By JEREMY OLSON, Star Tribune
Poverty and joblessness rose sharply in many Twin Cities suburbs last year, according to U.S. census estimates released Tuesday, along with a rise in what advocates call the "new poor'' -- families whose financial stability has crumbled in the economic recession.
In Anoka County, for example, the unemployment rate shot up to 6.8 percent in 2009 from 3.3 percent in 2008. Child poverty in Dakota County more than doubled, to 8.2 percent in 2009, while the rate of uninsured residents increased in Washington County from 5 percent in 2008 to 6.7 percent in 2009.
While the suburbs' numbers may be lower than those in Minneapolis and St. Paul -- urban cores accustomed to battling poverty -- their increases from 2008 to 2009 are what struck many population experts.
"Now poverty is reaching up and snatching people down into it," said Robert Odom, president of Minneapolis-based Love Inc., which mobilizes churches to confront social problems in their communities. "They were pretty secure, living the American dream, and now it's been snatched from them."
The new census data also showed increases in the number of adults who have never married, and a decline in the number of women who gave birth. State Demographer Tom Gillaspy said both are hallmarks of the recession and its impact on people's life choices.
In the big picture, Minnesota remains among the most prosperous and healthy states in the nation, Gillaspy said. However, the data show that the recession and the wave of job cuts that started in 2008 did hurt the state in 2009.
According to the census figures: Minnesota's median household income fell from an inflation-adjusted $56,767 in 2008 to $55,616 in 2009. The state's share of manufacturing jobs continued to slide. The rate of adults without jobs rose from 3.5 percent in 2008 to 5.8 percent in 2009.
The state also saw its rate of residents without health insurance increase from 8.4 percent in 2008 to 9.1 percent in 2009. Only Minnesota and Alaska showed statistically significant increases.
Suburban counties are "moving from a very prosperous kind of attitude to one of very great concern," Gillaspy said. "If you're living out there, even if you have a job, you're going to notice people around you who are losing their jobs or losing their homes."
Advocates for the homeless said more suburban families are coming to urban homeless shelters. Families in Anoka found it so difficult to secure beds in downtown Minneapolis that area churches are now sheltering some of them. The street outreach coordinator for St. Stephen's Human Services in Minneapolis said she has responded to calls of homeless families living in cars in retail parking lots in Edina and Plymouth, and a woods in Minnetonka.
While the census data are a year old, the trends appear to be continuing into 2010, even though the recession technically ended last year.
Anoka County saw a 41 percent increase in food assistance cases from January to July this year. Many families that lost jobs in 2008 benefited from the federal economic stimulus package, which extended unemployment benefits. Now those extended benefits have run out, said Edna Hoium, a veteran social services administrator in Anoka County.
"I would say this is as bad as it's been. It's certainly a longer duration," she said. "It does appear to me to have hit a higher number of people who have never been in our system before."
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Gubernatorial candidates debate education
STAR/TRIBUNE
Republican Tom Emmer and Independence Party candidate Tom Horner went on the offensive during Thursday's gubernatorial debate on education, attacking Education Minnesota, the state teachers union, and its choice for governor, DFL candidate Mark Dayton.
Though all three candidates agreed that effective teachers and principals are key to improving education, they differed significantly over how to keep good educators in schools, flush out bad ones and fund needed reforms.
Emmer said that when he talks with business and higher education leaders, he hears a common theme: "We're not producing what we have to out of our K-12 system." Horner and Emmer called for change in the state's teacher tenure system, one of the most hotly debated issues in education.
Despite pressure to consider such change, Education Minnesota has clung tightly to tenure, which affords teachers great protections after a three-year probationary period.
Dayton, who has the union's endorsement, agreed that banishing "bad teachers and bad principals" is key, but argued that wholesale change is not necessary. He'd opt to use a scalpel rather than a saw to refine the law, he said.
Emmer also pledged to support alternative-teacher licensure, another proposal that Education Minnesota has opposed. Supporters of alternative licensure are pushing for quicker, more direct methods of getting more people without teaching degrees into classrooms, especially in subjects where there are teacher shortages such as science, math and world languages.
Horner accused Emmer of double-talk on early childhood education, saying that he had voted against funding for such programs. Emmer referred to a single vote on the issue as a snapshot of his record.
"A six-year record isn't a snapshot; it's a motion picture," Horner shot back.
Dayton attacked Emmer's plan to deny education funding increases for the next two years, arguing that his stance would continue the trend of underfunding public education.
