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78-541: The National Terrorism Advisory System ( NTAS ) is a terrorism threat advisory scale used by the US Department of Homeland Security since April 26, 2011. The NTAS is the replacement for the often-criticized, color-coded Homeland Security Advisory System introduced by the George W. Bush administration in 2002. Janet Napolitano said that the color-coded system often presented "little practical information" to

156-493: A 2023 EdWeek article citing Everytown an organization that advocates for firearm safety. The 2023 article "A state mandated school threat assessment: Here's what it means for students" reviews the results of a study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice that analyzed 23,000 student threat assessment done in Florida in the 2021-2022 school year. As the most comprehensive study so far done by University of Virginia researchers,

234-530: A clear and simple premise: When a threat develops that could impact you—the public—we will tell you. We will provide whatever information we can so you know how to protect yourselves, your families, and your communities." Her speech was timed to complement US President Barack Obama 's 2011 State of the Union Address , two days earlier. In 2011, DHS added bulletins to NTAS to distribute information about trends and non-specific threats. On December 7, 2015,

312-727: A day after an Address to the Nation by the President from the Oval Office , a plan to add a new "intermediate" threat level to the NTAS was announced by DHS Secretary Johnson to reflect a "new phase" in the global terrorist threat against the homeland following the November 2015 Paris attacks and the 2015 San Bernardino attack . The Secretary of DHS for the Obama administration stated that

390-528: A divine duty with no consideration for political efficacy―their aim is transcendental and "holy terror" constitutes an end in itself. Hoffman's concept has since been taken up and developed by a number of other writers, including Walter Laquer, Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamen, and rebranded as the "New Terrorism". Arguably, the first organization to use modern terrorist techniques was the Irish Republican Brotherhood , founded in 1858 as

468-554: A formal alert providing as much information as [it] can." When an alert is provided to the public it includes the following information if available: geographic region, mode of transportation, critical infrastructure potentially affected by the threat, protective actions authorities are taking, and steps individuals or communities should be taking to protect themselves and families. That includes providing government agencies and emergency officials with threat assessments as well as using news outlets and social networking resources to notify

546-610: A military response and welcomed it as a provocation that would result in more Muslims fight the United States. Some commentators believe that the resulting anger and suspicion directed toward innocent Muslims living in Western countries and the indignities inflicted upon them by security forces and the general public also contributes to radicalization of new recruits. Despite criticism that the Iraqi government had no involvement with

624-558: A national security scale. However, many private companies can also offer threat assessment capabilities targeted towards the needs of individuals and businesses. Threat assessment involves several major components: Threat assessment is relevant to many businesses and other venues, including schools. Threat assessment professionals, who include psychologists and law enforcement agents, work to identify and help potential offenders, guiding students to overcome underlying sources of anger , hopelessness or despair . These feelings can increase

702-563: A particular cause and many of the most deadly operations in recent times, such as the September 11 attacks , the London underground bombing , 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2002 Bali bombings were planned and carried out by a close clique, composed of close friends, family members and other strong social networks. These groups benefited from the free flow of information and efficient telecommunications to succeed where others had failed. Over

780-498: A religious agenda. Before 2000, it was nationalist separatist terrorist organizations such as the IRA and Chechen rebels who were behind the most attacks. The number of incidents from nationalist separatist groups has remained relatively stable in the years since while religious extremism has grown. The prevalence of Islamist groups in Iraq , Afghanistan , Pakistan , Nigeria and Syria is

858-554: A revolutionary Irish nationalist group that carried out attacks in England. The group initiated the Fenian dynamite campaign in 1881, one of the first modern terror campaigns. Instead of earlier forms of terrorism based on political assassination, this campaign used timed explosives with the express aim of sowing fear in the very heart of metropolitan Britain , in order to achieve political gains. Another early terrorist-type group

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936-402: A single, all-encompassing, legally binding, criminal law definition of terrorism. These difficulties arise from the fact that the term "terrorism" is politically and emotionally charged. The international community has instead adopted a series of sectoral conventions that define and criminalize various types of terrorist activities. Counterterrorism analyst Bruce Hoffman has noted that it

