How Not to Report the News

Here's a video some people I know on facebook have been passing around and commenting on.  Note that they just passed on the video, no story, so what was in the video was the only information they were discussing.  The video is actually about a year and a half old, but it seems to have just been rediscovered.

Please note that there are some pretty disturbing images in here.



The story deals with an "increasing number" of babies in Falllujah born with deformities "since the war." 

According to the report, the deformity rates are so high, women are afraid to have babies anymore.  They talk about how there's no explanation for this, only suspicions on the part of the parents that it has something to do with chemicals used during the war.  The only chemical mentioned is white phosphorus, and the only users mentioned is the US.  They then show a series of pictures of babies born "within the last 8 months."  With the date of the video, that would make it though early 2009.

A doctor is interviewed, who tells us they don't actually know how many births like this there are, as "there isn't a specialist centre to register deformities."  He then goes on to say how he and other doctors have "noticed that the number of deformities has gone up in comparison to last year."  That would be 2008.  They then show a man holding his healthy young boy, noting that it took him 8 years to have a child, with the reporter telling us "doctors told him problems conceiving may also be the result of weapons used during the war."

Here we have a story with a tremendous human interest aspect.  The topic is heartbreaking and well worth reporting on and having investigated.

Why, then, did they do such a shoddy job of it?

First off, it's incredibly vague.  It tells us there's a huge increase in these deformities since "the end of the war."  This was in 2009, yet the war in Iraq was not officially declared ended by Obama until Aug. 31, 2010, almost a year after this report was made.  Perhaps they mean since Feb. 2009, when Obama began an 18 month withdrawal of combat troops?  It's unclear, yet this date would put it in the 8 month range mentioned in the video.  That, however, makes little sense.  They would be comparing births of children conceived in the last few months of the war to children conceived and born in the year previous, before the war ended.  When was the last known time any chemicals (I think we're supposed to assume these were chemical weapons) were used?  Who used them?  How much?  What were they?

The only chemical mentioned is white phosphorus.  What is white phosphorus?  They don't tell us, but we're to assume it's something that can cause deformities.  Well, let's look it up. 

It turns out white phosphorus is a substance that smells like garlic, looks like wax, and ignites when exposed to oxygen.

White Phosphorus (WP), known as Willy Pete, is used for signaling, screening, and incendiary purposes. White Phosphorus can be used to destroy the enemy's equipment or to limit his vision. It is used against vehicles, petroleum, oils and lubricants (POL) and ammunition storage areas, and enemy observers. WP can be used as an aid in target location and navigation. It is usually dispersed by explosive munitions. It can be fired with fuze time to obtain an airburst. White phosphorus was used most often during World War II in military formulations for smoke screens, marker shells, incendiaries, hand grenades, smoke markers, colored flares, and tracer bullets. 

Hmmm... nothing about possible birth defects here, and it's apparently been used for a very long time.  From the same source as above, we have:

The Battle of Fallujah was conducted from 8 to 20 November 2004 with the last fire mission on 17 November. The battle was fought by an Army, Marine and Iraqi force of about 15,000 under the I Marine Expeditionary Force (IMEF). US forces found WP to be useful in the Battle of Fallujah. "WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired “shake and bake” missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out. ... We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions."

Wait... the last fire mission was in Nov. of 2004?  The story above says this dramatic increase has been since the war ended, in 2009. Why are birth defects now being blamed on something that happened 5 years previously?  How are the parents still being exposed?

We still don't know how this stuff can lead to birth defects.  Reading more at the above link, we find out WP is some nastya$$ $hit that causes severe burns.  It's also used in...

Toothpaste?!?

It turns out WP is used in all sorts of non-military ways, including soft drinks, fertilizers, food additives and cleaners, special glasses, fine china, steel production and baking powder.  Oh, lovely... it's also an ingredient in Meth.

We also learn that, while it's never found free in nature, it's found combined with other minerals all over the world.

Finally, at the end, we look at health effects (other than the whole burning and pain thing).  The list of adverse effects is rather long.  They include:

• for "systemic intoxication" one can develop abdominal pain, jaundice and garlic breath
• "prolonged exposure" can lead to anemia, cachexia and necrosis of the bone
• "prolonged absorption" can lead to necrosis of the bone
• "overexposed workers" have complained of toothache, loose teeth, pain and swelling of the jaw and excess salivation

When it comes to necrosis of the bone, it mentions 10 cases with an exposure range between 10 months (2 cases) to 18 years.  More information and symptoms are mentioned.

Nothing about infertility or birth defects.

Looking around some more, we discover that phosphorus (in its various forms) is essential to our health, particularly in the formation of our skeletal and nervous systems, and that a lack of dietary phosphorous disrupts our muscle and blood cells, and leads to muscle and neurological disruption.

Clearly one of those things where the dose makes the poison!

So, in the video report, we have doctors saying they don't know what's causing these deaths and deformities.  Parents suspect "chemicals, such as white phosphorus, used by the Americans during the war."

Why did the reporter move from the generic term "chemicals" to the specific chemical, "white phosphorus?"  What other chemicals were used?  How?  When?  We have nothing.  Why are only the Americans specified?  Did no one else use white phosphorus?

A quick look at the history of military use of WP, we see it goes back to WWI.  Bombs, shells, rockets and grenades have been used by the British, the US, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Russia, Iraq (by Saddam Hussein), and "the Commonwealth" (individual Commonwealth countries were not named).  Though it's not on the lists I've seen, I know the Canadian military has used it since well before becoming involved in Afghanistan. While contact with WP, which has a tendency to stick to the skin, results in extremely painful, severe burns and significant damage, its primary use is for its smoke and light.  Its use is legal, and it is not classified as a chemical weapon.

In searching for this, there are plenty of articles about the use of WP as a weapon in Afghanistan, Iraq and, specifically, Fallujah.  This is not what the story is about.  These parents, as far as I can tell, were not victims of (alleged, suspected, or verified) chemical weapons attacks.  Such attacks aren't even mentioned.  Just a vague 'use of chemicals' comment.  This implies exposure, not contact.  Which means they are most likely to have been exposed to the smoke.  Smoke of all kinds can cause damage and, potentially, death, though there are no confirmed cases of anyone dying of WP smoke.

With WP being used by so many countries for so long, you would think there would be evidence of deformities and infertility connected to its use that goes back at least a couple of generations, and specifically among people people in, say, Vietnam, Chechnya and Iran, as well as among the Kurds in Iraq.  Is there any evidence of this?  Since there is apparently a rise in these deformities noted only during the Iraq war, one is lead to believe there isn't any.  From this story, these deformities seem to be an isolated explosion of cases in Fallujah.  If exposure to WP does lead to birth defects and/or infertility, this should be showing up among the people who trained with WP, as well as those who used it in combat.  Is it?  We're not told.  For all its dangers, birth defects and infertility are simply not mentioned anywhere I've seen.

So if it's not WP that's causing these deformities, what is?  This is a huge issue that deserves better handling than what this video gives us, which is little more than suspicions and insinuations.  A horrible disservice to such an important topic.

If you have taken the time to view the video on youtube, however, you'll find a link with a bit more information.  It's a "letter to the United Nations," also dated in 2009.

Here we're given some actual numbers.

In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 new born babies, 24% of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75% of the dead babies were classified as deformed.

This can be compared with data from the month of August in 2002 where there were 530 new born babies of whom six were dead within the first seven days and only one birth defect was reported.

Then there's brief mention of premature births and surviving babies developing "severe disabilities at a later stage."  No data to back it up, however.

For the above quoted portion, we've got striking dissimilarities between the two sets of numbers.  (I also don't understand why they used percentages with one, while using actual case numbers in the other.)

In a single month before the war in Iraq started, this one hospital saw 530 births.  Six of those (1.13%) died within 7 days, and of those, 1 (16.666% of the 1.13%) was a baby born with a defect.  No word on how severe the birth defect was, or if it actually caused the death.  Jump forward 7 years, and the same hospital has only 170 births in one month.  Of those, 24% (or 40.8 babies) died within the first week, and of the ones that died, 75% (30.6 babies) "were classified as deformed."  Again, nothing on the relationship between the deformities and the deaths.

At first glance, these numbers prove an incredible leap in deformities, but again, what we're lead to believe is so is actually extremely vague and inconclusive.  For all we know, someone cherry picked a single month before the war with the highest number of births and lowest number of deaths, then cherry picked a single month after the war with the lowest number of births and highest number of deaths.  We have no other information; particularly about what happened in the 7 years in between.  We have a major drop in the number of births at that hospital, coupled with a major increase in deaths and deformities, but the lack of data means we actually know nothing at all.  We're just guessing. Why did this particular hospital see such a change in numbers of births?  Are these parents locals, or do we have an influx of people from outlying areas with little or no medical care available?  What range of possible causes have been explored?

Unfortunately, what we've got to work with is largely anecdotal evidence - such as one grave digger in one cemetery who claims to be burying 4-5 babies a day, and his claim that most of these babies are deformed.  Something worth exploring more.

This letter, at least, does mention more than just WP.  It calls for "an independent committee to conduct a full investigation into the problem of the increased number of birth defects and cancer," then goes on to assume they already know the causes, namely WP and depleted uranium.  Once again, we're not given any information.  What, specifically, is depleted uranium?  How is it used?  Why and where?  By whom?  We have nothing.  Instead, the letter talks of "toxic materials used by the occupying forces including depleted uranium and white phosphorus" and the need to "prevent children and adults entering contaminated areas." 

