Career moves: Reflections on the Irish gunman

Abstract

The article, based on a generation of contacts with the militant Irish republican movement in general and the Provisional IRA in particular, focuses on: who becomes a gunman and why; who is chosen as a gunman by the leadership and why; what are the characteristics of an active service volunteer; what and who make a good gunman and why—the virtues, characteristics, and craft of the contemporary Irish gunmen; and the result of a gunman's career for the movement, the opposition, and the individual.     

The phenomenon of suicide bombing: a review of psychological and nonpsychological factors

This article reviews the literature on the phenomenon of suicide bombing. It addresses the question of just how much a psychological understanding of the individuals involved can aid in prevention. The article looks at historical, epidemiological, and cultural perspectives and compares the nonpsychological and psychological approaches to suicide bombing. On the basis of the material available it seems that social processes such as group-dynamic indoctrination and political factors are decisive in analyzing this problem. Cultural, nationalistic, and religious factors are important. The conclusion is that in suicidal bombing, suicide is instrumental in the context of war, not in the context of psychopathology. Suicide bombing is instrumental in realizing fatalities, and it is only one of many weapons. The act of killing in warfare is more important to understanding suicidal terrorism than the act of suicide. This explains why psychological profiling of suicidal terrorists has to date not been successful.     

Attitudes toward suicide bombing in Pakistan

Although suicide bombing is a historical phenomenon, there has been a recent upsurge in such incidents. In Pakistan, over the last year, more than 1,000 people have been killed in suicide bombing incidents. Assessing the attitudes and perceptions of people toward suicide bombing can help understand some of the root causes of this phenomenon. In this pilot study, we conducted a cross-sectional survey of people (N = 215) in Karachi, Pakistan, to assess their attitudes and perceptions toward suicide bombing. The majority of the respondents condemned suicide bombing and disagreed with the notion that Islam or any other religion supports it. Belonging to the Sunni Muslim sect and strong adherence to religion predicted support for suicide bombing. The majority believed suicide bombing to be a result of religious fundamentalism. Opinion was divided as to whether suicide bombers have an underlying psychiatric illness. Further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to determine the attitudes and perceptions of the Pakistani population regarding this important issue.     

The wto in Bali: what mc9 means for the Doha Development Agenda and why it matters

The conclusion of the World Trade Organization’s (wto) ninth ministerial meeting – held in Bali 3–7 December 2013 – is at one and the same time momentous, marginal and business-as-usual. It is momentous because it marks the first multilateral agreement reached in the wto since the organisation began operations on 1 January 1995; it is marginal because the deal reached will have only a limited impact on the global trading system; and it is business as usual because the Bali package will be of disproportionally greater value to the industrial states than to their developing and least developed counterparts. We examine what happened in Bali, covering the principal issues at stake and the content of the outcome, what this means for the wto and for the Doha Development Agenda (dda), and why it all matters. We argue that, while the Bali ministerial is significant and the agreements reached important, the conclusion of the meeting and the package agreed represent only a limited movement forward in addressing the fundamental problems and inequities of the wto system.     

Imam Samudra's Justification for Bali Bombing 1

The primary objective of this article is to provide a map of Imam Samudra's thinking behind Bali bombing I as written in his book Aku Melawan Teroris to those who are not able to read the book in its original Indonesian language with an assumption that counterideological effort cannot be executed effectively without understanding the ideas held by terrorism perpetrators. To add value, the article also offers a comparative study between Samudra's thinking and Al Qaeda's ideology. It then points out and provides brief alternative viewpoints to Samudra's thinking. The article ends with some policy recommendations pertaining to counterideological work.     

A method of estimating the distribution of farm incomes in Turkey∗

The ‘naive’ idea current among many of the older nationalists of the Third World regarding the de‐industrializing effect of western capitalism on their countries is confirmed by the analysis of occupational data relating to the State of Bihar in India. Similar evidence is also available for Egypt and China. If we shift from models of what can ideally happen under capitalism in its international aspects and look at what actually happened until, say, 1914, we find that it often had opposite effects on the advanced capitalist countries and their overseas offshoots, and on the colonial or semi‐colonial economies of the Third World in respect of industrial employment, investment in productive assets and distribution of income. Technological change even today often carries highly disruptive and inegalitarian consequences for Third World countries. In the light of such experience with market‐orientated growth, an alternative model is suggested in which development proceeds by localized economic activities, distributing incomes and opportunities equally and keeping out ‘backwash’ effects on other regions. One major task of the economist in the future will be to explore the inner logic of such a ‘paradigm’, suggest the means of implementing the model, and ferret out possible contradictions. The Chinese (and perhaps Vietnamese) experience may serve as an example or laboratory for such explorations.     

The Privatization Process At The Irish Sugar Company – Logical Incrementalism Or Ensemble Des Jeux?

This article presents an empirical analysis of the privatization process at Comhlucht Siuicre Eireann Teoranta (CSET), the Irish Sugar Company. The CSET privatization was significant in being the first in the modern Irish political context. It was also significant in that the primary momentum for the process was generated and sustained by strategic action at firm level. Yet, it was a transformation in which firm strategists were rarely in full control of events, and one that had national as well as organizational implications. The analysis suggests that even the most robust of firm-level models of change alone provides an inadequate guide to fully understanding such processes. It examines the case for viewing them through a more multi-level perspective.     

