It’s statastic’s first contest of contestation.

There are five disputed territories below. Once you’ve figured out the name of the disputed territory, match the letter of the description to the number of the correct map. The first to email me all five correct answers wins a prize. (Possibly the opportunity to buy Statastico a beer.)

Let the contest begin!

A. This region occupies the area between two countries with impressive corruption. Today it was reported that the independence leader of this potentially oil rich territory said, “The people have declared their own republic!” They also have a snappy new blue and white flag.

B. This territory has been a de facto independent state since a 1993 war forced 300,000 into exile. The geography is mostly mountainous forests, with tea and citrus plantations in lower areas.

C. The livestock of this unrecognized de facto sovereign state outnumbers the Muslim population by 7 to 1. May 17-18 is this state’s “Restoration of Sovereignty” holiday.

D. This separatist region has an economy based on the production of a strong spirit that appears on their currency, out-moded industry, and, allegedly, the trafficking of women.

E. This province is currently in talks with the United Nations about a path toward independence.

Note: Maps are not to scale, but they are oriented with north at the top.

It should come as no surprise that war made quick inroads into gaming. It translates well: war is a vastly simplified solution to complex problems. War is good versus evil, it has an enormous historical body of work to draw upon, and it appeals to men who make up 62% of gamers. But in 2005, “shooter” and “fighting” games only made up only 13% of total games sales. In fact, when you look at the $1 billion computer game market, strategy games outsell shooter games by 2 to 1.

As games have become more sophisticated, they have also become less black and white in interpretation of the world. The gray areas are starting to be addressed by a genre of gaming dubbed “serious gaming.” Serious games include any training and simulation games - including the games developed for the military mentioned in pt. 2 of this series - and they are an emerging resource for policymakers as well as war mongers.

The DC-based think tank Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars founded the Serious Games Initiative to “help usher in a new series of policy education, exploration, and management tools utilizing state of the art computer game designs, technologies, and development skills.” A growing subset of serious gaming is known as activist games. Activist games are designed to raise social awareness of issues near and dear to many non-profits - issues such as poverty, war, environmental protection, even genocide. Nonetheless, the oxymoronic genre of “serious games” has met some resistance in the world of social activism, despite good intentions:

“It’s like what Adorno said, the idea that it’s barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz. But you saw this around film too, when it first started: ‘The medium isn’t serious enough to allow for serious discourse.’ I find it somewhat contradictory because people criticize games for saying there’s nothing good in them, nothing serious. But when games try to talk about a serious issue, they say, ‘You can’t talk about that in a game.’ ”

-Professor Ian Bogost, an assistant professor at the George Institute of Technology, whose book on serious games will be published next spring by M.I.T. Press - New York Times, July 23, 2006

So what do activist games look like? While some of the games have share war games’ complex interactivity in massively multi-player online games (MMOG), most are much simpler. These stripped-down games often reflect the limited non-profit budgets which support the development costs of activist games. And with few exceptions, activist games are significantly lower quality than commercial games, which may further limit their reach.

Activist gaming still faces an uphill battle with more mature media: video games are hard to create on the cheap. Activist leaflets are cheap, web sites and blogs for social change are almost free. But even comparing the motion picture media reveals that blockbuster independent documentaries such as Supersize Me, which was produced for a budget of $65,000, can be made for less than blockbuster games.

The game A Force More Powerful is a role-playing game that puts you in the position of planner for a nonviolent movement seeking social change, pitting you against a regimepowered by artificial intelligence. The game required $3 million in funding and sells for about $20. Whether it will break even is doubtful.

But do games that inspire social change need to be as complex and expensive as Sim City? The online game Darfur is Dying was produced with a $50,000 grant and has attracted almost a million users. And one of the most simple and effective meassages highlighted below is conveyed in the editorial game September 12. The harder you try to exterminate the terrorists with violence, the more you terrorists you create. Perhaps President Bush should have played this before he invaded Iraq.

If our president is unconvinced that his current tactics create more terrorists than they destroy, at least he can take solace in the fact that there is a virtual suicide bus simulation in development for the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Games have come full circle to reflect the complexity of the world around us. They train U.S. war fighters, inspire terrorists, rally the local activists, teach diplomacy to the next generation, and treat the victims of our wars that exist not only in virtual reality.

.

.

A Survey and Screenshots of Activist Games

.

