Sunday, June 03, 2007

Sunday Morning Coming Down

The front page story this morning across the country is of the foiled plot of destruction at New York's JFK airport. Actually, not every paper has it on the front page. The New York Times, the Paper of Record, which in case you couldn't determine from its name, is a New York newpaper, relegated the news to page 37. Anyway, as I finished the article in this morning's Detroit Free Press, I was left wondering one thing that the Free Press didn't address-to which religion, if any, do these aspiring terrorists belong? Hmm, I wonder.

Mrs. Zwicker and I finally watched the season finale of 24 last night. It was a microcosm of the season as a whole. It started strong but then devolved to a mixture of some good scenes and some unnecessary personal stories that were more appropriate for a soap opera. The last twenty minutes were rather fluffy with all the tying up of loose ends although the last few minutes were great. While the show has previously addressed Jack's tortured soul, the last image of the season being a close-up of his face as he contemplated what his life had become was powerful. The silent clock was very appropos.

4 comments:

Noahdaddy said...

Not that I want to put myself in a situation where I'm defending the Free Press, but the article does mention that "Authorities said the men tried to get financing from a Trinidadian radical Muslim group, Jamaat al Muslimeen." Also, I remember the print version of the paper yesterday mentioning the religion of these individuals.

Second, I always found it so funny that some people insist on listing the religion of these type of offenders. If a white collar criminal is identified as a "Jewish stock broker" wouldn't you wonder why the descriptive nature of the broker's religion was necessary? Perhaps I'm oversimplifying (I've been told that "my kind" tends to do that), but the whole thing seems silly. They're terrorists. Isn't that enough?

The Zwicker said...

Seeking help from a group is far different than being a part of the group. Muslims and Nazi Germany cooperated greatly in World War II despite their obvious enmity towards each other. I read the same print article and didn't see any mention of their religion.

There is a big difference between a Jewish stock broker and a Muslim terrorist. I don't recall Michael Milken or anyone from the 1980 Wall Street scandals saying that they acted in the name of their religion or against another religion. Muslim terrorist are very proud that they are supposedly acting in the name of Allah and/or against free societies.

Noahdaddy said...

But your issue was with the report, not with the terrorists themselves. And if you don't think the money that Michael Milken made went mostly to Jewish causes, I advise you to check out the Milken Jewish High School in Bel-Air. Very swanky.

Also, the Times did mention the story on page one. It just didn't have it's in-depth article until page 37. that might be because it is now coming out that the "plot" was rather ill-hatched and, even if it was carried out, would not have resulted in any major damage because of the shut-off valves in the pipeline.

The Zwicker said...

My issue wasn't with the terrorists? I don't see where you reached that conclusion.

Milken may have given some of his money to charities but they were hardly his motive. He was no Robin Hood. Also, keep in mind that not all of his money was dirty. He was pretty wealthy before he ran afoul of the law.