Yes, The New York Times is committing genocidal journalism

by BELEN FERNANDEZ

In his latest column for the NYT, Bret Stephens tries to excuse a uniquely horrific crime with uniquely horrific journalism.

The Israelis certainly owe Bret Stephens a favour.

Yesterday, The New York Times opinion columnist took to the pages of the United States newspaper of record to promote his latest deranged argument, headlined: “No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza”.

Never mind that numerous global institutions, ranging from various United Nations bodies to Amnesty International, have determined that Israel is committing just that. These are organisations that hardly throw the G-word around lightly, but Stephens knows better. And he will tell us why.

In the very first paragraph of his Times intervention – which should perhaps come accompanied by a trigger warning for readers prone to aneurysms – Stephens demands defiantly: “If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal – if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans – why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly?”

It would seem, of course, that the Israeli military’s near-comprehensive conversion of much of the Gaza Strip into rubble – via the bombardment of homes, hospitals, schools, and everything else that can be bombed – would be rather “methodical”. As for the perceived insufficient deadliness of Israel’s ongoing “actions”, Stephens cites the official Palestinian death count of “nearly 60,000” in less than two years, and wonders why there are “not, say, hundreds of thousands of deaths”.

He goes on to proclaim that “the first question the anti-Israel genocide chorus needs to answer is: Why isn’t the death count higher?”

Among the many questions that Stephens himself needs to answer, meanwhile, is why he thinks slaughtering 60,000 people is no big deal. As of November 2024, Israel had killed at least 17,400 children in Gaza – but even this is apparently not “malevolent” enough. Furthermore, according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal more than one year ago, the true death toll in Gaza was already potentially set to exceed 186,000. How’s that for “hundreds of thousands”?

In lieu of waiting for an answer from the “anti-Israel genocide chorus”, Stephens presents his own, which is that “Israel is manifestly not committing genocide.” Citing the UN genocide convention’s definition of the term as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”, Stephens proceeds to announce that “I am aware of no evidence of an Israeli plan to deliberately target and kill Gazan civilians.”

Objectively speaking, this is the equivalent in terms of ludicrousness of claiming that there is no evidence of a plan by the operators of a chicken slaughterhouse to deliberately end the lives of the poultry therein. You don’t kill 17,400 children in 13 months by accident; nor do you repeatedly bomb hospitals and ambulances if you aren’t, you know, deliberately aiming to kill civilians.

But it’s not just about bombs. Forced starvation is genocide, too. And on that note, another question Stephens might answer is how intentionally depriving a population of two million people of the food and water that is necessary for human survival does not constitute an “intent to destroy” that group. Yesterday alone, Gaza health officials reported that at least 15 Palestinians had starved to death, including four children.

Aljazeera for more

The New York Times’ Bret Stephens, genocide denier

by WILL SOLOMON

In a July 22 essay that is extraordinary even for someone as morally odious as he is, The New York Times columnist and Israeli propagandist Bret Stephens writes that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. His reasoning? Israel has the capacity to efficiently kill way more people than it has—if it wanted to.

You might call this an exercise in gaslighting if Bret weren’t sufficiently ideologically committed to plausibly believe this bullshit. The essay is, ostensibly, like much of what he has penned in recent years, a response to the increasing disgust toward and isolation of Israel internationally, and to the immediate reality of mass starvation in Gaza. It also comes only days after prominent Israeli-American genocide scholar Omer Bartov penned a long essay in the same opinion section, systematically explaining why Israel is in fact committing genocide; it also comes as over one hundred aid organizations issued a joint statement about Israel’s starvation campaign. Should we assume that Bret, a pathological Israeli devotee, is somehow more credible here?

Bret Stephens has one overarching goal in his writing, which I have described elsewhere: defend Israel. At various times this involves demonization of Israel’s enemies, obfuscation of Israeli crimes, endorsement of Israeli “successes,” false equivalences between Israel and other states, and maybe his favorite tactic, baseless and borderline defamatory accusations of antisemitism against Israel’s (or his) critics.

There’s much to pick apart in this offensive and essentially incoherent essay, as in everything he writes, but a few brief points. One: Bret demands to know why the death count isn’t higher. Cute question, but it is. Over six months ago the British medical journal The Lancet published a study estimating the death count was 40 percent higher than what was recorded at the time—which would put the number of dead at the start of this year around 64,000 people, higher than what it “officially” is now. But even this is probably nowhere near the actual toll, as The Lancet also published a correspondence one year ago estimating a death toll near 200,000. Earlier this year Ralph Nader plausibly estimated the death toll at over 400,000. The Gaza Strip has been completely destroyed; “conservative” couldn’t begin to describe the scale of the undercount.

Counterpunch for more

by JINOY JOSE P.

Dear reader,

“At present, we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP.” When the American environmentalist Paul Hawken made this observation, he probably did not realise he was writing the tagline for humanity’s longest-running tragicomedy. Gross domestic product, or GDP, is the most trusted indicator of progress for governments, businesses, financial markets, policy forums, think tanks, and media outlets. The higher the number, the healthier the nation. Or so we are told. And this belief has remained mostly unchanged for nearly a century.

Ironically, it all began with a warning. In 1934, the Russian-born American economist, Simon Kuznets, presented the first set of national income estimates to the US Congress. These tables were designed to help understand the effects of the Great Depression and gave policymakers a new statistical tool: a way to quantify the total market value of goods and services produced within a country over a period.

Kuznets, who would later win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, understood the power of this invention and also its danger. He cautioned that this should not be mistaken for an index of national welfare. Economic activity and human wellbeing, he insisted, were not interchangeable. The Congress listened politely, then adopted the measure, ignoring all his warnings with juvenile enthusiasm.

By the 1960s, Kuznets was writing with increasing urgency. Growth, he argued, needed to be understood not merely in terms of volume but of purpose. More of what? For whom? To what end? His queries were rhetorical by then. The political appetite for a single, unambiguous number—one that could suggest the success of policies, the country’s potential, national dynamics, etc.—had become irresistible. GDP was simple to understand, it was scalable, and it was global. It was the Disney or McDonald’s of economic metrics; almost everyone has heard about it. It made countries legible to investors and intelligible to diplomats. It became, without debate or consensus, the shorthand for progress.

Once the framework was in place, it started dictating how power operated. In the decades following the Second World War, Western economies, especially those in Europe and North America, experienced sustained growth in GDP. This was seen as validation for the idea. The “economic miracles” of Italy, Germany, and Japan were purely statistical: high growth rates, surging output, and expanding industrial capacity. Italy’s miracolo economico, for instance—the rapid development from the late 1940s to the early 1960s—was taken as proof that state-led reconstruction and capitalist expansion could coexist fruitfully.

The fact that this growth also brought chronic air pollution, collapsing rural economies, the fall of sectors like agriculture, the decline of social security, and widening inequalities was treated as unfortunate but irrelevant background noise.

The American case was similar. During the post-war boom, petroleum flowed at prices lower than milk. Factories hummed, suburbs expanded, more and more workers were brought in (often at cheaper wages), and GDP rates climbed. The idea that infinite economic expansion might be neither possible nor desirable did not gain serious attention. Then, in 1973, the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries initiated an oil embargo against nations that had supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Prices quadrupled, supply chains broke down, and inflation soared. Economists were “reportedly” shocked. They had been charting the economy’s rise with all the confidence of a physicist plotting a parabola. Suddenly, the curve stopped.

What followed was a redirection. If growth could not be guaranteed through production, it would be chased through finance. In the 1980s, under US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, economic policy moved towards deregulation. The real economy—the production of goods and services—became subordinate to the financial economy: stocks, bonds, insurance, derivatives, etc. What mattered was not whether anything tangible was being made, but whether profits were being recorded. This shift was sold to the public as modernisation (reforms, to use a term we are familiar with), but it was better understood as abstraction. Capital moved faster. Transactions multiplied. GDP, ever adaptable, kept rising.

