Back in time: Should we trust AI browsing tools?


ByDr. Tim Sandle
SCIENCE EDITOR
DIGITAL JOURNAL
December 31, 2025


Generative artificial intelligence assistants like ChatGPT are cutting into traditional online search traffic, depriving news sites of visitors and impacting the advertising revenue they desperately need - Copyright AFP Justin TALLIS

According to a December 2025 report on browser privacy, the newly released ChatGPT Atlas ranks as the least secure web client. With the recent wave of AI browsing tools, the study by software provider Digitain examined thirteen popular browsers across different security features.

Why does these two companies stand-out? ChatGPT Atlas failed 100% of state partitioning tests, meaning it cannot prevent websites from tracking users across different browsing sessions. It is also remarkable, given the longevity of the firm. That Chrome ranks among the worst for privacy despite its popularity, scoring only 41 out of 100 for securing how it connects you to websites.

In contrast to the above, Brave and Mullvad are the safest options, keeping your browsing activity completely private from advertisers and data collectors.

Each browser went through dozens of technical tests that checked three main things: whether websites can identify and track you across the internet (called fingerprinting and tracking), whether the browser blocks companies from collecting your data through cookies and trackers, and whether your connection stays secure when you move between websites.

Browsers got scored in each category, and those scores were combined into a final Privacy Risk Score from 1 to 99. The higher your score, the worse your browser is at protecting you, with 99 meaning almost no privacy protection at all.

The 10 browsers with the highest privacy risks

Browser	Privacy & Anti-Fingerprinting Index Score	Tracker & Data Blocking Index Score	Connection & Navigation Security Index Score	Privacy Risk Score
ChatGPT Atlas	1	0	24	99
Chrome	68	0	41	76
Vivaldi	68	0	37	75
Edge	68	15	41	63
Opera	68	25	41	58
Ungoogled	71	25	41	55
Firefox	74	25	51	50
Safari	80	25	47	49
DuckDuckGo	58	79	51	44
Tor	52	70	83	40

Looming at the top five:

ChatGPT Atlas

Privacy & Anti-Fingerprinting Index Score: 1 out of 100
Tracker & Data Blocking Index Score: 0 out of 100
Connection & Navigation Security Index Score: 24 out of 100
Privacy Risk Score: 99

ChatGPT Atlas is the least private browser of all. OpenAI’s newly launched tool failed nearly every privacy test conducted in the study, scoring just 1 point in anti-fingerprinting protection and 0 in tracker blocking. The browser provides no defence against websites collecting user data through cookies, query parameters, or content trackers. ChatGPT Atlas also performed poorly in basic security measures, managing only 24 points out of 100 for connection and navigation security.

Chrome

Chrome comes second with a privacy risk score of 76, despite being the world’s most popular browser. Google’s browser scored 68 in stopping websites from identifying you but received 0 points for blocking trackers, meaning companies can freely follow your activity across the web. Chrome doesn’t block tracking cookies or the hidden markers that websites use to monitor where you go online. The browser earned 41 points for connection security, falling well below privacy-focused alternatives.

Vivaldi

Vivaldi ranks third among the least private web clients. The browser matched Chrome’s 68-point anti-fingerprinting score but similarly failed to block any trackers, recording 0 in that category. Vivaldi’s connection security also came in slightly lower at 37 points compared to Chrome’s 41. Despite marketing itself as a privacy-conscious alternative to mainstream browsers, Vivaldi’s test results show it offers low protection against online tracking and data harvesting.

Edge

Next comes Microsoft Edge. The browser posted the same 68 points as Chrome and Vivaldi for anti-fingerprinting but showed slight improvement in tracker blocking with a score of 15 out of 100. Edge tied Chrome’s connection security rating at 41 points. While Edge performs marginally better than Chrome and Vivaldi, it still fails to provide adequate privacy protection for users concerned about data collection and online tracking.

Opera

Opera rounds out the five least private browsers. Like other Chromium-based browsers in this ranking, Opera scored 68 for anti-fingerprinting and 41 for connection security. However, Opera showed slightly better tracker blocking capabilities with 25 points, putting it ahead of Edge, Vivaldi, and Chrome in this category. Despite these small improvements, Opera still ranks among browsers that offer poor overall privacy protection.

Investment in AI robotics: A bubble set to burst?


