how terrorists think

Despite the intensity of media coverage and public perception, terrorism is actually not more frequent today than a few decades ago. For instance, terrorist attacks were far more common during the Cold War period than during the post-9/11 era. Some experts believe terrorism peaked during the 1970s.
Despite the recent attacks, the U.K. and Western Europe experienced relatively low terrorist activity during the period 2000 to 2016 compared with the period 1970 to 1995.
In the United States, terrorism attacks were in sharp decline from 1970 to 2011, decreasing from approximately 475 incidents a year to fewer than 20.
Worldwide, terrorism is highly concentrated in a handful of countries.


While 9/11 is the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history, the second-worst was Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, which killed 168 people. The Anti-Defamation League reports that in the United States, “right-wing extremists collectively have been responsible for more than 70 percent of the 427 extremist-related killings over the past 10 years, far outnumbering those committed by left-wing extremists or domestic Islamist extremists.” The toll of right-wing terrorism could have been even greater if the FBI had not apprehended last month the heavily armed Coast Guard lieutenant Christopher Hasson before he was allegedly ready to strike against liberal politicians and media personalities.


Why do people join terrorist organizations?
People join extremists organizations for quite a number of reasons. Some - especially those locally recruited - mostly join for economic benefits. -In fact, the research we conducted in Somalia showed that 27% of respondents joined al Shabab for economic reasons. 15% mentioned religious reasons - and 13% were forced to join. We found that there is no easy answer to why people join terrorist organisations. It's a complex picture, we have to take into account processes linked to political and social exclusion dynamics, poor governance structures as well as religious and ethnic discrimination.
It is one thing to join such a group - but once you realized where you ended up; what are the reasons that makes you stay?
The reasons for staying are as diverse as for joining the organization. We found that the feeling of 'belonging' (21%) is really important. Some 11% felt a sense of responsibility. However, fear and economic dependence are also factors to reckon with.

Noam Chomsky: “What is Terrorism?”

A US army manual says, fair enough, that terror is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation,coercion, or instilling fear. That’s terrorism.
If you take a look at the definition of Low-Intensity Warfare, which is official US policy, you find that it is just another name for terrorism. That’s why all countries call whatever horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter-terrorism.

In December 1987, at the peak of the first war on terrorism, that’s when the furor over the plague was peaking, The United Nations General Assembly passed a very strong resolution against terrorism, condemning the plague in the strongest terms, calling on every state to fight against it in every possible way. It passed unanimously. One country, Honduras, abstained. Two votes against; the usual two, United States and Israel. Why should the United States and Israel vote against a major resolution condemning terrorism in the strongest terms, in fact pretty much the terms that the Reagan administration was using? Well, there is a reason. There was one paragraph in that long resolution which said that nothing in this resolution infringes on the rights of people struggling against racist and colonialist regimes or foreign military occupation to continue with their resistance with the assistance of others, other states, states outside in their just cause. Well, the United States and Israel can’t accept that. There was another one at the time. Israel was occupying Southern Lebanon and was being combated by what the US calls a terrorist force, Hizbullah, which in fact succeeded in driving Israel out of Lebanon.

The lead story in the New York Times on October 15, 2014, was politely titled “CIA Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels.” The article reports on a CIA review of recent U.S. covert operations to determine their effectiveness. The White House concluded that unfortunately successes were so rare that some rethinking of the policy was in order. The article quoted President Barack Obama as saying that he had asked the CIA to conduct the review to find cases of “financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn't come up with much.”

The first paragraph of the Times article cites three major examples of “covert aid”: Angola, Nicaragua and Cuba. In fact, each case was a major terrorist operation conducted by the U.S.

The Pley Club

(Reuters) - The U.S. Secret Service said on Friday it is under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security over the loss of computer files on the Washington Metro system.

In 2008, a contract employee lost two computer tapes on the Metro while transporting them from one facility to another, Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan said. The investigation was first reported Friday morning by Fox News.

The Secret Service notified transit police and the Department of Homeland Security, but were unable to locate the tapes. The back up tapes were not marked or identified and were protected by many layers of security, Donovan said.

"It was a low risk for compromise," Donovan said.

Following the incident, the Secret Service put in place new procedures aimed at preventing a repeat.

"There has been no reported fraud associated with the loss of these tapes," Donovan said.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Secret Service is under scrutiny after about a dozen employees were accused of misconduct for bringing women, some of them prostitutes, back to their hotel rooms ahead of a visit by President Barack Obama to Cartagena, Colombia.

(Reporting By Mark Felsenthal; editing by Todd Eastham)

The Ladies in White

Cuban police have arrested dozens of opposition activists, a week ahead of a visit by Pope Benedict XVI.

Most of those detained are members of the protest group Ladies in White, who are demanding the release of political prisoners.

Many were stopped as they staged their silent weekly protest march along an avenue in the capital, Havana.

