You Are Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths [Paperback]

Here's what I was expecting:

A collection of articles and essays about things the mainstream media have avoided covering, whether by accident or design. I also fully expected to be confronted by articles that I didn't agree with, or found uncomfortable reading.

Instead the 1st (political) half of the book is generally made up of opinion pieces of the type I used to see in various far-left newspapers such as Socialist Worker when I was at Uni. Pieces where the facts have been distorted to deliver the desired point of view.

Let's take as one example, the article "The Media and their Atrocities" by Michael Parenti where he talks about the NATO action against Yugolsavia.

According to Michael Parenti, here's why NATO acted against Milosevic: "Yugoslavia was the only country in Eastern Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy."

Calling Yugoslavia a socialist paradise is beyond ludricous.
Even most people on the mainstream European left who opposed the NATO actions agree that Milosevic was a socialist in name only.

Also, Parenti ignores one important fact. If the West was so hell-bent on destroying the socialist paradise of Yugoslavia, why did it generally just wring its hands and do nothing during the first phase of the Yugoslav wars from 1991-1995?

Then there's the claim that there were only "several dozen" rather than thousands of rapes during the Bosnian conflict. An outrageous statement bearing in mind that mass rapes were corrobated by a range of human rights groups and charities including Amnesty International, who last I heard wasn't in the pay of the Pentagon.

Finally there's the old chestnut that there were no large scale atrocities against Kosovo Albanians or against Muslims in Bosnia. Again the facts speak otherwise.

The Dutch Government recently resigned after a report showed that Dutch UN troops did nothing to stop the massacre of muslims in the safe haven of Srebrenica in 1995. If there was no massacre why did the Dutch Government feel the need to step down?

I could go on. For example the article on Northern Ireland starts by telling readers that there are two "parties" in Northern Ireland - Unionists or Loyalists and Republicans.

Wrong. There are about a dozen parties in Northern Ireland and four (not two) main strands of opinion. "Unionists" and "Nationalists" are broad labels given to groups who respectively want to remain part of Britain or join the Republic of Ireland but have advocated peaceful democratic means.

"Loyalists" and "Republicans" have (until recently) advocated violence as a means of remaining part of the UK or joining Ireland. A crucial distinction.

There were articles that were interesting, for example how the US media never talks about the fact that Martin Luther King spent his last years crusading about poverty and against the Vietnam War.

However, once you start to read articles where you know that the basic facts aren't true, you start to doubt the ones which you don't know very much about. All in all a disappointment.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. The subjects of this collection of essays, edited by Russ Kick, may not be paranoid but the essayists are out to get them. For example, in an article on George W Bush, David McGowan goes back to 1942 for his material, before Bush was born. 'But that's OK. Guilt by association is a valid part of any good mudslinging campaign.' Possibly but only if it is based on facts. McGowan claims the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was a Nazi front organisation. This is untrue. The UCB acted as a clearing house for German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen who had supported the Nazis' rise to power but was opposed to the war. He fled Germany in 1941 was captured in France and interned in a concentration camp. Neither the American authorities, nor the Anti-Defamation League, considered Prescott Bush a Nazi sympathiser and no Nazi gold was held. Apparently Kick is lying by claiming otherwise.

Or is he simply the victim of his own delusions? For example, he implies that John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, was part of Bush's social circle, implying a Bush-inspired assassination attempt. Similarly, Sam Smith defends Oliver Stone's mangling of history in JFK which repeats Jim Garrison's ficticious account as challenging the myth of the lone gunman. The film claims Oswald was a poor shot and one of the bullets took a magic trajectory. In fact, Oswald was an excellent shot and the so-called 'magic' bullet followed a normal trajectory hitting Governor Connolly because his seat was lower than that of the President.

