Magic Statistics

A 7000-strong peacekeeping force of African Union (AU) troops and civilians has been monitoring a shaky ceasefire in Darfur, western Sudan. The only outside force in Darfur, their numbers have been far too small to prevent the killings and atrocities that have driven over two million to flee their homes. The AU's mandate runs out at the end of this month, and they have asked the United Nations to take over peacekeeping operations in the region with a contingent of at least 20,000 soldiers.

The government of Sudan, however, is adamantly opposed to a UN takeover and has encouraged mass demonstrations in Khartoum against such a plan.

Thousands of people have marched through the Sudan capital, Khartoum, to protest against UN plans to take over peacekeeping operations in Darfur.

The marchers, including militias backed by the government, chanted slogans and held banners saying such things as "UN Troops bring your coffins with you".

From another report on the protests:

Shouting "Down, Down USA", thousands of Sudanese protested in Khartoum on Wednesday against any deployment of U.N. troops in the western Darfur region.

"Get out all foreigners, we don't want you here," shouted 21-year-old student Zeinab Kheir el-Sir.

Foreign soldiers from other African countries are already in Darfur.

In its campaign against UN peacekeepers, the government has deliberately promoted violent expressions of Sudanese nationalism, Islamic radicalism, and anti-Western sentiment.

The pro-government al-Intibaha newspaper has announced the formation of two new Islamist movements threatening to target foreign interests, called the Darfur Jihad Organisation and the Blood Brigades.

The protesters handed a statement to U.N. offices demanding the immediate eviction of the top U.N. envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk. Sudanese women bearing kalashnikovs joined the march, declaring their readiness to fight foreign troops.

This was happening at the same time that representatives from the UN, the United States, and the European Union, were meeting with Sudan and the AU in Brussels in hopes of convincing Sudan to accept UN intervention.

Western powers on Wednesday sought to persuade Sudan to agree to a weak African Union peacekeeping force being turned into a more robust U.N. mission to stop killing in the Darfur region, an EU official said.
. . .
At the Security Council's request, U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan has begun planning for a shift from a 7,000-strong AU force to a larger and better equipped U.N. mission for the troubled area. U.N. officials have sought NATO and EU support.

The African Union will meet on Friday in Addis Ababa to decide whether to hand its mission to U.N. command. Sudan has been lobbying AU states to reject this changeover.

Telegraph Africa correspondent David Blair:

If Sudan holds firm and manages to veto or sabotage the deployment of UN peacekeepers, the killing in Darfur will continue into the indefinite future. If it succumbs to outside pressure and a credible international force arrives in the area, things may just get better. All this will be decided in the next few weeks. Watch closely what happens.

If Sudan remains absolutely opposed to an adequately equipped UN peacekeeping force, there's apparently little that can be done to protect Darfur, short of military invasion. Also, presence of UN soldiers is no guarantee that deadly conflict will cease. Historical experience in Bosnia, Rwanda, Haiti, and elsewhere shows that peacekeepers cannot keep the peace if one side is determined to continue fighting. Time to pray for a miracle.

Yesterday evening I mentioned the article on Dr Patrick Sookdheo published in the London Telegraph on 19 February but since removed and replaced by this notice: "This story has been removed for legal reasons". I linked to the Google cache of the article, but overnight that too has vanished, displaced by the one-sentence notice.

1984 has arrived in the realm of cyberspace.

As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. . . . All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of The Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it.

Source: George Orwell, 1984, Chapter 4.

Well, perhaps that's too melodramatic. Before the article vanished into the ether, several websites posted lengthy extracts:

• Muslims in Britain at All Too Common
• The future of modern liberalism is submission at YARGB
• Islam Plans To Take Over England. Uh, Wait A Minute, No It Doesn't at Infidel Bloggers Alliance

Among those three sites, you'll be able to read most, if not all, of the original article. I also quoted a few sentences in this post of last month.

In browsing through the comment boxes at these sites, I found some more links to Dr Sookdheo's material, including a recording of a speech, "The Challenge of Islam", he delivered at Nashotah House in 2004, his response to the 7/7 London Tube bombings, and an August 2005 report on the Islamisation of Europe.

UPDATE (9 Mar.): Many thanks to those who have sent news of two sites where the complete article is posted: here and here.

UPDATE (13 Mar.): Editor responsible for removed article removed.

I’m now going to reveal an inside secret of statisticians, provide a lesson in one of the tricks of our trade. Have you ever wondered how we persuade complete strangers to answer highly sensitive and potentially embarrassing questions? We (well, not us personally; interviewers are hired and trained to do the dirty work) ask terribly intrusive questions about all kinds of personal stuff, e.g., sexual behaviours, medical conditions, consumption of alcohol, use of illegal drugs, criminal behaviour, crime victimisation, chronic unemployment–the list goes on and on. Yet the questions get answered, thus allowing surveys to be compiled, results analysed, reports written, press releases issued. More importantly, statisticians remain gainfully employed.

This is mainly an problem of survey design. If the questions are written in the right way and the survey is appropriately designed, you’d be surprised what people will tell an anonymous interviewer who just called them up on the telephone.

The general principle is to ask sensitive or embarrassing questions in a non-threatening way. As a fer instance, here are several techniques commonly used to coax cajole sweet-talk bulldoze trick wheedle motivate people into answering this delicate question:

1. The Casual Approach:

"Do you happen to have murdered your boss?"

2. The Numbered Card:

"Would you please read off the number on this card which corresponds with what became of your boss?" (Hand card to respondent.)

1. Natural death
2. I killed him/her.
3. Other (please specify).

3. The "Everybody's Doing it" Approach: Use words that suggest that the sensitive behaviour is not uncommon.

"As you may be aware, many people have been killing their bosses these days. Would you happen to have killed yours?"

4. The "Sandwich" Method: Try putting the sensitive topic in the middle of more threatening ones, thereby reducing its perceived threat.

"Have you ever done any of the following?"

1. Fire-bombed the Parliament Buildings.
2. Murdered your boss.
3. Detonated a nuclear device.

5. The Assumption Method: Assume the behaviour; ask about frequencies and other details.

"How many of your bosses have you killed in your last 10 years of work?"

6. The "Other People" Approach:

(a) "Do you know any people who have murdered their bosses?"
(b) "How about yourself?"

7. The Illustrative Technique:

"What thoughts come to mind when you look at the following pictures?"

8. Putting the question at the end of the interview.

Taken from: "Questionnaire Design News," No. 4, Statistics Canada, March 1990.
(Adapted from: Barton, A.J. (1958). "Asking the Embarrassing Question", Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 22, pp. 67-68.)