The group says the country's Communist authorities have increased pressure on them in recent days.

The government says they are paid by the US to undermine Cuba's revolution.

The Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco) usually attend Mass together and then stage a protest march outside calling for the release of all political prisoners.
Leader seized

A group spokeswoman said that 19 of its members had been detained on Saturday evening while trying to stage a march in central Havana. Three have since been released without charge.

On Sunday morning, police detained another 36 members of the group - including leader Bertha Soler - as they made their way to attend Mass together in Havana.

After the church service, 22 women and two men were arrested as they marched to the city centre, trying to go beyond a route that has recently been tolerated by the authorities.

Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles

Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles (born February 15, 1928) (nicknamed Bambi by some Cuban exiles)^[1] is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist extremist, domestic terrorist, and former Central Intelligence Agency agent.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]}

Posada has been convicted in absentia in Panama, of involvement in various terrorist attacks and plots in the Americas, including: involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed seventy-three people;^[9][10] admitted involvement in a string of bombings in 1997 targeting fashionable Cuban hotels and nightspots;^[11][12][13] involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion; and involvement in the Iran-Contra affair.^[14] In addition, he was jailed under accusations related to an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro in Panama in 2000, although he was later pardoned by Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso in the final days of her term.^[15][16] Posada Carriles has always denied involvement in the airline bombing and the alleged plot against Castro in Panama, but has admitted to fighting for "freedom" in Cuba.^[17]

In 2005, Posada was held by U.S. authorities in Texas on the charge of illegal presence on national territory before the charges were dismissed on May 8, 2007. On September 28, 2005 a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Posada cannot be deported, finding that he faces the threat of torture in Venezuela.^[18]Likewise, the US government has refused to send Posada to Cuba, saying he might face torture.^[17] His release on bail on April 19, 2007 had elicited angry reactions from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments.^[19] The U.S. Justice Department had urged the court to keep him in jail because he was "an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks", a flight risk and a danger to the community.^[13] On September 9, 2008 the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the District Court's Order dismissing the indictment and remanded the case to the District Court.^[20] On April 8, 2009 the United States Attorney filed a superseding indictment in the case. Posada-Carriles' jury trial had been set for February 26, 2010 but it was announced on February 22 that it would be postponed for at least three months.^[20][21] Posada-Carriles' trial ended on April 8, 2011 with a jury acquitting him on all charges.^[22]

Although he has never been convicted for his various acts of violence, Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive has referred to him as "one of the most dangerous terrorists in recent history" and the "godfather of Cuban exile violence."^[23] In Miami however, where Posada currently resides, he is considered "a heroic figure in the hardline anti-Castro exile community."

the Airline Brokers Co

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- A blaze last month that scorched the offices of a Cuba travel agency in Miami was deliberately set, fire investigators say, one of the first acts of violence in years against a company arranging visits to the island.

The Coral Gables Fire Department said in a report that investigators found a disposable lighter, the remains of a green bottle, and a piece of asphalt after the April 27 fire at the Airline Brokers Co.

Those items indicate the "potential use of a projectile to breach the building window, and the use of a liquid accelerant incendiary device in this fire," the report says.

The report was obtained by the Spanish-language newspaper El Nuevo Herald, which published a copy on its website. Coral Gables fire officials referred all inquiries to the state fire marshal's office, which did not return requests for comment by phone or e-mail Sunday.

The blaze severely damaged the offices of the company, which arranged the flights and travel for hundreds of Cuban-Americans and others to the island for Pope Benedict XVI's visit in March. The agency has also recently expanded its operations to include flights from Fort Lauderdale.

In the 1970s and `80s, bombings of businesses and Cuba travel companies considered sympathetic to the Castro regime were commonplace. Another uptick of violence occurred in the summer of 1996, when Marazul Charters, a company that arranges legal flights to the island, had two of its offices bombed. A second travel business, Maira and Family Services, had a bomb thrown inside its offices within the same month.

But in the last decade, such incidents have become unheard of and travel to the island has grown. President Barack Obama removed a cap that limited family visits soon after taking office. Last year, the Cuban government said it was expecting 500,000 U.S. visitors annually, most of them Cuban-Americans, many of whom still have strong ties and family on the island.

"It surprised me," said Maira Gonzalez, whose former business was targeted more than a decade ago. "I thought people had matured a bit."

Gonzalez said her company went out of business about a year after someone threw what she described as a Molotov cocktail inside their offices early one morning. No one was in the building. Police said gas spilled but the device did not go off.

yellow fever

Politics of the Spanish-American War

Walter Reed, James Carroll, Aristides Agramonte, and Jesse Lazear conducted their yellow fever research as part of the American occupation force in Cuba in the wake of the Spanish-American War. A review of the cause and outcome of the war is helpful if one wishes to understand the political and social context in which the commission worked.