MetaFilter posts tagged with Lies

The Education of Little Fraud

reenum — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:12:49 -0800

Many kids read The Education of Little Tree in school, but the author of the book, Forrest Carter, was actually Asa Carter, a staunch racist and charlatan.

Essential Internet Appliances

telstar — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:29:22 -0800

Crap Detection 101 Howard Rheingold offers a fairly in-depth primer on media and internet BS detection. Lots of links to resources for enabling critical analysis of various information sources included.

...I didn't actually read the link...

Artw — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:06:48 -0800

It’s only natural that if you wish to present yourself as a well-read person, a certain degree of complete bullshit is required. There’s no shame in lying about what you’ve read. There’s only shame in getting caught. Then you look like a doofus, and an illiterate one at that... How to lie about books.

How much of what you read can you trust?

netbros — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:37:13 -0800

Dave's Web of Lies. There is a lot of information available on the World Wide Web. Not all of it is as it seems. Everywhere you look there is out-of-date information, popular misconceptions, and even mistruths presented as fact. Random lie is your friend. Sadly, selling gin in marmalade jars to old ladies is now outlawed in parts of York and Manchester.

Won't Somebody Think of the Children?

Navelgazer — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 22:21:38 -0800

Lies We Tell Kids

Here he stands. He could not do otherwise. God help him.

orthogonality — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:54:42 -0800

"...aside from the Devil, you have no enemy more venomous, more desperate, more bitter, than a true Jew... What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? Since they live among us, we dare not tolerate their conduct, now that we are aware of their lying and reviling and blaspheming.... First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians.... Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.... Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.... Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb." -- From On the Jews and Their Lies, authored by the man voted by his countrymen the second greatest German of all time, the theologian whose break with Rome began the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther. Other selected quotes from Martin Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies include:

"No, one should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants."
"...but then eject them forever from this country. For, as we have heard, God's anger with them is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!", and
Over and above that we let them get rich on our sweat and blood, while we remain poor and they such the marrow from our bones.

"At times, [Martin] Luther seems as if he is all but calling for a holocaust: 'We are at fault in not slaying them.'" "At his trial in Nuremberg after the Second World War, Julius Streicher, the notorious Nazi propagandist, editor of the scurrilous antisemitic weekly, Der Stürmer, argued that if he should be standing there arraigned on such charges, so should Martin Luther." In fact, there are perhaps "two periods [of Luther's life that] have to be distinguished. During the earlier, which lasted until 1537 or shortly before, he is full of compassion for [the Jews'] misery and enthusiastic for their conversion to Christianity; in the later, toward the end of his life, he denounces them in unmeasured terms...." But some Christians [pdf] argue that Martin Luther's anti-Semitism wasn't like Nazi anti-Semitism. Instead, the Nazis' "appeal to Luther was a post-facto justification of their anti-Semitism and not the impetus of it." After all, Luther also wrote "Our fools, the popes, bishops, sophists, and monks — the crude asses’ heads — have hitherto so treated the Jews that anyone who wished to be a good Christian would almost have had to become a Jew. If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian. Therefore, I would request and advise that one deal gently with them [the Jews] and instruct them from Scripture;" Other Christian commentators, attempting to put Luther into a "Medieval context", also find Luther an anti-Semite but not "a prototypical modern antisemite". It should be noted that, beginning with the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod in 1983, the various branches of the modern Lutheran Church have renounced and rejected Martin Luther's anti-Semitism. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's 1994 Declaration has yielded to a more passive voiced current apologia that seems to see anti-Semitism as a disease that takes its sufferers unaware: "Often in the past our interactions with Jews have been marred by misunderstanding, prejudice, and sometimes overt hostility, from which even the great reformer Martin Luther himself was not immune. But further into the ELCA's current document, Luther is condemned more strongly and linked to the Holocaust, though with the qualification that

ultimately the Nazis surpassed anything that Luther had recommended with their systematic program to physically annihilate the Jews. Luther had instructed pastors to advise their parishioners that although they should beware of Jews and avoid contact with them, “they should not curse them nor harm their persons.”

The German Lutheran Church (perhaps inevitably, given that in Germany Luther's prescription for the Jews were carried out, or as ELCA says, more than carried out), takes a somewhat stronger stance: "It is imperative for the Lutheran Church, which knows itself to be indebted to the work and tradition of Martin Luther, to take seriously also his anti-Jewish utterances, to acknowledge their theological function, and to reflect on their consequences.... Both sayings of Martin Luther and specific expressions of Lutheran theology have had anti-Jewish consequences."