International Aid & Development Games

Food Force

About: World Food Programme’s “Food Force” simulates a country threatened by a hunger crisis. Acting as a humanitarian aid worker, the player completes a series of missions to plan and complete a successful emergency response. Players have to complete a series of missions ranging from dropping food parcels from the air to using food aid to rebuild a country’s economy.

Developer: United Nations World Food Program

Reach: Downloaded 4 million times in its first year online, audience target is children ages 8-13

Price: Free

Download at: www.food-force.com

.

.

.

3rd World Farmer

About: Players manage an African farm, and are confronted with the difficult choices caused by poverty - drought, war, and starvation.

Developers: The first prototype of the game was developed as a students’ project at the IT-University in Copenhagen, Spring 2005.
Price: Free

Play online here: http://www.heavygames.com/3rdworldfarmer/showgame.asp

.

.

.

Water Alert!

About: UNICEF’s unfortunately pedantic and un-engaging game, Water Alert takes you through the minutae of collecting water sample. This is more educational than most of the games mentioned here.

Price: Free

Play online here: http://www.unicef.org/voy/explore/wes/explore_1818.html

.

.

.

Activist Games

Darfur is Dying

About: Users play the role of a Darfur refugee. In the simualation, your character runs to fetch water risking rape or abduction by Janjaweed militae before returning to the refugee camp.

Developed by: University of Southern California, Reebok Human Rights Foundation and The International Crisis Group

Funding: Reebok Human Rights Foundation

Reach: 700,000 in the first seven weeks of its release

Developer: Susana Ruiz, Ashley York, Mike Stein, Noah Keating, and Kellee Santiago - all graduate student at the University of Southern California

Cost: $50,000 grant from Reebok Human Rights Foundation and the International Crisis Group in partnership with by MTVu, MTV’s online network geared toward fostering actvism amongst university students

Price: Free

Play online: www.darfurisdying.com

.

.

.

A Force More Powerful (AFMP)

About: AFFMP is a strategy game that is intended to teach budding activists how to use non-violent methods to influence government policies. Non-violent resistance tactics include training, fund-raising and organizing, protests, strikes, mass action, civil disobedience, noncooperation, and even such mundane actions as leafletting.

The game was developed by Ivan Marovic, co-founder of Otpor (Resistance) the Serbian youth movement, the non-violent movement that helped topple Milosovic in Serbia. Another apparent collaborator is the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), which claims to have helped oust tyrants in Serbia, Georgia and most recently Ukraine.

Developer: International Center on Nonviolent Conflict allied with commercial game developer Breakaway LTD.

Funding: $3 million from International Center on Nonviolent Conflict

Price: $19.95 Order here

Web site: http://www.afmpgame.com/index.shtml

.
.

.

September 12

About: Newgaming.com has created a new sub-genre of editorialized serious games that they call newsgames. September 12 is a simple, browser-based game where your apparent goal is to bomb terrorists who are wandering amongst civilians through an Arab market. When you bomb them, collateral damage kills innocent bystanders. Grief-stricken relatives are drawn to terrorism themselves and you see that bombing only produces more terrorists.

Developer: Newsgaming.com and Gonzalo Frasca, a game designer and professor at the University of Copenhagen

Price: Free

Play online: http://www.newsgaming.com/games/index12.htm

.

.

.

Peace & Peacekeeping Games

Madrid

About: Produced by the creators of September 12, Madrid was designed within two days of the Madrid train bombings as a memorial to the 192 victims.

Developer: NewsGaming.com – “This new site showcases video games that editorialize on current international news. Its team gathers a group of professional game developers and artists who believe that videogames can not only entertain but also encourage critical thinking. Periodically, Newsgaming.com will launch online video games related to major international news events.”

Play online: http://www.newsgaming.com/newsgames.htm

.

.

.

Foreign Ground

About: A first-person perspective training game used by the Swedish military to that simulates peacekeeping operations. Instead of focusing on combat it deals mostly with solving problems using non-violent means without relying on duels and combat. The user play the role of a UN Peacekeeper and solves various tasks while on foot or vehicle patrol.

Developer: Swedish National Defence College

Web site: http://www.defencegaming.org/foreign_ground.htm

.

.

.

