Liberty Watch - No Man's Land Between Customs and the US

The New York Times has this new story about a European being detained by Customs when arriving in the US. This story brings to mind the Icelandic woman who was detained overnight in New York before being sent home because 12 years earlier she'd overstayed her visa by two weeks. It is also akin to the story of scholars who were denied entry into the US. A key problem is that

such “arriving aliens” are not considered to be in the United States at all, even if they are in custody, they have none of the legal rights that even illegal immigrants can claim.

But even American citizens are in a no-rights zone when they come back into the US. An issue that opens anyone with a laptop to privacy violations, Customs is searching some people's laptops when returning to the US.


Today's story is about an Italian attorney who has been visiting his American girlfriend:

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum...

Mr. Salerno’s case may be extreme, but it underscores the real but little-known dangers that many travelers from Europe and other first-world nations face when they arrive in the United States — problems that can startle Americans as much as their foreign visitors.

“We have a lot of government people here and lobbyists and lawyers and very educated, very savvy Washingtonians,” said Jim Cooper, Ms. Cooper’s father, a businessman, describing the reaction in his neighborhood, the Wessynton subdivision of Alexandria. “They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn’t happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans.”...

Though citizens of those nations [27 so-called visa waiver countries] do not need visas to enter the United States for as long as 90 days, their admission is up to the discretion of border agents. There are more than 60 grounds for finding someone inadmissible, including a hunch that the person plans to work or immigrate, or evidence of an overstay, however brief, on an earlier visit.

While those turned away are generally sent home on the next flight, “there are occasional circumstances which require further detention to review their cases,” Ms. De Cima said. And because such “arriving aliens” are not considered to be in the United States at all, even if they are in custody, they have none of the legal rights that even illegal immigrants can claim.

The whole story is here.

[Later: National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation has a show on right now about problems at the privately run detention centers for people detained by Customs.

'Careless Detention' Exposes Deadly Neglect

The Washington Post began a series of investigative reports on Sunday revealing mistakes in medical treatment that may have contributed to 30 deaths in immigrant detention facilities in the U.S. Reporters Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein talk about their series, "Careless Detention."]

Getting Out of Ruts

We rented out our house when we went on sabbatical for the school year 2003-2004. We stuck all the extra stuff (including what the kids left when they moved out) into a downstairs room that was not rented out. After we got back, the room stayed a storage room and at one point looked like this.



While I have seen most of the floor since then, the room has basically been a big closet. Things have flowed to various recycling options, but the room is still a mess. So I decided to look on the web for ideas of what to do with the room. I tried out "Designing a Japanese style workspace." So far I haven't found what I was looking for, but I realized that not only have we gotten into a rut in terms of our house decor, but I've gotten into a internet rut trying to keep up with the blogs I track. There's all this other incredible stuff out there. Here are just a few interesting things from a couple of sites I visited.

This comes from stashpocket





And this:



From Stashpocket I took a link turn to Flight405 And from there to his Vimeo page where I found this:



Tendrils continued from flight404 on Vimeo.

How did he do that? Well I had to go to Processing

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.

Processing is free to download and available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Please help to release the next version!

Keeping up with Alaskan politics is something I guess all Alaskans should do, but there are all sorts of people out there doing neat things and they are just a couple of google searches away. So, while I design a new place to work downstairs, I'm going to have to go exploring to the edges of the internet universe regularly too. Getting out of ruts is good to do.

What's the difference between a cyclone, hurricane, typhoon, and tornado?

With the stories of the cyclone that hit Burma, I decided I needed to confirm or change my understanding of what a cyclone is compared to hurricanes and typhoons. After reading a several websites, the Times of India had the most succinct explanation that seemed consistent with what I read elsewhere.

What is the difference between cyclone, hurricane, tornado and twister?

Technically, a cyclone is any kind of circular wind storm. But now, it is only used to describe a strong tropical storm found off of the coast of India. Hurricanes and Typhoons are the same thing, but in different places. On the coast of Florida it is called hurricane. In the Philipines, it is called typhoon. Hurricanes occur in the Atlantic and typhoons, in the Pacific. Basically, hurricanes and typhoons form over water and are huge, while tornados form over land and are much smaller in size. A tornado is a violent windstorm characterised by a twisting, funnel-shaped cloud. In the United States, twister is used as a a colloquial term for tornado.

— Pradeep Jain, Agra

For a glossary of hurricane related terms, check the National (US) Hurricane Center.

The Hurricane Research Center of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Lab has Hurrican FAQs in English, Spanish, French, and German.

Both are part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) so they have links to other weather related information as well. [I'm also testing blogspot's new "scheduling posts dated in the future" feature. Let's see if this is posted at 8:29am May 13.]

