Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 56, Ed. 1 Saturday, September 27, 2014 Page: 3 of 26
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Denton Record-Chronicle
INTERNATIONAL/NATIONAL
Saturday, September 27, 2014
3A
U.S.-led strikes hit IS group
AP
In this photo provided by an anti-Bashar Assad activist group Edlib News Network, which
has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, anti-Syrian govern-
ment protesters carry flags of the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, left, and Islamic State
group, right, during a demonstration against the U.S.-led coalition airtstrikes on Friday.
By Ryan Lucas
Associated Press
BEIRUT — American war-
planes and drones hit Islamic
State group tanks, Humvees,
checkpoints and bunkers in
airstrikes Friday targeting the
extremists in Syria and Iraq, as
the U.S.-led coalition expan-
ded to include Britain, Den-
mark and Belgium.
The European countries
committed to take part only in
the Iraq part of the military
campaign, leaving the opera-
tion in Syria to the United
States and five Arab allies who
began conducting airstrikes
there on Tuesday. Still, the
broadening of the coalition
provides a welcome boost for
President Barack Obama and
the American-led campaign.
The U.S.-led operation aims
to roll back and ultimately crush
the Islamic State group, which
has carved out a proto-state
stretching from Syria’s northern
border with Turkey to the out-
skirts of Baghdad. The militants
have employed brute force to
achieve their goals, massacring
captured Syrian and Iraqi
troops, terrorizing minorities in
both countries and beheading
two American journalists and a
British aid worker.
While striking fear into its
opponents, the Islamic State
group’s tactics have also helped
galvanize the international
community to move against
the extremists. France has al-
ready joined the U.S.-led effort
in Iraq, and is considering ex-
panding its role to Syria as well.
The Netherlands, too, has said
it would take part in the bomb-
ing campaign in Iraq.
Denmark, Belgium and
Britain all signed on as well on
Friday. Denmark said it would
send seven F-16 fighter jets and
250 pilots and support staff,
while Belgium will contribute
six F-16s that are already en
route to Jordan so they can go
into action as early as Saturday.
“No one should be ducking
in this case,” said Danish Prime
Minister Helle Thoming-
Schmidt. “Everyone should
contribute.”
British lawmakers also vot-
ed Friday to join the coalition.
London is expected to deploy
Tornado fighters, which are in
Cyprus — within striking dis-
tance of northern Iraq.
“This is about psychopathic
terrorists that are trying to kill
us and we do have to realize
that, whether we like it or not,
they have already declared war
on us,” Prime Minister David
Cameron told a tense House of
Commons in a more than six-
hour debate. “There isn’t a
walk on by’ option. There isn’t
an option of just hoping this
will go away.”
The European contingent
will join a campaign that has
already carried out hundreds
of airstrikes, the latest of which
hit Islamic State positions in
both Iraq and Syria late Thurs-
day and Friday.
The U.S. Central Command
said that airstrikes outside the
northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk
destroyed three Islamic State
Humvees, disabled two armed
vehicles and damaged an ar-
mored truck. More strikes west
of Baghdad and near the Syri-
an border knocked out a guard
shack, armed vehicles, a bun-
ker and a checkpoint.
In Syria, the U.S. destroyed
four tanks and damaged an-
other outside the city of Deir el-
Zour on the Euphrates River.
Those strikes marked the
second consecutive day that
the United States and its Arab
allies have taken aim at the mil-
itants near the border with
Iraq. Coalition planes pounded
a dozen makeshift oil-produc-
ing facilities in the same area
on Thursday, trying to cripple
one of the militants’ primary
sources of cash — black market
oil sales that the U.S. says pro-
duce up to $2 million a day.
Syrian activists said the
American-led air campaign also
hit the Tanak oil field as well as
the Qpuriyeh oil-producing area
in Deir el-Zour on Friday. It said
air raids also targeted the head-
quarters of the Islamic State
group in the town of Mayadeen
southeast of Deir el-Zour city.
The Britain-based Syrian
Observatory of Human Rights
said the strikes were believed
to have been carried out by the
coalition. Another activist col-
lective, the Local Coordination
Committees, also reported four
strikes on Mayadeen that it
said were conducted by the
U.S. and its allies.
In the village of Zagheer
west of Deir el-Zour, a war-
plane attacked a motorcycle
Friday evening shortly after it
left an Islamic State group
compound, according to the
Observatory. It said an Iraqi
commander of the group was
killed as well as another mem-
ber who is from a Gulf state.
The Observatory also re-
ported another apparent coali-
tion air raid on Islamic State
positions outside the city of
Hassakeh in northeastern
Syria.
Muslims gather
to demonstrate
against extremism
By Lori Hinnant
Associated Press
PARIS — In tweets, in street
gatherings and in open letters,
moderate Muslims around the
world are insisting that Islamic
State extremists don’t speak for
their religion. Many are also
frustrated that anyone might
think they do, and a backlash
has already begun.
This week’s videotaped be-
heading of a French mountain-
eer by militants linked to the Is-
lamic State group prompted
heartsick firry among Muslims
in France and elsewhere in Eu-
rope, tom between anger at the
atrocities committed in the
name of Islam and frustration
that they have to defend them-
selves at all.
Herve Gourdel was the fifth
Western hostage decapitated in
recent weeks by Islamic extrem-
ists — this time, the militants
said, as revenge for France's de-
cision to join airstrikes against
the Islamic State group.
The head of France’s largest
mosque called for Muslims to
rally Friday in Paris to condemn
Gourdel’s slaying and show uni-
ty against terrorism, saying Is-
lamic State’s “deadly ideology”
had nothing to do with Islam.
Within hours of the call, the rec-
tor of the Bordeaux mosque, Ta-
req Oubrou, said French Mus-
lims need not demonstrate in
the name of Islam — but should
be joined by everyone.
“They are doubly affected,
because this crime touched one
of our countrymen and because
this crime was carried out in the
name of our religion,” Oubrou
told RTL radio.
The same debate played out
elsewhere. The hashtag cam-
paign #notinmyname — or #pa-
senmonnom in French — initi-
ated by British Muslims who
wanted to show their opposition
to extremist violence, spawned a
#MuslimApologies backlash by
those who thought the sense of
regret was overwrought. Tweets
“apologized” for algebra, soap
and coffee.
“Nowhere does the Qur’an
say other religions or nations
must be attacked. Cutting peo-
ple’s heads off is really the most
despicable. If airstrikes can stop
these fundamentalist, aggres-
sive ideas from spreading, I am
all for it,” said 65-year-old Enes
Mustafic.
Another congregant, Omer
Jamak, questioned the devotion
and even sanity of anyone who
thought otherwise.
“According to Islam, nobody
is allowed to be evil to others.
Nobody has the right to do such
a thing. I am against everything
they do down there like every
sane person is,” Jamak said.
An online poll posted by
France’s Le Figaro newspaper,
asking whether people thought
the country’s Muslim communi-
ty had sufficiently denounced
Gourdel’s death, drew an infuri-
ated response. Rachida Dati, the
mayor of Paris’ 7th arrondisse-
ment and the daughter of Alge-
rian immigrants, called for an
end to the “confounding of Is-
lam and fundamentalism, as the
French political class has done
for too long.”
The paper on Friday apolo-
gized for what it called a “clum-
sy” question.
Dawud Walid, director of the
Michigan chapter of the Council
on American-Islamic Relations,
said headlines about the Islamic
State were often frustrating in
his work. Walid said he’s been
speaking out against excessive
force by police after the fatal
shooting of a young black man
in Ferguson, Missouri.
“I received calls and emails
from fellow Americans who say,
‘Why are you worried about
what's going in Ferguson? Stop
ISIS.’ That is ridiculous,” said
Walid, a black Muslim.
“My primary responsibility
as an American citizen is to try
to make America more of a just
place,” Walid said. “People in
Iraq and Syria can't even fix their
own problems.”
Fire at air-traffic center disrupts 1,800 flights in Chicago
By Jason Keyser
Associated Press
CHICAGO — A contract em-
ployee suspected of setting a fire
at a suburban Chicago air traffic
control center brought two of
the nation’s busiest airports to a
halt Friday, sending delays and
cancellations rippling through
the air-travel network from
coast to coast.
The worker was found with
multiple self-inflicted knife
wounds and bums, and author-
ities quickly ruled out any ties to
terrorism. But the ground stop-
page at O’Hare and Midway air-
ports immediately raised ques-
tions about whether the Federal
Aviation Administration has ad-
equate backup plans to keep
planes moving when a single fa-
cility has to shut down.
By late afternoon, nearly
1,800 flights in and out of Chica-
go alone had been canceled. A
few flights began taking off and
landing again around midday,
after a nearly five-hour gap. The
planes were moving at a much-
reduced pace, officials said, and
no one could be sure when full
service would resume.
Investigators had no imme-
diate information on a possible
motive.
The early morning fire forced
the evacuation of the control
center in Aurora, about 40 miles
west of downtown Chicago. It
was the second unexpected
shutdown of a Chicago-area air-
traffic facility since May.
Emergency crews found the
man suspected of setting the fire
in the basement, where the blaze
began, with the knife wounds
and burns to his body. It was un-
clear whether he was intending
to commit suicide, said Thomas
Ahem, a spokesman for the Bu-
reau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Fire-
arms and Explosives, which was
taking part in the investigation.
The 36-year-old FAA con-
tractor, who was authorized to
be at the site, was taken to a hos-
pital and was expected to sur-
vive.
“We don’t know what his
state of mind was at the time,”
Ahern said.
The man used gasoline as an
accelerant, and there was fire
damage to some wiring in the
building, as well as water dam-
age from the sprinkler system,
Ahern said.
Authorities were preparing
to search the suspect’s home in
nearby Naperville. No charges
have been filed, and the suspect’s
name was not released.
When the center was evacu-
ated, management of the re-
gion’s airspace was transferred
to other facilities, FAA spokes-
woman Elizabeth Cory said.
But hours after the ordeal be-
gan, the region’s air traffic was
still a mess. The Aurora facility
— which had become a crime
scene — remained shut down
while investigators examined
the site.
A control center in Indianap-
olis called in staff on overtime to
patch together inbound and
outbound routes for the Chicago
area, said Douglas Church, a
spokesman for the National Air
Traffic Controllers Association
labor union. But the process was
slow and painstaking because
there was no way for other Chi-
cago-area controllers to send
flight plans to computers in In-
dianapolis. That information
normally gets routed through
the Aurora facility.
“They have had to revert to
entering flight-plan information
on those aircraft into [their] sys-
tem by hand,” Church wrote in
an email.
That led some observers to
call for better backup plans.
“This is a nightmare scenario
when we thought systems were
in place to prevent it,” said avia-
tion analyst Joseph Schwieter-
man of DePaul University in
Chicago. “Technology is advanc-
ing so fast that... there’s less of a
need for air traffic control to be
so geographically oriented. I
think the FAAs going to find it-
self under a microscope.”
The disruption was also
likely to deliver a financial hit to
airlines, Schwieterman said.
An FAA spokeswoman in
Chicago did not respond to a re-
quest for comment about the
agency’s backup planning.
The shutdown quickly
spread travel misery around the
country, with airports as close as
Milwaukee and as far as Dallas
canceling flights. Online radar
images showed a gaping hole in
the nation’s air-traffic map over
the upper Midwest.
Passengers already in the air
headed for Chicago wound up
elsewhere. Flight-tracking ser-
vices showed some Chicago-
bound American flights doing
loops over Michigan before di-
verting to Detroit.
Southwest Airlines said it
was scrapping all of its flights at
Midway and Milwaukee for the
entire day.
At O’Hare, long lines formed
at ticket counters. Some passen-
gers simply gave up and re-
turned home.
Brothers Glenn and Gary
Campbell, of suburban Chicago,
had planned to travel to the Or-
lando, Florida, area to attend
their father’s 80th birthday par-
ty. Instead, they settled for re-
funds.
“That it is so easy to disrupt
the system is disturbing,” said
Gary Campbell, a carpenter
from Crystal Lake, Illinois.
“They need to see how to make
sure this kind of thing doesn’t
happen again.”
Holder departure will bring civil rights questions
Molly Riley/AP
Outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at the Voting
Rights Brain Trust event on Friday.
By Jesse J. Holland
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Mo-
ments after making fresh de-
mands that Attorney General
Eric Holder open federal investi-
gations into police shootings of
unarmed black men, a cluster of
civil rights activists learned,
courtesy of whispers and a
shared e-tablet, that the nation’s
first black attorney general was
stepping down.
Civil rights leaders, liberal ac-
tivists and black lawmakers are
now left wondering what effect
Holder’s impending departure
will have on the high-profile ef-
forts begun on his watch.
“There’s a lot for us to calculate,”
said the Rev. A1 Sharpton, who
was meeting with black leaders
in Washington.
Holder has been applauded by
civil rights and equal rights activ-
ists as the most effective attorney
general ever for their causes.
“There has been no greater
ally in the fight for justice, civil
rights, equal rights, and voting
rights than Attorney General
Holder,” declared Myrlie Evers-
Williams, widow of slain civil
rights leader Medgar Evers and
a former NAACP national chair-
woman.
But the first black attorney
general could be leaving several
things undone as he transitions
out:
■ Possible federal charges in
the deaths of black men includ-
ing Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri, and Trayvon Martin in
Sanford, Florida.
■ The November monitor-
ing of congressional and state-
wide elections that will take
place after the Supreme Court
threw out a major protection in
the Voting Rights Act.
■ And projects he personally
promoted such as the reduction
of racial profiling in federal in-
vestigations, changes in how
federal prosecutors negotiate
sentencing, changes in the death
penalty system and efforts to re-
duce tensions between local po-
lice departments and minority
communities.
“At this critical time for
America, we can’t afford to lose
momentum on civil rights,” said
Leslie Proll, director of the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s
Washington Office
For his part, Holder told the
Congressional Black Caucus
during its legislative conference
on Friday that he plans to keep
on pushing voting rights and
civil rights protections while still
in office. He has agreed to stay
on until the Senate confirms his
replacement, and President Ba-
rack Obama has yet to name
that person.
“In the meantime, there re-
mains a great deal to be done,”
said Holder, who got a standing
ovation from the crowd as he en-
tered the room. “I have no inten-
tion of letting up or slowing
down.”
Despite Holder having in-
formed the White House
around Labor Day of his im-
pending departure, black law-
makers and civil rights activists
in Washington were shocked to
find out about his resignation
Thursday.
At the National Press Club —
only a few blocks from the Jus-
tice Department — Sharpton,
National Urban League presi-
dent Marc Morial and represen-
tatives of other groups had
joined with Brown’s parents to
call for federal charges to
brought against the white police
officer that fatally shot him. Mo-
rial, Sharpton and others could
be seen whispering to each other
and reading the breaking news
from an electronic tablet before
Sharpton told the crowd.
On the other side of town,
House Democratic leader Nan-
cy Pelosi broke the news to the
Congressional Black Caucus
during one of its legislative con-
ference sessions, just moments
after Holder’s work had been
praised. Gasps could be heard in
the crowd. “What?” one person
said into a microphone.
Sharpton and others hope
that Obama consults with the
civil rights community before
picking Holder’s replacement,
and Sharpton is pushing Holder
to at least make an announce-
ment on Ferguson before he
leaves office.
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 56, Ed. 1 Saturday, September 27, 2014, newspaper, September 27, 2014; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1124427/m1/3/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .