Lies and deception have been a major part of Marxism since the very beginning. The truth, according to Marxists, is exactly what they say it is and has no bearing on the events as they occurred, the same thing that is going on in Cuba today.
Back in 1944, while we were tied up in Murmansk, USSR, every day someone would sneak a pile of newspapers and little books and booklets, into the crew's mess. The news was always at variance with the truth as we knew it.
I purchased some children's school books, written in English and published in Moscow, with stories about the horrors of life in the U.S.A., their Five Year Plans, and all the other communist propaganda.
Ordinary Russians were not told about the convoys to Murmansk or the Persian Gulf, that brought them food and munitions. Russia did not acknowledge our sacrifices until the year 2001, when they invited American and British merchant seamen and U.S. Naval gun crews to a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the first convoy to Murmansk in 1941. Stalin never acknowledged this help at all, and neither did he ever reveal that the U.S. sent tons of wheat to the country of his birth, Georgia, during the great famine there (deliberately caused by the Moscow government in order to get rid of the small farmers there, the Kulaks). In fact, the bags of food with labels as "gifts from the American people to the Russian people" were painted over.
It is amazing how, when you talk to Russian immigrants to the U.S. today, they'll tell you how they would often know the real truth from little clues they'd find in spite of all the efforts by Moscow to hide it. All the lies also turned many ordinary Russians into crooks and liars themselves, because they found that this was the only way to survive.
As was pointed out in the link, probably a good deal of the nonsense which is believed about the United States originated in Soviet-inspired disinformation during the Cold War; my bet is that most of the conspiracy theories (which, when you boil them down, end up being either the British Royal Family and/or the Jews) were first hatched in Moscow. Apparantly an old Muscovite tradition, as it was the Czarist Okhrana which wrote The Protocols of the Elders of Zion for the continuing edification of most of the Arab world.
It is true that the left has lived on lies - not right from the get go; initially, they were just mistakes - leftist thought at variance with the actual facts. As the world progressed and proved lefist ideas ever more absurd, it became necessary to be a very accomplished liar (or a dimwitted dupe) in order to hold to leftist thought.
It is in the liberal democracies that truth is most commonly found - of course, there are bags of lies floating around here as well, but the truth is also easily obtained. This is because in a liberal democracy, you really can say anything you want and this means that each lie will have its counter-vailing truth. In non-western societies (or societies made non-western by means of totalitarianism) truth is not so easily obtained - and lies are vital to the continued function of the various power structures.
Doing a bit of research, I just discovered that about 70,000 people have died in the various Arab/Israeli wars over the past 50 years - sounds bad and our enemies, lying like rugs, endlessly harp upon these deaths...the truth of the matter is, however, very different - not, of course, that the dead aren't dead, but that they are best only a busy season for the Arabs themselves. At least one million Arabs have been killed by Arabs over the past 50 years in various wars, civil wars and acts of governmental repression. We never hear about these dead, because the truth of the matter would upset the equilibrium.
Mark: You rely too much on crude stereotypes. There are many nationalities that fall under the general category "Arab". The statistic you brought up -- a million Arab deaths -- is uttlerly useless except as a tool for misrepresentation. The vast majority of the "million" you cite (the number is actually larger) were casualties of the Iran-Iraq war. What have these deaths got to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict???
ps. Disturbing to see you attempt to dismess 70,000 human deaths as insignificant.
COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA AND LIES NEVER STOPPED
Lies and deception have been a major part of Marxism since the very beginning. The truth, according to Marxists, is exactly what they say it is and has no bearing on the events as they occurred, the same thing that is going on in Cuba today.
Back in 1944, while we were tied up in Murmansk, USSR, every day someone would sneak a pile of newspapers and little books and booklets, into the crew's mess. The news was always at variance with the truth as we knew it.
I purchased some children's school books, written in English and published in Moscow, with stories about the horrors of life in the U.S.A., their Five Year Plans, and all the other communist propaganda.
Ordinary Russians were not told about the convoys to Murmansk or the Persian Gulf, that brought them food and munitions. Russia did not acknowledge our sacrifices until the year 2001, when they invited American and British merchant seamen and U.S. Naval gun crews to a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the first convoy to Murmansk in 1941. Stalin never acknowledged this help at all, and neither did he ever reveal that the U.S. sent tons of wheat to the country of his birth, Georgia, during the great famine there (deliberately caused by the Moscow government in order to get rid of the small farmers there, the Kulaks). In fact, the bags of food with labels as "gifts from the American people to the Russian people" were painted over.
It is amazing how, when you talk to Russian immigrants to the U.S. today, they'll tell you how they would often know the real truth from little clues they'd find in spite of all the efforts by Moscow to hide it. All the lies also turned many ordinary Russians into crooks and liars themselves, because they found that this was the only way to survive.
As was pointed out in the link, probably a good deal of the nonsense which is believed about the United States originated in Soviet-inspired disinformation during the Cold War; my bet is that most of the conspiracy theories (which, when you boil them down, end up being either the British Royal Family and/or the Jews) were first hatched in Moscow. Apparantly an old Muscovite tradition, as it was the Czarist Okhrana which wrote The Protocols of the Elders of Zion for the continuing edification of most of the Arab world.
It is true that the left has lived on lies - not right from the get go; initially, they were just mistakes - leftist thought at variance with the actual facts. As the world progressed and proved lefist ideas ever more absurd, it became necessary to be a very accomplished liar (or a dimwitted dupe) in order to hold to leftist thought.
It is in the liberal democracies that truth is most commonly found - of course, there are bags of lies floating around here as well, but the truth is also easily obtained. This is because in a liberal democracy, you really can say anything you want and this means that each lie will have its counter-vailing truth. In non-western societies (or societies made non-western by means of totalitarianism) truth is not so easily obtained - and lies are vital to the continued function of the various power structures.
Doing a bit of research, I just discovered that about 70,000 people have died in the various Arab/Israeli wars over the past 50 years - sounds bad and our enemies, lying like rugs, endlessly harp upon these deaths...the truth of the matter is, however, very different - not, of course, that the dead aren't dead, but that they are best only a busy season for the Arabs themselves. At least one million Arabs have been killed by Arabs over the past 50 years in various wars, civil wars and acts of governmental repression. We never hear about these dead, because the truth of the matter would upset the equilibrium.
Who do you have in mind when you talk of 'our enemies', Mark? The enemies of Israel or those of the US - or do you think these are one and the same?
Arie Brand
Mark: You rely too much on crude stereotypes. There are many nationalities that fall under the general category "Arab". The statistic you brought up -- a million Arab deaths -- is uttlerly useless except as a tool for misrepresentation. The vast majority of the "million" you cite (the number is actually larger) were casualties of the Iran-Iraq war. What have these deaths got to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict???
ps. Disturbing to see you attempt to dismess 70,000 human deaths as insignificant.