AP Orders Staff: ‘Stop Using the Phrase “Ground Zero Mosque”’

In an unusual move, the Associated Press has publicly released an advisory memo [1] to its reporters on how to cover of the Ground Zero mosque story - and the first rule is that journalists must immediately stop calling it the "Ground Zero mosque" story.

Well, this was unexpected.

/s

That is new mecca, new york.

“In an UNUSUAL MOVE...?” Are you kidding? Since when is it unusual for the AP to circle the wagons for the democrat party and the rest of the left???

It’ll become it’s own entity, like Washington, DC.

Let's take a look at "The Cordoba Initiative" that wishes to build a mosque near grown zero. This is according to their IRS 990 form:

The Cordoba Initiative - P.O. Box 10600, Aspen Colorado, 81612. EIN - 41-2140798 - Telephone Number - 970-927-1071

2007:

$15,000 - Contributions and Grants

$16,668 - Program Service Revenue

----------------------------------

$31,668.00 - Gross Receipts

$21,022 - Net Assets or Fund Balances

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CHAIRMAN - IMAM Feisal Abdul Rauf, P.O. Box 7376, North Bergen, NJ 07047

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR - John S. Bennett, P.O. Box 4127, Aspen, CO. 81612

DIRECTOR - Daisy Kahn - 201 W. 85th Street NO. 10E, New York, NY. 10024

DIRECTOR - Julia Jitkoff - Resigned 05/04/07 - P.O. Drawer B, Kingsville, Texas 78364

The books were in the care of Kay Zimmer, 100 E. Kleberg, Suite 200, Kingsville, Texas 78363 - Telephone - 361-595-0411

The 2007 IRS 990 was signed by John S. Bennett

The tax preparer was mAry Ann Oldham with Hahn & Oldham P.C., 100 E. Kleberg Ave., Suite 200, Kingsville, Texas 78363. Telephone - 361-595-4211

------------------------------------------------------------

Their 2008 IRS 990 that nonprofits must submit show income of ZERO! NADA! NOTHING! Total expenses were $2,767.00 and their net assets were $18,255.00. $1,965.00 was spent on travel.

Rauf, Bennett and Kahn were the only directors. The books, etc. were handled by the same people.

Some Freepers may know me for my past posts regarding nonprofits. There are WAY too many nonprofits in America and the nonprofit corporation laws have been substantially abused in this county. Way too many nonprofits are in business to enrich their handlers, push a particular political or social view or to outright compete against real corporations who make money and pay taxes.

This groups "exempt purpose", the reason they say they should not pay taxes is:

"The organizations primary exempt purpose is to bridge the divide between America and the Muslim world through dialog, policy initiatives and education. The organizations objectives include the following:

*Increase intercultural understanding, tolerance and respect, both in muslim societies and the west.

*Stimulate fresh thinking about peace in the middle east.

*Address the root causes of international terrorism

Their "Statement of Program Service Accomplishments" says:

For the Cordoba Initiative, 2008 was a planning and fundraising year that laid the groundwork for a major 2009 symposium entitled "Women's leadership and activism in the Muslim worls". Shirin Ebadi,the Iranian woman who won the nobel peace prize, will be giving the keynote address; and the symposium will include a variety of other progressive mMuslim women who are working for human rights, respect for the dignity of women, and improved relations between the Muslim world and the West. The symposium will take place at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. In addition, the Cordoba Initiatives 2008 work will also include preparations for a 2009 scholarly study of how "Shariah" (Islamic Jurisprudence) supports core vsalues of Democracy, Human Rights and the rule of law."

Over the years I've read over 100 IRS 990's. As far as I can tell this outfit up until 24 months ago did not have the money in hand to buy a new Ford F150, much less any kind of real estate. And there was no way they had the money to build an outhouse, much less something in New York city.

There is NO WAY that these people have raised as much money as they will need to do this project unless they have a substantial donor or government money incoming. Something is way off here. Way off! Where is the money coming from? The Saudis? Or is it us? Recently it has been said that the Obama administration has been using US taxpayer money to rebuild or build mosques in other countries. Has that money or other taxpayer dollars been sent abroad then funneled back in to this "project".

