I just read on Gateway Pundit that the media had fallen for another "insurgents slaughter many"-type story, likely fed to them by an AQI propagandist / stringer. I was currious about what CBC had said about this story but when I click on the link .... Curious. Probably just a server error.

This would be a phenomenal time for the US to withdraw it's 37,000 troops from Korea, save a few bucks and incidentally let South Korea grow the fuck up a little. Yahoo News:

Taliban militants agreed Tuesday to release 19 South Korean church volunteers held hostage for six weeks after Seoul reaffirmed a pledge to withdraw its troops by year's end and prevent Christian missionaries from working in Afghanistan.

Noami Wolf gives her 10 easy steps to a Fascist America, currently being implemented by the Bush Junta. This is even too stupid for Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder. One could pointlessly "fisk" the article, but let me argue from a meta point of view: if America was actually becoming fascist, Wolf and her pals would either shut up and cower or, more likely, enthusiastically join up, start sig-heiling and kicking the shit out of people who looked at them sidewise, just like large numbers of "socialists" and "communists" did once they saw which way the wind was blowing in Nazi Germany. And to further belabor the point, if you turned on the TV and saw a mob of masked thugs kicking the shit out of someone, would you take a bet that they're right-wing Bush partisans?

Updates:

• Right Wing News does the point by point
• Kathy asks "why aren't you a lampshade?"

The editor of the Winnipeg Sun, John Gleeson, is a moron. Here's a rebuttal, via Damian Penny.

Just for a laugh, I thought I'd give the Green Party a visit and see what's making news for them.

Green Parties of Canada and United States warn of disastrous consequences of an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities

Canadian and U.S. Green Parties are jointly calling for a comprehensive and open dialogue to stop the escalation of tension in the Persian Gulf OTTAWA – At the initiative of the Leader of the Green Party of Canada, Elizabeth May, the Canadian and U.S. Green Parties are jointly calling for a comprehensive and open dialogue to stop the escalation of tension in the Persian Gulf. The escalating tension, combined with suggestions the U.S. may have a war plan that includes targeting Iran's nuclear facilities, led the Green Parties of the U.S. and Canada to state today that nuclear facilities should never be targeted for deliberate attack.

Does the Conservative Party issue joint press releases with the Republicans? The Liberals with the Democrats? Yet Canadian Green Party leader, the American Elizabeth May, somehow thinks us colonials need a little transnational help from our betters, south of the border.

“There can be no justification for attacking nuclear facilities," said Janina Komaroff, Green Party of Canada critic for International Cooperation. “The consequences of such an attack would be disastrous.”

Nuclear facilities? It's not like Iran has plants up and running. And the consequences for Iran's nuclear program would certainly be disastrous, but I doubt it be much worse than any other "normal" attack. And it certainly sorted out Iraq's program, all those years ago without "disastrous" "consequences".

Citing the potentially catastrophic environmental and health consequences of such attacks, the Greens jointly called upon all parties in the current stand off to refrain from war and to enter into meaningful negotiations. The Canadian and U.S. Green Parties are collaborating with Green Parties in Europe on this issue.

OK, our final offer: you can kill half the Joos in a rain of fire, enslave one-quarter and deport the rest to Germany.

“Western governments know the dangers of attacks on nuclear facilities. The vulnerability of their own nuclear facilities to terrorist attacks has been an ongoing concern since 9/11,” said Julia Willebrand, Co-Chair of the International Committee of the Green Party of the U.S. “The idea that any western country would engage in or support such attacks on the facilities of another nation should be unthinkable.”

We, the sane, don't really see the symmetry between a terrorist attack designed to kill Canadian and American civilians and a military attack design to stop a dictatorship from killing civilians and threatening neighboring nations. Sorry, we didn't go to cuckoo school let you folks.

Global double standards are the crux of the current crisis over Iran's uranium reprocessing. While the nuclear weapons states have failed to live up to their commitment made under the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970 to dismantle their own nuclear weapons, they have selectively allowed some states like Israel, India and Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons, while threatening and/or bombing countries like Iraq and Iran. Clearly, as this crisis demonstrates, the status quo is not working and is not providing security and stability in the Middle East or the world.

