Prime Minister Takaichi announced the dissolution of The House of Representatives and the general election at a press conference on January 19th. The general election is to be held on Sunday, February 8th. This brief essay will examine the current political situation, focusing on what the snap election means and why a new party, the Centrist Reform Coalition, was formed by the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) and the Komeito Party (Komeito). Why Prime Minister Takaichi Called a Snap (…)

In Christoph Dehn's profoundly disturbing novel, Jan, a retired official of a German development agency operating in the Philippines, returns to look for an ex-lover, Diwa, an ex-cadre of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) who wrote to him from out of nowhere. Jan wants to reconnect and ask Diwa about her disappearance. Deep down, he hopes to rekindle their affection for one another and, as he tells his daughter, “to finish an old story.” It turns out to be neither a simple nor (…)

Conseil de la paix, Iran, Venezuela, Groenland : les États-Unis ne rencontrent actuellement presque aucun obstacle devant leur offensive frontale contre le droit international, les droits de l'homme et les règles établies en matière de souveraineté des États. Et Trump ne fait que commencer. Le président américain Donald Trump arrive pour une conférence de presse à la Maison Blanche, mardi, un an après le début de son deuxième mandat. Crédit : Nathan Howard/Reuters Donald Trump est un (…)

Board of Peace, Iran, Venezuela, Greenland: The United States currently faces almost no obstacles to its frontal assault on international law, human rights, and the old norms of state sovereignty. And Trump is just getting started U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for a press briefing at the White House, on the one-year mark into his second term in office, Tuesday. Credit: Nathan Howard/Reuters Donald Trump is a destroyer. As he marks one year into his second term on Tuesday, the U.S. (…)

On Friday a majority of European Union states voted to accept the Mercosur free trade deal despite opposition from France. Yet the climatic and environmental impacts of this agreement with the South American nations involved are profound: an increase in CO2 emissions, deforestation, higher sales of pesticides and chemical fertilisers, and more animal exploitation. All this represents a series of setbacks for the planet's ecology, writes Mediapart's environment editor. French farmers have (…)

Comment le bénévolat devient-il aujourd'hui un lieu de tensions entre les sexes et les classes sociales ? Quelles sont les caractéristiques spécifiques des relations de classe dans l'Ukraine contemporaine ? Et comment les militant·es de gauche français perçoivent-iels la guerre en Ukraine ? La rédaction de Posle s'est entretenue avec Daria Saburova, docteure, chercheuse à l'Université d'Europe centrale, membre du comité de rédaction de la revue de gauche ukrainienne Spilne (Commons) et (…)

Eleni Varikas, qui vient de décéder le 9 janvier 2026, a été ma compagne pendant 45 années. Pendant presque un demi-siècle nous avons partagé joies et chagrins, mené des combats ensemble, parfois écrit des essais à 4 mains. Elle nous laisse un riche héritage intellectuel et politique, profondément humaniste, universaliste et subversif. Eleni Varikas, qui vient de décéder le 9 janvier 2026, a été ma compagne pendant 45 années. Pendant presque un demi-siècle, nous avons partagé joies et (…)

The Israeli government has practically paralyzed the agency dedicated to Palestinian refugees, and sanctions have caused extensive budget cuts. But UNRWA is still the most important humanitarian organization operating in Gaza. In an interview with Haaretz, its heads tell their side of the story A locked UNRWA school in East Jerusalem, last February. Israel's anti-UNRWA laws went into effect a month earlier. Credit: Shira Diaman AMMAN - The past week has been especially turbulent for the (…)

« Les Alaouites récoltent aujourd'hui les fruits amers du vide politique, religieux et moral que leur a légué la clique Assad, et d'une forme malsaine de conscience politique à caractère sectaire qui a envahi l'espace public syrien. » Il est, en politique, des acteurs égoïstes qui agissent uniquement en fonction de leur propre intérêt, suivant ce qui leur sert ou leur nuit. A cette fin, ils s'appuient nécessairement sur des raisonnements purs et des calculs logiques, en s'affranchissant (…)

We are fifty years on from Franco's death, forty-eight years after the restoration of parliamentary democracy, and forty-four years after Colonel Tejero's failed coup. These seem like three decisive arguments for claiming that Spain has definitively left fascism behind, but nothing could be further from the truth. Few countries in Europe are as susceptible to a resurgence of fascism as the Iberian monarchy, argues historian Vincent Scheltiens-Ortigosa. Unlike Italy, Portugal and Germany, (…)

Nine months after the monsoon revolution toppled Sheikh Hasina, Bangladeshi women face a double bind: an interim government failing to protect them, and resurgent Islamist forces targeting their freedoms. Sociologist Samina Luthfa, who teaches at the University of Dhaka and was among the organisers of the May 2025 women's march, spoke to Himal Southasian in June 2025 about the state of feminist organising under these conditions. With Bangladesh's general election scheduled for February 2026, (…)

How is volunteering becoming a site of gender and class tensions? What are the specific characteristics of class relations in contemporary Ukraine? And how do French leftists perceive the war in Ukraine? The POSLE editorial team spoke with Daria Saburova, a researcher at Central European University and member of the editorial board of the Ukrainian left journal Spilne (Commons), as well as author of Travailleuses de la résistance (Women Workers of the Resistance). Hello, Daria, thank you (…)

