12/06/2024

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, December 13, 2024

                

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Relatives of the Palestinians killed in Israeli attack on Nuseirat refugee camp, mourn as the funeral prayers are held for the bodies at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Dair Al-Balah in Gaza’s central strip, on December 12, 2024. (Omar Ashtawy/APAimages)


Israel’s Genocide Day 433: U.S. national security advisor heads to Cairo, Doha for ceasefire talks

As a ceasefire deal appears to be inching closer in Gaza, Israel continues to carry out massacres in the Strip, killing at least 26 Palestinians in one attack. In the West Bank, Israeli settlers continue to attack Palestinian towns.

 

By Qassam Muaddi, December 12, 2024


Casualties

 

·      44,835 + killed* and at least 106,356 wounded in the Gaza Strip, 59% of whom are women, children, and elderly.

 

·      811+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**

 

·      3,962 Lebanese killed and more than 16,520 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***

 

·      Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.

 

·      Israel recognizes the death of 890 Israeli soldiers, policemen and intelligence officers and the injury of at least 5,065 others 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 December 12, 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 December 12, 2024.

 

*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on December 9, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.

 

**** 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

 
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
FOR A DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR PALESTINE!

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Never Again War, Kathe Kollwitz, 1924

It’s Movement Time

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

It’s movement time.

As the Trump presidency take shape, there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Disbelief meshes with despair, and some are quite frankly desolate.

Dry your tears, blow your noses, and join movements of resistance to this madness. Blacks in America have never known a time when resistance wasn’t necessary, including life under a Black president.

For centuries for generations, people have had to struggle for freedom, for respect, for justice. Why should this time be any different?

The ancestors, like the revered Frederick Douglass, lambasted Abraham Lincoln as a fool or coward who wouldn’t fight the civil war with thousands of willing Black troops. Said Douglass, “if there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Said Douglass, “Power concedes nothing without demand.”

So let us struggle. Let us build movements that lift our hearts. Let us remake our history with the brick and mortar of struggle.

Prison Radio, November 21, 2016

https://www.prisonradio.org/commentary/it-is-movement-time/

 

Write to Mumia at:

Smart Communications/PADOC

Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335

SCI Mahanoy

P.O. Box 33028

St. Petersburg, FL 33733

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We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether! 

—Bonnie Weinstein

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On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

 

Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks.

 

To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.

 

Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier's lead counsel, commented, "This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard's incarceration."

 

“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP's treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” —Suzie Baer

 

Leonard's Statement: Peltier 80th Statement.pdf:

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABHSRNdyB8SKn0I&id=DFF2DD874157D44A%21118178&cid=DFF2DD874157D44A&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp

 

To view the film, please visit:

https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation

 

We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts.

Miigwech.

 

Donate/ActNow:

https://www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org/donate?link_id=2&can_id=1b2409958245a3dd77323d7f06d7f2df&email_referrer=email_2476307&email_subject=leonard-peltiers-80th-birthday-statement-2024


Leave a message at the Whitehouse:
www.whitehouse.gov/contact

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.

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be


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 

By Monica Hill

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

Prison Radio is a project of the Redwood Justice Fund (RJF), which is a California 501c3 (Tax ID no. 680334309) not-for-profit foundation dedicated to the defense of the environment and of civil and human rights secured by law.  Prison Radio/Redwood Justice Fund PO Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94141


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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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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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Articles

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1) Stalin Silenced These Ukrainian Writers. The War Made Them Famous Again.

The Soviet regime killed a generation of literary artists in the 1930s. Their legacy is being reclaimed as Ukraine fights to preserve its cultural heritage.

By Constant Méheut, Reporting from Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine, Dec. 4, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/world/europe/stalin-ukraine-writers-war.html

A person dressed in white stands on a platform while about a dozen other performers move on a stage below.

A performance of “You [Romance],” a play chronicling the lives of the “Executed Renaissance” directed by Oleksandr Khomenko, in Kyiv, Ukraine, in October. Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times


In Ukraine, they are known as the “Executed Renaissance,” pioneering literary artists whose lives were snuffed out by Stalin’s brutal purges in the 1930s.

 

Living together in an apartment building and embracing experimental art forms, these writers, poets and directors spearheaded a flourishing of Ukrainian culture and identity about a century ago.

 

But that golden age was short-lived. The Soviet regime soon began to surveil, arrest and ultimately execute about half of the writers in an effort to stifle Ukrainian culture. For decades, their works were banned and their legacy nearly erased.

 

Until now.

 

In the face of Russia’s invasion, the story of the Executed Renaissance has been given new resonance as many Ukrainians seek to reclaim their cultural heritage. The lives of the writers are being told in a musical, a feature movie and a memoir. There is even a fashion line themed around them, with sweatshirts riddled with bullet holes to symbolize their killings.

 

“It’s a big trend,” said Yaryna Tsymbal, the author of “Our Twenties,” an anthology of Ukrainian literature from the 1920s. She said the demand for projects about the artists came “from everywhere: publishing houses, magazines, theaters.”

 

The sudden interest after a century of silence reflects a broader phenomenon in wartime Ukraine. Many people have embraced Ukrainian culture — like folk songs, poetry and overlooked painters — to affirm their identity and counter Moscow’s attempts to erase their country’s cultural heritage.

 

But the story of the artists has particularly struck a chord with Ukrainians, because they have viewed it as a warning of what could happen if Ukraine loses the war: the silencing of their culture, once again.

 

“What they seek in this story of the Executed Renaissance is the inspiration to keep fighting,” said Oleksandr Khomenko, the director of the musical. “They don’t want history to repeat itself.”

 

At the center of this story is Slovo House, a writers’ residence named after the Ukrainian for “word.” Completed in 1929 in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, then the capital of Soviet Ukraine, it was a modern building in which each apartment had its own bathroom and telephone, a luxury at the time, said Tetiana Pylypchuk, the head of the Kharkiv Literature Museum.

 

The 60 or so writers who lived there with their families partly financed the project, but its completion relied on Soviet approval and funding, scholars say. At the time, the Communist leadership in Moscow sought to build loyalty across the Soviet Union by promoting national cultures, in a reversal of czarist-era Russification policies.

 

Ukrainian culture thrived as a result, and Slovo House, with its vibrant community of writers and playwrights living under one roof, symbolized this renaissance. There was Mykola Khvyliovyi, a charismatic novelist who wrote of breaking free from Moscow’s yoke, and Mykhail Semenko, a poet whose futurist verses revitalized Ukrainian literature.

 

Another resident, the avant-garde director Les Kurbas, drew admirers from across the Soviet Union with theater productions blending live performances with film projections.

 

“These were truly gifted artists,” Ms. Pylypchuk said. “It was a pivotal period for Ukrainian culture.”

 

But that all did not last.

 

The Kremlin realized that promoting Ukrainian culture was driving Ukrainians away from the Soviet project rather than creating the kind of loyalty it had originally hoped for. Stalin complained about Mr. Khvyliovyi, who expressed his yearning for independence with a slogan that later became famous: “Away from Moscow!”

 

In 1933, around the same time Moscow imposed a human-made famine on Ukraine known as the Holodomor, Stalin began a crackdown on Ukrainian culture.

 

Slovo House, once a vibrant creative hub, became a deathtrap.

 

The Soviet secret police began arresting the residents of Slovo House one by one. On May 13, 1933, Mr. Khvyliovyi gathered fellow writers in his apartment to discuss the situation. During the meeting, he went into his room and shot himself in the head.

 

“Khvyliovyi did that to send a warning, to show what was coming,” said Taras Tomenko, the director of “Slovo House: Unfinished Novel,” a feature film about the artists’ residency that was one of the most-watched Ukrainian movies this year.

 

Some 30 Slovo House writers were executed, and a few others sent to penal colonies, Ms. Tsymbal said. Their work was banned and disappeared from public view, replaced by Kremlin-approved Russian-language books and plays.

 

Ms. Tsymbal recalled how, while studying at Harvard in 1998, she discovered the existence of a novel by Mike Johansen, one of the killed Slovo House writers. The university had kept in its archives a 1930 copy of the book, which had never been reprinted in Ukraine, she said. It has since been published again in Ukraine.

 

Even after Ukraine’s independence, Russian literature, songs and movies continued to dominate. Interest in Slovo House was so low that when Mr. Tomenko first pitched his idea for his film in 2012, “nobody cared,” he said.

 

“At that time, Ukrainian culture wasn’t even on the radar,” he added.

 

Russia’s cultural dominance was such that Mr. Khomenko, the musical’s director, long thought that Ukrainian writers were “boring,” he acknowledged. He said he “grew up loving Russian literature,” staging plays in Kyiv, the capital, about Russian writers.

 

Then came Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

 

Trapped in Russian-occupied territory for the first month of the invasion, with no cellphone network in the countryside house where he had taken refuge, Mr. Khomenko said, he “had a lot of time to reconsider his past choices,” realizing that he had spent years promoting the culture of a country that was now erasing his own.

 

Back in Kyiv in April 2022, he made a decision to focus on the Ukrainian artists he had long overlooked. He set his sights on the Slovo House residents, recognizing in them a compelling, untold story. Along with friends, he recorded an album inspired by their tragic lives, called “You [Romance],” before turning it into a musical.