1014-412: A strategic tool to influence decision makers. By targeting densely populated public areas such as transportation hubs, airports, shopping centers, tourist attractions, and nightlife venues, terrorists aim to instill widespread insecurity, prompting policy changes through psychological manipulation and undermining confidence in security measures. The terms "terrorist" and "terrorism" originated during

1092-413: A student Brian O. came to first period with a shotgun that he fired and left a chest wound for one student and a near miss for another before Brian surrendered. He was criminally convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison. The ensuing California Court of Appeals civil court case found in 2022 that there was 54 percent negligence with the threat assessment and management team and awarded $ 3.8 million for

1170-421: A student's risk of suicide , alcohol and drug use , physical abuse , dropping out and criminal activity. Threat assessment also applies to risk management. Information security risk managers often perform a threat assessment before developing a plan to mitigate those threats. Per a Senator King hearing in 2022, a top U.S. military officer was reprimanded by Senator King, the chairman of the committee, because

1248-437: A successful high-profile attack. The attacks prompted some criticism from domestic and international observers regarding perceived injustices in U.S. foreign policy that provoked the attacks, but the larger practical effect was that the United States government declared a War on Terror that resulted in substantial military engagements in several Muslim-majority countries. Various commentators have inferred that al-Qaeda expected

1326-692: A tactic because it can: Attacks on "collaborators" are used to intimidate people from cooperating with the state in order to undermine state control. This strategy was used in Ireland, in Kenya , in Algeria and in Cyprus during their independence struggles. Stated motives for the September 11 attacks included inspiring more fighters to join the cause of repelling the United States from Muslim countries with

1404-584: A task force to reassess the scale and concluded that the Homeland Security Advisory System was unclear and lacked public support, and the task force recommended discontinuing the scale. In November 2010, the Department of Homeland Security submitted a draft plan to overhaul the color system and create what one official called "a system that communicates precise, actionable information based on the latest intelligence." The system

1482-478: A universally accepted, legally binding definition. Title 18 of the United States Code defines terrorism as acts that are intended to intimidate or coerce civilians or government. The international community has been slow to formulate a universally agreed, legally binding definition of this crime, and has been unable to conclude a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism that incorporates

1560-598: Is also evidence that Black and Hispanic students are disproportionately determined threats as well as students with disabilities. In the 2016 Oregonian/OregonLive article "Targeted: A Family and the Quest to Stop the Next School Shooter," a sixteen-year-old boy on the autism spectrum eventually drops out of school after being selected for a threat assessment. The family allowed the reporter full access to their experience of not being able to get information from

1638-522: Is not only individual agencies within the same governmental apparatus that cannot agree on a single definition of terrorism; experts and other long-established scholars in the field are equally incapable of reaching a consensus. In 1992, terrorism studies scholar Alex P. Schmid proposed a simple definition to the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) as "peacetime equivalents of war crimes", but it

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1716-713: Is one known as Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines ) as well as what is deemed a threat, according to the Ed Week article. Another 2024 Ed Week article "How Columbine shaped 25 years of school safety" This article chronicles how threat assessments were recommended in the wake of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Co., but schools still struggle to get it right. A 2022 New Yorker article "Can researchers show that threat assessment stops mass shootings" states that there isn’t definitive evidence that threat assessments stop school shootings. However,

1794-511: Is politically charged and over-simplified. The underlying historical assertions have received less critical attention. According to The Oxford Handbook on the History of Terrorism : Since the publication of Rapoport's article, it has become seemingly pre-requisite for standard works on terrorism to cite the three case studies and to reproduce uncritically its findings. In lieu of empirical research, authors tend to crudely paraphrase Rapoport and

1872-405: Is reviving in new and unusual forms". He is the first to propose that religious doctrines were more important than political rationales for some terrorist groups. Rapoport's work has since become the basis of the model of "New Terrorism" proposed by Bruce Hoffman and developed by other scholars. "New Terrorism" has had an unparalleled impact on policymaking. Critics have pointed out that the model

