From the Great Purges in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s to the bloody elite purges in Eastern Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s to the mass terrorism in Cambodia in the middle 1970s, the role of terror and the secret police in Communist politics has been powerful and highly visible. This book reviews the surprisingly sparse literature on the subject and presents new studies of secret-police forces and the political use of terror in the USSR, China, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Cambodia. The focus of each country study is the nature and extent of internal terror and repression, the range of external intelligence functions, and the effect of secret-police interference in internal policymaking processes. The book ably fills a void in the literature by providing needed case studies as well as a theoretical framework for understanding secret-police activity.

While there is no easy way to define terrorism, it may generally be viewed as a method of violence in which civilians are targeted with the objective of forcing a perceived enemy into submission by creating fear, demoralization, and political friction in the population under attack. At one time a marginal field of study in the social sciences, terrorism is now very much in center stage. The 1970s terrorist attacks by the PLO, the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Japanese Red Army, the Unabomber, Aum Shinrikyo, Timothy McVeigh, the World Trade Center attacks, the assault on a school in Russia, and suicide bombers have all made the term terrorism an all-too-common part of our vocabulary.This edition of Political Terrorism was originally published in the 1980s, well before some of the horrific events noted above. This monumental collection of definitions, conceptual frameworks, paradigmatic formulations, and bibliographic sources is being reissued in paperback now as a resource for the expanding community of researchers on the subject of terrorism. This is a carefully constructed guide to one of the most urgent issues of the world today.When the first edition was originally published, Choice noted, This extremely useful reference tool should be part of any serious social science collection. Chronicles of Culture called it a tremendously comprehensive book about a subject that any who have anything to lose--from property to liberty, life to limbs--should be forewarned against.

What is the relationship between the political parties that embrace the democratic process and terrorist groups, which eschew the legal and procedural strictures of democracy? This acclaimed volume provides a detailed theoretical and empirical analysis of this controversial issue. Drawing on a vast array of data, the authors examine a large number of international case studies from Italy, Spain, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Peru, Argentina, Japan and Northern Ireland. This comprehensive book is the definitive account of this extremely important subject.

Your source to "CLASSIFIED INFORMATION" on Terrorism & Politically Motivated Aggression, as well as the "Ways & Means" to "Neutralize and Control" these modern day THREATS!!!!! This NEW research is based mainly on classified information, which the main author through his long-term stationing in the Balkans until late 2000, covering a position of major relevance in the Security Arena, has managed to experience firsthand. The included update is quite current, February 2002, and includes additional information regarding Russia, Biological Warfare & Chemical Weapons. A great percentage of this research is regarded as CLASSIFIED & RESTRICTED information by official sources such as SFOR, KFOR, NATO, as well as American & European Intelligence Communities. We have included classified information released by Ex-Government Officials, whose names, for obvious reasons, cannot be identified. The Criminal Organizations and especially the TERRORIST THREAT is a hidden threat, and to assess the nature and seriousness of such a threat is quite difficult with, and especially without access to CLASSIFEID INTELLIGENCE. An informative study of politically motivated aggression and the ways that certain golbal groups manage to operate on financial and organisational levels, put together with information from classified intelligence sources from over 10 agencies. The most up-to-date information regarding terrorism in the Balkans and the Middle East. Incorporating the author's firsthand experience, the book explores the connections that organised crime and terrorism may have with the drug trade, religious extremism, and political motivation, as well as the role that resources and location may have in the mobilisation of aggressive sentiment. Ideas are presented on ways that criminal activity may be countered on a world-wide basis, including the formation of global organisations specifically designed to weed out drug traffickers, Mafia connections, and communities that may harbour the development of terrorist forces.

Previously published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly, this volume assesses the nature, power, role and function of names in global politics and the international media. Names are not objective, they accrue subjective associations, for example 'Terrorist' has a very different connotation to 'Freedom-fighter'. The contributors seek the truth beneath the names assigned in an effort to remove the obscurity created by the power of 'the politics of naming' to the reality of the situation, taking examples from Al Qaeda, Russia's demonization of the Chechens and naming in the Israeli-Palestine conflict, among other important contemporary debates. Terrorism and the Politics of Naming makes a substantial contribution towards elucidating the power of naming in the discourse of conflict and will be of great interest to students and scholars of political philosophy, political theory, and politics and the media.

Winner of the 2008 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Political Communication Division of the National Communication Association The topic of terrorism has evolved into an ideological marker of American culture, one that has fundamentally altered the relationship between the three branches of government, between the government and the people, and between America and countries abroad. In the Name of Terrorism describes and analyzes the public communication strategies presidents have deployed to discuss terrorism since the end of World War II. Drawing upon internal administration documents, memoirs, and public papers, Carol K. Winkler uncovers how presidents have capitalized on public perceptions of the terrorist threat, misrepresented actual terrorist events, and used the term "terrorism" to influence electoral outcomes both at home and abroad. Perhaps more importantly, she explains their motivations for doing so, and critically discusses the moral and political implications of the present range of narratives used to present terrorism to the public.