Political Violence and Terrorism

Recent studies indicate that the number of terrorist incidents is declining while their lethality is increasing. This trend in casualty rates has raised the rhetoric on terrorism, leading to claims that a new form of terrorism has emerged over the last thirty years. The “new terrorism” is defined by a tendency towards maximum destruction and a pronounced religious motivation. The question is whether or not the new terrorism is actually driving current trends in terrorist violence? This study examines casualty rates by terrorist groups categorized by their ideologies and finds that trends in terrorist violence are not being driven by the new terrorism per se. Instead, all forms of terrorism are more violent generally, and variations of ethno-national terrorism are the most violent specifically.

This book shows how scholarly studies of prejudice, identity formation, and genocide studies can shed light on global examples of religious hatred. The book is divided into four parts, focusing respectively on: theories of prejudice and violence; historical developments of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and race; contemporary Western antisemitism and Islamophobia; and, prejudices beyond the West in the Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. Each part ends with a special focus section.

Key features include:
- A compelling synthesis of theories of prejudice, identity, and hatred to explain Islamophobia and antisemitism.
- An innovative theory of human violence and genocide which explains the link to prejudice.
- Case studies of both Western antisemitism and Islamophobia in history and today, alongside global studies of Islamic antisemitism and Hindu and Buddhist Islamophobia
- Integrates discussion of race and racialisation as aspects of Islamophobic and antisemitic prejudice in relation to their framing in religious discourses.
- Accessible for general readers and students, it can be employed as a textbook for students or read with benefit by scholars for its novel synthesis and theories.

The book focuses on antisemitism and Islamophobia, both in the West and beyond, including examples of prejudices and hatred in the Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions. Drawing on examples from Europe, North America, MENA, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, Paul Hedges points to common patterns, while identifying the specifics of local context.
Religious Hatred is an essential guide for understanding the historical origins of religious hatred, the manifestations of this hatred across diverse religious and cultural contexts, and the strategies employed by activists and peacemakers to overcome this hatred.

This article puts the focus on the role of religion during the French Revolution. It tries to combine two often separated streams of research: the sacralisation of the nation and the pluralisation of religions. It will also be argued that there is not only one type of violent religion during revolution. "Religion" does not necessarily lead to violent conflicts but there are other kinds of religion during revolutions: for example religions of political indifference as well as concepts of universal religion.

The focus of this book is ultimately to present a clear and succinct view of what psychological research has revealed about terrorists and terrorism. The results are often disturbing, sometimes surprising and frequently disheartening. Perhaps most worrying of all, is the extent to which this current level and range of knowledge has repeatedly been ignored and overlooked by those tasked with the responsibility of controlling terrorism. This book aims to provide a clear, intelligent and well-informed account of what psychology has learned in the past thirty years about issues relating to terrorism. It also aims to demonstrate just how one branch of social science can provide a powerful tool for insight and guidance on one of the most challenging problems facing the modern world.

The first act of Chechen suicide terrorism occurred on June 7, 2000 and was carried out by two young women. This inaugurated the migration of suicide terrorism from other conflict zones, into the Chechen conflict. How suicide terrorism as a tactic made it’s way into Chechnya is the topic of this paper, which provides an analysis of the events concerning the importation of militant ideologies and radical terrorist movements taking place since the Chechen declaration of independence as well as an empirical and theoretical analysis of Chechen suicide terrorism based on psycho-social interviews that were collected in Chechnya over a two-year time period from March 2003 to March 2005. We report data about suicide terrorism and the radicalization process from thirty-two interviews with family members and close associates of thirty-four Chechen suicide terrorists inquiring about the terrorists’ backgrounds, experiences, religious, and psychological reasons leading up to their suicidal acts.

"Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos opens the book with his latest contribution to his comprehensive project of re-theorising spatial justice with a piece titled ‘Spatial Justice in a World of Violence’. Through a close reading
of the photographic series Fortunes of War, Life Day by artist Eric Lesdema,
Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos is interested in how these images reveal peripheral
spaces at the edge of violence which impose an ethic of spatial responsibility on the
viewer in the act of turning away and looking elsewhere. While no acts of explicit
violence are shown in the images, we are left with no doubt that violence is ubiquitous
along the spatio-temporal continuum. This continuum of violence between
bodies raises questions of complicity and responsibility. Do we submit to a state
of affairs in which space is saturated with the everyday and immobilised violence
of the ‘engineered atmosphere’ – or is it also possible for bodies to withdraw from
the atmosphere, through ruptures and folds within the continuum? Such a notion
raises the ethical possibility of the ‘emergence of spatial justice’." Chris Butler and Edward Mussawir (eds)

Global terrorism continues to be a multifaceted security threat that decisively shapes the policies of political actors worldwide. An important component of contemporary terrorism is the financing mechanisms connected to the activities of terrorist organizations (TOs): TOs have proven apt in diversifying their funding sources and now rely on activities as broad as involvement in organized crime, illicit resource extraction as well as transnational trade in drugs and people. Following the innovation and popularization of modern communication technologies, TOs have also increasingly capitalized on the internet as a space through which to finance their operations, disseminate their propaganda and recruit new members. The financing mechanisms of TOs are subsequently in a process of consistent evolution and are shaped by external factors, thereby producing consistent challenges for State actors to develop their counterterrorist capacities in accordance with the newest trends in terrorist activities.

Not-guilty verdicts, mistrials, and impunity for the Bundy family and many of their supporters in the armed confrontations over public land use in Nevada and Oregon. Expanded access for private oil, gas, mining, and logging industries and the downsizing of national monuments such as Bears Ears lead by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. A number of highly contentious debates and sensationalized events have again focused attention on land held in the public domain by the United States. This essay argues that federal land policy as a form of colonial administration has been constitutive for the logic of expectation as property in what is now the United States. From the state land cessions negotiated on behalf of the Articles of Confederation to the preemption acts (1830–1841) to the homestead acts (1862–1916) to present-day demands for land transfer, the acquisition and disposal of the so-called public domain have been central to westward colonization, the consolidation of the nation-state, and the promise of land ownership as the ostensible foundation of individual liberty. These dynamics are evident in contemporary conflicts over public lands and arguments for the transfer of public lands to either state or private ownership. Approaching the Bundy occupations as flashpoints that illuminate competing interpretations and claims to land within the history of westward colonization, this essay seeks to demonstrate the ways in which expectation emerges from particular economies of dispossession of indigenous peoples that have historically worked through and across the division of public and private property.

Mediante las voces y experiencias de campesinos quechuas de las comunidades de Ocros y Huancapi (Ayacucho), Los silencios de la guerra. Memoria y conflicto armado, hurga en los rastros de los años de violencia que enlutaron al Perú a fines del siglo XX. El agudo análisis de la antropóloga Valérie Robin Azevedo es una etnografía sensible de los secretos de las memorias campesinas de la guerra contra Sendero Luminoso, donde se rememora el pasado en fiestas patronales y en carnavales, en la creación musical y en los bailes comunales, en los sueños o en las apariciones de un santo milagroso.
¿Cómo se construyen hoy los recuerdos de la guerra y qué se silencia del pasado? ¿Qué muestran y qué ocultan las narraciones y celebraciones que escenifican lecturas parciales del pasado? Este fascinante libro nos revela las encrucijadas campesinas que siguen buscando rutas de convivencia pacífica hacia el futuro para reconstruir los lazos sociales profundamente dañados por la guerra interna.

