Category: France

  • John Mullen looks behind the huge movement against Macron’s attack on pensions, which has brought millions onto the streets, and seen ongoing blockades and strikes.

  • France is in revolt. Ever since the 24 March decision by Macron to push through hated pension reforms without a vote, people have been shutting down city centres, and occupying schools, universities, and workplaces.

    Much of the news has focused on the movement in Paris. However, the rebellion isn’t only in the capital. It is happening in cities, towns and villages across the country.

    The Canary spoke to Ana, an organiser from Marseille, who has been involved in the protests and demonstrations in the city. She agreed to tell us a little about what’s been happening over the last week.

    ‘Manifestation sauvage’

    Ana said that people have taken to the streets of Marseille almost every evening since Macron bypassed parliament by invoking article 49-3 of the French constitution. These nighttime protests are known as ‘manifestation sauvage’ in French, or (roughly translated) wildcat demonstrations. The city’s anarchist movement organises them.

    Ana said that the police have responded to the wildcat demonstrations with tear gas and violence. For example, police mobilised with force against demonstrators on Tuesday 28 March. The cops arrested at least six people. The protests are repressed by the riot police, known as the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) and the Brigade Anti-Criminalité (BAC):

    The CRS and BAC also have a large visible presence in the side streets, at the large pre-arranged trade union mobilisations.

    On 30 March, Ana told us that a demonstration was held in Marseille, protesting against police violence. Barricades were set up on the streets.

    Stopping the train lines and motorways

    As in other cities in France, the rebels of Marseille have used the tactic of stopping the roads and trains in order to force Macron to back down.

    The most recent big strike day was on 28 March. Trade unions organised a massive demonstration, with at least 280,000 people in Marseille participating. Members of several unions blockaded the St Charles railway station for over an hour. Prior to the blockade, the station was still operating in spite of the strike. People stopped the trains by occupying the tracks.

    Ana told us that members of the Solidaries union blocked also the motorway on 28 March, and people blocked Marseille’s bus and tram depot at St Pierre too.

    On 29 March, members of the CGT union used cars and trucks to bring traffic to a standstill on the roads and in motorway tunnels around Marseille.

    Ana told the Canary that students have repeatedly taken action to block the entrances to their schools and universities. This happened at Lycée Saint-Charles recently, for example. She also said that students blocked the university campus at St Charles at least twice in March too. One blockade lasted 24 hours.

    On 21 March, strikers occupied the oil depot at Fos-Sur-Mer, building burning barricades.

    Finishing what the Gilet Jaunes started

    We asked Ana whether she has hope that the movement will succeed. She told us that people are becoming weary after months of intense struggle since the strikes began last year:

    Are we going to win? I am a bit lost.. Honestly, people are very tired and struggling because of money and the rise in living costs. The strikes started at the end of last year, even though it was only one or two days… People are feeling the effects of the strike especially those on precarious contracts. In my opinion Macron was strategic – when he choose to use 49-3 in mid-March – when he knew people would have started to feel the loss from the strikes. He refused to meet the unions time and time again.
    But she says that the ongoing spirit of resistance gives her hope:
    But I have some hope – whether it’s the students blocking their schools or the unionists blocking tunnels and motorways – I dream we can finish what the Gilet Jaunes started in 2019 against Macron.
    The French revolt against pension reforms should give us hope too. Lessons can be learned from the intensity of the demonstrations and disruptive actions across France. If our movements in the UK hope to challenge the state’s attacks on all of us, then we will need to work together to generate the level of solidarity and militancy we’ve seen across France in the past months.
    Featured image via screenshot/RMC

    By Tom Anderson

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • By Jan Kohout, RNZ Pacific journalist

    New Caledonia’s Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) say they will tell the French Prime Minister of the Kanak people’s “sense of humiliation” over the last independence referendum.

    The pro-independence alliance is set to talk to the French state from April 7-15.

    The secretary-general of the Caledonian Union, Pascal Sawa, told La Premiere television they need to discuss what happened in the referendum vote in 2021, which was boycotted by the indigenous Kanak people due to the effects of the covid-19 pandemic.

    “The first thing to discuss is the conflict in relation to December 12, 2021,” he said.

    “We cannot ignore what happened then. The state says there is a right for independence and that the accord is now past.

    “We don’t believe it has finished because we feel still feel a sense of humiliation.”

    In Paris, the alliance is set to meet French Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne.

    In a statement, the FLNKS said they would discuss crucial topics such as the restricted electoral roll based on the Noumea Accord of 1998 which allows only people with 18 years presence in the territory to vote.

    “The FLNKS reaffirms that the electoral citizens body is irreversible from the Noumea Accord, and that its modification could break the social peace in the country.”

    They will also choose the next phase in order to progress the Noumea Accord, which in the eyes of the FLNKS remains unfinished.

    “The next phase is how we will come out constructively of the Noumea Accord to rebuild something that resembles us and that brings the people of New Caledonia together,” the statement said.

    The FLNKS statement affirms that all future discussions about the future of the country will be decided and acted in New Caledonia not France.

    ‘We will not reproduce the Accords’
    New Caledonia’s High Commissioner Louis Le Franc said that France would not reproduce the Noumea Accords.

    Seven months after taking his role in Noumea, the commissioner said he was optimistic about future trilateral discussions.

    He said it was a shame the last meeting did not involve the anti-independence side.

    “We are in a period, post-Noumea Accord, we will not reproduce the accords and we will hopefully find an intelligent solution for the sake of future generations.

    “The French Minister of the Interior and French Overseas Minister only have one voice, therefore the framework put down is very hard to be respected.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Group of Swiss women and French ex-mayor suing their governments in first such cases heard by rights court

    The governments of Switzerland and France have been accused of breaching the human rights of their citizens by not acting decisively enough on climate change, at a landmark legal hearing in Strasbourg.

    A panel of judges at the European court of human rights heard petitions from a group of Swiss women and a French former mayor seeking to bolster climate action in their countries. Although climate litigation has spread quickly around the world, these are the first such cases to be heard by the ECHR.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.



  • From France to Uruguay, not by chance, neoliberal governments have proposed a pension reform that adds years to the retirement age (two in France; up to five in Uruguay). The narrative that justifies raising the retirement age is twofold: (1) People live longer and, therefore, have to work more; (2) If these “necessary and painful reforms” are not carried out, the system will be defunded and the country will lose competitiveness in the world since other countries have applied these same measures, necessary for the financial class and painful for the productive classes. The same discourse, plus a third threat, has been repeated for decades in the United States: (3) Social Security (invented by “the communist president” Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression) is not sustainable, so we must raise the retirement age and, as far as possible, privatize it. It does not matter that it is and always has been self-sustaining. Social security is just that: insurance, not risky investments.

    Privatization was first put into practice in peripheral countries. The destruction of Salvador Allende’s socialist democracy 50 years ago and the imposition of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship had the declared intention of preserving the freedom of capital and using this country as a laboratory for the neoliberal theories of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The “Chilean Miracle” was noted for its social and economic crises, despite the tsunami of dollars from Washington and large corporations. The semi-private pension model was brought to Uruguay in 1996 and it only took 20 years for it to fail. The damn state should have come to the rescue of those harmed by investment geniuses.

