Prometheus 6

"Regarding the Congressman's desire to hunt wildebeest and distribute the cured meat to refugees, wildebeest are not present in Chad."

And a Wildebeest in Every Pot
By Al Kamen
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; A13

Sometimes even the most altruistic notions come to naught. Take California GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter's nifty idea to help the neediest of the needy: the 230,000 refugees in Chad who have fled the slaughter in Darfur and are desperately in need of food.

Hunter's staff contacted the embassy in N'Djamena, Chad, last week to see whether Hunter could distribute food at a camp. Hunter also wanted to put together an outing to hunt wildebeest and distribute the meat to refugees.

On July 9, after supplying his bosses with passwords to the system that turned out to be false, Childs was suspended.

The following week, with system administrators locked out of their network and Childs sitting in jail, a consultant advising the city discovered that Childs had rigged the network so that files would be erased if someone tried to figure out what the proper password was, prosecutors said.

Childs had created an ability to track anyone who tried to get into the system, kept his own e-mail server and had been using the modems locked in storage cabinets to create a private network, prosecutors said.

The consultant, Anthony Maupin, also found that because Childs had fashioned his makeshift system to run off temporary, short-term memory, a power outage - such as turning off the computer for maintenance - would mean full system failure, del Rosario said.

The system was rigged that way in May by a user named Maggot617 , a city computer analysis showed. Prosecutors say "Maggot" was Childs.

Tech rigged S.F. computer meltdown, prosecutors say
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 24, 2008

(07-23) 12:09 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Terry Childs envisioned the ultimate revenge on his bosses, prosecutors say - the meltdown of the city's computer network at the flick of a switch.

And it would come not directly at the hands of Childs, but during routine system maintenance at the building that houses the city's Technology Department.

Regulators are accusing the defendants of making 19 separate attempts at market manipulation in March 2007, involving three specific Nymex contracts — for light sweet crude oil, for heating oil delivered to New York Harbor and for gasoline, also for New York delivery.

At least five attempts were successful, according to the complaint. In three instances, it said, the illegal trading pushed prices of all three commodities lower, while the other two resulted in higher prices for gasoline and crude oil.

Firm Said to Manipulate Oil Market
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES

Commodity regulators in Washington have accused a Dutch trading company of making roughly $1 million in illegal profits by manipulating the prices of crude oil, heating oil and gasoline over an 11-day period last year.

Every so often I get a link from the mainstream blog network...today it's from Crooks and Liars ...and I'm jarred by how much attention they can send you, and how little. I got so much traffic...240+ folks in under 30 minutes...that I can't follow it to see if any new visitors read anything but the linked page.

Because I am a bit nuts, my hosting account is a virtual server instead of a shared server...I can handle the volume surge. But it makes me think about what it would cost to support a site that gets Crooks and Liars volume every day.

Comments to this thread are unmoderated...anonymous comments post immediately.

AP IMPACT: After 60 years, black officers rare
By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Writer  |  July 23, 2008

WASHINGTON --Blacks have made great strides in the military since it was integrated 60 years ago, but they still struggle to gain a foothold in the higher ranks, where less than 6 percent of U.S. general officers are African-American.

At a ceremony commemorating the day President Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces, military officials and black leaders said the U.S. must not rest on its laurels.

"My hope and expectation is that, in the years ahead, more African-Americans will staff the armed forces at the highest levels," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a crowd that included many black former service members. "We must make sure the American military continues to be a great engine of progress and equality."

First All-Women-of-Color Presidential Ticket in US History: Green Party Nominee Cynthia McKinney and Running Mate Rosa Clemente on War, Democracy and Hip Hop

The Green Party made history last week when it nominated the first all-women-of-color presidential ticket in US history. Former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was the first African American woman elected to Congress in Georgia, won the Green Party’s nomination last Monday. She named longtime community organizer, journalist and former director of the Hip Hop Caucus, Rosa Clemente, as her running mate earlier this month. They both join us for a wide-ranging discussion on the 2008 race, the media, the impact of the hip hop generation and more. [includes rush transcript]

I missed the first half-hour of CNN's Black in America series. I actually intended to ignore it, but an old friend forwarded some email he got (I actually don't know that he reads P6)

Did you know that companies in the US have said they would hire a white man with a felony record and no high school education BEFORE they would hire a black man with NO criminal record and a 4-year degree?

