Southern Bread Blog

With Kindle’s being so cheap now, there’s going to be a ton of them sold to first-time users this Christmas. Here’s my suggested reading list to get you started with your new device. The only problem I ran into is that there are so many great books that aren’t available on Kindle yet. Especially books by Robert Higgs, James Chodes and the older Cato works.

Economics:
Economics in One Lesson - Henry Hazlitt
What Has Government Done to Our Money – Murray Rothbard
A Free Market Monetary System and the Pretense of Knowledge – F.A. Hayek
Choice in Currency: A Way to Stop Inflation – F.A. Hayek
Denationalization of Money – F.A. Hayek

History:
A Century of War – John Denson
Day of Deceit – Robert Stinnet
The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda and an Unnecessary War – Thomas DiLorenzo
War and the Rise of the State – Bruce Pelton
Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Money Supply – Doug French
The Myth of a Guilty Nation – Albert Jay Nock
History of Money and Bankingin the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II – Murray Rothbard
In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition (1918-1938) – Butler Shaffer
Hamilton’s Curse – Thomas DiLorenzo
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West – Stephen Ambrose

Political Economy:
The Law – Frederic Bastiat
Our Enemy, the State – Albert Jay Nock
Betrayal of the American Right – Lew Rockwell
Losing Ground: American Social Policy (1950-1980) – Charles Murray
Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse – Thomas E. Woods
End the Fed – Ron Paul

Christian Thought:
What St. Paul Really Said – N.T. Wright
The Historical Jesus of the Gospels – Craig Keener
How to Read the Bible for All it’s Worth – Gordon Fee
The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach – Mike Licona
Church History in Plain Language – Bruce Shelley

Philosophy & Polemics:
Thinking as a Science – Henry Hazlitt
Tactics – Greg Koukl
Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul – J.P. Moreland
Body & Soul: Human Nature & the Crisis in Ethics – J.P. Moreland
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz – R.S. Woolhouse
Warranted Christian Belief – Alvin Plantinga

Science:
Signature in the Cell – Stephen Meyer

Food:
Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It – Gary Taubes

Fiction:
Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card

Education:
Dumbing us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Education – John Taylor Gatto
Government Schools are Bad for Your Kids: What You Need to Know – James Ostrowski

I was reading Albert Jay Nock’s book Myth of a Guilty Nation, when I ran across him referencing G.K. Chesterton’s comments on Lincoln. Since I wasn’t aware that there were any comments on Lincoln by Chesterton, I immediately searched for them. What I found was that Chesterton had written a book in 1922 called What I Saw in America. I haven’t read it yet, but I did find excerpts from it where he deals with Lincoln, the South/North conflict and the War to Prevent Southern Independence.

His comments are very, very interesting. Especially considering the timing of it being written in 1922. This was less than 60 years removed from the Civil War. That would be like someone writing about Korea and Vietnam right now. The memories and direct consequences of those wars are still very real to us today. Chesterton was born in 1874, only four years after Virginia itself was re-admitted to the Union (1870).

Anyway, I cherry picked what I thought were the most interesting:

On religious liberty at America’s founding:

Now there is nothing in this to diminish any dignity that belongs to any real virtues and virilities in the Pilgrim Fathers; on the contrary, it is rather to the credit of their consistency and conviction. But there is no doubt that the note of their whole experiment in New England was intolerance, and even inquisition. And there is no doubt that New England was then only the newest and not the oldest of these colonial experiments. At least two Cavaliers had been in the field before any Puritans. And they had carried with them much more of the atmosphere and nature of the normal Englishman than any Puritan could possibly carry. They had established it especially in Virginia, which had been founded by a great Elizabethan and named after the great Elizabeth. Before there was any New England in the North, there was something very like Old England in the South. Relatively speaking, there is still.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

On a Northern vs. Southern birth view of America’s founding:

Long ago I wrote a protest in which I asked why Englishmen had forgotten the great state of Virginia, the first in foundation and long the first in leadership; and why a few crabbed Nonconformists should have the right to erase a record that begins with Raleigh and ends with Lee, and incidentally includes Washington. The great state of Virginia was the backbone of America until it was broken in the Civil War. From Virginia came the first great Presidents and most of the Fathers of the Republic. Its adherence to the Southern side in the war made it a great war, and for a long time a doubtful war. And in the leader of the Southern armies it produced what is perhaps the one modern figure that may come to shine like St. Louis in the lost battle, or Hector dying before holy Troy.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