    All this could be solved with a more direct democracy system, something that many of us have been writing about for decades, especially with the new digital tools.

    The difficulty that a single country, be it France or Uruguay, can resist this acceleration of the robbery of the working classes is due to the fact that these neoliberal policies have a global reach. Countries are held hostage by big capital that migrates from one country to another in a matter of hours, terrorizing populations with the threat of another economic crisis and forcing their rulers, democratic or not, to kneel before these feudal lords. On the other hand, the largest financial institutions in the world, such as the IMF and the World Bank, are allies of this mafia. The World Bank defines itself as a development bank, but its practice indicates the opposite: It is at the service of the benefits of capital, informing to the minute which countries are planning to vote on a law to protect their workers or to control banks with regulations. Thus, its partners and clients can protect their investments by transferring their millions from a sovereign country to a more friendly one, better placed in the ranking of “business freedom,” another of those old functional fictions.

    Since the 1980s, the productivity of workers in the United States and around the world has been steadily growing, while their wages have remained stagnant or have lost purchasing power. You don’t have to be a genius to understand where this difference between productivity and salary went. But they want more.

    Another tender explanation for legislating against the will of the people consists of the classic idea that it is not the unions that govern but the elected governments. But in France alone, 70% of the population is against the pension reform, and its “government elected by the people” refuses to listen. This deafness is classic and, in turn, is justified by another ideology: “The government must act responsibly, not demagoguery.” Again: responsibility before the capital of harassment; demagogy for exercising democracy, giving the people their right to decide.

    All this could be solved with a more direct democracy system, something that many of us have been writing about for decades, especially with the new digital tools. If the French could decide in regular referendums, the massive demonstrations and urban destruction that have been going on for weeks would not have occurred in France. But common citizens have no other effective tool than rebellion, in violent cases. Obviously, this idea of direct democracy is dangerous because it is an idea in favor of a real democracy.

    As history shows, capitalism is by nature undemocratic. It has developed from the brutality and carnage in its colonies; it has been strengthened by slavery; it has been consolidated with the multiple military dictatorships in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Even lately, he has been more than comfortable with Chinese communism. When capitalism coexisted with liberal democracies, it was not because it was a democratic system but because it is a great manipulator, to the point of convincing half the world that democracy and capitalism are the same thing, since both are based on freedom. What he forgets to clarify is that democracy refers to the freedom of the people and capitalism understands it as the freedom of capital, that is, of the dictatorial elite that today not only owns most of the world’s wealth but the control of the global financial system and the near monopoly of the dominant media.

    The French have a long tradition of social protest, but they can also afford to riot in the streets since few will accuse them of being underdeveloped. Uruguayans, despite their long tradition of democratic institutions such as education, health, and individual rights, are much timider in their claims. Its oligarchy, like all of them, also has a long tradition of stigmatizing the advances of real democracy, accusing any popular demand of being communist (a recipe inoculated by the CIA in the 1950s and which survives 30 years after the Cold War) at the same time. They do it in the name of democracy and freedom.

    The (re)solution for France is not easy in an international context kidnapped by the masters of capital who demand and even convince their slaves to work more years for the same ration and, moreover, to do so of their own free will. For Uruguay, due to its context and its size, it is more than difficult. But in both cases, if resistance to economic dictate succeeds, they could set themselves up as dangerous examples.

    For these reasons, the only long-term solution is the union of a new current of Non-Aligned Countries or those associated by common interests (cultural and economic) such as Latin America, for example.

    But of course, we all know that the centennial solution of imperial capitalism has been the disunity, demobilization, and demoralization of the colonies and their own workers. So long as this ideological inoculation that today, in the former colonies, nationalist movements are on the rise. With one detail: they are not the anti-colonialist nationalism of the 1960s in Africa, for example, but a sepoy and parasitic reflection of imperial nationalism in their own colonies.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Human rights watchdog say people angry at Macron’s pension law had right to protest peacefully

    Europe’s leading human rights watchdog has accused the French police of using “excessive force” during protests against a fiercely contested pension law.

    Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, said those wishing to gather peacefully had a right to be protected from “police brutality” and attacks by protesters against officers did not justify a heavy-handed response.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • John Mullen describes the escalating revolt against pensions attacks in France and argues for an indefinite strike to defeat Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron’s attack on workers.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • On Thursday 23 March, French unions staged a new day of disruption against president Macron’s pension reforms. Workers brought refineries to a standstill, along with mass transport cancellations.

    Interrupted supply from refineries has raised concern over fuel shortages for planes at Paris airports. This adds to a growing list of headaches in the crisis that include piles of rubbish in Paris.

    Macron, on 22 March, said he was prepared to accept unpopularity. He stated that raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 was “necessary” and “in the general interest of the country”.

    Protests were planned across the country on 23 March in the latest day of nationwide stoppages that began in mid-January against the pension changes.

    Some 12,000 police, including 5,000 in Paris, were to be deployed for Thursday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said.

    Plummeting approval

    Earlier in the day, protesters blocked road access to Terminal 1 at the capital’s Charles de Gaulle airport, French television footage showed. Half of all high-speed trains nationwide were cancelled, SNCF said, as a union source said one fourth of staff was striking. At least half the suburban trains into Paris were not running.

    Paris municipal garbage collectors have pledged to uphold a rolling strike until Monday, as thousands of tonnes of rubbish rot on the streets.

    Acting on Macron’s instructions, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne invoked an article in the constitution a week ago to adopt the reform without a parliamentary vote.

    The government on Monday narrowly survived a no-confidence motion, but the outrage has spawned the biggest domestic crisis of Macron’s second term.

    A survey on Sunday showed Macron’s personal approval rating at just 28 percent, its lowest level since the height of the anti-government “Yellow Vest” protest movement in 2018-2019.

    Airport fuel ‘under pressure’

    Around a fifth of schoolteachers did not turn up for work on Thursday, the education ministry said.

    Blockades at oil refineries will also continue. In particular, one TotalEnergies site in four is working in the country. The ministry of energy transition warned that the kerosene supply to the capital was becoming “critical”.

    The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has warned that its fuel stocks at the two main Paris airports are “under pressure”. It urged planes to fill up at foreign stopovers.

    Spontaneous protests have broken out on a daily basis in recent days. This has lead to hundreds of arrests and accusations of heavy-handed tactics by police.

    Amnesty International has expressed alarm:

    about the widespread use of excessive force and arbitrary arrests reported in several media outlets.

    On Wednesday evening, hundreds again took to the streets in Paris, Lyon, and Lille.

    ‘No legitimacy’

    France’s Constitutional Court still needs to give the final word on the reform. However, Macron told French TV channels that the changes needed to “come into force by the end of the year”. He also backtracked on earlier comments that the crowds demonstrating had “no legitimacy”. Instead, he said that organised protests were “legitimate”, but violence should be condemned and blockages should not impede normal activity.

    Undeterred, hundreds of protesters in Paris flooded onto train tracks on 23 March in the Gare de Lyon. They interrupted traffic and caused a delay of at least half an hour, according to national railway operator SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français). They chanted:

    And we will go on, we will go on, we will go on till revocation

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Global News

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Alex/Rose Cocker

  • French president Emmanuel Macron’s government narrowly survived a no-confidence motion on March 20 over his decree enforcing the attack on pensions, reports John Mullen. But the people’s revolt against it is escalating.

