Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 29 January 2017
Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.
Global
Trump’s refugee and travel suspension: World reacts (BBC News) President Donald Trump’s decision to halt all refugee admissions and temporarily bar people from seven Muslim-majority countries has been criticised by rights groups and activists around the world. However, some right-wing European politicians have welcomed the move.
U.S.
Terror-Tied Group CAIR Causing Chaos, Promoting Protests & Lawsuits as Trump Protects Nation (Breitbart) Here is what this esteemed news source has to say:
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, aka CAIR, has helped launch a series of protests across the country and plans lawsuits related to President Trump’s recent executive orders on immigration.
The orders are designed to keep Americans safer from terrorism by temporarily barring visitors from Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan from entering the U.S. without “extreme vetting” and banning refugees from these countries for at least 30 days.
CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding operation.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is also increasingly a part of America’s institutional left infrastructure and was one of the partners behind the recent Women’s March in Washington that drew hundreds of thousands, along with feminist groups like Planned Parenthood.
CAIR: Who We Are (Council on American-Islamic Relations Website) Information source.
US refugee ban: Trump decried for ‘stomping on’ American values (The Guardian) UN agencies and rights groups challenge the legality of Trump’s executive order which appears to target Muslims. Chuck Schumer, Democratic leader in the Senate, said:
“Tears are running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty tonight as a grand tradition of America, welcoming immigrants, that has existed since America was founded, has been stomped upon. Taking in immigrants and refugees is not only humanitarian but has also boosted our economy and created jobs decade after decade. This is one of the most backward and nasty executive orders that the president has issued.”
Inside the confusion of the Trump executive order and travel ban (CNN) The White House inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, overruled guidance from the Dept. of Homeland Security that the order did not apply to people who with lawful permanent residence, generally referred to as green card holders, according to CNN. This article also states that the president did not consult the Dept. of Justice before issuing the executive order. Econintersect: Is Trump taking lessons from Modi? This order seems to be as well thought out as Modi’s demonetization decree last fall.
Exclusive: US May Have Let ‘Dozens’ of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees (ABC News) Here is the background (from 2013 article) on why Pres. Obama banned Iraqi refugees admission to the U.S. for 6 months in 2011. It was discovered that the security checks in place to that time were flawed and known terrorists had been admitted to the country. The 2011 order was in place until the vetting process was reviewed and updated. Econintersect: Since that time we have not yet found any report of a known terrorist being admitted to the U.S.
Are Immigrants Prone to Crime and Terrorism? (The Atlantic) In terms of both crime and terrorism, immigrants are not the problem Trump says they are:
Study after study after study bears out … : Immigrants largely commit crimes at a lower rate than the local-born population. Those numbers are true even of the children of immigrants. Writing in the Oxford Handbook of Crime and Criminal Justice, Sandra M. Bucerius, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, noted:
Second-generation immigrants typically have higher crime rates than first-generation immigrants. In the US context, however, most second-generation immigrants continue to enjoy lower crime rates than the native-born population. In stark contrast, research findings in European countries indicate that some second-generation immigrant groups have crime rates that drastically exceed those of the native-born population.
Terrorism by Muslims makes up one-third of 1 percent of all murders in the US (Vox) A new study from Duke University sociologist Charles Kurzman, which tallies up the data on terrorist attacks committed by Muslim Americans, found that only 46 Muslim Americans (defined as “Muslims who lived in the US for an extended period“) were linked to violent extremism at home or abroad in 2016. The total Muslim American population is 3.3 million. Of those 46, only 24 were actually implicated in a concrete terrorist plot (the others did things like attempting to travel to Syria to join ISIS). Those plots claimed 54 lives, the vast majority of which (49) came in a single attack – the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. Since 9/11, Muslim-American extremists have killed a total of 123 people, compared to 240,000 total murders. So the extremists have killed 0.05% of the murder total while coming from 1.1% of the U.S. population over the past 15 years. (The 1/3 of 1% in the headline refers to 2016 only.) And, this article points out, the extremists predominantly came from a small group of the Muslim-American total, those of non-Muslim ancestry who converted to Islam. This article states:
Many of these people are likely attracted to extremism rather than Islam per se, as you can see by looking at the rates of violent extremism among non-Muslim groups.
The truth about Muslims in America (CNN) This article is 13 months old. Some factoids:
A Duke University study found more terrorism suspects and perpetrators were brought to the attention of law enforcement by members of the Muslim-American community than were discovered through U.S. government investigations.
A Pew survey found that roughly half of U.S. Muslims say their religious leaders aren’t speaking out enough against Islamic extremism.
A Pew religious landscape survey found that 57% of American Muslims say there is more than one way to interpret Islam’s teachings. A similar number say many different religions can lead to eternal life.
American Muslims live in cities big and small all across the United States. The first mosque built in America was in, of all places, Ross, North Dakota, back in 1929.
American Muslim women hold more college or postgraduate degrees than Muslim men. And they are more likely to work in professional fields than women from most other U.S. religious groups.
U.S. Muslims have the second-highest level of education among major religious groups in the country; Jews have the highest. And a greater proportion of them have college degrees than the general U.S. population.
Trump argument bolstered: Clinton could have received 800,000 votes from noncitizens (The Washington Times) Based on national polling by a consortium of universities, a report by political scientist Jesse Richman of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, said 6.4% of the estimated 20 million adult noncitizens in the U.S. voted in November. He extrapolated that that percentage would have added 834,381 net votes for Mrs. Clinton by ESTIMATING that 81% of them voted for her. See next article for an interview of Prof. Richman.
ODU professor wants President Trump to stop citing, misquoting his research (wktr.com) Contrast what Professor Jesse Richman says in this interview with what was reported without links provided to the report presumably quoted. In this interview he says:
“Maybe 100,000 (ballots), maybe a little more to the Hillary Clinton margin. Not insignificant, but on the other hand, way below the kind of levels of fraud that Trump is alleging.”
Canada
US refugee ban: Canada’s Justin Trudeau takes a stand (BBC News) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken a stand on social media against the temporary US ban on refugees and immigration from designated countries. In a series of tweets, Mr Trudeau underscored his government’s commitment to bringing in “those fleeing persecution, terror & war“.
