The main focus of the Beyond the Kerb blog has always been the aspect of road use in general which I find—literally, in all too many cases—morbidly fascinating: people’s attitudes, which are manifested not just in people’s personal use of the roads, but also in the media and, most concerningly of all, law. But, occasionally, I mention cycling infrastructure.
October 2015
We Do Not Negotiate With Terrorists
It’s perhaps no surprise that contemporary definitions of the word “terrorism” have largely narrowed somewhat, but one of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions of “terrorism” still represents the broader usage:
The instilling of fear or terror; intimidation, coercion, bullying.
The first use of the term is believed to have been around 1794 and was in reference not to to the use of terror as a tool to undermine governments, but to the use of terror by governments themselves. Only a few years later it was being used in reference to the British government of the time.