  • Protests in Paris and across France have ramped up since President Emmanuel Macron’s government on Thursday used a controversial constitutional measure to force through a pension reform plan without a National Assembly vote. Fears that the Senate-approved measure — which would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 — did not have enough support to pass the lower house of Parliament led to a…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.



  • Protests in Paris and across France have ramped up since President Emmanuel Macron’s government on Thursday used a controversial constitutional measure to force through a pension reform plan without a National Assembly vote.

    Fears that the Senate-approved measure—which would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64—did not have enough support to pass the lower house of Parliament led to a Council of Ministers meeting, during which Macron reportedly said that “my political interest would have been to submit to a vote… But I consider that the financial, economic risks are too great at this stage.”

    “This reform is outrageous, punishing women and the working class, and denying the hardship of those who have the toughest jobs.”

    After the meeting, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne announced the decision to go with the “nuclear option,” invoking Article 49.3 of the French Constitution—a calculated risk considering the potential for a resulting motion of no-confidence.

    Members of Parliament opposed to the overhaul filed a pair of no-confidence motions on Friday, and votes are expected on Monday. Although unlikely, given the current makeup of the legislature, passing such a motion would not only reject the looming pension law but also oust Macron’s prime minister and Cabinet, and likely lead to early elections in France.

    As Deutsche Welle reported:

    “The vote on this motion will allow us to get out on top of a deep political crisis,” said the head of the so-called LIOT group Bertrand Pancher, whose motion was co-signed by members of the broad left-wing NUPES coalition.

    The far-right National Rally (RN) filed a second motion, but that was expected to get less backing. RN lawmaker Laure Lavalette however said her party would vote for “all” no-confidence motions filed. “What counts is scuppering this unfair reform bill,” she said.

    Leaders of the Les Republicains (LR) are not sponsoring any such motions. Reuters explained that individuals in the conservative party “have said they could break ranks, but the no-confidence bill would require all of the other opposition lawmakers and half of LR’s 61 lawmakers to go through, which is a tall order.”

    Still, Green MP Julien Bayou said, “it’s maybe the first time that a motion of no-confidence may overthrow the government.”

    Meanwhile, protests against the pension proposal—which have been happening throughout the year—continue in the streets, with some drawing comparisons to France’s “Yellow Vests” movement sparked by fuel prices and economic conditions in 2018.

    Not long after Borne’s Article 49.3 announcement on Thursday, “protesters began to converge on the sprawling Place de la Concorde in central Paris, a mere bridge away from the heavily guarded National Assembly,” according to France 24.

    As the news outlet detailed:

    There were the usual suspects, like leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, thundering against a reform he said had “no legitimacy—neither in Parliament, nor in the street.” Unionists were also out in strength, hailing a moral victory even as they denounced Macron‘s “violation of democracy.”

    Many more were ordinary protesters who had flocked to the Concorde after class or work. One brandished a giant fork made of cardboard as the crowd chanted “Macron démission” (Macron resign). Another spray-painted an ominous message on a metal barrier—”The shadow of the guillotine is nearing”—in the exact spot where Louis XVI was executed 230 years ago.

    Police used tear gas to disperse the Concorde crowd. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told RTL radio 310 people were arrested nationwide—258 of them in Paris. He said, “The opposition is legitimate, the protests are legitimate, but wreaking havoc is not.”

    Anna Neiva Cardante is a 23-year-old student whose parents, a bricklayer and a cleaner, “are among those who stand to lose most.”

    “A vote in the National Assembly was the government’s only chance of securing a measure of legitimacy for its reform,” Neiva Cardante told France 24 as police cleared the crowd Thursday. “Now it has a full-blown crisis on its hands.”

    “This reform is outrageous,” she added, “punishing women and the working class, and denying the hardship of those who have the toughest jobs.”

    Across the French capital early Friday, “traffic, garbage collection, and university campuses in the city were disrupted, as unions threatened open-ended strikes,” DW noted. “Elsewhere in the country, striking sanitation workers blocked a waste collection plant that is home to Europe’s largest incinerator to underline their determination.”

    “Article 49.3 constitutes a triple defeat for the executive: popular, political, and moral,” declared Laurent Escure, secretary general of the labor union UNSA. “It opens up a new stage for the protests.”

    The French newspaper Le Monde reported that “the leaders of France’s eight main labor unions called for ‘local union rallies’ on the weekend of March 18 and 19 and for a ‘new big day of strikes and demonstrations’ on Thursday, March 23.”

    Philippe Martinez of the CGT union asserted that “this forced passage with the use of Article 49.3 must be met with a response in line with this show of contempt toward the people.”

    Fellow CGT representative Régis Vieceli vowed that “we are not going to stop,” telling The Associated Press that flooding the streets and refusing to work is “the only way that we will get them to back down.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.



  • Amid protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to overhaul the country’s pension system, his government on Thursday chose the “nuclear option,” opting to use a constitutional procedure to force through reforms, including raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, without a vote in the lower house of Parliament.

    While the proposal passed the Senate, the upper chamber of Parliament, 193-114 Thursday morning, “reports indicated that the ruling party, which lost its overall majority in elections last year, was a handful of votes short” in the National Assembly, which led to an emergency Council of Ministers meeting about triggering the Article 49.3, Le Monde explained.

    After announcing the government was invoking executive privilege, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne “faced scenes of anger and unrest in the National Assembly,” reported Politico. “Far-left lawmakers belonging to the France Unbowed party booed and chanted the national hymn the Marseillaise as far-right National Rally MPs shouted ‘Resign! Resign!’”

    Using the controversial procedure to push through the plan is risky for Macron—founder of the Renaissance party—because it allows members of Parliament “to submit motions of no-confidence within 24 hours,” Politico added. “While the government has survived motions of no-confidence in recent months, the stakes are much higher this time around. If a majority of MPs vote in favor of a motion, Borne’s government would be forced to resign.”

    While multiple opposition groups in Parliament may respond with no-confidence motions, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party has already pledged to do so.

    “It’s a total failure for the government,” Le Pen told reporters of the Article 49.3 decision, calling for Borne’s resignation. “From the beginning, the government fooled itself into thinking it had a majority.”

    Socialist Party chief Olivier Faure also criticized the approach, saying that “when a president has no majority in the country, no majority in the National Assembly, he must withdraw his bill.”

    Fabien Roussel, head of the French Communist Party, declared that “this government is not worthy of our Fifth Republic, of French democracy. Until the very end, Parliament has been ridiculed, humiliated.”

    MP Rachel Keke of the leftist party La France Insoumise stressed that “what the government is doing makes people sick of politics. It should improve people’s lives, not destroy them.”

    Former French presidential candidate and MP Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who launched La France Insoumise, tweeted: “It is a spectacular failure and a collapse of the presidential minority. United unions call for continued action. This is what we are going to focus on.”

    French trade unions have led national demonstrations and strikes against the overhaul since January. While protesters were oscillating “between rage and resignation” earlier this week, they filled the streets of Paris on Thursday, and “the leader of the CFDT labor union, Laurent Berger, announced there would be new protest dates,” according to Le Monde.

