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Dignity as Leverage: A Counterframework for Palestinian Prisoner Negotiations
The U.S.-Israeli approach to negotiations with Palestinians remains fundamentally misaligned with justice and human dignity. While Israeli hostages are publicly mourned and framed as victims, Palestinian prisoners are treated as threats — statistics to be managed, not lives to be honored.
In this asymmetrical terrain, U.S. mediation reinforces Israeli security narratives, ignoring systemic abuses: rearrests, torture, indefinite detention, and the criminalization of Palestinian grief and solidarity. Incarceration becomes not a tool of justice but of demographic warfare.
Yet even within this environment, Palestinian resistance reframes captivity — not as defeat but as defiance. Through hunger strikes, courtroom refusal, and the ethic of sumoud (resilience), prisoners have transformed their bodies into frameworks of refusal. This is not passive survival — it is political agency. As PFLP’s prisoner Ahmad Sa’adat declares, “Our imprisonment is not the end of our struggle — we are the conscience of a people who refuse to be erased.”
This counterframework refuses to engage through the language of victimhood alone. It posits prisoners as political subjects — architects of strategy, not merely its symbols. Their bodies become texts of resistance, declaring humanity through suffering wielded deliberately. The ethical foundation of this model begins not with what must be demanded, but what must be refused.
Refusal is not obstinacy — it is strategy. The counterframework rejects hostage diplomacy staged as deterrent theater, denounces militarized humanitarianism where aid becomes surveillance, and repels the symbolic erasure encoded in practices like anonymous burial and re-arrest. These acts strip captives of memory and dignity in an effort to unwrite them from the historical record.
The refusal is deliberate, layered, and unyielding. Hamas and allied factions have responded to Trump’s proposed prisoner exchange and ceasefire deal with a spirit of negotiation — but not submission. They understand the logic underpinning the dominant framework: Israel retains military leverage while discarding the burdens of governance; it aims to dismantle Hamas while presenting itself as a rational actor in a “peace process.”
The asymmetry is clear: the framework is not peace — it’s containment.
In submitting counterproposals, Hamas and allied factions reframed the negotiation. Their demands reject tactical pacification and assert structural conditions for any progress. Chief among these is the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Though the upfront demand for ending the war has been softened, the insistence on written guarantees — specifically for troop retreat and uninterrupted ceasefire negotiations — signals the emergence of a political safeguard.
The notes of Hamas and allied factions further call for international oversight — preferably under UN administration — and removal of U.S.-Israeli control over aid and surveillance. Hamas and its allies understand the risks of leaving mediation tools in the hands of those invested in their containment. The counterframework demands mediation not as diplomatic theater, but as structural protection.
These positions reorient the entire frame of the negotiation. The factions are no longer reacting to Israeli terms — they’re building a system where justice isn’t deferred to humanitarian appeals but embedded in strategic architecture. U.S. Framework vs. Palestinian Counterframework: How oppression tries to outlast resistance Palestinian factions, far from being reactive, now hold key cards:
– Operational Leverage: Remaining Israeli captives are not just bargaining chips — they are Israel’s strongest incentive to negotiate. The factions control the timeline and rhythm.
– Political Unity: A unified front among factions strengthens their legitimacy, undercutting narratives of fragmentation and allowing them to act with moral coherence.
– Narrative Authority: By framing the negotiation as one centered on sovereignty, protection, and justice — not mere exchange — they control the moral terrain.
This leverage does not simply stall Israeli ambition — it redefines the negotiation itself.
As one analyst recently put it, “Hamas isn’t playing with borrowed cards — it’s designing its own deck.” And as Fateh’s prisoner Marwan Barghouti stated, “Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation. Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.” Here, he is not just reflecting on past failures, but insisting that dignity and sovereignty must anchor any negotiation and reframing what legitimacy looks like.
If Netanyahu responds true to form, several patterns will likely emerge:
– Delay Tactics: Publicly, negotiations will slow under the guise of security reviews and logistical constraints — buys time, hopes to fracture Palestinian unity.
– Defiance Masked by Concession: Netanyahu may appear hawkish to domestic audiences while quietly engaging mediators to preserve diplomatic cover.
– Displacement of Blame: He’ll lean on U.S. mediation to obscure accountability, portraying Israeli rigidity as consequence of “external constraints.”
But the terrain has shifted. Public sympathy, diplomatic fatigue, and the irreducibility of Palestinian refusal may disrupt his playbook.
If Netanyahu overplays his hand, dragging negotiations without movement, he risks pushing factions from tactical flexibility to strategic closure, i.e., the withdrawal of participation as a strategic response to a framework that undermines justice from the start.
The counterframework insisted upon by Hamas and allied factions isn’t designed to win negotiations — it’s meant to transcend them. Its logic is liberatory, not procedural. Ceasefires must not merely pause violence — they must erode the legitimacy of systems that reproduce it.
This means restoration of collective dignity as the barometer of success — not appeasement metrics, and the insistence on international oversight divorced from occupation logics and recognition of Palestinians as strategic participants in shaping political outcomes.
To the extent that prisoner exchanges and ceasefires are real, they must reflect the architecture built by prisoners themselves — the cost borne, the unity forged, the refusals sustained.
Resistance, in this frame, is not reactive. It is architectural.
_________________ Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher, and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
The following article is republished from Medium. The U.S.-Israeli approach to negotiations with Palestinians remains fundamentally misaligned with justice and human dignity. While Israeli hostages…
"The U.S.-Israeli approach to negotiations with Palestinians remains fundamentally misaligned with justice and human dignity. While Israeli hostages are publicly mourned and framed as victims, Palestinian prisoners are treated as…"
Had a pretty much perfect Saturday. Got chores done early, napped, and got halfway through a book. The guilt of not working a local festival still lingers, but I'm all about working smarter, not harder, and Wannigan Days last year was poorly organized.
Figured out the next play. The 1 2 3 column, if you count out all the possible ways that can be arranged, lets me confirm one more block of the 3 section, which connects to the block I was able to steal in the 4 2 row, which chains to a lot of stuff I can confirm in the bottom half of the board.
Settler Colonialism in Light of F. Fanon: Algeria Yesterday, Kanaky Today… (Part 2)
Resistance by the colonized
The total violence of colonization in Algeria, Palestine, or Kanaky is therefore physical and symbolic, economic and cultural, political and social, religious and civil. It is literally a matter of substituting one society for another, replacing one people with another, destroying a history to justify an illegitimate present. The victims of these colonizations therefore have only one choice: to resist or disappear. To date, there is no example in human history of a people choosing to disappear. Resistance is inevitable and takes many different and evolving forms.
Fanon brilliantly describes the changing forms of resistance as colonial rule takes hold over the colonized society. The first forms of resistance are logically dependent on the social and economic structures that existed before colonization. They are therefore agrarian and tribal, communal and local, insurrectionary and guerrilla in nature. Two eras of human history clash militarily, two models of collective identity [tribal and tribal confederation for the colonized, nation-state for the colonizers], two types of military technology, two conceptions of war. Despite the imbalance of forces, this primary resistance of a society that refuses to disappear and that focuses all its energies on survival will have a lasting impact on colonized peoples. Admittedly, the military superiority of the colonizer led to the imposition of colonization, but the sense of dignity became deeply rooted and was passed down from generation to generation.
In Algeria, as in Kanaky, the transmission of the history of resistance to conquest and then colonization was the subjective foundation on which subsequent resumptions of the anti-colonial struggle were built. Memory is thus an important form of resistance, explains Frantz Fanon: “The memory of the anti-colonial period remains vivid in the villages. Women still whisper in their children’s ears the songs that accompanied the warriors who resisted the conquest. At the age of 12 or 13, the young villagers know the names of the old people who took part in the last uprising, and the dreams in the douars [… are] dreams of identification with this or that fighter, whose heroic death still provokes abundant tears today[23] . The book by Alban Bensa, Kacué Yvon Goromoedo, and Adrian Muckle, Les Sanglots de l’aigle pêcheur. Nouvelle-Calédonie : La guerre Kanak de 1917 (The Sobs of the Fisher Eagle: New Caledonia: The Kanak War of 1917), highlights the same mobilization of transmission and memory as a tool of resistance. “Defeated by arms, decimated, scattered, and yet still there, they entrusted words and writing with the task of preserving the memory of that time,” states the back cover[24] . In Algeria, as in Kanaky, storytelling, song, poetry, and legends were the springs of survival in the face of the steamroller of colonization.
Another transformation of resistance described by Fanon concerns the dimensions of identity. These are the site of a dual movement: rooting and broadening. Rooting, first of all, because the colonized perceive the danger of disappearance and react by immersing themselves totally in everything that makes up their historical personality, their cultural specificity, their social, religious, and civilizational differences. Almost instinctively, they retreat into their values, their ancestors, their religion, etc., in order to maintain their existence in the face of multifaceted genocide. For women, wearing the veil becomes an act of resistance, as does fleeing all contact with the colonizer and their institutions, returning to the djemaas[25] , and even religiosity itself. Explaining the colonizer’s determination to unveil Algerian women, Fanon explains: “The [colonial] administration states: ‘If we want to strike Algerian society at its core, in its capacity for resistance, we must first conquer the women; we must seek them out behind the veil where they hide and in the houses where men hide them[26] .”
