MARXISTS

Otto Rene Castillo, born 1936, was a Guatemalan revolutionary, a guerilla fighter, and a poet. Following the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup that overthrew the democratic Arbenz government, Castillo went into exile in El Salvador, where he met Roque Dalton and other writers who helped him publish his early works. When the dictator Armas died in 1957 he returned to Guatemala and in 1959 went to the German Democratic Republic to study, where he received a Masters degree. Castillo returned to Guatemala in 1964 and became active in the Workers Party, founded the Experimental Theater of the Capital City Municipality, and wrote and published numerous poems. That same year, he was arrested but managed to escape, going into exile once again, this time in Europe. Later that year he went back to Guatemala secretly and joined one of the armed guerilla movements operating in the Zacapa mountains. In 1967, Castillo and other revolutionary fighters were captured; he, along with his comrades and some local campesinos, were brutally tortured and then burned alive.

Apolitical Intellectuals

One day
the apolitical
intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest
of our people.

They will be asked
what they did
when their nation died out
slowly,
like a sweet fire
small and alone.

No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long siestas
after lunch,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with “the idea
of the nothing”
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.

They won’t be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward’s death.

They’ll be asked nothing
about their absurd
justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total lie.

On that day
the simple men will come.

Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
their tortillas and eggs,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them,
and they’ll ask:

“What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life
burned out of them?”

Apolitical intellectuals
of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.

A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.

Your own misery
will pick at your soul.

And you will be mute in your shame.

–Otto Rene Castillo

Marxists for more

by KRISTIN SCAPLEN

The human brain contains approximately 87 billion neurons. On average, each of these cells make thousands of different connections to facilitate communication across the brain. Neural communication is thought to underlie all brain functions – from experiencing and interpreting the world around you to remembering those experiences and controlling how your body responds.

But in this vast network of neural communication, precisely who is talking to whom, and what is the consequence of those individual conversations?

Understanding the details surrounding neural communication and how it’s shaped by experience is one of the many focuses of neuroscience. However, this is complicated by the sheer number of microscopic connections there are to study in the human brain, many of which are often in flux, and that available tools are unable to provide adequate resolution.

As a consequence, many scientists like me have turned to simpler organisms, such as the fruit fly.

The Conversation for more

by ERIC LUDLOW

An additional 20 billionaires were included in the list compared to 2023, taking the total number Australian billionaires to 159.

The ultra-wealthy have increased their fortunes by profiteering from skyrocketing commodity prices and the ongoing property bubble. These movements in the markets have come off the back of the ongoing US-NATO imperialist war against Russia in Ukraine, the profit-driven dismantling of any COVID safety measures, killing millions, and increasing global financial uncertainty.

Amid the soaring cost of living for ordinary workers and cuts to social spending in order to fund militarism and genocide, the Australian published an editorial on 14 March titled “The List – Richest 250 cause for celebration.”

“We strongly believe there is nothing wrong with making money,” the editorial declared.

It continued: “Reading the stories of how money is made should be an inspiration.… The Richest 250 List is not a road map but it is a field guide for anyone with the determination to succeed. It is proof there still are no limits for those who are willing to back themselves and give it a go.”

It is doubtful that working people will be joining these celebrations.

The same week the Rich List was published, an analysis of data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that the two-year drop in real disposable income of Australian households since 2022 was the biggest in 50 years. Falling living standards coupled with soaring house prices and inflation far higher than nominal wage “increases” have seen more Australian workers finding it difficult to make ends meet.

This transfer of wealth has been overseen by the Labor government of Anthony Albanese which was elected in 2022 on fraudulent slogans of “a better future” and “no one left behind,” only to implement harsh austerity measures and to insist on “sacrifice” once in office.

World Socialist Web Site for more

by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

First Hind Rajab went missing, then her rescuers.

But missing isn’t the right word. Hind is missed. So are the people who tried to save her.

So much depends on using the right words now. On being precise.

Hind didn’t go missing. Her rescuers didn’t go missing.

Hind was trying to escape. Her rescuers were trying to save her.

But you can’t escape from a tank in a small black Kia. Not a tank filled with soldiers who’d fire on a small black Kia, driving away from them. Not a tank armed with the latest explosive shells provided on an emergency order by the US government. Not a tank that would shoot at a frightened young girl.