So what is depleted uranium?  How and why is it used?

It's uranium that has about 40-60% (depending on your source) less radiation than natural uranium (military specifications for depleted uranium actually has less of the radioactive isotopes by weight). Natural uranium exists in small amounts pretty much everywhere.  We eat, breath and drink it every day.  Now, before we start freaking out about radiation levels, let's take a moment to examine the realities of radiation.  Lots of things are naturally radioactive, including food.  Like bananas and Brazil nuts.  We are all surrounded by radiation, and some geographical locations naturally have higher levels of radiation than others.  (Interestingly, many people living in these areas tend to have longer average life spans and lower levels of cancer than in other areas.  We don't know why.)

As for depleted uranium (DU), it is extremely dense.  This makes it ideal for use in things like armor plating on tanks and armor-piercing projectiles.  In the civilian world, it's used by the airline industry as counterweights, in medical radiation therapy, industrial radiography equipment and in containers radioactive materials are shipped in.

Who uses DU?  It's quite a list.  Military use includes the US, the UK, France, Canada, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies.  That's just a partial list and doesn't even count its civilian uses, both industrial/commercial and medical.  It's even used in false teeth!

Studies on cultured cells and rodents show possible negative effects ranging from neurological effects to cancers.  There are contradictory reports about the effects of exposure to DU by humans. 

If DU is a cause of these defects, given that it's used in armour plating (among other things), you'd think that soldiers surrounded by it day after day, year after year, would be showing signs of infertility and have deformed offspring as well.  Likewise, civilians exposed to it on a regular basis should also show similar signs.  Do they?  We don't know.  The letter doesn't explore the notion at all.  If it is a cause, however, the health problems attributed to exposure to DU should be showing up in the parents of these babies - yet the parents shown and interviewed seem to be healthy.  Of course, we can't judge a person's health just by looking at them, but given the nature of the claims, you'd expect at least someone to mention if the parents themselves have unusually high levels of cancer and other illnesses typically attributed to high exposure rates to DU.  One would have to assume that the parents have been exposed to these conditions for the duration of the war. If exposure to DU and WP are the cause of these defects, why are they not also causing health problems in the parents? 

There are so many possible causes for these defects that aren't being examined.  We don't even have the most basic of data to be able to understand just how widespread and serious the issue is.

What we have are an awful lot of questions, and no answers.

Going back the the video report, we have an utter failure in dealing with a major topic.  We have a heartbreaking situation that deserves to be treated with urgency and seriousness.  Though the letter gives slightly more information, it is little better. 

What the news report should have done was asked more questions.  If no answers were forthcoming (due to lack of data, for example) there should be screaming for the rooftops to find the answers, so that solutions can be found.

Instead, we have suspicions and blamecasting.

A story that should have been hard hitting on facts and questions, while sensitive to the human interest side, was instead used to find something else to blame on the US.

This does nothing to help these poor children and their families.  Worse, jumping to conclusions and playing the blame game delays finding the actual cause of these deformities, which in turn delays finding a solution, compounding the tragedy even more.

Which tells me that, once again, it's more about getting ratings by attacking popular targets (the US and the use of specific chemicals) and not about finding the truth.

Up and running

After much delay, part of a new project Eldest and I have been working on is now up and running.  Click on the new tab above, Thoughts of a Modern Day Heretic, so see what we've been up to.

Just how much thought?

I recently discovered a friend had been wondering why I haven't been talking about what's going on in Egypt these days, seeing as how I don't typically hold back on discussions of note.  The truth is, I really don't know a whole heck of a lot about Egypt and didn't feel I had anything worthwhile to contribute.  I do have a lot of questions, but in seeking answers, I have instead been finding far more questions.

Just as an example.  I keep hearing that these protests are all about Egyptians wanting freedom and democracy, and that Mubarak is a horrible dictator that needs to be ousted.  If this is true, why is it that, in a country of some 80 million people, a huge deal is made out of protests that number in the hundreds of thousands across the country (a single demonstration on Capitol Hill often exceeds those numbers)?  Even at the height of these demonstrations, the largest number I'd seen was one million protesters.  That leave 79 million who aren't, with many of those barricading themselves to protect themselves from the protesters.  There could be a lot of reasons for people to stay home.  It just strikes me as curious that such a big deal is being made of such relatively low numbers of protesters, while (again, just for example) the media consistently derided the Beck rally for being "only" a few thousand people, reducing the numbers from the estimates of 300-350 thousand attendees.  The annual March(es) for Life consistently involves hundreds of thousands of people, yet the media barely even mentions them.  A curious double standard.

