‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 325:
As ceasefire talks falter, Israeli army orders evacuation of al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital
The only running hospital in central Gaza is threatened with closure after an Israeli evacuation order amidst ongoing military operations in the area. Meanwhile, ceasefire negotiations resume in the wake of Hezbollah’s retaliatory attack.
By Qassam Muaddi, August 26, 2024
Casualties
· 40,435 + killed* and at least 93,534 wounded in the Gaza Strip. The identities of 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble*
· 646+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes 146 children.**
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
· 702 Israeli soldiers and officers have been recognized as killed, and 4096 as wounded by the Israeli army, since October 7.***
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on August 26, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of August 25.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Source: mondoweiss.net
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Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
U.S. Parole Commission Denies Leonard Peltier’s Request for Freedom; President Biden Should Grant Clemency
In response to the U.S. Parole Commission denying Leonard Peltier’s request for parole after a hearing on June 10, Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, made the following statement:
“Continuing to keep Leonard Peltier locked behind bars is a human rights travesty. President Biden should grant him clemency and release him immediately. Not only are there ongoing, unresolved concerns about the fairness of his trial, he has spent nearly 50 years in prison, is approaching 80 years old, and suffers from several chronic health problems.
“Leonard Peltier has been incarcerated for far too long. The parole commission should have granted him the freedom to spend his remaining years in his community and surrounded by loved ones.
“No one should be imprisoned after a trial riddled with uncertainty about its fairness. We are now calling on President Biden, once again, to grant Leonard Peltier clemency on humanitarian grounds and as a matter of mercy and justice.”
Background
· Leonard Peltier, Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was convicted of the murders of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. He has always maintained his innocence. Amnesty International joins Tribal Nations, Tribal Leaders, Members of Congress, former FBI agents, Nobel Peace Prize winners and former U.S. Attorney James Reynolds, whose office handled Peltier’s prosecution and appeal, in urging his release.
· Parole was also rejected at Peltier’s last hearing in 2009. Due to his age, this was likely the last opportunity for parole.
· A clemency request is pending before President Joe Biden. President Biden has committed opens in a new tab to grant clemency/commutation of sentences on a rolling basis rather than at the end of his term, following a review of requests by the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice.
Amnesty International has examined Peltier’s case extensively for many years, sent observers to his trial in 1977, and long campaigned on his behalf. Most recently, Amnesty International USA sent a letter to the U.S. Parole Commission urging the commission to grant him parole.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/u-s-parole-commission-denies-leonard-peltiers-request-for-freedom-president-biden-should-grant-clemency/
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom.
Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.
"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."
—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency
Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out. —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography
These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting
Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love.
Excerpt from the book:
"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains." —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader
Get the book at:
https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.
See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings
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Daniel Hale UPDATE:
In February Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale was transferred from the oppressive maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois to house confinement. We celebrate his release from Marion. He is laying low right now, recovering from nearly 3 years in prison. Thank goodness he is now being held under much more humane conditions and expected to complete his sentence in July of this year. www.StandWithDaniel Hale.org
More Info about Daniel:
“Drone Whistleblower Subjected To Harsh Confinement Finally Released From Prison”
https://thedissenter.org/drone-whistleblower-cmu-finally-released-from-prison/
“I was punished under the Espionage Act. Why wasn’t Joe Biden?” by Daniel Hale
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) A Trial Asks: If Grocery Rivals Merge, Do Workers Suffer?
As Kroger seeks to acquire Albertsons, federal regulators argue that the biggest supermarket combination in history will hurt not only consumers, but workers as well.
By Danielle Kaye, Aug. 26, 2024
The supermarket in West Hills, Calif., where Leonard De Monte works is slated to be sold as part of merger. The last time his store was part of a merger, he found himself out of work. Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Times
Back in 2015, Leonard De Monte was feeling settled. At 31, he had health insurance and was making a union wage at the Vons grocery store in Woodland Hills, Calif., where he had worked for more than a decade. A familiar face in the bakery section, he knew dozens of frequent shoppers’ orders by heart.
Then came a corporate merger: Albertsons acquired its rival Safeway, Vons’s parent company. Mr. De Monte’s store was sold to a third chain as part of the deal, and within months of the change, the store’s new owner declared bankruptcy. Mr. De Monte found himself out of work.
Former customers vouched for him, and he found a new job at a local Pavilions, part of another grocery chain owned by Albertsons. But he had lost his seniority and was demoted to minimum wage.
“All my hard work was flushed down the toilet,” Mr. De Monte said.
Now, nearly 10 years older and having finally worked his way up to a wage of nearly $27 per hour, he’s experiencing déjà vu: Albertsons is trying to merge with Kroger in a $24.6 billion deal that will be the biggest grocery combination in history if it goes through. The two chains have agreed to sell 579 stores — out of about 5,000 — to a third company in an effort to satisfy antitrust regulators. The Pavilions where Mr. De Monte works is on that list.
Mergers often create anxiety for workers who stand to lose jobs or benefits when companies combine. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, or U.F.C.W., which represents most in-store workers at Kroger and Albertsons, has spoken out against the proposed deal, though it doesn’t have much ability to stop it.
But the union does have a powerful ally: the Federal Trade Commission. The agency sued to block the combination, and a trial that will decide whether the two chains can join forces is scheduled to start in federal court in Oregon on Monday.
The F.T.C. is making arguments typical of antitrust enforcers in recent decades: The merger will decrease competition, leading to higher prices for consumers.
But within its legal complaint is another claim, one that has surprised some antitrust experts because of its novelty. The combination of the nation’s two biggest supermarket chains, the F.T.C. argues, would erode the bargaining power of unions and harm not just consumers, but workers as well.
Starting in the late 1970s, after a period of robust antitrust enforcement, regulators eased up on challenging corporate mergers. Regulators under the Biden administration, however, have made cracking down on corporate concentration a priority. And for the first time, merger guidelines updated last year by the F.T.C. and the Justice Department explicitly outline the agencies’ emphasis on how corporate mergers could reduce competition for workers and result in lower wages or worse benefits.
