The Right to Protest: Then and Now

When I was sixteen, almost seventeen, I staged my first act of protest. A new law had been brought into our school, and it felt unjust. So in the middle of the night, one of my classmates and I sneaked out with a stack of posters. We put them up on the side of the library in Plovdiv, hoping people would see them the next day.

It wasn’t violent. It wasn’t dangerous. It was simply words—our words—made visible. Instead of posting them on a wall online, we posted them on a wall in the city. That was protest. That was freedom. And this was in Bulgaria, a country only beginning to find its footing after communism.

We still had to sneak out to do it. It wasn’t without risk. But the point is: we did it, we spoke out, and we were not arrested or silenced. We could protest on the streets, too—and we did.

Looking back now, I feel fortunate. At sixteen, I had the right to protest. I had the right to say: I disagree.

And yet today, living in what is supposed to be the “free world,” I feel something is deeply broken. People are being arrested for protesting genocide. Entire groups of peaceful demonstrators are absurdly branded as “terrorists.” Actions that are symbolic, creative, and peaceful—putting up posters, painting a military aircraft, staging sit-ins—are treated as if they are violent crimes.

And it goes beyond the streets. Think of the flotilla that tried to bring aid across international waters—nappies, milk, food for children, nothing more. That too was a form of protest, a peaceful act of resistance, and yet it was met with force. How can bringing supplies to children be treated as a threat?

The same suppression is creeping into the digital space. If putting up posters at sixteen was my version of protest, then today’s young people use social media in the same way: sharing words, sharing truths, making injustices visible. But even that is under threat. Platforms like TikTok are being bought, regulated, and manipulated, their algorithms shaped to silence or bury certain voices. Protest itself is being policed—not only on the streets and at sea, but online, in the very spaces where people gather to speak out.

And this is what shocks me most: I am supposed to be living in the “free world,” in one of the most democratic societies on Earth. This is where liberty and human rights are meant to be protected above all else. And yet here, in the so-called beacon of democracy, people are silenced for speaking, arrested for marching, demonised for resisting. I can’t believe it. We are going backwards, not forwards.

What is going on?

We cannot call ourselves free if speaking up, peacefully and openly, is criminalised. We cannot call ourselves democratic if we regulate dissent out of existence. Protest is not terrorism. Protest is not violence. Protest is the heartbeat of freedom.

At sixteen, in Bulgaria, I could protest with nothing but a stack of posters and the nerve to sneak out at night. Now, in democracies that claim to be “free,” those same words—whether pasted on stone, carried across the sea, or typed on a screen—can get you silenced, arrested, or erased.

Please—wake up.

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Once you know, you know...

You know those ideas that pop up in the late, late hours of the night? 
When the whole world is sleeping and a single thought wakes you up, almost like a message from another planet...

I pencil it down quickly before going back to sleep and I love reading the notes from time to time. 
It always fascinates me how the meaning changes with time. 

Here is one from April. 

'Growing up — truly growing up — is realising that the tears you see in a romantic movie aren’t just about happiness or triumph. When we’re young, we watch these moments with wide, idealistic eyes, believing the characters are simply overwhelmed with joy: they found each other, they made it. We smile, thinking love is pure, simple, inevitable. 

But somewhere along the way, something shifts. Maturity teaches us that the tears aren’t only for the sweetness of arrival — they are for the invisible road that led them there. The tears carry the weight of every goodbye, every mistake, every silent heartbreak that once made them doubt this moment could even exist. 

Sometimes, they are mourning what was lost even as they celebrate what was found. And when you feel that, when you see both the beauty and the bruises stitched into one tender moment, you know you’ve grown older — not in years, but in understanding.'

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We Are All Complicit

When police officers arrest peaceful protesters, the defence is often: *I was just following orders.* And the counterpoint is equally familiar: there is no excuse for obedience to injustice. That much is true. But there is a harder truth we often avoid because it implicates not just those in uniform, but all of us. The truth is: we are all complicit.

Complicity isn’t confined to batons and handcuffs. It is woven into the everyday systems that sustain our lives. We pay taxes that fund military budgets. We scroll through apps built by companies investing in surveillance and arms. We consume products that travel through supply chains threaded with exploitation. None of us stand outside this web.

Take the NHS, a cherished institution that is supposed to be our sanctuary. And yet its data platform is being built by Palantir, a company whose technology is tied to surveillance and military targeting in Israel and beyond. Do I stop using the NHS? I can’t. My family’s health depends on it. But my reliance still binds me to a company profiting from war.

Or consider Spotify. For most of us it is simply music in the background of our days. But its billionaire co-founder Daniel Ek has invested millions into military technology firms supplying Israel’s assault on Gaza. Even our playlists, it seems, carry the weight of complicity.

And these are only fragments of a larger pattern. Google and Amazon provide AI and cloud infrastructure to the Israeli government under Project Nimbus.[1] Microsoft’s Azure and GPT-4 tools have been integrated into military operations.[2] Caterpillar supplies the bulldozers that demolish Palestinian homes—so notorious that Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund recently divested from the company.[3] Defence giants like Lockheed Martin, Leonardo and Elbit Systems profit directly from weapons sales, while global shippers like Maersk keep the cargo flowing.[4] Even the phones in our pockets are assembled from minerals extracted under brutal conditions in global supply chains.

This is not accidental. The system is designed to make purity impossible. It wants us dependent and compromised, so that complicity feels inevitable and resistance feels futile. When every service, every product, every institution is touched by violence, the temptation is to shrug and say: *what difference can my choices make?*

But recognising complicity is not about surrender. It is about clarity. It means refusing the comfort of pointing fingers while pretending our own hands are clean. The question is not *“Am I complicit?”* but *“What am I doing despite my complicity?”*

There are cracks in the system. Some institutions are beginning to take a stand. Scotland has banned public funding for arms companies supplying Israel’s military.[5] Norway has divested from Caterpillar. And workers inside tech firms are organising: Google and Amazon employees have launched the *No Tech for Apartheid* campaign, while Microsoft staff have staged walkouts under the banner *No Azure for Apartheid*.[6] These acts are small, but they remind us that even in a tangled web, it is possible to pull at the knots.

We are all complicit. That is not an excuse to turn away or to accept things as they are. It is the very reason we must act—because if our daily lives are tied to injustice, then our daily acts of resistance matter all the more. Keep questioning the status quo...

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References

[1] “How US Big Tech supports Israel’s AI-powered genocide and apartheid,” Al Jazeera, May 2024.

[2] “Israeli military used Microsoft AI in Gaza war,” The Guardian, Jan 2025.

[3] “Norway’s wealth fund divests from Caterpillar over ethical concerns,” Reuters, Sept 2025.

[4] “Global firms profiting from genocide in Gaza, says UN rapporteur,” The Guardian, July 2025.

[5] “Scotland bans arms companies that supply IDF from receiving financial aid,” The Guardian, Sept 2025.

[6] “No Tech for Apartheid campaign at Google and Amazon,” Wikipedia (accessed Sept 2025)

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To My Dearest Friend

If I could gather every shard of injustice
and burn it down for you…
I would.
I would stand in the ashes
and challenge the heavens…

You who carry strength
like a light within your palm,
who can crack the darkest day
with one gentle look,
who makes the world feel possible
just by being in it…
You deserve better.

There are no right words
for how wrong this is.
I see you.
Not broken, never broken…
but shining with a passion
that no suffering can extinguish.

You are not alone.
Even when darkness dwells inside you,
I am there, the steady hand beside yours,
the voice that stays
when everything else fades.

And when you forget
how golden you are,
I will remind you…loudly.
Fiercely.
Forever.

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PALANTIR - Remember the name

There are names that stir unease before they reveal their intentions. Palantir is one of them—named after Tolkien’s “seeing stones,” instruments of vision, power, and control. Today, the company is embedded in the NHS. A private firm forged in military surveillance and intelligence now holds the keys to millions of patient records.We’re told this is progress. But progress for whom? 

In late 2023, NHS England awarded Palantir a £330 million, seven-year contract to build the Federated Data Platform (FDP), a system meant to centralise NHS data across England. The language—efficiency, modernisation, transformation—is familiar. But beneath it lies the quiet outsourcing of public power to private surveillance. 

Palantir’s history is not one of care. It was born from the CIA’s venture capital arm and honed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track undocumented migrants. More recently, it has been linked to Israeli military operations in Gaza. These are not abstract associations. They reveal a corporate philosophy rooted in control, not compassion. 

This is not the first time data systems have been weaponised. In the 1930s, IBM supplied punch-card technology to the Nazi regime—tools that helped the government identify and track Jewish communities. IBM didn’t run the camps. It built the system that made them possible. Palantir is not IBM. But the logic is the same: power cloaked in neutrality, tools sold as apolitical, consequences outsourced. 

Public trust is already breaking. Nearly half of people in England say they would opt out of sharing NHS data if a company like Palantir is involved. But for most patients, no real opt- out exists. The data is “pseudonymised”—a meaningless term when the company handling it also holds the tools to re-identify. 

Doctors’ organisations have pushed back. The British Medical Association, the Doctors’ Association UK, Medact, and Foxglove have all opposed the deal, citing threats to patient confidentiality and the NHS’s founding principles. A legal challenge is underway over the heavily redacted contract—417 of 586 pages were blacked out—and the lack of a proper tender process. 

Meanwhile, NHS staff on the ground report little improvement. Some trusts find Palantir’s software incompatible with their systems. Others say it increases their workload. At the same time, the company’s liability for data misuse is capped at just £150,000—a laughable figure for a billion-dollar firm. 

So why is Palantir here? 

The answer is depressingly familiar. They were already in the room. During the pandemic, Palantir was granted emergency access to NHS data systems. That foothold gave them an enormous advantage when bidding for the long-term platform. No meaningful alternatives were explored. No public debate was held. 

But there are better options. Platforms like OpenSAFELY, built during the pandemic by NHS doctors and researchers, allow for privacy-preserving, open-source analysis of sensitive data—without the need to centralise or commercialise it. Other European public-health systems use tools like Better (based on openEHR) or UK-developed platforms like Graphnet and Black Pear, which operate without ties to military surveillance. 

The question isn’t whether we need digital transformation in the NHS—we do. The question is who should lead it, and what values they should uphold. 

Palantir does not share the values of the NHS. It is a surveillance firm, not a care provider. And its growing role in our health system—quiet, complex, and largely invisible to the public—risks normalising a future in which healthcare is governed not by ethics or equity, but by algorithms and efficiency. 

If we care about the NHS as a system of care, not control, we must pay attention and do something. 

What we can do: 

- Demand transparency: Full release of the Palantir contract and a public inquiry into the procurement process. 

- Push for a real opt-out: Patients should have the right to refuse sharing their data beyond direct care. 

- Support public alternatives: Invest in NHS-led, open-source platforms with democratic oversight. 

- Lift liability caps: Private companies handling patient data must be fully accountable. 

- Connect: Join campaigns like No Palantir in Our NHS, write to your MP, and amplify voices of doctors, patients, and campaigners. 

The NHS was founded on the belief that healthcare is a right—not a commodity. The more we hand over its infrastructure to corporations built for surveillance and war, the more we forget that promise. 

Palantir does not belong in the NHS.