The g33kThug's Blog

The bishops of boredom

2008-03-05T14:54:00.001Z

When I wrote:

Nick Davies exposes the distortion in the corporate media and does so without boring you to death trying to prove that he is "holier than thou".

I knew that it wouldn't be long before the tedium twins at MediaLens targeted Davies for the heinous crime of producing a book of media criticism that didn't mention Chomsky, Herman, Piglet or their own dull publications.

So, this morning I get treated to the first of a two-parter dedicated to Davies - or more truthfully dedicated to the pious rantings of a couple of really boring men.

Pilger has declared Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent nothing less than the “Greatest book of the twentieth century”.

Is that a joke - or are these fuckers really that dull?

Warszawa - "troof seeker"

2008-01-17T00:12:00.000Z

Retarded 9/11 troofer, warszawa, has hissy fit on PoV blog:

William Blum's blatant and elementary error.
Posted by warszawa on January 16, 2008, 20:54:11, in reply to "William Blum on 9-11"

"I do wish you guys in the 9/11 Truth Movement luck; if you succeed in proving that it was an inside job,..."

Blum is someone whose writings I've often admired, but his argument here is simply ridiculous.

To state the obvious: It is nobody's job, in any movement, to prove anything. No-one is obliged to be Philip Marlowe or Perry Mason. It seems that Americans have still to learn the shocking truth: that these heroic ace sleuths are in fact mere fictional characters, like Santa Claus, Forrest Gump and the honest-to-goodness self-made millionaire. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Burden of Proof lies with the Bush gang alone, who rule the country, who alone have access to all the evidence, and who alone claim to have solved the crime, but who have never even seriously investigated it. Their very own handpicked toadies - Cleland, Kean and Hamilton - have themselves now admitted that America was "scammed", that the 9/11 Commission was "obstructed" by the CIA and the White House, and that even that feeble, compromised, underfunded, hamstrung Commission was - in addition - deliberately "set up to fail".

So the Official Account is a worthless fraud. Until this issue reaches a court of law, that is all that anyone can prove, and that is all that anyone can be expected to prove. It has now been proven many times over. Its very authors have now admitted as much.

"To win over people like me, the 9/11 truth people need to present a scenario that makes the logistics reasonably plausible. "

"A scenario"! - What the hell is it with Americans - even with "progressives" of Blum's calibre? Have their brains all been scrambled by decades of 24-hour cable TV?

The task is not to "win over" the fastidious channel-surfer William Blum; the task is not to come up with a "plausible" "scenario", or a totally cool plot-twist, or even a cracking punchline; the task is to investigate a crime of mass murder.

Ask any policeman or lawyer: There are well-established ways of doing such a thing. There are methods that have been tried and tested over the course of centuries. Those methods are effective. So the task is manageable, if you have police officers to enforce it. But how could that task be managed by anyone in what Blum calls "the 9/11 Truth Movement"? How could they possibly "prove it was an inside job"?

William Blum is not just missing the point and reversing the Burden of Proof; he is demanding the impossible.

Because nobody in what Blum calls "the 9/11 Truth Movement" can:

- exercise powers of subpoena;

- force the CIA to release the evidence, including the evidence that its secret Guantanamo prisoners actually did say what the CIA claims they said;

- compel the airlines to release CCTV evidence that the alleged hijackers were actually even on the planes;

- interrogate Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Myers;

- force them or any other witness or Person of Interest to testify under oath.

Etcetera. Just for starters.

All this is obvious, obvious, obvious. William Blum should switch his telly off and grow up.

"So the Official Account is a worthless fraud"

Posted by g33kThug on January 16, 2008, 21:29:39, in reply to "William Blum's blatant and elementary error."

Yawn

"To state the obvious: It is nobody's job, in any movement, to prove anything."

Great position - thus enabling you to bore and harass netizens with your worthless mantras: the Bush Gang did it, the Official Story is clearly false, the hijackers are still alive, blah blah blah - without having to provide a shred of evidence.

Look, with all DUE politeness...
Posted by warszawa on January 16, 2008, 22:12:04, in reply to ""So the Official Account is a worthless fraud""

PISS OFF, YOU ATTENTION-SEEKING OAF.

That's all the response your predictably oafish "response" deserves. You are a chronic waste of time - or at least you want to be.

MODS: Please regard this is an official complaint about The Oaf. You know I have recently done *precisely* what you requested in your board rules; you know how you responded to my response; so it's your move now.

Look at the quality of this cretin's posts. This is his idea of "political discussion".

Very, very clearly, the only possible response to such an oafish, pea-brained homophobic Tory pillock is abuse - because he is not remotely interested in an honest argument, nor is he remotely capable of it. And it is NOT a good policy to let such reactionary powerworshipping cretins get away with murder, WITHOUT a response. Simply ignoring the Omnipresent Oaf who calls himself Thug is NOT a serious option. To pretend it is, is to ignore the nature of politics entirely.

It's your board, Mods, so it's your move. Choose the kind of "online forum for political discussion" you want to have. If it has now become an open playground for timewasting, ad-posting, complacently "contrarian" Tory Oafs, then please let me know. Because I believe the online edition of the Daily Mail already provides such a playground, and I don't understand the need to duplicate it.

Thank you.

Political discussion?
Posted by g33kThug on January 16, 2008, 22:39:21, in reply to "Look, with all DUE politeness..."

Where is the "political discussion" in your posts?

Your position:

"To state the obvious: It is nobody's job, in any movement, to prove anything."

makes political discussion impossible.

Politically, it's also about the most naive statement that I've read in long time - the sort of statement that could only be made by somebody who has little knowledge of the history of struggles for freedom.

Accusing others of "power worship" is laughable. You defer to the law to answer your 9/11 questions and you spend every other post calling on the board administrators to take action against people who say stuff that you don't like.

And "your" capacity for abuse seemingly has no limits - I'm now a "Tory" and a "homophobe" as well as all the other names that you've levelled at me in the last 18 months.

"I'm now a "Tory" and a "homophobe""
Posted by warszawa on January 16, 2008, 23:09:33, in reply to "Political discussion?"

Yes, precisely. For once, you've understood something. (Statistically, it had to happen eventually.)

You are very obviously a Tory and a homophobe. If you doubt this, it merely demonstrates that you cannot even read your own posts. You are the very model of a Top Gear-watching, animal-rights-despising, consumer-toy-addicted, BBC-believing, insecurely-bragging, "fruit"-fearing, complacent, suburbanite Home Counties pub bore.

"Where is the "political discussion" in your posts?"

It's in my posts. You are admittedly sentient, but equally clearly illiterate. Or more likely, you simply pretend to be illiterate, because it suits you to do so and it allows you to waste people's time even more effectively.

But not with me, matey. So fvck you, and fvck off.

Eelpie, you are wasting your time with The Oaf,
Posted by warszawa on January 16, 2008, 22:29:14, in reply to "Re: "So the Official Account is a worthless fraud""

The more politely and rationally you argue, the more cretinous and dishonest his response will be. He is a Tory Oaf and a troll. (I predict that his reponse to your post - if any - will be in his well-practiced Gollum Mode, because he knows very well when he has been exceptionally oafish and needs to slink away from the headmaster.)

Re: "So the Official Account is a worthless fraud"
Posted by g33kThug on January 16, 2008, 22:56:59, in reply to "Re: "So the Official Account is a worthless fraud""

On the contrary, the official account is a potent legend, and the essence of a legend is that it is unverifiable.

It is literally impossible to verify the U.S. government's assertions about the events of Sept 11th 2001.

I differentiate between the "official account" and the officially collected evidence. The conspiracy theorists seem to consider them one and the same.

Verification is possible (not instant, but possible) because of the professionalism and rationalism of those who gathered and assessed the evidence.

Claiming that this process and the conclusions drawn by experts is worthless and unscientific - especially if you aren't prepared to provide your own rational explanation - is what makes the conspiracy theorist look like a nut nut.

So let's get back to discussing the ridiculous claims - like routine interception of civilian aircraft pre-9/11 - so that we can dispense with "stand down" theories and get on to more interesting stuff.

The Oaf in Full Oafishness
Posted by warszawa on January 16, 2008, 23:20:45, in reply to "Re: "So the Official Account is a worthless fraud""

"Verification is possible (not instant, but possible) because of the professionalism and rationalism of those who gathered and assessed the evidence. "

Leaving aside all the rest of the rubbish in this post (how did The Tory Oaf manage to pack so much crap into such a tiny space?): "Rationalism" [sic]? It's tempting to say 'Shurely shome mishtake?' But of course this is what we get when Jeremy Clarkson tries to emulate Wittgenstein.

What a waste of time you are, Oaf. You're funniest when you're trying hard to look serious.

Improving the PoV banner

2007-09-28T08:13:00.000Z

Well *I* thought it was funny...

You give people the benefit of your professional retouching skills (and a bit of CSS) and what thanks do you get?

Money for nothing and your clips for free

2007-09-28T08:06:00.000Z

Specialized and Google have just announced the Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Contest.

It's billed as an attempt to "save our planet, one pedal stroke at a time" - but the terms and conditions look more like Specialized are "increasing their marketing materials, one free video at a time".

One winner (or team of up to 5 people) will get $5000 and a bike. Five runner-up prizes of $550 bikes will also be handed out and a further 200 individuals or teams will receive T shirts.

And all Specialized (and their representatives) get in return are thousands of videos representing a huge amount of labour and expertise from the entrants.

Videos which they have made themselves entitled to use free of charge in any medium (whether it exists today or not) in any way they choose, worldwide and in perpetuity.

(Unless you live in Poland - in which case Specialized can only abuse your rights for 5 years.)