This paper attempts to outline how the projected image of the female suicide bomber is directly linked to the prenatal mother. We are all aware how violence is viciously cruel. Terror is different from fear. It is nonverbal and left over from early childhood where it has not been put into words and then acted out nonverbally. This contribution explores the role which the mother plays in the early life of a child. I refer mainly to the works of Melanie Klein who shed light on how we relate to the world nonverbally through the use of objects. She took up where her mentor, Sigmund Freud, had left off by taking the emphasis away from the father to the importance of the bonding relationship between the infant and the " good breast. " i Nowadays neuroscience teaches that the mother-infant relationship is crucial for the development of a healthy well-adjusted child who can grow to trust his own perceptions of the world surrounding him. What does this say about terrorists? How This Work Began When I was eight years old I first learned about the Golden Age of Spain where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together in convivencia; I was fascinated. I went on to study the languages and cultures of medieval Iberia with a passion. However, my unconscious agenda was a wish to understand how very different people negotiated the same geo-political space, be it Iberia or under the roof of a home. I began working on terrorism then but it was the summer before September 11 th when I was invited by a leading psychoanalyst, Dr. Joan Lachkar, ii to participate in a human rights seminar on the suicide bomber. She asked me to provide a psychohistorical backdrop because of my doctoral work on aljamia and the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain. iii My work had been written up in German in the mid 1980's because of the Gastarbeiter problem. iv While training clinically I turned from trauma survivors to undertake the actual study of perpetrators, the terrorists themselves. I began to see a sadomasochistic dance as in Shakespeare's Othello. The constant cycling of projection-rage-shame-blame translated into a kind of sexual obsession/addiction, bonding to pain rather than pleasure. Could the banality of murder-suicide be driving a significant part of the suicide attack's alleged political violence? Let us say, it all begins in utero when the prenatal environment creates the " motherboard " for the baby's mind. This is a fragile maternal womb, which becomes exposed to a postpartum environment where the female instead of being valued and cherished is denigrated, abused and pathologically controlled from day one. There is no regard for the mother's stress hormone level or her devotion to her newborn. Ultimately, this not only jeopardizes the infant's health but can lead to severe ego dysfunction as well as cognitive impairments, such as flying planes into buildings rather than just fantasizing about it. v The mother-child relationship is key to understanding any culture. According to the British-trained Iraqi child psychiatrist Dr. Sami Timimi, in Arab Muslim culture the child is never permitted to separate psychologically from Ummi, that is 'mommy' in Arabic. vi The baby becomes an appendage to the mother in a state of fusion (a problematic bond). The mother is over-idealized yet the female is denigrated. The only way she obtains power is by giving birth to a male baby. Ummi comes from the same root as Ummah – so that the Arab Muslim communal self-perception is linked to the maternal. Berko reports that Ummi is the only one who could have stopped her child from becoming a suicide bomber. vii The Saudis repeatedly

This work is a beguiling prospect for anyone who has been involved in South Asia or has an interest in the region. The idea of analysing so many distinct insurgencies and counter-insurgency (COIN) campaigns within the covers of a single book is both ambitious and tantalising. Unfortunately, and in spite of occasional good moments, this book provides few of the answers. It has a clunky structure, is peppered with editorial and factual errors and unsupported statements. The British General Templer in Malaya argued that COIN should only be 25% shooting. The remainder should be winning "hearts and minds". Sadly this has all too rarely been the case in South Asia where many of the COIN campaigns have been heavy-handed and brutal. Partly this is a function of capability; effective COIN needs excellent intelligence and highly trained and equipped Special Forces. Yet it is interesting to reflect that two "successful" COIN operations of recent years; the Indian defeat of the Khalistan movement and President Rajapaksa's suppression of the Tamil Tigers owed little to Templer or the proponents of minimum force

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

Though traditionally regarded as a peaceful religion, Buddhism has a dark side. On multiple occasions over the past fifteen centuries, Buddhist leaders have sanctioned violence, and even war. The eight essays in this book focus on a variety of Buddhist traditions, from antiquity to the present, and show that Buddhist organizations have used religious images and rhetoric to support military conquest throughout history.

