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August 28, 2005

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TM

Islam means peace

NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/national/nationalspecial3/02muslims.html

Times - London
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/03/international/europe/03london.html

ISNA Conference
http://www.isna.net/clear.gif

ISNA .pdf file
http://www.isna.net/uploads/media/2005Convention-Program-Final.pdf


The session on Islam means peace is Session 10B, Sunday, Sept. 4

Speakers are Badawi, Magid, Irfan

TM

David Carr, a regular Times contributor, discovers media hype in the Katrina coverage.

Careful readers will infer that Mr. Carr writes these columns as some sort of a media critic who focuses on television coverage, so the performance of the NY Times itself is given a pass.

In his world, Fox News, talk radio, and the internet hyped the violence and atrocities. However, let's notice the gap between criticism and evidence:DISASTER has a way of bringing out the best and the worst instincts
in the news media. It is a grand thing that during the most terrible
days of Hurricane Katrina, many reporters found their gag reflex and
stopped swallowing pat excuses from public officials. But the media's
willingness to report thinly attributed rumors may also have
contributed to a kind of cultural wreckage that will not clean up
easily.

First, anyone with any knowledge of the events in New Orleans knows
that terrible things with non-natural causes occurred: there were
assaults, shots fired at a rescue helicopter and, given the state of
the city's police department, many other crimes that probably went
unreported.

But many instances in the lurid libretto of widespread murder,
carjacking, rape, and assaults that filled the airwaves and newspapers
have yet to be established or proved, as far as anyone can determine.
And many of the urban legends that sprang up - the systematic rape of
children, the slitting of a 7-year-old's throat - so far seem to be
just that. The fact that some of these rumors were repeated by
overwhelmed local officials does not completely get the news media off
the hook. A survey of news reports in the LexisNexis database shows
that on Sept. 1, the news media's narrative of the hurricane shifted.

The Fox News anchor, John Gibson, helped set the scene: All kinds
of reports of looting, fires and violence. Thugs shooting at rescue
crews. Thousands of police and National Guard troops are on the scene
trying to get the situation under control. Thousands more on the way.
So heads up, looters. A reporter, David Lee Miller, responded: Hi,
John. As you so rightly point out, there are so many murders taking
place. There are rapes, other violent crimes taking place in New
Orleans. After the interview, Mr. Gibson did acknowledge that we have
yet to confirm a lot of that.

Later that night on MSNBC, Tucker Carlson grabbed the flaming baton
and ran with it. People are being raped, he said in a conversation
with the Rev. Al Sharpton. People are being murdered. People are being
shot. Police officers being shot.

Some journalists did find sources. About 10 p.m. that same evening,
Greta Van Susteren of Fox interviewed Dr. Charles Burnell, an emergency
room physician who was providing medical care in the Superdome.

Well, we had several murders. We had three murders last night. We
had a total of six rapes last night. We had the day before I think
there were three or four murders. There were half a dozen rapes that
night, he told Ms. Van Susteren. (Dr. Burnell did not return several
calls asking for comment.) On the same day, The New York Times referred
to two rapes at the Superdome, quoting a woman by name who said she was
a witness.

OK, if Fox mentioned the systematic rape of
children, or the slitting of a 7-year-old's throat, this was the time to mention it. Instead, we get a generic mention of violence, looting, and rapes. Does Mr. Carr contend that this was *not* happening?

But we don't need to look far for news source that was passing on some of thr urban legends. If Fox helped set the scene with their Sept 1 broadcast, let's see what the NY Times offered on Sept 1:
Higher Death Toll Seen; Police Ordered to Stop Looters

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 31 - Chaos gripped New Orleans on Wednesday as
looters ran wild, food and water supplies dwindled, bodies floated in
the floodwaters, the evacuation of the Superdome began and officials
said there was no choice but to abandon the city devastated by
Hurricane Katrina, perhaps for months.

...With police officers and National Guard troops giving priority to
saving lives, looters brazenly ripped open gates and ransacked stores
for food, clothing, television sets, computers, jewelry and guns, often
in full view of helpless law-enforcement officials. Dozens of
carjackings, apparently by survivors desperate to escape, were
reported, as were a number of shootings.or:
Superdome: Haven Quickly
Becomes an Ordeal

They had flocked to the arena seeking sanctuary from the winds and
waters of Hurricane Katrina. But understaffed, undersupplied and
without air-conditioning or even much lighting, the domed stadium
quickly became a sweltering and surreal vault, a place of overflowing
toilets and no showers. Food and water, blankets and sheets, were in
short supply. And the dome's reluctant residents exchanged horror
stories, including reports, which could not be confirmed by the
authorities, of a suicide and of rapes.or:
Police and Owners Begin to
Challenge Looters

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 31 - In a city shut down for business, the Rite Aid
at Oak and South Carrollton was wide open on Wednesday. Someone had
stolen a forklift, driven it four blocks, peeled up the security gate
and smashed through the front door.

...

One police officer was shot Tuesday trying to stop looting, but he was expected to survive.

An emergency medical vehicle that was taking a Baton Rouge police
officer who had been shot last month from a hospital back to his
hometown was shot at on the way out of New Orleans on Tuesday.
Fair and balanced at the NY Times.

