General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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How do we define consent and why does it matter?
The relevance that rape law places on ‘a rapist’s state of mind’ makes a mockery of women’s autonomy, argues legal scholar WENDY MURPHY
Joelle Hatem/Creative Commons
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
PERSONAL autonomy is among the most precious of human values.
John Locke described it as a natural law that recognises the basic human right to self-determination. We shouldn’t even call it a right, because some things are so important we ought not codify them, lest they become subject to exceptions and legislative whims that can’t be reversed. Like the old camel’s nose in the tent problem — once the nose is in, the tent will surely fall.
We express our commitment to the profound nature of autonomy when we forbid things like slavery and torture, and when we say things like “my right to swing my fist ends before it hits you in the nose.”
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French feminists salute Gisele Pelicot as her husband and 50 other rapists are jailed
The state government, police and hospital administration are under suspicion for spreading false rumours, victim-blaming, destroying evidence and engaging in a cover-up to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice, writes MARIAM DHAWALE
History shows that legal frameworks alone cannot end the scourge of sexual abuse and the struggle against women’s subjugation takes place against a broader context where male interests have been prioritised over generations, writes BHABANI SHANKAR NAYAK
