Thoughts and numbers (and links) from the week

Posted by Benjamin on: 01.05.2009 /

• During the current iteration of hot conflict between Israel and Gaza, I heard on the news, 400 Palestinians have died, and 4 Israelis have died. This works out to about a 100 to 1 ratio

  This reminds me of a similar statistic.  In 2008, in the hot conflict in Iraq, 9193 Iraqi civilians have died, and 332 Coalition soldiers have died. which works out to about a 27 to one ratio.

  Would it be evil to conclude that “they” are worth somewhere between 1/30th and 1/100th as much as “we” are?  Strangely, this holds up in terms of GDP.  Which is to say that the Israeli GDP per capita is about 24 times the Palestinian GDP per capita, and the U.S. GDP per captia is about 14 times the Iraqi GDP per capita.

  I guess perhaps these aren’t very ideal measurements of people’s worth.  There is some truth in there somewhere, however.

 

• Huffington Post recently ran a well reserached and well written story on child slave trafficking. Writer Rukmini Callimachi details the story of Shyima Hall, of Egypt, who worked as an unpaid “maid” for a wealthy family here in the U.S., living in their unheated garage, from age 14 for many years before she was finally freed.

 

• Martin recently sent me a story about the Dignity, a boat belonging to Free Gaza which was attcked by Israeli Defense Forces while trying to deliver humanitarian supplies to the besieged territory.

Your thoughts/comments in response to any of these are definitely welcome =)

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