With the state's growing student population, Emmer's plan to hold funding "harmless" by not increasing or decreasing it, would actually do more harm than good, Dayton said, by not adjusting for inflation. "This is an investment in the future of our state," he said.
In his closing statement, Emmer made his platform clear: He believes that more spending won't solve the problems. "Politicians have been making promises my whole life," he said. "This is about recognizing that we have limited resources."
Republican Tom Emmer and Independence Party candidate Tom Horner went on the offensive during Thursday's gubernatorial debate on education, attacking Education Minnesota, the state teachers union, and its choice for governor, DFL candidate Mark Dayton.
Though all three candidates agreed that effective teachers and principals are key to improving education, they differed significantly over how to keep good educators in schools, flush out bad ones and fund needed reforms.
Emmer said that when he talks with business and higher education leaders, he hears a common theme: "We're not producing what we have to out of our K-12 system." Horner and Emmer called for change in the state's teacher tenure system, one of the most hotly debated issues in education.
Despite pressure to consider such change, Education Minnesota has clung tightly to tenure, which affords teachers great protections after a three-year probationary period.
Dayton, who has the union's endorsement, agreed that banishing "bad teachers and bad principals" is key, but argued that wholesale change is not necessary. He'd opt to use a scalpel rather than a saw to refine the law, he said.
Emmer also pledged to support alternative-teacher licensure, another proposal that Education Minnesota has opposed. Supporters of alternative licensure are pushing for quicker, more direct methods of getting more people without teaching degrees into classrooms, especially in subjects where there are teacher shortages such as science, math and world languages.
Horner accused Emmer of double-talk on early childhood education, saying that he had voted against funding for such programs. Emmer referred to a single vote on the issue as a snapshot of his record.
"A six-year record isn't a snapshot; it's a motion picture," Horner shot back.
Dayton attacked Emmer's plan to deny education funding increases for the next two years, arguing that his stance would continue the trend of underfunding public education.
With the state's growing student population, Emmer's plan to hold funding "harmless" by not increasing or decreasing it, would actually do more harm than good, Dayton said, by not adjusting for inflation. "This is an investment in the future of our state," he said.
In his closing statement, Emmer made his platform clear: He believes that more spending won't solve the problems. "Politicians have been making promises my whole life," he said. "This is about recognizing that we have limited resources."
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Despite Setback, Gay Rights Move Forward
NEW YORK TIMES
Efforts that could lead to a reversal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibits openly gay soldiers from serving in the military may have stalled in the United States Senate, but the legal fight is advancing in the federal courts along with other important gay rights litigation.
In addition to the military policy, two laws restricting gay rights — the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the California ban on same-sex marriage — have been declared unconstitutional by federal judges in recent months.
The three recent decisions on gay rights issues suggest that federal judges are increasingly willing to strike down what they see as antigay bias embodied in legislation, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at the University of California, Irvine. “Federal judges are no longer persuaded that a moral condemnation of homosexuality justifies government discrimination,” he said.
The path ahead for the litigation in all three cases is long, difficult to predict and risky, legal experts say. The ultimate question is whether a majority of justices on the United States Supreme Court will agree with the district court judges’ interpretation of the court’s own rulings in cases like Lawrence v. Texas, a case that struck down a state sodomy law.
In the 6-to-3 majority opinion in Lawrence, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote of due process rights associated with “autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression and certain intimate conduct.”
While Justice Kennedy argued that the decision did “not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter,” Justice Antonin Scalia angrily predicted in dissent that the majority opinion would, in fact, justify homosexual marriage.
To Richard Epstein, a libertarian legal scholar at New York University, the logic of the Kennedy opinion in Lawrence inexorably leads to a grant of rights against discrimination. “There’s just no way, once you start down that road, that you’re going to get off of it,” he said. “If you can’t criminalize it, you can’t discriminate against it.”
While saying that he is “no seer,” he predicted that if the three cases made their way to the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy would ultimately write majority opinions that upheld the three recent district court opinions.
The district court judges are reflecting an increasingly obvious shift in public opinion, said Andrew Koppelman, a professor of law at Northwestern University. “The gay rights movement has been a spectacularly successful movement for cultural change,” he said. “A few decades ago these people were cultural pariahs. It was taken for granted that gay people are mentally ill, contaminated and unclean. Now the cultural valence has flipped — it is that view of gay people which is itself stigmatized.”
