ON Saturday January 19, ordinary French people in their tens of thousands were again out on the streets of France, sporting the yellow safety vests that have become a global symbol of revolt. Since materialising as if from nowhere on November 17, 2018, and despite full-on brutal State efforts to contain it, the movement of the Yellow Jackets (Gilets jaunes) continues to confront French President Emmanuel Macron with his gravest crisis yet.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on January 17.

AFTER the fall of the Paris Commune, the Governments of the European countries organized police repression on the International’s sections and members. In France membership in the International was regarded as a criminal offence. The Governments of Germany, Russia and Austria were discussing joint measures against the organization.

Never since the defeat of the 1848-49 revolution had a campaign of slander reached such intensity in the bourgeois press, which resorted to every kind of falsification and misrepresentation of facts.

HINDI teacher-training school was held at CPI(M) Headquarters, A K Gopalan Bhavan in New Delhi from January 18-22, 2019. 97 comrades from 13 states attended the school. A heartening feature of this school is the presence of youth, who constituted nearly half of the participants. The aim of the school is to train teachers to ensure that all the Party members are imparted education within this year, in at least four basic subjects – Marxist Philosophy, Political Economy, Party Programme and Party Organisation – as decided by the Kolkata Plenum on Organisation.

THE 11th Maharashtra state conference of the DYFI held at Wada in Palghar district on January 11-13, 2019, resolved to rapidly expand the youth movement and organisation to meet the challenges posed by the murderous rightwing offensive. In connection with the conference, a massive youth rally and public meeting were organised on January 11. Thousands of DYFI activists from Palghar district participated in the rally held at Wada.