"If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant;
if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone;
if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate;
if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion.
Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything."
-- Confucius [Kung Fu-tse] (551-479 B.C.)
"When they put bombs in cars and kill people, they're uncivilized killers. When we put bombs on missiles and kill people, we're upholding civilized values. When they kill, they're terrorists. When we kill, we're striking against terror". Norman Solomon
“If the U.S. government is entitled to summarily kill suspected drug traffickers abroad, there is no reason why the same prerogative would not eventually be invoked on the home front.” – James Bovard, "The Demented Origin of the War on Drugs and War on Terrorism Nexus" [2026]
On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner, an enslaved American, led about 70 of his enslaved and free Black neighbors in a rebellion to awaken his white neighbors to the inherent brutality of slaveholding and the dangers it presented to their own safety. Their goal, Turner later told an interviewer, was “to carry terror and devastation wherever we went.” Turner and his friends traveled from house to house in their neighborhood in Southampton County, Virginia, freeing enslaved people and murdering about 60 of the white men, women, and children they encountered.
Terrorism is a mental health dysfunction: At its core, terrorism, war, genocide, conflict, and hate can all be seen as manifestations of a collective mental health dysfunction—rooted in fear, insecurity, dehumanization, unhealed trauma, and real or imagined injustices. When individuals and societies fail to manage emotions such as fear, anger, rage, and shame, these emotions can be projected outward, leading to aggression, scapegoating, and cycles of violence. Essentially, large-scale violence reflects psychological breakdowns—amplified by power, ideology, technology, and group identity—rather than purely political or economic forces. Terrorism is difficult to define, even the various law enforcement branches of the U.S. government cannot agree on one definition. The old adage, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is appropriate still today. Cw February 15, 2017
Terrorism - The Definitional Problem Alex Schmid, 2004 40 pages. Case Western/Intl Law.
The Definition of Terrorism, Duncan Gaswaga 2013 22 pages. Case Western Reserve University School of Law. https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=ijel#:~:text=In%20some%20quarters%2C%20the%20difficulty,for%20what%20ends)%20is%20legitimate.
Some DEFINITIONS OF TERRORISM:
“Terrorism is the premeditated, deliberate, systematic murder, mayhem, and threatening of the innocent to create fear and intimidation in order to gain a political or tactical advantage, usually to influence an audience.” — James M. Poland, Author - "Understanding Terrorism"
“Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. — FBI” (The FBI acknowledges there is “no single, universally accepted definition of terrorism…”)
Terrorism: “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” CIA in Title 22 of U.S. Code
“Terrorism is the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.” — U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)
Terrorism is “dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources,” violates the criminal laws of the United States, and appears intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.” Department of Homeland Security founding document.
"There will be no Homeland Security until we realize that the entire planet is our homeland. Every sentient being in the world must feel secure." - John Perkins
“Terrorism is all criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public”. — League of Nations, 1937
“Terrorism is all criminal acts directed against citizens by a State intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or a political party”. Cw 2025
“Terrorism is any act or threat of violence, whatever its motives or purposes, that occurs in the advancement of an individual or collective criminal agenda and seeking to sow panic among people, causing fear by harming them, or placing their lives, liberty or security in danger, or seeking to cause damage to the environment or to public or private installations or property or to occupying or seizing them, or seeking to jeopardize a national resources.” — Council of Arab Ministers of the Interior and Justice, 1998
"Terrorism is the war of the poor. War is the terrorism of the rich." - Leon Uris - (1924-2003) American novelist - Source: Trinity, a Novel of Ireland, 1976
“A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force:” Unknown
"The war against terrorism is terrorism." - Woody Harrelson
"No one has the right to ignite a war and lead an occupation and armies to conquer people, invading them and make them suffer all kinds of torture, murder, expulsion, displacement, bombing and terrorism by different lethal prohibited weapons and then come and speak as the savior of the people or a defender of their rights." - Muqtada al Sadr (the fundamentalist Shiite cleric who has opposed U.S. and British operations in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Considered by many to be one of the most influential religious and popular figures in Iraq, despite not holding any official title)
In early 2006 the World Council of Churches, more than 350 Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox Churches, met in Brazil and sharply denounced the US led war in Iraq of “raining down terror”.
