I’m a closet Trekkie without the elf ears or phaser. I don’t attend those goofy conventions but I love Star Trek and have since I was a kid. A few times a year when I can’t sleep, I have a ST marathon (I have all the DVDs. And for the original series I go to FirstOnMars.com or hulu.com and watch on my computer.)
I like the original series and the Next Generation – don’t watch the newer incarnations like DeepSpace 9. As far as I’m concerned, no one can be better Enterprise captains than William Shatner or Patrick Stewart.
Live long and prosper with a 2 state solution - Mr.Spock
Nimoy is advocating splitting Jerusalem. Making it the capitol of both Israel and the Palestinians, in addition to land swaps. What land is going to be swapped? If the Palestinians have control of the holy sites that are now in the hands of the Jews, will they remain open to all? I doubt it and so does Andrew Klavan:
In his letter, Nimoy sites the episode of ST called Let this be your last battlefield (Season 3, episode 15.) Two aliens are transported on board the Enterprise who have been in mortal combat for thousands of centuries. If you get a chance to watch the episode, it’s an obvious portrayal of the race issues in America in the ’60’s.
Star Trek - Let this be your last battlefield
Both men are half black and half white and the only difference is that white is on the left of one and on the right of the other. The dialog is Oppressor vs Oppressed, bad guy/good guy and guess who’s the oppressive bad guy? The one (Frank Gorshin) who represents the white American male. He’s white on his right. Get it? (As a side note, this is the television Primetime Propaganda that Ben Shapiro writes about in his new book.)
So Nimoy thinks that a lesson can be learned from this episode of centuries old conflict and puts it in the context of the 2 state solution in Israel. I’m not really seeing a connection here. Israel has taken a dry desert and turned it green. It’s created a nation that is the most productive and democratic in the entire region – a nation that is open to anyone and just to all, including women and gays, unlike it’s Muslim neighbors. It has never enslaved Palestinians (as the ST episode posits about Black Americans.) It has never religiously oppressed them, as their Muslim neighbors do to Christians and Jews.
The ST episode and the letter Nimoy has written suggests and encourages a form a reparation for the oppressed (Black Americans in the 60’s and now Palestinians.) This is not only unrealistic (I mean, after all it was just tv!) but dangerous to the Jewish state. How will Israel be more prosperous, more safe with the Palestinians owning half of Jerusalem and swaths of the country? These are people who have sworn their intent is to destroy Israel.
And why do the Israelis owe reparations to the Palestinians? They never enslaved or stole this land from anyone. It was a UN charter that granted this land to them. Why have the other Muslim nations not absorbed the Palestinians into their nations but instead expect the Israelis to do so?
A 2 state solution will not work. It will empower the Palestinians to attack the Jews and to take more and more if they can get away with it. It’s their stated goal to eradicate the Jewish state and giving them more of a toehold by donating half of the holiest of cities, Jerusalem to them, will only encourage them on their dastardly course.
My message to Mr.Spock is logical: In television, conflicts that have simmered for centuries are routinely solved in less than 50 minutes. Not so in real life.
~~ooOoo~~
By the way, if you’re not a trekkie you probably don’t get the reference in the title of this blog, to another ST episode: Spock’s Brain. In that episode, Spocks brain is surgically removed by another alien invader, much prettier than Frank Gorshin, and he’s kept alive by the gifts of Dr. “Bones” McCoy. (insert smiley face emoticon here, please.)
Come on, ask me anything Star Trek — I got an answer for it!
We need to be vigilant of the left’s attempts to rewrite history and spoon feed it to us via the media and entertainment industry. Case in point is the video that is being featured on Fox Nation from those mental giants at CNN, Spitzer & Ditzer – as Rush likes to call them.
I’ve never watched this show – only seen the clips online, but this one claiming that Alexander Hamilton was an illegal alien is way over the top and is more reason for me to never watch that show.
Google or Wiki Hamilton and you you get a real quick education about the man. I’m not going to rewrite stuff here that you can find for yourself but needless to say, Hamilton was about as much an alien as most other “*Americans” of his time. Technically, there was no America here when he came from the Caribbean: it was a collection of British colonies just as the place of his birth, The British West Indies, were.
Furthermore, he was more than a guy who “got off the boat and just happened to write the Constitution.” In fact, the only real thing he had to do with it was signing it. But he was more than “just a guy who blah blah blahed” – he was an aide to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War, from all accounts he fought bravely in the service of the colonies and he penned a great deal of The Federalist Papers. He was a lawyer and the first Secretary of the Treasury, a position that I’m sure he held in greater regard than the current Secretary does.
