The Macabre on the Margins: A Study of the Fantastic Terrors of the Fin de Siècle

It demonstrates that in spite of the dominant associations of fantastic literature with horror, terror, as the marginal and marginalized fear of the unknown, with its uncanny, sublime and suspenseful qualities, holds a definitive presence in fin de siècle fantastic texts. Literary analysis of the chosen texts registers significant examples of the importance of terror to fantastic writing, and as such functions to extract an “aesthetics of sublime terror” from the margins of critical studies of this often macabre literary mode

Western State Terrorism

States use terror to achieve political ends, by employing violence to ensure compliance and to coerce populations away from dissent. Moreover, despite popular understandings of terrorism as a ‘strategy of the weak’ used against liberal democracies, an examination of the history of Western foreign policy shows that democracies have often returned to the use of state terror in order to cement their regional or global dominance. This chapter explores the use of state terror by the West, and seeks to provide an understanding of its underlying purposes. We argue that Western state terror is one of a number of coercive tools used to secure and maintain access to resources and markets, whether in colonial times, during periods of imperial decline, or as an adjunct to the more recent roll-out of neoliberal forms of globalisation

Financial Uncertainty in Germany and its Impact on Western European Terrorism

This paper analyses the link between the VDAX as a proxy for European financial uncertainty and the number of terror incidents in Western Europe. Considering data of the Global Terrorism Database, the number of terror incidents does – on average – not affect financial uncertainty. In contrast, based on a behavioral model of terrorism motivated by Schmid and de Graaf (1982), lagged financial uncertainty contains information for the risk of terror events. Estimation results of the negative binominal quasi maximum likelihood count data model confirm an inverse impact of lagged financial uncertainty on terrorism. Furthermore, empirical evidence leads to the conclusion of average lead time for terror incidents of 6 month. These results are potentially important for terror prevention.Efficient design of facilities; location games; privacy concerns; strategic entry prevention; unfriendly seating arrangement; urinal problem

Rendition in the "War on Terror"

The CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) programme was a central component of the first phase of the ‘war on terror’, from 2001-2008. Through constructing a global network of secret prisons, wherein hundreds of terror suspects were tortured, the US and its allies embarked upon a concerted campaign of state terrorism in pursuit of their wider political goals. This chapter provides an account of the employment of state terror through the CIA’s RDI programme. We outline the main features of the programme, and the involvement of a range of other states, many of which were Western democracies. We also show that the attempt to secure valuable intelligence through coercion, torture and terror proved to be a clear failure, resulting in the detention and torture of dozens of individuals who posed no threat and the use of barbaric methods which did nothing but produce poor intelligence and dehumanise all those involved

The Origins of Terrorism - Cross-Country Estimates on Socio-Economic Determinants of Terrorism

To expand our knowledge about an appropriate anti-terror strategy, it is indispensable to assess the underlying causes of terror. We examine social and economic conditions in the country of origin of terrorist attacks, claiming that low opportunity costs of terror, e.g. approximated as slow growth and poor institutions raise the propensity of terror and the willingness in the population to support terror. Using a mixed effects Poisson regression model, we are able to show that unfortunate socio-economic conditions in a country are suitable to reduce the opportunity cost for potential terrorists and increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks originating from a specific country. Interestingly, this effect is relevant after a certain level of development has been reached. We therefore distinguish between the OECD, Europe and Islamic countries.terror attacks, openness, discrete choice analysis, institutions

Rebranding terror

Ten years after its most devastating attack, al-Qaeda has turned into a franchiser, publisher, and occasional climate-change activist. Can the world’s most deadly terrorist group go mainstream and keep its edge

Bodily Limits to Autonomy: Emotion, Attitude, and Self-Defence

Many of us took pride in never feeling violent, never hitting. We had not thought deeply about our relationships to inflicting physical pain. Some of us expressed terror and awe when confronted with physical strength on the part of others. For us, the healing process included the need to learn how to use physical force constructively, to remove the terror—the dread. —bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Blac

Terror and the Costs of Crime

This paper argues that terrorism, beyond its immediate impact on innocent victims, also raises the costs of crime, and therefore, imposes a negative externality on potential criminals. Terrorism raises the costs of crime through two channels: (i) by increasing the presence and activity of the police force, and (ii) causing more people to stay at home rather than going out for leisure activities. Our analysis exploits a panel of 120 fatal terror attacks and all reported crimes for 17 districts throughout Israel between 2000 and 2005. After controlling for the fixed-effect of each district and for district-specific time trends, we show that terror attacks reduce property crimes such as burglary, auto-theft, and thefts-from-cars. Terror also reduces assaults and aggravated assaults which occur in private homes, but increases incidents of trespassing and "disrupting the police." Taken as a whole, the results are consistent with a stronger deterrence effect produced by an increased police presence after a terror attack. A higher level of policing is likely to catch more people trespassing, and at the same time, reduce the number of property crimes. The decline in crimes committed in private houses is likely an indication that the tendency for individuals to stay home after a terror attack further increases the costs of crime.crime, police, terror

Jus Ad Bellum after 9/11: A State of the Art Report

An examination of the applicability of conventional and revisionist just war principles to the global war on terror