And, if you accidentally infringe somebody else's copyright, patent or cause any other legal problem that leaves Specialized at risk of legal action then you also have to pay all the legal fees and damages incurred - including Specialized's.

Oh, nearly forgot, Specialized also get to feature your name, address and personal details in any way that they see fit too.

Nice to see these companies doing their bit for the environment - shame it's accompanied by an old fashioned right's grab from individuals who deserve to be compensated like any other film maker who produces work for advertising campaigns.

Randomness, Reformation, Creationists and ConspiroNumpties

2007-09-26T22:29:00.000Z

So it's Wednesday night and I'm watching a documentary on BBC4 about the rise of Protestantism.

In the interests of balance - because the Reformation was looking like too much of a good thing - they interview some dopey American Creationist.

She states that Darwin's theories (aka The Official Story) is demonstrably false in many respects. She then reveals that by demonstrably false that she really means that some bits of the theory can't be proved to her satisfaction.

The term "demonstrably false" reminded me of the 9/11 ConspiroNumpties, especially that big old windbag Alex Jones.

It also reminded me of Nassim Taleb's book "Fooled by Randomness" in which he produced a Table of Confusion that I like to glance at every so often to check if I'm being fooled.

Here is an excerpt:

Luck	Skills
Probability	Certainty
Belief, conjecture	Knowledge, certitude
Theory	Reality
Anecdote, coincidence	Causality, law
Forecast	Prophecy
Noise	Signal
Epistemic probability	Physical probability
Induction	Deduction
Synthetic proposition	Analytic proposition
Contingent	Certain
Contingent	Necessary
Contingent	True in all possible worlds

It's human to want to move from left to right across the table - but doing so prematurely or without sufficient evidence or testing means that you are being fooled by randomness.

The creationists and the conspiracy theorists live their lives in a permanently fooled state. Yet they believe (meaning they "know") that it is the rest of us who are the poor fools...

Monkey Land

2007-09-21T07:39:00.000Z

Receiving junk mail from MediaLensers?

Picture this before you waste time responding:

9/11 Attention Seekers

2007-05-09T12:40:00.000Z

What is it with these ConspiroNumpties™?

Is it me, or are they all mentally retarded fuckwits?

Question their daft theories on a message board and they are all over you like impetigo.

Make a point and you're a troll. Respond and you're accused of being a fucking stalker.

Here are some quotes that illustrate the Conspironumptie™ MO from the anonymous (aren't they always), fuckwitted and retarded warszawa at Persistence of Vision.

AnonoMartin makes not even a whiff of a hint of an effort to respond to any point actually made. Instead, he brays, he crows, he boasts, he whinges, he misses the point, he calls people names (even when they haven't entered the thread), he drags up past "triumphs", and when all else fails (as it inevitably does) he shows us unsolicited photos of his racing bike. What next, AnonoMartin? Holiday snaps? Old report cards? Tales of your last Rotary Club function?

Instead, you might (for once) try to actually answer a question put to you: What *is* a "conspiracy theorist"? Go on. Give us a definition that's more than just an evasion or a playground taunt.

Your posts are beyond satire.

There is indeed no point, because it's entirely irrelevant. (As it happens, I think motor racing is the most boring and obnoxious "sport" in existence, so it doesn't surprise me that you like it. But it's entirely beside the point.)

And you still haven't even *attempted* to answer the question, because you can't. Instead, you give us more of your snaps, more of your evasions, apparently expecting people to admire your social skills. It's just incredible.

Eelpie had a message removed for calling you a troll; but you are in fact, and very obviously, a troll:

Trolling (2): Posting derogatory messages about sensitive subjects on newsgroups and chat rooms to bait users into responding.

- and you're a deeply boring and nasty and stupid troll at that; a playground show-off and winder-upper with nothing interesting to say about anything, ever. The topic of this thread is the news of George Tenet's multiple meetings in late August with the people named above. Of this you know nothing and care nothing - yet still you feel the urge to "comment", nastily and stupidly and irrelevantly. You fill up this board with piss-poor cartoons, dismal "humour" (sic), fatuous boasts, digs, provocations, holiday snaps, wheedling pleas for understanding, and constant ridiculous advertisements for your ridiculous self. On the very rare occasions when you actually post something vaguely resembling an argument, you simply ignore any responses that deal with that argument, responding instead with some infantile wind-up ("AnonoLeftie" /"ConspiroNumoptie" - geddit??!?) or with a photo of your latest spiffing day out at Brand's Hatch, Butlin's or Legoland.

In short: you are a troll, and a chronic waste of time. (And to hear you describe anyone as an "Attention Seeker" is truly beyond satire.)

Odd. Aren't you supposed to ignore trolls?

Well, if you're fucking stupid enough to have to look up the definition of troll at answers.com then you're obviously none to bright...

Perhaps somebody can let me know how old warszawa is? I'm worried that I might be accused of taunting a child...

warszawa aka boresabore

2007-03-29T22:39:00.000Z

The most numpty of the ConspiroNumpties hit rock bottom today by appealing to the owner of the Persistence of Vision message board to protect him from being stalked:

MODFATHER: This TROLL won't stop stalking me.
Posted by warszawa on March 29, 2007, 19:18:54, in reply to "What are you after? My phone number?"

"you are in real-life a complete non-entity who pulls his "Captain TruthSeeker" underpants over his trousers" (etc.)

Modfather, could you please either tell me precisely what is "constructive" about this post (or indeed any other by Thuglet), or else tell this sad, anonymous, passive-aggressive, attention-seeking entity to stop breathing kebab-fumes through my letter-box. Thank you.

Sadly the post has been replaced with a moderator's message - but not before I'd seen it and laughed heartily.

Like most things in this sad little AnonoLeftie's fantasy world, the normal meanings of words don't apply. Warszawa's inability to refrain from responding to my posts - even if it is just to post "****TROLL ALERT****(NM)" over and over again - has become evidence of my stalking.

Before they fall from the PoV message board we should attempt to preserve warszawa's crazed scrawlings for posterity:

http://members.boardhost.com/DT3rd/msg/1174486586.html
AnonoBoozer(TM): "And all because the lay-deez love..."
Posted by warszawa on March 21, 2007, 14:16:26, in reply to "Re: An AnonoLeftie™ writes"

"The thugStyle© CSS template was created on a boring train journey home last night."

What a guy! Rustles up templates at the drop of a hat. Tells us all about it, regardless of whether we want to know or not. Wears, like, really, really cool shades. Posts unsolicited photos of himself in, like, really, really cool shades. (Is that a yacht he's on? Maybe it's his yacht!) Makes frank, unfrightened reference to laydees' arses. (Ooh la la! No prisoner of dull bourgeois conformity he!) Wears black polo-necks. Drinks really really really BIG beers. (C'est formidable! What a capacity he must have!) Refers to himself constantly in the third person. Whinges, anonymously, about other people's anonymity. Calls himself 'Thug'.

It's like, really, really, really impressive, all that. (But not very like it.) I'm trying to think who he reminds me of.

http://members.boardhost.com/DT3rd/msg/1172310018.html
10 characteristics of a Coincidence Theory Troll
Posted by warszawa on February 24, 2007, 9:40:18, in reply to "10 characteristics of conspiracy theorists"

1. Profound stupidity.
2. Chronic mendacity.
3. Inability not to miss the point.
4. Primary schoolboy's delight in provoking irritated or disgusted responses.
5. Gift for getting other people's posts deleted while his own infantile wind-ups remain.
6. Incessant issuing of content-free blanket insults ("conspironumpties", etc.) towards people - Thompson, McKinney, Ahmed, McGowan, Meacher, "the Jersey Girls", Hoffman, Bröckers, Hauss, Levis, Ganser, etc., etc., etc. - who are infinitely superior to him in every way, and whose writings he has either never read or abjectly failed to understand.
7. Inability to distinguish between insults and argument.
8. Snideness/slipperiness/shiftiness.
9. Inexplicably high opinion of himself.
10. Dead scary user-name.
(NOTE: Point 5 is the Coincidennce Theorist Troll's only detectable real talent. No doubt that's why he cultivates it so assiduously.)

followed shortly by another post because he'd lost his bottle:

P.S. I don't mean anybody in particular by this.
Posted by warszawa on February 24, 2007, 9:46:20, in reply to "10 characteristics of a Coincidence Theory Troll"

Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or merely brain-dead, is purely etc.

(Just as certain Coincidence Theory Trolls don't mean anybody in particular when they're issuing their incessant blanket insults and their childish wind-up attempts masquerading as arguments.)

I made him a logo to see if I could cheer him up a bit, but the PoV moderator deleted it and really hurt my feelings by declaring that it wasn't "constructive" :-(

Cartoons

2007-03-23T12:35:00.000Z

Inspired by watching Bolton bullshitting on BBC's Question Time.

Divine inspiration from MediaLens... did you know that the Davids have written a book?

Inspired by murshed and warszawa the funniest comedy duo in left-wing blogging history.

Sue, murshed and warszawa - a formidable team...

Coincidence Theory

2007-02-25T16:13:00.000Z

I'd never noticed the term "coincidence theorist" before both sau and warszawa used it in the last couple of threads.

I was immediately struck by the oddness of its meaning. Attaching a theory to coincidences is an accusation I'd lay at the door of our resident conspironumpties - not the cynics who fail to be taken in by their bad reasoning.

References to the term "coincidence theorist" indicate that this isn't the case and that conspironumpties do consider the term to mean the opposite of "conspiracy theory" - hence the quote that appears in the introduction of Hecht's "Conspiracy and the State of the Union".

To reason that coincidence and conspiracy are opposites would be to reason that the evidence one which the theories are based is accurate and that the only difference between them is the existence of a guiding hand.

