Rupert Stone

Freelance journo working on security & geopolitics in MidEast & South Asia. Bylines: Newsweek, Spectator, Nikkei Asia, AJE, Prospect et al. RT ≠ endorsements.

[Rupert Stone @RupertStone83]

The Taliban takeover has not been good for Pakistan. Drug-trafficking from Afghanistan has increased under Taliban rule, my new piece shows, with frequent large seizures of opiates and crystal meth, the latter feeding a domestic 'ice' epidemic.

https://t.co/WeZ49E3kHA

[Ed Husain @Ed_Husain]

Perhaps the most consequential book released this year as Mary Beard rightly calls for expanding the field of study of ‘the classics’ — from solely Latin and Greek, our universities should add Arabic and Hebrew.

[Joshua Claybourn @JoshuaClaybourn]

On Sunday, my friend Gordon Wood was struck and killed in a car accident. Gordon taught history at Brown Univ. and was among the most accomplished historians America has produced. He won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for The Radicalism of the American Revolution, and his earlier book The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 took the 1970 Bancroft Prize. He also received the National Humanities Medal.

He was, in my view, the finest historian of America's founding—which makes it all the sadder that he did not live to see the nation's 250th birthday. His reputation reached popular culture, too. Matt Damon's character in Good Will Hunting invokes him by name in the famous bar scene, accusing a Harvard student of simply "regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about [...] the pre-Revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization."

I feel fortunate to have collaborated with Gordon on several projects. In a 2019 anthology I compiled, he wrote an essay on the possibility of a shared American narrative. He centered his argument on equal rights as "the most radical and most powerful ideological force" the Revolution unleashed. "This powerful sense of equality is still alive and well in America," he wrote, "and despite all of its disturbing and unsettling consequences, it is what makes us one people."

When I needed jacket blurbs for my new book Lincoln's Compass, coming out this November, I turned to Gordon. The fit was natural: the book argues that Abraham Lincoln took the Declaration's claim that "all men are created equal" as his guiding moral compass—and that he refocused the nation on that claim. Gordon, ever the gentleman, offered generous praise.

He was, in many respects, the dean of American historians. He will be very hard to replace.

[Patrick De Haan @GasBuddyGuy]

BREAKING: U.S. SPR declines 7.9 million barrels in the last week to 349.2 million as of June 5, meaning that at any moment in the next few days the SPR will decline to its lowest since 1983, when it was being filled for the first time.

[Phil Stewart @phildstewart]

IRAN SAYS FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS HAVE BEEN LIFTED WITH AIRSPACE RETURNING TO NORMAL CONDITIONS - STATE MEDIA

[Trey Yingst @TreyYingst]

Israel is now striking southern Lebanon.

Rocket sirens are also sounding in northern Israel amid incoming Hezbollah rocket fire.

[Tala Ramadan @TalaRamadan]

Iran's armed forces announce end of military operations against Israel, warn of harsher attacks if Israel resumes attacks on Lebanon - Fars News

[Patrick Wintour @patrickwintour]

Ansar Allah Yemen:

We declare a complete and absolute ban on maritime navigation for the Israeli enemy in the Red Sea and believe that any enemy movement from the moment this statement is announced will be a military target for our armed forces.

We will respond to escalation with escalation, and our military operations will be increasingly coordinated with events, battles, and participation in the axis of jihad and resistance.

[Yashar Ali 🐘 @yashar]

The Islamic Republic of Iran has launched another round of ballistic missiles towards Israeli territory.

[Barak Ravid @BarakRavid]

🚨🚨President Trump tells me: I am going to call Netanyahu right now and tell him not to strike back

[Guy Elster גיא אלסטר @guyelster]

Israel wants to strike Iranian infrastructures after the missile attack, according to Israeli media, waiting for a green light from Trump

[Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof]

Iran is firing ballistic missiles at Israel. Israeli officials say they will respond. A return to full-scale war in the Middle East may be hours away.

[Edward Feser @FeserEdward]

What those who are unhappy with the pope’s comments on war need to get into their heads is that his concern – and the concern of other churchmen and theologians who have argued for a more restrictive approach to war in modern times – is the protection of innocent lives. That’s it. It isn’t pacifism, or cowardice, or Neville Chamberlain style naiveté, or misplaced sympathy for evildoers, or any of the other straw men people keep attacking. It’s the enormous number of civilians who have done nothing deserving of harm and yet are killed, or have their homes destroyed, or whose society’s infrastructure is so devastated that anything like normal life becomes impossible for them. That some war aim is good in the abstract, or that some government has done evil, does not magically make it acceptable to inflict this sort of damage on huge populations of innocent people who simply get caught up in the middle of conflict between warring armies. That A has a legitimate reason to attack B does not somehow entail that he is at liberty to do things that inflict enormous harm on some third party C in the process. Everyone knows this in other contexts, but for some reason some people wrongly suppose that it doesn’t apply in war. And when they try to rationalize this attitude by appeal to the good consequences they claim war will bring about, their reasoning is no different from (and no less morally corrupt than) the similarly utilitarian arguments others use to justify abortion, euthanasia, and the like.

[Rupert Stone @RupertStone83]

Scott Pelley speaks out in first interview since being fired https://t.co/HXbdjzCW5e

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

BREAKING: The US economy adds 172,000 jobs in May, crushing expectations of 85,000.

The unemployment rate was 4.3%, in-line with expectations of 4.3%.

April's jobs number was also revised UP by +64,000 jobs.

This marks the second strongest US jobs report in 13 months.

[James Bikales @jamepdx]

NEW: Oil execs are warning the Trump admin a bigger oil price shock could be weeks away.

Industry leaders have been telling officials that tight inventories could leave markets vulnerable if Hormuz stays closed.

My latest w/ @bjlefebvre for @politico: https://t.co/eljvNvByzC

[Alayna Treene @alaynatreene]

NEWS: John Bolton is expected to plead guilty over mishandling classified documents, three sources familiar with the matter tell @CNN

He intends to plead guilty to one count of illegal retention of sensitive national security documents, according to one of the sources. He has also agreed to pay a more than $2 million fine

via @kpolantz @kaitlancollins @HBRabinowitz https://t.co/4JbfZPAvn8

[David Klion @DavidKlion]

The real problem for Bari isn’t what Pelley said, or even that she had to fire him. It’s that everyone applauded him for saying it and then the exchange leaked to every media reporter instantly. That will keep happening because she does not have and will never have their respect.

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: The House voted to end the war in Iran, as four Republicans sided with Democrats in a striking rebuke to President Trump. https://t.co/Oeeox0iq9q

[Ben Mullin @BenMullin]

Scott Pelley just issued a statement on Bari's remarks this morning:

[Kaivan Shroff @KaivanShroff]

One missing angle of the Scott Pelley ‘60 Minutes’ feud is that the show was up 9% in year-over-year viewership…so you have to ask who/what the revamp is really for…