TUESDAY, JULY 1, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Snakebite causes huge mass in woman's leg, 50 years later – CBS
By BAHAR GHOLIPOUR LIVESCIENCE.COM July 1, 2014

More than 50 years after being bitten by a venomous snake, a woman developed a large mass in her lower leg, according to a new report of her case.

The 66-year-old woman in Thailand had been bitten by a Malayan pit viper, a venomous snake native to Southeast Asia, when she was 14.

The painless mass had become noticeable 10 years earlier, and on an X-ray it looked like an enlarged cavity wrapped in a tough, calcified membrane, resembling an eggshell. It ultimately grew so large that it broke through the woman's skin. Doctors surgically removed the mass, and the wound completely healed by one month after the surgery, they wrote in their report, published June 16 in the Journal of Medical Case Reports.

Such masses have rarely been reported following a snakebite, but they have been seen following other types of traumatic injury to muscles, according to the report's authors, who are researchers at the Prince of Songkla University in Thailand. [16 Oddest Medical Cases]

A calcified mass can form as muscle tissue starts to die after a crushing injury or disruption of the blood supply, usually in the lower leg, said Dr. Darren Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor of Radiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, who wasn't involved in the woman's case.

The result is usually a firm, hard, palpable mass that can be examined using X-ray or MRI scans. [Image of the mass]

"It's very common for it to be mistaken for a tumor, but usually, the imaging helps with the diagnosis," Fitzpatrick told Live Science.

In the case of this patient, doctors suspected that, because of the snakebite, the woman had developed a condition called compartment syndrome; the name refers to sections of muscle that are held together, along with nerves and blood vessels, by a tough tissue called the fascia, which does not stretch easily.

The woman's compartment syndrome had been left untreated, according to the report.

"Compartment syndrome usually happens below the knee," Fitzpatrick said. "You have a big group of muscles there, and they are in kind of a tight compartment.

"If the muscles start to swell from trauma or injury, they can run out of space, and that could result in compromised blood flow," he added. "That's certainly a very plausible reason as to why this could have happened in this case."

Email Bahar Gholipour or follow her @alterwired. Follow LiveScience@livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.




Compartment syndrome is a new term to me, but while it is unusual it is not unknown to physicians. “Compromised blood flow” is one of the causes for the membrane called the fascia, which encloses a “compartment” of several muscles, to harden around an empty space to form a structure that resembles “an eggshell.” In the case of this Thai woman, the snake bite when she was 14 years old is thought to have caused the problem with blood flow, and therefore the calcified mass. It grew progressively until it emerged from the skin. It was removed surgically, and the leg healed up without problems. Luckily these things are rare. They seem to be relatively harmless, but it is a little shocking and scary if you do have one.





Climate change satellite launch scrubbed
By WILLIAM HARWOOD CBS NEWS July 1, 2014

An attempt to launch an environmental research satellite atop a Delta 2 rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif, Tuesday was called off just 45 seconds before the planned liftoff when a launch pad sound suppression water system failed to activate as required.

The launch team was protectively told to press ahead for a possible second launch try Wednesday, but NASA managers said a final decision on how to proceed would depend on what is required to fix the water system, which is used to help dampen the acoustic shock of engine ignition and to cool an exhaust flame duct at the base of the rocket.

"What we had was a mandatory called hold at T-minus 45 seconds," said launch director Tim Dunn. "What that deluge system does is it protects the launch mount from the high temperatures of the launch and gives some amount of suppression from that huge shock wave of the ignition of the engine.

"We begin that water flow at T-minus 45 seconds and there's a verification step there immediately that the engineer is looking for. (He) could not verify that his water system was operating nominally, therefore that resulted in a mandatory hold."

In any case, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 spacecraft perched atop the rocket remained healthy and ready to begin a $468 million mission to measure global carbon dioxide levels, collecting data expected to shed light on how the greenhouse gas affects climate change and the role of human industrial activity.

"It's a bit of a disappointment for the launch team when you have a great countdown up to that point," Dunn said. "However, these are things you prepare for, we're a professional team, we know how to handle this."

A nearly identical version of the spacecraft was destroyed in a 2009 launch mishap caused by problems with an Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus XL rocket. NASA managers decided the mission's scientific value warranted building a replacement, but the OCO-2 satellite was moved to a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 after a subsequent Taurus failure.

