Form Of Terrorism Research Articles

Medication Counterfeiting: The Next Form of Terrorism or Just Greed?

Medication Counterfeiting: The Next Form of Terrorism or Just Greed?

Terrorism as technology: A discussion of the theoretical underpinnings

This short article is intended as a brief discussion of the concept of terrorism as technology, and the impact of military thinking about new threat models on the theoretical analysis of terrorism. Many of the concepts developed in discussions of the RMA seem tailor-made to terrorism. Indeed, terrorism in its conventional, political form was one of the new threats that the RMA has been applied to. However, the thesis of this article is that the new form of terrorism that debuted so spectacularly on September 11 can also be theoretically analyzed within the prism of the RMA.

Literary representations of risk: terror, crime and punishment

All forms of terror seem to aim at the destruction of the individual experience and judgement of people. Part of our world is threatened by political terror (as represented first by Dostoevsky) or ethnic and cultural terror (as convincingly described by J. M. Coetzee), but it seems possible, at least in principle, to find an answer to these threats. Is religion the primary remedy against nihilism and, therefore, also against terrorism as Dostoevsky believes? Or is the quasi or semi-autonomous self the major antagonist of terrorism? The genetic manipulation of the human race, as sketched by Michel Houellebecq in his novel Les Particules élémentaires (1998), holds a threat that is irreversible. The cloning of human beings, which supposedly offers a solution to many of our problems, seems too high a risk to take.

Like Zealots and Romans: Terrorism and Empire in the 21st Century

The paper defines terrorismand gives a rough classification of itstraditional forms: repressive terrorism,insurrectional terrorism ofethnic/national/separatist character andsocial-revolutionary terrorism. To explainthese forms of terrorism, scholars used twomodels: the psychiatric model and thesociological model. Both were – and are –not just objects of scholarly debate, butpart and parcel of a political conflictover the legitimacy of terrorist actions.In the last decade, new forms of terrorism(most prominent: fundamentalist Islamicterrorism) have developed as a reaction toglobalization and Empire-building. We haveseen a development from provincialterrorism to terrorism of global reach,from terrorism as a form of political crimeto terrorism as criminalized war. Thetraditional explanatory models have,therefore, to be supplemented by adiscussion of the dialectical relationbetween the growing American Empire and aspecific form of military opposition.Defined as terrorism, this opposition has,ironically, become a rather useful enemy inthe process of Empire-building. There ishope that the Empire will, in the not sodistant future, be able to monopolize thelegitimate use of military force,criminalize all other forms of violenceand, thus, turn the terror of wars into amere war on terrorism.

Protection of Foreign Ships against Piracy and Terrorism at Sea: Legal Aspects

AbstractThis presentation gives a factual assessment of the phenomenon of piracy and other forms of terrorism at sea as well as a legal analysis of the respective international provisions to suppress such forms of violence. The points of difference between the international rules against piracy and terrorism are noted and the author calls for a more coherent approach and a more intensified cooperation in that respect. Otherwise, he argues, the freedom of navigation will be jeopardised.

Maintaining Hope in the Face of Evil

P. G. Zimbardo (2001) and M. E. P. Seligman (in an interview with S. Carpenter, 2001) discuss evil and hope in response to the September 11, 2001, disaster. The implications for counseling are presented with an emphasis on how counselors can maintain hope for themselves and their clients in the face of evil.

