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Definitions, Lies, and Losing Your Head

by Lewis Loflin

The Liberal press for example tries to play political correctness to the point the whole story is distorted. Nowhere is this more absurd then using terms as militant instead of terrorist. In the article below regarding the beheading of 12 men, one could almost blame it on say American Christian missionaries or Assyrian Christians as opposed to Arab Iraqi Islamic fascists. Some definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary. Note that original meanings mean little today.

Fascism: a philosophy or system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic control, a strong centralized government usually headed by a dictator, and often a policy of belligerent nationalism.

Communism: a social system characterized by common ownership of the means of production and subsistence and by the organization of labor for the common advantage of all members. 2: a system of government in which the state controls the means of production and a single, often authoritarian party hold power with the intention of establishing a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people.

Socialism: a social system in which the producers possess both political power and the means of production and distributing goods.

Nationalism: devotion to the interest of a particular culture or nation. 2. The belief that nations would benefit from acting independently rather than collectively, emphasizing national rather then international goals.

Relativism: the theory that truth is an ethical to the individual or group that holds it.

Nihilism: the doctrine of a 19th century Russian movement that advocated assassination and terrorism. A system that says all values and baseless and nothing is knowable. The belief that destruction of political or social institutions are necessary for future improvement.

Militant: fighting or warring especially in the service of a cause.

Terrorism: the systematic use of terror, violence, and intimidation to achieve an end.

Liberal: following political views or philosophies that favor civil liberties, democratic reforms, and the use of governmental powers to promote social progress. 2. Policies that favor the individual to act or express themselves in a manner of their own choosing.

Individualism: the theory that a citizen should have freedom in their economic pursuits and should succeed by one's own initiative. 2. The doctrine that the interest of the individual should take precedence over the interest of the state or social group.

Collectivism: See socialism.

Progressivism or progressive: favoring political or social reform, liberal. In taxation, the tax rate increases as the income level increases.

Right wing: holding conservative views.

Thus, in the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun, an historian influenced by two illustrious Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, boldly declared that "Arabs are people who[se] ... savagery has become their character and nature." To this day it is only in Arab-Islamic states which amputate human limbs for trivial offenses.

In this century, an emancipated Arab sociologist, Sonia Hamady, admitted that "Lying is a widespread habit among Arabs, and they have a low idea of truth." They lie not only to "infidels" but to each other. Another indication of a flawed religion no one questions in an era of cultural relativism.

Here is what Ibn Hazm of the 11th century wrote: "The height of goodness is that you should neither oppress your enemy nor abandon him to oppression. To treat him as a friend is the work of a fool whose end is near."

CNN soft-pedals murder

(CNN) -- Iraqi militants have killed 12 Nepalis they captured just over a week ago, the militants and a Nepalese official said Tuesday.

It was the largest mass killing of captives in the grueling war against the insurgency that has followed the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

A Web site associated with a group calling itself Jaish Ansar al-Sunna posted gruesome still images and video of militants beheading one of the Nepalis and shooting to death 11 more as they lay on the ground face down.

Nepal's ambassador to Qatar, Somananda Suman, confirmed the deaths in an interview on the Arabic-language television network Al-Jazeera.

The still images on the Web site appear to have been taken from the video.

Jaish Ansar al-Sunna, which claimed August 23 to have kidnapped the 12 Nepalis, said they were killed "for their cooperation with the United States in fighting Islam and its people."

The group described the men as working for a Nepalese company that works under a Jordanian firm doing business in Iraq.

The killings nearly double the number of hostages believed to have been killed in Iraq, and are by far the largest number of captives to be killed at once.

The claims come at a time that another Islamic group is holding two French journalists hostage, threatening to kill them unless the government of France revokes a law banning Muslim girls from wearing head scarves in state schools.

The deadline for executing the two, which would have come Tuesday night in Baghdad, has been pushed back to Wednesday night, an Arab League official said.

Iyad Mansoor, director-general of the Morning Star Company, a Jordan-based services firm which had contracted the 12 Nepalese workers for jobs in Iraq, told The Associated Press he was shocked to hear the news.

"The last I heard was that the Nepalese government was in contact with Iraqi clergymen and others in an effort to set the 12 men free."

Journalist Akhilesh Upadhyay told CNN from Nepal that the news had been greeted from the men's families with shock.

Sudarshan Khadka, 23, the elder brother of hostage Ramesh Khadka, 19, told him he had just heard the news and was not sure whether it was true but was "stunned." He did not know how to break the news to his parents, he said.

CNN has confirmed 23 hostages killed by militants in Iraq. The dead include one American, two Bulgarians, a Dane, two Italians, one Lebanese, two Pakistanis, a South Korean, a Turk and the 12 Nepalis.

In four other incidents, different groups have claimed to have killed hostages, but CNN has been unable to independently confirm any of the information.

In the most recent, a video posted in early August shows a man claiming to be an Egyptian spying for the Americans before he is decapitated.

A video in which militants shoot and kill a man they identify as U.S. Army Reserve Spec.. Keith Matthew Maupin -- reportedly captured in April -- was released in June. U.S. officials were unable to identify the man as Maupin, however.

In a third incident, two Germans were believed captured and killed in April.

Copyright 2004 CNN. All rights reserved.

Here is a good one. The press uses a benign term such as "beheading" to describe the slaughter and butchery of a screaming live human being.

The news media and Nick Berg

By Dennis Prager May 18, 2004

For those who still doubt that ideology guides most of the world's major news media, the reporting of the Islamic ritual murder of Nick Berg provided textbook examples of an almost universally leftist bias. News media have essentially become propaganda organs for anti-Americanism.

We have already seen the hysteria over the Abu Ghraib abuses, with the daily running of photos on front pages and the continued news and editorial preoccupation that greatly damage the war effort. (If German prisoners in World War II had been stripped naked and humiliated to get information to save American lives, would any major American paper have published the photos during the war?)

On the day The New York Times reported the savage murder of Berg - in the most subdued fashion of any major paper in America (just one column on the front page, with a photo, the smallest of three front-page photos, at the bottom of the column) - its lead editorial was yet another in a series denouncing the Bush administration for prison abuses in Iraq.

Now, the Berg murder provides further evidence of how a leftist worldview determines the way news is presented, namely the media's depiction of it as "revenge for America's Iraqi prison abuses."

The vast majority of the world's news media are so anti-American and so morally confused that they reported the claims of anti-American butchers as if they were facts. Nick Berg's murderers said their butchery was revenge for American abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison, and the world's press dutifully published this as if it were a fact (or even worse, as if it were an understandable, though admittedly extreme, act of revenge).

Here are examples of the headlines - not subheads - in major American newspapers:

"American beheaded in revenge for abuses" - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Grisly Vengeance" - The Hartford Courant "Militants avenge abuse with taped beheading" - The Des Moines Register

"Vengeance on Video" - The Arizona Republic

"With a Vengeance" - Newsday (Long Island)

Lest their readers be distracted from the real evil in Iraq - the American treatment of Iraqi prisoners - some newspapers actually conflated that with the Berg murder in their headline:

"Amid prison inquiry, revenge" - Minneapolis Star Tribune "U.S. civilian beheaded in Iraq; abuse responsibility in dispute" - The Providence Journal

On the other hand, the few non-liberal newspapers in America had very different headlines, making no mention of the "revenge" claim:

"Terrorists Behead American" - The New York Sun
"Pure Evil" - New York Daily News
"Savages" - New York Post
"Bastards" - Philadelphia Daily News

Perhaps the starkest example of the pronounced leftist impact on news reporting is the difference between the headlines in Canada's two major national newspapers. The headline in the liberal Globe and Mail was "Murderous revenge: U.S. hostage dies in wake of Iraq prison abuse." The headline in the conservative National Post was "Al-Qaeda Beheads American." Even its subhead had no connection with the supposed vengeance: "Businessman was in Iraq to help build antennas."

Furthermore, the National Post devoted all six of its columns to the headline and the story, while The Globe and Mail devoted four columns and reserved its biggest print headline to "Oil at $40 worsens the 'pain.'"

Revenge? Islamists slaughtering innocents is never revenge. Was the slaughter of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan "revenge"? The terrorists called Berg's murder "revenge" in order to justify their savagery and because they know that the world press is so malleable and so anti-American that it will print their lie.