Where are my fucking mushrooms?!

Lord_Pall — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:59:31 -0800

You've seen Fast Food vs. Reality. Now witness the power of German ingenuity in the science of Photographing Food.. (Second Link is an easier to read link from Pundo3000, the perpetrators of this food taxonomy)

House of a thousand lies

CheeseDigestsAll — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 06:32:09 -0800

While it may be old news the US was drawn into the Iraq War under false pretenses, a new report by the Center for Public Integrity documents 935 specific falsehoods in public statements by eight white house officials: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz, Fleischer and McClellan. At the center of the report is a database of 380000 words of testimony on Iraq. A search for the phrase "aluminum tubes," for example, shows that there was an immediate negative reaction inside the government to Rice's claim (Sept. 2002) that these tubes were "only suited" for making nuclear weapons. Within a week, objections from the International Atomic Energy Agency, DOE, and the Oak Ridge labs, were raised both privately and publicly. Despite the expert rebuttal, in the summer of 2003, Rice was still claiming "a consensus" of scientists supported the claim.
Sadly, this report also serves to document why lying works and why Bush and others continue to use it. The press acts as an "echo chamber" for anything that high administration officials say. Anyone who disagrees is cast as a "critic" and an outsider. The fact that it took nearly five years after the start of the war to compile this database shows how much time the propaganda machine has to operate without an effective counter.

9/11 changed everything? And the NSA is only looking at overseas and terrorist-related phone and internet records?

amberglow — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:04:00 -0800

to gather information about Americans' phone records --... the NSA had approached the company (Qwest) about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records. ...Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts. ... -- The Administration's crimes and illegal spying on all of us and Quest's punishment for not going along with their plans.

Liar liar pants on fire.

Eekacat — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:40:02 -0800

Lies. Tania Head told a bunch of lies about 9/11. As a fiction editor for the NY Writers Coalition, she apparently knew her fiction. I guess it's nice to feel important.

Allí, ese 16 de marzo, Bush, Blair y Aznar decidieron sustituir al Consejo de Seguridad de Naciones Unidas y usurparon sus funciones para declarar por su cuenta y riesgo la guerra contra Irak.

amberglow — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 19:50:52 -0800

Bush and Aznar pre-Iraq Invasion-- Transcript of their private conversations in Crawford, Feb 22, 2003: "Quedan dos semanas. En dos semanas estaremos militarmente listos. Estaremos en Bagdad a finales de marzo", le dijo a Aznar. ("2 weeks. In 2 weeks we will be ready militarily. We'll be in Baghdad by the end of March", he told Aznar.) Consider this historical documentation. Full transcript here, and audio clips in first link. PB. Me parece muy bien. Chirac conoce perfectamente la realidad. Sus servicios de inteligencia se lo han explicado. Los árabes le están transmitiendo a Chirac un mensaje muy claro: Sadam Hussein debe irse. El problema es que Chirac se cree Mister Arab y en realidad les está haciendo la vida imposible. Pero yo no quiero tener ninguna rivalidad con Chirac. (Bush: Chirac knows the reality perfectly. Your intelligence services have told it. The Arabs are sending a very clear message to Chirac--Saddam must go. The problem is that Chirac thinks he's Mister Arab and the reality is that he's in a dream world(?). But i don't want to have any rivalry with Chirac. )

Photos never lie?

Dave Faris — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 10:01:21 -0800

Movie stars. What have they got that you haven't got? A professional retoucher. (via YesbutNobutYes) (Click on Portfolio. Flash interface, click on the thumbnail and hover over the pop-up to see the unretouched photo. Clicking on the pop-up will make it go away.)

This story is about something called Radical Honesty. It may change your life. (But honestly, we don't really care.)

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:35:05 -0800

I appreciate you for reading this article. I resent you for snarking in the thread without reading it.

How many does that make now?

amberglow — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:09:27 -0800

GOP Senator Larry Craig arrested in 'bathroom incident' --and pleads guilty. ... At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” ... He's denied similar stories in the past.