Buddhist soldiers in sixth century China were given the illustrious status of Bodhisattva after killing their adversaries. In seventeenth century Tibet, the Fifth Dalai Lama endorsed a Mongol ruler's killing of his rivals. And in modern-day Thailand, Buddhist soldiers carry out their duties undercover, as fully ordained monks armed with guns.

Buddhist Warfare demonstrates that the discourse on religion and violence, usually applied to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, can no longer exclude Buddhist traditions. The book examines Buddhist military action in Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, and shows that even the most unlikely and allegedly pacifist religious traditions are susceptible to the violent tendencies of man.

The Syrian Salafi armed group Ahrar al-Sham epitomises the most prominent case of politicisation. By 2014, Ahrar al-Sham was the leading insurgent group in Syria, with the largest number of soldiers, presence throughout Syrian opposition-held areas, and relatively strong ties with foreign countries including Turkey and Qatar. Ahrar al-Sham explicitly rejected al-Qaida’s legacy and developed a more inclusive approach to other groups and the population. This chapter traces the group’s emergence and development to demonstrate how pre-war developments and a de-centralised alliance-based expansion underpinned its politicisation over the years. This case study also contends that politicisation was sustained by the group’s internal institutionalisation, which ultimately explains its successes and failures during the conflict. This chapter is based on extensive field research interviews in Turkey and north-west Syria in 2019 with an array of leaders and members of Ahrar al-Sham, armed opposition groups, and independent Syrian Islamists.

This chapter aims to show how radical beliefs and violent action relate to each
other. It summarises the current landscape of academic research that has, in different
ways, attempted to identify the causes of terrorist action. In showing the current
trends, areas of consensus and areas of dispute, the chapter aims to show the
complex relationship between drivers based on ideas, ideologies and beliefs and
drivers based on other factors. Terrorists, like normal people, are influenced on a
number of different levels and in ways that they do not always realise or acknowledge
themselves. Whether through social ties, the power of counter-culture, or the
desire to seek thrills, status or recognition, the story of why people undertake political
violence is more complex and subtle than simply a question of belief.

This study analyzes controversies and public attitudes concerning the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)
and Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. The research question is: Which factors affect attitudes toward the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera in contemporary Ukraine? This article employs comparative and regression analyses of surveys commissioned by the author and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in 2009 and 2013 to determine the effects of regional and other factors on attitudes toward these organizations and the OUN-B leader. The study shows that regional factors and perceptions of these organizations' involvement in mass murder were the strongest predictors of the views concerning the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera. Their public support is strongest in Galicia and weakest in the East and the South, in particular, in Donbas and Crimea, two major conflict areas since the “Euromaidan.”

This study examines the role of political factors in attitudes toward World War II in contemporary Ukraine. The question under examination is which factors determine public views of the principal warring sides and their leaders in Ukraine. This paper uses a representative national survey specifically designed for this research project and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in 2012. It analyzes the roles of regionalism, political party preferences, ethnicity, language, age, and sex in attitudes toward the Red Army, Soviet partisans, the German Army (Wehrmacht), and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during the war, as well as toward the wartime leaders of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the UPA. The analysis of the survey data shows that regional values, political party preferences, ethnicity, language, and age have significant effects on views of the Soviet Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the war and attitudes toward the wartime activities of Joseph Stalin and Roman Shukhevych. Public perceptions of the German Army and Adolf Hitler in Ukraine do not vary much across regions, political parties, and ethnic, language, age, and sex groups.

The issue of the political rehabilitation and glorification of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) became one of the central political issues in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan. It provoked major political and historical controversies and debates in Ukraine and other countries. Presidents Yushchenko and Poroshenko, their parties, far right organizations, and many Ukrainian historians attempted to recast the OUN-B and the UPA as parts of a popular national liberation movement that fought against Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and to present the OUN-B and UPA leaders as national heroes. They denied, minimized or justified the involvement of the OUN-B and the UPA leaders and members in the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians.

