Thanks to Doug Hagmann and the
Canada Free Press for doing the work more people should be doing. Let the details emerge. As was mentioned last night, this does seem the stuff of an internet hoax, and doggone if one can find information about it easily — STILL, several weeks later. Shame, shame on our other media.
See also:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/flight297.asp
Interesting.
Though trusting Snopes is about like trusting OThuga.
I, too, applaud the citizen journalists who are doing the media’s job.
Despite Snopes’s efforts to dismiss and downplay this, they actually confirm the underlying facts, i.e. there was a serious incident involving 11-13 Arabic speaking men in Muslim attire—an incident serious enough to turn the plane around, disembark the passengers, re-search bags, etc., plus board a new flight crew, and continue to detain 2 of the men. Those items appear not to be in dispute.
Snopes never contacted Petruna. But they do highlight the AJC’s account of one woman sitting in the center behind the camera-user who declares it all a misunderstanding. First off, there’s no way AJC or Snopes knows what this woman’s agenda may or may not be, nor is there any way to gauge her credibility or objectivity. She could have been a planned enabler of this episode, seated there for the very purpose of her later eyewitness testimony, for all AJC or Snopes knows.
Second, assuming she’s legit, that woman was reporting only on that one man’s actions. She could not see/hear the multiple other simultaneous actions taking place throughout the cabin, front to back. So her assessment of the situation is based on quite limited observation, and is of no more weight than Tedd Petruna’s interpretation.
I’d love to know exactly how many of the passengers chose to NOT get back on that plane.