MICHAEL O. ALLEN

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A fight to the death?

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Why Israel went to war in Gaza by Chris McGreal in Jerusalem, The Observer, Sunday 4 January 2009
‘Are you a target if you voted for Hamas?’ Last night Israel sent its ground forces across the border into Gaza as it escalated its brutal assault on Hamas. As a large-scale invasion of the Palestinian territory appears to be getting under way, Chris McGreal reports from Jerusalem on Israel’s hidden strategy to persuade the world of the justice of its cause in its battle with a bitter ideological foe

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January 4, 2009
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Truths and hope

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The Central Virginia Progressive-The DAVISReport sends us You Can’t Fix What you Don’t Acknowledge-Can I get an Amen?

I am pleased to present this guest essay from my friend and colleague, Tyrone Nelson. A former school board candidate,Tyrone Nelson is well known in the greater Richmond Community. He is the pastor of the Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia,the president of the ecumenical social justice advocacy group, RISC (Richmonders Involved to Strengthen Communities)and serves on the board of the Gilpin Jackson Center, Historic Jackson Ward Association, and the Elegba Folklore Society.

Are We Serious? Some Truth Telling by Pastor Tyrone Nelson

On a recent trip to the barbershop, I overheard a middle aged woman speaking with unbridled passion about the “pay for play” plan to sell the United States Congressional Senate seat of our President-elect. She was amazed at “the level of corruption” and the “It’s all about me and my wallet” politicking that Illinois Governor Blagojevich had been accused of. I have heard a continuous flow of intense conversation and verbal hay making thrown the direction of Governor Blagojevich.

As flurries of allegations of crooked politics in Illinois and Chicago continues to threatens and distract from this great moment in American history, one thought continues to cross my mind, “ Do we seriously believe this is just happening in Illinois?” What would make us think that this behavior is inconceivable?

I believe that we can find evidence of corruption in more than a few organizations, religious bodies, non-profits, schools, fraternities/sororities, etc. You may say, “ but Pastor, most people are not asking for $500,000 fundraising gifts, jobs for spouses, and likewise”.
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January 1, 2009
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Presumption

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I have no problem whatsoever with Caroline Kennedy being named to the United States Senate seat from New York that Hillary Clinton will be vacating if she is confirmed as the new Secretary of State. In fact, I could offer a couple of powerful argument why Ms. Kennedy should be named (and I will later in this post) but an artist friend, Zina Saunders, sent me this piece that I could not resist posting:

Her Highn… I Mean, Senator Caroline Kennedy (by Zina Saunders, December 26th, 2008)

There’s been a lot of talk lately about Caroline Kennedy’s quest for the Senate seat being left vacant by Hillary Clinton. Questions have been raised about Kennedy’s qualifications and experience and financial entanglements …to read more, go here and here.

Caroline Kennedy’s bid is audacious, sure, and carries a certain presumptuousness that I think Ms. Saunders sought to puncture in this art. I love the piece. It is great, especially her depiction of the putative kingmakers, the Rev. Al and Uncle Moneybags. But her audacity is precisely the reason why I think Ms.Kennedy should be named to this seat. She has the stature to be presumptuous, to expect that the seat would be handed to her.

Yes, some of the people handling Ms. Kennedy’s bid have made missteps, including the efforts to strong-arm some political leaders to jump on-board. They need to show some class. But I blame New York Gov. David Paterson for most of the backlash that is beginning to build against Ms. Kennedy. The governor is outspoken and plainspoken and, often, that is part of his charm. Not in this case. Paterson has appeared, at times, petulant.  with reporters when discussing Ms. Kennedy’s bid. He needs to show some class.

Any of New York’s political class who gets the nod, Andrew Cuomo included, would come into the role with a tremendous status gap that the 51-year-old daughter of a martyred president of the United States has never known since the day she was born and would never suffer from as long as she lives.

Who could better serve the interest of New Yorkers? A woman who comes the closest to being America’s royalty, or some sweaty New York politician? Yeah, Chuck Schumer is great and Al D’Amato was, whatever, but it should not be that hard. I can understand wanting to puncture the kind of presumptuousness that attend to people like Caroline Kennedy, certainly. It can be unbecoming.

