Trump’s claim that he declassified everything that he removed to his residence is “hypothetically” possible but practically “absurd.”
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Graeme Wood
@gcaw
Staff writer, . Lecturer, political science. Once upon a time: , ,
theatlantic.com/author/graeme-…Joined May 2008
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I know I say this every time she publishes, but you gotta read 's latest. It's so astute.
Non-Western extremists justify their acts using terms like 'hurt feelings' and 'marginalization.' That's just a lie to win Western sympathy.
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The attack on Salman Rushdie is a reminder, writes, that we can't afford to “muddle the distinction between offense and violence, and between a disagreement over ideas and a disagreement over whether your head should remain attached to your body.”
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“Overture is slated to carry its first passengers by 2029.” Mach 1.7
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Today, we are excited to announce @AmericanAir has placed a deposit on 20 @boomaero Overture aircraft, with options on another 40. The world’s largest airline is now poised to be the world’s largest supersonic airline.
boomsupersonic.com/news/post/amer
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I may have spoken too soon about Europe. It seems that many European countries have abolished these laws in the last decade. None has the constitutional guarantee of the US to prevent such laws from being enforced, if they were reinstated. Good summary:
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Peter Singer 1972
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Of course in densely populated areas, risk from a communal fire would be much less than from home fires. So it matters a lot where you are—in a dense area with little fuel, or a sparse area with abundant fuel. But relative price of eating out versus self-catering isn't fixed.
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David Lynch directed this public service announcement for NYC in 1991
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Go out to the great big fire pit (where everyone cooks, and which ignites the whole neighborhood now and then). Or stay home two thousand years later and enjoy
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WSJ story about how restaurant prices are going down relative to the cost of home cooking. In much of history, cooking at home was a privilege of the rich, who could afford fuel. Everyone else cooked communally, i.e., ate out, for the returns to scale.
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Matar's mother sounds like a decent person: mol.im/a/11110905 She says he went to Lebanon for a month and came back a "moody introvert."
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Some folks prefer to imagine that whenever the IRGC does something bad outside of Iran, it must be the result of a rogue operative. Let me disabuse everyone of that right now.
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Good points. "The classification system is big and unwieldy" is a true and reasonable claim, against allegations that he swiped banal souvenirs. But not if he had something more sensitive
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1. Kind of an obvious point, but it's striking Trump has not made the most obvious claim someone in his shoes might make: That the documents were harmless--mementos, reminders of glory days, curiosities, etc. (Even some classified docs could after all fall in this category.)
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Sounds like Iran is adopting ISIS-like tactics for external ops. "There seems to be a process where individual members of various agencies... offer money to hitmen, acting like John Wick is a real thing." vice.com/en/article/88q (by )
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Only in the US are you absolutely protected from government punishment if you insult a religion or engender hatred toward it or its followers. In some European countries, you can be punished for stating true facts (!) about a religion, let alone ridiculing it
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Periodic reminder that blasphemy (not always under that name) remains illegal in most of the world, including Europe, and the view expressed below is not rare
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Free speech does not authorize you to insult, condescend & mock other religious figures & religions. Some people don’t care about their religion but some do. Play a stupid game - you will win a stupid prize. Your call. Some people only want fame no matter the cost/sacrifice.
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The cult of Khomeini spawned the cult of offense. One is thriving in Tehran, and the other right here. My latest in , on the near-successful assassination of Salman Rushdie:
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Illustration makes Rushdie look like the Antichrist. “Satan’s eye was blinded”
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Thread on the Iranian press reaction to the Rushdie news. Theme: rejoice! But maybe Israel is behind the attack, in order to derail the Iran nuclear deal. (Make up your minds!)
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Iran media call the assassination attempt on Salam Rushdie "divine retribution", "devil being blinded", a "conspiracy" for derailing nuclear talks.
A paper argued the attack was "NOT an attack" on freedom of speech "unlike holocaust deniers being heavily punished".
#سلمان_رشدی
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Hugh Trevor-Roper on Rushdie: “I would not shed a tear if some British Muslims, deploring his manners, should waylay him in a dark street and seek to improve them. If that should cause him thereafter to control his pen, society would benefit and literature would not suffer.”—1989
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In this Slate interview, spreads falsehood about the #Rushdie Fatwa.
Nader, you know perfectly well that in 2019 Khamenei doubled down on the fatwa. And on Sunday, Iran's media again talked about Rushdie & reminded everyone of the bounty.
Why lie about this?
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Another important thing to remember about Salman Rushdie is he went through everything he did for decades, and did not emerge on the other end as a reactionary psychopath. He obviously wasn’t religious, but came out the other end of that experience not wanting to ban Islam or…
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Phonics works. Direct instruction works. But they reduce the scope teachers have for creativity.
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There is nothing better we could do for equity and social justice in education than to convince schools to use effective reading instruction methods even if teachers find them tedious.
time.com/6205084/phonic
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There are rooms full of documents that remain classified from decades ago, and involve only people who are long dead. "Klaatu, barada, nikto—declassified!"
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Clarence Thomas’s grandfather (who he called “daddy”) raised him. Had him and his brother work at a farm from sunrise to sunset. Even removed the heater from his truck so the boys wouldn’t grow soft. Thomas later had a son, and describes seeing his grandfather interact with him:
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The power can be delegated, and is. A former director of ISOO told me he would sometimes stand over rooms of classified documents, wave his hand over them, and say “I hereby declassify you!” Job done
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A fun fact I omitted from this tour of the weird world of presidential declassification: the President is not the only official who can “bulk declassify” by uttering magic words over a truckload of documents
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Ahem:
1. There is NO required process that Presidents have to follow when declassifying information. They SHOULD follow a process, but don't have to.
2. But there has to be evidence that declassification actually happened. You can't just make shit up. Focus on this instead. /1
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Second degree? Bringing a knife to Chautauqua suggests premeditation to me. But who knows, maybe those adult-education speaker series are a rougher scene than I thought foxnews.com/us/alleged-sal #FoxNews
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The implication, coming from the co-host of ’s show, is that Rushdie deserved to be stabbed for opposing Trump. Wow.
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Helpful background from on the legal implications of nuclear secrets.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/
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For 33 years, Salman Rushdie has embodied freedom and the fight against obscurantism. He has just been the victim of a cowardly attack by the forces of hatred and barbarism. His fight is our fight; it is universal. Now more than ever, we stand by his side.
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It’s worth remember how many people disgraced themselves in 1989. nytimes.com/1989/03/05/opi
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Andrew Wylie: “Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.”
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nytimes.com/2022/08/12/bus
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Iran has been seeking revenge for Soleimani, aiming to kill high level officials. Repeated failures haven’t discouraged that effort, and but I suspect it has led to a shift in targeting. Moving on from high level, insulated officials, to lower level, softer targets.
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The story of how the young Salman Rushdie first encountered at Cambridge the classic story of the so-called "satanic verses" that eventually inspired the novel (published in 1988) is a pretty interesting one that he details in his memoir Joseph Anton (2012) ...
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