Little Green Footballs

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Charles Johnson and statistical fraud

Charles usually has the strange habit of throwing around some numbers to "prove" that Palestinians are in fact very well off, and that all this mumble about Palestinian suffering is a scam.

First off, the claim that Palestine has the lowest infant mortality rate is rather bogus. Extrapolating the statistic, that only includes three other countries, to all 22 Arab states is nothing short of silly, and rather dishonest. Because according to the CIA Factbook, there are lower mortality rates in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan (wait a second..), United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Israel and the US have an infant mortality rate more than 3 times less than the one of Gaza and the West bank.

Aside from that, Charles just can't be arsed to mention that Gaza has about 80% of its population living under the poverty line. Silly me to claim that they're suffering, right?

/update: Oh look at the happiness in Gaza! They're living in risk of drinking contaminated water! What suffering do you speak of?

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