How to Take Action Consistently
Body-Searching Children: No for the US Army, Yes for the TSA
HT They Gave Us a Republic
To avoid giving gross offense to the Afghan public, and to prevent the appearance of an uncontrolled security state, the US military forbids use on Afghan civilians of the very practices the TSA is now making routine for civilian travelers at US airports.
Human Security Report Project
The Human Security Report Project (HSRP) is an independent research centre affiliated with Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver, Canada. Formerly located at the University of British Columbia and known as the Human Security Centre, the HSRP joined SFU in May of 2007.The HSRP tracks global and regional trends in organized violence, their causes and consequences. Research findings and analyses are published in the Human Security Report, Human Security Brief series, and the miniAtlas of Human Security. HSRP publications have received major coverage in the international media and are regularly cited by national governments, international agencies, and NGOs, as well as the research community.
The HSRP also produces a range of online data, research, and news resources covering a broad range of global security issues.
HSRP In the News
The Associated Press, Le Monde, and The Economist are just some of the prominent media outlets that have used and provided coverage of our publications. Our staff also write op-eds and frequently provide commentary for the media.
Human Security Report
Security Stats
Conflict Monitors
miniAtlas of Human Security
Donors
Our work is made possible by generous support from a number of government departments and agencies.
The Human Security Report Project (HSRP) is made possible by generous support from:
The Department for International Development, United Kingdom (DFID);
The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, (Sida);
The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Switzerland; and
The Government of Canada.
In the past, the HSRP has also received support from the Government of Norway and from the Rockefeller Foundation.
2009
The Shrinking Costs Of War
The study reveals that nationwide death rates actually fall during the course of most of today's armed conflicts...Challenging commonsense assumptions, the study reveals that nationwide death rates actually fall during the course of most of today’s armed conflicts.
The study argues that wartime mortality, from disease and malnutrition, as well as war-inflicted injuries, has been driven downwards by significant changes in the nature of warfare—evident in the 70 percent decline in the number of high-intensity conflicts since the end of the Cold War, and more than 30 years of highly effective health interventions in poor countries in peacetime—which have cut death tolls from disease during wartime.
The "Shrinking Costs of War" also provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the claim that 5.4 million people have died because of the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It demonstrates that the true death toll is far smaller.
( All that support for a proposition that sounds as if - reading the label -war reduces the death rate. You have to read closely to see the assertion that current wars are less generally catastrophic - not that it improves upon peacetime. No wonder it's an academic study : who else would have so misleading a label as to content - Fox News? Better yet - what else can it be used for except minimizing reports of murder being levied against the perpetrators ? Isn't that an interesting laundry list of parties commissioning such a distinguished and authoritative report ? Amazing what happens when you 'click the link'. )
Mother Jones
The Iraq Math War
Why the CDC and the Pentagon sought to discredit the first scientific tally of Iraq's civilian death toll.
Congo
Roberts, a former Centers for Disease Control (cdc) epidemiologist who'd taken over as director of health policy for the International Rescue Committee, wanted to see how the locals were faring.
Every morning for weeks, Roberts and his team rode into the jungle. After finding a spot they'd selected randomly on a map, they approached the people living in the area and asked them about recent deaths in their households. When Roberts finally crunched the numbers, he determined that the mortality rate in Katana was two and a half times the peacetime rate. The next year, using a similar approach, he concluded that the war's overall death toll in eastern drc at the time wasn't 50,000, as widely reported, but a staggering 1.7 million.
Roberts' results helped boost the reputation of conflict epidemiology, a fledgling discipline that applies the tools of public health research to the surprisingly difficult question of how many civilians die in war zones. Historically, soldiers and journalists have been the main sources of real-time casualty estimates, leaving the truth somewhere between propaganda and a best guess. Researchers are still revising death tolls for wars that ended decades ago; estimates of civilian deaths in Vietnam even now range from 500,000 to 2 million or more. The methods Roberts helped pioneer aimed to end some of that uncertainty.
( So the Lancet study continues to be attacked. The thing is - there is no drive anywhere to find better methodology. Professional liars - politicians - are not great at hiring people who disprove their fairytales.)
Baghdad Burning October 22, 2007
It is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria today.
A cousin of mine is now attending a school in Qudsiya and his class is composed of 26 Iraqi children, and 5 Syrian children. It’s beyond belief sometimes. Most of the families have nothing to live on beyond their savings which are quickly being depleted with rent and the costs of living.
Within a month of our being here, we began hearing talk about Syria requiring visas from Iraqis, like most other countries. Apparently, our esteemed puppets in power met with Syrian and Jordanian authorities and decided they wanted to take away the last two safe havens remaining for Iraqis- Damascus and Amman.