As life-tenured appointees, judges can look beyond politics to posterity, Professor Koppelman said. “Right now it seems like a good bet that if you are friendly to gay rights claims,” he said, “future generations will honor you for that.”
President Obama has had an effect as well, said Jennifer Pizer, director of the national marriage project of the Western regional office of Lamba Legal, a public interest legal group for gay issues. Activists have criticized the president for the Justice Department’s defense of the federal laws being challenged, but he has also urged the repeal of laws that discriminate against gay men and lesbians.
“Having the president repeatedly say these rules discriminate and cause harm — so the discussion shifts to choice of processes for removing them rather than justifying them — seems to have changed the discussion,” she said.
On that, Ms. Pizer and Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, agree, though he deplores the trend. “I think he’s creating an environment in which the courts feel comfortable pushing the envelope with these decisions,” Mr. Perkins said.
Efforts that could lead to a reversal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibits openly gay soldiers from serving in the military may have stalled in the United States Senate, but the legal fight is advancing in the federal courts along with other important gay rights litigation.
In addition to the military policy, two laws restricting gay rights — the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the California ban on same-sex marriage — have been declared unconstitutional by federal judges in recent months.
The three recent decisions on gay rights issues suggest that federal judges are increasingly willing to strike down what they see as antigay bias embodied in legislation, said Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at the University of California, Irvine. “Federal judges are no longer persuaded that a moral condemnation of homosexuality justifies government discrimination,” he said.
The path ahead for the litigation in all three cases is long, difficult to predict and risky, legal experts say. The ultimate question is whether a majority of justices on the United States Supreme Court will agree with the district court judges’ interpretation of the court’s own rulings in cases like Lawrence v. Texas, a case that struck down a state sodomy law.
In the 6-to-3 majority opinion in Lawrence, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote of due process rights associated with “autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression and certain intimate conduct.”
While Justice Kennedy argued that the decision did “not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter,” Justice Antonin Scalia angrily predicted in dissent that the majority opinion would, in fact, justify homosexual marriage.
To Richard Epstein, a libertarian legal scholar at New York University, the logic of the Kennedy opinion in Lawrence inexorably leads to a grant of rights against discrimination. “There’s just no way, once you start down that road, that you’re going to get off of it,” he said. “If you can’t criminalize it, you can’t discriminate against it.”
While saying that he is “no seer,” he predicted that if the three cases made their way to the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy would ultimately write majority opinions that upheld the three recent district court opinions.
The district court judges are reflecting an increasingly obvious shift in public opinion, said Andrew Koppelman, a professor of law at Northwestern University. “The gay rights movement has been a spectacularly successful movement for cultural change,” he said. “A few decades ago these people were cultural pariahs. It was taken for granted that gay people are mentally ill, contaminated and unclean. Now the cultural valence has flipped — it is that view of gay people which is itself stigmatized.”
As life-tenured appointees, judges can look beyond politics to posterity, Professor Koppelman said. “Right now it seems like a good bet that if you are friendly to gay rights claims,” he said, “future generations will honor you for that.”
President Obama has had an effect as well, said Jennifer Pizer, director of the national marriage project of the Western regional office of Lamba Legal, a public interest legal group for gay issues. Activists have criticized the president for the Justice Department’s defense of the federal laws being challenged, but he has also urged the repeal of laws that discriminate against gay men and lesbians.
“Having the president repeatedly say these rules discriminate and cause harm — so the discussion shifts to choice of processes for removing them rather than justifying them — seems to have changed the discussion,” she said.
On that, Ms. Pizer and Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, agree, though he deplores the trend. “I think he’s creating an environment in which the courts feel comfortable pushing the envelope with these decisions,” Mr. Perkins said.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Afghan elections marked by violence, low turnouts and fraud
FERMOYLE'S NOTE: We have forces in Afghanistan that are trying to help the government there gain control, because we don't want to see the Taliban take over again. (The Taliban sheltered Al Qaeda before and after they planned 9/11.) There are grave concerns, however, that the government we are trying to help is corrupt and incompetent and will be unable to ever gain support of the people there.
NEW YORK TIMES
By ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: September 18, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — Hundreds of polling stations either closed or came under attack and at least 10 civilians were killed in Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections on Saturday, even as officials insisted the vote was generally safe nationwide.
The city of Kandahar seemed particularly hard hit. Explosions were heard every half hour through the morning, and 31 rockets were fired by insurgents, according to an intelligence official there, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. Kandahar Gov. Tooryalai Wesa toured polling places to encourage voters to turn out, but his own convoy was hit by a roadside bomb, slightly damaging his armored car but hurting no one.
