If you wanted more to worry about

 

Just passing on this story about the debt crisis in many African nations. It might help distract from Israel crushing Gaza like stepping a bag of potato chips and bombing with the goal of killing identified human targets. Not exactly kosher.

But let's get into debt; actually the subject of debt in African nations.

Africa’s Debt Crisis Has ‘Catastrophic Implications’ for the World

Except 1:

"It [the debt crisis] leaves less money for investments that could create jobs for what is the youngest, fastest-growing population on the planet; less money to manage potential pandemics like Covid or mpox; less money to feed, house and educate people; less money to combat the devastating effects of climate change, which threaten to make swaths of land uninhabitable and force people to migrate.

If nothing is done to help countries manage the financial crunch, “a wave of destabilizing debt defaults will end up severely undermining progress on the green transition, with catastrophic implications for the entire world,” warned a new report from the Finance for Development Lab at the Paris School for Economics and Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue."

Excerpt 2:

"Countries that borrow more than they can afford end up experiencing intense economic and social pain as output crashes, employment dries up, and inflation and poverty rise. The systemic problem, said Indermit Gill, chief economist at the World Bank, is that lenders who also made bad decisions by extending too much credit often don’t pay a financial penalty."

OK, that's not good. Also, the political and social instability that high debt causes is really bad. 

Here's more:  Africa's Debt Crisis Explained

Now back to the Middle East.