Slashdot Mirror
The Internet's New Alternate Reality
Hugh Pickens writes "Tim Rutten writes in the LA Times that when President Obama released his long form birth certificate last week, one of the striking things about the reaction to the president's calm and — to reasonable minds — entirely persuasive appearance in the White House briefing room Wednesday was the rapidity and ease with which so many leading birthers rejected the evidence he presented. 'Until very recently, if every professional news organization in the nation examined a charge and found it baseless, it was — for all intents and purposes — dropped,' writes Rutten. 'Today, the growth of the Internet has drained the noun "news" of its former authority. If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose "facts" accord with your beliefs.'"
You are supposed to trust the police, but then one of them treats you like shit. Then you end up not trusting any of them.
It is easy to criticize people for not trusting the media, but who hasn't been intentionally lied to by the media? The blame belongs on a lot of people here. Don't just blame the birthers.
KENYA, Indonesia, Wednesday (WorldNetDaily) — Barack Obama's alleged long-form birth certificate has been declared fraudulent by the noble and patriotic "Birther" movement, who claim firm evidence that the President is insufficiently white.
"I've seen a few Photoshops in my time," said immigrant Birther and world's oldest emo kid Orly Taitz. "I can tell from a few of the pixels. They're nowhere near light enough."
Donald Trump, the next Sarah Palin, takes credit for provoking the release of this initial documentation of the mysterious Obama, and has now asked if Obama's college transcript is all that, and something about basketball as the President's favourite pastime. Betting pools are now forming on when Trump will allude to watermelon and fried chicken.
Birthers are routinely outraged at suggestions that blatant racism is at the heart of their disquiet with Obama's landslide victory in the 2008 presidential election. So it's really worth saying it to them, every time.
The Birther movement was originally started by Party Unity My Ass, a group of disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters during the 2008 Democratic primary. They note that Obama has, on his track record so far, been a first-class Republican president.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I call bullshit... I find it hard to believe that people only like to be told what they want to hear.
Who knows, maybe the BC is fake but accurate.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
"If you don't like the facts presented on the sites of established news organizations, you simply keep clicking until you find one whose "facts" accord with your beliefs."
That's the way it has always been. People choose the newspaper or TV channel that selects / presents / distorts / invents the news in the way most fitting to their own world view. All that has changed is that the number of available publications has increased.
I can't be the only one who sees the irony in the URL being /news/opinion/...
"But everyone should know everything." -markab
Many revelations in later years have show us that the news establishment don't care for the truth at all. Many of the things reveled in the wikileaks cables was known but not reported. The war against Iraq was totally baseless but nobody seemed to care in the media. All they did was distributing what officials told them, without even bothering a simple fact check. All in all i think the problem described comes from the total lack of moral fiber in the media.
When you know almost everybody is lying to you, its only human to be drawn to news you think sounds most plausible.
HTTP/1.1 400
There is a real problem of people selectively tuning in to news sources that cater to their bias, but the summary has a tone implying that established news sources are more correct or neutral than new media when this isn't always the case. The scare quotes around 'facts' clearly suggest that new media are wrong and established media is right. Using the term 'birthers' paints the believers as conspiracy theorists, which may be accurate but is unnecessary.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I think the traditional mass media has done plenty to damage their own credibility. Why blame the internet?
Yeah, it's a bit of both... We are being lied to by media / governments and by our self delusion online... Neither is the full story. The problem is distinguishing the lie from the truth is becoming more and more impossible for people...
We must not underestimate the importance of reputation and multiple sources. Modern technology, sleight of hand and a convincing smile mean that any claim can be well supported by physical "evidence" and we need independent tests of the reliability of the evidence.
For example, OBL was killed within the past week. We know this because the US government says so. The US government say they've confirmed it because they performed DNA tests. This means that we must trust the US government and, if the DNA test data is released, that the data is not fabricated. Why should we do that? What about the alternatives: that he is not dead, or - per Benazir - that he has been dead for several years already? We do not have sufficient reliable evidence for any of these claims, so we should not assume that any are true.
Similarly, what does OBL's birth certificate say? It says that a piece of paper was produced resembling a birth certificate. Is this sufficient evidence that he was born in the US? No. Is there credible evidence that he was not born in the US? No. We must either trust him, not care, or explore further. I've always thought the "where you're born" rule about the Presidency is against the principles on which the US was founded, so I'd pick the "not care" option.
