Inmates at World’s Largest Open Air Prison are in Peril

BY B. R. GOWANI

 OCTOBER 16, 2023
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Gaza has five governorates: North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir el-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah. It shares border with Israel (51 km or 32 mi) and border with 11 km (7 mi) Egypt. IMAGE/Wikipedia.

The largest “open air prison” on our planet has 2.3 million inmates (US has 2.1 million prisoners– the world’s largest). This open-air prison is managed by one of the most technologically advanced and ruthless group of prison guards: the Israelis. The Gaza is a narrow strip of 365 sq km (141sq ml) that houses 2.3 million people, about the same as population of Houston, Texas. Gaza’s length is 41 km (41 mi) and the width varies between 6 to 12 km (3.7 to 7.5 mi). It’s one of the world’s most densely populated areas. The drive from any one end to another in Gaza takes less than an hour.

Noam Chomsky describes blockade of Gaza:

“It hardly takes more than a day in Gaza to appreciate what it must be like to try to survive in the world’s largest open-air prison.”

In 2012, Chomsky pointed out that Palestinians are terrorized, punished, and humiliated by the Israelis just for the heck of it.

“Such cruelty is to ensure that Palestinian hopes for a decent future will be crushed, and that the overwhelming global support for a diplomatic settlement granting basic human rights will be nullified. The Israeli political leadership has dramatically illustrated this commitment in the past few days, warning that they will ‘go crazy’ if Palestinian rights are given even limited recognition by the U.N.”

This horrible treatment of Palestinians by Israel has been going on for decades. The United Nations resolutions critical of Israel have been vetoed at least 53 times by the United States.

A summary of the June/July 2023 Report of the Special Rapporteur by Francesca Albanese on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967 describes it adroitly:

“In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, finds that arbitrary and deliberate ill-treatment is inflicted upon the Palestinians not only through unlawful practices in detention but also as a carceral continuum comprised of techniques of large-scale confinement -physical, bureaucratic, digital- beyond detention. These violations may amount to international crimes prosecutable under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and universal jurisdiction. Israel’s occupation has been a tool of settler colonial conquest also through intensifying methods of confinement against an entire people who – as any people would – continuously rebel against their prison wardens.”

She recommended a just solution:

“This macroscopic violation of fundamental principles of international law cannot be remedied by addressing some of its most brutal consequences. For Israel’s carceral regime to end, and its inherent apartheid with it, its illegal occupation of Palestine must end.”

Albanese has been a target of people not wanting to face the ugly truth. In May 2023, Albanese had drawn attention to the inhumane conditions Palestinians were subjected to by the Israeli occupying forces.

In my first year as #SRoPt, I saw too many deaths, too much arbitrariness, zero accountability. No different from @MichaelLynk5, @rfalk13, John Dugard, I saw spurious accusations agst my mandate, rise and fade: hideous words, deemed to hide a much more hideous reality.
Avanti. https://t.co/8oOupYGztG

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) May 3, 2023

Israel ignored the report as it has ignored all the UN resolutions of all these decades. Like its staunch supporter the United States, Israel is always in a defiant mood. As two of the most technologically sophisticated and militarily powerful states, they have long projected themselves as invincible powers.

However, the US saw its impregnability shattered in 2001 and Israel experienced it’s invulnerability wrecked on October 7, 2023. The illusion breakers were/are small actors with not very many means. Of course, Palestinians in Gaza will suffer death and destruction tens of fold. In case of US, it destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq, and also wrecked havoc on several other countries. The more powerful the bully, the bigger is the ego, and the greater the feeling of shame, and so most destructive is the vengeance.

The prison guards had never experienced such a humiliation as the one they underwent on October 7, 2023. The success prisoners gained was beyond their expectation.

The US House of Foreign Affairs Committee’s chairman Michael McCaul:

“We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen.”

If it’s true then why didn’t Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu act? Could it be that Netanyahu expected the usual Hamas attack which he could then use to divert people’s attention from the corruption inquiry going on against him in Israel, and, use it to retaliate against Hamas with unprecedented fury?

On October 9, 2023, major Western countries issued a statement:

Today, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States of America released the following joint statement following their call:

Today, we — President Macron of France, Chancellor Scholz of Germany, Prime Minister Meloni of Italy, Prime Minister Sunak of the United Kingdom, and President Biden of the United States — express our steadfast and united support to the State of Israel, and our unequivocal condemnation of Hamas and its appalling acts of terrorism.

…

The above statement brings to mind the famous Pakistani poet Habib Jalib*

“We were gheraoed by every Age,
No one ever came to our rescue!
Then, one day, we gheraoed them,
And every tyrant shouted his rage.

(Gheraoed means besieged or encircled in Hindi/Urdu.)

Western tyrants, indeed, came out in full support of the guards.

