THE FOG OF SEMANTICS


Bulldoze ranforests
Slaughter a lamb
Swat a fly
Targets terminate

Thin a herd
Hunt a bear
Harvest a deer
Wasp nests exterminate

Pacify a village
Drone 'terrorist' camps
Weed a garden
Mice eliminate.

Mow a lawn
"Cropdust" a field
Fell a tree
"Invasive species" eradicate.

Execute a prisoner
Control burn a meadow
Scotch a dandelion
Foreign leaders serially assassinate.

Club a seal
Butcher a pig
Boil a living lobster.
Cockroaches decimate.

Harpoon a whale
A butterfly impale
Vivisect a rat
A fish asphyxiate.

Stone an alleged adulterer
Puppies drown
Cows down
Gay men decapitate.

Electroshock an inmate.
Rendition an 'enemy'
A population liquidate.
By vaccination obliterate.

Zap a dragonfly
Nuke Japan
Snuff the kittens and polycidally
Bomb Afghanistan

Masking words for breaking
commandments not to kill..
Blowing semantic fogs...
the war propagandist's skill.

-saiom shriver-

Footnote:

We all know the atrocities of Hitler. Fewer know that Churchill deliberately starved the Indian population of Bengal during WW2.

Jesse Ventura: Thou Shalt Not Kill is not asterisked with exceptions.

The US Dept of Agriculture and Dept of Interior often set 'control burns' which when the wind turns direction kill even more humans animals and plnats than intended.

Here are some synonyms for 'kill': abort, ambush, annihilate, arson, bane, beck, bloodlet, bloodshed, blot out, blue-pencil, bottle up, bourne, brain, bump off, burn, carry off, chloroform, choke, consume, cork, coup de grace, crucify, crush, cut down, cut short, damp down, deaden, decimate, defeat, delete, denouement, deprive of life, destroy, devastate, dispatch, dispose of, do away with, do in, do to death, down drop the curtain, drown, electrocute, end, erase, euthanize, expunge, expurgate, extinguish,finalize, finish, finish off, game, get rid of, gill, give the quietus, hit, hurt, ice, immolate, kibosh, knife, knock off, KO, lapidation, liquidate, make away with, martyr, massacre, mercy kill, murder, nail, neutralize, nip, nullify, obliterate, occupy, poison, polish off, prey, purge, put down, put to death, put to sleep quash, quell, quench, ravage, ritual killing, rub out, sacrifice, scrag, shoot, sike, silence, slay, smash, smother, snuff out, squash, squelch, starve, stifle, still, stone, strangle, strike, strike out, subdue, suffocate, suppress, switch off, take life, torture, turn off, venery, void, waterboard, waste, weary, while away, wipe out