MICHAEL O. ALLEN

Menu
Jun 09
Love0

A Hell Without Fire

By Homepage, New York Daily News, Special Report on Rwanda No Comments

null by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Thursday, July 28, 1994

GOMA, Zaire – The heart of darkness lies beneath a smoky volcano.

It starts at the edge of a shimmering lake and stretches across a few miles of flowering bushes and dark rocky plain, proof of Mount Nyiragongo’s periodic tantrums.

It would be a beautiful reminder of nature’s capacity to uplift, if it were not the epicenter of the Rwandan refugee crisis – a man-made calamity of monumental misery.

Now it is hell without the fire – a place where children die without pity and men cry without shame.

“It is just so horrible, I can’t explain it,” a relief worker, Noel McDonough, said as he gave a Daily News reporter a lift into the teeming refugee encampments outside outside this border outpost earlier this week.

It was early in the morning, still dark, but light enough to see bodies piled beside the road, dead from hunger or untreated wounds or the cholera epidemic sweeping through Goma with the fury of a Colorado brushfire.

“These people are being wiped out,” he said, “wiped out.”

Read More

Jun 08
Love0

WEST HIT ON RWANDA: Relief Big Calls Response Weak

By Homepage, New York Daily News, Special Report on Rwanda No Comments

null by MICHAEL O. ALLEN in Nairobi and RICHARD SISK in Washington, Daily News Staff Writers | Friday, July 29, 1994

United Nations relief officials lashed out yesterday at what they viewed as the timid, pinch-penny response of the U.S. and its allies to the desperate plight of Rwanda’s refugees.

All member states of the UN must share the blame, but among the Western allies, “many are worried about their budgets. They think it costs too much,” said Peter Hansen, the UN’s undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs.

“Some are worried about being dragged into something where they might get hurt, there might be trouble and, “Gee, what if another soldier gets shot?’ ” Hansen said in a reference to U.S. reluctance to become involved after suffering casualties in Somalia.”

Hansen, who spoke in Nairobi after returning from a fact-finding mission to Rwanda and Zaire with international aid groups, described scenes of suffering and macabre indifference.

The human tragedy brought on by the flight of more than a million Rwandan refugees to the border town of Goma, Zaire, also has triggered resentment among local Zairians, who have demonstrated in recent days to protest the burden on their scarce resources.

“You have heard of different ways people set up roadblocks? In Goma, they made roadblocks with corpses. That was what was most easily available to the people in Goma,” Hansen said.

However, in Washington, Gen. John Shalikashvili, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted that the U.S. was doing all that was possible to fight the cholera epidemic killing nearly 2,000 dialy in the refugee camps.

He said the best way to wind down the crisis was to encourage the refugees to return home in safety.

“Time is of the essence. The greatest hope they have is to leave those camps,” Shalikashvili said, but “we don’t want to get into a situation where we are forcing them to go home.”

The general said the U.S. was considering targeted relief airdrops along routes back to Rwanda to give the refugees sustenance for the journey.

He would not say exactly how many U.S. troops might be involved in the humanitarian campaign–which is expected to be up to 4,000–because it still is “at a concept plan stage.”

Read More

Jun 07
Love0

THE ROAD TO KIGALI: Rwandans Trickle Home

By Homepage, New York Daily News, Special Report on Rwanda No Comments
null Cholera prompts return

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Sunday, July 31, 1994

RUBAVU, Rwanda – The road to Kigali yesterday was filled with frustration, anger, sickness and hope that this impoverished nation would step back from the abyss of ethnic hatred.

Rwandans, young and old, sick and healthy, were trickling back into the nation they fled more than three weeks ago. But the violence that has convulsed this impoverished nation stopped just short of taking another casualty yesterday.

Lt. Andrew Kalisa, an 11-year veteran of Rwanda’s Tutsi rebel movement, was nearly killed at a checkpoint because a young officer at the barricade did not recognize his superior out of uniform.

Kalisa, 25, was escorting a reporter and photographer to “Camp Cholera,” where Rwanda separates sick refugees so they don’t infect the healthy.

Kalisa and the young officer argued heatedly in Swahili, then the officer came by the passenger window, ordered Kallsa out of the car, then cocked his rifle.

Kalisa took him to a corner and gave him a stern lecture.

“He is from a new battallion,” he said when he returned.

Continuing on the road to the capital, there was Gisenyi, a border town showing all the scars of a ferocious battle. Burned-out hulks of vehicles were strewn about, along with clothing discarded as town residents fled for their lives.

Raymond Mugabo, 19, said he was in school when rebel forces routed the Rwandan army two weeks ago.

“We left Gisenyi at 4 a.m., he said. “I think 500 or more, a thousand perhaps, many people trying to cross the border. It was terrible.”

As a Hutu, Mugabo is ignoring the new Tutsi government’s appeal that the refugees return home. He fears that Tulsis– men like Kalisa–will be waiting at the other end of a machete to kill him.

