Sunday 27 May 2018

Composite Lies

Fighting Lies.

It is an old but true observation that: “The most destructive lie is the one which is mostly true, but just false at a vital point.

For this type of lie a careful attack is required. Of course the object, and indeed the usual effect of this “composite lie” is to create a totally false impression. And often a very powerful impression at that. So one's initial reaction is to fight against this false impression. Then one wants to attack the whole composite lie because one can see that the impression it is creating is false, but fail to see that it is not all false..

But you see the trap one then falls into: most of the composite lie is in fact true! So one ends up trying to disprove true facts – and that is always going to end badly! Into the bargain you are likely to lose your credibility as a truth teller and find the real liar's credibility enhanced!

In warfare tactic terminology one has just made the fatal error of attacking the centre of gravity – which is that the composite lie is mostly true: big mistake! In this case the centre of gravity is that most of the composite lie is true and only a small but vital part is false.

The Critical Vulnerability is the false part. If it is shown to be false the whole lie collapses.

So one's task is to resist the first surge of anger and the temptation cleverly laid out to “storm the battlements”. One must step back and think: I know the overall impression is false, but it is such an effective lie that I must suspect that there is just a fly in the ointment so to speak. Then one sets about looking for the one or few things that would have the power to turn true facts into a false impression. One can also start ruling out things that you know or suspect are true.

Once you have found the lies – which may be well camouflaged then one can set about destroying these. And the whole thing comes down.

I think this will prove important in tackling parts of the progressive narrative. Yes it is pernicious propaganda, yes it is leading people up the garden path, but it comprises a whole series of these composite lies.

We have already seen on issue after issue over the past fifty years that people who have known intuitively that the progressive arguments were wrong and have taken them head on have been steamrollered. Worse the progressives have managed to make them look like bigots and fanatics. I think they have managed to do it with these composite lies, and well intentioned people have fallen into the trap I have outlined.

So we need to do the hard slog and find the lies at the heart of things. Fortunately there are people working on it who we can learn from. I mentioned PragerU videos last time, there are also people like Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, and others you can see on Youtube.


Sunday 20 May 2018

Hamas Propaganda

Hamas Propaganda Lies

At the time of writing this, Israel ha just celebrated 70th anniversary of its formation by the UN, Palestinians have bemoaned 70 years since “catastrophe” and the US has opened its embassy in East Jerusalem.

Hamas has organised huge “demonstrations” along the Gaza Strip / Israel border. The intent appears to have been to break through the border fence and cause mischief - perhaps attacking nearby Israeli communities.

TV pictures have shown Palestinians burning tires (for a smoke-screen), slinging stones over the border and pulling razor wire from the border fence in apparent attempt to break through. Other images have been of Israeli forces firing tear gas, and Palestinians carrying and mourning dead and wounded.

On one day Israeli forces reportedly killed 65 or 70 Palestinians. There has been outrage against Israel led by leftist groups. There was a demonstration in Melbourne where I live with people carrying Hamas flags – regardless that Hamas is proscribed as a terrorist group even by anti-Israel European countries! Naturally the claim was that these were all “innocent people” in a “peaceful demonstration”. However to substantiate the numbers, Hamas published the names of theose it claimed were killed. But 50 of those names were identified as Hamas operatives – that it terrorists!

Only week ago three Christian churches in Indonesia were atttacked by suicide bombers. The bombers in this case were all one family – father, mother, sons and little daughters. Yes, a “devout” Islamist mother strapped explosives to her very young daughters and led them into a church where sh detonated the bombs. The relevance of this is that Hamas (though Shia rather than Sunni) has the same fanatical attitude. They have no compunction in using civilians as human shields, and sending even babies into harms way (an 18 month baby died at the demonstrations from the effects of tear gas) and then using their deaths for propaganda.

We must learn from our gullibility over Communist propaganda during the Vietnam war which resulted in millions of innocent deaths. We must reject Hamas' lies!

Last post I mentioned “PragerU” videoettes. Here is an interesting short one on the past Gaza Strip / Israel conflict by a British Army Officer who was actually in the Gaza strip.


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Sunday 13 May 2018

Fight Propaganda

Fight Propaganda.

President Johnson inherited the Vietnam war from President Kennedy. Under him US troop numbers and casualties blew out. Under him the anti-war propaganda so captured the American people that nearly a decade later a Democrat Congress was so afraid of similarly influenced public opinion that it refused the help it had promised when the North again invaded the South. In that same year of US inaction – 1975 – Pol Pot took over Cambodia. Before he was ousted in 1979 by invading Vietnamese troops he had killed perhaps one in every three Cambodians. But during his murderous reign there was little criticism, let alone action by Western nations.

In both cases it seemed that the power of pro-Communist propaganda had brought about a paralysis in US and Australian political thinking.

In 1968 students were cheering “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh” - adulating a ruthless dictator who had no compunction in killing half a million of his own people to bring in his “land reforms” and who waged war on the South after signing a treaty not to in 1954 and invaded the South after signing a treaty not to in 1973 – all at a cost of over three million lives. So people were making a hero out of a treacherous murdering, lying, tyrant. How absolutely stupid could we be!

Reminiscent perhaps of the crowd who could be so easily whipped up to demand that Pilate release a murderer and crucify the Author of Life!

This should sheet home to us the devastating power of unchecked propaganda!

Go back to the '60's. President Johnson wanted to institute social reforms. He refused to put energy into refuting the false propaganda, and particularly refused to put resources into publicly promoting and telling the truth about the war because he did not want to detract from his social agenda.

My point is that failing to fight “enemy” propaganda can have disastrous consequences. We can't change what happened in the 60's, and even trying to set the record straight as I have been here changes little. What is most important is to learn the hard lesson from the past and not make the same mistake in our current situation.

We are not now fighting with guns, but there is a desperate war being waged for control of our nations

From infancy our young people are being brainwashed. At school they are being converted to socialism and collectivism. Not just by teachers who themselves have been re-educated as devout collectivists, but by the curriculum slanted to be “anti” everything that has made the West great, and particularly anti-Christian. Then by methodology: self directed learning – have you ever heard of anything so silly! Down to subtle things like having to work in groups: no room here for individual thinkers or introverts!

Now schools are teaching “gender fluidity” - boys who like cooking are being told they are really girls “in a boys body” and encouraged at tender ages to undergo hormone treatment and surgery. Can you imagine the harvest of bitter, disillusioned, and deeply hurt individuals this will reap – right out of the Communist play book for destroying societies so that they can be captured and reformed. If that extreme fails, the rest of the schools' indoctrination towards sexual promiscuity will yield plenty of lost childhoods, narcissistic and immature adults, and unstable families – another aim of both Communists and Fascists.

The very fabric of our societies is being moth-eaten by so called “identity politics”. Instead of the unity of seeing ourselves as members of a great society – Americans, Australians, or whatever we are being divided. Made to hate our own culture. Made to think of ourselves as victims rather than lucky to be alive – and luckier still to be members of a free affluent society in the 21st century.

I could give more examples, but these should suffice to show the desperate straits we are in.

We need to be making more effort to counter this pervasive but destructive propaganda. One suggestion is to learn some of the counter arguments and be ready, politely, to correct falsehood when you hear it. But be warned: no matter how polite you are, you will be abused because those under the spell of this brainwashing hate anyone who does not agree absolutely wit them. So one must be determined to be resolute and strong. One good place to learn is the “Prager U” channel on You tube, it features short vidoes by knowledgeable people all all these current issues.

Sunday 6 May 2018

Propaganda that Killed Millions

Lies, Propaganda and Facts
























One of the processes that led the Democrat dominated US Congress in 1978 to break the treaty the US had signed in Geneva I 1973 was a public opinion poisoned by propaganda lies.


It was a shameful thing for the US Congress to break a treaty obligation. It was all the more shameful when it left South Vietnam at the mercy of the 130,00 strong North Vietnamese invading army backed by hundreds of tanks as well as artillery pieces and aircraft.


As a result we know about a million Vietnamese fled as refugees with about half perishing in the attempt. We don't know the numbers murdered or”re-educated” by the Communists. WE also know that subsequently Cambodia and Laos fell, with two million of innocent civilians being brutally murdered.


Three Communist propaganda coups spread far and wide and repeated over and over by gullible or culpable media featured highly in this swing in public opinion. All three were powerful, emotive, but painted a false picture.


The Tet offensive was a simultaneous sneak attack on about 100 targets by the Viet Cong and NVA during a cease fire for the Tet holiday in 1968. The highly influential broadcaster Walter Cronkite witnessed part of it in Saigon. He assumed the violence of the attacks was an indication of Viet Cong strength, when in fact it was their last ditch “do or die” effort, and on returning to the States said that the war was “unwinnable”. Actually the battle was an overwhelming victory for the South and US forces. The Viet Cong suffered so many casualties that thereafter the war was carried on almost exclusively by the North Vietnamese army.
However the truth never caught up with Cronkite's false report.
Second: The photo by Eddie Adams of General Loan executing a Viet Cong operative. The photo captures the moment that Loan shoots the handcuffed Viet Cong captain Lem in the head during the '68 Tet Offensive. It had a profound impact, galvanising the anti-war movement in the US.

Previous to the Third Geneva Convention, guerillas were held to be Francs-Tireurs and not under the protections of the rules of war. At the Nuremberg trials, no criminal responsibility was attached to the summary execution of partisans by German officers. The Third Convention extended the protection of POW status on four conditions. 1. They are responsible to a chain of command. The Viet Cong captain Lem probably fulfilled this condition. 2. They have a fixed distinctive sign which is recognisable at a distance – that is to say, they wear a uniform of some sort and are not dressed to make them indistinguishable to the civilian population. The Viet Cong deliberately violated this condition precisely to pass unnoticed among the civilian population. 3. They carry arms openly, which is debatable in this case. But 4. They conduct their operations in accordance with the “laws and customs of laws”, which captain Lem most certainly failed.

‘Lem was arrested during the Tet Offensive after having captured a South Vietnamese officer, Lieutenant Colonel Tran. Lem and his men then held Colonel Tran and his family hostage and demanded that Tran show them how to drive the South Vietnamese tanks they had just captured. When Colonel Tran refused, they slit the throats of his wife, his six children, and his 80 year old mother.

Captain Lem was a very nasty piece of work. When he was captured, standing at the mass grave of another 34 victims, he announced he was proud to carry out his orders and murder these people. So there was not a shadow of a doubt he was guilty of multiple murders. General Loan, as chief of police, subjected him to summary execution, entirely within even the stricter terms of the Third Geneva Convention.’

As an interesting post-script, General Loan fled the fall of Saigon and arrived in the US. He was initially refused immigrant status because of that photo, but the photographer Adams testified on General Loan’s behalf. General Loan owned a pizza shop in Washington DC for many years, and died of cancer in Virginia in 1998. Another photo.


Third: The picture of “Napalm Girl” Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the young girl who ran down the road naked after tearing off her burning clothes.

That was in June 1972 – just six months before the signing of the peace accords and after most US troops had been withdrawn, no US forces were in eny way involved in the event, and yet it is still cited as an illustration of the US war in Vietnam.

Here is the real story:

Kim Phuc was from the village of Trang Bang in South Vietnam. The village had just been overrun by NVA forces. Kim Phuc and the other villagers were fleeing along with the surviving South Vietnamese soldiers towards safety. The South Vietnamese – not American – South Vietnamese pilot of the plane was trying to protect the civilians by cutting off the North Vietnamese pursuit. But he mistook the fleeing South Vietnamese soldiers for the pursuing NVA. His napalm killed four civilians, and Kim Phuc and several others received third degrees burns.

In an interesting post-script to that photo, Kim Phuc was flown to Germany for surgery, then returned to South Vietnam. She was captured in the fall of South Vietnam and became a propaganda tool for the communist government. She was allowed to go to Cuba to study medicine, where she met her future husband Bui Hue Toan. They were married, and allowed to go the Moscow for their honeymoon. When their plane landed to refuel in New Foundland, the two of them stepped off the plane and asked for political asylum. Kim Phuc became a Christian, founded the Kim Phuc foundation to provide medical and psychological assistance to child victims of war, and still lives in Canada.

So we were taken in by propaganda, lies, misinformation, and mistaken information. The people believed the lies. The politicians bowed to the people – and at least two and a half million innocent men, women, and children died as a result!

We must remember to fight back against lies with the truth, no matter how much we are the minority of voices.