Whereas the problem with "conspiracy theories" is that the evidence on which they are based seems more often than not a fabrication which doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

I'd argue that the opposite of a "conspiracy theory" is straightforward rational enquiry.

But the problem with rational enquiry for the conspironumpties is that it can't be relied upon to prove what you desire to be true.

[originally posted here.]

9/11 Conspiracy Theories: 21st Century Spiritualism?

2007-02-20T00:49:00.000Z

This might just be the brandy talking, but I've just had a thought...
What if these Conspiracy Theories were really 21st Century Spiritualism?

It's being exported to the UK from the US.

It is exploitative - but at the same time sincere.

It is scientifically reactionary - but at the same time embraces scientific principles.

It inhabits the space between belief and science.

It can be used to both question or reinforce the idea of "respectability".

You can dismiss it out of hand - but its complexity deserves respect.

There's a book idea there... If only I had a couple of grammes of cheap whizz and the ability to write more than 3 paragraphs without losing interest I'd have it half written by the morning...

I just can't help thinking that "9/11 Truth Seeking" allows the same freedoms from conformity that Spiritualism offered the Victorians. Or the same security or support.

Reinforcement of the belief that the gifted "amateur" can be considered equal with the trained and State approved "expert".

One big difference would be the prevalence of male voices rather than female at the leading edge of the movement - but maybe that will change?

The Guardian caught lying... again

2007-02-15T17:23:00.000Z

More lies from The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2012444,00.html

My suspicions were raised immediately by the page layout and posted to Persistence of Vision:

AKA: How to make a single column story fill a whole page...

According to the Respect web site:

Galloway has written to the newspaper's editor, Alan Rusbridger, and a separate complaint has been laid with The Guardian Readers' Editor Ian Mayes. After these responses further action will be decided.

Keep your eyes open for more lies from The Guardian's resident space-fillers David Leigh and Rob Evans.

Deleted from Persistence of Vision

2007-02-14T22:34:00.000Z

This post was too much for the moderators:

Posted by Anna L Plurabella on February 13, 2007

Can corporate newspapers be "green"?

I think the answer is mostly "yes" - at least for
the Independent, Guardian, Observer, Times, Mail,
Express, Telegraph, Mirror and Sun. The only
problem area is the Sunday (and increasingly
Saturday) colour supplements. You have to be
careful there, as some have staples.

Computer print-outs can be green too. But you have
to buy the soft stuff, not just recycled. And some
inkjet paper can damage your rectum just as easily
as staples can. I find that MediaLens Alert
print-outs work well - generous enough in length
to be on the safe side in case of "complications"
(as Alan Partridge might say). And you feel *double*
clean afterwards.

Flush me down, it's brown [link to ML alert]

Wanna SPAM Usenet? Sign up with Shaw!

2007-02-04T18:51:00.000Z

I wrote to Shaw ages ago and complained about their customers spamming my favourite newsgroups.

They replied with:


Based on the information provided, we have identified the
offending computer and will take appropriate action(s).

These actions may be:
- Issue a warning by email indicating a
   complaint has been registered
- Issue a warning that service may be
   suspended if activity continues
- Suspend or terminate Shaw Internet
   connection to customer

But my favourite newsgroups are still full of spam from their customers. You can see from the snapshot above where all the ticked posts are from their network.

What the fuck is wrong with your system Shaw?

And why don't you do something about it?

Methodology?

2006-11-16T02:37:00.000Z

More like dodgy methods at Tim Lambert's Deltoid blog.

Here's a post from Tim that mysteriously disappeared while I was replying to it:

One minute it was there. The next, it was gone...

So my follow up post looks as "desperate" as Tim's need to attack IBC.

Oh, the irony

2006-11-06T13:43:00.000Z

A selection of recent posts from Persistence of Vision

Here we go then...
Posted by g33kThug on November 6, 2006, 13:27:50, in reply to "Re: Hello?"
Media Lens issued some alerts.
The were lots of assertions in the alerts that were incorrect.

There were also claims that more solid evidence would be provided to back up those assertions.

And then further claims that IBC's rebuttal would in turn be rebutted.

All of this stuff is documented - so it isn't he said/she said vagueness.

All of this stuff has also been reproduced here by people like Raoul - and they have been very careful in documenting where it originated from.

Now scan through the threads on this board (or on ML) and ask why people who are keen to unearth the tiniest details about the people in this argument or their motives haven't even bothered to get Media Lens to provide backup for the assertions in their original alerts.

The hypocrisy is total - and they don't want to be reminded of it.

Where's the reply to this post:

http://members.boardhost.com/DT3rd/msg/1162680409.html

The OP (and the other "usual suspects") has disappeared because they cannot answer these points without acknowledging that ML lied, distorted, spun and used all the other dishonest weapons that they moan about the mainstream media for using.

IBC seem to have moved on - posting documents that ask different questions to those posed about Lancet 1. And rational questions to boot!

Seems to me that ML (and their followers) are the ones who are trying to lead us along "familiar lines" - especially familiar to anybody who has read Herman and Chomsky.

Oh, the irony...

"Absolute rubbish"?
Posted by Raoul Djukanovic on November 4, 2006, 21:06:11, in reply to "Re: The one stuck in a permanent loop"

Are you really so sure dav?
The whole point of the IBC critique was to say that their numbers, being inevitably low (although ML screwed this bit up royally by inventing a Western sources fallacy instead of just quoting the IBC FAQ), were misleading and were therefor being "used by the British and American governments, and by the media, to attack or dismiss higher estimates in other studies". [1]

The alert went on to stress: "Not only is IBC's surveillance-based total for Iraqi civilian deaths one of the most widely cited by journalists, it is also the lowest", [2] before concluding "the IBC figure is selective in its sources, is the lowest estimate of eight serious studies, and relies on 'professional rigour' in the Western media that does not exist." [3]

The implication therefore was that it ought to cease and desist to deny the warmongers (whom they were, to quote Dahr Jamail's memorably hyperbolic smear, "actively aiding and abetting in war crimes" [4]) any further fig leaf. Lest we hadn't got the message by then, a subsequent alert was entitled "A SHAME BECOMING SHAMEFUL", [5] a line cribbed from a John Pilger email it quoted, beneath a quote from Noam Chomsky that read: "If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong." [6] In other words, hit dem IBC bad boys one more time until they recant for their shameful heresies.

Which consist of... tallying reported deaths and stating they're an inevitable undercount. The only legitimate criticism would have been to say this wasn't stated prominently enough on their site and the only constructive suggestion I can think of would have been to seek to amend that so a form email could be sent out to all journalists misrepresenting the numbers by any concerned party, any time they saw a misuse.

Media Lens chose not to do this. Why not? Go figure...

Notes:
[1] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060125_paved_with_good.php
[2] ibid.
[3] ibid.
[4] Email published by Media Lens editors, March 17, 2006.
[5] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060410_iraq_body_count.php
[6] http://www.journalism.sfsu.edu/www/pubs/gater/spring95/apr27/chom.htm

Re: "Absolute rubbish"?
Posted by David Bracewell on November 4, 2006, 21:13:12, in reply to ""Absolute rubbish"?"

"The implication therefore was that it ought to cease and desist... "
With what can you support this? My memory is that remedy rather than termination was their constant refrain.

"remedy rather than termination was their constant refrain"
Posted by Raoul Djukanovic on November 4, 2006, 22:46:49, in reply to "Re: "Absolute rubbish"?"

With what evidence can you support that assertion, David? And what was the suggested remedy?

Iraq Body Count tallies reported deaths. The only remedy worth considering (beyond that proposed above to ensure that even a fleeting visitor to their site could not miss the reference to the inevitable undercount, together perhaps with a line about deaths attributable to the coalition, although this is trickier to explain, as I explain below) would be to add sources that report deaths which aren't covered by the sources they use. This was not suggested, of course, presumably because they knew of none.

"[I]t is not at all our intention to challenge [the editors of Iraq Body Count's] integrity", [1] the Media Lens editors stated in their second alert, which details their case for assuming the underreporting of deaths attributable to the coalition. They asked John Sloboda whether his "site communicates an unbalanced message on who is dying and who is doing the killing in Iraq?" [2] adding, "Can you point me to areas of the site that draw attention to this inherent imbalance?" [3]

The implication here was that the remedy required was a statement about the probable underreporting of deaths caused by the U.S. and UK. Sloboda responded, with reference to his source list: "deaths unreported in these media are not in our data base. We have always publicly acknowledged that our numbers must underepresent the true figure. The question of by how much is one that exercises us, as it does many others." [4]

This response dissatisfied the Media Lens editors, who said: "But why has IBC not made crystal clear on its website that its figures under-represent the true figure in a particular direction - one that clearly favours the US-UK ‘coalition‘? Where are the caveats on the website advising that sources based on a largely Western press reporting on Western armies engaged in a ferocious war are inherently biased against filling in the wrong gaps - the gaps that reflect badly on the West? Why has IBC not mentioned the obvious reluctance of the ‘coalition’ to allow journalists to discover, research and confirm examples of mass killing by US-UK forces? Why has IBC not mentioned the long history of Western media failing to report Western responsibility for suffering and death in the Third World?" [5]

In short, why isn't Iraq Body Count making a Media Lens-style case on its website? Actually, as the alert acknowledges, they already do, after a fashion, asking: “... is there some unwritten rule by which the combatants killed – particularly the salaried, non-conscript soldiers of the aggressor nations – deserve more care and attention than those innocents – non-combatant men, women and children – whose lives have also been extinguished? If no such rule exists, why is it that on almost any day, a web search of the world's media will reveal massively more reports and discussion of Western soldiers killed than of Iraqi civilians, even though the reality on almost every day is that far more Iraqi civilians have been killed than Western soldiers?” [6]

The editors then asked: "Why is not this truth, and the structural realities of the corporate media system that lie behind it, splashed across the website, in particular on the homepage?" [7]

An apparently reasonable enough question, assuming they don't expect the full text of Manufacturing Consent (of Guardians of Power) on a hyperlink. The trouble is that they follow it up with a partial regurgitation of the Western sources fallacy [*], embedded in this perplexing line: "After all, this 'unwritten rule' suggests IBC’s reliance on the 'professional rigour' of the press (see Part 1) is a fundamental flaw - these are, after all, the same media that supply many of the reports for the IBC database." [8]

In other words, their methodology is flawed to the point where its utility is questionable. That's an argument that I can understand, although I don't agree with it, because I think it's a useful resource, despite its incompleteness and lack of bold type front-page caveats (which I think it needs).