Meanwhile, if Egyptians are wanting to oust a dictatorship and instill democracy, why are so many of them carrying images of a past dictator?  If it's about freedom, why do so many want Sharia law?  What is the real motivation when I read so many protesters quoted about how Mubarak has made them a "slave to Israel" or hold signs with Stars of David drawn on Mubarak's face?  What role is the Muslim Brotherhood, which seems to be the only group in the wings powerful enough to fill the Mubarak power void and its openly stated desire to eliminate Israel and all Jews, playing in all this?

I could go on.  Lots of questions.  Few answers that satisfy.

What gets me, however, is how many people are not just expressing support of Egyptian protesters, but wishing for the same for of thing in their own countries.  Just how much thought did they put into their statements?  Just as one example:

If we could all just get up enough gumption like the Egyptians... maybe we could change a few things around here....Monsanto....tar sands.....food parity.....child poverty... poverty at all..... I go on and on.....

Now, the person who wrote this isn't one who normally blathers on mindlessly like so many I see, so it seems completely out of character for her to write this.  The only responses she got to this were the online equivalent of people sitting over their cups of organic fair trade caffeine free hot beverages, sagely nodding their heads over the wisdom of one of their own.  Me, I was just perplexed.

Is this person actually equating our Canadian democratically elected government with a 30 year dictatorship?  Does she really think that, if only we were all brave enough, we should all be rampaging violently through the streets, burning, stoning, and killing?  Does this person really think we should be doing this over things like a company or oil?

Let's say we actually did what this person wanted.  We all had ourselves a grand revolution.  Then, after we've buried our dead, bandaged our wounds, replaced our burned out cars, homes and businesses, and got on with our lives, how would this actually fix the issues she brought up?  How would this solve food parity?  End poverty?

Somehow, I don't think she or the people agreeing with her or saying we, too, should have a revolution, have spent much time thinking through what they're actually saying.

How?

How can there be peace, when there's stuff like this?


New Trends in Arabic Anti-semitism from Henrik Clausen on Vimeo.

When emotion overrides logic, part two

Okay, so I goofed on my last post by somehow completely forgetting to write about part of the protester's commentary in an image folks I know on the left are passing around - I've seen it a few more times in the two days since I wrote my last post. 

So let's get right to it.  Here's the question from the first part.  Is Obama anti-war (the protester's sign says he's not).

Personally, I haven't got a clue.  To begin with, I don't know what the protester considers "anti-war."  Frankly, I thing most people, left or right, think war is a bad thing and the world would be a better place without it. The question I would ask is, at what point does a person decide that going to war is a better option than not.  At one extreme, I know people who insist that there is never, ever, any reason good enough to go to war.  I have to disagree, since it's thanks to people willing to go to war that my parents survived to meet, marry and to produce me and my siblings.  On the other hand, there are some far too willing and eager to go to war.  Like the late Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait.  Or Hamas with their constant rocketing of Israel. 

Since we're looking at US politics, I think it's safe to assume the protester's sign refers to the ongoing struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Add to the fact that most of the people I know who use the term also consider G.W. Bush to be a warmonger and believe he went to war in the Middle East, not because the US got attacked on 9/11, but because of oil.  With that in mind, let's assume that anti-war means pretty much the opposite of anything GWB supported.

So let's do some digging.  Oh, how handy.  There's a webpage comparing Obama vs McCain in regards to the war on Iraq.  This is what Obama officially campaigned on and part of what he got elected for.  Is Obama pro- or anti-war?  The site states:

- Obama was against the war in Iraq (anti-war)
- he opposed Bush in re: to Iraq, stating the US should focus on Afghanistan (anti-war on one, pro-war on the other)
- he vowed to end the war within 16 months (anti)
- advocated focusing on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan (again, pro- for Afghanistan, anti- for Iraq)
- claims opposition to the war in Iraq but supports allied efforts and "would engage the world community in combating terrorism."  (again, anti- on the one hand, pro- on the other).






This leaves me to wonder.  While running for president, he was clear about opposing the war in Iraq, but supportive of continued action in Afghanistan.  So ultimately, he would have to be considered pro-war - at least under specific circumstances.  However, since I know the people sharing this image are anti-Bush and against the war in Iraq, using that as the deciding factor, Obama would be considered anti-war. Except that, as senator, when it came time to vote, he apparently cast votes that favoured the war.  I'd link to that, but the original sources keep coming up dead.  Instead, I'm finding commentaries like this.  He was playing both sides of the field.



What about since he was elected?

Well, aside from Obama's speech declaring the war in Iraq over, I'm not finding very much other than opinion pieces.  Very little that's any official position.

So what can we conclude from this?  Well, Obama was officially anti-war in Iraq, but pro-war in Afghanistan.  He's also continued a number of Bush's policies, such as continuing Guantanamo Bay (not that he has much choice, there).  So he's... anti-war... except when he's pro-war...

The problem with drawing a conclusion is, where on the sliding scale of anti- and pro- is he?  He's not far enough in either direction to be declared one or the other.  As someone who believes that, as much as I'd prefer war never happening, there are times when war is necessary, I can understand that.