By Dr. Tim Sandle
SCIENCE EDITOR

DIGITAL JOURNAL
December 29, 2025


AI and robots. Image by © Tim Sandle

The latest investment data shows that investor interest in humanoid robotics is accelerating rapidly within the broader AI market. According to some venture capitalists, however, much of this momentum is being driven by hype rather than commercial readiness, raising concerns that humanoid robotics could become AI’s next bubble.

Recent major venture capital reports from KPMG and PitchBook demonstrate that AI remains in the lead, accounting for more than half of all investments this year. In addition, data from CB Insights shows that investors’ attention inside the AI market is shifting rapidly toward industrial humanoid robotics.
Is the AI-robotic bubble set to burst?

As a result, investors indicate that the flood of AI capital is pushing robotics toward a speculative zone, with potentially too many start-ups promising breakthroughs without commercial evidence.

The reports also show that, in the last quarter, industrial humanoid robotics captured 17 deals – the most of any category. AI was still the primary destination for investors, split into several categories, such as coding AI agents and co-pilots (14 deals), end-to-end software development AI agents (12), and others.

Rapid growth of the sector has already sparked fears of a bubble from the Chinese leading economic planning industry, which said that the humanoid robotics industry needs to “balance the speed against the risks of bubbles,” Bloomberg reports.
Why the interest?

Investors’ appetite for humanoid robots is largely driven by AI, since AI gives humanoids a commercial potential that was previously not possible.
What is the risk?

According to Daiva Rakauskaitė, the partner and manager of Aneli Capital, a company that manages a €35 million fund for early-stage Central and Eastern European startups, there are strong similarities between today’s AI-driven investment boom and the dotcom bubble in the early 2000s, leaving many startups exposed. She expects an AI bubble burst in 2-3 years, as she tells Digital Journal.

“Many AI startups that can’t yet generate revenue will fail, but we’re reaching a consensus on that in the market. While the same risks persist in humanoid robotics, many investors tend to overlook this,” says Rakauskaitė. “However, it is important to distinguish robotics from humanoid robotics; industrial and logistics robots already generate revenue and can deliver measurable results, while humanoids can’t yet prove their commercial value.”

As examples, companies around the world are demonstrating prototypes of robots performing actions from running to boxing, seeking to spark interest from users and investors. Yet, in the real world, Rakauskaitė sees very few practical commercial applications.

Similar challenges also persist for industrial humanoid robotics. These companies face challenges with inference (ability to make decisions in real time), dexterity (how well the robot can physically handle things), reliability, and cost, which limit the initial use cases to factories and warehouses with predictable sets of tasks, notes Rakauskaitė.

According to Rakauskaitė, especially now, when investments are driven by hype, investors should not forget the fundamentals and prioritize revenue-first philosophy, where real money matters more than growth at all costs.

“Investments in robotics and AI are crucial for the future development of humanity. But investors should remain disciplined and back companies that have realistic goals based on economics, not hype. From day one, startups should aim for early revenue streams through licensing, partnerships and have a clear model of monetization in the near future. The same revenue-first philosophy can be applied to any field,” Rakauskaitė explains.

Despite early signs of a bubble in humanoid robotics, Rakauskaitė remains confident in the broader robotics sector, where cheaper hardware and rapid advances in AI are accelerating real-world deployment.

According to Rakauskaitė, robotics is an especially promising field for the CEE startups. This region, Rakauskaitė points out, is located close to Germany, the largest industrial robotics market in Europe, which provides a major strategic advancement to scaling.

“The region also has lots of hidden talent. That’s why we dedicated our new fund for this region, aiming to support the talented founders with hands-on guidance and quick decision-making. Many hype-driven investors pull back once the hype fades. Yet to create real innovators, VCs must support them through their full journey. That’s exactly what we are going to do,” Rakauskaitė concludes.

“Self-Hating Jew, Kapo, What About Hamas?”

Every Zionist accusation is a confession: There is no bothsidesing genocide

by Phil Rockstroh / January 1st, 2026

Zionists have attempted to teach me the following: 1) Because I am Jewish, all Palestinians clamor and scheme to have me erased from the Earth. 2) There is no such entity as the Palestinian people.

Damn convenient: The people you are perpetrating a genocide upon do not exist. Damn odd: The people you are erasing — who do not exist — aim to erase you.

I have been instructed — because I understand the reason for Palestinian resistance — that I am a Kapo (defined as, a Jew who gained privileges by their cooperation with their oppressors within Nazi concentration camps).

