Friday, January 20, 2006

The Peoples' (Conditional) Right to Know

By Jack Kelly

Last month Italian authorities arrested three Algerians who were members of the al Qaida -linked terror group GSPC.

The three were plotting attacks on ships, railway stations and stadiums in the United States in a bid to outdo the casualties caused on 9/11, said Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu.

The arrests made front page news in newspapers in Italy, Britain and France. But apparently the only U.S. newspaper to mention them was the Philadelphia Inquirer, in a short AP dispatch on page A-6. The AP did not mention that the principal targets of the plotters were in the U.S.

The incuriosity of our news media about the plotters and their plots is curious, especially in light of the mysterious death of Joel Hinrichs, 21, a Muslim convert who, wearing a suicide vest, blew himself up Oct. 1 on a park bench outside the stadium in Norman where the university of Oklahoma football team was playing Kansas State. When Hinrichs' apartment was searched after his death, the FBI found a plane ticket to Algeria.

Perhaps the Algerian plotters went unmentioned because describing how they were caught -- the Italian authorities were listening in on their telephone conversations -- would interfere with a current journalistic meme...


(bold emphasis mine) Where is the MSN on this story? Oh yeah, I fogot, the NYT has decided it's against wire-tapping, at least when Republicans do it (they had no problem with Clinton's even more invasive and indiscriminate domestic surveillance program. In fact, they called it a “a necessity”). Therefore the story isn't worth mentioning, even though it makes headlines in Europe.

Could it be that the NYT thinks this story is not worth reporting here in the USA, and that the rest of our MSN agrees, because it might make it look like Bush actually has REASONS to be conducting wiretaps? No need for us to know about that!

You can read all of "The Peoples'(Conditional) Right to Know" HERE.

Related Links:
Post from the Little Green Footballs blog.

From Militant Islam Monitor.org: Muslim students arrested in failed Oklahoma University stadium suicide bomb attack - bomber Hinrich suspected to be convert.

Local report, with photos: Gateway Pundit.

1 comment:

Chas said...

Andy tells me this morning, that the story about the suicide bomber outside of the stadium was kept quiet by the FBI for security reasons.

That may have been true initially, but that does not explain the MSN keeping quiet about it now, and not reporting the related story that is making front page headlines in Europe. The cat's out of the bag now. Isn't this something we need to know about?

The trouble with good security is, that when it IS good, then people percieve that there are NO problems; and start to think the security is unnecessary. How many 9-11s do we need before we learn the lesson?