Pink Floyd sets the tone for my response to most of Yakov Bok's commentary by now: "I have become...comfortably numb." Sometimes I am positively amused. Reviewing YB's latest contributions to this blog, however, I am moved instead to quote the Boston attorney Joseph Welch, who said the following to the drunken,reactionary Senator Joseph McCarthy in June of 1954: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

"I'm a PhD student in Comp Sci and I can tell you that is AWFUL research" Well i's amazing you made it to where you are with such a woeful grasp of statistics. The study makes it very clear that 98,000 is the MOST likely number of deaths based on their survey. The further you go away from that number (either way) the less likely that is to be the number of deaths. The reason they say the number is likely higher than 98,000 is because the survey couldn't be done in some parts of Iraq because it was too dangerous (like Fallujah). Perhaps rd, you should take a refresher course in stats :-)

"Paul is correct in pointing out the exact body count is not as relevant as the pretty much indisputable fact that there has been major slaughter." This is simply another way of saying "facts don't matter." Great rhetoric, Chomsky would be proud!

r4d20, To be fair, you need to recognise social research typically has a much bigger margin of error than in the natural sciences because of lack of information, difficulties in identifying and controlling relevant parameters, absence of tight theoretical framework and so on. It is the nature of the beast. A correlation of 40% is complete garbabe in physics but is deemed quite respectible in sociology. Paul is correct in pointing out the exact body count is not as relevant as the pretty much indisputable fact that there has been major slaughter. Americans do not nitpick about the numbers in the trade tower attacks(which is much lower than the deaths in Iraq as a result of U.S invasion by any reckoning, it pales to insignificant if you include the deaths from the U.S led sanctions)

remember though that in the lancet report, falluja was excluded (look at pages 4-5 of the report) and the relative risk of death (i.e. risk of death after the invasion compared to before) increased 2.5 times after including falluja (95% c.i. 1.6-4.2). in effect the estimate was rather conservative. also r4d20 neglects to mention that the within the confidence interval, 100,000 represents the highest likelihood and as such it was not picked at random. as an econometrician, i would like to see smaller intervals, but in the circumstances this is the best they could do (and it was pretty darn good). finally i don't quite know the significance of r4d20s being a comp. sci. student, but the research is not bad as long as they are honest about the findings and report the 95% confidence truthfully.

So ok r4d20, who (if I remember correctly [yes, I do...see http://blog.zmag.org/index.php/weblog/comments/503/P40/, including my response] was previously miffed that I seemed to question the benevolent logic of "REAL free markets"), then go with the cautious, verifiable body Iraq body count at http://www.iraqbodycount.net/. Iraq Body Count does "media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military action by the USA and its allies." Last I saw their minimum body count (just people directly killed by the US and its "coalition of the killing")was 21,705. Let's assume you are correct (and you did not bother to step far enough out of your PhD seminar room to tell us statistical buffoons exactly what a "confidence interval" is) and 100,000 is off the wall (and all I said in this instance was "estimates go as high as"). Fine, it changes the discussion in no substantive way unless you want to say that 21,705 is not a significant death count. Your thesis is that the public health researchers who wrote the Lancet piece are just pandering to the mass of people --- including apparently the corporate-militaristic western media (like CNN which picked the Lancet story up and ran with it) --- who are panting to hear exaggerated death counts from the war on Iraq? Gee, I don't know about that.

"....as high as 100,000 (the estimate of the public health experts at the conservative British medical journal The Lancet)." And do you have any idea what the 95% confidence interval was for that study? I do. It was 8000 - 200,000. That means that the authors are 95% certain that somwhere between 8000 and 200,000 people have died. In other words - they have NO IDEA what number is right and so they just picked a number in the middle of the range they calculated. I'm a PhD student in Comp Sci and I can tell you that is AWFUL research. If I reported results with a confidence interval that large (proportionally) I would be laughed at and told to go get more data before I published my results. These guys do it and people eat it up because its what they want to hear.

SkyLoom: I agree of course that priority should go to meeting domestic social needs, but --- assuming that the government started meeting those needs (after rolling back the hyper-plutocratic Buschcon tax cuts) --- do you wish to see any changes in the definition of America's "job" in Iraq? Estimates of Iraqi deaths resulting from the unfortunate positioning of their nation in the crosshairs of Operation American Dominion (a division of the Project for a New American Century) go as high as 100,000 (the estimate of the public health experts at the conservative British medical journal The Lancet). The murder, torture, and abuse of Iraqi (and Afghan) people by racist and imperial US armed forces has been widely exposed around the world (if routinely denied in the US) and shown to be terribly widespread. The long-term consequences for Iraqis (including mass DU poisoning, birth deformities, infrastructural crisis) of our "job" are only beginning to be guaged and will certianly be dire indeed. I want "the job" not to be merely "finished" but to be fundamentally transformed and I think the transformation will begin with massive US reparations payments and investments and a complete shift in the orientation of America's presence.

