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  • johnpi 10:50 am on December 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , media frenzy, ,

    Pakistani police lend hype to the media frenzy, engage in wild speculation about a “big attack” and “ultra radicals.”

    “One of the possibilities (is the air force base [in Sargodha, where they were arrested]) but I really don’t think so. The attack was something more acute and bigger,” Anwar said.

    If there was a Walmart in Sargodha, we’d be speculating about whether they were planning to attack it.

    Also, way at the bottom of the story: The police chief said that the men claimed they came to Pakistan because “they were about to look for a girl, to get married.” That’s fair and balanced.

     
  • johnpi 10:38 am on December 10, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , media frenzy, , , , , , , ,

    Headlines going sensational on the Pakistan 5 arrest.

    USA Today: “Pakistan police: Five Americans have al-Qaeda link.”

    Reuters: “Americans held in Pakistan ‘wanted to join holy war.’”

    There’s no new information here. Just more alarmist quotes and headlines.

    I’m sure the evening news will be quite a spectacle tonight with spinning graphics, bombastic music, moving photos and file film of training militants to go along with the breathless glower.

    I wonder which ‘experts on American Muslims’ will be on the shows….

     
  • johnpi 2:47 pm on October 29, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , media frenzy, ,

    The sensational media feeding frenzy around the death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah continues as news organizations around the country begin to make desperate, absurd efforts to “localize” the story by claiming Abdullah “had ties” to the local area if he has ever happened to pass through there.

    This is from a tv station out of Atlanta:

    Federal authorities in Detroit said the leader of a radical U.S. Sunni Islam group, whom Channel 2 has confirmed had ties to Atlanta, was killed in a shootout with federal agents.

    What are the “ties”?

    Channel 2 Action News investigative reporter Mark Winne said Abdullah had many friends and associates in Atlanta. Winne said Abdullah attended the opening ceremonies for an Islamic sports competition in 2007 in Atlanta’s West End area. Prominent Islamic leaders from around the country were also there.

    The result of this kind of ‘localization’ will be to heighten fear and mistrust of local Muslims, and will likely feed into new incidents of discrimination and hate crimes.

     
  • johnpi 12:45 pm on October 29, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , media frenzy, ,

    This media report from the Detroit Free Press so sensationalizes Luqman Ameen Abdullah’s past that it literally communicates that they were trying to arrest him for running a “Sunni Muslim group with the mission of establishing a separate Islamic nation within the United States.” It’s not until the sixth paragraph into the story that we find out the charges were not religion or terrorism related.

    Here’s the first graphs:

    After a 2-year investigation, FBI agents descended on a Dearborn warehouse Wednesday hoping to capture the suspected head of an Islamic fundamentalist group.

    The scene quickly turned chaotic, however, in a shootout that caused agents to gun down Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, leader of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit. Abdullah is accused in a federal complaint of heading a Sunni Muslim group with the mission of establishing a separate Islamic nation within the United States.

    Eleven other men were criminally charged in the raids, which also occurred in Detroit.

    Abdullah, known to some as Christopher Thomas, died after firing on officers during the raid, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. An FBI dog also was fatally wounded.

    The suspects “are members of a group that is alleged to have engaged in violent activity over a period of many years and known to be armed,” a joint statement from the Detroit FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

    Does anybody know what ‘violent activity’ that “Ummah” as a group has been involved in? WIkipedia has no entry for the “group,” but there is a paragraph on it in H Rap Brown’s entry, and there is no mention of any violent incidents that the “group” has committed.

     
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