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Happy Friday and Happy Independence Day Weekend for our American readers!
I hope you have a great, steamy weekend; I will be avoiding the crowds in Washington, DC and cuddling my dogs in the A/C.
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Military Times
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Geoff Ziezulewicz
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In June 2017, a Thai prostitute named Lin Raiwest texted a Gunner's Mate that she was bringing women from Thailand to Bahrain to work. He offered to house them and take a cut. Raiwest was also a confidential NCIS informant. By 2018, the Navy had launched undercover operations that ensnared Chief Jayson Grant on Tinder, offering him trafficked women for profit. Grant pleaded guilty to human trafficking and drew four years in the brig. Geoff Ziezulewicz traces how sailors in Bahrain had been housing prostitutes, seizing passports, and profiting from the sex trade for years before the scandal broke. A Vice Admiral convened an all-hands meeting. Shocked. "This floors me," he said. Why the Navy failed to see it coming remains the sharper question.
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Monticello spent a decade shifting its interpretation away from Jefferson-as-genius toward the enslaved people who built and worked the mountain. In June 2022, the institution held a Juneteenth celebration with descendants. Three weeks later, the New York Post published "Monticello Is Going Woke" and Fox News followed with segments calling on visitors to confront guides about historical revisionism. Harassment flooded in. One-star reviews appeared in waves, parroting the coverage. The institution went quiet on slavery-related posts and staff departed one by one. Annette Gordon-Reed, the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer for History, resigned from the board without announcement. Frank Cogliano's job offer was revoked. The coordinated attack traced a line from tabloid journalism to Heritage Foundation policy in 18 days. What cost the institution was not the truth but its willingness to stand by it.
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Julie Reshe has been collecting testimonies from Ukrainian war widows since the full-scale invasion began. Early on, she positioned herself as the one who listens and bears witness. That stance collapsed as she stayed with their stories. The widows say things like "I died along with him" and "my entire existence is black pain." Reshe once heard these as figures of speech. She came to understand them as literal. A widow can remain breathing, speaking, standing, while something essential has already perished. Catherine Malabou calls this "destructive plasticity." The widows describe trauma not as a distortion of reality but as an initiation into what was always true. Love carries the risk of literal dying. Loss is not something to overcome but something to wear, to carry. The widows' knowledge is not private but something the rest of us remain protected from until our turn comes.
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A statue of King George III stood in New York after the Stamp Act's repeal. In July 1776, Continental soldiers lassoed it to the ground, decapitated the king, scraped away his gold leaf, and melted the lead into 42,088 bullets. For two and a half centuries, George has symbolized haughty intransigence. Hamilton made him a foppish clown. In truth, his papers reveal a far more complex figure: accomplished, ruthless, self-righteous, and capable of holding a hard line that destroyed his kingdom. The American Revolution cost George 128 million pounds and tens of thousands of casualties. After Yorktown in 1781, he asked posterity not to blame him for the colossal disaster. Posterity blamed him anyway. What the papers show is a man whose contradictions make him worth understanding, not because he was exceptional but because he remains comprehensibly human.
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