Erm, actually, yes, for the first two. It's in the Constitution. You can presumably visit other countries, but you do have to be a natural-born citizen:
Since TFA cites the example of Miller, may I remind everyone that the rapture is happening this month: http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/may21/ and I predict a recalculation on May 22nd.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
Over where I come from we have 3 main Tv channels. One is run by an independant group, and two others are run by different political parties.
If you watch the three news programs in series, you'll go from a country which is collapsing due to corruption and bad stuff the PM is doing, a country which is perfect because of what the PM is doing, to something in the middle.
So yeah, this is pretty much the case everything has been in for years.
The internet has a lot more potential to distribute unbiased news than 'the media', and it's not just Wikileaks, the very proliferation of news sources makes it much more likely that accurate news information will be free. We all still have to do what only we can which is to call bullshit when we see it.
Korma: Good
"Distrust in U.S. Media Edges Up to Record High"
For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% who now say this is a record high by one percentage point.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/143267/distrust-media-edges-record-high.aspx
This is yet another story about something we've heard a million times over, but they put "Internet!" in the title and treat it as though it's novel.
"Birtherism" isn't new, nor limited to black presidents. There was a long argument over whether McCain was native born, there were even debates about whether George W Bush was native born, and have been about presidents going way back. Even recently there was a huge amount of discussion over whether Sarah Palin was really Trig's mother. Even after multiple journalists reported that they had seen her pregnant belly, other equally prominent journalists were still Just Asking Questions.
And birtherism is loopy, but nothing compared to trutherism. About one third of Democrats believed that the government intentionally killed its own citizens to start a wars or, at least, that Bush knew about 9/11 and let it happen. Most Democrats also still claim that W was AWOL from his guard duty, and many prominent figures demanded explanations. CBS's Dan Rather, a 40 year veteran reporter, completely destroyed his career trying to pass off some forged documents. To this day, the guy insists that those forgeries were "fake but accurate". And, of course, there are long standing conspiracy theories about the Bush family's involvement with Nazis and such.
This gets play because "ooh, look, the Internet!" but if you look at what various conspiracies have in common, they're all old fashioned fishing expeditions. After Obama presented the long form, Trump *instantly* went to demanding his college records. The weird Palin birthers want all sorts of hospital records. The AWOL Bush people had huge lists of demands.
All these demands seek to scrutinize every possible second of a person's life. What happens when it's put into practice is the unbounded, independent prosecutor. Ken Starr, for instance, started out by investigating serious claims of corruption by the Clintons. When that turned up nothing, it morphed into a fishing expedition that turned up Lewinsky, Jones and Flowers. Incidentally, there are Clinton obsessives who are still Just Asking Questions, I won't link to it, but do a search for the "Clinton Death List" if you're curious to see some real crazy.
I occasionally get a glimpse of US news shows (clips and some cnn), the contrast with bbc or al jazeera is pretty striking:
The most important piece of information is always the name of the host, which is repeated every 5 seconds.
The hosts seem to be picked up straight from plastic surgery, complemented by exaggerated facial expressions.
Its roughly 5 minutes of program then 5 minutes of commercials.
If there are 2 hosts they spend half the time demonstrating their "chemistry" for eachother, its painful to watch.
The graphics remind me of old arcade cabinets, classy like las vegas.
Interviews are rude and annoying, the object seems to be that noone should speak a complete sentence.
I dont think its odd americans dont trust news, theres nothing trustworthy about it.
Yeah, that's the rule -- and it's entirely nuts.
The president is *elected* I see no legitimate reason whatsoever that some person born abroad should not be eligible to be president. Infact, it'd make more sense if one would insist that to be eligible for president, one must hold *ONLY* American citizenship. (the current rules don't have any ban on a two-citizenship person becoming president, aslong as one of the two is American, and he's born with it)
What's the rationale for disqualifying someone who, for example, was adopted by American parents at age 2, while ALLOWING a child born to (for example) an American/Norwegian couple who grew up in Norway, yet moved to America at age 20 with dual citizenship.
I'd argue that the latter has substantially stronger ties to a foreign nation, if that's the concern. (if not, I don't know what the concern is)
The constitution does indeed say what you claim, but seems to me it's a dumb rule.
When that was written , America had just come out of an independance war and didn't want to have foreign interference any more.
Kinda like the right to bear arms. Both made sense in that time, but they don't make as much sense nowadays.
but it certainly doesn't look like any other PDF I've seen.
Its the pixels and you having seen quite a few PDFs in your time.
