The Geography of U.S. Terrorist Incidents, 1970–2004

This paper describes the spatio-temporal trends in terrorist incidents in the United States, from 1970 through 2004. Utilizing the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) and ancillary data, we examine both the frequency of incidents and their characteristics: location, target type, attack type, weapon type, and perpetrator group. While the frequency of terrorist incidents has declined since the 1970s, there still is significant activity nationwide. Instead of urban-rural or West Coast-East Coast divisions, the pattern is a more complex mosaic based on group identity, target, and weapon type. We conclude that there is an explicit geography of terrorism, one that is quite decentralized and highly localized.     

Profiling candidate images in televised political spot advertisements for 1984: Roles and realities of presidential jousters at the height of the Reagan Era

Continued growth in the use of televised political spot advertisements in presidential campaigns justifies the increasing attention given to analyzing the role and content of such messages in the larger political system. The 1984 campaign offered a unique opportunity for theorists to investigate the potential for such messages either to reflect accurate images of candidates, or to evoke more dissonant themes between the images of candidates fabricated for the electorate, and the substantive candidates those images are intended to represent. This study analyzed the character attributes presented for ten presidential hopefuls in 201 televised spots, produced for 1984's primary and general election campaigns, and finds that while political spots can offer accurate portrayals of presidential candidates, the role of such messages can be nullified by perceived dissonance in the images they convey about their subjects.     

The Ethics of Waste in Zoë Wicomb’s You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town

Zoë Wicomb’s You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987) uses bodily and material waste to figure larger social processes of marginalization, dispossession, and racial abjection during the apartheid era. As the apartheid regime sought to devalue the lives of those categorized as “Black” and “Coloured,” while simultaneously profiting from their land and labor, it pushed non-white South Africans into dangerous proximity to hazardous and unseemly waste. Waste, in You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, becomes both metonymy and metaphor. Wicomb not only uses it to index the historical and material processes of abjection that obtained in twentieth-century South Africa; she also takes up garbage, feces, vomit, and other refuse as an ethical lens for the consideration of how individual and collective subjectivities are formed by what is thrown away. In its relationship to waste of all kinds, the individual body becomes a site in which social processes of acceptance and disavowal play out.     

Framing alleged Islamist plots: a case study of British press coverage since 9/11

In the decade after 9/11, the UK terrorist threat was associated with a series of high-profile counterterrorism operations linked to specific plots. These terrorism-related episodes received significant media attention and, as a consequence, were a visible sign of the contemporary terrorist threat. This article seeks to identify the dominant frames rendered in news media reporting on these episodes. Through a longitudinal study of UK press coverage, the analysis reveals that two prominent frames were present, an inevitability and preparedness frame, with alleged plots serving to underline the risk posed by contemporary terrorism, and a belonging and responsibility frame, which cast later episodes as belonging to the Muslim communities disrupted by police operations.     

论虚假诉讼的刑法规制——基于对虚假诉讼发生与司法实践状况的实证研究

近年来,虚假诉讼案件在我国频繁发生且呈现出逐年增多的趋势,但我国刑事立法中缺乏恰当的罪名对虚假诉讼行为进行定罪,无法对其进行全面评价。虽然各地出台了大量司法性文件以识别和预防虚假诉讼,但这些司法性文件并无法改变刑法存在漏洞的事实,相反,其对虚假诉讼的罪名设定存在争议,部分规定甚至存在侵犯当事人诉讼权利的嫌疑。因此,通过确立虚假诉讼罪来规制虚假诉讼至关重要。     

城市反恐重要目标安全防范试点与研究

“9·11”以来,国际恐怖活动与反恐斗争的较量已经持续了十余年,但以全球化为背景的恐怖主义威胁不仅没有消失,反而持续存在且更加突出.“三股势力”和由于各种原因导致的个体暴力恐怖威胁将成为今后相当长一段时间内影响我国安全与稳定的主要因素.借鉴国内外相关研究和城市反恐试点单位的成功做法,提出如下对策建议：一是建立党政领导,部门参与的反恐防范工作格局;二是加强防范恐怖犯罪公众教育,增强公众的防范意识;三是建立统一高效的情报信息工作机制;四是明确责任,建章立制,夯实基础;五是制定应对预案,通过演练予以巩固完善;六是强化检查考核,促进防范责任和措施落实.     