 

On a recent evening in Kyiv, a packed theater resonated with the cheers of spectators who had flocked to watch the musical, which mixes rock, pop and rap music. The musical has attracted more than 85,000 people since April, organizers said.

 

“I didn’t know the story of the Slovo House before this performance,” said Anastasiia Lisohub, 26, her eyes swollen from the tears she shed during the scenes depicting the artists’ executions. “These writers were incredibly modern.”

 

But pride in the writers has also come with a painful realization of all that was lost. Many Ukrainians say that if this generation of writers had not been killed, the country’s trajectory, especially its long subjugation to Moscow, might have been different.

 

“Ukraine would have flourished,” said Nataliia Kovalchuk, 40, as she left a screening of the movie about Slovo House. “If they were alive today, what kind of culture would we have? How different we would be? It chills me to the bone.”

 

Like many in Ukraine, Ms. Kovalchuk now fears that history is repeating itself.

 

Dozens of Ukrainian cultural figures have been killed in today’s war, stifling the country’s cultural potential. They have been called the “New Executed Renaissance.” At the end of the Slovo House musical in Kyiv, actors wore black T-shirts emblazoned with the names of recently killed artists, drawing a direct link between the two artistic generations.

 

Slovo House itself is also helping build a bridge between the two periods.

 

The building itself still stands, though it has long ceased being a writers’ residency and is now made up of ordinary apartments. In 2020, the Kharkiv Literature Museum purchased one, offering temporary stays to artists and cultural researchers. Despite near-daily Russian bombings on Kharkiv, which have damaged the building, the program continues.

 

In August, Khrystyna Semeryn, a Ukrainian researcher, joined the program to work on a series of articles on topics including Ukrainian scientists killed during the war, Jewish heritage in Ukraine and the history of German settlers in the country.

 

“I’m very inspired here,” she said with a smile. “This legacy of the 1920s, it reverberates through you.”

 

Oleksandra Mykolyshyn and Daria Mitiuk contributed reporting.


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2) How Universities Cracked Down on Pro-Palestinian Activism

Stricter rules and punishments over campus protests seem to be working. Universities have seen just under 950 protest events this semester, compared with 3,000 in the spring.

By Isabelle Taft, Nov. 25, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/us/university-crackdowns-protests-israel-hamas-war.html

Students in masks and draped in kaffiyehs hold pro-Palestinian signs and wave a flag on the University of Texas at Austin campus.

Students gathered on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin for a pro-Palestinian protest in October. There have been fewer protests around the country this semester, according to one count. Credit...Charlotte Keene/The Daily Texan


Colleges and universities have tightened rules around protests, locked campus gates and handed down stricter punishments after the disruptions of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and encampments last spring.

 

The efforts seem to be working.

 

Universities have seen just under 950 protest events this semester so far, compared to 3,000 last semester, according to a log at the Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard University’s Ash Center. About 50 people have been arrested so far this school year at protests on higher education campuses, according to numbers gathered by The New York Times, compared to over 3,000 last semester.

 

When students have protested this fall, administrators have often enforced — to the letter — new rules created in response to last spring’s unrest. The moves have created scenes that would have been hard to imagine previously, particularly at universities that once celebrated their history of student activism.

 

Harvard temporarily banned dozens of students and faculty members from libraries after they participated in silent “study-ins” — where protesters sit at library tables with signs opposing the war in Gaza — though a similar protest did not lead to discipline in December 2023. At Indiana University Bloomington, some students and faculty members who attended candlelight vigils were referred for discipline under a new prohibition on expressive activity after 11 p.m. University of Pennsylvania administrators and campus police officers holding zip ties told vigil attendees to move because they had not reserved the space in compliance with new rules.

 

And at Montclair State University in New Jersey, police officers often outnumber participants in a weekly demonstration where protesters hold placards with photos of children killed in Gaza and the words “We mourn.”

 

“They say it’s to keep us safe, but I think it’s more to keep us under control,” said Tasneem Abdulazeez, a student in the teaching program.

 

The changes follow federal civil rights complaints, lawsuits and withering congressional scrutiny accusing universities of tolerating antisemitism, after some protesters praised Hamas and called for violence against Israelis.

 

Some students and faculty have welcomed calmer campuses. Others see the relative quiet as the bitter fruit of a crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech. They worry President-elect Donald J. Trump, who as a candidate called for universities to “vanquish the radicals,” could ratchet up the pressure.

 

In many cases, universities are enforcing rules they adopted before the school year began. While the specifics vary, they generally impose limits on where and when protests can occur and what form they can take.

 

Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors and an associate professor of media studies at Rutgers, said the restrictions have made people afraid.

 

“They feel like they’re being watched and surveilled,” he said. “I think there’s a strong degree of self-censorship that’s taking place.”

 

But Jewish students who felt targeted by protesters have praised the rules — and the speed at which universities are enforcing them — for helping to restore order and safety. Naomi Lamb, the director of Hillel at the Ohio State University, said the school’s new protest policies seem to be working well.

 

“I appreciate the response of administrators to ensure that there is as little antisemitic action and rhetoric as possible,” she said.

 

Some of the tactics protesters used last semester have been met with stringent responses this school year. At the University of Minnesota, 11 people were arrested after they occupied a campus building. Last school year, some universities let protesters occupy buildings overnight and even for days at a time.

 

At Pomona College, the president invoked “extraordinary authority” to bypass the standard disciplinary process and immediately suspend or ban some pro-Palestinian protesters who took over a building on Oct. 7 of this year. A college spokeswoman said the unusual move was justified because the occupation had destroyed property, threatened safety and disrupted classes, and noted that students were given opportunities to respond to the allegations against them.

 

At some campuses, protesters have taken up new tactics to challenge the new restrictions.

 

Study-ins like those at Harvard have also taken place at Ohio State, Tulane University and the University of Texas at Austin. Students typically wear kaffiyehs and tape signs to their laptops with messages like “Our tuition funds genocide.”

 

“It’s kind of designed to put the administration in this bind of either you ignore it, or you enforce rules but you look like kind of a jerk,” said Jay Ulfelder, research project manager at Harvard’s Nonviolent Action Lab.

 

A Harvard spokesman said that a January 2024 statement from university leadership made clear that demonstrations are not permitted in libraries or other campus areas used for academic activities.

 

During Sukkot, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the harvest, members of the anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace set up “solidarity sukkahs” at about 20 schools including Northwestern and the University of California, Los Angeles. The sukkahs, or huts, commemorate the structures the Israelites lived in while wandering in the desert for 40 years and are often decorated with gourds, fruit and lights. JVP members added signs saying “Stop Arming Israel.”

 

The sukkahs were removed at nine universities, according to JVP, with administrators citing new rules prohibiting unauthorized structures.

 

When facilities workers arrived with power tools to tear down the sukkah at Northwestern, JVP members told them it was wrong to do so before the end of the weeklong holiday, said Paz Baum, a senior.

 

“They do not care about our ability or right to practice our religion,” Ms. Baum said. “They only care about limiting Palestinian speech.”

 

The new restrictions may not be the only factor behind diminished protest activity this semester. Some protest groups have embraced more violent rhetoric — praising Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, for example — alienating some students who had sympathized with their cause.

 

Some things have not changed, however: There is still little consensus about what it means for a campus to be safe and when speech critical of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism.

 

At Montclair State, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators have criticized the number of police officers and administrators at their events, President Jonathan Koppell said he was trying to strike a balance between “competing priorities.”

 

In an interview, Dr. Koppell said the officers stationed at protests are necessary to protect everyone on campus, including the protesters. He noted that demonstrations on campus have been peaceful and people have “engaged responsibly.”

 

He added that some community members want him to prohibit the pro-Palestinian gatherings altogether, something he has resisted.

 

“You have a desire for some people to be able to say whatever they what, wherever they want, whenever they want,” Dr. Koppell said. “And you have some people who would like to see an environment where there’s an absolute limitation on people’s ability to protest.”

 

“Anybody who wants an absolute in either direction is going to be unhappy,” he added.

 

Even as universities crack down, administrators and faculty say the federal government under Mr. Trump could try to force further changes at institutions.

 

Still, much remains unclear about what could happen. His pick to lead the Department of Education, Linda McMahon, has less education experience than is typical of education secretaries in the past and has publicly said little about campus protests.

 

Abed A. Ayoub, the executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said he did not think Mr. Trump could make campuses more hostile to pro-Palestinian protests than they already are.

 

“Are they going to continue with their crackdown on anti-Israel speech? I think they will,” he said, referring to universities. “That’s not because Trump is in office. They started this. It’s been happening.”


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3) Beit Lahiya Is Being Wiped Out: Israel Burns Last Refuge for Displaced Families, Plants Barrel Bombs Among Houses

QNN Team, December 3, 2024

https://qudsnen.co/beit-lahya-is-being-wiped-out-israel-burns-last-refuge-for-displaced-families-plants-barrel-bombs-among-houses/
Israel is attempting to wipe out Beit Lahya, besieging and burning the last remaining displacement centre and planting barrel bombs among houses.

Gaza (Quds News Network)- Israeli forces have escalated their assault on Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, targeting the city’s 60,000 residents in a campaign that threatens to wipe out the population.

