Understanding Suicide Terrorism

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (04) ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
A. Speckhard

SummaryAs a terror tactic, suicide terrorism is one of the most lethal as it relies on a human being to deliver and detonate the device. Suicide terrorism is not confined to a single region or religion. On the contrary, it has a global appeal, and in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan it has come to represent an almost daily reality as it has become the weapon of choice for some of the most dreaded terrorist organizations in the world, such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. Drawing on over two decades of extensive field research in five distinct world regions, specifically the Middle East, Western Europe, North America, Russia, and the Balkans, the author discusses the origins of modern day suicide terrorism, motivational factors behind suicide terrorism, its global migration, and its appeal to modern-day terrorist groups to embrace it as a tactic.

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 103-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Jansen

Literacy is a personally acquired skill, and the way it is taught to a person changes how that person thinks. Thanks to David Henige historians of Africa are much more aware of how literacy influences memory and historical imagination, and particularly how literacy systems introduce linear concepts of time and space. This essay will deal with these two aspects in relation to Africa's most famous epic: Sunjata. This epic has gained a major literary status worldwide—text editions are taught as part of undergraduate courses at universities all over the world—but there has been little extensive field research into the epic. The present essay focuses on an even less studied aspect of Sunjata, namely how Sunjata is experienced by local people.Central to my argument is an idea put forward by Peter Geschiere, who links the upheaval of autochthony claims in Africa (and beyond) to issues of citizenship and processes of exclusion. He analyzes these as the product of feelings of “belonging.” Geschiere argues that issues of belonging should be studied at a local level if we are to understand how individuals experience autochthony. Analytically, Geschiere proposes shifting away from ”identity” by drawing from Birgit Meyer's work ideas on the aesthetics of religious experience and emotion; Meyer's ideas are useful to explain “how some (religious) images can convince, while other do not.”


Author(s):  
L. M. Sintserov

The article deals with international migration during the last decades of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st centuries and its economic-geographical analysis. The paper provides an overview of opinions about the dating of the contemporary era of global migration. It is shown that only after completion of spatial restructuring of migration processes and with the transition to sustainable growth of the share of international migrants in the world population, the modern increase of migration begins. On the basis of the UN statistics the main sources of migrants to the countries of Western Europe have been determined as well as shifts in the geographical structure of migrant population of the region that have taken place in the last quarter of a century. Two migration waves directed to the core of the European region from its southern and then from the eastern periphery are determined. The transformation of the USA population structure caused by the migration inflow from Latin America and Asia is described. The ratio of the main directions of global migration is shown: South-South, South-North, etc. At the same time, it is noted that a rather limited part of international migrations is associated with the asynchrony of demographic processes in the regions of the world. The article also discusses the remittances of migrants from developing countries to their homeland, forming powerful financial flows, which are second only to foreign direct investment. They play an especially important role in the economies of developing countries. The calculations show that the contribution of international migrants to the world economy far exceeds their share in the world population.


Afkaruna ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Wildan ◽  
Fatimah Husein

In the last two decades, the Muslim population in Western Europe has grown in unprecedented ways. At the broader regional level, there are approximately 25 million Muslims living in European Union member states as of 2016, which is estimated to increase to 35 million by 2050. The arrival of Muslims from various countries in the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans has brought about significant changes and issues socially, economically, as well as politically. Undeniably, some phenomena of discrimination and Islamophobia arise in almost all EU countries in various aspects of public life such as hijâb clothing, building mosques, and housing. Using a qualitative approach and field research, this article explores not only the historical accounts of the presence of Islam in several EU countries, but also the relations between Islam and the state. This research presents several cases of discrimination and Islamophobia and the internal dynamics within the Muslim communities as to the challenges of living in completely different atmosphere. Three countries, namely Austria, Belgium, and Germany are chosen to represent European Union countries. This study contributes to the discourse on the integration of Muslims in European culture and to the way EU countries could involve Muslims in constructing European Islam.


2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
VIVEKANANDA MUKHERJEE ◽  
GAUTAM GUPTA

Many terrorist organizations around the world seek shelter in forests and this paper tries to address the impact of this phenomenon on forest conservation. We construct a framework to measure the social loss when a terrorist lives in the forest and has full control over the forest resources. We also consider a game between the terrorists and the government when the government tries to combat them to recover the social loss. We characterize the equilibrium of the game in which the terrorist chooses the optimum rotation length of the forest and the government chooses the optimum combat-effort. We derive the impact of two popular policy measures such as strengthening the combat operations and restricting the sale of timber by the terrorist groups in the market, on forest conservation and find both to be negative.


