Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: What is the purpose of terrorism?
Terrorism is, in the broadest sense, the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror among masses of people; or fear to achieve a religious or political aim.[1] It is used in this regard primarily to refer to violence during peacetime or in war against non-combatants.[2] The terms "terrorist" and "terrorism" originated during the French Revolution of the late 18th century[3] but gained mainstream popularity during the U.S. presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981–89) after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings[4] and again after the 2001 September 11 attacks[5][4][6] and the 2002 Bali bombings.[4]
Defining terrorism is difficult, and there are more than one hundred definitions of it in scholarly literature. The term is used in polemical contexts, thus it can become a move in a campaign rather than an aid to thought. A simple definition would be "use of force against innocent people for political purposes". Some scholars argue that there is no true or correct definition due to terrorism being an abstract concept without a real presence. Legal definitions contain internal contradictions and might be misused. There is an overlap between terrorism and various other forms of conflict and violent action, including civil wars or non-international armed conflicts. This is the case with several significant non-international conflicts in Europe, where there thus can be dispute as to what counts as terrorism: examples include the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), the breakup of Yugoslavia and subsequent conflicts, the First (1994–6) and Second Chechen Wars (1999–2009), and the War of Dagestan (1999).
As with "terrorism" the concept of "state terrorism" is controversial.[138] The Chairman of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee has stated that the Committee was conscious of 12 international Conventions on the subject, and none of them referred to State terrorism, which was not an international legal concept. If States abused their power, they should be judged against international conventions dealing with war crimes, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law.[139] Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that it is "time to set aside debates on so-called 'state terrorism'. The use of force by states is already thoroughly regulated under international law".[140] However, he also made clear that, "regardless of the differences between governments on the question of the definition of terrorism, what is clear and what we can all agree on is that any deliberate attack on innocent civilians [or non-combatants], regardless of one's cause, is unacceptable and fits into the definition of terrorism."[141]
The major piece of terrorist-related legislation in New Zealand is the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002. The Act, which strengthened the Government's counter-terrorism powers, was introduced in response to the September 11 attacks in the United States. The Terrorism Suppression Act defines terrorism, in New Zealand or elsewhere, as an act that "is carried out for the purpose of advancing an ideological, political, or religious cause" and with the following intention:And if it results in one or more of the following outcomes:
The FBI Seeking Terror Information list is the third major "wanted" list to have been created by the United States Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Investigation to be used as a primary tool for publicly identifying and tracking down suspected terrorists operating against United States nationals at home and abroad. The first preceding list for this purpose was the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, that list was supplanted by the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list, for the purpose of listing fugitives who are specifically wanted for acts of terrorism.
Suicide terrorism is the most aggressive form of terrorism, pursuing coercion even at the expense of losing support among terrorists' own community. What distinguishes a suicide terrorist is that the attacker does not expect to survive a mission and often employs a method of attack that requires the attacker's death in order to succeed (such as planting a car bomb, wearing a suicide vest, or ramming an airplane into a building). In essence, a suicide terrorist kills others at the same time that he kills himself. Usually these tactics are used for a demonstrative purposes or to targeted assassinations. In most cases though, they target to kill a large number of people. Thus, while coercion is an element in all terrorism, coercion is the paramount objective of suicide terrorism.
Buchanan argues Islamic terror groups target America, "for what we do, not who we are." He is critical of the post September 11 War on Terrorism, which he claims ignores the root causes of terror in favor of short-term military victories. He advocated the use of torture to get information from terrorists. Buchanan says the George W. Bush administration meddles in world affairs to the point of imperialism. He believes that Islamic terrorist attacks, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks come as a result of intervening in foreign countries, saying "terrorists hate us for what we do, not what we are." He says "Our war on terror should more properly be called a war on Al Qaeda, the ones who attacked us. Terrorism is a weapon of war that has been used from before the destruction of Carthage."
There is an old saying that death or loss of property are the side products of terrorism, the main purpose of such incidents is to "create terror" in peoples' minds and harm bystanders. If any incident in cyberspace can "create terror", it may be rightly called cyberterrorism. For those affected by such acts, the fears of cyberterrorism are quite real.
The chairman of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee has stated that the twelve previous international conventions on terrorism had never referred to state terrorism, which was not an international legal concept, and that when states abuse their powers they should be judged against international conventions dealing with war crimes, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law, rather than against international anti-terrorism statutes. In a similar vein, Kofi Annan, at the time United Nations Secretary-General, stated that it is "time to set aside debates on so-called 'state terrorism'. The use of force by states is already regulated under international law". Annan added, "...regardless of the differences between governments on the question of definition of terrorism, what is clear and what we can all agree on is any deliberate attack on innocent civilians [or non-combatants], regardless of one's cause, is unacceptable and fits into the definition of terrorism."
As with the concept of terrorism itself, the term "nationalist terrorism" and its application are highly contentious issues. What constitutes an illegitimate regime and what types of violence and war are acceptable against such a state are subjects of debate. Groups described by some as "nationalist terrorists" tend to consider themselves "freedom fighters," engaged in valid but asymmetric warfare.
“Questioning conventional wisdom-which is the only the provisional consensus at any given time – is a distinctive hall mark of Rapoport’s scholarship” Jean Rosenfeld writes. “Thinking about terrorism, what it all means, whether it is wholly random or patterned in its occurrences over thousands of years and in the modern world, where its ‘energy’ comes from, whether and for long it persists in a particular incarnation, who perpetuates it, how it changes, its professed morality, and its transcendent purposes have been some of the preoccupations of Rapoport, whose comparative studies of ancient and medieval religious terrorists in Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam alerted scholars to terrorism’s persistence in international affairs.
