Published: September 28, 2008 9:30 PM ET

NEW YORK The Oregonian today distributed to its Portland area subscribers, as paid advertising, the controversial DVD titled “Obsession” that raises alarms about the threat of radical Islam. It joined at least 75 other newspapers across the country in doing so — despite a plea by Portland Mayor Tom Potter and a coalition of community members.

The mayor’s office said he wrote to the publisher of the paper: “The Mayor reviewed the video and personally asked Fred Stickel, Oregonian publisher, not to distribute it in next Sunday’s issue. The Mayor felt that the tenor of the video contributes towards a climate of distrust towards Muslims that holds the entire Muslim community accountable for the actions of a dangerously misguided few. Distributing with the Oregonian lends the video an impression of objectivity and legitimacy it does not deserve.”

Some of the individuals or groups that have protested are calling for a 10 a.m. street protest outside the newspaper’s offices on Monday.

The Oregonian, like many other papers who had previously distributed the DVD (almost all of them in “swing states), carried an article explaining the move today. (E&P has chronicled this phenomenon for over two weeks.)

The report by Bill Graves revealed that Fred Stickel, publisher of The Oregonian, said the newspaper is treating the DVD as it does other paid advertising or product inserts.

“I’ve always felt we have an obligation to keep our advertising columns as open as possible,” said Stickel, after viewing the DVD. “Our acceptance of anything — our acceptance or rejection — does not depend on whether or not we agree with the content. . . . There is a principle of freedom of speech involved here. I could find no reason to reject this.”

Only a handful of newspapers have refused to distribute it.

Stickel said The Oregonian does not disclose how much the company is paid for advertising as a matter of policy. Here is an excerpt from the article.
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Masoud Kheirabadi, a Portland State University professor who teaches about Islam, viewed “Obsession” at The Oregonian’s request, and concluded, “It is a bad piece of propaganda.”

He said the work fails to provide historical context, blurs lines between violent Muslim extremists and the vast majority of Muslims, who oppose terrorism, and promotes division rather than understanding.

Islam sees itself as the culmination of the Jewish and Christian religious traditions — not at odds with them, he said. But the film says Islam teaches that it will destroy all other religions through Islamic jihad fighters.

“This is hate-mongering,” Kheirabadi said.

He says there’s no basis for an estimate made in the film by Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, a think tank focused on U.S. interests in the Middle East, that 10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam.

More than 30 local community leaders, clergy members, attorneys and groups, including Sho Dozono, past president of the Portland Japanese American Citizen’s League; David Leslie, executive director of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon; and Jan Abushakrah, co-president of the Institute for Christian-Muslim Understanding, wrote a letter to Stickel on Thursday asking the newspaper not to distribute “Obsession.”

By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:08:00 10/01/2008

MANILA, Philippines—This marriage between a Christian man and a Muslim woman works.

This is what Armand Nocum and Annora Sahia wish the Christians and Muslims in Mindanao, some of whom have difficulty living together, can learn from.

And now the couple want not only to show how they live together in harmony, but also hope to go beyond themselves and reach out to war-torn communities in one simple way—through books.

Specifically through the Books-4-Guns project, also known as the A-Book-Saya Group, which suggests the joy and enlightenment a book can bring to children who have known only strife.

But before the books there was food. And food, as people may well know, is a great pacifier, bonder, uniter—the way to go to assuage hunger and appease anger as well.

Armand, an ex-seminarian and a former reporter of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and Annora, a Tausug Muslim and a nurse, own the Satti Grill House. It is a small budget eatery in Ermita, Manila, and it serves food of Malaysian and Arabic origin indigenized by the predominantly Muslim communities of Zamboanga and Sulu.

The word “satti” is derived from the Southeast Asian “sate” or “satay.” The eatery Satti is also the name of a dish.

Satti’s bottled peanut sauce is now undergoing fine-tuning by the Department of Science and Technology. (The couple also have a stall at the SM Fairview Food Court plus other income-generating endeavors.)

Books, not guns

Armand grew up in Zamboanga City, and Annora, in Sulu.

“We plan to flood Mindanao with books and magazines, both old and new, in order to open the eyes of young Christians and Muslims there to the reality that they have a better future if they pick up a book rather than a gun,” he said, adding:

“We had a common childhood experience of seeing many guns, but we remember books to be very rare. It’s like you weren’t a full human being if you didn’t own a gun.

