TERRORISM - Only applies to people who oppose America and its allies.

http://www.alternet.org/our-warped-idea-terrorism-it-only-applies-people-who-oppose-america-and-its-allies?akid=12419.294211.l2Qt-6&rd=1&src=newsletter1025176&t=8

The definition of terrorism seems simple enough. The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that it is “the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal.”

But America’s leaders and corporate media have a radically different definition of terrorism.

“In the mainstream American media, the ‘terrorist’ label is usually reserved for those opposed to the policies of the U.S. and its allies,” Tomas Kapitan, professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University, recently wrote in a column for the  New York Times. This terrorist label is usually slapped on Muslims, even when they use violence in the context of a war zone like the Gaza Strip over the summer.

Since the September 11 attacks, the U.S. has waged a war on terror. But as the writer Glenn Greenwald has repeatedly pointed out, the tactic the U.S. is waging battle against has lost its fundamental meaning. In the eyes of the U.S. elite, terrorism today means an act of political violence carried out by Muslims opposed to U.S. foreign policy.