The Delta 2 rocket is one of only five left in ULA's inventory as the company completes a long transition to more powerful Delta 4 and Atlas 5 boosters. This is the first flight of a Delta 2 in nearly three years.




The Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 spacecraft is the center of a $468 million mission to measure global carbon dioxide levels in an effort to detect the mechanism causing the greenhouse effect, which is defined on Google as: “the trapping of the sun's warmth in a planet's lower atmosphere due to the greater transparency of the atmosphere to visible radiation from the sun than to infrared radiation emitted from the planet's surface.”

From Wikipedia on greenhouse gases, “Greenhouse gases are those that can absorb and emit infrared radiation,[1] but not radiation in or near the visible spectrum. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are determined by the balance between sources (emissions of the gas from human activities and natural systems) and sinks (the removal of the gas from the atmosphere by conversion to a different chemical compound).[12] The proportion of an emission remaining in the atmosphere after a specified time is the "Airborne fraction" (AF).”

So, infrared rays, or heat, from the sun are absorbed by the greenhouse gas molecules rather than being radiated beyond and out of the atmosphere, which causes the atmospheric heating to build up. Without these gases we would have a cold planet, but with too much concentration the balance is disturbed in the opposite direction – the “greenhouse effect.” Human industrial processes such as power plants are giving off CO2 and other greenhouse gases at such a rate that the “sinks” can't remove it rapidly enough to avoid increased heating of the atmosphere.

The Wikipedia carbon sink article gives a failure report of the Weyburn carbon sink in which CO2 has “leaked” through the rock cap over the oil deposit into the water and air above, causing bubbling in the water and the death of some animals near the pond. CO2 emissions from volcanic sites are known to form pockets of CO2 so dense that animals which go into the area die from lack of oxygen.

See Wikipedia's article “Carbon sink” – “The natural sinks are: Absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans via physicochemical and biological processes, Photosynthesis by terrestrial plants. Natural sinks are typically much larger than artificial sinks. The main artificial sinks are: Landfills and Carbon capture and storage proposals. From Wikipedia's “Carbon Capture and storage” – “Carbon capture and storage (CCS) (or carbon capture and sequestration), is the process of capturing waste carbon dioxide (CO2) from large point sources, such as fossil fuel power plants, transporting it to a storage site, and depositing it where it will not enter the atmosphere, normally an underground geological formation.  Although CO2 has been injected into geological formations for several decades for various purposes, including enhanced oil recovery, the long term storage of CO2 is a relatively new concept. The first commercial example was Weyburn in 2000.[3]'CCS' can also be used to describe the scrubbing of CO
2 from ambient air as a geoengineering technique.
The IEAGHG Weyburn-Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project is an international collaborative scientific study to assess the technical feasibility of CO2 storage in geological formations with a focus on oil reservoirs, together with the development of world leading best practices for project implementation. The project itself began in 2000 and runs until the end of 2011 when a best practices manual for the transitioning of CO2-EOR operations into long term storage operations will be released. The research project accesses data from the actual CO2-enhanced oil recovery operations in the Weyburn oil field (operated by Cenovus Energy of Calgary), and after the year 2005 from the adjacent Midale field (operated by Apache Canada). These EOR operations are independent of the research program. Cenovus Energy’s only contribution to the IEAGHG Weyburn-Midale CO2 Monitoring and Storage Project is to allow access to the fields for measurement, monitoring and verification of the CO2 for the global scientists and researchers involved in the project. This is the first instance of cross-border transfer of CO2 from the USA to Canada and highlights the ability for international cooperation with GHG mitigation technologies. Whilst there are emissions trading projects being developed within countries such as Canada, the Weyburn project is essentially the first international project where physical quantities of CO2 are being sold commercially for enhanced oil recovery, with the added benefit of carbon sequestration.  
A report[2] of CO2 leaks above the project was released in January 2011[3] by an advocacy group on behalf of owners of land above the project. They reported ponds fizzing with bubbles, dead animals found near those ponds, sounds of explosions which they attributed to gas blowing out holes in the walls of a quarry. The report said that carbon dioxide levels in the soil averaged about 23,000 parts per million, several times higher than is normal for the area. "The ... source of the high concentrations of CO2 in the soils of the Kerr property is clearly the anthropogenic CO2 injected into the Weyburn reservoir... The survey also demonstrates that the overlying thick cap rock of anhydrite over the Weyburn reservoir is not an impermeable barrier to the upward movement of light hydrocarbons and CO2 as is generally thought." said the report.[4]

Landfills give off methane, an even stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, but it has been tapped and sold in some places -- it is being used to generate electricity and heat, rather than escaping into the atmoshphere. The following article from the New York Times concerns this practice: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/14Rmethane.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. This is one of the creative uses of modern science to alleviate the greenhouse gas problem.






