Regardless of what Congress does and regardless of what the pro-war crowd says, there is already a countdown until all troops are removed from Iraq. Our national nightmare ends the day the next president takes office and the angry idiot is gone.mjh
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Ordinary Customers Flagged as Terrorists By Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post Staff Writer
Private businesses such as rental and mortgage companies and car dealers are checking the names of customers against a list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers made publicly available by the Treasury Department, sometimes denying services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.
The Office of Foreign Asset Control’s list of “specially designated nationals” has long been used by banks and other financial institutions to block financial transactions of drug dealers and other criminals. But an executive order issued by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has expanded the list and its consequences in unforeseen ways. Businesses have used it to screen applicants for home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment, according to interviews and a report by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area to be issued today.
“The way in which the list is being used goes far beyond contexts in which it has a link to national security,” said Shirin Sinnar, the report’s author. “The government is effectively conscripting private businesses into the war on terrorism but doing so without making sure that businesses don’t trample on individual rights.”
I think there is a serious flaw in this piece of art (Uproar hits Fla. Confederate flag show – Yahoo! News). The formal gallows invokes a false image — who did the Confederates hang in such a way or by whom were they so executed? No, the proper way to hang a Confederate flag is from a tree limb. Perhaps it should be stretched over the bloody face of a dead man. There should be a crowd at his feet, half of whom are enraged and the other half of whom look like they are at the county fair. mjh
Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter cry.
http://www.boscarol.com/nina/html/where/strangefruit.html
Billie Holiday sings Strange Fruit
Terror Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years, By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer
Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world — field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip — arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation’s central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects.
Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives.
But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. …
TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to “horror stories” of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.
The watch lists fed by TIDE, used to monitor everyone entering the country or having even a casual encounter with federal, state and local law enforcement, have a higher bar. But they have become a source of irritation — and potentially more serious consequences — for many U.S. citizens and visitors.
In 2004 and 2005, misidentifications accounted for about half of the tens of thousands of times a traveler’s name triggered a watch-list hit, the Government Accountability Office reported in September. …
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last year that his wife had been delayed repeatedly while airlines queried whether Catherine Stevens was the watch-listed Cat Stevens. The listing referred to the Britain-based pop singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. The reason Islam is not allowed to fly to the United States is secret. [mjh: As long as Ted Stevens is suffering, I’m OK with this.] …
TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data. …
Every night at 10, TIDE dumps an unclassified version of that day’s harvest — names, dates of birth, countries of origin and passport information — into a database belonging to the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center. TIDE’s most sensitive information is not included. The FBI adds data about U.S. suspects with no international ties for a combined daily total of 1,000 to 1,500 new names.
I have several blogs because I like to keep some topics separate. I also post photos on flickr (some call that a photo-blog). I appreciate you taking the time to look at these sites:
Wilderness and Chaco — www.mjhinton.com/wild/
Computers and the Web — www.mjhinton.com/help/
Photos by mjh — www.flickr.com/photos/mjhinton/I also host several blogs and other websites. These can be reached by www.edgewiseblog.com.
I read a lot of blogs now and then, especially on computer topics. Here, I will identify just a few general blogs I think you’ll find interesting and thought-provoking (but that’s redundant, isn’t it). mjh
Albloggerque
http://albloggerque.blogspot.com/
Cocoposts
http://cocoposts.typepad.com/
Duke City Fix
http://www.dukecityfix.com/
jfleck at inkstain
http://inkstain.net/fleck/
Judy’s Jottings
http://judysjottings.wordpress.com/
I truly could NOT care less about sports. I have zero interest in professional, academic or amateur sports. No interest at all in sports. None the less, I believe physical activity is vital. By all means, get out and be active, including participating in sports. I play volleyball every week with my friends.
My revulsion is in sports as a religion and business. My disgust is over sports for money and the corporate welfare that benefits sports. It sickens me that people get rich through sports — especially people who are not athletes themselves. It saddens me that fanatics know everything about sports trivia and less about the condition of the world. Our society squanders huge amounts of money, time, attention, focus and brain-power on corporate sports (in which I include anything involving pay).
Am I suggesting that a gifted athlete who works very hard to improve himself or herself deserves no money for that effort. Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. Do it because you love it. Do it because it makes you healthier, stronger, more attractive. You want to get rich in the process?
Oh, but how can anyone become the world’s greatest [insert sporting position of your choice] without compensation. Well, frankly, I don’t care, but I suspect love and devotion will take you pretty far. You want a dump truck full of money, too?
