"SLEDGEHAMMER SESSION" SET FOR AMTRAK STATION RENOVATION

By Michael Horne

For the third time in my life, a Milwaukee train station will be demolished, and for the first time, it's a good thing.
Perhaps "demolished" is too strong a word for the fate that will befall the Byron Kilbourn Amtrak Passenger Station, (it is instead called a "radical transformation") but sledgehammers are implicated, and the unlikliest of a crew will be yielding them.
According to a press release from the Milwaukee Department of City Development, "Mayor Tom Barrett, Governor Jim Doyle and U.S. Senator Herb Kohl will lead a special sledgehammer session on Monday, August 14th at 2 p.m. to mark the start of a $15.8 million renovation of Milwaukee's downtown Amtrak station into a dynamic intermodal transportation gateway."
The trio will be joined by Ald. Robert Bauman and State Representative Leon Young. For the most part these guys are none too nimble with their silver shovel duties during groundbreakings, and I can't quite imagine any one of them swinging a ten-pound sledgehammer to any particular effect.
The existing station, designed by Donald Grieb, was built in 1965 to replace the Milwaukee Road Union Station (1886-1964) of the one of two fabulous 19th century passenger depots of this city to be demolished in the 1960's. (The other was the Chicago & Northwestern Station, 1888-1966.)
Four decades later, the building remains one of the nation's newest passenger rail stations, (an indictment in itself of our nation's transportation infrastructure) and is a dismal, uninspired spot.
The folks at Eppstein Uhen Architects have designed a glassy, faceted replacement that, according to renderings, will dance with light.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation bought the building at 433 W. St. Paul Av. from the former CMC Heartland Partners, successors to the bankrupt Milwaukee Road, for $1.4 million around 2000, and Tommy Thompson, when governor, announced great plans for the facility, as well as a high speed train by 2010. Well, at least we're getting the station, if not the train.
The renovated building will "house Amtrak's rail connection, Greyhound Bus service and a potential future stop of the METRA commuter service from Chicago," according to the press release.
A true intermodal hub would also house trolley and express bus service, but this is not in store for the Milwaukee station.
The press release also says "visitors and commuters will enter and depart through a welcoming three-story glass atrium that offers ticketing kiosks, retail and food establishments, workspaces and user-friendly links to other transportation in Milwaukee."

TERRORISTS IN WAUKESHA COUNTY?

Van Hollen Claims may not be as Farfetched as they Seem

J. B. Van Hollen, one of the republican candidates for Wisconsin attorney general, has been getting a lot of criticism from his opponent Paul Bucher, the district attorney of Waukesha County, for comments he made some months ago indicating his belief that terrorist cells were active in Wisconsin.
Bucher keeps hammering Van Hollen on the point, which led to Van Hollen telling Bucher, "You suck!"
Interestingly, support for Van Hollen's claim can be found right here in the pages of milwaukeeworld.com, where Bruce Murphy wrote the following in September, 2001:

Is There a Local Connection to Arab Terrorists?

For years, some experts have asserted that the United States is harboring Muslim terrorists, and it appears that even Milwaukee may have connections to this network. Testimony by Sharif Alwan, a Palestinian who once confessed to being a member of the terrorist group Hamas, revealed that he received weapons training at a place just outside Milwaukee. The training included the use of Kalishnikov and M-16 rifles as well as explosives, and included instructions in how to booby trap a car.

Alwan was asked to testify about this before a federal grand jury in Chicago last fall and was eventually found guilty of criminal contempt of court for refusing to cooperate. His earlier confession was obtained by Israeli investigators, which Alwan claimed had been coerced.

Federal prosecutors believed Alwan had ties to Mohammed Salah of Bridgeport, a suburb of Chicago, who is under investigation for funneling money to fund Hamas. Prosecutors suspect Salah of recruiting and training terrorists, and believe he recruited Alwan to join Hamas.

Prosecutors went to court to confiscate $1.4 million of money controlled by Salah that they believe was intended to fund Hamas. "That case is still pending," says Randall Samborn, a spokesperson for the US Attorney's office. "The money is still frozen."

As for the Milwaukee training place for terrorists, have investigators tried to locate it? "I can't answer that," Samborn says, emphasizing that he can't discuss any investigations by his office.

Another Milwaukeean, a businessman named Jamil Salim Suliman Sarsour, was charged two years ago by a court in Israel with transferring $35,000 to the military wing of Hamas. And a Milwaukee resident named Tawfiq Musa was one of four defendants indicted by a federal grand jury in St. Louis in 1993, and accused of racketeering and conspiring to murder Jews.

Does Hamas and other anti-Israel terrorist groups have anything to do with Osama bin Laden, who is presumed to be behind the recent attack on America? For years, security experts had seen bin Laden as separate from these groups, but considerable evidence has arisen showing clear connections.

Israeli security agents have found connections between bin Laden and groups like Hamas, including terrorists who received their training at bin Laden's bases in Afghanistan. They also believe bin Laden tried to carry out a terrorist attack against Israel. Last June, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told the press that "bin Laden is attempting to penetrate into Israel with the aid of local residents and by attempts to infiltrate his own people into the country."

Bin Laden has been cultivating ties with groups like Hamas, which also uses suicide bombers, for years. Evidence shows that conspirators in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center made calls to the Islamic Association for Palestine, which is considered the American front office for Hamas.

