The cracks in Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron's neoliberal government are beginning to show and the strikes are continuing to broaden, writes John Mullen.
France
On January 14–17, fresh strikes and demonstrations took place across France.
According to media reports, several French ports were blocked by a 72-hour strike by members of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), as part of the ongoing mass transportation strikes over Prime Minister Emanuel Macron’s attacks on the pension system.
The CGT called a 72-hour walk-out starting from January 14 and for pickets on January 17, in what the union has called “opération ports morts” (operation dead ports).
Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy
By Kohei Saito
Monthly Review Press, 2017
RED-GREEN REVOLUTION: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism
By Victor Wallis
Political Animal Press, 2018
The Yellow Vests represent the first time in history that a spontaneous, self-organised social movement has ever held out for half a year in spite of repression, while retaining its autonomy, resisting cooption, bureaucratisation and sectarian splits.
The Grateful Dead are a terrorist threat, according to French police authorities.
Tout le Monde Debout (Rolling to You)
Directed by Franck Dubosc
Starring Franck Dubosc, Alexandra Lamy, Elsa Zylberstein
Showing as part of the French Film Festival across Australia in March and April
Remember Pretty Woman back in 1990 where rich guy Richard Gere raced off fallen-woman sex worker Julia Roberts?
Un Amor Impossible (An Impossible Love) is based on the controversial novel by Christine Angot, one of France’s angriest public intellectuals. The story is plainly autobiographical and leaves no painful fact unrevealed.
Thousands took part in the latest round of yellow vest protests in France on January 12 as President Emmanuel Macron announced a national debate in a bid to quell the growing unrest.
More than 84,000 demonstrators took to the streets across the country, a rise on the previous week according to official figures as the movement shows no sign of abating, Morning Star Online reported.
Concessions offered by Macron, including a pause in the fuel tax which triggered the protests and a rise in the minimum wage, have been rejected as protests continued for the ninth week.
Many "yellow vest" anti-government protesters in France vowed to press on with their demonstrations on December 11, a day after wringing out fresh concessions from President Emmanuel Macron. SBS.com.au reported that Macron announced a series of measures the previous night in an address to the nation, including a hike in the minimum wage and tax relief for pensioners and on overtime work.
In recent weeks, a new protest movement called the “yellow jackets” took to the streets of France. They are protesting the rise of petrol prices, issued by President Emmanuel Macron in order to cut CO2 emissions.
The yellow jackets movement, seemingly spontaneously born on the internet, immediately spread on a national scale. It brought hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Paris on November 24. The protesters are worried because rising petrol prices will directly affect their everyday life.
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