The new Lancet report Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq is published online today. Jon Ihle from Backseatdrivers has a bit on it, to which I’ve responded. Whereas the initial Lancet survey, published in 2004 claimed controversially that 100,000 civilians had died as a result of the invasion and subsequent turmoil, the new figure is even more shocking.
According to the MIT sponsored report, there have been 654, 965 post-invasion deaths as a consequence of the war. Jon questions that a leap of half a million deaths in two years could be possible and according to an AP report there are those that consider it an exaggeration and claim the timing of the publication is political, arriving just before the mid term elections in the US.
It is certain that, like in 2004 this report will be attacked, or as is more likely, ignored as much as possible. The survey though seems to be based on sound evidence and could be more thorough.
Rather than using media reports of deaths in Iraq ( Iraq Body Count) they produced a national cross-sectional cluster sample survey based on 50 clusters (with 40 households per cluster) which were randomly selected from 16 Governorates (the 2004 report was based on 33 randomly selected clusters of 30 households with a mean of eight residents throughout Iraq).
As Ben Good pointed out in his comment to Jon post, it seems that the highest mortality rate occurred in males of military age:
“Deaths in men of military age, defined as 15–44 years of age, were disproportionately high and accounted for 59% (52–65) of post-invasion violent deaths, despite this subgroup accounting for only 24•4% of the Iraqi population.”
However, only 31% of post-invasion violent deaths were the result of coalition forces. And deaths "from air strikes were less commonly reported in 2006 than in 2003–04, but deaths from car explosions have increased since late 2005".
Overall they estimate that the death count as a result of the invasion and subsequent insurgency cost the lives of 2.5% of the Iraqi population in the study area.
No doubt it will, once again, become a bludgeon for anti-war protestors to wield and just another politically motivated hysterical attack for the politicians responsible for the destruction to spin out of the way.
It seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I don't care what you purists think - Mary Margaret O'Hara's contribution on Hallelujah was a high point of Came So Far For Beauty, the Leonard Cohen tribute show in the Point on Thursday. I am not alone in this opinion - my mate sitting next to me agreed. Mostly everyone else, including my girlfriend, my other mates in the balcony, many Irish bloggers, much of the audience, and the Irish Times, disagrees.
I had long since given up ever hoping to see Mary Margaret O'Hara perform, and this was one of my (many) reasons for going to Came So Far For Beauty, so I might have been biased. Judging by the well-heeled crowd of a certain age, I'd imagine most people there hadn't ever heard her music and thought she was taking the mick or something.
I'm not defending the quality of her contribution; it doesn't need to be defended. She's a bit like Cohen himself in that respect - you either 'get it' or you don't and there's no convincing you. I'm saying that in complaining about O'Hara's whoops and ejaculations (or whatever the Irish Times said), you may have missed the point somewhat.
Consider the situation of all the artists heading onto that stage. What are you going to do when asked to cover songs everyone knows and loves? How can you come out ahead? Can you hope to break even? Most of the other performers (including some I love, such as the delightful Ms. Orton) played it safe and by the numbers; some (the great Lou Reed) played the songs as if they were their own - Reed's contributions, albeit great, could have been his own compositions circa the 'New York' album era.
Don't get me wrong, I think both of those are fantastic, and it was a privilege to hear the dirty rumble of that man's distorted guitar when he kicked those pedals, but they weren't exactly taking any chances. Some took a chance and it didn't work - I think it was Laurie Anderson doing Dear Heather ("and your legs all white/from the winter") through a distorted microphone, but at least she was going for it, and you have to respect that, even if, like me, you didn't appreciate it.
Mary Margaret O'Hara and Gavin Friday were handed the toughest assignment of the evening - to cover the best-known of all the Cohen songs, the smash-hit single all the kids wanted to hear. Playing Hallelujah straight, the best they could have hoped for was a polite smattering of applause and mutterings about how it wasn't a patch on Jeff Buckley's version (lauded even by Cohen himself as the greatest rendition of this song).
My two cent is that, faced with this no-win situation, O'Hara and Friday, talented renegades both, decided to go for broke. He's an irreverent punk in the purest sense of those words, and she's a kook possessed of an otherworldly voice - they tore that song apart, turned it inside out, and held it up to the light in a way that makes you see it afresh, as a new song. It's what Buckley did on the Grace album. It's what Johnny Cash did with all those American Recordings albums.
That's the true point of covering songs; if that's not what you want from a tribute show, then go see the Australian Leonard Cohen instead. If you're not aware of her own music, treat yourself to an early Christmas present of her only 'proper' album - Miss America, released way back in 1988.
