According to Wikipedia the definition of Terrorism is ,

“the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. This includes the psychological element:  Psychological impact and fear – The attack was carried out in such a way as to maximize the severity and length of the psychological impact. Each act of terrorism is a “performance,” devised to have an impact on many large audiences”. 

In the 1960s the US Government, under a possibly paranoid President Nixon, created such intense fear of the word ‘Communist’ that soon it became the greatest weapon of it’s time.  Any opponent could be slandered as a Communist and the mere hysteria incited by the word would taint them and many innocent people were persecuted.  Today we have the same fad regarding the word ‘Terrorist‘.

And Sarah Palin has strategically pulled the word from the thinnest and flimsiest of vague associations and aimed it at Senator Obama on the basis that around 40 years ago, when Obama was 8 YEARS OLD…..yes, 8 years old… ooo, shock, horror… don’t think so…. someone called William Ayers, was a Vietnam War protester who belonged to a group which had threatened violent action against it’s own domestic Government.

Oh, yeah… and decades later, William Ayers, much changed since his early and militant youth and now a college professor, was among the growing number supporters of Senator Obama.

This is like saying that an Avon lady who once sold lipstick to Palin had had an abortion, therefore making Palin an abortionist by association… or her own present day associations with people who might fit the terrorist definition TODAY.

( ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnSXGTFQ0Ak )

The Government during the Vietnam War in the 70s, had already conscripted and caused the deaths of almost 60,000 US citizens, 3 to 4 million Vietnamese from both sides and 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians in a war over 15 years.  For the US, it was in defence of ‘democracy’.  No Vietnamese aggressor had ever attacked America.

Whilst Vietnam War veterans deserve dignity, there wasn’t any glory in that war, nor any glory in the Iraq War was for which America is now known best for Abu Graib, Guantanamo, Rendition and torture.

Whilst Palin and ex-Vietnam vet Mc Cain may cheer on another 100 years of war in Iraq if necessary, I don’t think we should get swept up in their glorifications and it’s distraction from serious financial and environmental crises on a global scale.

The militant nature of many of the Vietnam protesters, or their desperation of their threats in the face of 15 years of war and deaths in a hatred of Communism also deserves no glorification.  But for Palin, in 2008, to take the word ‘terrorist’ in an election campaign and desperately and strategically use it to terrorise the American public into submission and mindlessness in seeking to control their votes, could well, in itself, be questioned an act of psychological terrorism.

Palin’s hate speech was taken up by Mc Cain amidst their further strategic baseless and tasteless choice of referring to  Obama as “Barrack Hussein Obama”.  The result was that when Mc Cain’s posed the rhetorical question ‘who is Barrack Obama’ at one of his rallies, redneck supporters in the audience shouted ‘terrorist’ and ‘kill him’.  In recognised democracies Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Denmark, France, Germany, Singapore, what they have done is illegal and punishable by up to ten years imprisonment under laws against incitement to violence.

On a lighter note, this sort of sums it up for me:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7DIc8jdra0o

Donna Williams

http://www.donnawilliams.net

and what does Palin herself have to say on this?

here’s what her body language has to say.