Women chant slogans during a protest marking International Women’s Day in Istanbul, Turkey, March 8, 2025
WOMEN took to the streets of cities across Europe, Africa, South America and elsewhere to mark International Women’s Day with demands for ending inequality and gender-based violence.
On the Asian side of Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city, a rally in Kadikoy saw members of dozens of women’s groups listen to speeches, dance and sing in the spring sunshine.
The colourful protest was overseen by a large police presence, including officers in riot gear and a water cannon truck.
Protesters pushed back against the idea of women’s role being confined to marriage and motherhood, carrying banners reading “Family will not bind us to life” and “We will not be sacrificed to the family.”
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From Athens to Madrid, Paris, Munich, Zurich and Belgrade and in many more cities across the continent, women marched to demand an end to treatment as second-class citizens in society, politics, family and at work.
Donald Trump shows off a letter from King Charles that Keir Starmer has just handed him, Washington, 27 February 2025. Photograph: ABACA/REX/Shutterstock
We need a ‘coalition of the willing’ capable of bringing together those in Europe and the global south. Britain should facilitate that
There are only so many times Donald Trump can be offered a state and royal visit to temper his political tantrums. With his latest attacks on Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the halting of aid to Ukraine, it’s already clear that not even the offer of a bed for the night at Balmoral has worked.
The silver lining of the Trump experience over the past fortnight is hopefully that it leads to a more realistic appraisal not just of the implications of the re-election of this narcissistic, bullying, corporate thug, but an understanding of the role the US has played over generations. Trump and his gang members JD Vance and Elon Musk are just the ugliest of faces of the US global policy pursued for a century at least.
In 1992 Noam Chomsky published a bestselling booklet, What Uncle Sam Really Wants. A read of Chomsky may help Labour’s policymakers overcome their apparent naivety so worryingly displayed in the constant references to the special relationship between the UK and US.
Trump’s “America First” policy is simply a more blatant articulation of the role the US has pursued globally since at least the second world war.
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There is an opening now for a much greater and more longer-sighted “coalition of the willing” capable of bringing together those in Europe and the global south to create the alliances and institutions needed to pursue the political and economic agenda that the US now resiles from.
This includes an economic cooperation agenda not based upon tariffs and protectionism for the wealthy, but one that is mutually beneficial and tackles both the grotesque inequalities between north and south and the common threat of the climate emergency.
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Unwise and immoral plans to cut British overseas aid, undermining soft power, are a legacy of a sort, but how much better it would be to see our prime minister using our influence and heft to bring together all those who want to discuss and construct a world reordered without the malign influences of Trump and China. That really would be a place in history worth having.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Francesca Albanese during the event “Reclaiming the Discourse: Palestine, Justice, and Truth”. Source: screenshot
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s talks have faced intense state pressure across Europe, with Germany at the forefront
Talks by UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese in Europe continue to face fierce pressure. Following the withdrawal of an invitation by some Dutch parliamentarians, German authorities have gone to great lengths to obstruct events where Albanese was scheduled to speak. Two German universities canceled events that had already been announced and had garnered widespread interest. However, activists secured alternative venues, ensuring Albanese could still present the results of her work.
Yet even non-institutional venues were not spared from pressure. The publisher of Junge Welt, which stepped in to host the event “Reclaiming the Discourse: Palestine, Justice, and Truth“ after it was cast out from its original location, found itself facing nearly 100 police officers. Inside the hall, around 200 attendees gathered to hear Albanese speak. Despite protests, the police remained stationed at the venue throughout the event, serving as a clear reminder of the dire state of free expression in Germany. While the hosts are considering legal action against the police, such repression is expected to persist, as left-wing activists remain under surveillance and students organizing Palestine solidarity events at universities face persecution.
Organizations hosting Albanese, including the political platform DiEM25, have described these pressures as “a direct assault on the rule of law and the core principles of democracy.” Similarly, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice, along with members of the left party Die Linke, condemned the suppression of academic freedom and the silencing of discussions on Palestine soon after the news of the cancellations.
