“
a new phrase was making the rounds in Berlin, to be deployed upon encountering a friend or acquaintance on the street, ideally with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow: “Lebst du noch?” Which meant, “Are you still among the living?
”
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Erik Larson (In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin)
“
There is no way to imagine what it feels like to be shot at. I will never be with him when he is the most scared.
”
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Melissa Seligman (The Day After He Left for Iraq: A Story of Love, Family, and Reunion)
“
Afghanistan changed him, but Iraq sculpted him.
”
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Melissa Seligman (The Day After He Left for Iraq: A Story of Love, Family, and Reunion)
“
I wanted to see my family, but didn't want to leave the other guys. The people waiting for us were strangers, even though I knew every last one of them.
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Clint Van Winkle (Soft Spots: A Marine's Memoir of Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)
“
I love you, Quinn. Against my better judgement, I love you, and you will never love me back.” Ashton’s quiet sobs break me apart. “I can’t keep going like this. You promised me that the last deployment was it and then we’d start a family together. I can’t spend the rest of my life hoping you’ll see that I’m right in front of you, waiting for you to share your heart with me, waiting for you to choose me.
”
”
Corinne Michaels (Indefinite (Salvation, #6; The Indefinite Duet, #1))
“
undocumented people did not open their doors out of fear that the people knocking were immigration authorities. (There had reportedly been a raid at a grocery store the week before the news broke.) When President Obama declared a state of emergency, the National Guard was deployed to Flint, making undocumented people even less likely to open the door, since this time the canvassers were in uniform. Some undocumented Flint residents learned of the lead in their water only when family members from Mexico called them on the phone to ask about it. They had seen reports of the poisoned water on Univision.
”
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Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (The Undocumented Americans (One World Essentials))
“
As he moves through his day, sometimes he stops and just stares at me. There is something on the tip of his tongue. But he doesn't say it. I'm not sure he knows what it is.
”
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Melissa Seligman (The Day After He Left for Iraq: A Story of Love, Family, and Reunion)
“
Deploying flattery leavened with irony, he began:
”
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Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
When his ability to charm hit a wall, he deployed another “business strategy”: throwing tantrums during which he threatened to bankrupt or otherwise ruin anybody who failed to let him have what he wanted.
”
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Mary L. Trump (Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man)
“
I hate myself that I wasn't there for him. I hate that I could not feel it in him. How could I not know what had happened? How could I not hear it in his voice, his comments, or in his demeanor? He needed my help, and I couldn't feel it.
”
”
Melissa Seligman (The Day After He Left for Iraq: A Story of Love, Family, and Reunion)
“
The story of women taking over the duties of their husbands in factories and homes during times of war is a familiar one. While he was deployed overseas to stop a foreign dictator from world conquest, she was placed in charge of the household. In the past, she depended on her husband's paycheck for all their material needs. Now, for the first time, she was solely in charge of the family's finances. She was also responsible for new duties such as simple home repairs and overseeing improvement projects.
”
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Melissa Rank (The Most Powerful Women in the Middle Ages: Queens, Saints, and Viking Slayers, From Empress Theodora to Elizabeth of Tudor)
“
Frosh (2002) has suggested that therapeutic spaces provide children and adults with the rare opportunity to articulate experiences that are otherwise excluded from the dominant symbolic order. However, since the 1990s, post-modern and post-structural theory has often been deployed in ways that attempt to ‘manage’ from; afar the perturbing disclosures of abuse and trauma that arise in therapeutic spaces (Frosh 2002). Nowhere is this clearer than in relation to organised abuse, where the testimony of girls and women has been deconstructed as symptoms of cultural hysteria (Showalter 1997) and the colonisation of women’s minds by therapeutic discourse (Hacking 1995). However, behind words and discourse, ‘a real world and real lives do exist, howsoever we interpret, construct and recycle accounts of these by a variety of symbolic means’ (Stanley 1993: 214).
Summit (1994: 5) once described organised abuse as a ‘subject of smoke and mirrors’, observing the ways in which it has persistently defied conceptualisation or explanation.
Explanations for serious or sadistic child sex offending have typically rested on psychiatric concepts of ‘paedophilia’ or particular psychological categories that have limited utility for the study of the cultures of sexual abuse that emerge in the families or institutions in which organised abuse takes pace. For those clinicians and researchers who take organised abuse seriously, their reliance upon individualistic rather than sociological explanations for child sexual abuse has left them unable to explain the emergence of coordinated, and often sadistic, multi—perpetrator sexual abuse in a range of contexts around the world.
”
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Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
“
After a few minutes, Churchill broke the silence, saying, “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.” The remark had such power that Ismay quoted it to his wife after returning home. He had no idea that Churchill would soon deploy the line in one of his most famous speeches.
”
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Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
The ministry’s array of “secret transmitters,” masquerading as English radio stations but based in Germany, were now to be deployed, “to arouse alarm and fear among the British people.” They were to take pains to disguise their German origins, even to the point of starting broadcasts with criticism of the Nazi Party, and fill their reports
”
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Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
I was inspired to write Countdown 'til Daddy Comes Home when I searched for books to help my 4 year daughter cope with her father deploying to Afghanistan and found nothing that quite fit our situation. My book is not only a great story for kids it has real suggestions for parents on how to keep you family connected during deployments or frequent business travel.
”
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Kristin Ayyar (Countdown 'til Daddy Comes Home)
“
During the period in which newspapers were initially reporting on how asylum-seeking immigrants were having their young children ripped from them, presidential daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump tweeted a photograph of herself beatifically embracing her small son. When Samantha Bee performed a fierce excoriation of Trump’s incivility in both supporting her father’s administration, and posting such a cruel celebration of her own intact family, she called her a “feckless cunt.” It was this epithet, one that Donald Trump had himself used as an insult against women on multiple past occasions, that sent the media into a spiral of shocked alarm and prompted Trump himself to recommend, via Twitter, that Bee’s network, TBS, fire her. But neither Trump’s past use of the word to demean women, nor his possible violation of the First Amendment, provoked as much horror as the feminist comedian’s deployment of a slur that she had used before on her show often in reference to herself. Typically only the incivility of the less powerful toward the more powerful can be widely understood as such, and thus be subject to such intense censure. Which is what made #metoo so fraught and revolutionary. It was a period during which some of the most powerful faced repercussion.
”
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Rebecca Traister (Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger)
“
my father’s short life is evidence of that. The country is now suffering from the same toxic positivity that my grandfather deployed specifically to drown out his ailing wife, torment his dying son, and damage past healing the psyche of his favorite child, Donald J. Trump. “Everything’s great. Right, Toots?” Acknowledgments At Simon and Schuster, thanks to Jon Karp, Eamon Dolan, Jessica Chin, Paul Dippolito, Lynn Anderson, and Jackie Seow.
”
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Mary L. Trump (Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man)
“
Today Is A New Day/New Beginning
1. Send a food hamper to a less fortunate family
2.Tutor a neighborhood child at no cost
3.Give an elderly or disabled neighbor a ride to church
4.Buy a birthday gift for a less fortunate child
5. Donate school supplies to a nearby school
6.Donate to a Children’s charity
7. Donate new books to a library
8.Send military care packages to deployed Service members
9.Send cards to the sick in a Nursing Facility/Shut-ins
10.Cook and serve meals at a Homeless Shelter
”
”
Charmaine J. Forde
“
The grandparents are raising the children because the biological parents have skipped off—for whatever reason, not always meth. The demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have often meant that both parents in a military family get deployed at once, and they leave their children with their grandparents. Layoffs of single working mothers lead a lot of families to decide to become multigenerational again. A wave of bipolar disorders and addiction to video games and gambling has also taken a toll on families.
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Rinker Buck (The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey)
“
Donald’s monstrosity is the manifestation of the very weakness within him that he’s been running from his entire life. For him, there has never been any option but to be positive, to project strength, no matter how illusory, because doing anything else carries a death sentence; my father’s short life is evidence of that. The country is now suffering from the same toxic positivity that my grandfather deployed specifically to drown out his ailing wife, torment his dying son, and damage past healing the psyche of his favorite child, Donald J. Trump.
”
”
Mary L. Trump (Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man)
“
Donald’s monstrosity is the manifestation of the very weakness within him that he’s been running from his entire life. For him, there has never been any option but to be positive, to project strength, no matter how illusory, because doing anything else carries a death sentence; my father’s short life is evidence of that. The country is now suffering from the same toxic positivity that my grandfather deployed specifically to drown out his ailing wife, torment his dying son, and damage past healing the psyche of his favorite child, Donald J. Trump. “Everything’s great. Right, Toots?
