Trust and coincidence

I was reading an interview with Peter Dale Scott about America's "Deep State", on the Global Research website. I was, previously, blissfully unaware of either. As often happens, I began to wonder: who are these people and should I believe them?

A quick review of the About page provided lots of information, but not much about who controls the site content or what motivates them. There is so much propaganda and disinformation on the Internet, that I tend to be skeptical.

This got me thinking about who to trust and I thought of one of the sources I find credible on political issues: Noam Chomsky. Despite him being too busy and me being nobody, I wrote him an email, to ask his advice about who and what to trust.

Then I went back to review the articles on Noam's website, to see what I could find along the lines of advice on the matter. Thus I ended up reading "The Responsibility of Intellectuals", the first footnote of which referenced a "Citizens'" White Paper - The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam, one of the authors of which was Peter Dale Scott.

So, does this make the Global Research website and Peter Dale Scott more trustworthy? Certainly, for me, in the case of Peter Dale Scott and somewhat for the website, on the assumption that what I was reading was an accurate representation of an interview with Mr. Scott.

How can one validate a source other than by knowing what they tell you by other means that confirm the truth of what they say? But then, one already knows what they say: it is nothing new. Otherwise, it is by reputation, past experience and blind faith. The concepts of a web of trust seem relevant. But so many people are deluded by propaganda or ignorance, even common beliefs are not trustworthy.

Who to trust? It is a hard problem.

Eating hamburgers is not an act of vegetarian extremism

I have read some reports that globally, in the long term, death from violence of all kinds is decreasing - an ever smaller percentage of people die from violence. Yet once free, liberal democracies are revolutionizing themselves in order to better pursue wars on drugs and terrorism and anything else they don't like, but terrorism is a hot topic lately and the war on terror seems to be causing all sorts of bother and expense, diminishing the lives of the many.

The war on terror seems to thrive on extreme rhetoric and the rhetoric of extremism, bigotry and hatred. Those in power seem little inclined to moderation, diplomacy, reconciliation or support and engagement to overcome problems.

Anyway, with all the talk of extremism and terrorism, I really got a good laugh from Nabil Goes In. The world needs more people with such passionate, compassionate moderation and sensibility.

Korean War Casualties

How many died in the Korean War? There are widely varying reports:

North Korea and the United States: Will the Real Aggressor Please Stand Down? quotes S. Brian Willson indicating four million Koreans were killed: three million in North Korea and one million in South Korea, and one million Chinese. That would be a total of five million, not counting US and allied casualties.

Korean War indicates nearly five million people died, of which over half were civilians. It also indicates almost 40,000 US dead. Presumably the US fatalities were part of the almost five million total casualties.

Korean War indicates a very different total: 1.2 million total deaths, based on 'recent scholarship' reported in http://www.eui.eu/Documents/DepartmentsCentres/SPS/Seminars/SeminarsF09/PVSEMF08/LacinaGleditschMonitoringTrendsInGlobalCombatEJP2005.pdf.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/korean_war.htm indicates 1.3 million South Korean military, 520,000 North Korean military and over 3 million Korean civilian casualties. Also, 142,000 US casualties, 900,000 Chinese casualties and 17,000 UN casualties. That's a total of almost six million casualties. This may be dead and injured.

http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/korea/kwar.html indicates four million casualties, including 33,600 US, 16,000 UN, 415,000 South Korean and 520,000 North Korean dead. That's 984,600 dead. It also indicates 900,000 Chinese casualties but it is unclear if these are part of or additional to the four million casualties.

http://necrometrics.com/20c1m.htm#Ko presents figures from various sources. They are quite variable. Total deaths reported range from about 2 million to 3.5 million.

With such variation in numbers reported, the actual number of deaths is uncertain, but it seems that more than 1 million and possibly several million people died. That's a lot of people in a brief conflict and a smal part of the world.