Ninety-Nine is published three times a year by Global Justice Now
Global Justice Now campaigns for a world where resources are controlled by the many, not the few. We champion social movements and propose democratic alternatives to the rule of the 1%. Our activists and groups in towns and cities around the UK work in solidarity with those at the sharp end of poverty and injustice.
Ninety-Nine magazine, Global Justice Now 66 Offley Road, London SW9 0LS 020 7820 4900 • offleyroad@globaljustice.org.uk • globaljustice.org.uk
Editors: Jonathan Stevenson, Anita Bhadani
Graphic Design: Matt Bonner www.revoltdesign.uk
Cover: The City of London skyline. Credit: Make Them Pay/Canva
Printed on 100% recycled paper.
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Make corporations and the super-rich pay
Nick Dearden Director
Climate change is a war on ordinary people across the world, driven by the richest people and corporations. While the rich burn millions of times their fair share of fossil fuels, the rest of us are left with a devastated environment – a planet which could soon be unable to feed, clothe or keep us safe.
Big business has driven the use of oil, gas and coal, even though some of them have known for decades that burning these fuels could devastate our planet. To this day, big banks continue to fund the expansion of oil, gas and coal, even though we are already suffering severe effects from climate change. A small handful of people have now gained more wealth than they could spend in several lifetimes, in turn fuelling ultra-high consumption lifestyles. And they have their man in the White House.
The rest of us will be forced to live with the consequences of what the minority has done to our planet. So we have everything to gain from much-needed, radical climate action.
The far-right is trying to turn climate into a culture war issue. We must undermine this.
Most people back climate action. But they are also concerned that such action could, if not done right, come at their expense. This hasn’t been helped by climate policies which place a severe burden on those least able to bear it, while shelling out our tax money to the very corporations that have caused the problem.
Far-right parties are trying to exploit these concerns to turn climate change into a culture war issue. We must undermine these attempts if we’re to have any chance of limiting the damage. To do this, we need to join with workers to demand climate action which transforms our economy, improving the lives of the majority, including through well-funded public services and a jobs guarantee.
This must be paid for by those who have caused the problem: the polluting corporations who have lied to us while burning our planet, and the superrich whose lifestyle is accelerating the problem. That’s why we are coming together across civil society to put the case that we must Make Them Pay –as Izzie McIntosh outlines on page 8 of this issue.
People everywhere have much to gain from climate action, and everything to lose from its failure. We will work together to push for this action to be transformative, building the future we deserve. I hope many of you can join us on the streets on Saturday 20 September – and whenever Donald Trump visits the UK.
STOP PRESS: As Ninety-Nine goes to press, Trump has joined Israel’s attack on Iran. See our statement at globaljustice.org.uk/iran
Battle lines drawn over new Trump trade deal
We have launched a renewed campaign to stop the UK agreeing a toxic trade deal with Donald Trump in recent months, after the US president started a global tariff war which has sparked economic chaos. While even US allies like Canada and the EU responded to Trump’s economic bullying by vowing to defend their interests and impose reciprocal measures on US goods, Keir Starmer has taken a different approach, offering concessions and trying to placate the president with the offer of a second state visit to Britain.
In May, the Trump and Starmer governments announced with much fanfare that they had reached a ‘trade deal’. But other than some
welcome tariff reductions (still to take effect at the time of writing), it was largely a press release setting out their intention to negotiate a full trade treaty in the coming months. This is the real danger of Starmer’s approach: Trump's demands extend across a wide range of areas beyond tariffs - from a Big Tech wish list of digital rules to longstanding controversies like lowering UK food standards and granting US companies access to public services, including the NHS. It means that a full trade deal with Trump would be every bit as toxic as the two previous US trade deals we have successfully fought off, with allies, over the last decade.
In particular, the ‘digital partnership’ touted as part of the deal by new UK ambassador to the US (and former EU trade commissioner) Peter Mandelson threatens to give Big Tech oligarchs such as Elon Musk, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos even greater power over our digital lives, not least the rapidly expanding but barely regulated Wild West of artificial intelligence (AI).
More than 40,000 people have joined our campaign already, but it will take many more to build a movement capable of halting a full US trade deal as negotiations continue.
Sign the petition against a toxic trade deal with Trump: globaljustice.org.uk/US-petition
UK suspends trade talks with Israel as sanctions calls build
Israel’s resumed assault on the people of Gaza has provoked a new wave of condemnation, after it shattered the temporary ceasefire in March. Even before abandoning the truce, with Donald Trump’s backing, Israeli forces had begun blocking the entry of aid into Gaza, causing famine-like conditions to spread, with many starvation-related deaths reported and thousands more children facing acute malnutrition. The UN’s humanitarian chief warned in May that Israel’s bombing campaign and forced displacement of Palestinians is “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.