“Recognizing that there’s a web of intersecting harm that can happen is an extension, in my mind, of the underlying principles of antitrust enforcement,” said Christine Bartholomew, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law who teaches antitrust. “The pendulum is swinging back to recognize the broader types of harm from anticompetitive conduct.”
The attorneys general of Colorado and Washington State, who have separately sued to block the supermarket deal, also centered workers in their complaints.
The grocery industry has seen waves of consolidation since the 1990s. Now just four companies — Walmart, Kroger, Costco and Albertsons — account for about half of all grocery sales.
Kroger and Albertsons collectively employ about 700,000 people. The new corporation would operate under the Kroger name, and a Kroger spokeswoman said all frontline workers would keep their jobs and existing union contracts. But Mr. De Monte is not convinced that his job and benefits would be guaranteed, or that the chain buying his store would keep it open.
His wounds from the last merger are still fresh.
A Regulatory Shift
The F.T.C.’s position today looks very different from the one it took in 2015. Back then, the regulator approved the merger of Albertsons and Safeway, satisfied that the 146 stores eventually sold to a third party — Haggen — would prevent dominance by a single supermarket chain in certain markets.
The U.F.C.W. did not strongly object to that merger or to the sale of stores, either, something the union came to regret once Haggen filed for bankruptcy and thousands of workers lost their jobs.
This time around, Kroger and Albertsons have proposed a similar solution to gain antitrust approval: selling 579 stores — along the West Coast and in Colorado, Arizona, Illinois and a handful of other states — to a company called C&S Wholesale Grocers. But the F.T.C. is not convinced that separating out about a tenth of the stores would effectively maintain competition or mitigate the harm to workers and consumers.
Although only about 13 percent of grocery store workers are unionized, most of the workers at Kroger and Albertsons are represented by the U.F.C.W.
“I have great health benefits because I’ve been with the company so long,” Mr. De Monte said, adding that he needs regular checkups because of a past cancer diagnosis. “If I lose my health benefits, I would have to pay out of pocket.”
The U.F.C.W. is concerned that the combined strength of Kroger and Albertsons would intensify a power imbalance with the union. John Marshall, a financial analyst for U.F.C.W. chapters in California and Washington State, said that, individually, both chains had been aggressive at the bargaining table. In 2003, they each demanded concessions from the U.F.C.W., including the introduction of a two-tiered pay structure. Despite setbacks, unionized workers at the companies have retained health and retirement benefits that their counterparts at nonunion rivals like Walmart lack.
Kroger has said it needs to merge with Albertsons to compete against Walmart and Amazon. Walmart employs two million people and has been accused of illegal union busting, allegations the company has denied. A Kroger spokeswoman said nonunion rivals would become “even more powerful and unaccountable” if the merger was blocked.
The F.T.C., however, argues that a combined Kroger and Albertsons would erode unions’ ability to negotiate better pay and benefits in bargaining talks.
“The unions that represent grocery workers leverage the fact that Kroger and Albertsons are separate companies competing for customers and workers to negotiate better terms of employment for union grocery workers,” the F.T.C. complaint reads. The deal would “eliminate that competition” and lead to lower wages, worse benefits and weaker worker protections. An agency representative declined to provide additional comment beyond the legal complaint.
Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who focuses on antitrust, noted that a more dominant Kroger would chip away at unions’ ability to use strikes as a bargaining tool.
“If the worker can find an equally good job elsewhere, then the workers can stay on strike longer, and that means the employer will have to give and make concessions,” Mr. Posner said.
He said he was not aware of any other antitrust cases that limited the scope of harm to unionized workers. And regulators have raised labor-related concerns in only one other case that has gone to court, Mr. Posner added. In that 2022 suit, the Justice Department successfully blocked a merger of book publishers, focusing on authors as workers who stood to be harmed by the deal.
Closings and Layoffs Feared
On top of weakened bargaining power, workers — especially those who experienced the fallout from Albertsons’s takeover of Safeway a decade ago — are concerned about potential store closings and layoffs.
Michael Lawing, a meat manager at an Albertsons in the Seattle area, has been an employee of the company on and off since 1987. He said he and all his colleagues lost their jobs when their store switched over to Haggen ownership in 2015.
“I lost all my seniority as far as vacation time, as far as health benefits,” Mr. Lawing said. “I had to restart from the beginning.”
Kroger has portrayed C&S, which has signed up to buy the 579 stores that would be shed under the merger, as a pro-union operator. Lauren La Bruno, a C&S spokeswoman, said the company would recognize the union work force and honor all collective bargaining agreements.
But Mr. Marshall of the U.F.C.W. said that at two meetings in January, C&S representatives had refused to promise to negotiate new collective bargaining agreements with the union once the current contracts expired. Contracts covering more than 100,000 Kroger and Albertsons workers, mostly on the West Coast, are set to run out next year, he said. Ms. La Bruno did not respond to a request for comment on those meetings.
C&S is primarily in the wholesale grocery supply business and currently operates just 23 supermarkets nationwide, according to the F.T.C. While Ms. La Bruno said the company had enough financial strength and experience in food retailing to operate hundreds more stores, antitrust experts and regulators say another Haggen-style collapse is likely if the deal goes through. They argue that C&S doesn’t appear to be equipped to efficiently operate hundreds of supermarkets.
“This company might just shut down the stores after buying them,” Mr. Posner said.
Yasmin Ashur, who has been an Albertsons employee for nearly 25 years, works as a cashier at one of the company’s stores in Port Orchard, Wash., which is set to be sold to C&S. Her pension and health insurance are top of mind as she thinks about what will happen after the current U.F.C.W. contract expires.
Ms. Ashur earns $26 an hour, about $10 above the minimum wage in her state. She said there were other places she could look for work, if need be — maybe at a nursing home or a discount retailer like Big Lots.