Yet I am met with belligerent obtuseness, mental walls of bristling denial, when I point out, before my grandfather was arrested and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, he was a member of the anti-Nazi underground. He was, in short, a member of a resistance organization that stood in violent opposition to a nation attempting to create a highly militarized, ethno-supremacist state. Yet when I aver, Israel is exactly that, Zionist apologists snarl, “I am a Kapo.”

Think this through: If my grandfather and his fellow Jewish prisoners had managed to stage an uprising against their Nazi prison keepers and an attendant prison breakout, including their resistance spilling out into the streets of Berlin, without a doubt, history would have regarded them as heroes. Yet, history as related by Third Reich Nazis, if Germany had emerged victorious in the end, would have label them as Oct 7 type of rampaging terrorists.

Therefore, in memory of my grandfather, I stand in solidarity with the besieged, living in constant terror, Palestinian people, and their acts of resistance against their ethno-supremacist oppressors, the latter, the actual betrayers of Jewish resistance against state sanctioned hate.

Pictured: My maternal grandfather, Heinrich Meyer, anti-Nazi resistance fighter.

Regarding, “but Hamas,”

My late father, orphaned as an infant, adopted by a Jewish mother from The Lower Eastside, New York and a gentile father, a New Orleans denizen via Staten Island, snapped the iconic photograph below on the streets of Birmingham, Alabama.

He sold the photograph, for the purpose of keeping a roof over our family’s head, to his photo-journalism syndicate and the image was subsequently published on the front page of the New York Times and the pages of Life Magazine.

When people demand why, as a Jewish person, I am repelled by Zionism, I offered in reply variations of: 1) My mother is a survivor of the Holocaust 2) Growing up, as I did in Jim Crow-ruled Birmingham, Alabama, upon my first visit to Israel, I detected a pronounced and ruling, bigotry-rancid mindset of the Zionist citizenry that was an analog to the mindset of Third Reich Germans and Jim Crow era US Southerners, complete with all the noxious casuistry and soul-defying psychological projections to which individuals in possession of majority status privilege in ethno-supremacist societies are prone. My family was scorned as “n-word lovers” by Jim Crow-clinging Alabamians as I am slandered as a “Kapo” by Zionist true believers.

When, as a child, walking the streets of Birmingham with my mother, according to Jim Crow law, Black men were obliged, under threat of arrest, to cross the street when in the path of an approaching White woman. As is the case with present day Zionists, the mindset evinces a pathological fear within the head of the oppressor in regard to the oppressed. As is the case with its fear-based and brutal analog in the Zionist state, the mindset is a progenitor of all manner of societal pathology, from casual cruelty to genocidal impulses.

Thus when Zionists accuse me and other anti-Zionist Jews of tribe-betraying treachery thus enabling of Israel’s savage, blood-crazed mortal enemies, the following truism comes to mind in regard to Zionist apologists and other authoritarian, bigoted brutes, “every accusation is a confession.”

To wit, every accusation regarding the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas, the Israeli thugocracy has exceeded ten thousand fold. Moreover, opinion polls of the Israeli citizenry reveal they are in full support of the worst of the uniformed thugs of the IDF’s war crimes, including the wholesale and planned starvation of Gaza’s children.

When Jews such as myself regard with mortification and condemn in the strongest terms the conflation of Judaism and Zionism — the abominations perpetrated by the latter group are the type of unforgivable actions that we dread will be associated, in a broad, indiscriminate manner, with us the primary group.

All war crimes should not only be regarded as reprehensible but there is a minefield of false equivalence stretching between Palestinian resistance and Zionist war criminality, between Palestinians’ struggle for survival and Israel’s attempt to erase not only their presence from the land of their ancestors but their history as a viable people from collective memory. Hence, an inadvertent confession of genocidal intent.

Then there is this: before you gibber “but Hamas too…” allow this to sink in: place yourself in the position of the people of Gaza (a location human rights organizations termed an “open air prison” well before the Oct 7 prison break out. Considering the evils that have been perpetrated on Gazans by the Zionist regime those kinds of condemnations should be regarded as facile and feckless declarations and utterances of casuistry.

Then there is this to consider: The history of the West reveals: Acts of suppression inflicted on powerless people abroad will engender a “chickens coming home to roost” effect (i.e., The Principle Of Perpetual Poultry Returns (POPPR). State perpetrated repression and violence in foreign policy traveled homeward.