President Joe Biden shouted a genocidal green light to Israel:

“This is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks to seek advantage. The world is watching.”

Actually it is the USS Gerald R. Ford, world’s largest aircraft carrier, that is watching to see that no one stops or interferes in Israel’s frenzy.

To make his case stronger, Biden also added some false claims.

In May 2021 too, Biden’s cruelty and open favor to Israel was on full display.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who is in Israel said:

“My message is this: As long as America exists, we will always be there by your side.”

Hamas is no match for heavily armed Israel. Israel can handle Hamas on its own, it has one of the most powerful armies. Additionally, it gets plenty of military aid from the US — $3.8 billion every year! Then, there is money people send to Israel. Israel also possesses nuclear weapons. However, this is a good opportunity for Israel to get as much free US taxpayer money as possible in the name of its national security. The Israel Lobby in the US is very strong and also plays a role in promoting Israeli interests.

To show solidarity with Israel, the European Commission in Belgium has raised an Israeli flag over its headquarters. The Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Bulgarian parliament building, and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin have been lit up in Israeli flag colors. Not to be left out, Sydney Opera House draped itself in the colours of apartheid.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party BJP have come out in support of Israel. Modi is also using similar tactics in suppressing the rights of the Kashmiri Muslims.

The supporters of Palestinians residing in the Western world have to be very careful in advocating the Palestinian cause.

Dozens of student groups at Harvard University condemned Israel. Their argument is that Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023 “did not occur in a vacuum.” Many supporters of Israel’s got upset. Author Ian Bremmer tweeted on X:

“Large number of harvard student organizations blaming israel solely for hamas terrorist attacks killing 700 civilians.

“Can’t imagine who would want to identify with such a group. harvard parents—talk to your educated kids about this.”

It’s not the Harvard “educated kids” who need a talk from their parents but it is Bremmer who needs a bit of history education. If Bremmer is not too keen on reading then he should just glance at the map of Palestine and will learn in no time how the Palestinian territory is being continually usurped by Israel, yet Israel never misses a chance to portray itself as a “victim” and Palestinians as “terrorists.”

Perhaps, Bremmer is averse to truth as so many Israelis and their supporters are. Back in October 2015, the US TV channel MSNBC showed Palestinian loss of land since 1946, and the present map which depicts how a non-existent Israel came up on the map as Palestine got progressively reduced to a narrow Gaza Strip on the left and some disjointed land on the right called the West Bank that is further being reduced in West Bank as Israel has been building many settlements that further diminish Palestinian land. Israel is built on stolen land. MSNBC had to, under pressure, lie that the map was incorrect!

A group of progressive congresspersons, from Biden’s Democratic Party, such as U.S. Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and many other House members have come under fire for suggesting to avoid further escalation of war which could bring more deaths and devastation. When White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked to remark on the steps the progressive House members have recommended, she flared up:

“We believe they’re wrong. We believe they’re repugnant and we believe they’re disgraceful.” “Our condemnation belongs squarely with terrorists who have brutally murdered, raped, kidnapped, hundreds, hundreds of Israelis. There can be no equivocation about that. There are not two sides here. There are not two sides.”

Journalist John Nichols observes that in US history it is seldom that White House press secretary has used such language for the members of president’s own party who wanted a peaceful resolution to the conflict. He doesn’t find anything “repugnant” in the congresspersons’ suggestions.

Jalib had expressed hope that one day the besieged will overcome the besiegers.

No reason to worry:
We shall rise soon despite the pain.
And every city which is now dark
Will see the light once again.”

But the odds are heavily against the prisoners/Palestinians as Mark LeVine points out. From Frantz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth, Levine quotes Fanon:

“Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.”

Levine appreciates Fanon’s understanding of how the colonized and the colonizer are affected psychologically because of the violence committed by the later. However, Levine differs:

“Colonialism, especially settler colonialism – and even more particularly Zionist settler colonialism – is very much a “thinking machine” with very powerful and longstanding logic and rationalities that are the key to its success.”

So far, 1,200 Israelis and 1,537 Palestinians have died. According to the UN, more than 338,000 people have been displaced. Gaza is under siege and more Palestinians will die as Israeli bombing continues. There are only 3 gates for Gazans to leave and enter and all three are closed. Water and Electricity has been cut off to Gaza on Netanyahu’s order. Israel has stopped all food, water, and humanitarian aid.

Human Rights Watch has confirmed that Israel is using white phosphorus on Gaza, that has horrific effects especially on the defenseless Gazan civilian families.

“White phosphorus ignites when exposed to atmospheric oxygen and continues to burn until it is deprived of oxygen or exhausted. Its chemical reaction can create intense heat (about 815°C/1,500°F), light, and smoke.”

The US is not going to stop Israel till they both feel enough Palestinians have been killed and Hamas has been weakened completely.

