Dissecting Leftism

 

A NEW HOLE IN THE “655,000 DEAD IRAQIS” CLAIM

I have not yet commented on the latest Lancet report of huge post-invasion mortality (”about 655,000″ extra deaths) in Iraq as it seemed perfectly obvious from the outset to me and to many others that it was just a piece of agitprop that would have done the old Soviets proud. You would have to be a Leftist to believe that nobody else noticed 655,000 corpses. I have googled up quite a few comments on the study now, however, and I have not so far found anybody who has noticed the really glaring defect in the study.

None of the comments I saw appeared to be by people who are experienced users of cluster sampling — the method used for the Lancet study. I am a VERY experienced user of cluster sampling — with many of my academic publications based on it. And the glaring error which rather explains why the study appeared in a medical journal rather than a more statistically sophisticated journal is that there was NO VALIDATION of the survey results. That your survey-takers might just sit down under a tree and “make up” their “interview” results is a routine peril and it is routine to take precautions against it — usually by going back on a later occasion and checking with the alleged respondents a proportion of all interviews handed in. Just the awareness that a sample of the respondents will be re-interviewed tends to keep the interviewers honest — though not always so, regrettably. So the results reported in the Lancet study have no credibility at all and must be regarded as garbage.

It is astounding that the authors of the study were so naive. Perhaps they WANTED their interviewers to “fudge” the results — making clear what the desired results would be, of course.

Another oddity in the Lancet article that suggests something peculiar about the authors is the claim that their interviewers were all DOCTORS — and not just any doctors but doctors bilingual in Arabic and English. I have never seen the like of that before. Experienced interviewers of some kind were what was needed and that is what is usually used, not doctors. Can we really believe that a whole corps of these rare doctors abandoned their medical duties for so long in order to do something outside their normal expertise? If true it certainly suggests a heavy political committment on the part of the doctors concerned — exactly what one would NOT want in a study claiming to be objective. To me the whole claim seems like the sort of “gilding the lily” that con-men engage in.

Other critics have noticed other vast implausibilities in the results reported — the amazingly high (98%) success-rate at getting people to consent to an interview, for instance — garbage, garbage garbage. And the lie about the death certificates actually shows how bogus the results were.

I wonder what my old friend the Liberal Avenger will make of this post? He is firmly convinced that no sound criticism of the Lancet study can be made. I predict much huffing and puffing from him. I know the sort of thing he will say: That doctors ARE experienced interviewers, for instance. He has however never been door-to-door if he thinks people respond to doorstep callers the way they respond to a doctor they go to.

**********************

SOME LEFTIST AMERICAN JEWS ARE TRYING TO WEAKEN ISRAEL

It’s that poisonous Leftist hate of success in others again

Perhaps most upsetting is the central role that a tiny minority of American Jews has played in souring ties between Jerusalem and Washington. That minority has undermined support for Israel in the Democratic Party and now seeks to undermine Israel’s position in the US in general. The Democratic Party’s sharp turn leftward in recent years has been a major factor in weakening the US-Israel alliance. The ideological transformation of the party is the fruit of a collaborative effort by leading financiers, radical-leftist ideologues and political activists. Together these forces built organizations that dictate the party’s agenda; finance the campaigns of politicians who embrace this agenda; and work to defeat conservative Republicans and Democrats who disagree with their agenda.

MoveOn.org is the most influential organization of this type established in recent years. Its principal financiers are American Jewish billionaires George Soros and Peter Lewis. MoveOn.org first gained national prominence during the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries. Howard Dean, a previously undistinguished governor of Vermont, was an eminently forgettable also-ran with a reputation among the few who knew of him as a political moderate who was hawkish on national security. Then he was discovered by MoveOn.org.

As the group began pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into his campaign,Dean veered to the left and began roundly condemning the war in Iraq. Caught off-balance by Dean’s challenge, all but one of the other candidates shifted left as well and joined him in criticizing the war. For his principled refusal to disavow the war in Iraq, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman earned the enduring enmity of MoveOn.org.

This summer, MoveOn.org played a central role in Lieberman’s defeat in the Democratic primary for his Senate seat. It contributed funds to Lieberman’s opponent, Ned Lamont, and its Web site served as a clearinghouse disseminating anti-Lieberman propaganda. Propaganda posted on the Web site was laced with blatant anti-Semitic attacks. Postings repeatedly referred to Lieberman as “the Jew Lieberman,” and “ZioNazi Lieberman.” These attacks were by no means unusual. Indeed, anti-Semitic slurs against Israel and Jewish Americans, and belittlements of the Holocaust, appear regularly in MoveOn.org Web forums….

 

According to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report, Soros and his wealthy Jewish American friends have now decided to aim their fire directly at Israel. Soros has invited Lewis and other North American Jewish plutocrats like Charles and Edgar Bronfman to join forces with him and leftist Jewish American organizations including American Friends of Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, and the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center to form a political lobby that will weaken the influence of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

Source

***************************

CANADIAN JEWS ARE LEARNING

One of the most significant phenomena in current Canadian politics – i.e. the growing shift of Canada’s Jewish community from the Liberal to the Conservative Party – took a major stride last week when the top contender for the Liberal leadership accused Israel of committing a war crime.