The same logic of anchoring oneself in custom and tradition as a form of resistance and survival can be found today in the functioning of the FLNKS[27] (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), for example. To the great incomprehension of many Western activists, the appointment of delegates to various bodies raises, among other things, the question of respect for custom. Anthropologist Isabelle Leblic recalls that during a mini-congress in the central-southern region, the delegates responsible for defining the criteria for the appointment of candidates for regional elections settled on the following choice: “being an active activist, having a good knowledge of custom and being well integrated into it, being able to defend the positions of the FLNKS, being representative of one’s region, and respecting the non-accumulation of mandates.” Describing the start of various meetings, she explains the unavoidable nature of the moment of ‘custom’: “It is custom, the moment of custom. In the empty space in the middle of our circle, there were piles of cigarettes, “tabacs-bâtons ,” sticks of tobacco, raw and compact, a few CFP franc notes, and above all manus, those long, thin pieces of cloth that symbolize the bonds between human beings. All these objects were brought by each of us. They are a sign of the respect we owe to each other and to this land, the land of the valley that welcomes us[28] .
This first change in identity, that of putting down roots, was followed by a second, that of broadening one’s image of oneself and the group to which one belongs. Very quickly, the colonized in a settlement colonization became aware of the impossibility of lasting resistance on the basis of the tribe or even the tribal confederation. Faced with the colonizer, the process of national identification, which already existed to varying degrees depending on the country, inevitably accelerated. Frantz Fanon summarizes the process as follows: “The mobilization of the masses […] introduces into each consciousness the notion of a common cause, a national destiny, a collective history.” Similarly, in her description of the use of custom in the political life of the FLNKS, Isabelle Leblic mentions a difference with the mobilization of the same custom in everyday life: “The only notable difference between the two types of gathering lies in the fact that for political gatherings, the ‘customs of arrival’ most often end with the raising of the Kanaky flag[30] . Forms of resistance thus shift from the tribe to nationality while remaining rooted in specific popular history. The question of mobilizing armed struggle stems both from the realization that so-called “peaceful” struggle is ineffective and from the balance of power.
We emphasize these changes in identity and the work of transmitting resistance, because they constitute a subjective heritage on which subsequent resistance movements are based. They make the latter inevitable. There is no third alternative to settler colonization: either colonialism is destroyed, or the colonized people disappear. The contradiction is entirely antagonistic, as Frantz Fanon concluded: ” On the level of reasoning, the Manichaeism of the colonizer produces a Manichaeism of the colonized. The theory of the ‘absolutely evil native’ is matched by the theory of the ‘absolutely evil colonizer. “The appearance of the colonizer signified syncretically the death of indigenous society, cultural lethargy, and the petrification of individuals. For the colonized, life can only arise from the decomposing corpse of the colonizer[31] .”
The peasantry as centrality
The countryside and villages are the essential location for the processes described above. Essentially agrarian and communal societies, countries that have been and/or are victims of settlement colonization feel its destructive impact first in the countryside, where the vast majority of the population lives. What Algerian geographer Djilali Sari called “the dispossession of the fellah[32] ” and Algerian filmmaker Lamine Merbah called “the uprooted[33] ,” takes the form of massive land theft through colonization and, with it, the destruction of the material foundations of peasant collective life. In Algeria, as in Kanaky, the colonial question begins with the question of land. Frantz Fanon concludes that the peasantry plays a decisive role in the anti-colonial struggle, that it is at its core. “It is clear that, in colonial countries, only the peasantry is revolutionary. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain[34] ,“ explains Fanon, describing the attitude of these rural masses towards colonization: ”The rural masses have never ceased to pose the problem of their liberation in terms of violence, of land to be taken back from foreigners, of national struggle, of armed insurrection. It’s all very simple[35] .”
In Kanaky, too, the peasantry is the primary social base of the independence movement. Nearly 70% of the country’s Melanesian population lives in rural areas. Colonial land theft has led to a steady decline in Kanak subsistence agriculture in the national agricultural production. “More than 80% of New Caledonia’s agricultural production is carried out by European farmers located in the south of the archipelago, in the peri-urban ‘green belt’ of Nouméa,” summarized sociologist Marcel Djama in 1999. One of the colors of the Kanak flag, green, symbolizes the rural roots of the independence movement. When it was created in 1984, the FLNKS explained the presence of green on the national flag as follows: “It is the color of the plant kingdom and living waters. It represents ‘green pastures,’ food, the peasantry, and the rural world. It is the color of the awakening of nature, the awakening of life, of hope, of remedies. It is the emblem of salvation[37] .”
It is also the peasant origin of the urban “lumpen proletariat” that led Frantz Fanon to consider it as having significant revolutionary potential, making it the “urban spearhead” of the struggle. These peasants, driven from their land, accumulate in the urban peripheries without being able to find any professional employment due to their dependence on colonial capitalism. Agricultural overpopulation did not transform itself en masse into a proletariat, but into a “lumpenproletariat”: “The men whom the growing rural population and colonial expropriation have driven from their family lands wander tirelessly around the various cities, hoping that one day they will be allowed to enter. It is in this mass, in this people of the slums, within the lumpenproletariat, that the insurrection will find its urban spearhead. The lumpenproletariat is one of the most spontaneous and radical revolutionary forces of a colonized people[38] .
The situation is not much different in contemporary Kanaky. The rural exodus to Nouméa has led to the accumulation of a poor Kanak population, and among them a lumpenproletariat. Thousands of Kanak inhabitants of Nouméa now live in shacks on public land in the capital. These “squatters” survive by scavenging and subsistence farming. Unsurprisingly, these Nouméa ‘squats’ were important areas of mobilization during the uprising that shook Kanaky from May 2024 onwards. The board of directors of the Oceanist Society described the situation during these popular revolts as follows: ” Many of those now described as rioters come from marginalized and excluded populations composed mainly of Kanaks and other Oceanic peoples. These poor populations, which also include a lumpen proletariat, emerged with the massive urbanization of Greater Nouméa over the last thirty years. They are the forgotten and shipwrecked victims of the Matignon and Nouméa agreements. How many of them would have stayed, or even returned, to their villages if they had been able to find the means to live there in decent conditions? They too must now be considered full citizens[39] .”
This interpretation of the class structure of the settlement colonies is, of course, a political stance against a dogmatic interpretation of Marxism that seeks to find the social base and offensive base of the national liberation struggle in an embryonic proletariat. Fanon even considers that this proletariat, which is weakly developed due to the very nature of colonial capitalism, has a social position that is incomparable to that of other components of the colonized people: “In colonial territories, the proletariat is the core of the colonized people most favored by the colonial regime. The embryonic proletariat in the cities is relatively privileged. In capitalist countries, the proletariat has nothing to lose; it is the class that has everything to gain. In colonial countries, the proletariat has everything to lose. It represents the fraction of the colonized people that is necessary and irreplaceable for the smooth running of the colonial machine[40] .”
Some have interpreted Fanon’s analysis as a total rejection of the Marxist approach, whereas his entire argument aims to emphasize the importance of taking into account the specificities of colonial capitalism [dependent and extroverted to serve the interests of the metropolitan economy] in order to understand colonization by settlement. Moreover, Fanon is not the only thinker on national liberation to have reached this conclusion. Amilcar Cabral, for example, believed that he had initially dogmatically applied European models, which led the independence movement to a dramatic impasse. This courageous self-criticism led him, like Fanon, to advocate a central role for the peasantry in the national liberation struggle: “I cannot claim to organize a party, or a struggle based on my ideas. I must do so based on the concrete reality of the country. [|…] At the beginning of our struggle, for example, we were convinced that if we managed to mobilize the workers of Bissau, Bolama, and Bafata to go on strike and demonstrate in the streets, the Portuguese would change and give us independence. That was wrong. First of all, in our country, wage workers are not as powerful as in other countries. From an economic point of view, salaried workers are not a sufficient force; in fact, in our country, the great economic force lies in the countryside[41] .
