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Fact checking the AP fact checker

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Power Line - By Scott Johnson - Dec. 20 (Opinion) - According to Pete Yost last week in a superficial AP fact check story: “Republican presidential candidates have claimed that the Obama administration is cleansing government files of references to radical Islam, an assertion so juicy that politicians keep repeating it — even though it’s a wild exaggeration.” But I think the GOP candidates have it right, more or less, and Yost has it wrong. At least they are closer to the mark than Yost. See, for example, Cliff May’s NRO column “What’s Islam got to do with it?” (May cites a report by the Westminster Institute’s Katharine C. Gorka that notes: “Key national security documents have already excised all terminology that associates terrorism with Islam or Islamic concepts such as jihad.”) See also “Obama administration pulls references to Islam from terror training materials, official says.” (The story quotes purposefully ambiguous comments made by Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole at the George Washington University law school. My call yesterday to the Department of Justice for clarification went unreturned.)

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Lowe's pulls ads from TV show about U.S. Muslims

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Associated Press - Dec. 12 (News Report) - A decision by retail giant Lowe's Cos. to pull ads from a reality show about American Muslims after protests from an evangelical Christian group has sparked criticism and calls for a boycott against the chain of home-improvement stores.

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France, Islam and the banlieues: a debate on the place of Islam and class in the suburbs

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Michèle Tribalat, Gérard Mauger - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - In an effort to allay concerns about Islam in France, policymakers and analysts have either tried to play down its importance or sought to blend it into the landscape. Islam is often portrayed as an integral part of French history: its presence simply follows on from ancient history. The basis for this argument is shaky, for it refers to an era when Christendom – not yet referred to as the west – was in retreat, driven back by the force of Islamic arms.

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A decade later, returning to the scene of something unfathomable - latimes.com

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Steve Lopez - Sep. 11 (Special Report) - A columnist goes back to Lower Manhattan, where in 2001 he got a close-up look at the destruction of 9/11. He's reminded anew that we all have a stake in what happened that day and in the days that followed.

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Lawyer: Norway Suspect Wanted A Revolution : NPR

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

All Things Considered - Jul. 24 (News Report) - The man blamed for attacks on Norway's government headquarters and a youth retreat that left at least 93 dead said he was motivated by a desire to bring about a revolution in Norwegian society, his lawyer said Sunday. A manifesto he published online, which police are poring over and said was posted the day of the attack, ranted against Muslim immigration to Europe and vowed revenge on "indigenous Europeans," whom he accused of betraying their heritage. It added that they would be punished for their "treasonous acts." "The calculated cynicism in it is really staggering," Goran Skaalmo, an investigative reporter in Norway, told NPR's Linda Wertheimer. "He calls the operation in Oslo the 'ultimate love gift' at one time. He says in the foreword that to put this whole work together has cost him 370,000 euros. Also, he sees himself as a European hero."

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White Christian Fundamentalist Terrorism in Norway

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Informed Comment - Jul. 23 (Opinion) - That the horrible terrorist attacks in Oslo on Friday that left some 90 persons or more dead– a bombing of the prime minister’s office and shootings at a Labor Party youth camp– were allegedly committed by a blonde, far right wing Norwegian fundamentalist Christian rather than by a radical Muslim group is being treated as a matter of surprise in some quarters. But if those journalists and analysts had been paying attention, they would not be surprised at all.

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Norway attacks: Suspect identified and at least 91 dead in bombing, shootings

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - Jul. 23 (News Report) - A man believed to be the gunman in a mass shooting on Norway's Utoya island Friday is also suspected in an explosion in Oslo earlier Friday, police said during a press conference Saturday.

