David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American white nationalist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, politician, and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.[3][4] A former one-term Republican Louisiana State Representative, he was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primaries in 1988 and the Republican presidential primaries in 1992. Duke unsuccessfully ran for the Louisiana State Senate, United States Senate, United States House of Representatives, and Governor of Louisiana. Duke is a felon, having pleaded guilty to defrauding supporters by falsely claiming to have no money and being in danger of losing his home in order to solicit emergency donations; at the time, Duke was financially secure, and used the donations for recreational gambling.[5] Duke…

 Chapter 18 From War To War Extract : In late 1915 and early 1916, things again went rather better for the Ottomans. The Russians retreated in Anatolia, the British were defeated and forced to surrender in Irak, and the sultan’s forces launched a second attack against the Suez Canal. By the beginning of 1916, after bitter fighting and heavy losses, the British and Australians withdrew from Gallipoli and abandoned the attempt to force the Straits. But in the long run, the superior power of the Allies prevailed. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the pressure from the East was relaxed, but…

SINCE the coup d’état in May economists have been trying to figure what South-East Asia’s second-biggest economy will do next. The data show that this year there will be hardly any growth at all. Spending is weak, investment down, trade and tourism shrinking. A drought is looming in the provinces and in Bangkok easy money has pushed the bourse nearly to an all-time-high. The optimists note that the coup has restored peace and order and things are already looking up. The pessimists see nothing but problems: a collapse in domestic demand, martial law, crippling uncertainty—about the army’s ability to run the economy,…

Fustrated by a growing death toll, the White House has quietly placed a hold on the transfer of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia as the Sunni ally continues its bloody war on Shiite rebels in Yemen, U.S. officials tellForeign Policy. It’s the first concrete step the United States has taken to demonstrate its unease with the Saudi bombing campaign that human rights activists say has killed and injured hundreds of Yemeni civilians, many of them children. The move follows rising criticism by U.S. lawmakers of America’s support for the oil-rich monarchy in the year-long conflict. Washington has sold weapons and provided training, targeting…

For me the Great Plains have a releasing effect. . . . Human effort is seen there in all its pitiful futility. — Thomas Hart Benton Late one afternoon in the winter of 1987, a pair of academics named Frank and Deborah Popper were inching their way down the New Jersey Turnpike when the idea hit both of them at once. Or anyway, that’s how Frank tells it. There they were, puttering along, chatting about the conundrum of the Great Plains, whose rural population has been dwindling for nearly a century, when they were overcome by a shared epiphany, and turned to each…