La sociologue Samina Luthfa explique comment les femmes se retrouvent coincées entre un gouvernement intérimaire incapable de les protéger et un conservatisme islamiste croissant qui menace leurs libertés. En octobre 2024, deux mois après la « révolution de la mousson » au Bangladesh qui a renversé la Première ministre Sheikh Hasina et le gouvernement de la Ligue Awami, quatre experts des questions de genre ont publié une tribune dans le journal bangladais Prothom Alo consacrée aux femmes (…)

Dans cet entretien réalisé par Jean Batou, Gilbert Achcar revient sur l'issue des soulèvements de la région arabe, quinze ans après la chute de Ben Ali en Tunisie. Jean Batou : Le 14 janvier 2026 marque le 15e anniversaire de la chute du régime de Ben Ali, qui a constitué la première grande victoire du « Printemps arabe ». Après la Tunisie, de nombreux autres peuples se sont lancés dans des luttes de masse, notamment en Égypte et en Syrie. Pourtant, cette imposante vague révolutionnaire a (…)

The political situation in Europe is very bad. The far right is in government in several countries: Italy, Hungary, Belgium (the Prime Minister is from the NVA), Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Croatia, not to mention Sweden (where the far right, without being part of the minority government, supports it). The far right has succeeded in becoming the leading political force in Italy (Brothers of Italy), France (RN), Hungary (Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union), the Netherlands (Geert (…)

La disparition de Raila Odinga en octobre 2025 invite non seulement au deuil, mais aussi à un bilan. Dans cette méditation politique, Tafahri Munjatta examine le paradoxe de la figure d'opposition la plus durable du Kenya – un homme qui parlait le langage de la révolution tout en évoluant dans l'architecture du pouvoir. Cet essai retrace comment le mythe de Raila reflète le projet moral inachevé de la démocratie kenyane : éternellement résistante, éternellement en négociation, sans jamais (…)

Dimanche dernier, le 18 janvier, le premier tour de l'élection présidentielle a eu lieu au Portugal, dont le second tour se tiendra le 8 février. Un ancien dirigeant du Parti socialiste et le chef des néofascistes se disputeront ce second tour d'une élection présidentielle qui confirme le virage à droite du Portugal. La concentration des voix sur le PS a relégué la gauche à de nouveaux minima historiques. La somme des voix du gouvernement de droite et des partis ultralibéraux et (…)

A GOVERNMENT THAT claims the right to blow up unarmed boats at sea in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific will also feel free to kill its population at home. A government that kidnaps the ruler of a foreign country, seizes its resources, and proclaims the intention to “run the country for years” will trample the democratic freedoms and civil rights of its own population with equal arrogance. The violent terror campaign unleashed against immigrants has resulted in the murder of Renee Good, (…)

At the moment, Minneapolis is the frontline of the resistance. President Donald Trump is at war with Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, whom he hates as a political rival, and at war with liberal Minneapolis, the state's largest city. Trump has now sent 3,000 agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into Minneapolis, 1,000 more than there were before ICE murdered activist Renée Nicole Good. There are now more ICE agents in Minneapolis than there are police in the metropolitan (…)

On Sunday 18 January, presidential elections were held in Portugal, with a second round scheduled for 8 February. A former leader of the Partido Socialista (Socialist Party, PS) and the leader of the neo-fascists will contest a run-off that confirms Portugal's shift to the right. The concentration of votes in the PS has relegated the left to new historic lows. The gypsies must obey the law! (Chega billboard) The combined votes for the right-wing government and the ultraliberal and (…)

At a study day organised by the Ernest Mandel Foundation in Antwerp, historians Vincent Scheltiens and Alex de Jong analysed the contemporary far right's rise across Europe. Their central argument: whilst parallels between 1930s fascism and today's neofascism exist, drawing such comparisons is strategically counterproductive. Today's far right, exemplified by Geert Wilders' PVV, functions less as classical fascism than as radicalised liberalism – embracing free-market ideology rather than (…)

China's US$20 billion Simandou iron ore project in Guinea signals a fundamental shift in Beijing's African strategy: from financing infrastructure through loans to directly controlling mines, railways and ports in a vertically integrated system. Yet this expansion comes at enormous cost. Environmental disasters in Zambia and the DRC have poisoned rivers and communities, whilst companies deploy legal threats and surveillance to silence critics. Chinese workers lured by promises of wealth find (…)

Exactly 17 years ago – on 19 January 2009 – a crime was committed that made this date symbolic as a day of remembrance for victims of far-right terror. That day, Russian neo-Nazis murdered two prominent figures of the antifascist movement – opposition human rights defender, left-wing and civic activist Stanislav Markelov, and Crimean anarchist and journalist Anastasia Baburova, who had been exposing the numerous crimes of Russian security forces. Stanislav defended victims of war crimes (…)

Plusieurs nouveaux projets, spécialement conçus pour les Juifs des pays anglophones, leur offrent la possibilité de lutter contre la violence des colons en vivant parmi les Palestiniens et en rendant compte de ce qu'ils vivent. Des volontaires manifestent à al-Tuwani avec des pancartes qu'ils ont fabriquées. Crédit : Naama Grynbaum Avant de se rendre sur le terrain, les volontaires reçoivent pour instruction de créer des affiches simples qui seront accrochées à la clôture d'une (…)