“But then again, you’re starting from scratch,” Ms. Ashur said. “Nobody will hire you for whatever I was making, and I’m going to have to start from the bottom.”
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2) Israeli evacuations orders prompt the U.N. to pause humanitarian operations in Gaza.
By Ephrat Livni, Aug. 26, 2024
United Nations humanitarian operations in the Gaza Strip have ground to a halt, at least temporarily, after the Israeli military ordered the organization to evacuate Deir al-Balah, its main hub in the territory, a senior U.N. official told reporters at a briefing on Monday.
U.N. security personnel were working with the Israeli authorities to resume humanitarian work in Gaza as soon as possible, said the U.N. official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. The Israeli authorities were also working with the U.N. to facilitate the movement of aid, the U.N. official said.
Humanitarian work in Gaza is coordinated with the Israeli authorities, who can slow or stop such efforts depending on security concerns in the area. The Israeli authorities were able to facilitate fewer than half of the planned humanitarian missions and movements in the Gaza Strip in the first few weeks of August, the U.N. office of humanitarian affairs said in a report on Friday, with more than half of all missions and movements blocked, delayed, impeded or canceled.
“The high number of aid missions that the Israeli authorities do not facilitate means that people who barely have the means to survive — access to clean drinking water, adequate food and shelter, to name a few — are often left with nothing at all,” Georgios Petropoulos, the leader of the U.N. office’s Gaza mission, said in a statement to The New York Times.
The Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, an Israeli agency that coordinates humanitarian activities, did not respond to a request for comment. The Israeli military directed comments to COGAT, the Israeli body that oversees policy in the Palestinian territories and that oversees the coordination and liaison administration.
The U.N. humanitarian affairs office on Friday warned that “ongoing intense fighting, damaged roads, a breakdown of law and order and access challenges along the main humanitarian route” have led to critical food shortages in Gaza. The number of children diagnosed with acute malnutrition through arm screenings increased substantially across Gaza between May and July, it reported, noting that since January, 14,750 children ages 6 months to nearly 5 years, out of 239,580 screened, had been diagnosed with acute malnutrition.
Anushka Patil contributed reporting.
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3) The U.S. will keep the aircraft carrier Roosevelt in the Middle East.
By Eric Schmitt, Reporting from Washington, Aug. 26, 2024
The aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt was to depart the Middle East this week, but will extend its stay, the Pentagon said. Credit...Adam Ferguson for The New York Times
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has extended the tour of the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier in the Middle East, the Pentagon said on Monday, reflecting the tensions in the region and persistent concern that Iran will retaliate for the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Tehran.
Mr. Austin decided over the weekend to prolong the Roosevelt’s time in the region, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters on Monday, meaning that the United States will have two carriers and their accompanying warships there in the coming days.
The Pentagon’s decision comes after Israel and Hezbollah fired rockets, missiles and drones at each other over the weekend. Hezbollah had responded to the bombardment of southern Lebanon on Sunday by Israeli military aircraft to stop what Israel said were preparations for a major attack by the Lebanese-based militant group.
John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman, said, “We’re maintaining a pretty robust force posture there to be able to defend ourselves and defend Israel should it have come to that.”
He called Hezbollah’s attack on Israel over the weekend significant enough to prompt the movement of additional American forces into the region.
“What Hezbollah launched into the early morning hours Sunday was certainly a sizable attack,” Mr. Kirby said, “different in scope than what we tend to see on a daily basis between Israel and Hezbollah. Hopefully, it won’t.”
The carrier Abraham Lincoln arrived recently in the Gulf of Oman, where the Roosevelt has been operating. The Roosevelt had been scheduled to depart this week, but General Ryder declined to say how much longer the ship would remain in the region. Another Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said it would be about two weeks.
The Pentagon’s move comes even as Israel and Hezbollah appeared to de-escalate after firing rockets, missiles and drones at each other over the weekend, averting a wider Middle East war, at least for now. But General Ryder said the United States must take seriously vows by Iran to avenge the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, last month.
Israel’s military has not commented on the assassination. But Hamas and Iran have blamed Israel for the killing, and U.S. intelligence has assessed that Israel was behind it.
“We continue to assess that there is a threat of attack, and we remain well postured to be able to support Israel’s defense, as well as to protect our forces,” General Ryder said.
As part of a coordination between the U.S. and Israeli militaries, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, chief of the general staff of the Israeli military, met with the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., during his visit to Israel this week, the Israeli military said in a statement.
The commanders discussed security, strategic issues and strengthening regional partnerships as part of the response to threats in the Middle East, the statement said.
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv, and Michael D. Shear from Washington.
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4) At Least 10 Killed as Israel Begins Major Military Operation in West Bank
Hundreds of troops entered cities in the occupied territory, targeting Palestinian militants. It was a significant escalation after months of raids that have unfolded alongside the war in Gaza.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, August 28, 2024
![[object Object]](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/08/28/multimedia/28mideast-crisis-briefing-carousel-zz-01-fqtv/28mideast-crisis-briefing-carousel-zz-01-fqtv-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp)
Al-Far'a, West Bank
Hundreds of Israeli troops mounted major overnight raids in the occupied West Bank, Israeli officials said Wednesday, targeting Palestinian militants after what they called months of rising attacks. At least 10 people were killed, and an Israeli military official said the operation was continuing.
The operation was concentrated in Jenin and Tulkarm, two cities that have become militant strongholds, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters. A Palestinian armed group based in Jenin said that it had fired on Israeli forces in two villages on the city’s outskirts, and Palestinian residents in both cities described hearing intermittent gunfire.