The conclusion to the alert is where it gets problematic - Media Lens starts laying down the law: "We accept that the IBC editors are sincere and well-intentioned. We accept, also, that they have often made clear that their figures are likely to be an underestimate. But we believe they could have done much more to challenge the cynical exploitation of their figures by journalists and politicians. And they could have done much more to warn visitors to their site of the number and type of gaps in their database." [9]

They now say, in effect, 'accept all of our premises' (including the flawed ones), while hinting, in tones of denunciatory moral clarity, that the remedy is to do more to challenge the cynical exploitation of the figures. Confronted with this, "IRAQ BODY COUNT REFUSES TO RESPOND", to quote the next alert [10], which ratchets up the smears, distortions and unsupported assertions to state, with a nudge and a wink: "In reality, IBC is not primarily an Iraq Body Count, it is not even an Iraq Media Body Count, it is an Iraq Western Media Body Count." [11]

From here on it all descends into acrimony and hysteria, with heated exchanges on the ML board (during which my password to post there was withdrawn) and repeated suggestions that IBC winds up its operations. As we both know, there is no direct quote from the ML editors saying "cease and desist", but by the third alert, IBC has become "a deeply flawed website" whose "reputation among journalists" as "respected and reliable" despite being "a 'passive' source of information, in that it does not send canvassers out to do random sampling" (to quote the Independent’s Andy McSmith) is "remarkable" [12], the trademark cue for hyperbolic assertions from Media Lens, a flourish apparently borrowed from John Pilger.

"Only one conclusion can be drawn," state the editors, in full flow now: "that the journalists citing the IBC figures have not studied the IBC database and so have not seen the massive bias and gaps in reported deaths." [13]

Trouble is, they can't see this because it can't be quantified. It's simply +known+ to exist and Media Lens isn't even offering a suggested caveat for the IBC homepage - it's demanding that they incorporate a propaganda model analysis or be denounced. If what they really mean is that the FAQ line on "many if not most" ought to add a clause saying "especially those attributable to the coalition" then they need to provide some evidence that could back this up - i.e. a case study. Failing that, they could have simply said they'd be happy to see John Sloboda's earlier line reworded. But they didn't because we're now into the full-scale denunciation phase, best exemplified by the final alert [14] where all sorts of smears and unsupported assertions get wheeled out - as IBC's response outlines [15] - to no reponse from Media Lens, as far as I'm aware. I don't have the time or inclination to get into all the stuff about amateurs, world's leading epidemiologists and the apparent influence of Les Roberts on the campaign - it's all been said before in any case.

Maybe it's time for the ML editors to concede that "mistakes were made", assuming they aren't about to apologise for anything graver.

Otherwise we'll just go round and round, with ever more mind-numbing tedium - and no constructive outcome whatsoever. Here's an email I sent earlier:

Date: 4 November 2006 20:07:25 GMT
To: "Editor"

Hi again,

You write in response to Josh Dougherty:

"We have quite a few moments like this when we think: either we've gone quite mad and have suddenly lost our capacity for common sense reasoning (a possibility, although odd as there are two of us), or the person we're arguing with is resorting to any old blather, any old obfuscation, to avoid facing an undeniable self-contradiction. At that point, there's little point, because whatever we say will result in - more of the same."

Perhaps if you were to acknowledge the flaws in what you've written about Iraq Body Count, you might yet square the circle and focus this discussion on the issue that matters (the serial distortions in the mainstream media) rather than denunciations based on misplaced moral clarity (the aiding and abetting warmongers line of argument that you're still in effect pursuing).

I'm sure you see the point, whether or not you're prepared to concede it in public. All you're doing here is picking scabs.

Best,

[Raoul]

Notes:
[*] The Western sources fallacy is shorthand for the reference in the original alert to source selection as an indicator of IBC's unreliability. The editors wrote:
"So what are the sources behind the database informing this "early historical analysis"? IBC reveals that these are "predominantly Western", with the "most prevalent" being "the major newswires and US and UK newspapers".
[...]

"[T]he notion that Western media exercise "professional rigour" is absurd.
[...]

"As we have discussed in previous alerts, from its inception at the start of the 20th century, 'professional" journalism has been inherently and massively biased in favour of powerful vested interests. It is exactly these interests that have so much at stake when civilians are being killed abroad. It is in exactly this situation that the mainstream media become wilfully blind, wilfully naïve, and in fact function as a propaganda system for state-corporate power.
[...]

"The report added:

"'We have not made use of Arabic or other non English language sources, except where these have been published in English. The reasons are pragmatic. We consider fluency in the language of the published report to be a key requirement for accurate analysis, and English is the only language in which all team members are fluent. It is possible that our count has excluded some victims as a result.' (Ibid)

"This is a remarkable explanation for such a serious omission, particularly in light of the immense media attention afforded to the IBC figures."

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060125_paved_with_good.php

To quote comments I made in earlier discussions:

"What does the latter highlighted section mean if not the suppression of information? What is the former if not overblown rhetoric?

[…]

"Without being able to demonstrate how the supposedly self-evident lack of professional rigour contributes to an undercount, the use of this line of argument is a straw man. That's why the question is key. Of course all deaths don't get reported, by any news outlet. But the Westernness or mainstreamness of the international agencies is an irrelevance without evidence of their oversights."

http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6098#6098

"Leaving aside the hyperbolic (and unprovable, as Bob J intimated in his challenge to the Davids to give it a go) assertion about the absurdity of 'the notion that Western media exercise "professional rigour"', IBC is being chastised for relying on 'predominantly Western' sources, 'with the "most prevalent" being "the major newswires and US and UK newspapers".'

"Since IBC's objective is to tally reported deaths, the argument would only be valid if the "wilfully blind" Western media were demonstrably ignoring deaths that other sources were reporting (thereby providing a potentially higher tally that's eluding IBC because of the choice of sources). It would matter not whether this were the result of deliberate suppression or anything else. You'd just have to demonstrate it was happening. But Media Lens didn't because they couldn't.

"Anyone's free to criticise the value of IBC if they want, based on the elementary truism (conceded from the outset) that vast numbers of deaths aren't reported. But the Davids' points about the Westernness, corporateness and mainstreamness of IBC's sources are just rhetorical stunts, apparently designed to deceive."

http://www.medialens.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6154#6154

I expand on the point further during the course of the thread on those links.

--
[1] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060126_paved_with_good_part2.php
[2] ibid.
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid.
[5] ibid.
[6] http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial_feb0704.php
[7] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060126_paved_with_good_part2.php
[8] ibid.
[9] ibid.
[10] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060314_iraq_body_count.php
[11] ibid.
[12] ibid.
[13] ibid.
[14] http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060410_iraq_body_count.php
[15] http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/defended/

Media Lens get back to banning again

2006-07-05T19:23:00.000Z

This was the MediaLens response to this post:

Joe wriggled:


What is the more reasonable conclusion to draw
from these facts
1) There is probably politcal bias - even at
the level of gathering facts - in IBC's data
though it is hard to quantify.
2) We can assume there is none, and place the
burden of proof on others to show that there is.

Joe, the data is what it is!

If *you* want to use it to support *your* position then the burden of proof is on *you*.

The Media Lens Editors are using the data to support their position and they are having to lie to do it.

Your position would suggest that *their* lying is somehow the fault of IBC because the IBC should be able to create data which cannot be abused in any way.

Let's test the theory by asking you to work out 5 per cent of 300,000. Does the IBC figure account for less than 5 per cent of Les Roberts' estimate?

Now explain to me how IBC have caused The Editors to publish a big whopping lie?

Or explain how I am mistaken and what they've written isn't a lie.

Or, just carry on musing on the "propaganda model" so that you can avoid acknowledging that The Editors are a pair of lying propagandists who use the very same techniques as the corporate media that you despise.

--
Martin

Media Lens get back to lying again

2006-07-05T01:37:00.000Z

From The First Post:

How many know that leading epidemiologist Les Roberts recently estimated that between 200,000 and 300,000 Iraqi civilians may have been killed since the invasion? Roberts argues that the most commonly cited source for Iraqi civilian casualties - amateur website Iraq Body Count (IBC) - may have captured less than five per cent of the true total.

Roberts recently said of an IBC report defending its work: "I discussed it with some of my co-authors. We decided that it was so devoid of credibility, and so laden with self-interest rather than the interest of the Iraqis, it did not merit a response."

Cromwell & Edwards continue their campaign of disinformation about Iraq Body Count.

Let's highlight the lies here:

I'll do them a favour by using the highest figure quoted: (300,000 / 100) * 5 = 15,000

IBC's counter "recently" stated a minimum figure (again doing them a favour) of 35,000 or so.

That seems to be more than 5 per cent. Looks like mathematics isn't The Editors strong point...

And, to back up the credibility of our leading epidemiologist (and trash IBC's) they quote a "context-free" sentence from a hissy fit that Les Roberts had on the Media Lens Forum (that hardly anybody reads).

