Though primarily a surrogate war over Palestine, in recent years the conflict has also become one between different Lebanese groups which can only be understood in the light of these groups' fears of being excluded from the country's political and social power-centres. The book's main theme is the problem of conflict and conflict regulation in Lebanon. How were conflicts regulated peacefully in pre-war Lebanon? How do the Lebanese - political and military leaders on the one hand and ordinary citizens on the other - view events in their country? What are their aspirations, and what do they believe they must realistically settle for? Can peaceful co-existence between Lebanon's different communities be re-established? The answers to these questions are of fundamental importance not only to Lebanon but the whole Middle East peace process. Professor Hanf's discussion of them is based on extensive first-hand research, as well as a wide range of primary and secondary sources.

    Not only was there an amazing amount of armed actions in Italy at this time, but those chronicled here (and there are 100s of them) were those carried out by autonomous/anarchist groups/affinity groups, not by the Red Brigades and other Leninist factions. As well as the detailed, annotated chronology, there's a contextual and historical introduction by Jean Weir, as well as several analytical articles published from the Italian anarchist press at the time. "But there was another dimension present in the struggle at the end of the 70s, one consisting of autonomous actions carried out by affinity groups formed for the duration of the action itself. At the time when we first published this counter-information we do so in order to make know and extend the whole dimension of armed struggle, and for this reason we chose to limit our criticism of the forms that struggle took. In reprinting it today we are doing so with another aim: that of contributing to the struggle's qualitative development."