Despite the brooding menacing presence of both Nick Cave and Lou Reed in the same building, the scariest part of the whole night was seeing Tori Amos walking around the foyer at the intermission and not knowing if she was on the billing for the second act. Thankfully, she was not. A little harsh you say? I agree, her voice is a little harsh.
Isn’t Irish politics fascinating? It seems so piddling and minor when put up against the scale and significance of British and American politics. But just when you thought it was all about constituency walkabouts, tribunals that never go anywhere (its ineffectual in terms of being able to prosecute the abhorrent political miscreants anyway) and the daily to-and-fro-petty-squabbles in the Dail, along comes a complication so grand that you have to step back from it and wonder.
The complication is Bertie Ahern and the wonder is how he has managed to maintain the façade of the plain politician completely lacking in self interest while working closely with the biggest bunch of greedy thieves and political liars (Ray Burke, Liam Lawlor and Charles J. Haughey) this country has ever known.
Bertie has worked hard to keep this façade in place, appearing adorned in his anoraks, using everyday speech while other politicians turn an arch rhetorical phrase, cutting the crap and getting on with it. It has meant that as his party has suffered enumerable revelations due to their cosy relationships with wealthy Irish business people and have seen their poll ratings plunge (from time to time that is – they’re still the most popular party in the state after all) he has managed to maintain his high popularity. Michael McDowell, the more confrontational and sophisticated speaker perhaps, has pointed this out when reaffirming his commitment to another coalition coupling with Fianna Fail. The Irish electorate, he claimed, would much prefer Bertie to Enda to lead the next Irish Government.
Update Chavez's praise for Chomsky's Hegemony and Survival has sent it to the top of the bestseller lists.
"What was one of Professor Chomsky's lesser known works has surged to No 1 on Amazon's bestseller list, with bookshops making bulk orders from the thousands of extra copies being printed".
Just as I was reading Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech to the UN this week and thinking that his analysis about the West's hypocrisy towards Iran was taking a leaf out of Chomsky’s book don't I find out from Hugh Green at Most Sincerely Folks that Chavez turned up at the UN brandishing Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival.
All very hilarious, all the more so because Chavez said, according to the New York Times 'that one of his greatest regrets was not getting to meet Mr. Chomsky before he died'.
But hilarity aside it was Admadinejad’s attempt to persuade the UN and the world that Iran is actually very democratic that caught my attention. For example:
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is the manifestation of true democracy in the Region”.
And:
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is a symbol of true democracy. All officials including the Leader, President, members of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, city and village councils are elected through the vote of the citizens. The Islamic Republic of Iran has held 27 national elections in 27 years. This showcases a vibrant and dynamic society in which people widely participate in the political life”.
So why is Condi Rice and others in the US Administration protesting that the people of Iran need to be freed from the tyranny of their Islamic rulers and should be allowed to determine the course of their own lives – blah, blah, blah? Well, of course the truth is somewhere in between.
As John Dunne says in his book the Setting the People Free – The Story of Democracy, the President talks up democracy on the world stage, while the Grand Council dismisses it.
“Iran’s Guardianship Council seldom hesitates to express its contempt for the liberal reformers voted in with President Khatami, and still does all it can to place them beyond reach of popular election in the future. But even in Iran, the advantages of staging elections are implicitly accepted by those who most fear to lose them; and the principled rejection of elections has become very much a minority taste”.
On an occasion like 9/11 everyone remembers where they were. It’s something of a cliché to say that of course. Growing up the line was that people could always remember where they were when Kennedy got shot, but that was way before my time, so I’d always considered the statement as overused and meaningless. On September 11th 2001, unlike Daniel Mendelsohn, I wasn’t in New York looking up at the Twin Towers as one of the planes struck. I was in an all-you-could-eat Pizza restaurant in a small Finnish town. In the latest New York Review of Books Mendelsohn describes going to pick up a friend at her apartment on the morning of September 11th. Having made good time he phoned her to say he had arrived a little earlier than expected. Then, says Mendelsohn “I flipped the phone shut, looked up, and a dark flash of something darted into the building that loomed directly before me, which was the north tower of the World Trade Center. A gigantic ball of bright orange fire ballooned out of the tower, followed by vast plumes of dense, black smoke.”
His first reaction is to think that it is the filming of a disaster movie and is puzzled momentarily that they should choose to use real planes in the age of CGI technology. His second reaction is to call his friend to ask her to turn on the news to find out what had happened (as if they would have helicopters already in the air recording as historic event unfolded). Needless to say, there was nothing on the news: ‘It was just the raw event. What had just happened had not yet become the story of what happened.’