However, if we go back to the protester's sign and the interpretation of anti-war that the people I know sharing this have, Obama is officially anti-war, which is the opposite of what the protester's sign claims.

Unofficially, or what he may be forced to do, is something else entirely.

So what about the other side of the protester's equation?  Is Jesus anti-war?  According to the protester's sign, he is.

I'll have to do some digging here, as well, as I don't recall Jesus talking about war.  He certainly wasn't the pacifist some people try to paint him to be.  He showed anger, even violence, when He drove the merchants from the temple.  War, however, is a whole 'nother ballgame.  Was Jesus actually anti-war?

The question has been examined rather thoroughly by others.  Here are a few I found well worth reading.

Jesus Christ and war
Jesus: War or Peace?  On Swords
What does the Bible say about war?
God and War: What the Bible Says About the Just War theory

In the end, Jesus seems to be saying that war is an inescapable part of living in this world.  Sometimes we're called to avoid conflict, but others we're to take up arms.  Different people have different interpretations about when and what circumstances would have us choose one over the other.

But was Jesus anti

What about the war in Iraq?  Does this fall into what's considered a "just war?" 

Well, that certainly leaves things up for debate, and I can easily see people being able to use the "just war" theology to bolster either view, depending on how they already felt about the war.


In looking at the protester's claim, that Jesus was anti-war, I would say that, according to the Bible, the answer is actually no, even though he certainly wasn't pro-war.  In using the interpretation of anti-war I see among my friends on the left, I'm not so sure. On the one hand, a lot of them claim there is no such thing as a "just" war, and all war is evil, but since pretty much all of them are also atheists, they wouldn't believe in Jesus, anyhow.  Their use of this image isn't because they actually agree that Jesus was anti-war, but a dig at what they describe as the religious right (because, apparently, there's no such thing as a religious left).  What they're actually doing is using this image as just another way to mock anyone who disagrees with Obama as a racist hypocrite.  They are the ones projecting an interpretation of Jesus as a pacifist; something Christians don't agree on themselves. 

The leftists I know who are passing this image around and tittering away at how cleverly the right is being skewered with their own hypocrisy clearly haven't examined what the sign is actually saying.  Let's recap the statements it makes, with my conclusions in (brackets).

Obama is NOT brown skinned.  (Well.. duh!  Of course he is.  The left can't seem to let us forget that.)
Obama is NOT anti-war (officially, he is, but it's questionable)
Obama is NOT a socialist (by definition, as a Democrat, he is; the only question is where on the scale he falls between free market capitalism and communism)
Obama is NOT trying to give away free healthcare (quibbles about what "free" health care actually is, passing the "Obamacare" was one of the things he ran on and got elected for.).

On the other hand, they are saying:

Jesus WAS brown skinned (as a Jew, Jesus would be classified as a Caucasian, which is considered lighter skinned or white.  In reality, the term includes peoples of varying shades of brown.  The best we can do is compare Obama to modern ethnic Jews, at which point we'd have to say that no, he was unlikely to have had skin as dark as Obama's Caucasian/Kenyan genetics.)
Jesus WAS ant-war (debatable, but unlikely.  Jesus was not a pacifist, and He was clear that war was pretty much the normal state of affairs for this world.)
Jesus WAS a socialist (Jesus taught that we, not the state, are responsible for caring for our fellow man.)
Jesus WAS giving away free healthcare (Jesus may have performed miracle healings and taught that all people are deserving of care, not just those of wealth and status, but nothing about the state providing health care for "free.")

Now, each of these points were pretty easy to counter - especially the laughable "brown skinned" point.  Considering each point made on the sign is essentially false (though some are open to interpretation), you'd think the quote would have been something the folks on the right would be sharing among themselves, tittering at how an Obama protester was embarrassing him (her?) self by holding it up. 

Instead of calling out the obvious errors made in the sign, the leftists, always keen to promote their own visceral disgust and hatred of the right, neglect logic. 

And make fools of themselves, instead.

When emotion overrides logic and reality

It's always interesting to see what sorts of images, articles and editorials get shared by people of strong political or religions beliefs.  In some cases, it displays the willingness of the sharers to suspend logic, so long as it supports their emotionally based positions.

Take this image, being passed around by people I know on the political far left, as something that points out how /har har/ stupid and foolish anyone who disagrees with Obama is.

So what are we looking at here?  It appears to be some sort of demonstration, but that's about it.  You can't see who's holding the sign.  There's no context given.  All we have is the text of the sign.  From that, we can assume the person holding the sign is an Obama supporter, and that the sign reflects what that person thinks of Obama and those who oppose him.

Let's examine what the sign says, then.  It says that Obama is *not* a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who gives away from healthcare.  Then it implies that Jesus was all of those things.

