POSSIBLE FUTURES Decolonial Collective

"On September 2, the British government announced the suspension of 30 of 350 arms export licences to Israel. It said these weapons exports could be used to “commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law”. "While this announcement was hailed by some as a positive development that reflects growing international pressure on Israel to stop its genocidal war in Gaza, it in no way fulfils the United Kingdom’s obligations under international law. In fact, it reflects NATO members’ insistence on overriding international law in order to fulfil alliance commitments. "In the context of the ongoing genocidal Israeli war in Gaza and the West Bank, all states have the duty to impose a full arms embargo on Israel. This duty derives from decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from January and July that concluded Israel is plausibly carrying out genocidal actions in Gaza in violation of the Genocide Convention and is illegally occupying Palestine. "This duty has also been asserted by the UN Human Rights Council and various UN experts. Stopping the flow of arms, energy and other key exports to Israel is meant to ensure the protection of the Palestinian people. In its legal note on the suspension of some arms sales, the British government names violations of Israel’s duty to enable the delivery of humanitarian aid and the mistreatment of prisoners as probable violations of international humanitarian law. The UK Foreign Office lawyers who drafted the note seem to accept that Israel’s engagement in Gaza and its conduct of hostilities are lawful. "This rationale finds little basis in international law because it has been clearly established that Israel does not have the right of self-defence in territories it occupies and its current offensive conduct is well outside the permitted parameters of self-defence. Some have even argued that its declared military goal of annihilating Hamas is in itself evidence of genocidal intent." - Shahd Hammouri for Al Jazeera English 🍉🍉🍉

"The profit-driven model perpetuated by big imperialist powers is unsustainable, exploitative, and oppressive. It hinders genuine sustainable development and threatens the planet. In a desperate attempt to mask this fundamental contradiction, the UN is organizing the Summit of the Future (SOTF) on September 23-24, 2024.   "Supposedly, it aims to get the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) back on track and respond to new opportunities and challenges. However, the current draft of the Pact for the Future – a negotiated political declaration of the SOTF – reveals contradictions. While it emphasizes sustainable development, it also promotes neoliberal trade, export-oriented growth, and investment liberalization. Notably, it lacks specifics on structural issues like control over land and resources and the unsustainability of corporate food systems. Additionally, it focuses on climate finance but remains silent on phasing out fossil fuels. Using the SDGs as a pretext, the SOTF seeks to preserve an unjust, unequal, and unsustainable global order. It aims to further consolidate and deepen corporate monopoly control over global governance through multistakeholderism (essentially a public-private partnership between the UN and transnational corporations or TNCs) and create more profit-making through science, technology, and innovation or STI (the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution), which the TNCs also falsely present as the cure-all to the multiple crises.    "The SOTF will occur amid rising tensions between imperialist powers, with the US striving to maintain dominance against challenges, especially from China. This rivalry fuels wars and aggravates hunger, displacement, and environmental destruction. "For rural and oppressed peoples, a bright future or truly sustainable development is unattainable under a global system dominated by profit-driven monopoly corporations and imperialist powers competing for domination. Today, the rural people have been forwarding their future through grassroots struggles, campaigns, and policy advocacies. The Global Peoples’ Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice (GPC), launched in 2023, aimed to provide a platform for these ongoing national and local efforts to support each other and build international solidarity for the demands of the rural people." - The Global Peoples’ Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice (https://lnkd.in/ge69NfEb) Join the Forward Our Future Summit on 23rd September: https://lnkd.in/gkty42UN The event will also be livestreamed via the GPC Facebook page https://lnkd.in/gMtDNcQ4 🌱👩🏽🌾

