Jihadism, Foreign Fighters and Radicalization in the EU addresses the organizational and strategic changes in terrorism in Europe as a result of urban jihadism and the influx of foreign fighters of European nationality or residence. Examining the different types of responses to the treatment of radicalization and its consequences in the recruitment of young urban fighters and jihadists, this book offers a framework for understanding the process of violent radicalization. It critically analyses political and legal responses that have taken place within the European framework, whilst also examining a series of functional responses from social and behavioural psychology. This book then goes on to develop an explanatory model from an economic standpoint, exploring the need to adapt the fight against the financing of terrorism to the changes in the sources of financing jihadist cells and foreign fighters. Furthermore, the volume draws on experience from the prison sector to assess the process of radicalization and the possibilities of intervention. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book will be of great interest to students of terrorism and counter-terrorism, radicalization, European politics, radical Islam and security studies.

This book provides new insights on contemporary terrorism and media research, opening the door for fresh perspectives and trends exploring theories and concepts in the field. Advances in technology have increased the threat of terrorism, as the Internet has helped terrorists to recruit new members, plan their attacks, and amplify their messages. As technology continues to evolve, it is not difficult to imagine how the advanced information and technology of the new millennium could cause more terrifying realities in the world today. During this period of profound technological change, we need to understand the relationships between media, society, and the new paradigm of terrorism. In our global society where the war on terrorism knows no borders, countries are increasingly recognizing the importance of improving terrorism coverage domestically and globally. This book is a valuable resource, offering key directions for assessing the ongoing revolutionary changes and trends in communicating terrorism in the digital age. This book was originally published as a special issue of Mass Communication and Society.

Critical Terrorism Studies emerged around 2007, in the context of the rapidly intensifying War on Terror. It was in this era that "terrorism" became a "growth industry" which generated a huge amount of academic research as well as social and political activity. Yet a yawning gap developed between the actual material threat posed by terrorists, and the level of investment and activity devoted to responding to this threat. Similarly, the quality of terrorism research was noticeably weak and lacking in methodological rigour. Critical Terrorism Studies set out to explore the exceptional treatment of political violence, to challenge the political manipulation of terrorism fears and increase in draconian anti-terrorism legislation, and to address some of the conceptual and methodological failings of terrorism research. In the 10 years since the journal Critical Studies on Terrorism was launched, that context and mission remains as important as ever. This volume looks back on the achievements and failures of Critical Terrorism Studies in this period, as well as collecting state of the art research into terrorism discourse, queerness and the War on Terror, the Prevent Strategy, epistemology in terrorism studies, state repression, the ambiguous ends of militant campaigns, the epistemology of preventative counterterrorism, and the question of non-violent responses to terror. The chapters originally published in a special issue in Critical Studies in Terrorism.

Uniting the best of Michael Fagel and Jennifer Hesterman's books in the fields of homeland security and emergency management, the editors of this volume present the prevailing issues affecting the homeland security community today. Many natural and man-made threats can impact our communities-but these well-known and highly respected authors create order from fear, guiding the reader through risk assessment, mitigation strategies, community EOC planning, and hardening measures based upon real-life examples, case studies, and current research in the practice. As terrorist attacks and natural disasters continue to rock the world, Soft Targets and Crisis Management emphasizes the vulnerability of soft targets like schools, churches, and hospitals, and presents the methodology necessary to respond and recover in the event of a crisis in those arenas. Features: Based on ASIS award-winning texts Provides a multi-faceted look at crisis management principles Offers community-specific examples for diverse locales and threat centers Includes up-to-date case studies on soft target attacks from around the world A must-read for security, emergency management, and criminal justice professionals, Soft Targets and Crisis Management: What Emergency Planners and Security Professionals Need to Know is a crucial text for practitioners seeking to make the world a safer place for others.

