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I Know Where bin Laden Is

6/24/2010

I know where Osama bin Laden is.

He is at the Gulf of Tonkin, telling us the communists fired on us.

He is accidentally erasing eighteen-and-a-half minutes of the Nixon tape.

He is pointing the finger at Oswald.

He is showing us the weapons of mass destruction.

He is declaring Bush the winner TWICE.

He is at Kent State shooting those naughty kids.

He is refusing to bargain with terrorists as he delivers arms to the Ayatollah.

He is “out of the loop” about Iran-Contra.

He is not having sex with Monica Lewinsky.

He is being greeted as a liberator in Iraq, where he is also turning the corner.

He is praising Clarence Thomas as the most qualified Supreme Court candidate.

He is choosing Dan Quayle as a serious running-mate.

Bin Laden is telling you to listen to your leaders. They never lie, do they?

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The Secrets of our Society Are Out!

6/22/2010

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I have been told many times, "If what you say is true, someone would have told the secret by now."

I hear this when I discuss why I believe government agents plotted and perpetrated the crimes of 9/11, for instance. Or when I say that Lee Harvey Oswald was framed and others shot President Kennedy.

This statement presents a non-falsifiable claim - that secrets about our government are always revealed - because we have no way to prove one way or the other that the statement is true or false. This problem occurs because we cannot see the successfully kept secrets, which leaves us in doubt as to whether secrets are always revealed.

The best way to deal with this unfair statement is to re-frame the issue: Maybe the secret is out and those who do not "know" the secret have not bothered to discover it.

If the secret is out, how does that help society?

It would change the way people discuss these topics. Those who support the government's invariable position that the government did not conspire to commit the aforementioned events or others, such as the successful coup of Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973, would now be on the defensive. They could no longer tell people to "knock off the conspiracy talk."

Instead of having to prove our case of government agent complicity over and over, we could, with the help of an informed and enthusiastic public, take legal action against the perpetrators. People like former Vice President Dick Cheney could no longer hide behind the secret that has kept him from a grand jury for the past eight years. He would have to do what anyone else accused of a crime would do - get an attorney for help with his legal options.

Likewise, I sometimes hear that people who do not believe a certain way about religion will go to hell. The people who speak of this place of eternal fire never say that they themselves will go there and they insist that the place exists as they describe it.

Instead of taking their word for it, we can re-frame the issue: What if hell does not exist or exists in other way?

Hell could be what happens when a person loses their integrity, not just to the world but to themselves. It could be what one might feel if they had nothing to look forward to as if the one thing they need in life will, like Godot, never arrive.

We can do and feel so much better when we refuse to let other people tell us that there is some "secret" that we do not know. Or that what we do know cannot be true because the other person does not think so. The truth does not come from the mouth of another; it goes through our own minds.

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Can the 9/11 Truth Community Handle the Truth?

6/16/2010

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I wrote an article called Understanding 9/11: Follow the Planes and Passengers recently in which I used Bureau of Transportation Statistics records and other facts about 9/11. I determined that plotters merged the four flights into two and tricked air controllers into believing the two flights left behind actually flew that day.

Some feedback has been positive. The rest of it has been unresponsive (some have called it a "no plane" theory even though I identify the planes used by flight number)

Which is a shame. We need a good debate within the 9/11 Truth community as to what really happened. There are disagreements about some of the details, which is hardly unexpected, but the best way to work out disagreements is to talk them (or email them) out.

I challenge those serious about finding the truth to articulate why they believe the way they do.

Reasonable minds can differ, for instance, hit the World Trade Center. But it is not reasonable to make presumptions or to preempt another's ideas with name-calling. This behavior causes rifts that are costly and hard to mend.

So I challenge the truth community further to identify the issues about 9/11 that are most important to determine the truth about.

If we all are in consensus (not necessarily full agreement) as to what we need to show to a public asleep on this issue after nine years of lies from our leaders, we will be better able to work together. I grew up playing baseball and my analogy is that if the team of 9/11 Truth needs you to play right field, go play it.

After all, the "jersey" that we wear does not show "no planes" or "missile at the Pentagon" on it. It shows the word truth. And when the truth stares at us on a one-way street, it is time for a new direction!

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How to Argue with In-Laws

6/7/2010

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“Are you serious?”

My in-laws shook their heads and said that they indeed believe that President Obama is not really a natural born citizen.

The whole afternoon, I had tried to reason with a group of people whose political background contrasted sharply with mine. The conversation had gone well, even with their statements that they supported the “Tea Party” movement, that they disagreed with Obama on many issues and their point of view that taxes were too high.

During this part of the conversation, we were able to carry on OK because we discussed topics of concern to all, or at least a great majority of citizens. I would welcome a dialogue about taxation, entitlements, foreign policy or just about anything else as long as it is based on reason and relevance.

But then we got stuck. What was with their idea that Obama is not constitutionally qualified to serve as president?

They said he signed some form back in college that allowed him to get money as a non-citizen. Even though it would be interesting to see a copy of this form, I told them that it was not relevant to the discussion. (See footnotes below for a full analysis of Obama’s natural born citizenship.)

I pointed out he was born in Hawaii, which made him a natural born citizen. They sneered and said he was born in Kenya.

So I used one of my critical thinking tools: the “Summary Judgment Approach.” I will stipulate, or agree strictly for the sake of moving an argument, to the opposition point of view.

So, I said “Fine. Let’s say he was born in Kenya. He would still be a natural born citizen because his mother was born in the United States. The bottom line, I told them, is that Obama was born a U.S. citizen via his mother and never needed to be naturalized.

Even if they wanted to take this argument to an extreme and say he REALLY isn’t a natural born citizen just because they say so, the federal constitution demands that someone who has been harmed by Obama must file a case in the appropriate court and say how Obama has harmed them. If someone did that, they would also have to find a way for the courts to redress the problem (hint: they can’t).

As is so often the case when people hear what they do not want to hear, my in-laws resorted to some tactics of their own. They told me that I shouldn’t be believed because I was from California (an “ad hominem” attack) and further insinuated that I am not as patriotic as they (a type of “straw man” tactic because they created a straw man by putting words in my mouth and then attacked me).

Other issues came up during our discussion that revealed more debating flaws. All of them derided socialism, but some of them admitted to having benefitted from it - my cousin-in-law who received good disability payments stemming from an injury while he served as a postal worker; my uncle-in-law, who received top medical benefits because of his military service; and my father-in-law, who was receiving care from a hospice. This flaw is known as hypocrisy, or perhaps "what's good for me is not good for them."

Our time together could not have been complete without one of them saying how much he hated illegal immigration. We finally agreed on something: illegal immigration is illegal. But as we drove around in triple-digit heat, we did not notice any white people out doing their landscaping. Someone asked if any of us, all of whom are here legally and have white skin, are willing to work in this kind of heat. It is hard to solve the problem of illegal immigration when those here legally have aversion to certain types of work. This debate problem is "talk is cheap."

By the time we finished talking, I sensed that the conversation benefitted me more than them. They probably had not heard in person from someone whose views did not match their own. It’s too bad because that is a good way to learn new things and to reduce one’s poor debating practices.

Footnotes: Here are two sites worth visiting on the subject of Obama’s eligibility to serve as President of the United States:

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/does_barack_obama_have_kenyan_citizenship.html

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/occidental.asp

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Would You Rather Be Jefferson Davis or Benedict Arnold?

6/2/2010

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Does anyone really change their mind?

An experience I had at work may have provided me with an answer. I work for a city as a public employee and served as an alternate representative for the existing union. A faction of the union wanted to bring in an outside union to replace the existing one and made motions at an official meeting to that effect.

Displeased with the manner in which the existing union management attempted to stop the motions by declaring them illegal, I voted with the faction (and on behalf of my regular representative, who bolted from the meeting with several others to try to stop the quorum).

Early on, I felt as though the battle lines were clearly drawn. Even though I contended from the beginning that I simply wanted a vote to be held among all employees in my class to allow choice between the two unions, I was “typecast” by those siding with the existing union as one of “those people.”

I wrote out and sent messages to all voting members of the union explaining my point of view, discussing ways the two sides could compromise and responding to various bits of what I believed to be misinformation by the other side. (Neither side behaved especially professionally in this mess).

What did the other side typically say? They would correct me and insult me if I so much as forgot to identify myself as an alternate. Neither side trusted one another and no one gave an inch.

Throughout this time, each side sent assertions of fact back and forth on the emails and also posted messages on bulletin boards in break rooms. But no member of either side publicly announced that they were convinced of the correctness of the other side's point of view. Why was that?

Because once the lines are drawn and “shots” are fired, people tend to “duck for cover” and line up with their allies. Does anyone really change sides? All we need do to answer that question is to answer this one: Who is the greater villain in United States history – Jefferson Davis or Benedict Arnold?

I could have pounded away at those who opposed a vote with sound arguments on many grounds. In fact, I did. I sent messages of my arguments to the union president, vice president and counsel. In the end, the union management got its way, I left the union and I hear things are back to normal.

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I Know Where bin Laden Is

The Secrets of our Society Are Out!

Can the 9/11 Truth Community Handle the Truth?

How to Argue with In-Laws

Would You Rather Be Jefferson Davis or Benedict Arnold?

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