 

The bombardment has targeted residential areas, schools, and hospitals, turning what was once a haven for displaced families into a warzone.

 

Residents in Beit Lahiya report that Israeli drones and helicopters have been relentlessly firing at homes. Barrel bombs have been planted in neighborhoods, causing widespread destruction and killing dozens of besieged civilians.

 

Israeli forces have also surrounded Abu Tammam school, the last remaining displacement shelter in the area. This schools is now under siege, with no access to food, water, or medical aid. Israeli forces also started burning parts of the school even as about 4000 civilians are trapped inside.

 

At Kamal Adwan Hospital, the situation is dire. Israeli drones have attacked the hospital multiple times, injuring three medical staff members, one of whom is in critical condition. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the hospital director, condemned the attacks, calling them “barbaric and unjustified.” He confirmed that drones dropped bombs filled with shrapnel, endangering patients and staff. “We are exhausted by this brutality,” he said. “Every day, we are systematically targeted.”

 

The Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza described the situation in Beit Lahya as catastrophic. Speaking to Al Jazeera, the spokesperson stated that Israeli forces are committing ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza. “We cannot provide medical or rescue services due to the relentless attacks,” he said. Many victims remain trapped under rubble, with no way for rescue teams to reach them.

 

In the past 24 hours, two massacres have been reported in Gaza. Hospitals have received the bodies of 36 victims, along with 96 wounded, but the actual toll is likely higher. Civilians in northern Gaza have endured two months without proper food or clean water. Their homes are no longer livable, and the humanitarian crisis deepens by the hour.

 

Since October 7, 2023, Israeli attacks have killed 44,502 Palestinians and injured 105,454, according to health officials. Beit Lahiya, once a sanctuary for those displaced by earlier strikes, now faces complete obliteration.


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4) Can Martial Law Happen in America?

By David French, Opinion Columnist, Dec. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/opinion/trump-south-korea-martial-law.html

An illustration of an American flag made up of barbed wire and tank tracks.

Illustration by George Douglas; source photographs by Enrique Díaz/7cero and Keystone-France, via Getty Images


Well, that was dangerous — and absurd.

 

On Tuesday, the president of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, suddenly declared martial law. He suspended political activity in one of the world’s most advanced and prosperous democracies and attempted to place the media under government control.

 

Seemingly confused and surprised troops struggled to contain a rebellious National Assembly, which voted immediately to end military rule, but not before a series of chaotic scenes that shocked the nation. The president backed down, mere hours after triggering a political crisis that threatened democratic rule.

 

As the drama played out in South Korea, my phone lit up with a question from friends and media colleagues — including from some of the most sober-minded people I know. Can this happen here? Can an American president — or any other American leader — create a similar political emergency?

 

The short answer is no. The longer answer is yes — if a president (or a governor) exploits ambiguities in American law.

 

Let’s deal with the short answer first. Unlike South Korea, the United States has no clear constitutional mechanism for a president to simply declare military rule. State governors do have the ability to declare martial law in the event of an emergency, but governors can’t abrogate the federal Constitution, and any declaration of state military control is subject to judicial review.

 

There have been a number of limited declarations of martial law in American history. Gen. Andrew Jackson declared martial law in New Orleans for three months during the War of 1812, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared martial law in Hawaii after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, to give two examples.

 

In addition, President Abraham Lincoln declared martial law in 1862 and applied it to “all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abettors, within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia draft or guilty of any disloyal practice affording aid and comfort to rebels against the authority of the United States.” But there is no American constitutional authority for military rule comparable to the one in the South Korean Constitution.

 

The longer answer, however, is far less reassuring. While there is no constitutional mechanism for military control, history demonstrates that American leaders will sometimes press their war powers beyond the constitutional breaking point (while Roosevelt’s declaration of martial law in Hawaii was defensible, his internment of Japanese Americans was not).

 

Even worse, there is a statutory basis for military intervention in domestic affairs, and the statute — called the Insurrection Act — is so poorly drafted that I have come to call it America’s most dangerous law.

 

The Insurrection Act is almost as old as the United States itself. The law dates to 1792, and it permits the president to deploy American troops on American streets to impose order and maintain government control.

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with granting a president such power, so long as it is properly circumscribed. There are numerous examples of lawless defiance of government authority, from the Whiskey Rebellion in George Washington’s second term, to the Civil War, to southern resistance to Reconstruction and to the Los Angeles riots in 1992 (the last time the act was invoked).

 

But the statute itself is terribly written. The first section isn’t problematic — it permits the president to deploy the military upon the request of a state legislature or governor, if the legislature can’t convene. That makes sense. If a governor has lost control, he should be able to appeal to federal forces for help.

 

The next two sections of the statute, however, are much worse. Section 252 of the act gives the president the authority to deploy troops domestically “whenever the president considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any state by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

 

Section 253 has similar language, granting the president the power to “take such measures as he considers necessary” to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.”

 

Note the extreme trust placed in the president. He can call out troops when he considers it necessary. There is no congressional oversight. If he believes he needs troops in the streets, he can order troops in the streets.

 

And in fact, Trump almost invoked the Insurrection Act during his first term. In the summer of 2020, he considered ordering federal troops to suppress the urban unrest that exploded after the murder of George Floyd, but he ultimately backed down after his secretary of defense, Mark Esper, publicly stated his opposition to Trump’s plan.

 

Since he left office, however, Trump has openly regretted not deploying troops in 2020, and his allies have urged him to use the Insurrection Act during his second term, to control the border or to suppress demonstrations. Or both.

 

But the Insurrection Act isn’t the only dangerously ambiguous and open-ended provision of American law that could expand the authority to use the military for domestic law enforcement. Presidents aren’t the only American leaders who can cause chaos, and a number of Republican governors are seeking to expand their own authority to use force.

 

Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution denies states the power to engage in war unless they are “actually invaded.” Article I, Section 9 protects the writ of habeas corpus (an ancient legal doctrine that allows an imprisoned person to petition for release) “unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it.”

 

Lincoln relied on Article I, Section 9 when he revoked habeas corpus during the Civil War, an obvious case of rebellion.

 

You might think that the meaning of these passages is clear, that an invasion is easy to define. Think, for example, of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or of North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in 1950 — violent attacks that are intended to destroy or occupy sovereign nations.

 

Yet a number of red-state governors — including, most notably, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas — have deemed the surge of migrants at the border an “invasion.” Texas used this purported invasion to justify placing barriers in the Rio Grande, although those barriers would otherwise violate federal law.

 

Earlier this year, Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason, wrote a piece in Lawfare explaining the original public meaning of “invasion” in the Constitution. In the words of James Madison, the term refers to “an operation of war,” and “to protect against invasion is an exercise of the power of war.”

 

Frank Bowman, a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law, wrote in Just Security that throughout the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the ratification debates, “With a handful of exceptions where ‘invasion’ is used metaphorically, as when referring to an ‘invasion of rights,’ the word invariably refers to a hostile armed incursion into or against the territory of the states or the nation, an incursion that must be met with a military response.”

 

In a decision issued in July, the Fifth Circuit held that the Texas barriers did not conflict with federal law, but they did so without answering whether the migrant surge constituted an invasion within the meaning of the Constitution.

 

In a concurring opinion, however, Judge James Ho — who is reportedly on Trump’s short list to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy — wrote that it’s not for courts to decide whether an invasion occurred. That’s a political question, to be decided by the elected branches of government. Under this reasoning, if the president says there’s an invasion, then there’s an invasion. Similarly, if a governor says there’s an invasion, then there’s an invasion.

 

If Ho’s reasoning was adopted by the Supreme Court, then unscrupulous presidents and governors would enjoy immense new authority over war, peace and due process. Economic migrants and asylum seekers could be treated as enemy combatants. Presidents could order large-scale detentions, without granting detainees access to federal courts.

 

Before the Trump era, not that many Americans perceived how much our democracy’s very survival depended on the honor and decency of American presidents. Yes, our Constitution is full of checks and balances, but it doesn’t address every contingency, and broad statutes give presidents far too much potential authority.

 

President Biden and his allies in Congress did important work to shore up American democracy. By amending the Electoral Count Act, they helped protect presidential elections from another effort at a Trump-style coup, to give one example. But the Biden administration focused on preserving elections, not on reforming the powers of the presidency.

 

Trump can still use the Insurrection Act to call out the troops when he wants to call out the troops. He can declare an invasion and dare the courts to disagree. Neither power is as broad as a South Korean president’s power to declare martial law, but they are dangerous to American democracy.

 

We have long trusted presidents not to abuse their power, and most presidents have proven worthy of that trust. Trump is not. While we can hope that the courts and Congress will restrain him in his second term, American law gives him more power than he should rightfully possess.


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5) THE WARNING (Graphics online)

By W.J. Hennigan

Graphics by Taylor Maggiacomo and Jeremy Ashkenas

Mr. Hennigan writes about national security for Opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/05/opinion/nuclear-weapons-space.html


U.S. intelligence analysts haven’t determined if it’s this region or some other area that Russia may one day threaten if it ever deployed such a device. In any scenario, a nuclear weapon detonated in outer space wouldn’t have a localized impact like a direct hit with a missile strike. It would be indiscriminate, affecting all nations. If the Kremlin decided to use a Sput-nuke, as the device is sometimes derisively called, it holds the unambiguous potential to disrupt the future of America’s military space operations and the lives of hundreds of millions of civilians around the globe.