Michael Ignatieff, a longtime Harvard authority on human rights and international law who came back to Canada two years ago to seek the Liberal leadership, seemed to stumble into the accusation. In an interview with the Toronto Star last August, he was asked about the Israeli bombing of the Lebanese town of Qana during the Israel-Lebanon war. He replied that it was a “dirty war,” and he wasn’t “losing sleep” over Qana. But when this remark was condemned in Quebec as heartless, Ignatieff backtracked, saying he had erred in making it. Asked last Sunday on Quebec’s top-rated talk show for further explanation, he landed himself in hotter water: “I demonstrated a lack of compassion. It was a mistake. And when you make a mistake like that you have to admit it. And I admit it because I was a human rights professor, and I’m a professor of the laws of war, and what happened at Qana was a war crime.”

With that, the roof fell in. Susan Kadis, a Toronto-area MP and co-chairman of his leadership campaign, resigned: “Michael is an intelligent person and I would think that he would have a better handle on the Middle East, given his years of experience on human rights and international law. I find his comments very troubling, since the Israeli response came in the light of the unprovoked brazen kidnapping by Hezbollah of Israeli soldiers.” The Canada-Israel Committee expressed “profound concern” and demanded “clarification.” If clarification was not forthcoming, they added, they “would feel obliged to convey that message to our constituency.”

Ignatieff hastened to provide a somewhat confusing explanation. He described himself as “a lifelong friend of Israel,” and went on to say that “war crimes were committed in the war in Lebanon. I don’t think there’s any question about it, and war crimes were visited on Israeli citizens and on Lebanese citizens.” His conclusion: “We’ve got to be determined, as Canadians, to do whatever we can to make sure that military solutions are not sought in this conflict, because the consequences are more civilian deaths.”

This did not satisfy the Canada-Israel Committee, and the Israeli ambassador to Canada called the statement “upsetting and disappointing.” Bob Rae, Ignatieff’s leading opponent for the leadership, commented that it was “not wise” for him “to rush into such judgments.” But this was not the first time leaders in the Canadian Jewish community have jumped into the leadership campaign. Heather Reisman, boss of Indigo Books and chairwoman of the Liberal Party’s national policy committee in the 1980s, announced in August that she was leaving the party to support Stephen Harper and the Tories. Her announcement followed a similar statement by film producer Robert Lantos that he was taking off his “lifelong Liberal hat.” Ms. Reisman e-mailed a friend: “I’m right there alongside Robert. After a lifetime of being a Liberal, I have made the switch. It feels strange, but it is totally and unequivocally right.”

Her husband, Gerry Schwartz, head of the giant Onex Corporation, another senior Liberal and a confidant of ex-Prime Minister Paul Martin, followed the same path. He and his wife’s were among eight signatories to an ad in a Cornwall, Ontario, newspaper warmly supporting the Tories. Also in August, another senior Liberal, Sen. Gerry Grafstein, publicly criticized Liberal house leader Bill Graham for his attack on Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper over Harper’s outspoken pro-Israel policy. Harper has reversed Canada’s 50-year record as a neutral “broker” in the Middle East, said Graham. But neutrality on Israel is not Canada’s historical record, Grafstein tartly commented.

This exodus of Jews from the Liberal Party is an historic switch. All through the 20th century the dominant Liberals could count on strong Jewish support. While there were certainly some Jewish Conservatives, the community as whole tended leftward, as did Canadian academe. Within the last decade, however, Canada’s socialists have increasingly opposed Israel, much to the consternation of their long-time Jewish allies. Meanwhile, it was not immediately apparent how seriously the Ignatieff incident might damage his leadership prospects at the convention in early December. A delegate count earlier this month gave him 30 percent of the committed convention delegates and Rae 20 percent, with the other six candidates ranging from 1 percent to 17 percent.

Source

*************************

ELSEWHERE

There is a good video of “The DNC song” here — in music-hall style.

Ted Turner as Neville Chamberlain: “Thirteen months before North Korea exploded a nuclear bomb, CNN founder Ted Turner predicted that such an event would never happen. “I think we can put the North Korea and East Asia problems behind us,” Turner confidently proclaimed in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer back on September 19, 2005. Referring to the North Korean regime’s claim they were “committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs,” Turner, having just returned from a trip to North Korea, found those promises to be 100 percent credible. “I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere,” he told an incredulous Blitzer on The Situation Room.”

Islamic hackers fail: “Islamic computer hackers tried to disrupt the Vatican web site earlier this week, but failed, according to a report in the ANSA news service. In an online forum for militant Muslims, a group announced plans for an assault on the Vatican computer network, which was said to be a form of retribution for Pope Benedict’s criticism of Islam in his Regensburg speech. Police later confirmed that there had been a concerted effort by hackers to penetrate the Vatican site, but computer-security experts were able to detect and repel the attack”

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

“All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.” — 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left — inspiring Karl Marx, the American “Progressives” of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************

 

This entry was posted on Monday, October 16th, 2006 at 2:28 am and is filed under Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 6 views | Trackback | Print this page |

| More from Dr. John Ray