Filed under: Rantin’ and Ravin’
Alleged al Qaeda agent Padilla claims torture
By Tom Brown
MIAMI (Reuters) – Lawyers for alleged al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla have asked a Florida judge to dismiss the terrorism case against him, saying he was tortured and force-fed psychedelic drugs while held at a U.S. military brig for more than 3-1/2 years.
“The torture took myriad forms, each designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately, the loss of will to live,” Padilla’s attorney’s said in the motion for dismissal filed in Miami federal court earlier this month.
“Often he had to endure multiple interrogators who would scream, shake and otherwise assault Mr. Padilla,” his lawyers said. “Additionally, Mr. Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.”
Gosh, I just LOVE this country. Citizens can be held without being charged under the guise of terrorism, the administration just suspended habeas corpus and citizens can be spied on, er I mean wiretapped, without a warrant. Our press isn’t as “free” as we think it is and of course, torture is now legal if the administration “suspects” you are a terrorist.
This country is turning into a fascist state and the best part about it is that pretty much NOBODY CARES!
November 1, 2006
After reading through some of the support forums at WordPress, I think I have figured out where most of my comment Spam is coming from. I am now clearing out over 20 spam comments a day – except for today – I had 72! Jeebus. It seems that what spammers do now is something called trackback spam. So, they spambot doesn’t actually leave a comment, but does a trackback to whatever post from a webpage.
The only good thing about it is that the more trackbacks you have, the higher your search ranking becomes. Not that my search ranking would be low anyway, I mean come one, if you are searching for me, this is pretty much the only page that should come up.
How do you defeat these spammers? Well, to do that requires that you turn your trackbacks or pings off. WordPress users – this can be done in your control panel under ”manage” I believe, I’d have to double check, but to really make sure it is turned off - when you are writing a post – in your sidebar there should be something called “discussion” and you would need to make sure that “allow pings” is unchecked. I used to have the ”allow pings” turned on, but now that I turned it off, I have the arduous task of manually editing all of my other posts to turn it off. Ach.
October 9, 2006
Bob Damn Spammers are really starting to piss me off. Over the last couple of months I have been getting at least 5 to 10 comment spams every day. I suppose it should be a little flattering that someone out there thinks that this site actually generates enough traffic that it is deemed spammable, but come on! This is getting ridiculous. Thank goodness wordpress has a pretty good comment spam filter plugin otherwise all the comments here would just be full of ads for illegal narcotics or viagra.
But what’s worse now is that some asshole out there has now decided to spoof my domain and create fake email addresses using my domain. Fuckers. I just had to delete about 30 emails from mailer daemons about undeliverable mail coming from fake email addresses from my domain. Sure 30 isn’t much, but makes you wonder about just how many emails actually went through.
This kind of crap is intolerable. How many morons out there actually would click on those links thinking that they can buy the crap in the emails anyway? Or would actually buy stocks listed in a spam message?
At least my page logs these fuckers’ ip addresses, I just wish I knew what I could do with them to get back at these jerks. It’s really a shame that Blue Frog went down because of spammers.
Blue Frog was this service where if you signed up with them and got a spam message, their service would go to the webpage listed in the spam and request that your email address be removed from their mailing lists. Now if they are in the US, they would have to comply and remove you. However, once Blue Frog went into effect, a couple of spammers got really pissed at them and starting DOS attacks against Blue Frog servers – which eventually forced them to close up shop.
Last I heard Blue Frog was working on a kind of peer to peer ad hoc network to est up shop again, but without central servers so DOS attacks wouldn’t be possible. Gawd, I hope that works out.
October 1, 2006
Ach. I don’t believe it, but I did it again and had to reinstall the freaking software again. So, any previous entry is well – archived – but I have to import them. Whoopeeee. I’ll do that later.
I got my ticket to Hawaii last week. I go there in a little less than 2 weeks now. That should be really interesting. I still haven’t told any of my buddies there that I am coming for a visit. I should probably do that. Just not now, it’s freaking late again.
I have such a hard time sleeping. I don’t know why I stay up so late all the time. I suppose it’s because I need the alone time – I talk to at least 60 to 70 different people each day and I just want to get away from people when I am away from work. Which is also probably why I have such a had time staying in touch with people. I really to start being social again.
January 17, 2006
What another messed up week.
I got sick last week Friday – and it really wiped me out – I basically slept and complained all day Saturday and Sunday. I felt like crap, but I went into work Monday and I was thinking about leaving early, but I stuck it out and stayed the whole day. Tuesday was worse though as my throat started to really get sore. I think at one point, I went through like 10 cough drops in 2 hours – not fun.
Work is yet again pissing me off. As of January 1st, they dropped our break times to the legal minimum – 10 minutes per every 4 hours or so – and they are making us include trips to the bathroom with our breaks – so I haven’t really been getting breaks because I have been using them to go to the bathroom. Super!
So that has motivated me to become my own law clerk or whatever and I have delved into Oregon labor laws and OSHA standards. Ooof. It’s amazing what you can learn in a couple of hours on the internet. So according to Oregon laws, employers must give workers 10 minute breaks every 4 hours or so and according to Oregon OSHA and Federal OSHA standards – employers must give employees reasonable access to bathrooms and they must be available for workers at all times. However I haven’t found any documentation stating specifically that rest room breaks are to be separate from regular breaks – but I ony started researching this yesterday. I do believe that rest room breaks are definitely supposed to be separate from regular breaks.
I would think that my job is not giving us reasonable access to the restrooms though. I mean if we go over 20 minutes of break – we get hit with an attendance point – which I guess could be described as a demerit point – and they are stating that if we go over 20 minutes, they are going to adjust our pay so that we are not paid for that time. WTF????? So, if I have used my 20 minutes, but suddenly get a bout of diarrhea, I would not only have to worry about skid marks, but also about getting a demerit point. Great!
I wonder what kind of opinion the Dept. of Labor or OR-OSHA would have about this. I know I am complaining and the easiest thing to do would be to quit, but why would I want to just give up and not get in touch with the proper authorities when I am pretty sure what they are doing is not right? I am going to be quitting soon anyway.
It’s funny I got a letter in the mail a couple of months ago about a lawsuit that the company was settling for things like unpaid overtime and such and if I accepted the settlement, then I would give up any right to sue in the future – I am so glad that I did not sign that waiver.
Oh Bob, I hate my fucking job, I am going to be so glad when I am out of there.
In other news, I got me some new exercise videos again. This time these are from Tracie Long Training.
They looked really great from the previews and I really need some variety with my workouts – I pretty much just did videos from The Firm for about a year and I did kind of get burned out on them. Now that I am feeling better, I just need to get off my ass and start working out again.
Well, I am going to preview the new workouts now.
January 12, 2006
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