And I can't mention the cyclone in Burma without some comment on the evil of the ruling clique there. There isn't much we can do now, though complaining to elected officials and Chevron wouldn't hurt. But this is an example of the world letting this boil fester for years and years. Anyone who wants to know, has known that these leaders have badly used the people of Burma to enrich themseles and whatever twisted power needs they have. China is a major enabler of these activities - lots of Chinese goods pass across their border with Burma - as are corporations like Chevron that take advantage of the slave labor arranged by the Burmese military.

Elton John in Anchorage

I don't have any John albums, but we do have some tracks on an old CCNY tape someone gave us long ago. The friends that we asked weren't interested. But Elton John is Elton John. And he's coming to Anchorage. J got in line a week ago. The line minders assured people well behind her that they would all get tickets. But in the end, J was about six people behind the last tickets. But they did tell her and others in line that there might be a second concert and took her name and phone number. They called Friday to ask if we were still interested. Yes. Come back Monday between noon and four, we'll have tickets for you - dry or wet side?

Today, J got the tickets. I don't think we've ever paid so much for a ticket to anything. No, the LA Opera last summer was more. Slowly I'm thinking in dollars again and not figuring out how many Baht that is. It would be obscene in what Baht could buy. What's EJAF?[As soon as I hit publish I started figuring it out, and then I had to check.]

Love Songs - a movie

Monday night movie at the Bear Tooth, a favorite routine. Monday's when they have foreign films or other artsy films.

Boy, Girl, Girl
All singing in French
As they experiment in Paris
Girl dies, Boy sad
Breaks off with Girl 2
Boy, Boy on a ledge

If none of that makes any sense - and if it does you've seen the movie or live in a different world than do I - you can see a brief video here.

Happy Mother's Day

When I went to see the sandhill cranes a while back, I took my old Pentax that has been sitting idle. When I developed the film, I discovered I started the film last summer, when my mom was visiting. Here she is last summer at 85.

For Mothers Day, I'll try to keep this short by listing ten important things my mom passed on to me

1. When you help other people you get back far more than you give
2. Make peace before you go to bed, never go to bed angry at (your child, spouse, parent, etc.)
   
3. There isn't just one way to see things. My mother came to the US alone at age 17 from Nazi Germany in 1939. While she has always appreciated the country that took her in, she never took things for granted - either the good things or the bad.
4. How to take care of myself - cook, hang up the laundry, iron my own clothes, and many other things.
5. How to get a lot done with the time you have. My mom always worked, from the week she arrived in the US when she started as a baby nurse until last May when she 'retired' at 85 from the medical office she'd worked in since 1949. She couldn't waste time and had everything organized, like the different stops on her way home to get what we needed, or having lunches ready to go the night before.
6. That everyone was important and to be treated with respect. I was about five when I recited "eeny, meeny, miney, mo, catch a Nigger by the toe." She pulled the car over to the side of the road and asked me what I had said and we had a long discussion about what it meant and why I was never to use that word.
7. Don't leave the lights on, and turn off the water while you brush your teeth.
8. Worrying is important if it gets you to do what you need to do. Beyond that it is a waste of energy and life. My mom saw everything that could go wrong and worried about it. I guess that comes from being a Jewish girl when Hitler came to power. She emailed me today that she just listened to a CD of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. It's a fantasy novel about how Nazis could have come to power in the US in the 1930s. It brought back memories, "Actually I was 11 yrs. when Hitler came to power in 1933. No wonder I wasn't afraid like the older people. What possibly could happen until I found out. They first thought he would be thru in 3 months and after that they became concerned, but then it was too late." I learned to be prepared and to think out all my options, but NOT to worry when there was nothing more I could do.
9. Let go. Even though she worried, she never said a thing to me when I took off to teach in Thailand with the Peace Corps long ago. She has accepted my living far away in Alaska with grace and has never used guilt on me. I've tried to give my own kids the same freedom to live their own lives.
   
10. To love the ocean.
    

This picture of my mother and daughter was also on that role of film.

My Buds

Mountain Ash Buds

Cottonwood Buds

Aspen Buds

Amur Maple Buds

Rspberry Buds

The garden is late, but it's starting to happen.

Pottery Sale, Weekend Market, Taste of Africa

Every year Paul Lafferty has a pottery sale at his home studio on Government Hill. There's one this weekend. We stopped by to see what he had.

We wanted something nicer than a plastic yogurt container to put our kitchen scraps in til we take them to the compost pile in the back yard. Locally made art work is kind of pricey, especially after being in Thailand for a couple of months. But when you consider how much time they spend making each piece and then selling it, their pay per hour is pretty low.


So if we want artists living here, folks who have a salary and health insurance and pensions, particularly if it it's a government job, ought to find artists they like and patronize them. On the other hand, I've always been somewhat anti-consumption and we're trying to get rid of things. So I tend to be looking for things that are functional AND look nice. The little things we've bought from Paul over the years have all grown on us. So now we have a vase that we're going to use as our kitchen compost holder.