On the analogy of Ireland as the American South:

England once sympathised with the South. The South still sympathises with England. It would seem that the South, or some elements in the South, had rather the advantage of us in political firmness and fidelity; but it does not follow that that fidelity will stand every shock. And at this moment, and in this matter, of all things in the world, our political propagandists must try to bolster British Imperialism up, by kicking Southern Secession when it is down. The English politicians eagerly point out that we shall be justified in crushing Ireland exactly as Sumner and Stevens crushed the most English part of America. It does not seem to occur to them that this comparison between the Unionist triumph in America and a Unionist triumph in Britain is rather hard upon our particular sympathisers, who did not triumph. When England exults in Lincoln’s victory over his foes, she is exulting in his victory over her own friends.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

Observation on the Southern view of the War’s court history:

I can answer for it, at least, that there are some people in the South who will not be pleased at being swept into the rubbish heap of history as rebels and ruffians; and who will not, I regret to say, by any means enjoy even being classed with Fenians and Sinn Feiners.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

On Southern slavery vs. Northern “slavery”:

Strange to say, it is not certain that a lost cause was never worth winning; and it would be easy to argue that the world lost very much indeed when that particular cause was lost. These are not days in which it is exactly obvious that an agricultural society was more dangerous than an industrial one. And even Southern slavery had this one moral merit, that it was decadent; it has this one historic advantage, that it is dead. The Northern slavery, industrial slavery, or what is called wage slavery, is not decaying but increasing; and the end of it is not yet. But in any case, it would be well for us to realise that the reproach of resembling the Confederacy does not ring in all ears as an unanswerable condemnation.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

On ex-post-facto justification of Lincoln:

And if [Lincoln] has been proved right, he has been proved right by the fact that men in the South, as well as the North, do now feel a patriotism for that American nation. His wisdom, if it really was wisdom, was justified not by his opponents being conquered, but by their being converted.

–G.K. Chesterton (1922)

This last quote was particularly interesting. It is the quote that Nock was referring to in his book. The crushing of secession was ultimately written down in history as the “right” thing to do, only because, ultimately, most Southerners accepted it as simply immutable. That’s what reconstruction was all about. Reconstruction was to be the re-programming of the Southern mind. It worked, and now Lincoln is seen as great. If, as Chesterton alludes to with his Irish example, the Southern spirit had continued to buck against centralized government and the resistance had continued into the twentieth century, Lincoln would be viewed more like Cromwell than Bismark.

Just because…

As a followup to my post about how I lost 48 pounds this year, I’d like to clarify why diets work, when they do. You could even ask, why does any diet work at all? It’s simple: when you lose fat on a diet, it’s because you are eating fewer carbohydrates. There is no other way you can lose fat. It’s not like there are 3 or 4 ways to lose body fat. There is only one way. That is by eating fewer carbohydrates, and thus lowering your blood sugar, which in turn lowers your production of insulin, which is the master hormone for fat regulation.

“But, I know this guy that lost 60 pounds on Weight Watchers,” you might say. Well, I know people that have lost lots of fat on weight watchers too. And, the reason they lost that weight is because the Weight Watchers points system reduces your total carb intake. If they reduced their carb intake even more, they’d lose even more fat. Think about it this way: if a person that eats a normal diet of around 2500 calories a day (60% carbs, 30% protein, 10% fat), cuts their calorie intake to 1500(a reduction of 40%), they will, by pure mathematics, be reducing their carb intake by 40% as well. So, if they were eating 100 carbs per day before. They’d be eating only 60 now. That’s a huge drop. And that’s why they succeed in losing fat.

Ok, so if it works, then what’s the problem you ask? The problem is that 1500 calories per day is virtually undo-able for most adults if there is other food available to them. It’s just not sustainable for about 90% of the population. Ultimately the diet will fail. I cannot count the number of Weight Watchers folks I’ve seen lose tons of weight and then gain it right back. And the reason is that the diet is starving you.

On my diet, I eat as much as I want. Usually to the tune of about 2500 to 3000 calories per day, with loads of fat, and I still lost almost 50 pounds. So, what does this tell us?

1. Reducing calories (which reduces carbs by default) makes you lose weight.
2. Reducing carbs, without reducing calories also makes you lose weight.

The common variable is carb reduction. The calories are irrelevant, in as much as they would be an indicator of anything other than a probable carb intake level. On their own, they are meaningless to weight loss.

This is all just a condensed version of a much larger, detailed explanation by Gary Taubes at his blog. You’d do well for yourself to go read it.

**Ok, so I usually re-post this every year around this time. As usual, it’s just my opinion so don’t stone me.

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We decided last year that we wouldn’t do the Santa Claus thing with our kids. That doesn’t mean that we just say “santa isn’t real”. No, we just decided to handle it a little bit differently. We tell our kids the true history of St. Nicholas and that he used to be a real person and we commemorate his kind acts of Christian charity today as a Christmas tradition. We are very careful to tell them that some people like to have fun with the idea of Santa Claus and act like the presents come from him, so they shouldn’t spoil it for other kids. But what’s our motivation for this in the first place? Well, there are several.

First, it’s the truth. I’ve heard all the arguments for and against pretending that Santa Claus is real. I’m just not compelled by them enough to trick my kids. I want them to have total faith in what I tell them; that it’s the truth, as fully and complete as I know it to be. When kids finally do find out that Santa isn’t real, it is usually from other kids. I remember when I found out that Santa wasn’t real in the lunchroom at school back in the 3rd grade. I was so embarrassed. I remember a couple of bullies, Anthony and Brian making fun of me for “still believing in Santa Claus” and the other kids at the table laughing at me. A child’s self-esteem is so fragile and I don’t want them to feel like I tricked them, and that’s what got them embarrassed in front of their friends.

Second, I want them to know that their presents came from us. Maybe it’s a little selfish, but I want them to know right now that we care about the things they like and that it’s we who love them and know just what to get for them. I don’t want that love and care to be laid at the feet of some made up character who doesn’t exist. Kids get lots of gifts during the holidays and if you’re not careful, Christmas will be over and they have gotten lots of gifts from lots of people, but the gifts they should be getting from their parents are instead coming from Santa Claus.

Thirdly and most importantly, to a child, Santa Claus and other fictional holiday characters are just too similar to the secular view of God for my taste. On one hand you have Santa Claus whom you never see but he evidently knows everything about you and keeps up with whether you are being good or bad. He gives you good presents if you’re good and bad presents if you’re bad. He loves you and brings you toys (which God doesn’t even do). And Mommy and Daddy tell you all these stories about him and how he is real even though you never see him. My question is what in a child’s mind makes that any different than God? If Mommy and Daddy lied to me about this person who I can’t see but who loves me nonetheless, why should I believe them when they tell me that we can’t see God but he sure does love me?

If you think that’s far fetched then just read this article about some teachers in the UK who told their students that Santa Claus was not real, and then read the very first reader comment in the feedback section:

“I think next they should start going to funeral homes and telling the loved ones of the recently deceased that there is no Heaven or afterlife and that their loved one will just rot in the ground and they’ll never see them again. This would be especially good to do to any small children who lose a parent.”

- Peter, Houston TX

The fact that Peter from Houston associates Santa Claus as being the same as Heaven and Hell proves my point. The secular world today lumps Christ in right alongside Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. I see no reason to give them extra ammo with my kids.

Now for the disclaimers: I Dave Jones, being of semi-sound mind and unsound body do willingly acknowledge the following:

• Millions of people believed in Santa Claus as kids and were not made fun of when they found out.
• Millions of people believed in Santa Claus as kids and did not lose their belief in God.
• Millions of people believed in Santa Claus as kids and still knew their parents loved them.

That is why we don’t get all preachy about it with other parents. As far as I’m concerned, issues like this should be decided by each parent based on what they think is best for their children. It doesn’t bother me one bit when a parent tells their kid that Santa Claus does exist. But my conscience won’t let me tell that to my own kids, because my mind tells me they might not handle it as well as other kids. If you want to say that I’m an insane, overprotective, right-wing, puritan worshipper as a dad, then you would probably be right. As a dad, it’s my job to be overprotective and to worry. That’s what dads do. But I also think my points make good sense, and reason should always accompany concern as a parent’s guide.