I was suddenly a number. No matter how wealthy or educated or comfortable, a refugee is a refugee. A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country- including their own... especially their own.
I cried that night because for the first time in a long time, so far away from home, I felt the unity that had been stolen from us in 2003.
Yes, Lancet lied about Iraq war deaths (My Wkly Std article)
By Michael Fumento
Lancet Denial
100,000 Dead—or 8,000 Fred Kaplan
Over half a million additional deaths in Iraq since US invasion
Oct 2006 Lindsay Beyerstein
Counting Iraqi deaths Glenn Greenwald
The Lancet study did not measure violent death only. it measured premature deaths. Cancers, diabetes, heart disease - deaths caused by chronic conditions. The conflation is astounding, and utterly dishonest, pushed by agenda whores with nothing to lose who think it's fine for other people and other peoples children to die to save face for a madman.
Posted by: Blue Girl, Red State (aka G.C.) on January 10, 2008 at 1:59 PM | PERMALINK
Today in Iraq, the vast majority of violent deaths of civilians are caused by US aerial bombing.
The statistical methods used by the Lancet study are very beneficial to identifying epidemics and how many victims they produce. My understanding is that is why these statistical methods were developed.
Creationists' complaints should be ignored when they discount scientific methods for political reasons.
Posted by: Brojo on January 10, 2008 at 2:09 PM | PERMALINK
Lancet Post Number 200
Dicksonator,
Great posts. You have nailed it directly. The war was illegal according to just about every national and international law - the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Code, and the US Constitution for starters. By that reckoning, the US is responsible for every death that occurred as a result of the invasion. And now Iraq is utterly devastated. One of the region's experts, Nir Rosen, said in 2008 that "Iraq has been destroyed, never to rise again". Pretty much the entire political and social infrastructure of Iraq was blown to smithereens by invaders who were pursuing their own agenda that had nix to do with WMD, promoting freedom or democracy. Yet this myth has repeatedly been rammed down our throats by the corporate and state MSM.
And also note the media's non-coverage of the recent study which showed that cancer cases in Falluja within 2 years of the US bombardment of that city in November of 2004 well exceeded the rate in Hiroshima after the atom bomb was dropped there. Falluja was once a teeming city with 600,000 inhabitants; now it is a burned out shell with the latest census reporting 300,000 residents, meaning that half of the population fled and has not returned or were killed in the US assault.
I find it takes remarkable hubris for anyone to try and downplay the horrific death and destruction inflicted on Iraq, first by the 'sanctions of mass destruction', and then by the illegal invasion. The utter hypocrisy of western foreign policy, part of which Dicksonator has alluded to (e.g. 'worthy' Kurds in Iraq, 'unworthy' Kurds in Turkey) as well as the support of monstrous regimes elsewhere under US control or influence (e.g. Montt, Marcos, Somosza, Pinochet, Mbutu, Suharto) speaks volumes. And those countries who do not play according to the rules set out in the "Washington Consensus" - Venezuela and Bolivia being prime examples - are forever vilified in the media. The fact that outright expansionism, nullification of alternative systems, and subjegation of other country's assets drive western foreign policy should be brazenly obvious by now, even if the body count as a result of such actions is enormous. Yet to many it isn't. We in the rich world prefer to think of ourselves as 'noble victims', and the media cultivate that image well. We trust our politicians, who usually hide their agendas behind a veil of lies and deceit. If one wants to really understand what drives western policies, its easy to do so: read declassified planning documents which are available in most large libraries. They could not be clearer.
Posted by: Jeff Harvey | October 26, 2010 4:33 AM
Data Bomb
Three weeks before the 2006 midterm elections gave Democrats control of Congress, a shocking study reported on the number of Iraqis who had died in the ongoing war. It bolstered criticism of President Bush and heightened the waves of dread -- here and around the world -- about the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Published by The Lancet, a venerable British medical journal, the study [PDF] used previously accepted methods for calculating death rates to estimate the number of "excess" Iraqi deaths after the 2003 invasion at 426,369 to 793,663; the study said the most likely figure was near the middle of that range: 654,965. Almost 92 percent of the dead, the study asserted, were killed by bullets, bombs, or U.S. air strikes. This stunning toll was more than 10 times the number of deaths estimated by the Iraqi or U.S. governments, or by any human-rights group.Over the past several months, National Journal has examined the 2006 Lancet article, and another [PDF] that some of the same authors published in 2004; probed the problems of estimating wartime mortality rates; and interviewed the authors and their critics. NJ has identified potential problems with the research that fall under three broad headings: 1) possible flaws in the design and execution of the study; 2) a lack of transparency in the data, which has raised suspicions of fraud; and 3) political preferences held by the authors and the funders, which include George Soros's Open Society Institute.