Race-Related Stressors Can Trigger PTSD

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical & Research NewsFull AccessRace-Related Stressors Can Trigger PTSDKen HausmanKen HausmanSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:20 Sep 2002https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.37.18.0021People who are victimized because of their race share an unfortunate legacy with victims of terrorism. Both suffer the effects of violence inflicted on them because of factors beyond their control—effects that are often both severe and chronic.This is the contention of Chalsa Loo, Ph.D., a clinical research psychologist at the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’s Pacific Islands Division. The center is a project of the Department of Veterans Affairs.Loo, who maintains that race-based violence is a form of terrorism, discussed this issue at the annual convention and scientific assembly of the National Medical Association, the country’s largest organization of African-American physicians, in August in Honolulu. She presented findings of a study on race-related stressors and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).Loo has written extensively on mental health issues pertaining to Asian Americans. For her study she administered the Race-Related Stress Scale (RRSS) to 300 Asian-American veterans who served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. She hypothesized that these soldiers, who, being of Asian ethnicity, bore a substantial physical resemblance to the enemy the United States was fighting in Vietnam, would suffer from PTSD in numbers over those predicted by military rank and extent of combat exposure.Loo noted that when she began her study, there was no published research on the existence of a relationship between race-related stressors and PTSD symptoms or even on racism as a traumatic stressor. There had been studies, however, that uncovered higher PTSD prevalence rates and adjustment problems among African-American and Hispanic veterans than among their white counterparts. Loo wanted to see whether race-related discrimination while in the military could be a shown to be a “distinct contributing factor” to psychological problems after veterans left the service.The measurement instrument they used, the RRSS, of which Loo was one of the developers, contains a series of questions that respondents rank on a five-point scale. The scale’s questions assess three categories of race-related stressors.The first, having experienced racial prejudice and stigmatization, asked the Asian-American veterans about perceived racial slurs, racial hatred, or “being treated like outsiders or foreigners” while in the military.The second category, bicultural identification and conflicts, assessed the degree to which the veterans identified with the Vietnamese people or culture while stationed in their country. Loo expected this section would reveal conflicts between the extent to which veterans identified with the North Vietnamese and “military conditioning to dehumanize the enemy.”Experiencing a racist environment while in the military was the third category of question. She explained that this section dealt with the Asian-American veterans having heard remarks or seen behavior on the part of U.S. military personnel that denigrated or harassed Asians.Participants’ race/ethnicity was Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Chamorro, mixed Asian, or mixed Asian and non-Asian. Seventy percent were in the Army, the rest in the other branches of the military.The data showed that 20 percent of the variance in PTSD incidence in this population of Vietnam veterans was due to race-related stressors, Loo said—that is, with military rank and combat exposure factored out.Both total RRSS score and having experienced racial prejudice and stigmatization were even stronger predictors of PTSD symptomatology than exposure to combat, Loo pointed out.She noted that her findings on the relationship of racism and PTSD are in line with those of studies done in the mid-1980s that showed that African-American Vietnam veterans showed more psychological problems and adjustment difficulties than Caucasian soldiers. She suggested that a major factor in the postwar problems experienced by African-American veterans may have arisen from guilt and rage related to emotionally identifying with the “devalued” and oppressed Vietnamese people they were fighting.“This finding tells us that the personal experience of racism is a potent risk factor for PTSD,” she stated, and one to which clinicians and researchers have rarely paid attention.The message for psychiatrists, Loo suggested, is that clinicians who fail to account for and discuss possible race-related stressors with their non-Caucasian patients are potentially missing a major cause of PTSD symptoms. ▪ ISSUES NewArchived

A Historical Analysis of Mass Casualty Bombers

Over the past two decades repeated attempts have been made to identify the next "new" form of terrorism, but all have come up short. Modern terrorism is not about the next trend, but is--and long has been--characterized by mass casualty bombers (defined as those terrorist groups that have killed 25 or more people in a bombing attack). When compared to other "new" terrorists, mass casualty bombers are more prolific than state-sponsored terrorists, more deadly than suicide terrorists, more identifiable than religious terrorists, and more plausible than CBRN terrorists. Mass casualty bombers have long presented the greatest terrorist threat to international peace and security and will likely continue to do so in the future.

Homeland security: the possible, probable, and perils of information technology. Information technology is a key component in both defending against and aiding terrorism threats.

Information technology is a key component in both defending against and aiding terrorism threats. The author considers the background in making progress with technology, bioterrorism and other forms of terrorism, cybersecurity - national (and global) critical information infrastructure protection, and the possibility of the establishment of a new department, the Department of (National) Homeland Security. He concludes that, more than ever, coordination, cooperation, and integration become a fundamental must in order to optimize our resources, which calls for standardization and interoperability of resources.

Concept Development in Sociology: A Comment on Steve Fuller's, ‘Will Sociology find some New Concepts before the US finds Osama bin Laden?’

An interesting issue is raised by Steve Fuller's ‘Will Sociology Find Some New Concepts’ in the previous issue of this journal. This is the extent to which the research programmes of sociologists are or should be influenced by particular, significant events. If this is a call for scientific open-mindedness in the interpretation of violent forms of terrorism and their causes, then it is good advice for us all. However, there is a danger that the interpretation of ‘significance’ will be shaped by the specific reception of events in the relatively rich nations, thus paradoxically tying sociological work to the vagaries of contemporary politics in similar ways to some of those contributions that Fuller rightly criticises. The main issue here we suggest, is not that of failing to see that real world events can confound our expectations, but of understanding and explaining events of many different kinds within ongoing research programmes, as this is what constitutes the real value of the sociological contribution to knowledge.

Applying economic methodology to the war on terrorism

The application of economic methodology to the problem of terrorism is discussed. Theoretical and empirical results are discussed with particular focus on the September 11 attack and the retaliatory response by the United States. Economists have relied on the rational agent model to derive testable hypotheses regarding the behavior of terrorists. The rational agent model postulates that terrorists respond to incentives, including media publicity, and the model predicts that when the net marginal benefit from one type of terrorist activity is diminished, terrorists will substitute into alternative modes of terrorism. Empirical results demonstrating that such substitutions indeed occur are discussed. Therefore, policy designed to reduce a particular form of terrorism, such as increased airport security to prevent airplane hijackings, may simply result in terrorists choosing alternative modes of terrorism. Empirical evidence demonstrating that terrorism is cyclical in nature is also discussed. Evidence on substitution and cycles suggests that following temporary reduction in terrorist activity after retaliation against terrorists and their infrastructure, terrorists are able to successfully regroup and attack using alternative means. Therefore, the current US focus on fighting terrorism on all fronts and over the long haul is the correct approach.

Perspectives on Narcotics Trafficking in Colombia

The cultivation of marijuana, coca, and poppy is an issue which has aroused considerable controversy in Colombia. This is not surprising. Nar cotics trafficking, the phenomenon to which illicit-crop growing owes its complexity and significance, constitutes the most outstanding feature of what Fernand Braudel would term Colombia's current historical conjunc ture. Indeed, the speed with which the narcotics trade has developed since the mid-1970s has precipitated radical changes in Colombia's economy, society, politics, and culture, contributing to the remaking of the country's entire national structure. The drug trade has compounded the already existing institutionalized social and political violence in Colombia by injecting it with its own forms of terrorism and mass assassination of opponents, competitors, officials, and political and social activists. It has fueled the creation and consolidation of professional criminal organizations entrusted with settling accounts, elim inating obstacles, and increasing the enormous profits to be made from the business. Gunmen recruited by narcotics traffickers have dramatically raised the homicide rates in some cities and enlisted large numbers of young people from the poorer quarters as sicarios (hired killers) and for general delinquency purposes. These youngsters are now facing the serious diffi culties of freeing themselves from these activities. The drug lords also kindled and financed paramilitary groups that have opened the way to the process of territorial appropriation and expansion whereby small landowners are evicted and agricultural lands are converted into extensive cattle-raising pastures. They have instigated forms of local organization where terrorism and the physical elimination of opponents and enemies are the norm, thus promoting regimes of public order based on brutal armed domination.

Kahane in America: An Exercise in Right-Wing Urban Terror

This article critically analyzes the activities of Rabbi Meir Kahane and the Jewish Defense League (JDL) during their formative stage in the United States (1968-1972) in order to examine whether it fits the description of an American "terrorist" group during a particular period, a notion which the American Jewish establishment attempted to project to the general public. My underlying hypothesis views Kahane and the JDL as boundary-crossers: using tactics from the two major forms of terrorism which manifested themselves in the United States during the late 1960s and 1970s. One type of terrorist group was an outgrowth of the cultural, political, and economic marginalism of an ethnic group, such as Americans of color, who adopted violent tactics in order to better their status in the United States. The second were the social and ideological protest groups who turned violent (such as the Weathermen) in an attempt to change an American political orientation, either foreign or domestic. Falling into neither of these categories, Kahane created a hybrid terror organization which mobilized an American-born ethnic constituency in order to better the status of their coreligionists elsewhere-in this case, those in the Soviet Union. Consequently, the JDL was the only organization in the U.S. during the period being examined which espoused employing violent tactics on American soil in order to achieve aims for members of what they considered to be their extended ethnic group abroad.

