"No Evidence..." and Other Bullshit

First - I was wrong. I wrote that I "have yet to hear insistence that Islam had nothing to do with it." - and I hadn't - but only because I didn't dig further into the official statements by Cuomo, de Blasio, etc. We're getting responses like:

Bomb experts will analyze the device and how it was made, according to CNN senior law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes.

"It could be somebody that has grievance against the US military, possibly the Marine Corps specifically, and have nothing to do with an overseas-inspired attack like ISIS. So it still could be terrorism without being international, without being al Qaeda or ISIS or another affiliated group."

Even better, de Blasio:

During a press conference, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said that there is no evidence that the explosion in Manhattan had any terror connection

Similar statements are being made, that it's not certain it was terrorism, etc.

And it's all bullshit.

I get it, if we don't know, we don't fucking know, but then the only four words we have to say are "we don't know yet". Meanwhile, there's also no evidence it was white supremacists, the Amish Sepratist Front, or Leprechauns, but there damn well is reason to believe it had something to do with Islam.

Look, one major tell someone is bullshitting you is when they use a lot more words than are needed. They're trying to hide something, talk around something, misdirect you from something, but more importantly, obscure something like a needle in a haystack and distance you from what they're saying (it's George Carlin, worth watching). Yes, we geeks are often accused of overspeaking when trying to be precise, and very smart people of "using big words to show off" - but there is a difference, in cadence, in feel when someone is bullshitting you (Aside - the Harry Frankfurt book "On Bullshit" is worth reading, and he also has an online essay).

In the above cases we get handed a bunch of words that are - sometimes only in the barest technicality (what counts as "evidence"?) - true, but intended to sell you a lie, minimize the problem, make you believe a falsehood.

I've been told "But they don't know for sure so they can't say it was terrorism" - much like the news is trying to slam Trump for saying "bombing" before the official statement was made.  Again - bullshit. if they don't know, those are the only three words they have to say. Every extra word in those statements, especially prepared ones, has a purpose - so look, again, at what they're minimizing.

And how did Trump "know" it was a bombing? How did we figure it wasn't a radicalized Mennonite?

ISIS, Again. #Coincidentally

A man goes around the St Cloud Mall in Minnesota with a knife attacking people. Amazingly, it is reported he was shouting Allahu Akbar, that he asked his victims whether or not they were muslims, and ISIS claimed credit. Just as amazingly I have yet to hear insistence that Islam had nothing to do with it. 

A wonderful example of reporting the facts while still carefully avoiding any of the obvious conclusions. After all, if we state that his political ideology / religious death cult was a motive, we'd have to start looking deeper at the pattern. 

The bomb in New Jersy that injured no-one near the route of a USMC charity run.

The bomb in Chelsea, NYC, that injured 25. A second device was reported found, and while I hadn't seen the word "terrorist" bandied about, the reported behavior of the police was that of "We think this is terrorists, so we're on the lookout for secondary explosives to catch responders."

I've noticed that these attacks, while news is posted on them, are quickly shuffled aside. You can blame "it's not news anymore" when we regularly have body counts and injury rates equal to or well North of what used to get extensive national attention (San Bernandino, Ft Hood, Boston). That said, the lying press decides what to fill the airwaves with. Reporting the bare minimum allows them to claim to be truthful, while they go back to wring their hands over Trump, Pepe, and "RACISTS!!". 

If they report the news, if they point out the connections, the constancy of the attacks, again, and again, and the multiple common traits. If they even begin to speculate "on air" that a culture that holds grudges for centuries for blacking their eye when they came raping, pillaging, and burning is at fault (remember, loot, pillage, then burn. Burn always goes last). People might get angry, and do something about the ones who know what we should want for us. And maybe we'd have to accept that "magic dirt" doesn't convert someone from the beliefs they brought with them. 

9/11

We already are forgetting.

Some of it, I know for a fact, are the rabbits, the R-selected liberals, who want to turn away and forget that there are wolves, that death waits. Who find remembering what happened "too morbid" or "too sad" or "you're just stirring up anger against muslims" as if that's a trump card.

I don't remember because I want to feel pain. I remember because I must - so the people who died that day are not forgotten. So that we don't forget the systemic malfeasance that led up to that day, the shoddy advice to just give hijackers what they wanted (and maybe they'll go away). 

To remember the fucking embarrassment of panicked legislation that - despite over a decade of the left screaming at conservatives was passed with bipartisan unity, over the objections of the left, and much of the right. The rights stripped from us.

These people want us to turn away from the memory of the jumpers, the falling man (1), the collapse, the debris, the bodies, flight 93, and even the one bright moment of "let's roll". They've systemically stopped showing the damage, the destruction. Pulling back to ever more distant and sterile views where you could not see the bodies, the debris, the apocalyptic dust cloud rushing toward the pedestrians on the streets. They edited out the sounds of the bodies hitting overhead from the video of the firefighters.

They want to forget, and they want us to forget, to be tranquil. To live a life dulled without the responsibility of memory. I refuse. I choose anger. I choose pain. I choose sadness - so I can know who 

The only other memory as stark, flashed and burned deep into my head in a moment of accelerate time, was the "oh shit" moment of learning about the Challenger explosion. 

I was detached from my usual command to learn enough about rigging operations to help out with pierside evolutions. We were in class, shooting the shit just before 9am, when someone came into the room, had just hear that a plane had hit one of the towers. We looked at each other, wondered what kind of horrible accident it could be. Was it deliberate?