In the US, to greater and greater degrees, speech is censored, ICE thuggery reigns, religious zealotry acts in the service of mercenary agendas, and there seethes on the highest seat of power a within-the-threshold-of Alzheimer’s president, surrounded by lickspittle tools and manic fools, who is an ambulatory caricature of a preening dictator. The dismal and deranged criteria dovetails and cross-pollinates with Western acceptance and enabling of Israel’s brutal and endless oppression of the Palestinian people.

As noted above, every accusation aimed at the resistors of tyranny is, in fact, an admission of intent.

Image: 1963, The Civil Rights Era “Children’s Campaign” assaulted with police water cannons on the Jim Crow-ruled streets of Birmingham, Alabama. Photograph by Frank H. Rockstroh

(When Palestinian Civil Rights campaigners (e.g., during The Gazan Great Walk Of Return) have emulated the tactic, IDF snipers have shot them down outright.)

Foundation mythos and blood-drenched folly:

The notion of Jews returning to the Promised Land is mythos created by Bronze Age Barbarians. My Ashkenazi Jewish DNA reports my ancestral home is as follows: Germany, France, Spain, Greece/Albania — with 4% coming from northern Iran/Iraq i.e., ancient Persia…the sum total of nada from Israel.

In contrast, the DNA of Palestinians reveals…wait for it…they are the true descendants of Biblical era Jews. They possess “the right to return”. Not my pasty, narrow ass.

Yet European settlers-colonialists, my relatives, expelled them from their rightful homeland and force Palestinians and Israel’s neighbors to live on their knees in perpetual supplication for the sins of Europe.

The fantasy, turned-into-waking-nightmare of returning to “the Promised Land,” is, as noted above, the noxious mythology of Bronze Age barbarians.

The mythos is noxious indeed:

When any system lapses into extremis, a psychical version of The Second Law of Thermodynamics kicks in; negative entropy is in play, and collapse becomes inevitable.

As is the case with Zionists, the Nazis swooned in false mythos. To wit, They believed the reign of the Third Reich would herald the rebirth of Teutonic Knights thus will bring about a German Golden Age.

Third Reich era propaganda poster portraying Adolf Hitler as a Teutonic Knight

The Thousand Year Reich lasted all of twelve years. Extremists have a pronounced proclivity to set in motion their own demise.

As with the Civil Rights era campaigns in the US Deep South, the hateful, casually racist, and cruel nature of Jim Crow apologists, as is the case with Israelis and their unhinged apologists infesting social media, and their attendant serial posting of vile and vicious content reveals the ugly, bullying character of the genocidal prone nation — thus is proving to be self-undermining.

The graphic below, despite the relentless torrent of Zionist propaganda retailed on legacy media outlets, reveals the soul-defying actions of a nation of bullies, if not homicidal maniacs. How is it possible to ignore the massive degree of wanton carnage that the IDF has inflicted on Gaza’s tiny land mass — on a more massive level — than the death and destruction wrought by the bombs, incendiary weapons (add present day murder-bots) that were targeted on major cities by both the Allies and Axis powers during aerial warfare campaigns of World War 2.

Every red dot represents an Israeli bomb that hit Gaza in the last two years

Withal, the world has witnessed a war crime — of the collective punishment kind — that has surpassed any in the modern era. Yet the major powers of the West have not only remained silent — but provided Zionist war criminals with the weaponry to perpetuate mass murder.

When a nation’s foundational mythos is: Because Jews (i.e., members of a broad and varied religious group) were victims of a campaign of annihilation (i.e., by a European power) — we Zionist (a political movement that engendered the establishment of a nation-state) have been granted carte blanche to eliminate anyone, any group or nation that we insist is a threat.

It is inane to ask whether I sympathize with Hamas. The question should be: Are you in simpatico with your own humanity?

Am I a self-hating Jew for my lack of simpatico with these kippah-bedecked jerkopaths?

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Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist, and essayist. His poems, short fiction, poetry and essays have been published in numerous print publications and anthologies; his political essays have been widely posted on the progressive/left side of the internet.  Read other articles by Phil, or visit Phil's website.

The Tyranny of Beer

By Gunnar Rundgren

December 29, 2025

Source: Garden Earth

Pint of beer. | Image license: Public domain license via Libreshot

I have written nine essays about why a collapse is coming, how it will play out and what comes after. As I pointed out at the onset, they were essays in its real and original meaning, trials (from French essayer). I don’t pretend to know. The only thing I really know is that this constant ever growing socio-economic system that I call global industrial capitalism is bound to collapse – I just don’t know when.

