basically, that's what I mean by White House, and Rumsfeld on a lot of issues, as somebody said, the goal in the last month has been to separate the apostates from the true believers. That's what's happening. The real target has been “diminish the agency.” I'm writing about all of this soon, so I don't want to overdo it, but there's been a tremendous sea change in the government. A concentration of power.
Be sure and read the whole thing though here. Combine Nationalism, an uneducated populace, hyped up propaganda (Fox News) and a team of crazies at the top consolidating power and this is what we get.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Romeo Dallaire: Canadian Patriot
My first and only encounter with Romeo Dallaire was in a Master's program in War Studies with the Royal Military College of Canada. We were in a class together. As a US Air Force exchange officer stationed in Ottawa I was somewhat surprised to find a Major General pursuing a Master's degree in War Studies. This happenstance spoke volumes about the sort of mensch Gen Dallaire is--constantly questioning, continually learning, trying to understand his world and to make it a better one.
Since that time about seven years ago I have heard his name come up on occasion in news reports. There was the report of his disappearance and subsequent appearance drunk and disoriented in Hull, Quebec--across the river from Ottawa. This led to his forced retirement from the Canadian Forces.
Why did he go from the heights of achievement--from the highest ranks in the Canadian Army to a park bench, depressed, drunk, out of his mind? In a word: Rwanda. You see, Maj Gen Dallaire was the commanding officer in charge of the UN mission in Rwanda in 1994 when the Hutus en masse went into collective hysteria and hacked 800,000 Tutsis to death with machetes in the course of about four weeks. He begged for 5000 combat ready troops. This was all he felt he needed to quell and put down the ragtag genocidal Hutus. The UN and the world ignored him. 18 Belgian soldiers were massacred by the base barbarians in order to intimidate the world community. The world community reacted predictably. See the new movie Hotel Rwanda for a shorthand version of this unspeakable atrocity.
Romeo Dallaire wrote an account of his tenure in Rwanda: Shake Hands with the Devil , and Mother Jones recently conducted an interview with him.
Here are a couple of other books on the subject I read about two years ago that I highly recommend:
National Book Award winner "America in the Age of Genocide" by Samantha Powers
"We Regret to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed along with our families: Tales from Rwanda" by Philip Gourevitch
Watch the movie. Then ask yourself the question: Does the Bush rhetoric match the task at hand?? Liberty for nations with oil but ignore those without?? Where are the ethics in our policy??
Since that time about seven years ago I have heard his name come up on occasion in news reports. There was the report of his disappearance and subsequent appearance drunk and disoriented in Hull, Quebec--across the river from Ottawa. This led to his forced retirement from the Canadian Forces.
Why did he go from the heights of achievement--from the highest ranks in the Canadian Army to a park bench, depressed, drunk, out of his mind? In a word: Rwanda. You see, Maj Gen Dallaire was the commanding officer in charge of the UN mission in Rwanda in 1994 when the Hutus en masse went into collective hysteria and hacked 800,000 Tutsis to death with machetes in the course of about four weeks. He begged for 5000 combat ready troops. This was all he felt he needed to quell and put down the ragtag genocidal Hutus. The UN and the world ignored him. 18 Belgian soldiers were massacred by the base barbarians in order to intimidate the world community. The world community reacted predictably. See the new movie Hotel Rwanda for a shorthand version of this unspeakable atrocity.
Romeo Dallaire wrote an account of his tenure in Rwanda: Shake Hands with the Devil , and Mother Jones recently conducted an interview with him.
Here are a couple of other books on the subject I read about two years ago that I highly recommend:
National Book Award winner "America in the Age of Genocide" by Samantha Powers
"We Regret to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed along with our families: Tales from Rwanda" by Philip Gourevitch
Watch the movie. Then ask yourself the question: Does the Bush rhetoric match the task at hand?? Liberty for nations with oil but ignore those without?? Where are the ethics in our policy??
Evangelical Right: destroyers of our environment
Listen to Robert F. Kennedy Jr talk to Glen Scherer about how corporate polluters have recruited Envangelical Christians (like our prez) to their agenda. These crazies who believe "the end is near" feel it's just fine to wipe out our wild heritage.
See also Glen Scherer's article in Grist: The Godly must be Crazy: Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment.
And the storm of letters to the editor that followed that article.
See also Glen Scherer's article in Grist: The Godly must be Crazy: Christian-right views are swaying politicians and threatening the environment.
And the storm of letters to the editor that followed that article.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Neocons going Green
James Woolsey bought a 58-MPG Toyota Prius. Why? Glad to see that SOME of the hawks recognize that the they are either part of the solution or part of the problem.
Fox: Fair and Balanced Inauguration
Follow this link for a three minute video clip of a Fox anchor boiling over because a guest dared criticize El Inauguracion del Presidente. Funny stuff.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Global warming approaching point of no return
We have at most ten years before there is no turning back.
Thai Islanders survive Tsunami: nearly 100%
They call it "wave that eats people", but the Moken sea gypsies, who have lived in isolation for decades, emerged from the tsunami almost unscathed. See also this entry from the New Yorker's Talk of the Town.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Saturday, January 22, 2005
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