Hour Silence for the 40,000 dead in Iraq

[chegrimandi]

It's not such a simple cause and effect though is it i.e. war in iraq=suicide bombers in London? Do you really reckon that pulling the troops out of Iraq will end the killing there now? What about Palestine - how do you solve that? How do you deal with young British Muslims feeling so disaffected that, for reasons one should not speculate about, they decide to blow themselves and another 50-odd people into bloody little bits? Are these issues conjoined? I disagree with the war in Iraq, but i also disagree with people strapping a ruck sack on their back and blowing up a tube train. I can show my grief at the latter, and I can show my dissatisfaction with the former. S'got feck all to do with "state-sanctioned grief". Holding the politicians responsible for their actions is quite a task - look at the shite storm that enveloped GG on the day he questioned Blairs motivations/actions etc - but unless you involve yourself in the political process at some stage, then you're probably pissing in the wind tbh.

I never said pull troops out. your words. We should never have been there.

I'm not suggesting I have the solution to the problems in Palestine. I wouldn't be so arrogant.

I disagree with the suicide bombings in London as well.

'Holding the politicians responsible for their actions is quite a task' - so we shouldn't bother? clearly people don't bother as Bliar was re-elected easily.

'but unless you involve yourself in the political process at some stage, then you're probably pissing in the wind tbh.' - I probably am yes - doesn't mean I have to like it does it? Or approve of the lies and bollocks and propaganda they feed us.....

 

[chegrimandi]

So my priorities are my family, my friends, earing enough to pay my bills and staying out of trouble.

Maybe its a bit insular and a bit harsh but someone dies in Africa - don't really care. Someone dies in Iraq. Don't really care.

First para fine - no qualms with that - second para is honest but it seems sad - you no feelings of compassion or empathy?

 

[treelover]

what a lovely guy, he has just summed up Thatcherism

 

[X-77]

Someone dies in Iraq. Don't really care. None of its really relevant to me. Someone dies in London. Well, I do care, but not enough to visit the family or to drop off some flowers or to write some mawkish comment in a condolency book.

so you 'don't really care' if someone dies in Iraq, even if the murderer is your very own government? I felt sick to my stomach the day this country invaded Iraq, far sicker than I felt last Thursday. Why? Because I knew my very own government was about to unleash all out hell on an entire nation for nothing but western greed.

Ditto for Africa - your government had the power to make big changes if it so chose to last week at the G8. Must be nice to be completely unaffected by such things - then again, nice probably isn't the right word.

Incidentally, a 'me' generation couldn't have produced the biggest march in British history so I get the feeling we're a bit beyond that now..

 

[camouflage]

I'd like an hour long silence for the 40,000 (conservative estimate) killed in Iraq tmw at noon. Please could someone email our betters and masters at the BBC, 10 Downing Street, the House of Commons and Buckingham Palace to ensure this happens or I won't be able to think about them properly.

Ta.

Top.

 

[camouflage]

Guns and bombs mostly

Hah! a retort of some wit.

 

[chegrimandi]

Top.

don't think anyone wanted it to happen - no idea why....you would have thought it would have been warranted, what with the thousands of dead and that...?!?! what could possibly be the motive?

 

[AverageJoe]

First para fine - no qualms with that - second para is honest but it seems sad - you no feelings of compassion or empathy?

Course I have feelings of compassion and empathy. I like to think that I actually a kind, considerate person. But I direct this to my own Community, friends and family.

Lets be fair. If you died tomorow in any manner (and I sincerely hope that you don't), would you expect me to attend your funeral, or be upset that you'd died? I don't really think that you'd expect it to be top of my priorities, in exactly the same way that I wouldnt expect you to be upset if I died. We don't know each other, apart from under assumed names on a bulletin board.

It seems a waste of energy to wring your hands over every single injustice in the world when you could direct that energy in a more positive manner elsewhere. I just try and do the best I can, when I can for people who need it. Getting involved with every problem and debate in the world and trying to change it would just wear me down and destroy me. I would be so jaded by continual failure to change the *big* issues such as famine and war that I would stop doing the small things that I do for fear of failure there as well.