”
”
Mary L. Trump (Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man)
“
We’ve done these mental-health assessment team studies for six years now—between nine and twelve [months] is where a lot of the stress problems really manifest themselves, where the family problems really manifest themselves,” former Army chief of staff George Casey said recently. “The human mind and body weren’t made to do repeated combat deployments without substantial time to recover.” The suicide rate among active-duty servicemen doubled in the first five years of the Afghanistan War and then kept rising. In the past decade, the US Army lost more soldiers to suicide than to enemy fire in Afghanistan.
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Rachel Maddow (Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power)
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I once read a question that somone used to begin their self-assessment: who do you most admire and why? If you are an american and have a TV in your house, you'd probably be tempted to list some sports figure, actor, singer, artist, successful businessman, or influential leader. We have been led to equate greatness with success, talent, power and recognition. Would we include on our list a single mom or dad who has faithfully served their family, the person who volunteers at the soup kitchen or homeless shelter, the guy who shovels snow for the elderly couple down the street or the soldier serving somewhere around the globe?
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Donna Mull (A Prayer Journey Through Deployment)
“
We got pregnant with Angel almost by accident. I was thinking it was just about time to go on birth control and wham-it happened. We wanted two children, but were thinking of spacing them out a little more. God and Angel had other plans.
I’m so glad. Bubba and Angel are so close in age and such good friends that I can’t imagine it any other way. But at the time, I was more than a little apprehensive about it. Once again, it worked out that Chris was preparing to leave just when I was due.
They say God only gives you what you can handle. Chris didn’t cope with crying babies very well. So either he paid the military to deploy him with each baby, or God was looking out for him with well-timed, newborn-avoiding deployments.
This time, the Team guy karma worked: the sonogram technician confirmed it was a girl several months into the pregnancy. She was going to be the first female born into the Kyle side of the family in eighty years. Which made her unique, and her grandparents particularly tickled.
Chris couldn’t resist the opportunity to tease them with the news.
“We’re having a boy,” he said when he called them back in Texas with the news.
“Oh, how nice,” they said.
“No, we’re having a girl.”
“Whoo-hoo!” they shouted.
“No, we’re having a boy.”
“Chris! Which is it!?”
“A girl!”
If they could have gotten away to visit us that night, I doubt they would have needed an airplane to fly.
”
”
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
“
In the Middle Ages, marriage was considered a sacrament ordained by God, and God also authorised the father to marry his children according to his wishes and interests. An extramarital affair was accordingly a brazen rebellion against both divine and parental authority. It was a mortal sin, no matter what the lovers felt and thought about it. Today people marry for love, and it is their inner feelings that give value to this bond. Hence, if the very same feelings that once drove you into the arms of one man now drive you into the arms of another, what’s wrong with that? If an extramarital affair provides an outlet for emotional and sexual desires that are not satisfied by your spouse of twenty years, and if your new lover is kind, passionate and sensitive to your needs – why not enjoy it?
But wait a minute, you might say. We cannot ignore the feelings of the other concerned parties. The woman and her lover might feel wonderful in each other’s arms, but if their respective spouses find out, everybody will probably feel awful for quite some time. And if it leads to divorce, their children might carry the emotional scars for decades. Even if the affair is never discovered, hiding it involves a lot of tension, and may lead to growing feelings of alienation and resentment.
The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good, and another to feel bad? How do we weigh the feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children?
It doesn’t matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend to justify it in the name of human feelings rather than in the name of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don’t harm anyone in the process – then what could possibly be wrong with it?
The same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their inner feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a priest that they were in love with one another, and that they never felt so happy, their good feelings would not have changed the priest’s damning judgement – indeed, their happiness would only have worsened the situation. Today, in contrast, if two men love one another, they are told: ‘If it feels good – do it! Don’t let any priest mess with your mind. Just follow your heart. You know best what’s good for you.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
Later that day, at about five-thirty P.M., Harriman met with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who was also suffering from a cold and looked tired. The two discussed the broader naval situation, in particular the threat to Singapore posed by the rising power and aggression of Japan. The U.S. Navy had no plans to interfere, Hull told him, but he personally believed that the navy should deploy some of its most powerful ships to the waters of the Dutch East Indies in a display of force, in the hopes—as Harriman paraphrased his remarks—“that by bluff the Japs could be kept within bounds.” By sitting back, Hull said, America risked the “ignominious result” of having Japan seize key strategic points in the Far East, while America kept its ships safely moored at their big Pacific base. Obviously tired and befogged by his cold, Hull could not for the moment remember its exact location. “What is the name of that harbor?” Hull asked. “Pearl Harbor,” Harriman said. “Yes,” Hull said.
”
”
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
Security had changed at the hotel as well, with armed SWAT teams deployed in the stairwells. Our family and closest friends were already in the suite, everyone smiling, kids racing around the room, and yet the atmosphere was still strangely muted, as if the reality of what was about to happen hadn’t yet settled in their minds. My mother-in-law, in particular, made no pretense of being relaxed; through the din, I noticed her sitting on the couch, her eyes fixed on the television, her expression one of disbelief. I tried to imagine what she must be thinking, having grown up just a few miles away during a time when there were still many Chicago neighborhoods that Blacks could not even safely enter; a time when office work was out of reach for most Blacks, and her father, unable to get a union card from white-controlled trade unions, had been forced to make do as an itinerant tradesman; a time when the thought of a Black U.S. president would have seemed as far-fetched as a pig taking flight. I took a seat next to her on the couch. “You okay?” I asked. Marian shrugged and kept staring at the television. She said, “This is kind of too much.” “I know.” I took her hand and squeezed it, the two of us sitting in companionable silence for a few minutes. Then suddenly a shot of my face flashed up on the TV screen and ABC News announced that I would be the forty-fourth president of the United States.
”
”
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
“
Back home, Chris struggled to readjust, physically and mentally. He also faced another decision-reenlist, or leave the Navy and start a new life in the civilian world.
This time, he seemed to be leaning toward getting out-he'd been discussing other jobs and had already talked to people about what he might do next.
It was his decision, one way or another. But if I’d been resigned to his reenlistment last go-around, this time I was far more determined to let him know I thought he should get out.
There were two important reasons for him to leave-our children. They really needed to have him around as they grew. And I made that a big part of my argument.
But the most urgent reason was Chris himself. I saw what the war was doing to him physically. His body was breaking down with multiple injuries, big and small. There were rings under his eyes even when he had slept. His blood pressure was through the roof. He had to wall himself off more and more.
I didn’t think he could survive another deployment.
“I’ll support you whatever you decide,” I told him. “I want to be married to you. But the only way I can keep making sense of this is…I need to do the best for the kids and me. If you have to keep doing what is best for you and those you serve, at some point I owe it to myself and those I serve to do the same. For me, that is moving to Oregon.”
For me, that meant moving from San Diego to Oregon, where we could live near my folks. That would give our son a grandfather to be close to and model himself after-very important things, in my mind, for a boy.
I didn’t harp on the fact that the military was taking its toll. That argument would never persuade Chris. He lived for others, not himself.
It didn’t feel like an ultimatum to me. In fact, when he described it that way later on, I was shocked.
“It was an ultimatum,” he said. He felt my attitude toward him would change so dramatically that the marriage would be over. There would also be a physical separation that would make it hard to stay together. Even if he wasn’t overseas, he was still likely to be based somewhere other than Oregon. We’d end up having a marriage only in name.
I guess looked at one way, it was an ultimatum-us or the Navy. But it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. I asked him if he could stay in and get an assignment overseas where we could all go, but Chris reminded me there was never a guarantee with the military-and noted he wasn’t in it to sit behind a desk.
Some men have a heart condition they know will kill them, but they don’t want to go to the doctor; it’s only when their wives tell them to go that they go.
It’s a poor metaphor, but I felt that getting out of the Navy was as important for Chris as it was for us.
In the end, he opted to leave.
Later, when Chris would give advice to guys thinking about leaving the military, he would tell them it would be a difficult decision. He wouldn’t push them one way or the other, but he would be open about his experiences.
“There’ll be hard times at first,” he’d admit. “But if that is the thing you decide, those times will pass. And you’ll be able to enjoy things you never could in the service. And some of them will be a lot better. The joy you get from your family will be twice as great as the pleasure you had in the military.”
Ultimatum or not, he’d come to realize retiring from the service was a good choice for all of us.
”
”
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
“
The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good, and another to feel bad? How do we weigh the feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children?
It doesn’t matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend to justify it in the”
“name of human feelings rather than in the name of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don’t harm anyone in the process – then what could possibly be wrong with it?