The operation followed months of escalating Israeli raids in the occupied territory, where nearly three million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule. Israel has arrested thousands of Palestinians suspected of involvement in armed groups since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, an increasingly deadly campaign that has unfolded alongside its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Despite the toll in the West Bank — more than 580 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, according to the United Nations, in violence involving both the Israeli military and extremist Jewish settlers — the raids have failed to tamp down the armed groups. They have also further immiserated Palestinian civilians in the territory, who saw Israeli bulldozers tear up roads early Wednesday and feared being caught in the crossfire.
The raids on Wednesday appeared to be the largest since July 2023, when about 1,000 Israeli soldiers carried out a 48-hour incursion in Jenin that killed 12 Palestinians, at least nine of whom militant groups claimed as members.
Palestinian officials said the Israeli operation included drone strikes. Troops also operated farther east in the Far’a neighborhood, conducting an aerial strike that killed four militants, the Israeli authorities said.
Here is what else to know:
· Gunfire and explosions: Kamal Abu al-Rub, the Palestinian governor of Jenin, said the Israeli incursion was unusually fierce, with the sounds of gunfire and blasts intermittently resounding through the city. Israeli officials had informed their Palestinian counterparts that they were imposing a formal curfew on parts of the city and that soldiers had surrounded Jenin’s hospitals, entrances and exits, he said, adding: “People are living in a state of terror and anxiety.”
· Iranian smuggling: The raid comes as U.S., Israeli and Iranian officials have said that Tehran is trying to flood the West Bank with weapons. The covert operation, employing intelligence operatives, militants and criminal gangs, has heightened concerns that Iran is seeking to turn the territory into another flashpoint in its longstanding conflict with Israel, The New York Times reported in April.
· Settler violence: While the Israeli military cited rising Palestinian violence, extremist Israelis have also stepped up attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. Many escape legal accountability for the mob attacks, some of which turn deadly. This month, a 23-year-old Palestinian was killed when dozens of Israeli settlers attacked the town of Jit in the northern West Bank.
· Jenin a symbol: The city is synonymous with Palestinian rebellion, the source of dozens of suicide bombers who were sent into Israel during the second intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation in the early 2000s. More recently, the impoverished city has been a hotbed for recruiting by Hamas and the militant group Islamic Jihad, as well as newer militias that have emerged among a disaffected younger generation. Israeli officials say that more than 50 shooting attacks on Israelis have emanated from the Jenin area this year.
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5) The Israeli operation follows months of often deadly raids in the West Bank.
By Amelia Nierenberg, Reporting from London, August 28, 2024
Surveying damage after an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin in November. Credit...Zain Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Since Hamas’s surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, more than 580 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, according to the United Nations, as Israel has ramped up military raids there and violence by extremist Jewish settlers has increased.
Many Palestinians have died in Jenin or its refugee camp, long strongholds of the armed groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad; in Tulkarm, a West Bank city near the Israeli border; and in the nearby Nur Shams neighborhood. On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had begun a raid focusing on Jenin and Tulkarm, and that nine people it described as militants had been killed.
Here are some of the notable recent Israeli military operations in the territory:
July 3-5, 2023: Israel launched its largest military operation in years against armed groups in the West Bank, a raid meant to curb attacks by armed Palestinians on Israelis. Israel carried out deadly airstrikes, which had not happened there in about two decades.
Twelve Palestinians were killed during the operation, which involved about 1,000 Israeli soldiers. Militant groups claimed at least nine of them as members. One Israeli soldier was also killed, possibly mistakenly by a fellow soldier. Thousands of people fled their homes and Israel detained and interrogated many others. Here are pictures of the raid.
Oct. 19, 2023: At least 13 Palestinians and one Israeli officer were killed in clashes, less than two weeks after the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel. At least five of the 13 Palestinians were children.
The worst clashes were in Nur Shams. Israel’s military said that it was “thwarting terrorist infrastructure and confiscating weapons” in the operation — and that Palestinians had fought back, shooting and throwing improvised bombs.
Dec. 12-14, 2023: An Israeli raid killed at least 12 people during a two-and-a-half-day incursion in Jenin. A 13-year-old was pronounced dead at a hospital after his father carried him there, according to the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, which said Israeli armored cars had blocked ambulances.
At least 34 other people were injured. The Palestinian Prisoners Club, a rights group, said that at least 100 Palestinians had been arrested.
Israel disciplined three soldiers for a video showing some of them singing a Jewish prayer in a mosque in Jenin during the raid. The footage had circulated widely online.
Jan. 7, 2024: At least nine Palestinians and an Israeli officer were killed during a day of violence. A drone strike killed seven men in pre-dawn clashes during an incursion into Jenin. Four were brothers, aged 22 to 29, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, Wafa, said.
Israeli soldiers killed an eighth man in the central West Bank, Palestinian health officials said. And a 3-year-old girl was killed, apparently by errant fire, when Israeli forces said they shot at a car that rammed a checkpoint near Jerusalem.
The Israeli border police officer was killed when a bomb blew up her military vehicle.
Jan. 30, 2024: Israeli soldiers raided a hospital and fatally shot a Hamas commander in a patient’s room. During the brief incursion, some of the soldiers were wearing medical garb, surveillance footage showed, as they brandished their guns in the hospital. Two other men were also killed in the shooting.
Experts said the raid raised questions because hospitals have special protection under international laws of war.
April 20, 2024: Israeli soldiers killed at least 10 people at the Nur Shams camp, the military said, in what it described as a “counterterrorism operation.” Palestinian officials said that at least 14 people had died, including a 15-year-old boy.
The next day, Palestinians in the West Bank went on a general strike in protest: Shops, schools, universities, banks and public transit were closed or stopped.
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6) Jenin, a focus of the raids, is a symbol of rebellion for Palestinians.
By Erika Solomon, August 28, 2024
A woman raised a Palestinian flag in the ruins of Jenin in 2002, after much of the area was destroyed in a two-week Israeli military offensive. Credit...Scott Nelson/Getty Images
Jenin, a focal point of Israel’s wide-ranging raid into the West Bank on Wednesday, is a potent symbol of rebellion and militancy for Palestinians after decades of fighting against occupying powers.