According to Albanese, Germany is the first country she has visited recently where universities have capitulated to pressure and canceled her speeches. “This gives me a sense of the state of the debate in this country,” she told attendees of Reclaiming the Discourse. Throughout the discussion, the UN Special Rapporteur emphasized the lengths to which many European governments are willing to go to suppress debates on Palestine—Germany, in particular, leading the charge. Despite the authorities’ repressive actions, she insisted that “it’s not a crime to talk about Germany’s implications and responsibilities vis-à-vis what’s happening in Palestine.”
She also urged participants to reject fear and organize against the climate of repression surrounding discussions on Palestine in Europe, describing it as an atmosphere lacking oxygen. “It’s no longer [just] about Palestine,” she continued. “When I see police officers in Europe using the stick against people standing against injustice, when I see Jewish people in this country being lectured about what antisemitism is—I say something has gone wrong.”
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable living in a country where you cannot talk about a people who are being genocided,” she added.
In their attempts to silence Albanese, Zionist groups and other right-wing organizations have attempted to smear her as antisemitic. Some have fallen for this ruse, but many more continue to stand by her and amplify her work. While audience members noted that university staff largely failed to publicly support her or defend academic freedom following the cancellations, Albanese pointed to the legal and academic experts, including in the Global South, who have spoken out, urging institutions to refuse such repression.
“While our politicians and universities fail to show respect for a UN Special Rapporteur, we, as international lawyers, fail a colleague and a luminary in these dark times by not standing up for her against false and unfounded accusations,” wrote public and international economic law expert and professor Isabel Feichtner. “Most of all, however, we fail our students, broader society, and the very idea of human rights, which—if they are to have any meaning—must serve the powerless.”
A view of the damaged area after a deluge brought up to 200 liters of rain per square meter (50 gallons per square yard) in hours in towns across the region of Valencia, Spain on October 30, 2024. (Photo: Alex Juarez/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“These disasters are only getting worse, and stopping the industries and systems driving climate collapse is the only rational response,” one climate group said.
Spain’s deadliest flooding in 30 years killed at least 72 people as torrential rain slammed the eastern region of Valencia on Tuesday, with some towns recording a year’s worth of rain in a single day.
The flooding sent churning muddy water down narrow streets, tossing cars, downing trees, bulldozing bridges and buildings, and trapping people in rising flood waters.
“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally smashed up,” Christian Viena, who owns a bar in Valencia’s Barrio de la Torre, told The Associated Press. “Everything is a total wreck, everything is ready to be thrown away. The mud is almost 30 centimeters (11 inches) deep.”
As of Wednesday morning, officials reported 70 deaths in Valencia and two in the bordering region of Castilla La Mancha. However, the death toll could rise as search and rescue operations continue amid difficult conditions, such as power outages and blocked roadways. Many people remain missing with their fates uncertain.
This includes residents of Utiel in Valencia, whose mayor, Ricardo Gabaldón, told Spanish broadcaster RTVE that Tuesday was the “worst day of my life.”
“We were trapped like rats,” Gabaldón said. “Cars and trash containers were flowing down the streets. The water was rising to 3 meters (9.8 feet).”
One person who was rescued was Denis Hlavaty, who spent the night perched on the edge of the roof of a gas station where he works.
“It’s a river that came through,” Hlavaty told Reuters, adding, “The doors were torn away and I spent the night there, surrounded by water that was 2 metres (6.5-feet) deep.”
“The fossil fuel industry increases the climate emergency, destroys the balance of critical ecosystems, and puts people’s lives in danger.”
The storm also canceled high-speed rail travel between Valencia and Madrid and Barcelona, and derailed one high-speed train near Malaga, though no one was injured.
While the rains had tapered off in Valencia by Wednesday morning, the rest of the country is not out of danger, as the storm is projected to move northeast.
“We mustn’t let our guard down because the weather front is still wreaking havoc and we can’t say that this devastating episode is over,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told the nation on television Wednesday.
Even if the death toll does not rise, Tuesday’s floods are already the deadliest in Spain since 1996, when a flood near the Pyrenees killed 87. They are also the deadliest in Europe since floods in 2021 that killed at least 185.
In the immediate term, Tuesday’s deluge was caused by a phenomenon called a gota fría, or “cold drop,” a storm formed as cold air moves over the warm Mediterranean. In Spain, these kinds of storms are also commonly referred to with the acronym DANA—for Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos, or isolated high-level depression.
