Geography Archives: France

This isn’t what Western countries wanted to sow in West Africa, writes Owen Schalk.

Niger is shaping up to be the surprising frontline of the new Cold War.

Burkina Faso and Mali have declared their willingness to defend Niger with armed force if France, Nigeria, or ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) were to intervene in Niger following the recent change of power.

Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité. That was the slogan with which the French masses overthrew the hated monarchy in 1789.

South Africa’s media agencies report that the country’s authorities have rejected a French request to send an invitation to President Emmanuel Macron to attend the upcoming summit of the BRICS economic group.

France’s Interior Minister reports that one-third of those imprisoned during the week of violence were young rioters.

The proposed law specifies that the procedure can be executed “without the knowledge or consent of its owner or possessor,” but is limited to suspects involved in terrorism, organised crime and other illegal activities punishable by five or more years in prison.

France never really came to terms with its colonial heritage or its colonial mindset.

“Tout le monde deteste la police!”—Everyone hates the police—was chanted at demonstrations and riots across France last week.

Newly declassified British files shed disturbing light on the origins and internal workings of Operation Gladio, a covert NATO plot deploying fascist terror militias across Italy. Have spies in London applied these lessons in Ukraine?

175 years on from the 1848 June Days insurrection, Katherine Connelly explores what Paris’ working-class revolutionaries taught Marx and Engels.

Ever since the Haitian people successfully overthrew slavery and colonialism in 1804, they have been subjected to interventions and policies by the French and U.S. governments–from devastating “debt” collection to brutal military occupation, from coups to neocolonial puppet dictatorships–designed to destroy their existence as sovereign people, as an independent nation.

During the May 2023 Group of Seven (G7) summit, the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, near where the meeting was held.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement in China about developing “strategic autonomy” from the United States is empty posturing intended for the domestic French market.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron told Xi Jinping that he opposes the U.S. war drive against China and wants an independent Europe with “strategic autonomy”. But he has made comments like this before, and failed to challenge Washington’s hegemony.

As workers prepare for a long drawn struggle, John Mullen argues now is the time to call for a general strike.

The president of China, Xi Jinping, commented to his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, that all parties involved in the conflict in Ukraine “must assume their responsibilities” and “create the conditions” for a political solution and avoid escalation.

“The Party Is Ending for French Retirees.” That’s the headline the Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) went with just days before French President Emmanuel Macron invoked a special article of the constitution to bypass the National Assembly and enshrine an increase in the retirement age in national law.

John Mullen writes from Paris on the background to the current strikes and the very different patterns of union organisation in France.

Since January, more-or-less weekly mass labor mobilizations have continued against a new law that would increase the retirement age from 62 to 64, even after it was rammed through without a vote on March 16.