Gabriele Zamparini asks for a correction to ZNet's Michael Albert

Dear Michael Albert, ZNet Editor
CC Prof. John Sloboda, IBC founder

On May 02, 2006, ZNet published:

Speculation Is No Substitute: A Defence Of Iraq Body Count Executive Summary
by Hamit Dardagan and John Sloboda and Josh Dougherty
May 02, 2006
Iraq Body Count

At the top of that ZNet page, the article reads: (This document is a summary of the full document available from http://www.iraqbodycount.org/editorial/defended/.)

The Iraq Body Count article published by ZNet reads:

“In an ill-informed and antagonistic campaign spearheaded by the web-based pressure group Media Lens, it has been vehemently claimed that we are grossly undercounting deaths; that we severely underrepresent the deaths caused by the US military; and that we do nothing to advertise these gross errors or to correct them. This article shows the first two claims to be false, and therefore the third claim becomes irrelevant.

Our critics are united by a deep distrust of Western media, and an ardent advocacy of the views of epidemiologist Les Roberts, a co-author of the respected Iraqi mortality study by Johns Hopkins University published in the British medical journal The Lancet in 2004.

The media stand accused by our critics of failing to give the Lancet study the priority it deserves, and for citing IBC figures in preference to it. Our critics demand that we give Lancet preference over our own ongoing work and insist that we have a moral obligation to instruct the media to do the same.

The Lancet study makes an important contribution to knowledge. However, our critics rely on highly misleading and speculative conclusions drawn from that study and its lead author, which this article analyses and rebuts.”

The full document linked to this ZNet article reads: LINK: [PDF]

Speculation is no substitute: a defence of Iraq Body Count
Hamit Dardagan,* John Sloboda,† Josh Dougherty.‡ April 2006

Perhaps the most prolific emailer associated with the Media Lens
campaign is one Gabriele Zamparini, who operates his own blog
and regularly takes media outlets and websites to task for their
use of IBC data. Occasionally Zamparini will spot genuine errors
in usage and so is justified in requesting corrections – however
his suggested replacement material itself contains errors such as
those we expose in this paper. And like the Media Lens Editors,
Zamparini is apt to indulge in wildly overblown rhetoric on the
subject of IBC:

“The damage that Iraq Body Count’s figures have done is
huge, terrifying and shocking.”
(“Silence kills and silence is complicity – a ‘follow-up’”. April 14,
2006. http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2006/04/silence-killsand-silence-is_14.htm)

Zamparini further resembles the Media Lens Editors in dodging
requests that he support such startling claims with quantifiable
evidence of actual “damage” done by IBC: http://www.blogger.
com/comment.g?blogID=857 9803&postID=11 45011 9689434334

[and]

One of the campaigns’ most persistent email crusaders, and
regular Media Lens message board users, repeatedly sent this
misinformation to anti-war groups and websites, in the case
below to groups who were using a poster featuring IBC:

“According to Les Roberts … there might be as many as
300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. … I urge you therefore to
reconsider the use of that poster. The difference between
30,000 and 300,000 can no longer be ignored. Using that
poster as well as keep referring to the IBC’s numbers,
would be a betrayal of our share ideals and values of
peace and justice.”
(Gabriele Zamparini – “Iraq: ‘Why is the Left Understating the
Carnage?’”. March 15 , 2006. http://www.thecatsdream.com/blog/2006/03/iraq-why-is-left-understating-carnage.htm)

A few days before ZNet published this IBC article, linking to the full IBC document, the BBC published an interview with IBC’s founder John Sloboda.

A few excerpts from this interview:

BBC’s question: Your critics claim that your work is a vast undercount, how do you answer that?

IBC’s John Sloboda’s answer: The claim (that our work is a vast undercount) is made basically on the back of some quite shaky extrapolations from a single study that was carried out with a particular methodology in 2004. That is the celebrated Lancet study. (…) Some critics of the Lancet study have said it's like a drunk throwing a dart at a dartboard. It's going to go somewhere, but who knows if that number is the bulls eye. Unfortunately many many people have decided to accept that that 98,000 figure is the truth - or the best approximation to the truth that we have.

(...)

BBC’s question: How would you describe Media Lens?

IBC’s John Sloboda: They are a pressure group that use aggressive and emotionally destructive tactics. On the belief that the gravity of the issues they're dealing with justify that, and also on the belief that that's somehow effective. (…) I think it's because we don't fit into their worldview. The hard left and the hard right, they're both utterly rigid, and the stuff that's going on in the middle, they can't handle. They want certainty. They want something they can latch onto and say - this is what I believe. They like the sense of being a beleaguered minority. What's most chilling is if you look at people's allegiance to much more dangerous causes than either of our critics are adopting. This is also the mindset that draws angry young men towards terrorism. And it's ultimately self-destructive."

As we all know, the new ORB poll suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age).

There are now three scientific studies that prove that this Iraq Body Count article published by ZNet was part of a smear campaign that nothing had to do with peace, justice and resistance.

Since my name was stained, I ask you therefore to publish this e-mail on the Top Page of ZNet as a correction and a reparation for the damage inflicted upon peace activists and anti-war campaigners that have just been doing their part to highlight the ugly truth of this brutal empire.

As an old time ZNet reader and former [not for my fault] contributor, I am sure ZNet will agree with this request.

Thank you

In solidarity,
Gabriele Zamparini
Editor, The Cat’s Dream