Tuesday, April 30, 2013

The meaning of words

One of the weapons of propaganda is a continuous effort to influence the language itself. As Orwell said in "1984", the goal is to change the language to the point when no "wrong" thoughts can be expressed. Since Obama's take over in 2009, the nation could see a number of rather peculiar attempts of the White House at newspeak. Terrorist attacks became "man-caused disaster". A terror attack by a deranged Islamist were characterized as "workplace violence", while Time magazine speculated if major Hasan contracted the Post-Tramautic Stress Disorder from the returning soldiers. American were told that the worst tragedy of the Fort Hood attack could be "And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse." Apparently, the need to hire supporters of Islamic terrorism is what constitutes diversity in the eyes of the Obama administration, and "not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength" which should we cannot afford to lose.

Obama administration seemed to decided that it was a great idea to test how far they can push the absurd in our everyday life. Charles Bolden, the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, listed Obama's priorities for NASA: "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and engineering — science, math and engineering." A careful observer would notice that space exploration was not in the top 3 goals of NASA - but making Moslems feel better about themselves was.

The mainstream media obviously is trying to follow the lead of their leader. As a political gesture, AP (a media monopoly) outlawed the term "illegal immigrant". Apparently, some people (i.e. liberals) did not like the term, and it only made sense that AP had to follow orders from the crowd. 

Recently, my attention was caught by the CNN's article (other news outlets are no better). In the wake of the Moslem Boston bombing, CNN published an article on terrorism. Here is the offending passage:

Of the 380 individuals indicted for acts of political violence or for conspiring to carry out such attacks in the U.S. since 9/11, 77 were able to obtain explosives or the components necessary to build a bomb, according to a count by the New America Foundation.


Of those, 48 were right-wing extremists, 23 were militants inspired by al Qaeda's ideology, five have been described as anarchists and one was an environmentalist terrorist.

There are a few interesting notes here. Firstly, White racists, anti-semites and nut-cases are arbitrarily called "right-wing" - even though there is little ideological correlation between most of these people except their support for terrorism.

On the other side, Moslem terrorists, united in their Moslem faith are claimed to be "inspired by al Qaeda's ideology". Left-wing, progressive terrorists are assigned a misnomer of "anarchists", as if those people were extreme followers of Bakunin. Any objective person would see a bias in CNN's reporting - and a more careful observer would note that this is clearly an attempt of influencing the nation's mind through changes in vocabulary.


It's also interesting to note that Scott Roeder,  a schizophrenic, and a member of the pseudo-anarchist group "Sovereign Citizen Movement" who killed an abortionist is also characterized as "right-wing". In general, any anti-abortion group is claimed to be right-wing - and this highlights a rather peculiar dichotomy. Doctor Kermit Gosnell, an infamous abortionist is personally responsible for murdering hundreds if not thousands of babies through so-called "abortions". Many of the children were murdered outside the womb (although it is left unexplained what is the major difference between killing a 24 week viable baby inside the woman or beheading it later). Dozens of people from Gosnell's medical personal, Planned Parenthood, government officials,  and numerous of his patients covered up his crimes. And yet, all these people, clear supporters of abortion without limits, are never classified as "liberal", "left-wing" or "progressive". Common sense would dictate that if freedom of abortion is a dividing line between right-wing and left-wing, then Doctor Gosnell would clearly fall in the category of a hard-core progressive individual. A media outlet which seeks the truth would also note that Barack Obama, then an Illinois senator, objected to the proposed law that would have made Gosnell's behavior illegal.

I have little doubt that my readers will find other numerous examples of the left-wing attempt to change our vocabulary. A few additional examples would include "kinetic military action" as a substitute for "war", as well as "diversity" and "affirmative action" as code words for "discrimination based on race".

The article will not be complete if I did not share the euphemism that I invented - "reverse reverse discrimination" to denote the reaction of White Americans to "affirmative action".



Monday, April 29, 2013

Smart foreign policy

In 2011, America got a splendid gift from the Middle East - the Syrian "reformer" and John Kerry's "Dear Friend" finally got in trouble with his own population. Today, Syria is battleground, a place where Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Lebanese Hezbollah fight against Al Qaeda. The war between American bitter enemies brings to mind Henry Kissinger's famous quip about the Iran-Iraq war: "It's a shame they can't both lose". What a smart US president would do in this case? He would try to stay as non-committal as possible, and say his thanks to God that helped his country.

