At the moment, SDA is recieving about 2,000 hits an hour – about 15 times
normal traffic for this time of day. But look at Captain Ed’s stats:
My logs show that the vast majority of my hits are from Canadian sources, including media and government servers (there are few on normal days). I suspect Ed’s site is showing similar demographics. That means that a lot of Canadians are becoming aware of the information.
That raises difficult poltiical optics for a government considering prosecution of bloggers or news aggregators. How does one prosecute individual citizens for sending readers to the same information that politicians and media have been recieving via blackberry (elitist hypocrisy) – information that is deeply damaging to the governing party – without the appearance of abuse of power to protect your own political interests?
The traffic is causing some loading problems here and at Captain Quarters, who is anticipating more information – and another traffic surge – later today. Our host (this blog is also hosted in the US) is “clearing the decks” to smooth server problems. I’ll second his recommendation of Hosting Matters as a blog host par excellence.
update – Welcome, MIchelle Malkin and Wizbang (as well as Instapundit readers who have been surfing in for the past couple of days).
As I wrote on Kevin’s site – this is Canada’s “Watergate”, writ large – but in this case the blogosphere is playing the role of both “Deep Throat” and the Washington Post, and in the case of Canadian sites – doing so with the threat of legal action over our heads. Kudos too, to CTV News for naming Captain’s Quarters on their broadcast last night. It is no small assist to have the nation’s leading news broadcaster pushing the envelope along side us – especially NealeNews.com, who is going to need all the backup we can give him.
update 2 Colby weighs in and suggests now is the time for American bloggers to pour on the heat. I’ll exerpt the juicy bit, but it’s a good idea to read the whole thing for context.
Under the metaconstitutional Oakes test, any infringement of individual Charter liberties, such as a publication ban, must have a “rational connection” to the intended benefit and must be the most minimally restrictive measure that can bring about the benefit. The argument here is that if a ban doesn’t work in practice–say, because American webloggers are all printing the mind-blowing stuff Canadian ones cannot–it can’t meet Oakes. With due respect to the ban, which I consider myself to have observed herein, it would actively help free the hands of Canadian webloggers and reporters if our foreign cousins were to be aggressive about “publishing” the substance of the Brault testimony outside the reach of Canadian law.
The availability of information with the Gomery publication ban, by bloggers, is the best thing happened to Canada since sliced bread.
Hopefully, this uncapable corruption will awaken the average Canadians eyes from their slumber of consumerism to see how they been manipulated by false images and practised rhetoric for decades now.
Logically it will signal change and the Liberal Party will go the way of the previous dinasaur, the Conservative Party, whose equally corrupt and above-the-law mentality caused its demise too.
Now it is time to put the whole Canadian political scene under a microscope–learn from our past errors and reform our entire parlimentarian system: a voted senate, equal representation, MP’s and party delegates that historically reside in their respective ridings, accountability for election promises.
Ted: The difference is that it’s pretty horrifying to be accused of treason, whereas if someone told me that I had “Americanized” ideas, I’d just shrug. There aren’t a whole lot of home-grown ideas anyway, and you have to get your ideas somewhere.
More seriously, I’m assuming what you mean is that it’s possible to shut down debate in Canada by accusing your opponent of having an “American” agenda. The Libs tried to do that a bit last summer, but I don’t think it works on its own, since most Canadians just aren’t that hostile to the USA as a general proposition.
It’s different if you can attach it to some sort of specific policy (“an American-style agenda on health care”); but in that case it’s just shorthand for one particular thing about America that most Canadians dislike. No politician would get very far by accusing an opponent of having an “American-style” agenda on, oh, tort reform for example. (American-style tort reform in Canada would mean damage awards here would suddenly start getting a lot bigger. In fact, maybe Bush should start campaigning for a “Canadian-style” tort system, to make tort reform sound all friendly and unassuming.)
John, Purposefully dishonest sounds like a good description of the Bush regime, which I’m sure you wholeheartedly support, despite your phony concern about honesty.
Fred Kaplan is entitled to his opinions. He is not God, and just because he says something does not make it gospel.
Beyond that, the fact of the matter, is that anybody reading his article in an honest manner would come away with the conclusion that he agrees with much of the methadology of the study, despite what he claims.
In terms of playing fun with numbers. You say that it’s towards the lower end of 8,000 compared to 100,000, but the actual interval is between 8,000 and 192,000. So, even if it is toward the lower end, it could well be between 50,000 and 75,000. There is absolutely no basis from either the Lancet study of from Mr. Kaplan’s analysis that the lower number to pick is anywhere near as low as 8,000.
Now, I realize you didn’t write this John, but it is interesting to compare this : “That means with Saddam’s daily murder rate (most common number I’ve seen is 700) the Iraqis were ahead after only 4 weeks of the war.” to the way the right wing loons have pathetically attempted to take apart the Lancet study.
Where does that 700 figure come from? Nobody questions that figure, yet it could just as easily be picked out of a hat. Why not? Because it’s not in the right wing nut interest to attempt to pick apart a number they are happy with.
One personal point. CMA’s generally don’t do taxes. We work in budgeting and internal auditing. As part of that, I’ve also studied a great deal of probabality and statistics. And, we also learn a great deal about the variables involved in counting and in arriving at figures.
“The study, though, does have a fundamental flaw that has nothing to do with the limits imposed by wartime�and this flaw suggests that, within the study’s wide range of possible casualty estimates, the real number tends more toward the lower end of the scale.”
He is referring to the fact that the Lancet study chose an area as part of the sample that he says was damaged far more than most other areas in Iraq and so skews the sample. Yet, if you read a little further down, he also qualifies his point on that quite considerably.
Once he does that, then any honest reader would conclude that the Lancet study is a reasonable attempt at arriving at a figure. I agreed with his assessment that the 100,000 figure was probably high at the time, and felt that 50,000-75,000 was a more accurate number. However, given that the study is now several months old, it would not surprise me if the actual figure is indeed now getting closer to 100,000.
“I agreed with his assessment that the 100,000 figure was probably high at the time, and felt that 50,000-75,000 was a more accurate number. However, given that the study is now several months old, it would not surprise me if the actual figure is indeed now getting closer to 100,000.”
You felt that 50,000 – 75,000 was a more accurate number? Based on what…the number of victims you treated at your Baghdad hospital? And you were able to determine from their medical records with some degree of certainity that all of them were civilians rather than “insurgents” or Iraqi soldiers? And you could tell by the bullets you extracted from their bodies that they were killed by US soldiers rather than terrorists?
What’s that? You are a Canadian CPA and not an Iraqi doctor? Well then, pardon me for saying so, but your opinion on the civilian death toll dosen’t mean shit as any figures you give have no measure of reference other than your own preconceptions and biases.
The inference from this should be obvious.
Jason, please don’t be a bigger dipshit than you normally are.
Obviously based on my assessment of reading the Lancent study and the critique of it.
Hey, it was in Ottawa that the RCMP raided a newspaper office and a reporter’s home, hauling off computers and notes. This never happened in the U.S. even in the hottest days of Watergate. Canada is becoming like Iran.
U.S. Blogger Rattles Canada’s Liberal Party
The mainstream press is catching on to the story of Ed Morrissey’s impact in breaking open the scandal that may kill Canada’s Liberal Party.
A Blog Written From Minneapolis Rattles Canada’s Liberal Party (NYT)
An American blogger has suddenly …