We have expanded our call for the UK government to put sanctions on Israel to help pressure the Netanyahu government to stop its attacks on Gaza and comply fully with international law. Since last year we have been campaigning for the UK to suspend its trade deal with Israel, cancel talks over a new trade deal, and ban trade with and investment in Israel’s illegal settlements on the West Bank. Now we are also pushing for the UK to sanction firms that facilitate Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory – and to use its comprehensive sanctions against Russia as a blueprint for putting meaningful economic pressure on Israel. Palestinians in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement have long argued that economic sanctions are necessary for countries to meet
their international legal obligations (see pages 14-15).
We had a limited success in May when the UK announced it had suspended talks over a planned new trade deal with Israel. These talks should never have been happening in the first place, but this was an important acknowledgement that close trade ties must be conditional on respect for international law. However, the announcement didn’t go nearly far enough, and at the time of writing, the UK is still resisting legal efforts to stop the export of F35 fighter jet parts that could end up in Israel. Meanwhile, its existing trade deal with Israel, which provides tariff-free access to the UK market, remains in place.
We also conducted polling in June which showed that a majority of British people back the call for economic sanctions (62% in favour, just 11% against), a full arms embargo (65%-11%), and suspending the UK-Israel trade deal (60%-13%) until Israel ends its attacks on Gaza. Urgent pressure is necessary both to compel Israel to halt the killing and to address the root cause of the violence in the region: Israel’s illegal occupation of the whole Palestinian territory.
Join the call for the UK to impose sanctions on Israel at: globaljustice.org.uk/israel-sanctions
Above: Destruction caused by Israeli bombing of Jabalia refugee camp, north of the Gaza Strip.
Mining boom not ‘critical’ for green transition
We published a report in June with new analysis on the demand for ‘critical minerals’ such as lithium and cobalt. It found that over half of the minerals designated as critical by the UK government play "no major role" in the green transition, and that the increase in the often-harmful mining of these resources is being driven in a large way by militarisation.
The smaller than expected amount of critical minerals necessary for the transition shows that a green future does not need to be built on the exploitation of poorer countries. But there is a material basis for taking this moment to fundamentally rethink what the economy looks like. We argue for shifting the UK’s mineral demand towards socially useful
sectors, like renewable energy, rather than simply growing the ‘mineral pie’ for the likes of the military industry, with questionable gains for ordinary people and the creation of ‘sacrifice zones’ of human rights abuses and environmental destruction in the global south. Addressing patterns of over-consumption in the global north is key, too.
We hope this research will equip campaigners for climate justice with stronger evidence and arguments against the false opposition of achieving an energy transition and standing against exploitative mineral extraction overseas.
Read the report at: globaljustice.org.uk/material-realities
UK is spending £17.5bn on fossil fuel subsidies
In May, we released a new research paper, ‘Fossil fuel subsidies in the UK: Who pays, who profits?’ We estimated that the UK is spending £17.5 billion on fossil fuel subsidies every year, with a total payout of £87.5 billion expected over this government’s fiveyear term. Billions go directly to the fossil fuel industry and a vast amount is also spent subsidising households and consumers to ensure they can still afford things like heating and fuel. Taxpayers paying the fossil fuel industry to produce energy, which then proves unaffordable for the public, demonstrates the extent to which our backwards energy system is built on private profit at all costs.
With inequality spiralling and many households reliant on
government support, easy fixes can seem limited. First of all, the government must cancel all direct payments to the trillion-dollar fossil fuel industry, redirecting this money to powering up renewables and funding UK oil and gas workers to transition their skills into the industries of the future. Such measures should be early steps in a just transition to publicly-owned renewable energy, which has the potential to deliver affordable, reliable energy for all and minimise the need for subsidising both energy consumption and production over time.
Read more at: globaljustice.org.uk/ff-subsidies
Dockworkers organise for a people’s arms embargo
As governments refuse to enact full arms embargoes on Israel, dockworkers and campaigners across Europe and North Africa have been organising in solidarity with Palestine by refusing to handle weapons shipments bound for Israel.
In Greece, workers organised a blockade of ammunition shipments, while in Sweden, the dockworkers’
union-led a boycott of military cargo to and from Israel. Shipping giant Maersk has been a key target of dockworkers and campaigners, after research by the Palestinian Youth Movement found the company has been sending huge arms shipments to Israel, including vehicles, parts for armoured tanks and aircraft and artillery systems.
