reported yesterday on a lobbying campaign to free its Iraqi-based photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been in U.S. military detention since April (a fact first reported not by the A(w/t)P, but ).
Who is spearheading the Free Bilal lobbying campaign? Yup, the :
The U.S.
military s indefinite detention of an Associated Press photographer in Iraq, without charges, is an outrage and should be seen as such by the journalistic community, AP editors said Friday. We are angry, and we hope you are, too, AP International Editor John Daniszewski told a gathering of the Associated Press Managing Editors.
In interviews, the leaders of APME and the American Society of Newspaper Editors shared frustration with the case of Bilal Hussein, who has been held by the military since April.
Later they and the president of the Associated Press Photo Managers signed a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urging him to release the photographer.
The editors said Hussein s arrest has denied our readers a part of the story and given the military justice system a black eye.
The Pentagon s refusal to give Hussein his day in court, or any semblance of due process, has violated a cherished American value, they wrote.
The AP similarly has called for the military to release the photographer or charge him with a crime.
Go read the entire A(w/t)P article. Guess what s missing?
Not a word about how the news organization sat on the news for five months. Not a word about the circumstances of Hussein s capture and detention. A :
The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.
He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces, according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj.
Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq. The information available establishes that he has relationships with insurgents and is afforded access to insurgent activities outside the normal scope afforded to journalists conducting legitimate activities, Gardner wrote to AP International Editor John Daniszewski.
The Pentagon said on Monday that an Iraqi photographer working for The Associated Press and held by the U.S. military since April was considered a security threat with strong ties to known insurgents.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said there was sufficient evidence to justify the continued detention of Bilal Hussein, 35, who AP said was taken into U.S. military custody on April 12 in the Iraqi city of Ramadi and held since without charge.
He declined to elaborate on what that evidence was.
All indications that I have received are that Hussein s detainment indicates that he has strong ties to known insurgents, and that he was doing things, involved in activities that were well outside the scope of what you would expect a journalist to be doing in that country, he said.
In three separate independent objective reviews, Whitman told reporters, it was determined that Hussein was a security threat and recommended his continued detention.
Instead, the latest A(w/t)P report quotes blind Bilal Hussein sympathizers in the press:
Suki Dardarian, deputy managing editor of The Seattle Times and outgoing president of the APME, said what s happened with Hussein could have a chilling effect on the work of other journalists. Hussein s detention has virtually halted the production of photographs from the dangerous region in which Hussein worked, Daniszewski said.
Well, if it means an end to jihadi propaganda photos like these from Hussein, then good:
David Zeeck, president of ASNE and executive editor of The News Tribune, of Tacoma, Wash.
, said Hussein s detention was reminiscent of how Saddam Hussein dealt with reporters. He would hold them incommunicado, Zeeck said.
This, dear readers, underscores how utterly biased, ignorant, and muddle-headed the vast majority of mainstream journalists are in their coverage of the war on terror.
These people see no difference between American troops detaining a suspect captured on the battlefield in the company of an alleged top al Qaeda leader in wartime and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein repressing civilian journalists in peacetime.
Isn t it possible that Bilal Hussein is coughing up valuable information about insurgent associates involved in kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces? Isn t it possible that Hussein is providing ongoing intelligence that may be saving both American and Iraqi lives?
Isn t it possible that the troops on the ground who captured Hussein in an apartment with bomb-making materials have better judgement about his security risk than A(w/t)P execs a world away?
The A(w/t)P and its minions refuse to entertain the possibilities. They re too busy maligning our troops and our military leaders as Saddam-esque tyrants and moaning about how the lack of new terrorist propaganda photos is having a chilling effect on journalism.
I doubt the family of shares the A(w/t)P s alarm and despair.
Reader Michael V. points out a new revelation in the A(w/t)P story that I meant to note:
The military has said Hussein was in the company of two alleged insurgents.
Daniszewski said that when the news cooperative pressed for further details, the best it could learn was that Hussein was allegedly involved in the kidnapping of two journalists by insurgents in Ramadi. However, Daniszewski said the two journalists were asked by AP about the incident and that they recalled Hussein as a hero who helped evacuate them from harm s way.
The obvious question here is WHO are these two journalists?
It turns out that the Somali cabdrivers in Minneapolis who refused to carry passengers with alcohol were inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood, as part of a larger effort to bring Sharia to the United States. For what may seem to be a pragmatic and fair solution the airport s initial plan to color-code the cabs as Sharia-compliant and non-Sharia-compliant actually opens the door to numerous other Sharia provisions in the U.S.
, as Daniel Pipes has pointed out. Will an unmarried man and woman be allowed to share a cab? A man carrying a ham sandwich?
This kind of effort, especially now that the Ikhwan turns out to be behind it, must be seen for what it is and resisted strenuously.
Airport taxi flap about alcohol has deeper significance, by Katherine Kersten in the , with thanks to Fjordman:
The taxi controversy at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has caught the nation s attention.
But the dispute may go deeper than the quandary over whether to accommodate Somali Muslim cabdrivers who refuse to carry passengers carrying alcohol. Behind the scenes, a struggle for power and religious authority is apparently playing out.At the Starbucks coffee shop in Minneapolis Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, a favorite Somali gathering spot, holidaymakers celebrating Eid, the end of Ramadan, filled the tables on Monday.
Several taxis were parked outside.
An animated circle of Somalis gathered when the question of the airport controversy was raised.
I was surprised and shocked when I heard it was an issue at the airport, said Faysal Omar.
Back in Somalia, there was never any problem with taking alcohol in a taxi.