Let's look at the first, three part statement.

Question:  Is Obama brown skinned?  This sign says he isn't, but of course he is.  In fact, the political left seems to be obsessed over his brown skin.  They also seem to assume the right is, as well, and that the right views the colour of Obama's skin as a negative.  Now, certainly there are racists, but any articles, editorials, etc that I've read from people on the right, the colour of his skin is never rarely brought up (correction: it's brought up, usually in response to accusations from the left or pointing out how the race card keeps being played, but when the authors deal with the issues and why they oppose Obama, they talk about what he says and does, not his skin colour).  Yet the left seems to assume that anyone who opposes Obama does so because of the colour of his skin, rather than, say, the fact that he's added a trillion dollars to the US debt, or any of a number of other issues people have problems with.

Curiously, this would imply that, because Obama has brown skin, this should exempt him from any criticism, and that he should be getting some sort of free pass because of it.  Which sounds pretty racist itself. 

This also calls to mind the frequent accusation from the left that the right just won't accept that we have a black president.  Again, they're assuming the colour of his skin is the only thing that matters (the frequency of this claim makes me think they, themselves, can't get past the melanin content of his skin and are projecting that onto those they disagree with), but they are also ignoring the fact that, ethnically, Obama is half white.  Why the obsession with the black half of his genetic make up and not the white?  This implies a dual racism; a patronizing racism that forgives his flaws because of the darkness of his skin, as well as displaying racism in downplaying/ignoring/whatever that he is part caucasian, as if the white half of his ethnicity is something to be embarrassed about or something.  Examining the possible motivations behind all this is an interesting thought experiment.

Next question: Is Obama a socialist?  Again, the sign says he isn't. 

First, let's look at the definition of socialism.

so·cial·ism (sō′s̸həl iz′əm)

noun

1. any of various theories or systems of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society or the community rather than by private individuals, with all members of society or the community sharing in the work and the products
2. 1. a political movement for establishing such a system
   2. the doctrines, methods, etc. of the Socialist parties
3. the stage of society, in Marxist doctrine, coming between the capitalist stage and the communist stage, in which private ownership of the means of production and distribution has been eliminated

 Also:

socialist

adjective: communist, Marxist, Labour, red, progressive, social democratic, leftist, Fabian, Leninist, Trotskyist, syndicalist, members of the ruling Socialist party

noun: left-winger, communist, Marxist, red, social democrat, leftist, Fabian, Leninist, Trotskyist, syndicalist, Labourite, progressivist.  His views have always been popular among socialists.

So is Obama a socialist?

Is the Pope Catholic?

The fact that Obama is on the left side of the spectrum makes him, by definition, a socialist.  The real question is; with socialism being a stage between capitalism and communism, where does he fit?

Third question: Does Obama give away free healthcare?  Again, the sign says he doesn't.  At this point, one would have to argue the various points of "Obamacare" and whether or not it's really free (it isn't, of course - "free" health care isn't free; it's just paid for through taxes rather than individuals directly), and so on.  Quibbling of details aside, however, from a pragmatic view, the answer would be, yes, he does.

Now, let's look at the last part; the implication that, while Obama is none of these things, Jesus is.

Let's look at those three questions again.

First: Was Jesus brown skinned.

Well, it's hard to say.  We don't know what he actually looked like.  Jesus was, however, a Jew.  Throughout their history, Jews discouraged marriage to outsiders, which is probably why the term "Jew" is both ethnic and religious.  So we can look to modern, ethnic Jews to answer this question.

The answer?

I'm not sure.  Part of the problem is that "white" has a pretty broad spectrum, too.  Usually when people say "white" they refer to caucasians.  Let's go back to the dictionary, shall we?

Cau·ca·sian  (kô-kzhn, -kzhn)

adj.

1.

a. Anthropology Of or being a human racial classification distinguished especially by very light to brown skin pigmentation and straight to wavy or curly hair, and including peoples indigenous to Europe, northern Africa, western Asia, and India. See Usage Note at race¹.

b. Of or relating to a racial group having white skin, especially one of European origin; white.

2. Of or relating to the Caucasus region or its peoples, languages, or cultures.

3. Of or relating to a group of three language families spoken in the region of the Caucasus mountains, including Chechen, Abkhaz, and the Kartvelian languages.

 So while it generally means people with white skin, the category also includes very light brown to brown pigmentation.  Oops... take a look at the thesaurus portion of that link.  It includes Semites.

Semite [ˈsiːmaɪt] less commonly, Shemiten

1. (Social Science / Peoples) a member of the group of Caucasoid peoples who speak a Semitic language, including the Jews and Arabs as well as the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians, and Phoenicians

2. (Social Science / Peoples) another word for a Jew

So not only does caucasian include Jews, but Arabs as well.

