Yeah but it is more politically convenient to discuss

The thing about terrorism is the sudden shock that comes with it. Someone is deliberately doing a terrible action. It mentally affects an entire nation.

I didn’t feel well for an entire week after Utoya, and I’m not even Norwegian.

The thing is: Terrorists are usually extremely stupid. It's kinda in the job description. Therefore a lot of them are caught before they can do much damage. Recent example from Germany: https://www.hessenschau.de/panorama/limburg-weilburg-17-jaehriger-soll-gewalttat-mit-waffen-und-sprengstoff-geplant-haben-v1,anklage-gewalttat-jugendliche-100.html

I'm not a big fan of the police (except when Sting is on the mic), but the authorities are doing a great job at catching them early.

Yeah right? Let's see a map showing all the deaths from bombs that have been dropped in the Middle East and North Africa in the same timeframe. While it's still a horrible thing to happen of course, it always amazes me how people in my country will act like a few people being killed in an attack is a huge tragedy. But then just treat mass deaths of civilians somewhere not in Europe like it's nothing

The Basque Country still belongs to Spain and Northern Ireland still belongs to the UK, so... no, I guess?

I don't know enough about that cluster in the Balkans to even speculate on it.

god that's stupid, sorry

Asking if terrorism works isn't a stupid question. It's a very impolite question (from the perspective of people in power), and maybe even heartless, but not stupid.

The Good Friday agreement was signed regarding Northern Ireland, so they definitely got something for their efforts.

It's not stupid at all. many do not reach their ultimate goal, except the revenge type attacks. But sometimes their deeds lead to unreasonably heightened security measures that negatively impact everyone in the region.

Now conspiracy theorists sometimes state that some attacks may be false flag to get those uncomfortable security measures in place. But I think it's rather politicians using the incident to further unpopular measures and please the ppl who bribed them.

Beslan and Moscow are both off the eastern edge of the map

Does the GTD include incidents of state terrorism? No, the GTD is limited to acts of non-state terrorism. One of the three necessary criteria for inclusion is that there must be sub-national perpetrators.

https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd-faqs#q3

I would assume this is why, as the prevailing theory is Lockerbie was sponsored by Libya

Wikipedia suggests the database isn't particularly academically sound either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Terrorism_Database