In April, dockworkers in France delayed a Maersk shipment of weapons to Israel. Meanwhile, after thousands of protestors took to the streets in Tangier and Casablanca in Morocco, workers refused to handle goods from Maersk ships suspected of carrying components for F-35 warplanes used in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Debt groups slam ‘weak’ proposals at UN finance summit
A landmark UN conference to discuss changes to the global financial system has been criticised by campaigners at Debt Justice for putting forward limited measures to tackle the deepening global debt crisis.
The Financing for Development conference, the first such meeting for a decade, aimed to boost the ability of lower-income countries to fight
poverty and climate change, against the backdrop of the worst levels of international debt since the 1990s.
Yet instead of backing African leaders’ demands for a new UN process to cancel debt and prevent future debt crises, countries face further talks aimed only at making recommendations, following pressure from rich countries
including the UK and EU. The US withdrew from the summit.
The so-called ‘Seville Compromise’ did add further backing to calls for a UK debt law that would force banks and other private lenders to accept losses when countries seek debt relief. Global Justice Now has joined 80 organisations in calling on Keir Starmer to introduce such a law.
A march in Tangier against the planned docking of a ship carrying fighter jet parts to Israel.
Over five million people across the US took to the streets for a ‘nationwide day of defiance’ on 14 June. Purposefully coinciding with ‘Flag Day’ – and Donald Trump’s birthday – the numbers dwarfed the US military parade. “We’re not gathering to feed Trump’s ego”, the organisers stated. “We’re building a movement that leaves him behind.”
Panama banana workers’ strike leads to victory Workers at US banana company Chiquita Brands in Panama have celebrated an agreement on pension reforms, ending their strike action. Workers took action as part of a national strike movement against pension cuts, concessions to Trump over allowing US soldiers access to Panamanian facilities, and proposals to reopen a polluting copper mine.
Legal win over UK anti-protest law
A legal challenge brought by Liberty against the previous Conservative government’s tightening of protest laws has succeeded in reducing the “almost unlimited” power for police to impose conditions. Changes brought in by home secretary Suella Braverman in 2023 had lowered the threshold for police to impose limits from “severe” disruption to “more than minor”.
Maasai community backs a Fossil Fuel Treaty
In the lead up to World Environment Day in June, the Maasai community of Kajiado County, Kenya became the first Indigenous Peoples outside of Latin America to publicly back the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. They join 11 Amazonian Indigenous nations and the growing international movement in calling for a globally just end to fossil fuels for good.
“As the Maasai community, we have lived in harmony in nature for generations, relying on our land
and animals to survive. But now the weather has changed and the rains have become unpredictable, the land is drying up and our livestock are perishing”, said Moses Ole Kipaliash, Maasai community leader and environmentalist.
“We support the call for a Fossil Fuel Treaty because we want to protect our land for future generations and stop the damage caused by pollution. We urge other communities and our leaders to stand with us and join this global effort.”
Indonesia halts controversial nickel mines
Following protests and a public outcry, Indonesia has revoked four out of five nickel mining permits in Raja Ampat, a group of islands off the coast of West Papua. Campaigners posting under #SaveRajaAmpat succeeded in bringing the devastating environmental destruction caused by nickel mining to national and global attention.
The Raja Ampat archipelago is one of the world’s most biodiverse marine ecosystems and home to 75% of the world’s coral species. Indigenous and local inhabitants of the land have
spoken out about the devastating impacts that pollution, deforestation and the degradation of their environment has had on their homes and livelihoods. Much nickel ore mining has been driven by global demand for EV batteries and has taken place without community consent.
Although this decision is a step forward, campaigners have levelled criticism at the Indonesian government for still allowing nickel mining to continue on nearby Gag Island – and so the fight must continue.
The Solidarity Movement for Raja Ampat holding a protest in June.
Polluting corporations and the super-rich are fuelling climate breakdown while inequality deepens. It’s time to make them pick up the tab, writes IZZIE McINTOSH.
From Aberdeen to the Peruvian Andes, activists are fighting for a just transition from fossil fuels. These battles not only remind us that a fossil fuel phase out is necessary, but articulate a vision for one that can deliver better lives around the world. This message, however, isn’t always being heard. In the UK, polling consistently shows that people care about climate change and support the government taking more action to stop it. More recently, figures have shown that even Reform voters favour taxes on major polluters to pay for climate damage. Yet stories of activists fighting fossil fuel-led climate change often struggle to cut through. How many have heard, for example, of the Peruvian farmer who spent a decade suing German energy giant RWE for emissions that he argued created an unacceptable flood risk to his home? Or the UK workers who are demanding polluter taxes so that oil and gas workers can be supported to transition their skills to renewable energy?