*** Sorry for the long post but the devil is in the details and from what I have seen something is very very wrong here!

This will go the way of the War on Rush, and the “Overseas Contingency Action”.

In other words, meaningless.

The AP Memo. This had have been drawn up at the behest of, and with connivance from, the White House. I wonder if there is any way to trace its origination from that source?

_________________________________________________________

08/19/2010

AP Advisory

AP Standards Center issues staff advisory on covering New York City mosque

Associated Press Deputy Managing Editor for Standards and Production Tom Kent sent the following note to the staff about covering the New York City mosque story:

Aug. 19, 2010

Colleagues,

Here is some guidance on covering the NYC mosque story, with assists from Chad Roedemeier in the NYC bureau and Terry Hunt in Washington:

1. We should continue to avoid the phrase "ground zero mosque" or "mosque at ground zero" on all platforms. (We’ve very rarely used this wording, except in slugs, though we sometimes see other news sources using the term.) The site of the proposed Islamic center and mosque is not at ground zero, but two blocks away in a busy commercial area. We should continue to say it’s “near” ground zero, or two blocks away.

WE WILL CHANGE OUR SLUG ON THIS STORY LATER TODAY from “BC-Ground Zero Mosque” to “BC-NYC Mosque.”

In short headlines, some ways to refer to the project include:

_ mosque 2 blocks from WTC site
_ Muslim (or Islamic) center near WTC site
_ mosque near ground zero
_ mosque near WTC site

We can refer to the project as a mosque, or as a proposed Islamic center that includes a mosque.

It may be useful in some stories to note that Muslim prayer services have been held since 2009 in the building that the new project will replace. The proposal is to create a new, larger Islamic community center that would include a mosque, a swimming pool, gym, auditorium and other facilities.

2. Here is a succinct summary of President Obama’s position:

Obama has said he believes Muslims have the right to build an Islamic center in New York as a matter of religious freedom, though he's also said he won't take a position on whether they should actually build it.

For additional background, you’ll find below a Fact Check on the project that moved yesterday.

Tom

---
Slug: BC-US--Mosque-Fact Check
Byline: CALVIN WOODWARD
Bytitle: Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — A New York imam and his proposed mosque near ground zero are being demonized by political candidates — mostly Republicans — despite the fact that Islam is already very much a part of the World Trade Center neighborhood. And that Muslims pray inside the Pentagon, too, less than 80 feet from where terrorists attacked.

And that the imam who's being branded an extremist has been valued by both Republican and Democratic administrations as a moderate face of the faith.

Even so, the project stirs complicated emotions, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a complex figure who defies easy categorization in the American Muslim world.

He's devoted much of his career to working closely with Christians, Jews and secular leaders to advance interfaith understanding. He's scolded his own religion for being in some ways in the "Dark Ages." Yet he's also accused the U.S. of spilling more innocent blood than al-Qaida, the terrorist network that turned the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon and four hijacked airplanes to apocalyptic rubble.

Many Republicans and some Democrats say the proposed $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque should be built elsewhere, where there is no possible association with New York's ground zero. Far more than a local zoning issue, the matter has seized congressional campaigns, put President Barack Obama and his party on the spot — he says Muslims have the right to build the mosque — divided families of the Sept. 11, 2001, victims, caught the attention of Muslims abroad and threatened to blur distinctions between mainstream Islam in the U.S. and its radical elements.

A look at some of the claims and how they compare with the known facts:
___

—"The folks who want to build this mosque — who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists — those folks don't have any interest in reaching out to the community. They're trying to make a case about supremacy." — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential 2012 presidential candidate.

—Some of the Muslim leaders associated with the mosque "are clearly terrorist sympathizers." — Kevin Calvey, a Republican running for Congress in Oklahoma.
—"This radical is a terrible choice to be one of the faces of our country overseas." — Statement by GOP Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Peter King of New York.

THE FACTS:
No one has established a link between the cleric and radicals. New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said, "We've identified no law enforcement issues related to the proposed mosque."

Ros-Lehtinen and King were referring to the State Department's plan, predating the mosque debate, to send Rauf on another religious outreach trip to the Middle East as part of his "long-term relationship" with U.S. officials in the Bush and Obama administrations. The State Department said Wednesday it will pay him $3,000 for a trip costing the government $16,000.

