Suppressio Veri, Suggestio Falsi (again)

aka “The suppression of the truth is the suggestion of a falsehood.“

When I heard on Radio Four news headlines blaze forth the news that German commercial ships had successfully navigated the North East Passage, with the clear implication that it had never been done before (and was now only possible because of climate change), I was puzzled. Hadn’t Stalin put a lot of effort into cracking just this problem in the 1930s, in order that the Soviet Navy not have to circumnavigate the globe to get to the Far East, as happened with their ill-fated Second Pacific Squadron in 1904 ? Isn’t that why they had nuclear-powered icebreakers ?

The answers are – yes, they had, and yes that’s why.

After a couple more trial runs, in 1933 and 1934, the Northern Sea Route was officially open and commercial exploitation began in 1935. The next year, part of the Baltic Fleet made the passage to the Pacific where armed conflict with Japan was looming.

Richard North examines the entrails at EU Referendum. He mostly concentrates on the Independent newspaper, which came out with a straight lie, but the BBC report is also mentioned.

Given that hardly anyone reads the Independent, yet BBC radio news is listened to by millions of people, its likely that far more people have been deceived by the BBCs insinuations than the Indie’s outright lies.

(Disclaimer – I actually believe it is pretty certain that chucking large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere could indeed impact the climate – the question is to what extent, and what actions should be taken to mitigate risk. But a good cause doesn’t justify falsehood.)