DoubleSpeak

Attack / Retaliation - When our allies suffer a loss of life/property at the hands of an enemy, it is called a cold-blooded attack. When our enemies suffer a loss of life/property at the hands of an ally, it is called retaliation.

And when that enemy retaliates for the attack it just suffered, it is again referred to as a cold-blooded attack -- never as retaliation. No matter how often this cycle continues, our side is always said to be retaliating to the other side's attack.

This effect is most apparent in the Israeli / Palestinian war. The Palestinians will launch a surprise attack, and Israel will retaliate. The Palestinians will launch another surprise attack, and Israel will retaliate again. The Palestinians launch yet another surprise attack, and Israel... well, you get the idea.

When the events are explained in this manner, one might get the impression that Israel is the victim of Palestinian aggression -- That Israelis desire nothing but peace and Palestinians desire nothing but war. Of course, it is impossible to say for sure 'who started it'. After all, this land had been changing hands continuously for the last 2500 years. However -- As far as I can tell, this latest conflict began back in the 1940's when Anglo-American and Jewish terrorist forces (Irgon and Stern) forced the Palestinians off their land in order to pave the way for the creation of a Jewish state.

Of course Israel wants peace now -- They are the ones with the land! Demanding peace after forcibly taking another person's land is like winning a large sum of money on the first hand of poker and then refusing to play another game. The Palestinians want their land back -- and Israel is trying to claim the moral high ground by denying them a chance to win it back.
Campaign Contribution / Bribe - Is there any difference at all? In theory, a bribe is a guarantee that a political payoff will result on a specified action being taken by a politician. But a campaign contribution is not supposed to contain such a quid pro quo But why else would an organization give $500,000 to a political candidate, if the didn't expect something in return?

Civilian Casualties / Collateral Damage - Other countries kill their own citizens... America only damages them.

Charity / Redistribution Of Wealth - When you offer food to people that are hungry, you are giving charity. When a government takes money from you in order to give it to people that aren't a whole hell of a lot poorer than you, it is called redistribution of wealth.
Educated / Brainwashed - US children are "Educated" about the evils of drugs, pollution, and race relations ... Soviet children were "Brainwashed" in Soviet doctrine.

Ethnic Cleansing / Population Transfer - The US forced thousands of Germans out of their homes after WWII. (The land was given to Poland for "war reparations") At the time, we called this "Population Transfer".

Freedom Fighters / Terrorists - Freedom Fighters attack other governments to obtain "freedom". Terrorists attack the U.S. and our allies, in order to gain their freedom.

Invasion / Military Police Action / Peacekeeping - All of these words can be used to describe when one country puts troops in another land. The choice of which word to use depends entirely on which country is performing this action. When the USSR entered Afghanistan to support the existing government, it was called an invasion. When the US put troops in Vietnam, it was considered a "police action". The presence of U.N. troops in Bosnia is called "Peacekeeping".

Law and Order / Oppression - Every law has at its core a desire to force a person to behave a certain way, and is a form a oppression. The only factor that determines whether a law is "oppressive' is whether or not you agree with it -- and whether or not you believe that the law will effect you!
Revolution / Civil War - When the colonies revolted against oppression from Britain, it was called a "revolution". When the south revolted against the oppression of Washington DC, it was called a civil war. I guess it all depends on who wins the war. If the government wins, it is a civil war. If the citizens win, it is a revolution.

Shell Shock / Combat Fatigue / Operational Exhaustion / Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - The comedian George Carlin once pointed out how the way we describe this condition has changed over the years. He pointed out how the wording has changed to completely remove any connection with the horrors of war from the name of the condition, even though it is the horrors of war which is the direct cause of the condition.
Slave/Serf/Indentured Servant/Debtor

A slave labors for his owner, and in return is given food, shelter, and the occasional lashing. He is the property of his master, and may be sold at any time.

In the by-gone days of Europe, a surf was required to give 20% of his produce to his lord - in exchange he had enough food to eat, and was allowed to live on the land. Actually, a serf is considered part of land - If the property is sold, he is sold with it. This is an improvement over slavery in that families cannot be broken up at the whim of the master - plus the peasant is allowed to accumulate some possessions.

An Indentured servant was required to work for his "master" for a term of years. This servitude was generally "repayment" for some sort of loan or grant. Many colonists became indentured servants to pay for their passage to the new world.