    The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) said in a statement that “this reform is unfair, unjustified, and unjustifiable, this is what millions of people have been asserting forcefully for weeks in the demonstrations, with the strike, and in all the initiatives. These massive mobilizations are supported by a very large majority of the population and almost all workers.”

    “The only response from the government and employers is repression: requisitions, police interventions on workplace occupations, arrests, intimidation, questioning of the right to strike,” the confederation added. “We won’t let it happen! What the CGT denounced as unfair yesterday is even more so today! This can only encourage us to step up mobilizations and strikes, the fight continues!”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • French unions have made an 11th-hour bid to stop the senate passing a deeply unpopular pensions reform. Despite two months of protests and strikes, a bill championed by president Emmanuel Macron is on the verge of passing. The legislation will raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, extend contributions for a full pension, and scrap some special privileges for public sector employees. Opinion polls show that around two-thirds of people in France are against it.

    The most visible impacts of the stand-off so far are the piles of rubbish on Paris’s streets. Municipal rubbish collectors and cleaners have stopped work since early last week. Around 7,000 tonnes of black bin bags and cardboard boxes have accumulated on pavements and outside restaurants in around half the city. Even in the other half of Paris, where private companies still whisk away refuse, collection has been complicated. Two key incinerators outside the capital are on strike.

    Street cleaners voted on 14 March to extend their walkout until 20 March. The result caused France’s interior minister Gerald Darmanin to demand the capital’s municipality order them back to work. However, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo retorted that she had “no power” and no intention of doing so.

    Strikes across Paris and France

    Several small demonstrations kicked off around France on Wednesday 15 March, including in the northern city of Calais. In a new day of strikes and protests, police said they expected between 650,000 and 850,000 demonstrators nationwide. This is fewer than the largest rallies last week. The walkouts also appeared more limited than in previous days of nationwide action. Nonetheless, some workers stood steadfast in rejecting the changes.

    As well as rubbish collectors and cleaners, CGT (General Confederation of Labour) union representative Eric Sellini said several refineries across France were not delivering fuel on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a public transport operator said services would be “very disrupted” between Paris and the suburbs, but only slightly affected inside the city limits. Additionally, just three out of five nationwide high-speed trains were running, national railway operator SNCF (société nationale des chemins de fer français) said. Furthermore, power supplier EDF said power stations around the country had reduced output on 14 March. This is because energy workers fear losing their special privileges to the pensions reform.

    Majority backing for pension reform in the senate

    A parliamentary committee started examining the retirement plan early on 15 March. This came ahead of a joint vote from the lower National Assembly and the Senate that could come as soon as 16 March. The biggest question over its passage is whether Macron’s minority government can muster the required number of votes in the assembly. Macron will need the support of the opposition Republicans party (LR) in order to pass the legislation.

    In a speech to lawmakers on 14 March, prime minister Elisabeth Borne insisted a majority exists in parliament for the changes. She appealed to LR lawmakers, who have long championed pension reform, by saying a vote in favour was “not support for the government”. Borne added:

    A majority exists that is not scared of reforms, even unpopular ones, when they are necessary

    If Borne fails to find a workable majority in the lower house, she could use a constitutional power contained in article 49.3 of the constitution. This would enable her to ram the legislation through without a vote. Analysts say this would deprive her and Macron of democratic legitimacy in the face of hostile public opinion, and would also expose the government to a confidence vote that it might lose.

    Political scientist Gilles Finchelstein, head of think tank Jean-Jaures Foundation, said using article 49.3 would be a “defeat for Borne, the government and the president”. However, he added that it’s “very unlikely” the government would trigger the article as it would have majority backing.

    Changing excuses

    The government initially claimed the changes were intended to make the system fairer. However, it is now emphasising they are about savings and avoiding deficits in coming decades. The proposal would bring France more into line with EU neighbours, most of which have pushed back the retirement age to 65 or higher.

    Featured image via Reuters/YouTube

    By Glen Black

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • At least 22 people died after their boat sank off the coast of Madagascar on Saturday 11 March. The boat was packed with 47 people, who were trying to reach the French island territory of Mayotte. Only 23 were saved, while two more people remained missing.
    Many refugees drown each year in small fishing boats called kwassa-kwassa as they attempt to reach French soil from Madagascar or the Comoros Islands. There are no viable statistics on how many people have lost their lives in attempting such crossings. A French senate report published in the early 2000s estimated that, at that time, around 1,000 people were dying each year.

    Marine cemetery

    The crossing to Mayotte from Madagascar and the Comoros Islands has been labelled “the world’s largest marine cemetery“, and France has blood on its hands. Rather than providing a safe haven for refugees, the state has ploughed the waters with interceptor boats. It detains and deports those it catches. In 2021 alone, more than 6,500 people were detained trying to enter Mayotte. And in December 2022, French interior minister Gérald Darmanin pledged to step up the fight against illegal migration into the French territory.

    The New Humanitarian has reported that:

    Mayotte is exempt from certain French immigration laws, and the border police do not always respect those that do exist. In a report last year, France’s human rights commission condemned the quick deportations in Mayotte, where most migrants don’t even see a lawyer or a judge before expulsion.

    The publication reported that seeking asylum on Mayotte is “mission impossible”.

    The decolonisation myth

    The islands of Mayotte are part of the Comoro archipelago, which were colonised by France in 1912. However, while decolonising from the region in the 1970s, France used underhand tactics to ensure that it didn’t in fact decolonise at all.
    When the Comoros islanders voted for independence from France in 1974, the colonising state took the results and interpreted them island by island. This way, it knew that it would be able to keep hold of Mayotte, which had voted against independence. The New Humanitarian wrote:
    In splitting the Comoros, France violated a UN mandate and an agreement with the Comoros to respect existing boundaries during decolonisation.
    France has a military base on Mayotte, which is strategically located close to the east coast of Africa. The base houses hundreds of Foreign Legion troops, maintaining France’s neocolonial presence in the region.

    Extreme poverty

    Despite Mayotte’s transition to a French department, the islanders live in the worst conditions in all of the French territories:

    Compared to metropolitan France, two to four times more people lived under the income national poverty line in the “old” overseas departments… and this rate increased to five times more in Mayotte. Poverty affects people with no employment or qualifications, young people and single-parent families most of all. Social benefits accounted for household revenue to a much greater degree than in metropolitan France.

    Those who have arrived by boat, without official papers, can’t work. They’re left with no access to accommodation, food or water. For people seeking asylum, they’ve had no option but take to the streets in protest at their dire situation.

    It is unsurprising that France is using the usual European rhetoric of blaming ‘illegal immigrants’ in order to cover up for its own incompetence and neglect in the region. After all, for as long as it can turn people against each other, it knows its neocolonialism can continue untouched.

    Meanwhile, thousands more people will die on perilous crossings from Comoros and Madagascar to Mayotte. To France, these people are just statistics – a convenient enemy to keep out. But these people had hopes for a better life, and France needs to be held accountable for each and every death.

    Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse

    Featured image via ClaraMD/Pixabay

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • After a three-week period of relative calm, all trade union federations in France called on workers “to bring France to a standstill” on March 7. Key workers’ sectors promised ongoing strikes, reports John Mullen.