The same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private
“matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their inner feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
He began, “There is absolutely no doubt in the mind of a very overwhelming number of Americans, that the best immediate defense of the United States is the success of Britain in defending itself. “Now, what I am trying to do is eliminate the dollar sign. That is something brand new in the thoughts of everybody in this room, I think—get rid of the silly, foolish, old dollar sign. “Well, let me give you an illustration,” he said, and then deployed an analogy that distilled his idea into something both familiar and easy to grasp, something that would resonate with the quotidian experience of countless Americans. “Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have got a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away: but, my Heaven, if he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him put out the fire. Now, what do I do? I don’t say to him before that operation, ‘Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have got to pay me $15 for it.’ What is the transaction that goes on? I don’t want $15—I want my garden hose back after the fire is over. All right. If it goes through the fire all right, intact, without any damage to it, he gives it back to me and thanks me very much for the use of it. But suppose it gets smashed up—holes in it—during the fire; we don’t have to have too much formality about it, but I say to him, ‘I was glad to lend you that hose; I see I can’t use it any more, it’s all smashed up.’ “He says ‘How many feet of it were there?’ “I tell him, ‘There were 150 feet of it.’ “He says, ‘All right, I will replace it.’ ” That became the kernel of an act introduced in Congress soon afterward, numbered H.R. 1776 and titled “A Bill Further to Promote the Defense of the United States, and for Other Purposes,” soon to receive its lasting byname, the Lend-Lease Act. Central to the proposal was the idea that it was in the best interests of the United States to provide Britain, or any ally, with all the aid it needed, whether it could pay or not.
”
”
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
During the war, I was constantly afraid Chris would die. What made it worse was that he told me many times that he wanted to die on the battlefield.
Let me refine that.
He didn’t want to die, but if he had to die, then he couldn’t imagine anything better than dying on the battlefield. It was part of his sense of duty: dying on the battlefield would mean that he had been doing his utmost to protect others. There was no higher calling, and no higher proof of dedication, for Chris. So there was no sense fearing death in combat. It would be an honor.
That idea hurt me. I knew my husband wasn’t reckless--far from it--but in war there is a very thin line between being brave and being foolish, and when Chris talked like that I worried the line might be crossed.
I started going to church more during his first deployment, and eventually went to women’s Bible studies to learn more about the Bible. But fitting the idea of God and faith and service together was never easy. What should I pray for? My husband to live, certainly. But wasn’t that selfish? What if that wasn’t God’s will?
I prayed Chris would make the right decision when it came time to reenlist or leave the Navy. I wanted him to leave, yet that wasn’t exactly what I prayed for.
Yet I was disappointed when he reenlisted. Was I disappointed with God, or Chris?
Had my prayers even been heard?
If it was God’s plan that he reenlist, I should have been at peace with it. Yet I can’t say that I was.
Right after he made his decision, I took a walk with a friend whose faith ran very deep. She knew the Bible much better than I did, and was far more active in the church. I cried to her.
“I have to believe this is the best thing for our family,” I told her. “But I don’t know how it can be. I’m really struggling to accept it.”
“It’s okay to be angry with God,” she told me.
That caught me short. “I--I don’t think we’re supposed to be.”
“Why not?”
“Well…Jesus was never mad at God, and--“
“That’s wrong,” she said. “Don’t you remember in the temple with the money changers? Or in the garden before he was crucified, his doubts? Or on the cross? It’s okay to have those feelings.”
We talked some more.
“I do believe that if Chris dies,” I said finally, “God must be saying it’s still okay for our family, even if I don’t know how.”
She teared up. “I’m in awe,” she confessed. “I don’t know if I could say that.
”
”
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
“
told my people that I wanted only the best, whatever it took, wherever they came from, whatever it cost. We assembled thirty people, the brightest cybersecurity minds we have. A few are on loan, pursuant to strict confidentiality agreements, from the private sector—software companies, telecommunications giants, cybersecurity firms, military contractors. Two are former hackers themselves, one of them currently serving a thirteen-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Most are from various agencies of the federal government—Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA. Half our team is devoted to threat mitigation—how to limit the damage to our systems and infrastructure after the virus hits. But right now, I’m concerned with the other half, the threat-response team that Devin and Casey are running. They’re devoted to stopping the virus, something they’ve been unable to do for the last two weeks. “Good morning, Mr. President,” says Devin Wittmer. He comes from NSA. After graduating from Berkeley, he started designing cyberdefense software for clients like Apple before the NSA recruited him away. He has developed federal cybersecurity assessment tools to help industries and governments understand their preparedness against cyberattacks. When the major health-care systems in France were hit with a ransomware virus three years ago, we lent them Devin, who was able to locate and disable it. Nobody in America, I’ve been assured, is better at finding holes in cyberdefense systems or at plugging them. “Mr. President,” says Casey Alvarez. Casey is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who settled in Arizona to start a family and built up a fleet of grocery stores in the Southwest along the way. Casey showed no interest in the business, taking quickly to computers and wanting to join law enforcement. When she was a grad student at Penn, she got turned down for a position at the Department of Justice. So Casey got on her computer and managed to do what state and federal authorities had been unable to do for years—she hacked into an underground child-pornography website and disclosed the identities of all the website’s patrons, basically gift-wrapping a federal prosecution for Justice and shutting down an operation that was believed to be the largest purveyor of kiddie porn in the country. DOJ hired her on the spot, and she stayed there until she went to work for the CIA. She’s been most recently deployed in the Middle East with US Central Command, where she intercepts, decodes, and disrupts cybercommunications among terrorist groups. I’ve been assured that these two are, by far, the best we have. And they are about to meet the person who, so far, has been better. There is a hint of reverence in their expressions as I introduce them to Augie. The Sons of Jihad is the all-star team of cyberterrorists, mythical figures in that world. But I sense some competitive fire, too, which will be a good thing.
”
”
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
“
At the same time, I had a deep sense of loss: all that time in the deployment army. All that wasted potential. The wasted humanity! Using people as if they were bots. Disrupting lives, families, sleep patterns...it was all such a waste.
”
”
Michael T. Nygard (Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software)
“
Education established the backbone for America’s great experiment in civilization; it enabled American industry, commerce, and military to thrive and supplied the intellectual reagent to spur the growth of the American social consciousness that paved the road to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination that tainted this hallowed ground. Education bridges communities together and provides reinforcement to generations of families. Formal edification is worthless unless we also develop our spiritual pillars in a manner that enables a great civilization to deploy its enhancement in technology to improve the health and general welfare of all people.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
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Well, how's that going to work with both of you as pilots? Who's going to watch your kids? What if you both get deployed? If he is going to be successful in the Air Force, he'll need a strong support system at home. Don't you want to be a good wife to him?" My heart sank. It was absolutely none of his business that we were going to get a divorce anyway. None of this was any of his business. It was clearly not his place to be making that kind of decision for my family, or anyone's family.
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Mary Jennings Hegar (Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman's Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front)
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Being a soldier in wartime is a sick profession. How is that when I hear the word "deployment", I am able to effortlessly flick a switch and shut off my family? Yet when I returned from deployment, there was no such switch to reconnect me to my children and parents? It doesn't equate. I don't get to pick up where I left off. I will have to rebuild.
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Kirsten Holmstedt (The Girls Come Marching Home: Stories of Women Warriors Returning from the War in Iraq)
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Hospice deploys nurses, doctors, chaplains, and social workers to help people with a fatal illness have the fullest possible lives right now—much as nursing home reformers deploy staff to help people with severe disabilities. In terminal illness that means focusing on objectives like freedom from pain and discomfort, or maintaining mental awareness for as long as feasible, or getting out with family once in a while—
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Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
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After Du was captured fleeing the capital, he wrote a poem during his internment on the night of Mid-autumn Festival, a traditional day for gathering with or remembering family. In the poem, he imagines the following: his children are still too small; so on the night of mid-autumn, only his wife will be looking up at the moon and thinking of him. What would his wife look like at that moment? He writes: “Her hair will be mist scented, her jade-white arms chilled in its clear light.” In just ten characters, he deploys the senses of smell, sight, and touch. Why is his wife’s hair full of damp mist? Because the dew was heavy that night, and she stood out looking up at the moon for a long, long time. So how could her arms not have become chilled?
The damp of her hair and the chill of her arms represent his wife, but also the hallucinatory sense of the husband being by her side, feeling her. It is so immediate to the senses.
