Out of Pod Experience

@ Zagam

It's not impossible to determine what is really the truth. Just extremely difficult. The difficulty is three fold: First, you have to know at what point does personal bias get passed on as fact? The second is fighting your own personal opinions that may get in the way of the facts. The second part is the hardest as you will have grown up and gotten use to your opinions that may or may not contradict facts.

The third part is not that hard to do: Ask questions (lots of them). This part is something we all have to do very often compared to the first two I mentioned.

Years ago, there was a commercial about a fortune teller names "Cleo" who used Tarot cards to help solve your problems and she promised that the calls are free. It turned out to be hogwash. She would not only lie about being a Jamaican tarot card reader and that her name was Miss Cleo (her real name is Harris), but she also charged her customer a lot for the phone calls that were requested via unsolicited emails. Several states, including FL and Arkansas as well as the FCC to name a few, sued the psychic network and its parent company for fraud.

Then there was a toy company that made a doll that promised (via commercials) to 'dance around, do cart wheels and twirl'. Turned out to be hogwash as well. The FCC jumped on them like a lion on prey when customers complained about the product's lacking performance.

As to disinformation, probably the most successful Disinformation Campaign was that launched by the former Soviet Union against the Neutron Weapons NATO was deploying.

For those with no back ground on the issue:

The Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were the two alliances that were the main contenders in the Cold War in Europe between the end of WWII and the collapse of the Eastern European communist ruled countries.

The Warsaw Pact's military forces were dominated by massive Tank Heavy formations which relied on Soviet Mass Attack Strategies. These used large numbers of cheaply equipped units to over whelm their opponents - as they had done during WWII. A Warsaw Pact Armored Division was thought of as a drill bit. It would attack, trying to bore a hole in the enemies formations until it had been ground down to the point that it was ineffective - and then be replaced by another that continued the attack.

NATO, vastly outnumbered and made up of societies unwilling to accept either the maintenance of massive conscript armies or the mass casualties inherent in mass attack strategies, relied on superior weapons, training and tactics. NATO also relied on the deterrent value of short range nuclear weapons. If their armies were going to be over whelmed - they let it be known that they would not refrain from using nuclear weapons - which worked really well against massed tank attacks.


Now, one of the problems with the threat by NATO to use nuclear weapons - was that being the defender in any foreseeable conflict with the Warsaw Pact - these nuclear weapons would be used on their own soil, blowing up the homes of their citizens - possibly with large numbers of those citizens, (those unable to evacuate in time), still inside them.

The trouble was - it isn't easy to kill a tank. It takes a large blast to do so if you don't hit it directly with something and nuclear weapons are area of effect weapons. This large blast resulted in a large area of effect - which would encompass the homes of more citizens and would kill these people by dropping their homes on their heads, if it didn't sweep they and their homes entirely away.

To get around this - NATO came up with a weapon that relied - not on blast - but on radiation to knock out those masses of Soviet Tanks. Radiation didn't have to destroy the tank - it only had to penetrate it's armor and kill the crew inside - which neutron radiation was able to do fairly well. Thus - not having to have a larger blast (producing a larger blast radius) - the neutron weapons would be effective against the tanks it was targeted against - while killing fewer civilians.


Now - the Soviets being past masters at lying and having a willing audience in all the silly little teenagers who were rebelling against their parents and all their parents stood for - plus a number of left wing political organizations - started a Disinformation Campaign that basically went "The Neutron Bomb - it kills people but doesn't hurt buildings", the implication being that it would be used by the evil capitalists to callously kill civilians while leaving their property intact.

Now of course - nothing could have been further from the truth. The alternative was NOT weapons which killed fewer people - the alternative was the current nuclear weapons that killed MORE people - they just did it by dropping structures on them if it didn't blow structures and people both away.


Using the old National Socialist Workers Party concept of The Big Lie - this Disinformation Propaganda was widely and repetitively published by the Soviets and their supporters in the west - until the populations of the NATO countries rejected the weapons that would have killed fewer of them than the current weapons - which would still be used in the absence of something less deadly to civilians to replace them.


And - thus - the Soviet Armored spear heads were made safer at the expense of NATO Civilians - BY - NATO civilians.

Utterly Brilliant Campaign.

Of course ... this disinformation campaign - like most advertising - relied on the stupidity of the listener for it's success. Anyone paying the slightest attention to how things really worked wouldn't have been fooled - but most people (outside their area of expertise, with which they earn their living) are abysmally ignorant. So it worked really well.


Fortunately for all concerned, NATO's long term strategy for defeating the Warsaw Pact (just keeping them from attacking until their unworkable economic systems collapsed from their own weight) worked and the chances of WWIII starting in Northern Europe are now drastically reduced.


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