  • Hundreds of thousands of French workers walked off the job Tuesday and marched against the government’s effort, led by neoliberal President Emmanuel Macron, to raise the nation’s retirement age from 62 to 64.

    For the sixth time this year, French unions organized strikes and rallies to protest Macron and his legislative allies’ deeply unpopular attack on pension benefits. Police anticipated between 1.1 million and 1.4 million participants at more than 260 demonstrations nationwide. Laurent Berger, secretary-general of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, estimated, based on initial figures, that Tuesday’s protests were the biggest since mobilizations started in mid-January.

    “The strike has begun everywhere,” said Eric Sellini of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), which urged people to “bring France to a halt.”

    “If Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want France to come to a standstill and a dark week for the energy industry, it would be better for him to withdraw his reforms.”

    Energy workers impeded fuel deliveries, transit workers shut down most services, teacher walkouts prompted the closure of many schools, and garbage collectors’ ongoing work stoppage has led to a build-up of trash. Meanwhile, BBC News reported that “there will be calls to extend the strikes to include power generation” in the coming days.

    Thirty-eight-year-old activist Sarah Durieux, part of a massive, largely family-friendly crowd in Paris, told The Associated Press, “To see so many people today gives me hope.”

    “The movement has spread because to defend workers’ rights means defending a social model based on solidarity,” she added.

    Unionized workers blocked the exits to all eight oil refineries in mainland France on Tuesday, striking fear in Thierry Cotillard, president of Les Mousquetaires retail chain, who warned that “if the refineries are blocked we could run out of petrol by the end of the week.”

    It is unclear how long the blockades will last. But Emmanuel Lépine, leader of a trade union representing refinery workers, said last week that the aim is to “bring the French economy to its knees.”

    Prior to Tuesday’s actions, labor leader Sébastien Ménesplier declared that “if Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want France to come to a standstill and a dark week for the energy industry, it would be better for him to withdraw his reforms.”

    As BBC News noted Tuesday, the campaign so far “has caused little damage to the economy, and the bill is proceeding through parliament.”

    The legislation, discussed last month in the National Assembly—where members of the New Ecological and Social People’s Union, a leftist opposition coalition, tried to derail debate by proposing thousands of amendments—is being considered in the Senate this week. A vote on the final version is expected later this month.

    “Unions and the left know time is running out before the reform becomes a reality—which is all the more reason for them to up the pressure now,” BBC News observed.

    Macron and his supporters have called the proposed changes “essential,” citing projected budget deficits. But union leaders and left-wing lawmakers have stressed that parliament could bolster France’s pension system—without raising the retirement age or increasing the number of years workers must contribute before qualifying for full benefits—by hiking taxes on the wealthy.

    “The mobilizations will continue and grow until the government listens to workers.”

    “The job of a garbage collector is painful. We usually work very early or late… 365 days per year,” Regis Viecili, a 56-year-old garbage worker, told AP. “We usually have to carry heavy weight or stand up for hours to sweep.”

    Trash collectors’ early retirement age would be raised from 57 to 59 if the reform proposal is enacted.

    “A lot of garbage workers die before the retirement age,” said Viecili.

    A record 1.3 million people took part in mass demonstrations against the legislation on January 31. At subsequent protests, the number of people hitting the streets—while still in the hundreds of thousands—began to decrease.

    According to BBC News, “Union leaders now believe rolling strikes are their best hope of success.”

    Citing CGT secretary-general Philippe Martinez, AP reported that unionized workers “will decide locally” on Tuesday night whether to engage in open-ended strikes.

    A majority of French citizens support the ongoing strikes. According to an opinion poll conducted recently by the French survey group Elabe, two-thirds of the public supports the movement against the government’s planned pension changes in general, 59% back efforts to bring the country “to a standstill,” and 56% support rolling strikes.

    Martinez said in an interview Sunday that unions “are moving up a gear.”

    “The mobilizations,” he predicted, “will continue and grow until the government listens to workers.”

    Xavier Bregail, a 40-year-old train driver in northern Paris, told AP on Tuesday that “the government will step back only if we block the economy.”

    “The subject behind this is inflation, soaring food and energy prices,” he added. “I just want to live decently from my work.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • Unions disrupted fuel deliveries and public transport in France on 7 March. They’d kicked off a fresh day of strikes and protests against pension reforms that would push back the retirement age for millions. The call for people to take to the streets saw more than a million people across the country responding.

    Blockading the economy

    Unions vowed to bring the country to a standstill with strikes over the proposed changes. These include raising the minimum retirement age to 64 from 62 and increasing the number of years people have to make contributions for a full pension. During a rally in Paris, CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labour) union chief Laurent Berger said:

    The government has to take (resistance) into account when there are so many people in the street, when they’re having so much trouble explaining and passing their reform.

    By midday on 7 March, around 39% of workers at state rail operator SNCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français) had walked off the job, a union source told Agence France-Presse (AFP). That would make it the highest number since this year’s first strike against the pension reform on 19 January. Only one in five regional and high-speed trains were running.

    Meanwhile, the Guardian said up to 30% of flights were cancelled on 7 and 8 March as air traffic controllers went on strike. Additionally, the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) union said strikers had blocked fuel deliveries from refineries across France. As a result, petrol stations may run short if protests continue.

    Despite the disruption, there was public support for the protests. According to a survey by polling company Elabe, 56% of respondents said they supported rolling strikes. 59% also backed the call to bring the country to a standstill.

    An anonymous source told AFP that police had expected between 1.1 million and 1.4 million people to hit the streets. The upper limit of that range would mean stronger opposition than during the five previous days of rallies. The biggest day of demonstrations so far brought 1.27 million people to the street on 31 January.

    Next moves

    The government has argued that changes are crucial to keep France’s pensions system from falling into deep deficit. But unions contest that conclusion and say small increases in contributions could keep it solvent. They also argue that the proposed measures are unfair. The new measures would disproportionately affect low-skilled workers who start their careers early, as well as women.

    The bill is now being debated in the upper house of parliament. Two weeks of heated discussion in the lower house previously ended without even reaching a vote on raising the retirement age. President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government is hoping to push through the reform in parliament with help from the right, without resorting to a controversial mechanism that would bypass a parliamentary vote but risk fuelling more protests.

    Workers’ representatives are set to meet in the evening of 7 March to decide on their next moves.

    Featured image via Independent/YouTube

    Additional reporting by Agence-France Presse

    By Glen Black

  • Emmanuel Macron and Rishi Sunak meet on Friday with the UK’s new bill high on the agenda

    Emmanuel Macron and Rishi Sunak meet in Paris on Friday for the first bilateral summit between France and Britain since 2018. High on the agenda will be the longstanding row over small boats crossing the Channel, given new impetus by the plan to tackle the issue announced by the UK on Tuesday.

    What’s the state of Anglo-French relations?

    Continue reading…

  • RNZ Pacific

    Ni-Vanuatu residents have emerged battered but still standing after Cyclone Kevin swiped the country with a strong backhand.

    “It was quite exhausting. Dealing with two cyclones in three days is pretty draining, you know,” Vanuatu journalist Dan McGarry told RNZ Pacific.