“If the books can stop even only one or two potential terrorists from bombing civilians, that would be fulfillment enough for us.”

Armand and Annora spoke with one voice: “What do we do to children who grew up thinking that the future depends on how they handle their guns? What do we do to children of war who grew up with guns, and not books? Kill them all?”

A variety of books have already been donated, Armand said.

These will be examined and classified, but he wishes that there were more books suited for the children of indigenous communities in Mindanao. (There are some available now, written and designed by writers and artists from such communities, courtesy of Pamulaan, but they are not easy and cheap to produce.)

Christian, Muslim weddings

Armand recalled seeing the fair Annora for the first time when he was a reporter for a Zamboanga paper.

Annora was then a student at the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Zamboanga.

He wooed her, but marriage was not immediate. She left for Kuwait while he moved to Manila and joined the Inquirer.

For the two of them, religion was not a big issue, but for some relatives it was. To make a long story short, when Annora came home in 1995, the two decided to tie the knot.

They had a Christian wedding (with Fr. Angel Calvo, a Claretian, officiating) and later a Muslim wedding (with an ustadz presiding) on Oct. 7, 1995.

Calvo, a Spanish Catholic missionary and known peace advocate, assured the couple it was all right for them to be husband and wife.

“I was a Claretian seminarian,” Armand said. “Fr. Rhoel Gallardo, who was kidnapped and killed by the Abu Sayyaf, was my fellow seminarian.”

Pain-filled years

Not too long after the wedding, Annora left again for Kuwait, where she worked as an operating-room nurse. “I wanted to earn a little more,” she said.

She did not know she was pregnant when she left. Their elder daughter, Arizza Ann, now 13, was born in Kuwait.

Annora came home with the baby but left again shortly. Armand continued to work as a reporter. Arizza was left in the care of Armand’s brother and sister-in-law.

“Those were pain-filled years,” Armand recalled. “I lived in a rented, rat-infested room and went to work in a beat-up motorcycle. But those years of saving up paid off.”

After a total of five years in Kuwait, Annora came home to stay. Their second daughter, Ashia Marie, was born eight years ago.

Ashia studies at Holy Spirit School, a school run by Catholic nuns, in Fairview, Quezon City. Arizza also studied there and graduated valedictorian. She is now enrolled at Philippine Science High School.

It will be up to his daughters to choose their religion when they come of age, Armand said. For now, they are exposed to the Christian and Muslim faiths as practiced respectively by their father and mother.

Peace and unity

Early in the marriage, Annora, with her good business instinct and Armand backing her all the way, started a car exchange business that expanded in no time.

Armand stayed on in journalism until 2006.

With their small businesses thriving, the couple now want to spend their energies on something else—peace and unity.

“Through food, we can break down the wall of bias that some of us Christians have put up,” Armand said.

“Muslim food appreciation may bring respect of the Muslim religion, culture and norms. We are happy that in our food outlets, Christians and Muslims are coming together to break bread daily,” he said.

However, Armand said with a sigh, “the recent outbreak of war in parts of Mindanao has shown us that we should do more than offer food.”

This is why, Armand said, he and Annora decided on the Books-4-Guns project and adopted the A-Book-Saya catchphrase to counter the damage that the Abu Sayyaf was doing to the image of Muslims in general.

Jolted out of comfort zone

The book project had long been there, but he did not push it hard enough, Armand admitted.

“Then the MILF-MOA brouhaha jolted me out of my comfort zone,” he said, referring to the scrapping in August of the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which had caused a resurgence of violence. “This time there is no turning back.”

Armand said he was “willing to sacrifice time, money and comfort” to keep the book project going—and thriving.

“When we stay silent we are contributing to the loss of innocence, dreams and hopes of the Muslim and Christian children being marched off to war as child soldiers,” he said.

“Today they may appear distant and fragile, like toy soldiers, but 10 years from now, these children will become deadly bombers and make us pay for our indifference and neglect of their miserable lives in Mindanao.”

The systems and structures of the project have yet to be put up, but Armand hopes that things will fall into place with the help of like-minded citizens in Mindanao and elsewhere.