What a pair of wankers.

In case you are thinking that their words were distorted in any way:

We sent the letter and the editor agreed to publish it and also offered us 600 words for an article. We had full editorial control of the article.

--The Editors, describing their article in The First Post, July 4, 2006, 11:45 am

As the Media Lens Message Board is populated by intelligent and diligent researchers, you'd expect somebody would quickly point out this glaring error in their "Media Truth". Let's see how long it takes by clicking here to monitor the thread on their Message Board.

Media Lens truth is not the whole truth.

Media Lens get back on track

2006-06-28T17:32:00.000Z

It's good to see Media Lens getting back to what they are good at - criticizing the mainstream press:

A Superb Demolition

I used to have a girlfriend like you

2006-06-23T18:50:00.000Z

The Media Lens Message Board has recently descended into farce - brought about mainly by The Editors banning everybody who criticizes them.

The nadir was this post by The Editors:

Re: Rewriting history

Posted by The Editors on June 22, 2006, 10:23 pm, in reply to "Re: Rewriting history" User logged in as: Editor

I used to have a girlfriend like you - huge, wide-eyed melodrama; a fantastically dramatic, Silent Movies-style departure. Five minutes later she'd be back and we'd be having a cup of tea together laughing about it. It happened all the time. I spoiled it when I started chuckling before she'd even left...

Which earned this hilarious response:

Re: Rewriting history

Posted by finn mccool on June 22, 2006, 11:32 pm, in reply to "Re: Rewriting history"  User logged in as: finn mccool

I used to have a girlfriend like you. A frigid b###h.

I'd give you the link for that so that you could ROTFL too - but the reply was banned...

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - No Thanks!

2006-06-22T17:31:00.000Z

Isn't it always the way? You read something in a book and suddenly you notice the same words and themes all around you.

So I'd just finished chapter two (Outlaw States) of Chomsky's latest book and, all of a sudden, I'm noticing that everybody is talking about the bomb again.

No mention of the NPT last night on the 10pm news. Discussion of whether spending 20 billion quid on new bombs was "against the spirit" of the NPT on the Today programme this morning. The view of the interviewee was that it was debatable but ultimately *not*...

Picked up the FT and found a single mention:

"Gordon Prentice, Labour MP for Pendle and a Trident opponent, warned that the chancellor could lose support among MPs in a leadership contest when Mr Blair quits. "If that's Gordon Brown's position, that's fine, but I won't be voting for candidates who have positions that are directly opposed to my own. We have an obligation under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to progressively disarm and what we're doing is precisely the opposite: enhancing our capability."
Brown homes in on targets with Trident stance, FT, 22 June 2006.

The FT is much more interested in Brown proving that he's as trustworthy a *reformer* as Blair and that BAE are cracking bottles of champagne today.

Wasnotwas

2006-06-03T00:04:00.000Z

Response to:
http://members.boardhost.com/DT3rd/msg/1149285347.html

> Axiomatic, schmaxiomatic. It's perfectly imaginable that
> "a state" could deal with certain threats by identifying them
> correctly and then neutralising them, without significantly
> restricting individual freedoms. It's also demonstrable that
> some "states" have done so.

It's perfectly imaginable that "a state" will give everybody their own football (Jedermann sein eigner Fussball) too - but what point are you trying to *demonstrably* make?

> I'm curious now, though. Is it also "axiomatic" that "a state"
> will never tell lies and invent or exaggerate a threat to provide
> a pretext for furthering the interest of the clique that runs it?
> Is it axiomatic that the Bush Gang is among the ranks of those
> hallowed truthtelling "states"?

WTF are you rambling on about?

And why quote some of the words? You seem to have a problem with my vocabulary - can't you cope with somebody using "wanker", "quotidian" and "axiomatic"?

> According to Thug, "a state" is synonymous with the people
> who happen to rule it. And it seems that, in his view, the clique
> that currently runs the US is self-evidently trustworthy.

> I'd be curious to know exactly how Thug knows these things.

I'd be curious to know why you are posting more "worthless conjecture"?

Things that make other people go "ooh"

2006-06-03T00:03:00.000Z

From:
http://members.boardhost.com/DT3rd/msg/1149290201.html

"The Editors" vomited:

> We were forced to ban the infamous 'g33thug' - a fanatical
> defender of IBC - after deleting his posts (deletions protested
> by Josh D, you will recall).

How's that for media inaccuracy?

The wankers couldn't even spell my nick right.

And what *forced* them to ban me?

Feel the Love

2006-05-24T17:30:00.000Z

More words from me ol' mate, scourge of anonymous epidemiologists and the best scanner operator in London, George Bidder.

I've highlighted his comments in red and uploaded the mp3 of the radio show here. The IBC-related stuff starts seven minutes into the recording. Enjoy:

Hey Martin – this is a transcript of David Edwards getting loved up and bigged up in an interview on a KDVS radio show on 10 April 2006 with host France Senecal.

I’ve uploaded an mp3 which should give you a laugh, but only transcribed the bits relating directly to IBC. I’ve added comments and asterisks to try and convey the emphasis (and make some points) but you really need to listen to the mp3 to feel the lurv.

They’ve just finished discussing how wonderful Les Roberts is and now turn their attention to IBC :

France Senecal: Right now though you’ve just released a Media Lens Alert, which is an exposé you send to your subscribers, and subscribing is free. You can go to Medialens.org and *really* be informed [not the word that I'd use...], in which you basically took the website Iraq Body Count to task as to their methodology. And you did a very simple study. It was amazing. Can you explain how you compared your notes and…

David Edwards: Yes. It was a very simple study. I’ll tell you how it started. We were doing a number of Alerts. There’d been this Independent summary of the year last year which identified all of these terrible killings of British troops, American troops, of suicide bombings and so on. And nowhere in any of the twelve months of the review was there any reference to mass killings of Iraqi civilians by US or British forces. So we thought this can’t be right [stifles laughter], so you know, where are we going to look? So we looked in Iraq Body Count, and we were absolutely astonished by what we found actually.

FS: Which is?

DE: We searched January to June 2005, and we sort of decided to look under incidents of 10-plus deaths of civilians, so 10 or more civilians killed. [I keep seeing this in the ML stuff, what is the significance of this number? Is their lucky number “10” or what?]

FS: Right.

DE: …a minimum of 10 or more in a particular incident. And in the first six months of 2005 there were 58 incidents of 10-plus deaths. Now, of these, one was attributed to coalition action.

FS: hmm [sounding concerned]

DE: …to a US air strike. 54 of those incidents of 10+ deaths were *clearly* attributed to the insurgency [David’s lying – the IBC almost never attributes deaths to “the insurgency”, it merely describes the circumstances of the killings. Even in IBC’s Dossier or in latest press release here: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr13.php, IBC attributes most deaths in 2005 to “unknown agents” which can mean almost anyone, including the coalition or its proxies. The attribution of all these deaths to “the insurgency” is his, not IBC’s.].

So, that seemed amazing. You know, Seymour Hersh reported in December that the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped half a million tons of bombs on Iraq [Fuck, they were busy if they dropped all those bombs in the “the first six months of 2005” he’s just chucking in some additional disinformation for good measure.]

A Pentagon official told Les Roberts last autumn, he said, we’ve dropped about 50,000 bombs [Again, when? Not in the period of Edwards’ “very simple study”]. What do you expect? [laughs for emphasis]

FS: Right. [sounding totally convinced]

DE: Of course there’s been lots of civilians killed. So you’ve had thousands of air strikes, and yet there was one example of 10+ deaths. [Repeating the message again, the two parts of this sentence have nothing to do with one another – there were not “thousands of air strikes” in the period Edwards was looking at with IBC. Edwards does not say, or appear to know, how many air strikes there were in the period he’s looking at, and the host isn’t going to ask here amazing guest.]

So we looked a bit closer. We looked from July 2005 to January 2006, and we found [sounding thoroughly astonished] six references to coalition helicopter attacks and air strikes killing civilians. In a six month period we found six references…

FS: You *know* that’s….

DE: Absolutely astonishing. [or is it amazing or incredible or, or]

FS: You know that’s a lie. [How? - I chuckled first time I listened because I thought she said a “lot” rather than “lie” and that the pause was because she wasn’t “on message”]

DE: Sorry? [Didn’t hear or was surprised to hear it called a “lie”]

FS: You know it has to be a lie.

DE: Well…

FS: Underreporting…

DE: Well, yes…I wouldn’t say liars, I just think there’s obviously a massive omission here. [note “obviously”]

FS: Ha ha, ok… [laughing knowingly]

DE: If you use your common sense, a massive gap here.

FS: Yes!

DE: And so we wrote to Dahr Jamail for example and said what do you think of this? Do you want to have a look at this and tell us what you think? And he did. He looked at the same data and he said it does seem incredible. He said there is certainly a heavy bias towards counting deaths caused by suicide bombers as opposed to air strikes. [note the use of “certainly”]

So that’s how it all started. That’s really where it began [Does this mean that he is admitting that it all started with arriving at “certain” and “astonishing” conclusions based on no evidence but the non sequiturs above. Edwards needs to do some study on the “very simple study” into 2005 air strikes described above, wonder if he has read this: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/4.2.php ]

FS: And then you also found that once you published one of your Alerts and people started questioning, you found more *resistance* [Sounding shocked that anybody would dare resist being “taken to task” over these “certain” and “astonishing” – but also bogus – conclusions] in questioning them. And the people at Iraq Body Count themselves…

DE: Mmm..

FS: …were less than amenable to discussion about this topic.