Global billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024. For most of the rest of us, things are only getting worse.
ever-higher mountain to climb. Much of the public focus in this country is on an economy that’s tanking, taking vital public services down with it. Thanks in part to big oil’s massive marketing budget, 44% in the UK also believe that renewable energy will make their energy bills higher, despite the fact that the opposite is the case. It's hardly surprising that we’ve ended up here. Big oil and billionaires have spent decades buying our politics to try and make sure that policy agendas which should be about maximising the public good are actually geared towards maximising their wealth and profits. Elon Musk’s recent role in the US government shows this is no longer happening in the shadows. With oligarchy bedding in across the pond, we need to fight harder than ever to push our government to be independent and at the service of working people first and foremost.
UNEQUAL WORLD
WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST
The machinery that these brave and tenacious activists are up against is a big part of the problem. With prolific climatedenier Donald Trump firmly ensconced in the White House once again and increasingly anti-net zero Nigel Farage rising in the polls in the UK, campaigners pushing the idea that climate policies can make people's lives better have an
There has never been a greater need for a climate agenda that targets polluting corporations and the super-rich. Directly connecting gaping wealth inequality with fossil fuel expansion can help to demonstrate that a Peruvian farmer’s struggle is intrinsically linked with that of an oil and gas worker fighting for a just transition, and that a win for either can be a building block for a better, fairer society for all. That’s why Global Justice Now is working with others to mobilise the public this autumn behind a call to ‘Make Them Pay’.
Right: A billboard at the G20 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last year.
This call targets the very wealthiest in society, as well as the corporations who have made trillions driving climate breakdown.
We’ve quickly assembled an ambitious civil society alliance that represents millions of people across the UK and globally. It’s easy to see why. In 2024, global billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion, with UK billionaires' collective wealth growing by £35 million a day. For most of the rest of us, things are only getting worse, with public services like the NHS and schools under pressure, the cost of living growing and climate disasters on the rise everywhere. Economic systems both globally and domestically reward the super-rich - who are fuelling ecological and democratic breakdown - with more vast wealth. Meanwhile, working people around the world, including climatevulnerable communities in the global south, are left to pick up the pieces. When it comes to climate and energy, injustice still abounds. Half of the world's carbon emissions come from 36 fossil fuel firms; this industry
has known about climate change and the widespread harm it would do to nature and communities globally for decades. The UK is making some limited moves towards transitioning its energy systems, but workers in the oil and gas industry will need funded support to transition their skills. By failing to create fiscal headroom for such a process by decisively making polluters pay, our government risks leaving workers and communities high and dry.
In May, veteran Brazilian diplomat André Corrêa do Lago, presidentdesignate of the upcoming COP30 climate summit, told the Guardian that he “wants to spur a new global effort to persuade people that remodelling the economy away from a reliance on fossil fuels and towards a clean energy future will reap benefits for all people”. It will be impossible to achieve this worthy goal without redistributing the grotesque wealth of the super-rich and corporations towards paying for action on the climate crisis and inequality. This must include funding a just transition for
workers, climate finance for the global south and functioning, well-funded public services. For today’s working people and tomorrow’s generations, we need change, and we need to Make Them Pay for it.
Izzie McIntosh is climate justice campaign manager at Global Justice Now.
The mining industry will not save the planet
Everyone seems to agree that the green transition requires expanded mining of so-called ‘critical minerals’. Yet the reality is somewhat different, writes CLEODIE RICKARD.
‘Critical minerals’ has become a buzzword in discussions about the green transition. But whether in industry reports, NGO communications or the media, the same narrative is trotted out. Whether they lament it or advocate for it, achieving net zero “inevitably means more mining”. Yet this claim is rarely backed up with evidence.
In this context, campaigners and frontline defenders denouncing the damage being done to lands and lives in sites of mineral extraction – largely in the global south and often on Indigenous territories – can be misconstrued as opposing climate action. Meanwhile, mining companies can claim a social licence to ramp up mineral projects no matter their risks, positioning themselves as saviours of the planet.
what materials we are talking about, what specific industries they serve and the amounts we need – crucially, for what kind of transition. As nations resource an agenda of rearmament, we must set out what amount of mining is genuinely necessary for a future economy that works for people’s livelihoods and the natural world, rather than private profits and the military-industrial complex.
