29205: Collesano comment re:29202: (Durban & Chin): On the Lancet Study (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: David Collesano <dcc@pobox.com>

In Corbett #29179 Chin says:

    I too read the study in its entirety and found little to
    argue with, unless one wants to take the stance that the
    the data were invented.

Durban (#29202) responds quite honestly:

"Well OK, I'll voice my belief that the the data were invented."

This puts the state of the question squarely in the realm of
'faith-based' discourse - where most of the dialogues here wind-up
sooner rather than later. Yet, even after the chanting of dogma, one
still ought to respond to questions about its probability.

Lancet published another survey using the same statistical methods
which showed that 100,000+ Iraqi civilians had been killed by the
American Occupation *before* the levelling of Fallujah in 2004.
Conventional wisdom says the figure is 'only' 43 to 48 thousand dead
Iraqi non-combatants to date (2006).

The question arises: whom is one to believe? The obscurantist killers
themselves who, like Gen.Tommy Franks, make no pretense of 'doing body
counts of civilians' or the social scientists whose methodologies -
when applied to test efficacy of, say,  marketing campaigns - are
accepted daily as definitive verdicts (even without peer review) on
multi-million dollar capitalist gambles by every major multinational
corporation in the world?

I know where I'd bet my money.

The third choice is to accept the corporate media's implication that
nobody is credible and just dump all that death and violence down the
memory hole. This is the empire's default position on Haiti: a
nihilism that reflexively consigns all innocent victims to oblivion.

-- dcc
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David C. Collesano, Pompano Beach, FL.

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