Word of the Day (AP Spreading Cuban Propaganda Edition

Gobsmacking

Will Weissert of the AP is a dupe, an idiot, or a dishonest jerk who lets his blind hatred of the United States cloud his judgement of the truth.

Funny how totalitarian states always have wonderful standards of living, until their dictator is toppled, then we discover that their governments had been manipulating their statistics.

The CIA World Book relies on the statistics provided by each government, so just citing them as a source for a stat doesn't mean that the numbers are honest.

Compare the statistics on the two Koreas. South Korean statistics compared to North Korean numbers are very similar across the board. The one major difference is infant mortality which is 3x higher in North Korea. Why they choose to admit that number and not the others is a mystery, but one doesn't have to look too hard at the two places to come to the quick conclusion that these numbers being so close isn't exactly reality based, and might have a lot to do with lies and propaganda being put forth by a totalitarian dictator.

Just look at the plunge life expectancies took across the former Soviet Union after its fall, some of that was dislocation and an increase in drug and alcohol abuse, but a larger portion of that plunge was also more honest numbers.

I say this story is the worst kind of BS imaginable, the Cuban government is lying, and the AP is either incompetent or untrustworthy, either way, they are not to be believed on stories (more like fables) with regards to Cuba.

They Make It Far Too Easy Some Times

The AP article on the death of Saddam closes with a doozy of a paragraph.

While he wielded a heavy hand to maintain control, Saddam also sought to win public support with a personality cult that pervaded Iraqi society. Thousands of portraits, posters, statues and murals were erected in his honor all over Iraq. His face could be seen on the sides of office buildings, schools, airports and shops and on Iraq's currency.

The line, "sought to win public support" is what really gets me. All those dictators with their attempts at producing cults of personality around themselves are really just trying to 'unite' the many people under their control. By plastering his image across the land, he was just doing a public service. Saddam wasn't a brutal, murderous, foul, filthy, megalomaniacal dictator, instead he was merely a person who, "wielded a heavy hand to maintain control".