Population Statistics

Submitted by Laina Farhat-Holzman (United States), Jan 5, 2015 at 16:22

Dear Daniel:

I learned years ago that the UN numbers, which are the ones mostly posted (even by the CIA publicly) are figures provided by the HOST GOVERNMENTS! In the Middle East, there is a numbers game that has little to do with reality, but with politics.

During the first Gulf War, Saudi Arabia and Iraq changed their population numbers by great increases, chest thumping, of sorts. When I called the UN to ask where the numbers came from, they said the host countries.

It is my understanding that the CIA gets these numbers another way for internal purposes, such as looking at water consumption, which is not generally fudged.

Laina

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