Frederick Deknatel

As news of the killings spread, there were people who doubted that the massacre had happened at all. Some of the phrases seemed to have been lifted straight from the old regime's playbook. The lines used to deny Assad's sarin gas attacks in Ghouta in 2013 were now being used by ordinary people, echoing the propaganda that had once been employed against them. 'They were armed. "They were agents of foreign powers who wanted chaos.' Many argued that the dead had deserved it. Some opponents of Assad chose to ignore these latest killings. They were turning away from atrocities not because they had stopped seeing them, but because they had learned their lesson: don't speak out.

“As news of the killings spread, there were people who doubted that the massacre had happened at all. Some of the phrases seemed to have been lifted straight from the old regime’s playbook.”

“the latest in his controversies over pierogis” — Newsmax is going for a Pulitzer.

Loubna Mrie · ‘We were tricked’: Assad and the Alawites For a long time, it had seemed that Assad might outlast everything. Then, almost overnight, it was over. And with his...

“In the new Syria, as in the old, it seems that those who commit violence can count on rehabilitation, so long as they frame the alternative as chaos.”

Loubna Mrie on the massacres of Alawites in March and the false promise of accountability in Syria after Assad: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

As expected, dispute appears to be over White House demands to break the law. These aren't 'disputes'. Law is clear on this. Only mystery is how it was that Long, a very Trumpy guy and not part of the ethics community, seems to have not gone along, or not enough.

Whether it’s Harvard, Columbia or now UCLA, this is not a “dispute” with the federal government. This is the government claiming to have the power to control universities—power it doesn’t have and shouldn’t have if academic freedom and higher education mean anything in America.

The Trump administration is arbitrarily attacking universities with obviously bogus pretexts. It’s a clear-cut abuse of power that most media outlets somehow continue to cover as “resolving their differences.”

Trump Wants U.C.L.A. to Pay $1 Billion to Restore Its Research Funding

This is the kind of extortion that defines authoritarian regimes, not democratic governments. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/u...

It doesn’t raise the question tho, the question was answered before he stepped back into office and they keep answering it

At the Tesla Diner, the Future Looks Mid

“If you look past the design by Stantec, this is a high-volume restaurant with a menu of meat-focused fast food that diners order on touch screens, then pick up at the counter. It’s an unremarkable model that chains rolled out years ago.”

Also sums up Tesla itself. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/d...

Why I left The Washington Post “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — but what if the lights are going out from within?

A grim dispatch on the Washington Post: “There is no vision, no game plan, and no commitment to build on existing traffic. Instead, the buyouts have removed some of The Post’s biggest traffic generators — and I don’t see a strategy to replace what has been lost.” substack.com/inbox/post/1...

Gas-Guzzlers Are Back, America. But For How Long? Tariffs hammer Honda, while changes in regulations allow manufacturers to go back to building big ICE trucks and SUVs.

“The Trump administration apparently sees the pivot toward electric vehicles and electrification as un-American, so it’s doing everything in its power to absolutely destroy any and all investments in EV tech.”

What could go wrong? 😑 @gaytonausa.bsky.social

insideevs.com/news/768202/...

These numbers, plus Trump’s sinking approval ratings, are why he and the GOP are trying to rig the midterms with aggressive mid-decade gerrymandering in Texas, Indiana etc. It couldn’t be more obvious.

How to Prevent More Starvation Deaths in Gaza As Israel refuses to let in sufficient humanitarian aid, a leading expert on famine explains why even “flooding the zone” with food won’t be enough.

“If Netanyahu wanted every child in Gaza to be fed tomorrow, he could just give that instruction and it would happen.” www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

The way that Israel and Gaza is unique is that the system of control is extraordinarily tight and precise. So in the worst sieges in Syria, people could smuggle themselves in and out. Food could get in if you bribed the right people or knew where the tunnels were. The same is true in Sudan. In Gaza, that just isn't possible. And the other feature that makes Gaza unique is that you have a capable international system that could respond basically at a moment's notice. If Netanyahu wanted every child in Gaza to be fed tomorrow, he could just give that instruction and it would happen.

Alex de Waal on Gaza’s starvation compared to Syria and Sudan:

-“The system of control is extraordinarily tight and precise.” Smuggling is impossible.

-“You have a capable international system that could respond basically at a moment’s notice,” if Israel wanted. www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Trump’s Attack on Wind, Solar Cuts Deeper Than Industry Expected President Donald Trump is escalating his attacks on wind and solar power from the rhetorical to the tangible, mounting a rapid-fire campaign that exceeds the industries’ worst fears.