Diplomacy Games

Peacemaker

About: Simulates the violence and political turbulence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Players choose between the role of an Israeli prime minister or a Palestinian Authority president, making policy decisions and communicating with the international community while dealing with unexpected violent events. The games teaches high school and college students about the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by focusing on the goal of cohabitation rather than on occupation and destruction.

“It’s meant to teach people about the different perspectives. It’s just a turn-based strategy game, but we’ve inverted the war model so it’s about conflict resolution. The end goal is to create a peaceful resolution to the conflicts.” -Eric Brown of Impact Games

Developer: Impact Games

Reach: Developers are currently testing the game in limited pilots and have not yet announced a release date.

Web site: http://www.peacemakergame.com

.

.

.

Global Kids Island

About: “Second Life is a 3D virtual world in which the residents are provided with the tools required to lliterally shape the world around them. Teen Second Life is a space restricted to 13-17 year olds. Beginning in February, 2006, Global Kids has been exploring how to bring a youth development model around global issues into an island within this teen grid.”

Price: First Basic Account is free. Premium: ranges from $6.00 to $9.95 per month

Second Life blog: http://www.holymeatballs.org/second_life/

.

.

.

Treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder with Virtual Reality

Suicide Bus Bomber Virtual Reality PTSD Prototype

About: Researchers Tamar Weiss (Haifa, Israel), Azu Garcia-Palacios (Spain) and Hunter Hoffman (U.W. Seattle) are developing an immersive virtual reality simulation to help survivors or witnesses of terrorism who have developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The simulation of a terrorist bus bombing is designed to give the therapist control over the progression and intensity of the experience, including the addition of realistic visual and audio affects.

Developer: Imprint Interactive

Developer web site: http://www.imprintit.com/index.html

More info: http://seriousgamessource.com/features/feature_053006_ptsd.php

.

.

.

9/11 Virtual Reality PTSD Prototype

About: A Weill Cornell Medical College therapist and a virtual reality researcher from the University of Washington HITLab are using virtual reality to treat victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, and their regimen appears to be effective in helping patients cope with the severe psychological trauma of the event.

Web site: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/ptsd/

.

.

.

.

.

Serious and Activist Gaming News

New York Times: Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time - reprinted in full here

Business Week: Getting Activist Video Games to Market

Overview of Games for Change Conference

Newsweek: Gaming the Poor

PBS Newshour: Can “Serious Games” Improve Your Mind?

NPR: Video-Game Designers Target World Peace

Interview with Professor James Paul Gee, professor of educational psychology, UW-Madison who recently received $1.5 million from the MacArthur Foundation to support his research on learning and video games

Use of virtual reality for treating post-traumatic stress disorder

.

Blogs about Serious Gaming
Blog from Games for Change Conference

Blog from Susana Ruiz, a graduate student in the School of Cinema-Television’s Interactive Media Division at the University of Southern California, part of the team behind Darfur is Dying

Good essay about the Syrian company Afkar Media that produced Under Siege

.

Serious Games Web Sites
Games for Change

Serious Games Source

Social Impact Games

Video and computer games are no longer a nascent entertainment technology just for kids. It’s a $7 billion industry aimed at an average player who is 33 years old. In fact 69% of players are older than 18. So it should come as no surprise that an industry born to entertain is now reaching maturity. Violent video games have existed since the beginning. But innovation in gaming is allowing a wider range of viewpoints to use video games to reflect their own reality, recruit people to their causes, and even to mix foreign policy with virtual reality.

Early video games such as fighter jet flight simulators were developed in the private sector. Some simulators such as F-16 Fighting Falcon were so realistic, that the Air Force classified aspects of the game and started using them for training their own pilots.

The U.S. Department of Defense has used several video games over the years to train and recruit new soldiers. The line between government and commercial games is increasingly blurred. The Army game, America’s Army was first developed with U.S. government dollars. Now it’s available for Xbox. More recently, the government has flipped the investment equation, using venture capital money to fund video games, hoping that commercial sales will subsidize the classified versions of their strategy and war games.

But such public-private partnerships are a thin line to walk. Pandemic Studios, the creator of Mercenaries 2, has previously developed training aids for the US Army. Their most recent commercial release of the video game Mercenaries 2 features a presumably fictitious storyline about a group of ragtag mercenaries on their way to Venezuela to oust Hugo Chavez. Apparently this hit a little too close to home and there are accusations from the Venezuelan government that the game is propaganda from the U.S. Intelligence Community. Dreamy rockstar/activist, Bono, an investor in a parent company was even swept up in the controversy.