Frontline for more

by SOKSAMPHOAS IM

Both sides accuse the other of igniting the armed hostilities but Thailand’s fraught civil-military divide is largely to blame

It has been two months since tensions between Cambodia and Thailand flared up again. This most recent escalation was sparked by the death of a Cambodian soldier during a skirmish with Thai troops on May 28, 2025, at the disputed border area between Cambodia’s Preah Vihear province and Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani province.

The incident reignited a long-simmering border conflict, culminating in an exchange of artillery and small-arms fire on July 24, 2025. This violence, however, cannot be understood through the lens of a single battlefield event—nor can it be reduced to the widely discussed 17-minute leaked phone call on June 15 between Cambodian Senate President and former Prime Minister Hun Sen and suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra.

Three days after the phone conversation, Hun Sen published the recording on his Facebook page, raising alarm bells across the region. Yet, to understand the significance of this latest border crisis, we must go beyond these two headline-grabbing incidents and examine the internal political dynamics of both nations – and the deep historical legacies that continue to shape bilateral relations.

A key moment in the phone call focused on the Thai military’s unilateral decision to close border crossings and maintain troops near Ta Moan temple. Hun Sen pressed for the reopening of the border and the withdrawal of Thai troops, pointing to the failed bilateral talks on June 5 and a brief 10-minute skirmish near the Emerald Triangle.

Paetongtarn, however, expressed hesitation in issuing such orders. Despite holding the national leadership position, she admitted that doing so could worsen her political situation, as she was already under pressure from nationalist factions who accused her of being soft on Cambodia – due in part to the close ties between her family and the Hun family.

While she agreed in principle to Hun Sen’s requests, her tone betrayed uncertainty. Instead, she proposed that Hun Sen reach out to Thailand’s then-Minister of Defense and now acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai.

Hun Sen rejected this suggestion outright, insisting that since the Thai side initiated the provocation, it must resolve the issue on its own. Cambodia, he assured her, would reopen its border as soon as Thailand did.

This exchange revealed more than diplomatic posturing – it exposed the fractured nature of Thailand’s political system. Paetongtarn’s inability or unwillingness to overrule military decisions laid bare the reality that her civilian government lacks authority over the Thai armed forces.

If we assume that she did attempt, between June 16 and 17, to persuade the military to withdraw and was rebuffed, then it stands to reason that a coup – or something resembling one – may already be underway.

Some observers have dismissed Hun Sen’s decision to leak the call as a cunning political move, portraying him as the “old fox” taking a stab at a weakened rival. But perhaps his intent was not to manipulate public sentiment, but to document – on record – that both he and Paetongtarn had attempted to de-escalate tensions.

Asia Times for more

This past week, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives both passed Donald Trump’s signature budget bill, which Trump has dubbed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”.

Despite the hype surrounding Trump’s bill, this legislation will do nothing to ‘make America great again’. It will, however, do a great deal to enrich billionaires even more, and to increase economic pressures on workers and the poor.

To explore what this legislation will mean for ordinary Americans, Dimitri Lascaris spoke with Margaret Kimberly.

Margaret is the Executive Editor and Senior Columnist of Black Agenda Report and the current host of the Black Agenda Radio podcast, Her book, Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents, was published in 2020.

Dimitri and Margaret also discussed key elements of Trump’s foreign policy (including Palestine and Iran), the race for the mayoralty of New York City,, and the true significance of Independence Day in the United States.

Youtube for more

by MATHEW JOHN

The Feku regime has found an ingenious way of making people “disappear” whose loyalties are uncertain, eerily reminding one of George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’.

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves… The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.” 

