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Infographic: US military presence around the world. Grand Theft Lebanon. Lebanon’s economic crisis has been long in the making, as the wartime boom and the rentier economy both hid and fostered the country’s structural weaknesses.Yet this final graph captures the causes and timing of its actual bankruptcy.

Grand Theft Lebanon

It highlights the sudden explosion of companies dedicated to speculating on the country’s sovereign debt, by purchasing Treasury bonds with inflated, unsustainable interest rates. These companies are almost exclusively offshore, hardly pay taxes, and thus embody the evermore extractive and unproductive nature of Lebanon’s economy. This curve mirrors almost precisely the evolution of Lebanon’s international credit ratings. In 2008, the outlook shifts from stable to positive. In 2009, Lebanon is granted a B2 grade, and improves to B1 the following year. The Greatest Briton Churchill Hated The Greatest Indian Gandhi. This prompted an equally disappointed reply from Churchill: “It now seems certain that the old rascal will emerge all the better from his so-called fast.”

The Greatest Briton Churchill Hated The Greatest Indian Gandhi

In 1943, Lord Wavell replaced Linlithgow as viceroy. The prime minister warned Wavell “that only over his [Churchill’s] dead body would any approach to Gandhi take place.” Then he joked that Wavell had “one great advantage over the last few Viceroys”: They “had to decide whether and when to lock up Gandhi,” whereas this viceroy “should find him already locked up.”

Wavell, however, stood against Linlithgow and Churchill and believed that India should become independent. He released Gandhi from prison in May 1944. These facts are well known. In 1951, Churchill published an installment of his war memoirs, The Hinge of Fate, and made an astonishing charge against Gandhi. “In the end,” Churchill continued, “being quite convinced of our obduracy he abandoned his fast, and his health, though he was very weak, was not seriously affected.” Curtains opened on UN security council for first time since attack on Che Guevara. Germany has literally brought daylight to UN security council proceedings by opening the curtains in the famous chamber for the first time since a bazooka attack on Che Guevara more than half a century ago.

Curtains opened on UN security council for first time since attack on Che Guevara

The German UN mission celebrated its month-long presidency with the symbolic step of calling for the heavy drapes covering the two-storey-high windows to be pulled aside to let the sunshine of a New York spring day flood into the council chamber and on to its famous horseshoe-shaped table. The mission’s Twitter account pressed home the point, declaring: “Transparency & openness to broader @UN membership & civil society are crucial not just symbolically, but also in practice for credibility & legitimacy.”

German Mission to UN (@GermanyUN)Sunshine 🌞 during today's debate in the #UNSC--a rare occurrence throughout its 75-year history. #Transparency & openness to broader @UN membership & civil society are crucial not just symbolically, but also in practice for credibility & legitimacy. 'I am the revolution': Fidel Castro’s tools of personality cult and propaganda. The front of the official newspaper of the central committee of the Communist party of Cuba was dominated by a shot of Fidel Castro Ruz in his cap, waving the national flag under the historic Cuban slogan: “Hasta la victoria siempre!”

'I am the revolution': Fidel Castro’s tools of personality cult and propaganda

There is no raised fist, no customary fat Cuban cigar this time and no gun brandished to underline El Comandante’s political fervour. That’s because the newspaper, which is called Granma after the yacht used to bring Castro’s revolutionary fighters from Mexico to Cuba in 1956, already shows Castro raising a rifle aloft in triumph on its masthead. For 57 years the imagery of Castro and his Cuban revolution has stood for socialist rebellion. Whether despised or admired, its posters and slogans have been adopted as a stylish global shorthand for working-class revolt, more widely recognisable today than Marianne, the fictional French revolutionary mascot, or even Soviet images of Lenin. International Affairs. Making the History of 1989.

The Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe IntroductoryEssay Sets the scene for the events of 1989 and explains their significance in world history.

Making the History of 1989

PrimarySources Over 300 primary sources, including government documents, images, videos, and artifacts with introductory notes. ScholarInterviews Four scholars focus on the history & events surrounding 1989 through primary sources. TeachingModules Modules provide historical context, strategies, and resources for teaching the history of 1989 with primary sources. CaseStudies Teaching case studies provide historical context and strategies for teaching the history of 1989 with primary sources. Advanced Search. Turning Bacon Into Bombs: The American Fat Salvage Committee. It turns out that bacon fat is good for more than sprucing up bitter greens—it’s also pretty good for making bombs.