 

Once considered a largely peaceful domain, space is now viewed by many American lawmakers and military commanders as a place where the next major global conflict might unfold. If Moscow is working on a space nuke, it would be merely one of dozens of space weapons under development or already in use by Russia, China and the United States. All three nations have tested high-flying missiles capable of targeting space systems from the surface and have lasers, signal jammers and other devices that can disrupt space operations. Russia has deployed nesting doll satellites (in which one satellite births a smaller satellite that is maneuverable and armed with a projectile) and China and the United States have demonstrated grappling satellites, which can sidle up to another satellite and tug it out of its orbit with robotic arms.

 

It may sound as if these technologies were torn from the pages of a science fiction novel, but none of them come close to doing what a nuclear weapon could in space: wipe out clusters of satellites at once.

 

As the risk of conflict in space climbs, there are surprisingly few international agreements to safeguard against military action there — and no established norms. There are just two major pacts governing nuclear weapons in the cosmos, both of which predate Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. The Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater or space, was signed by the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union in 1963. The Outer Space Treaty, which was first signed less than four years later, bans deploying “nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction” in orbit. Today, both decades-old agreements are proving shaky. With a new generation of weapons under development, space experts see a rising potential for miscalculation, misinterpretation and aggression.

 

While the American government says it has tracked Russia’s nuclear anti-satellite program for nearly a decade, it’s impossible to independently verify its claims about Cosmos 2553. But even the prospect of such a device should alarm the more than 90 nations with at least one satellite in orbit. The potential threat to the world’s satellites may emanate from Russia today, but it doesn’t end there. Any nation with ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, like North Korea, holds the potential to reverse the progress of the space age with a single detonation.

 

It is a development that the world must not look on with indifference. In his first administration, Donald Trump created the Space Force, a clear indication that he recognizes the threat of the mounting militarization and weaponization in outer space. In his second term, it’s imperative for Mr. Trump to lead an international effort that aims to improve space traffic management, open new communication channels with adversaries and slow the rapid development of space weapons that is already underway.

 

We rely on space more than ever

 

Perhaps the easiest way to understand the extent of our reliance on space is gazing upon the night sky. It doesn’t take long before Starlink satellites come into view, streaking among the celestial bodies. With around 6,500 active satellites, Starlink, operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, accounts for more than half of the world’s inventory. Starlink provides high-speed internet to customers who purchase terminals and is accessible almost anywhere on the planet, including Ukraine, where it has proved crucial to Ukrainian troops on the battlefield. (Moscow has since said any company that provides satellite service to Kyiv’s forces could become a target.)

 

SpaceX has plans to greatly increase the size of its constellation in the coming years. That’s a lot on its own, but Amazon also has plans to build a system to compete with Starlink in the next few years. China hopes to launch 40,000 of its own such satellites in the next decade, and the Pentagon is set to spend nearly $14 billion over the next five years to build its new system of missile-targeting satellites in low-Earth orbit. All told, the global space economy is expected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2035, roughly three times where it stood in 2023, according to a recent industry analysis.

 

It’s hard to overstate modern armed forces’ reliance on space. They use it to drop bombs on targets, communicate, navigate and track potential incoming attacks. When Iran launched around 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel in early October, for instance, U.S. forces knew well in advance where many of the missiles were positioned, the split second they launched and the approximate locations they were on course to hit. That so few of those missiles got near their targets is proof of the extraordinary technological advantage of America and its allies in space. This dominance is also an Achilles’ heel. U.S. military analysts believe the dependence on such systems is seen as a wartime vulnerability by our adversaries, including China and Russia.

 

Taking out these satellites, particularly in a conflict, could even the playing field. The conventional anti-satellite weapons that Beijing and Moscow have developed could render orbiting satellites useless. The United States responded to this growing threat by launching a satellite constellation last year code-named Silent Barker to monitor its spacecraft, and the Space Force continues to enhance its ability to fend off potential attacks.

 

The discovery of Cosmos 2553 has generated serious contemplation at the highest levels in Washington about the worst-case scenario, including examining military policies and considering whether to entrust military commanders with more options and tools for conducting conventional counterattacks.

 

What if a nuclear weapon detonated in space?

 

If a war in space is difficult to fathom, a nuclear detonation is unthinkable. The devastation would be counted not in casualties but in mass disruption to our everyday lives, from vital services like weather forecasting and navigation to supply chains. Many of the larger national security satellites — comparable in size to school buses — are much farther from Earth, in what’s called geostationary orbit, and contain electronics designed to withstand radiation from a nuclear detonation. But thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit have little to no protection and are profoundly vulnerable to such an attack.

 

Much of what we know about the effects of nuclear weapons in space stems from two series of U.S. tests conducted during the Cold War, code-named Operation Argus and Operation Fishbowl.

 

One test in 1962, called Starfish Prime, knocked out a third of the two dozen satellites in orbit at that time.

 

Here’s what would happen if a weapon detonated near low-Earth orbit today.

 

There would be no sound, no fire and no shockwave. There would be no mushroom cloud.

 

From the surface, people would see a brilliant light, followed by dazzling auroras generated by a burst of electrons colliding with gases in the atmosphere.

 

The detonation would disable and destroy everything in its immediate vicinity, turning satellites into unguided projectiles that could crash into one another.

 

Objects in low orbits travel at around 17,000 miles per hour. Any debris — even as small and light as a paint chip — would pose real danger to other objects or people in space.

 

Meanwhile, the burst of intense radiation produced by the detonation would be captured by Earth’s magnetic field.

 

Swirling away from the blast point, the charged particles would form a shell of radiation that would linger for weeks, if not years — long enough to gradually fry the onboard electronics of surviving satellites orbiting close to Earth.

 

U.S. intelligence analysts have determined low-Earth orbit would be unusable for an unknown period, depending on the size of the blast.

 

Predictions about how an event like a nuclear detonation in space would affect human life are difficult to pin down. Any astronauts aboard the International Space Station would likely face grave danger and future human spaceflight would be imperiled for some time. A U.S. National Intelligence Council analysis of the possible economic damage caused by a nuclear blast in low-Earth orbit warned that there would be a widespread impact on travel and shipping, banking and financial markets, the oil and gas industries and farming and supply chains.

 

Even a detonation closer to Earth could have catastrophic effects. Such a blast high above a major city may not harm the population, but the bomb’s electromagnetic pulse could cause crippling blackouts and permanently damage electrical grids. The Soviets demonstrated these effects during a series of nuclear tests, code-named the K Project, in the early 1960s.

 

U.S. intelligence had been tracking Russia’s interest in developing a nuclear anti-satellite weapon years before Cosmos launched in 2022, officials say. Once they detected it, just weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, military officials at Space Command’s Joint Operations Center in Colorado Springs started to pull together information from various intelligence agencies. They keyed satellite sensors onto the Cosmos 2553 and told leaders at the Pentagon what they believed they had found: a working model for Russia’s nuclear anti-satellite program that relays data on how an operational weapon would perform, should it be placed in orbit.

 

All this was kept in tight secrecy until last Feb. 14, when Michael R. Turner, an Ohio Republican who is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, put out a cryptic statement calling for the release of classified material about a “serious national security threat.” As more information trickled out of Washington about the potential weapon, President Vladimir Putin of Russia publicly dismissed the allegation. “Our position is clear and transparent: We have always been categorically against and are now against the placement of nuclear weapons in space,” he said. The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

 

Although the Soviet Union, now Russia, signed the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which forbids nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in space, that’s not exactly easing anyone’s mind. At the United Nations in April, Russia vetoed a resolution that reaffirmed provisions in that treaty. And in recent years, both Russia and the United States have walked away from several Cold War arms agreements as relations between the countries have worsened.

 

There are also several United Nations agreements that regulate various aspects of outer space, but space-faring countries have yet to solidify norms and conventions for responsible actions in orbit. How close can one nation’s satellite approach another nation’s satellite? When they inadvertently draw close, which way should they turn to avoid crashing? How should satellite operators communicate with one another? It took centuries in maritime and decades in aviation law to establish such rules and identify safe and professional behavior. It’s now time for outer space.

 

Although U.S. administrations including President Biden’s have tried to move the world closer to a consensus on the rules of the road, progress has been slow. One hundred and fifty-five states, including the United States, voted in favor of a United Nations resolution calling to halt debris-generating anti-satellite missile tests from Earth, but Russia and China voted against the measure. After Russia vetoed the reaffirmation of the Outer Space Treaty, Moscow, along with Beijing, introduced a competing resolution calling for a ban on the placement of all weapons in outer space. That also failed after the United States and other nations dismissed it as a ploy to distract attention from its true intentions.

 

Therein lies the challenge. The United States, Russia and China are growing further apart rather than coming together to forge such agreements. Verifying that a satellite isn’t carrying a nuclear weapon or some other harmful payload becomes even more difficult once it’s put into orbit. And writing legal definitions of what qualifies as a space weapon is a formidable task because of dual-use capabilities. A grappling satellite, for instance, that does the necessary work of grabbing and pulling dead satellites from orbit could also in theory be used to remove another nation’s functioning national security satellite from its position, though no nation is known to have done so to date.