Many thanks to those that give comments and feedback. I read and I try to react or respond to the comments I get. In this post I will just raise a few matters emerging from the process, from your comments or from my emerging thoughts.

Even among those that seem to agree that this growth-addicted system is doomed to fail and collapse, there seems to be quite different perspectives on how fast that will happen. Equally important is of course how deep the collapse will be and what will collapse. Some seem to believe that most things can continue as they are, just with some adjustment in how things are managed; others seem to see the world as a smorgasbord where we can pick the good stuff that this current civilisation has brought us and skip the rest. Yet others have the view that when the current civilisation will fall, life and the human condition will revert back to a pre-fossil fuel era, both technology wise and socially. Let me call the first group sustainable degrowthers, the second transition idealists and the third total collapsniks. Just take it as shorthand and don’t feel attacked, and I am aware of that there are many strains with opposing ideas in all three categories.

I find myself attuned to all three in some regards but not in others. Below I highlight the main weaknesses of each of them. I believe I have outlined my own ideas in the previous essays and will not repeat all of them here.

The sustainable degrowthers seem to believe that we can manage a transition away from business as usual to a fair society, by putting the brakes on global capitalism, or abolish it altogether, and at the same time redistribute wealth and resources not only nationally but internationally. It is a proposal that assumes that societies will be cooperative, people will voluntarily choose this development, and that global systems of governance much stronger than the current ones are put in place. It also assumes a highly engineered and managed process akin to a planned economy. While I am a degrowther in its essential meaning, I have less faith that such a process is likely to happen by management. First, I do think that growth will end and capitalism will not survive. The current lifestyle is so entrenched, however, that the general population and the politicians will engage in all kinds of futile efforts to keep the system going instead of taking the necessary measures in time. This will aggravate the crises and make the inevitable economic recession very steep. When the system ultimately collapses, the chances for globally coordinated or managed processes will be very low. We can be happy if global solidarity can prevent war from happening. Even in the unlikely event that a managed global degrowth process would start, I am quite certain that it would degenerate into a Soviet style of society. After all it was not ”communism” that was the problem of the Soviet state, but the power vested in an overreaching and overbearing central government controlling everything. Having said that, I don’t exclude that some countries or regions could manage a kind of degrowth process.

The transition idealists views the world and human societies as shells we can fill with whatever we like. We can abandon fossil fuels, avoid some of the worst practices, keep advanced welfare and medical care and high science, consume more culture and less trinkets and go on with a merrier life than before. To some extent they are right, but society, human expression and technology develop in tandem. And in order to be strong they need to reinforce each other. And one technology assumes, or dictates, that many other technologies are in place and that society is organised in certain ways. Even something basic as beer assumes agriculture, and agriculture assumes and requires a sedentary culture. Sedentism, in turn, implies a lot of things, even though I don’t subscribe to the idea that agriculture and sedentism is the fall of man, the cradle of tyranny or the broken link between humans and nature. Some claim that beer preceded or even initiated agriculture and sedentism in that case means that it is beer that is the culprit, quite an entertaining thought….

It all started with beer, image: Gunnar Rundgren

As I tried to explain in one of my articles, you can’t just choose to have internet or advanced medicine unless you have a society with advanced technologies and extensive global networks to ascertain all the material needs for such a marvel to exist. Some things can be done but become prohibitively expensive to do unless embedded in a certain technological system. For example, you might think that it is unsustainable that almost every person has a car, but that people living in remote places ought to have an electric one. But the relative costs of cars (electric or not) and the cost of a car-adapted-road and service network per km driven will increase at least one order of magnitude, perhaps more, if there is no mass car usage.

The total collapsniks predict a very deep and quick collapse, which will throw us back hundreds of years. In the process, or as a result, billions will starve and societies will collapse from a combination of inner strife, war and lack of resources. The result will be an agrarian scarcity society, sometimes under a Hobbesian rule. Of course, I am not in a position to say that this will absolutely not happen. But I see several reasons for why not. First, I don’t see a particular reason why humans will lose all of the abilities and knowledge gained in the last two hundred years, even considering my criticism of the cuddly transition narrative above. Even if we did lose much of it, there are such huge quantities of steel and other useful stuff to keep us going for centuries to come. For sure they are not edible, but they will make food production much easier.