Six-year-old girls who like to dress up as princesses in pink gowns don’t simply go missing in Gaza City these days. They don’t just disappear. They are disappeared.

Hind Rajab was in her own city when the invaders in tanks came. What was left of it. By late January, 60 percent of the homes in Gaza City had already been destroyed by Israeli missiles and bombs. Hind’s own kindergarten, which she’d recently graduated from had been blown up, as had so many other schools, places of learning, places of shelter and places of safety in Gaza City. (78% of school buildings in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged amid Israel’s incessant bombing, according to a new report by Relief.net. The 162 school buildings directly hit served more than 175,000 kids.)

But to be a child in Gaza City now is to be a target. There are no safe streets, no sanctuaries. The places where you once felt most at home are now the most likely to be bombed. There are no escape routes. Every corner you turn might put you face-to-face with a tank or in the laser-sights of a sniper or under a Hermes drone.

Hind was missed, but she wasn’t missing. Hind was hiding. Hiding in a car shredded by shrapnel and bullets. Hiding in a car with dead and dying relatives: her aunt, her uncle, three of her cousins. Hiding in a car bleeding from wounds to her back, her hands and her foot. Hiding with her 15-year-old cousin Layan Hamadeh, who was also hurt, bleeding and terrified.

Layan had grabbed her dead father’s phone and called the Red Crescent Society. She begged them to come rescue her and Hind. “They are shooting at us,” Layan pleaded. “The tank is right next to me. We’re in the car, the tank is right next to us.” Then there was the sound of gunfire and the line went silent. The dispatcher asked, “Hello? Hello?” There was no answer. The connection had cut out.

The Red Crescent operator called back. Hind answered. She told them Layan had been shot. She told them everyone else in the car was now dead. She stayed on the line for three hours. The dispatcher read her lines from the Koran to calm her.

“I’m so scared,” Hind said. “Please come, come take me. You will come and take me?”

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine your daughter picking up the phone from the dead hands of her cousin, who’d been shot to death only seconds before right in front of her?

The dispatchers told Hind to keep hiding in the car. They told her that an ambulance was coming. They told her that she would soon be safe. Hind had been able to tell Rana Al-Faqueh, the PRCS’s response coordinator, where she was: near the Fares petrol station in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. Her own neighborhood. She told them the entire neighborhood seemed to be under siege by the Israelis.

It was approaching 6 in the evening. The street was now in shadows. It had been three hours since she and her family had been shot. Three hours in the car with the bodies of her dead relatives. Three hours under fire with darkness closing in.

“I’m afraid of the dark,” Hind told Rana.

“Is there gunfire around you?” Rana asked.

“Yes,” Hind said. “Come get me.”

Then the line went dead again. This time for good.

An ambulance had been sent, but it never arrived. Her rescuers came for her, selflessly entered the zone of fire, but never reached her. Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamada, had gone to the hospital anxiously expecting her daughter any minute, but she never showed up.

Before the ambulance was dispatched, the Red Crescent Society told the Gaza Health Ministry and the IDF about Hind’s call. They told them she was a frightened, wounded six-year-old girl in a black Kia that had been mangled by tank fire. They told them where she was and that an ambulance was coming. They asked that the ambulance be given safe passage to Hind.

After they’d coordinated a plan for her rescue, the RCS dispatched an ambulance crewed by two paramedics: Ahmed al-Madhoon and Youssef Zeino. As Ahmed and Youssef approached the Tel al-Hawa area, they reported to the Red Crescent dispatchers that the IDF was targeting them, that snipers had pointed lasers at the ambulance. Then there was the sound of gunfire and an explosion. The line went silent.

A frantic search began for Hind, Ahmed and Youseff. But no one could enter the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. No Palestinians, at least. Not even to find a little girl. Not even after the tapes of the harrowing calls for help by Layan and Hind had been made public. The IDF had sealed it off.

When CNN reporters, whose deferential posture toward the Israeli regime has recently been detailed by the Guardian, contacted the IDF about Hind and the two paramedics, giving them the coordinates of the car, the Israelis said they were “unfamiliar with the incident described.” Four days later, CNN inquired again about the fate of Hind, Ahmed and Youseff and the IDF replied they were “still looking into it.” The Israelis didn’t look too deeply into “the incident.” The evidence was right before them, done by their own hands, likely captured on footage from their own soldiers, tracked by their own drones.