I just saw Ted Howard re-tweet John Siracusa’s link to the full text of a boilerplate response being sent out by Scott Brown about the NDAA indefinite detention of Americans provision. The part that stood out to me the most was this one:

I understand your concerns regarding Sections 1031 and 1032 of the FY 2012 NDAA. As we continue to combat terrorism around the world and fight extremists on the battlefields in Afghanistan, it is important to have a judicial system in place to bring these suspects to justice. However, allowing detainees suspected of supporting terrorist activities to be tried in civilian courts in the United States jeopardizes the security of the city in which the trials would be held and would award detainees the same rights as U.S. citizens, hindering the government’s ability to bring these enemy combatants to justice. To mitigate these concerns, the Guantanamo Military Commission was created to give fair and meaningful trials to unlawful enemy combatants housed at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

–Scott Brown, via @siracusa (emphasis mine)

What is he saying in plain language? He’s saying, “The bill of rights inhibits justice.” Obviously, this is ridiculous. The rights we have been “guaranteed” (as much as words on paper can guarantee anything) by the constitution are there specifically to ensure that justice is brought about. The withdrawal of those rights guarantees only that raw power will prevail. It has nothing to do with justice.

But, remember what we’re talking about here. The whole controversy is about detaining Americans, captured on American soil. So, when Scott Brown says that trying these folks in court would “award detainees the same rights as U.S. citizens,” he is evidently saying that once you are detained, you are no longer a citizen. This is actually fairly consistent with the trajectory of criminal justice as a whole over time. Convicted felons can’t own guns or vote. They are treated like non-citizens. Now, Scott Brown just takes the next logical step and includes suspects in the non-citizen category also. Why wait for a conviction to strip citizenship when you can go ahead and do it just for being detained?

What a load of crap.

I was just reading a post by Veronique De Rugy at the NRO blog. She quotes from Peter Orszag:

Writing for Bloomberg View yesterday, Peter Orszag explained how in the private sector, “defined contribution” pensions have become the rule:

“The defined-contribution concept is already familiar to most American workers through their retirement benefits. Over the past two decades, company retirement programs have moved decisively away from defined-benefit plans, in which workers are paid a given amount of retirement income, and toward defined- contribution 401(k) plans, in which risks — from fluctuating financial markets, for example — are borne by workers.”

“In 1985, a total of 89 of the Fortune 100 companies offered their new hires a traditional defined-benefit pension plan, and just 10 of them offered only a defined-contribution plan. Today, only 13 of the Fortune 100 companies offer a traditional defined-benefit plan, and 70 offer only a defined-contribution plan.”

Orszag predicts that the same trend should be expected in the health-care market too. In fact, he claims that the adoption of the president’s health-care bill will accelerate this transition.

–Veronique de Rugy, NRO Corner

What is Peter Orszag saying here? He’s saying that a transition period is beginning where more and more of our health care costs are going to be paid by us directly, instead of our employers. This won’t come in the form of higher premiums. It will come in the form of higher co-pays and higher deductibles. This has already begun in the place where I work.

Every company I’ve worked for over my career has split my monthly health care premium costs with me 50/50 and every year the premium goes up about 8%-10%. This is a fairly standard way of doing it in the private sector corporate world. But, two years ago, we were notified that in order to avert an increase in premiums, we were raising the deductibles for certain procedures and raising the co-pay by $10 per visit. The same thing happened again this year. You see what’s happening right? The premium didn’t rise, but my out-of-pocket costs still rose. I’m paying a larger percentage of my health care costs now, even though my premium hasn’t risen in two years. This is what you can expect to happen over the course of the next decade or two. It’s unavoidable.

As health insurance companies shift more of the cost on to us, it’s going to hurt. But, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. Sure, some people will be hurt very badly by this. But, the net result will be a lowering of prices in the health care market as consumers have to pay more and more of the costs directly to the provider without going through the insurance company. It’s going to hurt doctors as well as consumers, since they will have to adjust to this new paradigm too.

But, as I said earlier, it’s unavoidable, and necessary. Prices simply have to come down or consumers won’t be able to pay. In case you haven’t noticed, being charged $100′s of dollars just to talk to a doctor for 5 minutes and have him write you a Zithromax prescription isn’t exactly sustainable market pricing. And the fact that the total(employee + employer) premium for my family coverage health insurance is now more than my monthly mortgage payment further indicates a massive correction coming at some point.

