Kristof New York Times has tape Obama Muslim prayer Arabic

It would appear that Nicholas Kristof and the New York Times have a tape of Obama reciting the Muslim call to prayer in Arabic.

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/obama-on-the-issues-and-his-grandfathers-wives/

In Tuesday’s column, I write about Barack Obama and argue that it’s a canard that he is too inexperienced to be a good president. I quote briefly in the column from an interview I did with him in his Senate office on Feb. 27, but here are highlights from the transcript as a whole.

The transcript would have been made by the staff of the New York Times from a tape. So the New York Times has the tape of the interview.

Note that the interview was Feb 27, 2007 in Obama’s Senate office and the column was printed March 6, 2007. If one goes to the New York Times link above, one can follow the link to the column below. This shows the transcript referred to is to the interview where Obama recites the Muslim Call to Prayer in Arabic. This is the Obama Muslim Smoking Gun Tape.

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/opinion/06kristof.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

So the New York Times has Obama on tape reciting the Muslim Call to Prayer in Arabic. Thus they know he was raised as a Muslim. No one learns that from childhood unless raised as a Muslim.

Same repeated at Obama webpage

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/davidhuntington/CqsD

Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

By reposting the same quote on his webpage, Obama’s campaign affirms the quotation did occur in that form, i.e. Obama’s campaign has admitted he did recite the Muslim Call to Prayer in Arabic to the New York Times.

==

If the tape is played, then Obama is proven a liar on his webpage. He will not be elected president if the tape is played is a reasonable conjecture. Thus the New York Times is withholding a tape from the public that would change the election. The NYT knows the liberal MSM is falsely repeating the Obama claim he was never raised a Muslim. They have the tape to refute it. They are withholding it.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/christian

Back to Fight the Smears home

The truth about Barack Obama’s faith Lie: Barack Obama is a Muslim. Truth: Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.

==The following comment was submitted to the Kristof blog link at New York Times on July 15, 2008

“I quote briefly in the column from an interview I did with him in his Senate office on Feb. 27, but here are highlights from the transcript as a whole.”

The word transcript implies there is a tape of the interview.

The column says

“Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.””

Thus the NYT has a tape with Obama reciting the Muslim Call to Prayer in Arabic. But on his webpage, Obama says

“
The truth about Barack Obama’s faith

Lie:
Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Truth:
Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.

“

The NYT knows that other media organizations are repeating this and claiming people who say Obama was raised a Muslim are ignorant or wrong. Please post the interview tape on-line so that people can hear Obama recite the Muslim call to prayer in Arabic. That will show other media organizations are falsely calling people ignorant for saying Obama was raised a Muslim.

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/obama-on-the-issues-and-his-grandfathers-wives/#comment-65262

== end of comment submitted

Please go to the above link and ask the New York Times to post the tape. If the above comment is not quoted, you can copy the whole thing and add your endorsement to please post the tape and the comments.

==Added July 16, 2008

The New York Times is posting comments at the above page. I posted mine and Al Czervic has posted his. Please add yours.

==Sat July 19, 2008

Obviously my original post was an argument with a conclusion and the conclusion stated in the headline. The request on the NYT’s own webpage also indicates that I was not claiming more than was stated in the article, i.e. there is a very high probability that the NYT has this tape. I think its appropriate to treat this as a very high probability.

A stenographer who takes down a conversation is more expensive than a tape. Of course, if it turned out that was the case, that person could be found to confirm the event. A legal stenographer is expensive and even a non-legal one, if they can be found, is expensive. The NYT like other papers has been cutting costs, so they likely used a tape recorder and then just had someone back at HQ transcribe it.

Obama posted the Kristof article on his website with the indication that Obama recited in Arabic the Muslim Call to Prayer, which is confirmation the original conversation happened.

This idea has been picked up on at the following links

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/07/18/new-yorker-cover-cartoon-not-a-satire/

http://www.redstate.com/diaries/wsjreader/2008/jul/18/obama-recited-the-muslim-call-to-prayer-in-ar/

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2047717/posts?page=51

==Sunday July 20 Layoffs at NYT

Did Kristof make a tape of Obama or bring a stenographer to Obama’s Senate office in DC? The New York Times has been having layoffs for years.

Search layoffs “new york times”

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/nytimes_1-8.html

http://www.thestreet.com/stocks/sandybrown/10243573.html

09/20/05 – 05:12 PM EDT

Sandy Brown

Newspaper publisher New York Times (NYT – Cramer’s Take – Stockpickr) slashed third-quarter earnings guidance and set plans to cut 500 jobs, or 4% of its staff.

The company said the cutbacks will include 45 newsroom jobs at its flagship New York Times newspaper. In May the company set plans for an earlier layoff round that saw it cut almost 200 jobs.

==Keller memo 2005

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/circulation/bill_keller_well_be_there_in_dazzling_form_26160.asp

From: Bill Keller
To: Newsroom
Subject: A message to the staff
Sent: 09/20/2005 04:23 PM

To the Staff:

None of you will be surprised to learn that the economic pressures on our business have been unrelenting. While we’re in better shape economically (and much stronger journalistically) than our competitors, our revenues have not grown sufficiently to keep up with the growing costs of everything the company does.

So this afternoon the company is announcing a significant reduction in staff that will be carried out over the next six to nine months. The numbers are still approximate, but Arthur and Janet estimate that across all of the Times-owned properties the total cut in staff will be about 500 people. As in the past, the deepest cuts will be on the business side. Janet and Arthur are well aware that the journalists make up the great engine of this company’s prosperity and the hope for its future growth. But the newsrooms ­- here, at the Globe and elsewhere ­- are going to take a hit.

I’ve been told that we will be expected to cut about 45 positions in the Times newsroom. To put that in context: that’s about double the number who took the newsroom buyouts offered earlier this summer.

This number was given to me yesterday, so I can’t begin to tell you precisely where those slots will come from. I can say a few things about what this means for us:

First, Janet and Arthur have assured me we will have considerable flexibility in meeting this number. Our aim will be to reduce staff through a combination of voluntary severance deals similar to the ones we did earlier this summer, by curtailing use of temporary employees, and by attrition. This is a serious challenge, and there’s no guarantee, but my hope is that we can bring this off without layoffs.

As a first step to protect the loyal, hard-working staff we have, we are closing the door immediately on new hiring. This freeze will last at least until the end of the year. Of course, we will honor commitments to people who have been offered jobs and have accepted. And, of course, I reserve the right to make exceptions for cases of high priority to the paper. But you should expect the exceptions will be few, if any, and they will be made in consultation with the department heads.

As soon as we have information from the business side about what we can offer in the way of separation packages, we will aim to structure another round of voluntary buyouts. The buyout offers earlier this summer were extended to only a fifth of the newsroom ­- areas where we thought the staff reductions would have the least impact. This time we will look at opening the field wider.

We will also look hard for non-payroll spending cuts in the hope that we can, in effect, offer up dollars instead of staff positions. It’s possible that if we can come up with real savings in non-payroll spending we will not have to cut staff by the full 45 slots. We will be looking hard at freelance spending. We will be working with Foreign, National and Bizday to look for opportunities to postpone major relocations of staff, which are hugely expensive. We will work with the department heads to help keep the lid on spending for entertainment, and to make sure overtime and comp time are closely monitored. And so on. Anticipating that 2006 would be an unusually grim budget year, John and Bill Schmidt and our budget minders had already begun looking hard for ways to change some of the things we do in order to minimize the damage of these cuts. We hope to have a detailed plan to take in this notch in our belts within two or three weeks. In all of this, we will work closely with the department heads to set priorities and to help the newsroom weather this.

I won’t pretend that it will be painless. Between the buyouts earlier this summer and the demands placed on us by the IHT and the Website ­- not to mention the heroic commitment we’ve made to covering the aftermath of Katrina ­ we don’t have a lot of slack. Like the rest of you, I found the recent spate of retirement parties more saddening than celebratory, both for the obvious personal reasons and because they represented a sapping of our collective wisdom and experience. Throughout these lean years you have worked your hearts out to perform our daily miracle, and I wish I could tell you relief was in sight.

What I can tell you is that we will not retreat, not one inch, from our commitment to put out every day the best news report in the world. We’ll be there, in dazzling form, for the next Katrina, the next international crisis, the next domestic upheaval. We’ll be there putting faces on the changing course of American life, and digging up the stories that won’t get told unless we tell them, and we’ll be telling them with the insight and grace our readers expect.

You will have questions, and in the coming days I should have better answers. Probably the easiest way to keep you all in the loop is through Ahead of the Times. If you e-mail questions to me, Glenn Kramon or Grace Wong, I will post answers as soon as I know them.

Bill

==

http://www.observer.com/2007/times-announces-layoffs-enforcement-hiring-freeze

To the staff:

Despite growing pressure on the newsroom budget, The Times has continued to turn out great journalism, whether it’s covering Iraq, New York City or the most crowded Presidential campaign in memory. We’ve been able to do this,
in part, because each of you has helped us save money by finding new and more efficient ways to do what we need to do. That has enabled us to avoid the kind of drastic staff cutbacks other news organizations have endured. Jill, John and I greatly appreciate everything you have done.

As we approach 2008, it is clear that the newsroom is going to have to do even more to tighten spending, and to help the publisher and the Times Company meet the difficult financial challenges facing our industry.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/business/media/14cnd-times.html

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Published: February 14, 2008

After years of resisting the newsroom cuts that have hit most of the industry, The New York Times will bow to growing financial strain and eliminate about 100 newsroom jobs this year, the executive editor said Thursday.

http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/