But Ms. Kennedy brings to her bid a record of public service equal to, if not better than, that of many who have sought the office.

When our carpet-bagging First Lady, Hillary Clinton, first sought the office, was she really that much more qualified than Caroline Kennedy is now? No. I believe New Yorkers start out way ahead with Caroline as their United States senator.

December 26, 2008
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Like I said . . .

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Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois

Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is a public menace.

He makes it hard for people to exist and behave as they normally would in their natural habitat. Rod Blagojevich, Tony Rezko and others were doing only what came natural when Fitzgerald decided to stick his nose in their business. I mean, who ever heard of a person being arrested for a shakedown, especially when done properly, like Rezko and Blago do it?

If it were left up to me, it would be Fitzgerald who will be led off to the hoosegow, not our beloved governor. Listen to this description of Clean Fitz:

Kent Redfield, a political scientist at the University of Illinois, said Fitzgerald used indictments to pressure the governor’s confidants to turn on one another.
“It’s a message: You are in my sights, and I’d like to get you to come in and talk to me,” Redfield said. “It puts pressure on the person you indicted and puts on notice the next person up the chain.”
In seven years as U.S. attorney in Chicago, Fitzgerald generally has won strong reviews from government and defense lawyers alike. Obama is said to be considering keeping Fitzgerald in his job even though the coveted spots typically turn over with a new administration. But defense lawyers who have faced Fitzgerald say he can be hard-nosed when it comes to even small fish trapped in the government’s net.
One former prosecutor who knew Fitzgerald 20 years ago, when the U.S. attorney was a junior defense lawyer, said he was zealous in pursuit of his goals and offended by violations of the public trust.
“His line between right and wrong is very bright, and it’s very easy for him to see that line,” the former prosecutor said. “If there’s a brick wall, he’ll take it down brick by brick.”

That’s just not right.

December 22, 2008
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According to Google

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At least its Analytics application, no one is seeing this post.

The photographer is a Michael Castielli and this image is licensed by Creative Commons in his name.

Is this cat fierce?

He certainly has a fierce visage. Or, is it curiousity, which, as you know, they say killed the cat. Unless I’m getting that saying mixed up with something else. But I don’t think so.

I hope you’ve guessed by now that this is a test post to be taken down later. It’s all part of the work “I” am doing on the site.

When “I” am done, the site will be very nice, very professional. Hopefully, even Google Analytics would work properly and measure the actual traffic to this site.

Alright. I wish I have a story to tell you about the cat but I don’t. He’s a good looking cat. That much I can say.

I am going to go now because this cat is beginning to scare me.

December 18, 2008
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Wacko Jacko's Mask of Zorro

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Michael Jackson off the deep, deeper, deepest end

Michael Jackson off the deep, deeper, deepest end

Michael Jackson steps out in his most bizarre outfit yet

By Simon Cable

He has never lacked creativity when it comes to fashioning a ‘disguise’.

But Michael Jackson’s latest effort is remarkable, even by his standards.

With his trademark trilby hat and a black eye mask, the troubled 50-year-old looked a dead ringer for Zorro.

December 13, 2008
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"A passion for justice"

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The Fed Who Blew the Whistle

Is he a hero or a criminal?

by Michael Isikoff

NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Dec 22, 2008

Thomas M. Tamm was entrusted with some of the government’s most important secrets. He had a Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance, a level above Top Secret. Government agents had probed Tamm’s background, his friends and associates, and determined him trustworthy.

It’s easy to see why: he comes from a family of high-ranking FBI officials. During his childhood, he played under the desk of J. Edgar Hoover, and as an adult, he enjoyed a long and successful career as a prosecutor. Now gray-haired, 56 and fighting a paunch, Tamm prides himself on his personal rectitude. He has what his 23-year-old son, Terry, calls a “passion for justice.” For that reason, there was one secret he says he felt duty-bound to reveal.

