Why You Can NOT Believe the "9/11 Conspiracy Theory De-bunkers!"

There are some people who can win any argument or debate, no matter whether they are right or wrong. Lawyers, for example, make really nice livings convincing juries that the most obviously guilty criminals are innocent. So goes the modus operandi of the 9/11 truth de-bunkers out there: wrong or not, they are always right. Or at least, like the lawyers, they appear to be right.

Before I detail the invalid arguments and deceptive techniques of the myth huggers, I have to point out three important fundamental problems that these people have before they even begin to make their claims:

Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links

Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

The Informants

The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots—or leading them?

Remember the Washington Metro bombing plot? The New York subway plot? The guys who planned to blow up the Sears Tower? The teenager seeking to bomb a Portland Christmas tree lighting? Each of those plots, and dozens more across the nation, was led by an FBI asset.

Obama Goes All Out For Dirty Banker Deal

My theory is that the Obama administration is trying to secure its 2012 campaign war chest with this settlement deal. If Barry can make this foreclosure thing go away for the banks, you can bet he’ll win the contributions battle against the Republicans next summer.

Which is good for him, I guess. But it seems to me that it might be time to wonder if is this the most disappointing president we’ve ever had.

Video: Printable paper solar panels can power gadgets

A new manufacturing technique may allow for solar panels to be produced simply using nothing more than an ink-jet printer.

The idea behind the MIT team’s approach is that if researchers can perfect a process in which cells can be printed on common everyday materials like cloth and paper, you would suddenly open the technology up to all kinds of possibilities for household use. Cells can be painted on wallpaper or companies can produce solar-powered curtains to harness energy anywhere the sun might shine.

NIST, NatGeo: pants on fire

The Backfire Effect

The Misconception: When your beliefs are challenged with facts, you alter your opinions and incorporate the new information into your thinking.

The Truth: When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

Once something is added to your collection of beliefs, you protect it from harm. You do it instinctively and unconsciously when confronted with attitude-inconsistent information. Just as confirmation bias shields you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect defends you when the information seeks you, when it blindsides you. Coming or going, you stick to your beliefs instead of questioning them. When someone tries to correct you, tries to dilute your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens them instead. Over time, the backfire effect helps make you less skeptical of those things which allow you to continue seeing your beliefs and attitudes as true and proper.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else-by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusion may remain inviolate - Francis Bacon

Read more...

See also: Plato's "The Cave"

Dead in the Water

During the Six-Day War, Israel attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty belonging to its closest ally, the USA. Thirty-four American servicemen were killed in the two-hour assault by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats.



See it at NavyTV

Documents reveal TSA ignored dangers of body scanners

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) says that is has official documents that reveal the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) deliberately ignored warnings that airport body scanners pose a health risk; the internal documents and email exchanges show that TSA officials brushed aside concerns that employees raised after noticing that a large number of workers had cancer, strokes, and heart disease after working near the body scanners

The TSA's tentacles spread

It's eight months now since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) abandoned its last pretence of respect for America's constitutional principles, by mandating no traveller may fly in American airspace unless TSA agents first see and/or feel said traveller's genitalia. That's not hyperbole, just a straightforward description of American law playing out in airports every day. And given America's vast size, lack of mass transit and Americans' generally short vacations from work, flying is often the only feasible way US citizens can travel from points A to B. Yet our government has decreed every such flyer submit to search procedures previously associated with playground-haunting paedophiles and prison rapists.

All along, the TSA and its cowardly supporters insist my freedoms be curtailed to assuage their thumbsucking fears: "If you don't like it, don't fly!" Only now, they'll have to expand their craven mantra: "If you don't like it don't fly, don't take a train or trolley, don't ride a bus, don't board a boat or ferry, and don't drive your own car. In fact, don't go anywhere; just stay home and be thankful you live in a free country."

read more...

Ron Paul: A 2012 Revolution

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal (a pissed-off farmer)

Everything I want to do is illegal. As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal’s office.

And it doesn’t stop with agriculture bureaucrats. It includes all sorts of government agencies, from zoning, to taxing, to food inspectors. These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process.

Driver's view of tsunami

Aqua Importance

In early 2011, the non-profit, non-partisan Environmental Working Group (EWG) published a scorecard that rated 173 bottled waters from the previous year based on source, treatment, and quality. The results were a bit shocking. Of the brands, 18% failed to reveal the geographic source of their water, 32% didn’t want to talk about their treatment methods or purity testing, and 13% provide water quality reports without any actual testing results. Not one single bottled water brand scored an “A.” Not one. Gerber Pure Purified Water, Nestle Pure Life Purified Water, and Penta Ultra- Purified Water were the only 3 to get B’s. All the other companies received C’s, D’s, and F’s, which are very poor marks for something you’re paying through the nose for and counting on for purity. Couple these results with the fact that many of the plastics of these bottled waters can leach chemicals, bottled water suddenly doesn’t sound like such a good idea.