We also take issue with a specific point made twice by Mr. Carr:

(1) ...First, anyone with any knowledge of the events in New Orleans knows
that terrible things with non-natural causes occurred: there were
assaults, shots fired at a rescue helicopter...

(2) The widely reported and seemingly fantastical story about a man shooting at a rescue helicopter was confirmed.

Confrimed by whom? Matt Welch wrote a better, earlier column about Katrina media hype on Sept 6, and said this about the helicopter:

Relief efforts
ground to a halt
last week after reports circulated of looters shooting at helicopters, yet
none of the hundreds of articles I read on the subject contained a single
first-hand confirmation from a pilot or eyewitness. The suspension-triggering
attack—on a military Chinook attempting to
evacuate refugees from the Superdome—was
contested
by Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown, who told ABC
News, We're controlling every single aircraft in that airspace and none of
them reported being fired on. What's more, when asked about the attacks,
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
replied:
I haven't actually received a confirmed report of someone firing on a
helicopter.

From the ABC story to which Matt links, we see confirmation from a National Guard officer:At the Superdome, we have a report that one shot was fired at a
Chinook helicopter, [Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard] said, adding that the Chinook is an
extremely large aircraft.Although he ignored the Times own breathless coverage of rapes, looting, and vigilantism, I am sure Mr. Carr will welcome an opportunity to document this particular assertion about the confirmation of reports that a helicopter was fired upon. We don't want any hype in the hype-denouncing story, do we?

TM

Shleifer of Harvard / Al Gore in Russia scandal

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/ma/presspage/Aug2005/Harvard-Settlement.htm

TM

A never-finished draft:

The President Has Asked People To Show Their Cards On Iraq

I am declaring war on Iraq, and feel as if I ought to explain why.

I accept the notion that Saddam is a long term threat to the peace and stability of the Middle East, including Israel, and that there is an excellent probability that we will have to confront him militarily at some point. Sanctions have been a public relations disaster, and are being eroded due to lack of world support. The long term presence of US troops scattered throughout the region to "contain" Saddam also seems to fuel hostility, as we have seen with Osama.

Regime change in Iraq will reduce these problems. There will be many US troops in Iraq, but we can move troops out of the holy land of Saudi Arabia, as well as our other bases in the Mid East. I also believe that the road to peace in Jerusalem runs through Baghdad. Israel can not negotiate with a gun to its head. Saddam is a major supporter of the Palestinian terrorist groups, and a military threat to Israel. Syria will also become more amenable to developing a peaceful relationship with Israel when its neighbors include a democratic Iraq. Removing Saddam helps to create an environment in which Israel can feel that it will be allowed to live in peace, and fruitful negotiations should be a result.

I believed this months ago. Beyond that, however, US credibility will be shattered if we back down now. If that were the only reason to proceed, it would be insufficient. However, since I believe that this is a war is only a matter of time, then the time is now.

So, am I worried about casualties to Iraqi civilians? Of course I am. I also worry about Iraqis imprisoned and killed by Saddam and Iraqi children that receive reduced medical care due to sanctions. I worry about Palestinian and Israeli deaths in that struggle. I worry about a potential worldwide breakdown in the international system if the only credible superpower is shown to have no resolve. I worry about lots of things.

But I have concluded, or rationalized, that an invasion of Iraq will, on balance, promote the health, wealth, and stability of Iraq. There will be higher civilian deaths than without an invasion, but over the next few years, more children will live as a result of the end of sanctions. The net result is unknowable, but quite possibly beneficial to Iraqi civilians as a group. The invasion of Iraq, while tragic, will probably save lives.

Will an invasion of Iraq be a recruiting bonanza for Osama? Well, did sales of tickets on cruise liners skyrocket after the release of "Titanic"? I think that, like most of the world, the Muslim world prefers the strong horse. When the US shows strength, we will be respected; if we show reasonableness, it will be mistaken for weakness.

Diversion from war on terror

No link to 9/11

Breakup of the UN

Wait for a Democratic President

TM

More on Brooks, Kaus

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=115670

Author Ron Kampeas interviews prominent neoconservative intellectual Joshua Muravchik.

"When Joshua Muravchik, perhaps the pre-eminent expert on the interventionist foreign policy that has become known as neo-conservatism, was looking for non-Jewish neo-cons to prove that the movement isn't pervasively Jewish, he naturally included Lewis Libby.

"'Non-Jews figuring prominently in current foreign-policy debates and today called neo-cons include Libby, [John] Bolton, American Enterprise Institute president Christopher DeMuth, and Gary Schmitt of the Project for the New American Century,' Muravchik wrote in Commentary magazine two years ago.

"'Go easy on me,' Muravchik laughingly told a reporter this week, after it emerged that the man at the center of the White House leak scandal indeed is Jewish."

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Bush's lead would have vanished only if the recount had been conducted under severely restrictive standards advocated by some Republicans.

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Bush still would have won.
The Florida Supreme Court on Dec. 8 ordered that all undervote ballots be counted in counties that had not already conducted a hand recount.

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