In the spring of 2004, Tamm had just finished a yearlong stint at a Justice Department unit handling wiretaps of suspected terrorists and spies—a unit so sensitive that employees are required to put their hands through a biometric scanner to check their fingerprints upon entering. While there, Tamm stumbled upon the existence of a highly classified National Security Agency program that seemed to be eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. The unit had special rules that appeared to be hiding the NSA activities from a panel of federal judges who are required to approve such surveillance. When Tamm started asking questions, his supervisors told him to drop the subject. He says one volunteered that “the program” (as it was commonly called within the office) was “probably illegal.”

Continue . . .

December 13, 2008
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How not to win a war

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Report Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders By JAMES GLANZ and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER

BAGHDAD — An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

Continue . . .

December 13, 2008
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Rich's indictment

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Two Cheers for Rod Blagojevich By FRANK RICH

ROD BLAGOJEVICH is the perfect holiday treat for a country fighting off depression. He gift-wraps the ugliness of corruption in the mirthful garb of farce. From a safe distance outside Illinois, it’s hard not to laugh at the “culture of Chicago,” where even the president-elect’s Senate seat is just another commodity to be bought and sold.

But the entertainment is escapist only up to a point. What went down in the Land of Lincoln is just the reductio ad absurdum of an American era where both entitlement and corruption have been the calling cards of power. Blagojevich’s alleged crimes pale next to the larger scandals of Washington and Wall Street. Yet those who promoted and condoned the twin national catastrophes of reckless war in Iraq and reckless gambling in our markets have largely escaped the accountability that now seems to await the Chicago punk nabbed by the United States attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.

The Republican partisans cheering Fitzgerald’s prosecution of a Democrat have forgotten his other red-letter case in this decade, his conviction of Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Libby was far bigger prey. He was part of the White House Iraq Group, the task force of propagandists that sold an entire war to America on false pretenses. Because Libby was caught lying to a grand jury and federal prosecutors as well as to the public, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. But President Bush commutedthe sentence before he served a day.

Fitzgerald was not pleased. “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals,” he said at the time.

Continue . . .

December 13, 2008
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Nat Hentoff weighs in

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In two columns last week and this week, Village Voice columnist and legendary civil liberties activist Nat Hentoff argues vigorously for bringing American officials responsible for human rights abuses during The Bush Years to be brought up on War Crimes charges. Last week he said:

With regard to serial war crimes, “accountability” would mean putting on trial George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and his longtime associate, David Addington, and a coven of lawyers from the Justice and Defense departments.

He continued:

If you remember, the Constitution begins: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice . . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

It’s our government. And neither Dick Cheney nor George W. Bush was among our Founders.

While Obama emphasizes that we must look forward and not backward, there is a way to clean out the cesspools of the last eight years.

Next week: the first steps on how to structure realistic, open forums of accountability—even if President Barack Obama chooses not to join us.

In this week’s installment, he continues the argument:

Among President Obama’s advisers (and, seemingly, in the man himself), there is a division as to what, if anything, should be done to the chief rapists of the Constitution since 9/11. On one hand, with so much for the new president to do, he’ll need public support, so why distract the citizenry with old news? Also, for many of us, there’s much more concern about keeping our jobs (or scrambling to find new ones) than finding out who ordered waterboarding or gave the CIA blanket permission to hide away suspects in secret “black-site” prisons.

The answer to this quandary—and I think Barack Obama is capable of understanding this—is provided by Scott Horton, former president of the International League for Human Rights, and a Tom Paine of our time, in a story in Harper’s December issue, called “Justice After Bush”: “If the people wish to retain sovereignty, they must also reclaim responsibility for the actions taken in their name. As of yet, they have not. . . . Pursuing the Bush administration for crimes long known to the public may amount to a kind of hypocrisy, but it is a necessary hypocrisy. The alternative, simply doing nothing, not only ratifies torture (among other crimes), it ratifies the failure of the people to control the actions of their government” (emphasis added).

We need to keep vigilant what the new administration does and take action if our government won’t.

December 11, 2008
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