If there was any doubt that bin Laden is forging a connection with other Arab terrorists, you might consider the history involved in his attack on America. The attack echoes the famed "Black September" operation of 1970, when terrorist members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked four airliners departing to New York from Zurich, Frankfurt and other cities. Two years later, a Palestinian group calling itself "Black September" took hostages at the Munich Olympics and killed 11 Israeli athletes. This action occurred on September 11, the exact date the attack on America occurred.

The Wall Street Journal estimated that militant Islamic movements, including Hamas and bin Laden, have raised tens of millions of dollars – much of it through tax-exempt organizations – in the US. According to one source close to the Milwaukee police department, police here have suspected some local Arab Americans of laundering money that is sent overseas to militant Islamic groups.

Curiously, on the morning of the attack on America, students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee discovered the words "Black September" written on an erasable board in a classroom in Bolton Hall. Campus police detective Art Koch, who responded to their calls, says it was just a coincidence. "It turned out to be real bad timing by a student."

Koch says he checked the computer records in the room and found that a student had been researching Middle East history on Monday night. Koch says he contacted this student, who was not an Arab American, and the student confirmed that he had written the words "Black September" on the board after reading accounts of it.

As news accounts have suggested, Arab Americans and others have been taunted, shot at and attacked in many cities, in response to anger about the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. There are an estimated six million Muslims in this country, and an infinitesimal percentage of them are likely to be connected to terrorists. In 1998, Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) claimed that there are 1,500 to 2.000 "known terrorists" in the US.

His language echoes the "known Communists" line of former Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, and the current concern over terrorists already has the feel of the old Red Scare, with conservatives charging that we are being soft on terrorists, and liberals arguing that we must not violate people's civil rights in the rush to protect America.

The evidence suggests that the terrorist network of bin Laden has made inroads in America, and may include the Chicago and even the Milwaukee area. That's a cause for concern, but is not a license to discriminate against Arab Americans.

--Michael Horne

RUSS TO JUDGMENT

Sen. Russell Feingold has been traveling a great deal lately, trying to get his name before the public across the country. Wednesday was time for folks in the Milwaukee area to meet the junior senator from Wisconsin on a day when he attended at least two fundraisers and one State Fair.

The senator and his small campaign staff travel in a Ford van with “Feingold 2004” painted all over it, and the van was outside the Marshall Building, 207 E. Buffalo promptly at 6 p.m. for a fundraiser for Bryan Kennedy, the democrat who is challenging Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. for his seat in the House of Representatives.

Kennedy told the crowd of fifty or so in an airless room in the basement of the building that “we are blessed to have one senator when 99 didn’t care about the bill of rights we had one senator who did.”

Kennedy also told the crowd, and Feingold, “God performs miracles through us average everyday people who step up and answer the call,” and then went on to ask the crowd, “How many know a parable from the new testament that goes …” [Feingold did not raise his hand for this one.]

Kennedy, a Mormon, does inject a good amount of religion into his speeches, as can be seen from the above, but he was not above coming up with a pretty good crack that even had Feingold laughing.

It was a story about a fellow in bad straits after a flood. A raft came by to rescue the guy, and he sends it away, saying, “God will save me.” Then comes a boat, with the same response – “I’ll wait for God to save me!.” Finally, he rejects a helicopter ride for the same reason, after which the floodwaters rise, and he dies.

When he gets to heaven, he asks God, “Why didn’t you save me?” God replies, “What do you mean? I sent you a raft, a boat, a helicopter …”

Feingold told the audience that he had known Sensenbrenner since college – that is, when Feingold served as an intern in the state capitol and Sensenbrenner was a member of the legislature.

According to Feingold, “Wayne Whittow (now the City of Milwaukee Treasurer, then a legislator) tried to get him to smile. One of my hobbies was I would try to get him to laugh.” Apparently, the Whittow-Feingold glee club was not enough to break the stoic visage of Sensenbrenner.

Turning to more recent issues, Feingold said he “tried to fix the Patriot Act,” which Sensenbrenner blocked. “We’re not just on opposite sides on this issue, we are opposite sides on America”

Feingold added that Sensenbrenner called him names, but he said he felt “no bitterness at all.”

Rather, it was more like outrage, he said, claiming that “Sensenbrenner with the president more than any other reason is why the Patriot Act did not get fixed. He should go.”

Feingold also alluded to Sensenbrenner’s most recent cause – that of ridding our nation of illegal immigrants.

Feingold said his father, an immigrant, flunked a couple of years of school, blaming it on the poor level of Yiddish discourse in the public schools of Janesville, Wisconsin. Eventually, dad learned his English, and assimilated to the extent that his son could attend Harvard, join the world’s most exclusive club, and maybe someday move into the world’s most exclusive house.

Feingold, warming to the subject, continued to bash Sensenbrenner, saying, “He fancies himself with pride to be an agent of what is polarizing this country. It is time for him to go.”

It appears that Health Care For Everyone will be a rallying cry for Feingold as he crosses the country giving his speeches.

At the event, Milwaukeeworld offered Feingold a coupon good for two-for-one flavored milks at the State Fair booth run by his counterpart, Sen. Herb H. Kohl. Feingold took the proffered sheet and promptly passed it over to his manager, George Aldrich. (Feingold has always had a knack about treating his staff assistants like filing cabinets.)

I asked Feingold to explain a paradox to me – he voted against the war, saying it was illegal and immoral, yet now, when he calls for withdrawal of troops, he is accused of being a “McGovernite” and a “cut-and-run” democrat.

The Bush administration members, he said, "are the masters of intellectual dishonesty."

-- Michael Horne