The ambiguities and contradictions of the petty bourgeoisie
Fanon died too soon to witness the independence of Algeria, for which he fought so hard. However, he did witness the first African national independence movements and with them the rise of the national petty bourgeoisie, which was often at the head of the independence organizations. As roving ambassador for the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) for Africa from the spring of 1960, he had the opportunity to observe at close quarters the first steps of independence in countries ranging from Congo to Senegal, Liberia to Guinea, and Mali to Ghana. Bitterly, he noted the complicity of certain African countries in the isolation and assassination of Lumumba: “The great success of Africa’s enemies is to have compromised Africans themselves. It is true that these Africans had a direct interest in Lumumba’s murder. They were puppet heads of government, within a puppet independence, confronted day after day with massive opposition from their peoples[42] . “
For Fanon, African complicity in the Congolese tragedy confirmed his observations in several African countries that independence had been confiscated by the establishment of a new age of colonialism, indirect colonialism, colonialism through the mediation of African elites who became managers of the interests of the former colonizer, neocolonialism. The expectations and hopes of the people invested in independence began to be disappointed from the very first steps of the new governments: “Discontented workers are subjected to repression as ruthless as that of the colonial periods. Trade unions and political parties are confined to quasi-clandestinity. The people, the people who had given everything in the difficult hours of the national liberation struggle, are now wondering, with empty hands and empty stomachs, how real their victory really is[43] . “
To understand the sequence of independence, it is necessary to distinguish, as we have said before, between independence and decolonization. It was precisely to avoid genuine decolonization that certain African independence movements were abruptly promoted after 1956 by the French colonizer. A decade earlier, at the Brazzaville Conference in February 1944, the latter had stated that “the ends of the civilizing work accomplished by France in the colonies rule out any idea of autonomy, any possibility of evolution outside the French Empire; the eventual, even distant, establishment of self-government in the colonies is to be ruled out.” In an attempt to eliminate any hope of independence, massive repression followed. This was the case on May 8, 1945, in Algeria, in Vietnam in September 1945, and in Cameroon in 1947. A little over a decade later, it was Paris that defended the idea of autonomy from 1956 and then independence from 1958 for the colonies of French West Africa (AOF) and French Equatorial Africa (AEF). Between these two historical periods came the victory of the Vietnamese independence movement at Dien Ben Phu, the outbreak of armed struggle in Algeria and Cameroon, the Bandung Conference, and the Anglo-French-Israeli defeat in Egypt during the nationalization of the Suez Canal. Fear of the radicalization of national liberation struggles led the colonizers to change tactics in order to maintain their hold and promote formal independence, constrained by economic and military agreements that reproduced colonial dependence under a new guise.
Describing these “puppet” independences, Fanon compared them as early as 1958 to real independence, that is, independence that goes as far as true decolonization: “True liberation is not this pseudo-independence where ministers with limited responsibility coexist with an economy dominated by the colonial pact. Liberation is the death of the colonial system, from the preeminence of the language of the oppressor and departmentalization to the customs union that in reality keeps the colonized in the grip of colonialist culture, fashion, and images[45] . Note the reference to “departmentalization,” indicating that Fanon was not fooled by the new colonial discourse of 1946 on the “four old colonies” of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, and French Guiana, which would later be expanded to include Kanaky and Polynesia. He, who was so inspired by the work of Césaire, distinguished himself from him by rejecting the “realism” that led the latter to accept the logic of departmentalization in place of the goal of national independence.
Three years later, in his masterpiece, The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon offers us a veritable autopsy of these “puppet” independences. He defined the class nature of the new leaders of these “puppet” states: “The national bourgeoisie that takes power at the end of the colonial regime […] has the psychology of businessmen, not captains of industry. And it is quite true that the rapacity of the colonists and the embargo system set up by colonialism left them little choice[46] .He describes the type of economy that such a class implements once in power: “The national economy of the independence period is not reoriented. It is still about harvesting peanuts, harvesting cocoa, harvesting olives. […] No industry is established in the country. We continue to ship raw materials, we continue to be Europe’s small farmers, specialists in raw products[47] .“ He characterizes the social and political function of the new leaders politically, namely to serve as intermediaries and business agents: ”The national bourgeoisie has discovered its historic mission to serve as an intermediary. As we can see, it is not a vocation to transform the nation, but prosaically to serve as a transmission belt for a capitalism cornered into camouflage and now adorned with the mask of neocolonialism. The national bourgeoisie will revel, without complex and with dignity, in the role of business agent for the Western bourgeoisie[48] .”
The concrete reality has proved Fanon right in many African countries. Independence has often been a rush to grab the colonists’ assets. Wealth has accumulated in a matter of months. It has then been considerably increased by accumulation in the shadow of the state apparatus. In short, the process of crystallization of social classes, previously all suppressed by colonialism, suddenly accelerated, giving rise to a comprador bourgeoisie and a class of large landowners. Unlike Fanon, we characterize the social strata installed in power by the colonizer as predominantly petty bourgeoisie and, at best, middle bourgeoisie for landowners. The process of neo-colonization is, in our view, precisely constituted by the transformation of these social strata into comprador social classes [commercial and agrarian].
Fanon draws political conclusions from this process by warning about the nature of nationalist organizations, their programs, and their social bases. He emphasizes that there is no possibility of independent capitalism for the former colonies. The petty bourgeoisie engaged in the national liberation struggle must choose between betraying their ideals and betraying their class interests: “In an underdeveloped country, an authentic national bourgeoisie must make it its imperative duty to betray the vocation to which it was destined, to put itself at the school of the people, that is, to place at the disposal of the people the intellectual and technical capital it wrested during its passage through the colonial universities[49] . Such “betrayal” does not happen spontaneously. It can only be the result of a democratic political organization with a program and a social base in the popular classes [peasantry and working class] and establishing grassroots control over its leaders.
Amilcar Cabral came to the same conclusion in his thesis on the “suicide of the petty bourgeoisie” presented at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in 1966: ” In order not to betray its objectives, the petty bourgeoisie has only one path: to strengthen its revolutionary consciousness, repudiate attempts at gentrification and the natural solicitations of its class mentality, identify with the working classes, and not oppose the development of the revolutionary process. This means that in order to fulfill its role in the national liberation struggle, the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie must be capable of committing class suicide in order to be reborn as revolutionary workers, fully identified with the deepest aspirations of the people to whom they belong. This alternative—betraying the revolution or committing class suicide—is the choice facing the petty bourgeoisie in the general context of national liberation
[50]. The colonizer does not remain inactive in the face of this choice. As independence approaches, it multiplies openings, bureaucratic bodies, commissions, sinecures, etc., with the aim of bureaucratizing the independence political organizations and orienting them toward neocolonialism.
In Kanaky today, there is a juxtaposition of the institutionalization and bureaucratization of a significant section of the petty bourgeoisie and the radicalization of the popular movement. The lessons of Fanon and Cabral sound like a warning and a call for vigilance.
The centenary of the birth of Lumumba, Malcolm, Fanon, and Cabral comes at a time when the anti-colonial struggle is resurgent [as evidenced by France’s troubles in West Africa and the October 7 operation in Palestine] and imperialist aggression is on the rise, with wars breaking out in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, and elsewhere. In this context, Fanon’s message is marked by an undeniable modernity. Whether on the nature of colonial oppression, its links with capitalism and imperialism, the resistance it inevitably provokes, the attitude of different classes and social strata towards it, the link between independence and decolonization, that between decolonization and socialism, the possible dead ends and contradictions of national liberation struggles, etc., Fanon remains essential reading for anyone who wants to dismantle the colonial system that persists by constantly donning new masks. As long as our world remains structured around a dominant imperialist center and dominated peripheries, Fanon, Cabral, Malcolm, and Lumumba will remain relevant.
Said Bouamama is a French Algerian sociologist and activist who is the author of over a dozen books, his latest, Manual on Immigration (2021), For a Revolutionary Panafricanism (2023) Strategic Manual on Palestine and the Middle East (2024) among others.
[1] Born in Martinique, F Fanon was legally French by birth. By joining the FLN, he symbolically and politically rejected this nationality of birth. In his writings, he expresses himself as an Algerian. For example, in Year V of the Algerian Revolution, he writes: “What we Algerians want,” “our struggle,” “our cause,” and “our Revolution.” Having died before independence, he was never officially granted Algerian nationality. However, he was a representative of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA), which indicates that he was considered Algerian by the authorities of the new state.
[2] Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme, Paris, Présence africaine, 2004, p. 9.
[3] Jean-Paul Sartre, “Le colonialisme est un système,” speech at a meeting “for peace in Algeria,” Les temps modernes, no. 123, March-April 1956.
[4] Amilcar Cabral, Foundations and Objectives of National Liberation and Social Structures, Speech at the First Conference of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Havana, January 3–12, 1966, in Unité et Lutte, Maspero, Paris, 1980, p. 161.
[5] Samir Amin, Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism, Minuit, Paris, 1973.
[6] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, in Œuvres, La Découverte, Paris, 2011, p. 455.
[7] Amilcar Cabral, Fondements et objectifs de la libération nationale et structures sociales, op. cit., p. 159.
[9] Ali Moussa Iye and Khadija Touré (eds.), Histoire de l’humanité, volume 6, UNESCO, Paris, 2008, p. 1388.
[10] Melanesia includes Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kanaky, and the Fiji Islands. The term Kanak refers to the Melanesian population of Kanaky.
[11] Jean-Louis Rallu, La population de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, Revue Population, 1985, no. 4-5, p. 725.
[12] Kamel Kateb, Européens, « indigènes » et juifs en Algérie (1830-1962). Représentations et réalités des populations, INED, Paris, 2002, pp. 16 and 47.
[13] Djilali Sari, Le désastre démographique, SNED, Algiers, 1982, p. 130.
[14] Jean Guiart, Bantoustans en Nouvelle-Calédonie, Droit et Liberté, no. 371, July-August 1978, p. 14.
[15] Alain Ruscio, La première guerre d’Algérie. Une histoire de conquête et de résistance, La Découverte, Paris, 2024, p. 394.
