Wright Smith

DC Friends 🚨🚨

Sasha is missing in the Cleveland Park area, if you see her please get in contact with @mcmasterreed.bsky.social!

“Command of the commons” ugh typing too fast strikes again.

YES! When I gave a lecture on US military power and command of the commands, I told my students I was about to show them a photo encapsulating US military dominance, and asked them to guess what it was. No one ever correctly guessed “unloading a mobile Burger King from a C-17.”

Richard Frank describes how the Japanese carrier aviation graduating cohort in 1937 was 25 pilots…a very select, elite group, but nowhere near enough of a pipeline to fight an industrial war!

If you don’t have much disposable income don’t give to this but I know a lot of y’all do and it’s worth some coins IMO. Direct action of a very specific kind.

Defend the Internet Archive. Protect the Wayback Machine. Tell the music labels: Drop the 78s lawsuit. Sign our open letter on change.org

📢 The Internet Archive needs your help.

At a time when information is being rewritten or erased online, a $700 million lawsuit from major record labels threatens to destroy the Wayback Machine.

Tell the labels to drop the 78s lawsuit.

👉 Sign our open letter: www.change.org/p/defend-the...

🧵⬇️

“You know, they’re all kids in Washington. It’s like Bugsy Malone, but with real guns.”

In the Loop, 2009

A good home is needed near Eugene, Oregon.
The momb is moving out of the country and heartbroken!
@gonzo.bsky.social
@itsflanoy.bsky.social

Fight for 15(5 mm)

$15.00 minimum wage for our workers, 155mm shells for our enemies.

Same energy.

Stella Sacco - Saber Interactive | LinkedIn Veteran in narrative, content, and creative direction for hit games like Lily’s Garden… · Experience: Saber Interactive · Education: Sage College · Location: New York · 500+ connections on LinkedIn. V...

VETERAN NARRATIVE DESIGNER/GAME WRITER IN DESPERATE NEED OF A JOB

- Almost 20 years experience
- Original writer/ND for mobile hit Lily’s Garden
- Worked with big IPs like World of Warcraft, Marvel, DC
- Experience with mobile, console, and PC

Please, please, please help me. I am out of time.

This is basically what happened in the German High Seas Fleet in November, 1918, and it triggered a revolution that overthrew the monarchy!

@sodrock.bsky.social
@uticaeric.bsky.social

Donate to Impending Foreclosure Threatens Sarah’s Stability, organized by sarah g I come to you with a very heavy heart and a desperate plea for help. … sarah g needs your support for Impending Foreclosure Threatens Sarah’s Stability

Please help me. I really need a push. gofund.me/09bc15a5

Screenshot of an error from the CIA CREST documents website reading “We apologize for the inconvenience, but the link you are trying to access is undergoing scheduled maintenance. During this time, access to the page is temporarily unavailable. We appreciate your patience and understanding, and please check back shortly.”

Extremely unimportant with all that is happening, but I noticed tonight the CIA CREST online documents database is not working well at all-many docs not loading (displaying the error below). Hopefully just site maintenance, but if your research uses this, you might want to search through it asap.

Starship Troopers remains undefeated in its contemporary relevance.

I’m very biased, but I think almost anything Barry Posen has done is really helpful for understanding war, and his first chapter of “Inadvertent Escalation” is in particular a really great piece for tying together grand strategic issues to operational and tactical actions.

I wonder if the prevalence of drones is also an indicator of how much attrition both sides have suffered? I could see the industrial process behind prepping small drones is paradoxically simpler than producing artillery, and certainly than more complex platforms like tanks, APCs, or aircraft.

“I Have Lost Everything”: The Toll of Cities’ Homeless Sweeps Cities often take belongings — including important documents and irreplaceable mementos — when they conduct sweeps of homeless encampments. ProPublica gave notecards to people across the country so th...

“We wanted to help ProPublica’s readers recognize the humanity of the people we had met and talked to, so we gave them notecards and asked them to describe their experiences with sweeps.”

Syrian activist whose suffering became symbol of Assad brutality found dead in Sednaya prison Mazen al-Hamada had escaped to tell the world about regime’s torture before returning to Damascus

When he spoke around the world, Mazen al-Hamada’s face told the story of brutal torture by Assad’s regime. The discovery of the Syrian activist’s body inside the notorious Sednaya prison brought the news that he never lived to see its downfall.
@ruthmichaelson.com
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Mazen al-Hamada, symbol of Syrian regime’s brutality, confirmed dead His body was found with about 40 others wrapped in bloody sheets and dumped at a military hospital outside Damascus.

Mazen al-Hamada told the world about the horrors of
Assad’s prisons & the torture he suffered. No one listened & now he is dead, under torture in the last hours of Assad’s regime www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/1...

Assad Didn’t Inform Cabinet, Military Before Fleeing, Syrian Officials Say President Bashar al-Assad kept his cabinet in the dark about his plan to leave the country early Sunday local time, Syrian security officials said. Many of those loyal to him in the military were also...

After 13 years of war, Assad didn’t even tell his loyalists he was fleeing the country.

www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

Exposing Assad’s War Crimes The top-secret documents that tie the Syrian regime to mass torture and killings.

I don't think Ben Taub is on here but his New Yorker piece on The Assad Files will always stick with me. (And horray, for the ability to easily post links to deeply reported journalism!)
www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

Assad falling is no guarantee of a better Syria replacing him, but his continued rule is a guarantee that a better Syria couldn’t

Now that barrier is gone and I hope against hope that Syrians - the ones whose country it is - finally get to live free

I still have the letter I sent my Congressman in 2013 supporting action against Assad. To paraphrase a friend, the Syrian Civil War shaped my worldview and there are few things I wanted to happen in world affairs more than to see the regime fall. I hope what comes next is better.

Thinking about how many lives had to be destroyed or displaced and how much priceless human heritage erased to buy an extra decade for this doomed regime.

Uniforms of Syrian soldiers from the dictator Bashar al-Assad’s army, abandoned as they fled Damascus. A historic image marking the end of the dictator and his army.