“I nurtured this dream for more than 20 years,” he said. “Annora and I hope to show young Muslims that we care for them. We want to saturate schools and day-care centers in Zamboanga, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi with books in order to make young Muslims realize that there is greater hope in knowledge than in the barrel of a gun.”

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. publisher of a controversial novel about the prophet Muhammad closed its offices as a “precautionary action,” but emphasized that no threats had been received and that “The Jewel of Medina” would be released as planned.

“We were out of the office for a meeting today, and we felt it was unfair for the employees to be back there without management,” Eric Kampmann, president of Beaufort Books, said Monday. The publisher took on Sherry Jones’ novel after it was dropped by Random House Inc. over security concerns.

In London, police said they arrested three men Saturday on suspicion of terror links, relating to a fire at the home and office of publisher Martin Rynja, whose Gibson Square announced earlier this month that it would issue “The Jewel of Medina,” a fictionalized version of Muhammad and his child bride, Aisha.

Beaufort, the publisher that issued O.J. Simpson’s reviled, once-rejected “If I Did It,” plans to release “Jewel of Medina” on Oct. 15, with a first printing of 50,000.

As of Monday afternoon, the book was No. 204 on Amazon.com. Barnes & Noble Inc. and Borders Group Inc. will both stock the book in stores, according to spokeswomen for the superstore chains.

Kampmann said he has discussed possible security arrangements with the FBI and New York City police, but added that nothing was planned and that there were no immediate worries about safety.

Random House was supposed to publish Jones’ novel in August, but pulled it after determining that Muslims would be offended by its subject matter. The publisher acknowledged that it received no specific threats, saying in a statement that “credible and unrelated sources” had warned that the book “could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.”

Empire State Building, the tallest one here after the destruction of the World Trade Center during the September 11, 2001, attacks, would shine in green today and tomorrow to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr.

This is for the second year in a row that the world famous monument is exhibiting the colour to mark the Muslim religious festival. The building also celebrates Christmas and Hanukah, a Jewish festival.

The building’s tower lights are known for celebrating different nationalities, holidays, events of global importance and parades.

During the India Day Parade, which is taken out in Manhattan during August, the building sports the colours of the Indian flag.

The 1454-foot building houses hundreds of offices and is known as the ‘world’s most famous office building.’

POSTED: 04:00 AM PDT Tuesday, September 30, 2008
BY TYLER GRAF

It’s become clear that the Pacific Northwest is leading the way in sustainable building design and urban planning in the U.S. Now an advocacy and education organization, the Congress for the New Urbanism, has taken notice and intends to get involved.

The Chicago-based organization will soon open a regional “Cascadia” chapter, with branches in Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C.

The 20-year-old CNU works to promote and facilitate the tenets of new urbanism. For the built environment, this means constructing walkable cities with ample green space and public transportation.

“A lot of people in the Northwest are transplants from elsewhere, so we thought we’d come here and expand ourselves as well,” CNU spokesperson Lauren Hauck said.

With the formation of the organization’s Cascadia chapter, Hauck said the short-term goals of the CNU include getting developers, architects and city planners to become members, and getting government officials to institute new urbanism concepts.

Long-term goals for the organization include bringing its national convention to the Pacific Northwest in 2011.

It’s unlikely the organization will set up shop in Portland until later this year. It plans to file for nonprofit tax status at the end of October.

“Most of our initial programs will focus on educating people on what new urbanism is,” Hauck said.

As a concept, new urbanism arose in the 1980s in Florida, when fast-developing midsized cities were looking to create community hubs that were easy for pedestrians to navigate. Many of the early new urbanistic developments were cities, suburbs or exurbs designed and built from scratch, said Hauck.

But in the already-established city of Portland, the nascent organization is expected to support the city’s existing sustainable building services, according to Ralph DiNola, a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design consultant and principal with Green Building Services.

“They’re going to bring a welcome perspective to urban planning,” DiNola said, “especially when it comes to the edges of the city where there’s underdeveloped or undeveloped land. There will be a focus on the smaller nodes and communities.”

The Congress of the New Urbanism will also be promoting the concept of LEED for Neighborhood Development, or simply LEED-ND, which the organization created in conjunction with the U.S. Green Building Council.

