Now no-one believes the Lancet

The Lancet has come up with some controversial figures regarding the number of violent deaths in Iraq - and after years of relying on it for out-of-context health-scare stories, the media and general public suddenly do not believe it.

Indeed, it seems the general public knows better than the British medical journal. Everyone has become an armchair statistician. Journalists, pundits, Joe Blog... they all know more about stastics and the situation in Iraq than a team of scientists who have now produced their second report into violent deaths in this war-zone.

This is the most recommended moderated comment on the BBC website:

Using the figure of 650,000 I have worked out (V V roughly) that no less than 515 people have been killed every day over the last 42 months. That is day in and day out. I cannot begin to believe such a figure. Certainly the killing that has ocurred has been absolutley awful but bandying nonsense figures about helps no one and certainly discredits "The Lancet".
John, Oban

OK John from Oban - what figure can you believe? The ones spawned from counting death reports in the media? Official government figures, if there are any? Or just cut to the chase. Tell us how many people you think have been killed by the conflict, and we'll find a source that matches up with that. Is that what you want? The world to slot into agreement with your tiny brain?

John from Oban cannot imagine 500 people a day dead from violence because, at that rate, Oban's entire population would be slain in just over three weeks. So it isn't true.

Even the BBC offers a totally flawed "this can't be so" analysis. It uses an assumption that existing UN figures are correct, to debunk, in a roundabout way, the proposed figures from the Lancet.

BBC Paul Reynolds: Baghdad is not the whole country of course, but AP reported the United Nations as saying that in July and August, 6,599 people were killed across the country, of which 5,106 were in Baghdad.

This suggests that Baghdad has by far the highest number of actual and percentage dead.

So, if the current rate in Baghdad is about 86 and the countrywide figure should be about 500 according to the Lancet report, where are the "missing" dead?"

This is like debunking Copernicus with:

"The Earth is at the centre of the universe. Copernicus has a different view. Therefore... Copernicus is wrong. And he's a dangerous liar, let's put him under house arrest before he ruins everything."

The Lancet has done a difficult and unpopular job. Sure they may wish they had a larger sample, or a more diverse sample, or a smaller, more accurate, sample, or whatever sort of sample it is statisticians dream of. But the fact is, they have a sample, they have come up with a result, they have published it and put their scientific reputations behind it. This is science. You can disagree with it but you can only discredit it if you have a better way. And the armchair statisticians have nothing, except angry scared voices.

Sound familiar?

Will the editors of the Lancert now be burned as witches?

They'd better be careful. RIP David Kelly - an unpopular scientific view can get you in a whole lot of trouble in the third world war.

Blame Bush's belligerence

A good piece here on Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons development. The Logic of Proliferation is written by Floyd Rudmin, a professor of social & community psychology at the University of Tromsø.

The simplest solution to the present crisis would be for the US to stop threatening other nations, to return to rule of international law, and to give the guarantees of non-aggression that North Korea and Iran have been requesting.
...
The sooner America realizes that it is merely one nation among many, comprising merely 5% of humankind, the sooner will the world be more peaceful and able to face the real threats to our existence.

Rice: very ma fan

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Japan, South Korea and China on Oct. 17-22, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian affairs Christopher Hill said on Friday.

The key part of Rice's trip will focus on making sure the UN Security Council resolution to be passed on imposing sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) "will really have teeth," Hill said.

Condoleezza Rice, if you're reading this (and I know you are): FUCK OFF LAH. DO NOT COME TO CHINA. You're not welcome.

Wherever you and your bullying cohorts go, there extends a cloud of misery and threats. You are coming to ensure sanctions against North Korea are really going "to have teeth" - well what if China doesn't want to sanction North Korea? Are you going to threaten to bomb China "back to the stone age" like you did with Pakistan?

You thought five of the six-party nations would roll over with shock and outrage at North Korea's announced nuclear test but now things are not going your way, you're planning a little hate-tour of Asia. Japan, South Korea and China.

Behind the scenes, the political games must be more complicated than the plot outline for the new Dan Brown thriller. And just as formulaic.

Within minutes of the alleged nuclear test, US geological offices announced they had NO seismic record of the event.

www.guardian.co.uk - October 8 AM The U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected no seismic activity in North Korea, although it was not clear whether a blast would be strong enough for its sensors.

This was no doubt to give the Bush administration time to awaken from their slumbers, brush their bloodthirsty teeth and plan a suitable response. Several hours later, US geological offices were practically the ONLY seismic experts in the world quoted by the press.

AP - October 8 PM The U.S. Geological Survey said it has recorded a seismic event with a preliminary magnitude of 4.2 in northeastern North Korea that coincided with the country's announced nuclear test.

