Koch Brothers

Koch Brothers

Charles G. Koch, CEO of Koch Industries Inc. (KII), as well as younger blood brother William I. Koch, president of the Oxbow Corporation, pursued each other through 30 years of usual conspiracy accusations that ultimately centered on the crude industry’s might to influence regime actions through crusade contributions.

Control of Kansas-based KII, the second-largest privately held companionship inwards the United States, was divided inwards 1967 amid the 4 sons of ardent libertarian Fred Chase Koch: Frederick (b. 1932), Charles (b. 1935), as well as twins David as well as William (b. 1940).

In 1983, KII bought the shares of William, Frederick, as well as their allies next a 1980 elbow grease to oust Charles every bit CEO. Dissatisfied amongst the deal, William eventually brought to a greater extent than than 2 dozen legal actions for fraud, conspiracy, as well as racketeering; almost failed.


Internal KII beliefs that William’s conspiracy charges were themselves business office of an anti-KII conspiracy gained back upwards inwards July 1999, when the New York Times reported that William hired private investigators to pose every bit journalists to larn within information from KII.

William Koch’s entirely successful trial was a Qui Tam action—an private adjust on behalf of the federal government—charging that Koch Industries had conspired to pocket oil from Osage lands. This adjust followed a 1988 Senate investigation that was dropped at the behest of Republican senators Bob Dole as well as Nancy Kassenbaum of Kansas, Don Nickles of Oklahoma, as well as Democratic senator David Boren of Oklahoma.

Using Federal Election Commission (FEC) data, an article inwards the Nation asserted that all 4 were beneficiaries of Koch political contributions; the article every bit good alleged that a 1989 FBI illustration summary said at that spot was belike get to prosecute KII (Perry). Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 1999 jury trial flora KII guilty.

Questions of political influence arose over again inwards a 1998 Senate investigation that suggested that Charles as well as David had evaded crusade spending limits inwards 1996 past times funneling $1.3 1000000 through the Economic Education Trust (EET) to conservative consulting grouping Triad Management Services. No subpoena was issued for EET’s fiscal records, as well as the New York Times alleged that Senator Nickles blocked farther investigation.

In legitimate crusade financing, KII became the 2nd largest political contributor inwards the unloosen energy manufacture inwards 1997–1998, amongst 90 per centum of its donations going to Republican causes. Self-styled “Renaissance Man” William was the forty-sixth largest rootage of Democratic soft coin inwards the same fourth dimension period, putting him inwards a league amongst Bell Atlantic as well as Federal Express.

Party rivalries came to a caput presently before the 2000 elections. In August 2000, KII was indicted on ninety-seven felony counts for violating emission standards for cancer-causing benzene at its Corpus Christi, Texas, crude refinery.

While the Al Gore crusade told the Washington Post that KII’s environmental surgical procedure showed how the crude manufacture was buying influence amongst then-governor George W. Bush, the Daily Oklahoman argued that the indictment had been timed to discredit the Bush campaign. In Apr 2001, the charges were reduced to a unmarried count, as well as KII agreed to pay $20 1000000 inwards penalties.

Although a terse articulation memo, dated 25 May 2001, announced the destination of all litigation betwixt KII as well as the Oxbow Corporation, the 1983 buyout cast a long shadow. In Jan 2001, sometime Playmate Anna Nicole Smith sued KII for conspiring amongst her stepson E. Pierce Marshall to deny her $474 1000000 inwards KII stock owned past times her slow husband, J. Howard Marshall II.

The elderberry Marshall had disinherited boy J. Howard Marshall III for backing William inwards 1980. In before legal battles over the estate, a probate estimate was removed from the illustration for having previously taken trips that were partly funded past times a Koch foundation every bit business office of a estimate didactics program.

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda (Arabic for "the base") is a worldwide Sunni Islamist militant insurgent group. Founded by Osama bin Laden in 1988 in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is now dedicated to driving the United States out of the Middle East specifically and out of Muslim countries generally, to destroying Israel, and to toppling pro-Western governments in Islamic countries and replacing them with Islamic fundamentalist governments.

