[The official US definition of terrorism (not reproduced here, but easily searchable on the Internet) is embarrassingly self-descriptive, therefore no longer emphasized by the government that wrote it. All the same, if hypocrisy has ever had a moderating influence on US policy, it must be microscopic. What policy hacks hanker for, no doubt, is a definition that will encompass all forms of resistance to the expansion of US interests anywhere in the world, while leaving out the wanton use of imperial violence. Hypocrisy, already a problem for humans under normal conditions, when raised to the power of superpower, becomes a colossal threat to a world in desperate need of justice.

Yet the colossus of hypocrisy striding over America from sea to shining sea is almost perfectly invisible to those living under it, thanks to a culture that strenuously preconditions for this outcome. Oddly, Washington cannot always count on those outside its borders to miss or dismiss the towering colossus, many of whom see it even from the other side of the world. Which is very confusing for many Americans who swear by the Bible they see nothing, even as Washington makes explicit the woeful connection between American exceptionalism and its monopoly on violence (shared as needed with partners in international crime, most notably Israel). Certainly neither government nor media waste any time addressing root causes, if doing so jeopardizes any fraction of its power, privilege or control, as it almost always does.

What is terrorism really in the simplest language available? Is it not a gun to the head and an ultimatum from the gun-holder seeking unfair advantage in the realm of human affairs? The gun may be real or metaphorical. In fact, it may be something desperately needed (such as food, education, medicine, infrastructure, resources, livelihood) to prevent widespread hunger, ignorance, disease, poverty, suffering, death. If the leverage of the gun is strong enough to support an ultimatum in the form of 'do as we say or be destroyed' - you have terrorism. Indeed, ultimatums in the form of 'do as we say and be destroyed' are not uncommon. This happens when accepting the ultimatum means loss of land, language, culture, autonomy. This type of ultimatum is terrorism with genocide as the intended slow-motion consequence. This is how US planners destroyed the native peoples of America and gained possession of a continent. This is how Israel and China are trying to destroy the people of Palestine and Tibet respectively (to name but two examples in the period since WWII).

Those who don't like to think in officialese may find the nontechnical definition above to be even more descriptive of US policy (foreign and domestic) than the definition of terrorism referenced at the outset. Hence the perennial need to do with words what cannot be done: to define the ubiquitous terrorism of the imperial state out of existence, while characterizing all resistance to it, no matter how justified, as an existential threat worthy of still greater violence against it. Terrorism is the growth-engine of empire, and as such has always been part of its province and purview. When non-state groups or vulnerable nations resisting annihilation on the periphery adopt terrorist tactics, it's usually out of sheer survival and invariably with effects that are orders of magnitude less. These stark differences, if honestly accounted for in any attempt to understand the term, clarify what terrorism really is and who uses it.

In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech of 1967, MLK correctly identified the US as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. Forty-some years later, though modulations to shape, style, substance, oratory and color are detectable in empire's front man, the pathological use of violence still has a hammerlock on the White House. For Americans, as for many others around the world, terrorism as defined here is a serious threat to their well-being. But there's often a major difference: for Americans the threat is almost entirely internal.]

Terrorism is the US defense budget: 1.5 billion per day in declared spending, and rising.
Terrorism is a country that budgets more for defense than the rest of the world combined.
Terrorism is a Congress that cannot question the terrorism of its own military spending.
Terrorism is 700-plus US military bases in 130 of the world's 195 countries,
and thousands more within US borders and territories.
Terrorism is government-sponsored torture, and no serious investigations or prosecutions.
Terrorism is 14,000 sexual assaults per year in US military,
and no access to abortion in military hospitals.
Terrorism is criminal wars of aggression to cripple, corrupt and bankrupt every generation:
disabling the able in vast numbers, implicating en masse the ruling class,
ensuring no funds for political reform.