At the time of his emigration to the colonies, he was a subject of the British crown, as were all others who lived in “America.” He was a British subject who left one British territory for another. This was not a sovereign nation so therefore there was no such thing as an illegal immigrant.
And while we are on this topic, let it also be known that all of the Founders, save Hamilton, were born in “America” to first and second generation “Americans.” Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams all were born in “America” into established “American” families.
We have all got to speak up when we hear or see this misinformation being disseminated. We’ve had 4 decades of Zinn history in our schools and 20 some years of Oliver Stone’s revisionist history in our theaters and it’s got to be stopped.
As Conservatives, our battles are not only in the voting booth and the phone lines and emails of our Congressmen (no, I am not being politically incorrect, I know that we have women in our legislature, too) and Senators. This is also a cultural battle we are fighting. We have got to stay ahead of those who, for whatever reason, are spewing falsehoods about our Founders and our history.
From pressure by the left to silence diverse voices, ABC is apparently caving in to the likes of Media Matters and the Huffington Post.
I was personally surprised when I read that Breitbart and Dana Loesch would be part of the election coverage on ABC. Why on earth would anyone want to lend credibilty to the likes of George Stephanopolus? (I probably misspelled his name, but guess what – I don’t care.)
My thinking is that the 3 networks should remain leftist. It gives America a choice – propaganda and lies or fairly balanced news on Fox. Their ratings keep falling and they will never catch up with cable news (make that Fox) so they will eventually die off. All that will be left of network tv will be insipid sit-coms.
I say leave them to their own demise.
But I’m still going to try and annoy them daily with my morning boycott email.
Don’t anyone ever say that Putin doesn’t understand the use of a photo op. These 2 photos speak volumes to these 2 men and their characters. H/t to the Drudge Report.
In light of the breaking news at Breitbart’s websites, especially regarding the NEA’s push to enlist artists and others to the crusade for Obama’s agenda and to continue on from my blog about Cloward-Privan, I’m posting this. If you’ve read Alinsky, you will recognize how he incorporated these ideas into his “primer”. Of course my examples are written from a conservative point of view but you can find as many of these propaganda techniques used by Republicans, entertainers, political “comedians” and even used car salesmen.
I offer this which is another product of Columbia University deep thinkers:
From Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Propaganda Analysis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938. Quoted at http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/propaganda/home.htm andhttp://www.vcsun.org/~ilene/secured_305text/propa.html
Name calling
Bad names have played a tremendously powerful role in the history of the world and in our own individual development. They have ruined reputations, stirred men and women to outstanding accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and made men mad enough to enter battle and slaughter their fellowmen. They have been and are applied to other people, groups, gangs, tribes, colleges, political parties, neighborhoods, states, sections of the country, nations, and races.
Example: countless, but here’s a few: Pelosi et al calling townhall attendees astroturf, manufactured masses, Un-American, mobs. And of course, RACISTS.
Van Jones and name calling:
Glittering generalities
We believe in, fight for, live by virtue words about which we have deep-set ideas. Such words include civilization, Christianity, good, proper, right, democracy, patriotism, motherhood, fatherhood, science, medicine, health, and love. For our purposes in propaganda analysis, we call these virtue words “Glittering Generalities” in order to focus attention upon this dangerous characteristic that they have: They mean different things to different people; they can be used in different ways. This is not a criticism of these words as we understand them. Quite the contrary. It is a criticism of the uses to which propagandists put the cherished words and beliefs of unsuspecting people.
When someone talks to us about democracy, we immediately think of our own defnite ideas about democracy, the ideas we learned at home, at school, and in church. Our first and natural reaction is to assume that the speaker is using the word in our sense, that he believes as we do on this important subject. This lowers our ‘sales resistance’ and makes us far less suspicious than we ought to be when the speaker begins telling us the things ‘the United States must do to preserve democracy.’ The Glittering Generality is, in short, Name Calling in reverse. While Name Calling seeks to make us form a judgment to reject and condemn without examining the evidence, the Glittering Generality device seeks to make us approve and accept without examining the evidence.
In acquainting ourselves with the Glittering Generality Device, therefore, all that has been said regarding Name Calling must be kept in mind.
