AdamSmith

I would obey firecat's longstanding injunction and hie myself to Thailand.

"...I know that if I ever go looking for my heart's desire, I'll never go any further than my own backyard..."

Third-Ing that. Have known a couple of friends who got much relief from your symptoms by changing their blood pressure meds. As for headache/hangover, likely you have already tried this, but I found (in cadging friends' pills) that Cialis is a lot easier on the system than Viagra.

Well, it is explicitly a petition from parties for one side of the case. As such, it would seem not to be its duty to seek "balance," any more than would a pleading from either prosecution or defense, or parties thereto, in any such contest in our adversarial system.

No doubt the Intelligent Designer created her that way.

What's a little necrophilia between friends...?

Open letter from former Guantánamo prisonersFormer inmates of the notorious prison say Barack Obama must made good on his claim to want it closed The Observer, Saturday 4 May 2013 17.43 EDT 'At first the world was shocked by images of shackled kneeling men in orange jumpsuits wearing face masks, blacked out eye-goggles and industrial ear muffs. Then they were mostly forgotten.' Photograph: Shane T McCoy/AP The hunger strike by our former fellow prisoners at the Guantánamo prison camp should have already been the spur for President Obama to end this shameful saga, which has so lowered US prestige in the world. It is now in its third month and around two-thirds of the 166 prisoners there are taking part. They are sick and weakened by 11 years of inhumane treatment and have chosen this painful way to gain the world's attention. Eighty-six of these men have been cleared for release by this administration's senior taskforce. Who can justify their continuing imprisonment? This must be ended by President Obama. Since the opening of the prison camp, numerous prisoners held at Guantánamo have sporadically taken part in hunger strikes to protest their arbitrary imprisonment, treatment and conditions. This, however, is the first time the overwhelming majority of the prisoners are taking part – and for such an extended period. It will, in a few months, be 12 years since the first prisoners were sent to Guantánamo by the Bush administration to avoid fair treatment and fair trials. At first the world was shocked by the images of shackled kneeling men in orange jumpsuits wearing face masks, blacked out eye-goggles and industrial ear muffs – in order to prevent them from seeing, hearing and speaking. Then they were mostly forgotten. However, over time their voices did get heard as recurrent and corroborative stories of torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment came out when some of the men who endured it were released. Of the 779 prisoners once held at Guantánamo, 612 have been released – without charge, or apology. We are among these men and it is through our testimony – and that of the prisoners left behind, via their legal teams, – that the voices of those who know the evil of Guantánamo are finally being heard. Last week, a report by the Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment, which included two former senior US generals, and a Republican former congressman and lawyer, Asa Hutchinson, who served as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency from 2001 before being appointed in January 2003 as Undersecretary in the biggest division of the Department of Homeland Security, described the practice of torture by the US administration as "indisputable". The report also stated bluntly that the treatment and indefinite detention of the Guantánamo prisoners was "abhorrent and intolerable" and called for the prison camp to be closed by next year. Despite these findings the US administration continues to employ tactics that include: ■ The abuse of the prisoners' religious rights, such as the desecration of the Qur'an ■ The use of chemical sprays and rubber bullets to "quell unrest" ■ Regular and humiliating strip searches ■ Extremely long periods in total isolation ■ Interference in privileged client/attorney relationships ■ Lack of meaningful communication with relatives ■ Arbitrary imprisonment without charge or trial The present hunger strikes are a result of the culmination of over a decade of systematic human rights violations and the closing of every legal avenue for release. The appalling methods of force-feeding several of the prisoners in a crude attempt at keeping them alive, by strapping down their arms, legs and heads to a chair and forcing a tube through their nostrils and forcing down liquid food into their stomachs, demonstrates the absence of any morals and principles the US administration may claim to have regarding these men. President Obama claimed he wanted to close Guantánamo and promised to do so. Four years after his initial promise, he has again acknowledged that Guantanamo is not necessary and must close. Speaking on 30 April 2013, the US president reaffirmed his commitment as it was, "not necessary to keep America safe, it is expensive, it is inefficient … it is a recruitment tool for extremists; it needs to be closed." We hope that on this occasion, such words are not mere empty rhetoric, but a promise to be realised. We make the following recommendations: 1 For the American medical profession to stop its complicity with abusive forced feeding techniques. 2 For conditions of confinement for detainees to be improved immediately. 3 That all detainees who have not been charged should be released and 4 That the military commissions process should be ended and all those charged should be tried in line with the Geneva Conventions. Signed, former prisoners, Moazzam Begg, UK; Sami Al- Hajj, Qatar; Omar Deghayes, UK; Jamal al-Hartih, UK; Ruhal Ahmed, UK; Richard Belmar, UK; Bisher al-Rawi, UK; Farhad Mohammed, Afghanistan; Waleed Hajj, Sudan; Moussa Zemmouri, Belgium; Adel Noori, Palau; Abu Bakker Qassim, Albania; Adel el-Gazzar; Egypt, Rafiq al-Hami, Tunisia; Salah al-Balushi, Bahrain; Sa'd al-Azami, Kuwait; Asif Iqbal, UK; Shafiq Rasul, UK; Feroz Abbassi, UK; Jamil el-Banna, UK; Murat Kurnaz, Germany; Sabir Lahmar, France; Lahcen Ikassrien, Spain; Imad Kanouni, France; Mourad Benchellali, France http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/04/open-letter-former-guantanamo-prisoners