If Hamas is gone, someone else will emerge in its place and the tragedy will continue creating more hatred and violence. Unless, the US and Israel decide to solve the problem.

The other option is if Saudi Arabia and UAE ask US and Israel to solve the Palestinian problem. Israel has diplomatic relations with UAE and is eager to establish relations with Saudi Arabia.

*(English translation by Tariq Ali in An Indian Dynasty: The Story of the Nehru-Gandhi Family (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1985), pp. 180-81). The poem was written for Indian workers who indulged in “gherao” or “encircle and besiege”, that is, not letting the owners and managers out of factories and offices unless they agreed in writing to workers’ demands.)

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

Breaking Bread at the Terminus of Learning

BY BINOY KAMPMARK

 OCTOBER 16, 2023
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Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres – Public Domain

Let this be a lesson to you students. You are now coming to the end of another semester, arbitrarily designated as having an even number of weeks, crammed with a range of objectives that no doubt most of you have not met. For one thing, you did not read. But my, did one try to encourage you. You will have a chance to punish your teacher with absurd course ratings and meaningless criteria. You will be able to “rate your professor” in the worst sense of the practice.

Modern education, if nothing else, is the elevation of admired, if predictable failure, over heroic, diligent success. The latter are always seen as the tossers of the classroom, because they let the side down. Let’s face it: the mediocrats will always get top billing from the managers, largely because the mediocrats are the managers.

Do not, however, despair. To have you, dear students, in the classroom, is to feel vitality and strength, to find a sense of purpose. Despite every attempt by the educational commissars to hack, diminish and denude the worth of a university education, some of you have realised that a love of the word and the feeling for learning is a love like no other. It is orgiastic in release, and cathartic in cleansing: to be able to wash, bathe and cleanse in a text, and leave it invigorated. To be able to feel glorious cerebration.

Ultimately, you are the only reason the academic functions, why the university breathes in its staggered, desperate way, escaping the shot that will end it. The only reason the teacher or instructor has any calculable worth, can turn up on their hindlegs and brave a sea of faces in the muddled search for knowledge, hoping that a message might mind find its mark in the dark recess of a journey.

That student-teacher relationship is almost more important than a love affair or conjugal union. It is an admission of unadulterated trust, a conveyance of one being’s wonder into another’s quest to shape it. For in that union, the mind plays with thoughts expressed, the assignments and papers submitted depictions of an inner self, a vulnerable being held up for the most intense questioning. The instructor reads the student’s work as a full statement of effort, defect and all, weakness displayed, error prostrate.

It is the task of the instructor to show a way to best understand such defects, to warn of the potholes in the learning life, to issue caveats over those gnarly points where you might be caught out. Make sure you do not trip over a source with origins that may compromise its worth. (The opinion of a law company website can hardly rise to the level of a court opinion, as much as the authors might think it does.) Make sure you state a claim clearly. Avoid the clunky, the waffly, the syntactically vicious. The savagery of conciseness will set you free.

In recent years, you can even say decades, that sacred union between yearning, curious student and profound, eager pedagogue has been assailed, if not destroyed altogether. The bureaucrats have decided to mock and ridicule the academic as ornately irrelevant, a clown in the front of a room who deserves nothing but contempt. Somewhere along the line, a number of risible morons decided that students and teachers were somehow equal in their possession of knowledge, presuming that all opinions have equivalent weight. That bastard beast known as the lectorial was born – or was it the “flipped classroom”? Some academics have turned into bureaucrats, the Vichy-Quisling class who have sold out their own in an effort to rise up that greasiest of poles: middle management. In such desert spaces, ideas, and learning, go to perish in horrible ways, most commonly by means of the spreadsheet.

A relentless pushdown, even pulverising of the beauty that is abstract learning, complex form, Platonic ecstasy, has been taking place across teaching institutions, largely in the hope of securing more students who are best treated as dunderheaded gullible consumers than learning vessels filled with wonder. The advent of the coronavirus pandemic simply added a drug-filled impetus to the measure, a nightmarish fuel to the fire of isolated despair. Get online everyone: you know you want to.

On this day, we are engaged in that most glorious of occasions an instructor, a lecturer, a pedagogue can ever have with their students: break bread and reflect sweetly upon the weeks passed. It is a most solemn yet deeply felt occasion. It is the end of the semester, and when you leave this classroom, a vestigial thought might stir on what you learnt. At an opportune moment, it might comfort you, even save you.

