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Contents contributed and discussions participated by draneka

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'Their Men Are Magnificent' - The New York Times - 0 views

  • ‘Their Men Are Magnificent.’
  • “The success of the British aviators has been made possible by the unceasing manufacture of new machines by the many airplane factories which have been established since the war. ..
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Still Paying World War I Debt, 100 Years Later - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The scale of World War I was unprecedented in several ways, including the cost of financing it. In fact, several of the countries involved are still facing related debts.
  • with debt just 2.7 percent of the economy in 1916. The surge in debt associated with World War I was financed largely by selling bonds to the U.S. public and, in the war's aftermath, the U.S. hit a new record high debt-to-GDP ratio of about 33 percent, with more than $25 billion in debt.
  • The 25-year U.S. loans to Germany envisioned by Dawes paid interest at 7 percent. American investors were thirsty to get involved—until Hitler defaulted on the loans.
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The Long Story of U.S. Debt, From 1790 to 2011, in 1 Little Chart - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • the United States managed to become the world's biggest debtor
  • The US was born in debt. The earliest full reckoning of US national debt was compiled by Alexander Hamilton, the first US Treasury Secretary, who was sort of like the Nate Silver of his era--a self-taught economist.
  • In 1916, as a share of the economy the debt accounted for just 2.7%
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  • As the size, scope and role of government changed drastically under Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal, the US posted its biggest-ever peacetime debt increase. The debt jumped by 150% from 1930 to 1939, when it was at around $40.44 billion (about $673 billion in today's money.) 
  • with some fits and starts the debt load declined until hitting its recent low in 1974 at 24%, when the debt outstanding held by the public was $343.7 billion ($1.61 trillion, in current dollars.)
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Why Don't Americans Remember the War? - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • While it is certainly too much to say the Yanks won the Great War by themselves, it is indisputable that the Allies would not—could not—have won the war without the United States. Although America was not, at that time, widely regarded as a world power, the nation made three indispensable contributions to the Allies’ victory over the Central Powers in World War I.
  • Most Americans favored neutrality, and President Woodrow Wilson obliged them. He even adopted a rather muscular definition of neutrality, which he articulated to Congress on August 19, 1914:
  • By the onset of the great depression, Americans no longer cared to talk or think about the great war; even veterans felt that way.
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  • Without the United States, the Allies, at best, would have fought to a stalemate.
  • Perhaps now the war’s centennial will encourage Americans to reexamine their nation’s part in the Great War. Perhaps they’ll rediscover that America’s role was, in fact, indispensable.
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Was the Great War Necessary? - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The underlying and animating emotion in his book is profound regret. "The First World War," he states up front, "remains the worst thing the people of my country have ever had to endure."
  • engendered in Britain a sense of loss that endures to this day; it remains the great divide in Britons' sense of their history.
  • in the first three months of the war, the 60,000 casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the 723,000 British dead by the end of the war (twice as many as in the Second World War).
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  • , "German leadership over a united Europe in order to brave the coming giant economic and political power blocs."
  • But to say that Britain fought the war so as not to be dependent on the sufferance of Germany doesn't settle matters, because the price Britain was compelled to pay to preserve its national independence was truly awful.
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An Inside Look at the Germans' Deadly Bomber - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Awful though it was, some good came of a German air raid on London in July 1917. Twenty-two Gotha bombers had flown in for the attack, but only 19 returned, Prime Minister David Lloyd George told a secret session of the House of Commons a few days later.
  • The downing of the bombers allowed an artist working for The Times Mid-Week Pictorial to render the airplanes’ general structure and arrangements in a cutaway diagram, including the racks and chutes in which 14 60-pound bombs were carried over the target, and the bombardier’s sighting window on the underside of the fuselage.
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Czar Nicholas II, Under Arrest and Doomed to Die - The New York Times - 0 views

  • By the time the photograph appeared in The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial 100 years ago, it was two months out of date. The imperial family had already been moved to western Siberia.
  • Times Insider is offering glimpses of some of the most memorable wartime illustrations that appeared in The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial
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The Awful Beauty of the 'White War' - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The moment captured by the camera was certainly beguiling. But the “White War” in the alpine heights of Italy was otherwise a dreadful episode.
  • The “White War” was little remembered until recent years, when frozen corpses began emerging in the mountains.
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In France, a 1961 massacre looms large behind a controversial new law - The Washington ... - 0 views

  • PARIS — It ranks among the bloodiest acts of state repression against peaceful protesters in modern European history, but few remember the horror.
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Kenyan election official flees to US in fear, saying new election will not be fair - 0 views

shared by draneka on 19 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • "Ironically the very people, the political leaders who are supposed to build the nation have become the greatest threat to the peace and stability of the country," he said. "I'll not tolerate the threats on my staff anymore. I'll not tolerate the interference in the commission anymore."
  • "I have made several attempts to make critical changes but all my motions have been defeated by a majority of the commissioners. Under such conditions it's difficult to guarantee free, fair and credible elections.
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'It looks like we're afraid of foreigners': Army turns away some green-card holders - T... - 0 views