On July 23 at 9pm and July 24 at 9pm, CNN will premier a series, 'Black in America with Soledad O'Brien' and I personally challenge you to watch it WITH your children, especially your sons, if you have any, uninterrupted. The aforemention statistic and many others will be revealed during the series.

I had the privilege of meeting with Soledad O'Brien and actually SEEING this premier on Monday, and what I saw brought tears to my eyes and anguish, frustration, and a sense of helplessness to my soul.

On Monday the series will focus on Women and Families and Tuesday is dedicated entirely to the plight of the Black Man in America .

I beg and plead with you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE watch and internalize what you see and hear; no matter HOW disturbing the information revealed...you can (and will) thank me later.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2008/black.in.america

Of course, this is old news around these parts. Still, skipping it might be an error, since this WILL be what a vast swath of America thinks being Black "means." So I taped one of the replays, and the hour of Anderson Cooper that followed. And tonight's episode on Black men is queued up for the recorder.

Meanwhile, Spence live-blogged part one, which I will read, but not until I watch part one myself.

Another thing I missed...folks are reviving the attempts to get some investigation of LaVena Johnson murder. Ugly case. Electronic Village has the best roundup I found today.

As part of his alleged sabotage, Childs engineered a tracing system to monitor what other administrators were saying and doing related to his personnel case, law enforcement officials said...

The system continues to operate even though administrators have limited or no access, officials said.

S.F. officials locked out of computer network
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 15, 2008

(07-14) 19:23 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A disgruntled city computer engineer has virtually commandeered San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to top administrators even as he sits in jail on $5 million bail, authorities said Monday.

The Providence police chief, Col. Dean M. Esserman, said the federal government seemed unable to balance antiterror efforts and crime fighting.

“Our nation, that I love, is like a great giant that can deal with a problem when it focuses on it,” said Colonel Esserman, who became chief in 2003 when he was hired by Mayor David N. Cicilline. “But it seems like that giant of a nation is like a Cyclops, with but one eye, that can focus only on one problem at a time.”

“The support we had from the federal government for crime fighting seems like it is being diverted to homeland defense,” he added. “It may be time to reassess, not how to dampen one for the other, but how not to lose support for one as we address the other.”

A City’s Police Force Now Doubts Terror Focus
By DAVID JOHNSTON

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Nearly seven years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the war on terror in this city has evolved into a quiet struggle against a phantom foe.

Last year, when a sailor slipped over the side of a Turkish merchant ship in the city’s port, a Providence police detective assigned to a joint terrorism task force was quickly alerted, reflecting a new vigilance since the Sept. 11 attacks. Alerts also went out to immigration, customs, the F.B.I. and other federal agencies, but the case went cold.

Another alarm was sounded over a suspicious man of Indian descent who asked a metals dealer about buying old power tools and hair dryers. The lead petered out when the prospective buyer told a police detective in an interview that he wanted to refurbish the equipment for resale overseas.

Sudanese Leader Mounts Charm Offensive
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

EL FASHER, Sudan — Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, who has been accused of genocide, is not especially well known for his dance moves.

But on Wednesday, in front of tens of thousands of people packed into what appeared to be a mandatory pep rally in Darfur, the portly president jumped on a desk and did a little jig. He jutted his cane. He rolled his hips. Shadows of sweat bloomed under his arms. But the crowd did not seem to care.

“Seer, seer, al-Bashir!” spectators screamed. “Go, go, Mr. Bashir!”

With an international indictment looming on charges of genocide, Mr. Bashir returned to the scene of the war crimes he is accused of committing in Darfur — this time on an uncharacteristic charm offensive.

