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.

Animal Farm Friday 2 - Just Deserves! (Warning: Graphic Photo!)

Fuck you, matadors! Mess with the bull, get the mother fucking horn to the face!

Painting for Prophet

Animal Farm Friday - Monkey Love

This touches me, deeply.

Animal Farm Friday - Snakes Are Cool!

You've got to read this to believe it! Just how they created the study is worth the read!

So spitting cobras defend themselves by initially tracking an aggressor's movements. However, at the instant that an attacker triggers the cobra into spitting, the reptile switches to predicting where the attacker's eyes will be 200 ms in the future and aims there to be sure that it hits its target.

Thanks for paying your taxes...

Things you find in a closet

Farewell, Bill Moyers. Happy Retirement!

Bill Moyers sadly signed off for the last time at The Journal this past Friday. This quote is from that show:

Ed Murrow told his generation of journalists bias is okay as long as you don't try to hide it. So here, one more time, is mine: plutocracy and democracy don't mix. Plutocracy, the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy.

Plutocracy is not an American word but it's become an American phenomenon. - Bill Moyers, from his final broadcast at The Journal

Thank you, Mr. Moyers. Farewell!

Cure for PTSD - Good or Bad?

With nothing more than a little prick in the neck, post-traumatic stress disorder can be mostly cured, making it possible for soldiers to endure the horrors of combat without any of the lasting side-effects that should - ya know, in an ideal world - help to prevent such horrors from ever taking place.

But a small new study out of Walter Reed Army Medical Center might offer more than temporary relief — with nothing more than a quick jab to the neck.

It’s a procedure called stellate ganglion block (STB), and involves injecting local anesthetic into a bundle of nerves located in the neck. The bundle are a locus for the sympathetic nervous system, which regulates the body’s “fight-or-flight” stress response.

I'm all for helping soldiers ease their suffering, but this seems like a panacea to the Pentagon, one that could make them more likely to send soldiers into harms way since they don't have to worry about any lingering post-combat side-effects.

Animal Farm Friday - Soy Milk or Soy - wait! WTF?

Sorry. No non-human animals in this funny news clip of what else to call soy milk (or rice milk, etc.) instead of "milk".

The video is funny, but the topic pisses me off. I don't personally care for soy milk, or rice milk, or even milk from a cow generally speaking. But I hate the National Milk Producers Federation and other dairy organizations like them, for many, many reasons that I won't go into here, and this specific topic is one of them. Those jerks are as bad as cigarette companies when it comes to greed and general evilness. Attacking competitors in such a shameless way is clear evidence. I wonder when they'll start going after Milk of Magnesia.

Illegal Immigrants?

Art from Garbage

Believe it or not, this:



is made from this:



For more stunning examples of art made from the by-products of our excessive consumerism, check out the amazing work by Chris Jordan, a Seattle-based photographer (and former corporate lawyer).

On the Humanity and Inhumanity of American Soldiers in Combat

If you've seen the video of the massacre in Baghdad, where US forces are shown murdering innocent civilians, you know how gut-wrenching that situation was. The following article is no less gut-wrenching, but it sheds more light on the events of that day, and offers more detail on the humanity - and the inhumanity - of American soldiers in combat.

Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord, who is seen running with an Iraqi child in his arms in the video posted by WikiLeaks of a July 2007 massacre of civilians in Baghdad..., together with another former member of the company, Josh Stieber, have addressed an open “Letter of Reconciliation” to the Iraqi people taking responsibility for their role in this incident and other acts of violence.

I highly recommend reading the full interview.

Moohammed