Patriotic history and anti-LGBT rhetoric in Zimbabwean politics

Over the past 20 years, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his political party, Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), have relied heavily on political rhetoric that demonizes lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. In this paper, it is argued that the anti-LGBT political rhetoric in Zimbabwe is part of a larger program known as “patriotic history,” which emphasizes a particular kind of Zimbabwean identity to legitimize the continued rule of Mugabe and ZANU-PF. The value of combining patriotic history and political homophobia emerges out of the unique political and economic context which Mugabe’s regime found itself unable to adequately address. To illustrate how and why this has happened, the paper focuses on two key incidents: the 1995 Zimbabwe International Book Fair, and the public conversation over writing a new constitution between 2010 and 2013.     

THE THATCHER GOVERNMENT, THE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT INITIATIVE, AND THE 'NEW CML SERVICE'

The Thatcher era has been a traumatic one for the career Civil Service, so much so that one leading civil servant has suggested that the order of change is such that a 'new Civil Service' is emerging. This paper examines, first, interpretations of what has happened to the Civil Service under the Thatcher government; next, it reviews the developments relating to the economy programme and the Financial Management Initiative; then it considers the current state of the Civil Service pay and promotion system; finally, it concludes that thus far at least, essentially, the 'old Civil Service' has survived.     

COUNCILLOR/OFFICER RELATIONS IN IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT: ALTERNATIVE MODELS

The models of Irish local politics that dominate the literature offer inadequate explanations of the elected politiciad officer relationship. This article analyses the behaviour of the most senior local officer (the county or city manager) vis-à-vis elected representatives by first reviewing the relevant parts of four current models and then offering an alternative explanation by way of a fifth 'divergent interest' model. This final model is in part an amalgam of the other four though it also aims to disaggregate the notion of policy as it is currently used. In particular, it seeks to compromise between the neglect of substantive policy concerns inherent in the brokerage explanation and the epiphenomena1 model's ambivalence on the initiatives available to the manager. A feature of this model is that both managers and councillors have policy and administrative interests but in largely non-competitive areas. The divergence of interests between official and politician arises from differing perspectives established by both consideration of time-scale and socialization. The stability of their relationship is reinforced by the temporal fragmentation of the formal policy making process, and b the non-competing resources over which the manager and his councillors seek command: It is hoped that the divergent interests model offered here will be a useful tool in understanding the relationship between Irish politicians and bureaucrats at the local government level.     

Anatomy of a Riot: The Social Imaginary,Single Women,and Religious Violence in Niger

This article asks us to rethink the models that have conventionally represented the coming of Islam to Africa: that of a pre-established entity, given from the outside, coherent, monadic, unity, like an already formed identity. Using Lacanian challenges to conventional notions of identity, this article contests the above version of Islam, viewing it as an incarnation of the imago: always there, always obeying the logic of a model of transmission into Africa as a reception from abroad. The conventional representation of its irruption into Africa has always involved the misrecognition of an identity as a pre-existent, already-whole form, wait ing to be born, presumably in complete unity. What this model ignores is that the language and form of what it came to recognize and name as Islam were already there, and that the Islam that formed its newlyconscious sense of self was grounded in the same act of misrecognition as characterizes the mirror stage, that is, the stage at which the subject comes to state: “This is who I am.” In order to rethink the identitarian model, this article evokes the figure of the dead father, the “McGuffin” on which turns the drama of Hampaté Ba’s Wangrin and Sembène Ousmane’s Faat Kine. In both works, the act of exhuming the father’s body takes on a degree of fantastical importance because it situates the struggle between two competing mirror stage tendencies: narcissism and aggression, tendencies around which all forms of subject-identity formation take place.     

British Trials of Irish Nationalist Defendants: The Quality of Justice Strained

In what came to be controversial cases in the 1970s, British courts convicted individuals involved with IRA bombing campaigns and sent them to prison. The Guildford Four, Maquire Seven, and Birmingham Six were all convicted with faulty evidence and/or coerced confessions. Obtaining convictions for the bombings was important for the British government and British public opinion, since the guilty persons were caught and punished. There are few indications, however, that the government as a matter of policy decided to convict and imprison innocent people in order to mollify the public and achieve other political objectives. The original convictions were miscarriages of justice but not government policy. The delay in rectifying the original convictions, however, displayed more concern about potential negative effects for the political system if judicial errors were admitted.     

Karen Mossberger,Susan E. Clarke and Peter John (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Urban Politics

This article discusses the current state of the ethical framework for local government, which developed under the broader Modernisation Agenda of the Local Government Act 2000. It argues that the local government framework stands at a crossroads between the high road and the low road of ethics. Whereas the low road leads down the path of compliance and quantifiable performance measures, the high road is far more ambitious and leads to a culture of ethical governance. Recent developments - such as upcoming Section 66 regulations and the expansion of the role of the monitoring officer - have highlighted the choice between these two paths. This article will analyse the scope of unethical activity in local government, primarily in England, and map the regulatory terrain of the local government ethical framework. It identifies precursors to the framework and examines the way in which the Local Government Act 2000 built upon, and deviated from, the recommendations of the third report of the Committee for Standards in Public Life. Finally it discusses what has happened since the LGA 2000 Act was implemented, and assesses whether the framework is now poised to go down the high road of ethical culture or low road of compliance.     