This is unlikely to happen in the future. We are now at a terminus – of sorts. Universities may be liquidated (in some cases, deservedly) by the gibbering hordes and minions of the Artificial Intelligence revolution. Lectures and seminars will become programmatic spouts and spurts arranged and organised for delivery, leaving academics to suicide in libraries without books. Essays will be derivative, machine products, tested on the quality of the AI function, rather than the quality of the human endeavour. The idea of a crafted essay with all its beautiful, unintended faults: the misplaced colon, the split infinitive, the tormenting tautology, will pass into an anodyne, textual sludge called technological perfection. When that happens, we all best take leave, and depart this earth. But even then, it could be artificially generated.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

Humanitarian Calamities That Aren’t on the World’s Agenda

By Priti Gulati Cox, Stan Cox

October 15, 2023
Source: TomDispatch


Various versions of the aphorism “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography” have been making the rounds ever since the rise of U.S. imperialism in the late 1800s. The quip (which, despite legend, appears not to be attributable to Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, or any other famous person) has proven all too accurate when the war in question directly involves American troops. When, however, non-U.S. combatants and civilians suffer and die from conflicts relatively unrelated to Washington’s “strategic interests,” our media outlets tend to avert their eyes, aid agencies get stingy, and Americans learn no geography whatsoever. Oh, and given this country’s power and position on this planet, millions suffer the consequences of that neglect.

Terror Days in Khartoum

Let’s start with Sudan. A civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Force (RSF) is now dragging into its seventh month with no end in sight. Since the conflict erupted, Washington has issued only a few token calls for the fighting there to end, while providing insufficient aid to desperate millions of Sudanese. The assistance that did go out has proven microscopic compared to the vast quantities of humanitarian, economic, and military aid our government has poured into similarly war-torn Ukraine.

In the first five months of brutal fighting in Sudan, 5,000 civilian deaths and injuries to at least 12,000 more were reported — and those were both considered significant underestimates. Meanwhile, more than a million people have fled that country, while a staggering 7.1 million have been displaced in their own land. According to the International Office of Migration, that represents “the highest [number] of any internally displaced population in the world, including Syria, Ukraine, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Human Rights Watch reports that “over 20 million people, 42% of Sudan’s population, face acute food insecurity and 6 million are just a step away from famine.”

Try to take that in for a moment and wonder, while you’re at it, why you’ve heard so desperately little (or nothing at all!) about such an immense human tragedy. Worse yet, the Sudanese people are hardly the only ones being treated shabbily by Uncle Sam and other governments of the rich North while suffering deadly deprivation. Sudan is, in fact, at the center of a region stretching from the Middle East deep into Africa in which countries suffering some of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies are largely being ignored by the Global North.

Given the near vacuum of news on the Sudan conflict in our media, we contacted Hadeel Mohamed, an educator we know who fled Sudan for neighboring Egypt, but is still in frequent contact with her neighbors who stayed behind in the capital city, Khartoum. We asked her for an update on what people still living there were telling her they were enduring after six months of unending civil war.

Every house in their neighborhood, she’s heard, has been looted by combatants. In the process, her friends and neighbors say that they’ve experienced “terror days when their houses were being invaded or even re-invaded to see if there’s anything left.”

“When it starts to get dark outside,” she told us, “that’s scariest, because you never know who’s going to come in and attack.” If female household members are there, what grim fates are they likely to suffer? And she adds, “If you have males in the house, are they going to be abducted and what’s going to happen to them?”

We asked whether atrocities were being committed by both the Sudanese Army and the RSF? “Yeah, both sides,” she responded. “Listen, I’m not validating any side, but when you’re in war, you really don’t know who’s coming at you or who’s a threat to you. So, everyone is seen as a threat.” And that, she adds, leads the combatants to act violently toward the civilians who’ve stayed behind.

Food is especially scarce in Khartoum, because travel in and out of the city is so dangerous for the usual suppliers and, as Hadeel points out, “Most of the stores have been looted, but in certain areas, some bread and other food is available for a few hours per day per week. There’s no fixed schedule, though.” Worse yet, wherever there’s active fighting, electricity and water supplies are normally cut off. “Some people can have electricity for weeks, while others will not have it for weeks.” Some engineers have bravely remained in Khartoum trying to keep power and water supplies flowing, but it’s often a hopeless task.

“People are on such unstable ground,” Hadeel concludes. “They really don’t know when their next food supplies are going to come in or when they’re going to be able to refill their water.” They have to watch for opportunities to slip outside in relative safety to “find something to keep them and their neighbors going.”

And what exactly has been Washington’s response to this ongoing horror? Well, the State Department issued a toothless admonishment that the army and RSF “must comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, including obligations related to the protection of civilians.” And that was about it, other than ineffective sanctions applied to the leader of the RSF. Meanwhile, international efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting have collapsed, and humanitarian aid efforts have been hopelessly bogged down. Anyway, who has time for Sudan when arming and backing the Ukrainians has the attention of everyone who matters in the United States?