It would be 12 days before the Israelis withdrew from Tel al-Hawa; 12 days before anyone reached Hind, whose body had been left by the Israelis to decompose in the black Kia next to Layan and Layan’s father and mother and her three siblings (also children); 12 days before anyone discovered what happened to the ambulance sent to rescue her; 12 days before anyone found Ahmed and Youssef, left where they had been shot.

The headlines in the corporate press said Hind’s body had been “found.” But found isn’t the right word. Hind wasn’t missing. Her rescuers knew where she was and were killed because they almost reached her. The Israelis knew where she was, right where they’d killed her and her family. The media made the double massacre sound like a mystery. But there was nothing mysterious about it. By late January, the killing of Hind and her family and the Israeli attack on a Palestinian ambulance had become routine. Since October, at least 146 ambulances have been targeted by the IDF and more than 309 medical workers killed.

Who will rescue the rescuers?

The massacre on that street in Tel al-Hawa took place three days after Israel had been put on notice by the International Court of Justice that it needed to stop committing acts of genocide, stop killing civilians, stop killing children and health care workers–a ruling that Israel has not just ignored but openly defied. Instead, Israel blames the victims of its atrocities. Tel al-Hawa was a closed military zone, the IDF says. Any Palestinians moving on the streets were legitimate targets, the IDF says. The rules of engagement were those of the US troops at My Lai: shoot anything that moves. Even young girls and the paramedics who rushed to treat their wounds.

The black Kia, its windows blown out, the body of the car gashed by shrapnel and riven with bullet holes, was found by Hind’s relatives exactly where Layan and Hind had said it was: right next to the gas station. It was found where it had come under fire from an Israeli tank. It was found near the PRC ambulance that had been sent to rescue Hind, itself shredded by Israeli tank shells and gunfire.

Was Hind alive to see the ambulance approach? Did she think she was finally going to be brought to safety? Did she watch her rescuers come under fire? Did she witness Ahmed and Youssef be killed by the IDF? Was she still alive, alone, as the sky drew dark, left in the chill of the night, knowing now no one was coming to save her?

It’s an excruciating scenario to contemplate, but think about it we must because the pleas of Layan and Hind have given voice to an awful abstraction: 13,000 murdered children in Gaza.

We don’t know most of their names. We don’t know how most of them were killed. We didn’t hear their screams for help in the enveloping darkness.

But Layan and Hind have spoken. We have heard their last words, piercing through the gunshots around them, words that still resonate across the weeks, as Israel prepares its assault on Rafah, the last refuge of 600,000 displaced Palestinian children, many sleeping in tents after fleeing their bombed homes, most of them surely feeling just like Hind: “I’m so scared. Please come, come get me…”

Counterpunch

by YORGOS MITRALIAS

We republish the following text because it is now even more timely and even more useful than when it was first published in August 2021. Why? Because Netanyahu and his government are doing everything they can to fully confirm what Einstein had already observed and publicly denounced in 1948: That Menachem Begin and his Likud friends, of whom Netanyahu is the ideological heir and faithful follower of their policies, are “fascists”, “racists”, “criminals” and “terrorists” who will inevitably lead Israel to its “final destruction”.

We have no doubt that if he were alive today, Einstein would be at the forefront of the demonstrations in support of the Palestinians in Gaza, hand in hand with the brave young Jews of If Not Now, and he would be very proud of them. And that he would agree with another great Jew, the only surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the co-founder of the legendary Polish Solidarnosc labor union, Marek Edelman, when he compared the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the Palestinian struggle.

