Product Description

Already a massive underground best-seller in the US, this extraordinary book acts as a battering ram against the distortions, myths and outright lies put out by the government, corporations, the media and others who want to keep the truth from us. Packed with contributions from Noam Chomsky, Howard Bloom, Howard Zinn, R U Sirius, Alex Constantine and many more, it dispenses with speculation and theorising and cuts right to the bone with fact after substantiated fact.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #231366 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 350 pages

Customer Reviews

Over-rated and over-here
I usually like this type of book, which pokes and prods at the lies we know we are fed. But somehow this doesn't work for me. Maybe its because it tries to cover too much ground (from Osama Bin laden to "why kids aren't like their parents" is just too broad for me). It's also incredibly americanized - and a lot of it isn't of that much interest to the British reader. I've read it all, a lot better, in other texts. Want to know about the lies of the food industry? Read "Fast Food Nation" - about flaws in the US political and voting system try "Stupid White Men", about lies in the p.r. industry try "Toxic Waste is good for you." If you want a nice ornamament or coffee table book, then buy this (it's a really, physically large book. Hard to read it at night lying in bed!). If you want in-depth analysis avoid this completely. Sorry but this is not what they hype made it out to be - it's basically nothing more than a coffee table book which tries to make it's reader feel like they are learining and becoming more aware but in the end just fills us with too much information. One for Americans who want to feel politically correct.

Opinion masquerading as fact
Here's what I was expecting:

A collection of articles and essays about things the mainstream media have avoided covering, whether by accident or design. I also fully expected to be confronted by articles that I didn't agree with, or found uncomfortable reading.

Instead the 1st (political) half of the book is generally made up of opinion pieces of the type I used to see in various far-left newspapers such as Socialist Worker when I was at Uni. Pieces where the facts have been distorted to deliver the desired point of view.

Let's take as one example, the article "The Media and their Atrocities" by Michael Parenti where he talks about the NATO action against Yugolsavia.

According to Michael Parenti, here's why NATO acted against Milosevic: "Yugoslavia was the only country in Eastern Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy."

Calling Yugoslavia a socialist paradise is beyond ludricous.
Even most people on the mainstream European left who opposed the NATO actions agree that Milosevic was a socialist in name only.

Also, Parenti ignores one important fact. If the West was so hell-bent on destroying the socialist paradise of Yugoslavia, why did it generally just wring its hands and do nothing during the first phase of the Yugoslav wars from 1991-1995?

Then there's the claim that there were only "several dozen" rather than thousands of rapes during the Bosnian conflict. An outrageous statement bearing in mind that mass rapes were corrobated by a range of human rights groups and charities including Amnesty International, who last I heard wasn't in the pay of the Pentagon.

Finally there's the old chestnut that there were no large scale atrocities against Kosovo Albanians or against Muslims in Bosnia. Again the facts speak otherwise.

The Dutch Government recently resigned after a report showed that Dutch UN troops did nothing to stop the massacre of muslims in the safe haven of Srebrenica in 1995. If there was no massacre why did the Dutch Government feel the need to step down?

I could go on. For example the article on Northern Ireland starts by telling readers that there are two "parties" in Northern Ireland - Unionists or Loyalists and Republicans.

Wrong. There are about a dozen parties in Northern Ireland and four (not two) main strands of opinion. "Unionists" and "Nationalists" are broad labels given to groups who respectively want to remain part of Britain or join the Republic of Ireland but have advocated peaceful democratic means.

"Loyalists" and "Republicans" have (until recently) advocated violence as a means of remaining part of the UK or joining Ireland. A crucial distinction.

There were articles that were interesting, for example how the US media never talks about the fact that Martin Luther King spent his last years crusading about poverty and against the Vietnam War.

However, once you start to read articles where you know that the basic facts aren't true, you start to doubt the ones which you don't know very much about. All in all a disappointment.

Fanatstic eye opener
This book deserves a review, it deserves to be read by people who want out of the MTV listening, diet-coke drinking, G.W. Bush is my hero club. It has about 40-50 articles on a wide range of issues from politics (politricks) to health issues. Did you know that Nutrasweet contains a petrochemical and that a study highlighted such severe symptoms that the volunteers were prevented from continuing in the program. Now consider that Nutrasweet (aspartame) is in every diet soft drink and in every sugar-free (not sweetner free!) product.

There are also aricles on the Columbine(sp?) shootings, did you know that survivors described three or more shooters, not just two. That there were small bombs littered around the school so numerous that there is no way these two kids could have possibly snuck around hiding them without being caught.

There are also more sinister snipes at American culture and Martin Luther Kings silencing beyond his 'I have a dream' days. The last couple of his years of his life are never shown on TV documentaries etc.. because he became more outspoken on politics and American culturee in general (oooh, better not let him influence people on that...).

There you go then, a brief highlight of this book, to get the bigger picture buy it. It is very cheap for the book you get (400 pages at 9" by 12" , go actually measure that, youll be surprised!). I can only hope more of these come thick and fast so that a series can be built up to the point where the media will have to review each new book and be forced to tell us how they caved in on principles.