Mosque to be Built Near Ground Zero

How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against - Michael Mandel

Review
"Exciting, original, and completely convincing ... This book is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand how the law really works in international affairs, and it throws a great deal of light on those international affairs themselves." --Edward S. Herman

"This closely reasoned and carefully documented study is sad and grim, and necessary. Unless its lessons are heeded by citizens of the rich and powerful states, the fate of the world will be left to the whim of those with the guns and the faith to enforce their will." --Noam Chomsky

Product Description
The US has claimed the moral high ground in its recent wars. But how is this position tenable if those wars were in fact illegal?
Through a thorough exploration of the recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, and the attempts of the US to legitimise them, Michael Mandel casts a critical eye on the claims the US makes for its wars – "humanitarian intervention" and "self-defence" – and unpacks the complex moral and legal issues underpinning recent US military action. Michael Mandel shows how international law is a malleable entity which the US can bend in its favour, but even then there are many times when it goes against the law and fights wars illegally.

Mandel also explores the recent war crimes trials of those who lose their battle with the US, and the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in particular. Mandel argues that the trials are not actually about ending war crimes, or impunity for war crimes, but about selectively punishing "the usual suspects" as part of the imperial strategy of the great powers – primarily the United States. Mandel also highlights how hypocritical such trials are – Milosevic is tried with great ceremony for his crimes, while America is not. In fact, Mandel shows how these tribunals shield America and its allies from responsibility for what is termed "collateral damage", but what is in reality murder on a vast scale.


http://www.amazon.com/How-America-Gets-Away-Murder/dp/0745321518

August 30, 2010
Incidents at Mosque in Tennessee Spread Fear
By ROBBIE BROWN
ATLANTA — After a suspected arson and reports of gunshots at an Islamic center in Tennessee over the weekend, nearby mosques have hired security guards, installed surveillance cameras and requested the presence of federal agents at prayer services.

Muslim leaders in central Tennessee say that frightened worshipers are observing Ramadan in private and that some Muslim parents are wary of sending their children to school after a large fire on Saturday that destroyed property at the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. Federal authorities suspect that the fire was arson.

The Islamic center has attracted national attention recently because its planned expansion into a larger building in some ways parallels a controversial proposal to build an Islamic center two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York.

The Murfreesboro center, which has existed for nearly 30 years, suddenly found itself on front pages of newspapers this month and on “The Daily Show.” It became a hot topic in the local Congressional race, with one Republican candidate accusing the center of fostering terrorism and trying to link it to the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

Then, on Saturday, the police say, someone set fire to construction equipment at the site where the Islamic center is planning to move, destroying an earthmover and three other pieces of machinery. And on Sunday, as CNN was filming a news segment about the controversy, someone fired at least five shots near the property.

“We are very concerned about our safety,” said Essam Fathy, head of the center’s planning committee. “Whatever it takes, I’m not going to allow anybody to do something like this again.”

No people were injured in either incident. The cases are being investigated by the police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In a statement on the center’s Web site, a spokeswoman called the fire an “arson attack” and an “atrocious act of terrorism.”

In Nashville, 30 miles northwest, local imams met with representatives of the United States attorney’s office on Monday to discuss the risk of further anti-Islamic violence. Several mosques have requested police surveillance, they said, especially with the end of Ramadan this year nearly coinciding with the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We’re worried that these attacks could spill over into Nashville,” said Mwafaq Mohammed, president of the Salahadeen Islamic Center there. “We don’t want people to misunderstand what we’re celebrating around Sept. 11. It would be better to take precautionary measures.”

Another mosque, the Islamic Center of Nashville, has installed indoor and outdoor surveillance cameras, hired round-the-clock security guards and requested that F.B.I. agents be on site during worship services, according to the imam, Mohamed Ahmed.

“Whoever did this, they are terrorists,” Mr. Ahmed said. “What’s the difference between them and Al Qaeda?”

But in other parts of Tennessee, including Chattanooga, Knoxville and Memphis, Muslim leaders reported that they had experienced no hostility and saw no reason to increase security.

Here's a timeline of how it all happened:


Dec. 8, 2009: The Times publishes a lengthy front-page look at the Cordoba project. "We want to push back against the extremists," Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the lead organizer, is quoted as saying. Two Jewish leaders and two city officials, including the mayor's office, say they support the idea, as does the mother of a man killed on 9/11. An FBI spokesman says the imam has worked with the bureau. Besides a few third-tier right-wing blogs, including Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs site, no one much notices the Times story.

Dec. 21, 2009: Conservative media personality Laura Ingraham interviews Abdul Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, while guest-hosting "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox. In hindsight, the segment is remarkable for its cordiality. "I can't find many people who really have a problem with it," Ingraham says of the Cordoba project, adding at the end of the interview, "I like what you're trying to do."

May 6, 2010: After a unanimous vote by a New York City community board committee to approve the project, the AP runs a story. It quotes relatives of 9/11 victims (called by the reporter), who offer differing opinions. The New York Post, meanwhile, runs a story under the inaccurate headline, "Panel Approves 'WTC' Mosque." Geller is less subtle, titling her post that day, "Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction." She writes on her Atlas Shrugs blog, "This is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident. Just as Al-Aqsa was built on top of the Temple in Jerusalem." (To get an idea of where Geller is coming from, she once suggested that Malcolm X was Obama's real father. Seriously.)

May 7, 2010: Geller's group, Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), launches "Campaign Offensive: Stop the 911 Mosque!" (SIOA 's associate director is Robert Spencer, who makes his living writing and speaking about the evils of Islam.) Geller posts the names and contact information for the mayor and members of the community board, encouraging people to write. The board chair later reports getting "hundreds and hundreds" of calls and e-mails from around the world.

May 8, 2010: Geller announces SIOA's first protest against what she calls the "911 monster mosque" for May 29. She and Spencer and several other members of the professional anti-Islam industry will attend. (She also says that the protest will mark the dark day of "May 29, 1453, [when] the Ottoman forces led by the Sultan Mehmet II broke through the Byzantine defenses against the Muslim siege of Constantinople." The outrage-peddling New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser argues in a note at the end of her column a couple of days later that "there are better places to put a mosque."

May 13, 2010: Peyser follows up with an entire column devoted to "Mosque Madness at Ground Zero." This is a significant moment in the development of the "ground zero mosque" narrative: It's the first newspaper article that frames the project as inherently wrong and suspect, in the way that Geller has been framing it for months. Peyser in fact quotes Geller at length and promotes the anti-mosque protest of Stop Islamization of America, which Peyser describes as a "human-rights group." Peyser also reports — falsely — that Cordoba House's opening date will be Sept. 11, 2011.

Lots of opinion makers on the right read the Post, so it's not surprising that, starting that very day, the mosque story spread through the conservative — and then mainstream — media like fire through dry grass. Geller appeared on Sean Hannity's radio show. The Washington Examiner ran an outraged column about honoring the 9/11 dead. So did Investor's Business Daily. Smelling blood, the Post assigned news reporters to cover the ins and outs of the Cordoba House development daily. Fox News, the Post's television sibling, went all out.

Within a month, Rudy Giuliani had called the mosque a "desecration." Within another month, Sarah Palin had tweeted her famous "peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate" tweet. Peter King and Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty followed suit — with political reporters and television news programs dutifully covering "both sides" of the controversy.

Geller had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams.

August 30, 2010
Who Else Will Speak Up?
The hate-filled signs carried recently by protesters trying to halt plans to build an Islamic center and mosque in Lower Manhattan were chilling. We were cheered to see people willing to challenge their taunts and champion tolerance and the First Amendment. But opportunistic politicians are continuing to foment this noxious anger. It is a dangerous pursuit.

Already New Yorkers have seen a troubled young man slash a Muslim taxi driver with a knife. A zealot in Florida is threatening to burn a stack of Korans on the anniversary of Sept. 11. Where does this end?

The country needs strong and sane voices to push back against the hatred and irrational fears. President Obama made a passionate defense of the mosque, but only once. Most Democratic politicians are ducking. So far, the leader with the courage to make the case repeatedly is Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

He has said firmly that the developers have a right to build and that New York needs a powerful memorial to those who died, surrounded by a living city. He has rejected efforts to move the mosque, noting that for opponents no distance will be far enough. At a Ramadan iftar dinner last week, Mr. Bloomberg declared that “Islam did not attack the World Trade Center — Al Qaeda did.”

Later, the mayor invited the wounded taxi driver, Ahmed Sharif, to City Hall. Then he went on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” to remind non-New Yorkers that “there’s already another mosque down there within four blocks of the World Trade Center. There’s porno places; there’s fast-food places. It’s a vibrant community. It’s New York.” Surely, Mr. Bloomberg isn’t the only politician left out there with courage and good sense.

After tracking Sharif’s finances and talking to acquaintances about his rough-and-tumble business style, I now don’t think the mosque will be built at the location staked out near ground zero. According to people familiar with the mosque project, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, a community leader, were blindsided by the revelations about Sharif, making a partnership unlikely. Moreover, Sharif’s domineering personality troubles them because it doesn’t fit into the slow, methodical, and even boring work of building a nonprofit.

I expect that Rauf and Khan will gracefully bow out of this project near ground zero, lead an interfaith community effort to build an Islamic center elsewhere, and welcome Sharif and his family in the congregation with open arms. To me, that’s the best solution out of this political—and now PR—debacle. I’m also certain that somewhere in there the businessman in Sharif will see a profit.

Who Else Will Speak Up?

I seek to hold all to the same standards.

The formula is simple and foolproof (although those who deploy it so facilely seem to think we are all fools): If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.

Stanley Fish