The trial of Dominique Pelicot, who arranged for 82 men to rape his wife, Gisele Pelicot, over 200 times began in September. Gisele successfully fought for the judges to open the trial to the public, igniting a new wave of a women’s movement fighting mysogyny and sexual violence worldwide.
The mass of French voters in the latest parliamentary elections allowed the Left-wing coalition of parties—the New Popular Front—to gain the largest number of seats in Parliament, though far short of a majority. The far-right National Front has hardly been defeated.
Takes up: Amazonian Initiative Movement, a Sierra Leone group fighting genital mutilation (FGM); a two-year, 7,400-mile caravan journey through 20 African countries by #FrontlineEndingFGM; Asian Women for Equality struggling to stop massage parlors and other venues of prostitution in Canada; and France becoming the first country to explicitly guarantee women’s legal right to abortion in its constitution.
Dan Bremer passed away in October. We remember his kindness, his profound grasp of world and local politics, and his steadfast commitment to a more humane world based on the Marxist-Humanist philosophy of human liberation.
The military coup against Gabon President Ali Bongo on Aug. 29, 2023, was welcomed with jubilation in Gabon’s capital, Libreville. Whether that leads to a move toward civilian participation and something approaching democracy remains to be seen.
After Nahel Merzouk, a teenager of Algerian-Moroccan descent, was killed by police at a traffic stop in a Paris suburb, French youth, many of North African descent, responded with outrage. How did France come to this explosive moment?
Revolt against rulers’ skewed efforts to transform reality is global, opposing both fascism, which markets itself as the alternative to the disintegrating status quo, and the “return to normal” that markets itself as the only alternative to fascism. And each revolt is confronted by serious contradictions.
A new series by the New York Times paints a picture of Haiti’s stark, painful, preventable history of more than 200 years. Slaves who freed themselves in revolution were subverted first by Napoleon’s France—supported by the U.S.—demanding outlandish sums of money as ransom.
On April 24, Emmanuel Macron won a second five-year term as president of France. The rise of right-wing politicians posing as populists is a worldwide phenomenon aided by the neoliberal economic policies of centrist candidates such as Macron and Joe Biden
French President Macron’s calculated use of fascist language marked a new low. He may have felt it necessary in response to the racist, anti-immigrant campaign of Eric Zemmour.
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.
Call to support Moroccan journalist Maâti Monjib, who was convicted of “fraud” and “undermining state security” by a court in Rabat, Morocco, and who has begun another hunger strike.
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.
Five Canadian feminist activists released The Care Economy Statement proclaiming that caregiving is a societal responsibility; through February, thousands of feminists demonstrated across France in support of “Julie,” a 25-year-old woman who when younger was raped over 100 times by 20 firemen; in memoriam for Nawal El Sadaawi, an Egyptian radical feminist, Marxist, writer and activist; and the Illinois Prison Project launched the Women and Survivors Project.
Young climate activists prepare for the next UN climate change conference, COP26; the French Senate’s reactionary vote to dissolve the National Union of Students of France; youth protest a Japanese plan to dump more than 1 million tons of irradiated water from the Fukushima reactor site into the ocean; and more than 60,000 schoolchildren in Japan signed a “Stop Extreme School Rules” petition.
Governments across the world are conducting a war against the freedom of thought, from France’s assault on critical race theory to U.S. criminalizing of Indigenous water protectors to Poland’s legal enshrinement of Holocaust denial.
Murders of Trans and Gender Nonconforming people; vigil for Avril, a Trans student harassed at a French high school; New Orleans’ underserved and at-risk communities, including LGBTQ+ people, and the homeless and poor living with HIV/AIDS; swell of support for Trevor Wilkinson, suspended in Texas high school for nail polish.
The battle against the COVID-19 pandemic is a battle over how society will change, mirroring the battle over how to confront and adapt to the climate and extinction crisis. Strikes are erupting across the world.
What was new this International Women’s Day was larger marches, greater militancy of women participants, the new places where they took place, and the attacks against them which escalated significantly from previous years.
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.
International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in France; ecofeminists in Uganda; and protests against the gang-rape of a 19-year-old British girl in Cyprus.
Excerpts of a talk by Polish Amazon worker/organizer Agnieszka Mróz, on a U.S. tour seeking cross-border solidarity among Amazon workers worldwide.
30,000 in Italy protested World Congress of Families; Sudan’s first female-run radio show; survivors of prostitution marched from France, arriving to Germany for Survivor’s Day; Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center in Nigeria provides pro bono legal services and research to fight civil rights violations and violence against women.