This book examines potential synergies between the fields of Terrorism Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies. The volume presents theoretically- and empirically-informed contributions, which shed light on whether the two fields can inform each other on issues of mutual interest and importance. The book examines key themes including the conceptualisation(s) of peace and violence; the exceptionalisation of terrorist violence; the relationship between scholarship and political power; the dysfunctionality of the liberal peace and the opportunities offered by post-liberal peacebuilding frameworks; and the implications and challenges of cyber-terrorism and cyber-conflict. Furthermore, the book intends to be a launching pad for future debate on whether the recent 'critical' turn in terrorism studies can offer a pathway for peace studies to engage with the so far largely ignored question of power. Consisting of not only key scholars but also practitioners and policy makers, the contributors present a number of case studies, including Colombia, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country, and Iraq, where they explore the relationships between terrorism and peace and conflict approaches. They critically analyse the statist approach inherent in both terrorism approaches and liberal peacebuilding frameworks; the role of the grassroots levels of society; the inefficiency of simplistic frameworks of understanding and implementation; and the chains of governance from international (and transnational) actors to national actors and finally from national to local actors. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism studies, peace and conflict studies, IR and security studies.

The international system is becoming increasingly legalized, with legal arguments and legal advisors playing an increasingly important part in the state policymaking process. Presenting a practice-oriented theory of compliance with international law, this book shows how international law affects the behavior of increasingly lawyerized states in an ever more legalized world. By highlighting the legalization of international legitimation and the lawyerization of policymaking as the new engines of compliance, the book's analytical framework rethinks the relationship between state behavior and international law, and provides an empirical focus on security through the study of NATO's military intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999 and the changes in the US detention and interrogation programs in the "War on Terror." Relying on primary sources, the author demonstrates the effect of lawyerized decision making on international law compliance, reconstructing the strategies of (de-)legitimation used to show that international law is the hegemonic frame of reference in interstate debates. This book will be of interest to scholars of international relations, government studies, foreign service studies and lawyers employed in government work.

This edited volume offers a comparative and interdisciplinary analysis of interrogation and questioning in war and conflict in the twentieth century. Despite the current public interest and its military importance, interrogation and questioning in conflict is still a largely under-researched theme. This volume's methodological thrust is to select historical case studies ranging in time from the Great War to the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, and including the Second World War, decolonization, the Cold War, the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland and international justice cases in The Hague, each of which raises interdisciplinary issues about the role of interrogation. These case-studies were selected because they resurface previously unexplored sources on the topic, or revisit known cases which allow us to analyse the role of interrogation and questioning in intelligence, security and military operations. Written by a group of experts from a range of disciplines including history, intelligence, psychology, law and human rights, Interrogation in War and Conflict provides a study of the main turning points in interrogation and questioning in twentieth-century conflicts, over a wide geographical area. The collection also looks at issues such as the extent of the use of harsh techniques, the value of interrogation to military intelligence, security and international justice, the development of interrogation as a separate profession in intelligence, as well as the relationship between interrogation and questioning and wider society. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, counter-terrorism, international justice, history and IR in general.

Studying Muslim fundamentalisms, this book compares key movements, examining their commonalities, differences, and intricate relations, as well as their achievements and failures. Muslim fundamentalisms have the sympathy of approximately half of the Muslim population in the world. Yet, they are divided among themselves and are in a constant state of controversy. The research dwells on the leading fundamentalist movements, such as the Muslim Brothers, Tablighi-Jama'at, al-Qaeda, and ISIS, and illustrates how differently they think about the West and its culture, democracy, and women's presence in the public sphere. By identifying these trends, and studying them comparatively, the book enables the interested reader to make sense of the plethora of fundamentalist movements, which are otherwise lumped together by the media and are barely discernible for the reader. Whereas most studies of Muslim fundamentalism focus on organizational or militant actions that the movements perform, this study concentrates on their efforts to Islamize society through everyday life in a peaceful manner. Identifying the different strands of Muslim fundamentalisms, the book will be a key resource to a wide range of readers including researchers and students interested in politics, religious, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.