Their press releases were as finely crafted as the "good old shoe" song in Wag the Dog, complete with neat headline-friendly seismic graphs. The Guardian UK ran with the graph half page: "This is the moment North Korea became a nuclear power".

(As an aside, according to French geologists, North Korea detonated nothing more than a gigantic brown paper bag. The explosion's seismic signature identified the bag as the packaging for the French luxury food hamper arrived at the North Korean government offices last week. Luxury goods sanctions? "Qu'es que c'est, un 'sanction'?")

But the US geologists have now been replaced with more CIA-reliable science - secret radiation reports from CIA spies in North Korea. Their results are still inconclusive - the last thing the US wants right now is conclusive evidence of real testing either way. But secret raditation reports are much easier to maniuplate than seismic scientists.

The CIA will have to "silence" less geologists this way. It's better for Earth Science as a whole.

Expect the story of exactly who or what the North Korean's blew up to unravel like a political thriller. Who cares? North Korea SAYS it conducted a nuclear test. A real explosion or not is irrelevant; since it has said it would never strike first with nuclear weapons if it had them, its intentions are clearly to annoy the rest of the six-party nations and give itself some political manouevering room at the hungry-dog table. It has been treated like shit by the international community, particularly the US. Now it wants some respect.

It doesn't look like it's gonna get it. Rice plans this little junket around Asia to press for further sanctions. She will visit South Korea, Japan and China. Why not North Korea? It is a bona fide six-party member, even though it has stained its record of late. Why is Rice going around behind it like that, like a double-crossing bitch?

The whole point of the six-party talks is to allow each state - including North Korea - a frank forum for discussing North Korea's nuclear weapon's testing.

It makes me sick that this bully Rice is going around like a schoolyard sneak. Rice's visit to China is pathetic snivelling behaviour at best - at worst, if threats are involved, it's just plain old bullying.

And you know what they say about bullies? Well, pick your insult. Did the US wet its bed as a child? Did its mother not love it? Is it hopelessley insecure?

China is unlikely to bow to even Rice's smallest demands, but her presence here is going to make for some nasty name calling and all-round China-hating in the international press.

I can only hope that, upon Rice's arrival at Beijing Immigration, the infrared body temperature cameras glow bright red. "Sorry dear. You're running too hot. Perhaps a fever. Perhaps it's bird flu. We're going to have to place you into quarantine for six weeks. You wouldn't want to spread bird flu around Asia now would you?"

And then the rest of the six parties can get along and decipher this whole political game without the hair tugging of the spoilt kid who wants everything for herself.

"Ladies first", warned Chinese tourists

Chinese tourists are an embarrasment for their government - the travellers are loud, they spit, they litter and they deface national monuments, according to a report from government news agency Xinhua. Calls for tourists to improve their behaviour were mostly ignored during the week-long National Day/Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, with 40 tonnes of litter left in Tian'anmen Square alone on October 1.
But the government should not be too hard on these travellers. Sure, they are noisy, uncouth and annoying. But then, look at any nation on holiday. Look at the Brits. We are the worst travellers in the world. We're like a group of Chinese tourists who have been forced to drink Special Brew all day. The Chinese tourists may be loud but they can only afford one can of lager between them, and they won't be vomiting in the street at least until the economy picks up. By then, the government hopes, it will have taught them some manners...

BEIJING, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The government calls for Chinese tourists to improve their behavior that was mostly ignored during the week-long National Day holiday from Oct. 1 to 7, according to a commentary in Monday's China Youth Daily.

"The uncivilized behavior of many Chinese people can not be eradicated in just a few days - it needs long-term efforts," said the report.

The newspaper exposed the bad habits of Chinese tourists both at home and abroad during the past week and called on Chinese people to behave in a more civilized manner.

"Some improvement has been seen among Chinese tourists traveling abroad, with less spitting and littering," said Li Xi, a Chinese travel guide in Paris. "But what annoys the locals most is that Chinese tourists always speak loudly and make noises in public," Li said.

The Civilization Office with the Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee and the National Tourism Administration jointly issued an etiquette guide on Oct. 2 telling Chinese travelers to pay attention to everyday etiquette and hygiene while abroad.

Travelers are asked not to litter, not to talk loudly, to respect queuing rules, be polite in public places, and observe the rule of "ladies first".

Uncivilized behavior is becoming a real embarrassment for China as tourism continues to increase rapidly. Some experts attribute the uncouth behavior to Chinese people's lack of awareness of public property and selfishness.

Education in manners and etiquette has been strengthened in some kindergartens and primary schools in China. But experts believe it may take several generations to nurture civilized behavior and form a positive image of Chinese tourists.