 

There are clear points where collaboration can still happen that would benefit all countries — and provide the foundation for future agreement. A United Nations report in May noted the growing congestion in low-Earth orbit and urged states to consider an international framework for nations to share information on satellites and space debris. It echoes a topic already under discussion in Washington about developing an effective channel with Moscow and Beijing to coordinate space traffic. Such a safety mechanism could prove useful, particularly during a diplomatic or military crisis, to avoid an honest mistake like an unintended collision being interpreted as an act of war.

 

The U.S. military is on board for this kind of open channel, beyond the limited ones in operation now. “We want to have a way to deconflict and have space safety discussions, which would enable those tenets of responsible behavior,” said Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, who oversees Space Command.

 

American leadership is needed to bring other nations into the hotline and to maintain peace — however uneasy — in space. When news of Russia’s nuclear anti-satellite program became public, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reached out to his counterparts in India and China to help apply pressure on Moscow about the program. Mr. Trump should try to expand on that effort when he re-enters the White House. Rather than fuel an accelerated space arms buildup, he should instruct his National Security Council to mobilize a diplomacy-led, multilateral effort to draw up rules of behavior in outer space that reflect the technological reality of today.

 

A good start would be for Mr. Trump to call out Cosmos 2553 by name — something the Biden administration hasn’t publicly done — and further express the need to build on the half-century-old Outer Space Treaty with China and Russia. The president-elect might opt to consult Mr. Musk, who as founder of SpaceX has much to lose with a military confrontation in space. As he no doubt knows, the world has spent decades delicately constructing the space architecture that enables our daily life. Any act of war in space, much less a nuclear detonation, would needlessly put all that at risk.

 

History has shown that wherever there’s a potential for financial or strategic advantage — on land, in the air or at sea — it’s accompanied by the prospect of war. The peril now looms above us, and it can no longer be overlooked.

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6) Gazans With Disabilities Face ‘Impossible Times’ of Chaos and War

A family fled carrying a 9-year-old girl for hours on their backs. Sisters with visual impairments pleaded for help as Israeli airstrikes fell. “It’s a nightmare,” one wheelchair user said.

By Adam Rasgon and Bilal Shbair, Dec. 5, 2024

Adam Rasgon reported from Jerusalem, and Bilal Shbair from Khan Younis and Deir al Balah, Gaza.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/world/middleeast/gaza-disabled.html
A child in a wheelchair with a woman and another girl sitting in chairs on either side of her.
Nine-year-old Lara and her mother, Manal Abu Odeh. An orthopedist said he believed spinal surgery could allow Lara to walk. Credit...Bilal Shbair for The New York Times

A woman wearing a cast sits on a bed looking at her child with a pensive look on her face. The child is missing much of her legs.A Palestinian girl who lost parts of her legs in an Israeli airstrike in the central Gaza Strip in September. In December, UNICEF said around 1,000 children had lost one or both legs. Credit...Hatem Khaled/Reuters

When the Israeli military ordered evacuations in part of northern Gaza about a year ago, Zuhair Abu Odeh rushed out with his 9-year-old daughter, who uses a wheelchair, in search of a safer place.

 

In his haste, he ran her chair into a crack in a road, jamming a wheel and forcing them to abandon it. Mr. Abu Odeh and his sons carried his daughter, Lara, on their backs for four and a half hours until they reached Nuseirat, nine miles to the south.

 

“We’re living through impossible times,” Mr. Abu Odeh, 46, said in a phone interview from a makeshift shelter in Khan Younis, where the family has since fled.

 

The war has forced most of Gaza’s roughly two million residents from their homes, an experience defined by daily struggles to find food, water, clean bathrooms and power. But it has been particularly punishing for people with disabilities and their families.

 

The suffering of disabled people — the blind, deaf, physically and cognitively impaired — has been compounded by steep shortages in devices to aid them, like wheelchairs and hearing aids, and in damage to roads, sidewalks and homes with accessible features.

 

Until Mr. Abu Odeh found Lara a new wheelchair in February, he and his children carried her to the market, the hospital and the beach. While the chair has brought some relief, it has still been difficult to push through dirt paths in the makeshift camps set up for people seeking shelter.

 

“We’re barely holding on,” said Mr. Abu Odeh. “We can’t tolerate this agony anymore.”

 

Lara was originally diagnosed with cerebral palsy, but an orthopedist said he believed that was wrong and suggested spinal surgery could give her the ability to walk.

 

Her parents, who lived in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, spent days preparing paperwork and working connections to send her to the Israeli-occupied West Bank for surgery. But since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that ignited the war in Gaza, they have made no progress because of Israeli restrictions  on leaving Gaza.

 

“I don’t need food or any other kind of assistance,” said Manal Abu Odeh, Lara’s mother. “What I need is to bring Lara to Ramallah,” the West Bank city where hospitals have resources well beyond Gaza’s broken health care system.

 

Before the war, 56,000 people in Gaza were registered as living with disabilities, with nearly half suffering from a physical impairment, according to the Palestinian Authority. The United Nations said 21 percent of households in Gaza reported at least one family member having a disability before the Oct. 7 attack. While no new estimate has been released, experts believe the conflict between Israel and Hamas has permanently disabled thousands more.

 

Doctors have amputated people’s limbs throughout Gaza. At the end of last year, UNICEF said medical workers and U.N. staff members reported  that around 1,000 children had lost one or more of their limbs; in September, the World Health Organization reported that more than 22,500 had suffered “life-changing” injuries, requiring rehabilitation “now and for years to come.”

 

Disabled people, humanitarian officials said, were some of the most neglected in the war.

 

“People with disabilities in Gaza are at the highest risk, but they’ve been forgotten far too often,” said Muhannad Alazzeh, 54, a member of the U.N. committee on the rights of people with disabilities.

 

In 2012, Israel ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which requires member states to take “all necessary measures” to ensure that people with disabilities are protected, including in armed conflicts. Mr. Alazzeh said Israel was not living up to its obligations to move disabled people from the line of fire, ensure the delivery of sufficient equipment and specialized medications, and help injured people leave Gaza.

 

In a statement, COGAT, the arm of the Israeli defense ministry that coordinates the entry of aid into Gaza, said it has permitted the entry of more than 28,000 tons of medical supplies, including medicine, wheelchairs and crutches.

 

It also pointed to Israel’s recent decision to allow some patients and escorts to travel through Israeli territory to access medical treatment abroad. In one of the most recent cases in November, Israel allowed more than 200 patients and their escorts to exit Gaza.

 

But thousands of other people in need of treatment have been unable to leave, including some suffering from life-threatening conditions. Sharaf al-Faqawi, the Gaza area manager for Humanity & Inclusion, an organization that supports disabled people, said he and his colleagues have placed around 2,000 people on waiting lists for devices like wheelchairs, crutches and walkers.

 

“We often feel incapable of providing what people need,” Mr. Al-Faqawi said.

 

Constantly relocating has been exhausting. For blind people, it has at times felt impossible.

 

Doaa Jarad, 25, and her sister, both of whom have visual impairments, were sheltering on a stairwell in a school in Rafah when Israeli airstrikes suddenly pounded the area. Amid the chaos, she pleaded with people for help, but nobody came to their aid.

 

“Everyone was looking out for themselves,” said Ms. Jarad, who lived in the northern city of Beit Hanoun before the war. “We wanted to go down the stairs, but all the people on our floor were rushing down them.”

 

When everyone was gone, they tried to walk to a safer place while avoiding knocked-over tables and chairs, she said. The bombing eventually stopped, but it was one of the most harrowing moments for the Jarads over the past year.

 

Surrounded by the horror and destruction of war, even going to the bathroom has become a long and nauseating experience for displaced people.

 

Many disabled people struggle to get onto the toilet seat. Makeshift bathrooms, which have become common, often lack accessibility features like extra space for someone in a wheelchair to transfer to a toilet seat, or bars to help them balance.

 

Ali Jebril, 28, who is paralyzed from the waist down, said the stalls are often so narrow that he can barely fit with his wheelchair, if at all.

 

“It’s a nightmare,” said Mr. Jebril, who has been living in a tent in central Gaza. “Gaza wasn’t built for people like me before the war, but now it isn’t built at all for us.”

 

Mr. Jebril, originally from Gaza City, has been paralyzed since a neighbor drove his car into him when he was 6. Before the war, he was a top wheelchair basketball player and worked at an oceanside restaurant.

 

His wheelchair has gradually fallen into disrepair, with punctured tires and the seat’s frame coming undone. He often requires strangers’ help to move. But he said it can be frightening to ask for assistance. Israel has frequently targeted militants in civilian spaces, sometimes dropping bombs weighing hundreds of pounds to kill them.

 

“You can’t know if your neighbor is a safe person or not,” he said. “But what can I do?”

 

The hardest part, Mr. Jebril said, was thinking back to his life on the basketball court and at the restaurant in Gaza City.

 

“I had so much that I hoped for in life,” he said. “But now, I’m going from tent to tent and city to city. I’m living through a torturous struggle to survive.”


