glen greenwald talks about the definition of terrorism. this is hilarious what the FBI labelled it as because its very similar to 9/11 and ive heard about this guy before. so hes a white guy who flew his plane into the IRS building as a protest, and greenwald writes:
"the FBI continued to insist it “was handling the case ‘as a criminal matter of an assault on a federal officer’ and that it was not being considered as an act of terror.”"
...That is the crucial backdrop for yesterday’s debate over whether the term “terrorism” applies to the heinous shooting by a white nationalist of nine African-Americans praying in a predominantly black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Almost immediately, news reports indicated there was “no sign of terrorism” — by which they meant:
it does not appear that the shooter is Muslim.
...almost nothing about this attack had the classic hallmarks of “terrorism.” In the days and weeks that followed, it
became clear that Zehaf-Bibeau suffered from serious mental illness and “seemed to have become mentally unstable.” He had a history of arrests for petty offenses and had received psychiatric treatment. His friends recall him expressing
no real political views but instead claiming he was possessed by the devil. The Canadian government was ultimately
forced to admit that their prior media claim about him preparing to go to Syria was totally false, dismissing it as “a mistake.” Now that Canadians know the truth about him — rather than the mere fact that he’s Muslim and committed violence — a
plurality no longer believe the “terrorist” label applies, but believe the attack was motivated by mental illness."
glenn continues sarcastically:
"The U.S. can call its invasion of Baghdad “Shock and Awe” as a
classic declaration of terrorism intent, or
fly killer drones permanently over terrorized villages and cities, or engage in
generation-lasting atrocities in Fallujah, or arm and fund Israeli and Saudi destruction of helpless civilian populations, and none of that, of course, can possibly be called “terrorism.” It just has the wrong perpetrators and the wrong victims."
more:
"
Ample scholarship proves that the term “terrorism” is empty, definition-free and invariably manipulated. Harvard’s Lisa Stampnitzky has documented “the inability of researchers to establish a suitable definition of the concept of ‘terrorism’ itself.” The concept of “terrorism” is fundamentally plagued by ideological agendas and self-interested manipulation, as Professor Richard Jackson at the the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies in New Zealand has explained: “most of what is accepted as well-founded ‘knowledge’ in terrorism studies is, in fact, highly debatable and unstable” and is “
biased towards Western state priorities.” Remi Brulin is a scholar who specializes in the discourse of “terrorism” and has
long documented that, from the start, it was a highly manipulated term of propaganda more than it was a term of fixed meaning — largely intended to justify violence by the West and Israel while delegitimizing the violence of its enemies."