    He said the gale-force winds have been rough. He woke early on Saturday morning to try and get a sense of the extent of the damage.

    He went outside in the dark to charge his phone, and when the sun came up it was a real eyesore.

    “Our own laneway is blocked off. We’ve got tree limbs all the way up and down,” he said.

    After clearing the way, he was able to get out and about and have a look around.

    Port Vila had been badly knocked about. McGarry came across a mango tree that landed directly on top of a minibus.

    “And then the wind lifted the entire tree and dumped it a metre-and-a-half away,” he said.

    Fuel was in short supply and a boil water order was in effect, McGarry said.

    Many people were at the few hardware stores that were open, trying to buy tools to repair their properties, he said.

    Cyclone Kevin and Cyclone Judy as pictured on Earth Nullschool on Saturday March 4.
    Cyclone Kevin and Cyclone Judy as pictured on Earth Nullschool today. Image: Nullschool/RNZ Pacific

    On Saturday evening, the Fiji Meteorological Office said the severe tropical storm remained a category five, and was centred in the ocean near Conway Reef.

    Tafea province in Vanuatu, which was under a red alert as Kevin tracked south-east, had been given the all clear.

    An Australian Air Force reconnaissance flight over Tafea province was reported to have shown some intact settlements and still some greenery.

    No casualties had been immediately reported but hundreds of people fled to evacuation centres in the capital Port Vila, where Kevin blasted through as a category four storm.

    Foreign aid needed
    Vanuatu needs support from its international partners.

    “There is going to be a significant need — this is not something Vanuatu can do alone, so the assistance of these partners is going to be critical to a speedy and effective response,” McGarry said.

    He believed cooperation from donor partners was needed. France has already received a request to send a patrol plane, he said.

    “I expect that New Zealand would be putting a P3 in the air before very long. Australia has already committed to sending a rapid assessment team.”

    Stephen Meke, tropical cyclone forecaster with the Fiji Meteorological Service, said cyclone response teams and aid workers wanting to help should plan to travel to Vanuatu from Sunday onwards, as the weather system is forecast to lose momentum then.

    “Kevin intensified into a category four system,” Meke said. “It was very close to just passing over Tanna. So it’s expected to continue diving southeastwards as a category four, then the weakening from from tomorrow onwards.”

    A UNICEF spokesperson said its team was preparing to ship essential emergency supplies from Fiji in addition to emergency supplies already prepositioned in Vanuatu.

    “These include tents, tarpaulins, education, and health supplies to support immediate response needs in the aftermath of the two devastating cyclones.”

    New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was working with the Vanuatu government and partners to see what help it could offer.

    An MFAT spokesperson said New Zealand had first-hand experience of the challenges Vanuatu faced in the coming days and weeks. It had been challenging making contact with people because of damaged communications systems, they said.

    Sixty-three New Zealanders are registered on the SafeTravel website as being in Vanuatu.

    UNICEF is preparing to ship tents, tarpaulins, education, and health supplies to support immediate response needs on the ground.
    UNICEF was preparing to ship tents, tarpaulins, education, and health supplies to support immediate response needs on the ground. Image: UNICEF/RNZ Pacific

    Parts of Vanuatu have plunged into a six-month-long state of emergency.

    Evacuations in Port Vila
    The Fiji Meteorological Office said Port Vila experienced the full force of Kevin’s winds. Evacuations took place in the capital.

    McGarry said he knew of one family that had to escape their property and shelter at a separate home.

    “The entire group spent the entire night standing in the middle of the room because the place is just drenched with water.

    “So it’s been an uncomfortable night for many, and possibly quite a dangerous one for some.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • French trade unions called workers out on a new strike on Thursday 16 February against a bitterly opposed pension reform being debated in parliament. This is the fifth day of action against President Emmanuel Macron’s reform, whose headline measure is raising the legal retirement age from 62 to 64. And the strikes aim to keep up the pressure ahead of a wider mass walkout on 7 March. However, unlike previous strike days, most main line trains and the Paris metro were running normally. This was due to fewer workers participating during school holidays across most of France.

    Employees at state-controlled energy giant EDF said they had lowered output by more than 3,000 megawatts, or the equivalent of three nuclear power plants, without affecting supply to end users. On Wednesday, many hydroelectric plants had been disconnected from the grid. Also on Thursday, 30% of flights from Paris’ Orly airport were cancelled.

    Police said they were expecting demonstrations by up to 650,000 people nationwide, after counting almost one million on Saturday. Unions, however, said that the weekend figure was more like 2.5 million.

    Further marches

    Union leaders were planning to join a march in the mid-sized town of Albi, northeast of Toulouse. Laurent Berger, leader of the CFDT union said:

    We want to put the spotlight on one of the characteristics of this social movement. There’s a France of workers that wants to show it exists, that there’s more than just the big cities.

    Polling shows around 70% of the public reject Macron’s pension reform plans. Meanwhile, a petition opposing them has gathered over one million signatures.

    Philippe Martinez, head of the hard-left CGT union, said the plan was to “keep up pressure on MPs” to vote the bill down. Just last month, CGT threatened to cut off energy for billionaires. Martinez said:

    It would be good if we cut off their electricity so that they can put themselves, for a few days, in the shoes of … French people who can’t afford to pay their bill.

    “Bring France to a halt”

    It is unclear whether the lower house will discuss its Article 7 before running out of time on Friday. Article 7 is responsible for the change in pension age. This uncertainty comes after left-wing opponents submitted thousands of amendments to delay debate. MPs have already rejected one of the bill’s articles, designed to press companies to employ more older workers.

    Macron himself sought to project confidence Wednesday, telling a cabinet meeting that opposition parties have “totally lost their way” over the pensions fight. Socialist MP Philippe Brun said that there is “a possible majority in the chamber to vote against” the retirement age provision.

    The biggest day of action may be still to come, with trade unions promising to “bring France to a halt” on 7 March. Unions are still debating whether to shift to rolling strikes after that date, with Paris metro workers and rubbish collectors already deciding in favour.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/CBC News

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Maryam Jameela

  • Demonstrations in more than 260 towns took place across France on February 11, the fourth day of action to defend pensions, as the Pensions Bill began its four-week debate in the National Assembly, reports John Mullen.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Though it was clear that Burkina Faso was eventually going to follow in the footsteps of Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR), Ouagadougou’s decision to break military ties with France was not as simple as media sound bites want us to believe.

    The conventional wisdom is that these countries are walking away from their former colonial master, France, to forge alternative alliances with a new ally, Russia. These convenient analyses are largely shaped by the geopolitical tug-of-war between old and new superpowers: The US and its NATO allies on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other.

    Though global rivalry, especially on the resource-rich African continent, is an important component in understanding Burkina Faso’s decision – and earlier, similar decisions by Mali in April, and CAR in December – more attention needs to be paid to the logic of these African countries’ own political discourse.

    On January 21, Burkina Faso officially asked France to withdraw its troops from the country within a month. French President Emmanuel Macron seemed perplexed by the request. He answered that he was awaiting clarifications from Burkina Faso’s transitional President, Ibrahim Traore.

    Paris’ confusion did not last long, however. “At the current stage, we don’t see how to be more clear than this,” the Burkina Faso government’s spokesperson, Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo, speaking on national television, said on January 23.

    Ouagadougou’s decision was in reference to 400 French soldiers stationed in the country following a military agreement signed with Paris in 2018. But what were these soldiers doing in Burkina Faso, in the first place?

    The agreement between Paris and Ouagadougou was part of a series of agreements signed between France and several African countries to form regional economic and military alliances, with the understanding that France would be helping these countries achieve stability amid threats of various militant groups.

    Mali, which suffered a series of military coups and deadly rebellions that threatened to divide the country, was the focal point of the French military redeployment into Africa, resulting in the launch of several major campaigns starting in January 2013 with Operation Serval and, later, Operation Barkhane.

    As time passed, the French government claimed one victory after another against various militant groups, always rationalizing its action as part of regional accords signed per the invitation of African countries, which are mostly based in the Sahel region.

    Critics often hit back, saying that France, which effectively controls the economies of fourteen African countries by having a major stake in their currencies and national reserves, is not an equal partner in Africa, but a meddler.

    The latter claim began acquiring more credibility, as there was no proof that Operations Serval and Barkhane achieved their intended goals, or that any of the countries involved in the French scheme achieved political or economic stability.

    Though military coups were a common occurrence in many African countries following the formal end of colonialism on the continent, the new governments in Mali, CAR and Burkina Faso used a different kind of political discourse, which accused the former regimes of treason, while also blaming France for much of these countries’ corruption.

    Burkina Faso was not the exception.

    On September 30, a military coup in Burkina Faso overthrew the government. Anti-French sentiments were apparent in the language and chants on the streets, and the French flag was repeatedly burned and replaced by the Russian flag.

    This is where news analyses often go wrong. When Russian flags were raised in abundance in the streets of Burkina Faso, many assumed that the entire spectacle was an outcome of French-Russian rivalry in that region. Though this geopolitical conflict is real, the behavior of Burkina Faso’s Traore’s government cannot be reduced to political opportunism and military or financial bribery.

    Like Mali and CAR – and other African countries – Burkina Faso never had real political margins that would allow it to operate independently from its former colonial masters. These margins did exist, but were almost completely shut down following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The USSR was seen as a trusted ally by various African governments, which used Soviet support to balance out Western influences and pressures on the highly contested continent.

    The demise of the USSR meant the end of that balancing act and the full return of Africa to the grip of the western sphere.

    The changing global political dynamics resulting from the US/NATO-Russia/China rivalries have, again, opened some of these margins. The countries that dared to be first to cross to the other camp – Mali, CAR, and now Burkina Faso – were the countries that had little to lose as a result of this political gamble. They enjoyed no political stability, little sovereignty and no economic prospects.

    This means that the future could also witness more such geopolitical shifts. The nature and speed of these shifts will be largely determined by the outcome of the ongoing global conflict.

    Burkina Faso’s decision to order French troops out of the country had something to do with global geopolitics, but only in terms of timing. The actual reason is that the French military presence in the country was of no real benefit to Burkina Faso. Ouagadougou seems to have reached the same conclusion as Bamako and Bangui did in the previous month. Indeed, it was only a matter of time.

    The post A Month’s Notice: Why Burkina Faso Ordered French Troops out of the Country first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In Paris and in 267 other towns around France, there were angry protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to raise the standard retirement age from 62 to 64, reports John Mullen.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.


  • French workers currently live nearly two years longer than their counterparts in member states in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), composed of roughly the world’s most advanced capitalist countries. Further, they retire with full benefits, on average, nearly three years earlier than their counterparts in the OECD. Thanks to a rich history of militant struggle for a shorter workweek, a greater share of national wealth, and social benefits for retirees, workers in France enjoy a higher standard of living and a much longer secure retirement than most workers in other countries.

    Of course, a better, longer, more secure life comes at a cost; France devotes much more of its GDP to support retirees than other OECD countries. It should be an obvious truth that it costs more to live longer.

    And the people of France want to keep this system and improve it. They believe that spending more national wealth on the people is sensible and just.

    With the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and his corporate backers threatening to raise the retirement age by two years, the opinion polls consistently show that the vast majority of those polled oppose the change.

    To bring this opinion to the attention of France’s elites, two million people rallied and marched throughout France on Thursday, January 19; in Paris alone, the march extended for two and a half miles.

    Rather than bow down to the demands for austerity and competitiveness made by capital, working people in France are fighting to retain what earlier generations have won. They do not see the fate of the elderly as negotiable.

    Instead, the people defend senior benefits as an act of solidarity and not charity.

    By delaying retirement benefits for two years and shortening the retirements of French workers, politicians believe that they could save as much as 150 billion dollars per year. Of course, this “savings” will never benefit working people.

    However, it is thievery with the stolen national wealth redirected toward shoring up the fortunes of the ruling class.

    The day after the massive demonstrations, President Macron announced that his administration planned to increase French spending on the military by 115-120 billion dollars per year over the next six years! So the proposed savings will go into the pockets of the armament industry and further increase the tensions in Europe unleashed by the war in Ukraine.

    Since the consolidation of nation-states, rulers have used war and the threat of war to rally support. Not only is the war in Ukraine a reckless step toward regional, if not global, war, but the governing cliques are using it to justify their hold on power. Military spending is exploding across the region. Fear of a mythical Russian march to the sea serves the interest of all of the capitalist powers in the Euro-Atlantic area.

    As it was in the twentieth century, war is the answer to the collapse of the traditional parties; war is the distraction from the inability of the center forces to rule effectively; war is the answer given to the masses searching for political alternatives to the misrule of the few.

    But if the majority of French voters oppose Macron’s initiative, how did he get reelected? He never hid his agenda from the people. If sixty to eighty percent of the voters oppose his policies, what is the secret of his electoral victory?

    Macron’s election was the result of the dilemma presented to voters in nearly all of the so-called “advanced democracies” — those countries organized around mature capitalist economic relations, but governed by a parliamentary system with nominally universal suffrage.

    Where these countries exist– especially the US and Europe, but others as well– voters must choose between two ugly options. They can support political parties that have abdicated social welfare for the individualistic, winner-take-all “justice” of the market. Or, on other hand, they can opt for the bogus anti-elitist populism of the refashioned right.

    Understandably, many voters have turned against traditional parties that have been won over to “serving” social justice through the mechanism of private firms, NGOs, foundations, and charitable institutions. The US Democratic Party, UK Labour, the German SPD, Italy’s Democrats, etc. have abandoned their traditional posture of partisanship for the working class and surrendered to the philosophy of “a rising tide lifts all boats” — the politics that is dismantling the welfare state safety net.

    With the traditional center-left disregarding the working class and with working people slammed by a global shift in wealth distribution, a privatization and dismantling of public infrastructure, and a radical restructuring of employment away from high-paying jobs, voters are looking for alternatives.

    Sections of the traditional right– refashioned to attack indifferent elites, construct handy scapegoats, and offer easy, but misdirected solutions– have rushed to fill the political void. Politicians like Trump, Boris Johnson, Orbán, Le Pen, Meloni have opportunistically capitalized upon the vacuum left by the mutation of the center-left parties. Their faux-populism captured much of the forgotten working class, desperate for an alternative, any alternative.

