Why You Can’t Trust Your Government
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When people are warned that we should have the same distrust of government the Founders did, some say “Not OUR government! It’s different! You’re crazy to distrust American politicians!”
But without touching upon a single conspiracy theory, you can easily come up with an almost endless list of examples of why your own government, even the most famously “good” ones, cannot be trusted.
This page presents a growing set of examples, including:
The Tuskegee Experiment
The 1979 Belmont Report, by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, found that, the US government diagnosed 400 black men who had Syphilis, an easily easily cured, but horribly disfiguring and deadly sexually transmitted disease…but did not tell ANY of the men, did not treat them, but instead studied their slow, tortured decline, for 40 years, from 1932 until ALL of the men are dead by 1972.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Study_of_Untreated_Syphilis_in_the_Negro_Male
http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.htm
Gulf of Tonkin Incident
According to the National Security Agency’s own assessment, a carrier near Vietnam had its own little accident, but the Federal government pretended this was an attack by the Vietnamese, dragging the US into a needless war, shortly after President Johnson tells the Joint Chiefs of staff “you can have your war”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Incident
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261
FBI Crime Lab Fraud
In the 1990s, the FBI’s own Crime Lab head, Frederic Whitehurst, announced that the FBI fraudulently manufactured evidence to convict suspects.
When you watch Bones and CSI, you are not often reminded of how frequently crime labs are caught manufacturing evidence to more or less frame suspects (whom the police, one supposes, are just CONVINCED are guilty). Sure, local investigators get caught a lot…but don’t forget that the Federal government does it, too.
Remember, when someone says “but all the evidence is against him”, the one who’s really guilty may be the investigators and crime lab.
http://crimemagazine.com/tainting_evidence.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Whitehurst
Project MK Ultra
In 1975, a Congressional investigation (called the Church Committee) revealed to the public that United States government had actually set up their own brothels, hiring prostitutes to slip mind-altering drugs like LSD to unsuspecting lovers, who the government officials then observed from behind one-way mirrors.
They also abducted random victims from medical clinics and literally wiped their minds with electro-convulsive shock treatment, until they no longer had memories, or could even talk, and then abandoned them with no identification in random public places.
This sounds insane, WORSE than all the crackpot conspiracy theories, but is actually the finding both of Congress and a Presidential investigation by the Ford administration, known as the Rockefeller Commission:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK_Ultrahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_President’s_Commission_on_CIA_activities_within_the_United_States
http://history-matters.com/archive/contents/church/contents_church_reports_rockcomm.htm
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/
Seventh Day Adventist Waco Massacre
In 1993, based on what was later concluded by government investigation to be false evidence, a conventional search warrant was issued, to allow the FBI to present itself to the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist group living near Waco, Texas, and demand to search for automatic weapons.
Instead of following the laws for this kind of search warrant, the ATF stormed their homes without the warrant at all (apparently having left it behind by accident), and without identifying themselves, resulting in a frantic defense by the home-owners, who were later cleared of accusations of wrongfully shooting back, in Texas court.
Then the FBI and BATF, under the Clinton administration’s Attorney General Janet Reno, cut off the “Davidians” from communication with the outside world, using psychological warfare against them for 51 days, then assaulting the compound with tanks and other armor, resulting in the deaths of 76 people, mostly women and 20 children.
To reiterate: the OFFICIAL conclusions, to government investigation and court trials, was that the “Davidians” were solely victims, having done nothing wrong either before or during the attack and siege.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_Siege
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Why You Can’t Trust Your Government
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This site has its origins before the word “Blog” existed. Back then its owner, Kaz, was simply thought of as having a website that published socio-political articles with regularity…But the only real difference was that the RSS/XML protocals were not yet used this way.