So I suppose he can be forgiven as a matter of self-interest for omitting Rathergate, CNN's deliberate reporting of Saddam's propaganda in order to retain access, NBC rigging pickups to explode to get an "exposé" and the like. Or maybe not, since they directly implicate the real responsible party for the loss of trust in the news media: the constant lies of commission and omission of the news media themselves.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Oh, boo hoo! Another hack writer whose livelihood is threatened by the rise of alternative media. Here's what I see going on: Alternative media exposes the myth that the big news organizations are "reputable". Anybody remember Dan Rather? Someone gave him an obviously counterfeit letter about George W. Bush, and day after day he defended the letter as truth. Finally it became obvious that good ol' Dan was nothing more than a Democrat political operative, and everything he'd ever said became suspect. His career died, and rightly so. I'm guessing there are a lot of other "reputable" news employees that are scared to death by that. This is just their latest outburst.
http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/428-After-Birth.html This is an analysis of Obama's long form birth certificate by an image analysis expert. Check his previous posts for details of his experience. He concludes that it is genuine.
that this can work both ways.
A day after President Obama made his joke about Michele Bachman being born in Canada I found someone on Yahoo Answers seriously asking if she was born there. Muhahahaha
Article 2 Section 1:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
No, because the doubt only exists in the mind of the insane, and no amount of "evidence" will change the mind of the insane.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
That rule was incorporated into the Constitution to prevent the European practice of importing new royal families on a somewhat regular basis. The current British royal family, for instance was brought in from Germany. The idea was to keep American independence.
Of course, this was from an era when few people traveled between nations often (citizens were rarely born overseas) and before international adoption became frequent. Times have changed since then, and the constitutional requirement effectively excludes a large group of citizens from serving.
Fortunately, we've still got a pretty big pool to choose from...
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I'm sorry for the quip, but really this has been a reality from even before the internet. At first, CNN (read Cable TV) seemed to straighten out the other big three, now that is toast.
As far as the Birth Certificate goes, I believe the undo attention came when a one million dollar retainer was put in place to protect it. I was latter led to believe that it became two million. Now one has to wonder if this was to divert the attention from something else.
I hope Allen West runs and wins the presidential election. It would go far in erasing much FUD that has been spread through the decade.
While "explaining the unexplained" may be a reason for some people to believe in god, in my opinion that is a minority. Most deeply religious people don't care about the "unexplained" and wouldn't even come up with any of the questions that where driving science and modern society for centuries.
Most religious people simply seek a omnipotent protecting father figure that shields them against plain everyday peril and distress. Something where they can take refuge in cases of illness or poverty. And something that gives them the hope, that they may see again those who they have lost in some "paradise" after death.
And the important bit of his analysis:
.
No more needed to be said, but some mad people get excited about layers.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Why does it not make sense to allow a person to own an item?
Don't you need to draw a line somewhere? Which of the items below would you ban? Any of them?
1. Three foot poles.
2. Ten foot poles.
3. Unroadworthy cars.
4. Guns.
5. Car bombs.
6. Heavy weapons.
7. Non-weapons grade nuclear material.
8. Biological weapons.
9. Nuclear weapons.
It's a miracle at all that we allow international campaign funding. It's no accident that we give Israel billions of dollars each year in military and economic aid, then give them discounts on US military technology in return for tens of millions of campaign donations each year. Somewhere there's a debate between Al Gore and Bush where one says "I love Israel *smile*smile*" and the other retorts "I love Israel too *smile*smile*" and the crowd laughs. Why wouldn't we give the same assistance to impoverished hot button countries like Lebanon, Yemen and Serbia?
Let's keep as much international influence out of this as possible, mmkay? Let's keep the natural born citizen rule in place (I've got no beef with Obama) and look towards going the other direction and finally ending international campaign donations instead.
moox. for a new generation.
It also conveys a sense of meaning and purpose to life and the universe. It is far more comforting to imagine an all-powerful being guiding providence by will alone, who offers eternal afterlife to those believers who are deemed worthy to receive it; than to imagine a cold and uncaring universe, with no design or purpose, operating by mere quantum chance, and an existence that to some seem arbitrarily short and cosmically pointless.
Some people feel this way and religion provides their needed hope that there's a reason for it all.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
...to having Walter Cronkite feed me the official truth. The loonies were always there and were not convinced by the media consensus: they just had no way to get their message out. Unfortunately, the same applied to some not-so-loonies.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Of course the idea that a god existing makes anything more meaningful is also pretty funny if you think about it.
What would then be the "reason" for that god existing for example?
In the end there is no meaning other than what you create for yourself. Most find it easier to copy their meanings from others - and the larger a group is, the more convincing their meanings appear..
which is totally what she said
Of course the idea that a god existing makes anything more meaningful is also pretty funny if you think about it.
What would then be the "reason" for that god existing for example?