DE: Yes, perhaps I should explain, that the way Iraq Body Count count their casualties is that they use two sources, two independent media sources who have to confirm a death before they consider it a definite death. But what it turns out is that, in for example in their Dossier of Civilian Casualties 2003-2005, they noted that just three press agencies, the Associated Press, Agence France Press and Reuters, provided one third of all their stories. So their tally is largely made up… [I’m actually surprised that he hasn’t spun that information because most of the ML shock troops believe that the figure is 100% from these sources.]

FS: Awww [sounding mildly disgusted]

DE: …of Western reports…

FS: There you go! [“Massive omission” mystery solved, obviously, even though unsubstantiated in the first place]

DE: Now, they’re operating in an incredibly fierce conflict zone. And what we sort of said to them is why do you not draw attention to the fact that you’re largely using Western press [As Edwards' clearly discovered from reading IBC’s own publication (see two paras above), which draws attention to it] who are notorious for suppressing crimes of Western powers. That’s something we’ve obviously discussed… [natch]

FS: Of course… [natch back]

DE: …endlessly and is documented that Western occupying countries, the media who are reporting on those wars are not likely to want to really tell the truth about the casualties that their armies are inflicting. And of course the country’s under occupation…so the military are making it extremely hard. There are also lots of reports coming from Iraq that Iraqi journalists have been threatened…

FS: Yes, yes!

DE: …and attacked when they’ve written stories containing evidence against the US military.

FS: Mmm hmm…

DE: And there’s stories of the Pentagon planting propaganda in Iraqi newspapers for money, that kind of thing. [Maybe so, but how would this affect IBC?]

FS: Of course.

DE: So we think, why aren’t you [IBC] really highlighting this issue, to make it clear to people that your figures are almost certain to be a major underestimate. [Highlighting the likelihood of undercounting in its FAQ and in many of its press releases isn’t enough for people who are too busy to read anything but the headline. The degree and specific causes of underestimate claimed by Edwards are not backed up, and therefore not “almost certain”, which probably explains why IBC does not highlight those in the way Edwards would like.]

And we were surprised by the response because they interpreted what we were doing as an attack [So does this enamoured radio host: “you’ve just released a Media Lens Alert… in which you basically took the website Iraq Body Count to task as to their methodology” – to which Edwards also does not disagree, because these “Alerts” were obviously a public and systematic attack on the reliability and supposed irresponsibility of IBC, which IBC, this host, and anyone being at all honest could immediately recognize as such.]

FS: Of course

DE: …which really wasn’t what we intended. [He doesn’t want to take any credit. The actual character and content of the “Alerts” and the bombardment by convinced emailers afterward and the tone and character of comments on the message board, supersedes any claimed “intent” and clearly shows that these were a systematic attack in which IBC is being “taken to task”.]

It was kind of a similar process that we’ve gone through with Les Roberts and the Lancet. We’ve taken criticisms from the media and said ‘what’s your response?’. [“Similar” being understood very loosely.]

FS: Right.

DE: And the Lancet team had replied, and we’d taken the discussion forward, but IBC haven’t been willing to respond.

[But the IBC did respond. “The Editors” just didn’t like the responses. IBC has since responded further, and in great detail, here: http://www.iraqbodycount.net/editorial/defended/index.php. Where is the ML rebuttal - are they still waiting for more anonymous epidemiology?]

This is where you'll find me

2006-05-12T11:22:00.000Z

http://www.g33kthug.co.uk/

You need an "ology"

2006-05-05T17:29:00.000Z

A shame becoming shameful

On 10 April, 2006 Media Lens issued an alert under this title and the subtitle:

"John Pilger And A Leading Epidemiologist Challenge IBC"

This is pot-pouri of their usual devices and themes including:

1. The Chomsky Quote
2. Pilgerism
3. The False Association
4. Self-referential Bollocks
5. The Zamparini Example
6. Professional Epidemiology --***NEW***---

1. The Chomsky Quote:
This alert's Chomsky Quote is good one:

"If you are not offending people who ought to be offended, you're doing something wrong."

And the ML conclusion is a "jaw-dropping display of propaganda" (to borrow their words) and a totalitarian *classic*:

"One indication that the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project is doing something wrong is that it is deemed, not merely inoffensive, but is eagerly embraced by people who really ought to be offended. "

For them, no task, no position, no words and no cause can be anything other righteous.

A bunch of corduroy-clad, intellectual lefties decide to devote every bit of their spare time to recording and giving a name to every civilian killed in a war-torn country.

An ordinary person would maybe view this as a generally good thing (if not a waste of time)? An activist and anarcho-syndicalist like Chomsky would no doubt congratulate them on their determination to work against all odds to record the names of individuals who lost their lives to further the ambitions of the US State and its willing partners.

But a totalitarian would only be interested in whether the exercise was of value to them. And if you aren't upsetting the BBC and privately owned media corporations then the exercise is deemed not just useless but threatening to the cause.

2. Pilgerism
The Editors are pulling out all the stops in this Alert with a Pilgerism following straight after The Chomsky Quote:

Consider Herald Sun journalist Adam Bolt, described by John Pilger as “the lowest of journalism's low, an extreme right wing and aggressively idiotic member of Murdoch's dominant press group in Australia“. (Email to Media Lens, April 4, 2006)

They then quote a paragraph from *journalism's low* and perform a miraculous sleight of hand...

3. False Association

Bolt’s recent article, ’Body of evidence,’ provides a jaw-dropping display of propaganda. Bolt asserts, for example, that Saddam Hussein “claimed on average between 90 and 120 victims each day. Every day. For 24 years. That's three or four times higher than the daily deaths in fighting in Iraq today”. (Bolt, ‘Body of evidence,’ Herald Sun, March 22, 2006)

While this is sheer fantasy, Bolt +does+ accurately cite IBC’s maximum tally for reported civilian deaths by mid-March - 37,800 - to make his point:

“It is a shocking loss of life, but see how many more Saddam killed or ordered to their death each day.”

This is so pathetic but serves to indicate the crude propaganda that his being pumped out by Media Lens. Propaganda that can be cut and pasted by their miserable band of followers and delivered to the target via a plague of email.

4. Self-referential Bollocks

The rest of the first half of the *Alert* is a shit storm of quotes in the usual Media Lens style of out-of-context quotations and running commentary so that their readers can all follow the *approved* interpretation.

This boils down to emailing Phil Space at the Hick County Enquirer and getting him to let slip that he wrote an article without giving the issues any thought.

Big fucking deal and, once again illustrating that The Editors just don't understand anything about Anarchism...

5. The Zamparini Example

Sometimes the ML acolytes get a little carried away and send emails to which they scrawl their own pay-off lines after the pasting some of the Alert. These are generally embarrassingly bad - along the lines of "you're in the pay of Bush and Blair and I hope you burn in hell you fucking liars" - so each Alert pays homage to the master of totalitarian arslikan, Gabriele Zamparini.

This one is particularly funny because it proves that the IBC are really bad people by revealing that the Liberal Democrat web site shows IBC figures that are 16 months out of date.

Now there's something I didn't know - that the IBC are webmasters for the LibDems! This is political activism at its best. Zamparini leaves no turn un-stoned.

As The Editors state:

"Sometimes the use of IBC’s figures borders on the surreal."

6. Professional Epidemiology - NEW
Media Lens' politics might be a bit old-fashioned in an *uncle Joe* kind of way but their techniques move with the times. Picture a beautiful girl tossing her long hair while smiling and saying "and now for the science".

And not just any old science, this is EPIDEMIOLOGY. And not just any old epidemiology, this is PROFESSIONAL EPIDEMIOLOGY. And not just any old professional epidemiology, this is ANONYMOUS PROFESSIONAL EPIDEMIOLOGY.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story of Broad Street Pump and the birth of epidemiology there are only two things worth knowing about this field:

a. If you prefer beer to water then you don't need epidemiology
b. Epidemiology is just like Economics - experts juggling figures to prove that white is black and day is night

The interesting thing about this section is the hypocrisy.

Media Lens' most often cited influence is Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is a professional in the area of linguistics but an amateur in just about every other area that he writes about. For anarchists this presents no problem because rational authority doesn't need to be labeled as "professional". But totalitarians like ML don't like their world complicated by lots of independent bits of rational authority.

Bakunin would blow their minds. For him, freedom: "results from th[e] great number of material, intellectual, and moral influences which every individual around him [or her] and which society . . . continually exercise . . . To abolish this mutual influence would be to die."

And a glance at the Media Lens message board proves the point. You are either right or wrong, with us or against us.

They should be choking on their Chomsky quotes as they worship the irrational authority of an anonymous professional.

An Amateur Writes
My mate George Bidder - an amateur Les Roberts watcher - has this to say about the remaining bit of the Media Lens Alert:

Martin

I had written this up right after that "Shame Becoming Shameful" shit came out, but I never got around to posting it. The "anonymous" bloke sounds just like Les Roberts - and it doesn't take much to shred his "arguments".

Feel free to post it on your blog.

[...]

Media Lens quotes Les Roberts as saying:

"Attached is a graph [not included here] of deaths in Guatemala from 1960 to
1995 put together by Patrick Ball at UC Berkeley. Murders are with the
black line, the % reported in the press with the dashed line. Note, when
violence goes up, reporting in the press goes down. I have calibrated
surveillance systems during times of war (always in Africa admittedly) and
would be astonished if [IBC's] system could capture 50% of deaths."

