ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS 4 SEP 2013

When KAL Flight 007 in Sept. ’83 was shot down & 9/11 took place, I was fit to be tied because in both cases the news media were not asking any of the right questions immediately after these disasters. How does a 747, which has an authorized flight plan & requirements to stay on track, tracking procedures both ways & 4 autopilot systems get hundreds of miles off course for a long period of time?
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Asking the right questions seems to be a widespread deficiency in our culture. In third grade I began reading adult history books, soaking up defective information. Then it took some time to begin sorting things out, almost to the point that truth at times seems nothing like those history books. So I will give two examples of asking the right question, & share with you some interesting history.
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Occasionally I ask people the “right questions” to stimulate their thinking. Why did we go to war with Japan on Dec. 7, 1941? Many know enough to say, Japan surprise-attacked Pearl Harbor. O.K. why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?? Now they are stumped! Almost 100% of Americans have no clue. Next issue… Why did South Carolina secede from the USA in Dec. 1860? Most Americans have little idea, and if they have some clue they may say state’s rights or high taxes. Actually, Japan’s attack against us, and South Carolina’s breach w/ the U.S. which led to the Civil War had similar fundamental reasons…both wanted to preserve their way of life which was threatened by the United States. And in both situations there were specific triggers that forced the deeper issue.
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The trigger for Japan was the U.S.A.’s embargo on oil, gas, & fundamental materials (like scrap iron) that Japan needed to run her economy. Having only a 6 month supply of gas & oil on hand, they waited to attack until the last month (Dec. 1941) before gas supplies ran & their economy fell on its face. In a similar situation, the United States would have attacked any country embargoing our gas & oil in a heartbeat. We have publicly warned that. But the cause of the war goes much deeper. Back in 1853, when Commodore Perry by his superior Amer. naval power forced Japan to open up to the Western nations, the Japanese realized their way of life was threatened and they began secretly planning & working towards the attack that 88 years later would be known as Pearl Harbor. In 1892, the only major nation not controlled by the Europeans in the world was Japan. Bhutan, Ethiopia, Nepal, & Thailand were also independent but minor countries. Sometimes Nepal & Bhutan were mistakenly colored pink on world maps as if they were part of the British Empire, which they were not. Also parts of Morocco & modern Saudi Arabia were independent in 1892. After Commodore Perry, the Japanese govt. was focused on raising their military to level they could challenge America. Their navy for the first year of the war was superior to ours, but their economy was unable to compete w/ America. They had the world’s most powerful battleships, their naval Zero was superior to ours, and so were their torpedoes. Their night fighting abilities were great, & in the first night fights in the Solomon Islands our navy got defeated.
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One can speculate all one wants about South Carolina’s secession, but the truth is in black in white in their document “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union”. This document was then used as a basis of other southern states to secede. So what were the causes? They were upset that northern states were using their states’ rights to mitigate slavery: New York had banned the transport of slaves in their state, some states were allowing blacks to become citizens, and 14 states were refusing to send runaway slaves back to the South. Rather than seceding because of state’s rights, they were seceding because the northern states had used their states’ rights in ways South Carolina did not like!! In Civil War newspapers & speeches, the CSA made it clear that they were fighting for white supremacy. If our history books taught this, people would realize that the South did win the war! For here is what happened… After Lee surrendered, the other Confederate armies began surrendering & the Federal govt. occupied the South w/ troops. The North put Negroes (the name then) in control of many things. During reconstruction, armed whites through the use of guns & guerilla warfare (like the KKK did) regained control over the blacks. Successful black leaders were killed. In 1890, due to various changes, white supremacy was fully legally re-established & this did not get diluted until 1940, and didn’t substantially change until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s. And what was the trigger that forced the issue in 1860? The election of Abraham Lincoln. Of the first 15 U.S. presidents, eleven were slaveholders or pro-slavery. Lincoln was the first Republican elected president; it was a new party that was against slavery…and here is the catch…Lincoln was NOT on the ballot in any southern state. In other words, the North could elect a president that not a single person in the South voted for, & they couldn’t do anything about it…except secede. The South realized w/ Lincoln’s election that the balance of political power had shifted totally to the North. Their way of life was threatened, as Japan’s had been a few years earlier.
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By the way, both wars could have been prevented. That’s another story.
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Our better school history textbooks often fail to ask the right questions. They consistently fail to quote primary documents. The people who write them (mostly non-historian ghost writers) are often not the expert historians who are given credit on the covers…Christian publishers do the same thing…for instance, Billy Graham’s books are ghost written, but the publishers pay him for his name because the name will sell millions of books. The non-historian ghost writers repeat the garbage they heard. So again we see problems in learning the truth are systemic. The problems are not accidental, but rather patterns of deficiency in the way the World operates.