Resistance and terrorist organizations have also developed video games that tell their side of the story. Special Force is Hezbollah’s response to American video games that portray all Arabs as terrorists. In another video game, Under Siege, players violently fight the Israeli army in game apparently based on a true story of Palestinian repression and resistance.

And finally, domestic extremists have utilized video game technology to extol their own twisted values. The game Border Patrol has a deceptively innocent, cartoon-like interface. The object of the game is anything but innocent: gun down families crossing border between Mexico and the U.S. An even more technologically complex and disturbingly sinister game is blatantly named Ethnic Cleansing. The neo-Nazi goal is to wipe out all non-whites.

For the baby boom generation it is easy to ignore video games as child’s play. They are not. As you can see from the screenshots below, video games are effective tools of resistance, terror, war and death. But as much as gaming reflects the dark side of humanity, they are also showing signs of redemption, peace, and diplomacy. Stay tuned.
.

.

Commercial War Games

Real War: Rogue States

About: A commercial release where a player can choose between two player profiles: the United States and the Independence Liberation Army, an amalgam of terrorist groups with access to heavy weaponry. Based on the game Real War, an official Joint Chiefs training game, all jets, ships, and ground vehicles are taken directly from today’s military - with a few special items right off the Pentagon’s drawing boards.

Developer: Rival Interactive

Price: $9.95

Download

.

.

.

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames

About: Players drop into Venezuela to help settle an oil dispute, take on “a power hungry tyrant,” and blow up lots and lots of stuff. Though Mercenaries 2 is based on a fictional scenario, the plot is “realistic enough to believe that it could actually happen,” a Pandemic rep told the AP.

Supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, an outspoken critic of American policy, are not amused. “[Mercenaries 2] sends a message to Americans: You have a danger next door, here in Latin America, and action must be taken,” said lawmaker Gabriela Ramirez. “It’s a justification for an imperialist aggression.” Ramirez also said that Mercenaries 2 could be banned from the country by laws intended to protect children from violent games….

“I think the US government knows how to prepare campaigns of psychological terror so they can make things happen later,” said Venezuelan congressman Ismael Garcia. - Source: gamespot.com
Developer: Pandemic Studios

Price: TBA

Web Site: http://www.pandemicstudios.com/proj_mercs2.php

.

.

.

Government War Games

F2C2 (Future Force Company Commander)

About: The Army’s war game and recruiting tool for Future Combat Systems (FCS).

From army.mil: “F2C2 is a real-time tactical strategy game that allows you to learn about the Army’s FCS program by giving you command of a Mounted Company Team in the year 2015. Through gameplay, F2C2 shows how FCS is designed to give the 21st Century Soldier unprecedented situational awareness and the ability to see first, understand first, act first, and finish decisively.”

Developer: SAIC

Price: Free

.

.

.

First to Fight

About: First to Fight is a tactical first-person shooter in which you lead a four-man fire team in close-quarters urban combat in the streets and buildings of Beirut. It was created with the help of more than 40 active-duty U.S. Marines fresh from firefights in the Middle East and will be used by the United States Marine Corps for training.

Developer: Destineer & U.S. Marines. In-Q-Tel has invested in Destineer to develop additional training and simulation games for the intelligence community.

Funding: Private

Price: $29.99

Web site: http://www.firsttofight.com/html/

.

.

.

America’s Army

About: America’s Army is a tactical multiplayer first-person shooter owned by the U.S. government and released as a global public relations initiative to present an image of the current U.S. Army and help with U.S. Army recruitment. A different version of the game for Xbox and PlayStation 2, America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier, is being developed by Ubisoft in collaboration with the U.S. Army. The Xbox version was released in November, 2005.

Developer: MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School was contracted by the U.S. Army to create the game
Funding: U.S. Department of Defense

Commercial Developer: Ubisoft

Funding: U.S. Government - three years and $7.5 million

Reach: 5 million registered users as of May, 2006

Price: Army version is free; XBox version America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier is $19.99

Web site: http://www.americasarmy.com/

.

.

.

Resistance War Games

Hezbollah’s Special Force

About: Special Force is a first-person shooter military video game, published by the militant Islamic organisation Hezbollah. Special Force allows the player to take the part of an armed member of the Islamic Resistance to the Israeli invasions of Lebanon and to attack Israeli positions and Israeli politicians.