On the way home, we stopped to check out the Saturday Market. It's early in the season and there were some empty spots still. It's a good place to buy Alaska gifts when we go back to Thailand. This is a veiw from the old Post Office Mall - changed to Ship Creek Mall, but that website calls it the Fourth Avenue Market Place.
We'd found a good parking spot on 4th Avenue and walked through the mall to the Saturday Market. On the way back looking for a window to take a picture from, we stumbled onto Taste of Africa, a restaurant we'd only heard of last week when they were featured in Anchorage Press (I can't find the review on their website). They have a great view and it looks like an interesting addition to the Anchorage food scene. We didn't have time today to try it.

Moose, Goose Lake, UAA Science Building

When we biked over to OutNorth Thursday evening for the NW Film Festival shorts, we saw a moose on the north side of Northern Lights going and one at UAA coming back.








There was still ice on most of Goose Lake, and the new UAA Science building was looming large on the other side of the lake from the beach. If we had bigger trees in Anchorage, you wouldn't see it from there.

Kohring -Politely Corrupt

Prosecutor Bottini responding to Kohring's attorney, who comparing his client to Kott, said Kohring didn't swear or drink or any of those things, that he really is Andy Griffith.

. . . granted, he’s not Pete Kott when it comes to the colorful language, but you saw a guy who was politely corrupt. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t corrupt because he doesn’t swear. The fact that he’s - Andy Griffith - I don’t recall any shows where Andy Griffith took cash from anyone. He may be polite, but still corrupt.

This raises so many issues - about Kohring, but more importantly, about all of us. How do we judge people? How do we decide who to trust and not. We 'hire' politicians to spend our money and steer the ship of State with far less research than most organizations use to hire an administrative assistant or janitor. (And there's no disrespect intended here for admin assistants or janitors, organizations can't run without them.)

So if someone has a veneer of respectable - polite, decent clothes, good haircut, etc. - we make all sorts of positive assumptions about them.

Watching Kohring in court during his trial and even talking to him during breaks, I feel like this is someone who got in way over his head. He reminds me of a kid who has spent his life learning how to avoid trouble, maybe from an abusive parent or from bullies. He's learned to be very polite and to ask "How can I help you?" I think he really means it. But doing everything he's learned how to do, he still gets into trouble. I've written about the contradictions in Kohring's life before - the free market advocate who only has government gigs on his resume.

The rules of life are hard. Some people need hard and fast rules, others are comfortable with the ebb and tide of life. There are different kinds of smarts. Kohring seems to have 'follow the rule' smarts. The problems for this sort of person come when there are conflicting rules, or when conditions change and the rules no longer apply. He pledged early on that he wouldn't vote for taxes. And didn't, but said he would if they called it a fee. Bottini called him a frequent flier at the Legislative Ethics Ofiice meaning he constantly checked on whether he was obeying the law, but they only warned him about state law probably, not the federal law he was convicted of. He understands, I think, that "here's your money, now go vote this way" is illegal. He doesn't understand that "Here's your money" and then sometime later, "Hey, Vic, let that bill out of committee" is the same thing. Don Corleone explained all this: (hit the yellow arrow)

someday imported by AKRaven

"Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding."

"Politely Corrupt" also raises a basic theme of this "What do I know?" blog. How do we know things? How do our brains affect what data from the 'real world' we consider (and what we filter out) and how do we interpret those 'facts' that do get in? "He may be polite, but still corrupt." Polite is easy to see, corrupt is far less visible. We tend not to think of the two combined. Maybe Hollywood needs to make more movies with polite villains so that we get used to looking out for them too.

How did Kohring know who to trust? He trusted Bill Allen, but now he says he was betrayed. He trusts John Henry Browne who at the end of the trial said the defense had cost about $100,000. But Browne also said yesterday, in explaining the new back surgery that Kohring needs, that Kohring had been injured in a car accident before the trial. In Browne's car. Browne was driving. It was his fault.

I guess Browne's insurance is paying for that surgery. But did Kohring check with an attorney other than Browne about a settlement? And some might even think there was a conflict of interest if his criminal defense attorney is the man he might have to litigate over his back injury. And this all happened before the trial.

My biggest hope (though I'm not holding my breath) is that people will take more care and time in studying the backgrounds and beliefs of the people on the ballot in November. That they look past labels like Republican and Democrat and look at the people. They look past 30 second television commercials. Look past bumper sticker slogans like "no taxes" and take the measure of the candidate. Get people down to Juneau and DC who think, are comfortable with themselves, know how to handle money (their own and the state's), and have a good understanding of how everything fits together.

And here's the press grilling one of the jurists after the sentencing. One of Browne's arguments for lowering the sentencing was that we don't know exactly how many of the bribery charges the jury found Kohring guilty of. Although this juror didn't say a lot, I heard her to say she had taken everything into account.