Tag: IRA

2,247 words

Professor David Betz is an academic whose area of expertise includes civil war. His title is Professor of War in the Modern World, and he teaches at King’s College, London, a highly respected university. He has been doing the rounds on alternative media for the last year or so predicting that civil war, or some variant, is imminent not just in the UK but across Europe. Recently, he made an interesting comment. If civil war or something similar starts in Europe, it will start in Northern Ireland. (more…)

Cellphone footage of the recent Clapham mob.

3,019 words

What is terrorism? There have been many attempts to provide a universally accepted definition. So many, in fact, that in the 1980s a Dutch academic named Alex P. Schmid reviewed over 100 such definitions and collated them into one:

Terrorism is the use (or threat) of violence against civilians, intended to create fear, in order to achieve political or ideological objectives.

Although academically respected, Schmid’s definition has never been universally accepted into legislation, and for an obvious reason. No nation wants to commit to a definition of terrorism which might one day describe their own actions. But Schmid’s definition seems perfectly serviceable, the key points being the use of violence, the ideological nature of the objective, and the fact that the victims are civilians, although that is not always the case. (more…)