1950-480: Is usually accompanied by anti-government sentiments. Adherents of Christian Identity are not connected with specific Christian denominations , and they believe that whites of European descent can be traced back to the " Lost Tribes of Israel ". Adherents have committed hate crimes , bombings and other acts of terrorism, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing . Its influence ranges from

2028-893: The Hamas Charter 's apparent advocacy of genocidal aspirations . In the periods of 1994–1996 and 2001–2007, Hamas orchestrated a series of suicide bombings , primarily directed at civilian targets in Israel, killing over 1,000 Israeli civilians. Five of the terrorist groups that have been most active since 2001 are Hamas, Boko Haram , al-Qaeda , the Taliban and ISIL . These groups have been most active in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria. Eighty percent of all deaths from terrorism occurred in these five countries. In 2015 four Islamic extremist groups were responsible for 74% of all deaths from Islamic terrorism: ISIS , Boko Haram,

2106-655: The International Conference of Rome for the Social Defense Against Anarchists , the first international conference against terrorism . According to Bruce Hoffman of the RAND Corporation , in 1980, 2 out of 64 terrorist groups were categorized as having religious motivation while in 1995, almost half (26 out of 56) were religiously motivated with the majority having Islam as their guiding force. Depending on

2184-504: The Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups to the anti-government militia and sovereign citizen movements . Terrorist acts frequently have a political purpose based on self-determination claims, ethnonationalist frustrations, single issue causes (like abortion or the environment), or other ideological or religious causes that terrorists claim are a moral justification for their violent acts. Individuals and groups choose terrorism as

2262-1298: The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in pre-war Poland , the Shining Path in Peru under Alberto Fujimori , the Kurdistan Workers Party when Turkey was ruled by military leaders and the ANC in South Africa. According to Boaz Ganor, "Modern terrorism sees the liberal democratic state, in all its variations, as the perfect launching pad and a target for its attacks. Moreover, some terrorist organizations—particularly Islamist-jihadist organizations—have chosen to cynically exploit democratic values and institutions to gain power and status, promote their interests, and achieve internal and international legitimacy". Jihadist militants have shown an ambivalent view towards democracy, as they both exploit it for their ends and oppose it in their ideology. Various quotes from jihadist leaders note their disdain for democracy and their efforts to undermine it in favor of Islamic rule. Democracies, such as Japan,

2340-753: The Palestinian airplane hijackings in 1970 and the 1975 Dutch train hostage crisis . Specific political or social causes have included: Causes for right-wing terrorism have included white nationalism , ethnonationalism , fascism, anti-socialism, the anti-abortion movement , and tax resistance . Sometimes terrorists on the same side fight for different reasons. For example, in the Chechen–Russian conflict secular Chechens using terrorist tactics fighting for national independence are allied with radical Islamist terrorists who have arrived from other countries. Various personal and social factors may influence

2418-587: The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report on domestic terrorism in the United States. The report (titled The Age of the Wolf ) analyzed 62 incidents and found that, between 2009 and 2015, "more people have been killed in America by non-Islamic domestic terrorists than jihadists ." The "virulent racist and antisemitic " ideology of the ultra-right wing Christian Identity movement

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2496-598: The University of Maryland, College Park , has recorded more than 61,000 incidents of non-state terrorism, resulting in at least 140,000 deaths between 2000 and 2014. Various organizations have used terrorism to achieve their objectives. These include left-wing and right-wing political organizations, nationalist groups , religious groups , revolutionaries , and ruling governments . In recent decades, hybrid terrorist organizations have emerged, incorporating both military and political arms. The term "terrorism" itself

2574-755: The 16th century has also been described as a reign of terror. The terms "terrorism" and "terrorist" gained renewed currency in the 1970s as a result of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Basque separatist group, ETA , and the operations of groups such as the Red Army Faction . Leila Khaled was described as a terrorist in a 1970 issue of Life magazine. A number of books on terrorism were published in

2652-427: The 1970s. The topic came further to the fore after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and again after the 2001 September 11 attacks and the 2002 Bali bombings . No definition of terrorism has gained universal agreement. Challenges emerge due to the politically and emotionally charged nature of the term, the double standards used in applying it, and disagreement over the nature of terrorist acts and limits of

