WND: Feds label liberty lovers 'terrorists' ... again!

Examples of what START considers to be “right-wing” include “groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national ‘way of life’ is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent.” The report also goes on to describe right-wing “terrorists” as those who are reverent of individual liberty and suspicious of centralized federal authority. Under such a definition, the Founding Fathers might have been considered right-wing terrorists. ~ Jack Minor

By Jack Minor, World News Daily: The government is once again promoting the idea of “those who are reverent of individual liberty” being terrorists with a new study funded by the Department of Homeland Security.

The study and related data were recently produced by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. START was launched with a $12 million grant from DHS and is recognized by the organization as one of its “Centers for Excellence.” In December, DHS announced it was renewing START’s funding with another $3.6 million.

START recently released a study titled, “Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970-2008.”

The report noted that nearly one-third of all terrorist attacks from 1970 to 2008 occurred in five metropolitan counties run by Democrats.

The counties were Manhattan, New York, Los Angeles County, Miami-Dade County, San Francisco County and Washington, D.C. The report went on to list groups by ideology such as right-wing, left-wing, religious and single issue.

Interestingly, the report appears to have key data missing when it comes to Islamic terrorism.

On Page 22, Table 4 lists “hot spots” for religious terrorism by decade. For the 1990s, it shows there was no religious terrorism in New York or Los Angeles and only two terrorist attacks during the 2000s.

Ruth King, writing for Ruthfully Yours, noted that the report apparently does not consider the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to be terrorism. Also omitted was a 1994 shooting by Rashid Baz, who killed 16-year-old Jewish student Ari Halberstam and attempted to murder dozens more in a van on the Brooklyn Bridge.

The report also ignores the 2002 shooting at the El Al ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport. Following the attack, which killed two and wounded four others, the FBI and Justice Department concluded that the shooter, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, was an Egyptian terrorist who wanted to be a Muslim martyr.

Also, by cutting the report off at 2007, it was able to omit events such as the Fort Hood massacre by Maj. Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 29 others, and the Little Rock Army recruiting center, where a Muslim convert shot soldiers in front of a recruiting office.

When defining “left-wing,” START said it wanted “to bring about change through violent revolution rather than through established political processes. This category also includes secular left-wing groups that rely heavily on terrorism to overthrow the capitalist system and either establish “a dictatorship of the proletariat” (Marxist-Leninists) or, much more rarely, a decentralized, non-hierarchical political system (anarchists).”

This description would appear to apply to members of Occupy Wall Street, who have called on violence to achieve their means. A speaker at a Los Angeles OWS rally said in to achieve its goals, the organization would need to engage in violence similar to what was done in the French Revolution with mass beheadings. The groups have also received the endorsements of the Nazi and communist parties.

In a video, the speaker said, “One of the speakers said the solution is nonviolent movement. No, my friend. I’ll give you two examples: French Revolution and Indian so-called Revolution. Gandhi today is, with respect to all of you, Gandhi today is a tumor that the ruling class is using constantly to mislead us,” he said. “The French Revolution made fundamental transformation, but it was bloody. India, the result of Gandhi, is 600 million people living in maximum poverty. So, ultimately, the bourgeoisie won’t go without violent means. Revolution! Yes, revolution that is led by the working class. Long live revolution! Long live socialism!”

The report appears to be at odds with the Southern Poverty Law Center – which, while listing WND as a hate-group, ignores the Occupy Wall Street movement’s violence.

However, examples of what START considers to be “right-wing” include “groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national ‘way of life’ is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent.” The report also goes on to describe right-wing “terrorists” as those who are reverent of individual liberty and suspicious of centralized federal authority.

Under such a definition, the Founding Fathers might have been considered right-wing terrorists.

WND contacted START about the designations and was told, unlike previous reports by other government groups claiming that members of groups such as the tea party are terrorists, the START study was intended to only refer to those who actually committed terrorist acts.

The report also warns defines as terrorists those who want to “forcibly insert religion into the political sphere” and are opposed to abortion.

This is not the first time a government report has listed conservative groups such as evangelical Christians and tea-party members as terrorists.

WND has reported on how the DHS had previously issued another report listing returning veterans and Christians who believed in end-time prophesies as dangerous right-wing extremists.

A report issued by the Missouri Information Analysis Center warned law enforcement agencies to watch for individuals with bumper stickers for third-party political candidates including Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. It also defined radical ideologies as opposing immigration, abortion and federal taxes.

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