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Wow. Drop what you’re doing, and go read this article:

The only thing that sets these students apart from kids at any other school in America – aside from their special-ed designation – is the electric wires running from their backpacks to their wrists. Each wire connects to a silver-dollar-sized metal disk strapped with a cloth band to the student’s wrist, forearm, abdomen, thigh, or foot. Inside each student’s backpack is a battery and a generator, both about the size of a VHS cassette. Each generator is uniquely coded to a single keychain transmitter kept in a clear plastic box labeled with the student’s name. Staff members dressed neatly in ties and green aprons keep the boxes hooked to their belts, and their eyes trained on the students’ behavior. They stand ready, if they witness a behavior they’ve been told to target, to flip open the box, press the button, and deliver a painful two-second electrical shock into the student at the end of the wire.

Now, this is already astoundingly nasty stuff. The justification is that these are severely disabled children who would otherwise be locked up, drugged to the eyeballs, or killing themselves. I can’t accept it – because I wouldn’t want anybody to have that power over anyone, certainly not in such a regimented system – but at least I can see the defence. Only, read on and it gets far worse:

Sometimes, the student gets shocked for doing precisely what he’s told. In a few cases where a student is suspected of being capable of an extremely dangerous but infrequent behavior, the staff at Rotenberg won’t wait for him to try it. They will exhort him to do it, and then punish him. In these behavior rehearsal lessons, staff members will force a student to start a dangerous activity – for a person who likes to cut himself, they might get him to pick up a plastic knife on the table – and then shock him when he does.

And worse:

New York state inspectors concluded that “the background and preparation of staff is not sufficient,” that JRC shocks students “without a clear history of self-injurious behavior,” and that it uses the GED “for behaviors that are not aggressive, health dangerous, or destructive, such as nagging, swearing, and failing to keep a neat appearance.”

Edit

: wow, there have been some totally fascinating comments on this. Thanks, everybody

I’m not sure how much [this](http://kbke.livejournal.com/3726214.html?style=mine)(RUS) is tongue in cheek, but it made me laugh:

Livejournal is spying on you!


American spies have developed a special search engine. It rummages through all livejournal posts, including locked ones, and adds politically dissident authors to a special list.

All personal information which you entrust to livejournal can be subjected to a political search.

Do you oppose interference of the secret services in personal life?

Do you oppose the illegal opening of internet postings?


Be sensible…don’t use Livejournal!

Seems the CIA aren’t content with [running Facebook](http://www.infowars.com/articles/bb/facebook_bb_with_a_smile.htm),and having the [NSA](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025556.200?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19025556.200) fund research into scraping social software sites


Oh, and before anybody says it: yes, I’m sure the CIA do search through anything you put on LJ or anywhere else on the web. That is their job, isn’t it?

Update

: The report is now available online

How credible is the study about to appear in the Lancet, estimating 655,000 excess deaths in Iraq as a result of the war?

All this is based on the media coverage I’ve seen ([Wall Street Journal](http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116052896787288831-zIkhR7ZgGRS2_Bz9LXSKJsg43vQ_20071010.html?mod=rss_free), WaPo, NYT). I haven’t seen the report, so I can’t say it is trustworthy. All we can say for now is that it is consistent with other figures, and using an appropriate methodology.

First, the plausibility. Yes, 600,000 is a very big number. It is about 2.5% of the population of Iraq. But remember that this isn’t anywhere close to saying that 600,000 people were directly killed by American soldiers. It is just that the overall death rate has increased massively – that might include inadequate healthcare or nutrition, more traffic accidents, whatever. It certainly includes the violent crime, which we know there is a huge amount of. Granted, it is at the high end of the scale, and I’ll want to look at the methodology in detail before I say that I believe it.


This is not inconsistent with other accounts

. In particular, it isn’t disproved by the fact that [Iraq Body Count](http://www.iraqbodycount.org/), give a much lower death toll, between 43,850 and 48,693 deaths.

