VIJAY PRASHAD looks at the web of militias and drug-trafficking gangs that emerged in the Sweida region through the Syrian civil war, and how they relate to recent clashes and Israel’s intervention
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Thanks to Banksy, Louise Michel is fighting oppression once more
LEA REISNER tells the Star about the Louise Michel, a feminist refugee rescue ship named after the famous anarchist and funded by the world's most elusive street-art star — and how the civil fleet came to its aid when Europe abandoned it
Lea Reisner on the deck of the Louise Michel
by Roger D Harris and John Perry
VINCE MILLS says Scottish Labour has adopted better positions than its Westminster counterpart — but unless it starts to fight for them that will count for nothing
Labour MSP CAROL MOCHAN calls for Britain to follow France’s lead and recognise the Palestinian state as part of efforts to end this war
A Chilean court ruled that funds were illegally taken by the dictator to accumulate family wealth that is now disputed among his heirs, writes PABLO MERIGUET
The shock suspension of socialist MPs and Diane Abbott’s re-suspension reveals a leadership intent on crushing internal debate — but MERCEDES VILLALBA MSP warns against surrendering party democracy without a fight
“THE revolt of the tribes was deadly serious,” wrote the French anarchist Louise Michel in her memoir about the doomed 1878 Kanak rebellion against French colonial rule on far way New Caledonia.
The Kanak people, whose south Pacific home France had turned into a penal colony, were seeking the same liberty that Michel and her comrades had sought during the 1871 Paris Commune.
“Let me say only that my red scarf, the red scarf of the Commune that I had hidden from every search, was divided in two pieces one night. Two Kanaks, before going to join the insurgents against the whites, had come to say goodbye to me. They slipped into the ocean.
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Mr Smalls and 13 other Freedom Flotilla Coalition activists who tried to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza aboard the Handala ship remain in detention and on hunger strike
