A Relentless War: America, Israel, and the Fight Against Terrorism

For Israel, terrorism has plagued the nation since its beginning. Terrorism rears its ugly head in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons; however, in both the United States and Israel, Islamic extremism has presented itself as the largest threat. Since its birth as a nation, the United States has been involved in numerous conflicts, from the Revolutionary War to World War II and beyond. These wars were fought between nation-states and traditional powers, but since the attacks on 9/11, the United States finds itself in a new kind of conflict against a different kind of enemy. As a conflict between a nation-state and an ideological group, it is unlike anything the United States has participated in before. On the other hand, Israel has spent most of its history battling Islamic extremism, even beyond its time as an official state. Ultimately, this thesis explores the approaches of the United States and Israel take against radical Islamic terrorism and seeks lessons to be learned from Israel to further solidify the United States\u27 dominance against terrorist threats. Military might and diplomacy have been enough for the United States to be successful in the past but those techniques are not proven against an ideology like Islamic extremism, which is so radical that its followers strive to be martyred for it. Until now, the United States led the rest of the world in military and intelligence capabilities but under pressure from this immediate and continuous threat, understanding how to adapt to the everchanging fight against terrorism will be crucial

Internet Censorship: An Integrative Review of Technologies Employed to Limit Access to the Internet, Monitor User Actions, and their Effects on Culture

The following conducts an integrative review of the current state of Internet Censorship in China, Iran, and Russia, highlights common circumvention technologies (CTs), and analyzes the effects Internet Censorship has on cultures. The author spends a large majority of the paper delineating China’s Internet infrastructure and prevalent Internet Censorship Technologies/Techniques (ICTs), paying particular attention to how the ICTs function at a technical level. The author further analyzes the state of Internet Censorship in both Iran and Russia from a broader perspective to give a better understanding of Internet Censorship around the globe. The author also highlights specific CTs, explaining how they function at a technical level. Findings indicate that among all three nation-states, state control of Internet Service Providers is the backbone of Internet Censorship. Specifically, within China, it is discovered that the infrastructure functions as an Intranet, thereby creating a closed system. Further, BGP Hijacking, DNS Poisoning, and TCP RST attacks are analyzed to understand their use-case within China. It is found that Iran functions much like a weaker version of China in regards to ICTs, with the state seemingly using the ICT of Bandwidth Throttling rather consistently. Russia’s approach to Internet censorship, in stark contrast to Iran and China, is found to rely mostly on the legislative system and fear to implement censorship, though their technical level of ICT implementation grows daily. TOR, VPNs, and Proxy Servers are all analyzed and found to be robust CTs. Drawing primarily from the examples given throughout the paper, the author highlights the various effects of Internet Censorship on culture – noting that at its core, Internet Censorship destroys democracy

The Twenty Year Test: Principles for an Enduring Counterterrorism Legal Architecture

The United States faces three enduring terrorism-related threats. First, there is the realistic prospect of additional attacks in the United States including attacks using weapons of mass destruction (“WMD”). Second, in responding to this threat, we may undermine the freedoms that enrich our lives, the tolerance that marks our society, and the democratic values that define our government. Third, if we are too focused on terrorism, we risk losing sight of this century’s other certain threats as well as the capacity to respond to them, including the state proliferation of nuclear weapons, nation-state rivalry, pandemic disease, oil dependency, and environmental degradation. The United States should respond to these threats using all available and appropriate security tools, on offense and in defense. Law is one of the essential security tools. Law provides substantive authority to act. Law can also provide and embed an effective process of preview and review to test proposals and validate actions, ensuring that they are both lawful and effective. However, the United States has been slow, or perhaps unwilling, to adopt a legal architecture that maximizes each of these legal benefits. Instead, the political branches have generally adopted an incremental approach, or relied on the President’s authority as Commander in Chief to define the law. This paper describes four principles that should inform the design of a lasting legal architecture to counterterrorism: First, the architecture should reflect an understanding of the strategic value of law in substance, process, and policy. Second, the architecture should reflect the threats it is intended to address, including the potential catastrophic nature of the physical threat, which distinguishes this form of terrorism from that of the past. Third, with limited exception, the law should avoid absolutes—in the authority asserted; in the authority prohibited; or, in bureaucratic design. Finally, the architecture should be lasting, which means among other things that it should be “constitutionally inclusive” in design. A lasting and inclusive architecture will improve security—by maximizing the Executive’s authority to act, sustaining support for tools and policies, and improving the opportunity and efficacy to appraise U.S. actions