2730-498: The 2024 shooting in a Windor, Ga highschool resulted in four deaths, Education Week analyzed the subject in the article, "Why responding to student threats is so complicated." This case had reports to the FBI in 2023, but these reports did not lead to a conclusive identification of the then 13-year-old boy who about a year later used an AR-15 style gun at Apalachee High School. The article looks at how there were many systems in play between

2808-798: The FBI Atlanta Field Office, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office that alerted that areas schools, and then the Barrow County School District that was next to Jackson County but it wasn't determined if they got the warning, and no threat assessment team was in place at the school where the shooting happened. Federal data says for the 2023-2024 school year eighty-five percent of public schools have behavioral threat assessment teams or something similar. Issues arise with different state laws and wide variation in what practices they use (evidence based

2886-667: The French Revolution of the late 18th century but became widely used internationally and gained worldwide attention in the 1970s during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the Basque conflict and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict . The increased use of suicide attacks from the 1980s onwards was typified by the 2001 September 11 attacks in the United States. The Global Terrorism Database , maintained by

2964-642: The Middle East. Their activities in Lebanon during the 1980s garnered support among local Shiites , leading to the rise of smaller terrorist groups, notably the Islamic Jihad . Hamas , the main Islamist movement in the Palestinian territories , was formed by Palestinian imam Ahmed Yassin in 1987. Some scholars, including constitutional law professor Alexander Tsesis , have voiced concerns over

3042-548: The September 11 attacks, Bush declared the 2003 invasion of Iraq to be part of the War on Terror. The resulting backlash and instability enabled the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and the temporary creation of an Islamic caliphate holding territory in Iraq and Syria, until ISIL lost its territory through military defeats. Attacks used to draw international attention to struggles that are otherwise unreported have included

3120-688: The Taliban, and al-Qaeda, according to the Global Terrorism Index 2016. Since approximately 2000, these incidents have occurred on a global scale, affecting not only Muslim-majority states in Africa and Asia, but also states with non-Muslim majority such as United States , United Kingdom , France , Germany , Spain , Belgium , Sweden , Russia , Australia , Canada , Sri Lanka , Israel , China , India and Philippines . Such attacks have targeted both Muslims and non-Muslims, however

3198-628: The United Kingdom, the United States , Israel , Indonesia , India , Spain , Germany , Italy and the Philippines , have all experienced domestic terrorism. While a democratic nation espousing civil liberties may claim a sense of higher moral ground than other regimes, an act of terrorism within such a state may cause a dilemma: whether to maintain its civil liberties and thus risk being perceived as ineffective in dealing with

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3276-511: The age—such as the invention of dynamite, which they were the first anarchist group to make widespread use of —enabled them to strike directly and with discrimination. In 1920 Leon Trotsky wrote Terrorism and Communism to justify the Red Terror and defend the moral superiority of revolutionary terrorism . The assassination of the Empress of Austria Elisabeth in 1898 resulted in

3354-439: The article states the assessments done that year produced mixed results. The main takeaways are that better data needs to be gathered by both states and school districts to ensure fairness, that threat assessments need to be fully funded to offer support to struggling students, that sixty-four percent of the student threats studied were transient, and that Black students were disproportionately referred for threat assessments. After

3432-417: The assumed relevance of "Thuggee" to the study of modern terrorism is taken for granted. Yet the significance of the article is not simply a matter of citations―it has also provided the foundation for what has become known as the "New Terrorism" paradigm. While Rapoport did not suggest which late 20th century groups might exemplify the implied recurrence of "holy terror", Bruce Hoffman, recognized today as one of

3510-645: The country, the political system, and the time in history, the types of terrorism are varying. In early 1975, the Law Enforcement Assistant Administration in the United States formed the National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals. One of the five volumes that the committee wrote was titled Disorders and Terrorism , produced by the Task Force on Disorders and Terrorism under