Rauf counts former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from the Clinton administration as a friend and appeared at events overseas or meetings in Washington with former President George W. Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and Bush adviser Karen Hughes.
He has denounced the terrorist attacks and suicide bombing as anti-Islamic and has criticized Muslim nationalism. But he's made provocative statements about America, too, calling it an "accessory" to the 9/11 attacks and attributing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to the U.S.-led sanctions in the years before the invasion.

In a July 2005 speech at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center in Adelaide, Australia, Rauf said, according to the center's transcript:

"We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims."

While calling terrorism unjustified, he said the U.S. has supported authoritarian regimes with heinous human rights records and, faced with that, "how else do people get attention?"
In the same address, he spoke of prospects for peace between Palestinians and the Israelis — who he said "have moved beyond Zionism" — and of a love-your-neighbor ethic uniting all religions.
___

—"Mr. President, ground zero is the wrong place for a mosque." — Rick Scott, Republican candidate for Florida governor.

—"Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There's no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center." — Gingrich.
—"Just a block or two away from 9/11." — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, another 2012 GOP presidential prospect.

THE FACTS:
No mosque is going up at ground zero. The center would be established at 45-51 Park Place, just over two blocks from the northern edge of the sprawling, 16-acre World Trade Center site. Its location is roughly half a dozen normal lower Manhattan blocks from the site of the North Tower, the nearer of the two destroyed in the attacks.

The center's location, in a former Burlington Coat Factory store, is already used by the cleric for worship, drawing a spillover from the imam's former main place for prayers, the al-Farah mosque. That mosque, at 245 West Broadway, is about a dozen blocks north of the World Trade Center grounds.

Another, the Manhattan Mosque, stands five blocks from the northeast corner of the World Trade Center site.

To be sure, the center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence. The building was damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks and the center's planners say they want the center to stand as a statement against terrorism.
___

—"There should be no mosque near ground zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. ... America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization." — Gingrich.

—"This religion's plan is to destroy our way of life. ... If we have to let them build it, make them build it nine stories underground, so we can walk above it as citizens and Christians."

— Ron McNeil, a House GOP candidate in the Florida Panhandle, in an exchange reported by The News Herald in Panama City.

THE FACTS:
Such opinions are shared by some Americans, while others are more reluctant to paint the religion with a broad brush and more welcoming of the faith in this country. Bush, himself, while criticized at the time for stirring suspicions about American Muslims, traveled to a Washington mosque less than a week after the attacks to declare that terrorism is "not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace."

In any event, the U.S. armed forces field Muslim troops and make accommodations for them. The Pentagon opened an interfaith chapel in November 2002 close to the area where hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building, killing 184 people.

Muslims gather there for a daily prayer service Monday through Thursday and hold a weekly worship service on Fridays, drawing no complaints. Similar but separate services are provided for other faiths.
___
Associated Press writers Tom Hays in New York and Anne Flaherty in Washington contributed to this report.

How 'bout the "Mosque with the 9/11 aircraft landing gear stuck in its roof?"

Hamosque=Rush Limbaugh

Let’s call it the AP Mosque at Ground Zero.

Too Late AP - We WILL call it Imam Obama’s Ground Zero Mosque!!!!!!

Maybe AP can order their minions to stop using the term “birther”, too, while they’re at it.

This is absolutely disgusting.

>> THE FACTS:
>> No one has established a link between the cleric and radicals.

The asswipes are not investigative journalists - they’re hacks supporting an agenda.

This is America...Freedom of Speech
note to AP.....
FU AP

we can see November from the mountain tops here in Pennsylvania...

It’s only divisive because the truth cuts deep.

“Hamosque” sounds better anyway

“Calling it the Ground Zero Mosque is hurting democrats! Quick, quick, find something else to call it!”

Exactly.

Leave the Democrat's ALONE!!!

Another day of distributing lefty talking points in Obamaland. :)

Note to self....get to range....practice, practice, practice.

“I’m sure there are literally thousands of more accurate names to be used.”

I would call it, “The Sty”!