The uprising of the gilets jaunes (Yellow Vests) against French President Emmanuel Macron embodies the unity and brutal disunity of our time.
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.
Women have changed the world through an incredible and sustained activism based on a humanism that runs like a revolutionary red thread through an amazing array of actions, demonstrations and statements. This development is based on over 50 years of a movement that the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, characterized as “Woman as Revolutionary Force and Reason.” .
Readers’ Views on Women’s Liberation struggle continue and voices from behind bars.
On Sept. 20, 150 police showed up at 6:30 AM at the Bure House of Resistance in France. It is the latest incident of repression against growing opposition to “permanent” burial of France’s high-level radioactive waste.
Police raids in Bure, France, attempted to disrupt resistance to a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste.
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.
The people’s revolutionary struggles form the ground for approaching developments including Trump’s attack on a Syrian military base. The human-to-human communication found in places like Kafranbel has been a form of theory in itself. The deadliest weapon of mass destruction in the Syrian conflict has been the lie that there is “no good alternative” to Assad, echoing the bourgeoisie’s “no alternative” to capitalism. The state of Europe today illustrates the central importance of revolutionary solidarity.
France’s national elections will head to a run-off between fascist Marine Le Pen of the National Front party and liberal bourgeois centrist Emmanuel Macron of the En Marche party.
Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
An expansive look at the rise of fascism worldwide beginning in the U.S. with Donald Trump and the U.S. election, and taking in European fascism, and the situations in India, the Philippines, China, Japan and the opposition by rulers worldwide to those fighting for a free existence and new human relations.
The attempt by Socialist President Francois Hollande to ram through labor law changes has been met by nationwide strikes and social mobilizations. Resistance is heated.
The wildfires sweeping Alberta’s tar sands region provide a window onto the state of the environment and the multidimensional worldwide struggle against pollution and climate chaos fueled by capitalism’s drive for production for the sake of production.
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.
Part IV of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The renewal of Syrian demonstrations for freedom refuted the state powers’ belief that the idea of revolution can be destroyed by bombs, and highlighted a civilizational crisis and the need for international solidarity.
Part II of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The worldwide war against women includes attacks on abortion rights, counter-revolution in Egypt, attacks on women by UN troops. Women celebrated International Women’s day in Turkey and other countries.
Readers’ Views on: Environment, Labor, Race and Philosophy; Queer Liberation; Black Lives Matter; Bolivian Social Movements; Trumpery’s Fascism & Racism.
The fascist terror attacks in Paris herald further reaction. Syria and its tortured twin, Iraq, have become the umbilical cord connecting ISIS to the bourgeois imperialism that is its model.
California prisoners battle barbaric ‘justice’ system; Against ISIS attacks; Women under attack; Support Maati Monjib; The Burmese Way; Race, class & politics.
We condemn these horrific massacres and the reaction that feeds upon them. To destroy ISIS and all other counter-revolutionary forces will require a battle of ideas, even more than a struggle of arms.
From the signing of a nuclear weapons agreement by the U.S. and Iran, to the ongoing war in Syria including the roles of Turkey and of the Left, this wide-ranging article delves into the Middle East situation with an emphasis on the forces fighting for genuine freedom and a multi-ethnic society.
Worldwide, the refugee crisis is unprecedented and is fueled by war, terrorism and climate change. The worldwide response is paltry with country after country turning away or deporting frantic and desperate people in search of a safe haven.
In celebrating the online publication of the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, we present excerpts of her Introduction/Overview to Volume XII, which takes up the Marxist-Humanist concept of archives as not only retrospective but perspective, in the quest to establish “continuity with the historic course of human development.”
She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is a documentary of the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in the U.S., from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. Filmmaker Mary Dore used a wealth of historical news coverage to give a sense of the breadth of organizations and depth of demands in the explosive growth of the WLM. Activists, identified within archival footage—including women like Fran Beal of the Civil Rights Movement’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lesbian rights activist Karla Jay, and Judith Arcana of the abortion underground organization Jane—gave contemporary interviews interspersed in the film.
The electoral victory of Greece’s Syriza party was an important first step in resisting austerity imposed on the Greek and European working classes as capitalism’s response to its own intractable crisis. Nothing could be in greater contradiction to the movement that lifted Syriza to prominence than the parliamentary alliance with the racist, theocratic Independent Greeks party.