My bile has risen because UNM just hired a coach for nearly ONE MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR. A coach, someone who “loves the game.” Countless people believe one coach can easily be worth so much money. People who won’t make one million dollars in their lifetimes still believe one person is so much more valuable than they are themselves. That’s some self-esteem.
The Million-Dollar-Coach will make $400,000 more than the new President of the University. You might think that says enough about the priorities of our state educational institution — the coach of a handful of athletes is worth almost twice what the leader of the entire university makes. But don’t ignore that there is very limited money for everyone else at the university. The University is a community of students, teachers and other staff (and our families). Everyone in this community is important. We all need some support, some give and take, a share of the pie. In comes a big pig and there’s less for the rest of us. Simple, isn’t it? I have to go vomit now.
mjhPS- I’ve been “temporary part-time faculty” at UNM for almost 20 years (without common benefits). The pay for all my colleagues at the Division of Continuing Education was drastically cut some years ago; we’ve never quite come back. Even if none of this were true, I’d still hate sports more than religion.
Daily Lobo – Alford to rake in $975,000 a year by Steven Fernandez
[Steve] Alford, officially introduced as the new UNM men’s basketball head coach on Friday, will be making an annual salary of $975,000 – nearly twice the amount of former head coach Ritchie McKay, who was fired Feb. 22. …
David Schmidly, UNM’s next president, said Alford is a great hire for the basketball team.
Schmidly will make more than $500K, by Caleb Fort
The Board of Regents approved the five-year contract for Schmidly, UNM’s next president, on Friday.
Annually, Schmidly will get a $380,000 salary, $120,000 deferred compensation, a $42,000 car allowance and a $45,000 housing allowance. [mjh: $587,000-a-year, about 60% of the coach’s salary.]
Louis Caldera, UNM’s former president, had a salary of $293,000.
Bill to increase pay for part-time faculty by Bryan Gibel
The best-paid instructors in the sciences make about $8,000 per course on Main Campus, while instructors at UNM’s Valencia County branch earn less than $2,000, Niame said. … [mjh: I make about $400 for a workshop; I made about $4000 in 2006.]
Niame said there are about 1,200 faculty members who teach part-time in the UNM system, but they aren’t specifically included in the budget.
“We do not exist in UNM’s budget, and we’re not considered when the Board of Regents looks at the budget,” she said. “We’re not considered true employees. We work semester-to-semester, which means we get no benefits, and we have no job security. We’re nonentities in a lot of ways.” …
Jamie Koch, president of the Board of Regents, said the University will not increase wages for part-timers out of its own budget.
“We’re not increasing salaries for part-time faculty,” he said.
A Darfur Village Bears Up Under Janjaweed Yoke By Stephanie McCrummen, Washington Post Foreign Service
The story of Kuteri is in many ways emblematic of a conflict that is slipping from crisis into a more chronic state of dysfunction.
Now in its fifth year, a military campaign by the Sudanese government to crush a rebel movement in Darfur has almost completely reordered the region’s demographics. The conflict is complex but comes down to one in which the government has armed and supported certain nomadic Arab tribesmen against the region’s farming villagers, who are predominantly black Africans.
At least 450,000 people have died from disease and violence in the conflict, and more than 2.5 million — around half the area’s entire population — have fled to vast displacement camps whose numbers continue to swell. …
Since the Janjaweed came in early 2003, some families have fled Kuteri for what seemed like the relative safety of the camps, but others could not or did not want to leave. …
Even as humanitarian organizations remain focused on helping the millions of displaced people, there is growing concern that some of the vast camps encircling towns in Darfur are becoming semi-permanent settlements of people dependent on aid and increasingly alienated from village life.
In many camps, people have begun to build mud-brick homes, fences, gardens and other structures in a sign that they are settling in for a long stay. There have also been reports of youth gangs forming in the camps and other quasi-urban problems developing, aid workers said.
In that context, a few relief groups are attempting to help people who have expressed a desire to stay in their villages. …
So far, about 50 families from Kuteri … have packed their bags, loaded their donkeys and headed for a camp near Zalingei. And one day last week, another few families — totaling about 30 people — decided they had finally had enough of making nice with militiamen and wondering whether they would have enough food tomorrow.
In a scene repeated perhaps millions of times across Darfur, the families went house to house in the early morning, saying goodbye to their friends and relatives, who gave them cooking oil, soap and food to help them get through the first few days in the camp.
“All the families leaving are feeling sad,” Ismail said. “We tell them to go stay in the camp, and if you don’t like it, then you can come back.”
But not one family has returned, except for occasional visits, he said, and the village’s population is dwindling.