Jama Dirie said, If a driver doesn t pick up everyone, he should get his license canceled and get kicked out of the airport.
Two of the Somalis present defended the idea that Islam prohibits cabdrivers from transporting passengers with alcohol.
An argument erupted. The consensus seemed to be that only a small number of Somalis object to transporting alcohol. It s a matter of personal opinion, not Islamic law, several men said.
Ahmed Samatar, a nationally recognized expert on Somali society at Macalester College, confirmed that view. There is a general Islamic prohibition against drinking, he said, but carrying alcohol for people in commercial enterprise has never been forbidden. There is no basis in Somali cultural practice or legal tradition for that.
This is one of those new concoctions. It is being foisted on the Somali community by an inside or outside group, he added. I do not know who.
But many Somali drivers at the airport are refusing to carry passengers with alcohol. When I asked Patrick Hogan, Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman, for his explanation, he forwarded a fatwa, or religious edict, that the MAC had received. The fatwa proclaims that Islamic jurisprudence prohibits taxi drivers from carrying passengers with alcohol, because it involves cooperating in sin according to the Islam.
The fatwa, dated June 6, 2006, was issued by the fatwa department of the Muslim American Society, Minnesota chapter, and signed by society officials.
The society is mediating the conflict between the cab drivers and the MAC. That seems odd, since the society itself clearly has a stake in the controversy s outcome.
How did the MAC connect with the society? The Minnesota Department of Human Rights recommended them to us to help us figure out how to handle this problem, Hogan said.
Omar Jamal, director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, thinks he knows why the society is promoting a no-alcohol-carry agenda with no basis in Somali culture.
MAS is an Arab group; we Somalis are African, not Arabs, he said. MAS wants to polarize the world, create two camps. I think they are trying to hijack the Somali community for their Middle East agenda.
They look for issues they can capitalize on, like religion, to rally the community around. The majority of Somalis oppose this, but they are vulnerable because of their social and economic situation.
What is the Muslim American Society?
In September 2004 the Chicago Tribune published an investigative article. The society was incorporated in 1993, the paper reported, and is the name under which the U.S.
branch of the Muslim Brotherhood operates.
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna. The Tribune described the Brotherhood as the world s most influential Islamic fundamentalist group.
Because of its hard-line beliefs, the U.S. Brotherhood has been an increasingly divisive force within Islam in America, fueling the often bitter struggle between moderate and conservative Muslims, the paper reported.
The international Muslim Brotherhood preaches that religion and politics cannot be separated and that governments eventually should be Islamic, according to the Tribune. U.S.
members emphasize that they follow American laws, but want people here to convert to Islam so that one day a majority will support a society governed by Islamic law.
Daily Nebraskan | October 24, 2006
University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty members need to read and comment on the proposed UNL [pdf] by Halloween. The timing is utterly appropriate.
Here is what should frighten you:
1. From now on, your annual evaluations will include being graded on the extent to which you have contributed (or not) to a climate of inclusiveness and the extent to which you have participated in campus programs to improve climate
Inclusiveness is not defined in the document, nor is the nature of these programs specified. Thus, these words can mean whatever your department chairperson or others in the administration want them to mean - and can t we all guess?
Does anyone doubt that all this constitutes a politically based litmus test for continued employment? Simply expressing disagreement with affirmative action, or with UNL s implementation of it, could easily be cast as contributing to a non-inclusive climate. Having the wrong book on your bookshelf or the wrong cartoon on your office door could be judged non-inclusive.
This vague standard violates your rights under the First Amendment and your rights as a public employee. It also violates the spirit and the letter of academic freedom, both as generally understood and as codified in the University of Nebraska Regents bylaws, section 4.2.
If you think you are immune because you hold the correct opinions, you might want to take a close reading of the document and imagine how it could be used against you by a hostile department chairperson.
2. All potential new hires must be grilled on their willingness and ability to contribute positively to the campus climate.
As a candidate, if you slip up during an interview and reveal that you think the diversity emperor has no clothes, you ve lost your chance at a UNL job - based on your political opinions.
Let no one think this doesn t happen. At other institutions, faculty candidates have been asked if they d read books such as America in Black in White (critical of affirmative action) or The Bell Curve (deemed racist).
Simply admitting to have read such a book has cost them a job.
3. All academic units will have diversity curricula and an assessment of their effectiveness.
This asserts administrative hegemony over one of the very few areas over which faculty members still maintain some control: curriculum. This is a direct violation of the academic freedom of faculty members.
4.
There are to be recruitment targets for female and minority faculty. Deans and department chairpersons will be graded on their ability to meet those targets. The administration will thus force lower and mid-level administrators and faculty search committees into illegal reverse discrimination.
If you plan to join a search committee, keep in mind that you may therefore be called upon to display non-inclusive behavior. That is, you may be required or encouraged to exclude non-Hispanic white male applicants. Thus, you will be in violation of the other parts of the plan that require you to be inclusive.
In the High-Orwellian Newspeak of diversity, exclusivity is inclusive! Naturally, the authors of the plan will protest they meant no such thing as unconstitutional hiring and employment practices nor violations of free speech and academic freedom.
If so, why have they left critical terms open to interpretation?
Why have they provided no explicit protections for free expression of ideas even if those ideas imply some sort of non-inclusiveness? Why have they not explicitly protected faculty members and employees who will say out loud that diversity has become a pathetic caricature? Why is diversity of ideas unprotected?
Precisely, perhaps, because the authors intend harm to people based on their political viewpoints. For shame.
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