Anything which doesn't fall in with the rationalist Enlightenment view that mankind can create paradise on earth is attacked. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is criticised for its early association with the Oxford Group (OG) of Frank Buchman. Charles Bufe suggests that AA and OG parted company 'quite possibly' because of Buchman's 1936 interview "in which he said, 'Thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler' and in which he pined for a 'God-controlled Fascist dictatorship'. Both out of context statements misrepresent the facts. Buchman said, "I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism." Nor did he pine for Fascism. What he said was, 'Human problems aren't economic. They're moral and they can't be solved by immoral measures. They could be solved within a God-controlled democracy, or perhaps I should say a theocracy, and they could be solved through a God-controlled Fascist dictatorship." He was wrong on both counts but that doesn't excuse Bufe's misrepresentation of Buchman as a closet Nazi. Whatever its faults AA helps alcoholics which is more than Bufe's journalism ever has.

No left wing mythology would be complete without an attack on Christianity. What is strange is the decision to include an extract from M M Mangasarian's 1909 book, 'The Truth About Jesus - Is He A Myth?'. Mangasarian's central tenet that Christianity is a re-telling of pagan Sun-myths, is a long since discredited idea. His book appeared in the same year as Arthur Drews who coined the 'Christ Myth theory'. The theory is peddled by humanists to support their ideology. An interview with Warren Allen Smith entitled 'Who's Who in Hell' presents a tradition of non-belief. Kick writes, 'the uncomfortable fact that these achievers don't believe in a god or gods is conveniently overlooked.' Uncomfortable for whom? There's no reason for theists to be uncomfortable with non-theists as Smith appears to be: he misidentifies Aleksander Kwaniewski as an atheist (Kwaniewski self-identifies as an agnostic). He also misidentifies Neil Kinnock as an atheist and a statesman, whereas Kinnock is an agnostic and no statesman.

This reflects a lack of familiarity with the United Kingdom, an error repeated by other essayists. Robin Ramsay claims the Labour Party led by Tony Blair is a continuation of the Social Democratic Party! He suggests 'the Blair faction' were tied to America through the American funded, British-American Project, although he omits to mention that Jeremy Paxman and James Naughtie along with several Conservative MPs, were beneficiaries of the Project, especially its hospitality. Marni Sullivan's article on Northern Ireland is disgraceful. Sullivan complains about a lack of equal coverage in the American press of the political and religious divisions in Northern Ireland. Yet she refers to 'a more radical splinter group called the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF)' but not its Nationalist counterpart the Northern Ireland Liberation Army (NILA). Her claim that in the three years leading to the cease-fire loyalists killed more people than the IRA is not only patently untrue it hides the fact that over the course of the 'troubles' Republican paramilitaries killed twice as many people as their Protestant counterparts (2057 to 1019).

Sullivan discredits her case when she tries to separate Sinn Fein from the IRA and ignores Enniskillen and Warrington. Her reference to Lee Clegg's release from prison shows manifest ignorance of the offence for which he was convicted. To complete her propaganda piece Sullivan, quoting the Troops Out Movement (TOM), claims that 'a good number of casualties resulting from the Canary Wharf bombing was largely attributable to the inept procedures of the British authorities'. So it was the people injured by the bomb, rather than the bomb-makers who were at fault!! Meanwhile the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA continue to kill rather than accept the peace process. Presumably that is the fault of the British too.

There's a wide variety of articles but conspiracy theories do not make good history. In that sense it's the essayists, not the subjects, who are paranoid. The subtitle of the book is, 'the disinformation guide'. There's enough disinformation in this book to write another but, if it's as bad as this one, it won't be worth reading. Three stars out of sympathy for humanity.

kapple999 has missed the point entirely about the Bible Code essay in this book. The point the author was trying to make is that it is a massive generalisation to insist that there is a code to modern events in the bible...it was a joke...get it?!

This (as well as others produced by the disinformation gang) is a VERY important book lambasting what we think we know about issues so entrenched in the psyche of many societies: especially religion.

My only criticism is that I would have liked to have seen more topics written by, and about, women. After all, we are the subject about which there's the most disinformation circulating!!