I hope this explains my position better. Its not that as a person I don't care, per se, its just that there is *so* much that you can get carried away with that I have to prioritise where my loyalties lie. And I don't know anyone who lives in Africa, or Iraq or Afghanistan so I push my time and attention to issues that I do know about, such as homelessness in my town, or giving support to friends and family that needs it.

Does that make sense?

 

[warszawa]

Do we?

edit: Actually fuck it. Just looked at some of your other posts. Timewaster.

Go suck a big one cuntface.

I gave you the reasons why the Lancet study was bollocks and your only response was to talk about deaths from sanctions.

 

[Grandma Death]

I think its interesting that people get so grief stricken over the london bombings yet n'er a whisper relatively speaking from the mainstream about those murdered and maimed in Iraq .

what does that say about us?

its all ok as long as its not in our back yard. Imagine if a thousand people had been killed in london. What would we be doing now? Would we be going to war?

I agree. Seems a shame that some peoples sense of grief should be guided by nationality.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

100,000 Dead—or 8,000
How many Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the war?
By Fred Kaplan<snip>

That piece is a hatchet job that demonstrates the author's fundamental ignorance of statistics.

Yes the Lancet study describes a range of values, but Kaplan's 'dartboard' claim suggests that all values within that range are equally likely. This is simply not so. The likely values cluster at the centre of their symmetrical confidence interval. That means with an interval of 8000-194,000 the most likely 'true' result is going to be 90-odd thousand. Kaplan suggests 8000 is just as likely, but this is simply wrong and shows that he can't do maths.

So basically his whole line of reasoning is bullshit.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

This article in the Economist is a review of the Lancet study by someone statistically literate. You'll note that their conclusions differ from Kaplan's.

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3352814

 

[Soreenkid]

shame on you she was da kween of arts she was

she was the people's queen, guvna.

 

[maomao]

Go suck a big one cuntface.

I gave you the reasons why the Lancet study was bollocks and your only response was to talk about deaths from sanctions.

No. You c&ped an essay 'debinking' the lancet survey off the internet. Not the same thing as explaining it yourself at all. Just proving that you subscribe to a particular set of views and there's really no point paying you any attention.

 

[maomao]

Go suck a big one cuntface

Oh. And don't make fun of BA's disability.

 

[Streathamite]

Chegrimandi - Are you George Galloway in disguise?

Actually I think its it good idea. I think you *should* stay quiet for two minutes every time someone dies. And then we can have a rest from all of your guff.

I'm sure i remember seeing a site that had a couple of real time tickers of people being born and people who had just died on it. It had names as well. You could use that to *really* be accurate. Shame i can't remember where it was...

just because you don't give a shit about the wider world, why is it 'guff' when someone else does?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> I'm sure i remember seeing a site that had a couple of real time tickers of people being born and people who had just died on it. It had names as well. You could use that to *really* be accurate. Shame i can't remember where it was...

It sounds like you're talking about http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

The methodology there though, is passive. They simply collect journalist reports of violent deaths, which means they only record deaths journalists happened to hear about. The Lancet study attempts, by cluster sampling, to get a complete estimate for all deaths over and above those that would have been expected normally, and includes violence as a category.

One conclusion that can be drawn from their work is that violent death, the kind that Iraq Bodycount tracks, is now around 58 times more likely than under Saddam and death in general is 1.5 times more likely, or 2.5 times if you include the Fallujah sample. It's also worth bearing in mind that this data is now pretty old and things have become significantly worse for Iraq since.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Researchers wonder why study was ignored

I think a big part of the reason why it was ignored was that people were subjected to and repeated statistically illiterate hatchet jobs like that Slate article. It's the technique that PR types use to attack inconvenient science.

Get a bunch of scientifically flawed criticisms into the popular media to promote a vague general idea that the science in question is unreliable.