Today's society is far more advanced. People are no longer considered to be anybody else's property. They my own their own property. None-the-less, a worker must still pay 38% of what they earn to the state. To make matters worse, most are heavily in debt to banks and other lending institutions. In a sense, they have allowed themselves to become "indentured servants" by agreeing to loans with 15%-20% usury charges. They are forced to hand over a large percentage of their income to their new masters. (Did you really think the bank was doing you a favor by giving you a credit card?)

Spend / Invest - Politicians aren't spending taxpayer money - they're investing it. Normally, when one says that he is investing money, we assume that that person is intending to profit monetarily from that investment. The definition according to the American Heritage® Dictionaryis:

in•vest - To commit (money or capital) in order to gain a financial return: (invested their savings in stocks and bonds.)

If we adhere to this definition, the act of squandering taxpayer money on pet projects cannot be considered investing -- That is, unless the politician is expecting to profit from it personally. But of course, this is sometimes the case. Like when politicians spend money in order to please their campaign contributors, who in turn give the politicians even more money come election time.

Trickle-Down Economics / Supply Side Economics - The belief that companies create jobs. It is the belief that if America produces more, we will have more stuff... go figure.

Visionary / Unrealistic - All Visionaries have been called unrealistic at one time or another.

Translating Securityspeak Into English

Kevin Carson writes,

One might wonder, reading the American “national security” community’s pronouncements, if they refer to the same world we live in. Things make a little more sense when you realize that the Security State has its own language: Securityspeak. Like Newspeak, the ideologically refashioned successor to English in Orwell’s 1984, Securityspeak is designed to obscure meaning and conceal truth, rather than convey them. As an example, take these 2010 remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Ambassador Jaime Daremblum, senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Latin American Studies.

Daremblum, after praising Senators Lugar and Dodd for their promotion of “national security and democracy” in Latin America over the years, warned of the threat of “radical populism, which has taken root in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.” Perhaps most alarmingly, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has formed an alliance with Iran, “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.” The Nicaraguan government, having “returned to its old ways,” occupies a Costa Rican river island in defiance of an OAS resolution.

Chavez’s alliance with Iran, in particular, is “the biggest threat to hemispheric stability since the Cold War.” The Chavez regime poses a “serious threat to U.S. security interests.”

Wow! Sounds like a lot of bizarro-world gibberish, right? But if we break it down and translate it a bit at a time, we can actually distill some sense from it.

First, we have to remember that in Securityspeak, “democracy” doesn’t mean what it does in English. You probably think of democracy as meaningful control by ordinary people of the decisions that affect their daily lives. The false cognate Securityspeak term “democracy” sounds the same but can cause great confusion. It actually refers to a society in which the system of power is disguised by the existence of periodic electoral rituals in which the public chooses between a number of candidates, all selected from the same ruling class. These candidates may argue a lot, but it’s all about the 20% or so of secondary issues on which the different factions of the ruling class are divided among themselves. The 80% of primary issues, on which the ruling class agrees — issues that define the basic structure of power — never comes up for debate.

When the structure of power itself comes up for debate — when people start talking about, say, the concentrated ownership of land, or export-oriented development policy — it’s a sign that “democracy” is in danger of being replaced by “radical populism.” That’s a matter for the CIA or Marines to deal with. The whole point of Securityspeak’s version of “democracy” is to safeguard the fundamental structure of power by distracting the population with the illusion of choice.

It’s also important to keep in mind that in Securityspeak, the label “state sponsor of terrorism” — by definition — cannot include the United States. That’s because actions by the Sole Superpower and Hegemon to promote “democracy” cannot — by definition — be terroristic. Actions to promote “radical populism,” on the other hand, can.

As in Newspeak, actions that are considered laudable when practiced by one side are reprehensible when practiced by the other. Take, for example, the Nicaraguan action of occupying Costa Rican territory in defiance of an OAS resolution. That same action — defying an OAS resolution — was entirely commendable when practiced by the U.S. (i.e., the mining of Managua harbor as a means of combating “radical populists” 30 years ago).

Consider labeling the Iran-Venezuela alliance the “biggest threat to hemispheric stability since the Cold War.” You’re probably thinking he put that qualifier in there so U.S. actions during the Cold War wouldn’t count. After all the U.S. overthrew Guatemala’s democratic government in 1954, installing a military regime that terrorized the country for decades. It backed Central American death squads that killed hundreds of thousands of people and (starting with the overthrow of Brazil’s government in the 1960s and proceeding with Kissinger’s Operation Condor in the 1970s) put military dictators in power in most of South America.