The water and the fish: Public opinion and the provisional IRA in Northern Ireland

Abstract

The methods and goals of the Provisional IRA make it difficult to categorize it simply as a “terrorist” group. Its longevity and its affinity to Irish political culture suggest that it will not be defeated by force but by being rendered irrelevant. This is likely to come about as a result of the state demonstrating its own legitimacy among those sections of the Catholic community which have been understandably reluctant to give the state their full allegiance in the past. Survey evidence supports the contention that the Provisional IRA's goals and grievances are shared by many who would spurn their tactics.     

The Future Is Upon Us

T he race is on between environmental destruction on a global scale and sustainable solutions . T he finish line, in J ared D iamond's alarmed estimation, is only 50 years away . F or B ruce M au, sustainable solutions, already at hand, will win out . D iamond, too, hopes our civilization will learn from those in history who rose to their challenges and prospered, not suffer the fate of others who dithered and collapsed .     

Harsh State Repression as a Cause of Suicide Bombing: The Case of the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict

Although students of social movements have established that state repression strongly affects protesters’ choice of tactics, this finding has been ignored by most analysts of suicide bombing. Based on data collected from various sources, including 88 interviews the author conducted in 2006 with senior leaders of six Palestinian political organizations and close relatives and friends of Palestinian suicide bombers, this article argues that harsh state repression is a major cause of suicide bombing. It shows that understanding the effect of state repression is crucial to clarifying many of the unsolved puzzles concerning the rationales of organizations that employ suicide bombing, the motivations of individual suicide bombers, and the reasons why this tactic has become popular in some societies. The article concludes that there are three types of organizational rationales underlying the use of suicide bombing. Suicide bombing may be an extreme reaction to extreme state repression, a combined reactive and strategic action, or a purely strategic action. Different contexts and organizations typify these organizational rationales.     

Reconsidering Directly Elected Mayors in Ireland: Experiences from the United Kingdom and America

As part of the proposed modernisation of Irish local government a directly elected mayor with executive powers will be introduced in Dublin in 2011. It is then anticipated that the system of elected mayors will be extended to the whole country. However, it is not known what impact this new form of executive leadership will have on the prevailing system whereby city and county managers are dominant. Drawing from experiences in the United Kingdom and the United States, this paper suggests that Ireland needs clear, unambiguous mayoral models. As a political leader with executive powers it is imperative that the mayor's relationships with both the council and the city/county manager are tightly defined. A US-style recall option would also enhance the Irish system.     

From Munich to Boston,and from Theater to Social Media: The Evolutionary Landscape of World Sporting Terror

Modern terrorist attacks are usually characterized by intentionally extreme public displays of massive violence to get wide propagation, courtesy of the media. This article uses large-scale, world sporting events, from the 1972 Munich massacre to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing to document and analyze how terror acts grew and acclimatized into a reality in which the symbiotic, massive linkage between two gigantic entities—sports and the media—allows terrorism to prosper.     

The U.S. Navy's role in countering maritime terrorism

Abstract

There have been few spectacular acts of maritime terrorism. About ninety‐five percent of all incidents of what would be classified as transnational maritime terrorism involved bombings, hijackings, and “other” attacks. Nearly all of these took place when ships were in port, and the victims were predominantly merchant ships. Only a small number of terrorist attacks have been reported against men‐of‐war–none against U.S. Navy ships. Bombing, including various forms of mining, comprises the major threat to merchant ships, while the dangers of U.S. Navy ships would be aggravated by the presence of nuclear weapons or nuclear propulsion plants.

Counter terrorism as carried out by the U.S. Navy involves actions to deter or defeat direct terrorist activity (against the ship itself) and indirect activity (against other U.S. interests). U.S Navy ships are especially well organized, constructed, and equipped to deal with the former, but they would be virtually powerless to assist U.S. merchant ships against the most probable threats (bombing, hijacking, and attacks) in the most probable location (overseas ports).     

U.S. Policy on Terrorism: In Search of an Answer

An analysis of three years of suicide bombing data in Israel reveals an increase in such attacks through March 2002 followed by a steep decline through the end of 2003. The authors propose a terror-stock model that treats the suicide bombing attack rate as a function of the number of terrorists available to plan and execute suicide bombings. The intent of Israeli tactics such as targeted killings and preemptive arrests is to reduce the capacity of terror organizations to commit attacks. When fit to the data, this model suggests that the targeted killing of terror suspects sparks estimated recruitment to the terror stock that increases rather than decreases the rate of suicide bombings. Surprisingly, only the deaths of suspected terrorists, and not Palestinian civilians, are associated with such estimated recruitment. Although Israeli actions have reduced the rate of suicide bombings over time, it is preventive arrests rather than targeted killings that seem more responsible for this outcome.