Read More

Jun 06
Love0

RETURNING TO RUINS: Rwandan Refugees Find War’s Debris

By Homepage, New York Daily News, Special Report on Rwanda No Comments

nullnull

 by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Monday, August 1, 1994

KIGALI. Rwanda – Thousands of Rwandan refugees returning home yesterday from camps in Zaire found their towns torn up by civil war.

About 700 refugees riding into the capital in an United Nations truck convoy yesterday faced a city battered by three months of tribal warfare. Buildings were damaged. Streets were littered with wrecked cars. Water and
electricity were scarce. Gas stations were destroyed. And a rebel government that has no administration or civil servants was struggling to get the ravaged nation back on its feet.

As the convoy threads its way through Rwanda’s towns and villages, the refugees see that nearly every place where people once lived and farmed appears deserted. Shops are bombed out. If you get up close to some houses the smell of rotting invades your senses.

Though disease has killed thousands of refugees packed into filthy camps, most Rwandans too frightened to return home. Many are convinced the new Tutsi-led government in Kigali will kill returning Hutus to avenge the massacres of Tutsis by Hutu extremist forces.

To make matter worse, the refugees in camps in Zaire may soon face a second wave of epidemics more deadly than the cholera that kills hundreds of people daily, said Serge Male, the UN specialist in contagious diseases.

He said an inevitable dysentery outbreak could claim 20,000 to 40,000 lives among the more than 1 million refugees near Goma. Measles, malaria and meningitis also loom.

Read More

Jun 06
Love0

Good Sport

By Homepage No Comments
Jason Giambi was mobbed by teammates after reaching home. “This is what you dream about as a kid,” he said, “especially in Yankee Stadium.” (Photo by Barton Silverman/ The New York Times)

Giambi’s Home Run Is a Pain Reliever By JOE LAPOINTE, June 6, 2008

After Jason Giambi’s titanic home run landed in the third deck to give the Yankees a 9-8 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on Thursday afternoon at Yankee Stadium, he hopped, skipped and jumped around the bases, ignoring the pain in his sore left foot that had kept him out of the starting lineup for two games.

“I didn’t feel anything,” Giambi said. “It hurts now.” He was standing in the clubhouse, his feet bare, his left foot bandaged after having been hit by a pitch two days before.

His two-run shot — as a pinch-hitter on an 0-2 count, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning against closer B. J. Ryan — gave the Yankees two consecutive victories and a .500 record again (30-30) in one of their most dramatic finishes of the season.

Although the ending was memorable, it was witnessed by less than half of the 53,571 fans who were there earlier. Many of them might have left because of the game’s length: 3 hours 53 minutes. But they should know that the fourth hour of a Yankees game is sometimes the most interesting.

Until then, they could have been discouraged by the Yankees’ mistakes, which included a dropped fly ball by Melky Cabrera that negated a possible inning-ending double play and fueled Toronto’s five-run rally in the fifth. Some might have been annoyed by Robinson Canó’s failure to bunt in the eighth inning.
Read More

Jun 06
Love0

Wrong sport

By Homepage No Comments

Tampa Bay Rays pitcher James Shields, right, takes a swing at Boston’s Coco Crisp after Crisp was hit by a pitch and charged the mound in the second inning. (Photo by MICHAEL DWYER / AP / June 5, 2008)

Boston Red Sox, Tampa Bay Rays fight, Tribune wire reports, June 6, 2008

The Boston Red Sox had plenty of fight against Tampa Bay — both in and out of their dugout.

Manny Ramirez homered, drove in five runs and got into a shouting match with a teammate as Boston beat Tampa Bay 7-1 Thursday night in a game that included a bench-clearing brawl between the clubs.

TV cameras showed Ramirez and Kevin Youkilis being separated after exchanging words in the dugout at the end of the fourth inning. Ramirez pointed at Youkilis before being escorted down the runway toward the clubhouse by trainer Paul Lessard and a few players.

Boston manager Terry Francona felt emotions were still running hot after the earlier brawl.

“I think they were just exchanging some views on things,” he said, trying to downplay his players’ near altercation. “It was kind of a hectic night. Sometimes those things happen. It wasn’t really a big deal; it won’t be a big deal.”

Read More

Jun 05
Love0

Rwandan Leaders vow to punish ‘genocide’

By Homepage, New York Daily News, Special Report on Rwanda No Comments

nullnull

by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Wednesday, August 3, 1994

KIGALI, Rwanda – Leaders of this war-ravaged nation yesterday said they will execute those responsible for the slaughter of up to 500,000 Rwandans in ethnic fighting.

“Those who willingly carried out genocide deserve no less than the death penalty,” Rwanda’s President Pasteur Bizimungu told the Daily News yesterday at his villa near the capital, Kigali.

“We need a fair and transparent justice as a pillar of the government of national unity,” he said. “We don’t want to wait two or three years before we start.”

Bizimungu said trials and executions must begin soon to avoid revenge atrocities.

Speaking from his makeshift office at the Meridien Hotel in Kigali yesterday, Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu agreed.

“We do not want to be involved in retribution, revenge reprisals. The law must be followed,” he said.

