“The use of mercenaries in warfare has a very long history—much longer, in fact, than the almost-exclusive deployment of national militaries to wage wars. Before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ended Europe’s Thirty Years’ War and marked the rise of the modern state system, medieval powers from kings to popes routinely hired private fighters to do battle for them. As state governments sought a monopoly on the use of force within their territories in the 17th century, however, they moved to stamp out violence by non-state actors, including mercenaries, driving the industry underground.
America’s reliance on private military companies in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade hasn’t just expanded the industry; it’s also started to change the conduct of international relations.”
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“The national obsession with weight got a big boost in 1942, when a life-insurance company created a set of tables that became the most widely referenced standard for weight in North America. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company crunched age, weight, and mortality numbers from nearly 5 million policies in the United States and Canada to create “desirable” height and weight charts. For the first time, people (and their doctors) could compare themselves to a standardized notion of what they “should” weigh.”
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“After less than two years in the Senate, Cruz has positioned himself to make waves on a Republican debate stage in 2016 and to compete as a more conservative alternative to Jeb Bush or Scott Walker. What’s more, it’s likely that Cruz’s popularity among the conservative base in Texas will ensure his re-election should he decide to run for a second term in the Senate in 2018. Although media pundits and the Washington establishment may assume that Cruz’s apocalyptic rhetoric is alienating to audiences, his success would suggest that it is having the opposite effect. By creating a world that deals in black and white, the Texas freshman provides his supporters with a comforting degree of clarity amid the bewildering complexities of reality.”
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“France’s 475,000 Jews represent less than 1 percent of the country’s population. Yet last year, according to the French Interior Ministry, 51 percent of all racist attacks targeted Jews. The statistics in other countries, including Great Britain, are similarly dismal. In 2014, Jews in Europe were murdered, raped, beaten, stalked, chased, harassed, spat on, and insulted for being Jewish.”
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“What’s sometimes referred to as the global jihadist ‘movement’ is actually extremely fractured. It’s united by a general set of shared ideological beliefs, but divided organizationally and sometimes doctrinally. Whether to fight the ‘near enemy’ (local regimes) or the ‘far enemy’ (such as the United States and the West), for example, has been contentious since the 1990s, when Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States. Rivalry among like-minded militant groups is as common as cooperation. Identities and allegiances shift. Groups align and re-align according to changing expectations about the future of the conflicts they’re involved in, as well as a host of other factors, such as competition for resources, leadership transitions, and the defection of adherents to rival groups that appear to be on the ascendant.”
“As a reminder to those who argue that Jews should stop worrying so much about people who threaten to kill them, here is some (just some) of what Iran’s leaders, and leaders of its proxy militia, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, have said about Israel.”
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“With nearly half of Americans reporting that they have tried marijuana and more than a third of college students having used it in the last 12 months, any organization—in the public or private sector—with strict anti-marijuana policies could be missing out on a significant portion of the talent pool.”
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