they don’t just make up numbers, they make up practically everything
They Make Up Numbers
Moon of Alabama, Jan 2 2013
At least 60,000 people have died in Syria’s conflict, UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay says. How does Navi Pillay know this? The UN does not have any presence in Syria.
At least 60,000 people have died in Syria’s conflict, UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said on Wednesday, citing what she said was an exhaustive UN-commissioned study. The new study, by Benetech, a non-profit technology company, showed deaths rising from around 1,000 per month in the summer of 2011 to an average of more than 5,000 per month since July 2012.
Using scientific methods from demography, epidemiology, and mathematical statistics, the Human Rights group at Benetech® transforms information into knowledge about past and on-going human rights violations.
But that does not explain where the information that gets “transformed” by Benetech is actually coming from. Benetech’s funders, according to its website, include the National Endowment for Democracy, the Soros Open Society Institute and the US Dept of State. Are those also the entities that generate the “information” Benetech is “transforming”? Is it really well advised for the UN to use a US-government-funded entity to calculate some inevitably disputed numbers of casualties when the US is supporting one side of the conflict? Here is the full Benetech report (pdf). The “analysis” is based on “information” that, at least for all of 2012, comes solely from Syrian opposition groups. The process of analysis performed therein can be described as garbage in, garbage mixing and garbage out. It is pure opposition propaganda, laundered through a US-financed entity to be presented by a partisan UN Human Rights Commissioner.
