Political Violence and Terrorism

The circulation of techniques for violence and the role of materiality in Randal Collins’s violence theory

by Paolo Magaudda

"Sociologica" N. 2/2011

Processes of Violent Political Mobilisation

by Yvan Guichaoua

Published in 2010. CRISE Briefing

The Political Economy of Plunder: Economic Opportunity and Modern Piracy

by Ryan Jablonski

Maritime piracy is a growing scourge on the international community—imposing large costs on maritime states and... more Maritime piracy is a growing scourge on the international community—imposing large costs on maritime states and industries, as well as potentially undermining state capacity and funding terrorism. Using original data on over three thousand pirate attacks, we argue that these attacks are, in part, a response to poor labor market opportunities. To establish this, we take advantage of the strong effect of commodity prices on labor market opportunities in piracy-prone states. Consistent with our theory, we show that changes in the price of labor and capital-intensive commodities have consistent and strong effects on the number of pirate attacks in a country’s territorial waters each month. We confirm these results by instrumenting for commodity prices using monthly precipitation levels.

Central Asia: Islamic Extremism and Terrorist Violence in the 21st century

by Sotirios Karampampas

published in Research Program on Foreign Policy, Defence & Security, Center of Russia, Eurasia & Southern Europe (CERE), Institute of International Relations (IIR), vol. 3, pp. 3-7, 2012, http://ceregreece.org.

The Rainbow Warrior bombers, media and the judiciary

by David Robie

Robie, D. (2008). The Rainbow Warrior bombers, media and the judiciary Australian Journalism Review 29(2):49-62. ISSN 0810 2686

In July 1985, the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow Warrior was moored in Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour, about... more In July 1985, the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow Warrior was moored in Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour, about to embark on a protest campaign voyage against French nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia. Secret agents of the French external intelligence service DGSE planted two limpet mines on the ship’s hull on the night of July 10, sinking it and killing Portuguese-born photojournalist Fernando Pereira. Two of the secret agents were arrested on July 12 during an exhaustive police investigation. The Rainbow Warrior affair, involving state terrorism by a friendly nation, became iconic in New Zealand history because it highlighted NZ opposition to nuclear testing in the Pacific. New Zealand High Court closed circuit television (CCTV) footage of the criminal proceedings showed the two French agents – Major Alain Mafart and Captain Dominique Prieur – pleading guilty to manslaughter after being charged with murder. During the next two decades, five separate attempts were made to gain legal access to the videotape for news and current affairs programs. For the first four attempts, lawyers acting for Mafart and Prieur succeeded in blocking public release of the footage on privacy and administration of justice grounds. However, the fifth attempt, by state-owned public broadcaster Television New Zealand, was finally successful in the Court of Appeal and the footage was broadcast on August 7, 2006. A further appeal to the Supreme Court by the agents was dismissed. This article analyses a case study of the 20-year struggle to broadcast this historic footage and how a remarkable triumph in the public right to know was achieved and balanced against privacy values.

El antiterrorismo como paradigma de desaliento de la participación ciudadana

by Matias Bailone

Justifying Terrorism

by Thom Brooks

Public Affairs Quarterly 24(3) (2010): 189-95

Virginia Held's recent How Terrorism Is Wrong offers us any number of important contributions to how we think about... more Virginia Held's recent How Terrorism Is Wrong offers us any number of important contributions to how we think about terrorist violence. My discussion will focus on only one of these contributions, namely, how terrorism may be justified. This justification rests upon a group being denied a voice. Thus, terrorism may become justified where this demand to be heard is denied, coupled with the corollary that all nonviolent options have been exhausted. I will argue that we should require a more narrow justification of terrorism. This is because I believe Held's understanding may be open to abuses that we should close off. I will begin by looking at how she defines terrorism. I will next turn to how terrorism may be justified on her account before arguing that a more narrow justification is required and what this might look like.