“Severe, Extreme, or Catastrophic Conditions”

Mind you, that paucity of interest is anything but unique to the crisis in Sudan. For example, U.N. World Food Program (WFP) Director Cindy McCain recently told ABC’s This Week that there isn’t enough food-assistance money for desperate Afghanistan, filled with starving people, to “even get through October.” In addition, the WFP has had to cut food aid to other countries in desperate need, including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Jordan, Palestine, South Sudan, Somalia, and Syria. As for explaining that shortfall, McCain was blunt, blaming the rush of rich nations of the Global North to support Ukraine which, she says, “has sucked the oxygen out of the room.”

Typically, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that its famine-prevention program for war-ravaged Yemen is now receiving just 30% of the funds it needs, putting millions of Yemenis at risk. OCHA points to the peril facing Fatima, a 60-year-old woman living in the village of Al-Juranah. The program supplies her family with wheat, peas, and oil, but delivery is sporadic, a reality about which Fatima is all too matter-of-fact. “We receive a sack of wheat,” she says, “and sometimes we get only half a sack. They also give us roasted peas and oil. If this support stops, we will starve to death.” And sadly enough, that support is now anything but guaranteed.

Two years after a ceasefire in that brutal civil war fed by Saudi Arabia (with U.S. support), a conflict that received only the scantiest media coverage in this country, more than half of Yemenis — 17 million people — are food insecure. U.N. forecasters predict that without massive intervention, a quarter of those people will experience “acute food insecurity” by year’s end, with three-quarters of them reaching “crisis levels of hunger.” Such massive intervention is decidedly not in the cards, however, and the continuing neglect is having horrific consequences. National Public Radio’s Fatma Tanis did, in fact, report on this from a Yemeni hospital in August:

“We head next to the intensive care unit for newborns, often born with complications because of malnutrition. As we enter, a nurse pulls a sheet over a baby who just died. The parents aren’t here. Often, families use all their resources to bring their child to the hospital but can’t afford to return again. So the hospital has to take care of burials too, without them.”

The people of Syria are similarly striving to recover from the civil war that erupted in 2011 and was finally put on hold with a 2020 ceasefire, but only after a full decade of ferocious warfare and terrible suffering. Like the Sudanese and Yemenis, they remain largely unnoticed and uncovered these days in the American media. In addition to extreme water shortages, a catastrophic 55% of Syrians are officially in the crisis phase of acute food insecurity. In late 2022, OCHA reported that “severe, extreme, or catastrophic conditions” were affecting 69% — yes, you read that right! — of the country’s population. Furthermore,


“Basic services and other critical infrastructure are on the brink of collapse… Over 58 percent of households interviewed reported accessing only between three to eight hours of electricity per day, while almost seven million people only had access to their primary water source between two and seven days per month in June.”

Is the world paying attention? In one respect, Syria is more fortunate than Sudan or Yemen, enjoying its very own annual conference of donor nations. At this June’s conference, hosted by the European Union, donors pledged an increase in total aid, but the amount still fell $800 million short of what the U.N. was seeking for that country. Worse yet, just before the conference kicked off, the World Food Program announced that it would cut food aid to almost half of Syria’s 5.5 million current recipients just when they’re most in need.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, another country in deep distress, finds itself in the global spotlight, but not for the suffering its people are experiencing. Its huge deposits of cobalt, copper, and other mineral elements essential to future renewable-energy economies have finally brought it some attention. However, the Global North, transfixed by those priceless minerals, has remained remarkably blind to the wave of human misery now sweeping the Congo.

Last month, Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, just back from a trip there, told Democracy Now, “It’s the worst hunger catastrophe on Earth. Nowhere else in the world is there more than 25 million people experiencing violence, hunger, disease, neglect. And nowhere in the world is there such a small international response to help, to aid, to end all of this suffering.”

As in Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, hunger and war have gone hand-in-hand in the Congo. Today, Egelend said, an almost unbelievable 150 or so armed groups vie for power in the cobalt-rich eastern part of the country. In the early 2000s, cobalt was valued for its role in mobile phones and laptops. The stakes are far higher now, with vastly larger quantities required to produce the lithium-ion batteries essential to the development of sprawling new power grids and a vast global fleet of electric vehicles.

Collateral damage radiating from the Congo’s ongoing violence includes a hunger crisis, an epidemic of sexual assault by combatants on tens of thousands of civilian women, and so much more. The U.N. sought $2.3 billion in humanitarian assistance for the Congo in 2023. It has, however, only received a measly one-third of that sum, enough to help just one of every 18 people now in desperate need.

On Democracy Now!, Egeland put his finger on the terrible calculations of global economics and diplomacy: “Congo is not ignored by those who want to extract the riches of that place. It is ignored by the rest of the world… As humanity, we’re really, really failing Congo now, because it’s not Ukraine, it’s not the Middle East.”

