Erdogan's attempt to eliminate his likely rival in the upcoming presidential elections by arbitrarily placing him under detention has sparked mobilizations of rare magnitude. Faced with what could be a major turning point in the construction of Erdogan's neo-fascist autocratic regime, millions of citizens, including a newly radicalized youth, have taken to the streets once again.

On 16 April 2025, the UK Supreme Court ruled that “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 (the EA) refer to the sex assigned at birth in a case that was pushed for and funded by the UK gender critical movement. In essence, the judgment has found that being a woman entails having an XX chromosome, large gametes and the ability to produce children. This judgment means that trans women with gender recognition certificates (GRC) will no longer be legally defined as women under the EA.

This is a fundamental attack on the human rights of trans people.

The abduction of Mahmoud Khalil — the Palestinian graduate student and green card holder seized March 8 at his Columbia University residence — is now multiplied by other high-profile detentions and deportation threats, and dozens or even hundreds of unpublicized cases. Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly boasts as much.

Last spring, huge demonstrations took place across Kenya against the finance bill under the slogan “#RejectFinanceBill2024”. This IMF-backed project aimed to impose new taxes on the population in order to pay off debts amounting to $79 billion. The mobilization, mainly by young people, forced President William Ruto to cancel the bill.

Since the abrupt reversal of US policy towards Ukraine, the Russian concessions obtained by President Trump have been non-existent. The ceasefire on energy infrastructure has not been implemented; worse, bombing on Ukrainian territory has never been so intense, while the opening of a corridor to resume maritime trade in the Black Sea only benefits Russia.

This year's Newroz festival in Diyarbakir drew huge crowds with one hope: to finally find a political solution to the decades-long conflict in the Kurdish region. A Newroz message from the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers' (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan, was broadcast over the loudspeakers, something that had not happened for several years, as Öcalan has been in total isolation. The portrait of the charismatic PKK president was everywhere, which was not previously allowed. So was the portrait of Selahettin Demirtas, former chair of the HDP party (now DEM). Negotiating a ceasefire is no simple matter.

President Donald Trump's macho, white, nationalist ideology leads him to attack women, LGBT people, workers, the poor, the disabled and others, but his racism is particularly striking. He has in myriad ways made racism against Blacks, Latinos, and immigrants official U.S. policy. From the highest levels of government to the lowest economic levels of society people of color are being discriminated against, mistreated, and victimized as at no time since the 1920s.

An alliance is emerging between jihadist forces and pro-independence forces in northern Mali, which would improve their balance of power in the ongoing conflict.

We are entering a new era. Trump's return to the White House is so disruptive that it is causing the historic crisis of transatlantic relations as they were constituted after the Second World War. The new Republican and reactionary administration aims to exploit the new situation of ‘geopolitical chaos' to revive the role of the United States of America through an authoritarian turn, based on an alliance with the big hi-tech capitalists such as Elon Musk, and through a new foreign policy that focuses on imperialist national interests.

Ten national unions and dozens of locals representing more than 3 million members have issued a joint statement demanding the release of immigrant workers recently snatched by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“A hundred students have set off on bicycles from Novi Sad on 3 April to reach Strasbourg, where they are due to arrive on 15 April to present their demands to the European institutions. In this long 1,400-kilometre race ‘to wake up Europe', they were welcomed as heroes in Budapest - the mayor of the Hungarian capital, an opponent of Viktor Orbán, joined the Serbian diaspora - and in Vienna. In the Austrian capital, all the Balkan diasporas gathered to cheer the student cyclists in Marie-Thérèse Square, recalling that, in all their countries, ‘corruption kills'.”

At a time when everything is spiralling out of control in the East, when alliances as evil as the Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin duo are being forged, and when our leaders are advocating rearmament, we wanted to take some time to think about it. With Gilbert Achcar, a specialist in international relations and professor at the University of London, we discussed ways of supporting Ukraine while rejecting a generalized war.[Gaëlle Desnos-CQFD]