[16] Charles-André Julien, Histoire de l’Algérie contemporaine, volume 1, PUF, Paris, 1964, p. 250.
[17] Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme, Présence Africaine, Paris, (1955) 2004, pp. 13-14.
[18] Frantz Fanon, Why We Use Violence, Speech given at the Accra Conference, April 1960, in Year V of the Algerian Revolution, Complete Works, op. cit., pp. 413 and 418.
[19] Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Fayard, Paris, 1996, p. 647.
L’année 2024 fut celle du centenaire de la naissance du guinéen et cap-verdien Amilcar Cabral, un des penseurs encore trop méconnus des processus et des luttes de libération nationale. L’année 2025…
"Resistance by the colonized The total violence of colonization in Algeria, Palestine, or Kanaky is therefore physical and symbolic, economic and cultural, political and social, religious and civil. It is…"
After three years of bloody rule, the Marcos regime is now further intensifying its fascist repression of the Filipino people. Bloodshed and increasing cases of human rights violations in the name of counterinsurgency continue. It is obsessed with destroying the Filipino people’s patriotic and democratic aspirations and struggles, and ending their revolutionary resistance. It serves the interests of foreign monopoly capitalists, big comprador bourgeois, landlords, and bureaucrat capitalists.
To spotlight the intensity and extent of the regime’s brutality and echo the people’s cry for justice, Ang Bayan (AB) issues this report highlighting the long trail of abuses and human rights violations committed by Marcos’s armed minions in the last six months (January to June of this year). The report involves fascist personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Philippine National Police (PNP), paramilitaries, and other armed agents of the reactionary state.
This report is based on information AB has reported, gathered, and analyzed.
Because the regime’s intensified repression made it more difficult to send reports, many cases in the countryside went unrecorded. The report also does not include many cases of human rights violations against the Moro people which have not been publicized.
AB uses international standards in estimating the number of victims of evacuation and militarization, and in the number of affected children.
Policy of repression
The Marcos regime’s main policy enforced in the first half of 2025 is the National Action Plan for Unity, Peace, and Development (NAP-UPD) 2025-2028 in the Philippines. This policy became the framework for intensified political repression against the Filipino masses. The regime began preparing this refurbished policy last year.
The NAP-UPD was officially approved through Memorandum Circular No. 83, series of 2025, issued by the Office of the President. The memorandum ordered all government agencies to implement the plan as part of the “whole-of-nation” and “whole-of-society” approach to “resolving problems caused by the revolutionary movement.” The NAP-UPD is based on the National Security Policy 2023-2028 and the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028.
This policy designates itself as a “strategic blueprint” to destroy the Communist Party of the Philippines, the New People’s Army, and the National Democratic Front by 2028. The National Task Force-Elcac, established by the Duterte regime, is the main enforcer of the new policy.
In line with this policy, the AFP and PNP are waging a rampaging dirty all-out war against the Filipino people in the cities and the countryside. State fascist terrorism persists, along with continued subservience to US imperialism and suppression of patriotic and democratic forces.
Despite repeated claims by the US, the AFP, and Marcos himself regarding the supposed “pivot” of the country’s armed forces from “internal defense” to “external defense” after having “weakened” or “defeated” the NPA, the bulk of the AFP remains in the countryside and guerrilla fronts. They persistently claim that only seven weak guerrilla fronts remain, but thousands of military, police, and paramilitary forces remain focused on counterinsurgency.
Congruent with the NAP-UPD, Marcos continues to weaponize the Anti-Terrorism Law, now in its fifth year, and the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression Act to harass and silence critics and those vocal against his regime, including ordinary citizens. The regime targets its so-called “CPP-NPA-NDFP legal fronts” to supposedly “stop recruitment, cut off financial support, and counter propaganda.” This policy systematically violates the rights of sectors to organize.
In the countryside, intensified militarization and occupation of communities continue through focused military operations (FMO) and occupation of villages in the guise of Retooled Community Support Program (RCSP). These operations mainly target civilian or unarmed peasant farmers for military violence and repression. Concurrent with these are indiscriminate aerial bombings, strafing, and shelling of farms and mountains which endanger civilians and destroy the environment.
Where military fascist terrorism have been most intense, large mining businesses, plantations, ecotourism projects, and other forms of plunder and community displacement soon follow. Military operations also serve to “secure” certain areas for US and Philippine war games.
The NTF-Elcac relentlessly implements the “return to the fold” program and deception using fake amnesty offers in the countryside. This combines with campaigns of intimidation, forced “surrender” of civilians, and plunder of public funds. In April, the Marcos regime funded the creation of a “former rebel” organization to use against the Filipino people.
As in the last three years in power, the Marcos regime wantonly commited violations of the rules of war—such as deliberate killing of wounded combatants, murder of civilians in staged “fake encounters,” and infliction of suffering on entire communities during AFP combat operations.
Human rights violations
Ang Bayan records 180,074 victims of human rights violations by the US-Marcos regime from December 10, 2024, to June 30 (203 days). AB recorded 239 incidents of human rights violations nationwide.
There are, on average, three victims of political killings every month. There is also one victim of abduction and two victims of torture every month. In the past six months, seven people survived attempted killings by state forces.
As in previous reports, most of the victims are peasants (176,940), followed by children (2,273) and urban poor (2,237).
In the three years of the Marcos regime, AB has recorded a total of 3,321 cases, victimizing at least 688,313. Over the past three years, an average of 628 fell victims to human rights violations each day under the Marcos regime.
Extrajudicial killing, frustrated killing, and torture
At least 24 people fell victim of political killings nationwide in the past six months. Most incidents occurred at the height of focused military operations (FMO) and RCSP by soldiers and police in peasant and indigenous communities. Killings took place in Oriental Mindoro, Masbate, Negros Oriental and Occidental, Capiz, Samar, Northern Samar and Eastern Samar, Leyte, Agusan del Sur, Surigao del Sur, and Sarangani.
As in the past, the AFP claims having killed victims in “encounters.” To make them appear so, the corpses are dressed up, planted with firearms, ammunition, and other military items, then dumped in different locations. The AFP disseminates this false information despite strong denials from families, neighbors, and even local village council officials.
The victims include five hors de combat (fighters incapacitated by injury or illness), and non-combatants or retired members of the revolutionary movement. AFP executioners captured and deliberately killed them, instead of declaring them prisoners of war or charging them in court. The bodies also showed signs of torture.
Massacres. The report period recorded three cases of massacre: one involving an entire family, another involving three farmers, and the third involving the massacre of hors de combat.
In Agusan del Sur, 26th IB soldiers mercilessly massacred the Gomansil family at the banks of the Dayuman River, Barangay San Vicente (Balagnan), Esperanza on December 15, 2024. The executioners killed the couple Toto and Toni Gomansil and their daughter Celine. They accused them of having links to the NPA and the revolutionary movement in the province.
Before the crime, the Gomansil family even asked the soldiers stationed at a nearby detachment for permission to work at their farm. Despite their “request,” the soldiers followed them and tied up Toto and Toni. They subjected the couple to intense interrogation and repeatedly asked if there were NPA members in their community, which the couple denied. The soldiers also asked for Celine’s husband, whom they accused of being an NPA fighter.
After this, the soldiers stabbed the couple to death. Celine managed to run after witnessing her parents’ killing but the soldiers swiftly shot her. The soldiers even violated and hacked Celine’s remains into two.
In Northern Samar, 8th ID soldiers gunned down three farmers in Barangay Nagoocan, Catubig on June 8. The military portrays the three as among five people killed in their armed encounter with the NPA. The victims were identified as Noel Lebico Sr, Arnel Aquino, and Nonoy Norcio.
Lebico was a resident of Barangay Roxas in Catubig, Aquino came from Barangay Osmeña in Palapag, and Norcio was from Barangay Luneta, Gamay. Their villages and towns of residence have been under de facto martial law since 2020. The victims have already been experiencing harassment and military abuses prior to the incident.
Earlier, the three refused to join the 8th ID’s forced surrender program.
Killing of a minor. The 63rd IB killed 16-year-old Jayson Grafil Padullo by indiscriminate firing on June 15 at Sitio Bagong Barrio, Barangay Pinanag-an, Borongan City, Eastern Samar. Jayson’s fellow residents in Barangay Benowangan firmly testified that he was a civilian. According to them, he had just enrolled in Grade 7 and was set to attend classes that June.
The victim and another youth were at a field outside the sitio when soldiers conducting operations fired shots at them. Jayson died from gunshot wounds, while his companion managed to escape.
Killing of hors de combat. The AFP and the Marcos regime blatantly disregard the rules of war. Killings of hors de combat were recorded in the Negros Oriental and Occidental, and Leyte provinces.
In Negros Occidental, soldiers abducted and deliberately killed Nonoy Ponteras (Ka Jojo) and Marisa Pobresa (Ka Kim). On March 7 at 8 p.m., Crime Investigation and Detection Group of the Philippine National Police (PNP) operatives and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) personnel abducted Ponteras and Pobresa from a house in Bacolod City. They were forced into van and taken to an unknown location, where they were ultimately killed.
Marcos’ butchers brought the two bodies to Sitio Paraiso, Barangay Caduhaan, Cadiz City. The next day, local military spokespersons disseminated lies that the two died after 1 a.m. in a clash between the 79th IB and the NPA.
Ponteras was an NDF-Negros leading official and Pobresa was an NDF regional office administrator. Their responsibilities included consulting with workers, farmers, farm workers, the poor, and other oppressed sectors on the island to help them assert their concerns and advance their struggles.
In Leyte, the 93rd IB killed three unarmed, incapacitated NPA members on June 18 in Barangay Cogon, Carigara. Juanito Selleca Jr (Ka Tibor/Ka Rey) and Sadam Paclita (Ka Dimple) were recovering from ailments when soldiers attacked and shot them. Lino Delante (Ka Dodong), a medic caring for the patients, was killed with them.
The NPA members were not armed because they were patients. The manner of the killing clearly showed the soldiers’ outright intention to kill the three, since they could have easily captured them as prisoners of war.
Deaths due to trauma. Lolita Reman died in Sitio Toril, Barangay Bandila, Toboso, Negros Occidental in May because of extreme fear and trauma from the 79th IB’s operations. Soldiers raided and ransacked the Mahusay family house, where she was staying in Sitio Toril, at 5 a.m. on May 20.
A similar incident occurred in Barangay Minapasok, Calatrava. Farmer Boyet de Asis suffered a stroke on May 23 after seven 79th IB soldiers and traitors to the revolution threatened him.
Death in detention. An ailing political prisoner from Quezon died on December 25, 2024 because of the criminal neglect of the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City. Hilario de Roxas, a farmer from Catanauan, Quezon, died from a stroke.
De Roxas was a senior citizen suffering from hypokalemia (a condition where potassium in the body drops), pneumonia, and hypertension. Police and soldiers arrested him, on criminal charges, in General Luna, Quezon, on February 12, 2020.
He was transferred to NBP on September 30, 2024 from Gumaca District Jail and Quezon District Jail (QDJ) in Pagbilao town. While detained in Quezon, de Roxas suffered a mild stroke and various health complications.
Ang Bayan also recorded seven victims of frustrated killing. The military units involved in these cases, fearing an ambush attack, fired wantonly at anyone they encountered in the forest or on the road. At least 23 people suffered torture at the hands of soldiers.
Arrest, abduction, and threats, harassment, and intimidation
AB recorded 31 cases of arbitrary arrest and detention of no fewer than 73 victims, mostly peasants. Reactionary officials filed various fabricated cases against the victims to prolong their detention. The usual charges filed against them included illegal possession of firearms and explosives, murder and attempted murder, terrorism, and “terrorism financing.”
Some of them experienced deliberately delayed processing of court documents to prevent their immediate release. Others, especially those in the provinces, were illegally detained in military camps without a court order and prohibited family visits.
While in detention, arrested individuals were made to face “former rebels” who tried to coerce them into recanting and working for the state. Authorities also used the families of those arrested and detained to pressure the detained relatives to “surrender.”
Arrest for standing up for land rights. Police arrested five members of the Samahan ng Magsasaka at Mangingisda sa Barangay Taltal (SAMMBAT, Association of Farmers and Fishers of Barangay Taltal) when they opposed the demolition of houses on the 32-hectare land in Sitio Togue, Barangay Taltal, Masinloc, Zambales on June 19.
Led by Sheriff Roy Mendones of the Provincial Sheriff’s office, along with around 70 police officers and SWAT personnel, the demolition team stormed the community. The police detained SAMMBAT spokesperson Neil Edward Geroca, secretary Claire Elfalan, and members Elmer Nollas, Elmer Madarang, and Alex Mose. They secured their release after several days of posting bail.
Arrest of anti-demolition barricaders. Police arrested four residents of Mayhaligue Street in Barangay 262 and 264 in Zone 24, Tondo, Manila for barricading against the demolition of the community on May 26. Residents asserted that the demolition had no legal basis and violated their rights.
The case of the Agusan 8. Elements of the 66th IB, 67th IB, and the police arrested 11 individuals at a checkpoint in Bunawan, Agusan del Sur on the night of June 13. Charisse Bernadine Bañez, Ronnie Igloria, Louvaine Erika Espina, Sinag Lugsi, Larry Montero, Daryl Man-Inday, Arjie Guino Dadizon, Grace Niknik Man-aning, Leo Taba, and two drivers were traveling from Monkayo, Davao De Oro when they were stopped at the checkpoint. According to the group’s report, police forced them out and made them lie prone on the road for hours.
The victims stated that the state forces had no reason to arrest them. They asserted that the charges were fabricated and that authorities only planted firearms and explosives supposedly found in their possession. The military and police searched the vehicle without a warrant, confiscated their belongings, allowed the group to stand up only after two hours, then claimed to have found weapons and explosives. They were taken to the police station in Bunawan.
On the morning of June 14, the victims discovered that Taba and the two drivers were missing from their group. That same day, soldiers also prevented paralegals and human rights groups from approaching or talking to the detainees.
Delayed release. The report’s coverage recorded cases of deliberately prolonged and delayed processing of documents and papers which prevented the immediate release of political prisoners. One such case was that of Rey Irvine Malaborbor.
On June 23, Malaborbor was scheduled for release after six years in prison when personnel from Metro Manila District Jail Annex 4 (MMDJ4) blocked his release and returned him to jail. The jail staff said that a subpoena arrived for Malaborbor for an arson case that allegedly occurred in 2019 in Mindoro. The subpoena did not even bear Malaborbor’s name.
Malaborbor is an activist and member of the Katipunan ng mga Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan (Kasama-TK, Federation of Peasant Associations in Southern Tagalog). The 76th IB elements arrested and charged him with fabricated cases of illegal possession of firearms and murder on July 27, 2019 in Santa Cruz, Occidental Mindoro. He was also accused of being a New People’s Army member.
Malaborbor only gained full release from jail during the first week of July.
5 years of the Anti-Terrorism Act. With the implementation of the repressive Anti-Terrorism Act and the related law against “terrorism financing,” Karapatan records show 227 individuals were charged, while 34 were arbitrarily designated as “terrorists” by the Anti-Terrorism Council.
Of those charged, 30 remain in jail. One documented victim was convicted through a plea bargain with the state. This victim faced 55 counts of involvement in “terrorist financing.”
Attacks at the height of the midterm elections. Patriotic and democratic candidates who ran in the May midterm elections faced relentless attacks. Senators and party-list candidates from the Makabayan Coalition, as well as local candidates, became targets of blatant repression in the form of Red-tagging, surveillance, and threats. Even Makabayan’s supporters were not spared from this repression.
Vote Report PH data indicate that these comprised 4.83% of the total 6,064 reports of rights violations and anomalies during the election. The most serious among these was the abduction and subsequent detention of a Bayan Muna Party-list campaigner in Batangas.
The 59th IB abducted Pauline Joy Banjawan on April 26. Human rights groups traced her on April 28 at the police station in Santo Tomas, Batangas. The groups learned that before authorities brought her to PNP-Santo Tomas at 9 p.m. on April 27, she had already experienced physical and mental torture at the hands of the 59th IB. She was then charged with a criminal case to justify detention.
AB also recorded 17 abduction victims over the past year. There were cases in Isabela, Rizal, Batangas, Sorsogon, Masbate, Negros Oriental and Occidental, and Agusan del Sur. State forces surfaced some of these victims, while the military presented others dead. The authorities claimed they died in encounters.
Among those surfaced alive, some were charged with fabricated cases and detained. Others remained in military custody and were presented as “surrenderees.”
AB also recorded at least 891 victims of threats, harassment, and intimidation. This number is significantly higher if one includes the thousands of individuals paraded and forcibly “surrendered” by the military as NPA members or supporters in both urban and rural areas. In forced “surrender” cases, the military often used aid distribution as an opportunity to take photos of residents and then claim that they had “surrendered.”
Military terror in communities
In their desperate goal to “crush” the New People’s Army in the countryside, or supposedly “prevent their return,” AFP and PNP combat operations scour many rural communities. Battalions of military and police forces continue to occupy numerous communities of peasants and national minorities.
AB recorded at least 2,060 victims of forced eviction and displacement. Imposed harsh food and economic blockades affected up to 171,066 residents. The records include nine incidents of aerial bombing, strafing, and encirclement.
Bombing in Mindoro. The 203rd IBde conducted aerial strafing and bombing in Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro on March 1. The attack terrorized farming and Mangyan-Hanunuo communities.
Residents reported that the first wave of aerial gunfire from two blackhawk helicopters occurred at 10 a.m. in Sitio Lomboy, Barangay Panaytayan. The helicopters returned at around 2:30 p.m. and dropped four bombs while relentlessly strafing the adjacent sitios of Lomboy, Abaka, and Matarayo.
The executioners carried out aerial terrorism after the 4th IB’s fabricated battle with NPA-Mindoro. No NPA-Mindoro units were present in that area on that day.
The bombing also affected other nearby communities of Buol, Amaga, Tangkulang, Salay, and Proper, all under Barangay Panaytayan, as well as the sitios of Puyuhan and Badi under neighboring Barangay Teresita.
The bombing in Mansalay followed aerial strafing and bombing in the town of Pola on February 19.
Strafing in Bukidnon. The 88th IB rained bullets on civilians in Sitio Bendum, Barangay Busdi, Malaybalay City, Bukidnon on April 19. One civilian sustained critical wounds and was rushed to the hospital. The civilians were only searching for agarwood when soldiers allegedly misidentified them as New People’s Army members.
US war games’ devastation on livelihoods. The imposition of “no-sail zones” by the local government and US troops directly affected the livelihoods of fisherfolk to pave the way for war games and live-fire exercises. Authorities implemented this in April and May in towns of Ilocos, Zambales, and Cagayan, reportedly impacting at least 28,000 fisherfolk. This constitutes food and economic blockade which violates human rights..
Justice!
The Filipino people collectively clamor for justice for all human rights violations victims under the US-Marcos regime. Various forms of expression and struggle broke out over the past year to give voice to victims and their families.
Groups and victims of the war on drugs tirelessly demand Rodrigo Duterte to be held accountable for his crimes against humanity. They welcomed the International Criminal Court’s arrest and detention of Duterte on charges of crimes against humanity on March 11. The victims resolutely stand against the Dutertes’ attempts and maneuvers to allow and grant him interim release. They are also strengthening the call for the Philippines to rejoin the ICC.
Human rights groups also conducted fact-finding missions as a form of resistance and call for justice. In Mindoro, various groups, including Karapatan-Southern Tagalog, bravely confronted and resisted the 203rd IBde’s military harassment and violence that tried to prevent them from conducting a fact-finding mission on the island from February 23 to March 1.
The team specifically visited the municipalities of Pola, Bulalacao, and Mansalay in Oriental Mindoro which generated reports of a series of human rights violations following encounters between the 203rd IBde and the NPA-Mindoro in February. Upon arrival on the island, undeclared martial law was already imposed in these barangays.
Through continuous campaigns and perseverance of families and lawyers, several political detainees won their release due to lack of evidence from fabricated charges filed against them.
These include the release of organizers from Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay), John Griefen Arlegui and Anakbayan’s Reynaldo Viernes, on February 4 after more than six years in prison. Lumad rights defenders Julieta Gomez and Niezel Velasco also walked free on April 8 after four years.
Strikes and collective actions by workers and unions demanding wage increases, workplace rights, and to win new collective bargaining agreements (CBA) also gained prominence last year. Notable actions include strikes by workers and unions of Nexperia Philippines Inc and Kawasaki Philippines.
People and human rights defenders continue their militant struggle to relentlessly fight the Marcos regime’s brutal rule. From legal and extra-legal efforts to armed actions by the New People’s Army, the people are determined to fight to defend their rights and achieve justice. They expose, criticize, and hold Marcos accountable for policies of repression and state terrorism.
Introduction After three years of bloody rule, the Marcos regime is now further intensifying its fascist repression of the Filipino people. Bloodshed and increasing cases of human rights violations in the name of counterinsurgency continue.
"After three years of bloody rule, the Marcos regime is now further intensifying its fascist repression of the Filipino people. Bloodshed and increasing cases of human rights violations in the…"
[Former congressman Walsh] added: “Trump’s legacy is the destruction of truth. He lies as he breathes and his lies to his supporters have made him popular among his supporters, so it’s beautiful that he may actually be crucified on one of his lies.”
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A September 2015 conference worthy of attention today: “Germany's new Ostpolitik and Russia: from strategic partnership to geopolitical competition?” gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p…
I am presently going through 10 linear feet of file folders containing documents that I plan to process into Volume 3 of my memoirs for publication at year’s end.
Linux users who have Secure Boot enabled on their systems knowingly or unknowingly rely on a key from Microsoft that is set to expire in September. After that point, Microsoft will no longer use that key to sign the shim first-stage UEFI bootloader that is used by Linux distributions to boot the kernel with Secure Boot. But the replacement key, which has been available since 2023, may not be installed on many systems; worse yet, it may require the hardware vendor to issue an update for the system firmware, which may or may not happen. It seems that the vast majority of systems will not be lost in the shuffle, but it may require extra work from distributors and users.
Small companies which use old laptops with Windows might be bitten hard by this because they can become locked out of their hardware with no way to update it, or even make a backup!
And by the way, Intel motherboards which are running your Linux system may contain a copy of Minix - yes, the Minix from the historic Tanenbaum vs. Torvalds debate - which runs below the OS in the system management mode engine and is controlled by the vendor, which can e.g. update firmware via the network. SMM is normally not visible by the user but it can cause problems e.g. for real-time applications because it has higher privileges than the kernel and can interrupt all of the kernel at any time.
Are you reading this on a machine running a GNU/Linux distribution? A Windows machine? Or perhaps an Apple OS? It doesn’t really matter, because your computer is probably running MINIX anyway…
For a home desktop that's never left unattended with anyone untrustworthy, I don't see that Secure Boot is worth the effort in setting up.
Given that you have to re-sign the boot image every time you upgrade, any malware already running with root privileges on the machine could easily slip itself into the new signed image.
The best security is not running untrusted software to begin with.
Can you explain the detailed reason why you think that? Voicing opinions is nice of course but explaining the thought process and logic is, I think, almost always more interesting to other people.
To start with, what do you think is the "normal users" threath model? And, for example, if one happens to be a member of any of the various minorities that authoritarian governments of every color happen to single out and persecute in your countries case, what would you want to protect from? Or if you are, say, a lawyer, and have a professional obligation to protect sensitive data from theft?
Actually, I would love for you to explain to me how Secure Boot alone would protect someone from any of that. If you want to protect files, you need full disk encryption, not Secure Boot.
Or are you seriously expecting a government-level threat actor to bother to:
Sneak into your home while you're away or asleep;
Overwrite your bootloader or UEFI with a rootkitted image of the same version so it's impossible to tell;
Wait for you to boot your computer and enter your disk encryption password, then:
Use the rootkit to read the decrypted files off your disk?
That's the great thing about fascist governments, is they have no need to be that sneaky. They can just change the laws to make whatever you're doing illegal and jail you until you agree to give up your documents, or simply hit you with a $5 wrench until you tell them the password.
Secure Boot is a really contrived and, frankly, bad defense against an attack that is extremely difficult to execute in reality and does not happen often (are there any examples of a bootloader replacement against a home desktop in the wild?).
An actually good solution would be firmware support for LUKS-style FDE (with a password-encrypted key which then encrypts the rest of the disk), so that your bootloader is encrypted with the rest of your system and impossible to substitute without erasing the rest of the disk, until you enter the password. This way there's no need for key enrolment into firmware, and firmware manufacturers don't have to just trust MS. (the firmware of course needs to be protected too, by signing it with the manufacturer's key; if you flash something unsigned, a warning pops up Android-style before every boot).
If you are hiding something from the state (like your sexual orientation or something), your energy is much better spent encrypting your communications online and keeping your identities anonymous. If you are already suspicious enough to try and pull a bootloader replacement attack on you, any authoritarian state which would do that in the first place will just throw you in jail and fabricate evidence as needed.
If secure boot is off, and you run malware on your pc, it can change the boot process to escalate privileges.
This probably requires root or admin in the first place, but if they can install a malware loader, they can establish persistence so that even if you remove the os-level components, they'll be reinstalled on reboot.
Yeah, but the malware can just wait for a system upgrade where you sign a new boot image and slip itself in then.
It works for Windows because theoretically only Microsoft would have the signing key and it's not just sitting on disk somewhere. But then you're just trusting Microsoft, and also subject to vendor lock-in.
If secure boot is off, and you run malware on your pc, it can change the boot process to escalate privileges.
This is technically correct, but on a desktop system, malware executing in user space is normally already game over. It can exfiltrate and send your passwords or ssh private keys, change browser certificates or browser software, add user systemd sessions or crontab entries and can generally e.g. do everything a banking trojan would like to do.
As commenters on the LWN thread said, I doubt that many firmwares even bother to check anyway. My motherboard happens to have had a bug where you can corrupt the RTC and end up in 2031 if you overclock it wrong. I didn't use secure boot then though so I don't know if it would have still booted Windows. But I imagine it would.
That said, I've always just enrolled my own keys. I know some other distros that make you enroll their keys as well like Bazzite. At least that way you don't depend on Microsoft's keys and shim or anything, clean proper secure boot straight into UKI.
As commenters on the LWN thread said, I doubt that many firmwares even bother to check anyway. My motherboard happens to have had a bug where you can corrupt the RTC and end up in 2031 if you overclock it wrong.
Seems it compares the expiration date of the UEFI key with the signature date of the bootloader / OS keys. (See the comments on the LWN article, some are far more knowledgeable than I am.) So, no, it does not require a working on-board clock to lock you out if you are not extremely careful and fully understand each part.
That does not help if the master key in the key chain is expired.
