Half-Million on Strike Across France

teleSUR English; Jonah Birch Jacobin
The revolt in France is growing! Up to 500,000 people went on strike and took to the streets across the country to protest unpopular pro-business labor reforms that would leave many people unemployed and would be an attack on worker's rights. France's largest cities saw a new wave of street demonstrations and strikes as student groups and unions tried to maintain pressure on the government just days before the bill is brought to Parliament.(teleSUR English)

books

Camus on Trial

Jeffrey C. Isaac Dissent Magazine
While Camus was a vocal advocate of Arab rights since the 1930s, his fictional universe seemed blind to their existence. . In 1957 Albert Camus uttered a widely misquoted criticism of terrorism. What he meant to say, what he in fact said, is that a policy of killing innocent civilians - whether his own mother or the mother of his adversary - is not properly named "justice."

labor

#NuitDebout: A Movement is Growing in France’s Squares

Sam Cossar-Gilbert ROAR
Fed up with inequality, unemployment and labor reforms — and increasingly outraged at the financial and political elite — tens of thousands across France are taking to the streets and the squares.

labor

The Front National and French Workers

Sebastian Chwala spectrezine
A blanket assertion that the French working-class has shifted to the right is misleading. Rather there has been a “demobilization” of leftwing voters due to the deep crisis of the old industrial structures which has put labor and the left on the defensive. Old Communist strongholds have seen rising voter abstention. Workers vote for the FN in large numbers in regions where leftwing consciousness and organization had been weak.

labor

The Front National and French Workers

Sebastian Chwala spectrezine
A blanket assertion that the French working-class has shifted to the right is misleading. Rather there has been a “demobilization” of leftwing voters due to the deep crisis of the old industrial structures which has put labor and the left on the defensive. Old Communist strongholds have seen rising voter abstention. Workers vote for the FN in large numbers in regions where leftwing consciousness and organization had been weak.

Thomas Piketty: A New Deal for Europe

Thomas Piketty; translated by Anthony Shugaar The New York Review of Books, February 25, 2016 issue
Only a genuine social and democratic refounding of the eurozone, designed to encourage growth and employment, will be sufficient to counter the hateful nationalistic impulses that now threaten all Europe. We should put together a conference of eurozone nations on debt-just like those that were held in the postwar years, to the notable benefit of Germany. The objective would be to reduce public debt as a whole.

The French Justice Minister’s Resignation and the “Droit Du Sol”

Sarah Wood The Conversation
French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira resigned January 27 to protest President Francois Hollande’s new anti-terrorism law that strips those with dual nationality of their French citizenship if convicted of terrorism. Taubira, who was born in French Guiana, says this divides French citizens into two categories with different rights. Taubira, the target of numerous racist and misogynist attacks, played a critical role in the passage of France’s same-sex marriage law.

books

I am French

Jeremy Harding London Review of Books
Were the mass 'We are Charlie' demonstrations in France in support of 'We are France,' in the best republican tradition or a shot against Muslim immigrants signifying that 'You are not?' Polymath Emmanuel Todd argues that the demonstrations, like much of Charlie Hebdo's satire, were not so much attacks on toxic religious ideology as broadly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab, indicating that the vaunted French secularism has lost its solidaristic component, 'equality.'

Jets and Predators - Report from Germany

Victor Grossman Portside
Germany is constitutionally barred from foreign missions but that never bothered anyone in the government. Germany's rulers, in coalition armchairs or skulking in lobbies behind them, are very determined to expand political, economic and military power, not just in Europe but to far distant shores as well. Some dangerous bombs from the last century are still found in Germany; they must be defused. This applies equally to dangerous ideas.

Win the War? No, Put an End To It

Jean-Pierre Piérot l'Humanite in English
The chaos in the Middle-east which has led to hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing ISIL’s barbarous rule is the result of fifteen years of Western interventionism. How can France ever take a convincing stand against ISIL while claiming to be the main ally, and provider of fighter planes, to the Gulf monarchies. The real question, to which French diplomacy has so far given no convincing answer, is not how to win the war but how to put an end to it.
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