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June 26, 2007
Presidential scholars
Today's teenagers take a lot of criticism for their materialism, obsession with celebrities, and apathy about politics and world affairs. Some of this criticism is the standard "kids these days" grumbling that every new generation must endure, but a lot of it is justified.
However, a group of 50 high school seniors has temporarily restored my faith in today's teenagers. The high schoolers were invited to the White House as part of the Presidential Scholars program, and when President Bush used them as a photo op during a speech about reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind act, they took the opportunity to present him with a letter.
What was in the letter? According to the MSNBC, it urged a halt to "violations of human rights" and condemned the torturing of terror suspects. These kids were being recognized and honored by the President of the United States, and they could have easily set aside politics and used the opportunity to get some good photos for their scrapbooks. But instead they had the courage to call the administration out on one of the most un-American policies it has implemented.
And what was the President's response? He "let the student know that the United States does not torture and that we value human rights." In other words, he lied.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 8:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 22, 2007
Civilian Death Statistics in Iraq & Afghanistan Compared
Interesting Statistical Comparisons
Every 9.62 days, there is an equivalent amount of casualties in Iraq & Afghanistan as September 11th.
There are 9.65 Virginia Tech shootings in Iraq & Afghanistan everyday.
There are 1.61 Madrid bombings in Iraq & Afghanistan everyday.
In 11 days as many Iraqi & Afghani civilians are killed as the entire amount of American military personnel killed since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Note: There is some discrepancy between various sources on the amount of civilian casualties since the US-led invasion in March 2003. A study in October of 2006 listed over 650,000 killed (see Washington Post article below) while other sources vary from 400,000 to just over 60,000 (see British-government funded Iraq Body Count below). I computed 250,000 by averaging several sources, though I personally feel this is a low number.
Update: The differing methodologies among these studies led to these wide variations. For example, the lowest figure from IBC is based solely on media reports of violent deaths, while the Lancet study surveyed random families in Iraq and includes non-violent war related deaths, such as those dead to lawlessness and collapsed infrastructure. I computed 250,000 to use as a useful estimate by averaging these sources, though I personally feel this is a low number when talking about the impact of the US invasion on Iraq.
Sources
Forgotten victims by Jonathan Steele, the Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/comment/story/0,11447,718647,00.html
Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_of_the_U.S._invasion_of_Afghanistan
Iraq Body Count, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/.
Iraq death toll 'soared post-war', BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3962969.stm
Casualties in Iraq: The Human Cost of Occupation, Antiwar. http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000 by David Brown, Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html
July 7 London Bombings, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings
Posted by Alec at 2:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 20, 2007
Un-happy World Refugee Day
Today is the United Nations World Refugee Day, and for the first time since 2002, the number of refugees around the world is increasing, thanks in large part to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to a new report by the UN High Commission on Refugees, the number now approaches 10 million people, a 14% rise in the over last year.
The largest group of refugees are as follows:
- Afghans - 2.1 million
- Iraqis - 1.5 million
- Sudanese - 686,000
- Somalis - 460,000
And that is only counting refugees. When stateless and internally displaced persons are counted, "persons of concern" according to the report, the figure is about 32.9 million globally.
World Refugee doesn't seem to be getting a lot of coverage in the U.S. mainstream media, but at least the refugee crisis in Iraq is on the radar. CNN's lead story today is about Iraqi refugees struggling to cope in new lands. They also are running an article about how refugee illnesses are often misdiagnosed in the U.S.
Displacement is an often overlooked tragedy of war, but it is a tragic consequence that we need to be reminded of. These aren't soldiers or terrorists or insurgents. They're average people who face the consequences of wars far more directly than the decisions makers who set the wars in motion. They're the reason why no nation should ever rush to war without exhausting all other alternatives.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 2:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What would Jack Bauer do?
I've never really gotten into the show 24, mainly because I can't just enjoy it as a work of fiction and I tend to read too much into the storyline. I can't help but think that if the Bush administration wanted to develop the perfect piece of propaganda to reinforce the War on Terror's message of fear and justify the "any means necessary" use of torture, 24 would be it.
Apparently, I'm not the only one who reads too much into the fictional show. At a recent legal conference in Canada, Justice Antonin Scalia got into a heated debate about Jack Bauer when a Canadian judge made a passing remark, "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'What would Jack Bauer do?'"
