Useful Fools

Noam Chomsky and other leftist moonbats would like you to believe that corporations are inherently amoral.

On the surface, it seems correct:

The only purpose of a corporation is to make a profit for its owners. Hence, it has no moral direction.

But…

Corporations are owned by and crewed by people. A corporation is only amoral (or immoral) if its people are immoral. Otherwise, the corporation’s actions will be constrained by moral considerations beyond the profit motive.

The those asserting that corporations are inherently amoral are saying all the leaders of corporations are amoral or immoral.

What does that say about the person making the assertion? That they would throw away their own morals for profit?

Here is the promised review of

To Set The Record Straight

How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the
New Media Defeated John Kerry

by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler

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Expect one surprise after another in this brilliant and important book. In 2004, John Kerry’s run for the presidency suddenly energized thousands of Vietnam vets. This man, who said his fellow veterans had “raped, cut off ears, cut off heads,…randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan…” wanted to be President! (page 13)

This is the true story of how those vets fought against the vast battalions of the elite media…and against all odds, won. Swett, an insider from the start, and Ziegler nail journalists to the wall time after time. I have never read so many shocking instances of outright bias – or fraud – or stupidity – by the mainstream media.

Early on, the Swift Boat veterans held a historic press conference, where one after another of Kerry’s brothers-in-arms condemned him. You probably didn’t hear about it - it was all but ignored by the media.

“They [Swiftees] assumed that the media would validate their credentials and report their charges to the public. John O’Neill later admitted ‘We were naïve.’ …

“CBS was the only network that did anything, and they did a complete hatchet job…”

“By October, O’Neill no longer had any illusions about what to expect from the old media gatekeepers. The leading liberal networks and newspapers would try to discredit any information harmful to Kerry. Other Swift Vets and POW’s were astonished at the hypocrisy of news organizations they had once admired. While loudly praising the vital role of a free press, the old media imposed a nearly Soviet level of political censorship on the content of news reports.”

When you read the book, you too will be astonished. And you will be amazed at what you never heard, such as the evidence strongly suggesting that John Kerry acted as an agent of the enemy, and that he covered up a less-than-honorable discharge from the Navy.

A CBS report opined “But if you think this is just a concerned group of veterans, think again.” (page 99)

So who were the Swift Boat veterans? This book counters the myths about the vets, who are usually pictured in movies as druggie losers or enraged psychopaths. In particular, it clears up slanders against the Swiftees and their organization, proving they were part of a spontaneous grass roots uprising. The veterans were from all walks of life, Democrat, Republican or just plain ornery.

Expect howls of outrage… expect ad hominem attacks— that the authors are liars and the Swiftees… Bush operatives. Swett and Ziegler give the facts to prove this wrong.

Every practicing journalist in America needs to read this book and then ask and answer some hard questions.

Everyone else in America needs to read it to realize how many times the mainstream media seeks to mislead instead of inform.

You can buy the book directly from the authors here.

Scott Swett, webmaster for The Swift Boat Vets for the Truth, and Tim Ziegler have written a book chronicling the battle between Vietnam Veterans and John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign: “To Set The Record Straight”.

Scott is the ultimate insider in this affair, part of the effort from the start and also well connected in the conservative internet world. He was webmaster of both the Swift Boat site and WinterSoldier.com, the authoritative information site on John Kerry.

Check here for information on this book. I now have a copy and will be posting a review when the book becomes generally available for purchase. Let’s just say - you want it - it tells a very important story about how the real grass roots defeated the leftist media establishment.

John O’Neill, the Swiftie spokesman whose photo is on the front cover, was interviewed last year by Useful Fools. That interview, in snippets and in entirety can be heard here.

The sad state of elite academia is indicated by the statement of Columbia’s acting Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs regarding Iranian terrorist leader Ahmadinejad’s visit.

Dean John Coatsworth seems unaware of 20th century history.

From The New York Sun:

[He] told [us] that if the Nazi leader had agreed to speak and answer questions at Columbia University in 1939, the event could have helped changed Hitler’s views of America and this country’s understanding of the intentions of the Hitler’s regime.