Terrorism is the US prison-industry bonanza,
disguised as a phony war on drugs and tough-on-crime policies.
Terrorism is jails for jobs: locating prisons in depressed communities to boost the economy.
Terrorism is mandatory minimum-sentencing and bribe-taking judges.
Terrorism is the sadistic prison guard lobby, cramming the benches with law enforcement,
calling for longer and longer lockup for less and less.
Terrorism is staggering US rates of incarceration: 25% of the world's prisoners,
5% of the world's people.

Terrorism is jobs that don't pay a living-wage and never will.
Terrorism is Labor locked up in sweatshops and sealed-off behind militarized borders.
Terrorism is anti-living wage, union-busting corporations.
Terrorism is business-captured Labor agencies: de facto government-supported wage theft.
Terrorism is executive pay hundreds of times that of the average worker.
Terrorism is international trade agreements driving millions from land and jobs with the stroke of a pen.

Terrorism is the longstanding practice of the Federal Reserve: transferring public wealth
to private banks, defeating democratic forms of finance.
Terrorism is decades of real wage loss in the face of soaring productivity and profits.
Terrorism is predatory lending and payday loans as consolation for declining wages.
Terrorism is an unregulated economy of easy credit, bad loans, inflated assets.
Terrorism is billions for zombie banks while homeowners drown in foreclosures.
Terrorism is Labor in the crosshairs, soaring unemployment, pensions all but gone.
Terrorism is education spending politically tied to privilege, class, race.
Terrorism is the government sabotage of public schools: cutting education in every budget.
Terrorism is impossible teacher-student ratios, classrooms without resources, buildings in decay.
Terrorism is the steady transformation of city schools into holding pens halfway to jail.
Terrorism is pittance for public education, but hundreds of billions for Pentagon budgets.
Terrorism is higher education hijacked by corporate demands, cranking out cookie-cutter
graduates to staff the switchboards of empire.

Terrorism is tens of millions of people without medical coverage.
Terrorism is no money for single-payer healthcare, but billions for death-dealing wars around the world.
Terrorism is healthcare for profit driven by the logic of denying care;
making billions off the back of the sick and desperate.
Terrorism is a medical system outstanding in the fields of death, injury, bankruptcy;
killing hundreds of thousands, ruining many more per year.
Terrorism is Big Pharma's medicine chest of drugs that kill and maim,
and its rubber-stamp factory and revolving door the FDA.

Terrorism is the US model of industrial farming, soil depletion, food without nutrition.
Terrorism is genetically modified food, pesticide-laced and irradiated food.
Terrorism is CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations): all the heart-sickening sadism,
manure spills, 10 billion animals slaughtered per year.
Terrorism is the USDA taking orders from Big Ag, feeding school children GM food
and factory-farmed meat.
Terrorism is alcohol and tobacco on every block, but scarce access to organic food.
Terrorism is a culture exploding with extremes: hunger amid surfeit, homelessness amid mansions,
no rights amid full privilege, crushing poverty amid great opulence.

Terrorism is mountaintop removal: Appalachia's tearful monuments to insanity for all time.
Terrorism is deforestation, climate change, big-dam projects and privatized water.
Terrorism is coal-ash and oil spills devastating local ecologies and economies for decades.
Terrorism is the intrinsic danger of nuclear energy and its mountains of radioactive waste,
toxic for hundreds of thousands to millions of years, i.e. forever.

Terrorism is believing that belief in god makes god real.
Terrorism is the doctrine of original sin and divine right.
Terrorism is the idea of a chosen people in a promised land.
Terrorism is the pusillanimous project of spiritual warfare.
Terrorism is religion that denies equal rights, human rights, reproductive rights.
Terrorism is the appalling spectacle of Abrahamic religions, divisions and feuds,
lasting centuries, crossing continents, smashing up the world in self-fulfilling
prophesies of apocalypse and doom.

little big pine
may 2009

Little Big Pine: citizen, patriot, poet; may be reached at littlebigpine@gmail.com.