“Believe it or Not” Telling the Difference

Iran – Election – was it fair? Can the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council stand up to a tecnologically driven tranparency that may show the world and their own citizens they had their thumb on the scale of democracy.  Then there is the nuclear monster.  Is it Iran’s idea or ours for them to build nuclear weapons?

Palestine – Israel (the Obama Cairo speech) Why was bin Laden so upset?  Was the Obama speech really good enough to put Osama out of business? Netanyahu‘s response, “Sure there can be a Palestine, if …”

North Korea – Obama says we are not going to play “Kim’s Game,”  That is Kim throws a tantrum and we sent him care packages. Their recent second test blast registered about 4 kilotons, about 8 times their first one.  Oh, not to forget the two lady journalists sentenced to 12 years hard labor.

Immigration “Reform” (try to figure what “reform” means)

Oh, and let’s not forget the economy, the recovery, the bailout, or as I think of it, the “rip-off” of the American people.  It will be limping along with hopeful conjecture or bearish ________

Whatever, is the “news of the day,” I can say with great certainty that whatever the subject or issue, you will be getting  far more propaganda than fact.  More obscuration than transparency.

What to do to figure out what is really happening?

Well, I propose to talk about just that, borrowing from the themes “Believe it or Not,” or  Telling the Difference

I remembered being entertained by Ripley’s “Believe it or Not” cartoon panels in the newspaper. I don’t know if they are still producing them, but there is a Ripley’s website http://www.ripleys.com/ and they have 67 “museums” around the world with 42 of them in the United States.  As I recollect, Ripley never gave you a clue as to whether the what he was telling you was actually true or not,  it was up to you to check it out if you could and if you cared.  Mostly, there was nothing at stake other than giving your imagination a workout, and often you did learn some amazing and entertaining fact.

Well, when you look at what our government intends to “do for us” this summer, you can count be besieged with lots of “hot” words and little detail.  As the various factions and special interests battle it out; the one thing you can count on is that few of them will be interested in the “common good.”  There are trillions of dollars of established interests that some feel are at risk.  There are those who want us to be very, very afraid of everybody that looks at us cross-eyed.  And, everybody is doing everybody else’s thinking for them, our so you might think when you listen to them try tell you how the other side hates America.

For those who like to read ahead, here are some of the resources we’ll look at …

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/

Anneberg Political Fact Check
http://factcheck.org/

Snopes.COM: Urban Legends References (and internet hoaxes)
http://snopes.com/

Other Internet hoax checkers
http://www.symantec.com/business/security_response/threatexplorer/risks/hoaxes.jsp
http://vil.nai.com/vil/hoaxes.aspx

Truth about computer security hysteria (This is mostly for geeks)
http://vmyths.com/

Washington Post checker, Now defunct, but was active during the election, leaves some “4 Pinocchio” bits as reminders
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.(My favorite for detailed information – note warnings)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

If you want a real education in fact checking and urban-myth busting you can actually take a course in it here:
http://www.factchecked.org/
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