Obviously Dean Coatsworth doesn’t know his history:

• Hitler was an intelligent sociopath who could almost hypnotically mesmerize his audiences. A stunningly effective speaker, he crafted his speeches to his targets, just as Ahmadinejah targeted the left with his assertions that the US is seeking a pretext to attack Iran.
• Americans would have “learned” how good Nazi Germany was from a speech by the charming monster.
• Hitler would have “learned” how soft and easily mislead were Americans.
• The Nazi’s had significant support within the US - the German-American Bund and others.
• By 1940, the isolationist 800,000 America First Committee had Charles Lindbergh on its executive board and its views were prevalent among Americans. These and other isolationists wanted nothing to do with a “European War,” and would have seized upon Hitler’s statements (some no doubt aimed at them) to buttress their position.
• Reports of Nazi oppression of Jews were often greeted with skepticism, with anti-Semitism, perceived Jewish influence in media, and the sheer excess of the Nazi brutality leading many to disbelieve the accounts.

It would appear that, just as Columbia’s School of Journalism will issue a Masters Degree to students who have not taken one hard (math-based) science course, the Dean of International and Public Affairs is ignorant of history.

Would you want your kid to go there?

Sean Penn like a feminine Hygiene product? That’s just part of the story. Read on…

Today we have “celebrities” who believe their special status gives them great knowledge about all sorts of controversial matters - about which they feel a “duty” to influence us. Mosquito hoards of Hollywood celebrities and news “stars” hum and buzz all around us.

The celebrity as expert is especially dangerous when these preening royals are in the news media. The latest example is Dan Rather, who refuses to stay buried, haunting the blather-sphere in search of re-incarnation.

We need to understand that the fame of these narcissistic “personalities” is often a result of mere marketing branding. The popularity of an anchor or star comes from the development of that person’s name as a brand. An actor becomes a “celebrity” as a result of being a valuable “property” - a name that leads to movie ticket sales. A newsman becomes a “celebrity” by having millions of viewers.

In these areas, becoming a brand is a combination of mostly luck, a little skill, and often a willingness for back-stabbing. CNN’s almost hiring of a high-school dropout as an anchor should make it obvious that expertise is not high on the list of criteria.

That Dan Rather’s unraveling was caused not by trained journalists, but diligent bloggers, further exposes the fallacy of the famous journalist as a reliable, omniscient source. “And that’s the way it is

Do we really believe there are only a few people in this country of 300,000,000 with the ability to be a Dan Rather? I’m sure Dan Rather thinks he is special, but I see Dan Rather as no different from Crest toothpaste: he is a brand, and as such, doesn’t have any special insight into the world or greater logical abilities or intelligence than the rest of us. I am not interested in being lectured on how I should think by a Crest toothpaste tube.

Likewise, I really resent it when a Feminine Hygiene Brand like Sean Penn does it.

One of the most famous of these “experts,” who personally decided that the Vietnam War was lost after the great US victory in the Tet Offensive, and used his post as “thie most trusted man in America” to assure our loss, provides in his branded phrase, the best end of this article:

“And that’s the way it is. “

[This article is a follow-up to an earlier post here.]

On Veterans Day, 2006, I had the pleasure of interviewing John O’Neill, well known spokesmen for the Swift-Boat veterans, who played a crucial role in the defeat of John Kerry in 2004. I knew John from my time with the Vietnam Vets for the Truth (VVT) during the 2004 election. The interview was held in Las Vegas where we were both attending a conference on terrorism by America’s Truth Forum, organized by Jeff Epstein, himself a former member of VVT..

The interview covers the formation of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, their motivations and actions. John frankly discusses media bias, the behavior of “Kerry thugs” and a number of related topics, such as how MoveOn.org inadvertently helped the “swifties” - their political enemy.

It is presented in two forms: a series of short clips, and the much longer full interview.

All statements by John O’Neill are his alone, and may not reflect the views of the interviewer, John Moore

UPDATE: A new (12/2007) book documents the Vets vs. Kerry activity in 2004. Check out “To Set The Record Straight” by Scott Swett (SBVT webmaster) and Tim Ziegler. Scott was an insider to the whole thing and tells it like it was.

THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH JOHN O’NEILL

• Full Interview (about 1.5 hours, 22 Megabytes)

THE CLIPS

• How SBVT started
• How MoveOn.org helped the swifties!
• Republicans couldn’t silence us
• How enemy spies worked directly with Kerry’s Vietnam Veterans Against the War (See also wintersoldier.com)
• Libeled for not being accused as a war criminal? Huh?
• Swifties scare liberal kiddies (this is really funny)
  
• New in the media lexicon: “swiftboating“
• CBS follies
• They push the first amendment, except when they don’t
• Yellow Journalism from the New York Times
• Local paper can’t get facts straight
• How to defeat the Main Stream Media
• Media Liar
• Why the swifties focused on Kerry’s Vietnam War record
• Yalie with an M-16
• How Kerry “earned” his medals
• Rice Pellets in the fanny
• Ross Perot’s fantasy becomes reality.
• What the swifties victory means
• Intimidating a war widow
• Wounded marine asks about Iraq
• The effect of the campaign on John’s life

What if interrogation of a captured terrorist could prevent an imminent attack? What if the terrorist refuses to talk? In the debate on torture, this is called the “ticking bomb” scenario.