But those things wouldn’t count anyway. When the United States overthrows government after government, with domino chains of military coups putting pro-U.S. dictatorships in power throughout most of the hemisphere, that’s protecting stability, not threatening it. It’s all for the sake of defeating that “radical populism,” which is by definition a threat to stability.

And in Securityspeak, saying a Venezuela-Iran military alliance is a “threat” doesn’t mean they might attack the U.S. and invade its territory. It means they might be able to fight back when the U.S. attacks them — that the U.S. might not be able to defeat them and put a stop to the threat of “radical populism.” In other words, they might get away with taking land away from oligarchs and patrons and distributing it to the people who actually work it, and their economies might start serving the interests of the people who live there instead of Norteamericano corporations. And that would be bad.

Similarly, “national security” refers not, as you might expect in English, to the security of the American people. It refers to the security of the American state and the coalition of class interests that controls it. Economic populism is indeed a threat to “national security” in this sense. American economic elites are the heart of one of the opposing sides in the age-old conflict between those who own the world and those whose blood and sweat enrich those who own the world. When a functionary of the American state like Daremblum refers to a “threat to national security,” he means a threat to the ability of the hemisphere’s owning classes to extract wealth from the blood and sweat of the rest of us.

There — that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Via: "Anti-War"

No-Fly Zone: Clouding Words Of War

The cost of using only airpower against Gaddafi is strategic incoherence that will likely result in a stalemate [REUTERS]


The West Has Used Euphemism To Deny A State Of War Against Gaddafi Under The Guise Of A Humanitarian Mission.

By Tarak Barkawi
Last Modified: 28 Mar 2011 13:41
Courtesy Of "Al-Jazeera"

Phantasms from the 1990s are upon us: no-fly zones; the rhetoric of humanitarian war in Washington, Europe and the UN; guarantees that no US ground troops will be deployed; an air war which alone cannot decisively affect earthbound events.

President Obama swung for ringing tones in his statement on Libya, condemning idleness in the face of merciless tyrants who brutally assault innocents.

In the legal codes through which the international community acknowledges so untoward a happening as war, the UN resolved to protect civilians and create a cordon sanitaire around the blighted country.

But it was all a faraway echo from the Yugoslav heyday of believing people could be bombed for humanitarian effect.

The language of liberal war may still flow as easily in the West as Libya's sweet crude, but even the true believers are running on fumes on this one.

Few critics have even bothered to point out the obvious selectivity. Obama meant no idling before this particular tyrant, while the UN Security Council offered the beatific state of protected innocence to some Libyans only, not to Syrians, Yemenis, Palestinians or Bahrainis, much less those suffering in the Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe or elsewhere.

Nonetheless the idea of liberal war, of the use of force for humanitarian objectives, continues to cloud opinion and profoundly informs the official terms of debate, in international forums and especially in Western Europe. It also shapes the character of coalition operations over Libya.

Denying War, The Art Of Euphemisms

Liberal war is so useful, particularly to 'good Europeans', because it denies it is war. It is a no-fly zone protecting human rights?

While quite obviously joining the Libyan rebels in their war on the regime, coalition commanders are forced to pretend otherwise. They regularly and politely inform Gaddafi's forces where they need to regroup to avoid being destroyed in the name of universal values.

In essence, and without ever saying so, the message to Gaddafi is that he must stop defending himself from those who would overthrow him. Why, we might ask, is it not possible to speak more plainly, at least to ourselves? Why must war be confronted with liberal euphemisms?

At the core of liberal war is a contradiction between big rhetoric – humanity, innocence, evil – and limited liability, signalled by 'no ground troops' and the pathetic legions of UN peacekeepers.

In wars primarily justified on altruistic grounds, the elected leaders of the Western democracies wisely, if conveniently, spare the blood if not the dollars of their own citizens.

The chosen weapon is air power and the cost is strategic incoherence. Absent a terrestrial policy, air forces are left to blow things up, surveil the results, and fly about. Other things being equal, the likely outcome is stalemate.

Most pernicious is the way liberal war frames understanding of conflicts. It performs a sleight of hand that can only be admired.

A Dramatic Play

There is space for two main actors, the humane intervener (typically the international community led by the West) and the barbaric perpetrator (a changing and selective cast of leaders, regimes and ethnic groups).