Terrorism, Security, and Liberty

by Eilidh Douglas

Enemies and Citizens of the State: Die Boeremag as the Face of Postapartheid Otherness

by Kathryn Henne

Critical Criminology: An International Journal 19(4), 2011

This examination is a case study analysis of the Mail & Guardian’s news coverage surrounding the ongoing trial of... more This examination is a case study analysis of the Mail & Guardian’s news coverage surrounding the ongoing trial of members of the separatist group, die Boeremag. The 22 defendants stand accused of treason and 41 other criminal charges for the 2002 bombings of Soweto and conspiring to establish an independent Boer state. Utilizing a race critical lens, this analysis looks at these news representations of Afrikaner nationalists to glean insight into how law, race and racism can imbricate public understandings of crime, specifically, in this case, domestic terrorism. It draws attention to the ways in which this fundamentalist group emerges as a repugnant Other and interrogates their roles within the “imagined” postapartheid South African community, the newspaper’s target audience. After explicating these dynamics, the paper concludes with a discussion of how this case study relates to practical dilemmas that stem from the utopian ideologies of reconciliation and nonracialism.

Selbstmordattentate im Nahost-Konflikt und deren Auswirkung auf die Zivilbevölkerung.

by Robert Friebe

Bachelor thesis

Examining the Underlying Conditions Presdisposing Societies to Terrorism

by Patrick Little

Thesis written for requirements of Global Security Studies M.A. Program at Johns Hopkins University.

Abstract

This paper attempts to examine the underlying conditions which predispose societies to terrorism.... more Abstract

This paper attempts to examine the underlying conditions which predispose societies to terrorism. The paper will specifically focus within three different regions to provide balance to the discussion. These areas are Western Europe in Northern Ireland, Northern Africa and the Middle East in Algeria and Eastern Europe in the North Caucus within the territory designated as Chechnya.

Each chapter of this thesis presents a different case study of the history of a terrorist group and its country of origin. After setting historical foundations, the chapters then analyze these accounts in relation to modern theories of terrorism.

The thesis tests theories of terrorism which are based on the arguments derived from five working groups on the topic at the March 2005, Madrid Summit. The groups included the top experts from around the world who are knowledgeable on the categories of terrorism resulting from cultural, economic, political, psychological and religious (or ideological) factors. The case study used the working groups to test the arguments that have been developed by theorists within these categories in order to help bring further understanding to the topic of terrorism.

This thesis also tested the hypothesis that claims that multiple combinations of underlying conditions within society blend together to predispose societies to the use of terrorism. In spite of the fact that the combinations of factors varied in importance from case to case, the thesis found that all of the potential underlying conditions which predispose some societies to terrorism mentioned at the Madrid Summit are confirmed in the case studies presented.

The thesis shows that the most comprehensive explanations for predisposition of terrorism come from a combination of multiple underlying conditions with varying degrees depending on which society is targeted.

Thesis Advisors: Dr. Ken Masugi, Dr. Mark Stout, Dr. Ariel Roth

Unbury that Body The Tragic Palinode of a Generation in Marco Baliani’s Corpo di stato

by Nicoletta Marini-Maio

In Ruth Glynn and GIancarlo Lombardi (eds), Remembering Moro: The Cultural Legacy of the 1978 Kidnapping and Murder. Oxford: Legenda, 2012, 123-134.

Regionalization of Terrorism: Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia

by Mohamed Nawab

In Ekaterina Stephanova and Jaideep Saikia (eds) Terrorism: Patterns of Internationalization (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2009)

Should environmental issues be securitised?

by Owais Rajput

Environmental issues
The variables that have defined national security for the most part of the World’s history... more Environmental issues
The variables that have defined national security for the most part of the World’s history have largely been military in nature. Security was primarily made up of the physical defence of the country, its people and whatever they possessed. Profound factors outside the traditional area of military operations have been realised that could affect the securities of many countries.
It is within this background that environmental issues have raised to importance, and the term ‘Environmental Security’ has entered the language of environmentalists, policy makers and security planners. With the ending of the cold war, the usual concepts of the nature of national security and the methods to achieve it have changed. The global powers at the time were engaged in military containment of each other, as in the case of America and the Soviet Union containment of each other.

