Commentary: Strategic gullibility Washington (UPI) Aug 2, 2013 "You'd be surprised what people will accept once you insist two or three times running that they have seen what you tell them they have seen" - So wrote Andrew Levkoff in "A Mixture of Madness." That was the gullibility syndrome that allowed us to accept a punitive expedition into Afghanistan to punish al-Qaida and its Taliban hosts after 9/11 without questioning how ...
Aug. 4, 2013 - Space War
Facebook Shares Close Above IPO Price It took about 440 days, but shares in the social network company today finally closed above $38 ($38.05 to be exact) — the price Facebook charged for its stock when it went public in May 2012. After gaining 23 cents on Day One, the IPO became a symbol of Silicon Valley hubris — and investor gullibility — as institutional buyers began to fear that Facebook wouldn’t be able to grow. It was unclear ...
Aug. 2, 2013 - Deadline Hollywood
Jacques Barzun in CounterPunch The diffusion of ideas is propaganda, whether fascist, communist, or democratic,the great historian Jacques Barzun wrote many years ago. "The democratic hope has always been to raise the standard of gullibility, to sharpen judgment, to...
Eric Abetz in ABC Online Sadly some so-called environmental activists have in the past put cuddly animals on their websites to solicit donations for what are essentially scams praying upon people's good nature and gullibility,Senator Abetz said.
Antony Beevor in Brisbane Times Beevor argues that "it should be the duty of not just every scientist and historian, but also of every writer, publisher, movie-maker, TV producer and ordinary citizen to fight all attempts to exploit the ignorance and gullibility of audiences".