WashingtonsBlog

Wired reports today:

These are some warning signs that that you have turned into a terrorist who will soon kill your co-workers, according to the U.S. military. You’ve recently changed your “choices in entertainment.” You have “peculiar discussions.” You “complain about bias,” you’re “socially withdrawn” and you’re frustrated with “mainstream ideologies.” Your “Risk Factors for Radicalization” include “Social Networks” and “Youth.”

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That was the assessment of a terrorism advisory organization inside the U.S. Army called the Asymmetric Warfare Group in 2011, acquired by Danger Room.

And the government has more or less classified journalists as terrorists.

So it’s time for an updated list of actions and beliefs which government officials have said may indicate “potential terrorism” …

The following actions may get an American citizen living on U.S. soil labeled as a “suspected terrorist” today:

• Being young (if you live near a battle zone, you are fair game)

• Reporting or doing journalism

• Speaking out against government policies

• Protesting anything

• Questioning war (even though war reduces our national security; and see this)

• Criticizing the government’s targeting of innocent civilians with drones (although killing innocent civilians with drones is one of the main things which increases terrorism. And see this)

• Asking questions about pollution (even at a public Congressional hearing?)

• Paying cash at an Internet cafe

• Asking questions about Wall Street shenanigans

• Holding gold

• Creating alternative currencies

• Stocking up on more than 7 days of food (even though all Mormons are taught to stockpile food, and most Hawaiians store up on extra food)

• Having bumper stickers saying things like “Know Your Rights Or Lose Them”

• Investigating factory farming

• Infringing a copyright

• Taking pictures or videos

• Talking to police officers

• Wearing a hoodie

• Driving a van

• Writing on a piece of paper

• (Not having a Facebook account may soon be added)

Holding the following beliefs may also be considered grounds for suspected terrorism:

• Being frustrated with “mainstream ideologies”

• Using social media

• Valuing online privacy

• Supporting Ron Paul or being a libertarian

• Liking the Founding Fathers

• Being a Christian

• Being anti-tax, anti-regulation or for the gold standard

• Being “reverent of individual liberty”

• Being “anti-nuclear”

• “Believe in conspiracy theories”

• “A belief that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack”

• “Impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)”

• “Insert religion into the political sphere”

• “Those who seek to politicize religion”

• “Supported political movements for autonomy”

• Being “anti-abortion”

• Being “anti-Catholic”

• Being “anti-global”

• “Suspicious of centralized federal authority”

• “Fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”

• “A belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in … survivalism”

• Opposing genetically engineered food

• Opposing surveillance

Postscript:  Given that the U.S. government is directly supporting Al Qaeda and Iranian terrorists – and the fact that the government has removed some of these groups from the list of terrorist organizations for political reasons – a reader satirically jokes that only those U.S. citizens who join one of the actual terrorist groups which the U.S. now supports will avoid being labeled terrorists.

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