It’s because they are

counting different things

. Iraq Body Count simply totals up the civilians reported in the media as having been killed. [By their own admission](http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/defended/) this is will always be an undercount:

We have always recognised and made explicit that our media-derived database cannot be a complete record of civilians killed in violence, and have called forproperly supported counts since the beginning of our own project. What IBC continues to provide is an irrefutable baseline of certain and undeniable

deaths based on the solidity of our sources and the conservativeness of our methodology.

The figures

are

higher than the death counts based on bodies in morgues. These generally relate only to violent deaths (narrower than this study), and count about 100 a day. [Juan Cole](http://www.juancole.com/2006/10/655000-dead-in-iraq-since-bush.html) doesn’t find this discrepancy too large to deal with:

First of all, Iraqi Muslims don’t believe in embalming or open casket funerals days later. They believe that the body should be buried by sunset the day of death, in a plain wooden box. So there is no reason to expect them to take the body to the morgue. Although there are benefits to registering with the government for a death certificate, there are also disadvantages. Many families who have had someone killed believe that the government or the Americans were involved, and will have wanted to avoid drawing further attention to themselves by filling out state forms and giving their address.

Personally, I believe very large numbers of Iraqi families quietly bury their dead without telling the government of all people anything about it. Another large number of those killed is dumped in the Tigris river by their killers. A fisherman on the Tigris looking for lunch recently caught the corpse of a woman. The only remarkable thing about it is that he let it be known to the newspapers. I’m sure the Tigris fishermen throw back unwanted corpses every day.

I’m not entirely convinced by Juan Cole’s line of argument here, simply because people generally

were

able to produce death certificates:

When people reported deaths, researchers asked them about the cause and obtained death certificates in 92 percent of cases


(Baltimore Sun)

And at the Washington Monthly blog, [Kevin Drum](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_10/009727.php) adds:

This time around, the figures from their new study buttress the previous one, and also match up with other data, which suggests their methodology is on target.

How reliable is their methodology?

Not perfect, but better than anything else available. As far as I can see, the methodology is the same as what they used back in 2004 – see a collection of defences of it [here](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/128). Probably the biggest criticism of the 2004 report was the small sample size. But now, as [Rubicon](http://www.robertsilvey.com/notes/2006/10/death_in_iraq_d.html) says:

For statistical purposes, the sample size is very large, much larger (for example) than typical national voter polls in the US, which sample about 1,000 to 1,200 individual respondents. If we presume 4 persons per Iraqi household, the sample size is over 7,000 persons—in a country one-twelfth the population of the US. The data-gathering and estimation techniques are quite reliable; according to one of the lead researchers, Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins, “This is a standard methodology that the U.S. government and others have encouraged groups to use in developing countries.”

One likely methodological problem is ‘recall bias’ – that is, the possibility people will have forgotten deaths that happened in the past. This would decrease the figures for pre-war mortality compared to post-war mortality, and so give an inflated count of excess deaths. The issue was raised with the 2004 study, and the longer timescale of the latest report makes it an even bigger issue.


Note

: I am updating and amending this entry as I find out more about the study. I haven’t yet made up my mind on how much I believe it – and in any case, I still haven’t seen the report.

Blogs defending the study: [Amptoons](http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2006/10/11/ny-times-coverage-biased-against-lancet-study/), [mahablog](http://www.mahablog.com/2006/10/11/adding-up-the-commas/), [Barista](http://barista.media2.org/?p=2764), [Deltoid](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/10/600000_violent_deaths_in_iraq.php#commentsArea) (not much yet, but likely will have more in time)

Blogs arguing against it (only the ones I think have halfway-decent arguments): [Jay Reding](http://www.jayreding.com/archives/2006/10/11/lies-damned-lies-and-casualty-figures/). No doubt there are more decent arguments against this, but I’ve not been bumping into them much.

You know what would be useful and doesn’t exist? An rss feed (or similar) for UN Security Council resolutions. Anybody found one hiding somewhere in a corner of the internet?

Underneath the media hysteria, [Ella-p](http://ella-p.livejournal.com/675361.html) links to a few polls suggesting Russians aren’t really all that passionate in their loathing for Georgians. All these figures predate the current scuffle. They also conflict with my own experience of Russia, which is of a pretty widespread loathing of anybody from the Caucasus.

Firstly, [two](http://bd.fom.ru/report/cat/frontier/border/Gruzia/tb040309) [polls](http://bd.fom.ru/report/cat/frontier/border/Gruzia/tb062413) on opinions of Georgia:

So opinions of Georgia have worsened over the time Saakashvili has been president, but not to any truly terrible levels.

[Another poll](http://bd.fom.ru/report/cat/frontier/border/Gruzia/gruz_abkhaz_russ/tb063010) concerns attitudes to Abkhazia. Throughout several questions, the same small majority are in favour of keeping Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia (51%), supporting independence for Abkhazia (53%), and welcoming Abkhazia as part of Russia, if requested (54%). The rest are divided between a good 20-30% who support the opposite position, and a large number who didn’t answer.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about polls, and my Russian is ropey enough that I’ve probably misunderstood some of them. If you’re interested, look at the “Public Opinion Foundation”: [other polling data on Georgia](http://bd.fom.ru/cat/frontier/border/Gruzia/), or the English-language section.

In one of those ‘far more comprehensive than you’d ever want’ posts, here is a little background to the current dispute between Russia and Georgia. Things haven’t been quite this heated before, but all the elements have been there for a while. There’s the political grandstanding by both Putin and Saakashvili, partly animated by personal dislike but mostly a strategy to enhance their domestic popularity. Then there are the plausible underlying causes: the Russian soldiers who are in Georgia and helping separatists, and the overall story of Georgia’s attempt to get out from under Russia’s thumb.

A war of words

How much of this is just about looking good on TV? A pretty huge amount, I’d say. Saakashvili’s persona is based on being unremittingly pro-Western – look at how he has [presented](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/2/d9286bf3-6e9a-4f29-98e3-cb44e734c286.html) defiance of Russia as his personal contribution to politics:

“

…we’re no longer the country we were two or three years ago. We’re not afraid of anything and we won’t let anything upset us

”

Saakashvili loves political grandstanding against Russia. He has loudly accused Russia of [arming separatists](http://mosnews.com/news/2005/09/12/saakashvili.shtml), [sabotaging gas pipelines](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/1/207cd3c0-56a4-4b43-bc0b-9f929ca75c79.html) to leave Georgia without winter fuel, even [involvement in kidnapping a Georgian child](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/8/59c9a015-0ba7-43a1-95c5-99111c8a18f7.html). In the UN, he has [hinted](http://mosnews.com/news/2005/09/19/saakashvili.shtml) about Russian aims of annexing Georgia.

There’s a kernel of truth in a lot of this rhetoric, but Saakashvili is saying it all so publicly for his own political interests.

There’s been almost as much verbal nastiness on the Russian side. Some of it is personal tension between Putin and Saakashvili. Putin has, for instance, [blamed](http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060131/43264624.html) a previous crisis on “

the ability of individual political figures in Georgia to respond adequately to the situation in the relations

“. Then there’s the time a Russian Foreign Ministry official seemingly [encouraged assassination of Saakashvili](http://mosnews.com/news/2006/02/21/killsaakashvili.shtml)

I’d count Russia’s [ban of Georgian wine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Russian_ban_of_Moldovan_and_Georgian_wines) and mineral water, and their occasional [refusals to issue visas to Georgians](http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/2/d9286bf3-6e9a-4f29-98e3-cb44e734c286.html), in this category of ‘political grandstanding’. They aren’t insignificant (wine and water are two of Georgia’s main exports, and the million or so Georgian workers in Russia need their visas), but the measures were obviously driven by politics rather than necessity.

The unwanted soldiers

Then we get onto the underlying issues – and yes, it’s military and it’s ethnic. It’s about the Georgian separatist republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, an about the unwanted Russian troops still stationed in Georgia. Some of the troops are (not exactly neutral) ‘peacekeepers’ in the separatist regions. Others are loitering on old Soviet bases: everybody agrees they have to go at some point, but Russia is dragging its feet and trying to keep them in Georgia for another few years.

