**September 23, 2006 FEMA Emergency Management Higher Education Project
Activity Report**

\(1\) CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS?:

Agence France-Presse. \"Pakistanis Protest, Cleric Says Pope Should Be
Crucified.\" 22 Sep 2006. At:

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060922/wl_sthasia_afp/vaticanpopeislampakistan_060922124129>

\[\"Jihad Watch\" comment on this article: \"Can you feel the love? More
Peace and Tolerance on the Day of Rage from those who would never, ever
insult or disparage a religious figure.\" Accessed at:

[[http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/013255.php]{.underline}](http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/013255.php)\]

Connor, Ken. \"Why Did Pope\'s Remarks Spur Violence?\" Human Events,
September 22, 2006. Accessed at:

[[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17166]{.underline}](http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17166)

\[Excerpt: \"Current U.S. policy is predicated on the fact that, given
the opportunity, the Muslim world will embrace democracy. Yet over and
over we see a vocal segment of the Muslim population attempting to limit
speech and impose religion. Indeed, Islamic religious leaders commonly
issue a fatwa, or a legal decree, when someone says something they
consider blasphemous\.... When religious leaders have the power to
condemn men and women to death for statements deemed to be blasphemous,
what hope is there for freedom of religion or freedom of speech? Can
democracy really flourish in the Muslim world?\"\]

Islamic Society of North America. \"ISNA Statement About Pope
Benedict\'s Regensburg Lecture and Subsequent Apology.\" 18 Sep 2006.

[[http://www.isna.net/index.php?id=35&backPID=1&tt_news=780]{.underline}](http://www.isna.net/index.php?id=35&backPID=1&tt_news=780)

\[Excerpt: \"In a major speech delivered at the University of
Regensburg, Germany last Tuesday, September 12 , Roman Catholic Pope
Benedict deeply offended Muslims by citing demeaning remarks about the
Prophet Muhammad\...and by asserting incorrect statements about Islam.
However, ISNA welcomes the Pope\'s recent remarks stating that he did
not mean to offend Muslims by his September 12 speech. The Islamic
Society of North America appreciates the Pope\'s apology as an
indication of a sincere desire for respective dialogue. In addition,
ISNA believes it is important to correct the erroneous information that
Pope Benedict cited regarding Muslims and Islam\.... \'There is no
compulsion in religion\' was revealed during the Medinan period, after
the Muslims had established a secure city-state. Freedom of religion
remained a bed-rock principle of Islamic jurisprudence.\" {! \-- Tell
that to Fox News reporters kidnapped in Gaza Strip recently}.\]

MacFarquhar, Neil. \"Putting a Different Face on Islam in America.\" New
York Times, September 20, 2006. At:

[[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/nyregion/20mattson.html?\_r=1&oref=slogin]{.underline}](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/20/nyregion/20mattson.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

\[Excerpt: \"This month, Professor {Ingrid} Mattson, a 43-year-old
convert, was elected president of the Islamic Society of North America,
the largest umbrella organization for Muslim groups in the United States
and Canada, making her a prominent voice for a faith ever more under
assault by critics who paint it as the main font of terrorism. She is
both the first woman and, as a Canadian, the first nonimmigrant to hold
the post. To her supporters, Professor Mattson\'s selection comes as a
significant breakthrough, a chance for North American Muslims to show
that they are a diverse, enlightened community with real roots here -
and not alien, sexist extremists bent on the destruction of Western
civilization\.... Like other mainstream Muslims, she struggles with how
best to convince people that the faith does not condone terrorist
violence. She detects what she calls \"Muslim fatigue\" among North
Americans weary both of the extremists who use the religion to justify
their attacks and of the moderates who seem powerless to influence them.
The sense I have from Americans is that they don\'t want to hear Muslims
talking about Islam anymore,\' she said. \'They just want us to do
something to stop causing all these problems in their lives\'.\" Note:
website address: Islamic Society of North America.http://www.isna.net/\]

Murdock, Deroy. \"West vs. Islamofascism : We\'re Too Nice.\" Human
Events, September 22, 2006. Accessed at:

[[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17169]{.underline}](http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17169)

\[Excerpt: \"From the Vatican to the Pentagon, goodwill gestures offered
to the Muslim world too often blow up in the West\'s collective face.
The olive branch Pope Benedict XVI extended to Muslims is obscured by
the smoke that has billowed since his address at Bavaria\'s Regensburg
University\.... The Pope\'s call for Christian and Islamic interchange
ignited days of Muslim rage\.... Throwing olive branches at
Islamofascists is beyond futile. This is the War on Terror, not the
Summer Olympics on Terror. If America won\'t fight this like a war \--
and win \-- we might as well cut our losses, hand out the Korans, and
start the mass conversions.\"\]

Page, Clarence. \"Faith and Unreason.\" Baltimore Sun, September 22,
2006. Accessed at:

<http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.page22sep22,0,1007365.story?collbal-pe-opinion>

\[Excerpt: \"Violence in defense of Islam only serves to confirm in
Western minds the stereotype that Islam is a violent religion - the very
stereotype that the protesters protest\.... We need to have reasoned
dialogue, not war, between faiths, cultures and civilizations. That puts
a burden not only on Westerners to reach out but also on responsible
Muslim leaders to step up and show their support for free speech, even
when it is provocative and aimed at something so cherished as one\'s
religion\.... The days of Christian Crusades and Inquisitions are over,
but some folks haven\'t gotten the message. Even if he had not
apologized, nothing the pope said comes close to the hate spewed forth
by Islamic militants.\"\]

Reagan, Michael. \"How Many Divisions Has the Pope?\" Human Events,
September 22, 2006. Accessed at:

[[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17178]{.underline}](http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=17178)

\[Excerpt: \"Today the question might be, \'How many supporters does the
pope have among the world\'s leaders?\' Shamefully, the answer is none.
Assailed all across the globe by millions of Muslims for quoting a few
passages from a debate featuring the 14th Century Byzantine emperor
Manuel Paleologos II \-- next-to-last emperor of what had been the
Eastern Roman empire \-- Pope Benedict XVI has been left standing alone
among the leaders of the Western world despite his warning that they
face a foe determined to subjugate them and their citizens\.... All this
proves the point I have been making for a long time: the world fears
Islam and its adherents. In an attempt to spur a dialogue between
Christianity and Islam the pope quotes a Byzantine leader from 1391 to
make his point about the futility of violence between religions and what
do we get? We get a dead nun, churches burned, the leader of the
world\'s billion Catholics burned in effigy, hordes of angry Muslims
demonstrating in the streets and demanding that the pope be hunted down
and slaughtered, all of which proved the point stressed by Manuel
Paleologos II, in the 14th century. And worst of all, we get silence
from the leaders of the besieged West.\"\]

Zenit News Service (Rome). \"Benedict XVI, Faith, Reason and Islam.\"
September 23, 2006. Accessed at:
[[http://www.zenit.org/english/]{.underline}](http://www.zenit.org/english/)

\[Excerpt: \"Rather than being an attack on Islam, \'What emerges
clearly from the Holy Father\'s discourses is a warning, addressed to
Western culture, to avoid \'the contempt for God and the cynicism that
considers mockery of the sacred to be an exercise of freedom\', noted
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi on Sept. 14. The Jesuit
explained that the Pope was criticizing modern culture for trying to
exclude religion\.... the followers of an irreligious modern mentality
had far more reason to be irritated with the Pope than anyone else, a
fact that probably explains the extreme hostility of a New York Times
editorial against the Holy Father published Sept. 16\.... Cardinal Paul
Poupard, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious
Dialogue, recommended that people \'read well\' the Pope\'s text.
Interviewed by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Sept. 15, the
cardinal explained that if Muslims were to read and meditate on the text
they would understand that, far from being an attack, it is rather \'an
outstretched hand\'.\"\]

\(2\) DISASTER RESILIENCE: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH \-- NEW BOOK AVAILABLE
IN OCTOBER:

Received note from publisher, Charles C. Thomas, Ltd., too late for
yesterday\'s activity report, announcing the release soon of a new book
on \"Disaster Resilience: An Integrated Approach,\" edited by Douglas
Paton and David Johnston. The description provided by the publisher is
included below:

\"This book will fill the gaps that hamper the effective utilization of
the resilience and sustainability concepts within emergency planning:
one concerns the lack of a comprehensive review of this multi-level
concept; the second relates to its multi-level nature. Specifically, the
text identifies a need for the systematic integration of these different
levels in a manner that illustrates the holistic contribution of the
resilience concept to emergency planning. By integrating these different
levels in a manner that illustrates the holistic contribution of the
resilience concept to emergency planning, a comprehensive working model
of disaster resilience and sustainability can be developed. The text
discusses the resources and strategies required at each level to
facilitate resilience and how they can be integrated to develop a
sustained capacity to adapt to nature (and other) hazard consequences.
The nature and implications of these inter-relationships will be
developed throughout the text and will lead towards the development of a
comprehensive, integrated model of community resilience. A key focus of
the text will thus be its articulating the inter-relationships between
these levels. The importance of basing emergency planning on the
holistic application of the concept will also be discussed. By
representing resilience in a holistic manner, the text will also
constitute a resource capable of assisting assessment of the community
implications of any shortfall of resilience resources for emergency
planning and for community recovery planning. The book brings together
contributions from international experts in core areas. It includes
chapters that provide an overarching framework within which the need for
inter-relationships between levels to be developed is discussed. It also
includes sections that link chapters to progressively develop a holistic
multi-level model, and a chapter that describes the final comprehensive
model and its implications for contemporary emergency management. It
will be useful to those researching or teaching courses in emergency
management, disaster management, community development, environmental
planning, urban development, sociology, and applied psychology, as well
as to emergency management agencies, risk management agencies, engineers
and consultants, planners, emergency and law enforcement agencies, and
social and welfare agencies.\"

Will do another note after I have received a copy and had a chance to
take a look \-- sounds very interesting. For additional information the
Thomas website is:
[[http://www.ccthomas.com]{.underline}](http://www.ccthomas.com/) \--
phone number is 800-258-8980.

\(3\) MATERIALS RECEIVED:

Disaster Research, No. 462, September 22, 2006. (Natural Hazards
Research and Applications Information Center. Institute of Behavior
Science No. 6 482 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0482. (303) 492-6819, (303)
492-6818, (303) 492-2151 (fax), URL:
[[http://www.colorado.edu/hazards]{.underline}](http://www.colorado.edu/hazards),
e-mail: hazctr@spot.colorado.edu.) Accessed at:

[[http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/dr/currentdr.html]{.underline}](http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/dr/currentdr.html).

\(4\) RESOURCES:

Hazard and Risk Science Review 2006. Benfield Hazard Research Centre
(UK), 44 pages, September 2006. Accessed at:

[[http://www.benfieldhrc.org/activities/hrsr/h&rsr_2006/]{.underline}](http://www.benfieldhrc.org/activities/hrsr/h&rsr_2006/)

\[From website: \"Benfield and PartnerRe are proud to present the third
edition of the Hazard & Risk Science Review. The Hazard & Risk Science
Review is a unique digest of the latest academic and technical research
into natural hazards. Since the launch of the first edition in 2004, the
Review has become established as an important reference point for the
latest summarized research in this field. With claims to property
insurers from natural disasters totaling USD78 billion in 2005 - USD65
billion of which were triggered by hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in
the United States - there remains a need for the industry to be kept
fully informed of the latest research into emerging risk science in
order to develop appropriate insurance and reinsurance solutions. The
2006 Review, commissioned once again from the Benfield UCL Hazard
Research Centre, provides a synopsis of over 75 scientific papers
published during the past 12 months. It is focused on the four major
areas of hazards that are relevant to catastrophe insurance and
reinsurance - atmospheric, geological, hydrological and climate change.
Both of our organisations have a long-standing commitment to research
and we hope that this review will continue to assist the industry in
developing its understanding of emerging risk science.\"\]

\(5\) WAR ON TERROR:

White House. \"President\'s Radio Address\" (War on Terror). September
23, 2006. Accessed at:

[[http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060923.html]{.underline}](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060923.html)

\[Abstract: \"In his weekly radio address President Bush said, \'All
civilized nations, especially those in the Muslim world, are bound
together in this struggle between moderation and extremism. By working
together, we will roll back this grave threat to our way of life, we
will help the people of the Middle East claim their freedom, and we will
leave a safer and more hopeful world for our children and
grandchildren\'.\"\]

\(6\) WAR ON TERROR \-- AL QAEDA:

Associated Press. \"Report: Bin Laden Dead in Pakistan.\" September 23,
2006. Accessed at:

[[http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1157913687851&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull]{.underline}](http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1157913687851&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)

\[Excerpt: \"French President Jacques Chirac said Saturday that
information contained in a leaked intelligence document raising the
possibility that Osama bin Laden may have died of typhoid in Pakistan
last month is \'in no way whatsoever confirmed\'\.... Officials from
Afghanistan to Washington expressed doubts about the report\...\"\]

\(7\) WAR ON TERROR \-- AFGHANISTAN/PAKISTAN:

Sanger, David E. \"Musharraf Tells Bush Tribal Deal Is Aimed At Qaeda.\"

New York Times, September 22, 2006. Accessed at:

[[http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/22/news/prexy.php]{.underline}](http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/22/news/prexy.php)

\[Excerpt: \"President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan attempted Friday to
convince President George W. Bush that a deal he approved with tribal
leaders in one of the country\'s most lawless border areas would result
in driving Al Qaeda and Taliban forces out of the area, rather than give
them more freedom to operate. Bush and his national security aides were
clearly skeptical\...\"\]

B.Wayne Blanchard, Ph.D., CEM

Higher Education Project Manager

Emergency Management Institute

National Emergency Training Center

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Department of Homeland Security

16825 S. Seton, K-011

Emmitsburg, MD 21727

\(301\) 447-1262, voice

\(301\) 447-1598, fax

wayne.blanchard@dhs.gov

[[http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu]{.underline}](http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/edu)

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