The Truth About Lies

 by Aja Raden review – a history of deceit, hoaxes and cons

From snake-oil salesmen to the origins of the mermaid – why people lie, and why we always want to believe

Kathryn Hughes London Guardian   

At about the age of 18 months babies start to get sneaky. They hide food they don’t like and go in for bouts of fake crying. In other words, they have learned that reality, far from being set in stone, is something that can be performed, tinkered with or even made to disappear completely. This, suggests Aja Raden, is the great foundational moment of life, indeed of all our lives. From now on we spend our time tiptoeing along the boundary between true and false, with a dizzying sense of how little there is to choose between them.

From here Raden takes us on a whistle-stop tour of hoaxes and cons. She’s not talking here about little fibs, the grownup version of hiding your spinach under your plate, but rather the swaggery whoppers that are capable of bringing down a whole peer group. Something like the Bernie Madoff scandal, a long con that lasted three decades and involved a lot of very rich people believing a criminal when he promised to make them even richer, without explaining how. In effect, and on Madoff’s own eventual admission, he was running a $65bn pyramid scheme, which used the money from new investors to pay off the marks who had been in the game for longer. All fine and dandy until the day came when he ran out of fresh meat and the whole wonky structure came tumbling down.

Why on earth would anyone – especially smart, rich anyones – fall for such obvious nonsense? Raden explains that it’s because, in the grand scheme of things, it benefits us to take information on trust. If we felt obliged to test knowledge before believing it, most us would have to spend at least a decade of our adult lives satisfying ourselves that the Earth is indeed round (assuming our maths was even up to it). Raden isn’t suggesting for a moment that the Earth is actually flat, simply that we have learned to rely on collective intelligence and majority decisions as a way of shortcutting a lot of tedious grunt work. In the case of Madoff, investors believed that his scheme must be a Good Thing simply because so many other people, including CEOs and Hollywood stars, already thought it so.

That is why the most compelling hoaxes start with a nugget of truth. Take snake oil. The indentured Chinese labourers who built the American transcontinental railroad in the 19th century naturally looked to their medicine chests to soothe their smashed joints and sunburnt skin. Snake oil, made from the rendered fat of black water snakes, was extraordinarily rich in Omega-3 and worked a treat as an anti-inflammatory. Soon news of its efficacy had spread throughout the whole blistered-fingered west. Demand outstripped supply (the medicine had to be imported from China since there are no black water snakes in North America) with the result that any number of fakes started to appear. The best – or worst – was from Clark Stanley, who invented Stanley’s Snake Oil by boiling up a rattlesnake (woefully light on Omega-3) and murmuring something about how the Hopi swore by it. In time Stanley didn’t even bother with essence of snake, but simply bottled up mineral oil and turpentine and slapped a fancy label on it. And at a stroke you have original – or rather fake – snake oil, sold in hundreds of thousands of bottles throughout 1890s North America.

The fact that people went on swearing that Stanley’s Snake Oil eased their aches and pains is testimony, Raden writes, to our very human need to believe. On a crazier scale she tells the story of how Animal Planet showed a documentary in 2013 which suggested that mermaids were real. Not that they were sexy fish ladies exactly but rather that they were aquatic animals that had evolved from early coastal hominids many millions of years ago, in the same way that dolphins and whales are known to have evolved from early coastal canids. Everyone fell for it, including Raden herself. What’s more, she went on wanting to believe it, even after newspapers started running spoilsport headlines such as “No, Mermaids do not exist”. What she longed for, she says, was the possibility that somewhere in a world stripped bare of enchantment there remained a corner where magic and mystery still reigned supreme.

The Truth About Lies claims to be a “taxonomy” of deceits, hoaxes and cons, but actually it is no such thing. “Taxonomy” is one of those words that sounds important and semi-official. But Raden never makes any attempt to bring her stories into any kind of relational or ranking system (not even one that works only because we have all consented to its existence). Instead, what we get is a ragbag of anecdotes, from the original Ponzi scheme of the 1920s to the slips and sleights of big pharma that have led to the current opioid crisis. All hugely interesting, and certainly entertaining, but not quite the serious and scholarly investigation that Raden would have you believe.

The Truth About Lies: A Taxonomy of Deceit, Hoaxes and Cons is published by Atlantic (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

‘It’s a hotbed’: Miami’s role in Haiti murder plot fits decades-long pattern

‘It’s a hotbed’: Miami’s role in Haiti murder plot fits decades-long pattern

Exile communities, ready supply of military veterans, history of corrupt local politics and drugs money make city a nexus for mayhem

Julian Borger London Guardian

One of the less surprising developments in the unfolding mystery of the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse is the central role of Miami in the whole story.

For decades, Miami has been the launching pad and a byword for half-baked plots and coups – from the Bay of Pigs, the failed invasion of Cuba in 1961, to last year’s harebrained raid on Venezuela, and now, allegedly, last week’s murder of the Haitian president. Most of the supposed participants were killed or arrested in the 24 hours after the murder.

The main suspect, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, is a Haitian with strong ties to the Miami area, as has another Haitian-American detained by the Haiti authorities, and the security firm alleged to have recruited the Colombian mercenaries accused of involvement in the attack has an office in Doral, near to Miami International airport and Donald Trump’s golf resort.

The security firm reportedly named by some of the plotters calls itself the Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy (CTU) and is run by a Venezuelan exile. When Miami Herald reporters went to knock on the door of its modest offices, no one opened the door.

It is all reminiscent of the ill-fated Operation Gideon, a brazen abortive raid on Venezuela in May last year, hatched in Miami by exiles and mercenaries run by a gung-ho former Green Beret, Jordan Goudreau. That plot left eight people dead and 100 arrested. As in Haiti, the raiders were paraded in front of the cameras by the government they were supposed to overthrow, to rub in the humiliation.

Miami has all the ingredients required for a nexus of mayhem: several exile communities, dreaming and scheming about a return to power in their home countries, a ready supply of military veterans with Latin American and Caribbean experience from US Southern Command, headquartered in Doral, and a long history of corrupt, ethnically driven local politics to provide a permissive environment.

Narco-dollars from the cocaine trade have historically served as the connective tissue and lubricant between these three pillars.

In her book on Miami, author Joan Didion wrote that its exiles were under “a collective spell, an occult enchantment from that febrile complex of resentments and revenges and idealizations and taboos which renders exile so potent an organizing principle”.

The urban sprawl that runs up the coast from Miami to Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach is home to the diaspora of most Latin American states, but the three most significant and active communities today are Cuban, Venezuelan and Haitian.

The Cubans have traditionally been based in Little Havana, just west of downtown Miami. A few miles to the north is the densely packed neighbourhood of Little Haiti. The Miami Venezuelans are more dispersed but the biggest concentration is in Doral.

“It’s the exile headquarters of the world,” said Anne Louise Bardach, who reported extensively on the city for her book Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana. “It’s because Florida is a peninsula that is basically a dagger cutting into the Caribbean and aimed at Latin America.”

The exile communities, Bardach said, operate almost like autonomous countries, with their own internal governance, their political machines, their own radio stations and newspapers.

“It’s a hotbed: people aching for their homeland,” she said. “They are all governments-in-waiting, and they all think they are about to take power next week.”

Each of the exile communities inevitably has its own relationship with US intelligence and their aspirations have played a role in US foreign policy.

Cuban exile militias trained in the Everglades ever since the 1959 revolution, coming under the control of Jorge Mas Canosa, an exile who became a major force in Florida politics and in Washington. The Cuban and Venezuelan diaspora vote played a major part in swinging Florida to Trump in 2016 and 2020.

The city’s Haitian community has historically had less clout, but it has been a major force in Haitian affairs, while helping drive the demand for the security companies that have sprouted up across South Florida.

“The longstanding precarious nature of Haiti’s security environment is such that Haitian elites have long relied upon private security firms to ensure their own personal security,” said Jenna Ben-Yehuda, a former Haiti analyst at the US state department, and now president of the Truman National Security Project.

“The presence of private security has been pervasive throughout Haiti for decades, probably exceeding the number of Haitian national police officers.”

There are plenty of firms run by former US special forces soldiers seeking a comfortable retirement, like Goudreau. The firm named by the Haitian police as recruiting the Colombians in the attack on Moïse, CTU, did not have quite the same pedigree. Its owner, Tony Intriago, boasted of police experience in Latin America, and special forces connections, according to a Miami Herald profile, but none of it was confirmed. The Haitian police have so far not presented evidence of CTU’s involvement, and Intriago has been unavailable for comment since the assassination.

The initial signs suggest that the Haiti operation was aimed at something far more ambitious than mere murder, up to and including regime change. The fact that it fell well short, and simply added to the misery and chaos of its target country, is in many ways, just another Miami hallmark.

More Noodles, More Life

More Noodles, More Life

By Tracy Kennard NY Times

Ms. Kennard is a writer and a former owner of the wine bar Brunette in Kingston, N.Y. In 2019 she received a diagnosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

When I moved to New York City in the late 1990s, I discovered ramen. Not the packets at the grocery store in packs of six for $1.00 that I cooked in my dorm room but the hand-pulled noodles served in ramen houses whose steam-fogged windows welcomed you to a hazy world where men in business suits and women in practical shoes sat at tables and bars with their heads facing down over a bowl of broth. Rooms both sweaty and silent, except for the nonstop slurping of noodles. No one even paused for breath.

On the menu at every one of these restaurants — after the add-ons for corn, tamago, scallions, fish ball, chashu and butter — was kaedama, a magical word that means “extra noodles.” Once I learned this, I fell in love with the indulgence of getting more of something before I’d even finished what I had. I ordered kaedama every chance I could.

Two days ago, I ate broiler fries for lunch and then drove an hour round trip for a mediocre coconut bubble tea. Yesterday I added an extra knob of butter to my rice noodles to help them slide down my throat. Then I doused them in soy sauce and added even more butter — I really wanted to taste them. I ate two bowls because a hint of salt came through and I didn’t want to waste the moment. Later that night, I ate three yellow gummy bears before bed, after I’d brushed my teeth.