"We shouldn't be here," said one Marine infantryman bluntly. "There was no reason for invading this country in the first place. We just came here and [angered people] and killed a lot of innocent people," said the marine, who has seen regular combat in Ramadi. "I don't enjoy killing women and children, it's not my thing." – Marine Infantryman, Christian Science Monitor [September 21, 2004]
"We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, will be known only as Americans." : Martin Kelly
"What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists -- whatever else they might be -- might also be rational human beings ; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States " - William Blum
"Let the laws be clear, uniform and precise; to interpret laws is almost always to corrupt them." -- Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778) French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher
“No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says…millions of American people…support your revolution.” Harry Belafonte, singer activist, to US critic and socialist Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela. (Jan. 23, 2006 US News World Report.)
While President George W. Bush saw "terrorism", and especially "suicide-terrorism" as evil, which can be cured by killing terrorists everywhere in the world, Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia understood that terrorism is the result of people, who see themselves as victims of injustice, and, are unable to find justice by any other means, taking law in their own hands and seeking to redress the injustice by whatever means available to them.
In 2013 Tom Ridge, former Governor of PA and DHS director said “The war against terrorism is really a war against a belief system that justifies killing innocent people to achieve a political end.” But the US justifies war as a remedy to terrorism. War is a system that accepts the killing of innocent people as collateral damage to achieve it’s political ends. In October 2013 an unarmed, mentally ill woman named Miriam Carey was surrounded by police who fired 17 shots at her in front of her 1 year old daughter…it was an act of war…not police work. Fear of terrorism allowed our nation’s finest police to shoot an unarmed woman under the suspension she was driving a WMD to murder the President. She believed Obama was bugging her apartment. It appears the Secret Service’s only real option was to go into ‘threat elimination” mode. Police forces have become heavily militarized, and routinely use “overwhelming force”. Is this really a police operation or a special forces operation? \
"What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists -- whatever else they might be -- might also be rational human beings ; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States .." William Blum
Ex-US Officialsce Fa'Material Support' Probe for Terror Links High-ups in US political establishment expose hypocrisy by ignoring federal law they championed - Common Dreams staff. March 16, 2012
A Treasury Department investigation has been initiated against nearly two dozen former high-ranking US officials, many who continue to hold elite positions of power in media and policy circles or private industry, for their active support and financial ties to an Iranian dissident group, the People's Mujahedin of Iran (or MEK), that is listed by the State Department as a 'terror organization'.
Those under investigation represent a bipartisan group including former Democratic governors Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Howard Dean of Vermont; former Republican Homeland Security Advisor to George W. Bush, Fran Townsend, Bush's Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, and former UN ambassador John Bolton; former Republican Mayor of New York, Rudolph Guiliani; and ex-FBI Director Louis Freeh and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton, among others.
Due to a ruling by the Supreme Court in 2010 that affirmed a DOJ interpretation of the 'material support' statute, The MEK's listing as a terror organization makes it illegal to coordinate with, provide assistance to, or take payment from the group.
"What is particularly repellent about all of this," Glenn Greenwald recently wrote about the situation, "Is not the supreme hypocrisy and self-interested provincialism" of these former officials. That's par for the course. The real problem, he argues ... is that there are large numbers of people — almost always Muslims — who have been prosecuted and are now in prison for providing “material support” to terrorist groups for doing far less than Fran Townsend and her fellow cast of bipartisan ex-officials have done with and on behalf of MEK. In fact, the U.S. Government has been (under the administration in which Townsend worked) and still is (under the administration Rendell supports) continuously prosecuting Muslims for providing “material support” for Terrorist groups based on their pure speech, all while Fran Townsend, Ed Rendell and company have said nothing or, worse, supported the legal interpretations that justified these prosecutions.
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MSNBC reports today:
The investigation, being conducted by the Treasury Department, is focused on whether the former officials may have received funding, directly or indirectly, from the People's Mujahedin of Iran, or MEK, thereby violating longstanding federal law barring financial dealings with terrorist groups. The sources, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, said that speaking fees given to the former officials total hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"This is about finding out where the money is coming from," an Obama administration official familiar with the probe said. "This has been a source of enormous concern for a long time now. You have to ask the question, whether this is a prima facie case of material support for terrorism."