In the end there is no meaning other than what you create for yourself. Most find it easier to copy their meanings from others - and the larger a group is, the more convincing their meanings appear..
IOW, religions have always exercised the same sort of alternate-reality support as this story describes as "new" for the Internet Age.
When you immerse yourself in a subculture that believes X, it becomes easy to believe X and hard to be motivated to ask questions that challenge X. It doesn't matter whether your source of authority is FOX News, David Koresh, or the Pope - it works the same in each case, and depends on surrounding yourself with people who suckle at the same tit.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
who are deemed worthy to receive it
Or the ones who who used the words of said omnipotent to justify slavery because this being (supposedly) said that enslaving someone is perfectly acceptable.
And when you say worthy to receive it, you mean a man who was willing to kill one of his sons to prove to this omnipotent being how far he would go to follow such a psychopath.
Or the people who slaughtered non-white people around the world because these savages were un-believers.
Or people who were gleeful, and wrote about it, when said savages were dying of diseases that these believers brought with them but had immunity.
Yeah, those are the kind of people who are worthy of eternal bliss.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Article II - The Executive Branch
Section 1 - The President
"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;"
Question: who is "natural born"? I propose all candidates must prove they are natural born.
Well, it's clear that no one living today was a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of that Constitution, so it looks like we need to stop having presidents.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What evidence would the birthers accept as proof that Obama is in fact a US citizen? The actual birth certificate, which as far as I know is legal proof good enough for any court in the country, doesn't seem to be sufficient. So what evidence will satisfy them? I suspect that the answer is "Any evidence presented is fake, because it contradicts my strongly held belief".
Just because a person is born on American soil does not make that person a citizen. (Take the children of diplomats, for example.)
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." If you aren't here under diplomatic or some other kind of immunity, you're subject to the jurisdiction of the United States; see 83 US 36 and 112 US 94.
Does the fact of one of his parents being a British National confer British citizenship on him? Dual citizenship? Does it depend on the laws in effect at the time of his birth? How does that affect his eligibility?
Maybe; I'm not familiar with British citizenship law, but I imagine that without being born on British soil, application for citizenship under jus sanguinius would be required when he wanted to claim that citizenship. You can have dual citizenship in both the UK and the US. As it turns out, the Constitution only cares that you're a "natural born citizen," which clearly means that you're not a naturalized citizen. Being a citizen by jus soli or jus sanguinius means that you were born into citizenship (by location or by blood), which is about as "natural born" as you can be. Also, 169 US 649 would seem to indicate that he is indeed a citizen by the 14th amendment unless said parent happened to be working for the British government in an official capacity, which isn't the case.
If his mother became an Indonesian citizen, doesn't that mean he, as a minor, was also an Indonesian citizen? Doesn't he have to file a form during his 21st year asserting his birthright to American citizenship? (If he didn't, is he an illegal alien?) Did he attend Occidental College and Columbia as a foreign student? If so, how does that affect his eligibility?
Maybe; I'm not familiar with Indonesian citizenship law. However, in most countries, the mere act of your parents being naturalized doesn't have any effect on your citizenship, in much the same way that a child of a foreign national, born on US soil, doesn't immediately make his or her parents into citizens despite the rabid claims about "terror babies." As we've already established he's a citizen by jus soli, and US law assumes anyone born on US soil is a citizen unless a proper objection can be raised to the contrary (and in this case, that'd be that both of his parents were not subject to US jurisdiction at the time, or that the birth certificate is fake, and both of those objections have been disproven), no forms need to be filled out. I don't know where this "file a form during his 21st year" thing is coming from, since the only relevant form here to assert citizenship in the US is the notification of foreign birth, which is filed by the parents with the State Department after the birth in cases of jus sanguinius where the child is born outside the US.
I am bothered more by the fact that Obama and his groups have spent millions of dollars trying to suppress attempts to find out the facts, than I am by crazy people spreading doubts about where he was born.
Really? Because I think crazy people spreading doubts complicates the political discourse to no advantage and is essentially demeaning an institution and a person with no evidence. In my book, that's rather unethical. Would you be okay with people bringing up doubts here about your sanity, or your recent battles with drug abuse? See how easy it is to "spread doubts" that serve no purpose other than to engage in a cheap shot against someone with whom you disagree?