– From the play Julius Caesar, by Shakespeare 

My story is about Bholistan, a dystopian country eerily like ours, brimming with injustice and oppression. For a whole decade and more, that benighted land has been ruled by a Feku – cruel, mendacious, boorish and wrapped up in himself. He has wielded untrammelled power that he has used to tyrannise and bamboozle his people who have meekly submitted to his every command as he wrecks their world – values, kinship, institutions – for his own gain and that of his cohorts.

The special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Maghda is the latest atrocity that the Feku has inflicted on his people. From being a vocal critic of the universal Uphaar identity card scheme before coming to power in 2014, calling it a “political gimmick”, he pushed the Uphaar Act through the legislature in 2016 and since then had made it mandatory for all kinds of purposes including filing of income tax returns, availing of government welfare schemes, getting a passport, opening a bank account, as identity for voting and what have you.

But now the Feku and his factotums in the National Electoral Commission (NEC) have decided to pull the rug from under the people’s feet. The long-suffering citizens, whose lives are being disrupted repeatedly on account of the Feku’s hare-brained or mischievous schemes have been told that the Uphaar card is no longer proof of citizenship or date of birth.

With the upcoming Maghda election in mind and with the obvious but unstated intent of excluding dadi-topiwalas and the marginalised from the electoral process, the NEC has completed the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Maghda, but not before shockingly deciding that the Uphaar, voter ID and ration cards are not valid indicative documents for voter registration.

Consequently, a huge swathe of the electorate has been disenfranchised. Out of 7.40 crore electors as many as 80 lakh have been denied the vote. A cute Labrador, though, was issued a residence certificate, thereby demonstrating the unbridled power of the NEC to cull and hand-pick the electorate.

The Feku regime has indeed found an ingenious way of making people “disappear” whose loyalties are uncertain, which reminds one of George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, that described the Party’s practice of making individuals who were inconvenient to disappear from society, history and memory, effectively turning them into ‘unpersons’. It’s surreal, the way the Feku has been trampling all over his country’s constitution and the values that underpin it, even as the guardians of the constitution – the judiciary – hems and haws but then does his bidding. And his people are mute.

Given the Feku’s dodgy educational credentials, the rumour that he keeps a copy of Mein Kamph by his bedside is probably apocryphal. What is indubitable, though, is that he has somehow imbibed the Fuhrer’s tips on how to propagate the Big Lie: “The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small but their power of forgetting enormous…all effective propaganda must be limited to a few points and must harp on these in slogans.”

The Great Dictator also commended the art of lying: “Great liars are also great magicians.” The Feku has acted decisively on this advice.

The Wire for more

by B. R. GOWANI

they starved us
they stripped us
they degraded us
they terrorized us
they executed us
they suffocated us
…

that super power was crushed by dying & new superpowers

we were planted in someone else’s land

we gradually stole most of the land

we also got huge reparation money from our oppressor

many of us also made money out of the tragedy

the Superpower has supported us financially/politically/vetoically

once we got the land …

we then became … them

we humiliated them
we imprisoned them
we terrorized them
we starved them
we bombed them
we executed them
…

And …

almost no one came to their rescue

a few little ones were crushed

the big one was taken care of by the Superpower

we are “God’s chosen ones” & the Superpower’s loved ones

No one has hindered our mission …

Our protector is all around us …

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

THE FRIDAY TIMES

Long before Islamic kingdoms ruled the land, Pakistan was a cradle of Buddhist civilization, home to the majestic Gandhara region, where kings like Ashoka promoted dharma, and Greek and Indian cultures fused in stunning sculptures and stupas. Explore how Buddhist thought flourished across Taxila, Swat, Sindh, and Gilgit-Baltistan until Hun invasions and the rise of Islam faded its presence. Rediscovered through British archaeologists and modern collaborations, today Pakistan’s grand monasteries, rock carvings, and museum collections are drawing global attention. This documentary traces that transformation, from Mauryan roots to modern preservation, and shows why this forgotten heritage still shapes shared culture and identity. 

The Friday Times for more

SCROLL STAFF

The 1981 classic, starring Rekha, has been restored and will be re-released in cinemas on June 27.

