One positive byproduct of the war in Iraq has been the increased contact between outsiders and some of the smaller cultural groups in Iraq. I’m thinking particularly about the Yezidis, a religious group in North Iraq. Frequently misunderstood – even seen as devil-worshippers – they have been the objects of prejudice within their own country, and confusion outside it.

Then suddenly in the past few years a steady stream of outsiders have made their way to the Yezidi villages near Mosul and Dohuk. Most recently there is Michael Totten‘s report, written in February. Before that Michael Yon did something similar. And back in April 2005, Jacob Appelbaum wrote his own two-part account of the Yezidis, with many pictures he’s taken.

All three have written touching and human portraits of the Yezidis, as well as collecting ever more accurate information about their beliefs and lifestyles. They certainly compare favourably to this account of them written back in 1941, and even to the photographs from the same time, recently shown at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

As if Christ, vampires and lesbians weren’t enough, i_am_toast and  i_am_marky have treated me to Toxic Avenger, which involves “the first superhero from New Jersey” protecting a small town from evil. Better still, he does it

in a tutu

.There was also another film about panther-people, murder and incest,but nobody was paying much attention by that point. Silly films are

much

more enjoyable than ones that want to be taken seriously.

Update for those of you concerned about the Abolition of Parliament bill: the third reading looks likely to happen during the last week of this month. So far, only one Labour MP is publicly opposing it. Be scared!

Hoping to see lots of you at the

Loki-free

(*) Calling tonight.

* you don’t want to know how close I came to using a blink tag there

Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter is a fantastically wonderful film.

Spoilers below

[warning: the following is fairly macabre]

I’m trying to get my head round the death toll in Iraq. I don’t know what the latest estimates are (some past ones are collected [here](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/93), but it’s clear that we’re well over the 100,000 that the Lancet [guessed](http://www.jhsph.edu/Refugee/Front%20Page%20News/Document%20Links/Mortality_Lancet%20final.pdf) back in October 2004. Compare that to [this collection of 20th century death tolls](http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstats.htm) , and you’ll see Iraq is in the running as a serious catastrophe on historical scales. It’s caused more than [these wars and atrocities](http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat4.htm) (e.g. the Boxer rebellion), and is comihng close to [some of these](http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat3.htm) (e.g. the Lebanese Civil War). Worse, it feels like we’re only getting started.

[cross-posted to the [IAG blog](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/blog)]

Since the bombing of the Samarra mosque, nearly 1000 Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes every day. I’ve just added a report from the IOM, which sources these figures, and gives an (incomplete, but still interesting) breakdown by region and cause of migration.

As Rachel wrote recently, this is part of a change over the past few months, which has deeply affected the country in all kinds of ways.

People are refusing to carry their identity cards: the cards give their names and hence hint at their creed, and have been used by gangs to choose victims for execution. 30% of children are absent from school, largely because parents are too frightened of the violence to let them leave home, but also because schools are becoming ever more divided on religious lines.

I don’t think we yet have a good understanding of what’s going on here – but much of the information is available, just waiting to be pulled together. Some questions I’d like to see answered:

• How regionally-limited is this? Examining the figures in the IOM report above would tell us something
• How much public support is there for the militias among different communities? We might be able to find this out from opinion polls
• Who is conducting the executions, and why? Analysts with more of a military background than IAG have already devoted a lot of effort to answering this question
• Can we blame this all on the bombing of the mosque in Samarra, or did that event just exacerbate a trend that already existed?

And then there’s the money question that nobody has an answer to:

• How can the violence be stopped?

This is too funny-scary not to propagate. The British police pulled somebody off a plane because he’d been singing along to

London Calling

on the way there.

For his sake, I’m glad it wasn’t

the guns of Brixton

I’d like to point you all towards a few blogs with real content, written by people who know what they’re talking about. I’m biased about all three: I’m a contributor to the first (and member of the group running it), I was taught by the author of the second, and the driving force behind the third is a close friend who I spent a year sharing a house with. Despite that, they’re all great!

First, the [Iraq Analysis Group](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/) have just launched their new [blog](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/blog/). This is one of the most awesome groups of people I’ve ever worked with. They’ve been campaigning and thinking about Iraq since the 1990s, first as the [Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/blog/), and then as this group after sanctions were lifted. They (OK, we) have accumulated a large [collection of resources to learn about Iraq](http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/). It isn’t yet comprehensive, but it’s probably the best listing of it’s kind on the web. I strongly recommend this site: of the project I’ve been involved in, this is one of the few that I believe in 100%, and I’m continually impressed by all the people involved.

Then there’s [sarasvatam cakshuh](http://sarasvatam.blogspot.com/), a blog about Sanskrit written by Somadevah Vasudeva. The focus is on primary texts, so this probably won’t be your thing unless you read Sanskrit. That that doesn’t stop me squeeing about it, I’m afraid. There’s a good amount of [snarkiness](http://sarasvatam.blogspot.com/2006/03/skmadhynam-part-1.html) aimed at people who write about Sanskrit based on translations and small selections of original texts. Totally justified snarkiness: Somadevah is one of the few who has read immense amounts of Sanskrit literature. Some of it he’s committed to memory, and the rest is stored on his Mac, with copious annotations and some weird geek-fu that lets him instantly find any reference. Reading this blog makes me very aware of how little I know, but it also spurs me on to look at more Sanskrit texts.

Finally, another [blog](http://armstrade.blogspot.com/) on the borderline between research and campaigning. This one is from the [Campaign Against the Arms Trade](http://www.caat.org.uk/), which has been pluggin away at its issue for some 30 years, has kept going through thick and thin, and has a great body of expertise on the basty bits of British foreign policy and corporate nastiness. As with anything focussed on content rather than memes, this might be heavy going if you don’t care about the issues.

I’d like to point you all towards a few blogs with real content, written by people who know what they’re talking about. I’m biased about all three: I’m a contributor to the first (and member of the group running it), I was taught by the author of the second, and the driving force behind the third is a close friend who I spent a year sharing a house with. Despite that, they’re all great!

First, the Iraq Analysis Group have just launched their new blog. This is one of the most awesome groups of people I’ve ever worked with. They’ve been campaigning and thinking about Iraq since the 1990s, first as the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq, and then as this group after sanctions were lifted. They (OK, we) have accumulated a large collection of resources to learn about Iraq: it isn’t yet comprehensive, but it’s probably the best listing of it’s kind on the web. I strongly recommend this site: of the project I’ve been involved in, this is one of the few that I believe in 100%, and I’m continually impressed by all the people involved.

Then there’s sarasvatam cakshuh, a blog about Sanskrit written by Somadevah Vasudeva. This probably won’t be your thing unless you read Sanskrit, but that doesn’t stop me squeeing about it. As the subtitle tells you, this is about primary texts. There’s a good amount of snarkiness aimed at people who write about Sanskrit based on translations and small selections of original texts. Totally justified snarkiness: Somadevah is one of the few who has read immense amounts of Sanskrit literature. Some of it he’s committed to memory, and the rest is stored on his Mac, with copious annotations and some weird geek-fu that lets him instantly find any reference. Reading this blog makes me very aware of how little I know, but it also spurs me on to look at more Sanskrit texts.

Finally, another blog on the borderline between research and campaigning. This one is from the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, which has been pluggin away at its issue for some 30 years, has kept going through thick and thin, and has a great body of expertise on the basty bits of British foreign policy and corporate nastiness. As with anything focussed on content rather than memes, this might be heavy going if you don’t care about the issues.

Does anybody else do this?

I have an interesting dream, half wake up from it, and want to write it down. Then I dream myself finding a pen and notepad and writing it down, and go back to sleep in the knowledge that I’ve recorded it. In the morning I’m pretty irritated about it all, but if I’m lucky I’ll be able to remember the words I jotted down on the dream-notepad, and reconstruct the dream from that.

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