I quess it is outrageous for women to have studies, let alone study something that requires looking into something as nasty as the concept of terrorism when they should be home cooking.

Personally, I applaude any and all attempts to tell me what "terrorism" is. It is difficult to offer an non-emotional explanation to a concept that has been supercharged with emotion whenever it has been used. Attempts to develop a value neutral definition seem doomed to end in self-validating meaningless constructions or dogmatic official lines that follow the premises from the establishment.

It is not sufficient to define terrorism as an act causing or intending to cause terror when this linguistic degradation obscures other forms of coercive conflict as well.

Most definitions of terrorism make no distiction between the many types of terror--state sponsored terror, state directed terror, anti-state terror, etc.

Any theoretical framework for the concept of terrorism is fraught with conceptual problems. If the women's studies group can turn on some light in a dark room, more power to them.

No clarity of vision can be possible if you accept the Weberian concept that violence is a defining characteristic of the state. And it follows from this that the state is exempted from being a terrorist, and further discussion is obviated. You will then relegate terrorism to the same limbo as obscenity- you can't define it, but you know what it is when you see it. Through this type of filter it can be whatever you want it be.

The democratic state exists in a tension that balances the principles of coercion and consent to maintain legitimacy. It seems you would short cut the process by painting those that don't buy your idiocy as being antiAmerican. This sir, is disgraceful and a good example of why the isle in the House of Commons is one sword blade plus six inches in width.