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But Now You Know 
[…] Why you can’t trust the government – Just a few examples with links for confirmation. For a few of these examples, it’s important for those who remember these events to remember what happened at the time. […]
[…] Why you can’t trust the government – Just a few examples with links for confirmation. For a few of these examples, it’s important for those who remember these events to remember what happened at the time. […]
This is very enlightening, I’d love to see something like this about the UK government
[…] Why you can’t trust the government – Just a few examples with links for confirmation. For a few of these examples, it’s important for those who remember these events to remember what happened at the time. […]
[…] Why you can’t trust the government – Just a few examples with links for confirmation. For a few of these examples, it’s important for those who remember these events to remember what happened at the time. […]
theres a law sighned by a president in antiquity that if somethings unconstitutional and if the constitution people are being scilenced by the authority then they have to go public with it.thats why many of these things are known conventionally today.there would still be an auspice that puts lsd in the drinking water to this day if that didnt go public in the 60s.and many other things halted sighned by presidents with great pressure on them.
[…] other words: the pope is cooler than anyone else on earth–even Vladamir Putin. Why you can’t trust the government – Just a few examples with links for confirmation. […]
Don’t trust the government. Does this really need an article? THought this was basic common sense,
Sadly, people have been taught blind faith in government, in government schools, for a couple of generations.
Over half your sources are Wikipedia you dumbfuck.
And you’ve been told by your teachers that Wikipedia, a threat to their control over what you learn, is bad…right?
The fact is that studies intended to prove that Wikipedia is bad have turned out to show it’s actually more reliable than what you’re told you should be using on your little essays.
Actually, Wikipedia can be a pretty risky source at times. Because most articles can edited by any user, it’s fair to say that inaccuracies and biases can slip their way in. I mean, I could literally build a page about you and say whatever I want in it. If they’re not fact checked well enough they can be BS. I also don’t know how it could possibly be more reliable than the sources that it cites and pulls from…logic indicates that they’d be equal at best.
While you’re repeating the claims of the kind of bureaucrats who desperately want to retain control of what you learn (in public schools, newspapers, et cetera), the fact is that the opposite is true:
Because Wikipedia is edited by everyone, it is MORE reliable. NPR lies about economic issues, Fox News lies about foreign policy, government officials lie about everything, by default…with Wikipedia you have a form of crowdsourcing where everyone oversees each other, instead of some bias dominating.
The more controversial an article is, the more accurate it becomes, because people demand sources and proof, and the only stuff staying on the page is the best-sourced. One can always cite the sources in the article, and the stupid bureaucrats then don’t even know Wikipedia is involved…say for a term paper.
In one study after another, people INTENDING to show that Wikipedia is unreliable have, instead, found that it’s MORE reliable than mainstream media.
While my under schooling was in the public school system, my higher education was not. It was at a private college, which is well known for its emphasis upon critical learning, and 100% free from the influence of “bureaucrats.” And while public schooling may well be structured by government groups who decide what is learned, newspapers are not. In the United States, free press allows media to report on any issues, without being controlled by bureaucrats.
You point to NPR, Fox News, and Government officials as liars. First and foremost, these are not the sources I referred to as reliable. In fact, they would be among those who make Wikipedia a medium that should be used cautiously. Much like the millions of other people with no specialized or fact based knowledge of a topic, yet create Wikipedia articles. The sources I referred to in my last post would be professionals and experts in the relevant field. Historians, doctors, engineers (depending upon the topic).
On the matter of controversy driving accuracy, I can agree that this is highly possible. However, it’s important to consider the cases in which it does not. Certain topics will not attract people from both sides of an argument. If I was to wiki search an obscure “conspiracy” for instance, it’s likely that I already have a bias about such matters. And more likely than not, I would be inclined to agree with the slant of the article, regardless of its possible inaccuracies.
Now, this is not to discredit Wikipedia as a whole. It can be a great source for information, and I often used it when beginning research for my writings, even those that were published. It’s a great tool and has the potential to be even better. However, it cannot be a stand alone source. The possibility of flawed information forces any serious researcher to dig well beyond Wikipedia.
Finally, I will reiterate, my comparison was between Wikipedia and “main stream media” as you seem to be arguing. That debate would be pointless, as mainstream media is well known to often be wrong. That’s a fact with which any educated person can agree. I was comparing Wikipedia to sources by professionals and experts in fields relevant to a given topic.
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