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Yu Qiuyu
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Once every few weeks, beginning in the summer of 2018, a trio of large Boeing freighter aircraft, most often converted and windowless 747s of the Dutch airline KLM, takes off from Schiphol airport outside Amsterdam, with a precious cargo bound eventually for the city of Chandler, a western desert exurb of Phoenix, Arizona. The cargo is always the same, consisting of nine white boxes in each aircraft, each box taller than a man. To get these profoundly heavy containers from the airport in Phoenix to their destination, twenty miles away, requires a convoy of rather more than a dozen eighteen-wheeler trucks. On arrival and family uncrated, the contents of all the boxes are bolted together to form one enormous 160-ton machine -- a machine tool, in fact, a direct descendant of the machine tools invented and used by men such as Joseph Bramah and Henry Maudslay and Henry Royce and Henry Ford a century and more before.
"Just like its cast-iron predecessors, this Dutch-made behemoth of a tool (fifteen of which compose the total order due to be sent to Chandler, each delivered as it is made) is a machine that makes machines. Yet, rather than making mechanical devices by the precise cutting of metal from metal, this gigantic device is designed for the manufacture of the tiniest of machines imaginable, all of which perform their work electronically, without any visible moving parts.
"For here we come to the culmination of precision's quartermillennium evolutionary journey. Up until this moment, almost all the devices and creations that required a degree of precision in their making had been made of metal, and performed their various functions through physical movements of one kind or another. Pistons rose and fell; locks opened and closed; rifles fired; sewing machines secured pieces of fabric and created hems and selvedges; bicycles wobbled along lanes; cars ran along highways; ball bearings spun and whirled; trains snorted out of tunnels; aircraft flew through the skies; telescopes deployed; clocks ticked or hummed, and their hands moved ever forward, never back, one precise second at a time."Then came the computer, then the personal computer, then the smartphone, then the previously unimaginable tools of today -- and with this helter-skelter technological evolution came a time of translation, a time when the leading edge of precision passed itself out into the beyond, moving as if through an invisible gateway, from the purely mechanical and physical world and into an immobile and silent universe, one where electrons and protons and neutrons have replaced iron and oil and bearings and lubricants and trunnions and the paradigm-altering idea of interchangeable parts, and where, though the components might well glow with fierce lights send out intense waves of heat, nothing moved one piece against another in mechanical fashion, no machine required that measured exactness be an essential attribute of every component piece.
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Simon Wincheter
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After Du was captured fleeing the capital, he wrote a poem during his internment on the night of Mid-autumn Festival, a traditional day for gathering with or remembering family. In the poem, he imagines the following: his children are still too small; so on the night of mid-autumn, only his wife will be looking up at the moon and thinking of him. What would his wife look like at that moment? He writes: “Her hair will be mist-scented, her jade-white arms chilled in its clear light.” In just ten characters, he deploys the senses of smell, sight, and touch. Why is his wife’s hair full of damp mist? Because the dew was heavy that night, and she stood out looking up at the moon for a long, long time. So how could her arms not have become chilled?
The damp of her hair and the chill of her arms represent his wife, but also the hallucinatory sense of the husband being by her side, feeling her. It is so immediate to the senses.
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Yu Qiuyu
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Parabellum Investments is a family office operating as a global private equity firm. We deploy our own capital to acquire companies operating in enterprise software, business & IT services and mining & energy.
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Parabellum Investments
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Telepathy has more to do with interferometric principles than with light encoding. Interferometry is a family of techniques in which waves, usually electromagnetic waves, are superimposed, causing the phenomenon of interference, which is used to extract information. Sometimes there is confusion between interferometric deployments and "encoding in waves.
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Rico Roho (Beyond the Fringe: My Experience with Extended Intelligence (Age of Discovery Book 3))
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In 1952, a year after becoming Chabad’s leader, the Rebbe undertook to send a newly married couple to serve as shluchim in Brazil. Unlike the Lipskers, in this case the bride and her parents, all three Lubavitchers, were very unhappy with the Rebbe’s request. The father, who held a key position for the movement in Israel, couldn’t comprehend the idea of his daughter and son-in-law moving to a country with little Jewish infrastructure in place, and he wrote to the Rebbe to express his unhappiness. We possess no copy of the father’s letter, but the basic content of what he said is clear from the Rebbe’s response (when the letter was published, the Rebbe, as was his custom, omitted all names). The father, clearly pleased about the marriage, wrote that the family’s “happy event was [now] disturbed” by the news that the couple were to be sent abroad. It seems apparent from the Rebbe’s response that the father made no effort to disguise his displeasure at what the Rebbe had done. The Rebbe was in no way apologetic. He wrote in his capacity as a leader, in a sense as a military general who understood the need to deploy his troops where they were most needed, to “a place where your son-in-law and your daughter can fully utilize their potential.” The Rebbe acknowledged that moving to a foreign and largely nonobservant Jewish community requires a certain measure of self-sacrifice (mesirut nefesh), but he then posed a rhetorical question intended to overwhelm any further opposition. To paraphrase: “If one can’t expect such self-sacrifice from a graduate of our yeshiva, one who is a child as well of such a graduate and who is married to the daughter of such a graduate, if even from such people one can’t ask for a measure of self-sacrifice, then upon whom can one rely?” The Rebbe proceeded to offer both a carrot and a stick. Thus, he assured the father—knowing that the letter would be read by his daughter as well—that the couple would flourish in every meaningful manner by undertaking such a mission: “The vastness of the good fortune that will result if they accept this offer, including good fortune in a physical sense, is obvious to me.” On the other hand—and the Rebbe stated this as a fact, not a threat—refusing such a mission would cut the couple off from the work of the Previous Rebbe (who had died just two years earlier), and, by implication, from the Rebbe himself. Although he expressed “shock” that an offer to spread “the light of Torah and Chasidus” to unknowledgeable Jews could lead to the parents feeling that their happiness had been “disturbed,” he also set down, near the letter’s end, his trademark conclusion: “As stated above, I am not giving an order, Heaven forbid. This is only a suggestion.
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Joseph Telushkin (Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History)
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Brittany was lonely. She'd had Dillon during Carson's first deployment, and when he returned, he didn't seem very interested in getting to know his son. Then, half a year later, he was gone again. The baby could walk now, and Brittany had gotten used to being a single mom. She would have to adjust her life to fit a husband into it again.
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Karie Fugett (Alive Day: A Memoir)
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Young women wore colorful new dresses with high heels and false eyelashes. They clashed against the parking lot backdrop, dust whirling around them. There were babies too young to have ever met their fathers, parents holding each other in anticipation as they waited for their sons and daughters to arrive home from war. Cleve's unit--Third Battalion, Eighth Marines--had been gone seven months. Though everyone was excited to see those who'd survived, we also anticipated the sadness that would inevitably wash over us when the buses emptied too soon.
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Karie Fugett (Alive Day: A Memoir)
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I feel like so much has been left undone. There are friends I won't see before I leave, there are bills I still need to pay. I haven't written as much as I've wanted, and there are countless things I've said that I wish I could correct, but this is a process that will never end. When my grandmother died she left a library full of books she never finished reading. This is how I feel now.
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Jason Christopher Hartley (Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq)
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Now, I’ve got a few things to say. You’re on your way to First Phase, so make me proud of you. After Hell Week, those of you who survive will still have to face the scuba pool comps in Second Phase and weapons practicals in Third Phase. I’ll want to shake your hand at graduation. When you get there, I want to think of you as one of Reno’s warriors.” There’s another roar from the class. Reno is very popular with Class 228. While he has frequently made them suffer, the trainees know that Reno and the other Indoc instructors have tried to give them what they need to survive in First Phase. “Be on time. Be alert. Be accountable for your actions in and out of uniform. You officers, look out for your men and your men will look out for you. Your reputation is everything in the teams. Remember this if you remember nothing else. For each of you, a chance to build on that reputation begins on Monday morning at zero five hundred in First Phase.” He looks around the class; every eye is on him. “For those of you who do get to the teams, I want you to take this on board. The guys in the teams are a brotherhood. You’ll be closer to them than you ever were to your friends in high school or college. You’ll live with them on deployment and some of you may even die with them in combat. But never, ever forget your family. Family comes before teammates. Most of us will grow old and die in bed, and the only people who will be there to help us die will be our family. Put your family first. I want you to never forget that.
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Dick Couch (The Warrior Elite: The Forging of SEAL Class 228)
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There’s a complicated system allowing agents to express preferences about offices and assignments that all FBI agents must follow. It would take too long to go through the whole thing here, but the FBI does have a very comprehensive approach to soliciting agents’ desires and then determining how best to deploy them. The only problem is that they totally ignore the system. If you ask the average FBI agent, he’ll tell you that the way the Bureau assigns people is that they’ve got a monkey in a room who throws a dart with your name on it at a U.S. map on the wall.
