Monday, November 30, 2015

The Guy From Pittsburgh. Episode # 724. Illegals sue Oregon over driver...

The Guy From Pittsburgh. Episode # 725. Jibari Dean charged threat to ...

November 29, 2015

Trump, American Muslims, and the Mainstream Media After 9/11

Once again it's Donald Trump versus the mainstream media, with the focus this time being on the aftermath of 9/11. Trump is being portrayed by the media as a xenophobic buffoon for saying thousands of Muslims in New Jersey had cheered on 9/11 when the Twin Towers collapsed.

Is Trump right? As periodically happens, Trump could have phrased his statement more precisely. Media “fact checkers” (including those who ignore their own publication’s facts) rushed to allege no evidence that “thousands” of Muslims -- across the Hudson River in New Jersey -- had publicly cheered (as opposed to privately cheered) the 9/11 attacks. Well, no surprise there. If such an outrage had happened, even the left-leaning media could not have ignored it. Perhaps Trump was thinking about television images from the Palestinian territories showing thousands of Muslims cheering the 9/11 attacks.

Yet Trump may be onto something. Just as significant elements of truth were contained in Trump's badly worded comments about Mexico not sending its “best” (but instead sending many from its criminal class) his comment about cheering Muslims also contains elements of truth.

The story has already progressed through Trump pointing to a Washington Post piece one week after 9/11 (“Northern New Jersey Draws Probers' Eyes”) about the presence of Islamic terrorism in that state over the years -- from the 1993 Trade Center bombing to connections to the 9/11 hijackers; and the article briefly mentioned reports that small gatherings of Muslims cheered as the Twin Towers burned and collapsed. Trump subsequently mocked the reporter who wrote that story when the reporter said he couldn't remember details of what he wrote. And there were allegations that Trump parodied a physical disability the reporter suffers, provoking severe rebukes from media outlets around the world. Trump denied making fun of the reporter's handicap.

Yet consider that just days after 9/11, veteran CBS newsman Dan Rather spoke about small gatherings of cheering American Muslims when visiting the David Letterman show. Asked by Letterman if Muslims were celebrating 9/11, a teary-eyed and emotional Rather remarked that it happened overseas and, yes, at home:

“Oh absolutely, they’re celebrating. There’s one report, this has not been confirmed, but there are several reliable reports there was a cell, one of these cells across the Hudson River, and they got on -- this is the report and I emphasize I don’t know this for a fact – but there’s several witnesses who say this happened; they got on the roof of the building to look across. They knew what was going to happen; they were waiting for it to happen, and when it happened they celebrated. They jumped for joy to see this happen; it was a great triumph. It's inconceivable to me and to you, but David this is what we have to understand as a country; we’re not dealing with the kind of thing we dealt with in any war we’ve ever fought before, because we’ve never dealt with these kind of hateful-to-the-core evil people.”

In retrospect, Rather's comments were remarkable given that he's a liberal – and yet at the time he and other like-minded media figures (together with most every Democratic lawmaker) had a moral clarity right after 9/11 that was subsequently shoved aside as they fretted about a backlash against Muslims (which was non-existent). And though Rather and others had initially praised Bush's reaction to 9/11, they went onto embrace Bush Derangement Syndrome. Did CBS News ever follow up about reports of cheering Muslims in New Jersey – and set the record straight? It appears CBS didn't.

To be sure, in accounts by Rather and the Post regarding cheering American Muslims, the qualifying words “allegedly” and “unconfirmed reports” are used.

Yet something bears repeating: It's strange that neither CBS nor the Washington Post apparently never followed-up on specific reports of public cheering among small groups of Muslims. One plausible explanation is that these scattered incidents did in fact occur, but that the mainstream media failed to follow-up at the time due to journalistic laziness or political correctness. On the other hand, the media soon bent over backwards to promote false claims of a Muslim backlash -- and above all with efforts to find “moderate” Muslims to interview.

Regarding that quest to find “moderate Muslims,” the media initially held up some laughable examples. One media favorite was Anwar al-Awlaki, a closet jihadist. Yes, the American-born son of Yemeni immigrants (the man who inspired many deadly jihadists) was according to a report on National Public Radio, a Muslim who could "bridge the gap between the United States and the worldwide community of Muslim.” And the New York Times even said at the time that al-Awlaki was "held up as a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West." As al-Awlaki basked in the media's glow, a Pentagon official even invited the popular and charismatic preacher to a luncheon. But as al-Awlaki's true colors were eventually revealed, he found himself on America's terror hit list. On September 20, 2011, he was killed in a drone strike in Yemen.

The media all but ignored early warning signs about al-Awlaki. No matter that soon after 9/11, during a sermon in a mosque in the Washington, D.C., area, he had echoed a refrain heard among large swaths of supposedly moderate Muslims, at home and abroad. Specifically, al-Awlaki condemned the 9/11 attacks...but understood the reasons why. The conjunction “but” was then being used by more than a few Muslims in America – an attitude reflective of global surveys revealing the true feelings of large swaths of Muslims around the world. The clueless media never trumpeted this alarming fact.

Scattered public celebrations among handfuls of American Muslims -- watching the 9/11 attacks from New Jersey -- may well have occurred, even though the media is now determined to discredit such reports that Trump has made a campaign issue in his foot-in-the-mouth fashion. It certainly seems that Dan Rather felt there were celebrations, based on his assertion that there were “several reliable reports” of such cheering – though he added that CBS had not “confirmed” them, whatever that means.

