Download or read book UDR Declassified written by Micheál Smith and published by Merrion Press. This book was released on 2022-03-23 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In UDR: Declassified, Micheál Smith reveals what the British establishment, the British government and its armed forces knew and had to say about the regiment in recently declassified files. From its formation in 1970 as a locally raised militia, the Ulster Defence Regiment developed into the largest regiment in the British Army. For unionists, service in the UDR was a noble act and often a family tradition; for nationalists, an encounter with the UDR was frequently hostile, often brutal, and sometimes fatal. To the British Army, they were ‘a dangerous species of ally’, and a classic militia regiment which was part of a long tradition of the use of such forces by the British Empire. It was viewed as ‘a safety valve’ for the tempers of loyalist extremism, and it also served as the main source of training, weaponry, and intelligence files for loyalists throughout the conflict. UDR: Declassified is an evidence-based exposé of the UDR through the declassified files of Number 10, the MoD, and the NIO. The denial of access to history is a part of a continuum of British state efforts to obscure its colonial past. This book is a testimony to the value of defying such efforts and uncovering the truths behind our traumatic past.
Download or read book Does Counter Terrorism Work written by Richard English and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-27 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: State responses to terrorism have shaped politics and society globally. But how far, and in what precise ways, has counter-terrorism actually succeeded? Based on the author's experience of studying terrorism and counter-terrorism for over three decades, Does Counter-Terrorism Work? offers an historically-grounded, systematic, and expert interrogation of the effectiveness of state responses to terrorist violence. Previous analyses have too often tended to be polarized, simplistic, and short-termist; they have also lacked a comprehensive framework against which properly to assess the (in)efficacy of counter-terrorist efforts over time. Richard English's pioneering book carefully defines what effective counter-terrorism would involve, and then tests that layered framework through cross-case, balanced, historically-focused comparison of important counter-terrorist campaigns. Drawing on a vast range of source material, Does Counter-Terrorism Work? assesses in detail the strategic, tactical, and personal or political achievements and failures evident this blood-stained field of work. The book is intended to stimulate debate and reflection among scholars, students, practitioners, and the wider public. Every one of us is daily affected by the choices made in counter-terrorist politics and policy. This deeply original book helps us to understand how society and politics have been shaped by such decisions in the past, and prepares us to respond more effectively in the future to one of the world's most important challenges.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace written by Laura McAtackney and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-13 with total page 732 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace is the first multi-authored volume to specifically address the many facets of the 30-year Northern Ireland conflict, colloquially known as the Troubles, and its subsequent peace process. This volume is rooted in opening space to address controversial subjects, answer key questions, and move beyond reductive analysis that reproduces a simplistic two community theses. The temporal span of individual chapters can reach back to the formation of the state of Northern Ireland, with many starting in the late 1960s, to include a range of individuals, collectives, organisations, understandings, and events, at least up to the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement in 1998. This volume has forefronted creative approaches in understanding conflict and allows for analysis and reflection on conflict and peace to continue through to the present day. With an extensive introduction, preface, and 45 individual chapters, this volume represents an ambitious, expansive, interdisciplinary engagement with the North of Ireland through society, conflict, and peace from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, theoretical frameworks, and methodological approaches. While allowing for rich historical explorations of high-level politics rooted in state documents and archives, this volume also allows for the intermingling of different sources that highlight the role of personal papers, memory, space, materials, and experience in understanding the complexities of both Northern Ireland as a people, place, and political entity.
Download or read book Counter Terrorism and State Political Violence written by Scott Poynting and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-16 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume aims to deepen our understanding of state power through a series of case studies of political violence arising from state ‘counter-terrorism’ strategies. The book examines how state counter-terrorism strategies are invariably underpinned by terror, in the form of state political violence. It seeks to answer three key questions: To what extent can counter-terror strategies be read as a form of state terror? How fundamental is state terror to the maintenance of a neo-liberal social order? What are the features of counter-terrorism that render it so easily reducible to state terror? In order to explore these issues, and to reach an understanding of what it means to say that the ‘war on terror’ is terror , the contributing authors draw upon case studies from a range of geographical contexts including the UK and Northern Ireland, the US and Colombia, and Sri Lanka and Tamil Eelam. Analysing these case studies from a psychological-warfare and hegemonic perspective, the book also includes two chapters from Noam Chomsky and John Pilger, which provide a global and historical context. This book will be of great interest to students of critical terrorism studies, political violence, war and conflict studies, sociology, international security and IR.