That history dates back to British rule of Palestine during what was known as the Arab Revolt of the 1930s, and through the 1948 Arab-Israeli war surrounding the creation of the modern Israel and triggered the flight or expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
But Jenin’s resonance today, both for Palestinians and Israelis, largely stems from the second intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation in the early 2000s.
Israelis remember Jenin, which sits in the rolling hillsides of the northern West Bank, as a source of dozens of suicide bombers sent into Israel at that time.
Palestinians remember a 10-day battle, known as the Battle of Jenin, in 2002 between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces. Israel killed 52 people, of which up to half may have been civilians, according to the United Nations in a report on the event. The fighting killed 23 Israeli soldiers.
Yasir Arafat, the late Palestinian leader, dubbed the camp “Jeningrad,” a reference to the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II.
Palestinian officials called the Israeli assault a massacre — a claim that was rejected by the United Nations in its report, though it criticized both sides as putting Palestinian civilians at risk. Nonetheless, the attack is widely remembered as such to Palestinians.
During the period of British administration, Jenin was a stronghold of rebellion against colonial rule and the wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine. British forces blew up a quarter of the town in 1938 after one of their officers there was killed.
In the wake of the 1948 war, Jenin became known as a town that never surrendered, after Palestinian fighters, backed by Iraqi soldiers, repelled an Israeli attempt to take Jenin.
It also was home to one of the original refugee camps set up for Palestinians displaced by that war. Although all of these sites are still called “camps” to recognize the displacement of the residents’ ancestors, the areas are actually ramshackle neighborhoods of apartment blocks and roads, usually of poor quality.
In more recent years, the Jenin refugee camp has frequently been a target for raids by Israeli forces. In addition to widespread violence in Jenin, the camp is considered by the United Nations to have the highest rates of unemployment and poverty in the West Bank.
Both Hamas, which controls Gaza, and the militant group Islamic Jihad have recruited in Jenin. But in recent years, the ranks of the militants have been joined by newer, loosely affiliated militias that emerged among a younger generation that is frustrated with a Palestinian leadership they see as corrupt and enabling of the Israeli occupation.
Israeli officials say that more than 50 shooting attacks on Israelis have emanated from the Jenin area this year. Violence has surged in the West Bank amid Israel’s war in Gaza. Israeli forces say they are fighting off efforts to move arms into the West Bank, but Jewish settlers have also escalated attacks and expanded settlements.
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7) ‘We are in the first stages of this operation,’ an Israeli military spokesman says.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, August 28, 2024
“'If people wish to leave, they can leave,' Colonel Shoshani told reporters. 'But I am not aware of a plan of evacuation or something like that.'”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/28/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war
An Israeli military bulldozer in the Nur Shams area near the city of Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank, on Wednesday. Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military said on Wednesday that an unusually wide-scale operation in the northern part of the occupied West Bank had only just begun as Israeli troops raided two major Palestinian cities there in an effort to crush militant groups.
“We are in the first stages of this operation,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, told a news briefing.
Israeli forces launched the unusually large military raids, focusing on the cities, Jenin and Tulkarm, after months during which Palestinian militants resisted Israeli efforts to subdue them in the territory.
Both cities have seen deadly battles between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants. Colonel Shoshani said that more than 150 “shooting and explosive attacks” against Israelis had originated in the two cities over the past year, including an attempted bombing in mid-August in the coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv.
Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks prompted full-blown war in Gaza, Israeli forces have stepped up raids in the West Bank, targeting what it says are Hamas and allied groups. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed, including both militants and civilians; at least 4,500 have been arrested, according to the Israeli military.
In the operation announced on Wednesday, nine militants were killed, the Israeli military said; Colonel Shoshani said that at least seven had been killed in aerial attacks. The West Bank once rarely saw bombardments by Israeli drones, but they, too, have become commonplace since Oct. 7.
Another Israeli security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that roughly hundreds of soldiers were participating in the operation. In Jenin, Israeli forces deployed near a major hospital, stoking fears that they might raid it. Colonel Shoshani argued that the military was trying to prevent the hospital from becoming a haven for militants.
Israeli officials have long said that militants have planted improvised explosive devices in an attempt to blow up Israeli soldiers as they drive along roads in Palestinian towns. Colonel Shoshani said that Israeli troops had worked overnight to disarm the explosives, deploying combat engineers specialized in dismantling them.
During another major raid in Jenin last year, scores of Palestinians fled their homes temporarily as Israeli troops pursued people suspected of being militants. Colonel Shoshani said there were currently no plans to order the evacuation of residents. Earlier, Israel’s foreign minister had raised the prospect of temporarily ordering residents to evacuate as the military operation goes on.
“If people wish to leave, they can leave,” Colonel Shoshani told reporters. “But I am not aware of a plan of evacuation or something like that.”
Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.
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8) Africa’s Debt Crisis Has ‘Catastrophic Implications’ for the World
Crushing obligations to foreign creditors that have few precedents have sapped numerous African nations of growth and stoked social instability.
By Patricia Cohen, Aug. 28, 2024
Proposed tax increases resulted in deadly protests in Kenya this summer. Credit...Brian Otieno for The New York Times
After a new tax increase incited weeks of deadly riots in Kenya early this summer, President William Ruto announced that he was reversing course. He abandoned the finance law he had proposed, and then he shook up his cabinet.
Last week, the government reversed itself again. The newly appointed finance minister announced that some of those discarded tax increases would be reintroduced.
The Ruto administration is desperately trying to raise revenue to pay off billions of dollars in public debt and avoid defaulting on its loans, even as critical public assistance and services are being cut.
Governments throughout Africa are facing the same dilemma.
The continent’s foreign debt reached more than $1.1 trillion at the end of last year. More than two dozen countries have excessive debt or are at high risk of it, according to the African Development Bank Group. And roughly 900 million people live in countries that spend more on interest payments than on health care or education.