Nationwide, authorities could only confirm that 92 percent of the planned 5,816 polling centers had opened as planned, and no word had been heard from the other 8 percent, raising concerns that security conditions had forced them to close, according to the Independent Election Commission. The commission had previously canceled about 1,000 polling centers because the authorities could not secure them.
Halfway through the voting day, even in a safe neighborhood of downtown Kabul, only 150 men and 130 women had cast their ballots at the Naderia High School. But there was little violence in the capital, and late in the day, long lines began to form at some of the centers around the city.
Outside the capital, in the rural Guldara District in Kabul Province, village polling places were lightly attended. And in one spot, only four women voted, other than official election observers. In the more populated district center, however, 650 people, including 150 women, had voted, and others were streaming in an hour before polls closed at 4 p.m.
In Kandahar, the Taliban papered the city with nightletters on the eve of the election, warning people not to vote in “Americanized elections” and that anyone doing so would be a target.
In Dand District just outside the city, polling places set aside for women had not received a single voter, although several hundred men had cast ballots. In the center of the city, another women’s polling center had attracted only 23 voters in the morning.
Kandahar is the traditional stronghold of the Taliban where NATO and Afghan forces have stepped up military operations recently.
Those who did vote in Kandahar were nervous. “I am so scared to come to the polling station,” said Shafiqa, 49, “my family insisted I not come, but I have to because this is my country and I want to use my vote for someone I like.”
In Kunduz Province, northern Afghanistan, 16 civilians were injured during election-related violence, some while casting their votes and others in their homes when rockets were fired into them by insurgents. A statement posted on a pro-Taliban website claimed the insurgents had attacked more than 100 polling centers.
However, the Afghan monitoring organization, the Free and Fair Elections Foundation, said generally the elections were safe. “Though there were numerous attacks, none were severe enough to disrupt voting on a wide scale,” F.E.F.A. said in a statement.
There were numerous accounts of fraud.
In the first reported instance of fraud, a woman who worked for the I.E.C. in Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, was arrested with 1,500 fake voter registration cards, according to Dawood Ahmadi, the spokesman for the Helmand governor’s office. He said the employee, whom he did not name, was the daughter of a female candidate, Habiba Sadat.
In Paktika Province, a man was arrested for trying to use 1,600 fake voter registration cards on behalf of a parliamentary candidate, Rahmatullah Wahid Yar, according to Rohullah Samoon, the spokesman for the governor.
At a polling center at the Ghazi Khan High School in Kunduz city, journalists and election observers watched as I.E.C. officials and supporters of some of the candidates locked the doors for two hours and filled out ballots themselves.
F.E.F.A. also said that in nearly 3,000 polling centers — about half of the total — its monitors discovered that the ink used to mark voters’ fingers to prevent repeated voting was easily washed off, even though it was supposed to have been indelible.
NEW YORK TIMES
By ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: September 18, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — Hundreds of polling stations either closed or came under attack and at least 10 civilians were killed in Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections on Saturday, even as officials insisted the vote was generally safe nationwide.
The city of Kandahar seemed particularly hard hit. Explosions were heard every half hour through the morning, and 31 rockets were fired by insurgents, according to an intelligence official there, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. Kandahar Gov. Tooryalai Wesa toured polling places to encourage voters to turn out, but his own convoy was hit by a roadside bomb, slightly damaging his armored car but hurting no one.
Nationwide, authorities could only confirm that 92 percent of the planned 5,816 polling centers had opened as planned, and no word had been heard from the other 8 percent, raising concerns that security conditions had forced them to close, according to the Independent Election Commission. The commission had previously canceled about 1,000 polling centers because the authorities could not secure them.
Halfway through the voting day, even in a safe neighborhood of downtown Kabul, only 150 men and 130 women had cast their ballots at the Naderia High School. But there was little violence in the capital, and late in the day, long lines began to form at some of the centers around the city.
Outside the capital, in the rural Guldara District in Kabul Province, village polling places were lightly attended. And in one spot, only four women voted, other than official election observers. In the more populated district center, however, 650 people, including 150 women, had voted, and others were streaming in an hour before polls closed at 4 p.m.
In Kandahar, the Taliban papered the city with nightletters on the eve of the election, warning people not to vote in “Americanized elections” and that anyone doing so would be a target.