Download or read book The North Ireland Peace Process Today written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The 1981 Irish Hunger Strike written by Michael C. Mentel and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-02-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hunger strike of 1981 is regarded as one of the most tragic events in Irish history. Ten men died over a period of 217 days in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh (Maze) prison while exercising the most extreme form of civil disobedience available to them. The Troubles that gave rise to the hunger strike had roots in the centuries of socio-economic subjugation and religious persecution in Ireland. In 1971, the British government began internment without trial for persons suspected of belonging to paramilitary organizations. Eventually, the British government granted Special Category Status to these prisoners before later stripping it from the prisons by 1976, leading to a five-year prisoner protest that culminated in the 1981 hunger strike. This book critically examines declassified British government documents that detail how the government's policies led to the 1981 hunger strike, how Margaret Thatcher exacerbated the strike by refusing steps to end it, and how the hunger strike eventually led to peace in the north. Analysis also illustrates how the 1981 hunger strike, and the ten men who died on it, forced a revolutionary change in the political and governmental structure of the north and paved a road to peace that concluded with the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Download or read book Margaret Thatcher the Conservative Party and the Northern Ireland Conflict 1975 1990 written by Stephen Kelly and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first woman elected to lead a major Western power and the longest serving British prime minister for 150 years, Margaret Thatcher is arguably one the most dominant and divisive forces in 20th-century British politics. Yet there has been no overarching exploration of the development of Thatcher's views towards Northern Ireland from her appointment as Conservative Party leader in 1975 until her forced retirement in 1990. In this original and much-needed study, Stephen Kelly rectifies this. From Thatcher's 'no surrender' attitude to the Republican hunger strikes to her nurturing role in the early stages of the Northern Ireland peace process, Kelly traces the evolutionary and sometimes contradictory nature of Thatcher's approach to Northern Ireland. In doing so, this book reflects afresh on the political relationship between Britain and Ireland in the late-20th century. An engaging and nuanced analysis of previously neglected archival and reported sources, Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Party and the Northern Ireland Conflict, 1975-1990 is a vital resource for those interested in Thatcherism, Anglo-Irish relations, and 20th-century British political history more broadly.
Download or read book A State in Denial written by Margaret Urwin and published by Mercier Press Ltd. This book was released on 2016-10-07 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This meticulously researched book uses previously secret official documents to explore the tangled web of relationships between the top echelons of the British establishment, incl Cabinet ministers, senior civil servants, police/military officers and intelligence services with loyalist paramilitaries of the UDA & UVF throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Covert British Army units, mass sectarian screening, propaganda 'dirty tricks,' arming sectarian killers and a point-blank refusal over the worst two decades of the conflict, to outlaw the largest loyalist killer gang in Northern Ireland. It shows how tactics such as curfew and internment were imposed on the nationalist population in Northern Ireland and how London misled the European Commission over internment's one-sided nature. It focuses particularly on the British Government's refusal to proscribe the UDA for two decades – probably the most serious abdication of the rule of law in the entire conflict. Previously classified documents show a clear pattern of official denial, at the highest levels of government, of the extent and impact of the loyalist assassination campaign.
Download or read book Northern Ireland written by United States. Congress. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Odyssey written by Ron Culley and published by Grosvenor House Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following in the hallowed footsteps of Bryson, Fry and Palin, Ron Culley has produced a travel book that is at once fascinating, delightful and very funny. Whether writing about America's Route 66, the Arctic Circle, European rail journeys, Africa's Equator countries or points between, Culley entertains hugely. A must read!
