When headlines tell you to read no further.
I usually shy away from actually copying material from places and using it for my blog, and instead just throw up the link to where I saw it. Some of the stuff I link to and talk about it is obvious directional propaganda to steer a person this way or that. Yet they also carry the truth with the lie, and since that is how anything mainstream is portrayed, you really have to claw and scrape your way to the truth. Almost to the point of being a reality archeologist, with the flecks of truth equaling the flecks of dinosaur bones.
Over the course of time just like an archeologist, you take all the bits of truth and throw them together like a bigger picture jigsaw puzzle. As the picture grows bigger a person can fill in some of the blank spots while other blank spots elude for years and decades.
Then there are times like this when they just make it to easy and tell you it's bullshit right in the head lines.
Like this one.
I am not going to post the story, but I will shoot the link up on here.
http://www.alternet.org/story/123818/
I am however going to post the headline and then ask a couple questions.
Iraq's Shocking Human Toll: About 1 Million Killed, 4.5 Million Displaced, 1-2 Million Widows, 5 Million Orphans
First they say 1 million killed.....ok that in itself is believable over the course of 6-7 years of war. Then they say 4.5 million displaced. Ok, this too has possibility also given the length of time.
But then they go on to say 1-2 million widows.
WTF?
I am by no stretch of the imagination, a mathmetician, but even I can add the numbers thus far and say 1+1 in this story is not equaling 2. IF there were in fact 2 million widows then the one million dead number is wrong or a lie. Which it is. Beacause that would mean the one million dead was men only and each man had 2 wives.
Second they say 5 million orphans.
Again.....WTF?
This means each man had 2 wives and 5 children.
So based on the headline alone you can pretty much tell this story is gonna be chock full of bullshit, and from there choose if you want to actually go in and pick apart the story for the flecks of truth.
As far as numbers going in regards to anything mainstream reporting it, simply do this.
Go back into past news stories stretching back to 2003. from there go forward in time and look at all the stories in regards to american troop deaths in both afghan and iraq wars. Then take notice how the numbers hover near the same level for 3 years. Then go back and use the same method in both world wars, korea, viet nam. Then check to see if this little hovering phenomenon happened in those wars.
I doubt you will.
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