In Dand District just outside the city, polling places set aside for women had not received a single voter, although several hundred men had cast ballots. In the center of the city, another women’s polling center had attracted only 23 voters in the morning.
Kandahar is the traditional stronghold of the Taliban where NATO and Afghan forces have stepped up military operations recently.
Those who did vote in Kandahar were nervous. “I am so scared to come to the polling station,” said Shafiqa, 49, “my family insisted I not come, but I have to because this is my country and I want to use my vote for someone I like.”
In Kunduz Province, northern Afghanistan, 16 civilians were injured during election-related violence, some while casting their votes and others in their homes when rockets were fired into them by insurgents. A statement posted on a pro-Taliban website claimed the insurgents had attacked more than 100 polling centers.
However, the Afghan monitoring organization, the Free and Fair Elections Foundation, said generally the elections were safe. “Though there were numerous attacks, none were severe enough to disrupt voting on a wide scale,” F.E.F.A. said in a statement.
There were numerous accounts of fraud.
In the first reported instance of fraud, a woman who worked for the I.E.C. in Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, was arrested with 1,500 fake voter registration cards, according to Dawood Ahmadi, the spokesman for the Helmand governor’s office. He said the employee, whom he did not name, was the daughter of a female candidate, Habiba Sadat.
In Paktika Province, a man was arrested for trying to use 1,600 fake voter registration cards on behalf of a parliamentary candidate, Rahmatullah Wahid Yar, according to Rohullah Samoon, the spokesman for the governor.
At a polling center at the Ghazi Khan High School in Kunduz city, journalists and election observers watched as I.E.C. officials and supporters of some of the candidates locked the doors for two hours and filled out ballots themselves.
F.E.F.A. also said that in nearly 3,000 polling centers — about half of the total — its monitors discovered that the ink used to mark voters’ fingers to prevent repeated voting was easily washed off, even though it was supposed to have been indelible.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Obama Declares an End to Combat Mission in Iraq
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared an end on two weeks ago to the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq, saying that the United States has met its responsibility to that country and that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home.
In a prime-time address from the Oval Office, Mr. Obama balanced praise for the troops who fought and died in Iraq with his conviction that getting into the conflict had been a mistake in the first place.
“We have sent our young men and women to make enormous sacrifices in Iraq, and spent vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home,” Mr. Obama said. “Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.”
Seeking to temper partisan feelings over the war on a day when Republicans pointed out that Mr. Obama had opposed the troop surge generally credited with helping to bring Iraq a measure of stability, the president offered some praise for his predecessor, George W. Bush. Mr. Obama acknowledged their disagreement over Iraq but said that no one could doubt Mr. Bush’s “support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.”
Mr. Obama spoke for about 18 minutes, saying that violence would continue in Iraq and that the United States would continue to play a key role in nurturing a stable democracy there. He celebrated America’s fighting forces as “the steel in our ship of state,” and pledged not to waver in the fight against Al Qaeda.
Over the last decade, “we have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas,” he said. “And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy and grit and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad.”
The United States still has 49,700 soldiers in Iraq. That is less than a third of the number of troops in Iraq during the surge in 2007. Under an agreement between Iraq and the United States, the remaining troops are to leave by the end of 2011, though some Iraqi and American officials say they think that the agreement may be renegotiated to allow for a longer American military presence.
The remaining “advise and assist” brigades will officially concentrate on supporting and training Iraqi security forces, protecting American personnel and facilities, and mounting counterterrorism operations.
In a prime-time address from the Oval Office, Mr. Obama balanced praise for the troops who fought and died in Iraq with his conviction that getting into the conflict had been a mistake in the first place.
“We have sent our young men and women to make enormous sacrifices in Iraq, and spent vast resources abroad at a time of tight budgets at home,” Mr. Obama said. “Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.”
Seeking to temper partisan feelings over the war on a day when Republicans pointed out that Mr. Obama had opposed the troop surge generally credited with helping to bring Iraq a measure of stability, the president offered some praise for his predecessor, George W. Bush. Mr. Obama acknowledged their disagreement over Iraq but said that no one could doubt Mr. Bush’s “support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.”
Mr. Obama spoke for about 18 minutes, saying that violence would continue in Iraq and that the United States would continue to play a key role in nurturing a stable democracy there. He celebrated America’s fighting forces as “the steel in our ship of state,” and pledged not to waver in the fight against Al Qaeda.
Over the last decade, “we have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas,” he said. “And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy and grit and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad.”
