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Power Law Explains Insurgent Violence

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Sam Wormley

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Dec 16, 2009, 11:58:11 PM12/16/09
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Power Law Explains Insurgent Violence
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1216/1

By Richard Kerr
ScienceNOW Daily News
16 December 2009

War is messy, but it may be predictable. According to a study of nine recent insurgencies
around the world, some patterns, such as the risk of violence over time, can be predicted
from just a few simple aspects of the conflict.

The insight comes from a study led by Juan Camilo Bohorquez, a physicist at the University
of the Andes in Bogotá. In 2005, his team started assembling a database of casualties from
the insurgent wars of nine countries: Afghanistan, Peru, Colombia, Indonesia, Iraq,
Israel, Northern Ireland, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. The data consisted of 54,679 acts of
violence--which they tallied from government and media reports--including the time, date,
and the number of casualties for each event. The death toll ranged from a single
assassination on the streets of Bogotá to nearly 1000 deaths in August 2005 in Baghdad
during a terror-induced stampede.

Although the conflicts have taken place in vastly different contexts--in environments as
diverse as jungles, deserts, and urban areas, and with motivations such as religion and
land disputes--two striking similarities emerged from the data.

more: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1216/1

Robert Higgins

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Dec 17, 2009, 9:42:12 AM12/17/09
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Such analyses are virtually worthless. Using media and government
reports on casualties is inherently inaccurate. There are cases of
both gross under-reporting and gross over-reporting of deaths. One
effect that the physicist author is oblivious to is the tendency to
hide "score settling" in political violence. (For example, you bump
off a romantic rival, and hang a sign saying "spy" or "collaborator"
around his neck). The dates chosen for each "insurgency" are
arbitrary. Why is Iraq only until 2005, but Afghanistan is up to 2008?
Certainly the destruction of the Golden Dome increased violence, and
the surge reduced it - both of these effects are hardly random. The
dates for Indonesia are for a very short time period (1996-2001), but
there has been violence in East Timor since at least 1974. The dates
chosen mix two very different conflicts - the first was the struggle
of East Timor for independence, the second, attacks by pro-Indonesian
militias against the new East Timor state.

Even more suspicious is what the author (a Colombian) surely knows
about his own country. Colombia has a higher murder rate than any
other country in the world, 8 times that of the US. Yet the CIA and
State Department consider only about an eighth of the murder rate to
be related to narco- or political terrorism. In other words, even
without an "insurgency", the murder rate in Colombia would still be
the highest in the world. How does the author know which "individual
assassinations" are related to "insurgency", and which are the result
of the general lawlessness of a Third World country?

Any reasonable conclusions the authors might had extracted from the
poor data set regarding the effect of the media are eliminated by the
span of time the authors use. Comparing the media environment in
Northern Ireland in 1969 to that of Iraq in 2005 is ludicrous. The
"cherry-picking" of data to satisfy a pre-ordained conclusion is
obvious from the dates chosen for each conflict, and the conflicts
chosen.

Paul Cardinale

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Dec 17, 2009, 9:57:12 AM12/17/09
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Stop behaving like a jackass. You incessently post OT political crap
here. Go somewhere else to defecate.

Paul Cardinale

Androcles

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Dec 17, 2009, 11:01:04 AM12/17/09
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"Paul Cardinale" <pcard...@volcanomail.com> wrote in message
news:a9719967-59df-4fde...@s20g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...

> Stop behaving like a jackass. You incessently post OT political crap
> here. Go somewhere else to defecate.
>
> Paul Cardinale

Hey Cardinale!
Stop behaving like an arsehole. You incess-A-ntly post any old crap
here and are illiterate as well. Go somewhere else to shit.

Uncle Al

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Dec 17, 2009, 11:31:39 AM12/17/09
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Sam Wormley wrote:
>
> Power Law Explains Insurgent Violence
> http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1216/1
>
> By Richard Kerr
> ScienceNOW Daily News
> 16 December 2009
>
> War is messy, but it may be predictable. According to a study of nine recent insurgencies
> around the world, some patterns, such as the risk of violence over time, can be predicted
> from just a few simple aspects of the conflict.
[snip hopeless scrap]

Vietnam was the first game theory conflict. It was an incessant US
disaster. Then, somebody realized the North Vietnamese did not know
game theory. Of coures they were winning - they weren't
professionally managed! The US made a remarkable and successful
effort to leak the mathematics of Official conflict to the North.

It worked! The North Vietnamese went 100% game theory. They invested
a year debating the size and shape of the Paris negotiation table with
US diplomats (mildly retarded children of wealthy and powerful
parents). For some reason the US never caught on.

Game theory will defeat the enemy in Afghanistan! But first, we must
send in military advisors to teach them spreadsheets and differential
equations.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/qz4.htm

Uncle Al

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Dec 17, 2009, 1:19:20 PM12/17/09
to
Sam Wormley wrote:
>
> Power Law Explains Insurgent Violence
> http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1216/1
>
> By Richard Kerr
> ScienceNOW Daily News
> 16 December 2009
>
> War is messy, but it may be predictable. According to a study of nine recent insurgencies
> around the world, some patterns, such as the risk of violence over time, can be predicted
> from just a few simple aspects of the conflict.
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