Redefining What is Considered a Terrorist: Anyone Who is a Threat to Corporatism

Do we REALLY have millions of terrorists on American soil plotting our demise? According to the ACLU, Uncle Sam’s list of those it considers terrorists is growing by leaps and bounds — some 20,000 individuals are added each month. In its March 2008 online newsletter, the ACLU surmised that at the rate names were being compiled, the terrorist “watchlist” would surpass one million…that was nearly 4 years ago.

One has to ask why our government has strayed so far from the core, defining, aspects of TRUE terrorism to one which seemingly includes nearly everyone. Most of us can remember the following events where the term “terrorist” did indeed correctly apply to the individuals involved, even if their underlying cause may have held legitimacy:

The 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich West Germany — members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and killed by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. The terrorists were demanding the release and safe passage to Egypt of 234 Palestinians and non-Arabs jailed in Israel. 11 Israeli athletes, 1 West German police officer and 5 terrorists died.

Oct. 7th, 1985 — The Achille Lauro — four heavily armed Palestine Liberation Front gunmen hijacked the cruise ship off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, threatening to blow it up and kill the 11 Americans on board if 50 Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel were not released. When their demands weren’t met they shot and killed disabled 69-year-old Jewish-American, Leon Klinghoffer, then pushed him overboard in his wheelchair.

There are exhaustive examples of bonafide acts of terrorism, genuinely deserving of that classification. However, what the public is being force fed today has little to do with real terrorism and is nothing short of a full-fledged propaganda campaign. A deliberate, controlled, mass indoctrination — not unlike Bush’s prelude to the Iraq invasion — of lies, fear and hysteria utilizing the “terrorist” label to scapegoat innocent citizens in a bid to quash multiple dissent across the board.

Setting fire to a Hummer to draw attention to society’s gluttonous, over-consumption of fossil fuels is arson — not terrorism — no matter how disingenuously our government uses the term to intensify public prejudice and paranoia. Hoisting one’s self into a tree to prevent clear-cutting an old growth forest is a defiant, non-violent act of protest against corporate greed and environmentally destructive practices; it is by no stretch of a sane person’s logic — terrorism. Freeing non-human animals subjected to neglect, abuse, torture and murder may be relabeled “terrorism” by powerful corporate interests controlling Congress, in order to expeditiously imprison and dispose of those who stand in the way of their rapacious business practices and profits, but that doesn’t make those individuals terrorists. Such acts can never be compared — with any moral or ethical honesty — to the violent acts of kidnapping, torture and murder of human beings undertaken by real terrorists. No. The “terrorist” paradigm is being rabidly exploited by the corporate state to silence any and all opposition to its imperialistic agendas.

Redefining the ‘terrorist’ label to include non-violent acts of civil disobedience has become a convenient strategy to demonize, criminalize and incarcerate those who publicly denounce the growing multifaceted, unconstitutional, jackbooted behavior of a government gone mad. Entrapping peaceful groups by infiltrating them and using coercive, bullying tactics by government snitches and provocateurs, to railroad law-abiding citizens into committing crimes they never would have undertaken in the first place, seems solely “American” in nature. For all of the historic red-baiting hysteria about Russia and China’s brutal crackdowns, it’s doubtful that these countries actually INVENT crimes to imprison people. How do I know this? Because they don’t need to. They don’t hide behind a hypocritical facade of democracy. If an individual is problematic to the government they are simply arrested — no need to play mind games for the benefit of an uninformed public to cover their tracks. Their citizens are well aware of the extent of their government’s criminality.

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