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Originally Posted by Indentured Servant
How does one confirm or debunk a conspiracy or theory if they themselves do not have the ability to independently verify the conclusions? Does it not come down to an issue of SOURCE and whether or not one TRUST the source or have a vested interest in supporting the SOURCE, or not? It's not about what we know, its about who we think we can trust and who we think we should distrust. I tend to simply look for Motive, Means and Opportunity. Any entity that has Motive, Means and Opportunity is suspect in my opinion.....even though I have not the ability to prove who actually is responsible for what.
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What you're saying is true, but not complete. I was active in the anti-war movement of the 60s and early 70s, and the environmental movement of the 70s.
What caught my attention was that the people who were telling us that we were being lied to, and that we should oppose what the government was doing, were the ones who were providing data. There was no internet, although there was an underground press, it was limited to, maybe, 30 cities. The only alternative source of information was the protest rallies themselves, where there would be soldiers who came back and told us of what was really going on, or historians who will fill us in on the background to the war - basically, it was a war of imperialism and also control of the drug trade after France left. In fact, they main reason I went to those rallies and protests was to get more information - information Walter Cronkite did not see fit to air.
I often talked to people who supported US efforts in Southeast Asia, as most of the country did. After telling them about the Gulf of Tonkin lie, about the US calling off the vote that they promised the Vietnamese, after pointing out that the Viet Cong were *South* Vietnamese, not North Vietnamese invaders (even though to the Vietnamese, it was one country, and the US promised in 1954 that it would be reunited) and the horrendous death and destruction we were raining on the South Vietnamese that we were supposedly "saving", almost everyone said some variation of , "Well, the [US] government might be lying, but they know more than we do, and it's for our own good."
I'd listen to scientists talking about the dangers of Agent Orange, or road-side spraying of chemicals to kill weeds, or the dangers of Love Canal, or the dangers of radiation from Hanford, from open air testing of nuclear weapons, of Three Mile Island. The response by the government, or Monsanto, was to hire professional liars, alpha-males with authoritative voices, saying a variation of "We're the experts, and we are telling you that you have nothing to be concerned about."
After a while, I kind of made it my rule to look at the actual information being presented, and see what actually made sense, rather than relying upon authorty figures in million-dollar production studios and professional voices saying, 'Don't worry. We're taking care of everything."
When I hear statements like, "Global warming has
preceded increased CO2, not been the result of increased CO2", I want to hear refutation of that information, not some pap about how every scientist worth anything agrees that anthropomorphic CO2 increases will destroy the planet, so we need to start a new form of taxation that corporations will own and control.
When I hear that France, which never adopted polio vaccinations, experience the same decline in polio cases as the US, I want to hear how that data is misinterpreted, or misreported, not some BS about how important vaccinations are.
I took science in high school. I studied chemistry and physics in college. I'm not daunted by reading hard data. I know how to read graphs. Show me the data.
When I hear that Oswald had an FBI and Permindex handler, I want to see his tax returns. They are still classified, in spite of it being over fifty years, and a direct Congressional mandate to open the JFK files.
If they are not responding to the charges, then they are hiding something. All you have to do is look at the photos of the Pentagon and see that no plane hit the Pentagon.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/images/01749r.jpg
And then when you hear about two bombs going off, and an employee walking out the wall in the hole made by the first bomb, before the second bomb when off, I want some hard information to tell me why that was made up, or misunderstood, or something.
Look at the data, see what makes sense to you. Some will be over your head, using a technical vocabulary, but if the people are honest about what they are saying, they can say it in a way that we can understand.
If it's worth spending time arguing about, it's worth spending time studying.
One of my biggest frustrations are people who think they are well-informed because they listen to drive-time NPR on their way home from work, and think that if they haven't heard of something, it's because it isn't true or didn't happen. They refuse to do their homework, and then try to shout down those who have.