Red Pepper News

It's never too late to move beyond the choices of the cold war

Apologies that this blog has been a little slow of late. In the meantime, you might be interested in Red Pepper editor Hilary Wainwright's contribution to a debate on socialism in The Guardian (her piece is a response to Martin Kettle).

No to the state of exception

The following statement is from various trade unions, left political parties and civil liberties groups in France.

Joint Communiqué, Paris, November 8th, 2005. Confronted by a revolt born from the accumulation of inequalities and discrimination in the “banlieues” (suburbs of Paris) and the poor areas, the French government has just passed a new and extremely serious threshold in the escalation of security measures. Even in May 1968, when the situation was a lot more dramatic, the public authorities did not use the extreme measure of declaring a state of emergency. The proclamation of the state of emergency is the answer to a revolt whose causes are profound and well known even at the level of state repression.