The new designation promotes dense residential clusters, based around public transportation, located near city centers and typically developed on infill sites.

Though it’s still in its pilot phase, LEED-ND certification has been awarded to two Portland projects: The Eliot Tower and Helensview Homes.

“As we start broadening our view of green buildings and we start saying, ‘It’s not just about one building at a time but rather about building green communities,’ we need to look at how we build communities,” DiNola said. “There’s only so much we can do with one single building.”

Ten Oregon cities have been invited to participate in the Oregon Main Street Program, part of a national program that works to design, promote and economically restructure downtown commercial districts.

The three-level program is administered by the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department. The program levels include Exploring Downtown, Performing Main Street and Transforming Downtown, which allow cities to participate in training, community assessments, technical assistance and grant programs. The cities of Albany, Baker City, Oregon City and Roseburg will participate in the Performing Main Street program, and Carlton, La Grande, Oakridge, Riddle, Sandy and the North Northeast Business Association will participate in the Transforming Downtown program.

The communities became eligible for the program through a competitive selection process.

Print advertisements for the new Dentyne campaign, called “Make face time.” By borrowing phrases from the realm of electronic communication, the campaign is trying to question whether new technologies are bringing people closer together.

Wednesday September 24, 2008, 9:31 AM SALEM — The number of immigrants entering the United States is down nationally, but that isn’t reflected in the Salem area, the heart of Oregon’s Hispanic community. Salem’s foreign-born population rose 11.9 percent last year but still is lower than it was three years ago, according to numbers released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau. In Marion County, the immigrant population grew by 3.3 percent in 2007 from a year earlier, and increased slightly from 2005. But the number of foreigners putting down roots in Polk County skyrocketed by 79.7 percent in 2007 from 2006, after an earlier significant rise from 2005. The census said the numbers are hard to analyze because figures from 2005 do not include foreigners living in group quarters such as nursing homes, prisons and psychiatric facilities, as do 2006 and 2007 figures. The national downturn usually is explained by a bad economy and a tighter border with Mexico. But locally, many point to the agricultural industry’s pull for farmworkers as the reason for the increase in Marion and Polk counties. “Agriculture has been booming in the Willamette Valley,” said Mike Leachman, a sociologist and policy analyst at the Oregon Center for Public Policy in Silverton. “We’ve seen a very rapid growth in ag exports, particularly from Marion and Polk counties,” he said, with a large share of agricultural workers foreign-born. But some question the Census figures. Jim Ludwick, the president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, a group that advocates for placing a cap on immigrant numbers, said he thinks the true figures are much higher. “That doesn’t reflect 2008 figures,” he said of the latest numbers. “I’ve seen where other estimates say there are as many as 5 million more illegal aliens in the country than what the census estimates there are. That makes sense because if you’re in the country illegally, you’re most likely not going to tell a bureau person that you’re here illegally.” Overwhelmingly, foreign-born people living in Salem and Marion and Polk counties are not citizens but legal status often is unclear because the Census Bureau does not ask. “We simply ask whether they’re a citizen or not,” said Tom Edwards, a Census spokesman. “But not being a U.S. citizen doesn’t mean the person is in the country illegally. They could be here on a work visa, be a student, or be a temporary or permanent resident.”

The TriMet board nearly tripled its spending on an engineering study for aWillamette River bridge for a light rail extension to Milwaukie.

The board approved spending $509,000 to bore on the floor of the river, an expense that it could have been delayed until later in the winter except that a federal environmental agency recently limited the timeframe for construction projects in the river.

The National Marine Fisheries Service recently ended its practice of allowing construction projects to disturb salmon habitat in the river during some winter months. TriMet officials said that decision forced them to either do the geotechnical testing next summer or change its contract with HNTB Corp. to do it next month.

The change order approved Wednesday adds up to $509,000 onto a $265,000 contract with HNTB, which is performing preliminary bridge studies.

Neil McFarlane, executive director of capital projects for TriMet, said nearly all the new money will be passed through to contractors who will test the soils. HNTB will receive a small amount for analysis of the data.

Delaying the testing until next summer could produce a six to 12-month construction delay. TriMet officials said they were hopeful that the federal government would later reimburse it for part of the cost of the testing.

– Dylan Rivera; dylanrivera@news.oregonian.com