Freeh and Shelton are among 40 former senior U.S. government officials who have participated in a public lobbying campaign – including appearing at overseas conferences and speaking at public rallies – aimed at persuading the U.S. government to remove the MEK from the terror list.
* * *
Greenwald, who has followed the story closely, wrote earlier this week:
[The Supreme Court ruling in Holder v. Humanitarian Law (pdf)] was one of the most severe erosions of free speech rights in decades because, as Justice Breyer (joined by Ginsberg and Sotomayor) pointed out in dissent, “all the activities” at issue, which the DOJ’s interpretation would criminalize, “involve the communication and advocacy of political ideas and lawful means of achieving political ends.” The dissent added that the DOJ’s broad interpretation of the statute “gravely and without adequate justification injure[s] interests of the kind the First Amendment protects.” As Georgetown Law Professor David Cole, who represented the plaintiffs, explained, this was literally “the first time ever” that “the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment permits the criminalization of pure speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity.” Thus, “the court rule[d] that speech advocating only lawful, nonviolent activity can be made a crime, and that any coordination with a blacklisted group can land a citizen in prison for 15 years.” Then-Solicitor-General Elena Kagan argued the winning Obama DOJ position before the Court.
Whatever one’s views are on this ruling, it is now binding law. To advocate on behalf of a designated Terrorist group constitutes the felony of “providing material support” if that advocacy is coordinated with the group.
And he notes the hypocrisy, referencing a previous post where he highlighted the many muslims who have been charged under the statute:
• A Staten Island satellite TV salesman in 2009 was sentenced to five years in federal prison merely for including a Hezbollah TV channel as part of the satellite package he sold to customers;
• a Massachusetts resident, Tarek Mehanna, is being prosecuted now ”for posting pro-jihadist material on the internet”;
• a 24-year-old Pakistani legal resident living in Virginia, Jubair Ahmad, was indicted last September for uploading a 5-minute video to YouTube that was highly critical of U.S. actions in the Muslim world, an allegedly criminal act simply because prosecutors claim he discussed the video in advance with the son of a leader of a designated Terrorist organization (Lashkar-e-Tayyiba);
• a Saudi Arabian graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, was prosecuted simply for maintaining a website with links “to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel” and “jihadist” sites that solicited donations for extremist groups (he was ultimately acquitted); and,
• last July, a 22-year-old former Penn State student and son of an instructor at the school, Emerson Winfield Begolly, was indicted for — in the FBI’s words — “repeatedly using the Internet to promote violent jihad against Americans” by posting comments on a “jihadist” Internet forum including “a comment online that praised the shootings” at a Marine Corps base, action which former Obama lawyer Marty Lederman said ”does not at first glance appear to be different from the sort of advocacy of unlawful conduct that is entitled to substantial First Amendment protection.”
Now, he writes, "we have the most well-connected national security and military officials in Washington doing far more than all of that right out in the open — they’re receiving large payments from a Terrorist group, meeting with its leaders, attending their meetings, and then advocating for them in very public forums; Howard Dean, after getting paid by the group,actually called for MEK’s leader to be recognized as the legitimate President of Iran – and so far none have been prosecuted or even indicted. The Treasury Department investigation must at least scare them."
* * *
Talking Points Memo adds:
TPM reached out to nearly two dozen high-profile speakers from past pro-MEK events, many of whom have acknowledged being paid, and who have advocated for taking the Iranian opposition group Mujahideen-e Khalq taken off the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. Most didn’t respond. Those who did, like former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, had no comment. And those we managed to get on the phone didn’t have much to say either.
“I don’t plan to comment on any of that,” former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean told TPM. “It’s unfortunate because there’s been a lot of misinformation in the mainstream media out there. When the blogs start repeating Iranian propaganda, we’ve got a problem.”
It’s never been entirely clear who actually pays for the speeches, which are typically arranged through speaking agencies. Rendell told the New York Timeshe was under the impression that his speaking fees came from Iranian-American supporters of the MEK and not the group itself. That is in line with what TPM was told by an organizer of an August 2011 rally outside the State Department. “Some of them are paid, some of them aren’t,” Hamid Azimi told TPM, adding that people wouldn’t even be asking about the payments if MEK wasn’t on the list.
It is illegal for Americans to do business with designated terrorist groups or, thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, advocate for positions in coordination with such organizations. The Treasury Department isn’t commenting on the probe.
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