Police director sues for critical bloggers' names
Site popular with citizens, officers
By Amos Maki, Memphis Commercial Appeal
Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin and the city of Memphis have filed a lawsuit to learn who operates a blog harshly critical of Godwin and his department.

The lawsuit asks AOL to produce all information related to the identity of an e-mail address linked to MPD Enforcer 2.0, a blog popular with police officers that has been extremely critical of police leadership at 201 Poplar.

"In what could be a landmark case of privacy and the 1st Amendment," the anonymous bloggers write on the site, "Godwin has illegally used his position and the City of Memphis as a ram to ruin the Constitution of the United States.

Single payer health care. Call it socialism if you like.

Paying Doctors to Ignore Patients
By PETER B. BACH

THE longstanding push-pull between Medicare and Congress has erupted again. Last week, Congress, overriding a presidential veto, canceled Medicare’s scheduled 10.6 percent cut in payment rates for doctors, and instead raised the rates 1.1 percent. But this action fails to address the problem with the Medicare payment system, which is not the amounts doctors are paid but the way their payments are calculated.

Medicare pays doctors for specific services. If a patient has a checkup that includes an X-ray, a urine analysis and a physical, Medicare pays the doctor three separate fees.

State Department officials say the upgrades would greatly enhance the F-16s’ ability to strike insurgents accurately, while reducing the risk to civilians. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Congress was weighing the plan, said the timing was driven by deadlines of the American contractor, Lockheed Martin.

Having the United States pay for the upgrades instead of Pakistan would also free up cash that Pakistan’s government could use to help offset rising fuel and food costs, which have contributed to an economic crisis there, the State Department officials said.

Plan Would Use Antiterror Aid on Pakistani Jets
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration plans to shift nearly $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counterterrorism programs to upgrading that country’s aging F-16 attack planes, which Pakistan prizes more for their contribution to its military rivalry with India than for fighting insurgents along its Afghan border.

Some members of Congress have greeted the proposal with dismay and anger, and may block the move. Lawmakers and their aides say that F-16s do not help the counterterrorism campaign and defy the administration’s urgings that Pakistan increase pressure on fighters of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in its tribal areas.

So I show up at Fox News HQ at, like, two seconds before 2 pm, which is when Color of Change, Nas and MoveOn.org were to present Fox News with 600,000+ letters requesting that the act right. ndre Banks was theres and I figured I should meet folks I support so regularly. Since I didn't make it to Netroots Nation and will not make it to Blogging While Brown this was the last opportunity for a while.

We had 45 seconds to talk. Andre was busy. Lotta-lotta media coverage; Fox even had this squirrelly little guy out there with a mike and a tape recorder. I recognized this Latino brother that interviewed me while he was at Columbia...he's working The Newshour's website now. I was interviewed by Reuters, god knows if or where it will be used. Met two cute white chicks who bummed a cigarette. They were wearing colorofchange.org t-shirts but did not know Fox won a lawsuit that established they have the first amendment guaranteed right to lie. This is to say even people who are offended by Fox don't know how bad they are.

Bill O'Reilly is SUCH a dick...

O’Reilly Attacks Gore For Attending Netroots Nation: ‘The Same As If He Stepped Into The Klan Gathering’

On Saturday, former Vice President Al Gore made a surprise appearance at the Netroots Nation convention in Austin, TX. In his speech, Gore praised the gathering of progressives, saying that they are part of an effort to “reclaim the integrity of American democracy.”

While the attendees of Netroots Nation received Gore with enthusiasm, his appearance has caused Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly to declare that Gore has “gone off the deep end.”

On his radio show today, O’Reilly claimed that Gore was now associating himself with the most “hateful group in the country.” “And I’m including the Nazis and the Klan in here,” said O’Reilly.” He then claimed that attending Netroots Nation was “the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering”:

O’REILLY: Al Gore now is done. He’s done. Ok. He is not a man of respect, he doesn’t have any judgment. The fact that he went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering. It’s the same. No difference. None. K, he loses all credibility with me. All credibility.