<> Yakov, it's quite simple. If this nation cannot afford to provide services for its citizens and at the same time wage war in Iraq, then we citizens come first. I'd agree that an I-Pod on one hand and a cell phone on the other is not necessarily indicative of "the good life" but health care, a living wage, a meaningful and fulfilling work, nutritious food, a decent home, and a secure retirement we all have a right to demand.

"Put some hard plans on the table of how a society of socialists will work." You should be skeptical if anyone claims to have a "hard plan". You don't "design" a society with a blueprint.Social changes that work usually do not start by some master plan. A moral vision is just a general guidence. The actual implementations in concrete convtext involve a lot of trial and error, revisions and false starts,this is an organic process of enagement. In any case I don't see why one has to have a master plan to be qualifed to critique the current system It is lame for a film maker who gets a shitty review to tell the critic "why don't you make your own movie if you're so smart?" The film critic may not know the details of making movies, it doesn't mean he can't tell a good film from a bad one.And some people who do know how to make movies may find the criticism useful.

"First, the health care is taken care of by showing up at the hospital. People without insurance by law must be taken care of by the hospital." YB Yes, wait until your problems fester into an emergency and then show up in a hospital. I wonder if that's what you would recommend say, to your aging parents. "That care is far superior to to that received with insurance. Don't believe me? Ask a doctor who deals with that population." Then you wonder why so many Americans who ARE covered spend a bundle on their health insurance. They must have money to burn. "Second, the standard in the U.S. is different than say, Mali, so again, who decides the standard? You people, with all your ideals, have yet to do so. " Actually in terms of indicators like infant mortality rate in the inner cities the U.S is probably not far from Mali.

This to Yakov Bok. To think that a society can be developed according to some vague slogan is ludicrous("from each..."). It is simply not feasible to write out some recipe for a future society, for societies develop in ways not foreseeable. The only reliable guidelines are class interests. To imply that poor people receive the same medical treatment as wealthy people is not even worth comment. Yes, the living standard in the US is different than in Mali,unfortunately. Who decides that murder and incest are wrong? Who decided that slavery was wrong? I'm sure that most people would concur with the notion that people should have access to nutritional food,water,shelter,medical care,and education.These things are not luxuries,they are requirements for existing as humans. As for your desire for 'hard plans on the table',there won't be a society of 'socialists',but rather of workers.And though this may seem to be going out on a limb, I would say an important aspect of a society of workers would be the appropiation of corporate profits for the needs of workers.I've argued with many a conservative, and I have always enjoyed it,but I wish they were a little more on the ball.

Notice how YB wants to divert you from the actual topics in the post: the cutting of Medicaid in Missouri and the general slashing of human service and social welfare/public health programs to pay for an imperial war that perversely benefits "defense" corporations. Sorry, but you don't have to have the entire socialist future blue-printed to legitemately criticize the US state's regressive and militarist priorities. Your critique of neoliberal and neo-imperialist policies is not discredited if you don't happen to have the full social-systemic alternative fully drawn up and ready to roll. "Engage me in a conversation" about "socialism" (which he thinks is inherently totalitarian butchery, as we know from earlier commentary) or parecon (which he bizarrely says was "discredited" in an early "discussion"). He must be joking. How sad and pathetic....and disingenuous. Why on earth waste time and scarce energy having false dialogues with proven, declared enemies of basic left goals? Please, not on this blog. And besides others are talking about left alternatives, including parecon on the latest Chomskty blog, where I suspect the other capitalist troll (for whom Chomsky is a shared bete noir) is briefly popping up. Cryofan's obsessions --- video-documentary and the critique of "identity politics" --- have their place but I wish (and here I am referring to past posts) cr. would try harder to understand that (a) talking about the harsh realities of persistent racism and racial inequality in the US is not the same as embracing "identity politics" (or even "racial spoils leftism") but an attempt (among other things) to make interracial left politics posssible and (b) black Americans are (ironically given cr.'s frequently declared disinterest in the race issue) the most consistently left/social-democratic (see the writings of political scientist Michael Dawson) and anti-imperial (3/5 of blacks opposed Iraq war at outset, compared to 1/5 of whites) parts of the electorate but are not going to combine with whites who (i) think that "racial equality" has been achieved (as cr. said earlier on this blog)...this in a nation where black net worth is ten cents on every dollar of white net worth; (ii) think that to have an honest discussion of the nation's persistent racial apartheid (separatism and related inequality) is to function as a tool in the corporate masters' effort to drive a Wedge between the people (who would all be raging social democrats if it wasn't for those damn naggy little issues like race and gender...right, that's the problem). Get real and honest about race/racism and you take the wedge away and use it against capital.

yackoff wrote: Put some hard plans on the table of how a society of socialists will work. NO! I am NOT going to waste my time on that. Instead I am going to work on my video documentary so that I can mold young minds for many years to come.....

You people are great at arguing at an emotional level. Only one person addressed the standard of "from each, to each." Yet, that standard still falls short of saying what the standard should be. UN Declaration of Human Rights: Article 25. (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. First, the health care is taken care of by showing up at the hospital. People without insurance by law must be taken care of by the hospital. That care is far superior to to that received with insurance. Don't believe me? Ask a doctor who deals with that population. Second, the standard in the U.S. is different than say, Mali, so again, who decides the standard? You people, with all your ideals, have yet to do so. So, engage me in a conversation. Put some hard plans on the table of how a society of socialists will work. BTW, don't forget the early discussion that discredited Parecon.

James wrote: You don't convert people, you outlive them. Yes. I was myself converted, however. But it took years. I cast my first vote for president for Reagan in 1984, and my second for Bush Sr. in 1988. After that, I voted 3rd party. So, people can be converted. But I never really bought into (or throughly investigated) the Leftist thesis until about 2000-2002. As a white male, I was pushed away from the Left by redneck-demonization, identity politics, and racial-spoils Leftism. The Wedge! It took a LOT of reading before my reason could fight through years (decades!) of conditioning, doctrine, and propaganda. But I have always been a heavy reader. Too think that my redneck brethren from central and west Texas would EVER do anywhere NEAR that much reading is preposterous! We need to build a subculture of Leftist education. But the people we need to reach (mostly blue collar whites) do NOT read enough. Video is the only way. And maybe music. Musically inclined lefties may want to consider making "Leftneck" country music. Leftneck country USED to be QUITE popular in this country: "Some people say a man is made outta mud. A poor man's made outta muscle and blood. Muscle and blood, skin and bones; A mind that's weak and a back that's strong. You load sixteen tons an' what do you get? Another day older and deeper and debt. St Peter don't you call me I cause can't go: I owe my soul to the company store. ....

This is the same siren song of the fit and the strong who don't give a damn about anyone who is needy. You would think they would remember the parable of the Good Samaritan, but perhaps that is asking too much. Every answer from this administration and it's cronies is more for the rich and screw eveyone else. They get the tax breaks we get the bankruptsy bill, and so on. I guess the question remains of how long we will put up with the situation - probably forever if it does not effect our own personal peace and comfort. Everything we see today is the stuff tyranny is made of, we either break the chains or hug them.

Paul, this state of affairs might go on until we hurt them bad in the wallet. That is how they do it in Europe. Specifically in countries like Denmark, where the people go on huge strikes periodically that effectively shut down the entire country. When you hurt the investors in the wallet--BAD--they are gonna do what you want. Here is a great article that talks some about this: http://www.american-pictures.com/english/racism/articles/welfare.htm And most of us here already know that Americans in general agree with many if not most leftist ideas, in principle. Here is a very good recent and comprehensive poll: http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=943 See the links near the bottom to navigate the report. But before we could take action we would need to get more Americans on board with the leftist platform. And a lot more Americans would go with the Left if we could get away from identity politics.

Who determines what needs are? The UN Declaration of Human Rights does this job relatively well, having, as it does, overwhelming international support both governmentally (support in terms of lip service, at least) and popularly. While you don't need to view it as a final document, it's a universally accepted approximation. It mentions many needs besides survival. Saddam Hussein did support terrorists. He paid Palestinian suicide bombers thus propelling what Arabs and Arab apologists call the root of the middle eastern problems. Carlos the Jackel lived in Iraq. And top Al Qaida operatives were in Iraq prior to the invasion. Let's look closer to (my) home. Tony Blair supports terrorists. He sells weapons to terrorists (and worse), thus propelling what every sane person on the planet calls a root of the world's problems. Carlos the Jackal lived in London. And top Al Qaida operatives were in England prior to September 2001. Yet there's no suggestion from anywhere that to invade England would form part of any kind of "war on terror". It would be an entirely orthogonal matter. Incidentally: I know that people don't think it's a valid use of time to debate with people like Yakov. I disagree. While we will not affect Yakov, this is not the point. It's important to debate at least a cross-section of the nonsense they post, so that anyone new reading this doesn't get the impression we don't have answers. You don't convert people, you outlive them.

He's keeping in step In the line Got his chin held high and he feels just fine Because he does What he's told But inside his heart it is black and it's hollow and it's cold He believes He loves the hand that feeds He loves it on his knees Too cowardly to see Doesn't want to change it His whole crusade's A charade And behind it all there's a price to be paid For the blood On which he dines Justified in the name of the holy and the divine So viciously naive He keeps holding on to what he wants to believe He refuses to see And keeps holding on and on and on and on

Story #1: what happened to from each according to his ability, to each according to his need? The lady isn't dead yet, so she has what she needs. Who determines what needs are? Story #2: Saddam Hussein did support terrorists. He paid Palestinian suicide bombers thus propelling what Arabs and Arab apologists call the root of the middle eastern problems. Carlos the Jackel lived in Iraq. And top Al Qaida operatives were in Iraq prior to the invasion. Further, one of the reason the troops in Iraq haven't been able to fight effectively is the military was under funded thanks to Congress who has the Constitutional authority to fund the military. Maybe these funds are what the military needs to finish the job?