The Russian economy’s unexpected resilience has been due, in part, to alternative supply chains.
“My condolences to the family and friends of Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a renowned literary giant and scholar, a son of the soil and great patriot whose footprints are indelible,” Kenya’s opposition leader Martha Karua wrote on X.“Thank you Mwalimu [teacher] for your freedom writing,” wrote Amnesty International’s Kenya branch on X. “Having already earned his place in Kenyan history, he transitions from mortality to immortality.”
Margaretta wa Gacheru, a sociologist and former student of Ngugi, said the author was a national icon.“To me, he’s like a Kenyan Tolstoy, in the sense of being a storyteller, in the sense of his love of the language and panoramic view of society, his description of the landscape of social relations, of class and class struggles,” she said.What unfolded in Rafah on Tuesday was not a tragedy – it was the grim success of colonial humanitarianism.
On May 27, thousands of Palestinians surged towards an aid distribution site in Rafah – desperate for food after months of starvation – only to be met with gunfire from panicked private security contractors. What the world witnessed at the Tal as-Sultan aid site was not a tragedy, but a revelation: The final, violent unmasking of the illusion that humanitarian aid exists to serve humanity rather than empire.Marketed by Israel and the United States as a model of dignity and neutrality, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s new distribution hub disintegrated into chaos within hours of opening. But this was no accident. It was the logical endpoint of a system not designed to nourish the hungry, but to control and contain them.
As starving people in Gaza – made to wait for hours under the scorching sun, tightly confined in metal lanes to receive a small box of food – eventually began to press forward in desperation, chaos broke out. Security personnel – employed by a US-backed contractor – opened fire in a failed attempt to prevent a stampede. Soon, Israeli helicopters were deployed to evacuate American staff and began firing warning shots over the crowd. The much-advertised aid site collapsed completely after only a few hours in operation.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation had promised something revolutionary with this initiative: Aid free from the corruption of Hamas, the bureaucracy of the UN, the messiness of Palestinian civil society. What it delivered instead was the purest distillation of colonial humanitarianism – aid as an instrument of control, dehumanisation, and humiliation, dispensed by armed contractors under the watchful eye of the occupying military.According to Amnesty, detainees were crammed into overcrowded, unhygienic cells, lacking adequate food, water, sanitation and medical care. Some of those interviewed said they saw fellow prisoners die due to these conditions or from acts of torture.
Witnesses described gruesome scenes, including two detainees being bludgeoned to death with hammers and another shot dead on the spot.All of the former detainees said they were either tortured or saw others being tortured with wooden sticks, electric cables or engine belts, the rights group said.
Relatives searching for the missing were often turned away by M23 fighters, who denied the detainees were being held – actions Amnesty says amount to enforced disappearances.Peace deal remains elusive