Israel Attacked the USS Liberty 43 Years Ago Today

On June 8, 1967, US Navy intelligence ship USS Liberty was suddenly and brutally attacked on the high seas in international waters by the air and naval forces of Israel. The Israeli forces attacked with full knowledge that this was an American ship and lied about it. Survivors have been forbidden for 40 years to tell their story under oath to the American public. The USS Liberty Memorial web site tells their story and is dedicated to the memory of the 34 brave men who died.

The cover-up continues to this day.

Israeli IDF are scum

Israel acknowledged Sunday that it edited recordings of what it said were anti-Semitic and anti-American radio calls by pro-Palestinian activists who tried to run the Gaza blockade and that it could not identify the origin of the broadcasts.

The Israeli military released a 26-second recording Friday night in which a warning call to a ship in the flotilla was met with the reply of "Shut up -- go back to Auschwitz." After another voice reports that the convoy has the permission of Palestinian officials to dock in Gaza, a third voice responds, "We are helping Arabs going against the U.S. Don't forget 9/11, guys."

[...]

On the full recording, an Israeli warship hails one of the vessels in the flotilla to warn it was approaching a blockade zone and warned that "all necessary measures" would be taken to prevent it from docking in Gaza. After three warnings, Free Gaza activist Huwaida Arraf replied that the blockade was a violation of international law and that the convoy was carrying only humanitarian aid.

"We do not carry anything that constitutes a threat to your armed forces," she says on the recording.

Let me say this loudly and clearly: FUCK YOU, ISRAEL!*

*Pertains to Zionists, Netanyahu's government, and the IDF

Restrepo

Animal Farm Friday on Monday - Popcorn Kittens

How the battle at Armageddon begins...

This could be interesting.

Offensive and Reprehensible

It's pretty fucking sad when even a legend speaks up against Israel, that legend can be toppled.

Helen Thomas announced on Monday that she is retiring, moments after the White House Correspondents Association said it was considering stripping her of her front-row press room seat.

The 89-year-old so-called “dean of the White House press corps” had caused an uproar after making remarks in May suggesting that Israeli Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and return to Germany and Poland “or wherever they came from.”

I echo Helen Thomas. The Jews have no more right to that land than anyone else in the world. They have it only because they took it, and they did it with US money and military support. Without that, there would be no Israel.

Mr. Gibbs said he had not spoken directly with the president about it. But, he added: “Those remarks were offensive and reprehensible. She should and has apologized. Obviously those remarks do not reflect, certainly, the opinion of I assume most of the people in here, and certainly not of the administration.”

I think this Obama administration is offensive and reprehensible. I think the Israeli government and the IDF are offensive and reprehensible. I think my tax dollars going to prop up Israel is offensive and reprehensible.

[Al Jazeera] Price to pay for opposing Israel

Animal Farm Friday - Meow Mix: Homage to talking heads

If this doesn't drive you nuts...

America has begun to see Israel more as a burden than an asset

That being declared by the head of Israel's Mossad.

Most telling of all are the stirrings of disquiet in America, Israel’s most steadfast ally. Americans are still vastly more sympathetic to the Israelis than to the Palestinians. But a growing number, especially Democrats, including many liberal Jews, are getting queasier about what they see as America’s too robotic support for Israel, especially when its government is as hawkish as Binyamin Netanyahu’s. A gap in sympathy for Israel has widened between Democrats and Republicans. Conservatives still tend to back Israel through hell and the high seas. Barack Obama is more conscious that the Palestinians’ failure to get a state is helping to spread anti-American poison across the Muslim world, making it harder for him to deal with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. His generals have strenuously made that point. None other than the head of Israel’s Mossad, its foreign intelligence service, declared this week that America has begun to see Israel more as a burden than an asset.

Read the full post here.

The Israelis apparently do not understand the concept of meta-data in photos.

Idiots. (Click to embiggen.)

Neutrinos have mass? Uh oh.

That means a whole lot of re-working of the Standard Model. Time to get busy, physicists!

For the first time, physicists have confirmed that certain subatomic particles have mass and that they could account for a large proportion of matter in the universe, the so-called dark matter that astrophysicists know is there but that cannot be observed by conventional means.

The finding concerns the behavior of neutrinos, ghost-like particles that travel at the speed of light. In the new experiment, physicists captured a muon neutrino in the process of transforming into a tau neutrino.

That's pretty awesome on a fundamental level, but how about these little details?

Because the neutrino beam that is created is not affected by electrical or magnetic fields, the proton accelerator must be pointed directly at detectors in the laboratory under Gran Sasso mountain 453 miles away in central Italy, between the towns of L'Aquila and Teramo. When neutrinos are produced, they continue in the same direction of the proton beam, arriving at Gran Sasso in 2.4 milliseconds.

The detector at Gran Sasso is a massive apparatus made up of 150,000 "bricks" of photographic film interleaved with lead sheets. The total mass of the bricks, which are accompanied by electronic detectors and other apparatus, is about 1,300 tons.

Mind = Blown.

Anti-Israel does not mean Anti-Semitic

Time to Cut Israel Off

Lets see how long Israel can continue being such a bully when they run out of money.

Throw top BP Execs in prison!

Could not agree more!

Since the Supreme Court in January declared that "Corporate Personhood" is the law of the land, let's treat British Petroleum like a person and hold them accountable as we would any person for such devastating destruction to the people, land, environment and animals in American and Caribbean waters. - Mark Karlin for Buzzflash

The Low Bar now cross-posts on Facebook

Unless you prefer coming here for the pretty formatting, you can follow The Low Bar on Facebook at this URL:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Low-Bar/121062797933431

Now to figure out how to add a "Like" button to this thing...

Animal Farm Friday - Hawkward!

Evangelicals turning US Armed Forces into a Christian Taliban with consent of the Pentagon

That this is happening is pretty sickening, but at least there's one soldier fighting for our Constitution.

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein shares his hate mail with both friends and strangers the way elderly people show off photos of their grandkids. He has plenty of it to share. For the past four years, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has been doing battle with a Christian subculture that, he believes, is trying to Christianize the U.S. armed forces with the help of a complicit Pentagon brass. He calls it the "fundamentalist Christian parachurch-military-corporate-proselytizing complex," a mouthful by which he means holy warriors in contempt of the constitutional barrier between church and state.

The article goes on to highlight the systemic infection - nay, cancer - of Christian Evangelicals in the US Armed Forces that spreads all the way to the top, and notes that the Obama administration is of no help in this matter (unsurprisingly).

As an aside, this statement referring to a quote from a Pentagon spokesperson strikes me as odd:

Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith declined via email to comment on it directly but said that the Defense Department "places a high value on the rights of military members to observe the tenets of their respective religions. [It] does not endorse any one religion or religious organization, and provides free access of religion for all members of the military services."

I believe this can be interpreted to mean that if a Christian soldier wishes to crusade against non-Christians, or if a Muslim soldier decides to wage jihad against fellow soldiers who are infidels, that would be legal. I think she should have chosen her words more carefully.

Who says multi-tasking is impossible?

Animal Farm Friday on Monday - Kung Fu Bear

This bear can kick your ass bear-style, or Bruce Lee style. Take your pick!

UPDATE: Let me know if you don't get this song stuck in your head.

TED Talks: Sir Ken Robinson on the Learning Revolution

Fabulous! Entertaining and enlightening.