The Lancet II study cost about $100,000, according to Tirman, including about $45,000 for publicity and travel. That means that nearly half of the study's funding came from an outspoken billionaire who has repeatedly criticized the Iraq campaign and who spent $30 million trying to defeat Bush in 2004.
The Lancet study was based on techniques developed by public health experts to determine rates of illness and death from epidemics and famines in large populations. This "cluster" sampling is a relatively new methodology that attempts to replicate the logic of public opinion polling in Third World locales that lack a telecommunications infrastructure.
An Iraq Body Count analysis showed that the Lancet II numbers would have meant that 1,000 Iraqis were dying every day during the first half of 2006, "with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms." The February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque is widely credited with plunging Iraq into civil war, yet the Lancet II report posits the equivalent of five to 10 bombings of this magnitude in Iraq every day for three years.
"In the light of such extreme and improbable implications," the Iraq Body Count report stated, "a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data."
Today, the journal's editor tacitly concedes discomfort with the Iraqi death estimates. "Anything [the authors] can do to strengthen the credibility of the Lancet paper," Horton told NJ, "would be very welcome." If clear evidence of misconduct is presented to The Lancet, "we would be happy to go ask the authors and the institution for an official inquiry, and we would then abide by the conclusion of that inquiry."
Russia "Seriously Worried" as Afghan Insurgency Spreads North
What we are afraid of in Afghanistan is extremism, terrorism, drugs coming from it to our direction.' Former Soviet republics Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan act as transit nations for U.S. Afghan supplies and some have reported armed clashes with Islamist groups."
( Which is the 'reason' for NATO to kill there and why Russia occupied the place - as a result of a C.I.A. 'enticement' fraud. Hmmm. )
Karachi CID building attack underscores Pak jihadi groups' capability to "strike at will"
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) attack on Karachi's Crime Investigation Department compound not only underscores the ties between jihadi groups in Pakistan's biggest metropolis and Al Qaeda and Taliban operating out of the tribal belt between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also their ability to launch terror strikes at will.
"They just want to tell us that they are still alive and could strike back," the Christian Science Monitor quoted Omar Shahid, the senior superintendent of police at the Crime Investigation Department, as saying.
( This doesn't even pretend that what is being done effectively deals with changing the situation into nonviolence. Given that - is it so strange to believe representations which outline what ends could be served by casting the place into chaos ? )
Online Journal
Obama conducting ‘reign of terror’ against suspected White House leakers
By Wayne Madsen
Expansionary fiscal contraction and the emperor’s clothes
Various eminent economists – amongst them, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Skidelsky – have attacked ‘deficit hysteria’ as based on weak economic evidence and poor theory. In other words, ‘economically illiterate’. The right-wing of the profession – not just in Britain but in Frankfurt and Washington – has struck back, digging hard into the literature to support their case. The result is the popularisation in Britain of the phrase ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’ – meaning that closing the budget deficit (fiscal contraction) is expansionary. That is to say, the high road to private sector-led growth. Personally, I find the phrase an oxymoron – but let’s examine the evidence.
What Should Macroeconomics Do?
What is wrong with American macroeconomics? In a nutshell, when 2007-9 came along every single macro textbook (including mine) and every single macro course (save possibly Perry Mehrling's) was of little or no use in helping people who had read or taken them to read publications like the FT as they chronicled the downturn or understand the policy debates hosted by the FT.
At the very minimum, a macro course should teach people enough about the macroeconomy that they can then read the reporting of the FT. And it should teach people enough about the theoretical approaches that underpin policy advocacy that they can then understand and evaluate the policies proposed in contributions to the FT.
Troy said...
As a non-specialist I've gained the most understanding of how the world actually works from Henry George, actually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty
and Dr Mason Gaffney in his sinecure at UCR:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/janusg/coe/cofe01.htm
Land economics has been the hidden drain in the economy since they stopped giving productive homesteads away ~100 years ago.
Land is where the Real Money is. It broke Japan in 1990. It has broken our economy, many times from 1797 to now.
donna said...
Where's the theory about the greedy rich sucking up all the available money until nobody else has anything left to spend and then creating inflated asset bubbles to fool them into playing the game a bit longer?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uTU2E7cZR_9yBs-WFO0OpV7kOgaJ2HuU8brN962hx0Akj5_qgIVQ48izXRi5nmsWsVdwRWYTLVny4670b6NTXYKJBDey8DS-cuqI6OUTumMGJbYK-yM2saWRfimOn-4W3moFOt0c-uEgxIabUKsV0=s0-d)
Posts