    As the traditional center-left lost ground, it raised the alarm of extremism, even fascism. Like the bourgeois parties of the past, the mainstream parties resort to fear-mongering, rather than a critical examination of their trajectory, their departure from their purported advocacy for the masses. Whether it was touting the danger of the ultra-right or trumpeting the emergence of fascism, the center-left sought to rally voters around a united front against Trump, Le Pen, Meloni, et al., a solely defensive strategy that, at best, only forestalled the continuing influence of right-wing populism.

    It is in this context, following this cautious, defensive strategy, that Macron won re-election. Against the rise of the right-populist National Rally party and its presidential candidate, Marine le Pen, the traditional French parties– including the center-left and the new left– unconditionally threw their support behind the “safe” alternative. The left neither sought nor received any major concessions from Macron for their votes. While they drew some satisfaction from stopping Le Pen, the left now faces a Macron determined to strip the working class of hard-won gains, ironically, a move that Le Pen does not support.

    Those on the left who embrace the tactic of unconditional unity against the right as an electoral strategy should take a hard, sober look at how it played out in France. Happily, millions of French citizens are rising to the challenge now posed by rallying behind a “lesser of two evils,” a “lesser” that may prove far more destructive of living standards than the “other evil.”

    As history all too often proves, giving voters something to vote against can, at best, temporarily retard the advance of the false friends of the people. Decades of fealty to the “lesser evil” myth has only spawned an ever more skeptical, cynical, frustrated electorate, desperate for an alternative. Absent a left that stands for something, voters will continue to consider faux-populism as a legitimate alternative.

  • First published at Marxist-Leninism Today.
  • The post France and the Dilemma of Electoral Politics in the 21st Century first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ministers say exceptional security needed but rights groups warn new law could extend police powers permanently

    The French government is fast-tracking special legislation for the 2024 Paris Olympics that would allow the use of video surveillance assisted by artificial intelligence (AI) systems.

    Ministers have argued that certain exceptional security measures are needed to ensure the smooth running of the events that will attract 13 million spectators, but rights groups have warned France is seeking to use the Games as a pretext to extend police surveillance powers, which could then become permanent.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • nugget
    3 Mins Read

    Dévore Food, the Frech plant-based meat startup founded by conventional meat lovers, has released its first products.

    More than two years of development have delivered with Dévore says are meat analogs that offer improved taste, texture, and performance. The first products on offer are Nugs and Strips, which the company says are both more affordable than organic chicken.

    A new, responsible way of eating

    “We wanted to offer a new responsible way of eating based on clean food, in line with our values,” co-founder Eugénie Le Dressay said in a statement. “Products to be devoured without any complexes, with your eyes closed!”

    Le Dressay co-founded Dévore with entrepreneur Vasco Duarte Ribeiro two years ago after assessing their conventional meat consumption.

    Devore foods
    Dévore Foods is bringing plants to meat-loving France | Courtesy

    Despite France’s long history as a meat-eating nation, a growing number of French people have begun reducing their consumption of meat and other animal products. Data from 2021 found nearly half of French citizens have reduced their meat intake in the last three years.

    Le Dressay says the made-in-Fance vegetarian meat from Dévore is rich in protein just like conventional meat but low in saturated fat as well as providing a good source of dietary fiber. The co-founder points to the company’s lower environmental footprint, too, which Le Dressay says is “three times less energy-consuming than chicken,” in terms of CO2, water pollution, and land mobilization.

    Accessible analogs

    “It was important for us to make our products accessible to make life easier for people who want to reduce their meat consumption, whether they are flexitarians, teenagers who have the munchies, or parents who don’t have the time to cook. Cheaper than a free-range chicken and just as generous, our products are good for everyone: tasty and balanced for humans, respectful of animals and sustainable for the planet,” says Ribeiro.

    La Vie
    Burger King has embraced vegan bacon from France’s La Vie | Courtesy

    Dévore’s launch comes on the heels of a number of plant-based launches in France. Last summer, HappyVore nabbed $36.8 million along with France’s largest vegan meat production facility. Last February, French supermarket chain Carrefour opened what it says was the first vegan butcher counter in the country. And the Natalie Portman-backed La Vie has seen its vegan bacon become a mainstay at Burger King locations across Europe.

    The first two Dévore vegan chicken products are now available via the company’s website, in select grocery stores and markets, and through foodservice channels.

    The post Another French Startup Is Taking On the Meat Industry appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Millions of workers and youth in France mobilised on January 19 against the government’s latest attack on pensions. John Mullen explains the background.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • The streets of France filled with outraged workers on Thursday as rail employees, teachers, and others walked off the job to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s deeply unpopular plan to overhaul the nation’s pension system by raising the official retirement age from 62 to 64. The union-led demonstrations — which ground significant portions of the country, including many schools and transportation…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A day of strikes and protests kicked off in France on Thursday 19 January. They’re set to disrupt transport and schooling across the country as workers oppose a deeply unpopular pensions overhaul.

    The changes presented by president Emmanuel Macron’s government last week would raise the retirement age for most people from 62 to 64, and increase the years of contributions required for a full pension.

    France’s trade unions immediately called for a mass mobilisation. This is the first time they have united in such a way since 12 years ago, when the retirement age was hiked to 62 from 60.

    Inspiration

    Workers in France signalled the start of their resistance with burning torches as they set out in defence of their pensions:

     

    French worker’s militancy is well-known – not least when compared to British workers. However, the UK has seen waves of strikes recently. Many people here seem to have been inspired by the idea of bigger, more coordinated action:

    One commenter suggested the use of some of the militantly disruptive French tactics employed over the years:

    The scale of the strikes, even outside major cities, impressed another Twitter user:

     

    British workers

    The British labour movement – distinct from the Labour Party – is in a moment of intense action. Many industries, like nursing and teaching, are currently fighting for better conditions, and some are actually winning against their tight-fisted bosses.

    There is still more to do the advance the struggle here in the UK. We could do much worse than look to our French counterparts for examples of passionate protest and mass resistance.  After all, at its very best, the workers’ struggle should have no borders

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/ Jeanne Menjelout, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY 2.0. 

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Pacific Media Watch

    President Édouard Fritch of French Polynesia says he wants to boost funds to study journalism in French Polynesia in a bid to help strengthen the media industry quality, reports RNZ Pacific.

    According to the local Ministry of Education, the amount given for study grants will vary from US$536 to US$1341 per month, depending on the level of study.

    Fritch told La Première television about the “growing threat of false information” and the importance of reliable news outlets.

    “Those social media pages escape the realm of news outlets, they shy away from all verification and create confusion and worse, they act as the public’s spokesperson,” he said.

    “That is why I think it is a must that the journalism sector must be supported by the country.”

    Meanwhile, public broadcaster France Télévision — La Première — reports that its audience in French overseas territories grew in 2022 and now reaches 42 percent of the 889,000 audience at least once.

    La Première in Tahiti heads the audience share with 36.5 percent. Figures for other territories are: French Guyana 33.4 percent, Mayotte 31.4 percent, New Caledonia 30.2 percent, Gaudeloupe 27.1 percent, Martinique 18.1 percent, and Réunion 14.5 percent.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.