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Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Omer Bartov ✏ writing in the New York Times discusses whether the Israel war on Gaza amounts to genocide.  
10-November-2023

Israeli military operations have created an untenable humanitarian crisis, which will only worsen over time. But are Israel’s actions — as the nation’s opponents argue — verging on ethnic cleansing or, most explosively, genocide?

As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is currently taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening. That means two important things: First, we need to define what it is that we are seeing, and second, we have the chance to stop the situation before it gets worse. We know from history that it is crucial to warn of the potential for genocide before it occurs, rather than belatedly condemn it after it has taken place. I think we still have that time.

It is clear that the daily violence being unleashed on Gaza is both unbearable and untenable . . .

. . . My greatest concern watching the Israel-Gaza war unfold is that there is genocidal intent, which can easily tip into genocidal action.

Continue reading @ New York Times. 

What I Believe As A Historian Of Genocide

New York Times ✒ Katherine Stewart has reported on the religious right for more than a decade. She is the author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.

Katherine Stewart

The most serious attempt to overthrow the American constitutional system since the Civil War would not have been feasible without the influence of America’s Christian nationalist movement. One year later, the movement seems to have learned a lesson: If it tries harder next time, it may well succeed in making the promise of American democracy a relic of the past.

Christian nationalist symbolism was all over the events of Jan. 6, as observers have pointed out. But the movement’s contribution to the effort to overturn the 2020 election and install an unelected president goes much deeper than the activities of a few of its representatives on the day that marks the unsuccessful end (or at least a temporary setback) of an attempted coup.

A critical precondition for Donald Trump’s attempt to retain the presidency against the will of the people was the cultivation of a substantial population of voters prepared to believe his fraudulent claim that the election was stolen ...

Continue reading @ New York Times.

Christian Nationalism Is One Of Trump’s Most Powerful Weapons

New York Times ✒ A United Methodist Church pastor in Indiana stepped down after performing in drag and speaking about inclusion on the show “We’re Here.”

Amanda Holpuch

Pastor Craig Duke at the start of his drag performance in an episode of the unscripted HBO show “We’re Here.” The show’s second season premiered in October.

When Pastor Craig Duke stepped onstage in a small town in southern Indiana, wearing a cotton-candy-pink wig and a sparkly dress under his white robe, he knew his performance would rile some members of his congregation.

He did not, however, expect his drag debut to bring an end to his role leading Newburgh United Methodist Church in a suburb of Evansville.

Mr. Duke’s performance was part of the unscripted HBO show “We’re Here,” which documents L.G.B.T.Q. people and their allies in small towns who put together a drag show, led by three drag all-stars.

The episode that featured the pastor premiered in early November and in it, he explained that he appeared on the show so he could be “empathetic, not just sympathetic” to the community’s gay members. Three weeks later, the church announced that he had been “relieved from pastoral duties.”

Continue reading @ New York Times.

Pastor Leaves His Church After Appearing On HBO Drag Show

Three journalists from The New York Times reviewed more than 260,000 words spoken by President Trump during the pandemic. Here’s what they learned.


At his White House news briefing on the coronavirus on March 19, President Trump offered high praise for the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Stephen Hahn. “He’s worked, like, probably as hard or harder than anybody,” Mr. Trump said. Then he corrected himself: “Other than maybe Mike Pence — or me.”

On March 27, Mr. Trump boasted about marshalling federal resources to fight the virus, ignoring his early failures and smearing previous administrations. “Nobody has done anything like we’ve been able to do,” he claimed. “And everything I took over was a mess. It was a broken country in so many ways. In so many ways.”

And on April 13, Mr. Trump insisted that governors were so satisfied with his performance they hadn’t asked for anything on a recent conference call. “There wasn’t even a statement of like, ‘We think you should do this or that,’” he said. “I heard it was, like, just a perfect phone call.”

The self-regard, the credit-taking, the audacious rewriting of recent history to cast himself as the hero of the pandemic rather than the president who was slow to respond: Such have been the defining features of Mr. Trump’s use of the bully pulpit during the coronavirus outbreak.

Continue reading @  The New York Times.

260,000 Words, Full Of Self-Praise, From Trump On The Virus

https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/coronavirus/uk-paid-dollar20-million-for-new-coronavirus-tests-they-didnt-work/ar-BB12LAxf?ocid=spartandhpThe New York Times. on the UK government spending $20 on Covid-19 test kits that failed to work.


London — The two Chinese companies were offering a risky proposition: two million home test kits said to detect antibodies for the coronavirus for at least $20 million, take it or leave it.

The asking price was high, the technology was unproven and the money had to be paid upfront. And the buyer would be required to pick up the crate loads of test kits from a facility in China.

Yet British officials took the deal, according to a senior civil servant involved, then confidently promised tests would be available at pharmacies in as little as two weeks. “As simple as a pregnancy test,” gushed Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “It has the potential to be a total game changer.”

There was one problem, however. The tests did not work.

Continue reading @ The New York Times.