MISSION CRITICAL?
Amid rising geopolitical tensions, the fog of war is, ironically, giving us a clearer picture: governments are bothering less to greenwash their scramble for critical minerals. Increasingly legitimised is the pursuit of minerals to bolster defence industries for ‘national security’, and nations are taking more militaristic paths to access them. This underscores that ‘critical minerals’ is a political rather than scientific term, defined differently by countries relative to their interests. It can therefore be contested. But first we need to better understand the mineral requirements of the green transition:
At Global Justice Now we’ve carried out research into the 33 minerals officially defined as ‘critical’ by the UK government, using International Energy Agency (IEA) data to show what amount of each mineral’s current production is being used for green technologies – or for other ends, as the case may be – and what amount of current production levels we’d need to use to meet the IEA’s 2040 green transition scenario.
What we’ve found is that almost one in five of the UK’s ‘critical’ minerals play no role at all in the IEA's green transition pathway. Another 15 –nearly half – will require only a small proportion of current global production for the transition, so their criticality is probably not being driven by sustainability goals. Only seven require significant increases above current production levels to facilitate the IEA’s green pathway –and most of these for electric vehicles (EVs), not energy generation.
Left: A London protest against cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Overleaf: Lines of newly-imported Tesla electric cars in Southampton docks.
Five of the minerals playing no role in the transition are in high demand from the defence and aerospace industries, which also have high demand for eight other transitionrelevant minerals. This indicates that much of the risk of increased mining is being driven by militarisation as a priority over the green transition.
These findings upend much of what we’re told about the huge increases in mining needed to tackle climate change, and the best routes to net zero. If the green transition requires more production of a defined subset of minerals, should the military sector be getting priority access to them? And should our transition depend on a model of mass private EV ownership – already accessible mainly to the better-off?
Political choices shape material needs. We argue that renewable
energy goals can largely be met within existing mineral production, if we reallocate use across industries – sharing the existing ‘mineral pie’ differently, rather than growing it. This is a far cry from the UK government’s policy. Last year, it announced financing for mineral importers to specifically benefit “defence, aerospace and EV battery makers.” Our prime minister is now, cowing to Donald Trump, prioritising “war-fighting readiness” with an extra £6 billion in annual defence spending from 2027.
TURBINES NOT BOMBS
Rather than pumping taxpayer cash into tanks and bombs with a hollow claim that this will bring jobs and growth, this moment demands a proactive green industrial strategy. Electric vehicles are the biggest mineral-intensive challenge, but
alternatives exist: better public transport, shared mobility schemes, and less car-centric planning. Too often, techno-fixes are false solutions wielded by fossil fuel companies as industry propaganda to justify their continued expansion. But for things like mineral-heavy grid storage, we need governments to lead research into innovative solutions like pumped hydro or flow batteries – with knowledge developed and held in the public domain rather than enclosed by corporations.
Instead, the defence sector is not only competing with the green industry for mineral supply, but becoming the sole darling of industrial policy based on a myth that it is uniquely productive. As argued by the thinktank Common Wealth, the military sector is not inherently prosperous, only because it has
been the target of active industrial strategy and investment. In fact, it is increasingly characterised by falling employment and union membership, plus consolidation and privatisation of leading companies, meaning that it is now asset managers reaping the rewards of state support rather than working people. The government is cutting health and disability benefits in aid of defence spending that supports only 0.83% of jobs in the UK, and that is geared far more towards global power projection than domestic safety.
lifeboats awaits us. As we see hostility around immigration and more overt fascist rhetoric, this doesn’t seem so far away. But hope lies in the fact that the slogan ‘Another world is possible’ can be more than a symbolic catchphrase if we can argue for its feasible material basis.
Renewable energy goals can largely be met within current mineral production, if we share the existing ‘mineral pie’ differently, rather than growing it.
Public investment, procurement and coordination in the renewables sector at scale would bring us far closer to a green transition that doesn’t leave jobs and livelihoods behind. This requires no less than a state-led reprioritisation of mineral demand, which intervenes for the preferential access of socially useful sectors. This is no longer such a bold demand amongst the growing global consensus that market forces have failed to respond to today’s crises.
MATERIAL CHOICES
Besides the flawed economic logic, there is a bitter irony to resourcing our militaries through mineral extraction that is itself driving armed conflict. Whether it’s the US threatening to annex Greenland or the EU sourcing Congolese conflict minerals from Rwanda, if rearmament policy comes in service of a resource war this only makes us less safe. In the same way, if climate policy is viewed through a 'securitisation’ lens, a dystopia of hardened borders and armed
A closer look at how many minerals we need and for what shows there’s no argument we shouldn’t pursue a green transition – but there are different versions of it with distinct resource needs. A green economy rooted in ‘private sufficiency, public luxury’ is not only politically desirable but materially necessary.