The department's speed in trying to make the regulatory change contrasts with its reluctance to alter workplace safety rules over the past 7 1/2 years. In that time, the department adopted only one major health rule for a chemical in the workplace, and it did so under a court order.

U.S. Rushes to Change Workplace Toxin Rules
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; A01

Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers' on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins.

McCain Mocks Media 'Love Affair' with Obama
By Howard Kurtz

John McCain's strategists have unveiled a new weapon against what they view as fawning coverage of his Democratic rival: mockery.

The campaign has posted two online videos, filled with clips of journalists saying nice things about McCain's opponent, and an e-mail message to reporters declaring: "It's pretty obvious that the media has a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama. Some may even say it's a love affair.... If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny."

The gimmick: asking people to vote on which video they prefer and promising to put that one on the air. Privately, though, McCain aides say they will be satisfied if the videos go viral, firing up supporters and donors, and that it isn't clear any of this will find its way into a campaign ad.

We treat 10-year sentences like they're nothing, like that's a soft penalty, when in much of the rest of the world a decade behind bars would be considered extraordinarily severe. This is what separates us from other industrialized countries: It's not just that we send so many people to prison, but that we keep them there for so long and send them back so often. Eight years ago, we surpassed Russia to claim the dubious distinction of having the world's highest rate of incarceration; today we're still No. 1.

If awards were granted to the country with the most surreal punishments, we would certainly win more than our share. Thirty-six straight years in solitary confinement (the fate of two men convicted in connection with the murder of a guard in Louisiana's Angola prison). A 55-year sentence for a small-time pot dealer who carried a gun during his sales (handed down by a federal court in Utah in 2004). Life sentences for 13-year-olds. (In 2005, Human Rights Watch counted more than 2,000 American inmates serving life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles. The entire rest of the world has only locked up 12 kids without hope of release.) Female prisoners forced to wear shackles while giving birth. (Amnesty International found 48 states that permitted this practice as of 2006.) A ban on former prisoners working as barbers (on the books in New York state).

Slammed: Welcome to the Age of Incarceration
What happens when you lock up 1 in every 100 American adults?
Jennifer Gonnerman
July 21, 2008

The number first appeared in headlines earlier this year: Nearly one in four of all prisoners worldwide is incarcerated in America. It was just the latest such statistic. Today, one in nine African American men between the ages of 20 and 34 is locked up. In 1970, our prisons held fewer than 200,000 people; now that number exceeds 1.5 million, and when you add in local jails, it's 2.3 million—1 in 100 American adults. Since the 1980s, we've sat by as the numbers inched higher and our prison system ballooned, swallowing up an ever-larger portion of the citizenry. But do statistics like these, no matter how disturbing, really mean anything anymore? What does it take to get us to sit up and notice?

Apparently, it takes a looming financial crisis. For there is another round of bad news, the logical extension of the first: The more money a state spends on building and running prisons, the less there is for everything else, from roads and bridges to health care and public schools. At the pace our inmate population has been expanding, America's prison system is becoming, quite simply, too expensive to sustain. That is why Kansas, Texas, and at least 11 other states have been trying out new strategies to curb the cost—reevaluating their parole policies, for instance, so that not every parolee who runs afoul of an administrative rule is shipped straight back to prison. And yet our infatuation with incarceration continues.

I think I'll be seeing echoes of Slavery by Another Name all over Da Souf.

Probation Profiteers
In Georgia's outsourced justice system, a traffic ticket can land you deep in the hole."
Celia Perry
July 21, 2008

Here's how it works: If you have enough money to pay your fine the day you go to court for, say, a speeding ticket, you can usually avoid probation. But those who can't scrape up a few hundred dollars—and nearly 28 percent of Americus residents live below the poverty line—must pay their fine, as well as at least $35 in monthly supervision fees to a private company, in weekly or biweekly installments over a period of three months to a year. By the time their term is over, they may have paid more than twice what the judge ordered.