Count the ones you see used by media and protagonists every day!!
Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression
Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense,
other techniques must be employed.
1. Dummy up. If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.
2. Wax indignant. This is also known as the "How dare you?" gambit.
3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about
the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors."
4. Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspects of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men.
5. Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nutcase," "ranter," "kook," or "crackpot". Avoid fair and open debate with any of
the people you have thus maligned.
6. Impugn motives. Marginalize critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan
political agenda.
7. Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.
8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."
9. Come half-clean: the"confession and avoidance" or "taking the limited hangout route." Create the impression of candor and honesty while you
admit only to relatively harmless, less-than-criminal "mistakes."
10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.
11. Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant eg - if
evidence exists they would have reported it. They haven't reported it so there is no such evidence.
12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely, who did it and why?
13. Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or publicizing distractions.
14. Lightly report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them. This is sometimes referred to as "bump and run" reporting.
15. Baldly and brazenly lie. A favorite way of doing this is to attribute the "facts" furnished the public to a plausible-sounding, but anonymous,
source.
16. Expanding further on numbers 4 and 5, have your own stooges "expose" scandals and champion popular causes.
17. Flood the Internet with agents. This is the answer to the question, "What could possibly motivate a person to spend hour upon hour on Internet
news groups defending the government?" Don't the authorities have defenders enough in all the newspapers, magazines, radio, and television?
Obviously not.
thebird.org...
Are there any number 17's at ATS?
[Edited on 28-8-2003 by MaskedAvatar]