KIA:WIA Ratios – Conjuring With The Dead And Ignoring The Wounded

Millions of words have now been written about the numbers of Tamil civilians killed during Sri Lanka’s victory over the Tamil Tigers in May 2009; probably more words than the millions of bullets fired during the war. But something didn’t ring true.

Missing from this civilian casualty toll inflation is any mention of an immutable fact of warfare: the ratio of dead to wounded. This was first analysed in a groundbreaking study in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 1999, which examined casualty ratios in wars from 1940 to 1988. The study showed that the “number of people wounded is at least twice the number killed and may be 13 times as high” depending on the conflict type, weapons used and other factors.

Applying this ratio to Sri Lanka’s civilian casualty numbers during the last stages of Eelam War 4 shows a truly appalling misuse of civilian casualty numbers by international humanitarians, whose jaundiced view on Sri Lanka’s victory has led them to disregard basic mathematics, statistics, facts and logic.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mohamed?

The UK has a Jihadi tourism problem. Since 2001 young Jihadis holding British passports have been quietly slipping out of the country to spend their gap years gaining valuable combat experience in hot and dusty places around the world. If they aren’t killed in action, they return home (as UK passport holders they can’t be denied re-entry to Britain) helping to spread the Jihadi gospel in cold, wet Britain and plan acts of ‘home-grown’ terrorism. Since they’re UK passport holders, they can’t just be executed abroad or quietly kidnapped and imprisoned by US forces. What to do?

The solution was simple, elegant, legal and lethal.

The Home Office says: “Citizenship is a privilege not a right. The Home Secretary has the power to remove citizenship from individuals where she considers it is conducive to the public good.”

Sri Lanka War Crimes Test Series – Will Sri Lanka win The Third Test in Geneva?

Can Sri Lanka win the Third Test Match (scheduled to end around 15^th March) of the thrilling five game series of the Sri Lanka War Crimes Test Series being played at the 19th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the inter-governmental body within the United Nations System?

The US has sponsored a resolution aimed at pushing Sri Lanka into implementing its own LLRC (“Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Committee”) report, whilst unsubtly telling it that unless it does so, Sri Lanka will face unforeseen, negative consequences.

Keeping a straight bat in Geneva?

Mr Poop Goes for a Walk

Amnesty International’s attacks on Sri Lanka’s poor war-time human rights record were rebutted with a kneejerk response from nationalistic Sinhalese politicians: “Amnesty is attacking Sri Lanka because it’s in the pay of the LTTE”. Most people (myself included) scoffed at such paranoid and ridiculous attacks on Amnesty. After all, this was Amnesty International, a neutral organisation dedicated to exposing wrongdoing across on the planet, not beholden to any government and funded solely by its member’s donations.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The paranoids have finally been proven correct. In a bizarre move, Amnesty proudly proclaimed receiving over $50,0000 from an LTTE front organisation, the Canadian Tamil Congress, which recently held fundraising ‘walk-a-thon’ in Toronto for Amnesty International.

 

Alex Neve, Amnesty International accepting $50,000 from the Canadian Tamil Congress, 21st January, 2012

“If you are sure you convict him; if you are not you acquit him. That is all there is to it.”

The English jury is a remarkable political institution. It selects twelve ordinary people chosen at random from the widest population; it convenes them for a particular trial; it entrusts them with the ultimate power of decision; it permits them to carry on deliberations in secret and to report their final judgment without giving reasons for it; and after their brief and unpaid service to the state has been completed, it orders them to disband and return to private life.

Until I was called up for jury service recently, this was an abstract thought experiment. After having served and decided on three criminal trials, I consider it a privilege to have been allowed to take part in an all-too-rare exercise in genuine democracy and believe that a jury trial remains a fundamental barrier against tyranny and an over-mighty state.

I’m With You To The Bitter End

What do you call someone who incites violence and forments insurrection from afar, yet resolutely refuses to place himself in the same danger he advocates for others? A fool, clueless moron or a Grade A hypocrite?

Graham Williamson, director of the laughably misnamed ‘human rights campaign group’ Act Now (in reality a European-fronted pro-LTTE pressure group) is that Grade A hypocrite. Antony Lowenstein has already taken the space reserved for ‘clueless moron’.

Wiilamson (left) waiting for the Bitter End

Bill Hicks Was Wrong

“By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising…kill yourself. Thank you. Just planting seeds, planting seeds is all I’m doing. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan’s little helpers. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now…. Seriously, I know the marketing people: ‘There’s gonna be a joke comin’ up.’ There’s no fuckin’ joke. Suck a tail pipe, hang yourself…borrow a pistol from an NRA buddy, do something…rid the world of your evil fuckin’ presence.”

Hicks (1961-1994), one of the greatest comedians of the 20^th Century was right about so many things, but on this he may have been ever so slightly wrong. Case for the defence, this 2003 advert for AmEx featuring Martin Scorsese collecting his nephew’s birthday party pictures from an instant photo developers.

London is looted and ransacked – Amnesty Int’l calls for restraint by “all sides”

What was Amnesty International’s reaction to the London Riots when feral mobs of looters ransacked, burnt and pillaged their way through large parts of the city with the Met impotently standing aside and watching the mayhem unfold? To “call for restraint from all sides”.

This looter couldn’t restrain himself from setting fire to a van and robbing a sporting goods store.

Britain’s Impotence Problem

London’s Metropolitan Police (the Met) and the British State have re-defined the metaphor for impotence in the 21^st Century. Over three days and nights of almost unrestrained looting, arson and rioting, gangs of teenagers and young adults have proven conclusively that the Met is incapable of providing the most basic service demanded of it – protecting ordinary people from mob violence.

A looted cash till from a Fish & Chip shop, South London.

Saying Sorry Is The Hardest Thing To Do

Sri Lanka Army Deeply Regrets..

A ceremonial force once barely capable of defending itself, Sri Lanka’s Armed Forces have fought in cities and villages, in jungles and hills and at sea and in the air. They have mastered the complexities of combined operations and completely annihilated the one of the most effective insurgencies of the last fifty years, the hitherto invincible Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. But one indispensable military skill (which has been successfully mastered by all major Western powers), still eludes them. This is how to say sorry when you kill the wrong people for right reasons and kill the right people for the wrong reasons.