Finally, Nick Berg was slaughtered, not beheaded. The world's news media distorted the nature of the savagery inflicted by Islamic "militants" on a young American man who went to Iraq to help Muslims. While he was indeed literally beheaded, that word does not accurately convey what was done to him. Nick Berg was slaughtered in the way an animal is. People who are beheaded have their heads chopped off. Nick Berg's head was cut off. This huge difference was completely missed by the media. Why? Because "slaughter" implies moral judgment, while "beheading" does not. Just as "terrorist" implies moral judgment, and therefore "militant" is preferred. The media's attempt to be morally neutral frequently leads to distortions of fact.

The bottom line is that the United States of America is fighting the world's news media as well as Islamic totalitarianism. Until we understand that, we have no chance of winning.

© 2004, Creators Syndicate

Related articles, click here.

Facts on Islam, click here.

They're Terrorists - Not Activists

by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
September 7, 2004

"I know it when I see it" was the famous response by a U.S. Supreme Court justice to the vexed problem of defining pornography. Terrorism may be no less difficult to define, but the wanton killing of schoolchildren, of mourners at a funeral, or workers at their desks in skyscrapers surely fits the know-it-when-I-see-it definition.

The press, however, generally shies away from the word terrorist, preferring euphemisms. Take the assault that led to the deaths of some 400 people, many of them children, in Beslan, Russia, on September 3. Journalists have delved deep into their thesauruses, finding at least twenty euphemisms for terrorists:

And my favorite:

The origins of this unwillingness to name terrorists seems to lie in the Arab-Israeli conflict, prompted by an odd combination of sympathy in the press for the Palestinian Arabs and intimidation by them. The sympathy is well known; the intimidation less so. Reuters' Nidal al-Mughrabi made the latter explicit in advice for fellow reporters in Gaza to avoid trouble on the Web site www.newssafety.com, where one tip reads: "Never use the word terrorist or terrorism in describing Palestinian gunmen and militants; people consider them heroes of the conflict."

The reluctance to call terrorists by their rightful name can reach absurd lengths of inaccuracy and apologetics. For example, National Public Radio's Morning Edition announced on April 1, 2004, that "Israeli troops have arrested 12 men they say were wanted militants." But CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, pointed out the inaccuracy here and NPR issued an on-air correction on April 26: "Israeli military officials were quoted as saying they had arrested 12 men who were 'wanted militants.' But the actual phrase used by the Israeli military was 'wanted terrorists.'"

(At least NPR corrected itself. When the Los Angeles Times made the same error, writing that "Israel staged a series of raids in the West Bank that the army described as hunts for wanted Palestinian militants," its editors refused CAMERA's request for a correction on the grounds that its change in terminology did not occur in a direct quotation.)

Metro, a Dutch paper, ran a picture on May 3, 2004, of two gloved hands belonging to a person taking fingerprints off a dead terrorist. The caption read: "An Israeli police officer takes fingerprints of a dead Palestinian. He is one of the victims (slachtoffers) who fell in the Gaza strip yesterday." One of the victims!

Euphemistic usage then spread from the Arab-Israeli conflict to other theaters. As terrorism picked up in Saudi Arabia such press outlets as The Times (London) and the Associated Press began routinely using militants in reference to Saudi terrorists. Reuters uses it with reference to Kashmir and Algeria.

Thus has militants become the press's default term for terrorists.

These self-imposed language limitations sometimes cause journalists to tie themselves into knots. In reporting the murder of one of its own cameraman, the BBC, which normally avoids the word terrorist, found itself using that term. In another instance, the search engine on the BBC website includes the word terrorist but the page linked to has had that word expurgated.

Politically-correct news organizations undermine their credibility with such subterfuges. How can one trust what one reads, hears, or sees when the self-evident fact of terrorism is being semi-denied?

Worse, the multiple euphemisms for terrorist obstruct a clear understanding of the violent threats confronting the civilized world. It is bad enough that only one of five articles discussing the Beslan atrocity mentions its Islamist origins; worse is the miasma of words that insulates the public from the evil of terrorism.

Theo van Gogh and Education By Murder in Holland
Click here to find out about the Danish Cartoon Jihad

Theo Van Gogh Murder and Islam

Also see: Beslan Child Slaughter
Responses to Ed Barlow of Creating the Future

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