http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2008/01/how-much-flour-can-one-person-eat/index.shtml

How Much Flour Can One Person Eat? (Update)

The Boston Globe ran an op-ed on Saturday by Eyad al-Sarraj and Hamas apologist/Finkelstein fan Sara Roy, Ending the stranglehold on Gaza. Not surprisingly, the piece is full of tendentious claims. Martin Kramer does the math on one such claim. Hilarity ensues: Gaza buried in flour

...The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won't even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:

Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.

You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.

A typographical error at the Boston Globe? Hardly. The two authors used the same "statistic" in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that "the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter." Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being "a reduction of 99 percent.

Note how an absurd and impossible "statistic" has made its way up the media feeding chain. It begins in an Egyptian newspaper, is cycled through a Palestinian activist, is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard "research scholar," and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can't do basic math. Now, in a viral contagion, this spreads across the Internet, where that "reduction of 99 percent" becomes a well-attested fact.

What's the truth? I see from a 2007 UN document that Gaza consumes 450 tons of flour daily. The Palestinian Ministry of Economy, according to another source, puts daily consumption at 350 tons. So the figure for total consumption retailed by Sarraj and Roy is off by more than three orders of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 1,000. No doubt, there's less flour shipped from Israel into Gaza--maybe it's those rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel?--but even if it's only the 90 tons claimed by Sarraj and Roy, it isn't anything near a "reduction of 99 percent." Unfortunately, if readers are going to remember one dramatic "statistic" from this op-ed, this one is it--and it's a lie...

He's the major shareholder of one software company that he himself founded and has now decided to give most of that fortune away. I don't know how that qualifies him to be anything more than Bill Gates. Philanthropist, yes. But authority on how things work? Uh uh.

Like being Mexican or Black or blind or a midget or in a wheelchair or (in some states) Gay. That way you automatically get chucked in the affirmative action pile and no one need debate or worry about it any longer.

At the end of the day, Mayor 911 with his 3 marriages and tawdry life and his antagonism and personal attacks on Bratton and everyone else means little. What is important is that he says nothing that resonates with anyone. It's not good or bad it's just blank.

Great speeches are great not because of what they say, but because of why they DO.

Will that be adequate reparations? I'm wondering this because no one seems to notice that they had to blow up a wall between Gaza and Egypt. As if, let me think....oh yes, the Egyptians didn't want them.

Clearly the Jews are to blame for the Egyptians building a wall between Egypt and Gaza. Clearly the Jews are to blame for Gaza and Egypt having no trade relations and not even a treaty between them similar to that Egypt and Israel have. Clearly the Jews are to blame for firing up & running the power plants in Ashkelon that provide 75% of the electricity for Gaza, for free, often under fire from the 2000 rockets fired into Israel in the last 12 months. Clearly the Jews are to blame for another 5% of the electricity that Egypt provides. Those dastardly Jews.

Did you know for instance Gary that it's Hamas who turned away 65 truckloads of supplies from Israel to Gaza in November 07 because they didn't want to be beholden to the evil Jew menace? Well if you're a journalist like you claim you are, you do. I don't expect the deluded hippies who read Salon to know that because they get their 'news' from you, they're too lazy to do your job for you. Just one example. Another example, one reported in that neocon rag the BBC (wait that can't be right...?!??!?) that last weeks' 'vigils' held by Hamas by candlelight were held in broad daylight, indoors. The Beeb noted "even a few journalists noticed this was odd". Those damn dirty Jews and their control of all media, like the BBC....?!?!?!

Gary, I really wouldn't care either way, but let's not pretend you and Salon are a 'news' organ. That you print, understand or even care about facts or reality. You don't. And that's fine, just tell your readership that what you print is Op-Ed Propaganda and not truth, or reality, or measured or researched or accurate. Just admit it's your personal pulled out of your ass opinions in between long paens about camping in the Sierra Madres or wherever and come clean. Don't you own your profession at least that much?

It's the semi fictional account of a 'secret' military hospital in Greenland where soldiers too grievously wounded in the Korean War, to ever return to the US, are kept. Something to think about.