Secondly, even if we would lose much of the technosphere, on a pure material level, I don’t think a radical scarcity is the normal human condition. I believe most of the narratives of how it “was” in the past are severely biased and shaped by the dominating narrative of progress. Just the other day, new research shows that It is likely that urbanisation in England during the Roman era resulted in limited access to resources and overcrowded, polluted living situations with long-term negative impacts on health. In contrast, rural communities did not similarly experience any of these stressors. I believe agrarian cultures have been, and can be, able to provide for a decent way of life if they are not subject to oppression and extraction from authoritarian elites. I believe, that even if the varnish of modernity is rather shallow, the ideals of egalitarianism* and respect for human life is not a result of modernity, but is embedded in the human culture from a very long time ago. So even with a deep collapse, I think the dystopian agrarian scarcity narrative is exaggerated.

For sure, regardless of which future we foresee, the very big global human population will put an enormous strain on resources. Fortunately, the population growth seems to be stalling and will soon cease, and it has already gone into reverse in many countries – this may delay an environmental collapse, but make the economic and social collapse even more certain. This also gives some clues for the urban-rural equation. You don’t need a massive urban exodus from cities to readjust urbanisation rates, you just need that people live longer and have more babies in rural areas than in urban areas.

Of course, my debate here is currently a fringe debate, The two prevailing mainstream narratives are very different. The first is the business as usual will just go on and more growth will give us new opportunities to deal with the bads and make more goods. The second is the green growth, ecomodernist story that says, yes, we have a problem but we will solve it with replacing brown technology with green. Essentially, there is little difference between the two. It is more a question of strategy of what comes first, economic growth or green transition. This, in turn, has more to do with how the proponents rate the severity of the environmental situation, ranging from “immediate disaster” to “some problem”. Anyway, here I don’t discuss these perspectives.

With this, I take four weeks break from this blog. I have a book project that I want to focus on to see if I can shape it up or if I should drop it altogether. It is about the economy as a socio-eco-bio-physical (you get it?) system.

* This recent article give an interesting overview of the topic: Egalitarianism is not Equality: Moving from outcome to process in the study of human political organisation.

 

Jailed U.K. Palestine Action Activists Continue Hunger Strike Despite Health Risks

By Francesca Nadin, Amy Goodman 

December 30, 2025

Source: Democracy Now!

Alarm is growing over the treatment and deteriorating health of eight pro-Palestinian activists jailed in the United Kingdom who are on hunger strike to protest their detention. The activists remain imprisoned as they await trial over charges linked to their work with Palestine Action, which the British government has banned under its Terrorism Act over direct action protests against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Several of the activists who began their hunger strike in early November are now in “a critical stage” and facing grave health risks or death, according to Dr. James Smith, a doctor supporting the hunger strikers. “This is an extremely critical moment, and, frankly speaking, it defies comprehension that members of the government have refused even to meet with the hunger strikers in an attempt to resolve this situation.”

We also speak with Francesca Nadin, a spokesperson for Prisoners for Palestine, which is supporting the jailed activists. She says the harsh treatment of the hunger strikers is part of a “coordinated witch hunt that reflects the wider repression of the pro-Palestine movement” in the U.K. and around the world. “The people that have taken part in this hunger strike feel like they have no other choice left to them but to take this into their own hands,” Nadin says.

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Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

U.N. experts are raising grave concern over the treatment and fragile health of a group of Palestine Action political prisoners who have been on hunger strike protesting their detention in Britain. The eight activists remain jailed as they await trial over charges related to their work with Palestine Action, which was banned by the British government under its Terrorism Act.

The U.N. experts, including Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for Palestinian territories, said in a statement the hunger strikers are at risk of organ failure and death. They wrote, quote, “Authorities must ensure timely access to emergency and hospital care when clinically indicated, refrain from actions that may amount to pressure or retaliation, and respect medical ethics,” unquote.

Several of the activists began their hunger strike in early November.

On Sunday, Democracy Now! spoke to James Smith, Dr. James Smith, a medical doctor supporting the hunger strikers, who has volunteered in Gaza during Israel’s assault.