Back to the question: was Jesus brown skinned?  Being Jewish, he would be classified as caucasian, which is associated with lighter skin of various hues.  Since this is a comparison to Obama, we would have to clarify by asking, would Jesus have had a skin colour as dark as Obama's?  I think we could safely say the answer is no, though it is impossible to be know for sure.

Next question: Was Jesus a socialist?

The most basic answer would have to be no.  Socialism didn't really exist during the time Jesus.  Neither did democracy.  There was no "left" or "right," as we use the terms now.  Even the early forms of both are quite different from how they are practised and defined today.

Let's look again at the definition of socialism and rephrase the question.  Go ahead and scroll up and reread it.

Since we're looking at the modern, political definition of socialism, I think we'll have to go beyond definition number one; it's too generic for our purposes.  One of the things I note is that political socialism tends towards atheism (Marxism, communism, Leninism, etc.), at which point Jesus couldn't possibly be a political socialist.  Socialism itself, however, isn't anti-religious, and there are Christian socialists.  Would Jesus be a modern socialist?  I find it highly unlikely, simply because modern socialism relies on government to take on responsibilities that Jesus taught were the realm of individuals.  We are supposed to be charitable, care for each other as a community, etc., not the government.  When it comes to modern, political socialism, that answer to whether or not Jesus was a socialist would have to be, no.

Then there's the final part: Did Jesus give away free healthcare?

Well, the Bible does describe Jesus performing miracle healings.  That's not exactly equivalent to free healthcare, though.  He also rejected the notion of only the wealthy and important being deserving of care, as he treated the poor and nameless as those of means.  Certainly, we're expected to treat all who are in need of it, regardless of wealth or status.  But "free" health care?  I think that's a bit of a stretch. 

At this point, I think we need to examine just what people mean when they say "free health care."  This would require examining what the "Obamacare" package will actually do.  That's something even the people who wrote it can't agree on - no surprise considering the proposal is a 3000 page monstrosity.  From what little I do know about it, however, I would have to say that no, Jesus would not be giving away the sort of "free healthcare" found with "Obamacare."  I'll leave you to research it more on your own time, but for now, I'll leave you with this opinion piece I was rather surprised to find.

To bring it back to our protesters sign that my leftist friends found to be such a wonderful dig at those racist folks on the right, they've once again allowed their emotional and visceral hatred of all things right to override reality.  Even if one didn't believe in Jesus, the first part alone is completely wrong.

Obama is brown skinned, he is a socialist, and he is trying to provide "free" healthcare.

Not of that seems to matter, though, if the leftist think they're making a good dig at the right.

update: Silly me!  For some strange reason, I missed the "anti-war" part of the sign completely.  I'll deal with that in a separate post.

How not to do science...

While perusing through the health tab on Google news this morning (why, oh why, do I inflict this on myself?), I came across a group of articles with headlines that caught my attention. They all dealt with a newly released study that showed First Nations babies in Quebec were suddenly having much higher birth weights than "normal" and that these bigger babies were more likely to die.  Eventually, I found the actual "study" these stories were based on.  Rather than link to a bunch of articles, I'll just link directly to the pdf.

What a horrifyingly bad example of what passes for "science" these days!

To read the news articles, First Nations babies in Quebec are suddenly being born much heavier than normal - the heaviest in the world, in fact (at least as for as the authors of the study know) - and that these "macrosomia" babies are at much greater risk of dying.

How was this determined?  Have medical professionals in First Nations communities noticed these higher incidents of vastly increased birth weights?  Have they expressed concern because so many of these kids are dieing?  Has some strange malady emerged that is causing babies to develop into abnormally large size?

The answer to all of the above would be "no."

It turns out these researchers didn't talk to a single First Nations person at all, nor did they talk to anyone who actually medically treats a high number of First Nations women and their babies.

The study is a data dredge.

That, in itself, is bad enough (and to be fair, in the paper, they did acknowledge some problems with this method).  There are so many other things that make it worse.

First, let's look at what "infant macrosomia"actually is.  In this study, it's simply babies greater that 4 kg in weight.

That would be 8.8 pounds.

The average birth weight for a healthy, full term, baby is between 7 and 8 pounds (males average slightly higher than females).

Low birth weight has long been the primary concern; in fact, reducing the number of low birth weight babes is often used as a measurement of a nation's success in improving the general health of the population.

Here, they're talking about babies in the 90th percentile or higher.

For the record, my own kids were born at 9 pounds and 9 pounds 6 ounces, which put them in the 95th percentile on the growth charts.  I grow big babies.  This was considered a good thing, back then.

Now, there can indeed be concerns in regards to unusually large children, when it can be shown that this size is in some way unnatural and harmful.  For example, if the mother had T2 diabetes, or some other health complication that can affect the growth and development of the fetus.  Does this study factor in any of this?

No.