Documents: Blackwater guards were out of control – CBS
AP  June 30, 2014

WASHINGTON - A U.S. State Department investigator warned that contractors for Blackwater Worldwide saw themselves as above the law and that the contractors, rather than department officials, were in command, according to a memo disclosed Monday.

The warning to State Department officials came two weeks before shootings in Nisoor Square in Baghdad that killed 14 people and wounded 18 others on Sept. 16, 2007. A trial in the shootings is under way for four former Blackwater security guards.

The New York Times first reported on the memo.

The memo and other State Department documents make clear that the department was alerted to serious problems involving Blackwater before the Nisoor Square shooting.

Blackwater had a contract with the State Department to protect American diplomats.

In the memo to State Department officials, the investigator, Jean Richter, also said he had been threatened by a Blackwater manager regarding the investigation. The manager, according to the memo, said that he could kill the investigator and that "no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq."

On Monday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said she couldn't comment at length on Blackwater given an ongoing legal case. She called the examination seven years ago a regular contract review.

"There were steps taken at the time given threats that people faced, but I don't have any additional information," Psaki told reporters.

Asked if that meant someone from Blackwater threatened a State Department auditor, and that that might have halted the review, Psaki said she only understood "there were reports of threats."




Blackwater: “the contractors, rather than department officials, were in command.... The memo and other State Department documents make clear that the department was alerted to serious problems involving Blackwater before the Nisoor Square shooting. Blackwater had a contract with the State Department to protect American diplomats. In the memo to State Department officials, the investigator, Jean Richter, also said he had been threatened by a Blackwater manager regarding the investigation. The manager, according to the memo, said that he could kill the investigator and that 'no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq.'" Blackwater, though under several revised names, is still contracted by the US government. See the “thinkprogress.org” article below for details.



http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/06/30/3454514/blackwater-iraq-contracts/
After Threatening To Murder Government Official, Blackwater Awarded Over $200 Million In Contracts
BY HAYES BROWN JUNE 30, 2014

The New York Times on Sunday night released a bombshell, revealing that the State Department ended an investigation into the private security firm Blackwater after one of its managers in Iraq threatened the government’s chief investigator. Since that event in 2007, the U.S. has awarded at least $242 million in contracts to the controversial company — including one as recently as May 2014.

It wasn’t until 2009, and the Obama administration taking over, that the Blackwater contract in Iraqwas released, due to the contractor being unable to receive a license to operate from the Iraqi government.

That wasn’t the end, however, of the relationship between the U.S. government and the group founded by Erik Prince, though the name has changed several times since then. Prince changed the company’s name from “Blackwater Worldwide” to “Xe Services” in 2009, as the company was under intensified scrutiny for the 2007 shootings. It was under that name that they received a contract worth around $100 million from the Central Intelligence Agency in 2010. Prince then sold the company in 2010, when investors changed the name to “Academi” — it is under this name that most of the firm’s recent contracting with the Department of Defense has taken place. Earlier this month, the firm merged with one of its rivals — Triple Canopy — to form “Constellis Holdings.”

Though Prince is no longer in the picture, the company still continues to obtain government contracts. In July 2012, the U.S. Army awarded Academi a contract to “provide for the life support services in Afghanistan” for $6,660,438. In May 2014, that contract was awarded an $8,801,172 modification, with the mission now reading that Academi will provide “camp integrity and life support and private security services.” Between 2012 and 2014, another $16 million in modifications were were added to the contract, making the total contract worth $31 million to date.







Ukraine president in talks with Putin, European leaders on conflict – CBS
AP  June 30, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine's president spoke with the leaders of Russia, Germany and France on Monday to figure out how best to resolve the deadly conflict with pro-Russian separatists in the east.

The telephone call between President Petro Poroshenko, Russia's Vladimir Putin, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and France's Francois Hollande took place as an expiration deadline neared for Ukraine's shaky, unilateral cease-fire.

Poroshenko has already extended the cease-fire from seven days to 10 as part of a plan to end the conflict that has killed more than 400 people. The cease-fire has been continuously broken, however, and rebels have not laid down their weapons as Poroshenko has demanded.

Poroshenko said during the call that the conditions, agreed in a four-way talk a day earlier, "haven't been fulfilled," but the statement released by his office didn't say whether the cease-fire would be extended. It expires at 10 p.m. (1900 GMT, 3 p.m. EDT).

French officials said Monday's phone call touched on establishing a full cease-fire by both sides, having international monitors on the border between Russia and Ukraine, freeing prisoners and holding substantial talks with Ukraine's separatist rebels.

European leaders have urged Russia to use its influence with the rebels to de-escalate the conflict and warned that they could impose another round of economic sanctions against Russia if the conditions for continuing the cease-fire are not met.

Those conditions included a demand that the separatists hand back three checkpoints on the border with Russia that they have seized.

Rebel leader Alexander Borodai on Monday welcomed having observers monitor the situation anywhere in the region but rejected the demand to hand back the border checkpoints. Rebels have previously kidnapped several teams of monitors.

Stymied by the rebels' refusal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Putin suggested to Poroshenko that both Ukrainian monitors and observers from the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe deploy to checkpoints on the Russian side of the border to ensure "they aren't used for illegal means."

"We expect that direct and detailed consultations between Russian and Ukrainian border guards will start shortly to agree on details of the monitors' presence," Lavrov said in televised remarks.

A Kremlin statement said foreign ministers from the four countries would quickly carry the four-way talks to discuss the issues by the leaders - a distinct cold shoulder to further efforts from the United States or the full European Union to be involved in Ukraine's protracted crisis.

Sporadic fighting still flared Monday despite the cease-fire. Shelling killed at least two people and ruined several apartments in the rebel-held city of Slovyansk in the eastern region of Donetsk.

Poroshenko says his unilateral cease-fire is a first step to give rebels a chance to lay down their arms. Further steps would include an amnesty for separatists who have not committed serious crimes, early local elections and changes in the constitution to decentralize power to Ukraine's regions.

But in Slovyansk, shooting kept up through the night, growing heavy at times Monday morning. Some of the shelling appeared to be directed at rebel front-line positions but other shells landed in a residential neighborhood, destroying or damaging several buildings.

One woman, 62-year-old Vera Sayenko, died when a shell hit her ninth floor apartment, neighbors told an AP journalist, as well as another woman during shelling.

"Everything we have collected in our life is destroyed. We have become poor," said Valery, whose apartment was also destroyed. He would not give his last name. "Show all Ukrainians what happened here. What else do they want, to ruin the town and kill people?"

Ukrainian police and prosecutors were also investigating the death of a Russian cameraman working for Russia's Channel One. Anatoly Klyan, 68, was fatally wounded late Sunday when a bus carrying journalists and soldiers' mothers was hit by gunfire as it approached a military base in eastern Ukraine after dark.

Russia's Foreign Ministry blamed the attack on Ukrainian soldiers and demanded an objective investigation.

Klyan was the fifth journalist to die since the fighting began in April.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began after a protest movement among those seeking closer ties with the EU prompted President Viktor Yanukovych to flee in February. Calling it an illegal coup, Russia seized and annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in March, saying it was protecting Russian speakers. The insurrection in the east began shortly afterward.

Ukraine signed a trade and political deal with the EU last week, the one that Yanukovych had rejected.




Rebel leader Alexander Borodai has refused to leave the border checkpoints. “Stymied by the rebels' refusal, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Putin suggested to Poroshenko that both Ukrainian monitors and observers from the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe deploy to checkpoints on the Russian side of the border to ensure 'they aren't used for illegal means.'We expect that direct and detailed consultations between Russian and Ukrainian border guards will start shortly to agree on details of the monitors' presence,' Lavrov said in televised remarks.” Another CBS article reports that the cease fire is officially over, and Ukrainian military operations will continue. Lavrov's invitation to Kiev to deploy more observers to the Russian side of the border, presumably to prevent weapons and soldiers from crossing over into Ukraine, sounds helpful, but mere observers can't stop it from occurring, I wouldn't think. Meanwhile the shooting war is on again.





European Court Upholds France's Burqa Ban – NPR
by KRISHNADEV CALAMUR
July 01, 2014

The European Court of Human Rights has upheld France's ban on face-covering veils, in a closely watched case that was brought by a Muslim woman who said the law violated her freedom of religion.

The French-born woman, who is in her mid-20s, was not named. She said she wore the burqa and niqab in accordance with her faith and convictions. And, she said, she was not pressured by her family to dress in this way. The woman said that the French ban on the veils was discriminatory, and violated her privacy and freedom of religion and expression. She lodged her complaint with the Strasbourg, France-based court in 2011, soon after the French law went into effect.

But on Tuesday the court ruled that France's ban was legitimate because it was "proportionate to the aim pursued, namely the preservation of the conditions of 'living together' " of all French citizens.

The French law is controversial (partly because the country has Europe's largest Muslim population), and Tuesday's decision is likely to be no less so. As Eleanor Beardsley reported on All Things Considered last year, the law has sparked protests and violence.

Under the law, women wearing the face-covering veil can be fined up to 150 euros (about $200) and/or be made to attend a class on citizenship. Critics say the ban targets Muslims and Islam.




An unnamed Islamic French-born woman complained to the European Court On Human Rights that a new law banning the Burqa in France restricted her religious freedom and privacy. “But on Tuesday the court ruled that France's ban was legitimate because it was 'proportionate to the aim pursued, namely the preservation of the conditions of 'living
together' of all French citizens.”

Yesterday, by coincidence, I happened to receive an email which purported to be a letter by a Christian woman from an Islamic background that portrayed modern Islam's repression of women and other things under the Sharia Law. It included the fear that Islamic people want to move to Western countries in large enough numbers, along with having children there, with the goal of becoming a majority in all countries and politically taking over the governments, substituting Sharia Law for Western.

It was an attempt to pass along the fear that some people have of having Islamic people within their borders, and was quite inflamatory. The fact that some Islamic people in France have tried to overthrow a French law that is, I'm sure, aimed at prohibiting the infiltration of Sharia Law into France, shows that they are indeed trying to resist merging with the larger French culture. What has frightened me about Islamic groups in Western countries is the occurrence of at least two news reports of “honor killings” by Islamic immigrant men within the US, and in France within the last ten years or so there have been riots in Islamic immigrant neighborhoods there. I sympathize with France in this instance, because I do think that the anti-feminist traditions and strong opposition to other religions which exist currently in so many Islamic nations are poisonous to freedom in general, such as our religious freedoms, and women's rights in particular, wherever they are allowed to take hold.

I didn't pass that email on to my mailing list because I think we already have enough cultural prejudices in this country, and the development of witch hunts over religion is one of the greatest evils on earth wherever it has occurred. After 9/11 a non-Muslim Sikh was shot in the street in an American city for wearing a turban. Europe was full of such things in the 1600s and 1700s, and that's why so many people left Europe at that time for America. The state of Pennsylvania in particular offered complete freedom of religion before we were a nation, and then it was written as a basic precept into the Constitution of the new United States. Freedom from a state religion of any kind is one of our most important liberties in this country. Indeed the lack of freedom even to think my own thoughts would be abhorrent. Nothing stops intellectual progress like a closed-minded viewpoint.

People with a mindset to overturn this principle and put something as hideous as Sharia Law into its place are a basic danger if they should become too populous, too controlling or refuse to adapt to Western ways, but those very groups are allowed to maintain their beliefs here under our constitution. That is as it should be, because the rule of freedom is more important. Any group, however, that becomes a threat, such as fostering jihadism within our very borders, will certainly be combated strongly by our Homeland Security and FBI. Freedom of religion does not include the right to overthrow the US government. That will especially be true now that ISIS (now called the Islamic State) has openly threatened the US and Western targets abroad. I'm not against Islam, per se, because many Islamic people are peaceful; but all radical and politically motivated religious groups are by their nature enemies of the US, and a genuine threat to peace. I'm waiting with some tension to see what happens in Iraq and that target area of ISIS expansionism. Just as a case in point, please see this conservative description of Hamtramck, MI, a city that according to this article has been taken over by radical Islamists. Then see the Wikipedia articles for balance and corroboration.


http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/zieve/070111
January 11, 2007
Michigan: the Islamic capital of the US
By Sher Zieve

As of 2005, Michigan held the largest and still growing Muslim population in the United States and the second largest Arab population outside of the Middle East. Outside of Muslim-run countries, Paris — which still experiences nightly vehicle torchings and mayhem in its Islamic neighborhoods — has the largest. It is estimated that eight million Muslims now live in the US and their numbers are continuing to grow. Islam is now the second-largest religious body in the United States and is said to be its fastest growing religious movement.

Although hundreds of long-time residents of Hamtramck, MI protested the city allowing the five-times-per-day Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast over Hamtramck's loudspeakers, the city council voted unanimously in April 2004 to allow it. Prior to the city council making its decision, public input from any citizens (except Muslims) had not been allowed. This continues today. Hamtramck resident Bob Golen was outraged by the city council's actions and said: "So they had made up their mind before any public meeting and it's been five-nothing ever since. This is only the beginning. They're going to use Hamtramck as a precedent. This is coming to your town, to the town down the road, and to the [next] town down the road." Golen added that, after the city council voted to allow the calls to prayer, one of the city councilmen said that he was "proud to set a precedent in this country."
Note: The most dangerous element of this "precedent" appears to be a US city council making a unilateral decision. No input from non-Muslim US citizen-residents was required — or permitted. Sound a bit like Shari'a law (which requires only Islamic clerics to make decisions) to you? It should. Only one-third of Hamtramck's population is Muslim. However, it is the group that appears to now wield the proverbial sword when and where its religious practices are involved. Hamtramck's Christians and Jews need not waste their time protesting, as this pro-Muslim (to the exclusion of other religions?) city council now firmly appears to be in control of matters relating to Islam.

Zieve, acknowledges that he is a conservative Republican, who do tend to have an opposition to all religions except Christianity, but if this article is factually correct, it does appear to be a case of Muslims moving into a small US town and taking over politically rather than “blending in.” Zieve is quoted here: “It has been said before and I'll say it again: Certainly, not all Muslims are terrorists. But, easily, 90+% of all current terrorists are Muslims. The bed has been made and the only decision that currently appears available is if we choose to lie in it.”


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamtramck,_Michigan

Over the past thirty years, a large number of immigrants from the Middle East (especially Yemen) and South Asia (especially Bangladesh) have moved to the city. As of the 2010 American Community Survey, the city's foreign born population stood at 41.1%,[9] making it Michigan's most internationally diverse city (see more at Demographics below). The population was 43,355 in the 1950 Census, and 18,372 in 1990.
In 1997, the Utne Reader named Hamtramck one of "the 15 hippest neighborhoods in the U.S. and Canada" in part for its punk and alternative music scene, its Buddhist temple, its cultural diversity, and its laid back blue-collar neighborhoods.[19]And in May 2003, Maxim Blender selected Hamtramck as the second "Most Rock N' Roll City" in the U.S., behindWilliamsburg in Brooklyn, New York City. Hamtramck is home of several of Michigan's most distinguished music venues.
In January 2004, members of the Al-Islah Islamic Center requested permission to use loudspeakers for the purpose of broadcasting the Islamic call to prayer. This request set off a contentious debate in the city, about the noise that would be caused by the call to prayer, eventually garnering national attention.[20] Ultimately, Hamtramck amended its noise ordinance in July 2004 regulating all religious sounds.[21]
From the 1990 Census to the 2000 Census the city's population increased by 25%. Sally Howell, author of "Competing for Muslims: New Strategies for Urban Renewal in Detroit", wrote that this was "overwhelmingly" due to immigration from majority Muslim countries.[35]
From 1990 to 2000, of all of the municipalities in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties, Hamtramck had the highest percentage growth in the Asian population. It had 222 Asians according to the 1990 U.S. Census and 2,382 according to the 2000 U.S. Census, an increase by 973%.[36]
In the 2000s a Bengali mosque named the Al-Islah Jamee Masjid wanted permission to broadcast the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, from loudspeakers outside of the mosque and requested this permission from the city government. It was one of the newer mosques in Hamtramck. Sally Howell, author of "Competing for Muslims: New Strategies for Urban Renewal in Detroit", wrote that the request "brought to a head simmering Islamophobic sentiments" in Hamtramck.[47] Muslims and interfaith activists supported the mosque. Some anti-Muslim activists, including some from other states including Kentucky and Ohio, participated in the controversy.[47] Howell added that the controversy, through an "international media storm", gave "a cathartic test of the "freedoms" we were said to be "fighting for" in Afghanistan and Iraq" to the remainder of the United States.[47] In 2004 the city council voted unanimously to allow mosques to broadcast the adhan on public streets, making it one of the few U.S. cities to allow this to occur. Some individuals had strongly objected to the allowing of the adhan.[51]


Dearborn, Michigan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 98,153.[5.... Dearborn residents are primarily of European or Middle Eastern heritage. German, Polish, Irish and Italian are the primary European ethnicities. Middle Eastern ancestries make up the largest ethnic grouping with Lebanese, Yemeni, Iraqi, Syrian and Palestinian groups present. The Arab American National Museum (AANM) opened in Dearborn in 2005, the first museum in the world devoted to Arab-American history and culture. Most of the Arab-Americans in Dearborn and the Detroit area are ethnic Lebanese, who immigrated in the early twentieth century to work in the auto industry, like many immigrants to the area. They have been joined by more recent Arab immigrants from other nations. The city's population includes 40,000 Arab Americans.[18] Ethnic Arabs own many shops and businesses, offering services in both English and Arabic.[19] In the 2010 census, Arab Americans comprised 40% of Dearborn's population; many have been in the city for several generations. The city has the largest proportion of Arab Americans in the United States.[20] As of 2006 Dearborn also has the largestLebanese American population in the United States.[21]
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit previously operated the St. Alphonsus Elementary School in Dearborn. In 2005 the archdiocese announced that the school would close.[31]
Free speech controversy
Four members of the Christian group "Acts 17 Apologetics" were arrested and prosecuted for breach of the peace in 2010 because they were walking around the annual Arab-American Festival talking to people at the festival about Christianity.[38]All the charges, except one of failure to obey a police order, were thrown out by a jury.[39] During the festival, four other people from Apologetics were blocked from handing out Arabic-English copies of the Gospel of John on a public street. Police ordered them to stop filming the incident, to provide identification, and to move at least five blocks from the border of the fair.[40]
A Tea Party Senatorial candidate in Nevada, Sharron Angle, suggested that Dearborn was contributing to a non-widespread "militant terrorist situation,"[38][41] and said that the city was enforcing Islamic law.[38] Angle was sharply criticized by the Mayor Jack O'Reilly, who called her comments "shameful."[38] "He said they were based on distorted Tea Party accounts of the arrest of members of an anti-Islam group at an Arab festival."[38] Angle was defeated in the election by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Preacher Terry Jones planned a protest in 2011 outside the Islamic Center of America. Local authorities required him either to post a $45,000 "peace bond" to cover Dearborn's cost if Jones was attacked by extremists or to go to trial. Jones contested that requirement, and the jury voted on April 22 to require the posting of a $1 "peace bond", but Jones and his co-pastor Wayne Sapp continued to refuse to pay. They were held briefly in jail, while claiming violation of First Amendmentrights. That night Jones was released by the court.[42] The ACLU had filed an amicus brief in support of Jones's protest plans.[43]
Terry Jones led a rally at City Hall and then planned to speak at the annual Festival on June 18, 2011, but on his way there he was blocked by protesters, six of whom were arrested. Police said they did not have enough officers present to maintain safety.[48] Christian missionaries accompanied Jones with their own signs of protest; they were alleged by festivalgoers and protesters to have yelled insults at Arabs, Muslims, Islam, and Catholics.[49]
On April 7, 2012 Terry Jones led a protest in front of the Islamic Center of America, Dearborn, speaking about Islam and Free Speech. The mosque was placed on lock down. 30 police cars were there to block traffic and prevent a counter protest.[50]



These conflicts in Michigan over America allowing local changes in response to the Islamic religion seems to be coming mainly from the most conservative elements of the population. In neither city were there anti-american riots or threats. It's more about cultural blending and the very presence of ethnic enclaves. I think it's not really a new process in the US. If these people became threatening in any way, I would feel differently, but in this case it doesn't look frightening to me.