The United States still has 49,700 soldiers in Iraq. That is less than a third of the number of troops in Iraq during the surge in 2007. Under an agreement between Iraq and the United States, the remaining troops are to leave by the end of 2011, though some Iraqi and American officials say they think that the agreement may be renegotiated to allow for a longer American military presence.
The remaining “advise and assist” brigades will officially concentrate on supporting and training Iraqi security forces, protecting American personnel and facilities, and mounting counterterrorism operations.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Planned Koran Burning Draws International Scorn
NEW YORK TIMES
The international outcry over a tiny Florida congregation’s plan to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11 intensified on Thursday, drawing vocal condemnations from world leaders and touching off angry protests in corners of the Muslim world.
Officials in Muslim countries urged restraint, seeking to head off any violent reactions if the Florida church goes ahead with its plans to set fire to several copies of the Koran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks this Saturday.
Meanwhile, President Obama joined a litany of high-ranking American officials to condemn the Koran burning, saying that the act, amplified by a global media, could put American troops at risk and fan anger against the United States. Mr. Obama called the planned event “a destructive act” and said it would be a “recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda.”
American embassies and consulates were reviewing their security policies, and several diplomatic missions in the Muslim world posted statements prominently on their Web sites condemning the planned event. The State Department issued a travel alert on Thursday saying the burning could catalyze violent anti-American demonstrations.
In 2005, violent protests erupted in Afghanistan and Pakistan world after Newsweek published report — one it later retracted — saying that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a Koran down the toilet. At least 17 deaths were blamed on the riots.
Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida who is at the center of the Koran uproar, has so far resisted calls to cancel the bonfire.
The relationship between the United States and the Muslim world, deeply strained by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been further aggravated in recent months by a furious debate over an Islamic group’s plans to build a community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site.
The president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, condemned the planned burning as despicable and said it could cause “irreparable damage to inter-faith harmony and also to world peace.” Leaders in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, and India urged President Obama to intervene.
But American officials have said they could do little to prevent the congregation from exercising its constitutional right to free speech.
In Nigeria, which has been wracked by violence between the predominately Muslim north and Christian south, President Goodluck Jonathan posted a message on his Facebook page saying that burning the Koran would “assault the sensibilities of our Muslim brothers and sisters.”
Addressing Mr. Jones, Mr. Jonathan wrote, “Be mindful of the Golden Rule taught by Jesus Christ: Do unto others as you would want others to do unto you.”
The French, British and German governments, all with troops serving in Afghanistan, have joined the condemnations.
The international outcry over a tiny Florida congregation’s plan to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11 intensified on Thursday, drawing vocal condemnations from world leaders and touching off angry protests in corners of the Muslim world.
Officials in Muslim countries urged restraint, seeking to head off any violent reactions if the Florida church goes ahead with its plans to set fire to several copies of the Koran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks this Saturday.
Meanwhile, President Obama joined a litany of high-ranking American officials to condemn the Koran burning, saying that the act, amplified by a global media, could put American troops at risk and fan anger against the United States. Mr. Obama called the planned event “a destructive act” and said it would be a “recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda.”
American embassies and consulates were reviewing their security policies, and several diplomatic missions in the Muslim world posted statements prominently on their Web sites condemning the planned event. The State Department issued a travel alert on Thursday saying the burning could catalyze violent anti-American demonstrations.
In 2005, violent protests erupted in Afghanistan and Pakistan world after Newsweek published report — one it later retracted — saying that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a Koran down the toilet. At least 17 deaths were blamed on the riots.
Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida who is at the center of the Koran uproar, has so far resisted calls to cancel the bonfire.
The relationship between the United States and the Muslim world, deeply strained by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been further aggravated in recent months by a furious debate over an Islamic group’s plans to build a community center two blocks from the World Trade Center site.
The president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, condemned the planned burning as despicable and said it could cause “irreparable damage to inter-faith harmony and also to world peace.” Leaders in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, and India urged President Obama to intervene.
But American officials have said they could do little to prevent the congregation from exercising its constitutional right to free speech.
In Nigeria, which has been wracked by violence between the predominately Muslim north and Christian south, President Goodluck Jonathan posted a message on his Facebook page saying that burning the Koran would “assault the sensibilities of our Muslim brothers and sisters.”
Addressing Mr. Jones, Mr. Jonathan wrote, “Be mindful of the Golden Rule taught by Jesus Christ: Do unto others as you would want others to do unto you.”
The French, British and German governments, all with troops serving in Afghanistan, have joined the condemnations.