But being a smart president is not something Barack Obama is capable of doing. As someone previously noted, ""He wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening". And so Obama, in the best traditions, "acted stupidly" - he decided that the world simply cannot survive if he keeps him mouth shut - and he announced that if Assad used chemical weapons, that would be a game changer, and would provoke America to do something really-really drastic.

And in 2013 it became undeniable that Assad used the chemical weapons against the rebels - and even Obama's Secretary of Defense conceded that fact - together with about half a dozen countries. It also became quite clear that our president has no idea what to do next and even felt remorseful for "acting stupidly". If Obama ignores the use of chemical weapons, the world will judge him and the country as non-serious. Israel will finally conclude that all Obama's pronouncements about nuclear Iran were worthless. If Obama decides to send the US troops to fight in Syria, he will screw up a perfectly fine conflict between Iran and Al Qaeda - and Syria will likely look even worse than Libya after Obama's war.

Even the Democrats noticed that Obama put the credibility of this country on the line. Rep. David Cicilline, a Democratic member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that “There’s no question that when the United States takes a position that this crosses a line, that our failure to respond has implications. So that if we, in fact, determine that chemical weapons were used, I think the expectation is that we and the coalition and others take some action.”

The most amazing thing about our president is that he is capable to take a perfectly good situation and turn it against the interests of this country. This man has a serious talent of turning anything he touches into shit. Too bad American people were stupid enough to elect him twice. We all will pay for this in the decades to come.

Monday, April 15, 2013

The terror attack in Boston fits the Islamist MO

It's always wise to wait until all the data are collected before pronouncing any conclusions on who could be the guilty party. You don't want to sound like the mainstream media that is infamous for always blaming some mythical right-wing extremists for the acts of terror. Here are the 6 most recent examples of this sloppy (and incorrect) analysis by the media outlets:

  • ABC’s Brian Ross tries to blame the Tea Party for the Aurora attack.
  • Reuters Foundation Fellow Jonathan Curiel blames "racism" for the attack by professor Bishop.
  • Think Progress proclaimed that James Lee (a man who took hostages in the Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring, Md).
  • Andrew Sullivan and Stephanie Miller blamed GOP, Fox News and the Tea Party for the death of United States Census Bureau William Edwin “Bill” Sparkman.
  • New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg,  Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss and the folks from Daily Kos blamed conservatives for the attempted bombing of the Times Square.
  • Jonathan Capehart from the Washington Post and Chris Rovzar from New York Magazine blamed the Republicans and the Tea Party for Andrew Joseph Stack kamikaze-style attack on the IRS building.
  • And last but not least - most of the mainstream media blamed Sarah Palin for Jared Loughner's attack on Giffords and other government officials.
 
Of course, all this pales in comparison with liberals blaming the deaths of JFK (killed by a communist) and RFK (killed by a socialist Palestinian) on, as you would guess it, the right-wing conservatives.
 
The other side of the story, is, of course, Barack Obama, bizarrely asking the public not to jump to conclusions about the Fort Hood attack by a Moslem terrorist, who screamed "Allah Akbar before gunning down American soldiers.
 
I will try to walk a thin line between these two extremes and instead will use logic and reason to guess who was the terrorist who bombed the Boston marathon.
 
A logical analysis of the facts would point in the direction of Islamic terrorism. Firstly, I cannot remember any non-Islamist attacks in US in recent history which would be similar to the attacks in Boston. An attack by the KKK on black churches was 50 years ago, and was specifically targeting people of color. The Oklahoma City bombing was an attack on a federal building, and the perpetrator claimed that civilians were not targeted on purpose.

Numerous progressive terrorists (from Obama's friends, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers to Occupy Wall Street as well as so-called "Animal Rights" activists) don't fit the profile either - it's unlikely they would attack marathon runners on the streets of Boston. Numerous non-Islamic terror groups (from IRA to Basques and Kurds) are unlikely to have any interest in attacking American cities.

Boston marathon attack was specifically designed as an attack on all Americans, without any distinction of color, race or connection to the federal government. The attack also showed a rather sophisticated use of multiple explosive devices, armed with ball bearings in order to result in maximum number of civilian damage, and timed in order to hurt the police and the medical personal which are expected to rush to scene and provide help to the wounded. The relevant terrorist attacks which resemble the Boston massacre are Islamist attacks in Israel, Europe, Bali - and the latest three attacks in the US - namely the attacks in Portland and two attacks in New York (New York Federal Reserve building and Times Square). If I were a terror profiler, I would conclude that the Boston bombing was a terrorist attack by Islamists with a high degree of confidence.