Reflections From a Murky Pond

Language shapes or gives shape to human thought. Therefore changes to culture’s language either represent a change in the what or how the culture thinks or are an attempt to induce changes in how the culture thinks.

This becomes quite clear when one looks at how people – mostly in America and other parts of Western Culture – have changed the definition of the “racism” in order to further their own agenda. In the past racism was defined in a denotative manner that contained no dependencies on secondary functions, constructs, or systems.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition:

Racism
Function: noun
Date: 1933

Definition(s):

1. a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2. racial prejudice or discrimination

This was and is the proper definition of racism. It accurately denotes and defines the phenomenon of racism.

Sadly, various Sociologists decided to craft a new definition of racism, one more suited to the agenda of societal change. Their new (mis)definition is:

Racism
Function: noun
Date: 1970

Definition(s):

1. Prejudice plus power

This (mis)definition of racism has its roots in the writings of Dr. Delmo Della Dora, who first devised this corruption of the meaning and nature of racism. It is a purely agenda-driven definition of racism. It’s purpose is to make racism a purely White problem and to free minorities from any and all responsibility for their own bigotry. In other words, this is a claim that no member of a minority group can be racist due the prevailing demographic disparities prevent them from having significant power.

This serves no purpose except as an attempt to lock Whites and minorities into fixed roles of oppressor and victim, with the latter either trying extracting concessions from the former or in rebellion against the former.

Only White people can be racist. This the battle cry of a generation of anti-racist activists, theorists, and minority leaders who have twisted the English language to further their agenda. It is a slogan that hopefully will go down in history as one of the most poorly conceived counterproductive arguments ever made by man.

InfoWar or Information Warfare is the use and management of information in pursuit of an advantage over an opponent. Information warfare may involve collection of tactical information, assurance that one’s own information is valid, spreading of propaganda or disinformation to demoralize the enemy and the public, undermining the quality of opposing force information and denial of information collection opportunities to opposing forces.

InfoWar has always been important in political and military struggles. In the modern world it possibly even more important for adversaries in a conflict to control and shape the information available.

Below is a video reporting on how some African citizen journalists – read that as Bloggers – are waging campaign of information warfare against the ruling parties in their lands who seek to maintain their authority at least partially by controlling and censoring what information is provided to their citizens and the world through the media.

This video is courtesy of Current_TV

These are some very brave and committed people who daily risk their freedom and their lives in an ongoing attempt to break their governments’ stranglehold on information dissemination. Across the globe citizen journalists – bloggers mostly – are engaged in an asymmetric war of information. They often manage though the porous nature of the internet to do what the Main Stream Media (MSM) is unable or unwilling to accomplish – the free and open release of information about unpopular, uncomfortable, and/or unprofitable issues.

232 years ago a group of insurgents rose up to cast off the shackles of an oppressive foreign power. Using asymmetric warfare techniques they forced an eventual withdraw of occupying and counter-insurgency troops from their land, despite being outnumbered and vastly out-gunned by their opposition.

They won their freedom from foreign tyranny and forged a new nation that still stands today.

Happy Birthday, America!

On Thursday, June 26, 2008, The US Supreme Court gave its ruling on DC v. Heller. In a 5-4 decision the SCOTUS ruled that the District of Columbia’s gun ban was unconstitutional.

The Majority Opinion held that:

1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
   1. The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.
   2. The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.
   3. The Court’s interpretation is confirmed by analogous armsbearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed the Second Amendment.
      
   4. The Second Amendment’s drafting history, while of dubious interpretive worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms.
   5. Interpretation of the Second Amendment by scholars, courts and legislators, from immediately after its ratification through the late 19th century also supports the Court’s conclusion.
   6. None of the Court’s precedents forecloses the Court’s interpretation. Neither United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553, nor Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 264–265, refutes the individual rights interpretation. United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes, but rather limits the type of weapon to which the right applies to those used by the militia, i.e., those in common use for lawful purposes.

2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.
3. The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny
   the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most cute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. Because Heller conceded at oral argument that the D. C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbitrarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement. Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment rights, the District must permit Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.

The full text of the Opinion can be downloaded here.

“Bush Lied, People Died” is a modern mantra among the Democrats and Liberal independents in the US. It has become an article of faith among the Left that the United States’ campaign in Iraq was based on a tissue of lies by Pres. George W. Bush and Vice Pres. Dick Cheney.

On June 5, 2008, Sen. John Rockefeller’s Intelligence Committee Report was released by a 10:5 majority of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). This majority did not include the Vice Chairman, Sen. Kit Bond. The purpose of this report was to substantiate those claims of falsehood.

Before taking the country to war, this Administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the Administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence.

In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent

— Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.)
Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence

Sen. John Rockefeller and his cronies – along with the rest of the Democrats – claim that the report achieved its purpose of proving that the Administration on numerous occasions, misrepresented the intelligence and the threat from Iraq. Sadly for them even their partisan report failed to prove their case.

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