U.K. Paid $20 Million For New Coronavirus Tests ➤ They Didn’t Work

From The New York Times, the horror of Covid-19 in Italy. 
By Jason Horowitz
The streets of Bergamo are empty. As in all of Italy, people can leave their homes only for food and medicines and work. The factories and shops and schools are closed. There is no more chatting on the corners or in the coffee bars.

But what won’t stop are the sirens.

While the world’s attention now shifts to its own centers of contagion, the sirens keep sounding. Like the air raid sirens of the Second World War, they are the ambulance sirens that many survivors of this war will remember. They blare louder as they get closer, coming to collect the parents and grandparents, the keepers of Italy’s memory.

The grandchildren wave from terraces, and spouses sit back on the corners of now empty beds. And then the sirens start again, becoming fainter as the ambulances drive away toward hospitals crammed with coronavirus patients.

“At this point, all you hear in Bergamo is sirens,” said Michela Travelli.

Continue Reading @ The New York Times.

‘We Take the Dead From Morning Till Night’

From the New York Times a piece on how the Swedes are tackling Covd19.

By Christina Anderson and Henrik Pryser Libell

Stockholm — When the coronavirus swept into the Scandinavian countries, Norway and Denmark scrambled to place extensive restrictions on their borders to stem the outbreak. Sweden, their neighbor, took a decidedly different path.

While Denmark and Norway closed their borders, restaurants and ski slopes and told all students to stay home this month, Sweden shut only its high schools and colleges, kept its preschools, grade schools, pubs, restaurants and borders open — and put no limits on the slopes. 

At a news conference this month, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven of Sweden announced the closing of high schools and universities, but not of the country’s preschools and grade schools.

In fact, Sweden has stayed open for business while other nations beyond Scandinavia have attacked the outbreak with various measures ambitious in scope and reach. Sweden’s approach has raised questions about whether it’s gambling with a disease, Covid-19, that has no cure or vaccine, or if its tactic will be seen as a savvy strategy to fight a scourge that has laid waste to millions of jobs and prompted global lockdowns unprecedented in peacetime …

… A recent headline in the Danish newspaper Politiken, encapsulates the question ricocheting around Europe, “Doesn’t Sweden take the corona crisis seriously?”

Continue reading @ the New York Times.

In The Coronavirus Fight In Scandinavia, Sweden Stands Apart

From the New York Times a piece on the covering up of war crimes.

Stabbing a defenseless teenage captive to death. Picking off a school-age girl and an old man from a sniper’s roost. Indiscriminately spraying neighborhoods with rockets and machine-gun fire.

Navy SEAL commandos from Team 7’s Alpha Platoon said they had seen their highly decorated platoon chief commit shocking acts in Iraq. And they had spoken up, repeatedly. But their frustration grew as months passed and they saw no sign of official action.

Tired of being brushed off, seven members of the platoon called a private meeting with their troop commander in March 2018 at Naval Base Coronado near San Diego. According to a confidential Navy criminal investigation report obtained by The New York Times, they gave him the bloody details and asked for a formal investigation.

But instead of launching an investigation that day, the troop commander and his senior enlisted aide — both longtime comrades of the accused platoon leader, Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher — warned the seven platoon members that speaking out could cost them and others their careers, according to the report.

Continue reading @ New York Times.

Navy SEALs Were Warned Against Reporting Their Chief for War Crimes

From the New York Times, a piece on the impact of Brexit.

Two weeks ago I was on the outskirts of Derry, a town in Northern Ireland, just a few yards away from the border where Britain ends and the Republic of Ireland begins. Behind a garden wall, a wiry, older man was eager to vent.

“This is Ireland! The English have no business here,” he exclaimed. He pointed down the road toward a small stone bridge. The checkpoint there vanished two decades ago, he said. Should the British try to erect a new guard house, he went on, “we will burn it down.”

Come on, I cajoled him, incredulously. What will really happen if, after Britain leaves the European Union, customs officers or the police might be stationed at what will then be a new border?

“We will stone them,” the man replied, more calmly. He shrugged, warming to his idea. “Yeah. We’ll stone them.”

There is no end to the problems surrounding Brexit, but especially for the rest of us Europeans, the dilemma at the Irish-British land border is the most perplexing, and perhaps the most concerning, at least in a symbolic sense.

Continue reading @the New York Times,

Brexit, Ireland And The Failure Of The European Idea

Hannah Beech and Muktita Suhartono write in the New York Times about an institutional cover up at Boeing. 

 When a new Boeing 737 Max 8 plunged into the waters off Indonesia last October, a terrifying mystery confronted the aviation industry: What could have caused Lion Air Flight 610, flown by experienced pilots in good weather, to fall out of the sky just 12 minutes after takeoff?

But it took the second, equally terrifying crash of an identical aircraft under similar conditions five months later, in Ethiopia, to reveal the climate of mistrust that has plagued inquiries into what caused the first disaster.

Interviews with government officials, aviation experts and company executives portray an environment in which Lion Air, Boeing, subcontractors, investigators and regulators erected walls to sharing information that seemed designed more for self-preservation than finding the truth about a crash that claimed 189 lives.


Continue Reading @ The New York Times.

Between Two Boeing Crashes, Days of Silence and Mistrust

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