North Korea - it's all about the oil (sound familiar)?

Look out for unbelievable shock, outrage and political grandstanding upon North Korea's nuclear test. The country's foreign minister has previously said the coiuntry would NEVER be the first to fire nuclear weapons but this stance is unlikely to surface as world leaders condemn this morning's nuclear weapon test and the world's self-righteous media hypothsises how North Korea is likely to deliver its new weapons.
Shame on the BBC, for example, for this little information box:

North Korea: * Believed to have 'handful' of nuclear weapons
* But not thought to have any small enough to put in a missile
* Could try dropping from airplane, though world watching closely

For a different view try Blue Skies China's story on North Korea's dependence on Chinese oil.

Beijing has previously used its oil exports to DPRK [North Korea] to coerce participation in the six-party talks (a forum for DPRK, South Korea, Russia, China, Japan and the US to set out their positions on DPRK's nuclear weapons programme). The DRPK's test today will allow China a gracious exit from existing oil supply deals - oil sanctions are likely - and thus force DPRK's hand in developing its own oil resources.
But here's where the politics gets interesting. To develop these offshore resources, DPRK needs China's offshore oil experience and an agreement on political boundary setting in the waters between the Korean peninsula and China. Previous efforts to develop the fields with South Korea, the UK, Malaysia, Sweden and Australia have all dried up and Beijing is considered DPRK's last hope in getting this offshore energy out of the ocean.
While a DPRK with its own secure oil supply would weaken China's sanctioning hand in future six-party gamesmanship, a share of the 22 billion barrels may prove irresistable, and China is likely to put political differences aside to get its drills in the water. The prize for China would be a greater share of the offshore reserves than it might have obtained from a six-party compliant DPRK. Boundary lines have not yet been drawn and it seems likely, given DPRK's snub of the international community, that China would be able to claim moral high ground and thus the lion's share of offshore waters, leaving North Korea with just enough for its own needs.

And yes, I'm plugging my own blog. Seems like better behaviour than most world leaders these days.

911 cover up

If you believe every scrap of evidence this movie presents - and the conclusions it draws - then it's time to march on the Capitol.

But hold on - there is no way of proving many of these facts; the movie's sources include Wikipedia, and the filmakers conclusions are ambigious. The "are you sitting down" conclusions are very disappointing. After a solid hour of reporting, it falls back on kids spy stories about hidden gold bullion and clandestine Wall St manouvres. Get this conspiracy theorists: stock options in airlines are bought and sold in "above average" amounts every day, and millions of dollars of options go unexercised each week. It doesn't mean someone knows something you don't about a terrorist attack. And tiny flashes of light/dust purporting to be demolition charges in the two towers of the World Trade Center could be explained a million different ways, especially given the poor quality of the videos available. Take a picture of any airplane flying overhead on your mobile phone camera and you could probably see enough suspicious shadows to turn it into a cruise missile.

The movie states with absolute confidence that the cell phone calls made from Flight 93 are fake. This, if proved true, would be huge news. The filmakers base this claim on cell phone call research made by a doctor in a light aircraft, who found call success rates above 8,000 feet to be impossibly low. But whether the researcher was flying over the same airspace, and on the same handsets and networks as the victims as Flight 93 is not explained. If this is valid research - then, wow - something is indeed going on. If not - then it falls into the same sham basket as quoting Wikipedia on the amount of gold deposits "rumoured" to be in the WTC basements.

Alas like every other conspiracy theory the movie itself falls down with its "and another thing" arm-tugging child attitude - if the filmmakers just spent some time investigating one or two inconsistencies in the "official" story rather than trying to discredit almost everything that happened that terrible day, they might be able to expose some truths. The mobile phone calls seem like a good place to start. The dialogues do seem strange, absurd even. But then, who knows what you might say to a loved one on the ground when under such duress? The "fakeness" of the conversations is not evidence in itself, but perhaps a pointer to something amiss. True, a flight attendant shouting "oh my god i can see water, buildings" reads like a bad novel character, when a real flight attendant would probably recognise Manhattan and say so... but it's not hard proof and perhaps just insulting to her memory to pick holes in her final words like this.

Nevertheless, something is rotten in Denmark for sure, and I hope these filmakers continue their investigations and come up with something more solid. Finding Flight 93 "heroes" alive and well and living in North Carolina would do it. But coming up with a theory based on grainy news pictures of the events seems childish, pointless and arrogant.

Virgin Galactic promo

Space travel just got sanitised into a slick science fiction wet dream. Somehow being an astronaut just lost all its glamour. Where's the clunky danger?