This book examines the permissibility and effectiveness of targeted killing in campaigns against terror. Targeted killing has become a primary counterterrorism measure used by several countries in their confrontation with lethal threats. The practice has been extensively used by the US in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, and by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. Several studies have already explored the difficult balance between achieving security while maintaining the liberties and rights of a country's civilians. This book goes a step further by seeking to examine whether maintaining those liberties by complying with legal standards and minimizing unintended deaths can be more effective for national security. Using targeted killing applied by Israel, in particular, as well as the United States during the first decade of the twenty-first century as case studies, this book explores that question and ultimately assesses whether compliance with legal standards can strengthen a state in its campaign against terrorism and thus provide stronger security. The book focuses on civilian-related criteria, hypothesizing that minimizing civilian casualties will maximize effectiveness in an asymmetric war setting. The conclusions are not limited to a specific tactic or theater, and if adopted might have far-reaching implications for how asymmetric warfare is strategized. This book will be of much interest to students of counter-terrorism, law, Middle Eastern studies, and security studies.

Suicide attacks have become the defining act of political violence of our age. From New York City to Baghdad, from Sri Lanka to Israel, few can doubt that they are a terrifying feature of an increasing number of violent conflicts. Since 1981, around 30 organizations throughout the world - some of them secular and others affiliated to radical Islam - have carried out more than 600 suicide missions. Although a tiny fraction of the overall number of guerrilla and terrorist attacks occurring in the same period, the results have proved significantly more lethal. This book is the first to shed real light on these extraordinary acts, and provide answers to the questions we all ask. Are these the actions of aggressive religious zealots and unbridled, irrational radicals or is there a logic driving those behind them? Are their motivations religious or has Islam provided a language to express essentially political causes? How can the perpetrators remain so lucidly effective in the face of certain death? And do these disparate attacks have something like a common cause? For nearly three years, this team of internationally distinguished scholars has pursued an unprejudiced inquiry, investigating organizers and perpetrators alike of this extraordinary phenomenon. Close comparisons between a whole range of cases raise challenging further questions: if suicide missions are so effective, why are they not more common? If killing is what matters, why not stick to 'ordinary' violent means? Or, if dying is what matters, why kill in the process? Making Sense of Suicide Missions contains a wealth of original information and innovative analysis which further our understanding of this chilling feature of the contemporary world in radically new and unexpected ways.

The Madrid train bombers, shoe-bomber Richard Reid, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the 9/11 attacks-all were led by men radicalized behind bars. By their very nature, prisons are intended to induce transformative experiences among inmates, but today's prisons are hotbeds for personal transformation toward terrorist beliefs and actions due to the increasingly chaotic nature of prison life caused by mass incarceration. In The Spectacular Few, Mark Hamm demonstrates how prisoners use criminal cunning, collective resistance and nihilism to incite terrorism against Western targets. A former prison guard himself, Hamm knows the realities of day-to-day prison life and understands how prisoners socialize, especially the inner-workings and power of prison gangs-be they the Aryan Brotherhood or radical Islam. He shows that while Islam is mainly a positive influence in prison, certain forces within the prison Muslim movement are aligned with the efforts of al-Qaeda and its associates to inspire convicts in the United States and Europe to conduct terrorist attacks on their own. Drawing from a wide range of sources-including historical case studies of prisoner radicalization reaching from Gandhi and Hitler to Malcolm X, Bobby Sands and the detainees of Guantanamo; a database of cases linking prisoner radicalization with evolving terrorist threats ranging from police shootouts to suicide bombings; interviews with intelligence officers, prisoners affiliated with terrorist groups and those disciplined for conducting radicalizing campaigns in prison-The Spectacular Few imagines the texture of prisoners' lives: their criminal thinking styles, the social networks that influenced them, and personal "turning points" that set them on the pathway to violent extremism. Hamm provides a broad understanding of how prisoners can be radicalized, arguing that in order to understand the contemporary landscape of terrorism, we must come to terms with how prisoners are treated behind bars.

Courageously stepping into charged terrain, this book casts a clear light on globalization and terrorism for what they are, not what some may wish them to be. Jamal R. Nassar carefully defines these twin concepts, placing them in historical as well as political context. Woven throughout the book is his central theme of the migration of dreams and nightmares. As some are able to take advantage of the opportunities of globalization, leaving others behind, they leave behind a legacy of unrealistic dreams. These unfulfilled hopes of the poor and oppressed often transform themselves into nightmares for the wealthy and powerful. This vicious cycle, the author argues, is often enhanced by globalization and effected by terrorism. Focusing on the key case studies of Palestine and Northern Ireland, Nassar applies their lessons to other examples of conflict including Iraq, Afghanistan, the Congo, Chechnya, and Colombia in order to internationalize our understanding of how globalization and terrorism operate in a range of situations. He also devotes a chapter to Islamist terrorism in a tour de force of incisiveness and balance. This book considers globalization and terrorism not only from the perspective of the major powers, but also introduces the views of those dominated by forces beyond their control. Yet even as the author offers a profound critique of Western hegemony, he conveys respect and hope for an enlightened global interdependence embracing the power of the dream over the nightmare."

The rise of political instability and terrorism necessitates a reassessment of various tourism policy issues. This book focuses upon evaluating the impact of terrorist political conflicts and other types of instability on the tourism sector and considers the practical implications for countries being adversely affected by these episodes. Over the last decades, tourism has been adversely affected by a wide range of problems such as economic crises, social conflicts, political instability, terrorism and wars. Each of these, and their consequences on tourism, confirms the need to understand more about potential mitigating policy interventions in different contexts. This book includes six chapters exploring a wide range of themes related to instability and tourism using innovative approaches and considering different countries for their research. Precisely, countries such as Turkey, Ukraine, Jordan, Egypt and Nepal are under analysis. The articles published in this special issue were written by authors affiliated with universities in the USA, New Zealand, Spain, Egypt, Jordan and Bulgaria. All selected papers underwent a rigorous double-blind review process before final revision and acceptance. The chapters were originally published in a special issue in the Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure & Events.

The world's leading expert on Osama bin Laden delivers for the first time the "riveting" (The New York Times) definitive biography of a man who set the course of American foreign policy for the 21st century and whose ideological heirs we continue to battle today. In The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergan provides the first reevaluation of the man responsible for precipitating America's long war with al-Qaeda and its decedents, capturing bin Laden in all the dimensions of his life: as a family man, as a zealot, as a battlefield commander, as a terrorist leader, and as a fugitive. The book sheds light on his many contradictions: he was the son of a billionaire yet insisted his family live like paupers. He adored his wives and children, depending on his two wives, both of whom had PhDs, to make critical strategic decisions. Yet, he also brought ruin to his family. He was fanatically religious but willing to kill thousands of civilians in the name of Islam. He inspired deep loyalty, yet, in the end, his bodyguards turned against him. And while he inflicted the most lethal act of mass murder in United States history, he failed to achieve any of his strategic goals. In his final years, the lasting image we have of bin Laden is of an aging man with a graying beard watching old footage of himself, just as another dad flipping through the channels with his remote. In the end, bin Laden died in a squalid suburban compound, far from the front lines of his holy war. And yet, despite that unheroic denouement, his ideology lives on. Thanks to exclusive interviews with family members and associates, and documents unearthed only recently, Bergen's "comprehensive, authoritative, and compelling" (H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World) portrait of Osama bin Laden reveals for the first time who he really was and why he continues to inspire a new generation of jihadists.

Why are we still at 'war' with terror 16 years after 9/11? This book will discuss what we have collectively done well, what we have done poorly, what we have yet to try and how we get to the point where terrorism does not dominate public discourse and cause disproportionate fear around the world. This book looks at a variety of approaches and responses to international Islamist extremism, ranging from military and security/law enforcement action to government policies, community measures and religious efforts, with a goal to determining what has worked and what has not. The examples are drawn largely from the West but the book's scope is global. Key features: Written in a clear, non-academic styleUses recent events to explain terrorismIs wide-ranging and 'ex-practitioner' based

The role of the Far East is becoming increasingly important in global geopolitics. Japan's economic might and sphere of geographical influence, between China, North Korea and the US, means it has the potential to be a major ally in the war on terror. While Japan's constitution does not allow for militarism or acts of war, in the post 9/11 world the use of the Japanese nation's 'Self-Defence Force' has become increasingly normal - a result of the exploitation of legal loopholes and political double-speak that has been used to bypass Japan's pacifist ideology. Here, Michael Penn assesses the role of US diplomats and lobbyists in Tokyo, the politicians who see the war on terror as a means of self-advancement and the influence of Washington in the unprecedented deployment of Japanese troops in Iraq. Written using a huge range of primary source material, including interviews with US insiders and Japanese policy makers, this is a scholarly and lucid account of Japan's relationship to the US and the Middle East from 9/11 to Barack Obama and the death of Osama Bin Laden.

This book provides a multidisciplinary collection of essays that seek to explore the deeply problematic legacy of post-Agreement Northern Ireland. Thus, the authors of this book look at a number of issues that continue to stymie the development of a robust and sustainable peacebuilding project, including segregation, contested parades and flags, ethnic party mobilization, and memorialization. Towards addressing these contemporary issues, authors are drawn from a range of disciplines, including politics, history, literature, drama, cultural studies, sociology, and social psychology.

Why did so many of the September 11th hijackers spend time in Germany? How did terrorist sleeper cells plant themselves in cities such as London, Paris, Rome, and Hamburg? This is the first book to uncover the secret history of how Europe was systematically infiltrated by the ranks of the most dangerous terrorist organization on earth. Terrorist analyst Evan F. Kohlmann argues that the key to understanding Al-Qaida's European cells lies in the Bosnian war of the 1990s. Using the Bosnian war as their cover, Afghan-trained Islamic militants loyal to Usama Bin Laden convened in the Balkans in 1992 to establish a European domestic terrorist infrastructure in order to plot their violent strikes against the United States. As the West and the United Nations looked on with disapproval, the fanatic foreign mujahideen, or holy warriors, wreaked havoc across southern Europe, taking particular aim at UN peacekeepers and even openly fighting with Bosnian Muslims at times. Within a few months of the war's end, home-grown terrorist sleeper cells appeared on the streets of Europe's cities. Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe unveils a new angle to the deadly international terrorist organization and includes recently declassified American and European intelligence reports, secret Al-Qaida records and internal documents, and interviews with notorious figures such as London-based Bin Laden sympathizer Abu Hamza Al-Masri.

Ethics for Enemies comprises three original philosophical essays on torture, terrorism, and war. F. M. Kamm deploys ethical theory in her challenging new treatments of these most controversial practical issues. First she considers the nature of torture and the various occasions on which it could occur, in order to determine why it might be wrong to torture a wrongdoer held captive, even if this were necessary to save his victims. In the second essay she considers what makes terrorism wrong--whether it is the intention to harm civilians, rather than harm to them being 'collateral damage, ' or something else--and whether terrorism is always wrong. The third essay discusses whether having a right reason, in the sense of a right intention, is necessary in order for a war to be just. Kamm then examines ways in which the harms of war can be proportional to the achievement of the just cause and other goods that war can bring about, so as to make the declaration of war permissible.

Terrorism is no longer woven into the backdrop of our daily lives, but rather it has been pushed to centre stage - an ongoing tragedy in which comprehension of the perpetrators' motivations is eclipsed by the impact of horror and devastation on its victims and wider society. Attempting to make sense of these atrocities and their antecedents, a body of literature has accumulated since 9/11 which offers a psychoanalytic perspective on terrorism. This research provides a reflective space within which the unconscious motivations, primitive conflicts, fantasies and impulses that underpin the extreme mindsets and violent actions of the individuals and groups involved may be explored, offering insights complementary to those of different disciplines - sociological, political, cultural and other. This book brings together contemporary psychoanalytic writers and practitioners involved in the study of radicalisation, fundamentalism and terrorism. Some of the authors have worked with terrorists, thus grounding their reflections and insights in direct clinical contact with these individuals. Understanding the motivations of the perpetrators includes elucidation of the wider group dynamics of minority populations, where the perpetuation of violence that is seen as terrorism may be viewed by its perpetrators as a justifiable response to collective experiences of subjugation, humiliation and injustice suffered over generations. Understanding such perspectives is not colluding with the aggressors, but rather it may contribute to interventions at both individual and global levels that attempt to break the deadly cycle of violence. This book was originally published as two special issues of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.

When States Take Rights Back draws on contributions by international experts in history, law, political science, and sociology, offering a rare interdisciplinary and comparative examination of citizenship revocation in five countries, revealing hidden government rationales and unintended consequences. Once considered outdated, citizenship revocation - also called deprivation or denationalization - has come back to the political center in many Western liberal states. Contributors scrutinize the positions of stakeholders (e.g. civil servants, representatives of civil society, judges, supranational institutions) and their diverse rationales for citizenship revocation (e.g. allegations of terrorism, treason, espionage, criminal behaviour, and fraud in the naturalisation process). The volume also uncovers the variety of tools that national governments have at their disposition to change existing citizenship revocation laws and policies, and the constraints that they are faced with to actually implement citizenship revocation in daily operations. Finally, contributors underscore the extraordinary severity of sanctions implied by citizenship revocation and offer a nuanced picture of the material and symbolic forms of exclusion not only for those whose citizenship is withdrawn but also for minority groups (wrongly) associated with the aforementioned allegations. Indeed, revocation policies target not merely individuals but specific collective categories, which tend to be ethno-racially constructed and attributed specific location within the international status hierarchy of nation-states. International and interdisciplinary in scope, When States Take Rights Back will be of great interest to scholars of politics, international law, sociology and political and legal history, and Human Rights. The chapters were originally published in Citizenship Studies.

This landmark book covers a range of issues concerning the consequences of terrorist attacks. Beginning with a discussion of new policies and strategies, it then delves into specific areas of concern, modeling a range of possible scenarios and ways to mitigate or pre-empt damages. Top researchers from around the world discuss issues such as: airport security, urban terrorism, Coast Guard operations, and the need to balance freedoms with security. New policies for deterring terrorism are also proposed. Later chapters model the economic impacts of terrorist attacks on the food industry, major US ports, and US theme parks. The final chapters provide an in-depth look at the effects of interruptions to electricity supply and how to improve resiliency. Using specific locations and situations, the volume details in a concrete way the long and short-term economic effects of possible future attacks. The cutting-edge research and provocative conclusions make this a must-read for policymakers, public sector economists, urban planners, aviation officials, insurance industry analysts and those charged with disaster management.

This volume examines the success of the 9/11 attacks in undermining the cherished principles of Western democracy, free speech and tolerance, which were central to US values. It is argued that this has led to the USA fighting disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to sanctioning the use of torture and imprisonment without trial in Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, surveillance and drone attacks. At home, it has resulted in restrictions of civil liberties and the growth of an ill-affordable military and security apparatus. In this collection the authors note the irony that the shocking destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11 should become the justification for the relentless expansion of security agencies. Yet, this is a salutary illustration of how the security agencies in the USA have adopted faulty preconceptions, which have become too embedded within the institution to be abandoned without loss of credibility and prestige. The book presents a timely assessment of both the human rights costs of the 'war on terror' and the methods used to wage and relentlessly continue that war. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners and students in the fields of human rights law, criminal justice, criminology, politics and international studies.

This book, written in honor of Arno Tausch, presents cutting-edge research on globalization, development, and global values. Internationally renowned authors cover topics such as global economic and political cycles, global values, and support for terrorism.  Over the last five decades, the Austrian political scientist Arno Tausch was a pioneer in studies on globalization, development and global values. This collection of essays takes up the issues dealt with by Tausch and presents perspectives for the 21st Century. Throughout his work, Tausch applied quantitative methods to study the fundamental issues of the global political economy and the global political system, like dependency, economic and political cycles, and global values, based on a rigorous study of available social scientific data, like the World Values Survey and the Arab Barometer.

This book examines the militant Irish republican movement in the United States from the final months of the Irish Civil War through to the Second World War. The narrative carefully and creatively intertwines the personalities, events and policies that shaped the activism during this period and shows the evolution of its inherently transnational nature. Through a bottom-up historical analysis that incorporates an examination of more than eighty archival collections in the US, Ireland and Britain, the book presents for the first time an account of the anti-Treaty IRA veterans who arrived in the US after the Irish Civil War. Upon their settlement in Irish-American communities, these republicans directly influenced and guided the US-based militant republican organisation, Clan na Gael, transformed the overall dynamics of militant Irish republicanism in America and provided leadership and co-ordination for an IRA bombing campaign. With the inclusion of these veterans' stories, the book provides a fresh interpretation of the inter-war movement in America that shows it to be far from as stagnant, wayward and detached from Irish affairs as has previously been claimed. -- .