Given the human rights and environmental abuses rife in mining variously scarce resources, it's pragmatic – not just idealistic – to call for the degrowth of certain industries. This term is often misunderstood as a kind of eco-austerity or romanticised primitivism. But cutting consumption of weapons, single-use plastics and other socially or ecologically harmful sectors answers calls for both global justice and realpolitik around insecure supply chains.
We must dig in our heels at a mineral rush geared toward rearmament and lacking the most ambitious protections of people and planet. At the same time, we can reach for redistributed wealth and demilitarised economies so we can live within planetary boundaries in ways that allow for human flourishing.
Cleodie
Rickard is trade campaign manager at Global Justice Now.
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Youth Summer School
Global Justice Now’s youth summer school took place in our London office in June. More than two dozen young people gathered for three days of political education, campaign strategy and activism training – and they managed to fit in some banner-making too! A big thanks to everyone who took part.
Kickstart our A-Z of Global Justice
More than 200 people have pre-ordered a copy of Global Justice Now’s new book, An A to Z of Global Justice, raising around £5,000 to help ensure publication can go ahead.
This beautifully designed primer covers the issues, alternatives and history animating the global movement for social and ecological transformation. It is written in a way that’s easy to understand, with graphics and photos, making it accessible and appealing to a wide audience.
The book highlights what we are fighting, like ‘monopoly capitalism’, features inspiring movements, such as the indigenous Zapatistas in Mexico, and envisions alternatives to our current economic system, like ‘radical abundance’. Political knowledge is the foundation of all activism.
With so much going on, production hasn’t been as quick as we’d hoped, but copies will
not too late to pre-order – go to: www.globaljustice.org.uk/AZ
How to resist Israel’s crimes
From sanctions to divestment, there are many ways to support the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom, justice and equality, argues OMAR BARGHOUTI.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously said that Israel’s crimes against Palestinians were even worse than those of apartheid South Africa. He had no idea how right he was. In January the UN’s humanitarian chief told the security council that Palestinian children have been killed, starved and frozen to death in Gaza.
According to UNICEF, in the first two weeks after the resumption of Israel’s bombing in March, it killed or injured an average of 100 Palestinian children every day. Its pre-dawn massacre on 18 March, when it shattered the ceasefire, is an example – in a few hours, Israel killed just over 400 Palestinians, including 174 children at least, mostly while sleeping.
So what gives Israel this level of impunity that allows it to perpetrate the world’s first live-streamed genocide?
COMPLICITY AND RESISTANCE
with the struggle for Palestinian liberation. They also recognise that Israel’s regime of oppression is a partner of far-right regimes globally and fascist parties, especially in the West, most of whom are antisemitic to the core.
Israel battle-tests weapons on Palestinian, Lebanese and other bodies. It exports weaponised spyware technologies as well as disinformation and election-rigging services as diplomacy tools, supporting war crimes perpetrated by dictatorships around the world.
Palestinians are not begging the world for charity. We’re calling for meaningful solidarity.
The most important answer is complicity. The pervasive and perverse complicity of the colonial West, including the UK, in funding or otherwise enabling Israel’s genocide and its underlying 77-year-old regime of settler colonialism and apartheid, is the key factor behind Israel’s extermination of Palestinians. It can be traced back to the centuries-old history of European and Euro-American dehumanisation, enslavement, colonial subjugation and even extermination of nonEuropean nations.
On the other hand, millions in the West have fought this complicity with inspiring courage, especially on campuses, despite vilification, intimidation and outright McCarthyite repression. They realise that the struggles for racial, Indigenous, economic, social, gender, and climate justice worldwide are connected
The most profound ethical obligation – especially in times of extreme oppression – is to do no harm, and to stop and repair harm done in your name. Palestinians are not begging the world for charity. We’re calling for meaningful solidarity. But before both, we are demanding an end to complicity. Ending complicity in grave human rights violations is a matter of duty, not discretion.
THE CASE FOR SANCTIONS
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has determined that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, and in a separate judgement, that its occupation is entirely illegal and that it amounts to apartheid. All of this triggers the legal obligations of states and all entities to end direct and indirect complicity in Israel’s genocidal violence and regime of oppression. To comply with the ICJ ruling, according to leading human rights experts, states must “cancel or suspend economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory”, and it should impose a full military embargo as well.