Then kiss him gentle.

I didn't realize Oz and TY had already implemented teledildonics here!

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government? A former FBI counterterrorism agent claims on CNN that this is the case Glenn Greenwald guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 May 2013 08.22 EDT Former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente, on CNN, discussing government's surveillance capabilities Photograph: CNN screegrab The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are. Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream of leaks uncritically disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way. On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could: BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them? CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out. BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible. CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not." "All of that stuff" - meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on US soil, with or without a search warrant - "is being captured as we speak". On Thursday night, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that "all digital communications in the past" are recorded and stored: Let's repeat that last part: "no digital communication is secure", by which he means not that any communication is susceptible to government interception as it happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital communications - meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like - are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is. There have been some previous indications that this is true. Former AT&T engineer Mark Klein revealed that AT&T and other telecoms had built a special network that allowed the National Security Agency full and unfettered access to data about the telephone calls and the content of email communications for all of their customers. Specifically, Klein explained "that the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T" and that "contrary to the government's depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists . . . much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic." But his amazing revelations were mostly ignored and, when Congress retroactively immunized the nation's telecom giants for their participation in the illegal Bush spying programs, Klein's claims (by design) were prevented from being adjudicated in court. That every single telephone call is recorded and stored would also explain this extraordinary revelation by the Washington Post in 2010: Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. It would also help explain the revelations of former NSA official William Binney, who resigned from the agency in protest over its systemic spying on the domestic communications of US citizens, that the US government has "assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about US citizens with other US citizens" (which counts only communications transactions and not financial and other transactions), and that "the data that's being assembled is about everybody. And from that data, then they can target anyone they want." Despite the extreme secrecy behind which these surveillance programs operate, there have been periodic reports of serious abuse. Two Democratic Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, have been warning for years that Americans would be "stunned" to learn what the US government is doing in terms of secret surveillance. Strangely, back in 2002 - when hysteria over the 9/11 attacks (and thus acquiescence to government power) was at its peak - the Pentagon's attempt to implement what it called the "Total Information Awareness" program (TIA) sparked so much public controversy that it had to be official scrapped. But it has been incrementally re-instituted - without the creepy (though honest) name and all-seeing-eye logo - with little controversy or even notice. Back in 2010, worldwide controversy erupted when the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates banned the use of Blackberries because some communications were inaccessible to government intelligence agencies, and that could not be tolerated. The Obama administration condemned this move on the ground that it threatened core freedoms, only to turn around six weeks later and demand that all forms of digital communications allow the US government backdoor access to intercept them. Put another way, the US government embraced exactly the same rationale invoked by the UAE and Saudi agencies: that no communications can be off limits. Indeed, the UAE, when responding to condemnations from the Obama administration, noted that it was simply doing exactly that which the US government does: "'In fact, the UAE is exercising its sovereign right and is asking for exactly the same regulatory compliance - and with the same principles of judicial and regulatory oversight - that Blackberry grants the US and other governments and nothing more,' [uAE Ambassador to the US Yousef Al] Otaiba said. 'Importantly, the UAE requires the same compliance as the US for the very same reasons: to protect national security and to assist in law enforcement.'" That no human communications can be allowed to take place without the scrutinizing eye of the US government is indeed the animating principle of the US Surveillance State. Still, this revelation, made in passing on CNN, that every single telephone call made by and among Americans is recorded and stored is something which most people undoubtedly do not know, even if the small group of people who focus on surveillance issues believed it to be true (clearly, both Burnett and Costello were shocked to hear this). Some new polling suggests that Americans, even after the Boston attack, are growing increasingly concerned about erosions of civil liberties in the name of Terrorism. Even those people who claim it does not matter instinctively understand the value of personal privacy: they put locks on their bedroom doors and vigilantly safeguard their email passwords. That's why the US government so desperately maintains a wall of secrecy around their surveillance capabilities: because they fear that people will find their behavior unacceptably intrusive and threatening, as they did even back in 2002 when John Poindexter's TIA was unveiled. Mass surveillance is the hallmark of a tyrannical political culture. But whatever one's views on that, the more that is known about what the US government and its surveillance agencies are doing, the better. This admission by this former FBI agent on CNN gives a very good sense for just how limitless these activities are. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/04/telephone-calls-recorded-fbi-boston