Turning Bacon Into Bombs: The American Fat Salvage Committee

And during World War II, handing over cooking fat to the government was doing your patriotic duty. The American Fat Salvage Committee was created to urge housewives to save all the excess fat rendered from cooking and donate it to the army to produce explosives. As explained to Minnie Mouse and Pluto in one wartime video, fats are used to make glycerin, and glycerin is used to make things blow up. One pound of fat supposedly contained enough glycerin to make about a pound of explosives. Patriotism aside, many American housewives were not enticed.

In 1941, Franklin D. Central planning hit women hardest. Share Communist factories failed to manufacture even the most basic items for women Soviet authorities deemed anything feminine to be frivolous and bourgeois Communist rhetoric on gender equality was at odds with reality The 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution has brought with it much whitewashing of history.

Central planning hit women hardest

Perhaps the most absurd example of this whitewashing is a New York Times article claiming that women in the Communist bloc “enjoyed many rights and privileges unknown in liberal democracies at the time.” The reality of centrally planned economics is shockingly sexist, no matter how much lip service was paid to gender equality. When there is no market incentive to fulfill human needs, it is women’s needs that are forgotten first. Communist factories failed to manufacture even the most basic items for women.

The economic planners diverted resources away from producing anything considered feminine, and therefore frivolous and bourgeois. First world war: 15 legacies still with us today. Poisonous gas The experiment began on 22 April 1915.

First world war: 15 legacies still with us today

German soldiers, entrenched in the Belgian medieval town of Ypres, attacked with 6,000 steel canisters of chlorine gas. The wind carried the lethal gas, which was two-and-a-half times heavier than air, across to the British enemies, over a front that ran along some four miles. Why World War I still matters, 100 years after it began. His election that November came as a surprise. Photo illustration by Slate.

His election that November came as a surprise.

Photos by Getty Images. His election that November came as a surprise. The conservative intellectuals had made telling arguments against his racism and conspiracy thinking. Rival nationalists had mocked his affection for a foreign tyrant. Businessmen had explained that economic isolation could only harm an export economy. His followers had faith, of course. Mussolini: An Overview In Videos + Readings - Lessons - TES Teach. The U.S. and Japan have very different memories of World War II. AFP/Getty Images On Tuesday, President Obama announced his decision to visit Hiroshima, Japan, the site where the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb in August 1945.

The U.S. and Japan have very different memories of World War II.

Obama will specifically visit Memorial Park, which commemorates the event; he will be the first sitting American president to do so, although he does not plan to offer any sort of apology. The bombing of Hiroshima killed around 100,000 people; three days later, tens of thousands more were killed after the United States bombed Nagasaki. Isaac Chotiner is a Slate contributor. To discuss the issues of war and memory, I spoke by phone with Carol Gluck, a professor of Japanese history at Columbia University. Isaac Chotiner: What did you make of President Obama’s decision to visit Memorial Park? Carol Gluck: I think it is a very good decision. ‘Antiwar’ and Other Fighting Words. The Meaning of 'Totalitarian' Lest you think The Blue Period has abated, know that I am taking it slowly with Anne Applebaum's Iron Curtain: The Crushing Of Eastern Europe. Ostensibly a history of Eastern Europe under Soviet rule, I regard Iron Curtain as something more granular and grand—an epic essay on the actual meaning of totalitarianism.

Writers are always bemoaning the degradation of names—racist, Nazi, misogynist, homophobe etc. The common complaint is that such labels are so often employed that they have lost meaning, and thus should be restricted in their use. I am skeptical of this claim because it is so often employed by people who do not live on the business-end of ideology and tend to overstate the progressive passage of man. (You can read more on this here and here.) Korean War (5min) EyeWitness To World War Two. The Beginning of World War II, 1939 "What now? ' asked Hitler with a savage look... " Hitler's interpreter describes the reaction of the Fuhrer and his henchmen to an ultimatum from Britain and the beginning of World War II.