Clinton on Syria: Astounding Lies, Zero Legitimacy

Bangkok, Thailand June 18, 2011 – Out of either desperation or immeasurable hubris, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has just attempted to rewrite the last 3 months of history, contradicting her own department’s statements made during the onset of the Syrian unrest.

Hillary Clinton’s brazen lies, unmitigated deception, and her crass insolence is irrefutable evidence that she and the government she works within have abdicated all of their legitimacy. Their open contempt for America’s Constitution while they promote “universal rights” and the will of the “international community” means that we no longer bound to obey them as they are no longer bound to the laws that truly govern our land. The next step of course is undermining these corporations and the puppet institutions that serve them through full-spectrum boycotts and replacing them entirely on a local level.

Marriage: A Short History Lesson

Privatize Marriage Now

The natural outcome of widespread approval of this state of affairs is that governments are now seen as the institution that can legitimately define marriage itself. We now have civil laws deciding what marriage is and what it is not and who can be married and who can not.

For anyone who has an interest in actually defending the historically traditional status of marriage, this power should be viewed as both dangerous and illegitimate. Thanks to the secularizing efforts of Christian reformers and anti-Christian types throughout history, marriage gradually became for many a civil matter only. Many people get "married" in courthouses in totally non-religious ceremonies. Such marriage contracts are in essence no different from run-of-the-mill legal contracts. The fact that we call such unions "marriage" doesn’t make them so. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, marriage is a religious matter. Some government judge can’t make you "married" any more than can your hair dresser. Here, we see that the so-called "traditional" marriage types who nevertheless defend government civil "marriage" (as defined by them) have already sown the seeds of their own defeat. They’ve already removed the institution of marriage from its traditional role and status.

Whole Foods Rap

ATF incites terrorism, gives it a Hollywood name; gets hundreds of people shot, killed

Officials at the Department of Justice are in "panic mode," according to multiple sources, as word spreads that congressional testimony next week will paint a bleak and humiliating picture of Operation Fast and Furious, the botched undercover operation that left a trail of blood from Mexico to Washington, D.C.

The '50s: apple pie, Andy Griffith, and MK Ultra

Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a covert CIA human research program, run by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early 1950s, continuing at least through the late 1960s, and it used U.S. and Canadian citizens as its test subjects.[1][2][3][4]

more

The CIA was fascinated by LSD, and thought it a wonder drug that could be used not only to create zombie-like armies, but to drive enemy leaders like Fidel Castro insane. There were few willing subjects in the research — often, LSD was secretly given to a range of people, from CIA employees to prostitutes and the mentally ill. Sometimes, agents even posed as prostitutes and secretly drugged their clients, while fellow agents watched in two-way mirrors.

more

"That was in the past. We've found Jesus!" - CIA

War is a Racket

"I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force--the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I suspected I was part of a racket all the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service."

Smedley D. Butler (1881-1940)

One of the most decorated combat veterans in US military history...but you'll never hear his name.

Here's why:

Decline of Empires

Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic , talks about the similarities in the decline of the Roman and Soviet empires and the signs that the U.S. empire is exhibiting the same symptoms: overextension, corruption and the inability to reform.

Previously released bin Laden photos

There is no question that there are serious differences is the physical characteristics of the people in these photos. The fundamental argument against the implications of this fact is, in a nutshell, "they wouldn't do that". That argument is based on faith and nationalist fervor engrained socially through popular culture, not on fact, recorded history, psychology, or observable human behavior.

A glimpse of CIA tactics: Portray Saddam as gay, make fake bin Laden videos

During planning for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the CIA's Iraq Operations Group kicked around a number of ideas for discrediting Saddam Hussein in the eyes of his people.

One was to create a video purporting to show the Iraqi dictator having sex with a teenage boy, according to two former CIA officials familiar with the project.

“It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera,” said one of the former officials. “Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session.”

The idea was to then “flood Iraq with the videos,” the former official said.

The spy agency’s Office of Technical Services collaborated on the ideas, which also included inserting fake “crawls” -- messages at the bottom of the screen -- into Iraqi newscasts.

The agency actually did make a video purporting to show Osama bin Laden and his cronies sitting around a campfire swigging bottles of liquor and savoring their conquests with boys, one of the former CIA officers recalled, chuckling at the memory. The actors were drawn from “some of us darker-skinned employees,” he said.

read full article

Clay Guida, living in a van down by the river

on MMA Prowatch

Lupe Fiasco's "Words I never said"