November 2025

The Global Sumud Flotilla [30 August – 2 October, 2025], consisting of over 40 vessels with 500 participants from more than 44 countries, was the first unauthorized naval humanitarian mission to come within 70 nautical miles (130 km) of the Gaza coast since the imposition of the Israeli blockade in 2009.

The attempt to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip was prevented by Israeli naval forces, which captured and detained the activists including climate activist Greta Thunberg. Most have now been deported. After her release from Israeli detention, Greta Thunberg spoke publicly for the first time on 7 October. Below are excerpts from her speech.

“Do not let me and other volunteers on the flotilla be a distraction. The global flotilla is about solidarity with Palestinians, international solidarity. And what Israel did was not mainly to illegally abduct us in international waters and abuse us in prison, but it was that it stopped a humanitarian mission, and violated international law by preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, [with] a population that is being systematically starved by Israel. This is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law and maritime law.

I also want to make it very clear that our imprisonment by Israel is a direct result of our governments’ inaction. They keep talking about the importance of upholding human rights and international law, and to get aid into Gaza. Then, when we do their job by trying to do just that, while being completely peaceful and abiding by international law, they fail to ensure our safety.

This mission should not have to exist. It is a last resort when all means fall short, and when those in power fail to step up and do the bare minimum. States have a legal obligation to end their complicity in genocide, which the UN Commission now also has confirmed …. Israel does not have immunity from international law, even though it might seem like it from their genocidal propaganda.

… Terrorism is defined as the calculated act of using violence to incite fear in a population for political control. Is that really what this peaceful humanitarian mission carrying food, medicine and baby formula in line with international law was doing? One can really [only] ask who the real terrorist is here.

I stand by what I have said and have stood for since I became an activist at the age of thirteen. I will continue to fight for a free world, a world free of all forms of oppression and racism, where we put human and planetary well-being over short term economic profit and geopolitical control for a few. That might sound naive, but I would any day choose being seen as naive over having double standards and not doing anything in the face of injustice.

I urge everyone to join the global uprising for justice, freedom and equality, and to apply real pressure on our governments and institutions to fulfil their legal obligations to ensure human rights for everyone.

We have truth, morale, international law, justice, love, history and solidarity of the world as well as basic common sense on our side. The war criminals have hate, lies and weapons.

Justice will prevail. Free Palestine.”

(Source: youtube.com)

Muhammad Yunus begins by noting that our current economic and political systems are deeply flawed because they are rooted in a form of capitalism where, as he puts it, “…selfishness is not even a problem; it is, in fact, the highest virtue of Capitalist Man.” The core belief is that profit above all else is the one and only driver of economic progress, and all our systems are therefore very specifically designed to reward selfishness, greed, and exploitation. The inevitable outcome is the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands and the disenfranchisement of an ever-growing majority of humanity.

Yunus points out that this approach is doomed to failure, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that this premise is simply not true. While many people are indeed largely motivated by profit motives, another human drive which is at least as strong is that of altruism and the desire to have a positive impact on our fellow human beings. Our financial structures must be reorganized with this understanding integrated into them as a fundamental principle.

Driven to address the scourge of poverty in his home country of Bangladesh, beginning in the mid-1970s, Yunus began exploring, implementing, and perfecting a system of solutions to address it that literally turns our current dysfunctional brand of capitalism on its head. On discovering that it was nearly impossible for those at the bottom of the economic ladder to obtain financial assistance, he began educating himself on the workings of the banking and financial industry, and in every case, he did the exact opposite of whatever they did. On this basis, he founded Grameen Bank, and the practice of microcredit was born.

Whereas conventional banks operate mainly in large cities, owned and operated by rich people, loaning mainly to men on the basis of collateral, with strict legal agreements drawn up by lawyers, Grameen is owned and operated mostly by the poor women in small villages who are its main customers. Yunus further notes that “Grameen Bank is collateral free and lawyer free.” Conventional banks deal in large loans to finance big business investments. Grameen Bank offers loans as small as US$40 to $50 to enable recipients to begin or expand small businesses in their local villages.

Grameen also implemented a reliable support system for their borrowers that helped guarantee their success, which also included groups of five borrowers meeting regularly to offer support, advice, and encouragement to one another. The repayment rate of Grameen loans is around 99%, far higher than with conventional banking. The same model of microcredit lending — small loans to those at the bottom of the economic ladder, with a strong support system — has since been successfully implemented in countries throughout the world, including in Western developed countries such as the United States, with nearly identical success rates.

