Steve Vertigum wrote:
I think the point of the argument against is that
statistics from an apartheid state (regardless of how
much the US happens to sanction it currently) must be
treated as suspect. UN statistics should be
better--ie, more NPOV--even if they are not as
"complete."
The same could in many ways be said for the US as
well-- the US until very recently was more or less an
apartheid state, and still has lingering aspects of
this left over, in terms of its sociological/financial
barriers. Etc. If this was the case today in the
US--as it was 1950--there would be every justification
for Wikipedians to look upon statistics coming out of
such a country's official machinery as smelly.
Oh geez... If you have some proof, let's see it. Otherwise you're
just spreading FUD. Almost every official statistic in Wikipedia
has a political opponent or conspiracy theorist ready to challenge
its validity; that's why we say "according to the Census Bureau"
or whatever, so if somebody has some differing numbers, they
can add those, citing the alternate source, rather than having an
edit war. In the case of Israel, there are plenty of reasons to
challenge any UN numbers - and plenty of books doing just that, in
great detail - so it's not neutral to simply declare that UN
numbers must be better than Israeli numbers.
Stan