Right: Palestinians look at the aftermath of Israeli bombing in Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza.
These are precisely the kind of sanctions that we are calling for in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement - lawful, ethical, mandatory measures to end all forms of complicity in Israel’s colonial regime.
A GROWING MOVEMENT
Launched in 2005, the non-violent BDS movement is led by the largest coalition in Palestinian society, in Palestine and in exile. It is inspired by the South African anti-apartheid struggle, as well as the US civil rights movement, and it is rooted in a century of Palestinian popular resistance. It aims at ending Israel’s regime of military occupation and apartheid as well as upholding the right of Palestinian refugees to return and receive reparations. Anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the BDS movement categorically opposes all forms of racism, including anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim, and anti-Jewish racism. BDS targets complicity, not identity.
Since the start of Israel’s livestreamed genocide, the impact of BDS has grown exponentially. 52 countries have formally called for a military embargo on Israel. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights recently adopted its first resolution on Palestine in 24 years, calling on African states to end complicity and ensure accountability. Giant sovereign funds in Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand and elsewhere have divested from complicit companies. Malaysia has banned Israeli shipping from its ports, while Angola and others have denied docking to ships carrying military material to Israel. Colombia has banned import of Israeli weapons and taken serious measures to end coal exports to Israel, and several European governments are calling for a review of the EU’s political and economic ‘association agreement’ with Israel for the first time ever.
OUR FULL MENU OF RIGHTS
To resist and abolish a system of oppression, the oppressed need power - people power, effective solidarity power, grassroots power, media power, strategic litigation power, among others.
To defeat Trumpism, and the rising wave of fascism worldwide, intersectional alliances are an existential need for humanity – not just for Palestinians. For a century, the Palestinian people has been resisting oppression, without giving up. We insist on what Archbishop Desmond Tutu calls our 'full menu of rights'.
We strive to thrive in our homeland with freedom, justice, equality and unmitigated dignity.
Do not fall into complacency or despair. We must end the complicity of the UK state, corporations and institutions, in Israel’s crimes. Help us realise our South Africa moment.
Omar Barghouti is co-founder of the BDS movement (bdsmovement.net) and recipient of the 2017 Gandhi Peace Award.
The Subvertising Surge
At a time of compounding crises and increasing powerlessness, people are responding on the streets with bold, creative resistance writes Daisy Pearson.
Subvertising has long been a powerful tool for exposing the hypocrisy of corporations and politicians, satirising the polished images they spend millions crafting, and exposing the stark realities behind them. A popular tactic for climate activists, it has helped toxify industries that greenwash their role in accelerating climate collapse, from fossil fuel giants to the banks funding them.
Lately, there’s been a noticeable surge in subvertising across public transport, billboards and bus stops. In an era of compounding crises (Israel’s assault on Gaza, climate breakdown, rising inequality and the far right) people are responding with bold, creative resistance. Subvertising, in particular, has become a way to intervene, reclaim public space and confront politicians and the population at large with uncomfortable truths.
Despite an overwhelming public outcry against Israel’s attack on Gaza, the UK government has largely refused to act, continuing to arm Israel, trading with it as usual, and refusing to enact meaningful sanctions. In this political vacuum, subvertising has become a steady, visible form of protest, amplifying public dissent and sustaining pressure on those in power.
It can also play a crucial role in highlighting less well-known details of corporate crimes and political complicity. In London, ads calling out Labour’s quiet pursuit of a new trade deal with Israel preceded the government’s decision to suspend negotiations, showing how these interventions can add visibility to an issue, and ultimately help shift political decisions. Others, like Trump going through the shredder, inject
much-needed humour, keeping energy alive amid despair.
Meanwhile, an explosion of opensource artworks targeting figures like Trump, Farage, Musk, and billionaire power more broadly has gone global, fuelled by a growing network of artists reclaiming corporate ad space.
In a media landscape dominated
by billionaire ownership and establishment bias, subvertising asserts a vital democratic impulse. It disrupts our passive and unconsenting consumption of commercial content, reclaiming public space for the people and focusing attention on what those in power would prefer we ignore.
1. The US Embassy, London on Trump's inauguration day. Art and photo by Matt Bonner.
2. St Thomas’s Hospital, Westminster.
3. A billboard in Tottenham. Photo: @OverthrowMusk
4. Wimbledon. Art design by Anarcha Art, installed by Brandalism activists. Photo: Tom Pilston.
5. Ramsgate, Kent. Photo: @EveryoneHatesElon_
It is always a fight for our lives
SIBONGILE TSHABALALA, one of the campaigners featured in our Two Worlds film series, on the global movement for access to medicines.
Although we have fought so much, with many victories along the way, today we still have to fight for our lives and advocate for access to medicines. We still have millions of people dying unnecessarily because of pharmaceutical greed, because pharmaceutical companies are making billions out of people’s misery.
Take the example of tuberculosis. Until today, we don’t have a reliable cure: people are still dying like flies. Yet there is no interest from the pharmaceutical companies, because most people who are affected by this disease are in the global south. We cannot accept this. We don’t believe that there is nothing that can be done.
We still have the issue of medicines pricing. Recently, we took to the streets here in South Africa to advocate for access to diabetic pens, which are very cheap to produce. 80% of people with diabetes live in low and middle-income countries. But pharmaceutical companies make it very difficult for people to access these treatments at an affordable price. We cannot be treated as secondary citizens just because we are coming from the global south. We cannot be treated as lesser human beings because we cannot afford to buy medication.
CUTS KILL
Our leaders at the global level always talk about equality, but they are allowing inequality to happen right under their noses, because they are scared to challenge the pharmaceutical companies.
The UK is also following suit. We’ve been having sleepless nights because of the cuts to the international programmes that countries like ours depend on. Our research on injectable treatments has been forced to stop because of funding cuts. Access to PREP HIV treatments
has been minimised because of funding cuts. Early projections have shown that in South Africa alone, there may be 500,000 deaths in the next ten years due to USAID cuts to HIV and AIDS funding. We are losing funding and we are expected not to say anything, or risk being perceived as attention seekers; as making unnecessary noise. This is an attack.
This is why we need activism more than ever now. We have to unite as activists, scientists, and clinicians. We still need to utilise courts and legal routes. We still have to go on the streets and protest. We still have to tell our stories. It is always a fight for our lives.
Sibongile Tshabalala is national chairperson of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa. This is an edited extract from her speech to the Two Worlds film launch. Watch the films at: www.twoworldsfilms.co.uk
Edinburgh is home to the first Palestine museum in Europe. Run by volunteers, it comprises three small rooms, filled with contemporary Palestinian art. As you enter, a large map on the floor portrays historic Palestine. The museum is a celebration of Palestinian culture, style and resilience. Abstract art, photographs of Palestinian women at work, or enjoying the sea; pencil drawings of markets and architecture titled ‘Before the Genocide’; a large painting of olive fields, flowers and trees– are all curated to help us imagine a free Palestine. The violence of the occupation is only glimpsed – in a small sculpture of a person maimed by a bomb; or in a mother’s eyes full of love and fear in a stylised ‘Madonna and Child’ portrait. Strikingly, the only overt portrayal of war in the museum is drawn in coloured pencils by children: a stark reminder of today’s reality.
Jane Herbstritt
THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE
Hasan Hadi, 2025
1hr 42 mins
Set in 1990s Iraq, The President’s Cake is a story of childhood innocence amidst dark realities, from Hasan Hadi, the first filmmaker from Iraq to feature at Cannes Film Festival. The story follows nine-year-old Lamia in her mission to gather the ingredients to bake a birthday cake. But this is for no ordinary party: the cake is for the birthday celebrations of Saddam Hussein, state-mandated even while the populace struggle under the impact of Western sanctions. The film deftly handles this contrast of dark and light tonality. Pulled into the high jinks of
GLOBAL BATTLEFIELDS
Walden Bello
Clarity Press, 2025
I first met Walden Bello when he was a leading light of the antiglobalisation movement. Then, he argued globalisation was a project of corporate rule and American imperialism. The last two decades have vindicated this.
Bello details a life which runs from the political underground of the Philippines communist party and Chile under Salvador Allende in the 1970s, through to running for vice president of his home country. He has been arrested for occupying the Filipino consulate in San Francisco, tear-gassed as the anti-globalisation movement burst to life in Seattle, offered safe haven by Hugo Chavez when his former Filipino comrades placed him on a hit list – and that’s just for starters.
Lamia and her colourful assortment of friends, foes and allies, you almost forget the harsh context of her story. But this tension always bubbles to the surface in gut punches of grim reality. The film portrays a bittersweet coming of age, forced to happen far too soon.
Anita Bhadani
He never shies away from assessing what our movement has got wrong, but he also helps us understand what went right –like the importance of the alliance between Global South governments and civil society in thwarting the expansion of the World Trade Organisation. His views today remain engaging and thoughtful. And he still refuses to duck controversy in his desire to reach the truth.
