Red_Dragon wrote: 
And we like it that way...

 maryte wrote: 
You are a beauty...

 Beanie wrote: 
AMEN !!!!

 

Tori Amos, Battle of Trees

• That damned extra space after "me" and before the comma
• That the "t" in "torture" is unnecessarily capitalized
• And that there are too many periods following "is" - should simply be the three used to form an ellipsis 

 Manbird wrote: 
You are lucky

Sunday was the worse that I've felt in decade. Today we are supposed to get nasty T-Storms which I hope will wash away it all. Not feeling bad today with all the concoctions i'm mixing up

 GeneP59 wrote: 
Mags dying, but I'm barely feeling anything. A few years ago I used to claw my eyeballs out and sneeze until the streets ran red  with blood and mucous. But not so much this year. 

Ssitting. I just got my new ass pad from amazon and it fell great for the first
ten minute but it's starting to really hurt again. Sitting is what wrecked my
back and and now I find myself having to sit for 10 hours a day or more
seven days a week. The pain almost brings tears to my ganglia but at least
I'm working again. Not getting paid for it, but working.  That feels good
some days when the little cha-ching extension goes off when I make a sale.
I'm averaging one a day and everybody else at my level is doing at least 3
times that. 

 SeriousLee wrote: 
A tale from the RAFT!

HAYFEVER!  

Buying a new car.

Comey

Intercepted Podcast: Just Following Orders

(...) Archival Newsreel: Before an international tribunal, holding court in the former war ministry in Tokyo, come the war-time leaders of Japan to be indicted as criminals.

JS: In the aftermath of World War II, the United States and its allies organized a series of war crimes tribunals to prosecute their vanquished enemies from Germany and Japan. The trials that were held at Nuremberg in Germany are probably the best-known of these. In Japan, it was the International Military Tribunal for the Far East — better known as the Tokyo Trials. And if you read some of the charging documents from these cases that were brought against Japanese military officers, soldiers, others, you might notice that among the war crimes charges was a technique referred to as water torture or water cure. This was a practice that the Japanese used against prisoners, including American POWs, and this practice involved holding down or immobilizing a prisoner and then dousing their open mouth or their nostrils with water. It simulated drowning and a sensation of dying.

The historian R. John Pritchard described the Japanese rational for using this water torture. He wrote, “The rapid and effective collection of intelligence then, as now, was seen as vital to a successful struggle, and in addition, those who were engaged in torture often felt that whatever pain and anguish was suffered by the victims of torture was nothing less than the just deserts of the victims or people close to them.”

Several Japanese military figures were executed for their role in water torture and other acts, others were sentenced to prison labor camps. Here’s Senator John McCain, himself a victim of torture as a POW in Vietnam.

Scott Pelley: Is waterboarding torture?

Senator John McCain: Sure. Yes. Without a doubt.

SP: So the United States has been torturing POWs.

JM: Yes. Scott, we prosecuted Japanese war criminals after World War II, and one of the charges brought against them, for which they were convicted, was that they waterboarded Americans.

JS: Again, what Senator John McCain is talking about here, took place in tribunals established by the U.S. and its allies. And here’s just a couple of examples of the charges that were presented at these trials, and I’m quoting: “In or about July or August 1943, the accused Yukio Asano, did willfully and unlawfully, brutally mistreat and torture Morris O. Killough, an American Prisoner of War, by beating and kicking him, by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils.”

Another described the torture of, and I’m quoting: “John Henry Burton, an American Prisoner of War, by beating him, and by fastening him head down-ward on a stretcher and forcing water into his nose.”

The Japanese soldier who did these things was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. But his official job description was interpreter. He was just following orders. That’s what he said.

Steve Doocy: So it’s all going to be about what happened regarding the waterboarding. Just keep in mind — whatever she did when she was in power at that point, she was doing it as a directive and it was all within the law.

Ainsley Earhardt: Right, doing what she was told to do.

JS: In related news, Trump’s pick to head the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, is in the midst of her confirmation process and Haspel was just following orders to when she was involved with what the Japanese called water torture.

That is one of the lines being pushed by her CIA defenders: that what she did was lawful, she was ordered to do it, she wasn’t really in charge, she’s an apolitical professional. I’m sure there are lots of people from all sorts of countries and nations throughout history that view their role in torture the exact same way that Haspel and her defenders view it. I’m sure there are many Nazis that could have pointed to laws created in their own country to permit the heinous acts that they committed. But the tribunal said no, just following orders is not a defense.

But, you see, the United States doesn’t believe in international tribunals for its personnel. The men who dropped the atomic bombs on Japan? They were heroes, just like the CIA officers who ran black sites, oversaw kidnapping operations and, yes, waterboarded prisoners. They were just doing their jobs. The fact that they were doing it for America means that it’s right: Our waterboarding is different than the Japanese waterboarding. Why? Well, because we’re doing it. (...)

 ScottN wrote: 
The ones I'm referring to don't involve me other than to piss me off.

Red_Dragon wrote:

I'd really like to know who they thought they were investigating. It can't have taken long to realize that this was a blind alley but I'd like to know who they suspected.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Yeah, and conference calls constitute a meeting, and who the F likes those?  Difficult to make a discreet absence.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
You can expect a visit now. Been nice knowin' ya.

RichardPrins wrote:
You're thinking of the Idaho panhandle, tho we have our share. Notably the Unabomber, But not a lot of black Muslims.

The tidbit caught my eye because there's a chance I'd know some of those who came under suspicion. I mean, they're not black, but if you squint just right...

 miamizsun wrote: 
I think my favorite is the conference call on speaker. It's about as close I come to losing my pacifism.