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.

I’ve been shopping for a new digital camera. I require a superzoom (10x or greater) and a great macro. I have been very happy with Olympus until the zoom’s focus became unreliable for some reason.

After some research, I decided to buy the Sony Cybershot DSC-H2. I stood in OfficeMax with one in my hands and was very close to buying it. Later, I stood in Best Buy with the H2 and the newer H5 and could see the H5 blows away the H2. The larger LCD will help with my macro shots and the more dense pixels of the electronic view finder will help with everything else. This is a bigger and more expensive camera than I really want, but 12x excites me.

I did some of my research at a great website, www.imaging-resource.com (recommended by my photo-freak friend, Lisa). That site lists online sellers and it was through them I found www.butterflyphoto.com (BFP), which has this camera for the least amount of money, bottom line. The listing for BFP showed lots of buyers and a very high rating.

On the BFP website, the initial purchase process went fine. The next day, I got email from BFP instructing me to call “Tom,” plus a phone message from Tom himself before I could call. No word as to why I should call. So, I sent email, but got no reply. I called Tom. Tom was very professional in his skillful pitch to get me to buy more stuff. If I were BFP, I’d give him a raise. But I resisted his insistence and urgings and assumed we were done with an unpleasant dance.

Then I got the same email, this time to call Chris. I wrote Chris and said I’d been through it all with Tom. Then I got the same email — exactly the same robotic email every time — again and again and again from Tom. Maybe there’s a problem. Maybe there’s something great, like a free gift. Couldn’t one of these email message vary just enough to include some information?

In 10 days’ time, I have received a dozen of these uninformative emails. In that same time, I checked the status of my order online several times a day. For the longest time, the status was “PVR.” What does “PVR” stand for? Not a clue is offered anywhere on the BFP website. The designer of that webpage should be ashamed to display an unintuitive abbreviation without any help. But I think BFP counts on customers being unsure enough to call.

I may appear a fool, but I feel that if a business can use email, it should. I find the unvarying emails from BFP irritating. I also feel that if a business has a well-designed website with a status page, it should be used to communicate something useful. (In fact, after about 10 days, “PVR” was replaced with “call Tom” — not quite literally, but nothing more helpful than that.)

Eventually, I relented. I called again because I believed no one at BFP would ever compose an original email message containing helpful information. Ironically, calling for the third time — in the middle of the afternoon — I got Tom’s phone message. I’m not surprised he never returned my call. The fourth time I called, I said, “send it or cancel it.”

This morning, the miscommunication ended. BFP sent a generic cancellation email. No useful information. I’ll shop elsewhere. mjh

PS- I feel no obligation to balance this report. While I don’t believe the customer is always right, I do believe a company that wants to do business with me — a company that has email and status webpages — needs to communicate with me by email. That said, I’ve talked to several people who had satisfactory service from BFP. Don’t avoid them just because I will from now on.

PPS- During this limbo time, I’ve read about an 18x zoom from Samsung and saw two Panasonic Lumix models top a survey that found some fault in the H5. God works in mysterious ways.

Progress Report Archives 2006-07 – Center for American Progress Action Fund

MEDIA — ABC/DISNEY SHUTS DOWN BLOGGER WHO HIGHLIGHTED INFLAMMATORY RHETORIC ON ABC STATION: For several months, a blogger nicknamed “Spocko” has been highlighting the inflammatory rhetoric used by talk radio hosts on KSFO, an ABC Radio-owned station in San Francisco. As Media Matters documents, “Spocko compiled a litany of examples on both his weblog, Spocko’s Brain, and in numerous letters to corporations advertising on KSFO. He noted that KSFO hosts had claimed to have put ‘a bull’s-eye’ on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), advocated hanging various New York Times editors, called for the murder of millions of Muslims, and so on.” Major advertisers, including MasterCard, Bank of America, and Visa, reportedly pulled their ads from the station. In response, “on December 21, ABC Inc., a subsidiary of the Disney-ABC Television Group, apparently issued a cease-and-desist letter targeting Spocko and his blog for copyright violation. Specifically, ABC alleged that by posting brief audio clips of various talk radio hosts on KSFO, the site was ‘in clear violation’ of the station’s copyright. The letter demanded that the owner of the site ‘remove the content immediately.’ Soon after, according to Spocko, his Internet service provider shut down his blog.” The major media has yet to report on this story.

In related news, ABC News announced this week that right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck will soon join Good Morning America as a “regular commentator.” Beck has a history of inflammatory and offensive remarks. During an interview with Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), Beck said “what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.'” On another occasion, Beck said that if “Muslims and Arabs” don’t “act now” by “step[ping] to the plate” to condemn terrorism, they “will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West.”

My dear Merri Rudd was sworn-in as Bernalillo County Probate Judge the morning of New Year’s Day along with 4 other county officers. Fewer people attended than four years ago, but each officer had some family and friends in attendance for the brief ceremony.

A fan said Mer represents the argument against term limits. However, Mer herself favors term limits and feels 10 years in office will be long enough. Ask her again when our health insurance expires.

At home, there were chants of “Four More Years!” My second glass of Gruet champagne was the better libation for celebrating bookends and term limits. mjh

Edwards, Now Seasoned, Elbows His Way Into the Field By Dan Balz, Washington Post Staff Writer

John Edwards will be able to run to the left of Clinton in a party whose base has shifted leftward during the Bush presidency. And this time, questions about lack of experience will go first to Obama. …

But he had a ready answer this week to the question of national security experience: Bush had the most experienced team in history, and still the United States ended up in a mess in Iraq. Experience, he said, is not a guarantee of good judgment. …

Edwards has settled comfortably into the left-of-center position in the Democratic field, pairing positions that excite the party’s liberal base with an upbeat message of hope and optimism. He has worked to deepen his relationships with organized labor, especially in Nevada, which is holding an early 2008 caucus, and he will challenge Clinton and Obama for the endorsements of key unions.

Edwards supports universal health care, which he said means health care for every American, not just most. “As you remember from 2004, there were a bunch of people waltzing around saying they had a universal health care plan that didn’t cover everybody,” he said. “Politicians tend to do that.”

He said he is examining two ideas and weighing whether to support a more ambitious and costly plan or one that may be more politically achievable. But he said both would meet his test of universality. …