France on the edge
An Interview with Éric Piolle***Version française ci-dessous***
The mayor of Grenoble has assembled a broad coalition of Greens, the Left and citizen groups to do a different sort of politics in the city of 158.000, located in Southeast France at the foot of the Alps. On the cusp of his second term, Éric Piolle sat down with Ethan Earle to discuss Covid, Macron and the “humanist arc” he seeks to build.
Ethan Earle (EE): What can you tell us about ...
read more "“We must make the commons a fulcrum for our society, allowing everyone to have security and give meaning to their life.”"
read more "“We must make the commons a fulcrum for our society, allowing everyone to have security and give meaning to their life.”"
An Interview with Anne-Cécile Mailfert***Version française ci-dessous***
The lockdown has highlighted the fact that victims of domestic violence live in de facto lockdown all the time. Anne-Cécile Mailfert is a French feminist activist and President of the Fondation des Femmes (Women's Foundation). In early June 2020, she took the time to answer questions from A Season in Hell Editor Ethan Earle about violence against women during, before and after the Coronavirus.
Ethan Earle (EE): Can you tell us a bit...
read more "“When women spend more time at home, it is never good for their rights”"
read more "“When women spend more time at home, it is never good for their rights”"
Forward! The march, the burden and the desert, weariness and anger.
~Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
The French defence industry has become addicted to arms exports as part of a national strategy to remain a global military player. To feed this addiction, France is effectively allowing undemocratic countries in the Middle East and elsewhere to purchase French diplomatic silence and political complicity for their crimes.
***Version française ci-dessous***
While it is common knowledge that the Middle East has been a near-permanent...
read more "Hooked on weapons exports"
read more "Hooked on weapons exports"
REUTERS
A breath of fresh air?Back in April, EU heads of state and government agreed a coronavirus rescue package worth over €500 billion for the countries hardest hit by the crisis. However, the support in this package only took the form of low-interest loans. Now, though, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have presented a plan for a further €500-billion recovery fund that would see aid issued to Member States as grants rather than as repayable loans. Moreover – and this is the most remarkable feature of their proposal – the plan would be ...
read more "Merkel and Macron"
read more "Merkel and Macron"
President Macron has acknowledged the link between Covid and the climate crisis, and the need for largescale measures in response. Emerging alliances demand that he move beyond lofty rhetoric, and that the French government take up the challenge of the socio-ecological transformation the moment demands.
The world is currently facing a pandemic crisis in the form of the coronavirus, and France is one of the most affected countries with more than 130.000 cases and 24.000 deaths as of this writing. The Gilets Jaunes slogan comparing the end of ...
read more "Covid crisis, climate crisis – same struggle"
read more "Covid crisis, climate crisis – same struggle"
From the pension reform attempt to the coronavirus crisis, the events of recent months have revealed a trade union movement that is weakened but still fighting hard to break with increasingly apparent 'neoliberal disorder'. Where does the French labour movement head from here?
***version française ci-dessous***
The anti-pension-reform movement was still going strong when the decision was taken to put France into lockdown.[1] Though the government sought to use the coronavirus as an opportunity to rush through its pension reform ...
read more "The French Labour Movement on the Hot Seat"
read more "The French Labour Movement on the Hot Seat"
Frontline nurses and hospital personnel share a sense of solidarity and purpose, but with their battle against the Coronavirus hampered by years of budget cuts and disinvestment, their concerns are beginning to grow.
As a nurse in the infectious disease ward of a major Paris hospital, Marie is on the frontlines of the battle against Covid-19. Over the past few weeks, dozens of new patients with the virus have arrived to her unit, medical students and nurses from other wards have been called in as reinforcements, and strict new precautionary ...
read more "French Hospital Workers Battle Coronavirus"
read more "French Hospital Workers Battle Coronavirus"
Quick! Are there other lives?
— Sleep in wealth is impossible.
Wealth has always been public property.
~ Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
*** traduction en français ci-dessus***
Across France, huge numbers of people are taking to the streets to push for the withdrawal of the proposed pension reform. Meanwhile another reform was adopted just a few months earlier. While these unemployment-insurance cuts attracted less attention, they represents a similarly flagrant attack on workers’ ...
read more "Fewer rights and greater precarity following unemployment-insurance reform in France"
read more "Fewer rights and greater precarity following unemployment-insurance reform in France"
Commentary by the CGT on the use of Article 49-3By Catherine Perret, Confederal Secretary of the French General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and author of our recent article describing the proposed reforms: An attack on the solidarity-based system.
Article 49-3 of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic allows the French government to govern by decree, bypassing the National Assembly. On 29 February 2020, the French government announced it would employ Article 49-3 to move its pension reform bill directly to the Senate – the first time this...
read more "”An outright subversion of democracy”"
read more "”An outright subversion of democracy”"
I have swallowed a monstrous dose of poison.
~Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
France’s forthcoming municipal elections mark the opening of a cycle that ends with presidential and parliamentary contests in 2022, following next year’s departmental and regional elections. Half a million local councillors in around 35,000 constituencies are going to be elected on 15 and 22 March, a major test of party organisation and local roots. Local success can provide a platform for smaller, newer or outsider parties to ...
read more "Islands of reaction: the far-right and France’s local elections"
read more "Islands of reaction: the far-right and France’s local elections"