I almost died nine months ago — not from cancer, which I have and which my doctors tell me I will not survive — but from malnutrition, a side effect of cancer treatment. I had undergone two months of daily radiation to my face, neck and brain, hoping to kill off some recurrent tumors. As a result, I couldn’t eat solid food for three months. I also lost my ability to taste. My weight dropped to 80 pounds, my hair fell out for the second time in a year, and I became too weak to walk unassisted. Gradually, thanks to a steady diet of strained Campbell’s chicken and stars, homemade whipped cream, ice cream and the cool innards of burrata, I made my way to a fighting weight of 100 pounds.

Before radiation treatment, I was the kind of eater who, halfway through a steamer of soup dumplings, would place a second order for dessert; who would get out of bed to make a batch of homemade ricotta, sprinkle it with salt and chives and eat it still warm with a spoon; who would order four appetizers instead of an entree in order to cram as many flavors as possible into one meal. I once teetered on heels outside the caterer’s door at a black-tie reception to get first dibs on fried tarantulas and sautéed cockroaches as they emerged from the kitchen.

Now a slice of tomato with basil and a grind of black pepper stings my mouth like a swarm of mosquitoes. A slice of sourdough toast is too dry to make it down my throat. Instead, I eat soft scrambled eggs, cheese tortellini in broth, the centers of pancakes soaked in syrup, Oreos dipped in milk. These are not my favorite foods, but they don’t make me cry from pain. The idea of kaedama — of having more — never crosses my mind when I eat them.

*

I recover from radiation treatment in my bed. On the days I have the energy to make it downstairs to the kitchen, I am an infuriating dining partner. I sit with a bowl of coffee ice cream dusted with protein powder while my husband, Jamie, eats a proper dinner. I ask him to describe his meals to me in detail. He gets pretty good at the game, but sometimes fatigue sets in, and the light drains from his face as I interrogate him about his spaghetti and jarred sauce.

“Is it chewy? Is the sauce fruity?” I egg him on. “Do you wish you cooked the pasta longer, less long? Can you taste the olive oil? How much did you salt the water? If the sauce tastes too jarred, add butter. Do you want some fresh basil?”

It’s a bit much, but I cannot stop myself.

During these months I can’t eat, I fantasize about what my first solid meal will be. I consider medium-rare burgers dripping grease into the browned nooks of English muffins; freshly baked bagels, untoasted, unsliced and dipped into whipped cream cheese; egg and cheese sandwiches with thin sausage patties on kaiser rolls made soft from steaming in their foil wrappers.

I never have that celebratory first meal because my mouth and throat heal gradually. One day I eat a few leaves of romaine. The next, while Jamie eats chicken wings, I am able to get down a single stalk of celery dipped multiple times in homemade blue cheese dressing.

The following week, I eat a bowl of Rice Krispies softened in coconut milk. These small victories encourage me. I poke around the kitchen, experimenting: Rice Chex seems like the logical next choice, but the squares stay too dry and catch in my throat. Special K is a success, the milk pooling in the crags of the flakes, providing the necessary moisture my salivary glands are no longer producing.

I tolerate boxed mac and cheese by cooking the pasta until it absorbs all of the pot’s water. I tear open the cheese packet and savor its familiar sweet and sour smell. I add one-quarter of the powder to tiny shells that have become so bloated and soft that when I stir in butter, they tear. I eat this straight from the pot, greedily switching to a soup spoon. The pasta slides down my throat easily, like slugs on a water slide. This tastes good, I think. But it is a muscle memory.

By early January, the pain in my mouth and throat eases up. I stand in the kitchen with a wooden spoon in my hand, making watercress soup. I am cooking down onions and garlic to what I imagine is a sweet jamminess that will offset the spicy cress. I feel nervous about the flavors, so I make a pot of rice — one food I feel confident cooking. No spices, all texture. Even though I can’t taste it, I can tell if it’s made properly, by the way the spoon drags through the pot.

And I keep returning to ramen, dreaming of bowls of milky tonkotsu broth topped with a soft egg, too many bean sprouts, a mound of wispy scallions and pork belly. Always with extra noodles — kaedama.

What I love about ramen — its dense yet springy texture, how each strand greedily grabs sauce like invisible caterpillar legs, tiny barnacles — is exactly what makes me unable to eat it. It’s too textured, too unwieldy. It gets caught in my throat. I cough. I get the hiccups.

Yet I make it every week.

I add scallions that I’m growing on the sill in the kitchen. I poach a chicken thigh skin on, then fry the skin in butter. I add the crisp skin and a half sheet of seaweed at the very last minute. I put my nose to the bowl and let the steam soothe my face. I suck up a noodle. I sputter and cough. Sometimes I take a sip of salty broth, but mostly I sit with my hands cradling the bowl, feeling warm, holding hope that next time will be the time I’ll be able to ask for more.