Gaza's Suspicious Casualty Figures

The Jewish publication Tablet has a feature from Abraham Wyner, a professor of statistics and data science at the Wharton School, digging into why the Hamas-compromised Gaza Health Ministry’s casualty numbers are highly suspect. Even for the innumerate English major (such as myself), Wyner’s work is digestible, incrementally working through what data are available. Perhaps best of all, he makes no claims as to what the casualty numbers might be in actuality (Netanyahu’s figures suggest 1–1.5 civilian deaths per Hamas militant killed; for reference, there were 15 million combat casualties and 38 million civilian casualties in WWII) and instead focuses on his area of expertise to enlightening effect.

Wyner writes:

"Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’ figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since Oct. 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the number was “over 25,000.” The Pentagon quickly clarified that the secretary “was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.” President Biden himself had earlier cited this figure, asserting that “too many, too many of the over 27,000 Palestinians killed in this conflict have been innocent civilians and children, including thousands of children.” The White House also explained that the president “was referring to publicly available data about the total number of casualties.”

Here’s the problem with this data: The numbers are not real. That much is obvious to anyone who understands how naturally occurring numbers work. The casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters."

Read the rest here.

Depression Era Propaganda from 1933; Hooray for inflation!

HT: Hoost

Acknowledging that I am something of an inflation hawk, the crisis of the early 30's was greatly exacerbated by bad policy decisions both in the Fed and the Hoover administration which combined to severely constrain the money supply, wipe out credit, and virtually bring to a stand still foreign trade and commerce. Which is to say that yes, a severe deflation can be almost as devastating as a severe inflation.

A Correction

In the course of a follow up to an earlier post Father Andrew has discovered that the report about a wealthy banker leaving a 1% tip and an insulting message for his lunch waiter was a hoax.  It appears that the image of the receipt was doctored and the whole thing was fabricated by person or persons unknown.  Given the whole 1% vs the 99% class warfare theme however, it does not seem unreasonable to suspect this was a politically motivated lie.  Point in fact I strongly suspect it was a clever piece of  left wing propaganda.  I had considered taking the original post down, but have decided against for three reasons.  First, I intensely dislike removing posts from the blog and in fact have only done so once in the near six years of its existence.  Secondly, no one specifically was defamed and finally because as it stands now it is cautionary warning about the tactics employed by the far left.

I have often been a sharp critic of right wing extremism on this blog.  But it is well worth remembering that some in the radical left are not above making things up or just plain lying to advance their agenda.