smartest animal in the world...the crow?

Watch A Murder of Crows on PBS. See more from Nature.

blah blah blah, "support our troops"...who do our troops support...again?

Candidate Comparison: Top Contributors 2012 Cycle

opensecrets.org

Barack Obama
Microsoft Corp $170,323
Comcast Corp $116,155
Harvard University $94,225
Google Inc $90,166
University of California $83,679
_______________________________________

Mitt Romney
Goldman Sachs $354,700
Credit Suisse Group $195,250
Morgan Stanley $185,800
HIG Capital $176,500
Barclays $155,250
_______________________________________

Herman Cain
Wausau Homes $9,800
Wells Fargo $8,300
Houston Texans $7,400
Cold Spring Granite $6,000
Cinco Natural Gas $5,200
_______________________________________

Jon Huntsman
Fertitta Entertainment $32,000
Ultimate Fighting Championship $26,500
Station Casinos $26,000
Crow Holdings $20,000
Fresenius Medical Care $17,400
_______________________________________

Ron Paul
US Air Force $23,437
US Army $23,053
US Navy $16,973
Mason Capital Management $14,000
Microsoft Corp $13,398

Media Silence Is Deafening About Important Gun News

Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down gun control laws in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

But Armageddon never happened. Newly released data for Chicago shows that, as in Washington, murder and gun crime rates didn't rise after the bans were eliminated -- they plummeted. They have fallen much more than the national crime rate.

Words vs Deeds

Grand-scale hypocrisy in action.

The globalist oligarchs wrapping themselves in the flag and pretending to love America and its core values only promote "democracy" when it concerns countries they want to bomb, invade, or generally force their will upon. Voices can "be heard", leaders will "respond", and "progress" can be made if--and only if--it is on the globalist oligarchs' terms. Everything else is a threat, and must be dealt with as such. Case in point...

The 5 Craziest Soldiers of Fortune To Ever Cash a Paycheck

Some people are reluctantly called to war, either drafted into service or volunteering out of a sense of duty. Other people, well, they just really like fighting.

That's why there is such a thing as the soldier of fortune, the mercenary who'll show up and fight in a war between two countries he didn't even know existed until they offered him a paycheck. It takes a certain breed of person to lead this lifestyle. And that breed is batshit insane.

Real Mother@*#$%^& Talk

Great candid street interview; OWS
*occasional "language"

Ron Paul: Bloomberg GOP Presidential Debate 10/11/11

Also, Herman Cain is a liar. : )

The Last Emporer: Chronicles of Fedor

Part II

Part III

Part IV

What's behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests?

It's unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street. Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists. That's just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges.

Origin of AIDS: The Polio Vaccine

Related:

U.S. apologizes to Guatemalans for secret STD experiments

U.S. fake vaccination programs as cover for harvesting DNA

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment

Reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System following Gardasil®

Full-scale terror exercise underway in Denver; Obama to oversee from ultra-secure bunker

Operation Mountain Guardian is a terrorism-based, full-scale emergency exercise scheduled to take place in numerous locations in the Denver metro area on Friday, September 23, 2011.

The exercise will involve first responders from 81 different agencies**, will be conducted at ten separate locations and will include loud noises, simulated weapons, smoke, emergency vehicles and other equipment that will be audible and visible throughout the day.

Read more...

A disturbing report prepared by General Alexey Maslov, the Senior Military Representative of the Permanent Mission of Russia to NATO, states that he has been notified by the Americans of their plan to hold a DEFCON 1 “Cocked Pistol” maximum readiness alert drill on 27 September which will be overseen by President Obama at one the United States most secure bunkers located beneath the Denver International Airport.

Read more...

RELATED:
The military/intelligence/law enforcement training exercises before, during and after September 11, 2001

Public relations CEO Mark Penn: Obama needs a terrorist attack to bolster support

Psychologists: Questioning 9/11 Is the Sane Thing To Do

The 9/11 Commissioners and Other Officials Don’t Believe the Government

The 9/11 Commissioners and congressional investigators into 9/11 themselves don’t believe the government’s description of events.

Much of the world doesn’t believe the official story.

Mental Health Professionals Say that Questioning 9/11 Is the Sane Thing To Do

Many mental health professionals have concluded that the official version of 9/11 is false, and that those who believe the official version suffer from defense mechanisms. For example:

5 Things Our Kids Won't Have In School

If you went to a school classroom 200 years ago, you'd see something remarkably similar to what we have today: A teacher talking to rows of kids sitting at little desks, each pretending to follow along in a textbook. Maybe the blackboard has been replaced with a whiteboard or a PowerPoint, but those basics haven't changed in generations.

But they're about to. Some of the most iconic staples of school life are about to disappear forever. Things like...

ACLU: 10 years after 9/11, Obama continues illegal Bush-era civil liberties abuses

Glenn Greenwald highlights the ACLU report on secret assassinations, warrantless wiretapping and more on the liberal website Salon.com:

The ACLU decided to use the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack to comprehensively survey the severe erosion of civil liberties justified in the name of that event, an erosion that -- as it documents -- continues unabated, indeed often in accelerated form, under the Obama administration.

The group today is issuing a report entitled A Call to Courage: Reclaiming Our Liberties Ten Years After 9/11; that title is intended to underscore the irony that political leaders who prance around as courageous warriors against Terrorism in fact rely on one primary weapon -- fear-mongering: the absence of courage -- to vest the government with ever-more power and the citizenry with ever-fewer rights.

read more...

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

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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