When Michael Franti mentioned in the opening scenes of his new film I Know I’m Not Alone (you can buy it here) that he was growing “frustrated” at the reporting on the Middle East, I could relate. I can’t say I’ve always been political, and I wish I could proudly confess that I’ve always been aware and concerned about what was going on in the world. The truth is, I used to avoid reading or watching the news in South Africa, and I remember complaining to my step father that there should be a “good news” newspaper out there, as if the media were supposed to stop reporting the bad stuff and everything would be fine. When the fall of apartheid exposed whites for the first time to the crime that had plagued black communities for decades, you became desensitized and frustrated at the monotony of reporting, and preferred instead just to close my eyes, at least for a while.

Fortunately for us, Franti wants to keep his eyes wide open. Taking a camera, a few friends, and his guitar, he heads to Iraq, Palestine and Israel, hoping to bypass the politicians and the soundbites and speak to the people on the ground, see how they live and listen to what they think. He talks to taxi drivers, shop owners, families, children, musicians, soldiers - the everyday people who rarely, if ever, have a voice on television. I could probably count the number of documentary films that have truely moved me through their simplicity and power on one hand. This most certainly belongs at the top, and I wouldn’t mind calling this one of the most lovely pieces of film I have ever witnessed.

First and foremost, Franti is a poet, so the film is layered with his songs and lyrics reflecting the world he sees and hears around him, and his ideas and thoughts about that world. Of course, Franti goes out of his way to try and find musicians in each location: in Iraq, a death metal band; in Palestine, a trio of hiphop artists; in Israel, he jams with an excellent group of Israeli musicians.

One of the wonderful things about a smile and music is that they’re excellent ways to break down barriers between cultures. Time and again, he is welcomed with open arms into families singing “Habibi” (an Arabic term for showing someone you love them), bringing smiles and laughter to children running along rubble-strewn streets and pock-marked buildings. Generally, though, it seems as if his music is Franti’s way of expressing himself to the viewer. While he himself does sometimes talk to the camera directly or with a voiceover, or he speaks to those he meets, it is the voices of the people he meets that have center stage: Franti sings about what he thinks, but we hear from them what they live and feel.

What is highly enjoyable is that Franti is not trying to impose his thoughts or ideas on the people who are living through occupation or terror. As he explains towards the end, he doesn’t want to choose sides, except for the sides of the “peacemakers”. He just wants to know what they think and, in turn, to let them tell us, the viewer. When ex-Saddam dissidents tell him that if Iraq invaded America, and Americans fought back, they would be considered to be fighting for their country instead of being terrorists, or when someone else tells him the Americans should leave, he doesn’t attempt to argue or justify what’s happening. Nor, when he plays to a room of American soldiers, does he try and judge them even though it’s clear that Franti doesn’t agree with the reasons that they’re there. The film is more effective in its subtlety and non-confrontational style, something that a number of documentary makers could learn from.

There are some genuinely touching moments that are inspirational testimonies of the human spirit, one of the most poignant being towards the end when a Palestinian and Israeli soldier talk to one another about the possibilities for peace and friendship. Religion, says the Israeli soldier, must not be part of the government of either side otherwise that leads to trouble. There’s a nodding of heads, and understanding between two people portrayed as mortal enemies.

All in all, I cannot recommend this film highly enough. It is exceptional, and deserves to be watched all over the world because its message is cultureless and timeless. From the Israeli army dissenters courageously speaking out, to the Palestinian mother who sleeps on the street because she’s afraid her house will be demolished around her; from the Israeli and Palestinian families who’ve lost loved ones and have come together to find forgiveness, to the Iraqi taxi driver who just wants peace. There are beautiful tales here that deserve to be heard, and to be witnessed by eyes that should no longer be closed.

In a recent post on the John Hopkins study of 655,000 deaths in Iraq since the US invasion, William Arkin asks: “Is the Hopkins study correct, and can reasonable non-partisan people feel comfortable with the conclusion that Iraq has suffered about 15,000 violent deaths a month every month since the U.S. invasion, about 500 deaths a day? I think not.”

This is just the latest in a long line of statements coming out against the study. Bush, for example, declared that, “I don’t consider it a credible report. Neither does General (George) Casey (top U.S. commander in Iraq) and neither do Iraqi officials”, calling the study’s methodology “pretty well discredited.” Casey commented that the figure “seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I’ve not seen a number higher than 50,000. And so I don’t give it that much credibility at all.” (Although Casey couldn’t confirm where he got his 50,000 figure from). A spokesman from the Iraqi government said, “The report is unbelievable. These numbers are exaggerated and not precise.” UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was a lot more reserved, saying, “The report gives a figure which is orders of magnitude different from any other source… nobody else has come up with figures on this scale… the report has been criticised by the Iraqi government as unreasonable”, but a spokesman for Blair was more forward: “It’s not [a figure] we believe to be anywhere near accurate”.

What annoys the hell out of me is not that people question the study - that just makes good sense - but that they pick and choose which studies to question. For example, in the Sudan, the press routinely takes estimates of deaths there also generated from studies also using estimates and, in some cases, using very similar methods, without question.

A recent study (by Hagan and Palloni) concluded that around 170,000 to 255,000 thousand people had died in Darfur (but the authors believe it much higher at near 400,000), while a Coalition for International Justice study caused Hagan, in an earlier analysis using the CIJ data, to conclude that the death toll was at around 390,000. The CIJ study, incidently, was “based on semi-structured interviews with 1,136 randomly selected refugees at 19 locations in eastern Chad. … The field data for the 1,136 interviews were compiled using a standardized data entry process that involved the collection and coding of detailed information from each refugee respondentâ??s set of answers. The researchers then used a statistical program to aggregate the data and analyze the results.”

My, that sounds very familiar. As pointed out in the John Hopkins newspaper, “These same survey methods [for the Iraq mortality study] were used to measure mortality during conflicts in the Congo, Kosovo, Sudan and other regions.”

Don’t know about you, but I have yet to read in the press refutations of the figures presented for these countries. Does the press publish columns or articles lamenting the fact that this is impossibly high? That it’s incorrect or too high? Of course not. The Washington Post went on about “Why has the world failed to act?”, pointing out that “Darfur has all ingredients for international intervention”, while citing the Hagan/Palloni study that the death toll was around 200,000 - 400,000. MSNBC also said that Hagan and Palloni’s study was the “first scientifically rigorous estimate of the death toll” and it showed “that the pessimists were right”. And so on. I also note with some amusement that, in 2005, the WaPo concluded in an editorial that Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick needed to “cite better numbers” - referring to Hagan’s original study - because if “his international partners … are allowed to believe that the death toll is one-third of its real level” the killing in Darfur will continue.

The real bottom line is that it’s easy to accept the Sudan estimate because they’re not, strictly speaking, “our” victims, but the Iraqi’s are. Of course the John Hopkins study will not be correct but it is by far the most accurate measurement we have to date; that’s the crucial point. The state of the country at the moment means it’s impossible for there to be any proper way of knowing the real figures (one of the reasons why the Sudan estimates and studies are also likely to be the most accurate assessment of casualties).