Author(s):  
Vladimir Petrovich Patrakov

This paper has summarized the foundations of the author’s interdisciplinary concept of national cultures genocodes (NCG), which represents synthesis of of the Hegelian doctrine about national spirits (Volksgeist), the Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, system of hexagrams of the Ancient Chinese Book of Changes and Girt Hofstede’s measurements of national cultures. There are generic genes (archetypes) and species ones in the national genocodes. Generic genes are the cornerstone of 6 cultural kingdoms, and specific genes — separate national cultures. All countries measured by Hofstede are divided into 6 cultural kingdoms. Kingdoms of Qian, Creative (USA, Canada, Australia, Poland and Scandinavia), Lee, Radiance (Western Europe) and Gen, Keeping Still (Japan) have an individualistic genocode. Kingdoms Zhen, Arousing (Russia, the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Central Asia), Dui, Joyous (Africa, Latin America, Middle East) and Kun, Receptive (China, India and Southeast Asia) have a collectivist genocode. The basis of European civilization is the generic genes of the kingdoms of Lee, Qian and Zhen. The interaction between the generic and species genes of these kingdoms, their complementarity or conflict lies at the heart of alliances or wars between states. It has been shown that the greatest conflicts are observed between countries with individualistic and collectivist cultures, therefore the Balkan countries, Greece, Turkey and Russia throughout history were in a varying degree unfavorable relations with the Western European countries. But studying NCG will allow to minimize tension between countries, to understand a role and the place of each country in the World and in particular the European Cultural Space, to lay a way to the long-term union of peoples and states.


2015 ◽  
pp. 30-53
Author(s):  
V. Popov

This paper examines the trajectory of growth in the Global South. Before the 1500s all countries were roughly at the same level of development, but from the 1500s Western countries started to grow faster than the rest of the world and PPP GDP per capita by 1950 in the US, the richest Western nation, was nearly 5 times higher than the world average and 2 times higher than in Western Europe. Since 1950 this ratio stabilized - not only Western Europe and Japan improved their relative standing in per capita income versus the US, but also East Asia, South Asia and some developing countries in other regions started to bridge the gap with the West. After nearly half of the millennium of growing economic divergence, the world seems to have entered the era of convergence. The factors behind these trends are analyzed; implications for the future and possible scenarios are considered.


Author(s):  
Jeanne LIEDTKA

The value delivered by design thinking is almost always seen to be improvements in the creativity and usefulness of the solutions produced. This paper takes a broader view of the potential power of design thinking, highlighting its role as a social technology for enhancing the productivity of conversations for change across difference. Examined through this lens, design thinking can be observed to aid diverse sets of stakeholders’ abilities to work together to both produce higher order, more innovative solutions and to implement them more successfully. In this way, it acts as a facilitator of the processes of collectives, by enhancing their ability to learn, align and change together. This paper draws on both the author’s extensive field research on the use of design thinking in social sector organizations, as well as on the literature of complex social systems, to discuss implications for both practitioners and scholars interested in assessing the impact of design thinking on organizational performance.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 229-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Titus ◽  
Jeffrey G. Eaton ◽  
Joseph Sertich

The Late Cretaceous succession of southern Utah was deposited in an active foreland basin circa 100 to 70 million years ago. Thick siliciclastic units represent a variety of marine, coastal, and alluvial plain environments, but are dominantly terrestrial, and also highly fossiliferous. Conditions for vertebrate fossil preservation appear to have optimized in alluvial plain settings more distant from the coast, and so in general the locus of good preservation of diverse assemblages shifts eastward through the Late Cretaceous. The Middle and Late Campanian record of the Paunsaugunt and Kaiparowits Plateau regions is especially good, exhibiting common soft tissue preservation, and comparable with that of the contemporaneous Judith River and Belly River Groups to the north. Collectively the Cenomanian through Campanian strata of southern Utah hold one of the most complete single region terrestrial vertebrate fossil records in the world.


Author(s):  
R. Khasbulatov

The author examines Russia’s economic position in the world in the XXI century, China’s economic and political infl uence on other countries, and analyzes the economy of the European Union, classifi es the experience of Western Europe as the most successful, while taking into account miscalculations and mistakes.


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