In the process of providing banking for the poor, Yunus became aware of other problems of the poor, and he began addressing them, one at a time, in each case by creating a new business devoted solely to solving a given problem. Eventually he realized that his “experiments had led to the creation of a new type of business,” which he called a ‘social business’. He defined a social business as “a no dividend company dedicated to solving human problems”. Rather than the main point being to generate a profit, the objective of a social business is to form a self-sustaining venture to address some pressing social problem.

He found the business model worked well, since generating an income allowed the enterprise to maintain its viability, while in some cases also providing a livelihood for those engaged in operating the business. Investors in the business were able to recoup their initial investment, but not derive a profit from it. (They were and are motivated by altruism rather than profit.) Any additional funds would go back into the operation or expansion of the business so that it could continue its work of social good. Grameen Bank itself was the first example of a social business.

Since Yunus began speaking on and spreading the idea of social businesses, “the concept has gone from an obscure idea exemplified by just a handful of companies in Bangladesh into a worldwide movement, with advocates and practitioners all over the planet.” At the heart of social businesses are individual entrepreneurs with a passion for social good in some specific direction. “Universities are opening social business centers where the idea is being studied, developed, and taught.” Young people are becoming inspired by the idea, and “launching entrepreneurial social business ventures to tackle social problems in their own communities.”

To encourage such businesses, Yunus and his colleagues set up a social business to help launch other social businesses. They established funds to provide ‘seed’ money to assist aspiring entrepreneurs, as well as offering expert coaching and guidance, helping to move them in successful directions. Yunus explains: “To participate in the Nobin Udyokta (New Entrepreneurs) program that we created in Bangladesh — most often referred to, simply, as the Nobin program — all that a young person must do is come up with a business idea.”

Yunus notes that “Like Grameen Bank, the Nobin program has developed a robust methodology. It can be applied in any country, any corner of any city, any village, or any community. It is self-contained and financially self-reliant. It can be applied wherever unemployment or underemployment exists…”

Similar to the unconventional approach taken with Grameen Bank, this ‘bottom up’, small-entrepreneur-focused business model turns conventional capitalism upside down. Yunus believes that human beings are natural-born, creative entrepreneurs, and challenges the idea that big businesses are the only viable source of job creation. He asserts that we need to shift this assumption, and his work in this area has proven the viability of a grassroots entrepreneurial model.

Yunus asserts that this can and inevitably will lead to a quantum shift in how we approach the economic field: “Once we replace two basic assumptions of mainstream economic thinking with the new realities revealed by social business, a new, more complete, accurate, and effective counter-economics emerges.” These two assumptions are that selfishness is the only driving force of economic progress, and that nearly everyone must spend their lives working for other people. Once these shifts in thinking have been made more universally, “We can employ social business to tackle ancient maladies like poverty, hunger, disease, environmental degradation and many more.”

The successes with small social businesses internationally have even inspired heads of large multinational corporations to become involved in forming social businesses. Examples include Danone, the food company from France, who partnered with Grameen Bank, using their resources to create a new social business, Grameen Danone Foods, which brings nutritional, affordable yogurt to undernourished children in Bangladesh. Other joint venture social businesses have been established with Intel, BASF, SK Dream, and others, including Veolia, a large water treatment and delivery company that helped bring safe drinking water to villages in Bangladesh.

Yunus makes a strong case for this approach having the potential to move towards his ‘three zeroes’ of zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero net carbon emissions. (Yunus uses the term ‘zero net carbon’ as “a convenient way to refer to the entire range of environmental challenges that our new economic framework must meet”. ) …

I recall Benjamin Creme stating that when we implement the sharing of resources so that everyone is guaranteed access to adequate food, shelter, healthcare, and education, it will unleash the creativity of the untold millions who have until now been forced to focus on mere survival, and that this creative wave will lead to the solving of the world’s problems. Similarly, Yunus says: “If we can turn unemployment into entrepreneurship, the amount of human creativity, talent, and productivity we will unleash is almost beyond measuring.” …

The themes and tropes of fascism — crude but familiar — are exploding across the US, UK, and Europe, as far-right parties gather support from disenchanted and marginalized communities. Violent and divisive, socially poisonous and environmentally destructive, they echo movements that emerged in Europe between the First and Second World Wars — destructive forces that fundamentally reshaped the continent’s political landscape. They pose a grave threat to liberty, freedom and justice, and are symptomatic of our fractured times — of a world divided between the many who long for change and the reactionary forces that violently resist it.

