View of the struggle and rights of people living with disabilities: an art series depicting youth with disabilities in Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal; a seminar for women with disabilities in Tanzania; Disability Pride in the U.S. and Canada; a protest in Brussels against segregation in residential care homes.
Takes up: The shutting down of Great Britain’s Rainbow Badge Scheme, designed to reduce barriers Queer people face in healthcare; the beating and sexual assault of a Gay man and Lesbian by Serbian police; and the imprisonment of British-Mexican Gay man Manuel Guerrero Avina in Qatar.
Scientists and climate movements highlighted the urgent need to take real climate action. Opposed are fossil fuel industries and their nation-states, who dominated COP28 and guaranteed its emptiness. The path forward can be built on the movements from below, posing liberation from capitalist exploitation and the release of full human development.
After eight years of ultra-nationalist, reactionary rule, Poland’s Law and Justice Party was defeated in parliamentary elections. However, the country’s future direction is by no means assured. Two areas are key: women’s and LGBTQ+ rights.
Takes up: The right of disabled people to be part of the reproductive justice discussion; Indigenous Disability Awareness Month in Canada; and European Union countries requiring people to prove their percentage of disability in order to have free access to culture.
Takes up: Uganda’s President Museveni who signed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023, which includes the death penalty; That supporters of drag story time at Middlesex County Library in Parkhill, Ontario, Canada, protected the storytellers and attendees from 40 anti-gay protesters; and Namibia’s Supreme Court ruled that the Ministry’s lack of recognition of same-sex marriages conducted in other countries undermines the dignity and equality of the appellants.
Great Britain is in a cost of living crisis. Newspapers are publishing “Heat or Eat Diaries.” Brexit has been an important catalyst for Britain’s dire economic situation. Hopefully the labor militancy now taking place can show a way forward.
Two hotly anticipated global summits on ecology and climate papered over a raging war of capital against humanity and Planet Earth—a war manifested in open conflict between “developed” and “developing” countries, but more deeply in a war of the two worlds of rulers and ruled within each country.
In both Sweden and Italy neo-fascist leaders have won great influence: Jimmie Akesson in Sweden and Giorgia Meloni in Italy. They have in common vicious anti-immigrant and other racists beliefs and actions.
Today’s divide in attitudes to technology and climate solutions is more than a political question. It is a deep divide in philosophy. As crucial as are technological advances and the “energy transition,” they are liable to turn into their opposite if they are the focus instead of struggles of people trying to take control over their own lives.
Readers’ Views on: Putin’s Brutal War on Ukraine; War on Yemen; Canadian Convoy; Trucks and Tribes; and Abortion Politics.
Women demonstrate at Boise State University against misogynist professor Scott Yenor; four male porn stars in France were charged with rape after 53 women performers complained; Sudanese women demonstrated in three cities against gang rapes by security forces; and in India, two men and a woman were arrested for creating a website pretending to “auction” over 100 Muslim women as slaves.
In the face of climate justice movements from below, the rulers are determined to keep control in their hands. With creative new actions and thinking raising the possibility of alternative, anti-capitalist paths of development, the powers that be are working hard to reduce that to a mere “energy transition.”
Women WorldWide takes up: Afghan women MPs set up an organization in exile to help other activist women escape; the thousands who marched in Istanbul, Turkey demanding action against widespread violence against women; women in Poland marching again against restrictions on abortion; and the 7,000 women who gathered in Madrid, Spain, protesting male violence against women.
A letter to the French government warned of civil war. Signed by 25 retired generals and about 1,000 service personnel, it claimed that the nation’s “civilizational values” are threatened by immigrants , Islamism, “anti-racism” and attacks on the police and military.
Ohio assailed for refusing to recognize Jack Henning-Sepkoski’s gender identity; Chicago Black Drag Council holds town hall over racism against performers of color in Gay bars; children of same-sex mixed nationality couples in Europe struggle for citizenship.
There is danger of neo-fascist parties gaining or taking control in several European countries including Germany, France, The Netherlands and Italy.
The European Union has once more proved its feckless inability to halt the destruction of democracy by Hungary and Poland, who caused a crisis by vetoing the EU budget, needed to fund the bloc’s COVID-19 recovery plan.