London Goes to War, 1939 Prime Minister Chamberlain's radio announcement of war was made at 11:15 AM - the air raid sirens began wailing at 11:27. Blitzkrieg, 1940. Letters from the Trenches. We are now 150yd from Fritz and the moon is bright, so we bend and walk quietly onto the road running diagonally across the front into the Bosche line. There is a stream the far side of this - boards have been put across it at intervals but must have fallen in - about 20yd down we can cross. We stop and listen - swish - and down we plop (for a flare lights everything up) it goes out with a hiss and over the board we trundle on hands and knees. Still. Apparently no one has seen so we proceed to crawl through a line of "French" wire. Now for 100yd dead flat weed-land with here and there a shell hole or old webbing equipment lying in little heaps! SL Case Study: Japanese expansion in East Asia 1931–1941 - IB History. The Age of Dictatorship: Europe 1918-1989 - Mussolini.

EUROPE IN THE AGE OF DICTATORSHIP: Mussolini Richard J. Evans FBA I If you could go back to the late 1930s and ask an averagely intelligent and politically interested European whether democracy or dictatorship was the political system of the future, the answer you’d probably have got would have been dictatorship. Democracy, most people thought, had had its day. Rudbeck-IB-History-Revision - home. Causes of the First World War. I am happy that you are using this web site and hope that you found it useful. Unfortunately, the cost of making this material freely available is increasing, so if you have found the site useful and would like to contribute towards its continuation, I would greatly appreciate it. Click the button to go to Paypal and make a donation. This document was written by Stephen Tonge. I am most grateful to have his kind permission to include it on the web site. 1750 to 1919: Japan.

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Rape of Berlin. Sensationelles Filmmaterial! Berlin nach der Apokalypse in Farbe und HD - Berlin In July 1945 (HD 1080p) The future of Cuba’s socialist ice-cream cathedral. There is a black-and-white photograph of Fidel Castro that was taken during his whirlwind April 1959 trip to New York, just three months after his rebel forces ousted Fulgencio Batista, a US-backed dictator who had turned Havana into a playground for the mafia.

Dressed in his trademark military fatigues, Castro is surrounded by minders and journalists, hunkered in the back of the miniature train that ferries visitors around the Bronx zoo. He has a pensive look in his eyes. His face is buried in an ice-cream cone. Traces of Evil: Site of Hitler's Bunker and New Reich Chancellery. Mohrenstrasse Underground station. Online Exhibition - For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan. This cartoon by Edwin Marcus (1885–1961) refers to opposition to the Marshall Plan by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (1879–1953), pictured as a basketball player. Stalin regarded the plan's vision of an integrated European market with considerable freedom of movement, goods, services, information, and, inevitably, people, as incompatible with his economic, political, and foreign-policy goals. In June 1947, delegates from France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union met in Paris to discuss Marshall's proposal.

After several days, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Six unexpected WW1 battlegrounds. 25 November 2014Last updated at 19:23 ET. Why the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. The Berlin Wall: A Secret History. The Berlin Wall in the cold war and now - interactive. 30 Pieces Of The Berlin Wall Spread Out All Over The World. The fall of the Berlin Wall: what it meant to be there. We throw chocolates up to the putty-faced East German frontier troops, as they stand guard – against whom? Defending what? – atop a Wall that since yesterday has become useless. Trench Warfare in World War I Was a Smarter Strategy Than You Realize. World War One - The British Library. The debate on the origins of World War One - The British Library. How did soldiers cope with war? - The British Library.

Curator Dr Matthew Shaw, explores notions of patriotism, social cohesion, routine and propaganda, to ask how soldiers of World War One were able to psychologically cope with the realities of combat. Introduction. World War One: 10 interpretations of who started WW1. The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University. Tunnelling under the Berlin Wall to save my girlfriend. WW2 Animated Propaganda Short Film by Walt Disney. Cold War. Who was to blame for the Cold War? 11thgradehistory.wikispaces.com/file/view/00_IB_hwk_Historiography.pdf/312556972/00_IB_hwk_Historiography.pdf. Best Sites for Primary Documents in World History. History of the First World War, 1914-1918 (WW1) - The Map as History. Frightful First World War - Causes of WW1.

Blackadder on the Causes of World War One. Blackadder Goes Forth - 'How Did The War Start?' Animated Soviet Propaganda. Balkans-1912-13.jpg (543×600)