Thursday, June 22, 2006

Down the Memory Hole

When LGF reported that, according to ABC News, “African-Americans” were among the terrorists arrested in today’s Miami bust, it made alarm bells ring for me. Could these be Jamaat ul-Fuqra operatives?

I followed Charles’ link to the ABC story, but there was no mention of “African Americans” in it. Strange — LGF had the quote. So I went to Google News and looked at story after story — Reuters, AP, whatever — no mention.

Finally I searched on Google News for “sears tower” “african americans”, and I got exactly one hit. Here’s a screen cap (click the image to enlarge):

Google News

So originally the Google summary had “African Americans” in it, but —surprise! It’s not in the ABC News story anymore. The only place you’ll find it now is in this Google screen cap.

Here’s what LGF quoted:

The suspects are described as African Americans and at least one man of Caribbean descent.

Google said:

Federal Agents Raid Suspected Terror Cell in Miami
ABC News - 1 hour ago
... planned to bomb the FBI building in Miami and the Sears Tower in Chicago. ... The suspects are described as African Americans and at least one man of Caribbean ...

But here’s the relevant paragraph in the ABC story as it is now, minus any mention of our African American brothers:

Among those arrested, five were U.S. citizens, one was a permanent legal resident, and one was a Haitian who was in the United States illegally on a visa overstay, federal officials told ABC News. [emphasis mine]

Amazing! Somehow, in this country of the color-blind MSM, the African American terrorists have been transmogrified into “U.S. Citizens”. This is the same transmogrifying machine that gave us “youths” rioting in France.

Ah, well… Another day at the George Orwell Ranch.

19 comments:

Bruce said...

It said "African American" when I read it not long ago.

Thanos said...

Broad strata, broad strata

In Russet Shadows said...

I think it's even stranger that they made the leap from "African-American" (presumably a skin color) to "U.S. citizen". How did the reporter know the suspects were citizens? Was he trying to cover up his own race-based outlook? What gives, here?

Karridine said...

Baron, having lived 21 years as a second-class citizen in my wife's nation, and tasting their linguistic equivalent of 'nigger' when applied to me daily, I've done a LOT of considering of racism.

I see it as a pervasive, toxic, corrosive and insidious dynamic; endemic to ALL humans (WE are pretty good, THEY can't be trusted!); and a definition deliberately manipulated by media, leftists and feminists in America for the furtherance of their (hidden) agendas.

Good work!
Karridine

Papa Ray said...

I distrust the media to even get the date correct anymore.

What ever color their skin was, does not indicate their culture, orgin or religion.

There are persons everywhere of different color skin who want to do us harm. But it usually has nothing to do with what their skin color is, but what they believe.

Don't forget the color of skin the man had that brought terror to Oklahoma.

But not to worry, there are millions of citizens of the world that want to do harm to you and your fammily.

Before it's all over we will have our chance to kill or imprison most of them and they will be of all colors, just like a rainbow...

Of Terror.

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA

Wally Ballou said...

On the other hand, that right-wing news organizaiton NBC (via MSNBC) has this to say:

The men — part of a radical Black Muslim group — were planning terror acts in Miami and Chicago, officials say.

link

The New York daily news says this:

Law enforcement sources told the Daily News the suspects were an offshoot of the Black Muslims, the precursor to the Nation of Islam.


Search Google News for "chicago miami black muslim" and you will find more stories.

And, I have to point out, every story - even the NYT and LA Times - identify the suspects as muslims.

American news organizations have been withholding the race of accused criminals under most circumstances, as a matter of offical practice, since the 1960's.
(although they have never been shy about using phrases like "all-white" or "predominantly white" whne they want to discredit a jury or a community)

Vol-in-Law said...

"American news organizations have been withholding the race of accused criminals under most circumstances, as a matter of offical practice, since the 1960's."

The cultural-Marxists who've controlled the media since the '60s hate facts, since facts enable the empirical ascertainment of truth, and the destruction of truth is their primary aim - yesterday I was reading "Critical Legal Theory", a British cultural-Marxist text from 1987, and this is all made explicit. In this case the fact they don't want the population to know is the black-white crime differential, that the black violent crime rate is consistently 6-8 times the white rate per capita. I think they think that widespread knowledge of this fact and related(eg that over half of murders in the USA are committed by blacks, and that over half the victims of these are white) would threaten the victim status re whites of the black minority, although these facts are readily available from the DOJ and FBI crime data. Victim status of suitable non-white groups is seen as necessary for Critical Theory in order to induce cultural pessimmism in the national culture, and ultimately destroy/replace it.

Andrew Ian Dodge said...

Well the Beeb could barely be bothered to mention it today. Women's right to birth was far more important.

airforcewife said...

What I can never figure out is this: if race is NOT supposed to matter at all to any of us, and is supposed to be relegated to the importance of someone's hair or eye color; then they can I not mention it as I would hair or eye color in a description?

For my generation, that tends to be the true experience - that skin color is about as important as the color of one's hair. And yet, though our tendency is to treat it only with the throw away mention of a descriptive and focus more on the "content of their character", we are constantly forced to pay attention to race above all other attributes.

By the PC Lefty crowd, no less, who claim to be trying to break down the racial barriers.

Instead, they call even more attention to them.

Starling said...

One of Dubai's leading papers, the Gulf News, has the story on the fron page http://gulfnews.com . The basically are reprinting what has appeared in stories from the major newswires:

"An official source said, "In the past couple of days, the US government has taken into custody seven people who were conspiring to conduct jihad (holy war) in the United States." It is believed that five of the men detained are US citizens, while the other two are foreigners. Reports suggest some of the men are American Muslims."

Elsewhere the story mentions that the men were arrested, ironically enough, in Liberty City. There's no way anyone reading the story here in the UAE would know that Liberty City is a predominantly black neighborhood.

To the degree that it matters, readers here would have no way to determine whether "American Muslim" meant an American convert to Muslim or a Muslim born-and-raised in the US, let alone the racial origins (Middle Eastern, Asian, Black, etc.)

Dymphna said...

Starling--

You are in a good position to see how things appear from a distance. It makes me realize how we -- strangers -- read the news from other countries and lose the important cultural cues.

"Liberty City" indeed.

Wally Ballou said...

Liberty City is a very sad place. it's named for and surrounds one of the very first federal housing projects for impoverished blacks, built in the 1930s. It is currently dominate by entitlement politics, race hustlers and radical leftists, thus ensuring that its people will stay downtrodden as long as possible. Its claims to fame include: the site of one of the worst race riots in American history; its status as a breeding ground for Rap "artists" (prophets of hopelessness, ugliness and nihilism); and as a locale in the utterly depraved video game "Grand Theft Auto". God help them all. no wonder Allah sounds good.

Epaminondas said...

Listen after the morons in canada reverted to saying that 14 'south asian' had been arrested who reprsented the braod spectrum of citizens, and now we have this truly ATLAS SHRUGS denigration of the objective truth by simply pretending that none of us notice, it gives one great angst.

Facts are facts. Deal the facts and let the chips fall.

But thank god for blogs.

Starling said...

Dymphna

part of the fun of my job is to provide the "cultural cues" that my students would otherwise miss. They understand English just fine but their knowledge of the underlying culture and context is often sorely lacking. Reminds me to tell you the full story one day about a student of mine here from Dubai- he's about 20 years old, loves rap/hip-hop music but knew neither the history nor meaning of the N-word, let alone that shouldn't use it. ;-)

Dymphna said...

Starling-

Given that you're black, how do you give him the context for the deeply historical aspect of this insult? Is there a parallel for him in his own language?

Manny C said...

Now they're not even Muslims anymore.

Anonymous said...

It during the French Youth Incident that I first noticed that the MSM had thrown blacks overboard to make room on the wagon for muslims.
It used to be that race was (properly) not mentioned, but once religon became an issue in the popular perception of terror, suddenly it was OK to mention race if you could thereby avoid mentioning Islam.
It was all African Origin this, and black that, but nary a peep about Jihadist sympathies.
How do we know it was racism at play in the MSM? Look no further than some airhead calling the French Youths "African-Americans" when clearly, they were French. If she meant that they had familial ties to African countries, there are many ways to say that. But "African-American" is a soaringly inappropriate, at the time, PC term for "black", which at any rate seems like a fine word. It was a real slip, and it revealed a lot.
Same goes for these knuckleheads from Miami. Islamic-connected Jihadists? Yes. Black? Yes. One of these has NOTHING to do with terror, but is widely cited by the MSM. This is patently insulting to anybody who cares about race relatons in America.

Wally Ballou said...

er, they didn't really call French "youths" African Americans. They did constantly refer to them as being of African or North African origin.

Wally Ballou said...

So, I have been told that some airhead actaully did use the phrase "African American" - my apologies - I still see it as an isolated incident of transcendant stupidity.