With Brexit, the rise of the far right, Macron’s vacuous French nationalism, and Sinn Fein’s victory in Irish elections, the “idea of Europe” is under great strain.
The Dec. 12 general elections in Britain were a victory for world reaction, reinforcing the racist 2016 vote to leave the European Union.
Schoolchildren continue to hold Fridays for Future strikes weekly across the world, demanding “that governments immediately provide a safe pathway to stay within 1.5°C of global heating.” The Right’s attempts to co-opt this passion highlight capitalism’s contradictions and the need to center a liberatory direction.
Elections in India and the European Union show the deep crisis in bourgeois society.
Elections to the European Parliament will be held in late May and will be a measure of the strength of the far right, racist anti-immigrant parties that have been gaining political power on the continent.
In OPEC powers’ participation in the counter-revolutionary attacks on the revolutions in Syria and Yemen, and in the anti-immigrant reactionary reshaping of European politics, we see the next stage of bourgeois politics taking shape.
The victory of Far Right and “populist” parties in Italian elections, preceded by that in Austria, and followed by that in Hungary, emphasizes the current threat of neo-fascism which means to take power in the EU.
Round up of news about LGBTQ people including: Transgender people rally against Texas discriminatory bathroom bill; International Non-Binary Day celebrations; World Pride 2017 was celebrated in Spain; and Illinois becomes the second state in the U.S. to pass legislation banning so-called Gay and Transgender panic defense.
From Paris, Francis Sitel analyzes the results of the 2017 presidential elections in France: Where does opposition stand in relation to election-winner Macron? .
The recent elections in France and Britain have been a welcome setback for that fascist Right which saw Trump and Brexit as a cresting wave carrying them to state power.
Protests occur across Turkey in resistance to the controversial constitutional referendum/power grab of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he has devolved into a capitalist counterrevolutionary ruler. .
Article about the recent elections in Bulgaria and Moldova and their possible connection with Vladimir Putin’s fascist influence in East Europe.
Readers’ Views on Hate: Orlando to Brexit; Black Lives Matter; Muhammad Ali and Dr. King; Duterte in the Philippines; News & Letters Readers Unite!; and Deadly Assault on Women From the U.S. to Israel.
An Editorial on how Brexit has emboldened the Far Right, not only in Britain but also in the U.S., bringing out blatant expressions of racism, homophobia, sexism and anti-immigrant hatred; and the importance of people’s own self-organization to counter this moment in history.
With Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the Far Right has been emboldened worldwide. As the economic and social crisis deepens, so does the brutality, while the Right seeks scapegoats for the results of capitalism’s objective laws, which only have force as long as humanity’s struggle to be free is not yet complete. The only solid ground for opposing this latest stage of reactionary retrogression is that of revolution in permanence.
Although the Greek masses reject the austerity program imposed on them by the European institutions, Syriza inexorably took a path to capitulation because it is rooted in the search for state power rather than the power of mass self-activity.
The two opponents facing off in Greece for five years have been the Greek masses vs. the European rulers and their institutions. The No vote manifested the revolt against austerity. We explore the meaning of these events.
In today’s economic crisis, Europe is haunted by the specters that were supposed to be overcome by the European economic union and the single currency Eurozone: the 20th century tendency to degenerate into vile nationalism, genocidal racism and the barbarism of total war.
by Ron Kelch
In one of the biggest demonstrations in Ireland since its revolutionary birth in 1916, 100,000 marched in Dublin on Nov. 27 against the terms of an 85 billion euro loan package put together by the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The marchers were outraged over the Irish government agreeing [=>]
World in View
European worker revolt
In Europe, capitalism’s deep economic crisis continues to unfold in ways that threaten the social benefits and social safety net that working people have fought for over decades.
First came the rescue of the banks and bankers–paid for through the public treasury. Privatize the profits; socialize the debt! Now all government talk [=>]
From the Nov.-Dec. 2010 issue of News & Letters:
French workers vs. state and union leaders
What follows are excerpts from an in-person report.
Montpellier, France–People ask me what it’s like living in France during these massive one-day strikes and popular mobilizations against the conservative Sarkozy government’s pension “reforms.” These cuts would push the minimum retirement age from [=>]