Despite Trump's hyperbole, it's hardly farfetched to say that more than a few American Muslims -- thousands and perhaps millions -- had silently cheered the 9/11 attacks (or at least in their minds believed it was understandable or justified). Certainly, the 9/11 attacks where cheered by the American-hating soul mates of more than a few American Muslims: members of the hardline ideological left. Their most prominent spokesmen at the time included disgraced former University of Colorado ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill and his mini-me counterpart Robert Jensen, a University of Texas leftist journalism professor.

It's unfortunate that Trump's public statements are not more precise;. But he may be onto something worth considering now that the terror attacks in France and Europe seem increasingly likely to come to America.

A chilling tale. A Brooklyn boy predicted the WTC attacks. What's a jittery New York to do ?

10/12/2001 11:57:55 AM ET

Between the lines

Jonathan Alter

Oct. 12 — This week, I went to Brooklyn in search of an “urban myth” about the World Trade Center assault. Was word of the attack on the street before Sept. 11? What I found out was chilling—this story is no myth.

EVERYONE HAS HEARD the stories—the “friend of a friend” who was stood up by her Afghan boyfriend, who then told her in an e-mail not to get on a commercial jet on Sept. 11. The next-door neighbors of Middle Eastern descent who threw a raucous party on Sept. 10—and then were nowhere to be found the next day.
The story I was looking for had circulated less widely and in more general form. It recounted the story of a kid who bragged around school before the attacks that the World Trade Center was going to be destroyed. On Oct. 11, Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, an aggressive young reporter for The New York Journal News of Westchester County, N.Y., published an article that tracked the story to New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, N.Y. Shapiro identified a teacher who witnessed a freshman in her class saying the week prior to the World Trade Center attacks: “Do you see those two buildings? They won’t be standing there next week.”
“This is the only case we know of where someone said the World Trade Center was coming down prior to it happening,” a police source told me.
New Utrecht High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, is a wonderful melting pot. On Thursday, when I visited, two girls—one Chinese, one Russian—sat poring over SAT prep material near polling booths set up for the New York City mayoral runoff. I heard at least three languages spoken I couldn’t even begin to identify. With 116 students from Pakistan, the school offers courses in Urdu.
Bensonhurst has changed immeasurably since the days of black versus white racial confrontation in the 1980s. Immigrants, many of whom speak little English, far outnumber native speakers on the streets. The restaurants and shops offer food from dozens of countries.
Since Sept. 11, hundreds of calls have poured into the local police precinct, but real incidents have been few. Someone tried to throw a Molotov cocktail into a mosque, but it hit a canopy pole of the building instead and did little damage. Reports that Arab immigrants had been cheering at a local supermarket after the towers collapsed (a frequent rumor around the country) were investigated and turned out to be false. So were the dozens of rumors of Arabs mysteriously disappearing from their homes just before the attack.
The police say they have been working closely with two of the three mosques in the area. One is run by an Irishman who converted to Islam and became an imam, the other by a baggage handler for American Airlines. This latter fact, not surprisingly, aroused a great interest at first. His friends in the community thought he might lose his job. But the imam is backed by the airline and remains close to the police in the area. “I feel sorry for the dark-skinned people in the neighborhood,” says a police officer. “They’ve done nothing wrong, and most have been cooperative.”
It’s that context that makes the story of the Pakistani freshman so strange. I can’t tell you who filled in the details for me; the heat is on, and the FBI is particularly jumpy. Both teacher and student have, with the help of the school, successfully ducked all efforts to contact them. But here’s what I’ve pieced together:
On Sept. 6—five days before the attack—Antoinette DiLorenzo, who teaches English as a second language to a class of Pakistani immigrants, led a class discussion about world events. She asked a freshman (his name has been withheld): “What are you looking at?” The youth was peering out the third-floor window toward lower Manhattan. After he made the remark about the World Trade Center not being there next week, the teacher didn’t immediately think much of it, though it stuck in her mind.
On Sept. 11, school was canceled after the attack and again the following day. On Thursday, Sept. 13, a clearly agitated DiLorenzo, saying she had been afraid to come forward, reported the incident to the principal’s office. “It scared the hell out of everyone,” according to a source at the school.
The police and FBI were alerted and 12 NYPD officers entered the school and secured DiLorenzo’s classroom for three hours, locking the doors with the students inside. While the students were brought lunch and a movie and told to be calm, the youth in question and his older brother, a sophomore, were taken to be interrogated by the FBI, stationed at the police precinct nearby.
DiLorenzo, the key to the believability of this story, was also questioned. She was described by school officials as having a superb and unblemished record in the New York school system. A police source described her as “100 percent credible.”
Moreover, according to police, the youth confirmed having made the Sept. 6 statement about the towers. At the moment he did so, his older brother elbowed him, said he had been “kidding,” and the youth in question agreed. The younger brother seemed upset and said he was “having a bad day.” When asked why, he said that his father was supposed to come back from Pakistan that day. Further details of the interrogation are unclear, in part because the FBI is not discussing it.
Because of the suspension of air travel, it took the father a few days to return. About a week after Sept. 11, the father visited the school and angrily asked why his sons had been interrogated by the authorities. He said that his family’s constitutional rights had been violated.
Having done nothing wrong beyond spreading a rumor that turned out to be true, the student was returned to his classroom. He remains in the school.
The FBI placed the boy’s family under surveillance but, according to sources, does not see a connection to the plot to blow up the towers. The case remains under investigation, but with thousands of leads, it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.
So what to make of all of this? There is no doubt in my mind that the story is true. But what does it mean?
There are only three possibilities. One, the youth was clairvoyant. Two, the youth, knowing about the 1993 bombing, was just venting anger in a particularly timely way. Three, word of the attack on the World Trade Center was rumored in his neighborhood and he heard about it.
Investigators don’t know what to believe. “It’s creepy,” one told me before I got on the subway to go back to the office. “But what the hell are we going to do about it now?”