Governments are well known to lie – One way they hide the truth is simply by not mentioning it

“When it is question of ensuring their own survival, they are ruthless.”

No 2003 Posted by fw, July 9, 2017

“Today, the entity that we call “The West” is facing existential threats in the form of resource depletion and global warming. Yet, the mainstream media are completely silent about resource depletion and, at least in the US, they seem to be aiming at silencing the discussion on global warming. Not that people cannot know what’s going on; there are plenty of blogs and discussion groups where you can learn the truth. But it remains an unofficial, marginal truth that plays no role in the general discussion. The main discussion remains dominated by concepts such as ‘making the country great again’ and ‘restart growth…’” —Ugo Bardi, Cassandra’s Legacy

Ugo Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy. He is interested in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy.

Is this a lie?

“We will grow our economy while reducing emissions. We will capitalize on the opportunity of a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy to create good-paying and long-term jobs.” —PM Trudeau (Source: Vancouver Declaration Moves Canada Closer To A National Climate Plan, DeSmogCanada, March 5, 2016).

How about this?

“Politicians are struggling to find a way of looking supportive. The way that they’ve been doing it is to say, ‘Well, we’ll get you a pipeline,’ which is going to do nothing to help the economics of the industry at the moment. It isn’t going to bring back those jobs, isn’t going to really do anything but it’s a very symbolic way of doing that.” – Adam Scott, Oil Change International. (Source: Canada’s Fossil Fuels Lobby Issues Dubious Data in a Bid for More Pipelines by The Real News Network, June 24, 2017)

Who are you going to believe – The Prime Minister of Canada or an energy and climate policy expert working for an NGO?

More importantly, on what basis will you make that decision?

Interesting questions. But as Ugo Bardi points out, although there are “plenty of blogs and discussion groups where you can learn the truth… it remains an unofficial, marginal truth that plays no role in the general discussion.” The main discussion remains dominated by the latest headline-grabbing captions, shallow descriptive commentary, rarely critically analytical.

Below is a short, abridged selection excerpts from the beginning and ending excerpts of Bardi’s piece, which focused on lies told by the governments of Germany and Italy during World War II. To read his post on his blog, click on the following linked title’

**********

What Can Governments Hide From Us? Lessons From WWII by Ugo Bardi, Cassandra’s Legacy, July 7, 2017

Governments are not known to be benevolent organizations. On the contrary, when it is question of ensuring their own survival, they are ruthless. And they are well known to lie to people. The case of the “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq is well known but, at least, eventually it became clear that it was a lie: these weapons didn’t exist. But it’s often easier to hide existing things than to create non-existing ones.

The internet is full of claims that governments or some of their institutions are engaged in this kind of lies. They are hiding from us the spreading of poisons in the sky in the form of chemtrails, the building of hidden concentration camps for political opponents, the fact that aliens landed and were captured, the fact that oil is really a renewable resource constantly recreated underground by abiotic processes, that climate scientists are engaged in a worldwide conspiracy to scare us first and then enslave us. The latest one is about “child slaves on Mars“.

These claims are usually described in terms of “conspiracy theories” and most of them are so hopelessly naive and absurd that they raise the legitimate suspicion that they are part of some targeted disinformation campaign. But it seems to be easy to convince people to believe in the weirdest ideas, so maybe these legends are spontaneous evidence of this tendency. Still, it is also true that conspiracies do exist and that governments are often actively engaged in them…

*****

[H]istorical examples can tell us something about how governments can hide truth: simply by not mentioning it. In other words, governments cannot make the truth disappear, but they can “blur” it, marginalizing it and making it appear unimportant.

Today, the entity that we call “The West” is facing existential threats in the form of resource depletion and global warming. Yet, the mainstream media are completely silent about resource depletion and, at least in the US, they seem to be aiming at silencing the discussion on global warming.

Not that people cannot know what’s going on; there are plenty of blogs and discussion groups where you can learn the truth. But it remains an unofficial, marginal truth that plays no role in the general discussion. The main discussion remains dominated by concepts such as “making the country great again” and “restart growth,” probably as impossible as it was for Italy to defeat the Soviet Union and the USA together, during WWII.

FAIR USE NOTICE – For details click here