As if by magic, real countries and peoples, with interwoven histories, become characters in a morality play, essential types who behave according to innate characteristics.

The drama comes in various versions, and by no means does the West always come out well in the end. But the terms of thought are set in riveting fashion: interest and ideals, tragedy and politics, bureaucratic inaction and charisma.

Historical memory is a casualty so instantaneous no one notices. The US fought its first war in what is now Libya, against the Barbary pirates, also justified by humanitarian concerns undergirded with commercial interest.

Blinded by tales of well-intentioned Westerners and violent natives again and again, it becomes impossible to see the shared, interconnected histories that led to the current conflict, and within which Libyans, Westerners and others are situated.

Libya was granted independence as a kingdom only sixty years ago, with the US and UK as patrons, supplying cash and arms in exchange for oil and stability.

As elsewhere, then and now, this combination generated popular resentment. It provided the ground for political alternatives, which Gaddafi seized.

History's Funhouse

He may be a character from history's funhouse, sent to remind us that contingency's reign is great, but his origins are to be found in the conjoined histories of the West and the rest.

More recently, Gaddafi's border police and coast guard, trained and assisted by the EU, have been greatly valued by the 'good Europeans' for helping keep out the Africans.

Liberal war's last service is to locate the source of violence in the natives, on the backward peoples of the non-European world, not on the Westerners who exploit, invade, occupy and bomb.

If we go by official rhetoric, the problem in Iraq and Afghanistan apparently has to do with religious and ethnic prejudice among the peoples there, who irrationally keep killing one another as well as Western soldiers kindly sent to modernise them.

The great cost of liberal war is clarity. The West now risks creating a situation where it neither allows nor enables the rebels to overthrow Gaddafi, nor will it do so itself.

As in Bosnia and Kosovo, to supply arms or allow in Arab volunteers, would violate the supposed neutrality of humanitarian intervention. Gaddafi can turn to death squads and snipers to carry on his fight.

War is not a morality tale, but a violent mutual embrace. Serious thinking begins with acceptance that we in the West are now combatants, and ethical responsibility requires seeing beyond the seductions of liberalism.

Tarak Barkawi is Senior Lecturer, Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge. He specialises in the study of war, armed forces and society with a focus on conflict between the West and the global South in historical and contemporary perspective. He is author of Globalization and War, as well as many scholarly articles.

"We Strongly Condemn..."

"A quick review of the racist Western perspective of what is happening in occupied Palestine explains the failure of all previous attempts to reach real solutions and just and comprehensive peace. It is because such a peace should be based on fair and balanced solutions....For negotiations to succeed, the sponsors of the process should be convinced that the life of the Palestinians is at least equal to the life of a criminal settler living on a land not his own in order to steal this land and kill the people living on it. Only then, there might be some hope of achieving peace based on justice and not on killing one party and giving the occupying killing party everything it wants. When Obama, Clinton and the European Union condemn killing the Palestinians with the same strength they condemn the killing of settlers, there might be hope of a real peace in our region."

By Bouthaina Shaaban
(Thursday, September 9, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"

On August 29, 2010, Martin Indyk wrote an op-ed in The New York Times entitled “For once, hope in the Middle East”. When I read it, I felt I should respond with an article that sheds light on the issues which Mr, Indyk has chosen to ignore. One of the premises he based his analysis on was that violence has receded in the Middle East in the past two years compared with the 1990s. Here, like most Western officials and journalists, Indyk ignores daily and persistent Israeli violence against Palestinians for the past sixty years which has risen to record levels in terms of the number and ferocity of Israeli crimes against Palestinian civilians in the past two years, particularly in the city of Hebron. How could Indyk ignore the ‘violence’ which Israel has been using for years against civilians in Gaza in terms of blockade and artillery, missile and warplane attacks? I would not have guessed that that the paradox, on this particular point, would become so stark on the international scene after four Israeli settlers were killed in a village near Hebron.