As a refugee from Sudan, Hadeel Mohamed worries every day about these kinds of terrible calculations being made in the North. As she puts it,


“This war has really opened our eyes to a lot of things. Although we saw the news of what’s happening in Yemen and Syria, and all these countries where wars erupted, we never really understood the depth of it. A worry of ours is that what’s happening to Syrian refugees is going to happen to Sudanese refugees… where your prospects are not going to mean anything… where you’re limited in your work transactions, you’re limited in your educational abilities.”

Because organizations like the U.N. and the International Red Cross were activated “quite late” in Sudan, she points out, some who fled the country, especially youth, “started forming groups to help people cross borders to get out, to find jobs, and to raise funds for food and water aid for those still in Sudan.” Hadeel herself is involved in such efforts. “But progress is a bit slow, because we’re still trying to rebuild our own lives in parallel.”

“If the war is not contained in Khartoum,” she adds, “the chances of it spreading are very high and we’ve seen a lot of spreading recently, whether it’s in Port Sudan or Madani or surrounding cities.” Violence has been raging for months in the Darfur region of western Sudan as well. The conflict could also be significantly prolonged by the desire of both sides to control northeastern Sudan’s vast gold deposits, which play a role analogous to that of cobalt in the Congo.

With no relief in sight, says Hadeel, the people of Khartoum, understand that lacking true humanitarian aid, “you really come back to more of community-based aid. With our limited resources, with our limited abilities, we still find people rising up to take care of each other.” Nevertheless, for refugees, “there are only two possible outcomes here: either you go back and fight for your country and potentially die or you go on living and establishing yourself outside of Sudan.”

Meanwhile, on the Outskirts of Democracy…

Tyranny, civil war, systemic breakdown — it can’t happen here, right? Or can it? We privileged folk in the United States may still think we live in a democracy, but so many of us don’t. In truth, the 140 million poor and low-wage folks, Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous, along with about one-third of White people, live on the outskirts of our “democracy.” Like the people of Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, they dream of being in a country where there’s equality and justice, and where democracy, while not complete, is at least not dying.

The United States never was, and by the looks of it, now has little chance of becoming a truly pluralistic, multiracial democratic system. If we were, we’d be spending every free hour raising hell to make sure the possibility of democracy doesn’t die in next year’s election. The media are replete with dystopian scenarios of its end and the rise of Trumpistan. We’re scared shirtless about that, too, and it’s a gut punch to realize that, if we had a truly functioning democracy, there’d be no way it could be toppled by a single guy like Donald Trump.

Ask a Sudanese or a Syrian or an Egyptian or an Afghan what it’s like to live under autocracy. Then ask marginalized Americans what it’s like to live on the outskirts of democracy. For the latter, democracy is like Sudan’s gold and the Congo’s cobalt. There may be a lot of it, but very few get any.

Frontlines Resistance Against Fossil Fuel Expansion in the Balkans

The Adriatic Climate Camp created a vibrant training program and community that pulled off two major direct actions against the natural gas industry and remains resilient in the face of police brutality.

 Centered around positive vision and strategy, the queer, women-led camp gathered diverse movement participants and local residents with support from eco-activists around the world.

By Alexandria Shaner, Lora 

October 12, 2023
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Adriatic Climate Camp action against an LNG Terminal in Croatia, 2023 |

 Photo: XR Zagreb

Climate activists from across the Balkans and beyond came together at the end of August for the 2nd annual Adriatic Climate Camp, culminating in nonviolent direct actions against a liquified natural gas, or LNG, terminal, which were met with violent aggression from police and private security forces.

LNG is advertised to the public as a clean “bridge fuel” that will enable a transition away from oil. Unsurprisingly, this dangerous claim is based on flawed industry-financed research. More recent studies have shown LNG and coal to have closer overall emissions, and sometimes it is even more emitting than coal. The war in Ukraine and potential fuel shortages has allowed the industry and supportive politicians to further accelerate LNG expansion, while continuing to lie about emissions.

Leading up to these actions, the Adriatic Climate Camp was both an activism training program and, crucially, a community building space. Both actions could have seen violence escalate very dangerously if the participants hadn’t acted with clear purpose, calm and discipline. After the fact, such repression often results in diminished hope, fear and infighting.

Yet, organizers are already eagerly planning next year’s camp and attracting more participants. Repressive state and corporate reactions have only galvanized commitment as this grassroots movement continues to grow and diversify locally, as well as to strengthen international ties of solidarity. This points to an incredible amount of trust, good faith and shared vision between people — in other words, strong community.

To discuss the actions, the camp, organizing lessons and possible paths for journeying from frustrated citizen to community activism, I spoke with Lora, a co-founder and organizer of the Adriatic Climate Camp and a member of political groups based in Zagreb such as Extinction Rebellion Zagreb, Food Not Bombs Zagreb and Vrrrane, an anarchaqueer-feminist group.