Desperate times and desperate measures: false-representation and distortion of terrorism in post-9/11 superhero films

In the wake of 9/11 there has been a marked increase in depictions of terrorism in Hollywood film. This shift has been particularly significant in superhero films. This genre of films has not historically relied upon terrorist narratives, but this article highlights contemporary ideological overlaps between terrorist and superhero narratives that explain why they have been more frequently presented together in contemporary film. In particular, both rely upon what Giorgio Agamben and other scholars refer to as a “state of exceptionality” and they feature ideological categories, such as those delineated in the work of Teun Van Dijk. This article analyses these themes using the methods of Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. The article finds the growing number of depictions of terrorists in superhero films problematic because they deny terrorists rationality or political consciousness. The article analyses the binarism that this creates, finding that the proliferation of terrorist narratives in superhero films ultimately is detrimental because it proliferates a shallow and misleading understanding of terrorism which can undermine popular understanding of terrorism.     

Mental discipline,punishment and recidivism: reading Foucault against de-radicalisation programmes in the War on Terror

This article uses Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to examine how de-radicalisation programmes in the War on Terror transform power–knowledge relations, mental discipline and punishment by attempting to instil self-governance through non-violence. Foucault’s theories on the evolution of discipline and punishment can be applied to de-radicalisation programmes, but only after considerable revision. By asking questions on the nature of knowledge, practice, state involvement and recidivism of de-radicalisation, I contend that many programmes may be ultimately limited by a disproportionate focus on religious rehabilitation rather than political dialogue regarding the motivations for such violence.     

Beyond necessity: Hezbollah and the intersection of state-sponsored terrorism with organised crime

ABSTRACT

The world is arguably experiencing a resurgence of state-sponsored terrorism. Meanwhile, the crime-terror nexus is seen as a continued threat to global security and stability. However, there has been little attention paid to the use of organised crime by state-sponsored terror groups. This is because existing literature views the use of criminal fundraising as an alternative to state-sponsorship. Despite this, there are numerous examples of state-sponsored organisations which nevertheless engage in organised crime. This paper addresses this puzzle by comparing two competing theoretical approaches on the crime-terror nexus. Current literature tends to either focus on responses to economic necessity at the group level or on the broader structure of opportunities and constraints. A congruence analysis will be conducted using the case of Hezbollah to test these approaches to the specific issue of state-sponsorship and crime. The main finding is that approaches rooted in opportunity structures have significantly more explanatory power than those focused on group level motivation and necessity. This paper also finds a more complex role for state-sponsors with some states actively enabling crime. This suggests the need for an understanding of terror and crime which focuses on the internationalised political context as well as internal group dynamics.     

The prosecution of “others”: presidential rhetoric and the interrelation of framing,legal prosecutions,and the Global War on Terror

ABSTRACT

In examining the Global War on Terror, the effects of presidential rhetoric on the framing of terrorism has been well documented. However, little previous work links terrorism and its status as an “othered” phenomenon to differential legal prosecution in a post-9/11 era. Using the Prosecution Project data set, we compared “othered” individuals, as defined by a Muslim, Arab/Middle Eastern, and/or foreign-born status, to “non-othered” individuals charged with terroristic felonies. Furthermore, we subdivided the dataset into three analytical time blocks: the George W. Bush administration immediately post-9/11, the latter half of the Bush administration, and the Obama administration. For the first and third time blocks, we found that “othered” individuals were prosecuted significantly more frequently than “non-othered” individuals. These findings call into question the effect of presidential rhetoric and the national framing of terrorism on the legal prosecution of “othered” individuals.