Download or read book Lethal Allies British Collusion in Ireland written by Anne Cadwallader and published by Mercier Press Ltd. This book was released on 2013-10-25 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '. . . a well-written piece of investigative journalism that asks some deeply troubling questions . . .' - NY Journal of Books 'Cadwallader has written a brave, powerful and forensically detailed book about a shameful and denied aspect of our conflict's history.' - The Irish Times. 'Anne Cadwallader's remarkable book focusses on collusion in the British security forces (the RUC, the British Army, and the UDR) in the mid-Ulster "Murder Triangle". Over 120 people were killed by a loyalist gang operating in mid-Ulster and Cadwallader has created a convincing argument that collusion with certain elements of the security forces was crucial in the committing of these crimes and the lack of proper investigation into many of these crimes' - The Dublin Reader Farmers, shopkeepers, publicans and businessmen were slaughtered in a bloody decade of bombings and shootings in the counties of Tyrone and Armagh in the 1970s. Four families each lost three relatives; in other cases, children were left orphaned after both parents were murdered. For years, there were claims that loyalists were helped and guided by the RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment members. But, until now, there was no proof. Drawing on 15 years of research, and using forensic and ballistic information never before published, this book includes official documents showing that the highest in the land knew of the collusion and names those whose fingers were on the trigger and who detonated the bombs. It draws on previously unpublished reports written by the PSNI's own Historical Enquiries Team. It also includes heartbreaking interviews with the bereaved families whose lives were shattered by this cold and calculated campaign.
Download or read book Paramilitarism written by Ugur Ümit Üngör and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-03 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the deserts of Sudan to the jungles of Colombia, and from the streets of Belfast to the mountains of Kurdistan, paramilitaries have appeared in violent conflicts in very different settings. Paramilitaries are generally depicted as irregular armed organizations that carry out acts of violence against civilians on behalf of a state. In doing so, they undermine the state's monopoly of legitimate violence, while at the same time creating a breeding ground for criminal activities. Why do governments with functioning police forces and armies use paramilitary groups? This study tackles this question through the prism of the interpenetration of paramilitaries and the state. The author interprets paramilitarism as the ability of the state to successfully outsource mass political violence against civilians that transforms and traumatizes societies. It analyses how paramilitarism can be understood in global context, and how paramilitarism is connected to transformations of warfare and state-society relations. By comparing a broad range of cases, it looks at how paramilitarism has made a profound impact in a large number of countries that were different, but nevertheless shared a history of pro-government militia activity. A thorough understanding of paramilitarism can clarify the direction and intensity of violence in wartime and peacetime. The volume examines the issues of international involvement, institutional support, organized crime, party politics, and personal ties.
Download or read book Sights Sounds and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-07-29 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book unlocks the look, sound, smell, taste, and feel of justice for massive human rights abuses. Twenty-nine expert authors examine the dynamics of the five human senses in how atrocity is perceived, remembered, and condemned. This book is chockful of images. It serves up remarkably diverse content. It treks around the globe: from Pacific war crimes trials in the aftermath of the Second World War to Holocaust proceedings in contemporary Germany, France, and Israel; from absurd show trials in Communist Czechoslovakia to international courtrooms in Arusha, Phnom Penh, and The Hague. Readers embark on a journey that transcends myriad dimensions, including photographic representations of grandfatherly old torturers in Argentina, narco-trafficking in Mexico, colonialisation in India, disinformation and misinformation pixelated in cyberspace, environmental degradation in Cambodia, militarism in Northern Ireland, and civil rights activism in Atlanta. Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions reimagines what an atrocity means, reconsiders what drives the manufacture of law, and reboots the role of courtrooms and other mechanisms in the pursuit of justice. It unveils how law translates sensory experience into its procedures and institutions, and how humanistic inputs shape perceptions of right and wrong. This book thereby offers a refreshing primer on the underappreciated role of aesthetics, time, and emotion in the world of law. Drumbl and Fournet have done us all a great service in knitting together – in a single, powerfully imagined, volume – these essays about how we might experience the institutionalisation of judgment in atrocity trials. – Gerry Simpson, Professor of Public International Law, LSE Law School (London). Contributions to this volume offer a unique opportunity to delve into law’s hidden landscape using the primary reality of the five senses. – Marina Aksenova, Assistant Professor in Comparative and International Criminal Law, IE Law School (Madrid).
Download or read book Spying on the World written by Richard J. Aldrich and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-19 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than half a century, the Joint Intelligence Committee or 'JIC' has been a central component of the British Government's secret machinery. It represents the highest authority in the world of intelligence and acts as a broker between the spy and the policy-maker. From WWII to the War in Iraq, and from the Falklands to the IRA, it has been involved in almost every key foreign policy decision. This book reveals the declassified papers of the JIC, shining a light on the workings of Whitehall's secret world and the vital, previously unknown, role played by intelligence in pivotal events across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Download or read book How to Get It written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1993-06 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive guide to identifying and acquiring government-sponsored documents, maps, patents, specifications, and other resources. Describes each item and gives its source, acronym, series designation or short title, cost, where it is indexed, and telephone numbers to call for more information. It emphasizes research development, testing, and evaluation programs.
Download or read book Kitson s Irish War written by David Burke and published by Mercier Press Ltd. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British government has taken steps to halt the prosecution of soldiers responsible for the deaths of civilians in Northern Ireland, most of whom had no connection to paramilitary activities. These killings were part of a ruthless dirty war that commenced in 1970 when Brigadier Frank Kitson, a counter-insurgency specialist, was sent to Northern Ireland. Kitson had spent decades in Britain's colonies refining old, and developing new, techniques which he applied in Northern Ireland. He became the architect of a clandestine war, waged against Nationalists while ignoring Loyalist atrocities. Kitson and his colleagues were responsible for: •The establishment of the clandestine Military Reaction Force (MRF) which carried out assassinations on the streets of Belfast of suspected IRA members; •They unleashed the most violent elements of the Parachute Regiment [1 Para] to terrorise Nationalist communities which, they adjudged, were providing support for the Official and Provisional IRA; •Spreading black propaganda designed to undermine Republican but not Loyalist paramilitary groups; •Deployed psychological warfare techniques, involving the torture of internees; •Sent Kitson's 'Private Army' – Support Company of 1 Para - to Derry where they perpetrated the Bloody Sunday massacre. The British Widgery and Saville inquiries did not hold Kitson and his elite troops accountable for Bloody Sunday. Kitson's Irish War lays bare the evidence they discounted: Kitson's role in the events leading up to and surrounding that massacre; evidence from a deserter from 1 Para who joined the IRA; a deceitful MI5 agent; a courageous whistle blower whom the British state tried to discredit, and much more, all of which points to a motive for the attack on the Bogside. This book unlocks the some of the key secrets of the Dirty War that the British government is still determined to cover-up.
Download or read book Security the Environment and Emancipation written by Matt McDonald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-08-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an examination of the role of emancipation in the study and practice of security, focusing on the issue of environmental change. The end of the Cold War created a context in which traditional approaches to security could be systematically questioned. This period also saw a concerted attempt in IR to argue that environmental change constituted a threat to security. This book argues that such a notion is problematic as it suggests that a universal definition of security is possible, which prevents a recognition of security as a site of contestation, in which a range of actors articulate alternative visions of who or what is in need of being secured. If security is understood and approached in traditional terms - as the territorial preservation of the nation-state from external threat - then it is indeed difficult to see how environmental issues would benefit from being placed on states’ security agenda. If, however, security is defined in terms of the emancipation of the most vulnerable individuals from contingent structural oppressions, then drawing a relationship between environmental change and security may be beneficial for redressing those environmental issues and prioritising the needs of those most at risk from the manifestations of global environmental change. This book takes the limitations of contemporary approaches to the relationship between the environment and security as its starting point, and seeks to do two things. First, it aims to illustrate the ways in which arguments over approaches to environmental issues can be viewed as contestation over the meaning of 'security‘ in particular political contexts. Central here is the composition and assumptions of the dominant security discourse to emerge regarding those issues: a framework of meaning for the most important forms of action on behalf of a particular group, defining the terms for meaningful contestation and negotiation about security itself within that group. As such, the book attempts to illustrate the dynamics of competition over the meaning of security with reference to environmental issues, particularly focusing on instances of political change in the dominant security discourse through which that issue is approached. In the process the author points to the central role of these dominant security discourses in underpinning the most practically significant actions regarding environmental issues such as deforestation and global climate change. The book employs methodological tools that enable a focus on how particular frameworks of meaning are constituted and become dominant; how they provide a lens through which various issues are approached; and how discourses most consistent with redressing environmental change and the suffering of the most vulnerable might come to provide the framework through which security is viewed in particular contexts. This book will be of much interest to students of Critical Security Studies, geography, sociology, IR and Political Science in general.
