Wednesday, May 09, 2007

A Most Difficult Case

If you bomb hotels killing a tourist, were involved in the bombing of a passenger plane killing 73 people, and were caught with 200 lbs. of explosives for blowing up an auditorium where a dictator and head of state you oppose is speaking (and were convicted of the crime) you are:
a.) a good ole boy who just likes to blow things up
b.) a lover of freedom and peace
c.) a boy scout working on a merit badge
d.) a terrorist


And so Steve Inskeep asks Greg Allen this morning, "Is it, is it fair to call this man a terrorist – given all these incidents in which he’s been linked, to which he’s been linked?" Is that bold, or what?

Oh, and Allen, who earlier described these activities as "several efforts of sabotage," replies, "You’ll certainly find many people around the world and in this country who have no problem calling him a terrorist. You have someone who there is evidence that links him to bombings and that certainly in this post 9/11 world would qualify someone as a terrorist. But you talk to people in Miami..."

I'm really floored by this. I honestly don't care how much I sympathize with someone's cause, if they blow up planes with people on them or tourist hotels - guess what - it's terrorism. I wonder if Allen would have described the destruction of the World Trade towers as "several efforts of sabotage?" Pretty damn crass...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Inskeep is a fuckin disaster. As someone else said the other day in the comments here: I am through with ME/ATC. And I have told them this. (Of course I never miss a day without checking in with this great blog.) But they don't get my money, nor do any public stations here which carry ME or ATC et my money. I won't enable them any more. (Fortunately we have enough public radio stations in the Seattle area that I can afford to be so purist about this!)

Porter Melmoth said...

Amen. I'm with you.

For some bizarre reason though, I'm tuning in to ME these days. And really, I'm not a masochist. Maybe because I want to know firsthand how far Neocon Public Radio is going in its attempts to sway reasonable-thinking people's minds in their direction. I'm concerned about the mental welfare of many people I know who seem to buy anything that's on NPR. I've told them about this blog, but because of the convenience of radio, there's a 99% chance that they'll flip NPR on, and a .1% chance that they'll hunt this blog down. We all know what we're up against.

(KPLU has great jazz, but it's incredible that they start ATC at 3PM! Consequently, it's the webcast version for me...)