Glorifying Terrorism is a 2007 science fiction anthology edited by Farah Mendlesohn, which was compiled in direct response to the Terrorism Act 2006. Every story in the anthology has been specifically designed to be illegal under the Act's prohibition on any publication "indirectly encouraging the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism," including "every statement which glorifies the commission or preparation (whether in the past, in the future or generally) of such acts," and the anthology's introduction begins with the explicit statement that "(t)he purpose of the stories and poems in this book is to glorify terrorism."
The purpose of the Garda Counter-Terrorism International section is to identify and monitor international terrorism suspects and groups within the jurisdiction of the Republic of Ireland, specifically those with links to or motivated by Islamic jihadism, who pose a threat to Ireland and to other countries.
Lauder also denounced the United Nations Human Rights Council for issuing what he called a "profoundly unbalanced and biased report" into Israel's raid of the Gaza flotilla in May 2010. "We note that [the council] has lost its moral compass, where terrorism is deemed activism, and self-defense is called disproportionate violence. If the UNHRC wants to regain the integrity of its original purpose, it cannot submit to being manipulated into justifying and covering up terrorism," the WJC president declared.
The Task Force defines terrorism as "a tactic or technique by means of which a violent act or the threat thereof is used for the prime purpose of creating overwhelming fear for coercive purposes". It classified disorders and terrorism into six categories:[93]
Another issue with the definition of terrorism is its vague wording. Navin Bapat, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and expert on terrorist campaigns, points out the subjective nature of words used in definitions of terrorism, such as "non-combatant" and "political purposes". The subjectivity of such words allows for dispute over whether a group is or is not terrorist, as questions such as the degree to which the attack was pre-meditated, the degree to which a subnational group was involved with the premeditation of the attack, or the definition of a "non-combatant" and what ideologies are considered "political" may arise.
The DTA hypothesis has its origins in work by Greenberg "et al." (1994) as an extension of their earlier terror management hypotheses (i.e., the anxiety buffer hypothesis and the mortality salience hypothesis). The researchers reasoned that if, as indicated by Wegner's research on thought suppression (1994; 1997), thoughts that are purposely suppressed from conscious awareness are often brought back with ease, then following a delay death-thought cognitions should be more available to consciousness than (a) those who keep the death-thoughts in their consciousness the whole time, and (b) those who suppress the death-thoughts but are not provided a delay. That is precisely what they found. However, other psychologists have failed to replicate these findings.
The following terrorism databases are or were made publicly available for research purposes, and track specific acts of terrorism:
One of the initial results of the law was the difficulty it presented in obtaining successful criminal prosecutions. Intent to use biological agents as a weapon had to be proven by prosecutors, thus making a defense that the agents were for "peaceful purposes" plausible. For example, an individual named Larry Wayne Harris attempted to procure biological agents from the American Type Culture Center for "defensive" research, per the BWC, in 1995. To address these issues the law was amended by the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. In part, the 1996 law required all private and academic organizations to register any possible BW agents with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). In 1997 the two laws were called a "model" for what may be needed to prevent acts of domestic biological terrorism.
The film's purpose is to investigate humankind's relationship with death, and is heavily influenced by the views of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker. In addition to interviews with a number of contemporary philosophers, psychiatrists and teachers such as Sam Keen, Robert Jay Lifton, Irvin Yalom, Merlyn Mowrey and Daniel Liechty, the film introduces the viewer to a group of social psychologists, who conduct research in support of what they call terror management theory (terror in this case not being terrorism, but rather emotional and psychological reaction to mortality awareness). Over the last twenty-five years, proponents of terror management theory have conducted over 300 laboratory studies demonstrating that subtle reminders of death on a subconscious level motivates a statistically significant number of subjects to exhibit biased and xenophobic type behaviors, such as gravitating toward those who they perceive as culturally similar to themselves and holding higher negative feelings and judgments toward those they perceive as culturally dissimilar to themselves.
Unofficial formation of the Special Purpose Service was started in 1995; after two more years the Service was officially established. After the 9/11 terror attacks, the main tasks of the Special Purpose Service became counter-terrorism, terrorist liquidation and hostage rescue. Members of the Special Purpose Service are called "Žaliukai", meaning green-men and were named after the Forest Brothers.
... what you have is an implantation in North America of this same unforgiving fanaticism that says "we will not allow the engagement of a contest of ideas, we will not allow a free market of ideas," which is precisely a microcosm of the problem that we have in these societies that spawn and produce terrorism. They rigidly control what their people hear and see so that they can control what they think and feel. And this is the essence of the problem. If the real solution to this fanaticism is ventilation, the aeration of various ideas, then you got a whiff of the underlying root cause of terrorism in Concordia. That is the unwillingness to have a free exchange of ideas. The root cause of terrorism is totalitarianism.
As an official at the Treasury Department, Aufhauser coined a phrase that represented the root causes of terrorism – terrorism’s “three currencies.” The three currencies are hate, counterfeit religion, and money. He believed that a hopeless environment in many areas within the Middle East created hate and counterfeit religion that fueled terrorist zealousness. However, one of the primary purposes of his role in the War on Terrorism was to go after terror financing.
18 U.S.C. §2331 defines "international terrorism" and "domestic terrorism" for purposes of Chapter 113B of the Code, entitled "Terrorism":
The following terrorism databases are maintained in secrecy by the United States Government for intelligence and counter-terrorism purposes: