The Israeli High Court has approved the expulsion of between 1,200 and 1,800 Palestinians from eight villages in the Masafer Yatta region of the South Hebron Hills in the occupied West Bank. Should the expulsions go ahead, it will be the one of the largest incidents of ethnic cleansing in the area since 1967.
The University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) student council has passed a historic motion in support of Palestine. The motion, “UMSU stands with Palestine—BDS and Solidarity Policy”, was moved by people of colour officer Hiba Adam and seconded by POC council representative Mohamed Hadi.
World military spending has passed US$2 trillion for the first time, according to new data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Last year was the seventh consecutive year that world military spending increased; total expenditure has almost doubled this century.
From early in her political career, Rosa Luxemburg was concerned with the struggle against imperialism and war. Her analysis and the tactics she advocated weren’t all correct, but she was always on the side of the working class and its independent organisation, and of the oppressed. That was true in her approach to the “national question”, her responses to wars and her theory of imperialism.
The Thin Red Line is a novel by James Jones set during the World War Two battle between the United States and Japan for control of the Solomon Islands. It is about the devastation war visits even on the “winners”; the title refers to the physical and mental fragility of human beings, which combat inevitably exposes with horrifying consequences. And it is about the hypocrisy and callousness of those who give the orders to fight without having to suffer those consequences.
The outbreak of World War I ushered in a new age of barbarism in Europe. It also triggered the collapse of the Second International, the international league of socialist parties that purported to be staunch opponents of war, but which lined up behind their own ruling classes when it broke out. Lenin’s pamphlet Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, published in the middle of the horror and brutality of the Great War, aimed to answer two questions: why this imperialist war, and why the collapse of the Second International?