  • The U.S. Army has stopped enlisting some immigrants who are legal permanent residents while mandating lengthy delays for others, part of a controversial effort across the military to tighten security in the ranks by subjecting foreign-born recruits to tougher background checks.
  • “If you’re going to be deployed in more than 100 countries to fight a global war, you can’t be afraid of foreigners.”
  • Those citizens have a legal right to enlist, said Stock, who is an immigration attorney.
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Sgt. La David T. Johnson, the soldier at the center of Trump's condolence-call controve... - 0 views

  • To most of the country, Sgt. La David Terrence Johnson was an American service member killed in action in West Africa.
  • Johnson and three other American soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger on Oct. 4. He left behind a wife who is six months pregnant and two children, a 2-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl.
  • the fallen soldier’s loved ones have largely remained quiet, except for a few public Facebook posts sharing pictures, condolences and memories of him.
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  • Wilson, who heard the conversation on speakerphone, later said Trump’s comments made the young woman cry.
  • ‘He didn’t even know his name.’ That’s the worst part,” Wilson said Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day.”
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Frederica Wilson getting threats over blasting Trump's call to soldier's widow, office ... - 0 views

  • Rep. Frederica Wilson's office claims multiple threatening phone calls directed at congresswoman came into her D.C. office on Wednesday, CBS Miami reports.
  • Wilson was thrown into the national spotlight after she said she was with Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, when she received the call from Mr. Trump. Myeshia Johnson was on the way to the airport to greet her late husband's remains. 
  • 'Well, I guess he knew what he was getting into,'
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  • "Yes, the statement is true," Jones-Johnson said. "I was in the car and I heard the full conversation."
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Senators Demand Online Ad Disclosures as Tech Lobby Mobilizes - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The content and purchasers of the Russia-linked ads that ran on Facebook and Google in 2016 “are a mystery to the public because of outdated laws that have failed to keep up with evolving technology,” Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Warner added.
  • Yet government officials working on the investigations into the Russian-funded ads and the efforts to enact stricter disclosure requirements say Facebook and Google have been less than enthusiastic partners.
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Fallen Troops' Families Tell of Meeting Presidents: Sympathy and Sometimes Discomfort -... - 0 views

  • And while a number of relatives said they were subject to verbal punches dressed up as sympathy, none came from the presidents who sent their sons and daughters to war.
  • This year, 11 American service members have been killed in Afghanistan and 14 in Iraq. Seventeen sailors were killed in accidents involving two Navy warships, the John S. McCain and the Fitzgerald. A member of the Navy SEALs was killed in Somalia and four American soldiers in the Niger ambush. Mr. Trump said this week that he had called “every family of somebody that’s died, and it’s the hardest call to make.”
  • “He said he was sorry, and he said he and I had something in common,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Oh dear, what is this?’ He said, ‘You and I cry when they play the national anthem.’”
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Do tougher gun laws lead to 'dramatically lower rates of gun violence'? - The Washingto... - 0 views

  • To be fair, the ban had some limitations. For one, assault weapons were not widely used in gun crimes prior to the ban. And, the ban may not have covered all forms of assault weapons because it did not ban all semiautomatic weapons. Instead, it banned semiautomatic weapons with large capacity magazines and weapons that “appear useful in military and criminal applications but unnecessary in shooting sports or self-defense.”
  • A 10-year ban on assault weapons such as AR-15s didn’t do much to reduce gun violence.
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What does Trump mean when he calls someone a 'true American patriot?' - The Washington ... - 0 views

  • “You embody the values of dedication, discipline, and hard work,” Trump said. “To every young American watching today, we encourage you to always strive to be your best, to do your best, and to give your all.”
  • “We believe our nation was founded as a Christian nation. The enemy is trying to take it in another direction, not Christianity,” said Linda Shebsta, a Burelson, Tex., resident who joined other conservative Christian women on the Mall earlier this week for a prayer event.
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In U.N. speech, Trump threatens to 'totally destroy North Korea' and calls Kim Jong Un ... - 0 views

  • President Trump warned the United Nations in a speech Tuesday that the world faces “great peril” from rogue regimes with powerful weapons and terrorists with expanding reach across the globe, and called on fellow leaders to join the United States in the fight to defeat what he called failed or murderous ideologies and “loser terrorists.”
  • Trump said, returning to a campaign theme and the “America First” phrase that has been criticized as isolationist and nationalistic.
  • “President Trump told the truth about the dangers lurking in the world, and called to face them forcefully to ensure the future of mankind.”
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U.S. Cyberweapons, Used Against Iran and North Korea, Are a Disappointment Against ISIS... - 0 views

  • Top Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of extremist bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned that the terrorist group was working to make explosives that fooled airport X-ray machines and other screening by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers.
  • “There were folks working hard on this stuff, and there were some accomplishments that had an impact, but there was no steady stream of jaw-dropping stuff coming forward as some expected,” said Mr. Geltzer, who now teaches law at Georgetown University Law Center. “There was no sort of shining cybertool.”
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Across Russia, Protesters Heed Navalny's Anti-Kremlin Rallying Cry - The New York Times - 0 views

  • MOSCOW — An extraordinary wave of antigovernment protests swept across Russia on Monday, as thousands of demonstrators gathered in more than 100 cities to denounce corruption and political stagnation despite official attempts to stifle the expression of outrage.
  • “They are just kids. They know nothing. They need to graduate from school first.”
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