Then we heard of the second plane, and looked at each other, and knew, just knew it was not an accident. We didn't need a third time to know it was enemy action. Gone for me was the illusion that the Cole, or even the first WTC bombings, were just flukes. Add to that the certain knowledge similar to the Cole - that the lack of negotiations, hostages, political demands, made that an act of war and not old-fashioned terrorism. 

We were dismissed, told to try to come back after lunch. I couldn't get on base - waiting an hour to move half a mile and the base still a mile away. Called my chief, and with permission took the rest of the day, and part of the next, off, to come back and help supplement the swing shift.

I joined my friends, and watched in shock the smoke, the debris, the few shots of the jets approaching and striking. Tom Clancy taking the human intelligence community to task - and not returning to the air after the break. 

Well, I thought they were my friends. We were talking, and I pointed out that we now had a very limited set of choices. That the attackers, and their compatriots, were only allowing us the choice to die like sheep, or be willing to kill them before we died, as they were perfectly willing to die either way just to get the chance to kill us. 

I lost a lot of friends that day, and one girl I was probably better off not dating but it hurt at the time. A fairly liberal crowd, but events will show who can face simple, stark, reality, and even then, people couldn't, were afraid to.

They want to forget, and they want us to forget, to be tranquil. To live a life dulled without the responsibility of memory. To not be reminded of the wolves and demons and monsters in human guise. I refuse. As I recently said elsewhere, I choose anger.  

(1) - Go read the esquire article on the falling man. 

Paradise is Dying

The Didact reviews Fistfights With Muslims in Europe. Along the way he makes a number of observations. Go read it, but something jumped out and made me laugh despite the seriousness of the subject:

It was a response that made absolutely no goddamn sense when you realise that this is the same Scandinavia from which the Danes and the Vikings hailed. The reavers that set sail on their dragon ships from the shores of Iceland, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden were among the most feared warriors of antiquity. Their fighting skills were so highly prized that they were offered enormous sums of money to become part of the royal guard of the Byzantine Emperors. The proud history and legacy of the Varangian Guard is deep within the blood of their descendants.

If the Viking ancestors of modern Scandis could see how badly their offspring have debased themselves, I doubt that even the Allfather himself could stop his einherjar from charging forth across the Rainbow Bridge to give the invaders of their ancestral lands a good taste of Viking steel- and their descendants a proper lesson in good old-fashioned Viking berserker tactics.

There is a stark contrast, by the way, between the meek and submissive natures of the Europeans that Mr. Langness encountered, and the Muslims that he fought with. As he states at length in his writing, he actually found himself greatly admiring those he fought against, because they have a warrior spirit and a strength that has gone very much amiss in the rest of Europe.

I understand entirely where that comes from. Once you know what it means to stand up and hit another man, and desperately try to avoid letting him hit you back, you will know what I mean when I say that fighting is the fastest way I know of to establish bonds of brotherhood between men who might otherwise be mortal enemies.

Even so, one might be pardoned for asking... WHAT THE NIFLHEIM HAPPENED?!?

OK. Nothing funny here per se. That said, anyone who's been to Dragon*Con has seen the fake ads and trailers they put up on the hotel - wide TV system on the "Dragon*Con TV" channel. One of my favorites was the Dalek pest extermination services, but relevant to the above post, one I still cannot find (I'll update it if I find it) was one where a Klingon and a Federation officer are sitting on a couch finishing watching the movie 300. The movie finishes, and bewildered, the Klingon looks at the officer and asks, "Humans used to be like this? WHAT HAPPENED?"

Their Children, or Ours

Posted at Vox Day:

Who's children are more important to us?

#Coincidentally #Pravda Two stabbed at music festival

A "man" stabs two people at a music festival in Germany:

A couple was stabbed at a German musical festival by a man who attacked them while shouting "Allahu Akbar."

The male victim, aged 57 was seriously injured, his 66-year-old wife is said to be fighting for her life. Despite his injuries, the man was able to overpower the attacker who was arrested by police.

The couple was enjoying a picnic when they were attacked.

Police say the attacker was "apparently under the influence of narcotics". The suspect was also described as a 26-year-old homeless man from Duisberg, Germany.

The weapon was recovered from the scene.  Officer are still looking for a motive.

Police spokesman Andreas Wilming-Weber said there is "no indication of any political motive."

A judge ordered the man be put in a psychiatric facility.

"A man" - nondescript. "Homeless". I'm hardly the only one who's noticed that when they go out of their way to obscure how the criminal looks, he's almost certainly not "White cis". Especially how when no-one really knows who the perp is, they speculate endlessly about right-wing haters.

It hardly surprised me to discover that he shouted "Allahu Akbar". #Coincidentally.

Nor does it surprise me that the police report "no political motive".

Well - I doubt you'll ever find a conspiracy organized for this, but if you look at the structure of the political ideology known as the islamic faith, it's a prospiracy - like minded individuals making very similar decisions with a common goal and path. So in one sense, there is no political motive, he wasn't an activist or part of cells. But Islam is political, and the ultimate example of making the personal political as it is also a totalitarian system of governance.

To put it into fancy lib-speak, they've been memetically programmed to go off and slaughter people shouting "god is greater" when they finally get pissed off enough over some perceived wrong.