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?

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.

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.

My wife teaches an after-school class for public school 3rd graders at our church here in Arizona. A few weeks ago, one of the kids told how she could pronounce the name of our governor, Janet Napolitano (D).It turns out her teacher gave out tootsie rolls to kids who learned to say it right. Nobody was talking about her oponent - I guess the kids just automatically know how to pronounce Munsil. Not.
Today, election day, they all wanted to know how my wife had voted. Had she voted for Napolitano? Their teachers had told them everyone should vote for Napolitano.

If this bald electioneering on the public payroll isn’t a crime, it should be! Once again, the teachers have shown that their selfish interests are more important than their sacred trust.

It is this sort of nonsense that causes me to ALWAYS vote against public school district funding - and I did so today.

My mother spent 20 years as a public school math teacher. When my daughter was born, there was one commandment: “No grandchild of mine should ever go to a public school!”

According to The Washington Post, Staples has cravenly given in to a radical left movement to silence dissenting opinion. In doing so, they have also shown a dangerous lack of understanding of the blogosphere and the internet age. I would not want to be one of their stockholders.

My letter to them follows:
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John O’Neill, of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Jerome Corsi have create a major problem for the main stream news media: what to do about their new book, “Unfit for Command,” and the accompanying very tough attack ad aimed at John Kerry’s truthfulness and bravery.

The issue is the allegations in the book by 60 of John Kerry’s “brothers in arms” from Vietnam that are extremely unflattering to Kerry. It also contains damaging information about Kerry’s subsequent anti-war activities. Even worse, it has been the Amazon #1 best seller for over a week.

It turns out that Kerry was a skunk. Every one of his commanding officers and their chain of command have question his ability to command. His awards, including a purple heart which allowed him to leave his comrades after only four months are also questioned. The press has ignored this information since it was presented on May 5, and now the problem has gotten larger.

Thus, if you are a member of the mainstream media, you have to figure out whether to ignore the book, or find enough problems with the book and authors to destroy its credibility, or maybe wait until your colleagues gin up a big, loud anti-Bush scandal, and during the din slip a little article about the book on page 39. TV anchors have more choices - find interviewees whose responses can be edited to your purposes (irregardless of their intended meaning) and put up a smear job on the whole thing with no facts at all. For an example, see how CBS handled the press coference of this group. But even this might increase sales of the book, from which the public would be able to read the charges and evidence without the helpful interpretation of the major news media.

No other possibilities, such as a straight news story, are acceptable, because they might damage your effort to push George Bush out of office.

Besides, Kerry’s only credentials are his abbreviated tour in Vietnam. Destroy those, and you destroy the Kerry candidacy.

Such a dilemma. No wonder the main stream news media is simply sitting on the story.

Fox News is so far the only major media outlet to explore the book at all.Since Kerry has made his Vietnam service the center of his campaign, and the book attacks it, the relevance is obvious.

Fred Barnes of Fox News, reacting to the lack of response by other major media, commented that this was the worst case of journalistic “dereliction of duty” he had ever seen.

No, Fred, It’s not dereliction of duty. It’s something far worse: intentional abuse of position of power and outright lying by omission.

Can the major press keep this secret until the election? Will the information only get out as samizdat?

The US press corps is a disgusting group of people. When there is a story that doesn’t match their ideological goals, they either distort it or simply not run it (spike it). US national journalists constitute a group of people less trustworthy than used car salesmen. They actually pretend to be objective, while they lie by omission or more frequently these day, by commission. There used to be a profession of journalism, people who let you know what was going on. No more - that profession is dead. We now have propaganda nomenklatura, responsible for producing pro-democrat and pro-internationalist pieces, who pretend to be objective. Shame on the bastards. The good news is that only 25% of the population believes these clowns. The bad news is that they are still subject to The Big Lie effect unless they actively seek other news outlets.

If you think Kerry is a war hero, get hold of this book. If you want to know of his dishonorable activities after the war, the book has them also.

When Libya turned over its nuclear material, complete plans for a nuclear weapon were found - in Chinese. This leads to an obvious suspicion that China is encouraging nuclear proliferation. Which leads to the question: why would they do that?
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The passing of Ronald Reagan naturally brings out the humanity of the left. Not surprisingly, the majority of the comments have sexual references in them, consistent with common symptoms of Cognitive Disorder of Progressives:
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Fox News Watch today had a segment discussing the prisoner abuse scandal. Never once did they consider the question of whether the photographs should have been released.

The following is my letter to the show:

I am shocked that nobody asked: “Should the pictures have been aired?”

Journalists have a first amendment right not to face prior restraint. With this comes a duty to behave as responsible citizens.

In the case of this story, the release of the pictures was irresponsible. Americans will die because of that action, and 60 Minutes II must have known that. The journalistic watchdog function could have been performed in this case without showing the photos, some of which will appear on terrorist recruiting posters and web sites for decades. Of course, it wouldn’t have provided nearly as juicy a scandal, but it might have saved many American lives. Waiting two weeks was not enough.

This was classified information. The person who released it to the media is a criminal. Were it not for the enormous political power of the media, a grand jury (or military equivalent) would have been convened to determine the identity of the leaker. If necessary, journalists would have been ordered to reveal their source. They would then take great pride in going to prison instead.

Why do you folks think you have not only a right, but a duty to release information very damaging to our effort to fight terrorism? Is it because it is a political year?

I admire Fox news, but I cannot admire anybody on your panel after the arrogance demonstrated by your failure to even realize that such a question is valid.

You people should be ashamed, if such an emotion is allowed in media personnel.

Consider me dismayed and disgusted

The media now assumes that possession of information confers an automatic and unfettered freedom, even an obligation, to release it, regardless of the resulting harm to the nation.

By far the greatest damage resulting from the prisoner abuse situations was the release of photographs. Had those not been released, the situation would have been appropriately handled by the steps already in process. Journalists could even have used their normal “gotcha” against the administration on this issue without releasing the photographs. But that wasn’t enough for them.

The consequence of the release of those pictures is potentially catastrophic. We are fighting a war for the “Hearts and Minds” of Muslims, especially in the Middle Easter. Information is a very important weapon and a very important defense in that war.

If we lose that war, we will have to fight a potentially much broader and vastly more destructive war, both to us and especially to countries that are involved with terrorism. Remember Dresden and Hiroshima, and extrapolate.

Am example of the damage done can be seen at the Iraqi blog Healing Iraq. It contains the writings of Zeyad, a young Iraqi dentist. Zeyad had been supportive of the occupation, even when one of his cousins was apparently killed in another rare incident of abuse (which is also under investigation). Zeyad understood that these events were rare. But now, Zeyad appears to have given up on us.

Thank you, 60 minutes II, for costing us an ally, and for humiliating and angering a good person.

Ironically, the release of those pictures may damage the military’s ability to prosecute those who abused the prisoners. Again, the media didn’t care.

As exemplified by 60 minutes and the Fox News Watch panel, the media simply doesn’t care. They are so arrogant and isolated in their own value system that the question apparently didn’t occur to them.

The pictures caused a scandal. The political scandal will follow the normal script for these. But the international damage may result in the death of many Americans.

Here is their Code of Conduct. You will find no mention of the national interest in it.

Note: Also published at The Command Post editorial section.