Per request I've created a new International Terrorism Forum.
This forum is intended for Discussions On Terrorism, the Past And Present, Terrorism As A Tactic, the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and other related subjects.

Political discussions should not go in here,
and I would kindly ask everyone to read through the forum rules one more time before posting in here:
Forum Rules and Information

More info will follow, and I'm also open for questions, suggestions and comments in this new forum.

Terrorism related References:
MIPT Knowledgebase: Terrorists and Terrorist Organizations.

Proposed Definitions of Terrorism
1. League of Nations Convention (1937):

"All criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public".

2. UN Resolution language (1999):

"1. Strongly condemns all acts, methods and practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, wherever and by whomsoever committed;

2. Reiterates that criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be invoked to justify them". (GA Res. 51/210 Measures to eliminate international terrorism)

3. Short legal definition proposed by A. P. Schmid to United Nations Crime Branch (1992):

Act of Terrorism = Peacetime Equivalent of War Crime

4. Academic Consensus Definition:

"Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby - in contrast to assassination - the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought" (Schmid, 1988 )

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/terrorism_definitions.html

Redleg... not sure how this differs from the Terrorism News forum...

The terrorism news forum will be a sub-forum of this one, and as soon as one of the news leads to a discussion/gets replies they will be moved to this forum.
That way we'll separate the news only threads without replies from the active discussions (like we've done in a few other forums in here)

I know that I am not very clever, but how can you talk about terrorism without being political? Terrorism is seen by many to be a violent form of politics. Others would go as far as to say that it is legimate when used against occupying forces. We should perhaps remember that Israel was founded by terrorists and today that land is supported by western countries. The two things go together like twin brothers.

What ever happened to one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter

Originally Posted by LeEnfield

What ever happened to one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter

What happened with what? and where??

LeEnfield, the answer is easy it seems.

The word "terrorist" has been hijacked by politicians, and their answer is.

If they are shooting at you, they are terrorists, if they are helping you, they are freedom fighters.

What we, the dumbed down public have to do, is to ignore the politicians buzz words and use our own good judgement. Unfortunately some among us seem to think that our politicians are there for our good, the truth being that too many of them are there purely for their own good.

That is how I feel too.
The words "cowardly" seem to pop up a bit too often I think as well.