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Joaquín "Jack" García (Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family)
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American CEOs believed, as they had believed since at least the time of Frederick Winslow Taylor and his 19th-century cult of “scientific management,” that expertise deployed through bureaucracy could impose rationality on such unruly social entities as free markets, culture, family, and sexuality. The supplanting of spontaneous order with political discipline is the essence of progressivism, then and now.
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Kevin D. Williamson
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All she could do was hope Sean had put the same consideration into his sleeping attire. He probably didn’t sleep in the buff, despite the deliciously vivid visual of that her imagination had no trouble conjuring. He’d been in the army for twelve years—a good chunk of that deployed overseas—and surely they weren’t in the habit of sleeping nude.
Flannel would be nice. And not battered shorts, like hers. Long pants and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned up to his throat would be nice, like something Ward Cleaver would have worn to bed in his 1950s sitcom.
When she finally dropped the curtain on the mental drama and left the bathroom, she was a little disappointed he was already asleep. Clearly he wasn’t struggling to hold back the reins of runaway sexual attraction the way she was. He’d dimmed the overhead light, but she could hear him softly snoring and make out the sheet pulled halfway up his stomach. His naked stomach, which led her gaze to his naked chest and then to his naked shoulders, the muscles nicely highlighted by the way he slept with his arms raised over his head.
Was the rest of him naked, too?
“When you stare at somebody who’s sleeping,” he mumbled without moving or opening his eyes, “they usually wake up.”
Busted. Her face burned as though his words were a blowtorch and she rushed across the room to slap the light switch off. In the faint glow of moonlight penetrating the curtains, she went to the couch to try to get comfortable. It wasn’t quite long enough, but she curled up under the light cotton blanket and closed her eyes.
Getting caught staring on the first night was embarrassing, but at least he wasn’t a mind reader. There was no way he could guess she’d been wondering what he wore from the waist down.
“Good night, Emma.”
The quiet, husky voice in the darkness made her shiver. “Night, Sean.”
A little less than seven hours of tossing and turning later, Emma’s question was answered—much to the detriment of her recently revived libido.
At some point during the night, Sean had thrown off the sheet. Probably right around the time he rolled onto his stomach. With his hands shoved under his pillow and one knee drawn up a little, she had a clear view of his ass—showcased perfectly in dark blue boxer briefs.
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Shannon Stacey (Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3))
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When he’d married her years ago she’d known being with the Teams took most of his focus. Missions had taken him away for months at a time. He’d been deployed to Iraq four times and Afghanistan twice, each time for six months or more. Then there were too many individual ops to even count. Though the deployments were hard Cat took care of everything like she’d been doing it all along. And she had, actually. She was literally a single parent. He hadn’t been at Dillon’s birth or Tate’s. Christmases had passed with barely a glance. If she hadn’t have sent him a box of treats every holiday he wouldn’t even have noticed them. But even when he’d been physically home, mentally he hadn’t. In his mind he’d always been preparing for the next op. He was on the range with his rifle every day, rain or shine. Training in the gym every day. Keeping that fine combat ready edge took a lot of grueling work. The only thing he’d been able to do well for his family was leave. And provide for them monetarily. “You
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J.M. Madden (Embattled SEAL (Lost and Found #4))
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You told me some of these things but I guess I just didn’t get it. I didn’t realize they were so real to you.” Hank sighed. “And I admit I protected you from things, too. I mean, you do so much. You take care of this family. I want to be the man you married, the guy I was before I deployed, but I just can’t do it anymore.” The tears started again, and Alex was actually glad to see them. It meant the information was actually having an impact on her. “And men, in general, find it hard to admit to issues like this,” Alex told her softly. “They’ve been raised to be the breadwinners and the protectors. But it takes an especially strong man to admit that he’s having issues. Your husband did the right thing by reaching out to Duncan today.” Alex
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J.M. Madden (Embattled Ever After (Lost and Found #5))
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while it is true capital’s deployment and redeployment of labor power overturns all barriers, an increasingly intensified competitive struggle within the working class determines who can sell her labor power and who will be forced into the reserve army of labor. There is nothing about this process that implies equality of opportunity among wage slaves, nor any tendency toward homogenization of their wages. With the improvement in the productivity of labor, wages fall and competition between workers becomes increasingly fierce precisely because this struggle is a matter of life and death for each of them. It only makes sense to assume that those workers who enjoy special advantages arising from purely historical causes, will employ these advantages with the utmost ruthless urgency as conditions of the class as a whole deteriorate. To lose in this competition means hunger and homelessness for the worker and for her family.
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Anonymous
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logic of kinship relations, and its plot driven by family conflict. The system of dramaturgy is a melodramatic one, displaying the characteristic ensemble of manichaeism, bipolarity, the privileging of the moral over the psychological and the deployment of coincidence in plot structures.
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Anonymous
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Precisely because they are scattered in small groups across the face of the earth instead of being clumped together in larger quantities, Small Churches have immediate access to communities, families and individuals, making them the largest, most readily deployable force for spiritual transformation, emotional encouragement and material sustenance that the world has ever seen. It’s time to turn them loose!
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Karl Vaters (The Grasshopper Myth: Big Churches, Small Churches and the Small Thinking that Divides Us)
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the reason for his arrival. “If it isn’t, then…” Before he could finish, the older man, who went by the name Ferran Basara, began to speak. “It is ready, as I promised your superior.” Ferran raised the briefcase from his desk. “Now you must keep your end of the bargain.” “Your family’s safety will depend upon the successful deployment of your device. Then and only then will you know peace, my friend.” Ferran shed his gaze from the man. “I doubt that it will bring me peace. Please—you must go now, before you draw unwanted attention.” “Of course.” The man turned and proceeded to exit the shop where Ferran’s daughter remained standing behind the front counter. Her eyes followed him, but he didn’t give her a second look and pushed his way through the door. At his departure, Izzah, Izzy to her friends, walked toward her father. Her petite frame stood firm inside the opened door. “Who was that?” She placed her
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Robin Mahle (Primal Deception (Lacy Merrick Thriller #1))
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I love you, Harper.” His hands reached up but he only cupped her hips, letting her continue on her journey. She pressed a kiss to the scar across his right deltoid, an old injury from one of his first deployments, then his left collarbone, broken on a training trip to California. Then, moving carefully, she pressed kisses to the new scar still healing on his chest. That one had been too close to taking his life. Thank goodness he had been able to receive medical care as quickly as he did. Cat moved down Harper’s muscled abs and the slim line of black hair there. “I think everything about you is beautiful.” He puffed out a little laugh but she looked up at him with reproach. “I do. Your body is superb, even wounded. It always has been. That’s why I always have to beat the nurses off you.” She flashed him a grin. “Your mind is devious and brilliant, but I love that. The loyalty to your family and your men is humbling.” She stroked a finger over the tattoo that echoed those sentiments on his right pectoral. “Your unfailing courage in the face of everything that has happened is astounding. I know whatever we have to face you will conquer with that same indomitable, dogged, Navy SEAL will. And your heart,” she moved back up his chest to press a kiss to his sternum, “your heart is more loving and willing to try than I ever could have hoped. We’re going to put our family back together,” she promised. Harper stared up at her for several long seconds before he closed his eyes, but not before she’d seen the shine of moisture in their depths. He pulled her down on top of him, burying his face into her neck. “You are every bit the woman you’ve always been, calm and understanding, willing to put up with my shit. And I have to tell you. All of those things you see in me? I wouldn’t be any of them without you. And I mean that. You’ve supported me through everything. You flew across the country to be at my bedside even though you didn’t know the kind of reaction you’d receive. It amazes me that you would take that chance. But I’m so glad you did. I love you, Catherine Marie Preston. I always have.” She flashed a smile at the use of her full name. “And I love you, Harper Broderick Preston. I always will.” They
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J.M. Madden (Embattled SEAL (Lost and Found #4))
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M113 Family of Vehicles Mission Provide a highly mobile, survivable, and reliable tracked-vehicle platform that is able to keep pace with Abrams- and Bradley-equipped units and that is adaptable to a wide range of current and future battlefield tasks through the integration of specialised mission modules at minimum operational and support cost. Entered Army Service 1960 Description and Specifications After more than four decades, the M113 family of vehicles (FOV) is still in service in the U.S. Army (and in many foreign armies). The original M113 Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) helped to revolutionise mobile military operations. These vehicles carried 11 soldiers plus a driver and track commander under armour protection across hostile battlefield environments. More importantly, these vehicles were air transportable, air-droppable, and swimmable, allowing planners to incorporate APCs in a much wider range of combat situations, including many "rapid deployment" scenarios. The M113s were so successful that they were quickly identified as the foundation for a family of vehicles. Early derivatives included both command post (M577) and mortar carrier (M106) configurations. Over the years, the M113 FOV has undergone numerous upgrades. In 1964, the M113A1 package replaced the original gasoline engine with a 212 horsepower diesel package, significantly improving survivability by eliminating the possibility of catastrophic loss from fuel tank explosions. Several new derivatives were produced, some based on the armoured M113 chassis (e.g., the M125A1 mortar carrier and M741 "Vulcan" air defence vehicle) and some based on the unarmoured version of the chassis (e.g., the M548 cargo carrier, M667 "Lance" missile carrier, and M730 "Chaparral" missile carrier). In 1979, the A2 package of suspension and cooling enhancements was introduced. Today's M113 fleet includes a mix of these A2 variants, together with other derivatives equipped with the most recent A3 RISE (Reliability Improvements for Selected Equipment) package. The standard RISE package includes an upgraded propulsion system (turbocharged engine and new transmission), greatly improved driver controls (new power brakes and conventional steering controls), external fuel tanks, and 200-amp alternator with four batteries. Additional A3 improvements include incorporation of spall liners and provisions for mounting external armour. The future M113A3 fleet will include a number of vehicles that will have high speed digital networks and data transfer systems. The M113A3 digitisation program includes applying hardware, software, and installation kits and hosting them in the M113 FOV. Current variants: Mechanised Smoke Obscurant System M548A1/A3 Cargo Carrier M577A2/A3 Command Post Carrier M901A1 Improved TOW Vehicle M981 Fire Support Team Vehicle M1059/A3 Smoke Generator Carrier M1064/A3 Mortar Carrier M1068/A3 Standard Integrated Command Post System Carrier OPFOR Surrogate Vehicle (OSV) Manufacturer Anniston Army Depot (Anniston, AL) United Defense, L.P. (Anniston, AL)
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Russell Phillips (This We'll Defend: The Weapons & Equipment of the US Army)
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Discouraging the formation of dynasties is particularly important. If a billionaire dies and leaves his money to his family, there are going to be a bunch of worthless nephews sitting around half-finished castles playing Nintendo all day. Since not everybody has a billionaire uncle, this would be unfair to poor people, who may not be able to afford Nintendos. Rich families could otherwise deploy their vast wealth to buy elections for themselves or others, as happened with presidents Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Hence
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Andrew Heaton (Laughter is Better Than Communism)
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Understanding Financial Risks and Companies Mitigate them?
