Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
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
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
The long-term effects of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange mean that the impact of war lasts well beyond a ceasefire
“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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