I don’t have it in me at the moment to go into a big 3000 word explanation about why the official mythology surrounding U.S. involvement in World War II is so screwed up. But, I’ve seen so much praise at the altar of the “greatest generation” today that I’d like to just provide some context to the discussion. I want to ask a simple question:

Why did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor?

If you don’t know the answer to this question, you really shouldn’t speak on the topic until you go and find out. So, to help you, let me paint some broad brush context to begin with:

1. In war, nobody is blameless.
2. Progressive era wars were about empires, not “freedom” as we would describe it now.
3. Countries the size of Japan don’t just attack other superpowers without, what they consider, really good reasons.
4. After war, the winner writes the history.

It’s these three concepts that drive my interest in WW2. The official history doesn’t seem to take any of those important ideas into account, and thus, it smacks of mythology. So, what’s the context of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor? Why would they make such a bold move when they were already deeply involved in wars within their own continent? Why attack the U.S. specifically? Why Hawaii? Well, let me give some more specific context about Japan in this era and suggest some good books:

• World War I was about competing European empires, and America sided with the British to help defend the economy of the British empire against competition from a rising German empire. A continuation of this story is what World War II was all about.
• Japan’s defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905) marked the Empire of Japan as a surprise threat to the English-American-Dutch empire. They were suddenly a serious player in Asia that could threaten European colony dominance.
• Japan has virtually no natural resources, so it relies on imports for all of it’s heavy industry and military. Thus, the U.S./Dutch oil embargo on Japan in July of 1941 was seen as a major provocation. It was a continuation of previous sanctions on heavy industry items.
• The U.S. knew their actions would provoke Japan into attacking(see the “8-action memo”) and cut off negotiations. The subsequent moving of the entire Pacific fleet to Hawaii provided a nice honeypot target for Japan to attack first and be seen as the aggressor.

This just barely scratches the surface of what was going on at the time. Here are some books you should read for more details:

• A Century of War by John Denson
• Day of Deceit by Robert Stinnet
• Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy by Percy Greaves
• The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable by George Victor
• No Clear And Present Danger: A Skeptical View Of The United States Entry Into World War II by Bruce Russett
• Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath by Harry Elmer Barnes

These books aren’t all written by modern revisionists. Some of them are old. And, two in particular were written by men who thought Roosevelt did the right thing by provoking the Pearl Harbor attack. What’s not in doubt is that he did provoke the attack. Calling the attack unprovoked is mythology, not history. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether the provocation was “worth it.” For my part, I think the killing of 3 million Japanese is non-justifiable.

“In war, truth is the first casualty.” –Unknown

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The first premise of my argument is:

1. It’s likely that we cannot trust the information being given to us about war.

What I’m basically saying is that the most readily accessible information about war is predominantly some form of propaganda. And, by propaganda, I don’t mean some sort of tin foil hat kind of thing. I just mean that the narrative of the information we read and watch is guided in a certain direction so that a particular impression is given. This does not mean that there is a secret person, or group of people within government that exert this control over the narrative. Instead, there are groups of people at every level of government, business and media that benefit from misinformation about war. And, because of this, they are all coincidentally on the same page.

I think, that war information is propaganda, is obvious if we consider these facts about such information(news):

1. Fear causes people to be less interested in the veridicality of news and information they receive about war.
2. Self-interest at every level of government produces an organic filtering of news as it travels through the bureaucracy.
3. Civilians naturally flee active and potential war zones, leaving only the military and embedded journalists behind.
4. Battlefields, thus being controlled by militaries and absent of competing news interests will inherently provide only curated news.

These seem fairly obvious to me, and provide a context that we can use to judge history as we look at a few examples.

There are four phases of war propaganda that we can look at:

1. The Leadup to War
2. The Ground War
3. The Actors Involved
4. Post-war Justification

I’ll cover the first two here, and go over the next two in the next post of this series.

1. The Leadup to War (Justifying initiation of hostilities)

“The deception of whole peoples is not a matter which can be lightly regarded. A useful purpose can therefore be served in the interval of so-called peace by a warning which people can examine with dispassionate calm, that the authorities in each country do, and indeed must, resort to this practice in order, first, to justify themselves by depicting the enemy as an undiluted criminal;”

–Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in War-time: Propaganda Lies of the First World War

Proper justification for the initiation of a war is absolutely critical for gaining the popular support necessary in a democratic system. Therefore, the lead-up to war is where the narrative is the most controlled. There are many examples of this, and whole books have been written on the topic. So, for the sake of brevity, I’ll share three examples that I feel are the most easily explainable: the sinking of the Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin and the killing of babies in Kuwait. These three events cover a large time period and show that lead-up propaganda is nothing new and hasn’t really changed much.