3588-578: The direction of H. H. A. Cooper, Director of the Task Force staff. The Task Force defines terrorism as "a tactic or technique by means of which a violent act or the threat thereof is used for the prime purpose of creating overwhelming fear for coercive purposes". It classified disorders and terrorism into seven categories: Other sources have defined the typology of terrorism in different ways, for example, broadly classifying it into domestic terrorism and international terrorism , or using categories such as vigilante terrorism or insurgent terrorism. Some ways

3666-505: The district and their son feeling singled out and criminalized. The "threat" was eventually determined to be a misunderstanding. The book "Trigger Points" by Mark Follman (a Mother Jones national affairs editor) covers threat assessments and traces them to an awareness of stalking behavior after the murder of John Lennon and shooting of Ronald Reagan. Follman elaborates how the field of behavioral threat assessment first grew out of Secret Service and FBI serial-killer investigations. His thesis

3744-414: The level understood as a normal alert level would have been considered a higher level years ago, but because of the continual threat, a high threat level is now considered as the "baseline." Alerts are issued under the categories of "elevated," "intermediate," or "imminent." According to Napolitano, "When [the Department of Homeland Security has] information about a specific, credible threat, [it] will issue

3822-565: The main driver behind these trends. The emergence of Hezbollah in 1982 marked a pivotal moment in terrorism's history. The Shiite Islamist group, rooted in Lebanon , drew inspiration from the Iranian Revolution and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini 's teachings , responding to the 1982 Lebanon War . Beyond pursuing revolutionary goals, Hezbollah members were deeply concerned about the social conditions of Shiite communities across

3900-571: The majority affect Muslims themselves. Terrorism in Pakistan has become a great problem. From the summer of 2007 until late 2009, more than 1,500 people were killed in suicide and other attacks on civilians for reasons attributed to a number of causes—sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims ; easy availability of guns and explosives; the existence of a " Kalashnikov culture"; an influx of ideologically driven Muslims based in or near Pakistan , who originated from various nations around

3978-653: The personal choice of whether to join a terrorist group or attempt an act of terror, including: A report conducted by Paul Gill, John Horgan and Paige Deckert found that for "lone wolf" terrorists: Ariel Merari , a psychologist who has studied the psychological profiles of suicide terrorists since 1983 through media reports that contained biographical details, interviews with the suicides' families, and interviews with jailed would-be suicide attackers , concluded that they were unlikely to be psychologically abnormal. In comparison to economic theories of criminal behaviour, Scott Atran found that suicide terrorists exhibit none of

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4056-491: The plaintiff, Bowe Cleveland, who was shot in the chest. There have been more incidents covered by the media where bias may have effected students lives when they were determined to be threats as shown in cbs8.com articles about the long-term stigma of falsely being determined a threat and a twelve-year-old being arrested and subsequently charged with a felony regarding his Snapchat message in San Diego, California. There

4134-451: The populace. To avoid detection, a terrorist will look, dress, and behave normally until executing the assigned mission. Some claim that attempts to profile terrorists based on personality, physical, or sociological traits are not useful. The physical and behavioral description of the terrorist could describe almost any normal person. The majority of terrorist attacks are carried out by military age men, aged 16 to 40. Groups not part of

4212-411: The problem; or alternatively to restrict its civil liberties and thus risk delegitimizing its claim of supporting civil liberties. For this reason, homegrown terrorism has started to be seen as a greater threat, as stated by former CIA Director Michael Hayden. This dilemma, some social theorists would conclude, may very well play into the initial plans of the acting terrorist(s); namely, to delegitimize

4290-564: The propaganda tactics used by terrorists. Some security organizations designate these groups as violent non-state actors . A 2007 study by economist Alan B. Krueger found that terrorists were less likely to come from an impoverished background (28 percent versus 33 percent) and more likely to have at least a high-school education (47 percent versus 38 percent). Another analysis found only 16 percent of terrorists came from impoverished families, versus 30 percent of male Palestinians, and over 60 percent had gone beyond high school, versus 15 percent of

4368-425: The public and that the NTAS will provide alerts "specific to the threat" with "a specified end date." On December 16, 2015, Secretary Jeh Johnson activated the bulletin capability for the first time. The Department of Homeland Security added an intermediate threat level in 2015, after the department identified a "new phase" in the global terrorist threat against the homeland. The Homeland Security Advisory System