This interview is co-published by ZNetwork.org and the International Peace Research Association via Waging Nonviolence.



You were involved in two recent actions calling attention to the dangers of LNG expansion that were met with brutal and illegal repression. Tell us about these actions and XR Zagreb’s strategy going forward.

This year’s five-day Adriatic Climate Camp was centered around community, learning and the peaceful disruption of a nearby LNG terminal on the island of Krk, Croatia. To be exact, the camp was organized in protest of the planned doubling of the capacities of the LNG terminal, announced earlier this year. This is the place where liquified natural gas is imported from other countries (previously Russia, now usually the U.S. and Qatar).

First was the kayaking action — activists rowed out into the sea in front of the LNG ship, but were quickly met with aggression from police and security service boats, including being shot at with a water cannon. The activists refused to be stopped — their training, commitment and bravery shined through as they put up quite a resistance, even creating an hourglass [the symbol of XR] formation with their kayaks. Eventually, their banner was taken away and they had to retreat back to the shore.

The second action took place the following day. We traveled from the city of Krk, where the camp was situated, to Omišalj, where the LNG terminal is located. There we met activists from the local community and together (a total of around 120 people), marched from the city to the LNG terminal.

Despite the right to peaceful gathering being set in Croatian law, and despite XR Zagreb liaising with the police over safety, this final protest at the state-owned LNG terminal, which is a large international importer for the EU, was met with violence. We encountered several riot police cordons there waiting for us, but we stayed and rallied with speeches, chants, drumming and a die-in. A self-organized group then separated and entered the premises of the terminal and displayed banners, quickly supported by those outside with chanting.

At this point, we were aggressively attacked by private security personnel and police officers. Protesters were pinned down and kept in painful pressure holds. All participants showed peaceful and nonviolent resistance. Nonetheless, the riot police violently threw 26 people into police vans and drove them to custody cells where we were held in inhumane conditions for up to 10 hours with no food, water, medical help or phone calls.

Even with the challenges, the actions were a success and provided valuable lessons for improvement in the future. We are committed to adapting the camp and our wider organizing strategies going forward.

Despite the violence displayed by the police and security services, we are persevering together with high spirits. We are now even more determined to fight against the system of capitalism, backed by the state, which places profits in front of people and uses repressive methods to protect the fossil fuel industry which is taking away our collective futures. Their brutality has in no way diminished our hunger for climate justice. In fact, you could say it just further proves that we have to come together and rise up in community.

Adriatic Climate Camp actions against an LNG Terminal in Croatia, 2023. Nonviolent civil disobedience was met with violent police and private security responses. |

 Photos: XR Zagreb

Could you tell us about how the camp developed, who participated and especially about the attention to community building?

In 2022, the first edition of the Adriatic Climate Camp was wildly successful, despite being organized by just two people. It became clear that there is a widely shared desire for both community experiences and communal resistance experiences — so naturally, the second one had to be bigger and better. Enthusiasm grew and several more people joined our organizing team. It was still a very small team for this large-scale endeavor, but it was a dedicated one.

I’d also like to highlight that the organizing team is entirely composed of queer persons who are either non-binary or women. This kind of representation is not often seen in the Balkans. We’re very proud to be breaking with oppressive traditions through our organizing and to be accompanied by people of all genders.

Since we wanted to host more activists at this year’s edition of the camp, and to have more impactful actions, we had to look for a way to finance these high ambitions. We were shown real solidarity from fellow members of the global climate justice movement and are grateful to our friends in XR Serbia for helping to connect us with Extinction Rebellion Global Support for funding. XR Global Support empowers local XR groups to act together across regions, nations and continents, peacefully disrupting business-as-usual. This year’s camp definitely wouldn’t have been possible without them.

Not only were we able to host 160 rebels at our camp, double the amount of last year, but we were also able to cover the costs of the logistics necessary for traveling to two actions which were situated on the opposite part of the island. The cooperation with XR Global Support was super friendly and we felt supported along the way — their motto “We are all crew” rang very true. Our XR Zagreb team was also very happy that some of our Serbian friends, including Scarlett who was our main contact for the financing, joined us at the camp so that we could meet in person to share experiences and activist stories.






Can you describe the camp itself and what participants engaged in on a day-to-day basis?

After six months of planning and meetings, our five-day climate camp was finally under way at a commercial campsite near the LNG terminal targeted by our protests. Set up beneath olive and fig trees, the camp included an info point, a kitchen area, several large tents for workshops, a lost-and-found spot, and space for sleeping tents.

Most days began with a morning plenary session for all participants where the day’s program was introduced and roles were delegated for joining the kitchen, cleaning and awareness teams. We were especially proud of this year’s camp program, because it included a wide array of activities and topics — from “classic” activist topics such as NVDA (nonviolent direct action) and legal workshops, to lectures on radical organizing, the effects of capitalism on food systems, digital activism, artivism, talks on off-grid living, herbalism and foraging, and kayak training. For deeper community building, which includes fun, we included “lighter” activities such as drumming workshops, climbing, speed dating, standup night, movie screenings, yoga and silk dancing.