DR. JAMES SMITH: Three of the four who have continued with their hunger strike have now been on hunger strike for more than 50 days. They are well into a critical stage, wherein they may experience sudden or very rapid decline in their physical health and are at increasing risk of death, and that risk increases with every passing day. As a healthcare worker who’s been supporting the hunger strikers, who’s in regular contact with their next of kin, this is an extremely critical moment, and, frankly speaking, it defies comprehension that members of the government have refused even to meet with the hunger strikers in an attempt to resolve this situation. …

As a healthcare worker and someone who has worked in Gaza during the course of the genocide, I’m, of course, invested in their demands, all of their demands, but I’m particularly concerned about their access to comprehensive and quality healthcare as the hunger strike progresses, and the extent to which the state and its various appendages respect and uphold their right to healthcare and their right to dignity. The situation now is beyond critical. …

Particularly concerning is that hunger strikers have been shackled — in one instance, cuffed wrist to wrist and shackled to a prison guard while receiving treatment in hospital. The treatment of some of the hunger strikers in hospital has been such that on more than one occasion hunger strikers, when they have complained of severe symptoms, have said that they don’t want to be transferred to hospital and that they would rather stay in prison. This is an indictment of the healthcare services that are being offered to these individuals.

AMY GOODMAN: That was emergency medical doctor James Smith.

This all comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago today amidst the fragile U.S.-brokered truce with Hamas that Israel has repeatedly violated since it went into effect October 10th.

For more, we go to Leeds, England, where we’re joined by Francesca Nadin, spokesperson for Prisoners for Palestine, which is supporting the Palestine Action prisoners on hunger strike. Last year, Francesca was arrested and charged with, quote, “conspiracy to commit criminal damage,” unquote, against two Leeds banks, Barclays and JPMorgan. Both banks invest in Israel’s biggest weapons producer, Elbit Systems. Francesca Nadin was imprisoned from July 2024 to last March, then released with an electronic monitoring curfew tag.

Thanks so much for being with us, Francesca. If you can explain exactly what’s happening, for people who are not familiar with this hunger strike? How many people are imprisoned with Palestine Action? On what grounds? And talk about their condition in prison right now.

FRANCESCA NADIN: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

So, for people that aren’t familiar with this, there are dozens of people in prison right now as a result of alleged actions, either with Palestine Action or the other groups that take action against the arms companies that are operating in this country. So, we are seeing now the process as the punishment, people being locked up for indefinite periods of time without even a conviction or a trial. In these cases, usually people would get bail. But not only this is not happening, without really any justification, but they’re now also being accused of being terrorists and treated as such. And this was before — most of them were put in prison before Palestine Action was even banned. So, it’s a kind of — it was the first step in a kind of coordinated witch hunt that reflects the wider repression of the pro-Palestine movement, not just here, but around the world. So, I know it’s happening over there in the U.S., as well.

So, after exhausting all these legal avenues, then we can see that the system is rigged. There’s been a lot of dodgy dealings going on behind the scenes. It’s quite clear to us that there’s political interference going on in all of these cases. The people that have taken part in this hunger strike feel like they have no other choice left to them but to take this into their own hands. The only way they have left of resisting against this persecution is to go on hunger strike. Nobody wants to go on hunger strike. It’s a really drastic, really dangerous thing to do, as James said. But they are very determined. They’re very sure of what they’re doing, because they know that this is how they can get justice for themselves and how they can motivate people to fight on their behalf on the outside, as well.

They have five demands. I think anyone would say, with any common sense, that they’re completely reasonable. So, for example, not to have censorship within the prison. They are constantly having letters, phone calls, visits, even legal visits and legal correspondence, blocked. To get bail before they go on trial, to have the right to a fair trial without this political interference, to not be labeled as terrorists, and to stop calling Palestine Action a terrorist organization, which it obviously doesn’t meet the conditions for. And most importantly for them, and this is directed at the general public around the world, is to continue shutting down these arms factories, like Elbit Systems or the various other companies that are still manufacturing and exporting arms to Israel to continue the genocide in Palestine. We know there’s no ceasefire, and the prisoners are going on hunger strike to remind everybody that it is their responsibility to take action to stop this in any way they can.

AMY GOODMAN: This is the sister of Palestine Action prisoner, 28-year-old Kamran Ahmed, speaking earlier this month.

SHAHMINA ALAM: He is on day 39 of his hunger strike. He has had two hospitalizations since the start of his hunger strike, having only come out of the hospitalization last week. Whilst they were able to stabilize his ketones, they are steeply on the rise again. But what is mostly concerning is that his heart is giving in, and his pulse is slowing down, and at the moment, he is losing half a kg every day.

AMY GOODMAN: The Palestine Action hunger strike is now the largest coordinated hunger strike in U.K. prisons since the 1981 Irish republican protests led by Bobby Sands. I believe he was 27 years old when he died, along with — was it — nine Irish republican activists. During the time of his hunger strike in prison, he was elected to Parliament. Can you talk about the parallels?

FRANCESCA NADIN: I think it’s really important to emphasize that we would never and should never compare ourselves to the Irish republican struggle. The prisoners and all of us take a lot of inspiration from them. And, in fact, the solidarity that has been shared with us from all Irish people has been incredible throughout this campaign, and it’s something that really gives the prisoners strength and helps them to keep going. But I think the key difference here is that the prisoners, yes, of course, they’re striking for justice for themselves, but, more importantly, they’re striking for the liberation of Palestinian people. They’ve taken on that struggle as their own. And for that reason, they don’t want to center themselves in this hunger strike. It’s simply a vessel for people to continue talking about Palestine at this time when the press and politicians are trying to make everybody forget about it and trying to fool people into the idea that there’s a ceasefire, and it’s obvious to all of us that that’s absolutely false. So, in that sense, it’s not a comparison.

I think the comparison that we can make is the amount of solidarity actions, the amount of mobilization, the amount of people that are being moved to take action for Palestine, to take more radical action for Palestine, to do direct action, which is something that people were perhaps a bit nervous around after the banning of Palestine Action. People are now so fired up to do this again, in a way that we haven’t seen in a very long time. So, for example, we’ve had meetings where hundreds of people have signed up for direct action. And that’s something that is a result, a direct result, of the hunger strike and is really amazing to see how inspiring the hunger strike is for people all over the place.

AMY GOODMAN: As we begin to wrap up, Heba Muraisi is one of the hunger strikers. It is said she can no longer form sentences, is struggling to maintain a conversation, added via your group, Prisoners for Palestine, that she feels weaker as each day passes. Four of the hunger strikers, including Ms. Muraisi, are accused of playing roles in the break-in at the Israeli-linked defense technology company Elbit Systems UK, November 19th, 2024, expected to go on trial of May next year. Can you talk about her condition and the charges against her?

FRANCESCA NADIN: So, of course, we are extremely worried about Heba. She’s suffering a lot as a result of this hunger strike. Almost two months without food is an incredibly long time. So, all we can do is continue fighting in every way possible to get these demands met and to end this hunger strike safely. But that is in the government’s hands. They already have blood, you know, all over their hands as a result of Palestine, but now they have the choice whether to add to that or not by letting the hunger strikers die.

So, as for their charges, they’ve been accused, they’ve not been convicted. It’s really important to say that Heba doesn’t even have any criminal convictions, and she’s been in prison for over a year now and treated in the most despicable manner that you can imagine.

So, anyone who’s been on trial against Elbit Systems or other arms companies, as I was myself, we will always say that the trial is another arena for our battle. When we go to trial, we turn the tables, and we put these arms companies in the dock. They are guilty of aiding and abetting a genocide. We will continue to accuse them of that. And until they are prosecuted for their crimes, until the politicians are prosecuted for their crimes, this struggle won’t end, whether it be a hunger strike, whether that be in the courts, whether that be on the streets with thousands of people getting arrested for supporting Palestine Action. People are not going to give up — actually, the opposite: Where there’s more repression, there’s more resistance.

AMY GOODMAN: And the significance of Greta Thunberg, known around the world as a climate activist, and now an activist for Palestinian human rights, getting arrested last week?

FRANCESCA NADIN: I think it’s just an indication of the incredible support from around the world that we have, whether that be from the U.N., whether that be from other activists. We are constantly, every single day, getting messages from people, from Tokyo to New Zealand and everywhere in between, about the support that people are showing for the prisoners. That’s an incredible thing to see. And we will encourage all those people to continue supporting and take that one step further, to apply that pressure to their governments and to the arms companies that are operating in their local areas. That’s what we need to do: shut all these places down, to stop their manufacturing arms to murder innocent Palestinian people.

FRANCESCA NADIN: Francesca Nadin, I want to thank you for being with us, spokesperson for Prisoners for Palestine, supporting the Palestine Action prisoners on hunger strike.Email

Francesca Nadin

Francesca Nadin is a spokesperson for Prisoners for Palestine.