Roberts is presumably referring to one or more graphs featured at this site: http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ciidh/qr/english/chap7.html

However, it is pretty clear that Roberts knows perfectly well that these kind of findings do not necessarily follow neatly from conflict to conflict and so results that one finds by analyzing the Guatemalan press between 1960 and 1995 would not necessarily correspond with, or bear any resemblance to, the world's press currently in Iraq. That he knows this should be clear from some of his own findings and statements regarding his Lancet-published study from Iraq, such as these appearing in a radio documentary featuring Roberts and clearly produced in close communication with him:

http://www.thislife.org/ra/300.ram

Host: "The shocker was how people were dying. For the first time in any of
his surveys, the leading cause of death wasn't disease [note: disease only
accounted for about 15% of his Lancet estimate for Iraq]. It was bombs and
bullets. In the 32 of the 33 clusters sampled, 21 people died of violence,
as compared to just one violent death in the period before the war. There
was a second shocker. Of those 21 ... the biggest number, 9, were killed by
the American-led Coalition."

Roberts: "I just didn't expect violence from the Coalition to have dominated
the causes of death in Iraq. No way reading the New York Times and
listening to NPR would I have believed that the Coalition killed far, far
more people than did the insurgents setting off car bombs."

Obviously there's also "no way" he would have believed this if he were basing the speculation on a graph of the findings in his previous studies in war zones, which showed disease as the primary cause of excess death. Even the untested speculations of experts do not always pan out, as Roberts' own public statements show. I'm not sure why Les Roberts and/or the Media Lens Editors feel it proper to counter what they perceive as the flaws of "amateurs" by suggesting that other "amateurs" reading their words should themselves make untested speculations about the work of those "amateurs".

But whatever the reason, it appears to have little to do with scientific concerns.

It continues in the same vein with:

"In Saddam's time, morgues + hospital reports + death certificates reported
to the central Gov. only accounted for about 1/3 of the deaths that must
have been occurring in Iraq. There have now been 15,000 excess violent
deaths just in the Baghdad Morgues! If Baghdad is about 1/5th of the
country, and the morgues do not capture all deaths, what does this imply...
the UNDP number (more than twice IBC at the time it was done) is known by
the authors to be an underestimate and was based on a couple of questions
out of a long (88 min.?) interview." (Email to Media Lens, March 23, 2006)

Again we have a suggestion for his "amateur" readers to speculate about what the factoids he's providing would "imply", a very "scientific" method for determining the facts indeed. The irony of this suggestion is compounded by the fact that the factoids he provides, as quoted by Media Lens, are themselves unclear in their origin or reliability. How has Roberts determined what level of deaths "must have been occuring" in Iraq during "Saddam's time" to arrive at his "1/3" figure, the figure on which all the remaining speculations are to be built upon? Neither he nor the Media Lens Editors say. Is it based on science? Just more untested speculations? Does anybody know?

And, if official sources record so few deaths as we're being instructed to assume, why did the Lancet study find that over 80% of deaths had death certificates to match? If we're supposed to speculate about implications based on this "1/3" figure, who or what was issuing all those other death certificates?

Serious readers should of course pay no mind to such unexamined questions as these. They come from an amateur. Just construct free-floating speculations about what certain factoids "imply" while under conditions of hysteria created by a dire "Alert", as directed by an "anonymous" expert and a website "run by amateurs", who are clearly concerned with scientific rigour.

A shameful becoming shamefuller or something like that

2006-05-04T17:29:00.000Z

In fact IBC records civilian deaths reported by any source it can get its hands on. That's just "about the most basic factual error that can be made about the topic", but I won't make a big deal out of it because almost every line they write contains an error.

Among the many examples:

1. Les Roberts doesn't have eight studies
2. the sample in the study published by the Lancet was small relative to at least one other study
3. the IBC count being out by a factor of five or ten is incorrect - and therefore the numbers cannot be *correct*
4. they describe IBC's methodology as *flawed*
5. they state that the IBC apply no caveats to their figures
6. and that John Sloboda hasn't suffered months of continual abuse

But, that's the nature of the beast. You can't write propaganda for simpletons without incurring a few casualties - truth and accuracy among them.

Media Lens ARE important
They then go on to state how important they are: repeated invites to appear on Newsnight, Their refusal to appear described as a "national scandal" no less! Constant calls and promises from Newsnight's editors etc etc

They are also incestuous
The same old names turn up over and over again: Les Roberts, their *anonymous expert* (that'd be Les Roberts again), Stephen Soldz, Lila Guterman and they even have the cheek to publish emails from their sycophant-in-chief Gabriele Zamparini as if they were indicative of the standard tone of all Media Lens' inspired communications.

And horribly vindictive
David Fuller is probably an all right bloke - I don't know him so couldn't tell you that for certain. But I can tell you that he doesn't know much worth printing about political discussion on message boards and newsgroups - well, not until now!

He started posting to the Media Lens Message Board in the same week as me. I was lucky enough to be banned within an hour of making my first post. He was allowed to keep posting - and did, foolishly.

What a gift to Media Lens who state:

"The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others."

Forgetting to publish the caveat that this doesn't include BBC journalists and message board n00bs.

They get The Editors' irrational arguments, their on- and off-list correspondence compassionately sent to their bosses and the unlimited respect of the dimwit ML acolytes on the message board.

And a whole *Alert* dedicated to the too!

SUGGESTED ACTION
Read the alert - it's so bad that I can't bring myself to quote or comment on it any more. I keep checking the date and it definitely says May 3, 2006 rather than April 1, 2006.

Cheer yourself with one of my pictures.

Media Lens: They quote Chomsky but prefer Stalin

2006-05-02T17:28:00.000Z

They run their Message Board like dictators. Selectively silencing those whose views are a little too strongly held or expressed. The Rules are applied in an arbitrary manner - as in all dictatorships. Acolytes can attack safe in the knowledge that the worst sanction that will apply to them is the withdrawl of a message.

That's not to say that there isn't any dissent on the site. There are some very dilligent people who are asking interesting questions and debunking the Media Lens' myths – but I wonder if it is worth the effort?

The problem with people who like totalitarianism is they just won't listen to anything that questions their simplistic view of the world.

Information cannot be complex, vague, fuzzy, unimportant, ephemeral or just fun.

This is why they want every page of the Iraq Body Count web site to have an accompanying document stating how the figures should be used and covering every eventuality. And hold IBC liable for every incorrect use of their figures in the media.

This is why they have an almost religious belief that finding a single error in a thousand pages of information means that they can invalidate everything else in those thousand pages that is inconvenient to their world view.

This is why anything interesting in your posts will be ignored, derided, confused or missed no matter how many methods (or times) you try.

The IBC Alerts

"Blair is no Hitler, but in his speech he deployed a classic combination of impassioned rhetoric and breathtaking distortion. The response of the free press was as uniform as it was lamentable."
Falling At The Feet Of Power - Blair's Sincerity And The Media, David Edwards, March 21, 2003

Replace "Blair" with "Media Lens" and "the free press" with "Media Lens supporters" and you'll get a pretty good picture of what this is about.

The Paved With Good Intentions alerts are object lessons in dictator-speak. Repetitive points, stacked on top of each other and couched in a language that appeals to their totalitarian-minded readership.

The language is distorted the quoting selective.

Some of the information is plain wrong.

And the weasel words are sickening:

"What do these figures tell us about the sincerity
and honesty of the IBC editors? Absolutely nothing
- it is not at all our intention to challenge their
integrity. But there are some important points
that need to be made."

They then go on to raise fallacious point after fallacious point with the aim of portraying the IBC as insincere and dishonest.

Naturally, they don't print the conclusions themselves. They leave their acolytes to infer this information and bombard the chosen target with hundreds of emails with the dots crudely joined.

My thoughts on the first two Alerts attacking IBC are here:

Paved With Good Intentions - Part 1
Paved With Good Intentions - Part 2

And, if this political stuff is getting you down, visit my Apple home page and cheer yourself up with the beautiful song of a nightingale.

Still banned from Media Lens

2006-04-28T17:28:00.000Z

You can't get a yes or no answer from these people. Meanwhile their sycophantic followers post more drivel to their message board with challenges kept to a minimum by blacklisting...

From: "Editor"
Date: 28 April 2006 11:30:00 BDT
To: "Martin"
Subject: Re: Media Lens - not averse to a bit of censorship themselves...
Reply-To: "Editor"

Thaks, Martin. The irony is that your message is far more abusive than +anything+ we've seen sent to IBC.

As for "gagging" you, I guess we could claim IBC are gagging everyone by not having a comparable message board. Anyone with a shred of honesty will tell you that we've published hundreds of critical message from people who disagree with us over IBC - Bob Shone, Josh D and others have posted endlessly. Which doesn't mean we will allow the board - primarily intended as a resource for media activists - to be swamped with angry exchanges provoked by messages of the kind you posted.

Best wishes

The Editors

My Response:

On 28 Apr 2006, at 11:30, Editor wrote:

Thaks, Martin. The irony is that your message is far more abusive than +anything+ we've seen sent to IBC.

My original message wasn't abusive.

The response to it - accusing me of trolling - got an appropriate response and I even recall deleting the word "fucking" before "idiot" prior to posting.

As for "gagging" you, I guess we could claim IBC are gagging everyone by not having a comparable message board.

You could claim it - but it'd make you look pretty stupid.

Anyone with a shred of honesty will tell you that we've published hundreds of critical message from people who disagree with us over IBC - Bob Shone, Josh D and others have posted endlessly. Which doesn't mean we will allow the board - primarily intended as a resource for media activists - to be swamped with angry exchanges provoked by messages of the kind you posted.

Your thinking is confused. The majority of the inappropriate noise has come from other people responding to my strong criticism of your position.

How many of them had their IPs blocked by you?

We are really looking at a case of you being fine at dishing out the criticism but not being able to take it yourselves.

I'll ask again: "Will you unblock my IP address?"

A simple "yes" or "no" will be sufficient.

I won't hold my breath...

