ABSTRACT
Murray Miron's Oxford English Dictionary defines terrorism as "Government by intimidation as directed and carried out by the party in power in France during the Revolution of 1789-1794; the system of the 'Terror.' More practically motivated is the Terrorists Order propounded by the British authorities to deal with the situation in Northern Ireland. The definition of governmental terrorism tends to be somewhat subjective as is evident from the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the dispute between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Perhaps the most notorious examples of state-directed terrorism are to be found in the practices of Stalin's Russia, Adolf Hitler's Germany, or the so-called psychiatric hospitals of Brezhnev's Soviet Union. It would appear that states and their governments tend to take a somewhat similar hands-off approach towards terrorism alleged to have been committed by the authorities of a fellow member of the family of nations.