Sure you can disable Secure Boot. But a password-protected BIOS is secured by TPM again. High levels of security always carry a risk of locking oneself out.
I don't think you understand what "enrolling your own keys" means in the context of Secure Boot.
The key affected here is specifically for the Linux shim signed by Microsoft. It is used by GRUB and some distros to work with Secure Boot.
Enrolling your own key means you add a new certificate to the key store. This is completely separate from the one provided by Microsoft and controlled only by you. The common recommendation is to remove all built-in keys and only add your own, to make this system as secure as possible.
OK, now you are talking about something a bit different - registering own keys in the UEFI system, which is significantly more involved than updating the BIOS, and also requires firmware support, and the firmware also needs to match the motherboard. And the whole issue with ACPI support for Linux shows clearly that having reams of specufications is not enough, the implementation of the BIOS needs to match that specification which whether thsz's the case you will only learn after you bought the hardware.
That said, I've always just enrolled my own keys. I know some other distros that make you enroll their keys as well like Bazzite. At least that way you don't depend on Microsoft's keys and shim or anything, clean proper secure boot straight into UKI.
I didn't start talking about it, this was many comments above
At least that way you don't depend on Microsoft's keys and shim or anything,
The whole point of the article is that you do depend on their expired root key. You have produced a lot of text without even understanding the key issue. At that point I am wondering whether all that text was produced by an LLM?
I don't know that you've understood the issue either, and you're being kind of a jerk? My understanding is this mainly affects installation media. If you disable Secure Boot, install a Linux distro, enrol that distro's keys and then reenable it, you're fine. That seems to be what the commenter you're replying too is suggesting.
Please don't troll and come back to the topic. GP was completely missing the topic, do you want to avoid it?
. If you disable Secure Boot, install a Linux distro, enrol that distro's keys and then reenable it, you're fine.
Um, given that Secure Boot prevents any modification of your computer's boot chain - including installing another boot loader or OS - that's not how it works.
I'm not trolling, you called them an LLM, they clearly aren't, you're being a jerk. I'm not going to engage with someone who thinks they're the smartest person in the room.
That's the whole point of enrolling your own keys in the firmware. You can even wipe the Microsoft keys if you want. You do that from the firmware setup, or within any OS while secure boot is off (such as sbctl on Linux).
That's a feature that is explicitly part of the spec. The expectation is you password protect the BIOS to make sure unauthorized users can't just wipe your keys. But also most importantly that's all measured by the TPM so the OS knows the boot chain is bad and can bail, and the TPM also won't unwrap BitLocker/LUKS keys either.
Secure boot is to prevent unauthorized tampering of the boot chain. It doesn't enforce that the computer will only ever boot Microsoft-approved software, that's a massive liability for an antitrust lawsuit.
That is far more complex than a firmware update and also depends on a correct implementation of the spec in the BIOS - which, given the experiences with ACPI for Linux, is not at all something one can rely on.
I just tried to distro-hop and found my BIOS had been locked with a password. Assuming I didn't set a password that I subsequently forgot (and that isn't one of the many I have memorized), I figured this might have something to do with the age of the laptop (I have a HP 4540s). If certificate expiration is already affecting people then this might be it.
EDIT: I just forgot I set a password, and it took me 2 days to realize that I was stupid enough to have set the password that I used for everything when I was 12 years old.
You can self-sign and self-enroll secure boot keys. Can’t say it’s an easy process, though - I had a lot of misery with it on my Surface Go 1st Gen. Might be better on my Thinkpad.
Microsoft's keys are pre-installed to all motherboards, so boot binaries signed by Microsoft are trusted by default. afaik Microsoft keys often can't be removed, but not because it's not possible, but because it can brick devices. you can create your own MOK or Machine Owner Keys and set up your linux system to sign your bootloader and kernel with it, but that is in addition to Microsoft keys.
That's bullshit. ARM is an architecture and by itself does not specify secure boot any more than x86 does. Raspberry Pis don't have secure boot. You can unlock the bootloader on a Pixel, install GrapheneOS, and relock the bootloader just fine. Several other manufacturers allow bootloader unlocks no problem. The main reason you can't on some popular phones is US carriers, even international Samsungs you can unlock the bootloader and flash whatever you want on it.
I'm literally typing this comment on a phone running a custom OS (LineageOS on a OnePlus 8T). I'm literally 2 versions of Android ahead of the latest supported version. I also have a Galaxy S7 running Android 15, a phone that officially tops out at Android 8 and launched with Android 6. Both you literally just toggle the bootloader unlock option in the settings, no hacks no craziness, it's literally a feature.
At this point you're just straight up making shit up.
The only one I can't find for sure is whether there's any lockdown on the firmware for the Microsoft Surface and Copilot+ laptops, but I'm also not finding any sources pointing that it would be. But at this point you're buying Microsoft hardware, what do you expect.
Some people argue that one can work around such locking down of PC hardware. Do this or that to avoid issues with substantial tinkering.
But that is not a bug but a feature. Sure, as a technical Linux user you can work around some nastiness. Like working around privacy invasion on Facebook or Linkedin by "adjusting" settings, or "adjust" settings in Wimdows to make it more private and so on. The thing is: working against the platform becomes quickly a losing game, because you don't control the platform - Microsoft does. And it does not help you if you manage to re-gain control of your device after some hours of tinkering if 99.9% of people around you don't have the knowledge and time and store your data, photos, Emails on OneDrive and so on. Freedom is very much a collective thing and software freedom is no exception.
And this does not mean that the thinkering and hacking is in vain - but it is not enough. We need the practical right to control our devices.
By effectively erecting a shield around Israel, Iron Dome and other defense systems grant Israel the impunity to act without restraint. That doesn't save lives, it takes them away by the thousands.
Also I found a copycat of Graphene OS on the arell.ai domain. Do Not Follow GrapheneOS@mastodon.arell.ai as it's fake. The real Graphene OS is GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social: disabled.social/@Aaidanbird/11…
@Linux@mastodon.au @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Yep, that's the way. I have the whole domain blocked. We even got them to take down their Digital Ocean droplet because it is no longer resolving.
according to my pihole it pulls 9.9.9.9#53 from it but it goes nowhere and ends up getting no data amd browsers get dns_probe_finished_nxdomain not showing anything
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Recently I highlighted that the Nintendo 3DS emulator Citra was doing a big move over to Vulkan, giving it a modern rendering system to keep on pushing performance. The latest updates also give a big boost for Linux / Steam Deck.
Did you know that there is not only Matt Godbolt's Compiler Explorer at godbolt.org, but also a Decompiler Explorer, appropriately named dogbolt.org, which compares the output of Ghidra, BinaryNinja, IDA and other decompilers?
@Iffine the devs are the guys who made basically every Nintendo Picross game so naturally it is good. Once you clear it you can get more from their own IP picross game Logiart Grimoire
I actually picked up Logiart Grimoire back when it was listed as early access on steam. Definitely a solid title though I do prefer picross games with more focused themes.
A secret, religious arbitration between two Israeli businessmen reveals that they had 'invested' as much as $25 million in President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico.
into the light of the night you take me baby over the dark you excite, lady under the moon make me cry together in the sunlight forever you wake me up tonight
Nextcloud Integration v0.3 Tool • Open WebUI Community - With this tool, you can access your Nextcloud, list your calendars, create events, and review your files. It's an early experiment.
Saying you support funding Israel's "defensive weapons" while opposing sending it "offensive weapons" is as nonsensical as saying you would never give a mass shooter guns and ammunition, but you would give him body armor to keep him safe from the police.
Experience the heartfelt emotion of Avril Lavigne's "When You're Gone," a touching ballad from her album "The Best Damn Thing." This poignant track beautifully captures the feelings of loss and longing, showcasing Avril's powerful vocals and songwriting talent. Dive into the depth of this song that resonates with anyone who has experienced separation.
🎵 L Y R I C S 🎵: I always needed time on my own I never thought I'd need you there when I cry And the days feel like years when I'm alone And the bed where you lie is made up on your side
When you walk away, I count the steps that you take Do you see how much I need you right now?
When you're gone, the pieces of my heart are missing you When you're gone, the face I came to know is missing too When you're gone, the words I need to hear To always get me through the day And make it okay I miss you
I've never felt this way before Everything that I do reminds me of you And the clothes you left, they lie on the floor And they smell just like you I love the things that you do
When you walk away, I count the steps that you take Do you see how much I need you right now?
When you're gone, the pieces of my heart are missing you When you're gone, the face I came to know is missing too And when you're gone, the words I need to hear To always get me through the day And make it okay I miss you
We were made for each other Out here forever I know we were, yeah-yeah And all I ever wanted was for you to know Everything I do, I give my heart and soul I can hardly breathe, I need to feel you here with me, yeah
When you're gone, the pieces of my heart are missing you When you're gone, the face I came to know is missing too When you're gone, the words I need to hear Will always get me through the day And make it okay I miss you, mmm
Album Artist: Avril Ramona Lavigne Album(s): The Best Damn Thing Written by: Avril Lavigne, Butch Walker Music genre(s): Pop, Rock Released: 2007 Decade for first release: #2000sMusic
Get ready to turn up the heat with Avril Lavigne's "Hot," a vibrant anthem from her album "The Best Damn Thing." This energetic track showcases Avril's playful side and catchy pop-rock sound, making it a fan favourite. Dive into the fun and excitement of this song that perfectly captures the essence of youthful exuberance.
🎵 L Y R I C S 🎵: Oh, oh, oh You're so good to me baby, baby
I wanna lock you up in my closet When no one's around I wanna put your hand in my pocket Because you're allowed I wanna drive you into the corner And kiss you without a sound I wanna stay this way forever I'll say it loud
Now you're in, and you can't get out
You make me so hot Make me wanna drop It's so ridiculous I can barely stop I can hardly breathe You make me wanna scream You're so fabulous You're so good to me baby, baby You're so good to me baby, baby
I can make you feel all better Just take it in And I can show you all the places You've never been And I can make you say everything That you've never said And I will let you do anything Again and again
Now you're in, and you can't get out
You make me so hot Make me wanna drop It's so ridiculous I can barely stop I can hardly breathe You make me wanna scream You're so fabulous You're so good to me baby, baby You're so good to me baby, baby
Kiss me gently Always I know Hold me, love me Don't ever go Oh, yeah yeah
You make me so hot Make me wanna drop You're so ridiculous I can barely stop I can hardly breathe You make me wanna scream You're so fabulous You're so good to me
You make me so hot Make me wanna drop You're so ridiculous I can barely stop I can hardly breathe You make me wanna scream You're so fabulous You're so good to me baby, baby You're so good to me baby, baby
You're so good
Album Artist: Avril Ramona Lavigne Album(s): The Best Damn Thing Written by: Avril Lavigne, Evan Taubenfeld Music genre(s): Pop, Rock Released: 2007 Decade for first release: #2000sMusic
Provided to YouTube by The Orchard EnterprisesListen To The Blues · Isaac ScottBig Time Blues Man℗ 2006 Red Lightnin RecordsReleased on: 2006-12-12Auto-gener...
Provided to YouTube by Malaco RecordsA Right To Sing The Blues · Little MiltonReality℗ 1991 Malaco Records, Inc.Released on: 1991-06-20Contributor: Milton Ca...
Silence Screams: The Zionist-Washington Empire Unveils Technocratic Blueprint for War & Escalates Domestic Surveillance thealtworld.substack.com/p/sil…
Vanessa Beeley- Syria's Fall Into Israeli Hands, US-Zionist Entity Targets Hezbollah, Abraham Shields Forges On, Trump's Big Beautiful Bill Points To War With Iran, Russia, China & Warrantless Surveil
I love that there's more noticers around but fuck me, I hate having to explain 50 times that the word "berg" being in a Germanic name doesn't make someone a jew, espesially when THIS is who's being talked about
Lyrics: I'm standing on the bridge I'm waiting in the dark I thought that you'd be here by now There's nothing but the rain No footsteps on the ground I'm listening but there's no sound
Isn't anyone trying to find me? Won't somebody come take me home?
It's a damn cold night Tryin' to figure out this life Won't you take me by the hand Take me somewhere new? I don't know who you are, but I I'm with you I'm with you, mm
I'm looking for a place I'm searching for a face Is anybody here I know? 'Cause nothing's going right And everything's a mess And no one likes to be alone
Isn't anyone trying to find me? Won't somebody come take me home?
It's a damn cold night Trying to figure out this life Won't you take me by the hand Take me somewhere new? I don't know who you are, but I I'm with you I'm with you, yeah-yeah
Oh, why is everything so confusing? Maybe I'm just out of my mind Yeah-yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah Yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah
It's a damn cold night Trying to figure out this life Won't you take me by the hand Take me somewhere new? I don't know who you are, but I I'm with you I'm with you
Take me by the hand Take me somewhere new I don't know who you are, but I I'm with you I'm with you
Take me by the hand Take me somewhere new I don't know who you are, but I I'm with you, oh I'm with you I'm with you
Avril Ramona Lavigne is a Canadian singer-songwriter. Body shape: Banana Dress size (US): 2 Breasts-Waist-Hips: 86-60-86 cm (34-24-34 inches) Shoe size (US): 7 Bra size: 32B Cup size (US): B Heig...
TEHRAN, Jul. 19 (MNA) – Yemen’s military says it successfully targeted Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport with a hypersonic “Palestine-2” missile, prompting mass evacuations and flight suspensions.
I'm going to hold your hand when I say this. I don't give a fuck whether immigrants "came here literally" or not.
We live in a country run by billionaire pedos who are actively burning the planet to the ground for a few more dollars and pulling us all down into actual fucking fascism but somehow I'm supposed to care about Juan the gardener and his wife Maria who makes the absolute best fucking homemade empanadas I've ever eaten in my life and whether they filed form M-725-E before or after crossing an imaginary line in the sand?
Join the official CCR email list: http://found.ee/CCR_NewsletterMusic video by Creedence Clearwater Revival performing Born On The Bayou. (C) 2012 Concord Mu...
Pars Today – The Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to China has stated that Iran's active diplomacy is moving forward with a powerful strategic ap...
Then he brought in a toy to play with on top of the duvet, instead of burrowing inside. Somehow I got more scratched up the last 20 minutes in bed than the previous 12 hours.
@ninapaleyNext time he's on top of the covers - get in the blanket and move your foot around under the blanket or wiggle your hand from underneath...that will absolutely rock his world! 😊
@FemaleIsNotAFeelingMomo was apparently played with like that as a kitten. He thinks feet under covers=toys. He’s usually gentle but has attacked and wounded my feet. So I’m not gonna play this game with the new kitten, despite how entertaining it is.
If you only read one article today, make it this one.
Excerpt: The biggest problem with removing evil from American culture and what’s left of our civilization is, quite frankly, the Democratic Party. Their mantra calls evil good, and good evil, and it is imperative, for them, that they have as much human depravity as possible. That is the source of their political power. townhall.com/columnists/markle…
Make sure to download Opera for free using my link: https://opr.as/Opera-browser-mattstonieVideo sponsored by: OpreaWe tasted & ranked Every Single Gordon Ra...
US President Donald Trump sues the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion over its reporting on a 2003 birthday letter that Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein.
Link to play: https://gamaverse.com/underwheels-game/Underwheels is a parody game based on the Asgore meme. Get behind the wheel as Asgore Dreemurr himself a...
Over a year ago, I posited that AI coding stuff isn't about coding or productivity. It's about some % of people who feel a stimulus-reward thing from using it, similar to how some people feel when gambling. It feels so overwhelmingly good to some % of people they don't even bother to measure if their AI stuff is actually doing anything useful, because of course it must be, because the feeling is so strong.
It seems more & more people are also finding this idea lately.
But I've also realized that it seems to apply to any of the prompt-style AI things, not just coding. There is some kind of slot machine playing mania (sorta, not exactly) thing it triggers in some % of people. I'm certain of it now.
If anything, it makes me feel a bit less angry and more sad towards the people with this AI prompt-query compulsion. It feels closer to when you see someone with a gambling addiction stuck at a gambling machine.
I've been pretty staunchly opposed to this wave of gen-AI since chatGPT launched in 2022, and never intentionally touched it until three months ago, when I finally felt like I needed to spend at least a little bit of time with it to understand/prove what I was opposed to. it almost *immediately* triggered an addiction response (of the gambling category, as you pointed out), to the point where within a week I could barely sleep, and all I could think about was prompting, explicitly like I needed to be using it 24/7 and trying to figure out the right way to extract quality output from it, under this sudden manufactured feeling of urgency.
luckily, i got burnt out on it pretty "quickly" (roughly a month) which forced me to step back, and had lived long enough to be able to identify what this cycle was. It was also tremendously helpful to both have had a long critical perspective built against the tech that I had now tested against, and a really high bar of personal work quality that I was able to use to categorize that output of these tools as "complete shit".
it's wild to me that as someone who was pretty publicly and vocally against the principle of the tech, this addiction loop still hit me at full force, on the very first prompt I ever fed it. for people without the life experience, critical lens, and body of high quality personal work to measure against, I can't imagine how many could possibly escape from the slot machine cycle. "if I can just figure out exactly how to word this prompt, it'll solve all my problems...". I wonder how those who do escape don't talk about it publicly out of shame (me, until this post).
the silver lining for me personally is that it did end up having some kind of positive effect on how I approach my work. reading through so much slop for a month re-lit a fire within me to be even more intentional and human in my work, whether through writing or code.
Me, I have next to no susceptibility to gambling-- for one thing, I understand too much about math, the odds of winning are so low the whole thing strikes me as contemptibly absurd-- and for another, I'm a digital artist so gut-wrenched by the uncanny valley effect of putting other people's work through a meat grinder and regurgitating it into a shambling frankenitation of art that it makes me feel physically ill, so I haven't even touched it. I've just been sitting here mystified like WHY EVEN...
If that's the type of effect it's having on people who aren't wired like me... good gawd, we're in deep shit.
Scott D Hansen
in reply to DangerRanger05 • • •