By noon on September 18, approximately 450,000 people had taken to the streets and workplaces across France. Coming just a week after nationwide blockades under the slogan “Let’s Block Everything” (Bloquons tout), Thursday’s strikes and assemblies were called by trade unions and confederations determined to resist another round of austerity measures.

“There are thousands and thousands of strikes in all workplaces,” Sophie Binet, head of the General Confederation of Labor (Confédération générale du travail, CGT), said during one of the marches. “Schools are largely closed. Daycare centers, swimming pools, libraries, and many factories are closed. The entire transportation sector is also affected by strikes. In short, today workers are rising up to say that they can no longer endure this endless night of Macronism.”

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/18/hundreds-of-strike-actions-across-france-demand-end-to-austerity/

Since his release from ICE custody in June, Khalil has not once relented in speaking out against the genocide of the Palestinian people.

A US immigration judge has ordered the deportation of pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil to Algeria or Syria. In an order dated September 12, Louisiana Judge Jamee Comans leaned into Trump administration allegations that in his permanent residency application, Khalil failed to disclose his work with UNRWA and the Syria Office at the British Embassy in Beirut, along with his ties to a pro-Palestine student group at Columbia University. Comans thus denied Khalil’s application for a waiver of removability, a legal order that waives a particular ground for deportation, permitting an individual to stay in the United States, and ordered his deportation – in what her ruling states as “the interests of this country.”

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/18/fascist-tactics-will-never-deter-me-mahmoud-khalil-remains-defiant-in-the-face-deportation-order/

The incident marks the third cross-border shooting operation carried out by Jordanian citizens in retaliation for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

At least two Israeli men were killed in a shooting attack on Thursday, September 18, at the Israeli side of the King Hussein Bridge border crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank (also called the Allenby Bridge).

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/18/two-israelis-killed-in-shooting-attack-at-west-bank-jordan-border-crossing/

Political tension is mounting in The Gambia following the arrest of four anti-corruption protesters and the controversial removal of the country’s auditor general. The government’s actions have been condemned as a major setback for democracy and accountability in the West African nation.

Gambians Against Looted Assets (GALA), in a statement said they had “credible information suggesting that this abrupt redeployment was intended to shield certain institutions, including the Gambia Revenue Authority (GRA), from much-needed scrutiny. By moving the Auditor General into a ministerial role, the President effectively places him in a position where he can be dismissed at will, thereby undermining the independence of the auditing function.”

“It is worth recalling that since 2021, the government has refused to make public the auditor general’s reports on government institutions. If this latest decision is indeed an attempt to silence oversight and accountability, we strongly condemn it in its entirety.”

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/18/lead-corruption-investigator-removed-protestors-arrested-in-gambia/

A coalition of nearly 400 organizations and prominent individuals in Ghana launched a campaign to cancel the “Israeli Film Festival,” scheduled from September 16-20, 2025, at Silverbird Cinema at the Accra Mall. The campaign, which included a public letter, called on Silverbird to withdraw from hosting the event and for all sponsors to pull out immediately.

The organizers of the “Cancel Israeli Film Festival” campaign described the event as “Zionist propaganda” and an attempt to “whitewash genocide and apartheid” in the context of the ongoing Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. “It is breathtaking hypocrisy that Silverbird, having just screened the anti-apartheid film “Comrade Tambo’s London Recruits” on 7 September, now seeks to celebrate the “culture” of today’s worst apartheid state,” read the statement. The organizers said that providing a platform for Israeli cultural expression equals “complicity in crimes against humanity.”

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/19/for-a-free-palestine-ghanaians-unite-to-demand-cancellation-of-israeli-film-festival/

🇵🇸🇬🇭 Ghanaians reject Israeli film festival in Accra

"We are not going to allow this cultural propaganda that is being perpetuated here in Accra to go on."

A coalition of 400 Ghanaian organizations and individuals launched a campaign to demand the cancellation of the “Israeli Film Festival” in Accra, saying that it serves to “whitewash genocide and apartheid”. Rallies have been staged outside the festival to reject the festival and express solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Sri Lanka has undergone one of the sharpest and fastest episodes of austerity in history, driven by a massive retrenchment in public investment and the suppression of real wages, according to a World Bank report.

On September 9, 2025, the World Bank published a report called Sri Lanka Public Finance Review: Towards a Balanced Fiscal Adjustment. The 109-page report is anchored in the theoretical certainty that austerity was a painful but necessary adjustment following Sri Lanka’s default on its external debts in 2022. Yet even within this paradigm, the report provides a treasure trove of data that serves as a damning indictment of how austerity has suppressed investment, undermined growth, and deepened social distress.

