Drones for hire

If you need drones, we've got drones. Apparently, this shoudl be our new national motto, according to this NYT article:

"Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies."

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Bradley Manning almost prevented the Deepwater Oil spill

Greg Palaste reports that the information released by Bradley Manning could have, almost, prevented the Deepwater Oil disaster. Manning's release of data definitely shows corruption by the U.S. in covering up a BP's dangerous method of capping its underwater wells with nitrogen-laced cement. It is absurd for the U.S. to accuse Manning of attempting to aid U.S. enemies when Manning did not financially benefit in the least labors, continues to pay a huge price for providing valuable information to the People of the U.S., and his efforts continue to expose the U.S. government as corrupt.

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How to investigate rich people hiding their money in off-shore accounts

Here's how to track down and expose thousands of rich people hiding their money offshore. Congratulations to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. What did they find in the 260 GB hard drive that was anonymously delivered to ICIJ? Here's another article on the work of ICIJ:

The secret records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists lay bare the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore hideaways. They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.

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Measuring intelligence in animals

In this article in the Wall Street Journal, Frans de Waal cautions us that we need to properly test animals before declaring that they lack intelligence. He gives several examples, concluding that scientists need to take the time to think like animals when designing experiments for animals.

A growing body of evidence shows . . . that we have grossly underestimated both the scope and the scale of animal intelligence. Can an octopus use tools? Do chimpanzees have a sense of fairness? Can birds guess what others know? Do rats feel empathy for their friends? Just a few decades ago we would have answered "no" to all such questions. Now we're not so sure. Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species. Scientists are now finally meeting animals on their own terms instead of treating them like furry (or feathery) humans, and this shift is fundamentally reshaping our understanding.

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Big corporate money as a muzzle

In Canada, big corporate money is funding the environmentally horrific tar sands project and the equally despicable effort to muzzle scientists who would otherwise be reporting on the environmental disaster. IO9 reports:

Big money muzzles truth-tellers. "The Canadian government is currently under investigation for its efforts to obstruct the right of the media and public to speak to government scientists. These policies are widely believed to be a part of the government's unspoken campaign to ensure that oil keeps flowing from the Athabasca tar sands — even if it’s at the cost of free scientific inquiry, the environment, and by consequence, democracy itself."

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