kallahar writes Now that the US has decided to wage a war against terrorism many other countries have decided to crack down own their own internal problem populations by painting them with the terrorist brush.

Russia did it with chechnians, China did with the minority muslim population in the west. In the case of Israel it has used the post 9-11 US position to crack down much harder on the palestenians to the point of putting eight hundred thousand people under curfew and starving the population into submission.

Before 9-11 all of these actions would have been objectionable to the US govt and the public at large but post 9-11 nobody has raised an eyebrow.

Even in the US anybody who disagrees with the govt gets tagged with the terrorist label. The environmentalists, the "anti globalists", hackers, music swappers, open source developers etc.

It should not surprise anybody to see taiwan jumping on board this bandwagon.

My suspicion is that the term will dilute itself just like the word nazi did after it got overused so much. Feminazi, green nazi, surf nazi, soup nazi etc. When you start labeling everybody with the same tag pretty soon the label encompasses so many people it loses it's potency.

- Taken from Slashdot