Outsize debt has been a familiar problem in the developing world, but the current crisis is considered the worst yet because of the amounts owed as well as the huge increase in the number and type of foreign creditors.
And in Africa, a continent pulsating with potential and peril, debt overshadows nearly everything that happens.
It leaves less money for investments that could create jobs for what is the youngest, fastest-growing population on the planet; less money to manage potential pandemics like Covid or mpox; less money to feed, house and educate people; less money to combat the devastating effects of climate change, which threaten to make swaths of land uninhabitable and force people to migrate.
If nothing is done to help countries manage the financial crunch, “a wave of destabilizing debt defaults will end up severely undermining progress on the green transition, with catastrophic implications for the entire world,” warned a new report from the Finance for Development Lab at the Paris School for Economics and Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue.
At the same time, economic stagnation in combination with government corruption and mismanagement has left many African countries more vulnerable to brutal wars, military coups and antigovernment riots.
In Nigeria, where foreign debt amounts to $40 billion, rising inflation and widespread hunger spurred a string of violent antigovernment protests this month. Forty percent of the country’s 220 million people live in extreme poverty. Yet more than a third of the revenue collected by the government is used to pay the interest on its public debt.
In Uganda, where foreign creditors are owed $12 billion, demonstrations in July targeted corruption. And in Kenya, which has $35 billion worth of external debt, some protesters have said they are ready to march again after the latest news of impending tax increases.
In many African countries, there has been zero per capita income growth in the past decade. The debt crisis has caused the value of many currencies to depreciate, further sapping purchasing power.
The string of economic shocks produced by the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine helped to supercharge the debt crisis. Food and energy prices soared as government coffers dwindled. The moves by central banks in wealthy countries to fight inflation with higher interest rates caused borrowing costs to rapidly climb.
The issue, though, is not just how much money countries like Kenya and Nigeria have borrowed, but whom they have borrowed from.
In recent decades, the pool of potential lenders has exploded to include thousands of private bondholders and a major new geopolitical player: China.
Seeking to spread its own clout and counter American and European influence, China has transformed itself into the world’s biggest national lender, financing roads, ports, bridges, airports, power plants, telecommunications networks and railways in developing countries.
Many nations, bristling at loan conditions dictated by Western lenders or the International Monetary Fund, were eager to find an alternative source of financing. Agreements with China often came without environmental, financial or human rights restrictions, though they were more opaque so difficult for outsiders to assess.
China now accounts for 73 percent of bilateral borrowing in Kenya, 83 percent in Nigeria and 72 percent in Uganda, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Over the past two decades, one in five infrastructure projects in Africa was financed by China, a report from the National Bureau of Asian Research found, and Chinese firms built one in three projects.
Some of them — like Kenya’s railway between Nairobi and Mombasa — have turned into showcases of corruption and blunders. Many of these large-scale infrastructure projects will never produce enough revenue to justify the costs.
Economic conditions and loan repayment prospects have soured, but China has been reluctant to offer debt relief. It has instead been holding out for repayment, extending credit swaps and rollovers that end up putting off the day of reckoning.
It took Zambia nearly four years to reach a loan restructuring agreement after it defaulted in 2020, for example, primarily because of opposition from China, the country’s single largest creditor.
The monumental increase in the number of private bondholders and creditors has further complicated efforts to resolve debt crises.
The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank encouraged poor and middle-income countries to embrace Wall Street and seek private loans overseas in the 2010s, said Jayati Ghosh, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Interest rates were extremely low, investors were on the hunt for higher returns and development officials hoped countries could tap a big new source of capital.
As a result, governments looking to rally political support or finance development borrowed too much and creditors seeking gains lent too much.
When interest rates suddenly rose, countries were forced to take out new loans, at high costs, to repay the money they had previously borrowed.
Investors were also able to impose costly loan terms like higher rates on struggling nations that were sometimes on the edge of default — what’s known as a risk premium. Kenya’s government paid more than 10 percent on international bonds to pay off a $2 billion debt that was due in June.
Countries that borrow more than they can afford end up experiencing intense economic and social pain as output crashes, employment dries up, and inflation and poverty rise. The systemic problem, said Indermit Gill, chief economist at the World Bank, is that lenders who also made bad decisions by extending too much credit often don’t pay a financial penalty.
“You got paid a risk premium for a reason,” Mr. Gill said of the lenders, adding that if they don’t absorb losses, they will make more reckless loans. “That’s a major weakness in the way the system works.”
The debt overhang leaves countries unable to make the kind of investments that could put their economies on stable footing, which would enable them to repay their loans.
And money that was intended for economic development ends up being siphoned off: Emergency loans from international institutions like the I.M.F. and the World Bank have been used to pay off private foreign creditors or China.
In Kenya, the central bank announced in June that private creditors would get $500 million of a World Bank loan.
As the Finance for Development Lab report concluded, “The global community is currently funding loans to developing countries, which end up ‘leaking out’ to pay off other creditors.”
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9) Palestinian militants confirm the death of a commander, as the toll in Israel’s raids rises to 17.
By Victoria Kim, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Raja Abdulrahim, August 29, 2024
![[object Object]](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2024/08/29/multimedia/29mideast-carousel-2-jptq/29mideast-carousel-2-jptq-square640.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp)
A damaged mosque following an Israeli military operation in the Fara camp in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military battled Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank for a second straight day on Thursday, killing at least five, including a young militant commander it said was responsible for attacks against Israeli civilians.
The commander, Muhammad Jaber, was killed in a clash in the city of Tulkarm, a focal point of the raids that are Israel’s biggest military operation in the West Bank in more than a year. Mr. Jaber, who was in his mid-20s and known as Abu Shujaa, led the local branch of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which dominates the Tulkarm camp. The group confirmed his death.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, said 17 people had been killed in all in raids across the territory that began before dawn on Wednesday, without specifying whether militants were among them. The Israel military said that 16 militants have been killed across the West Bank.