Account for the difficulty in achieving a universally-accepted definition of a ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’.

by Owais Rajput

Terrorism is the unlawful or threatened use of force or violence on people or property to compel or intimidate... more Terrorism is the unlawful or threatened use of force or violence on people or property to compel or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives. However it is difficult to define terrorism because all acts of terrorism are open to interpretation.

THE CENTRE FOR MUSLIM-CHRISTIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER

by Owais Rajput

Conceptualizing Terrorist Violence and Suicide Bombing

by Murad Ismayilov

Journal of Strategic Security, vol. 3 (2010), no. 3, pp. 15-26.

project:rendition

by Joy Garnett

Photoessay of collaboration by JC2, in Public Culture, Vol.22, no.1 (Winter 2010) Duke University Press.

project:rendition was a collaborative project that incorporated elements of installation, printed agitprop, audio, and... more project:rendition was a collaborative project that incorporated elements of installation, printed agitprop, audio, and performance into an interactive environment. The project was produced by JC2, a collective comprising the artists Joy Episalla, Joy Garnett, Carrie Moyer, and Carrie Yamaoka. The exhibition took place in May–June 2007 at Momenta Art, an artist-run charitable institution in Brooklyn that promotes emerging and underrepresented artists.

project:rendition used the enactment of “rendering” to examine military policies hidden from public view. The term extraordinary rendition refers to the clandestine kidnapping and extradition of suspected terrorists to countries where they can be interrogated and tortured beyond the reach of the U.S. judicial system. While extraordinary rendition is generally reserved for supposed highvalue suspects, subtler forms of political repression, stateinduced terror, and disenfranchisement are common, insidious, and long-standing. Throughout history, similar acts have proved effective means of rendering individuals and entire populations politically mute or existentially invisible.

Future of Naxalism: India needs to stay alert

by Bibhu Prasad Routray

Published in New Indian Express, 12 February 2012

The recent assessment by author Jan Myrdal that the Left-Wing extremist (Naxalite) movement in India is headed... more The recent assessment by author Jan Myrdal that the Left-Wing extremist (Naxalite) movement in India is headed nowhere, is bound to come as a shot-in-the-arm for the Indian state. Coming from a man who has observed the movement from close quarters for a long time, and who is also known to be in close contact with several senior Naxalite leaders including its elusive general secretary Ganapathy, the assessment is as realistic as it can get. However, the fact remains that it is not ideology, but the potential to carry out violence, which sustains the movement and will do so for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, the state approach towards the threat must be predominantly oriented towards meeting the firepower of the extremists.

Lega Nord e Fascismo. Brevi considerazioni sul carattere fascista della Lega.

by Pietro Piro

Scritto in occasione della presentazione del volume di F. Bonasera-D. Romano, L’inganno Padano. La vera storia della Lega Nord, La Zisa, Palermo 2010, p.176, ISBN 978-88-95709-77-2, tenutasi a Termini Imerese giorno 15/12/2011.

Il partito politico italiano Lega Nord si caratterizza per due tendenze fondamentali: il desiderio di potere reale e... more Il partito politico italiano Lega Nord si caratterizza per due tendenze fondamentali: il desiderio di potere reale e la fabbricazione di miti. La base emozionale dei suoi dirigenti si può collocare nella cornice di quello che W. Reich ha individuato come carattere fascista. Tuttavia, la società dello spettacolo, diluisce i tratti aggressivi e violenti di questo partito, in una prassi politica di occupazione delle istituzioni, che contribuisce da protagonista, alla ripresa di un più generale autoritarismo statale e economico.

El partido político italiano Lega Nord se caracteriza por dos tendencias fundamentales: el deseo de poder real y la elaboración de los mitos. La base emocional de sus líderes se puede colocar en el marco de lo que W. Reich identificó como carácter fascista. Sin embargo, la sociedad del espectáculo, diluye los rasgos agresivos y violentos de este partido, en una política de ocupación de las instituciones, en lo que contribuye como protagonista, a la reanudación de un más general autoritarismo estatal y económico.