Global Witness documented that 196 defenders were murdered in 2023 after exercising their right to protect their lands and the environment from harm. The actual number is likely to be higher. This tips the total number of killings to over 2,000 globally since Global Witness started reporting data in 2012. Global Witness estimates that the total now stands at 2,106 murders. Murder continues to be a common strategy for silencing defenders and is unquestionably the most brutal. Lethal attacks often occur alongside wider retaliations against defenders who are being targeted by government, business and other non-state actors with violence, intimidation, smear campaigns and criminalisation. This is happening in every region of the world and in almost every sector.  Murdered defenders were, in different ways, trying to protect the planet and to uphold their fundamental human rights. Every killing leaves the world more vulnerable to the climate, biodiversity and pollution crises. Over 1,500 defenders have been murdered since the adoption of the Paris Agreement on climate change on 12 December 2015. Global Witness' Annual Defenders Report 2023/4 was released yesterday. View the full report at https://lnkd.in/eHUXcsA7

The upcoming PEASANTS RISE solidarity webinar series features South and Southeast Asian peasant movements campaigning against land and resource grabbing and corporate control of food and agriculture systems. This is a public forum centring the resistance of grassroots peasant communities and the assertion of their legitimate rights. The webinars inform and educate civil society, people’s organisations, and the general public about the regions’ ongoing land and resource grabbing cases, in order to receive support and build solidarity. The webinar series will feature representatives from peasant movements in Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. A major component of the Global People’s Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice (GPC) campaign is international solidarity to ongoing national or local struggles against land and resource grabbing. The GPC aims to mobilize support for these struggles in various ways, including education and awareness-raising of affected communities’ particular issues and demands. https://lnkd.in/g4isQYuA

Sustainability professionals, surely the thought has crossed your mind: 💭 Is sustainability really actually sustainable? 🤔 What exactly are we supposedly trying to "sustain"? Perhaps even for a moment you might have asked yourself existential questions like, 🪞 Am I merely a slave to corporate greenwashing? 🌱 Will I ever grow to become truly influential in my work? 👁 At the end of my career, what will I really have achieved? These interrogations may lead you to ask, 🔎 Should I stay? Or should I go? If you'd like to explore these questions in a discreet, respectful space with likeminded others, consider joining our upcoming workshops. 2nd Sep Announcement: Unfortunately, we have decided to cancel all sessions due to unforeseen reasons. We are now working to redesign and relaunch workshops to explore similar inquiries. Please stay tuned for further announcements. https://lnkd.in/g2wiHZiw

"Palestine has become the perfect laboratory for the Israeli military-techno complex: surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration and brutality to the hi-tech tools that drive the ‘Start-up Nation’. From the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos’ and Jamal Khashoggi’s phones, the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas and drones used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown. Israel has become a global leader in spying technology and defence hardware that fuels the globe’s most brutal conflicts. As ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate model." - The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World, Antony Loewenstein https://lnkd.in/grnZMPh7 💀🔫 Middle East Monitor reports that earlier in August, Morocco had signed a USD 1 billion contract with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) for the supply of two Ofek 13s – IAI’s new advanced military reconnaissance satellites – over a period of five years until 2029. The new satellites will replace Morocco’s current surveillance system based on technology by European companies, Airbus and Thales. The Ofek 13 satellite, which was first launched into orbit in March 2023, is claimed to possess precise imaging capabilities even in adverse weather conditions due to its use of synthetic aperture radar, as well as offering both day and night surveillance with a resolution of up to 0.5 meters and an orbit period as short as 90 minutes. This latest deal marks a new step in increasing collaboration between Rabat and Tel Aviv in the military and technology sectors. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gTNenuJ2

"Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees rallied in camps in Bangladesh yesterday, on the seventh anniversary of the military crackdown that forced them to flee, demanding an end to violence and safe return to Myanmar. "More than a million Rohingya live in squalid camps in southern Bangladesh with little prospect of returning home, where they are mostly denied citizenship and other rights. "Thousands more are believed to have fled Myanmar's Rakhine state in recent weeks, as fighting escalates between troops of the ruling junta and the Arakan Army, the powerful ethnic militia that recruits from the Buddhist majority. In Kutupalong refugee camp, the world's largest (https://lnkd.in/g7YrZan6), refugees of all ages demonstrated with placards and chants, many wearing ribbons bearing the words "Rohingya Genocide Remembrance". "The latest attacks are the worst violence against the Rohingya since a 2017 Myanmar-military-led campaign, which the United Nations described as having genocidal intent, forced more than 73,000 to flee across the Bangladesh border. "Densely populated Bangladesh says repatriating the refugees to Myanmar is the only solution. Local communities have been increasingly hostile as funds for the Rohingya have dried up. "Bangladesh is in no position to accept more Rohingya refugees, de facto foreign minister Mohammad Touhid Hossain told Reuters this month, asking India and other countries to do more. "Hossain also called for more international pressure on the Arakan Army to stop attacking the Rohingya in Rakhine state." Read more: https://lnkd.in/gZWf38XR https://lnkd.in/giRRbxf7