Of course, it is no coincidence that photographs of the actions of the Jewish pro-Palestinian If Not Now movement illustrated our text more than two years ago. Since then, hundreds of other young Jews have joined the ranks of this anti-Zionist movement, which is now capable of mobilizing thousands of demonstrators almost everywhere in the United States, to the extent that the great lady of the Palestinian people, Hanan Ashrawi, praised If Not Now on Al Jazeera (10/29/23), emphasizing how valuable its struggle is for the Palestinians at this terrible moment in their history. Surely, this exemplary struggle of his is much more than a mere ray of hope now that it is almost midnight in our century …

What would you say if the notorious racist and anti-semite prime minister of Hungary Victor Orban accused Einstein of … anti-semitism? And Hanna Arendt as well? Together with the most iconic author of Holocaust literature Primo Levi? Unimaginable and unrealistic? Not at all. On the contrary, that is exactly what is happening today, and – what is more – it is happening on a global scale. Moreover, such attacks do not come only from people like Orban, but from a host of distinguished racists and anti-semites who, with the blessings of a variety of political establishments, use that label to destroy their political opponents – usually left-wing anti-fascists and anti-racists !…

This is not a marginal or topical phenomenon. It is part of a real war machinery set up over the last 3-4 years by the political structures of the right, the extreme right and even of social democracy to wipe out their progressive present or future rivals. Among them Jeremy Corbyn in the UK (who in the end was exterminated), Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France (who survived but was severely ‘injured’) or Jewish American Berni Sanders in the US (who fought back and managed to scare them off thanks to the mobilization of radicalized young American Jews).

In all these cases, even the slightest criticism of Israel’s policies or the slightest support for the rights of the Palestinian people led to an all-out political and media attack on the ‘culprit’, getting close to a public lynching, accusing him of being … anti-semite! And as if that were not enough, several of the many right-wing governments of the European Union or in the United States have recently taken a further step: they have passed laws that – in the name of fighting anti-semitism – forbid or criminalize any criticism of the brutal policies of (far right) governments of Israel… Jews won’t be free until Palestinians are

And so, the fact that the only criterion for the definition of modern anti-semitism turns out to be the attitude towards Israel and its governments has led to the following tragicomic situation: We witness the various Netanyahu’s and their supporters to honour as “partners of Israel” and “strategic allies” notorious racists and anti-semites of the far right, such as the leaders of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, such as the former president of the United States Donald Trump, European politicians belonging to the far right like Salvini, Wilders and De Winter or American Evangelists and so many others, while at the same time famous anti-racists and anti-fascists – many of whom are actually … Jewish (!) – are denounced as “anti-semites”, even though they have spent most of their lifetime fighting against anti-semites such as the present “friends of Israel”.

That is why the “strategic ally” and great friend of Netanyahu and of his political descendants, the prime minister of Hungary Victor Orban, could very well accuse and bring to trial today the Jew Alberto Einstein on charges of anti-semitismm because he had dared to send the following “scandalous” open letter to the New York Times, 73 years ago:

CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt) more

by RAMZY BAROUD

The critical mass for meaningful solidarity has finally been achieved, signaling that, once more, Palestinians have imposed themselves as the guardians of their own struggle.

Jared Kushner, a former US official whose relationship to power is that he married the wealthy daughter of a man who was later to become the US president, once attempted to teach Palestinians how to handle their own struggle for freedom.

In 2020, he advised Palestinians to stop ‘doing terrorism’, summing up the Palestinian problem in the claim that ‘five million Palestinians are (..) trapped because of bad leadership’, not the Israeli occupation or US support for Israel.

The inexperienced politician, who once bragged about reading 25 books on the Middle East, presented Palestinians with the same clichéd rhetoric already offered to them by other ill-intentioned self-imposed ‘peacemakers’.

Palestinians “have a perfect track record of missing opportunities,” he said, re-hashing the condescending language once used by Israel’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abba Eban: “If they screw this up, I think that they will have a very hard time looking the international community in the face, saying they are victims”.

But why bring up Kushner now?

Every few years, Americans, at the behest of Israel, peddle such ideas that the Palestinian cause is finished, that solidarity with the Palestinian people is dead and that the Palestinian people and their leadership should accept whatever political or financial crumbs thrown their way, courtesy of Washington, Tel Aviv and a few of their western allies.

Yet, every few years, the Palestinian people prove them wrong; that despite all the pressures – arm-twisting, sanctions, sieges, and relentless violence – they remain strong and not the victims ignorantly dubbed by Kushner.

What Kushner may not know is that there is a critical difference between victim and victimhood. While Palestinians cannot control their victimization, since it is imposed on them from an outside force, Israel – generously financed by the US – they do not seek to be victims.

Indeed, victimhood is a different issue. It is the state of perceiving oneself as a perpetual victim, with no aspirations, no agency.

While it is true that the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza is one of the greatest crimes of mass killings and ethnic cleansing in modern history, it is also true that no nation, in recent decades, has fought back as ferociously as the Palestinians. This is hardly the behavior of a victim.

The Joe Biden Administration, like every other US administration, has talked down to Palestinians, declaring them foolish for not accepting political deals that would fail to guarantee them the most basic of their long-denied rights. While Palestinians sought total and unconditional freedom, Camp David (1979), the Oslo Accords (1993), the Road Map (2004), and every other ‘offer’ before, during or after were political attempts at prolonging the Israeli occupation and denying the rights of the Palestinians. Kushner’s was not the exception.

All of these previous American ‘peace proposals’ were obviously unfair, as they were to Israel’s advantage and were designed entirely independent from international and humanitarian laws. All of these pro-Israeli proposals have failed, not due to the international community’s ability to challenge Washington, but due to the tenacity of the Palestinian people.

Palestinians defeated the US agenda, but that was not enough to clinch their own freedom, simply because they were in this difficult battle alone.

Solidarity with the Palestinian people has always been one of the pillars of all international solidarity movements worldwide for decades. The phrase ‘Free Palestine’ has been written on countless walls, in every language, in every city, town, or working-class neighborhood. Still, that solidarity was not enough to turn the tide, to achieve the coveted paradigm shift or to reach the critical mass needed to globalize the struggle for the freedom of the Palestinians the way that the struggle to end South Africa’s apartheid imposed itself as a moral necessity on the whole world.

There should be no illusions that the anti-apartheid struggle of South Africa and the struggle for Palestinian freedom are identical. Back then, the global geopolitical shift made it difficult for Pretoria to maintain its racial segregation regime. Moreover, the power of that racist government, if compared to that of Israel and its backers, is minuscule.

Washington sees Israel as an integral part of the US global influence. For US politicians, Israel is a domestic and not simply a foreign policy issue. Moreover, if Israel ceases to exist in its current dominant form, the US will lose a stronghold in a region teeming with precious resources, strategic waterways and much more. This is precisely why Biden has repeatedly declared that “If Israel didn’t exist, we would have to invent it”.

However, things are finally changing, and the new solidarity, ignited in response to the worst killing campaign in the history of the region, has exceeded the confines of conditional solidarity, ideological solidarity and symbolic solidarity, which, to some extent, had defined global solidarity with the Palestinians.

This solidarity is now expressing itself at the highest level of political discourses. In his testimony before the International Court of Justice’s public hearings (February 19-26), China’s representative, Ma Xinmin, went as far as defending, while referencing international law, the Palestinian people’s right to armed struggle. Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, called on sanctions on “those who obstruct humanitarian access to those in need”. European governments, such as Spain, Ireland, Norway and Belgium, are using unprecedented language to describe Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, while demanding real action.

The Global South is back at the forefront of championing the cause of Palestine as the world’s most inspiring national liberation struggle.

Palestine Chronicle for more

by PRANJAL PANDAY

On March 4th, Nepal’s two largest communist parties united to establish a new coalition government, including smaller parties as partners. Pushpa Kamal Dahal, leader of the Maoist party, will continue as prime minister, a year after his initial election. Dahal has severed ties with the Nepali Congress Party, the largest parliamentary group, and has allied with the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), the second-largest party led by Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli. Following the shift in coalition dynamics, the prime minister is obligated to seek a vote of confidence in Parliament within 30 days, a process anticipated to result in his favor.

The new Left Alliance coalition will consist of four political parties: the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), the Rastriya Swatantra Party, and the Janata Samajbadi Party or People’s Socialist Party.

The increasing rift between the Maoist Centre and Nepali Congress parties regarding the claim to the chairmanship of the National Assembly—Nepal’s upper house of government—had posed a significant threat to the already delicate ruling coalition.

Following its Standing Committee meeting on February 28, the Maoist Centre opted to fight for the National Assembly chairmanship while Dahal had promised support to the Nepali Congress (NC) in the election for the Chair. Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba intended for the party’s senior figure and recently elected legislator, Krishna Prasad Sitaula, to take on the position of National Assembly Chairman.

