It appears to me that Benetech was hired because the UN agency could not do the work – which is lame – and perhaps other reasons as well. Pillay is of course the pits, and the UN should answer all questions about this outsourcing. More could be said about that (see several commentators above.) It is an example, imho, of noxious privatization.
I have read the Benetech report. Number of deaths in a civil conflict like Syria are very hard to deal with, statistically speaking. The data sets – which represent an event befalling one person on a certain date in a certain place – is full of problems and doesn’t have many intrinsic characteristics (compare with house numbers or glucose in the blood etc.) – one can’t go far into any analysis, or make hypotheses or good guesses about its nature. (E.g. the pattern of deaths should act like the propagation of a microbe, as violence begets violence in a proximal way. This is not a model one can match to the data.)
The main problem of course are the observations themselves, which are shaped by the context and human action (unreported deaths, non deaths, etc.) The data sets (n=6) they worked with were horrid – duplicates (plus triplicates, etc.) Very difficult. Now, if one accepts these data sets as bona fide, if containing some ‘genuine’ errors:
They did an OK job that does not go very far, which they themselves state. As for the accuracy of the total number, the first question is the status of the eliminated observations – deaths or false deaths without a name (“child of 4”, for ex.) They don’t say how many of these were knocked away. As for the inclusion of duplicates (ie. not hunting these out properly and listing the same death twice or 3, 4 x) I doubt many, if any, got through, because even with such shoddy data the similarities point to a duplicate as the total nos. are not very large. if anything, some of the duplicates may have been two real ppl. E.g. Mohammed Ali, 27, Homs, date, is thrown out as we also have, M. Ali, 26, Homs, same date.
If it was all done properly! But I doubt very much that cheating took place. 1) There are no fancy tricks, or weird stats, it is all purely descriptive. 2) Cheating could only be done by transforming the original data sets (obviously) or thru under-tallying the duplicates, but that would be easy for anyone to check and if found out would damage Benetech’s reputation irreparably.
The lower nos. of deaths reported in the press in the past year (say) can be explained by the fact that reference was being made to one or two of the data sets. Imho.

Posted by: Noirette | Jan 5 2013 7:04 utc | 103

Need a laugh?
After the syrian Rebels shot down 2 army aircraft on November 27th and 28th, AP quoted the alleged SAM shooter Musa Abu Omar as follows:
“We’ve got enough of them now to bring down the whole Syrian air force”.
Well, what happened? It seems not a single machine has been shot down since then.

Posted by: KerKaraje | Jan 5 2013 22:33 utc | 105

A Japanese adventurer toured #Aleppo & took photos with terrorists while wearing his country’s uniform… https://twitter.com/ProSyriana/status/287714743966380032/photo/1

Posted by: brian | Jan 6 2013 1:11 utc | 107

Should have included this with the Presstv report.
Assad will deliver rare speech Sunday on ‘Syria, regional developments’
http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_01_05/Syrian-president-to-give-speech-Sunday/
“SANA said Saturday that Assad will speak about the latest developments in Syria. It did not provide more details. “President Bashar al-Assad will deliver a speech on Sunday morning on the latest developments in Syria and the region,” the agency said on Saturday, without specifying the time of the address.”

Posted by: вот так | Jan 6 2013 1:18 utc | 109

Well done summary of Israeli-American terrorist policies, especially pertaining to Syria and Iraq.
Terrorism with a “Human Face”: The History of America’s Death Squads
Death Squads in Iraq and Syria. The Historical Roots of US-NATO’s Covert War on Syria
http://www.globalresearch.ca/terrorism-with-a-human-face-the-history-of-americas-death-squads/5317564
(selected quotes)
“Operation “Syrian Contras”: Learning from the Iraqi Experience
The gruesome Iraqi version of the “Salvador Option” under the helm of Ambassador John Negroponte has served as a “role model” for setting up the “Free Syrian Army” Contras. Robert Stephen Ford was, no doubt, involved in the implementation of the Syrian Contras project, following his reassignment to Baghdad as Deputy Head of Mission in 2008.
The objective in Syria was to create factional divisions between Sunni, Alawite, Shiite, Kurds, Druze and Christians. While the Syrian context is entirely different to that of Iraq, there are striking similarities with regard to the procedures whereby the killings and atrocities were conducted….
The Free Syrian Army (FSA)
In many regards, the Free Syrian Army is a smokescreen. It is upheld by the Western media as a bona fide military entity established as a result of mass defections from government forces. The number of defectors, however, was neither significant nor sufficient to establish a coherent military structure with command and control functions.
The FSA is not a professional military entity, rather it is a loose network of separate terrorist brigades, which in turn are made up of numerous paramilitary cells operating in different parts of the country.
Each of these terrorist organizations operates independently. The FSA does not effectively exercise command and control functions including liaison with these diverse paramilitary entities. The latter are controlled by US-NATO sponsored special forces and intelligence operatives which are embedded within the ranks of selected terrorist formations….
The Jabhat Al Nusra Front
The Al Nusra Front –which is said to be affiliated to Al Qaeda– is described as the most effective “opposition” rebel fighting group, responsible for several of the high profile bomb attacks. Portrayed as an enemy of America (on the State Department list of terrorist organizations), Al Nusra operations, nonetheless, bear the fingerprints of US paramilitary training, terror tactics and weapons systems. The atrocities committed against civilians by Al Nusra (funded covertly by US-NATO) are similar to those undertaken by the US sponsored death squads in Iraq.
In the words of Al Nusra leader Abu Adnan in Aleppo: “Jabhat al-Nusra does count Syrian veterans of the Iraq war among its numbers, men who bring expertise — especially the manufacture of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) — to the front in Syria.”
As in Iraq, factional violence and ethnic cleansing were actively promoted. In Syria, the Alawite, Shiite and Christian communities have been the target of the US-NATO sponsored death squads. The Alawite and the Christian community are the main targets of the assassination program….”

Posted by: вот так | Jan 6 2013 17:42 utc | 111