Financial risks are the possible threats, losses and debts corporations face during setting up policies and seeking new business opportunities. Financial risks lead to negative implications for the corporations that can lead to loss of financial assets, liabilities and capital.
Mitigation of risks and their avoidance in the early stages of product deployment, strategy-planning and other vital phases is top-priority for financial advisors and managers.
Here's how to mitigate risks in financial corporates:-
● Keeping track of Business Operations
Evaluating existing business operations in the corporations will provide a holistic view of the movement of cash-flows, utilisation of financial assets, and avoiding debts and losses.
● Stocking up Emergency Funds
Just as families maintain an emergency fund for dealing with uncertainties, the same goes for large corporates. Coping with uncertainty such as the ongoing pandemic is a valuable lesson that has taught businesses to maintain emergency funds to avoid economic lapses.
● Taking Data-Backed Decisions
Senior financial advisors and managers must take well-reformed decisions backed by data insights. Data-based technologies such as data analytics, science, and others provide resourceful insights about various economic activities and help single out the anomalies and avoid risks.
Enrolling for a course in finance through a reputed university can help young aspiring financial risk advisors understand different ways of mitigating risks and threats. The IIM risk management course provides meaningful insights into the other risks involved in corporations.
What are the Financial Risks Involved in Corporations?
Amongst the several roles and responsibilities undertaken by the financial management sector, identifying and analysing the volatile financial risks.
Financial risk management is the pinnacle of the financial world and incorporates the following risks:-
● Market Risk
Market risk refers to the threats that emerge due to corporational work-flows, operational setup and work-systems. Various financial risks include- an economic recession, interest rate fluctuations, natural calamities and others.
Market risks are also known as "systematic risk" and need to be dealt with appropriately. When there are significant changes in market rates, these risks emerge and lead to economic losses.
● Credit Risk
Credit risk is amongst the common threats that organisations face in the current financial scenarios. This risk emerges when a corporation provides credit to its borrower, and there are lapses while receiving owned principal and interest.
Credit risk arises when a borrower falters to make the payment owed to them.
● Liquidity Risk
Liquidity risk crops up when investors, business ventures and large organisations cannot meet their debt compulsions in the short run.
Liquidity risk emerges when a particular financial asset, security or economic proposition can't be traded in the market.
● Operational Risk
Operational risk arises due to financial losses resulting from employee's mistakes, failures in implementing policies, reforms and other procedures.
Key Takeaway
The various financial risks discussed above help professionals learn the different risks, threats and losses. Enrolling for a course in finance assists learners understand the different risks. Moreover, pursuing the IIM risk management course can expose professionals to the scope of international financial management in India and other key concepts.
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Talentedge
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There had been many overseas deployments that separated them from their families. Countless times they had to uproot their families and move to another base, often to substandard quarters that were always too hot or too cold.
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Robert Coram (American Patriot: The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day)
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In the NCLB era, when the ultimate penalty for a low-performing school was to close it, punitive accountability achieved a certain luster, at least among the media and politicians ... Closing schools should be considered a last step and a rare one. It disrupts lives and communities, especially those of children and their families. It destroys established institutions, in the hope that something better is likely to arise out of the ashes of the old, now-defunct school ... It teaches students that institutions and adults they once trusted can be tossed aside like squeezed lemons, and that data of questionable validity can be deployed [used] to ruin people's lives.
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Diane Ravitch (The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education)
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WORDS HAVE POWER. WORDS ARE MORE THAN THEIR dictionary definition. The history of a word matters as long as the effects of that history are still felt. Take, for example, the history of the word “nigger.” First simply a take on the Latin noun niger (black), the word became a slur used to demean black slaves in the US. From the 1700s on, the word “nigger” was used almost exclusively to express hatred. Nigger was a word shouted at black men, women, and children by slave masters as they lashed their backs with whips. Nigger was a word hollered by white men in pickup trucks as they chased down black kids. Nigger was a word repeated by men in white hoods as they got ready to burn a cross on the lawn of a black family. Nigger was a word spat at hanged black bodies. Nigger is a very powerful word with a very painful history. As long as we have had the spoken word, language has been one of the first tools deployed in efforts to oppress others. Words are how we process the world, how we form our societies, how we codify our morals. In order to make injustice and oppression palatable in a world with words that say that such things are unacceptable, we must come up with new words to distance ourselves from the realities of the harm we are perpetrating on others. This is how black people—human beings—become niggers. All oppression in race, class, gender, ability, religion—it all began with words.
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Ijeoma Oluo (So You Want to Talk About Race)
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The fact that any Family in my Empire could so deploy its atomics as to destroy the planetary bases of fifty or more other Families causes some nervousness, true. But all of us possess precautionary plans for devastating retaliation. Guild and Landsraad contain the keys which hold this force in check. No, my concern goes to the development of humans as special weapons. Here is a virtually unlimited field which a few powers are developing.
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Frank Herbert (Dune Messiah (Dune, #2))
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Texcoco and Azcapotzalco, where peoples lived on maize and beans, cooking tamales and tortillas, drinking alcoholic pulque made from the agave cactus (much weaker than tequila and fermented rather than distilled). Women spun cotton textiles; men farmed and fought – they deployed neither metal nor the wheel but their children’s toys had wheels; they used rubber mixed with the sap of morning glory (a process not discovered in the west until the nineteenth century) to make balls for their games. In the absence of metal, they crafted obsidian volcanic glass for their weapons.
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Simon Sebag Montefiore (The World: A Family History of Humanity)
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Prince Philip’s study in his private quarters at Wood Farm, the house on the Sandringham Estate where he spent much of his retirement years, was as minimal and uncluttered as the boardroom of a ship. His was always the leanest operation of the Palace machine, deploying only two private secretaries, an equerry, and a librarian to execute several hundred royal engagements a year. Despite his peremptory manner, he was by far the most popular member of the family to work for—“very unassuming and knows that it is not always as easy to do something as it is to ask for it be done,” as one household servant put it. In 2008, he gave his Savile Row tailor (John Kent of Norton & Sons) a fifty-one-year-old pair of trousers to be altered.