It carries a deliberate and specific political message, that is pro-Islamic and anti-Israel. On the cover of the game’s box, a message to users says “the designers of Special Force are very proud to provide you with this special product, which embodies objectively the defeat of the Israeli enemy and the heroic actions taken by heroes of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon.” It adds: “Be a partner in the victory. Fight, resist and destroy your enemy in the game of force and victory.” - Source: Wikipedia

Reach: game sold out of first run of 100,000 copies

Web site: Official website in English (Inactive as at 20 July 2006)

Video of game being played: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvmj7wj1UOw

.

.

.

Under Siege

About: Under Siege is a sequel to the video game Under Ash. It is a first-person shooter, with the option of playing the game as a third-person shooter. The game focuses on the lives of a Palestinian family between 1999 and 2002 during the second Intifada. The player shoots at Israeli Defense Force soldiers throughout most of the game. However, shooting at civilians or otherwise hurting them ends the game. The game has been described as a docugame, since all the game levels are based on on the lives of 5 Palestinian family members during the second Intifada 1999-2002. - Source: Wikipedia

Developer: Afkar Media in Damascus, Syria

Cost: About $100,000

Price: $10

Web Site: http://www.underash.net/en_download.htm

.

.

.

Hate Video Games

Border Patrol

About: Credited to the bigoted neo-Nazi Tom Metzger, puts you in the role of a hunter/murderer who patrols the southern border with Mexico. Your objective: “Keep them out…at any cost!” “Them,” by the game’s definition, are the “wetbacks” trying to cross the border from Mexico.

Developer: Tom Metzger

Funding: Private

Cost: Free

.

.

.

Ethnic Cleansing

About: Created by the fringe neo-Nazi organization National Alliance, this elaborate and incredibly offensive video game seeks to extend the reach one of the most extreme viewpoints in American culture.

A description from the Anti-Defamation League: “The player roams the streets and subways murdering ‘predatory sub-humans’ and their Jewish ‘masters’ thereby ‘saving’ the white world…. The game has a high level of background detail and various National Alliance signs and posters appear throughout while racist rock blares on the soundtrack.”

From the resistance.com: “The most politically incorrect video game ever made. Run through the ghetto blasting away various blacks and spics in an attempt to gain entrance to the subway system, where the jews have hidden to avoid the carnage. Then, if YOU’RE lucky…. you can blow away jews as they scream “Oy Vey!”, on your way to their command center.”

Developer: National Alliance

Funding: Private

Cost: $14.88

How do we know when a media technology is maturing? Look at how well it reflects society. Communications technologies often start with a limited set of users, and often a limited appeal. And there are often contradictory forces at work in media innovation, for example when Monk scribes gave way to Gutenberg’s printing press. Religious elite lost some cache, but the rewards were expanded literacy and increased creativity in literature.

Photography is an early example of a media that could both document life and afford artists a new medium to reflect life. But today there is a major difference: ubiquity. In 1997, it was estimated that there were more than 150 billion photographs existed in the U.S., and that was well before digital cameras. Today almost everyone has access to a still and video camera. Yesterday’s photojournalism is today’s snapshots. And the advent of photo sharing is also blurring the lines between amateur and commercial photography.

Music has been around about as long as Homo sapiens, and perhaps since the Homo neanderthalensis. But the transformative nature of music, its ability to fuel the social activism of the 1960s, for example, could only occur with innovations recording (starting with the phonograph) and distribution (beginning with radio). With the advent of Internet music sharing, there is a new wave of do-it-yourself creativity in music, whether through self-published albums, mashups, or local iPod DJ nights.

Documentary and experimental film is as old as the medium itself. But documentaries of the early 20th century were from the viewpoint of a few documentarians. One side of innovation in film distribution has increased the public’s access to our homes, cars, even stadium seating. The other side is more the surge in production. Just look at the Viewer Created Content on Current TV to understand how everyone from high school students to priests and drug dealers are sharing their point of view. And motion pictures are increasingly activist: The box office now has hits with political editorials, documentaries about global warming or docudramas about genocide.

