Word of the Week - ‘Proliferation’
It is funny how words become written into political speeches these days, and enter the vernacular without so much as a passing glance, or questioning look from most of us.
I remember the time before “Weapons of Mass Destruction” - or WMD - became similarly entrenched.
The word of the week, this week, is ‘proliferation’, and it is being used in largely the same way as WMD was before the Iraq war: to stir up fear and contempt in the general news watching public.
What are the perpetrators of proliferation proliferating? Good question. I believe it has something to do with nuclear capabilities.
This Saturday, the US, UK and Japan will meet with four other nations to discuss ways to prevent proliferation. One or more of the best methods they’ll come up with will surely be to spread plenty of stories about Iran and North Korea, which insinuate some kind of macabre alliance.
North Korea are in the words of the US spin machine “nasty pasties”, as are the Iranians. As President Ahmadinejad found to his obvious displeasure, when he went to Columbia University, his country has already been accused of all manner of misfeasance by the US.
But who has the most nuclear weapons? Who is meeting on Friday with the Russian Government to discuss a new Missile Defence System?
America. Fuck yeah.
The UN made a Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which entered into force in 1970. It is a crying shame that they have not, as yet, ratified my suggested Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Absolute Bullshit (NPAB), which would see much of what Bush and Rice talk being against it’s terms.
RSS
Another word is “asylum seeker” -previously known as refugees. I think that the new term invokes considerably less sympathy.
Also, see “insurgent”. Otherwise known as “rebels” -the US was unhappy with “rebels” as it implied its invasion of Iraq was unpopular with Iraqis. A rebellion would mean that locals had rebelled and civil war was in session. Much better to blame the ill-defined “insurgents”. A word absent in the popular vocabulary and useful for masking uncomfortable facts.