Critical Thinking
Imagine a world where every person had complete access to the truth
AND
had sufficient education to separate it from propaganda.
A goal of this site is to provide unbiased access to the truth. This section, in particular, is devoted to helping readers recognize the truth, in the midst of all the propaganda.
Naked Emperors
Wed, 03/10/2010 - 14:54 — Dave Culver- It’s time to ask some very basic questions, like: What are banks for? What are houses for? What’s credit for? What’s the economy for? Or, for that matter, what’s the environment for?
- A 10-point economic detox programme.
Vanessa Baird, New Internationalist
Illustration by Kate Charlesworth
We should thank Bernard Madoff – the Wall Street broker with ‘impeccable credentials’ – who is charged with having swindled investors (including some of his best friends) to the tune of $50 billion. Few individuals have so eloquently exposed how easily gulled are the supposed experts of the financial world.
Madoff highlighted a simple truth: that one of the best ways to fool people is to make things appear rather complicated. Vanity kept ‘sophisticated investors’ from admitting that they didn’t really understand the intricacies of Madoff’s get-richer-even-quicker scheme. Greed and laziness kept them from asking the crucial questions. As long as the money came rolling in – and at 15 per cent the returns were abnormally high – who cared?
The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9/11 Truth Movement
Thu, 03/04/2010 - 17:41 — Dave CulverIn the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired analytic programs investigating the official account. Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a "conspiracy theory" ignoring science and common sense. This essay, by Elizabeth Woodworth, presents these media analyses in the form of 18 case studies.
Elizabeth Woodworth, Voltaire Network, in Axis of Logic
A Survey of Attitude Change in 2009-2010
Eight countries – Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Russia – have allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11.
This more open approach taken in the international media – I could also have included the Japanese media – might be a sign that worldwide public and corporate media organizations are positioning themselves, and preparing their audiences, for a possible revelation of the truth of the claim that forces within the US government were complicit in the attacks – a revelation that would call into question the publicly given rationale for the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Maddow Slams Orrin Hatch For Lying, Washington Post For Printing It
Thu, 03/04/2010 - 09:16 — Dave Culver
[Hatch's op-ed] has so many blantant, out-right falsehoods in it that it made me wonder if maybe there's a deal or something. Where if maybe you're a United States Senator who's been in office for 33 years like Orrin Hatch has, you just don't get fact-checked anymore in the Washington Post.
Huffington Post
Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Thomas Sklarski
Rachel Maddow took aim at Sen. Orrin Hatch Tuesday (March 2) for lying about health care reform and reconciliation in an op-ed written by the senator and published by The Washington Post. Maddow called Hatch a hypocrite and wondered aloud why the Post published his falsehoods:
The Real Consequences of Obstruction
Wed, 03/03/2010 - 13:53 — Dave Culver- Although the blockade was primarily Bunning's work, he was aided by a party that either stayed silent or even cheered on his obstruction.
- Even when Bunning finally relented last night (March 2) and allowed a vote to go forward on the legislation, 18 Republican senators joined with him to vote against the temporary extension of benefits.
Alex Seitz-Wald and others, Think Progress
For the past year, Republicans have embarked on an aggressive obstructionist agenda, determined to block any progress the Democratic majority may try make on health care, jobs, or even approving presidential nominees essential to keep the government running.
This week (Feb 28-Mar 6), the country saw the real-life effects of this partisan game. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) became a "poster child" for GOP obstruction and demonstrated the outsized influence a determined minority can exert over policies affecting the entire country. Although he's not the first obstructionist, he likely won't be the last. Most recently, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) put a blanket hold on President Obama's nominees in order to secure pork funding for his state. Although he eventually relented on most of the nominees, he continues to block several military officials.
Don’t Blame Bunning
Wed, 03/03/2010 - 10:51 — Dave Culver
Bunning’s action was a sideshow, a boneheaded symbolic gesture that backfired with slight consequences. Yet the senator was made to look the dangerous fool in media accounts while many of those who enabled the financial catastrophe continue to be treated as reasonable experts after being rewarded for their folly with the highest posts in both the Bush and Obama administrations.
Robert Scheer, TruthDig.com
Senate Banking Committee member Jim Bunning, R-Ky., gestures during a 2009 committee hearing. AP / Harry Hamburg
How convenient that seemingly everyone in the liberal blogosphere, and even at many points to the right, got to use Jim Bunning as a scapegoat. The venom of the attacks suggests that the maverick Republican senator from Kentucky provided a welcome alternative to the real villains: bankers much closer to the centers of power. As if Bunning’s denial of unanimous consent to a stopgap extension of unemployment insurance—easily overcome, as was demonstrated Tuesday night—is at the root of our economic crisis.
It isn’t, and it is vicious nonsense to transform Bunning, who has a long record of opposition to the bipartisan policies that caused America’s financial mess, into a poster boy for economic heartlessness. The issue was not one of extending aid for another month to those whose benefits had run out but rather holding the government accountable for the means of payment.