Among the beneficiaries of the recent trend of older films being re-released in cinemas is Umrao Jaan. Muzaffar Ali’s celebrated period drama from 1981, starring Rekha in one of her most well-regarded roles, is not available on any streaming platforms. This makes its re-emergence special, the director told Scroll.

Umrao Jaan’s rights are held by the son of the original producer of the film, Ali said. “Had he sold the film to a streaming channel, it would have lost its mystery,” the director added. “There is still a craving for the film since people want to see it in its better form.”

The movie, which has been restored by the National Film Archive of India, will be out in PVR and Inox theatres on June 27. Audiences can expect Rekha’s amazing grace, sumptuous visuals, gorgeous costumes and jewellery, Khayyam’s music, Asha Bhosle’s singing, Shahryar’s lyrics.

Most of all, they will see “a convergence of nostalgia and a dream for the future”, as Ali wrote in his memoir Zikr – In The Light of Shadow and Time (Penguin Random House, 2023).

Ali adapted Umrao Jaan from Mirza Hadi Ruswa’s historical fiction Umrao Jaan Adaa, about the courtesan Amiran. The movie, like the novel, is set in the nineteenth century. It traces Amiran’s arrival in a brothel in Lucknow and her relationships with characters played by Farooque Shaikh, Raj Babbar and Naseeruddin Shah.

Amiran’s experiences run parallel to the decline of Lucknow as the cultural hub of the former kingdom of Awadh. Umrao Jaan is classified as one of the most important courtesans films made in India, but it’s actually a “lost Lucknow film”, Ali said.

“It’s a film about relooking at Awadh with a sense of truth,” the 80-year-old filmmaker and designer observed. “A lot of films of this kind are placeless. You can’t smell the place. In Umrao Jaan, the fragrance of Lucknow is very strong. My film is deeply rooted in the geography of a place where I belonged.”

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by LAURA RODRIGUEZ SALAMANCA

When Meta embedded AI bots in its apps, even students in the most remote corners of Colombia gained access. But rather than boosting learning, it’s getting in the way.

• Meta’s popularity has made it the first place many Colombian students encounter and use generative AI.
• Teachers report a surge in AI-generated homework and essays, while student performance on exams declines.
• Educators warn easy access to AI is deepening existing problems in the country, which was already struggling with low graduation and literacy rates.

Chemistry teacher María Intencipa misses the good old days — last year — when her small school in rural Colombia was sheltered from the artificial intelligence revolution by its remoteness. 

José Gregorio Salas Rural High School, where she works, lacks enough computers and reliable internet. Few students can afford the high-end smartphones or data plans that top-of-the-line AI requires.

Intencipa had heard about ChatGPT, but from what she could tell, few of her students were using it. In 2023, some started whispering about getting help from “Lucia.” She thought it might be the name of a tutor, but they were referring to the Luzia app, which turns the WhatsApp messaging app into an AI bot.

Then, last year, AI metastasized to almost every class. Teachers across the school noticed a surge in unusually high-quality answers that didn’t resemble their students’ typical work. Homework and essays suddenly featured erudite arguments, sophisticated vocabulary, and points that had not been taught in class or the textbooks. 

“When I assign homework, students just use AI,” Intencipa told Rest of World. “Because it’s easier.”

Despite the burst in brilliance, more kids were failing exams, teachers said. 

Starting in July 2024, AI was suddenly everywhere all at once in Latin America after Meta Platforms started incorporating chatbots in its apps across the region. Whether users wanted them or not, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram became homes for a variety of AI bots. 

The students of José Gregorio Salas Rural High School put them to work on their homework. This small community of farming and cattle-ranching families was no longer shielded from the AI revolution, which was disrupting education worldwide. It could no longer escape because the new bots were embedded in the apps everyone was already using. Meta had fine-tuned the apps for the emerging-market consumer, making them cheaper to use and designing them to work with less sophisticated phones and patchy connectivity.

Rest of world for more