This is what abandoning the future looks like (while also hiking electricity rates.) www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

JD Vance’s team had water level of Ohio river raised for family’s boating trip Exclusive: Incident raises questions of exploitation of public services, but Secret Service says it was requested for ‘safe navigation’ Stephanie Kirchgaessner and David Smith Wed 6 Aug 2025 17.46 EDT Share JD Vance’s team had the army corps of engineers take the unusual step of changing the outflow of a lake in Ohio to accommodate a recent boating excursion on a family holiday, the Guardian has learned. The request from the US Secret Service was made to “support safe navigation” of the US vice-president’s security detail for an August outing on the Little Miami River, according to a statement by the US army corps of engineers (USACE). Vance was spotted in the south-western Ohio area on 2 August, his 41st birthday, according to social media posts that noted he was seen canoeing on the river, a tributary that Caesar Creek Lake feeds into. One source with knowledge of the matter who communicated with the Guardian anonymously alleged that the outflow request for the Caesar Creek Lake was not just to support the vice-president’s Secret Service detail, but also to create “ideal kayaking conditions”. The Guardian could not independently confirm this specific claim.

What good is being VP if you can't abuse your power to have the Army Corps of Engineers making your kayaking trip more ideal by changing the waterflow of a lake?

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Hello journalists. If you report this you gotta say that under the Constitution he has no power to do it. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

For sure, this is how Trump operates. But has any other American president this blatantly?

There’s buying influence and then there’s publicly gifting the president a pile of gold, on live TV, while the markets cheer.

Putin’s groveling oligarchs are the only comparison I can think of.

Remind me when in American history business leaders have had to pay personal tribute to the president to shield themselves from his imperial diktats?

“Multiple potential destinations were listed in a complex spreadsheet created on behalf of Israeli businesspeople who were sketching plans for the redevelopment of Gaza”

BCG really delivering on its pitch to help Israeli businesspeople “tackle their biggest challenges,” huh?

BCG consultants modelled relocating Gazans to Somalia Cost estimates of moving Palestinians to five destinations were included in project on postwar plans

Boston Consulting Group has been intimately involved in Israel’s designs on ethnic cleansing in Gaza. on.ft.com/3H0vvsv

But donors and allies of Mr. Adams and Mr. Cuomo have pined for weeks for the president to intervene, arguing that Mr. Trump, a lifelong New Yorker with strong views about how the city should be run, could play a role in consolidating the fractured anti-Mamdani vote behind a single opporant. This group strongly opposes Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist who outflanked Mr. Cuomo in the primary with a message about freezing rents and raising taxes on the richy Mr. Trump "loves New York and he's worried about New York," said John Catsimatidis, a billionaire Republican grocery and oil magnate. He said he had urged the president not to rush into any action, though.

The big news here is Trump talking directly with Cuomo about the mayor’s race. That’s hilarious.

But there was a lot more to Mamdani’s winning message than “freezing rents and raising taxes on the rich,” unless you’re just channeling angry billionaires. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/n...

Trump could not be more obvious in admitting there is a cover-up.

Tesla engineers built a proprietary tool to flatten patties for the smash burgers with crisp browned edges, held together with caramelized onions and cheese, which seemed to be on most tables. It lent the dish a superficial whiff of innovation, but the burger didn’t stand out in any meaningful way.

The Tesla Diner is a perfect metaphor for the whole Tesla brand: a bad facsimile of something that already exists, made by people who don't understand what they're recreating, with a thin veneer of superficial futurism on top, for people with no taste or self-respect

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/d...

Trump is the gift that keeps giving to China The US president is upending a quarter of a century of American policy in the Indo-Pacific

“Trump is letting China win the industrial race to clean energy… Last year China added more renewable energy capacity than the rest of the world combined.”

Trump’s “carbon nostalgia is China’s biggest windfall of all. The world’s future is being written in China. Trump is its unwitting co-author.”

Add this is the laundry list of self-destructive things Trump has done in barely six months yet most elite media reaction will still just be… yea but have you seen the stock market?

Perhaps the biggest medical breakthrough in a generation, so of course the Trump administration is abandoning it.

Headline from Harvard Crimson: "Harvard President Garber Tells Faculty He Is Not Considering a $500 Million Deal With Trump."

Text of story: Harvard prez Garber says report of a deal "was apparently leaked to the press by White House officials." NYT ran with it as a story.

Important details from this story:

1) Yet another news-break by student journalists (this time @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social) www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

2) Harvard saying "see you in court," not "let's make a deal."

3) Per Garber, WH/MAGA leaked news of a "deal." NYT then ran with it.

What the closure of USAID is really costing the world The abrupt withdrawal of American funding has stranded millions of patients and will be felt by countries for years to come

“The Lancet paper found that spending by USAID from 2001 to 2021 had saved roughly 92mn lives, 30mn of them children. It predicted that, unless the abrupt funding cuts were reversed, roughly 14mn additional people would die in the five years to 2030.“ on.ft.com/4ojiRFJ