The camp gathered a wide variety of people and not just ecoactivists, but also members of the local community, anarchists, LGBTIQ+ rights activists, permaculture practitioners, etc. Participants came from all over the region and beyond — with a few even traveling from as far as New Zealand and the U.S. In addition to opposing LNG expansion, the camp was also a space for human rights, for the rights of nature, and for living according to the values we seek for a better world. Together, we formed a community running the camp and joined forces for the two direct actions. After the last detained protester was released, the camp concluded with a big celebration on the beach.

2023 Adriatic Climate Camp on the island of Kirk, Croatia | Photos: XR Zagreb

You and your fellow activists have learned and achieved much over the last few years — looking back, could you have imagined what you were able to achieve and the community you have built when you got started? What would you say to others who feel frustrated and don’t know where or how to begin their own activism journeys? Everyone’s circumstances and paths are different, but perhaps you can share a little about your own story, as an example of one person’s path to action.

I’d say that I first became an activist in 2019, because that’s when I left my soul-sucking corporate job that turned me into an anticapitalist. (I was fired because I complained about the unpaid overtime.) While I was working there, I spent my limited spare time reading and educating myself on the ecocidal horrors being committed by the capitalist economy, backed by unjust neoliberal politics. I also learned about positive alternatives to this system that people were fighting for, like degrowth.

I felt like being stuck up in a corporate office day in and day out was not only making me miserable but also complicit in the crisis. It was frustratingly meaningless and the opposite of what I should be doing with my life, if there was any possibility of trying to live differently. And so, when I was fired, I took a chance and started my small freelance business so I could finally prioritize my free time and dedicate as much of it as possible to environmentalism and climate activism.

I think it’s important to emphasize the fact that not everyone is as privileged to be able to go freelance and have more freedom in organizing their time. I’m not prescribing this path for everyone, just describing my path. Not everyone can quit their job, but everyone can confront the reality of the climate crisis and find ways to prioritize some form of resistance. Everyone can seek communities of change and lend a hand in their own ways. My path from frustration to action also depended on more than changing my work. It resulted from a series of small steps that gradually led to more and more.

Climate March, Zagreb, Croatia | Photo: XR Zagreb

What were those other steps, outside of educating yourself and figuring out how to make time for activism? What is the “more and more” that your activism has brought into your life?

2019 was also the year when Greta’s movement gained momentum and the Croatian scientist initiative “Scientists For The Climate” sent a public appeal to the government asking for an urgent declaration of the climate crisis. Shortly after, I attended the 2019 autumn eco-seminar run by Zelena akcija (a local environmentalist NGO, part of Friends of the Earth), where I met the people who would soon become my fellow rebels in XR Zagreb. Despite the fact that the group was formed in 2020 during the Corona pandemic, and having faced many challenges of grassroots horizontal organizing in the Balkans, we are still growing strong. For me, it has been a profoundly life-altering experience.

To me, what really helps reduce the feelings of dread and anxiety induced by the climate crisis and biodiversity loss crisis, as well as other anthropogenic crises we may expect in our lifetimes, is learning about the issues while focusing on the solutions. Discovering concepts such as anarchism, a beautiful way of egalitarian anti-systemic local organizing; permaculture, a way of producing food and living with nature while caring for it and restoring its diversity; and degrowth, envisioning an economy that focuses on fulfilling essential human needs while bearing in mind the limits of the biosphere, all brought a lot of joy and peace into my life.

This grounding in positive vision is also guiding my activism towards expanding my knowledge and learning skills and practices that are prefigurative, in the sense that they reflect the future I would like to live, but are also making my life in the current capitalist system a lot more bearable and even enjoyable. I get to live pieces of my dream for a better world while continuously building it with others.Lora, a rebel from XR Zagreb, is interviewed during a Climate March | Photo: Nina Đurđević

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Alexandria Shaner (1986, USA) has lived most of her life in the Caribbean, as well as in Egypt and Nicaragua. A sailor, writer, organizer, and street medic, she has been involved in community organizing, media and education, and environmental activism for over 20 years. Alexandria is currently a staff member of ZNetwork.org and is active with Extinction Rebellion, RealUtopia.org, & the Women's Rights and Empowerment Network. Her work has appeared on ZNet, Common Dreams, CounterPunch, LA Progressive, Waging Nonviolence, Antiwar.com, Extinction Rebellion, The African, The Socialist Project, Meta CPC, DiEm25, PeaceNews, Popular Resistance, Resilience.org, Grassroots Economic Organizing, Shareable, and various other outlets.