Residents of Tulkarm and the surrounding area on Thursday described another difficult day of being stuck inside, with internet and telephone services down, many friends and family members unreachable and the streets watched over by Israeli snipers perched on rooftops. Israeli bulldozers ripped up roads to unearth improvised explosive devices and troops searched people’s homes, residents said. Israeli military officials have said that when they raid people’s homes they are searching for suspects and weapons or want to use them as lookout points.
The Israeli military has sent hundreds of troops, backed by drones, into Tulkarm and the city of Jenin since Wednesday in what officials described as an operation targeting Palestinian militant strongholds. Israeli officials have told the United States that the operation was likely to last at least through Friday, a senior U.S. official said. It was not clear whether the United States received a heads-up about the operation.
Israeli forces had repeatedly staged smaller raids in both cities in recent months as they escalated their campaign in the West Bank, where roughly three million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation.
The exact circumstances of the deaths of the five in Tulkarm on Thursday morning were not completely clear. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said Mr. Jaber and four other militants were exchanging fire with the Israeli military from within a mosque and near a mosque before they were killed by Israeli forces.
In its statement confirming Mr. Jaber’s death, Islamic Jihad said that he had been killed after a “heroic confrontation” with Israeli forces. Its local branch in Tulkarm said in a separate statement that after Mr. Jaber had been killed, its fighters detonated an explosive device and shot at Israeli forces, causing “direct injuries.” The timing was not clear.
Faisal Salameh, head of the services committee of Tulkarm camp, said that Mr. Jaber and the others had been killed in a strike around 5 a.m. while they were hiding in a home next to a mosque.
The New York Times could not independently verify any of the accounts.
In addition to his role with Islamic Jihad — an ally of Hamas in Gaza that was founded in the 1980s — Mr. Jaber also led a loose collective of militants in Tulkarm camp, including the Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. The Israeli military accused him in a statement of being involved in “numerous terror attacks,” including the murder of an Israeli civilian in June.
Mr. Jaber, whose nom de guerre means Father of the Brave, gained a kind of cult status in the spring when the Israeli military announced that it had killed him during a raid on the Tulkarm camp. Three days later, he emerged alive at the funeral of other Palestinians killed during that same raid, to joyous shouts from residents.
The Israeli forces took Mr. Jabr’s body, along with the bodies of two others killed, and detained a man whose leg had been broken, Mr. Salameh said.
Explosions were also heard on Thursday in Jenin, where Israeli troops were operating in the eastern part of the city, Wafa reported. The Palestinian Red Crescent said that it had lost contact with the emergency medical services in Jenin because communications were down.
Gheith Shawesh, a 17-year-old resident of the Nur Shams neighborhood near Tulkarm, lamented Mr. Jaber’s death, saying that people across the West Bank were “angry and sad” about his killing.
He called the raid the “most aggressive” on the camp in years. He said that Israeli forces were blowing off the doors of homes and searching them, rounding up suspects and holding them in seized shops, and cutting up the tarps that hang over some alleyways and are designed to give militants cover from Israeli drones.
Mohammad Al-Sayed, a member of the Jenin city council, said that most communications to the city were down and that movement on the street was being prevented. “The situation is very dangerous, everyone is afraid,” he said.
Riyad Awad, the head of the city council in Tulkarm, said that parts of the city — and all of Nur Shams — were without water and sewage service.
The activity in the West Bank is an escalation along a third front for Israel, in addition to its war in Gaza and the increased air attacks across its northern border with Lebanon against the militant group Hezbollah.
More than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, both in military strikes and at the hands of extremist Jewish settlers, according to the United Nations.
Rami Nazzal and Adam Rasgon in Jerusalem and Eric Schmitt in Washington contributed reporting.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Hostages’ relatives protest at the Gaza border, and other news.
· Relatives of Israeli hostages rushed toward the Gaza border on Thursday before turning back at the request of Israeli security forces, a group representing the families said in a statement. In their latest high-profile protest demanding a cease-fire deal, hostages’ family members stood near the border and used loudspeakers to call out to their loved ones being held in Gaza, before some in the group “broke through the fence” and ran toward the border “in a desperate attempt to get as close as possible to their relatives,” said the statement from the Hostages Families Forum. The Israeli government says that 107 hostages abducted during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks are still being held in Gaza after Israeli soldiers rescued one captive this week.
· Negotiators working on a cease-fire deal in Gaza are “bearing down on the details,” said President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, describing tentative progress in the monthslong talks. Speaking to reporters in Beijing at the end of an official visit, Mr. Sullivan said Thursday that the mediators “have advanced the discussions to a point where it’s in the nitty-gritty, and that is a positive sign of progress, but at the end of the day, nothing is done until it is done.” Officials from the United States, Egypt and Qatar have been holding meetings in Cairo to discuss details of a Biden administration proposal to bridge the gaps between Israel and Hamas.
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10) W.F.P. says it is pausing aid deliveries in Gaza after its workers were attacked.
By Lara Jakes, August 29, 2024
A photo made available by the World Food Program on Thursday shows a W.F.P. car that came under fire a few yards from an Israeli checkpoint at the Wadi Gaza bridge. Credit...World Food Program, via Associated Press
The World Food Program said it is suspending deliveries of aid in Gaza after one of its humanitarian teams was hit by gunfire this week as it approached an Israeli military checkpoint.
In a statement, the United Nations agency said none of its employees were injured during the shooting on Tuesday night, which occurred after a convoy of its trucks had delivered assistance to central Gaza. The agency said one of its vehicles had been hit by 10 bullets — five on the driver’s side — a few yards from the Israeli security post at the Wadi Gaza bridge.
The statement did not assign responsibility for the shooting, but it said Tuesday’s attack was not the first time a W.F.P. team had come under attack while nearing an Israeli checkpoint in Gaza — even after receiving permission to approach. As a result, it said it was “pausing the movement of its employees in Gaza until further notice.”