They do know that diabetes rates tend to be higher among First Nations, but that's not something they looked for in this study.  They didn't look at maternal health at all.  They only looked at birth weights.

Oh, then we have another issue.

In the first article I found, I was astounded to read that they were comparing First Nations births in Quebec with births to women who's mother tongue was French.

They were comparing an ethnic group to a lingual group.

On finding the paper, however, I discovered this report was wrong.  They were actually comparing ...

... two lingual groups.

Since this was a data dredge, they defined who was First Nations and who wasn't by what was listed as the mother's primary language.  (They excluded women who spoke Inuit.)  They do go on to describe how this might not be all that accurate, since some First Nations women in Quebec might actually have French as their mother tongue, but figured that this worked out all right, because they had a much larger group of French speaking women (over 600,000) to compare against the First Nations language speaking group (over 5,000).

So it wasn't an ethnic group being compared to a lingual group.  It was two lingual groups being compared to each other, and one of those groups is about 120x larger than the other, which made it okay.

At this point, the study is already useless.  We have one group defined as First Nations, but we don't know if they actually are First Nations; we only know the mothers spoke a First Nations language.  Even if the mothers were actually First Nations, mothers are only half of the genetic equation; fathers aren't even mentioned.  Then we have another group defined by French being their primary language.  Again, we don't know the actual ethnicity of these mothers.  We don't know anything about maternal health.  We don't know anything about where they live, and if that might be affecting them (though the paper does speculate that First Nations women isolated enough to not have French as their mother tongue might also be isolated enough to not have access to medical care - more on that later).  Not only is it a data dredge, but the definitions of who fits into the parameters is essentially arbitrary, and there are so many factors not taken into account, the whole thing is essentially rendered meaningless. 

Ah, but that didn't stop our intrepid researchers!

On to the next point!

Let's look at the parameters they use to determine that bigger babies among "First Nations" women are faring worse.  It's pretty straightforward.  They look at the death rates, with postneonatal deaths defined as between the ages of 28 days and 1 year.  They determined that "macrosomia" babies have postneonatal death rates 8.3 times higher in the "First Nations" group than in the "French" speaking group.

So now we're looking, not at health, but at mortality.  We don't actually know anything about the health of any of these babies, just that X number of them died.  We don't even know how or why they died, other than SIDS, which has its own category.  For all we know, some of these babies died in accidents, not because of ill health.  Also, since we're only looking at mortality rates, we don't know if the bigger babies that didn't die are at all unhealthier than their smaller counterparts.

They did try to factor in the remoteness problem, acknowledging that lack of timely medical care could lead to increased deaths.  How did they do this?

They defined a remote area by looking at census data for how many people living in the postal code areas listed for the mothers commuted to urban centres for work.

*facepalm*

As the paper is concluded, the authors talk about such things as how we know about the higher rates of diabetes among First Nations, so improving treatment for mothers might help reduce incidence of macrosomian among First Nations babies - except that they didn't actually have any data about diabetes or glucose tolerance.

Then they say more research in needed.  Yeah... and more research grants, I'm sure!

When I first started reading about this, and how it was talking about there was an increased trend towards macrosomia (what a strange word - it sounds like a sleep disorder) among First Nations babies in Quebec, I assumed it was actually recent.  It turns out that all these numbers they looked at are for births from 1991 to 2001.  They explain why in the paper.  The babies in this data dredge that didn't die in their first year would be turning anywhere from 10 to 20 years old this year.  It would be safe to assume at least some of these children have died in the last one to two decades.  There's nothing to tell us these bigger babies that didn't die in their first year have any more or less health problems than average sized or smaller babies, just as we know nothing about their actual health in their first year; all we know is that they didn't die.

Oh, and the actual number of larger babies dieing before their 1st birthday in the space of ten years?

Nine out of 1,424.


In the same time period, for postneonatal babies in the 10-90th percentile, 19 out of 3, 542 died.


Adjusting to per/1000, that's a change from 5.4 deaths of average sized babies (though 10-90% is a rather huge range to compare against) to 6.3 for larger babies.


The difference between postneonatal mortality rates in the 10-90th percentile vs the greater than 90th percentile works out to be an increase of .9/1000 births over the space of ten years.


One would suspect that there's far more than infant size that's causing the disparity in death rates between the First Nations language group and the French language group. 


Based on all this, the authors state "Parents and caregivers should be vigilant about the substantially elevated risk of postneonatal death among macrosomic infants of First Nations women."  However, their data also shows that being bigger might actually have protective qualities for perinatal babies.  So... up to the first 28 days, being bigger is good, but after that 28 day mark, their size is suddenly a risk factor?

There is so much wrong with this "study," it was hard to actually read it.  The entire foundation it's based on is meaningless.  They could just as easily be telling us that speaking a First Nations language leads to higher infant mortality rates.  This, however, seems to be what passes for "science" these days.