However, scientists observe that the climate crisis is making rainstorms like this one more extreme, as warmer air can hold more moisture to dump when conditions are right. For Europe specifically, the warming of the Mediterranean causes more water to evaporate from its surface, super-charging rainstorms.
“Events of this type, which used to occur many decades apart, are now becoming more frequent and their destructive capacity is greater,” Ernesto Rodriguez Camino, senior state meteorologist and a member of the Spanish Meteorological Association, told Reuters.
The Spanish flooding comes a little more than a month after record rainfall swamped Central Europe and Eastern Europe, in an event that scientists concluded was made approximately twice as likely and 7% more severe by the climate crisis fueled primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
“When we talk about climate change and climate emergency, it’s often perceived as an abstract concept far from our daily reality,” Eva Saldaña, the executive director of Greenpeace Spain, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this is climate change: the intensification of extreme weather phenomenons like what happened tonight, with the level of destruction greater each time. Ignoring it causes deaths that we cannot allow.”
In a post on social media, Greenpeace Spain said that fossil fuel companies including the Spanish Repsol should pay for the damages.
“DANAS are more intense every time due to climate change,” the group wrote. “The fossil fuel industry increases the climate emergency, destroys the balance of critical ecosystems, and puts people’s lives in danger.”
⛈️Las DANAS son cada vez más intensas por el cambio climático. La industria fósil aumenta la emergencia climática, destruye el equilibrio de ecosistemas críticos del planeta y pone en peligro la vida de las personas.
Extinction Rebellion Global agreed. “These disasters are only getting worse, and stopping the industries and systems driving climate collapse is the only rational response,” the group wrote on social media.
The U.S.-based Climate Defiance, meanwhile, shared images of flood-ravaged streets with dismissals often leveled at climate activists.
Yellow Dot Studios, Don’t Look Up director Adam McKay’s climate-focused media studio, also shared an image of cars dropped in piles in the street by the flood waters to call out the double-standard in how direct-action climate protests and the corporate crimes of the fossil fuel industry are punished.
Friends of the Earth Spain focused on the human impacts, arguing that urgent climate action meant “putting people’s lives, and not economic models, at the center.”
“Don’t prioritize sending people to work in extreme and dangerous conditions,” the group wrote. “It is a priority to take effective, ambitious, and urgent measures in response to the climate crisis we are living through.”
PEACE: Former Labour Party leader and now independent MP Jeremy Corbyn speaks at a London rally for Palestine, September 11 2024
Speaking at the Podemos congress over the weekend, JEREMY CORBYN MP outlines three crucial areas for building a powerful leftist movement across Europe: opposing austerity, promoting peace and combating the far right
AS we look to build a united left across Europe, there are three key issues that can form the basis of a strong, powerful movement: anti-austerity, peace and opposition to the far right.
Europe is heading toward a renewed era of austerity. We have witnessed attacks on wages and conditions all over Europe. Working-class living standards have fallen. Wages have stagnated. Meanwhile, there are more billionaires than ever before.
Inequality is not inevitable. It is the result of decisions that governments take to take money from the many and give it to the few. Last week, the British government celebrated its 100-day anniversary.
In that time, it has made two supposedly “tough” choices. One is to keep children in poverty by retaining the two-child benefits cap, refusing to lift 250,000 children out of poverty. The second decision was to cut the winter fuel allowance for 10 million pensioners.
We are told that these have been “tough choices.” Every day, my constituents make tough choices. Tough choices like deciding whether to heat their homes or put food on the table. Tough choices like taking out a loan to pay for this month’s rent. Tough choices like selling their home to pay for their family’s social care.
The government knows that there is a range of choices available to them. They could introduce wealth taxes to raise upwards of £10 billion. They could stop wasting public money on private contracts. They could launch a fundamental redistribution of power by bringing water and energy into full public ownership.
Instead, they have opted to take resources away from people who were promised things would change. There is plenty of money, it’s just in the wrong hands — and we will not be fooled by ministers’ attempts to feign regret over cruel decisions they know they don’t have to take.
Austerity is not a tough choice. It is the wrong choice. The British government tells us there is no money. At the very same time, they are committing to raising defence expenditure to 2.5 per cent of GDP.