So what about video games? Where do they fit in? It depends who you ask. Those under 40, probably grew up playing them and understand the appeal. The baby boomers have likely avoided video games, save for the ones that best imitate the card games they grew up with. First person shooter games have often been blamed for increased violence. The Economist magazine would beg to differ (see chart at right). Perhaps violent video games don’t reflect crime patterns perfectly, but they do reflect what’s CBS weeknight programming pretty well.

But do video games reflect more than violence in society? More on that shortly.

Sources & Notes:

DVDs include all DVD video software shipments in North America. Data provided by Digital Entertainment Group
Book sales data: Seattle Times
Movie Tickets: Motion Picture Association of America
CDs sales include only CD albums. No CD singles, LPs or downloaded music was included. Data provided by Record Industry Association of America
Games include computer and videogames. Data provided by the Entertainment Software Association

With crude oil prices hovering around $75 per barrel, big oil companies once again announced record profits yesterday. Congressional inquiries into price fixing went nowhere, primarily because oil companies don’t need to fix prices. They have a U.S. population addicted to driving (never mind what makes the car go), high switching costs, and fuel standards that make China look progressive.

How did this happen? After the record oil prices in the late 1970s - prices that produced the 1981 U.S. historical high of $3.01 per gallon (in 2006 dollars) - Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were made more stringent. From 1978 to 1981, U.S. car and truck fuel efficiency standards rose by 24%.

Then came the cheap oil of the 1990s and the SUV revolution. As a percentage of income, the average American was able to buy three times more gas in 1998 than they could in 1980. Fuel standards reflected the cheaper oil. CAFE standards in 1983 were 24.8; in 2004 the average was 24.7 miles per gallon (MPG). The U.S. has long lagged behind Europe in fuel efficiency standards, but more surprisingly, even the developing world makes us look bad.

China’s red-hot economy has meant a rapid shift from bicycles to cars, and the government is taking stern measures to increase fuel efficiency. One major difference with the U.S. CAFE standards is that Chinese standards are based on weight rather than class of vehicles. The lightest vehicles in China were required to get 38 MPG in 2005, increasing to 43 MPG by 2008. Contrast that with the U.S. CAFE standard of 27.5 MPG for cars.

The United States fuel efficiency peaked nearly two decades ago, and today the oil companies are posting record profits. But don’t blame the oil companies. They’re just small-brained, carnivorous, profit-making sharks that swim and devour money. It’s the bloated American, SUV-loving consumer that we should blame for willingly wading into these shark-infested waters. Chomp!

Notes & Sources: # Historical Real GDP per capita is in 2006 dollars. 2006 GDP estimated by statastic.com using latest Economist forecasts. Gas prices are the annual average gas price and were adjusted to 2006 dollars.
^CAFE fleet standards for cars and trucks. 2005 and 2006 data unavailable, so 2004 standards of 24.7 MPG were used.

As U.S. casualties continue to mount in Iraq, there are increasing calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Democrats remain divided on withdrawal as a viable strategy for the midterm election. Our involvement in Iraq is a political issue in Washington to be sure, but not for the right reasons.

Even if you support troops and want to prevent the further loss of American lives, it’s imperative to look beyond our own losses. Iraqi civilians are dying at the rate of 100 per day according to the United Nations. In June alone, more than 50 Iraqi civilians died for every one of our soldiers. And their deaths are increasingly cruel.

These questions might help frame the debate over a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq:

1. Are our troops exacerbating the problem or are they preventing further violence in Iraq? An Army commander in the documentary “Operation: Dreamland” commented that (paraphrased), “At this point, we are here to protect one thing: ourselves.”

2. Will the withdrawal of American troops increase the bloodletting in Iraq and lead to a full-scale civil war? If so, our current investment of troops and money might look like child’s play compared to our later involvement in a civil, or even a regional war.

3. If we left Iraq immediately and it turned into a flourishing democracy and ally, would our military credibility still be permanently weakened? Withdrawal also writes a recipe for how to engage our military in asymmetric tactics such as the use of IEDs. Iraqi insurgents have clearly learned that we didn’t stay the course in Somalia in 1994 after our troops were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

Unfortunately, our involvement in Iraq is more likely to be determined by domestic politics rather than by considering the hard questions.

If we divide the U.S. into Bush states and Kerry states based on the 2004 election, we can gain some insight into how troop casualties might affect the elections. Of the 11 states that were competitive in the 2004 presidential election (less than 5% difference between winner and loser), all but two states have higher troop losses per capita than the average of the states that Kerry carried.

