Engineering Consent for an Attack On Syria

Lies, Damned Lies And UN Statistics
By Moon Of Alabama

January 03, 2013 “Information Clearing House” – They Make Up Numbers – At least 60,000 people have died in Syria’s conflict, UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay says.

How does Navi Pillay knows 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.

Benetech:

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. I have yet to find their “sources”.

Benetech’s funders, according to its website, include the National Endowment for Democracy, the Soros Open Society Institute and the US Department of State. Are those also the entities that generate the information Benetech is “transforming”?

Is it really well advised for the United Nations to use a U.S. government funded entity to calculate some inevitably disputed numbers of casualties when the U.S. is supporting one side of the conflict?

UPDATE: Here is the full Benetech report (pdf). As expected 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 U.S. financed entity, to be presented by a partisan UN Human Rights Commissioner.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33511.htm