Saakashvili certainly isn’t the only Georgian to be angry about all this, but he has gone particularly far in trying to change it. There are fairly frequent military skirmishes, particularly significant ones being in South Ossetia in August 2004 (causing a row with Russia), and this summer the [Kodori gorge](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5221436.stm) of Abkhazia (causing – you guessed it – a row with Russia)

Georgia has also tried arresting the Russian soldiers before. I imagine this is partly to nudge Russia towards withdrawing them, partly for domestic political reasons, maybe even because they were breaking the law. I can’t find any for spying until recently, though – mostly they’ve been about [smuggling](http://mosnews.com/news/2005/09/30/peacekeepersheld.shtml) and [visa irregularities](http://mosnews.com/news/2006/02/01/peacekeepers.shtml). Georgian police even had a [punch-up](http://mosnews.com/news/2006/02/01/peacekeepers.shtml) with Russian soldiers after a road accident.

High politics and international relations

But, in the end, it all comes down to wider disputes. Saakashvili wants Georgia to be all but a part of Europe, Russia wants to keep it as a client state.

Georgia has always been among the most Westward-looking of the former Soviet states. Then in 2003 came the Rose Revolution, bringing in the Kremlin-baiting, West-loving [Mikheil Saakashvili](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikheil_Saakashvili), and the course was fixed. As with the separatist republics, Saakashvili has only been doing what most Georgian politicians also want – but he’s been pushing it a lot harder than they would dare.

His first foreign minister was not just (in what is perhaps a diplomatic first) the former French ambassador to Georgia, she was also Georgia’s first non-Russian-speaking foreign minister. Then there’s the new [oil pipeline](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4508633.stm) running through Georgia on its way from Azerbaijan to Turkey, cutting Russia out of the supply route. Or the [WTO membership](http://www.wto.org/English/news_e/pres00_e/pr182_e.htm) (something Russia hasn’t yet managed), the understandable [desperation to join NATO](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=3&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.georgiafornato.ge%2FMain%2520Page.htm&ei=6UgrRf24EZao-gKZvaTxBA&sig=___ncS1NG5qd4wjMwej-10ORFLalE=&sig2=fCcyNdGnLaCLH8zbQBtdRw).

All this unnerves Russia, which needs Georgia as a client state. It’s not that Georgia is intrinsically all that valuable to Russia – but if this one gets away, it undermines Russia’s ability to browbeat the rest of the post-Soviet states. Putin is seeing his ‘near abroad’ crumble as hte ‘colour revolutions’ remove pro-Russian elites, and as the CIS (a loose political union of the former Soviet states) is replaced by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Central Asia, and [GUAM](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUAM) further West.

So there you have it, from spheres of influence down to looking good on TV.

[incidentally, a lot of the articles I link above have been pulled out of a [useful del.icio.us collection](http://del.icio.us/nathanhamm/georgia%2Brussia?page=1) by Nathan Hamm of [Registan](http://www.registan.net). Even if Georgia isn’t his main focus, and he hasn’t blogged on the latest crisis, he still has a decent eye on what’s happening there. Go Nathan!]

Warning: cynicism ahead…

It seems that now Saakashvili has won his elections, he knows he can stop ratcheting up the rhetoric, and grovelingly [offer](http://izvestia.ru/politic/article3097366/) (RUS) to meet Putin anywhere for talks.

Back home, the

Industry will save Georgia

party are making a pretty futile shot at copying the imagery of the colour revolutions. Roses in hands, they held a march in protest at alleged election fraud last week – and would doubtless have been totally ignored, except that somebody decided to [take some potshots at them](http://www.panarmenian.net/news/eng/?nid=19604)

Oh, now this is getting silly…

Russian hosting company Garanthost is [closing down the accounts](http://blog.garanthost.ru/?p=12) (RUS) of Georgian customers, and refusing to serve Georgians.

Meanwhile on the other side of the fence, [Hostovik](http://www.hostovik.ru/gruzin.htm) is offering discount hosting for anybody who will display an “I am Georgian” logo on their site.

[via [webplanet](http://webplanet.ru/news/life/2006/10/09/gruzin.html) and [kbke](http://www.livejournal.com/users/kbke/)]