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7) Deadly Israeli Strike Hits Gaza Humanitarian Zone

The Israeli military said it was targeting senior Hamas militants in the area. Video from the scene showed the charred remains of tents.

By Hiba Yazbek, Reporting from Jerusalem, Dec. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/world/middleeast/israel-strike-gaza-al-mawasi.html

Charred makeshift buildings.

The aftermath of the strike on Thursday. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock


The Israeli military bombed a densely populated tent encampment on Wednesday night in an area of southern Gaza that it had designated as a humanitarian zone, saying the airstrike targeted senior Hamas militants who were operating in the area.

 

Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reported that at least 20 people were killed and several others wounded in the strike on a coastal area in southern Gaza known as Al-Mawasi, where thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering. The death toll could not be independently verified.

 

The Israeli military said in a statement that there were secondary explosions after the strike, suggesting “the presence of weaponry in the area.” It added that it took steps to mitigate the risk of civilian harm. Israel is trying to eliminate Hamas, which led the attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza, and it says Hamas militants hide among Gaza’s civilian population.

 

The Palestinian civil defense in Gaza said in a statement on Wednesday evening that its rescue and emergency crews were trying to extinguish a fire that engulfed the tents of displaced people after the strike.

 

Video taken in the aftermath of the strike by the Reuters news agency showed people walking through the mangled and charred remains of their makeshift tents on Thursday morning, with smoke rising from piles of clothes, mattresses and other belongings.

 

“The flames of the missile were the cause of almost all of this destruction,” Ahmed Abu Shahla, a displaced man sheltering in Al-Mawasi, told Reuters. “There were two children here in this place who were completely burned.”

 

Abu Kamal al-Assar, another displaced Palestinian who survived the strike, told Reuters that “it was a big and scary explosion” that turned the area “into a fireball.”

 

Al-Mawasi was designated as safer for civilians by Israel’s military. But Israel has also said that it will target Hamas or its infrastructure wherever it believes it to be and the area has frequently been hit by strikes.

 

The military has repeatedly ordered Palestinians in other areas of Gaza to evacuate to the humanitarian zone, despite protests from aid groups that the area lacks adequate shelter, water, food, sanitation and health care.


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8) Amnesty International Accuses Israel of Genocide in Gaza

Israel rejected the charge — the first of its kind by a major human rights organization — saying it was “based on lies.”

By Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem, Dec. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/world/middleeast/israel-amnesty-international-genocide-gaza.html

A swath of destruction in an urban area.

A neighborhood in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, after an Israeli airstrike this month. Credit...Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images



Amnesty International on Thursday became the first major international human rights organization to accuse Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza, drawing a rebuke from Israeli officials who denied the claim.

 

Amnesty’s contention, outlined in a 296-page report, comes as the International Court of Justice, the principal court of the United Nations, is reviewing similar allegations by South Africa.

 

“Israel committed and is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” the Amnesty report said.

 

The Israeli Foreign Ministry swiftly rebuffed the report, saying it was “based on lies.”

 

“Israeli citizens have been subjected to daily attacks” on multiple fronts, said Oren Marmorstein, the spokesman of the ministry. “Israel is defending itself against these attacks acting fully in accordance with international law.”

 

Amnesty International said it took into account acts by Israel between October 2023 and July 2024, including what it described as “repeated direct attacks on civilians” and extensive restrictions on humanitarian aid.

 

Israel has maintained that it is waging a war against Hamas in Gaza and not civilians. It has also blamed the United Nations for mismanaging the delivery of aid and accused Hamas of looting it.

 

The genocide accusation is acutely sensitive for Israel, which was founded in 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Many Israelis argue that it is Hamas that should face charges of genocide after its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 were taken captive, according to Israeli officials.

 

While the Amnesty report didn’t focus on the Oct. 7 attack, it said militants from Hamas and other armed groups conducted “deliberate mass killings, summary killings and other abuses, causing suffering and physical injuries.” It said war crimes committed by Hamas would be the subject of a separate report.

 

Under a convention adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, genocide is defined as carrying out certain acts of violence with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

 

In the case before the International Court of Justice, South Africa has argued that inflammatory public statements made by Israeli leaders are proof of intent to commit genocide. Part of Israel’s defense is to show that whatever politicians may have said in public was overruled by executive decisions and official orders from Israel’s war cabinet and its military’s high command.

 

Amnesty International said it used the 1948 convention to make its determination that Israel was committing genocide and it warned against narrow interpretations of what constitutes intent.


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9) How One of the World’s Richest Men Is Avoiding $8 Billion in Taxes

The chief executive of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, has taken advantage of popular loopholes in the federal estate and gift taxes, which have quietly been eviscerated.

By Jesse Drucker, Dec. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/business/nvidia-jensen-huang-estate-taxes.html

Jensen Huang with his wife, Lori, and their children in 2007. Credit...MediaNews Group/The Mercury News, via Getty Images


Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, is the 10th-richest person in the United States, worth $127 billion. In theory, when he dies, his estate should pay 40 percent of his net worth to the government in taxes.

 

But Mr. Huang, 61, is not only an engineering genius and Silicon Valley icon whose company, the world’s second-most valuable, makes the chips that power much artificial intelligence. He is also the beneficiary of a series of tax dodges that will enable him to pass on much of his fortune tax free, according to securities and tax filings reviewed by The New York Times.

 

The savings for his family are on a pace to be roughly $8 billion. It likely ranks among the largest tax dodges in the United States.

 

The types of strategies Mr. Huang has deployed to shield his wealth have become ubiquitous among the ultrawealthy. Blackstone Group’s Stephen A. Schwarzman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and top executives at Google, Coinbase, Eli Lilly, Mastercard and Advanced Micro Devices have collectively shifted billions of dollars into financial vehicles in order to avoid the federal estate tax, according to a Times analysis of securities disclosures.

 

It is just one sign of how the estate tax — imposed solely on a sliver of the country’s multimillionaires — has been eviscerated.

 

Revenue from the tax has barely changed since 2000, even as the wealth of the richest Americans has roughly quadrupled. If the estate tax had simply kept pace, it would have raised around $120 billion last year. Instead it brought in about a quarter of that.

 

That missing revenue would be enough to simultaneously double the budget of the Justice Department and triple federal funding for cancer and Alzheimer’s research.

 

The story of Mr. Huang’s tax avoidance is a case study in how the ultrarich bend the U.S. tax system for their benefit. His strategies were not explicitly authorized by Congress. Instead, they were cooked up by creative lawyers who have exploited a combination of obscure federal regulations, narrow findings by courts and rulings that the Internal Revenue Service issues in individual cases that then served as models for future tax shelters. As such strategies became widespread, they effectively became the law.

 

“You have an army of well-trained, brilliant people who sit there all day long, charging $1,000 an hour, thinking up ways to beat this tax,” said Jack Bogdanski, a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School and the author of a widely cited treatise on the estate tax. “Don’t expect anyone in Congress to stop this.”

 

The richest Americans are able to pass down approximately $200 billion each year without paying estate tax on it, thanks to the use of complex trusts and other avoidance strategies, estimated Daniel Hemel, a tax law professor at New York University.

 

Enforcement of the rules governing the estate tax has eased in part because the I.R.S. has been decimated by years of budget cuts. In the early 1990s, the agency audited more than 20 percent of all estate tax returns. By 2020, the rate had fallen to about 3 percent.

 

The trend is likely to accelerate with Republicans controlling both the White House and Capitol Hill. They are already slashing funding for law enforcement by the I.R.S. The incoming Senate majority leader, John Thune, and other congressional Republicans for years have been trying to kill the estate tax, branding it as a penalty on family farms and small businesses.

 

Yet Mr. Huang’s multibillion-dollar maneuver — detailed in the fine print of his filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and his foundation’s disclosures to the I.R.S. — shows the extent to which the estate tax has already been hollowed out.

 

“From an estate-tax-planning perspective, it’s a grand slam,” said Jonathan Blattmachr, a prominent trusts and estates lawyer who reviewed Mr. Huang’s disclosures for The Times. “He’s done a magnificent job.”

 

An Nvidia spokeswoman, Stephanie Matthew, declined to discuss details of the Huangs’ tax strategies.

 

‘Only Morons’

 

Going back millenniums, governments have sought to slow the buildup of dynastic wealth. Augustus Caesar in ancient Rome taxed wealth at death. Adam Smith, the intellectual father of laissez-faire capitalism, attacked inherited fortunes. During the last Gilded Age, so did some of America’s wealthiest men. “By taxing estates heavily at death, the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire’s unworthy life,” Andrew Carnegie said.

 

The United States adopted the modern estate tax in 1916. In recent decades, congressional Republicans have successfully watered it down, cutting the rate and increasing the amount that is exempt from the tax. Today, a married couple can pass on about $27 million tax free; anything more than that is generally supposed to be taxed at a 40 percent rate.

 

Billionaires have made a sport out of trying to avoid the tax. Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive who was President-elect Donald J. Trump’s chief economic adviser during his first administration, once quipped that “only morons pay the estate tax.”