The analyses of biographic publications, historical studies, and archival documents show that the majority of the OUN-B and UPA leaders and very large proportions of their members collaborated with Nazi Germany, mainly in the beginning of the Second
World War. Nearly half of the top and middle-ranked leaders of these organizations and
at least until the end of 1943 the majority of UPA members served in various police formations. They assisted the German occupation authorities in implementing genocidal policies towards the Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles by helping to carry out mass shootings and create conditions intended for the physical annihilation of the entire Jewish population and large numbers of Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles, specifically in Volhynia. The fact that many police commanders and large numbers of policemen in various locations and formations followed orders from the OUN-B by deserting en masse from their service, in particular in Volhynia in the spring of 1943, and forming the basis of the UPA shows that these commanders and police members were de facto controlled by the OUN-B.

Although suicide attacks have been carried out for hundreds of years, suicide bombings have only been a permanent feature of conflicts since the 1980s. In recent years, though, their use has dramatically escalated. AOAV, which collects data on explosive violence, has recorded a total of 1,191 suicide bombings globally between 2011 and 2015, resulting in 31,477 civilian deaths and injuries.

The vast majority of suicide bombings within these years have been carried out by international Salafi-Jihadi terrorist organisations.

In light of this, AOAV’s extensive report Understanding the rising cult of the suicide bomber investigates what makes individuals give their lives, and take others, for causes propagated by these transnational terrorist groups.

It also looks at what effect such attacks have had on local and regional conflicts, as well as on the communities exposed to them.

Furthermore, the report proposes how states and other actors in the international community might seek to prevent their use and further escalation based on the reports’ findings.

The report is based on extensive field-work, as well as a thorough mapping and investigation of specific suicide bombings and the individuals that perpetrated them.

Right-wing violence and terrorism have slowly gained more academic and public attention in recent years, with an increase in anti-immigration and anti-government organised violence from the extreme right in most Western countries. Some evidence exists that right-wing extremists have attempted to infiltrate the military in their home countries to gain access to tactical training, weapons, and to recruit highly skilled new members. Research about the extent and impact of extreme right-wing links to the military is, however, scarce. In addition to the lack of insight into potential right-wing (or other forms of) extremism problems in the military, most armed forces have not developed effective countering violent extremism (CVE) tools. In this way, the incorporation of CVE in the military lags far behind the use of CVE in other aspects of counter-terrorism in the West. As the military, next to the police and intelligence, is a critical part of a country’s security infrastructure, it must also include specially designed mechanisms to protect it from infiltration and abuse from violent extremists and those planning terrorist activities. This Policy Brief will discuss available knowledge about extreme right-wing links to the military in Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. It will conclude by formulating concrete recommendations for handling this potential threat.

Türkiye, uzun yıllardan beridir çeşitli ideolojilerde ve yapılarda terör örgütleriyle çeşitli yoğunluklarda mücadele etmiş ve etmeye devam eden bir ülkedir. Kürdistan İşçi Partisinin de (PKK- Partîya Karkerên Kurdistanê) bu terör örgütlerinin başında geldiği bilinmektedir. Ayrıca ülkeye maddi ve manevi anlamda verdiği zararlar çok büyük boyutlara ulaşmıştır. Bir terör örgütü olarak PKK, eylemlerinde silahlı yöntemlerin yanı sıra bu eylemleri ge-niş kitlelere ulaştırma, meşruiyet iddiasını sağlamlaştırma ve ele-man temini amacıyla yoğun biçimde propaganda faaliyetleri de yürütmektedir. Özellikle XXI. yüzyıl bağlamında terör örgütleri-nin propagandayı bir mücadele yöntemi olarak benimseme eğili-minin gün geçtikçe artış göstermesiyle PKK da propaganda uygu-lamalarını sürekli genişletmiş ve çeşitlendirmiştir.
Çalışmanın sonucunda hem Türkiye‟nin
hem de PKK‟nın propaganda dili, söylemi ve uygulamalarının
2000‟li yıllarda değişim gösterdiği, propagandanın giderek iki taraf
için de önem kazandığı savlanmaktadır. Son olarak da çalışmada,
Türkiye‟nin terörle mücadelede benimsediği propaganda yöntemleri
ve uygulamalarıyla PKK‟nın propaganda uygulamaları karşılaştırılmakta,
tespit ve önerilere yer verilmektedir.

People abused by angry discipline as children, may tend to abuse or overly punish other people or themselves for perceived wrongs in their adult life. In some individuals, aggressive personality traits may be genetically inherited. The aggressive personality may feel weakened by having guidelines or boundaries for anger. Anger is a normal human emotion, and these guidelines can help express anger in a healthy way.

This article surveys recent historiographical studies on social conflicts and radical left during the 1970s in Italy. The debate in last years suggested new topics, methodologies and interpretations, with particular emphasis being placed on the issue of political violence, but it is still polarized in two classical and often implicit representations: stagione dei movimenti («season of movements») and anni di piombo («years of lead»). On the one hand, some scholars have been underlining mass participation and the emergence of joyful movements aiming to social equity and individual emancipation. On the other, scholars have been emphasizing political violence, armed struggle and terrorism. Neverthless, the two representations are partial and misleading. The article attempts to suggest new investigative trails that might analyse the genesis and the transformation of the movements and opposition cultures in depth from a cultural and a social perspective, and take into account economic transformation, mass culture and the roll of political parties.

The visual reconstruction of shooting at Maidan protesters and journalists demonstrates that Maidan protesters were shot by snipers in the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings during the Maidan massacre in Ukraine on February 20, 2014. The bullet holes identified in government forensic expert reports, videos, and photos from directions of the Maidan-controlled buildings are in the area, height, and directions that match the shooting of the protesters.  The forensic examination reports by government investigators, videos and photos by journalists suggest that journalists from ABC (Australia), ARD TV (Germany) twice, Associate Press, BBC, Sky News, and RT in the Hotel Ukraina rooms facing Maidan were shot at from the Maidan-controlled areas. The visual reconstruction and the same data along with videos and media reports by journalists from these media suggest that ABC News (US) and TVP (Poland) journalists in the Hotel Ukraina were most likely shot at by snipers from the Maidan-controlled Bank Arkada. They suggest that a Ruptly reporter in the Hotel Ukraina was hit by a ricochet from a direction of a Berkut barricade. Russian journalists in other three locations of the Hotel Ukraina were shot at by Maidan snipers and/or by Berkut and Omega, which shot at snipers at the Hotel Ukraina.               

The visual reconstruction based on similar data shows that the Berkut police and Omega were generally shooting above protesters at the second and higher floors of the Hotel Ukraina and in electric poles, a flower box, and trees. Synchronized videos show that Maidan protesters in the massacre zone were in a blind spot below the line of Berkut police fire from behind a truck.             

This is an online appendix H of papers presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Boston and the “Regimes and Societies in Conflict: Eastern Europe and Russia since 1956” conference by the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Uppsala University and the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies in Uppsala in 2018.