With support for the war in Iraq slipping and the plummet of Bush’s approval rating, those red swing states with higher-than-average fatalities are unlikely to have the stomach for U.S. troop losses that they did two years ago.

Consider this: on a per capita basis, 585 times more Iraqi civilians than U.S. troops were killed in the month of June. Redeployment is more complicated than short-term domestic politics. Let’s hope the politicians realize that by considering how our policy will affect troop losses well beyond the midterm elections.

Notes: U.S. troop losses as of 7.26.06

Sources: Statastic research; Iraq Coalition Casualty Count; USA Today; U.S. Census

Bush announced that he would be sending more troops to Baghdad at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Bush commented that “Obviously the violence in Baghdad is still terrible, and therefore there needs to be more troops.”

This comes on the heels of the United Nations reporting that Iraq averaged more than 100 civilian deaths per day in June. The UN report was surprisingly precise in its numbers which were based on data provided by the Iraq Ministry of Health and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad.

The UN report included grim, yet matter-of fact, examples of the violence: “On 10 June, 7 bodies were found in the river ‘Malih,’ in Wasit Governorate. The victims wore civilian clothes; some were handcuffed, tortured and shot in the head. Dead bodies are regularly found in the same river.”

At Iraq Body Count (IBC), academics and peace activists have been keeping a separate record of civilian deaths based on news reports from at least two media sources. This tally includes detail that was noticeably absent from the UN report: Iraqi violence seems to be increasingly cruel. According to statastic.com analysis of IBC data, 1.4% of deaths of deaths in April, 2006 involved beheading or decapitation. This rose to 3.5% in May, and 4.4% in June.

These grim excerpts help reveal the scope of the brutality in June alone:

• June 29: Two decapitated bodies found in Kirkuk
• June 10: Severed heads of two brothers kidnapped in Baquba found
• June 10: Seven bodies found beheaded, tortured in Al-Maleh river
• June 6: Nine severed heads found in Hadid
• June 3: Eight severed heads of a Sheik and cousins who were construction workers in Hadid, (found) near Baquba
• June 1: Four men, some of whom detained by police in north Baghdad, found beheaded in Hibhib, near Baquba

It’s impossible for us to imagine death by decapitation. Such a murder would make the U.S. national news, talk shows and media swirl for days, if not weeks. But in Iraq this summer, an average of one civilian is beheaded every day .

Notes: The IBC Web site states that it underestimates the true number of casualties, although they do attempt to incorporate aggregated data from morgues that was not accounted for in media reports. IBC reports minimum and maximum civilian deaths, both are determined by discrepancies in media reports about the same event. The chart above uses the minimum monthly toll.

Because IBC data relies on media reports, any difference in reporting will naturally affect the nature of the data. For example, increased violence may inhibit journalists from reporting some civilian deaths. If violence reduces mobility of journalists, they minght inadvertently over-report especially brutal civilian deaths, thereby increasing the percentage of reported deaths that involve torture or decapitation.

Sources: Statastic research; Iraq Body Count Database; United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran an editorial that put the estimated death toll from the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo at 3.9 million, the equivalent of the entire San Francisco Bay Area population.

The war, which has involved as many as six nations, started in 1998 and continues to this day. The International Rescue Committee and The Lancet found that 98% of the deaths were due to treatable disease and malnutrition, largely the result of displacement during conflicts in the east. The remaining 160,000 deaths were a direct result of fighting.

The quality of the data in the editorial and the reports on which it is based are very impressive; the results are not. By comparing our response to the conflict in Congo with other recent wars and natural disasters, we find a discouraging record:

• -On a per capita basis, 30 times more United Nations Peacekeepers were deployed to Kosovo, where 12,000 people died, than to Congo where 3.9 million people have died this far.
• -The dollars of international aid distributed to Aceh, Indonesia in the wake of the tsunami was almost 100 times higher than the aid that has flowed to Congo.
• -In 2005 the media reported on Darfur more than 5 times more often than on the conflict in Congo.

The lessons from the data are clear:

1. 1. The media is more likely to report on wars that have been labeled genocide.
2. 2. The media is less likely to report on festering wars with no apparent good guys and bad guys.
3. 3. Media reports drive world attention. World attention drives donation rates, the reaction of our governments, and the deployment of U.N. Peacekeepers
4. 4. Citizen donations are fickle.  Governments are ultimately responsible for addressing conflicts such as that in Congo.