Media Lens - the editors respond

2006-04-28T17:27:00.000Z

From: "Editor"
Date: 28 April 2006 09:45:52 BDT
To: "Martin"
Subject: Re: Media Lens - not averse to a bit of censorship themselves...

Your email to us is noticeably different in tone to your posts, which were clearly intended to provoke and insult fellow posters. If you check the guidelines, you'll see that's something we don't tolerate. Our message board is for civil, rational debate.

The Editors

To which I've responded:

Hardly.

Your message board looks to be a place where a bunch of sycophants are busy ensuring that the debate doesn't really happen by constantly rehashing your mistaken position and spicing it up with some pathetic conspiracy theories and ad hominems about John Sloboda.

Direct criticism of your piss-poor position wasn't made to provoke *fellow posters* - it was made to point out that you have fucked up big time over this issue.

Gagging me because my inconvenient points were made forcefully is pathetic. Let me know your current position on this ASAP - as I've got plenty more to say on the issue.

I look forward to reading your response to the IBC rebuttal. If you need help with the maths let me know...

And let's see how many sentences you can write before you resort to Olly Kamm-style mentions of music lectureships etc.

Judge for yourselves about the nature of the Media Lens message board.

Media Lens - not averse to a bit of censorship...

2006-04-27T17:24:00.000Z

I was most upset to see the (usually very good) people at Media Lens wage an embarrassingly bad campaign against the people behind Iraq Body Count.

I posted a couple of messages to their message board about the inaccuracies in their reports and was accused of trolling and then promptly banned from the site:

Their remit to correct the distortions in the media obviously doesn't include criticism of their own output!

The post I was making was:

--Previous Message--
: Were the IBC rebuttal and your response
: coordinated or did it just drop out of the
: blue?
: The Newsnight interest in the last few days
: was surprising but with the IBC posting this
: evening and the subsequent trolling I
: wondered if it wasn't coincidental.

Yeah. Maybe I'm a member of a secret kabal of music lecturers?

Maybe Paxman was a music student before he became a journo?

And since when was pointing out that ML have made a mistakes "trolling"? The Editors can check my subscription - I've been a subscriber and appreciator of their work for a long time.

But the criticism of IBC was based on bad figures and bad advice. Dragging Pilger into the debate and then resorting to ad-hominems has made things worse.

Media Lens should be supporting the IBC by criticising the media that mis-represents their data. Not criticising the IBC because the media mis-represents their data.

Hardly radical, but too critical of Media Lens for publication.

Sad.

Very sad.

Just in case they decide to censor all of my posts:

Posted by Martin on April 27, 2006, 8:53 pm
User logged in as: g33kthug

The IBC have published their rebuttal of Media Lens' baseless attack. You'll find it at their site.

No need to delve deep into the massive document because the Executive Summary covers all the important points.

Les got his IBC figures wrong. They were corrected some time ago in the real publication - but you were too lazy to check and he's to busy bigging it up in the media to mention it.

Stick to re-hashing Chomsky boys - and proving what we already know: journalists tell lies and have trouble with maths & statistics.

Maybe the next alert will be about your own "distorted vision"?

Shame on you for your pathetic response too - resorting to ad hominem. Now, what was that daily death rate again?

And here is the sad ad hominem from Media Lens:

In his interview, Sloboda, for example, immediately proceeds to pass judgement on the Lancet report - a scientific study conducted by some of the world's leading professional epidemiologists and published in one of the premier science journals after a rigorous peer-review process.

And yet Sloboda's university website describes him as "internationally known for his work on the psychology of music".

I wonder what qualifications the Media Lens team have for passing judgement on John Sloboda?

Paved with Good Intentions - Part 2

2006-03-04T17:43:00.000Z

My comments on this document

The second part of Media Lens' attack on IBC is busy with more investigative journalism. Not serious investigation - just browsing the IBC site to look for evidence of under-reporting of civilian casualties of US air strikes.

They can draw no conclusions apart from incredulity that the US isn't killing the masses of civilians on a daily basis. But they can't resist some weasel words:

What do these figures tell us about the sincerity
and honesty of the IBC editors? Absolutely nothing
- it is not at all our intention to challenge their
integrity. But there are some important points
that need to be made.

They then go on to make a massive error by comparing death rates today from Air Strikes with those that include the invasion phase of the war. And reinforce this with a clearly biased quotation from a journalist on the ground in Fallujah which starts:

“I just finished having a look at what
you suggested... I agree with your findings...

Now there's a surprise...

Skipping the exchange between ML and John Sloboda, we move on to "The Editors" revealing their true left-wing, nannying tendencies:

But why has IBC not made crystal clear
on its website that its figures under-represent
the true figure in a particular direction -
one that clearly favours the US-UK
‘coalition‘? Where are the caveats on the
website advising that sources based on a
largely Western press reporting on Western
armies engaged in a ferocious war are
inherently biased against filling in the
wrong gaps - the gaps that reflect badly
on the West?

It's not enough for IBC to make their methods and limitations public. Each page must have a health warning. And failure to provide one means that IBC are responsible for every quoted use of their data in all media, worldwide.

This point is re-hashed over and over again until we get to the ridiculous final paragraph:

It is not rocket science to perceive obvious
flaws in the IBC methodology - a glance at
the database suggests that Iraqi civilians
are somehow immune to the firepower of US
jets, tanks, helicopters and artillery.
Other studies, and simple common sense,
suggest otherwise.

What would Chomsky have to say about that shameful example of propaganda?.

Paved with Good Intentions - Part 1

2006-03-03T17:39:00.000Z

My comments on this document

"On the rare occasions when the issue
of civilian casualties is discussed in
the mainstream media three words are
invariably mentioned: Iraq Body Count."

How rare is the discussion of civilian casualties in Iraq? In news that I watch and the papers I read stories about Iraqi civilian casualties have become quotidian. To describe them as rare is ridiculous - but it is important to the Media Lens authors as they lead their readers to an inevitable conclusion.

They waffle about IBC's not very well designed web site before introducing another irrational comment: "IBC is important, not least because it is often cited as a source in high-profile British and American media."

So we have rare discussion but the often citing of IBC. Confusing language, but necessary for the building of Media Lens' house of cards.

After a little more waffle, we get to the real point of the whole article:

"IBC is also important because its
figures for civilian deaths in Iraq
have been used by the British and
American governments, and by the
media, to attack or dismiss higher
estimates in other studies."

That IBC's figures are used and interpreted incorrectly, badly, stupidly or maliciously should surprise nobody. Journalists who want to make a point will use whatever they can find to support their positions - even if it is a malicious mis-reading. Here's an object lesson on how it is done.

First distortion:

IBC is clear that there are inherent
problems with its methodology. In
response to the Lancet study, IBC
pointed out: "We have always been quite
explicit that our own total is certain
to be an underestimate of the true
position, because of gaps in reporting
or recording." (November 7, 2004)

[note the immediate undermining of John's words with the selective quote from the IBC Dossier about "Journalism being the first draft of history" - suggesting a total lack of humility]

The IBC is not clear about problems with their methodology. Their methodology of recording and cross-referencing civilian deaths is well thought out, well carried out and explained clearly in their documentation. There are inherent problems with using their data to work out the total number of civilian deaths - which John Sloboda acknowledges and is made clear on the IBC site.

But that's not what Media Lens want to explain. They want to make the fallacious point that the IBC are spending a lot of time and effort publishing useless information.

Second distortion:

In its report ‘A dossier of civilian
casualties 2003-2005’, IBC noted that
just three press agencies - Associated
Press, Agence France Presse, and
Reuters - provided one-third of all
stories. Reliance on Western media
is not deemed a problem, however,
because they ”are unlikely to suppress
conservative estimates which can act
as a corrective to inflated claims”

Once again we are presented with a banal fact which has been published by IBC: The largest press agencies in the world provide one third of the reports that IBC use. The only surprise here is that the figure is as low as one third.

IBC also acknowledge that they use English language sources and that this gives rise to a risk in undercounting.

With the careful wording and the tossing in of a Chomsky quote you are left with the distinct impression that Media Lens have been busy employing all the skills of investigative journalists rather than copying IBC's own caveats about their figures. They've already trashed the project, so now it's time to deal the final blow.

And now for the science:

Not only is IBC’s surveillance-based
total for Iraqi civilian deaths one
of the most widely cited by journalists,
it is also the lowest. Les Roberts,
lead author of the Lancet report, told
us last year: “There are now at least 8
independent estimates of the number or
rate of deaths induced by the invasion
of Iraq. The source most favored by the
war proponents (Iraqbodycount.org) is
the lowest. Our estimate is the third
from highest. Four of the estimates
place the death toll above 100,000.
The studies measure different things.
Some are surveys, some are based on
surveillance which is always incomplete
in times of war. The three lowest
estimates are surveillance based.”
(Roberts, email to Media Lens, August 22, 2005)

Here we are invited to worship at the altar of epidemiology. It helps if you think about epidemiology as a form of biological economics - meaning (as any anarchist knows) a completely bogus science which takes selective samples of selective data and makes it mean whatever you want.

This is a prime example because it is completely wrong. There aren't 8 independent estimates and IBC isn't the lowest. But Media Lens didn't verify the fact that Les Roberts was talking out of his arse because the comments could be incorporated into their hatchet job on IBC.

We are bombarded with selective quotations to reinforce ML's points before Part One of their Alert finishes with a flourish:

But anyway, as we have seen, the IBC
figure is selective in its sources,
is the lowest estimate of eight serious
studies, and relies on “professional
rigour” in the Western media that does
not exist. As we will also see,
realities on the ground in Iraq cast
real doubt on the value of IBC’s
methodology and numbers."

Which, point-by-point, equates to:

Acknowledged by IBC
Wrong
Straw Man

And, boy, was I looking forward to Part Two...