I posted this because I appreciated the respectful stance of the Guardian reporter's notes, and certainly the interest of the photographer's approach. They are in marked contrast to the smarmy, pseudo-respectful archness of the television segments I mentioned above. Oz, thank you for the pointer to Bangkok 8. I just read the opening chapter on Amazon and am hooked.

You know, there is an outside chance that YOU may find yourself in the role of husband, obeying what your "wife" wants. Consider it.

I promise I will save it for special occasions. Trey has famously been featured in several media spots on extreme plastic surgery. (These, however, use his real name, so as I understand it would be against board policy to link here.)

Yes, it is Trey. Note how I carefully concealed that fact in the first line of the OP.

The second photo in this feature is Trey Thurston, known by many of us here. Pictures of the week: A New Kind Of Beauty, by Phillip ToledanoEach week, the Guardian Weekend magazine's editorial team choose a picture, or a set of pictures, that particularly tickle their fancy. This week, their choice is Phillip Toledano's striking series, A New Kind of Beauty Hannah Booth The Guardian, Friday 3 May 2013 11.30 EDT These are not 'my plastic surgery hell' stories lifted from the pages of the Daily Mail. These are individuals who have transformed the way they look through radical reconstructive surgery to the point where they still look human, only a little less so. By photographing them in a flattering, highly stylised way – with a nod to the 16th-century portraitist Hans Holbein the Younger – Phillip Toledano subtly reinforces this notion. With their static postures, his subjects appear detached, their expressions frozen as much by the art direction as by their surgery. Toledano’s interest in radical surgery followed a series of moving portraits he shot of his elderly father (dayswithmyfather.com) and of a man he shot who had undergone a lot of surgery. 'I’d been thinking about death and ageing while photographing Dad,' he says, 'and what struck me about this man was how, through his surgery, he was trying to defy the ageing process. He was mesmerising.' Through word of mouth and social media, Toledano tracked down others who had undergone extensive plastic surgery, and the project grew. If Toledano is trying to make a point, it is that we consider where we’re heading as a species. 'I wanted to ask what we might look like in 50 or 100 years. Will plastic surgery become as normal as wearing makeup or having a tattoo is today?' 'For many people, these portraits are hard to look at. But the subjects have created their own idea of beauty, and that’s courageous. They are all happy with, and proud of, the way they look.' With the means radically to alter the way we look now freely available to us, it’s interesting, Toledano says, to examine how people choose to look. As the government considers tougher controls on plastic surgery, following Sir Bruce Keogh’s report on the dangers of the 'normalisation' of such procedures, that choice may become harder. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2013/may/03/pictures-of-week-extreme-cosmetic-surgery#/?picture=408021353&index=0

All true. Fortunately it does seem both Markey and the Dem machine are working hard not to repeat La Coakley's follies. For my part I would far rather it had been Capuano, but evidently he judged it best not to buck party line-of-succession norms that it was Markey's turn. Ah well. The old coot can't last forever.

The "Ex-Change" ... clearly one of those things that doesn't exist but ought to.

Hmm! Instead of just dumping the ex, sounds like I should have traded him in for your friend.

What?! Microsoft? Never!

Possibly. I did though see some press speculation that it could have been a hardware failure in the form of an attach point tearing loose.

Guess I will have to outfit them with little suicide vests...

I told you, he is a stylite-ascetic.

In fact could there be $$$ in setting up a network service thereof?