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Tina Brown (The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor - the Truth and the Turmoil)
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Being in a combat zone is almost a constant adrenaline rush, and it should be. The moment you get comfortable and complacent is the moment you lose. When you’re on a deployment, it almost feels like time stops, or maybe it feels more like you’re in some kind of a twilight zone. Your family and friends are all moving on without you while you’re stuck living the same day over and over, like in the movie Groundhog Day. You get up, conduct personal hygiene, report to duty, conduct physical fitness somewhere in there, and do personal hygiene again before you pass out in your bunk for the night. If you’re lucky, you might get to sleep through the night. The base sirens would interrupt other nights, signaling you to grab your gear and get in a bunker. Your friends and family back home don’t understand this. They don’t understand the fear, the adrenaline rush, the twilight zone effect, and it sometimes seems pretty lonely. But you’re not alone. No matter what walk of life you’ve come from, you’re not alone. Everyone out there is in a similar situation and understands what it’s like. They become your new family during the deployment. While deployed, there’s a good chance you’ll see and/or experience things that will haunt you. Some learn to detach themselves from those situations and almost experience them from a bird’s eye view, somehow making them seem less real. Often, soldiers cope by making light of a bad situation. As a result, dark humor runs rampant amongst Service Members. While those on the outside may see that dark humor as cruel, it is just another way that you learn to deal with the atrocities of war. I digress. Let’s get back into it.
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J.J. Ainsworth (At What Cost: America's War in Afghanistan and Words From Those Who Served)
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In the mid-1800s, American activist Dorothea Dix deployed her sizable inheritance to devote herself to these issues with a fierceness of purpose that hasn’t been matched since. She traveled more than thirty thousand miles across America in three years to reveal the brutalities wrought upon the mentally ill, describing “the saddest picture of human suffering and degradation,” a woman tearing off her own skin, a man forced to live in an animal stall, a woman confined to a belowground cage with no access to light, and people chained in place for years. Clearly, the American system hadn’t improved much on Europe’s old “familial” treatments. Dix, a tireless advocate, called upon the Massachusetts legislature to take on the “sacred cause” of caring for the mentally unwell during a time when women were unwelcome in politics. Her efforts helped found thirty-two new therapeutic asylums on the philosophy of moral treatment. Dorothea Dix died in 1887, the same year that our brave Nellie Bly went undercover on Blackwell Island, in essence continuing Dix’s legacy by exposing how little had truly changed.
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Susannah Cahalan (The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness)
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On to the good news, Bailey. We are officially a couple now. Me and you. Us. I’ve claimed you as mine. So see, using my truck isn’t a big deal. Couples do that sort of thing all the time. They share. So being the generous guy I am, I am now willing to be exclusive with you and share my possessions and my body with only you. How cool is that?” I state. And then I remember to add, “And you will be sharing your body with me. Only me. That’s a very important part of being a couple. An us, if you will.”
Huh. That’s odd. She’s not squealing for joy as I expected. In fact, her eyes have gone a little past squinty and now getting close to scary.
I, once again, deploy my best smile on her. And I’m still waiting for that joyful squeal.
“So, let me get this straight. You have decided that we are now officially a couple. An us. And you decided this why?” she asks.
Still with the squinty eyes! What’s up with that?
“Several reasons. I realized how much I like you in my life when I heard what happened yesterday. I could have lost you! That’s unacceptable. And Pooh made me realize that you are worth claiming. So, you’re mine now. We’re going to be great together, babe.”
“While you were deciding this, with Pooh’s help, did it occur to you to ask me what I thought about us becoming a couple? Maybe I don’t want to be tied down to one guy? Maybe I like you in bed but don’t want to be in a relationship with you? Huh? Did you think about what I might want?” Bailey asks me.
“Uh, well, I guess I just assumed you would want to be mine. I’m a catch, babe! Seriously! Quit smirking at me! I have a good job, the best dad possible, club members that are family to me and they like you already. I am loyal and would never cheat or hurt you in any way. I own my own home, bike, truck. No debt. And I can promise you lots and lots of orgasms. I would never deprive you of those. I solemnly swear you can use my cock, hands or mouth anytime you want to get off. I am a giver like that. So, why wouldn’t you want me to be yours?”
“Wow! At least you’ll be generous with your cock. That makes me feel better already!” Bailey sarcastically says.
“I solemnly swear that so you have no worries on that front. Use my body however you want. I’ll never say no to you. And whatever freaky fantasies you may have, I’m your guy. I’d like freaky, dirty sex with you.
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Lola Wright (Axel (The Devil's Angels MC #2))
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An ordinary travel agency took care of the practicalities of chartering trains in exactly the same way as they dealt with such matters normally. Ordinary railway staff were deployed to organise the logistics of the transport, plotting train times into schedules, passing information on through the system. The camps were built, personnel received their orders, the industry began. Some of the soldiers must have been picked out on account of their brutality, many being obvious sadists who could find outlet and indulge themselves here, while others were ordinary and, in any context, considerate men doing a job for work.
Two years later they tried to remove all traces; having demolished Teblinka’s every structure they built a farm on the site and instructed the Ukrainian family they installed in it to say they had lived there always. The same occurred in Sobibor, Belzec and Chelmno, all traces gone. All around, life went on as nothing had happened.
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Karl Ove Knausgård (Min kamp 6 (Min kamp, #6))
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A doctor, for instance, is bored with his job and his family and must always have a project to keep himself entertained—a second house that needs renovation, another house at the beach, a farm outside town, an overseas trip for ‘professional development’, a share in a racehorse, extensions to the family home. This is the pattern of restless overconsumers, who deploy their wealth as a means of avoiding confrontation with the essential meaningless of life that they fear may lie just below the surface. They keep themselves amused by changing the form of their assets.
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Clive Hamilton (Growth Fetish)
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When his ability to charm hit a wall, he deployed another “business strategy”: throwing tantrums during which he threatened to bankrupt or otherwise ruin anybody who failed to let him have what he wanted. Either way, he won.
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Mary L. Trump (Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man)
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At Hongguang Commune, a roadside area of more than 2,000 mu was cleared of more than 180 dwellings. At least 12,000 homes were dismantled throughout the county. Unrelated families were obliged to share quarters, sometimes with domestic fowl. Cadres burst into homes without notice, tossed out belongings, and reduced a house to rubble in an instant. Commune members returning from deployment elsewhere wept upon finding their homes, wives, and children gone. Some families relocated seven times in a year. Cadres ransacked homes, often snatching desirable goods. Some commune members retaliated by hiding snakes in their rice jars.
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Yang Jisheng (Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962)
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He had also
—in a masterstroke of marketing—recently given his cows English names, since
his best customers were an American family deployed to the local embassy. So
Kamala had become Coffee, Gomu had become Gaby, and Shanti had become
Tiger
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Shoba Narayan (Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes)
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Amidst the many and varied emotions that we as humans endure the human imagination fuses with the realities of outer space for a new born planet to emergence that catapults a message of dire warnings to us, a cataclysmic finale for the planet earth that has fallen prey to human arrogance and greed.
The events of this story play themselves out in NASA when its spacecraft disappear, one after the other, and in the moments of hopelessness and expectation and the glances of disappear from the eyes of the world, and the feelings of the families. It is here that three of the best of the best that NASA has to offer, hero astronauts, are deployed to solve the riddle.
David, a pompous man if ever there was one, a man who has never been able to hold onto a woman in a serious relationship, least of all the last two women he was involved with.
Jack, the consummate womaniser who can’t get enough of his relationships with woman, while his dutiful wife Suzie remains at home, seething with pain for his many treacheries.
Finally there is Tony, the kind of heart, and his angelic wife Angela and their tragic infant son Cody, the apple of their eye, a handsome boy and smart suffering from an incurable disease that is on the verge of killing him. With all of that they love and support him and find time to do good deeds for all, garnering the respect and love of all.
As the astronauts arrive in the designated spot in space where the previous missions disappeared, they almost collide with a semi-invisible planet from legend, dragging them towards it with all their attempts to flee. They see within it things that go beyond the wildest dreams of mortal man till they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. Then they realise that this planet is besotted with many dark and ancient secrets relating to the Pharaohs, as they also learn that the planets responds only to human emotion.
Upon their return to earth the great surprise involving Cody takes place, and in the moment of farewell this mysterious planet sends a definite and resounding message to earth and all who reside on it.
The surprises don’t end there, till we return a second time to this planet to discover even more of its secrets… The only remaining question then is, will the inhabitants of this world reveal them?