Towards a critique of anti-German 'communism'

The spectre of anti-Germans has easily become the Feindbild for activists of the Anglophone Left; yet rarely does this translate into fundamental or informed criticism of the anti-German premise. This article, then, offers an introductory description and a critical analysis of pro-Israeli, anti-German communism in its context within the post-war German Left and as a contemporary protest movement that sits oddly on the fringes of radical politics. Its origins and politics are examined to depict the radicalisation of a broad anti-nationalist campaign against German re-unification, and its evolution into a small but coherent anti-German movement, controversial for its pro-Israel polemics and provocations. Current debates within the anti-fascist German Left are reviewed to explore anti-German positions on the Holocaust, Israel, Islam, anti-imperialism and Germany’s foreign policy. Theoretical works that have heavily influenced anti-German communism are discussed to comprehend the movement’s intellectual inspirations. The purpose of the article is to introduce one of Germany’s most controversial protest movements to an English-speaking audience and to hint at the formulation of a critique that is more than a knee-jerk reaction to pro-Israeli agitation

The Basis of Unit Self-Defense and Implications for the Use of Force

This is a reflective article, written for a volume commemorating fifty years of the school in Hyderabad, India, at which I taught for over twelve years. The 'Imli tree' in the title of the volume, refers to the 'Tamarind tree' which has stood beside the school for all these years

Citizenship, community, and counter-terrorism : UK security discourse, 2001-2011

This paper analyses a corpus of UK policy documents which sets out national security policy as an exemplar of the contemporary discourse of counter-terrorism in Europe, the USA and worldwide. A corpus of 148 documents (c. 2.8 million words) was assembled to reflect the security discourse produced by the UK government before and after the 7/7 attacks on the London Transport system. To enable a chronological comparison, the two sub-corpora were defined: one relating to a discourse of citizenship and community cohesion (2001-2006); and one relating to the ‘Preventing Violent Extremism’ discourse (2007-2011). Wordsmith Tools (Scott 2008) was used to investigate keywords and patterns of collocation. The results present themes emerging from a comparative analysis of the 100 strongest keywords in each sub- corpus; as well as a qualitative analysis of related patterns of the collocation, focusing inparticular on features of connotation and semantic prosody

Business as Usual: The response of the corporate sector to the May 2008 xenophobic violence

This work set out to fulfil two principal objectives: to investigate the contribution of the corporate sector with particular reference to the mining sector with its reliance on foreign labour, and thereafter to reflect on civil society's response to the xenophobic violence of May 2008. Explicitly in terms of the future, this work looks to offer insights into the future of civil society activism as reflected through the lens of the xenophobic violence

Identita v díle Zadie Smith Bílé Zuby

The bachelor work focuses on the question of maintaining a religious identity in a multicultural society, namely today's Britain. Using Zadie Smith's novel White Teeth, it explores the conflicts that can arise during the coexistence of both eastern and western culture. It also looks at the differences between the first and second generation family members portrayed in the novel. Particular attention is also paid to the religious identity of the ethnic and minority groups living in British society. The work also analyzes the changes in one's own perception of self identity whilst living in and experiencing the effects of British culture.Bakalářská práce se zaměřuje na otázku zachování náboženské identity v multikulturní společnosti, a to v současné Británii. Na základě knihy Zadie Smith Bílé zuby, práce zkoumá konflikty, které mohou vznikat ze vzájemného soužití západní a východní společností. Dále poukazuje na rozdíly mezi první a druhou generací členů tří rodin, přičemž zvláštní pozornost je věnována významu náboženské identity u etnických a menšinových skupin žijících v britské společnosti. Velká část práce je také věnována analýze změn ve vnímání vlastní identity pod vlivem britské kultury.Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistikyDokončená práce s úspěšnou obhajobo