This paragraph is so bizarre, it's hard to know where to start. We didn't "allow" Israel, India and Pakistan to do anything; they just went and did it. How can any sane person -- yes, I know -- talk about nuclear proliferation in the 21st century and not work in a mention of North Korea? That doesn't really fit into the negotiations, not bombs paradigm, does it? Iraq hasn't managed to attack any of its neighbors in the last 16 years, so that's a plus. Beyond that, it's hard to see what this has to do with peace and security in the rest of the Middle East.

While the situation in the Middle East is complex and involves many issues beyond the current nuclear crisis, a de-escalation of the current nuclear crisis is essential to addressing these complex problems. It is time to end the threats and the war games and to enter into a meaningful dialogue that addresses the issues and concerns of all parties involved.

e.g. see our final offer re: the Joos above.

Juxtaposition of the day:

• Maher Arar, stuck by the man
• Nancy Pelosi, stickin' it to the man

Work it out with yourself.

Germans are demanding reparations and return of lands lost during WWII in return for "peace". No further negotations can take place until these demands are met as-is. Bizarrely, CBC is reporting this as if it's serious news.

This is pretty funny:

Dear Kathy Shaidle,

Please remove my writing from your website.

Also, if you would be so kind as to tell me how you acquired the email I sent to Mr. Steyn I would appreciate it.

Thank you,

Troy Marquis

What was the writing that Troy wanted removed? Why this:

Also, your name implies that you are Jewish. Whether or not you are is irrelevant, but that because your names sounds Jewish, you have no credibility when you speak about Christianity or the Christian world, which, in case you did not get my point, robs you of credibility.

Which comes from a letter he sent to Mark Steyn.

Troy used to have a website but it seems to be down now for some strange reason. Ah, I see he's commented out the redirect he had to this PDF document which lists all the services Troy will provide for your organization. There's nothing there about ferreting out the Joos in your company but if that's what you're looking for, I guess you've got your go-to guy.

VDH:

The Cowardly Way

This Michael Richards mea culpa about his racist outburst against hecklers is pathetic—mentioning Katrina and war as he tossed out banalities about the nation’s “hate” and “rage.” The outburst and the apparent apology are right up there with the Judith Regan creepy confessional about her grotesque O.J. non-book event.

Let me get his Seinfeldian logic: a hip, sort of leftist cynic unloads on some impolite blacks in his audience with language right out of the Ku Klux Klan lexicon, and then tries to weasel out of it by suggesting some rage unleashed by things like the Katrina diaster? Apparently he thinks that hip nihilists like himself can’t be redneck racists. And if they slip up and show that they are, then it’s only because they suffer from a temporary sort of Bush-derangement syndrome brought on by the general “rage” unleashed in the country.

We need a new word in the vocabulary for this increasingly common syndrome where a liberal spouts far right nonsense that no conservative would utter and then blames his outburst apparently on the conservative climate. We all thought that the apology would be the alcohol or abused childhood common refuge, so surely “rage” is something new. Do we all suffer from it, or just Richards that evening?

And what is this new throat-clearing about the “war made me do it” (e.g. Richards’ reference to the “rage” between “this country and another nation”)? Even Mel Gibson sought cover in that idea of global conflict when his anti-Semitic rage boiled over in his cups (“The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.”). Apparently he thought the Iraqi and Lebanon fighting was both “the world” and were caused by the “Jews.”

Little Tobacco:

Christopher Hitchens says the election results are "unanalyzable". Sorry, but in the words of South Park, You Got F'd in the A.

That's it, I'm moving to Canada!

Your boy is going to hang.

BTW: this is pretty well what I'm believing, but Cristos, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Update: VDH:

How could John Kerry, born into privilege, and then marrying and divorcing and marrying out of and back into greater inherited wealth, lecture anyone at a city college about the ingredients for success in America? If he were to give personal advice about making it, it would have to be to marry rich women. Nothing he has accomplished as a senator or candidate reveals either much natural intelligence or singular education.

[...] The Democrats should use this occasion to have an autopsy of Kerryism, or this strange new tony liberalism, that has turned noblisse oblige on its head. It used to be that millionaire FDRs and JFKs felt sympathy for those of the lower classes and wished to ensure that the hoi polloi had some shot at the American dream. But today's elite liberals-a Howard Dean, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, George Soros, Ted Turner-love the high life and playact at being leftists simply because they are already insulated from the effects of their own nostrums that always come at someone poorer's expense while providing them some sort of psychological relief from guilt. Poor Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave-from bourbon, cigars, and poker to wind-surfing and L.L. Bean costume of the day says it all.

 

Lyn Davis Lear (via CQ):

Or have Diebold, ES&S, and local state secretaries assured them that they will do "whatever it takes" to get a Republican Congress elected again? Or are they just planning to outspend us? Karl Rove recently told the Washington Times, "For most Americans, particularly the marginal voters who are going to determine the outcome of the election, it started a couple of weeks ago... Between now and the election we will spend $100 million in target House and Senate races in the next 21 days". That is $30 million a week in 15 or 16 key races. Knowing this group, the answers must lie in a clever blitzkrieg combo of all of the above.

When I asked Gore Vidal at dinner why the White House seemed so serene and at ease about the vote, he replied that, this time around, the Bush-Cheney henchmen could simply call on martial law. He glumly noted that we are so far down the road toward totalitarianism that, even if Democrats do win back the Congress, it would take at least two generations before the last six years of damage to the nation could be reversed. Gore frankly despaired that any amount of time could ever return the country to where and what it previously was. This prediction left me reaching for some Fernet Branca.

What makes this more hilarious is Dear's bio; she's a professional propagandist for left-wing environment and other causes (because obviously just making the intellectual case for them won't work).

The close paragraph is incredible:

If for whatever reason we don't win back Congress in November the only real answer will be to take to the streets.

Tim Blair is a god. Look what he dug up:

"Michael Arcuri is a strong candidate, and I came to the realization that my staying in the race would only make it more difficult for him to win in November," Roberts said Wednesday morning. "I think it’s critically important that we elect a Democrat and that Democrats take control of the House of Representatives."

Chenango County Democrat Les Roberts, 44, withdrew Wednesday from the 24th Congressional District race.

[...] Roberts said, "Republican control of the Congress and White House in recent years has given us the most destructive governance since the Vietnam War."

The pre-emptive war against Iraq and record deficits fueled by "tax gifts for the richest few" have left the United States greatly weakened, he said.

In recent years, "one-party rule has degraded the Constitution and American civil liberties dramatically," Roberts continued. "We need to do something about that this year."

Roberts said he would try to help Arcuri win in November, and later in the morning, Arcuri had kind words for his former opponent.

Weird that (as Blair notes) no newspaper reports of the Lancet study could find the time to mention that he ran for the Democrats this year.

Read all posts on the Lancet study.

Samizdata says that The New Scientist to decided to drop a little editorialization into their reporting on the NK nuke blasts. Unfortunately, they flubbed:

While reading the October 14th issue of New Scientist I came across the following statement in an article titled "Nuke test sends shock waves round the world":

It may even have been only half a kiloton - the same explosive power as the terrorist bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995

[...] A half kiloton is 500 tons or 1,000,000 pounds of TNT. Now TNT is a 'high explosive', and the Oklahoma City bomb (and those of which I am quite familiar with from Belfast many years ago) are almost always made from nitrate fertilizer. While rather potent, they pack perhaps a fraction of the power per pound of a high explosive. So let us be conservative and give it a factor of two.

The quoted statement is therefor claiming a small truck pulled in front of the Murrah building loaded with about two million pounds of fertilizer.

How on Earth did the editors of a well known science magazine miss a hooter of this magnitude?

StatsGuy writes about the Lancet study (via Kathy). I'm just going to include a small snippet, this a long post with lots of stats and survey stuff that you should really read through:

The interview team went to 1849 households in urban areas of Iraq and encountered only 15 refusals and only 16 residences where neither the head of the household nor a spouse was in.  Don’t forget that they only went to each household once: there was no follow-up whatever.  If I ran a door-to-door survey with a response rate of 98.3% on the first go-round, I’d think I’d died and gone to statisticians’ heaven.  That is nothing short of miraculous.  That response rate implies that family heads in urban Iraq are virtually always at home.

Reading through the following paragraphs should really capture you interest -- the survey team was probably one of the most speediest and effective teams ever fielded by humanity. Or perhaps something else was going on.

Stats guy also writes (in a separate post) that the Lancet report authors ignored other studies on Iraq:

This I found odd.  Articles in academic and professional journals that address topics of controversy generally include references to previously published studies and discuss the perspective the current article takes vis-à-vis the views and findings of those earlier studies.  That is how scientific knowledge advances—by critically engaging published findings of other scholars and specialists.

The authors of the 2006 Lancet article, however, appear uninterested in critical engagement with the ILCS estimate of Iraqi deaths.  Yet we know that the Lancet researchers are aware of the ILCS, for they refer to it twice in their footnotes.  The first page mentions "surveys that assessed the burden of conflict on the population" and the fact that "insufficient water supplies, non-functional sewerage, and restricted electricity supply . . . create health hazards", and for these the ILCS is footnoted.

But as for critical discussion of the enormous difference between the ILCS estimate of deaths and the estimates generated from both Lancet surveys, the authors don't want to touch that.  They don't even acknowledge its existence.

Read all posts on the Lancet study.

Steven E Moore on the Lancet study in OpinionJournal. First, about the survey method:

Survey results frequently have a margin of error of plus or minus 3% or 5%--not 1200%.

The group--associated with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health--employed cluster sampling for in-person interviews, which is the methodology that I and most researchers use in developing countries. Here, in the U.S., opinion surveys often use telephone polls, selecting individuals at random. But for a country lacking in telephone penetration, door-to-door interviews are required: Neighborhoods are selected at random, and then individuals are selected at random in "clusters" within each neighborhood for door-to-door interviews. Without cluster sampling, the expense and time associated with travel would make in-person interviewing virtually impossible.

However, the key to the validity of cluster sampling is to use enough cluster points. In their 2006 report, "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional sample survey," the Johns Hopkins team says it used 47 cluster points for their sample of 1,849 interviews. This is astonishing: I wouldn't survey a junior high school, no less an entire country, using only 47 cluster points.

Neither would anyone else. For its 2004 survey of Iraq, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) used 2,200 cluster points of 10 interviews each for a total sample of 21,688. True, interviews are expensive and not everyone has the U.N.'s bank account. However, even for a similarly sized sample, that is an extraordinarily small number of cluster points. A 2005 survey conducted by ABC News, Time magazine, the BBC, NHK and Der Spiegel used 135 cluster points with a sample size of 1,711--almost three times that of the Johns Hopkins team for 93% of the sample size.

Do the Lancet study's author stand behind their words?

The Iraq Body Count (of which I'm not a fan, for other reasons) writes a "reality check" for the Lancet Study which claims 650,000+ Iraqis have been killed in the last three years:

A new study has been released by the Lancet medical journal estimating over 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq. The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:

1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja. 

Point #4 had occured to me also.

Read all posts on the Lancet study.

The Toronto Star reports (via Michael K):

Suspected Shiite militiamen killed at least 46 Sunni Arabs in a weekend rampage of revenge killing in a city north of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said Sunday, raising the toll in the latest sectarian bloodletting there to 63.

And don't forget that if you the Lancet's report is correct, several hundred to maybe a thousand other people were killed on Sunday also, but somehow no one managed to notice to report it.

Read all posts on the Lancet study.