4446-423: The public. It also outlines steps to take in response to a particular terrorist threat. Individual threat alerts are issued for a specific amount of time, and the threat alert then automatically expires. If new information becomes available, the threat alert may be extended. Information on whether the threat has been extended or is expiring is distributed to the public in the same way that the original notification

4524-455: The right to self-determination . Harvard law professor Richard Baxter , a leading expert on the law of war, was a skeptic: "We have cause to regret that a legal concept of 'terrorism' was ever inflicted upon us. The term is imprecise; it is ambiguous; and above all, it serves no operative legal purpose." Different legal systems and government agencies employ diverse definitions of terrorism, with governments showing hesitation in establishing

4602-672: The secular Irgun were among the Zionist groups labelled as terrorist organisations by the British authorities and United Nations , for violent terror attacks against Britons and Arabs. Another extremist group, the Lehi , openly declared its members as "terrorists". Historian William Cleveland stated many Jews justified any action, even terrorism, taken in the cause of the creation of a Jewish state. In 1995, Yigal Amir assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin . For Amir, killing Rabin

4680-600: The socially dysfunctional attributes—such as fatherless, friendless, jobless situations—or suicidal symptoms. By which he means, they do not kill themselves simply out of hopelessness or a sense of 'having nothing to lose'. Abrahm suggests that terrorist organizations do not select terrorism for its political effectiveness. Individual terrorists tend to be motivated more by a desire for social solidarity with other members of their organization than by political platforms or strategic objectives, which are often murky and undefined. Michael Mousseau shows possible relationships between

4758-469: The state and cause a systematic shift towards anarchy via the accumulation of negative sentiments towards the state system. The perpetrators of acts of terrorism can be individuals, groups, or states. According to some definitions, clandestine or semi-clandestine state actors may carry out terrorist acts outside the framework of a state of war. The most common image of terrorism is that it is carried out by small and secretive cells , highly motivated to serve

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4836-800: The state apparatus of in opposition to the state are most commonly referred to as a "terrorist" in the media. According to the Global Terrorism Database, the most active terrorist group in the period 1970 to 2010 was Shining Path (with 4,517 attacks), followed by Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), Irish Republican Army (IRA), Basque Fatherland and Freedom (ETA), Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Taliban , Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam , New People's Army , National Liberation Army of Colombia (ELN), and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Israel has had problems with religious terrorism even before independence in 1948. During British mandate over Palestine ,

4914-532: The threat assessment surrounding the Russian conflict with Ukraine was not anywhere near the actual outcome. Senator King commented that additional arms could have been sent by the U.S. government more quickly to aid Ukraine defense if a more reliable assessment would have been performed. Many U.S. states require schools have threat assessmentsincluding Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, and Washington state, according to

4992-495: The type of economy within a country and ideology associated with terrorism. Many terrorists have a history of domestic violence. Terrorism is most common in nations with intermediate political freedom, and it is least common in the most democratic nations. Some examples of terrorism in non-democratic nations include ETA in Spain under Francisco Franco (although the group's activities increased sharply after Franco's death),

5070-424: The typology of terrorism may be defined are: According to the Global Terrorism Index by the University of Maryland, College Park , religious extremism has overtaken national separatism and become the main driver of terrorist attacks around the world. Since 9/11 there has been a five-fold increase in deaths from terrorist attacks. The majority of incidents over the past several years can be tied to groups with

5148-534: The upside of threat assessments can be a warmer school community when struggling students get support. A California case that challenged the practice of threat assessments was the Taft Union case covered in the Psychology Today article "Threat Assessment Team Negligence: The Taft Union Case." This article outlines steps to avoid negligence in threat assessments based on a school shooting where in 2013

5226-585: The world and the subsequent war against the pro-Soviet Afghans in the 1980s which blew back into Pakistan; the presence of Islamist insurgent groups and forces such as the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba. On July 2, 2013, in Lahore , 50 Muslim scholars of the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) issued a collective fatwa against suicide bombings, the killing of innocent people, bomb attacks, and targeted killings declaring them as Haraam or forbidden. In 2015,