The massacre of almost 50 Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 was a turning point in Ukrainian politics and a tipping point in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. This mass killing of the protesters and the mass shooting of the police that preceded it led to the overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych and gave a start to a civil war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine. A conclusion promoted by the post-Yanukovych governments and the media in Ukraine that the massacre was perpetrated by government snipers and special police units on a Yanukovych order has been nearly universally accepted by the Western governments, the media, and many scholars. The Ukrainian government investigation identified members of the special company of Berkut as responsible for killings of the absolute majority of the protesters, but did not release any evidence in support, with the exception of videos of the massacre.
              The question is which side organized the “snipers’ massacre.” This paper is the first academic study of this crucial case of the mass killing. It uses a theory of rational choice and a Weberian theory of instrumental rationality to examine actions of major actors both from the Yanukovych government, specifically various police and security forces, and the Maidan opposition, specifically its far right and oligarchic elements, during the massacre.
          The paper analyzes a large amount of evidence from different publicly available sources concerning this massacre and killings of specifics protesters. Qualitative content analysis includes the following data: about 1,500 videos and recordings of live internet and TV broadcasts from mass media and social media in different countries(some 150 gigabytes), news reports and social media posts by more than 100 journalists covering the massacre from Kyiv, some 5,000 photos, and nearly 30 gigabytes of publicly available radio intercepts of snipers and commanders from the special Alfa unit of the Security Service of Ukraine and Internal Troops, and Maidan massacre trial recordings. This study also employs field research on site of the massacre, eyewitness reports by both Maidan protesters and government special units commanders, statements by both former and current government officials, estimates of approximate ballistic trajectories, bullets and weapons used, and types of wounds among both protesters and the police. This study establishes a precise timeline for various events of the massacre, the locations of both the shooters and the government snipers, and the specific timeline and locations of nearly 50 protesters’ deaths. It also briefly analyzes other major cases of violence during and after the “Euromaidan.” This study includes two video appendixes.
            This academic investigation concludes that the massacre was a false flag operation, which was rationally planned and carried out with a goal of the overthrow of the government and seizure of power. It found various evidence of the involvement of an alliance of the far right organizations, specifically the Right Sector and Svoboda, and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland. Concealed shooters and spotters were located in at least 20 Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. The various evidence that the protesters were killed from these locations include some 70 testimonies, primarily by Maidan protesters, several videos of “snipers” targeting protesters from these buildings, comparisons of positions of the specific protesters at the time of their killing and their entry wounds, and bullet impact signs. The study uncovered various videos and photos of armed Maidan “snipers” and spotters in many of these buildings. The paper presents implications of these findings for understanding the nature of the change of the government in Ukraine, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention in Crimea and Donbas, and an international conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine.

מאמר זה מבקש לתאר ולהגדיר את תפיסת התכסית האנושית, שהתפתחה
בצבא האמריקאי לאור ניסיונו באפגניסטן ובעיראק. המאמר יעמוד על הסיבות
שהובילו את הצבא האמריקאי לפתח תפיסה זאת; יתמקד בתשתית התיאורטית
ובזיקות שבין התכסית האנושית לבין מודיעין תרבותי ואינטליגנציה תרבותית.
כל אלה, לאור הניסיון האמריקאי והישראלי בזירות העימות השונות.

In the broadest view, Isis seems the product of a catastrophic war – the Anglo-American assault on Iraq. There is no doubt that the ground for it was prepared by this systematic devastation – the murder and displacement of millions, which came after more than a decade of brutalisation by sanctions and embargoes. The dismantling of the Iraqi army, de-Ba’athification and the Anglo-American imprimatur to Shia supremacism provoked the formation in Mesopotamia of al-Qaida, Isis’s precursor. Many local factors converged to make Isis’s emergence possible last year: vengeful Sunnis; reorganised Ba’athists in Iraq; the co-dependence of the west on despotic allies (al-Sisi, al-Maliki) and incoherence over Syria; the cynical manoeuvres of Assad; Turkey’s hubristic neo-Ottomanism, which seems exceeded in its recklessness only by the actions of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

In this paper we follow our earlier work on the mathematical and computational modeling of biological warfare and its potential extensions to nuclear terrorism. In particular
we review Dr. Parnell’s earlier critique of the proper and improper use of probabilities, scenarios and the emergent properties of terrorism undertaken in conjunction with the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineers and the National Institute of Health. As indicated in the earlier report published by the National Academies Press
(http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12206&page=3) we extend the argument that:
―The DHS (2006) report and DHS presentations of its content use inconsistent, imprecise technical language and do not define many key terms.