The Freelance Wizard
...comes from an expatriate, who moved to Canada and became a psychologist. Along the way, he was accused of dodging the draft, accidentally raised a kid who went in to politics, and discovered an alarming (and measurable) character trait that (among other things) brings along with it a willingness to accept any "logical" conclusion they agree with, no matter how faulty the reasoning, and to assert that the reasoning is valid.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
"The Authoritarians" is available as a free PDF, (~ 250 p), and it's moderatly funny, given that the subject is just what kind of lunacy you can expect when dealing with the hard core neocons and their followers, and where that lunacy comes from. Warning: I lost time reading this, and I normally don't give a rat's ass about psychology. It's that good.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
If the media would do a better job releasing the "news" to us then maybe the public would be more likely to believe what they were told.
The release of the "long form" birth certificate is a perfect example
No, it's a horrible example. The media didn't sit on the LFBC for three years, because they didn't have it either.
Hawaii released the SFBC because that's their policy. It just wasn't good enough for a lot of people who had some reason to desperately believe that the prez wasn't really the Prez. The media had nothing to do with it, except perhaps for some propaganda outfit fanning the flames of the kookery.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Obama is a republican? Are you sure?
It was Linda Lingle, a republican, who was governor at the time.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Plain, simple (really simple) racists.
It's pretty simple.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Does the fact of one of his parents being a British National confer British citizenship on him? Dual citizenship? Does it depend on the laws in effect at the time of his birth? How does that affect his eligibility?
If his mother became an Indonesian citizen, doesn't that mean he, as a minor, was also an Indonesian citizen? Doesn't he have to file a form during his 21st year asserting his birthright to American citizenship? (If he didn't, is he an illegal alien?) Did he attend Occidental College and Columbia as a foreign student? If so, how does that affect his eligibility?
At birth Obama was a British citizen and an American citizen, however when Kenya became independent in 1963 he became a Kenyan citizen and his British Citizenship lapsed. Since he was a dual citizen and Kenyan law forbids dual citizenship as an adult Obama's Kenyan citizenship lapsed at age 23 when he did not repudiate his US citizenship.
Obama became an Indonesian citizen when he was adopted in Indonesia. Under Indonesian law if you leave the country for 5 or more years and do not return to some period of time you automatically lose your Indonesian citizenship. So Obama is no longer an Indonesian citizen.
The question as to whether Obama's becoming an Indonesean citizen affects his US status is answered by US law as follows:
Loss of U.S. Nationality will occur when:
1. obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon the citizen's own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years; AND
2. taking an oath or making an affirmation or other formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof after having attained the age of eighteen years.
Since Obama was younger than 18 when this adoption occurred there was no status change.
Futhermore the question of having to file an application to claim US nationality is covered by Expatriation Law:
Closely related to need for voluntary action is the requirement that expatriation cannot be accomplished by a citizen who has not attained a specified age of maturity. This conforms with the common law maxim that an infant lacks legal capacity to undertake contractual obligations. Legal maturity generally considered to be the age of 21, unless a different age is specially stated. Paragraphs (1), (2), (4) of INA Â349(a) specifically fix the age of maturity at 18. In addition, INA Â351(b) fixes the age of maturity at 18 for paragraphs (3) and (5) of INA Â349(a). The text of INA Â351(b) is as follows:
A national who within six months after attaining the age of eighteen years asserts his claim to United States nationality, in such manner as the Secretary of State shall by regulation prescribe, shall not be deemed to have lost United States nationality by the commission, prior to his eighteenth birthday, of any of the acts specified in paragraph (3) and (5) of section 349 of this title.
These special provisions do not apply to acts of expatriation not specifically mentioned, and the age of maturity in relation to such other acts of expatriation generally continues to be the common-law standard of 21 years.
Paragraphs 3 and 5 cover enrolment in the armed forces of a foreign nation and making a formal renunciation of nationality before a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States in a foreign state.
Since there is NO evidence that Obama took actions under sections 3 and 5, he has no need to file a claim.
Basically there is a truism here. Any claims by a birther that Obama is not a natural born US citizen in good standing and is a citizen of another natiion are complete bullcrap.
With any authority bigger is better, so is farther away. If Jesus was around today and stubbed his toe millions of Christians would wake up instantly.
It wasn't ad-hominem, and not directed to you personally. Just a statement about typical reactions, based on observations of other conspiracy-theory believers.
Compare with the Apollo project. We have excellent photographs, but people who believe in a hoax are not convinced. The fact that the photographs are sharp enough to see the stars only points their attention to the fact the stars are missing (being ignorant to the fact they shouldn't be visible in the first place)
Put enough detail in the scan of the birth certificate that you can see the paper fibers, and some people will claim there's something wrong with the fibers.
The fact that Obama's birth announcement was in two Hawaiian newspapers should be enough evidence already. Unless he has a time machine, how could he have forged that ?