Clarke, who served three presidents as counterterrorism czar, believes that the United States was probably behind the cyberattack on Iran—and the U.S. is now vulnerable to having it turned back against it:
‘I think it’s pretty clear that the United States government did the Stuxnet attack,’ he said calmly.
This is a fairly astonishing statement from someone in his position.
‘Alone or with Israel?’ I asked.
‘I think there was some minor Israeli role in it. Israel might have provided a test bed, for example. But I think that the U.S. government did the attack and I think that the attack proved what I was saying in the book [which came out before the attack was known], which is that you can cause real devices—real hardware in the world, in real space, not cyberspace—to blow up.’
“Richard Clarke on Who Was Behind the Stuxnet Attack.” — Ron Ronsenbaum, Smithsonian
See more longreads on cyber security
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[1934] A look back at the wine industry in the United States shortly after the end of Prohibition. Wine consumption was growing, but it was unclear whether American companies could compete:
Since repeal became imminent the U.S. has been flooded with wine propaganda. In every metropolitan newspaper, experts have conducted daily columns on the art of wine drinking. Makers of the variously shaped glasses from which one drinks hock and Sauternes and Burgundy have done a boom-time business. The Marquise de Polignac, whose husband makes French champagne, has been repeatedly interviewed. The propaganda has been paid for by the French wine interests and by California’s. (The French are now feeling pretty glum about their quota.) But however it started, it has made the drinking and serving of wine, for the moment, as much a fad as was the cross-word puzzle or mah jong. So U.S. wines have a market worth competing for, an opportunity which may not come again for many, many years.
“Can Wine Become an American Habit?” — Staff, Fortune, March 1, 1934
See also: “The Beer Archaeologist.” — Abigail Tucker, June 24, 2011
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They helped overthrow Qaddafi, and now “women want what is due to them”:
Until the war broke out, women generally were forced to keep a low profile. Married women who pursued careers were frowned upon. And Qaddafi’s own predatory nature kept the ambitions of some in check. Amel Jerary had aspired to a political career during the Qaddafi years. But the risks, she says, were too great. “I just could not get involved in the government, because of the sexual corruption. The higher up you got, the more exposed you were to [Qaddafi], and the greater the fear.” According to Asma Gargoum, who worked as director of foreign sales for a ceramic tile company near Misrata before the war, “If Qaddafi and his people saw a woman he liked, they might kidnap her, so we tried to stay in the shadows.”
“Women: The Libyan Rebellion’s Secret Weapon.” — Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian
See also: “What I Lost in Libya.” — Clare Morgana Gillis, The Atlantic, Dec. 1, 2011
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In 1908, teams from four countries — the United States, France, Germany, and Italy — raced from New York to Paris by driving across the American west, and the frozen Bering Strait:
The contestants represented an international roster of personalities. G. Bourcier de St. Chaffray, driving the French De Dion, once organized a motorboat race from Marseille to Algiers that resulted in every single boat sinking in the Mediterranean. His captain was Hans Hendrick Hansen, a swashbuckling Norwegian who claimed to have sailed a Viking ship, solo, to the North Pole. He declared that he and his companions would reach Paris or “our bodies will be found inside the car.” Frenchman Charles Godard, driving the Moto-Bloc, participated in the Peking-to-Paris race without having driven a car and set an endurance record by driving singlehandedly for 24 hours nonstop.
“Paris or Bust: The Great New York-to-Paris Auto Race of 1908.” — Karen Abbott, Smithsonian
See more #longreads from Smithsonian magazine
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The presidential bully pulpit isn’t as effective as one would think. Evidence shows that the louder a president speaks to support an issue or bill, the more committed the opposing party will be to ensure that it won’t pass:
To test her theory, she created a database of eighty-six hundred Senate votes between 1981 and 2004. She found that a President’s powers of persuasion were strong, but only within his own party. Nearly four thousand of the votes were of the mission-to-Mars variety—they should have found support among both Democrats and Republicans. Absent a President’s involvement, these votes fell along party lines just a third of the time, but when a President took a stand that number rose to more than half. The same thing happened with votes on more partisan issues, such as bills that raised taxes; they typically split along party lines, but when a President intervened the divide was even sharper.
“The Unpersuaded.” — Ezra Klein, New Yorker
See also: “Power and the Presidency, From Kennedy to Obama.” — Robert Dallek, Smithsonian, March 21, 2011
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Liberals’ history with regard to gay rights is not as progressive as some would like you to remember:
It was, after all, the trustees of the Smithsonian Institution, not a Bible Belt cultural outpost, who bowed to pressure from the militant Catholic League just fifteen months ago to censor the work of a gay American artist who had already been silenced, long ago, by AIDS. It was a Democratic president, with wide support from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who in 1996 signed the Defense of Marriage Act, one of the most discriminatory laws ever to come out of Washington. It’s precisely because of DOMA that to this day same-sex marriages cannot be more than what you might call placebo marriages in the eight states (plus the District of Columbia) that have legalized them. DOMA denies wedded same-sex couples all federal benefits—some 1,000, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ programs—and allows the other 42 states to ignore their marriages altogether.
“Whitewashing Gay History.” — Frank Rich, New York magazine
See also: “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage.” — Theodore B. Olson, Newsweek, Jan. 9, 2010
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Longreads Pick
[Not single-page] Liberals’ history with regard to gay rights is not as progressive as some would like to remember:
“It was, after all, the trustees of the Smithsonian Institution, not a Bible Belt cultural outpost, who bowed to pressure from the militant Catholic League just fifteen months ago to censor the work of a gay American artist who had already been silenced, long ago, by AIDS. It was a Democratic president, with wide support from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who in 1996 signed the Defense of Marriage Act, one of the most discriminatory laws ever to come out of Washington. It’s precisely because of DOMA that to this day same-sex marriages cannot be more than what you might call placebo marriages in the eight states (plus the District of Columbia) that have legalized them. DOMA denies wedded same-sex couples all federal benefits—some 1,000, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ programs—and allows the other 42 states to ignore their marriages altogether.”
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Published: Feb 26, 2012
Length: 13 minutes (3,479 words)
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Featured Longreader: Sara Blask, communications manager for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones. See her story picks from Texas Monthly, Smithsonian magazine, plus more on her #longreads page.
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Flechtheim was driven out of Germany by the Nazis—and many works from his galleries are now in private collections and museums around the world. A lawsuit brought by his heirs raises questions about provenance:
Works in the MoMA online database today with Flechtheim in their provenance histories were sold prior to 1933, meaning they are legally deemed to have been acquired absent any Nazi persecution, though, as Mr. Dascher put it, ‘Flechtheim was confronted with anti-Semitism already before 1933, even as a German officer during World War I.’ Museums around the world that now possess works the Nazis sold off can and do claim that they have them legally, even though some of the art may have come through galleries like Flechtheim’s, shuttered under anti-Semitic persecution.
“Haunting MoMA: The Forgotten Story of ‘Degenerate’ Dealer Alfred Flechtheim.” — Nina Burleigh, New York Observer
See also: “The Goddess Goes Home.” — Ralph Frammolino, Smithsonian, Oct. 1, 2011
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