 

Mr. Huang is no moron. In 1993, he and two other engineers were eating in a booth at a Denny’s in San Jose, Calif., when they came up with the idea for a powerful new computer chip that would be the basis for Nvidia. The company was initially focused on making chips for 3-D graphics, but by the 2000s it was branching into other areas, such as supplying semiconductors for Tesla’s electric vehicles.

 

In 2012, Mr. Huang and his wife, Lori, took one of their first steps to shield their fortune from the estate tax.

 

They set up a financial vehicle known as an irrevocable trust and moved 584,000 Nvidia shares into it, according to a securities disclosure that Mr. Huang filed. The shares at the time were worth about $7 million, but they would eventually generate tax savings many times greater.

 

The Huangs were taking advantage of a precedent set nearly two decades earlier, in 1995, when the I.R.S. blessed a transaction that tax professionals affectionately nicknamed “I Dig It.” (The moniker was a play on the name of the type of financial vehicle involved: an intentionally defective grantor trust.)

 

One of the beauties of I Dig It was that it had the potential to largely circumvent not only the estate tax but also the federal gift tax. That tax applies to assets that multimillionaires give to their heirs while they’re alive and essentially serves as a backstop to the estate tax; otherwise, rich people could give away all their money before they die in order to avoid the estate tax.

 

Here’s how the I Dig It arrangement worked. Say that a hypothetical tycoon, John Doe, gave $10 million in cash to a trust for the benefit of his children. He wouldn’t have to pay gift taxes on that unless he had already hit the $27 million gift-tax exemption.

 

The trust could then use a combination of the $10 million and a loan from Mr. Doe to acquire $100 million of shares. Those shares wouldn’t be subject to the estate tax, thanks to the I.R.S.’s 1995 ruling.

 

There was an additional benefit. Say that the value of the shares in the trust soared tenfold. None of that would be subject to the estate tax. But it could trigger a $214 million capital gains tax bill — the $900 million gain taxed at 23.8 percent. Under a separate I.R.S. ruling, Mr. Doe could pay that tax on the trust’s behalf, without it counting as an additional gift to his heirs.

 

Otherwise, the trust would have to pay the capital gains tax bill, leaving a smaller fortune to future generations.

 

The I Dig It maneuver was enormously complicated — and enormously lucrative.

 

“I’ve always called it the gift that keeps on giving,” said Michael D. Mulligan, a veteran trusts and estates lawyer in St. Louis who helped create the strategy.

 

A parade of the ultrawealthy soon deployed variations of the technique, according to filings in court and with securities regulators.

 

The family of the media mogul Mel Karmazin used several I Dig Its. A former owner of the Detroit Pistons, Bill Davidson, used them to avoid more than $2.7 billion in taxes. Mitt Romney, who at the time was running the private equity firm Bain Capital and would later propose abolishing the estate tax as the Republican nominee for president in 2012, also used the technique.

 

The I.R.S. has challenged some setups that it viewed as overly aggressive. Mr. Davidson settled with the I.R.S. The agency claimed that the Karmazin family’s arrangements “lacked economic substance” and sought $2.4 million in back taxes. But the agency ultimately abandoned most of its arguments and collected about $100,000, according to a lawyer for the Karmazin family.

 

In Mr. Huang’s case, the details in securities filings are limited. But multiple experts, including Mr. Mulligan, said it was almost certainly a classic I Dig It gift, loan and sale transaction.

 

The $7 million of shares that Mr. Huang moved into his trust in 2012 are today worth more than $3 billion. If those shares were directly passed on to Mr. Huang’s heirs, they would be taxed at 40 percent — or well over $1 billion.

 

Instead, the tax bill will probably be no more than a few hundred thousand dollars.

 

First-Name Basis

 

The Huangs soon took another big step toward reducing their estate-tax bill.

 

Nvidia was emerging as the main provider of chips for artificial intelligence technology, eventually capturing more than 90 percent of the market. Mr. Huang was becoming a Silicon Valley celebrity. He adopted an all-black dress code. Such was his renown that he was known in tech circles simply by his first name, along with luminaries like Tesla’s Elon, Meta’s Mark and Google’s Sergey and Larry.

 

In 2016, the Huangs set up several vehicles known as grantor retained annuity trusts, or GRATs, securities filings show.

 

They were borrowing a strategy that had been invented years earlier on behalf of the ex-wife of Walmart’s co-founder. Beginning in 1993, Audrey Walton transferred about $200 million worth of shares to two GRATs. The twist was that the trusts had to eventually repay Ms. Walton the value of those shares, plus some modest interest. If the value of the shares went up more than what had to be repaid, the trusts could keep whatever was left over — tax free.

 

The I.R.S. contested the arrangement on narrow technical grounds. But in 2000, a U.S. Tax Court judge upheld its legality.

 

Mr. Hemel of New York University said the I.R.S. could have challenged the use of GRATs on other grounds as well. Instead, he said, the agency “capitulated” and essentially permitted the use of the trusts as an acceptable avenue for avoiding the estate tax.

 

Billionaires took notice. The Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the oil investor Harold Hamm, the cable magnates John Malone and Charles Dolan, and the designer Ralph Lauren were among those who set up GRATs soon after the Walton decision, according to disclosures in the men’s filings with the S.E.C. That positioned their families to collectively avoid billions of dollars in future tax bills.

 

Under President Barack Obama, the Treasury Department repeatedly tried to make it harder to avoid the estate tax, proposing restrictions on the use of GRATs and I Dig Its. But the proposals died in Congress. (In the Trump administration, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, himself a GRAT user, would halt efforts to close the loopholes.)

 

In 2016, Mr. Huang and his wife put just over three million Nvidia shares into their four new GRATs. The shares were worth about $100 million. If their value rose, the increase would be a tax-free windfall for their two adult children, who both work at Nvidia.

 

That is precisely what happened. The shares are now worth more than $15 billion, according to data from securities filings compiled for The Times by Equilar, a data firm. That means that the Huang family is poised to avoid roughly $6 billion in estate taxes.

 

If the Huangs’ trusts sell their shares, that will generate a hefty capital gains tax bill — more than $4 billion, based on Nvidia’s current stock price. Mr. and Mrs. Huang can pay that bill on behalf of the trusts, without it counting as a taxable gift to their heirs.

 

A Charitable Tax Dodge

 

Starting in 2007, Mr. Huang deployed another technique that will further reduce his family’s estate taxes. This strategy involved taking advantage of his and his wife’s charitable foundation.

 

Mr. Huang has given the Jen Hsun & Lori Huang Foundation shares of Nvidia that were worth about $330 million at the time of the donations. Such donations are tax-deductible, meaning they reduced the Huangs’ income tax bills in the years that the gifts took place.

 

Foundations are required to make annual donations to charities equal to at least 5 percent of their total assets. But the Huangs’ foundation, like those of many billionaires, is satisfying that requirement by giving heavily to what is known as a donor-advised fund.

 

Such funds are pools of money that the donor controls. There are limitations on how the money can be spent. Buying cars or vacation homes or the like is off limits. But a fund could, say, invest money in a business run by the donor’s friend or donate enough money to name a building at a university that the donor’s children hope to attend.

 

There is a gaping loophole in the tax laws: Donor-advised funds are not required to actually give any money to charitable organizations.

 

When the donor dies, control of the fund can pass to his heirs — without incurring any estate taxes.

 

In recent years, 84 percent of the Huang foundation’s donations have gone to their donor-advised fund, named GeForce, an apparent nod to the name of an Nvidia videogame chip. The Nvidia shares that the Huangs have donated are today worth about $2 billion.

 

The fund is not required to disclose how its money is spent, though the foundation has said the assets will be used for charitable purposes. The Nvidia spokeswoman, Ms. Matthew, said those causes included higher education and public health.

 

But there is another benefit. Based on Nvidia’s current stock price, the donations to the fund have reduced Mr. Huang’s eventual estate-tax bill by about $800 million.

 

Kitty Bennett and Dylan Freedman contributed research.


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10) Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows C.E.O.’s Killing

The shooting death of a UnitedHealthcare executive in Manhattan has unleashed Americans’ frustrations with an industry that often denies coverage and reimbursement for medical claims.

By Dionne Searcey and Madison Malone Kircher, Dec. 5, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/nyregion/social-media-insurance-industry-brian-thompson.html

A woman wearing a winter coat stands in front of a crime scene as she holds a microphone.

Messages found on bullet casings at the scene of the Wednesday shooting — “delay” and “deny” — are two words familiar to many Americans who have interacted with insurance companies. Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times


The fatal shooting on Wednesday of a top UnitedHealthcare executive, Brian Thompson, on a Manhattan sidewalk has unleashed a torrent of morbid glee from patients and others who say they have had negative experiences with health insurance companies at some of the hardest times of their lives.

 

“Thoughts and deductibles to the family,” read one comment underneath a video of the shooting posted online by CNN. “Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network.”

 

On TikTok, one user wrote, “I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for by insurance makes me physically sick. I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all of those patients and their families.”

 

The dark commentary after the death of Mr. Thompson, a 50-year-old insurance executive from Maple Grove, Minn., who was also a husband and a father of two children, highlighted the anger and frustration over the state of health care in America, where those with private insurance often find themselves in Kafka-esque tangles while seeking reimbursement for medical treatment and are often denied.