Jewish settlers, as everyone knows, have been killing Palestinian farmers, burning mosques, running over children with their cars, desecrating cemeteries, demolishing houses and whole villages. The lack of Western reaction towards this rise in the number of crimes against Palestinians reflects the conviction in the West that ‘violence has receded in the Middle East’, as if killing the Arabs is not ‘violence’, while killing these settlers is the only ‘violence’ in the Middle East! The US President hastened to condemn this ‘absurd killing’ while he kept silent regarding the killing of four thousand civilians, including women and children in Gaza. His Secretary of State also condemned the ‘brutal violence’, while she never condemned the Israelis for killing any Palestinian. The United Nations representative considered killing the Israelis a ‘mean’ attempt at undermining the negotiations, while his organization has done nothing to stop Israeli daily killing of Palestinians for the past sixty years. As usual, the European Union, and Japan too, condemned killing the Israelis, while they turn absolutely deaf when Israelis kill Palestinian civilians in their thousands. Even the Palestinian Authority condemned the killing of the four settlers without reminding the world of the crimes committed daily against the Palestinians, particularly in Hebron, and have never been ‘condemned’ or even mentioned be any American or European official. For them, that is ‘natural violence’, because Palestinian lives do not mean anything to the West. Only when an Israeli is killed, ‘civilized’ Westerners hasten to ‘denounce’ and ‘condemn’ violence.

In this article, I would just remind readers of some of the ‘acts of violence’, ‘ugly crimes’, ‘absurd killings’ and ‘brutal violence’ committed by the Israeli settlers in the West Bank, particularly in villages of the Hebron region, against unarmed Palestinians simply trying to live on their land with freedom and dignity and away from the killing and oppression practiced against them by Israeli settlers on a daily basis. Such acts and crime have never been condemned by Obama, Clinton, the European Union, the United States, or even Japan.

Since March 2010, Israeli occupation forces killed in cold blood Mohammad Ibrahim Abdul Qader Qadus on March 16, 2010 in Southern Nablus; and on March 21, child Mohammad al-Qanbar was run twice over by a settler’s car before he was detained in Ras al-Amoud. On April 3, an Israeli settler ran over Samar Saif Radwan, 17, in eastern Hebron. On April 5, 2010, the settlers of Kriat Shmona burned a Palestinian to death. On the same day, three settlers poured hot water on the body and face of Munjed Bsharat, 26, who sustained serious burns and wounds. On April 11, an Israeli settler ran over a Palestinian child in the village of Laban West of Ramallah. On April 27, occupation forces assassinated young man Ali Sweiti, maimed his dead body and blocked out his eyes. On May 10, a Palestinian child died of the tear gas he inhaled. On the same day, occupation forces beat child Abdullah Isa to death. On May 16, an Israeli settler ran over a mother and her two daughters Rowa, 2, and Nagham, 5, at the entrance of their village, Jabaa south of Bethlehem. On June 11, an Israeli military jeep ran over and killed Mazen Naem al-Jamal, 48, in Hebron. On July 19, an Israeli settler ran over and killed Abdullah Hasan al-Muhtaseb, 12 in Hebron.

Thus, Israeli settlers and occupation forces killed during the first months of 2010 fourteen Palestinians. No country in the world condemned the killing of these people. And this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the brutal crimes committed by settlers on a daily basis against innocent children, women and young people in Hebron and other West Bank cities and villages. What would the Palestinians do if no country in the world condemned killing them? No Western media outlet even keeps a record of the crimes committed against them on a daily basis. Palestinian anger reaches unbearable levels not only because of the settler violence committed against them, but also because of the silence and complicity of Western powers.

A quick review of the racist Western perspective of what is happening in occupied Palestine explains the failure of all previous attempts to reach real solutions and just and comprehensive peace. It is because such a peace should be based on fair and balanced solutions.

For negotiations to succeed, the sponsors of the process should be convinced that the life of the Palestinians is at least equal to the life of a criminal settler living on a land not his own in order to steal this land and kill the people living on it. Only then, there might be some hope of achieving peace based on justice and not on killing one party and giving the occupying killing party everything it wants. When Obama, Clinton and the European Union condemn killing the Palestinians with the same strength they condemn the killing of settlers, there might be hope of a real peace in our region.

DoubleSpeak & Language Mind-Control

By Anonymous Truther
Courtesy Of YouTube

A few examples of language to disguise and deceive.

Several defining attributes of doublespeak:

* misleads

* distorts reality

* pretends to communicate

* makes the bad seem good

* avoids or shifts responsibility

* makes the negative appear positive

* creates a false verbal map of the world

* limits, conceals, corrupts, and prevents thought

* makes the unpleasant appear attractive or tolerable

* creates incongruity between reality and what is said or not said