Anti-dam activists Ebo Mili and Dunge Apang were arrested and detained on 8th July 2024 by the Arunachal Pradesh Police in northeast India. "Ebo Mili, human rights lawyer and anti-dam advocate, and Dunge Apang, convenor of the Siang Indigenous Farmers Forum (SIFF), were released after more than 10 hours of detention. "Both were asked to sign a bond not to hold future protests and to “keep the peace” related to a case under section 128 of the Indian Civil Defence Code, facing a Rs 50,000 (EUR 550 or USD 600) penalty each for any breach of the bond. "The arrest and detention in Itanagar, capital of Arunachal Pradesh, northeast India, was made to “maintain public order”, according to the police, during the visit of India’s Union power minister ML Khattar’s visit and the Memorandums of Agreement (MoAs) signing event of Arunachal Pradesh State with hydropower companies to build large dams. "According to SIFF, the proposed 11,000 MW Upper Siang Multipurpose Storage Project (USMP) “being considered of national importance” does not prioritize “environmental conservation led by community well being and our self-determination” and “long-term sustainability over short-term gains.” Read the full statement by Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL) at https://lnkd.in/gaTJM3JK

"The Indonesian government has long used a militaristic approach in responding to political conflicts that occurred in West Papua, Aceh and East Timor (now Timor Leste). The method generally used is to kill, torture, or intimidate leaders and activists who have views that differ from the concept of a Unitary State. General Prabowo Subianto, a former member of the Special Forces Command (KOPASSUS), led military operations in East Timor and Papua in the 1990s. While in East Timor, Prabowo formed militia groups such as Aitarak and Besi Merah Putih. The same method was used by Prabowo in the post-hostage release operation in Mapnduma which involved operational support personnel, causing several hostages to become victims during the process of freeing the hostages. A similar militia group is being re-formed and is being led by Lieutenant Colonel (Titular), Lenis Kogoya." Read the full ULMWP statement from 18th July below. 🗒 Source: Telegram channel "WEST PAPUA UPDATE" https://lnkd.in/g-9F64Fa

"Since the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, they have played major roles in perpetuating today’s neocolonial world economy. Their dictates promote the plunder of the Global South for the financial oligarchy, transnational corporations, and elites of the Global North and South. On the other hand, peoples in these countries are forced to live under poverty wages, dangerous working conditions, landlessness, as well as forced migration in search of better livelihoods. "Last year’s Annual Meetings took place amid devastation and war in Palestine, the Arab world and Africa, regions heavily affected by global powers’ interventionism to protect narrow geopolitical interests, such as that of the United States (US). For the IMF-WBG, holding the Annual Meetings in these regions means the promotion of “better business climates” for its leading countries, especially from the Global North. Conflict in the region will be bolstered, resulting in more wealth inequalities, aggravation of societal tensions, displacement, killings, and the prevention of a peace based on social justice. "We expect these realities of harms to be erased or obfuscated by these Bretton Woods Institutions as they mark 80 years in 2024. And all these dictates and harms, we strongly condemn and reject. We, social movements and civil society organisations concerned with the dominant influence of international financial institutions over our economies and development, demand that the (IMF-WBG) be shut down and held accountable for their roles in driving and exacerbating today’s multiple crises." 80 years, not another year more: Reclaim our future from neoliberal dictates and false solutions! Shut down the IMF-WBG! Read the People's Coalition on Food Sovereignty's full statement and sign the declaration at https://lnkd.in/gR9sPxt8 ✍🏽✍🏽✍🏽