5304-437: The world's leading terrorism experts, did not hesitate to do so. A decade after Rapoport's article. Hoffman picked up the mantle and taking the three case studies as inspiration, he formulated a model of contemporary "holy terror" or, as he defined it, "terrorism motivated by a religious imperative". Completely distinct from "secular terrorists", Hoffman argued that "religious terrorists" carry out indiscriminate acts of violence as

5382-517: The years, much research has been conducted to distill a terrorist profile to explain these individuals' actions through their psychology and socio-economic circumstances. Some specialists highlight the lack of evidence supporting the idea that terrorists are typically psychologically disturbed. The careful planning and detailed execution seen in many terrorist acts are not characteristics generally associated with mentally unstable individuals. Others, like Roderick Hindery, have sought to discern profiles in

5460-436: The yellow ("elevated") and orange ("high") levels. Mississippi Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson said that the color codes were often better at causing "Americans to be scared" rather than at telling citizens "the reason, how to proceed, or for how long to be on alert." The color-coded system has also been ridiculed by television comedians and shows such as Saturday Night Live . In July 2009, Napolitano created

5538-455: Was Narodnaya Volya , founded in Russia in 1878 as a revolutionary anarchist group inspired by Sergei Nechayev and " propaganda by the deed " theorist Carlo Pisacane . The group developed ideas—such as targeted killing of the 'leaders of oppression', which were to become the hallmark of subsequent violence by small non-state groups, and they were convinced that the developing technologies of

5616-664: Was a modern phenomenon until David C. Rapoport published his seminal article Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions in 1984. Rapoport proposed three case studies to demonstrate "ancient lineage" of religious terrorism, which he called "sacred terror": the "Thugs" , the Assassins and the Jewish Sicarii Zealots . Rapoport argued religious terrorism has been ongoing since ancient times and that "there are signs that it

5694-547: Was an exemplary act that symbolized the fight against an illegitimate government that was prepared to cede Jewish Holy Land to the Palestinians. Members of Kach , a Jewish ultranationalist party, employed terrorist tactics in pursuit of what they viewed as religious imperatives. Israel and a few other countries have designated the party as a terrorist group. Threat assessment Threat assessments are commonly conducted by government agencies such as FBI and CIA on

5772-515: Was announced on January 27, 2011, by Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano, during a speech at George Washington University . Her official announcement followed reports about the NTAS that had surfaced the day before. Introducing the National Terrorism Advisory System, Napolitano said, "Today I announce the end of the old system of color-coded alerts. In its place, we will implement a new system that's built on

5850-425: Was created in response to the 9/11 attacks by the George W. Bush administration . After its announcement, Peter T. King , a Republican Representative from New York , said that the color-based assessments were useful at the time of their creation but that a more specific system was now needed. The five-level color system has been criticized as being vague and ineffective, and alert levels have rarely changed from

5928-731: Was made. Terrorism Terrorism , in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants (mostly civilians and neutral military personnel ). There are various different definitions of terrorism , with no universal agreement about it. Different definitions of terrorism emphasize its randomness , its aim to instill fear , and its broader impact beyond its immediate victims. Modern terrorism, evolving from earlier iterations, employs various tactics to pursue political goals, often leveraging fear as

6006-454: Was not accepted. In 2006, it was estimated that there were over 109 different definitions of terrorism. Early published studies like Paul Wilkinson considered terrorism a product of 19th-century revolutionary politics. Technological developments like the pistol and dynamite made possible the relentless onslaught of successful attacks and assassinations that shook the 19th-century. Scholars of terrorism had largely assumed that terrorism

6084-609: Was originally used to describe the actions of the Jacobin Club during the " Reign of Terror " in the French Revolution . "Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible", said Jacobin leader Maximilien Robespierre . In 1795, Edmund Burke denounced the Jacobins for letting "thousands of those hell-hounds called Terrorists ... loose on the people" of France. John Calvin 's rule over Geneva in

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