At the core of such movements lie authoritarianism, centralized control, and intolerance — it is the politics of hate and division. The nation and its past are glorified; racism is encouraged — overtly and covertly — while disgust and fear of immigrants are fostered; minorities and LGBTQ+ people are persecuted.

The methodology is plain: emotionally charged disinformation, the erosion of fact, and the systematic dismantling of independent institutions — courts, media, universities and civil society. Human rights are eroded, ignored, and trampled upon; the use of state violence is normalized — from Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts to Trump’s deployment of ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the National Guard.

At the apex of such extreme movements lies the cult of personality: the leader is exalted — by himself principally, and by his followers — portrayed as the one and only saviour of the nation, a figure concerned for ‘the people’, to be loved and obeyed, yet ultimately serving the interests of the ruling elite and corporate power.

Fascism and the far right represent a moral and political darkness; they flourish amid economic suffering, social deprivation, and the erosion of public services. Collective anger and fear follow, creating fertile ground for exploitation; ‘the Other’ becomes the convenient scapegoat, the imagined source of all problems.

As Hannah Arendt observed in The Origins of Totalitarianism, totalitarian movements “make use of the misery and instability of the mass of people and of their atomization into isolated individuals; they appeal to feelings of fear, hatred, and revenge, and they promise a world that is simple, unified, and comprehensible.”

Tactics of Control
This global movement of division is powerfully embodied in the United States under President Trump: authoritarianism is becoming normalized, freedoms of expression, the press, and assembly are under attack, as is freedom in educational institutions, including libraries. Control of information — including ‘book burning’ — is a classic fascist tactic (employed, for example, by the Nazis, in Germany, Franco in Spain, and Mussolini in Italy). And since 2021, around 4,000 titles addressing race, gender, and sexuality have been removed from US schools and public libraries.

At the same time, the judiciary is coerced, dissenting voices are hunted in the courts, and immigrants are illegally arrested, detained, and in many cases deported by ICE. With an annual budget larger than the total military expenditure of virtually every other country, this violent paramilitary force operates with total impunity.

Across Europe and the UK, similar patterns are emerging. Far-right parties and politicians are exploiting nationalism and feeding nostalgia for an imagined past. Xenophobia and division are deliberately stoked, instilling fear among minority communities, particularly asylum seekers and refugees.

Right-wing politicians in the UK have consistently portrayed migration as a national crisis and the cause of social ills. The Labour government, seemingly devoid of socialist principles, has echoed some of this rhetoric, albeit in a watered-down form. Anti-immigrant discourse has permeated the mainstream; racism, masquerading as patriotism, has been legitimized, and the national flag — the Union Jack — weaponized.

In France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Germany, far-right parties — once considered fringe groups with toxic ideas — have become mainstream political forces. Their approach is consistent and predictable: demonize migrants, trample on human rights, disregard minorities, and deny the environmental crisis.

These strategies of control, fear and misinformation form a transnational pattern, with far-right voices increasingly co-ordinating across borders and mimicking one another. A notable example is Elon Musk, whose public support for far-right figures and parties in Germany, Hungary, and the UK has amplified extremist narratives and fueled political unrest.

Racism lies at the core of all far-right and fascist groups, [and is] deliberately used to fuel xenophobia and social division. Amplified by media and absorbed by fearful or frustrated populations, it becomes both acceptable and legitimized, creating conditions in which discrimination, harassment, and violence against minority communities can occur.

Progress vs Reaction
Extremism is the sign of a civilization in decay — the death spasm of a frightened, broken order. It emerges when people are consumed by anger and fear, much of it legitimate, born of social deprivation and injustice.

Decades of colonial neoliberalism have brought us here: to a world where everything and everyone is commodified; every space seen as a marketplace, and the interests of capital — not people or the planet — are paramount. In such a hollow, reductive order, the good — social justice, compassion, freedom — is trampled on, division encouraged, and conflict stoked.

The struggle of our time is not a simplistic fight between left and right, but between evolution and regression; between the forces of progress and reaction — or, of light and darkness.

Fascism and all forms of far-right extremism must be called out for what they are — manifestations of evil — look no further than the Israel killing machine — and resisted. Resisted not just politically, but morally and spiritually, for this global crisis is above all a spiritual crisis, rooted in who we are, the values we hold, and the kind of world we want to live in.

The antidote and the seed of hope in this time of tremendous uncertainty lies in unity, social justice and freedom. In demonstrations of tolerance in the face of bigotry, the cultivation of co-operation, and the building of solidarity where there is division. Against these Principles of Goodness, hate and division cannot stand.