📲 Read the full article by Shiran Illanperuma on our website.⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/19/sri-lankas-2021-2024-austerity-is-one-of-the-most-severe-in-history/

US President Donald Trump has said he is designating “antifa” as a “major terrorist organization” in a post to his social media platform, Truth Social, sparking major free speech concerns.

Latest Trump administration move sparks concerns about free speech and legal implications; the United States has no legal framework for domestic groups to be classified as terrorist organizations.

“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump wrote on September 17. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.”

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/19/trump-intensifies-free-speech-crackdown-with-threats-against-antifa/

Less than one week after Israeli warplanes launched an aggression on the Qatari capital, Doha, in an attempt to assassinate Hamas senior leaders, an emergency Arab-Islamic summit was held in Qatar to discuss possible ways to confront Israel after the offensive.

A final communique was issued at the end of the summit, condemning the Israeli aggression on Qatar and other countries in the region, including Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. It also denounced Israel’s ongoing genocide, starvation, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, as well as settlement activities and expansionist policies in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

Moreover, the communique called on Arab and Islamic states to exert diplomatic pressure and take all possible legal measures against Israel, without mentioning any military action as a potential response to its continuous aggression and violations.

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/19/arab-islamic-summit-produces-embarrassing-response-to-israels-crimes-says-dr-issam-khawaja/

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a “strategic mutual defense agreement” in Riyadh on Wednesday, September 17. Analysts speculate that the agreement could unleash fundamental shifts in regional politics.

Among other things, the deal, signed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif during the latter’s visit to Saudi Arabia, provides for joint responses in the case of an attack against one of the signatories.

The joint response provision was confirmed by a statement issued by the prime minister’s office in Islamabad on the same. The statement says that the agreement “aims to develop aspects of defense cooperation between the two countries and strengthen joint deterrence against any aggression,” Dawn reported.

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/19/pakistan-and-saudi-arabia-sign-landmark-defense-agreement-in-a-step-toward-regional-alignment/

Solidarity with Palestine has long been a recurring theme at Belgium’s ManiFiesta, yet it has taken on particular significance since Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip began. Between September 13 and 14 in Ostend, at least two dozen events – including discussions, film screenings, dabke workshops, and concerts – highlighted the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the role of European movements in supporting it.

“It’s very evident how Palestine is front and center here at the festival,” Basil Farraj of the Bisan Center for Research and Development told Peoples Dispatch. “It’s nice to see how Viva Salud and other organizations have managed to create these international solidarity connections, not only with Palestine, but also with Cuba, the Congo, and others.”

“It’s very important work that’s being done to transnationalize our struggles, because the struggle in – and for – Palestine is not isolated from other struggles worldwide,” he added.

Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/19/palestine-solidarity-takes-center-stage-at-manifiesta-2025/

Lying over blankets spread out on the dirt in isolation centers thatched up with mud and straw, thousands, many visibly malnourished, suffer cholera with no medical care in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.

Since the outbreak in Darfur this June, the deadly disease has infected almost 12,200 people, claiming at least 509 lives as of Wednesday, September 17, when 135 new cases and 17 deaths were reported by the General Coordination of Darfur Displaced People and Refugees.

Its spokesperson, Adam Rojal, added that the rate of spread is increasing, killing at least 48 last week, when 1,665 fresh cases were recorded, “in addition to malaria” and “malnutrition among children”.

Numbers understate the severity of the epidemic because the underdeveloped healthcare infrastructure in Darfur, already ravaged by a regional civil war in the 2000s, has completely collapsed amid the fighting between the army and the paramilitary since April 2023.

#ElFasher
Read more ⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/19/thousands-suffer-cholera-with-no-medical-care-in-war-torn-sudans-darfur/

The documentary “Sahel: Homeland or Death” (“Sahel: La Patrie ou La Mort”), produced by BdF, premiered this Tuesday, September 16, in São Paulo. The film examines grassroots resistance and the new development trajectories being charted in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali following waves of civilian and military uprisings in recent years.

BdF reporter Pedro Stropasolas spent two months traveling across the Sahel to document the foundations of what locals describe as “real independence”. Stropasolas, who was on assignment in the region, directed the film which presents the role of popular resistance in sustaining revolutionary processes and draws on in-depth reporting of social dynamics and geopolitical struggles.

📲 Read the full article on our website.⬇
https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/09/19/bdfs-new-documentary-sahel-la-patrie-ou-la-mort-highlights-africas-struggle-for-sovereignty/