To learn more about the war in Congo, visit the IRC web site. There is also a link to take action by writing your Senator (assuming you’re not a Washington, DC resident).

Sources: Statastic research, International Rescue Committee, Wikipedia, Washington Post.

Every so often, Jeffrey Sachs tries to humiliate the U.S. into increasing its foreign aid. It’s true: While we give away about $19 billion annually in foreign aid, it’s not much relative to our Gross National Income. The Dutch give away about 5 times more, and we’re usually toward the bottom of the rankings for industrialized nations.

But even our Official Development Assistance - grants that promote economic development in low income countries - doesn’t really get to the poorest countries on earth. The United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI) helps quantify a country’s progress in areas such as health, education, and general economic welfare. One might think that this would be a pretty good guide to foreign aid benefiaries. But the five most under-developed countries on earth only receive $186 million in aid from the U.S., about 7% of what Israel receives annually.

At more than $10 billion in 2005, Iraq alone accounts for 45% of our total foreign aid. So the U.S. is spending about half of its development assistance solving a problem that we helped create. Actually, if you look at the top 4 countries that we give assistance to, it reads like a who’s who of failed U.S. foreign policies: Iraq is devolving into civil war, Israel has lost our roadmap to peace, Afghanistan cultivates poppies and terrorists, and we have outsourced Sudan’s genocide.

The bottom ten countries on the HDI index are miserable, conflict ridden places. But are they better off with or without our so-called aid?

Sources: Statastic, Wikipedia, United Nations Human Development Report

Notes: The “least developed countries on earth” is based on the 2003 United Nation’s Human Development Index.  Several countries that might have appeared near the bottom of the HDI were not ranked in 2003, many because of recent conflicts.  Statastico would like to give proper credit to the abject underdevelopment of the following countries that may have made the top 10 most miserable places to be a citizen, had they been ranked: Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Liberia, Afghanistan, and Monaco.  Ok, maybe not Monaco.

Given the choice, Statastico would rather read expertise than opinion. Recent polls concentrate on the latter. More interesting, however, is the wide gap between the public’s opinion and the opinion of experts. So why the obsession with public opinion polling?

The media use polling data not only to guide their own stories and advertising, but often as the basis for stories. So reporting what people think to the people who are thinking it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.

And then there are the politicians. They guide their district gerrymandering, their campaign messages and financing with public opinion polls. And of course politicians themselves also guide public opinion. Just look at how many times the phrase “addicted to oil” has appeared in the media, and you’ll understand why the public suddenly has a passion for energy independence.

But experts are polled less often. The Atlantic Monthly often polls its foreign policy experts, and Foreign Policy recently released polling data highlighting the divide between the experts and the public. These types of polls are crucial to moving debates forward.

So what informs public opinion? The average American is not devouring policy blogs, obsessing over exit strategies in Iraq, evaluating the efficiency of turning corn into ethanol; they’re not even reading newspapers. They’re thinking about what to have for dinner, searching for low airfares, and keeping up with the latest news about Brangelina.

The public is also increasingly fragmented. The Internet facilitates specialization of interests and opinion, so Americans who do pay attention to the news are more likely to get it from a partisan source. Public opinion polls supposedly help us understand the political climate, but politics are shaping that opinion. Polling the public on important issues is no more than politicians’ PR departments checking to see whether their messaging sticks.

So please poll the experts. Statastico doesn’t care what the American public thinks about pulling out of Iraq. We should care about what Iraqis think. We should care about what experts in the State Department think. Instead of obscuring scientific consensus as the Bush administration has done with global warming, help us understand possible solutions. Scientists and experts are not always right, of course. But politicians’ job is to listen to the experts and help the public understand real options for hard problems.

Sources:

1: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm#earth

2: http://web1.foreignpolicy.com/issue_julyaug_2006/TI-index/thepopularfront.html

3: http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/1009a1GlobalWarming.pdf

4: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

The polling data about scientific consensus and global warming is based on a scientific review of 928 scientific papers related to global warming. None of the papers reviewed, “disagreed with the consensus position.” Several scientists do disagree with different aspects of global warming. Here is a list of scientists who disagree with the global warming consensus.