From the Globe and Mail:
The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand."Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so. So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes."
This isn't the first time Jack Bauer's tactics have stirred up controversy. Recently members of the military went to the shows producers and asked if they would reining in Bauer's tactics, particularly his use of torture. They argued that the show was confusing young kids, and even members of the military, about whether torture is morally acceptable or not.
I haven't watched the show enough to know many of the running plots or any characters other than Bauer. But I've read and heard enough about it to know that Bauer frequently is willing to torture suspects and sacrifice moral and constitutional values in the interest of national security. Sound familiar?
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 9:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 14, 2007
Auf Wiedersehen Fatah
The news continues to filter in as the triumph of Hamas in the Gaza strip becomes apparent, culminating with the Palestinian government being dissolved by President Mahmoud Abbas this past hour. Fatah is running with its tail between its legs (quite literally – 40 Executive Force soldiers loyal to Abbas had to blow up a section of the Israeli-constructed Gaza-Egyptian wall to escape Hamas), much to the dismay of the Western governments who trumpeted Abbas as the heralded moderate in post-Arafat Palestine. It seems his time is dwindling as a serious power broker in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or in Palestinian internal affairs (the tally for Abbas brokered cease-fires to be ignored the next day is in the teens).
The casual observer will be quick to judge on lines of the media created zero-sum game between Islamist Hamas and Moderate Fatah (capitalized due to caricatures). While the adjectives may be comfortingly simple, the reality has always been faith-based militants with a panache for service and charity against white mustaches primarily interested in diverting funds to Swiss bank accounts and sending their children to Paris. While Hamas isn’t nearly as popular as reported, Hamas has created a following extremely devoted to their principles, while Fatah generated support primarily by bullying and defacto generational transposition.
While Fatah was birthed out of the loins of the pan-Arab, Nassir-led movement, it was reared by the slimy hands of Yassir Arafat, who personally siphoned off over one billion dollars of international aid and lined the pockets of those around him. Arafat’s malignant spirit still casts a dark shadow over a group that has continued to mimic his policies of graft and kleptocracy. While the money laundering continued, Fatah sunk in a cesspool of its own political bankruptcy, leading to the dismal showing in the 2006 parliamentary elections that may be regarded in the future as the institutional revolution of Hamas.
In the short run, the collapse of the Palestinian government and the split between a Fatah dominated West Bank and a Hamas dominated Gaza will be disastrous. But in the long term, this may speed up the precipitous decline of Fatah, a shell of a party that long ago abandoned its platform of secular socialism in favor of an unhealthy dose of bureaucracy and corruption. The only hope can be that a true moderate party, more responsive to the Palestinian people, will arise during the slow bleed of Fatah’s death.
Posted by Alec at 3:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The miltiary's "outside-the-box" thinking
The U.S. military is no stranger to outside-the-box thinking, but a couple of recent news stories make me wish they wouldn't venture so far away from the box:
The Gay Bomb. Pentagon officials recently confirmed that in 1994 a military lab produced a proposal of non-lethal alternatives weapons which included "a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting." The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.
Operation Northwoods. In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.
These are only "what if" scenarios that never made it past a proposal stage, but the thought process is disturbing nonetheless. If the military is so good at asking "what if" questions relating to gay bombs and attacking U.S. cities, whatever happened to the question, "What if the Iraqis don't greet us as liberators and we get bogged down in an extended quagmire?"
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 8, 2007
Majority of Americans believe in creationism AND evolution?
Below are answers to a recent USA Today/Gallup poll of American's views on evolution/creationism:
Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life
- Definitely true: 18%
- Probably true: 35%
- Probably false: 16%
- Definitely false: 28%
- No opinion: 3%Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000
- Definitely true: 39%
- Probably true: 27%
- Probably false: 16%
- Definitely false: 15%
- No opinion: 3%
So, in total, the majority of Americans (53%) think the statement about evolution is true, AND the majority of Americans (66%) think the statement about creationism is true. Often creationists who also believe in evolution agree with the general principles of evolution but think God had a hand in creating the simple organisms from which all life evolved.
However, this question clearly wasn't asking that. It states specifically that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago. Even if you didn't read the questions carefully, simply looking at the time lines involved, millions of years versus 10,000 years, should make this an either/or question.
Posted by Elyas Bakhtiari at 3:07 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack