☫ CNN wishes terrorist 'good luck'

Opinions  Warning: Method works in 'special' cases only

How to wish a terrorist 'good luck'      and keep your job in CNN

Expressing her respects to a Lebanese Muslim cleric on the occasion of his death was all it took for CNN to fire its Middle East senior editor Octavia Nasr, after 20 years of services for the media giant (The Guardian: Octavia Nasr fired by CNN over tweet praising late ayatollah).

Ayatallah Fadlallah was never even accused of committing or inspiring terrorist attacks. The controversy rather sparked because the Hezbollah resistance movement of Lebanon was said to take inspiration from him.

Regardless of such second-level claims of ever-absent proofs, the media apparatus of the so-called free West had no problem to justify the journalist's dismissal. Certainly Reporters Without Borders would do little - if anything at all - to record the case in its statistics.

The conclusion is that the West is so sincerely concerned about terrorism, that suppressing freedom of speech is easily excused when it comes to silencing those who slightly drift from the US Department of State storyline.

Would the same happen then if it turned out that a terrorist's acts were favorable to the craftsmen of American foreign policy?

Luckily we need not speculate. CNN Español anchor Patricia Janiot, has just given us an indisputable reply to this question in her latest interview with Raúl Díaz Peña, a Venezuelan fugitive who Western media has vehemently described as an 'opposition  student' (Raúl Díaz Peña in CNN Español).

More prominent than the fact that Díaz Peña could hardly be called an 'opposition student' at his 36 years of age (he was already above 30 at the time of his arrest), are his links to the planting of bombs in the Spanish and Colombian embassies of Caracas in 2003.

Patricia Janiot, finishes her legitimization of a fugitive tried for terrorism against foreign diplomatic missions by wishing Díaz Peña 'good luck' at obtaining asylum and a job in the United States.

Of course this is nothing new. The same US Department of State which claims to be at war with terror has been gladly hosting the biggest terrorist in Latinamerican history, Luis Posada Carriles, responsible for the bombing of a Cuban airliner and the killing of its 73 passengers (FBI declassified report on Posada Carriles #1, FBI declassified report on Posada Carriles #2).

However, the new cherry on top is how Patricia Janiot can keep her job as CNN anchor after wishing good luck to a fugitive terrorist - who happens to serve American interests -, whereas Octavia Nasr was silenced over expressing respect for a Muslim scholar who passed away.

On Janiot's defense, anyone seeking a job in the United States might indeed need a lot of good luck (Medical News Today: High Unemployment Results In Huge Increase Of Uninsured To 50.7 Million, USA Today: USA's poverty rate reaches highest level in 51 years). Ironically, terrorists like Díaz Peña and Posada Carriles (or the Iranian Maryam Rajavi  and her Muhajedin Khalq Organization in France) are certified asylum and subsistence by Western authorities, whereas prominent religious scholars are not even granted some posthumous respects.