Proponents of torture raise this hypothetical as the extreme case where torture is clearly justified. Opponents claim the situation is just that: extreme and hypothetical.

Today, Britain has two terrorists in custody who just attempted an attack at the Glasgow Airport. The timing and similarity to yesterday’s London attempts strongly suggest a coordinated conspiracy, with high likelihood of imminent additional attacks. These are likely to kill many innocent people, in spite of the terrorists’ incompetence so far.

The “ticking bomb” scenario is no longer hypothetical. It is happening now.

How far should the British be ready to go in today’s interrogations?

[Update 1240 MST] Britain has declared a “critical” alert level - meaning attack is imminent.

The “Global Warming” hysteria is in full swing.

The Carbon Fund has the dumbest motto yet:

Toward a Zero Carbon World

We carbon-based life forms hope they don’t reach their goal.

Islamofascists are engaged in a form of “viral” warfare against us. Their propaganda, internet sites, madrassas, their clerics in western mosques, theological scholarly writings and their planting of Islamist Imams in our prison system and military serve a dual purpose.

One is obvious - recruiting new members of organized terrorist cells.

The other is more subtle, and in some ways, more sinister: the viral creation of “loose cannon” terrorists - unaffiliated Islamist terrorists, a phenomenon called Sudden Jihad Syndrome by Daniel Pipes. These isolated Jihadis cause frequent terrorist attacks in the US and elsewhere, which are almost always mis-characterized by the media - probably out of their multi-culturalist instinct to not “create hysteria” against Muslims.

As a result of this media dishonesty, Americans are sadly under-informed about the threat of these increasingly dangerous viral terrorists.

A few of the “Unaffiliated Terrorist” events in the US include:

• March 1, 1999 - Abu Maizar was sentenced to life in New York City for a thwarted attempt to kill Jews by bombing a subway train in a Jewish area.
• July 4, 2002 - Barely-legal Egyptian immigrant Hadayet shot 6, wounding 2 at LAX El Al counter.
• October 2002 - The Beltway Snipers killed at least 10 people in a cross-country terror spree. One of the men, Muhammad, was a former member of the Islamic hate group, Nation of Islam. The other, Malvo, produced Islamist writings and drawings. Many other ties to Islamism have been found. While these psychopaths might have engaged in a murder spree in any case, certainly both were adherents to Islamist ideologiesm which provided convenient excuses for their actions. Mohammad was given a death sentence for engaging in terrorism.
• September 2005 - Four members of Assembly of Authentic Islam were indicted for a large scale terrorist plot against Jews in LA. These American Islamists were recruited in Folsom prison.
• March 3, 2006 - Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar and an Iranian immigrant struck 9 people with an SUV. He said he acted to ” avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.”
• July 28, 2006 - Naveed Afzal Haq attacked the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. He told a 9-11 operator “These are Jews. I’m tired of getting pushed around, and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.”
• December 9, 2006 - Muslim convert Derrick Shareef, was arrested for attempting to buy hand grenades to use during the Christmas season at a Chicago-area shopping mall.

If you or I, or 6 Rabbis sat aboard a US airliner and started joking about bombs or 9-11, we would be apprehended and probably prosecuted.

6 Imams recently did worse - they engaged in alarming actions obviously intended to either cause a political incident, or test security measures - probing for weaknesses of use by Islamic terrorists, or most likely both.

One asked for a seatbelt extension he didn’t need, but which would make a handy weapon. They took seats on the aircraft most suitable for an attack. Some booked one-way tickets. Even though they had already performed their evening devotions in the lobby, they did them again on the aircraft - not usual Islamic practice. They publicly discussed Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.

To not prosecute these saboteurs sends the message that our politically correct multiculturalism is still hobbling our defenses against those who wouldl kill us. At the very least, they should be permanently denied air transport.
If you want to find those paving the way to our defeat in the war on terrorism, look no farther than these people and those who defend them (especially CAIR, the Islamic terrorist’s best friend).

These men were not “victims, engaging in their constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms,” but agents of international jihad.