 

Messages that law enforcement officials say were found on bullet casings at the scene of the shooting in front of a Midtown hotel — “delay” and “deny” — are two words familiar to many Americans who have interacted with insurance companies for almost anything other than routine doctor visits.

 

Mr. Thompson was chief executive of his company’s insurance division, which reported $281 billion in revenue last year, providing coverage to millions of Americans through the health plans it sold to individuals, employers and people under government programs like Medicare. The division employs roughly 140,000 people.

 

Mr. Thompson received a $10.2 million compensation package last year, a combination of $1 million in base pay and cash and stock grants. He was shot to death as he was walking toward the annual investor day for UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare’s parent company.

 

Stephan Meier, the chair of the management division at Columbia Business School, said the attack could send shock waves through the broader health insurance industry.

 

About seven chief executives of publicly traded companies die each year, he said, but almost always from health complications or accidents. A targeted attack could have much larger implications.

 

“The insurance industry is not the most loved, to put it mildly,” Mr. Meier said. “If you’re a C-suite executive of another insurance company, I would be thinking, What’s this mean for me? Am I next?”

 

A longtime employee of UnitedHealthcare said that workers at the company had been aware for years that members were unhappy. Mr. Thompson was one of the few executives who wanted to do something about it, said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the company does not allow workers to speak publicly without permission.

 

In speeches to employees, Mr. Thompson spoke about the need to change the state of health care coverage in the country and the culture of the company, topics other executives avoided, the employee said.

 

Already, there is heightened concern among some public-facing health care companies, said Eric Sean Clay, the president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety. The trade group includes members that offer security to some of the largest health care companies in North America.

 

“The C.E.O.s are quite often the most visible face of an organization,” he said. “Sometimes people hate on that individual, and wish to do them harm.”

 

But few health care companies provide security for their executives, he said, in part to avoid bad optics, or because it may seem unnecessary.

 

In the hours after the shooting early Wednesday morning, social media exploded with anger toward the insurance industry and Mr. Thompson.

 

“I pay $1,300 a month for health insurance with an $8,000 deductible. ($23,000 yearly) When I finally reached that deductible, they denied my claims. He was making a million dollars a month,” read one comment on TikTok.

 

Another commenter wrote, “This needs to be the new norm. EAT THE RICH.”

 

“The ambulance ride to the hospital probably won’t be covered,” wrote a commenter on a TikTok video in which another user featured an audio clip from the Netflix show “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.” In it, the queen makes a dramatic show of faux sorrow over a death.

 

Scores of patients and family members also posted horror stories of insurance claim reimbursement stagnation and denials.

 

One woman expressed frustration with trying to get a special bed for her disabled son covered by UnitedHealthcare. Another user described struggling with bills and coverage after giving birth.

 

“It is so stressful,” the user said in a video. “I was sick over this.”

 

Stefanos Chen and Maria Cramer contributed reporting, and Kitty Bennett contributed research.


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11) The Supreme Court Just Showed Us What Contempt for Expertise Looks Like

By M. Gessen, Opinion Columnist, Dec. 6, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/opinion/supreme-court-trans-teens.html

A photograph of someone standing near the Supreme Court, holding a sign that says “protect trans kids.”

Rhiannon Adam for The New York Times


Shortly before allowing reporters into the main chamber of the Supreme Court for oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, a court employee asked us all if we needed to use a bathroom. The men’s room was right next door, the staff member said, and the women’s room down the hall.

 

“Where should nonbinary people go?” one of the reporters asked.

 

An uncomfortable back-and-forth followed. The staff person seemed not to understand the question. In the end, there was no answer. It just didn’t seem to compute.

 

The exchange was more than casually relevant to the case the court heard that day. At issue in United States v. Skrmetti is a Tennessee law that bans treatments such as the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors. The Biden administration is arguing, among other things, that trans people constitute a “quasi-suspect class” — in layperson’s terms, a group of people who have been subjected to systematic discrimination.

 

During the hearing, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked the U.S. solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, who argued the case for the federal government, for examples of laws that have historically discriminated against trans people. Prelogar couldn’t think of any.

 

Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union, who addressed the justices after Prelogar, cited two examples: a prohibition on trans people serving in the military and laws (some still on the books) that effectively banned cross-dressing in at least 32 states. Barrett prodded Strangio for more, but he couldn’t think of more examples that target trans people specifically.

 

Trans and gender-nonconforming people have existed as long as humans have used gender to organize themselves — think Joan of Arc; think Yentl; think many, many real and fictional people in-between — but in Western culture, it’s only in the last half-century that trans people have asserted ourselves as a group. It was only when we became more visible that the onslaught of new discriminatory laws began.

 

Tennessee passed its law, known as S.B.1, in March 2023. The American Civil Liberties Union and other rights groups sued on behalf of three Tennessee adolescents — two trans boys and one trans girl — and their families and one doctor. The kids had been benefiting from gender-affirming care; each had reportedly gained confidence, overcome distress and become much happier. Then the state banned their treatment.

 

The A.C.L.U.’s appeal to the Supreme Court (after winning a preliminary injunction that was then overturned when Tennessee appealed) argued that the law violated both the equal protection clause of the Constitution, by discriminating against trans minors on the basis of sex, and due process, by overriding the decisions parents make about their children’s medical care. The Biden administration had joined on the side of the plaintiffs.

 

But the court agreed to hear the case on only the equal protection grounds, setting the due-process argument aside. So by the time the case got to the Supreme Court, the stories of the people who originally sued Tennessee had become all but irrelevant to the proceedings. The opening arguments did not make more than a passing mention of the actual adolescents and their families whose medical decisions Tennessee decided to override.

 

The mental gymnastics were breathtaking at times, especially when Prelogar, who speaks with the speed of a champion debater, fielded questions from the justices. But the stakes for actual trans people — the existential nature of protection from discrimination — seemed obscured.

 

The only moments of obvious moral searching came when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she was dismayed by the similarities between the case before the court and Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case in which the court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violated the Constitution. Back then, the plaintiffs argued that, if a white woman could marry a white man and a Black woman could not, then this constituted discrimination on the basis of race. Jackson noted that in that case, too, proponents of the discriminatory law cited what they considered scientific evidence of the harm of interracial marriage.

 

Tennessee also claims that science is on its side, and that is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this case. Dozens of mainstream medical societies, including the leading associations of pediatricians, filed amici briefs arguing against S.B.1. Apparently trying to find their footing, conservative justices asked about new regulations in the United Kingdom and Sweden. But those regulations were written by medical — not legislative — authorities, and they come nowhere near a total ban.

 

Every time they posed questions about specific treatments, the justices seemed to get lost in the medical weeds. Which is forgivable: They are justices, not doctors. And they probably shouldn’t be trying to make a ruling based on medical evidence.

 

The ease with which legislators overrule doctors, and the relatively small amount of attention this overreach received during the Supreme Court hearing, are symptoms of our times. Just in the last few years, more than half the states have passed legislation that limits access to gender-affirming care. Many of the laws are at least as restrictive as S.B.1 — despite the medical profession’s opposition to total bans. Doing so is becoming something of a national pastime. Childhood vaccination rates continue their precipitous decline. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., vaccine skeptic and raw-milk proponent, is our secretary of health and human services designee.

 

Rejection of genuine expertise is both a precondition and a function of autocracy. Joseph Stalin’s regime outlawed genetics as “pseudoscience,” while he himself was declared an expert in all fields, from linguistics to biology.

 

Contempt for expertise is not the only autocratic force at work in the case of S.B.1 and in similar laws. Another is the government’s intrusion into private lives — in this case, the shameless assumption that legislators can make decisions that rightfully belong with families and their physicians. The Federal District Court cited this issue as one of its reasons for overturning S.B.1. Parents have a “fundamental right to direct the medical care of their children,” the court wrote. That, however, is the part of the case the Supreme Court decided not even to consider.

 

A third force is the growing intolerance of minorities and, in particular, people who dare to challenge tradition. It’s a cliché to point out that the totalitarian governments of the 20th century jailed and killed freethinkers and outliers of every kind. But it’s a cliché that seems to need repeating, since contemporary autocrats do the same thing — and many of them start by targeting L.G.B.T.Q. people.

 

Some observers see reason to hope that Barrett and Neil Gorsuch will join the three liberal justices and the court will overturn S.B.1 as discriminatory. I do not share this optimism. I expect the court to uphold the Tennessee law, which will have immediate, devastating consequences for trans kids and their families.

 

Expect the bans on gender-affirming care for minors to spread. Already, some states are trying to restrict gender-affirming care for adults. Outright bans will follow. We trans people have only recently become a visible minority with any rights claims at all. Some people, like perhaps that Supreme Court staffer, have never even heard of nonbinary people or gender-neutral bathrooms. Reversing our gains won’t take long.

 

But it won’t stop with trans care. Governments at different levels will be emboldened to meddle in what should be private, family decisions. In and out of government, people who know what they are talking about will be supplanted by people who perform their loyalty most loudly. Quackery will continue its ascent; expert consensus, not only in medicine but in all the disciplines that enable us to know and navigate the world, will be marginalized. Consider S.B.1, the arguments in its defense — and the largely vacuous discussion of them in the Supreme Court — to be a preview.


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