The British lies to Feisal regarding the aftermath of the ME after WWI, considering the long lasting implications I think it deserves a place on the Big Lies Througout History List.
“Citizens of Troy: I present you with this huge wooden horse, as a token of peace between our two countries.”
The Extinction of the Buffalo?
Maybe I’m just an ignorant fool but if I hadn’t seen them in person myself I would still have believed that they were all gone. I’ve never read a book or seen a documentary which mentions them in anything other than “now they are gone” terms. In fact, just the other day I saw a Burns documentary of the West and again it implied that there are no more Buffalo. There are plenty of wild Buffalo out West.
It’s just a shower.
There is no single factual answer, so the question isn’t really a GQ. Since it seems to have developed into a debate, I’ll move the thread to GD.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which purport to be a comprehensive plan and conspiracy for a Jewish takeover of the world, have been used to persecute Jews since the days of Czarist Russia. They were used to justify pogroms, ghettos and ultimately the Holocaust, and are still believed by gullible Jew-haters and used by cynical anti-Semites who know better.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help you! Some Asshole
You’re certainly not an ignorant fool! But I don’t think this counts as a lie. In school in the early 80s, I learned that the buffalo came back. I think histories of the West, such as Burns’s documentary, tend to focus on the effect that the near-extinction of the buffalo had on Western culture without bothering to slip in a parenthetical “By the way, they made a miraculous comeback in the mid-1900s.”
Anyway, would “Jews eat Christian babies” count as a lie, or be more in the realm of folklore? It started the ball rolling on persecution long before the Protocols were dreamt up.
Re. the Belgrano. Despite the confession:
This (and the facts) are in direct contradiction with Thatcher’s assertion that:
From RealVideo of the Diane Gould interview.
Some great lies would be what the Romans must have promised their neighbors… then what the Spaniards promised the Aztecs and Incas…
Far from plenty, more than there were, but very, very, extremely very far from the plenty that once were.
Do they stretch from horizon to horizon, going back towards the horizon as far as you can see?
My favorite lies were the following:
The man who never was: False intelligence planted with a corpse.
Garbo: The great false spy who fed the Nazis a lot of great lies.
What about the fake information the Allies planted on a dead body to fool the Germans into believing that the invasion of Normandy would take place elsewhere?
shakes fist at Dogface
Not the worst but one of the most common:
“I was just about to do that.”
The existence of the Social Security Trust Fund or statements claiming we are dipping into it.
There are no funds in trust, only trust in the fund.
Oh, I think the Romans’ neighbors knew EXACTLY what they were getting into. That’s why they fought tooth and nail most of the time.
The “Man Who Never Was” was planted to mislead the Germans from the invasion of Sicily, not Normandy. Of course, we used a much more elaborate deception plan to convince them that Calais was the true target of Operation Overlord.
Cecil Rhodes’ claim that the natives of Southern Rhodesia attacked his men, when really he had orchestrated it so that his own men faked an attack on his own men.
Hitler’s use of the same tactic a third of a century later, used as justification for invading Poland.
While we’re on Hitler:
“Peace in our time.” - His statement assuring Britain that Hitler would remain ‘peaceful’.
“Don’t worry Stalin - we won’t attack you.” - His peace pact with the Soviet ‘untermenschen’ Union
What about the glorious lies in the Books of Bokonon?