"Any help we can get with this will be greatly appreciated and, I believe, rewarded in heaven."

amberglow — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 15:45:06 -0800

Ted Haggard returns --with a cash for heaven offer to support him while he helps "broken people". Unfortunately, the procedure outlined is illegal, and the charity (Families With a Mission) is unregistered and run by a convicted sex offender. Meanwhile, Mike Jones, Haggard's favorite whore, pops up at a dirty bar trivia night (questions about Haggard and him, maybe nsfw, textwise)

The First Casualty of War? Truth

amberglow — Sat, 12 May 2007 13:01:47 -0800

War vs. Democracy: Untold Stories from the Lynch / Tillman Hearing -- ...U.S. soldiers whose injuries or deaths remain mired in secrecy. Pat Tillman's brother and fellow Army Ranger Kevin Tillman advocated strongly for other families still waiting for answers. ... "The family was told, it was -- quote -- 'an ambush by insurgents.' Two years later, they found out that those -- quote -- 'insurgents' happened to be the same Iraqi troops that he was training. Before his death, he told his chain of command that these same troops that he was training were trying to kill him and his team. He was told to keep his mouth shut." ... Thorough and eye-opening examination of the many ways the military spun, lied, withheld information on soldier deaths and injuries for propaganda purposes (and even delayed action until cameras were present in the Jessica Lynch rescue).

Be my, be my baby. Or, you know his.

Sticherbeast — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 00:06:30 -0800

Paternity Discrepancy. "My little boy was there, he was up at bat, and I started yelling for him, 'Go Matthew [not his real name]! Knock it out of the park!' And another man started screaming for Matthew. Louder than me. I looked over, and I looked at him, and I was like, Who is this guy? And I looked at my son, and I looked at him … and they were identical."

We distort, you decide?

metasonix — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:19:31 -0800

If you love to hate Fox News, this blogger has thoughtfully collected a number of Fox's more outrageous on-screen captions and website nonsense from the past few years. (Nice to see John Gibson admit he's a weakling.) [via]

On Wikipedia, no one knows you're a 24-year-old with no credentials

bhouston — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:06:05 -0800

The New Yorker appends a correction (scroll to bottom)... It seems that Essjay, an inner-circle Wikipedian favored by Jimbo Wales, has been lying about his "credentials " to everyone for years, including to The New Yorker (covered previously prior to correction.)

Carl Cannon: Why Presidents Lie

russilwvong — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:54:00 -0800

Carl Cannon on why Presidents lie, including a lengthy discussion of George W. Bush. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt on honesty, why doesn't the nation's first-ever M.B.A. president demonstrate a better command of the facts?

AWB's Sweet little earner

mattoxic — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 15:42:44 -0800

Make that bribe a tax deduction The Australian Wheat Board (AWB) [previously] has been found by to have breached UN sanctions on Iraq by paying the former regime almost three hundred million Australian dollars (300,000,000.00 AUD = 235,733,088.15 USD) in illegal “kickbacks” (read bribes). While the Australian Navy was instrumental in enforcing sanctions, at a huge cost to the Australian people (and indeed a far greater cost to Iraq people) this company was doing all it could to prop up Sadam’s regime. Now in the Australian Taxation Office have ruled that the bribes aren’t bribes, and have allowed the AWB to claim them as a tax deduction. Happily for some AWB’s share price surged with the news, so that’s some good news at least. It looks as if US might be taking action.

The Internet Sucks

GuyZero — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 10:08:52 -0800

Teh Intarweb suXXors! Macleans, the venerable Canadian magazine of declining circulation, declares the Internet a failure. But they're not bitter.

His cheekbone is crushed, his eye socket is shattered, and his nose is broken

amberglow — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 12:56:38 -0800

Meet the next generation of GOP leaders, part 8,493: Justin Zatkoff, Dan Carlson, & Jim Runestad. ... the conservative student Web site Truth Caucus posted photos of his (Zatkoff's) injured face, pronounced the incident a "hate crime,' and speculated it was the work of "liberal thugs.' A Republican organizer in Michigan e-mailed campus Republicans, warning them to travel in groups until the election was over. ... Um, no--Zatkoff was severely beaten by his own friend while both were drunk.

Bulldozer Politics

amberglow — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:48:53 -0800

New Orleans City Ordinance #26031 --...those who have not been able to make the necessary repairs to their battered homes by August 29th risk having their property seized and bulldozed by the city.... Bush says today: Katrina Repair Will Take Time, but time's up for many New Orleans residents. (more here from ACORN, who has been trying to help save homes there)

"Ahmad Chalabi 2.0"

bardic — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 13:27:25 -0800

"God's Army Has Plans to Run the Middle East" is an article that argues that Hezbollah is Iran's "spearhead" towards controlling the entire region. The author? Amir Taheri. You might remember him as the guy who fabricated the story about Iran imposing "yellow star" regulations on religious minorities (previously on mefi). James Wolcott connects the deceitful dots.