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Hany Rasha
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The Pew Research Center found that less than one half of 1 percent of American families had someone in the military.1 And only 1 percent of adults were on active duty. Iraq and Afghanistan became our nation’s longest wars with the smallest participation of American families. I believe those two facts are related. Would 2/5 marines have been under fire in Ramadi in pickup trucks if the marines had been called to duty from among the 99.5 percent? Would the public stand for men and women deployed to combat tours three, four, five and six times? Would the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become the longest in our history if our troops had been randomly drafted? Would Iraq have happened at all?
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Scott Pelley (Truth Worth Telling: A Reporter's Search for Meaning in the Stories of Our Times)
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In 2009, an American soldier named Bowe Bergdahl slipped through a gap in the concertina wire at his combat outpost in southern Afghanistan and walked off into the night. He was quickly captured by a Taliban patrol, and his absence triggered a massive search by the US military that put thousands of his fellow soldiers at risk. The level of betrayal felt by soldiers was so extreme that many called for Bergdahl to be tried for treason when he was repatriated five years later. Technically his crime was not treason, so the US military charged him with desertion of his post—a violation that still carries a maximum penalty of death. The collective outrage at Sergeant Bergdahl was based on very limited knowledge but provides a perfect example of the kind of tribal ethos that every group—or country—deploys in order to remain unified and committed to itself. If anything, though, the outrage in the United States may not be broad enough. Bergdahl put a huge number of people at risk and may have caused the deaths of up to six soldiers. But in purely objective terms, he caused his country far less harm than the financial collapse of 2008, when bankers gambled trillions of dollars of taxpayer money on blatantly fraudulent mortgages. These crimes were committed while hundreds of thousands of Americans were fighting and dying in wars overseas. Almost 9 million people lost their jobs during the financial crisis, 5 million families lost their homes, and the unemployment rate doubled to around 10 percent. For nearly a century, the national suicide rate has almost exactly mirrored the unemployment rate, and after the financial collapse, America’s suicide rate increased by nearly 5 percent. In an article published in 2012 in The Lancet, epidemiologists who study suicide estimated that the recession cost almost 5,000 additional American lives during the first two years—disproportionately among middle-aged white men. That is close to the nation’s losses in the Iraq and Afghan wars combined. If Sergeant Bergdahl betrayed his country—and that’s not a hard case to make—surely the bankers and traders who caused the financial collapse did as well. And yet they didn’t provoke nearly the kind of outcry that Bergdahl did. Not a single high-level CEO has even been charged in connection with the financial collapse, much less been convicted and sent to prison, and most of them went on to receive huge year-end bonuses. Joseph Cassano of AIG Financial Products—known as “Mr. Credit-Default Swap”—led a unit that required a $99 billion bailout while simultaneously distributing $1.5 billion in year-end bonuses to his employees—including $34 million to himself. Robert Rubin of Citibank received a $10 million bonus in 2008 while serving on the board of directors of a company that required $63 billion in federal funds to keep from failing. Lower down the pay scale, more than 5,000 Wall Street traders received bonuses of $1 million or more despite working for nine of the financial firms that received the most bailout money from the US goverment.
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Sebastian Junger (Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging)
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Getting deployed is both an emotional and hectic time for the entire family. Having to move in a rush might put you in dire need of long-term or short-term storage solutions. With our military storage in Northern Virginia, you will get the best services at affordable rates. Rest assured that we will take extra good care of your valuables, fragile items, pieces of art, and furniture for as long as you need. Needless to say that you will be able to retrieve your items whenever you need it!
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Zippy Shell Northern Virginia
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Her family couldn’t understand why a girl so pretty would choose frumpy uniforms, bad food and uncomfortable bunks. And the news reports about the women were often mean-spirited. Male reporters wrote that Negro women were being deployed abroad to keep Negro male soldiers from harassing white women. They were expected to be chauffeurs or prostitutes.
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Joshunda Sanders (Women of the Post)
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The Most Common Immigration Problems and How Lawyers Solve Them
Immigration law is notoriously complex and can be fraught with unexpected challenges. Whether you’re seeking a visa, green card, citizenship, or trying to navigate through deportation proceedings, you may encounter numerous obstacles along the way. The good news is that immigration lawyers are specifically trained to tackle these challenges and provide solutions that give you the best chance for success. Below are some of the most common immigration problems people face and how lawyers can help resolve them.
1. Visa Denials
Problem: One of the most common issues in immigration cases is visa denials. U.S. embassies and consulates around the world deny visa applications for a variety of reasons, including missing documents, failure to prove ties to your home country, or issues with your immigration history. For instance, someone might apply for a tourist visa, but the consular officer might believe that the applicant intends to overstay their visa, leading to a denial.
How Lawyers Solve It: An experienced immigration lawyer will review your case thoroughly and advise you on how to address the reasons for the denial. They will help you gather the necessary documentation, strengthen your case, and file an appeal if necessary. If the denial is based on a perceived lack of strong ties to your home country, your lawyer might help you present more compelling evidence to demonstrate that you will return after your visit. In some cases, they may recommend applying for a different type of visa that better suits your circumstances.
2. Green Card Delays
Problem: Green card applications often face significant delays, sometimes lasting several months or even years. These delays are typically due to backlogs in the immigration system, issues with documentation, or administrative errors. Some applicants may also experience delays if their priority date is not current, especially in family-based or employment-based green card categories.
How Lawyers Solve It: Immigration lawyers can help expedite the process by ensuring that all paperwork is completed correctly and filed on time. They can also track your case and follow up with USCIS if there are unnecessary delays. In certain situations, they may request expedited processing or appeal delays based on specific circumstances (e.g., medical emergencies or military deployment). Additionally, lawyers can help you understand the visa bulletin and priority date system, ensuring that you're aware of when your case is likely to be processed.
3. Requests for Evidence (RFEs)
Problem: Immigration applications are often delayed or denied because of Requests for Evidence (RFEs). These are issued when the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) or other authorities require additional documentation or clarification to process your case. For example, if you’re applying for a green card based on marriage, USCIS might request more proof that the marriage is bona fide (genuine).
How Lawyers Solve It: Immigration lawyers are experts at responding to RFEs. They know what additional evidence will satisfy USCIS's concerns and can help you gather and submit the required documents in a timely manner. Lawyers will ensure that your response to the RFE is complete, clear, and well-organized. Their experience in handling RFEs increases the likelihood of a favorable outcome by addressing the request in a way that meets all of USCIS's requirements.
4. Inadmissibility Issues
Problem: Some individuals may be inadmissible to the U.S. due to certain legal issues, such as criminal convictions, prior immigration violations (e.g., overstaying a visa), or health-related grounds (e.g., communicable diseases). Inadmissibility can prevent individuals from obtaining visas or entering the country.
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immigrationlawyer
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Each of the Gods at the center of these diverse cosmogonies is not just a creator, but the creator, and in a unique way. It is not a question of these different Gods being responsible for different parts of the cosmos, or having different discrete functions in an integrated system. Rather, each such Creator is responsible for the cosmos as a whole, but through a different concept, in each case, of what creation is. Each cosmogony is thus its own science of being, or ontology. Note also that it is no obstacle that Isis, for example, occurs in the fourth ‘generation’, so to speak, of the Gods, according to the most common accounts; She can still be understood as the Creator, eternally arranging the conditions for Her own cosmic emergence. Nothing about the generational or familial relations among the Gods has much effect upon Their ability to operate in this fashion as ultimate Creator. Some Egyptian theological texts deploy specific terminology to explicitly render a God self-creating, such as the epithet kamutef, literally ‘bull of his mother’, that is, having conceived themselves, or in a feminine version, ‘mother who became a daughter’, but even in the absence of such terminology it is simply a pragmatic expectation in Egyptian theological texts that insofar as a God occupies the center of attention even momentarily, that God is rendered supreme.
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Edward P. Butler (The Way of the Gods : Polytheism(s) Around the World)
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Briggs had a top-level security clearance and regularly advised military leaders, the secretary of state and various directorates including the Departments of Defense and Justice. He attended social events at the White House and was accustomed to briefing the president. For obvious reasons he’s of keen interest to the U.S. intelligence community, which isn’t going to insert itself directly into the domestic investigation of his death. The CIA is sneakier than that. Typically it uses the FBI as a liaison or a front because global spymasters aren’t supposed to deal directly with domestic medical examiners, cops and the likes. That’s a sanitized way of saying that in the real world the CIA is the invisible witch rubbing the FBI’s crystal ball, diverting and deploying its agents and experts like a squadron of flying monkeys. What happens next suddenly and without warning is they descend upon your scenes, your witnesses, your offices, paper records, database, labs, morgues, your very homes and families. There’s no regard for what damage might be done, and cops like Marino may never know what hit
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Patricia Cornwell (Chaos (Kay Scarpetta, #24))