“This is totally unacceptable and the latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents that have endangered the lives of W.F.P.’s team in Gaza,” Cindy McCain, the agency’s executive director, said in the statement, which was released Wednesday.
She demanded that Israeli officials take immediate action to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers delivering aid in Gaza and to improve the system by which aid agencies coordinate their movements with Israeli forces. “The current de-confliction system is failing, and this cannot go on any longer,” Ms. McCain said.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Wednesday that the incident was “under review” and that “Israel is committed to improve coordination and security with humanitarian organizations to ensure the effective delivery of aid within the Gaza Strip.”
Earlier this week, the agency’s main operating hub in Deir al Balah, in the central part of the territory, had to relocate after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for the area. Last week, amid ongoing Israeli military operations, five W.F.P. community kitchens were evacuated and the agency lost access to the only aid warehouse that it was still operating in central Gaza, the statement said.
The pause in aid deliveries comes at a perilous time for humanitarian efforts and the Palestinians in Gaza who depend on them. As Israel’s military offensive nears its 11th month, nearly half a million people in Gaza face starvation, experts have warned.
In April, an Israeli drone strike killed seven workers with the World Central Kitchen aid group. The organization resumed its work after a brief pause and said in June it had delivered more than 50 million meals in Gaza since the war began.
Israeli military officials have said the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy was a “grave mistake” and cited a series of failures, including a breakdown in communication and violations of the military’s operating procedures.
Adding to the humanitarian concerns, a 10-month-old child was diagnosed with polio this month, the first confirmed case of the disease in Gaza in a quarter-century. UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, is hoping to start a campaign to vaccinate children in Gaza as early as this weekend, and has asked Israel to pause military operations to allow it to take place.
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11) The Mpox Crisis Is Much Bigger Than Mpox
By Nicaise NdembiJean KaseyaNgashi NgongoTajudeen Raji and Morenike O Folayan
The writers are public health experts based in Africa, Aug. 29, 2024
Arlette Bashizi/Reuters
It is not easy to witness people battling an mpox infection. Fear and stigma make it difficult for patients to seek medical attention soon after symptoms arise, which include a painful rash, fever, muscle aches and sore throat. Misinformation is spreading rapidly. Doctors and other health care workers are straining to fight not just the disease as it afflicts individual patients; they are also up against larger issues they have little control over.
The resurgence of mpox has reminded the world of how dangerous this disease is for personal and community health. But less focus has been placed on the profound crises that exacerbate outbreaks like these, particularly in Africa. They are made exponentially worse because of the broader sociopolitical and economic challenges that many African countries face, exposing vulnerabilities that extend far beyond the realm of public health. Mpox is simply the latest crisis, and this cycle will not abate without meaningful action to alleviate the larger plights affecting the continent.
The Democratic Republic of Congo stands as a stark example of how a health crisis can intertwine with ongoing emergencies. The country experienced outbreaks like cholera, Ebola and Covid-19. Now it is at the center of the mpox outbreak in Africa. This year Congo has reported over 17,000 cases and over 500 deaths — the most cases and deaths in the continent — particularly in provinces like Équateur and South Kivu. These regions, already burdened by conflict, displacement and health infrastructural collapse, are grappling with the additional strain of a widespread and deadly mpox outbreak.
The emergence of a new mpox strain has added a layer of complexity to a challenging situation. Although the disease has spread predominantly because of sexual contact between adults, any physical contact can cause transmission of the virus. This means the overcrowded camps housing hundreds of thousands of people displaced by armed conflict are potential breeding grounds for a large-scale outbreak of the disease. These displaced families are grappling with the trauma of conflict, and now they must navigate the additional burden of disease.
Throughout the country, health care workers, the frontline defenders in the battle against mpox, are struggling to provide care with limited resources. Conflicts between armed insurgents and the country’s military have destroyed infrastructure and severely compromised access to essential services. In South Kivu, a region plagued by displacement and human rights violations, the situation is especially dire.
Mpox is especially dangerous to young children, many of whom have lost access to education and the safety that regular schooling offers. In Congo, over 1.1 million children under 5 years of age and approximately 605,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women faced or were expected to face elevated levels of acute malnutrition between July 2023 and June 2024. Though some patients get access to antiviral treatments, many must rely on their immune systems to fight off infection; malnutrition makes this especially challenging.
The resilience of these communities is continuously tested, and without significant intervention, the cycle of vulnerability and disease will only be perpetuated. Mpox will be far from the last public health issue to affect the region unless the social, political and economic problems plaguing these populations are also addressed.
While the World Health Organization and the Africa C.D.C. have declared mpox a public health emergency, the measures taken so far have been insufficient to address the scale of the crisis in the continent. Mpox vaccine distribution has been inequitable. African countries that desperately need it to protect their populations have been afforded limited access. The high cost of vaccines may further hamper disease prevention efforts, particularly in regions like South Kivu where the need is greatest. The W.H.O. has allowed its partners like UNICEF and Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, to procure mpox vaccines before the W.H.O. can formally give an approval — a step in the right direction but still woefully falling short of the kind of aggressive response we need to see from the rest of the world.
More than that, there must be a coordinated international response that goes beyond short-term emergency measures and addresses the root causes that keep certain populations vulnerable to the disease. Foreign aid should focus not only on immediate relief but also on building resilient infrastructure, strengthening health systems and promoting peace and stability in affected regions.
The lessons from the mpox outbreak are clear: Health crises cannot be effectively managed without addressing the broader societal context. The world must recognize that in places like Congo, where conflict and disease intersect, public health interventions must be coupled with efforts to resolve conflict, rebuild communities and restore dignity to those affected. In the absence of such an intersectional response, conflict regions are likely to be hot spots of health crises once again. We want nothing more than for the memories of those suffering from this terrible disease to be just that: memories.
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