The former government and ousted Rwandan Army, which triggered the civil war in April, primarily were composed of radical, ruling class Hutus. The Hutus, however, were defeated by Tutsi rebels in the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

Bizimungu and Twagiramungu are moderate Hutus appointed by the Tutsi government. Among the issues causing a rift within the fledgling government is when elections will be held.

Asked by the Daily News yesterday when he would be putting himself up for election, Bizimungu became agitated.

“There has been a tragedy in our country,” he snapped. “If you were sensitive to our tragedy you would not be asking for an election.”

In sharp contrast, the bespectacled Twagiramungu smiled easily as he sat in his office yesterday. Room 529 was neat and furnished with a dining room table and four sofas arranged around a coffee table. It does not give the appearance that the business of governing a nation of seven million people is being conducted here.

But it was here Twagiramungu met with George Moose, the U.S. assistant secretary of African Affairs, and assured him he welcomes America’s help in the daunting task rebuilding the nation.

Yesterday, U.S. Army convoys delivered more than 100,000 gallons of water to Rwandan refugees, bolstering their chances of surviving in crowded, disease-infested camps in Zaire. But much more will be needed to defeat the cholera, dysentry and simple dehydration that have killed more than 20,000 people since the refugee crisis began two weeks ago.

Read More

Jun 05
Love0

Firefox

By Homepage No Comments

Walter S. Mossberg

WALTER S. MOSSBERG’s Personal Technology column from the Wall Street Journal.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Is the Best Browser For Web — For Now, June 5, 2008

If you buy a new Windows Vista PC, it comes with a decent built-in Web browser, Internet Explorer 7. If you buy a new Macintosh computer, it comes with a decent built-in Web browser, Safari 3.0. So why would you want or need a different Web browser?

That is the question that Mozilla, the nonprofit organization that makes the leading alternative browser, hopes to answer this month when it releases version 3.0 of its Firefox Web browser. In some tech-industry circles, Firefox already is preferred over Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple’s Safari, but it still isn’t used by most people, and Mozilla is hoping to broaden its appeal.

The new version will be released simultaneously for Windows and the Mac’s OS X operating system, as well as for Linux. While each of the three editions will have the visual style of the operating system on which it runs, all three will have the same features.

I’ve been using prerelease versions of Firefox 3.0 for months, and have recently been testing a near-final version and comparing it closely to IE and to Safari. I have tested it on multiple Windows PCs and Macs, on desktops and laptops, over slow connections and fast ones. I have tried it with well over 100 Web sites.

Read More

Jun 04
Love0

Envoy’s Search for Justice Shows Rwanda’s Dark Side

By Homepage, New York Daily News, Special Report on Rwanda No Comments

null by MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Sunday, August 7, 1994

KIGALI, Rwanda–Sylvestre Kamali finally broke down.

Imprisoned for 21 days, he was tired, hurting and badly in need of a bath.

A career diplomat, he has served his country in all branches, including terms as vice president of the Supreme Court and ambassador to Belgium, Burundi and China.

Now Kamali was wearing the gray pants and white shirt he had on the day he was arrested in July. He was unshaven and had no shoes. He had not been given hismedication and special diet for a colon condition.

The tears came this day when he was told the new leaders of Rwanda are holding him on a charge of genocide. His jaw dropped. He looked at his two prisonguards and his face spread into a smile of incredulity.

“I am happy because now I know the reason why I am in prison,” the diplomat said in an interview with reporters from the Daily News and the Washington Postlast week. It was the first time he had been seen by people other than his jailers since his arrest in July.

In his native language, Kinyarwanda, as a prison guard translated, he said, “They told me my cars did not have all the proper papers.

“Me, Kamali?” he asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “Me, Kamali? From the time I was brought onto this earth until now, and I am 59 years old, I have never killed anyone, or ordered anyone to be killed.”

Read More

Jun 03
Love0

Obama in St. Paul

By Homepage No Comments


TRANSCRIPT

The following is a transcript of Senator Barack Obama’s speech to supporters on the last night of voting in the primary campaign, as provided by CQ Transcriptions.

SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: Sixteen months have passed since we first stood together on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Thousands of miles have been traveled; millions of voices have been heard.

And because of what you said, because you decided that change must come to Washington, because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest, because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears, but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another, a journey…

(APPLAUSE)

… a journey that will bring a new and better day to America.

Because of you, tonight I can stand here and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for the president of the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

But I want to thank — I want to thank all those in Montana and South Dakota who stood up for change today. I want to thank every American who stood with us over the course of this campaign, through the good days and the bad, from the snows of Cedar Rapids to the sunshine of Sioux Falls.

And, tonight, I also want to thank the men and woman who took this journey with me as fellow candidates for president.

At this defining moment, at this defining moment for our nation, we should be proud that our party put forth one of the most talented, qualified field of individuals ever to run for office.

I have not just competed with them as rivals. I’ve learned from them as friends, as public servants, and as patriots who love America and are willing to work tirelessly to make this country better. They are leaders of this party and leaders that America will turn to for years to come.

And that is particularly true for the candidate who has traveled further on this journey than anyone else. Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign.

(APPLAUSE)

Read More