It was the most open atrocity of all time, a simple demonstration written on the sky which everyone in the world was invited to watch. - Neal Ascherson <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n19/mult2319.htm#ascherson>

"Our lives have changed" is a phrase often heard in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. But some have pointed out that our world had been changing for years unnoticed -- or noticed only by a small group of journalists, academics, and military and intelligence experts, whose job has been to track the development of terrorism, and especially the growth of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups.

The purpose of this site is to help acquaint you less with the events of 9-11 than with the broader cultural and historical background of terrorism. Thus this site focuses less on recent developments -- the latest actions in Afghanistan or the investigations of the anthrax outbreak -- than on analyses of the roots of those events which have had such a transformative effect on all of our lives.