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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday October 12 2017, @07:23AM   Printer-friendly
from the oink-I-say dept.

Newsweek has this article on America's skewed definition of terrorism:

What is terrorism? According to the FBI, animal activists who stole two piglets from a farm were terrorists. As of now, Stephen Paddock, who killed 58 people at a country music concert in Las Vegas two weeks ago, has not been labeled a terrorist by the federal security organization.

In a viral story posted on The Intercept, journalist Glenn Greenwald details an account of federal agents investigating animal activists and scouring farm-animal sanctuaries to find two missing piglets that allegedly had been stolen from a farm. The FBI devoted such resources to finding these two piglets because their alleged theft and the capturing of undercover videos of the farm's conditions count as terrorism.

Why is the piglet theft classified as terrorism, but not the Las Vegas shooting? The distinction is rooted in the definition of the term. In spite of the emotions the word "terrorist" might elicit, the definition is not "mass killer" or "Muslim extremist" or "very bad person." The legal definition of terrorism is "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property in order to coerce or intimidate a government or the civilian population in furtherance of political or social objectives."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @01:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @01:15PM (#581118)

    No, it is their job to protect you. The reason criminals are arrested is to protect others. Both directly (because those criminals arrested otherwise might do further crimes) and indirectly (by deterring others from doing crimes as well).

    It is of course true that they cannot offer total protection. But it is indeed common that policemen are put on places where it is quite likely that a crime will occur. And if a police officer watches someone attempting a crime, he is not supposed to wait until the crime happened and then arrest that person, but rather he is supposed to take action to prevent that crime.