A War Of Individuals

This book draws together for the very first time examples of the 'aesthetic pacifism' practised during the Great War by such celebrated individuals as Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon and Bertrand Russell. In addition, the book outlines the stories of those less well-known who shared the mind-set of the Bloomsbury Group when it came to facing the first 'total war'. The research for this study took five years, gathering evidence from all the major archives in Great Britain and abroad. This is the first time that such wide-ranging evidence has been placed together in order to paint a complete pi.

This study begins with the assumption that individual rights exist and stand as moral obstacles to the pursuit of national, no less than personal, interests. That assumption might seem to demand a pacifist rejection of all war, for any sustained war effort requires military operations that predictably kill many non-combatants, most of whom presumably have a right not to be killed. Yet the book concludes that sometimes recourse to war is justified. Its argument relies on the insights of John Locke to develop and defend a framework of rights to serve as the foundation for a new just war theory.

Is it legal to kill, or capture and confine, someone in war? Is this relevant or wise to ask in the reality of war? What does 'legal' actually mean in the labyrinth of overlapping international laws? This volume explores the meaning, relevance, and wisdom of questioning the 'legality' of the use of force against individuals in war by reconnecting legal thought with the social world. Weaving together law, social theories, and actual practices, the book presents an interdisciplinary study of the laws regulating warfare. The Use of Force against Individuals in War under International Law uncovers different conceptions of 'legality' that generate tensions among different international laws regulating warfare and highlights the limits of legal techniques in addressing these tensions. Accepting these tensions serves not to denigrate the law itself but to invite a deeper level of engagement with it - through the lens of social theories. Drawing on the insight that every social action results from an interaction between human agency and social structures, this publication argues that in regulating warfare, one distinct body of international law, the law of armed conflicts, accommodates the diminished agency of human beings operating in highly structured conditions while other bodies of international law harbour the potential to transform these very structured conditions. Thus, assimilating these laws, whether in court or real-world practices, fundamentally conflates their underlying social ontologies.

War Against the People focuses on Israel's unique role in international affairs, highlighting how it promotes a global system of militarism and domestic control – a form of "global Palestine." Jeff Halper investigates how Israel exports the weaponry and techniques of occupation. He shows how it uses the West Bank and Gaza as a "laboratory" for the development of these weapons, instruments of population control and models of permanent pacification. These are used not only to armies but internal security agencies and police forces as well. Halper locates Israel's system of pacification within the broader project of global "transcapital pacification." War Against the People provides a valuable window into the workings of pacification on a global level and the latest in military and counter-insurgency doctrine, outlining critical aspects of global politics that activists often miss in their struggle for global justice.

Claiming more than 600,000 lives, the American Civil War had a devastating impact on countless numbers of common soldiers and civilians, even as it brought freedom to millions. This book shows how average Americans coped with despair as well as hope during this vast upheaval. A People at War brings to life the full humanity of the war's participants, from women behind their plows to their husbands in army camps; from refugees from slavery to their former masters; from Mayflower descendants to freshly recruited Irish sailors. We discover how people confronted their own feelings about the war itself, and how they coped with emotional challenges (uncertainty, exhaustion, fear, guilt, betrayal, grief) as well as physical ones (displacement, poverty, illness, disfigurement). The book explores the violence beyond the battlefield, illuminating the sharp-edged conflicts of neighbor against neighbor, whether in guerilla warfare or urban riots. The authors travel as far west as China and as far east as Europe, taking us inside soldiers' tents, prisoner-of-war camps, plantations, tenements, churches, Indian reservations, and even the cargo holds of ships. They stress the war years, but also cast an eye at the tumultuous decades that preceded and followed the battlefield confrontations. An engrossing account of ordinary people caught up in life-shattering circumstances, A People at War captures how the Civil War rocked the lives of rich and poor, black and white, parents and children--and how all these Americans pushed generals and presidents to make the conflict a people's war.

Acclaimed New York Times journalist and author Chris Hedges offers a critical -- and fascinating -- lesson in the dangerous realities of our age: a stark look at the effects of war on combatants. Utterly lacking in rhetoric or dogma, this manual relies instead on bare fact, frank description, and a spare question-and-answer format. Hedges allows U.S. military documentation of the brutalizing physical and psychological consequences of combat to speak for itself. Hedges poses dozens of questions that young soldiers might ask about combat, and then answers them by quoting from medical and psychological studies. • What are my chances of being wounded or killed if we go to war? • What does it feel like to get shot? • What do artillery shells do to you? • What is the most painful way to get wounded? • Will I be afraid? • What could happen to me in a nuclear attack? • What does it feel like to kill someone? • Can I withstand torture? • What are the long-term consequences of combat stress? • What will happen to my body after I die? This profound and devastating portrayal of the horrors to which we subject our armed forces stands as a ringing indictment of the glorification of war and the concealment of its barbarity.

"On War" by Carl von Clausewitz (translated by J. J. Graham). Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.