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Sudan split was 'over-simplified' by media

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Ali M Latifi - Jul. 10 (Opinion) - For many directly affected by the world's longest-running civil war, the Sudanese conflict has been over-simplified in the Western press as inter-religious or inter-ethnic strife. "The media tried to make us look like Jafar in Aladdin," says Khalid Albaih, a Sudanese political cartoonist. "Everyone looks alike [in Sudan], the Arabs and the Africans," he adds. John Prendergast, human rights activist and co-founder of the Enough project, told Al Jazeera: "One should not overplay this idea of north versus south or Christian versus Muslim." While Moez Ali, a Sudanese blogger and political commentator, said the conflict was an issue of disenfranchisement of a people "who were never given an agenda in the government" throughout the nation's 55-year history. Since independence in 1956, "a small group of people in power in Khartoum used race and religion to divide and conquer," says Prendergast. This conflict was further exacerbated in 2004 when the Khartoum government, headed by Omar al-Bashir, made a bid to control the oil and water resources of the south, he adds.

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South Sudan, world's newest nation, is instantly one of the most troubled

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - Jul. 10 (News) - Africa's longest civil war gives birth to South Sudan, a country about the size of France that has broken away from its bitter antagonist to the north. Heads of state gather for a euphoric celebration in the fledgling capital of Juba, but poverty, corruption and questions about its leadership already plague the new nation.The countdown clock ran out, the flag ascended over the fledgling capital and a new nation born from Africa's longest civil war and the deaths of 2 million people joined the world Saturday.

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Islamist militants take over southern Yemen city

Mon, 30 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Ariel Zirulnick - May. 30 (News) - Islamist militants took over the southern coastal city of Zinjibar (see map) this weekend, bolstering claims that Yemen's unrest, which borders on civil war, is leaving a vacuum that is allowing militants to gain strength. The clashes with the government have so far been concentrated in the north, around Sanaa.

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Now that he’s dead, let’s end bin Laden’s grip on us

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Eugene Robinson - May. 13 (Opinion) - Years from now, I believe, we will look back and say the elimination of Osama bin Laden changed everything. To borrow Churchill’s assessment of the Nazi defeat at El Alamein, “Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

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Iran's Ahmadinejad affirms Khamenei decision, tensions remain

Mon, 09 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Thomas Erdbrink - May. 09 (News Report) - Apparently bowing to unprecedented pressure from Iran's clerical establishment, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad welcomed an intelligence minister he had ousted in April back into his cabinet meeting on Sunday.

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12 dead in Egypt as Christians and Muslims clash

Sun, 08 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ernesto Londono - May. 08 (News) - Clashes between Muslims and Coptic Christians in a Cairo suburb left 12 people dead, dozens wounded and a church charred in one of the most serious outbreaks of violence the country’s interim rulers have faced since taking power in February.

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An Pakistani Student Reflects on Osama bin Laden's Death

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Maria Kari - May. 05 (Opinion) - As a Pakistani student living in the West, with roots heavily embedded in my cultural and religious heritage, many questions permeated the silence in my living room at that moment. What was Pakistan’s role in all of this? Will the president differentiate between fundamentalist Islam and the religion of Islam of which I adhere? Was there collateral damage? Will I get through airport security more easily now? Why does Obama pronounce Pakistan more correctly than most of my Pakistani-American friends?

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Fighting for bin Laden

Tue, 03 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Frontline - By Stephen Grey, Martin Smith - May. 03 (Special Report) - Two days after Osama bin Laden's death, Frontline presents this special report with inside access to the two biggest fronts in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. First, correspondents Stephen Grey and Martin Smith go inside The Secret War and uncover new details of CIA-funded Afghan militas tasked with guarding the border, gathering intelligence and launching kill raids against the insurgents and their Al Qaeda allies. Based in Afghanistan, their work is focused on Pakistan. A former commander of one of these teams, the Khost Protection Force (KPF), tells Frontline about how the team crosses the Afghan border into Pakistan's tribal areas. Under the protection of drone aircraft, they fire mortars against Taliban and Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan.

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Osama bin Laden, the face of terror, killed in Pakistan