(www.counterpunch.org)

To the shock of many, Reform, the UK party led by Nigel Farage which advocates deporting long-term legal immigrants — among other extreme views — now, according to the polls, out-performs not only the very long-established Conservative party but also the Labour party, which swept to power just last year [2024]. This move to the right is world-wide, as Gordon Brown spells out in a recent article in The Guardian, 11 October 2025.

The Labour Government seems to be responding to Reform by showing that it too is getting tougher on immigration, with ever-stronger talk and stricter rules on who has the ‘right to remain’. And recently, when a self-styled leader of the new right, ‘Tommy Robinson’ — his real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — led a march of 140,000 in the UK to demonstrate against immigration, it included a highly vocal, general anti-Islam protest.

How to Defeat the Far Right begins with the riots in 2024 in Southport, in the north of England, after two little girls had been stabbed to death at a children’s dance event. Social media quickly spread the story that an “undocumented migrant” had carried out the attack. A mosque was attacked, police were unable to maintain control and the riots spread to neighbouring towns, becoming increasingly violent and obviously anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and racist, as they grew. A recent shocking murder of two worshippers in a synagogue in Manchester UK has also highlighted the apparent prevalence, particularly recently, of antisemitism in the country. Both were hate crimes, which are dismayingly on the rise; both attacked people on the grounds of religion and/or race.

The rise of the far right is partly due to people’s resentment about their impoverished lives — material and cultural. They blame immigrants, believing that the newcomers are favoured over them for housing and other benefits. They ‘want their country back’. As Lowles says, it is no surprise that: “Tackling the underlying mood of anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-Muslim prejudice will also foster the understanding of the grievances people have about their own lives, not just how they feel about other people. … Resentment of others grows with dissatisfaction about one’s own life. Those areas that support immigration being permanently or temporally halted have very high levels of deprivation.” People in deprived areas are resentful and therefore are likely to lean to the far right.

The ‘hope’ of Hope not Hate is for a positive future where people with differences can live tolerantly together. An article in The Guardian on 14 October 2025 by the Muslim Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, echoes this hope: “We’ll never let extremists divide London.” He points to the religious and racial diversity in the UK capital, where people of many races and religions happily co-exist; but recently, perhaps stirred up by the war in Gaza, tensions between Muslims and Jews have been particularly evident. Gordon Brown (The Guardian 11 October 2025) tackles the issue of a growing divide by looking at nationalism on a global scale, with nations vying with each other for dominance instead of co-operation.

In the chapter ‘Local Heroes’, Lowles sets out his answer to racism and hatred, which applies on all levels, from the individual to the international: find ways to get communities united and creative. It was telling that the Southport riots also brought out the best in the population, as if realising their peril. People demonstrated and raised unexpectedly large sums of money to restore buildings, including a library that had been burned down. In London, Khan shows how Mitzvah day — the Jewish day for doing good deeds — brings together people from all faiths. Gordon Brown shows how it is possible to counter the far right’s plans to reduce public spending simply by pointing out that: “you will not afford to be sick, disabled , poor or vulnerable”.

Polling from Hope not Hate shows that, on the whole, the British public prefer Britain’s multicultural society to other options and that the government should do everything it can to make it work. Lowles quotes from interviews Hope not Hate carried out: “I’m proud to be British. You just have to look at the gym in there. There’s English, Jamaicans, me from Pakistan, Indians — we all treat each other with respect.” Generally young people are more tolerant than their elders: after all a quarter of under 25s in Britain come from ethnic minority backgrounds.

But changing people’s minds, as Lowles says, is not easy: “Earning the right to be heard requires humility, empathy and a lot of hard graft. …

“We — all of us — either make cohesion work or there will be conflict.”

The need for hope
Gee Walker, whose son was killed with an ice axe in a racist murder said: “Without hope I have nothing. If there are people who believe in hate instead of hope, there must be something wrong with them.”

“Britain’s immigration and asylum policy needs to be driven by what is right as opposed to being led by the far right … it needs to trust the public more,” Lowles says.

Hope is inspiring. The final section of the book focuses on what needs to be done — encouraging tolerance by building communities, and jobs for all. “Time and time again ordinary people do amazing things to make their communities better … Hope has got to be our guiding light to a better tomorrow.”

Books through Bars: Stories from the Prison Books Movement covers the history and ongoing work of the prison books movement in the US, and the rights of prisoners to have access to books. The book is co-edited by Dave “Mac” Marquis, a lifelong activist. He is the executive assistant for the Labor and Working-Class History Association and helped create the Asheville Prison Books program and the Saxapahaw Prison Books program.

In part one of Marquis’ interview with Share International’s Jason Francis, Marquis talked about the systemic issues driving high incarceration rates in the US, such as racism and unjust sentencing laws, while also highlighting the challenges of book censorship and arbitrary restrictions that complicate efforts to provide educational materials to prisoners. In part two, he talks about letters received from prisoners, the transformative power of books in prison, and the future of the prison books movement.

Getting letters from the inside
Share International: About how many letters requesting books does a Prison Books Program generally receive from incarcerated people ? And could you talk about the letters?
Mac Marquis: The more active any given organization, the more letters they get. It’s a drop in the bucket to being able to meet the need of incarcerated people. If a program gets 50 letters in a month and they send out 50 book packages that month, that’s not unreasonable. If they do it for two or three months in a row, they will probably start getting 75 or 100 letters. If they regularly send 100 packages, they will probably start getting 150 letters as people on the inside learn about the institutions and that these books will come through.

Sometimes the letters are very short and sweet like: “I wrote you all three months ago and I asked for a Steven King book. I didn’t get the one I wanted. I’m just going to see if I can get that this week?” Other times they go on and tell you about what is happening on the inside and that they don’t have anything to read. I literally once got a letter when I was working with Asheville Prison Books that said: “Send me the biggest book you have”. That was it. They were just like: ‘I don’t get books and I don’t know the next time I will get another book. I want to read as much as possible. Just send me the biggest book you have.’

People do describe life on the inside, but they are aware that people are possibly reading these letters on the way out. So there is a little bit of internal censorship that may happen when they send those letters. And some people are careful about sharing too much because they don’t want retribution on the inside.

There are letters that routinely talk about the isolation that people go through, the lack of educational material, the overall lack of hope, and also the appreciation for being able to get this material. That’s something that’s really common in the letters. People write, that this is the first thing that somebody from the outside has sent them in five years. So this is the first non-court and non-state facilitated contact with the outside world in five years. That’s a lot.

A moment to temporarily escape
SI: How does a book help free a person’s mind from life inside of prison?
MM: In our book, Daniel McGowan, Rod Coronado, and Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin all talk about it. Daniel McGowan made the point that when he was locked up, he read a lot of nonfiction, but he read more fiction and different types of fiction than he previously had because prison is a harsh environment. So the ability to read something that can help you temporarily escape that environment is priceless.

And there are a lot of people going through a significant moment of education on the inside. Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin talks about using books to help teach people to read. When he was first getting books on the inside, that’s how he learned about different political theories including anarchism. Books have the ability to transport you to a different place, especially in an environment designed to stunt your creativity and designed to crush you in many ways. Books can provide a way out of it. But that’s not done through the state. It all changes when you have to interact through tablets [handheld computers] because the state controls your access to that tablet. When you have a book in your cell and that book is yours, it’s a different relationship. Books can allow people the moment to temporarily escape.

Two educational systems
SI: You talked about learning to read while incarcerated. What is the literacy rate in prison?
MM: I’ve seen figures that indicate functional literacy, meaning people can read but they don’t necessarily understand what they are reading. The functional literacy rates are as high as 60 percent in prison. If you ask someone to read a book out loud they could, but if you ask them to explain and talk about what they read, you see that the comprehension is just not there. Other people don’t know how to read in any way, shape or form, at the time that they get locked up. And that points to larger societal problems where education is viewed as a privilege and not a right. You have people who disproportionately have poor educational systems and not as good access to education as people who are lucky enough to be born wealthy. …

SI: What societal changes would you like to see made and specifically how crime is addressed?
MM: Crime would go down if people had access to things that made their lives better – like health care, for instance, not having to go into debt, and being able to take time off to take care of their body. The elimination of poverty would eliminate a lot of people’s justification for the carceral state. At a minimum, people getting paid living wages, having healthcare and access to a free and good education. All of these things would go a long way to reducing the need, or the perceived need, as the case may be, for prisons.

SI: Is there anything further you would like to add that we haven’t discussed?
MM: People should be aware of this social movement, and I want people to get involved in social movements working to end the carceral system or to benefit people on the inside. As you pointed out, we incarcerate people in the United States at a higher rate than anywhere in the world. It’s something that people need to be more aware of.

For more information: Books through Bars: Stories from the Prison Books Movement by Moira Marquis and Dave “Mac” Marquis (The University of Georgia Press, 2024)