Terrorism in the former Soviet Union: A primer, a puzzle, a prognosis

This article examines political terrorist activity in the fifteen newly independent states of the former Soviet Union and the problems that security and terrorism analysts will encounter when assessing this activity. It introduces the reader to a form of terrorism known as “blood‐feud terrorism.” The geographic focus of the article is the southern Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia; the regions of Abkhazia and Marneuli in Georgia; Azerbaijan; and Tajikistan. Collectively, these areas have the potential of replacing the Middle East as the primary generator of international headaches, international crises, and international terrorism.

Voldtægt som et krigsvåben

Claudia Card argues that mass rape in war, like civilian rape, is a form of terrorism that aims to domesticate both women survivors of rape and the man who are socially connected to women who are raped. The primary function of rape, whether civilian or martial, is to produce dominance. The purpose of war rape, such as has occurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina, is genocide. War rape involves both outright slaughter as well as the cultural decimation of a group's identity. Although on the individual level, motives for committing war rape may be banal, coherent patterns are apparent at the level of strategy. The symbolic meaning of rape in patriarchal societies is dominance. Card explores possible strategies for resisting war rape. She discusses the importance of women becoming armed and skilled in the weapons of defence, and speculates about the possibility of women infiltrating the military. She fantasizes about "compulsory transsexual surgery" as a penalty for rape, a penalty which would attack the primary symbol of male dominance. The ultimate aim of resistance is to change the symbolic significance of rape, so that it no longer communicates dominance.

Studying Delta Force or Death Squads: The Politics of Hostage Negotiations

Is the study of terrorism too narrowly focused? Does it miss the broader context of the behavior it studies? Are researchers asking the right questions? We can explore these issues by examining one form of terrorism—hostage-taking. The response to these incidents is usually hostage negotiation. This technique is very successful because of the ability of the police or military to “contain and negotiate.” Most experts in the field have focused on the negotiations within such operations. If we examine the containment aspect of these sieges we can see that the decision to contain, and not to assault, the hostage-taker is the key to the success of most negotiations. However, this decision is a political decision. And, unless the role of politics is examined in the study of terrorism social scientists will forever be tied to conservative policies and practices. As a result, they will continue to miss the other, and more important, form of terrorism—state terrorism.

The process of delegitimation: Towards a linkage theory of political terrorism

The purpose of this paper is to close the gap between terrorism and other non‐terroristic conflicts which exist in the normal world, and to identify the behavioral links between various forms of terrorism and less radical disputes. The paper argues that all rebel terrorist organizations have a long pre‐terroristic history, and are products of a prolonged process of delegitimation with the powers that be. It shows that this rather lengthy trajectory of radicalization can be divided into smaller development stages, and is open to an unconventional theoretical manipulation. Three consecutive ideological and behavioral stages are identified: Crisis of Confidence; Conflict of Legitimacy; and Crisis of Legitimacy. The paper also offers a new classification of terrorist organizations, according to the type of the delegitimation processes they undergo: ‘Transformational Delegitimation'; ‘extensional Delegitimation'; and ‘Split Delegitimation’, and demonstrates and analytic and empirical usefulness of the new appr...

Informating policy and administration a comparative perspective on terrorism

The cliche that ‘one man's terroirist is another man' freedom fighter’ represents the major dilemma of anti-terrorism policymakers and administrators. The conceptual confusion is further complicated by the ideological orientations and policy interests of the observers. The comparative study of terrorism, however, has provided a conceptual underpinning and does provide the tools for sorting out the biases. This article compares the six principal models of political terrorism and suggests that each in fact describes a distinct form of political violence depending upon the perspective of the observer. Each of the forms of terrorism, moreover, may require a unique set of remedies. Using the widely publicized TWA bijacking during the summer of 1985 as an example, the analysis examines the differences in the American, Israeli, and Lebanese government perspectives and how those differences influenced policymaking.

The future of terrorism

Abstract Terrorism, both domestic and international, shows every sign of increasing. In looking at the future of terrorism, this article acknowledges the evaluative nature of the concept of terrorism, and attempts to distinguish it from other forms of violence. Three major forms of terrorism are examined, and in each case an attempt is made to specify the general context and forms of terror employed, the conditions conducive to terror and those factors tending to inhibit or reduce terror. Possible new types of weapons and tactics likely to be employed by terrorists in the future are investigated, and the danger of nuclear terrorism is evaluated.

Food distribution as a form of terrorism: He who controls the food controls the people

Food distribution as a form of terrorism: He who controls the food controls the people