Example: with many “glittering” words and imagery:
Transfer
Transfer is a device by which the propagandist carries over the authority, sanction, and prestige of something we respect and revere to something he would have us accept. For example, most of us respect and revere our church and our nation. If the propagandist succeeds in getting church or nation to approve a campaign in behalf of some program, he thereby transfers its authority, sanction, and prestige to that program. Thus, we may accept something which otherwise we might reject.
Example: Although the AMA only represents between 18 and 25% of the nation’s doctors and few Americans know that, Obama touts them to the public because they have signed onto his healthcare reforms. Therefore, it must be a good thing for our citizens.
Testimonial
This is the classic misuse of the Testimonial Device that comes to the minds of most of us when we hear the term. We recall it indulgently and tell ourselves how much more sophisticated we are than our grandparents or even our parents. With our next breath, we begin a sentence, ‘The Times said,’ ‘John L. Lewis said… ,’ ‘Herbert Hoover said… ‘, ‘The President said, ‘My doctor said,’ ‘Our minister said ‘ Some of these Testimonials may merely give greater emphasis to a legitimate and accurate idea, a fair use of the device; others, however, may represent the sugar-coating of a distortion, a falsehood, a misunderstood notion, an anti-social suggestion.
Example: The president said “we are the ones we have been waiting for” therefore it’s considered a call to arms by his supporters.
Oprah said:
Plain folks
“Plain Folks” is a device used by politicians, labor leaders, businessmen, and even by ministers and educators to win our confidence by appearing to be people like ourselves “just plain folks among the neighbors.” In election years especially do candidates show their devotion to little children and the common, homey things of life. They have front porch campaigns. For the newspapermen they raid the kitchen cupboard, finding there some of the good wife’s apple pie. They go to country picnics; they attend service at the old frame church; they pitch hay and go fishing; they show their belief in home and mother. In short, they would win our votes by showing that they’re just as common as the rest of us, “just plain folks” and, therefore, wise and good. Businessmen often are “plainfolks” with the factory hands. Even distillers use the device. “It’s our family’s whiskey, neighbor; and neighbor, it’s your price.”
Example: The rose garden beer summit hosted by Obama for Officer Crowley and Henry Gates. Obama playing basketball or bowling on the campaign trail.
The Beer Summitt in the rose garden
Card stacking
“Card Stacking” is a device in which the propagandist employs all the arts of deception to win our support for himself, his group, nation, race, policy, practice, belief, or ideal. He stacks the cards against the truth. He uses under-emphasis and over-emphasis to dodge issues and evade facts. He resorts to lies, censorship and distortion. He omits facts. He offers false testimony. He creates a smoke screen of clamor by raising a new issue when he wants an embarrassing matter forgotten. He draws a red herring across the trail to confuse and divert those in quest of facts he does not want revealed. He makes the unreal appear real and the real appear unreal. He lets half-truth masquerade as truth. By the Card Stacking device, a mediocre candidate, through the “build-up,” is made to appear an intellectual titan; an ordinary prize fighter, a probable world champion; a worthless patent medicine, a beneficent cure. By means of this device propagandists would convince us that a ruthless war of aggression is a crusade for righteousness. Some member nations of the Non-Intervention Committee send their troops to intervene in Spain. Card Stacking employs sham, hypocrisy, effrontery.
Example: “I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money,” Obama said.
“We have more important things to be talking about than ACORN.”
Bandwagon
The propagandist hires a hall, rents radio stations, fills a great stadium, marches a million or at least a lot of men in a parade. He employs symbols, colors, music, movement, all the dramatic arts. He gets us to write letters, to send telegrams, to contribute to his cause. He appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd. Because he wants us to follow the crowd in masses, he directs his appeal to groups held together already by common ties, ties of nationality, religion, race, sex, vocation. Thus propagandists campaigning for or against a program will appeal to us as Catholics, Protestants, or Jews…as farmers or as school teachers; as housewives or as miners. With the aid of all the other propaganda devices, all of the artifices of attery are used to harness the fears and hatreds, prejudices and biases, convictions and ideals common to a group. Thus is emotion made to push and pull us as members of a group onto a Band Wagon.
Example: The $5 and $10 donations to Obamas campaign that his handlers said numbered in the millions. The use of campaign rally attendees to call 3 non-attending friends on their cellphones to encourage them to vote for Obama.
“Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun,” 31-year-old Faisal Shahzad told a federal judge. “Consider me the first droplet of the blood that will follow.”
Stop Sharia in America
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Obamas Wisdom and Terror in the Street
"We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever...we absorbed it and we are stronger."
Diary of a Mad Conservative 