Dahal, known for leading a decade-long armed struggle against the then-monarchy starting in 1996, transitioned into mainstream politics following a 2006 peace deal facilitated by the United Nations. Although currently serving his third term as prime minister, he is yet to complete a full five-year term. Since abolishing its 240-year-old monarchy in 2008 and becoming a republic, Nepal has witnessed the formation of 13 governments.

South Asia Journal for more

Sandro Botticelli’s poetic sense of beauty captivated the Florentine court. But it was his subject matter which distinguished him from other artists. He was one of the first western artist since classical times to depict non-religious scenes, and Botticelli’s inclusion of a near life size female nude was revolutionary.

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by ALP KAYSERILIOGLU

In Turkey’s local elections, held on 31 March, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) achieved its strongest showing in fifty years, winning 38% of the overall vote. As well as landslide wins in the country’s largest cities – Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa, Antalya – the CHP also claimed several conservative strongholds in Anatolia, where it is traditionally weak and has not governed for decades. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) meanwhile received 35%, its worst results to date. This was a remarkable turnaround. Less than a year ago, Erdogan and the AKP-led ruling alliance triumphed in the presidential and parliamentary elections with relative ease, seeing off the opposition despite a failing economy and the country having suffered the worst earthquake in its modern history. How might this upset be explained?

First, the economy. The promises of the nationalist-Islamist coalition, made during the May 2023 election campaign, went unfulfilled. The AKP implemented a not entirely consistent return to neoliberal austerity and deflationary policies, a so-called ‘hybrid’ economic regime that has led to contradictory results such as resurgent inflation without a parallel increase in domestic demand. This compounded the dissatisfaction with the AKP that had already been rising since 2018, and was reflected in a large number of abstentions and invalid votes. While voter turnout was 84% in the 2019 local elections, and 88% in last year’s general elections, this year it fell to just under 79%, with the AKP and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) losing the most votes proportionately. So far, dissatisfied voters have mostly turned to other parties within the ruling bloc; the Islamist splinter party YRP jumped from around 2% to over 6%; in Anatolia and Kurdistan in particular, it contested the AKP’s leading position in strongholds and even won two provinces.

This accounts for the erosion of the AKP vote. What of the CHP’s success? The party’s strong presence in local politics was the key factor. Its administration of Ankara and Istanbul has shown that not everything goes down the drain when the AKP is out of power. On the contrary, public services have improved and populist redistributive policies have been passed, as more resources were available without the favouritism afforded to AKP-affiliated Islamist organisations and entrepreneurs. This was viewed favourably in the wider context of the AKP’s economic mismanagement. The party’s internal overhaul – with long-time leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu replaced by Ozgur Ozel, who is close to Istanbul’s prominent mayor, Ekrem Imamo?lu – also appears to have had a salutary effect. In the major cities, CHP victories were huge: they won not only the mayoralties but also swept the city parliaments and most of the neighbourhoods. Crucially, here they were able to win votes from the government bloc and thus – at least at local level – partially reverse the process of electoral polarization.

New Left Review for more

by ALEXANDRIA SHANER

As violent militias rampage across the country, activists in the DRC are urgently calling for a green transition that puts justice first, not new revenue streams, and that dismantles colonial exploitation once and for all.

“Inside every phone is the blood of a Congolese person.” These words from Pascal Mirindi, a student and activist in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), encapsulate the deadly links between war, the plunder of resources, and climate breakdown. 

Nowhere is this more devastatingly clear than in the DRC, where M23 militias financed by the Rwandan government, which is in turn funded by the UK, USA, and many more, are committing mass murder and ecological destruction as they surge into the east of the country. 

On the rare occasion that the mainstream media covers the DRC, it is portrayed as a poor nation with a “complicated” conflict-riven backstory. But this framing omits the catalyst for the region’s violence since its colonization – resource robbery.

“The conflict, which has persisted in the east of the DRC for almost 30 years, and is the deadliest since the Second World War, is mainly economic,” explains Nobel Laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege. Since 1996, more than 10 million people have been killed, with countless more being displaced, raped, or forcibly recruited (even as children) into armed groups. “The link between exploitation and the illegal trade in minerals is recognized as a root cause.”

Z Network for more