• The Sinking of the Lusitania

  The latest studies of the Lusitania wreckage confirm that the ship was indeed carrying munitions. The Germans were right. Wilson had been warned by the Germans in advance that they considered the Lusitania to be a valid target since it was carrying war supplies and munitions to and from England. Wilson, instead, did not warn Americans sailing on the ship about the threat, and publicly denounced the German action in a series of three “notes.” The sinking of the Lusitania was widely used in war posters and recruiting propaganda to whip up sentiment for America joining the war.

  Churchill, for his part, in a confidential memo said, “It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the U.S. with Germany. For our part we want the traffic – the more the better and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.”

• The Gulf of Tonkin Incident

  It’s widely known now, due to the recent de-classifying of material, that Lyndon Johnson lied about the gulf of Tonkin incident that justified, in American eyes, the full scale invasion of Vietnam by U.S. forces. The declassified NSA report that describes the lie says, “It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.” Robert Mcnamara corroborated this in the documentary The Fog of War.

• Killing of babies in Kuwait

  Like the Gulf of Tonkin event, it is now known that the George H.W. Bush administration lied about the killing of babies by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the lead-up to the first gulf war. It was widely reported, and repeated by Bush himself, that Iraqi Republican Guard troops, during the invasion, had gone into a Kuwaiti hospital, removed babies from incubators and left them to die. The eye witness(known at the time simply as Nayirah) that testified to the event was later found to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, and her story was coached by P.R. firm Hill & Knowlton. The story was false, but it was used readily by the Bush administration to justify the first gulf war. George W. Bush would later use a similar tactic (claiming Saddam was pursuing material for nuclear weapons) to justify the second gulf war.

2. The Ground War (Controlling the narrative)

As long as the lead-up propaganda was properly executed, the narrative of the ground war is fairly easy to control. Once the justification is made to actually start a war, many things will be forgiven in the mind of the public that might be inexcusable in another context. Let’s again look at three events from twentieth century wars.

• The Katyn Forest Massacre

  In 1938, Russia killed 22,000 polish intelligentsia and buried them in mass graves in Katyn Forest. Stalin blamed the Germans for the atrocity after the Nazi government discovered the mass graves at a later date. The massacre was used widely in Europe during the war to reinforce the view of Germany as evil. Of course, German officials would indeed turn out to commit atrocities, but the Katyn Forest massacre was propagandized in a way that covered up war crimes by an ally(Russia) and blamed it on the enemy(Germany). It’s also clear from now-public dispatches between Churchill and F.D.R. that they knew with fair certainty that Stalin was to blame for Katyn, but kept the matter quiet.

• Vietnam Body Count

  This is not an event, but rather an interesting observation that, even to this day, there is almost no awareness of the true death toll in a major U.S. war. Very few average citizens know how many Vietnamese were killed during that decade of active war(nearly two decades of U.S. involvement). The total number of deaths due directly to the war is over 1.2 million. But, the only numbers most Americans are aware of are U.S. troop casualty numbers. This protocol of not reporting on enemy death counts is still in place today, and for good reason. The numbers are shocking.

• Iraqi Body Count

  Again, like Vietnam, the lack of knowledge is what’s so fascinating. The best count we can get on the number of dead as a result of the Iraq war is from the government itself. The number of war dead, according to leaked documents, is placed at well over 100,000, with over 60% of those being civilians. This is a number that virtually no American citizen on the street is aware of because it’s never given to them in a mainstream news broadcast.

  Controlling the ground war narrative in this way is very easy. Since active war zones are under military control, it’s a simple matter to keep journalists out of those areas. And, the reporters who are “embedded” with various troop units have very little incentive to report information that would reflect negatively on military operations, since that would get them sent home.

I’ll examine the propaganda surrounding the personalities of war and the post-war justification period in the next post of this series. These take a long time to research, so it might be slow in coming. I have to get the facts straight however, so I’m taking my time.

And awesome: