“War Made Easy" is a documentary with Sean Penn narrating, and is based on a book by Norman Solomon . This is an award winning expose on how the American Public has been led into a 50-year pattern of government deception and spin, dragging the United States from one war into another. Remarkably this film exhumes archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations. Brutally persuasive this film presents disturbing examples of propaganda from those we want to believe in.
posted by Rancid Badger on Sep 29, 2007 - 51 comments

The Constitution in Crisis: "The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War, and Illegal Domestic Surveillance." The 350-page Final Investigative Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff "identifies 26 laws and regulations Bush Administration may have violated." [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha on Aug 4, 2006 - 29 comments

"Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything." So says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years. Now, who still believes the P(L)OTUS?
posted by acrobat on Nov 10, 2003 - 50 comments

"Children Drink 25% of Alcohol Consumed in the U.S." At least according to the attention-grabbing headline of a press release recently issued by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. The only problem is that it wasn't true. The organization had miscalculated the data, and the figure was actually closer to 11%. It was also misleading, since the word "children" included 18, 19, and 20 year-olds (who presumably do most of the drinking). Aside from yet another lesson in the inherent malleability of statistics, what conclusions should we draw from this study? Should we accept that teenagers are going to drink, and teach moderation? Or is stricter enforcement of the 21 age-limit the way to go? I'm also interested in the views of those living in (more enlightened?) countries with a lower drinking age.
posted by pardonyou? on Mar 1, 2002 - 22 comments

Were the clues found by law enforcement officers planted to mislead the search for the perpetrators of 9.11? I've been wondering, and so does Stratfor.
posted by rebeccablood on Sep 14, 2001 - 13 comments