These three goals lead to the organization’s ultimate goal, which is the reestablishment of the caliphate, a nation uniting Muslims and spanning the Islamic world.

The organization is believed to be highly redundant, both financially and operationally. While the various cells that make up the organization are accountable to higher-level leadership, operations appear to be left to the individual cells, while higher levels provide material and logistical support.


Ideas and targets coming from the upper echelons filter down to the individual cells responsible for coordinating and executing the attacks. This redundancy increases the organization’s resiliency; when cells are destroyed or captured, the losses can be contained more effectively than if al-Qaeda were a more linear organization.

Al-Qaeda’s training camps are likewise well organized. The extent of the training and organization is best seen in the group’s multivolume Encyclopedia of Jihad. Several thousand pages in length, the encyclopedia details the bureaucratic workings of the group.

Covered topics include guerrilla warfare, assembling booby traps, tactics for fighting against armored or aerial combat units, urban warfare, intelligence security, data gathering, and chemical weapons tactics.

The group has been linked to or accused of taking part in terrorist acts across the globe beginning in the early 1990s. A list of the attacks against U.S. interests attributed to al-Qaeda includes the 1992 hotel bombings in Aden, Yemen; the February 6, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City; attacks carried out on U.S. military forces in Somalia in 1993 and 1994; the June 25, 1996, truck bombing of the Khobar Towers residential compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; the near-simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7, 1998; the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen on October 12, 2000; and the September 11, 2001, airline hijackings and attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

The United States is not the group’s only target, however. Al-Qaeda also is linked to the April 2002 bombing of the El Ghriba synagogue in Tunisia; the October 2002 nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia; the November 2003 bombings of synagogues and a British bank in Istanbul, Turkey; the March 11, 2004, train bombings in Madrid, Spain; and the July 7, 2005, London transit bombings.

Al-Qaeda is most often represented and understood in regard to its founder, Osama bin Laden (aka Abu Abdallah). Bin Laden was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on March 10, 1957. When he was six months old, his father, Muhammad bin Laden, the Yemeni immigrant who established the Saudi Binladin Group, relocated to Jeddah, where Osama grew up.

The Soviet Union’s December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan galvanized the Muslim world in defense of Afghanistan and provided the West with a proxy war through which to combat the Soviet Union. Bin Laden, who had studied economics at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, was one of many spurred to action in defense of Afghanistan.

He made his first trip to neighboring Pakistan in 1980, where he sought ways to contribute to the jihad. Bin Laden made several monetary contributions to the mujahideen, but quickly began looking for other ways to contribute.

Bin Laden joined with Palestinian cleric Abdullah Azzam to found the Services Bureau (Makhtab al-Khidimat, or MAK) in Pakistan in 1984. Azzam, who had taught at King Abdul Aziz University while bin Laden studied there, was indispensable in recruiting.

In addition to providing relief to war victims in Afghanistan, the MAK organized and coordinated the volunteers, donations, and weapons coming into Pakistan and Afghanistan in support of the jihad.

Azzam believed that the young Arab men streaming to Pakistan to participate in the jihad should be scattered among the Afghan functions. Azzam felt that such a mixing of Arabs among the local forces would reap benefits both in Afghanistan and abroad.

Bin Laden saw the situation differently and sought to create his own separate Arab fighting force. He believed that such a force would be a superior fighting unit compared to local Afghan forces. Bin Laden broke with Azzam and established training camps for his Arab force near Jaji, in eastern Afghanistan.

From this base, which they dubbed al-Masadah (the Lion’s Den), bin Laden’s "Arab Afghans" engaged the Soviets in the battle of Jaji in the spring of 1987. It was at this time that bin Laden grew closer to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and one of its most prominent members, Ayman al Zawahiri, who would become bin Laden’s deputy in al-Qaeda.

When the Soviets announced their planned withdrawal in April 1988, bin Laden began preparations to perpetuate and expand his forces. He began by moving his unit to the area around Jalalabad, Afghanistan, which became known as al-Qaeda; bin Laden would later say that the name remained with the group by accident. Following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, bin Laden, who had consistently expressed his contempt for the "atheist" Hussein and his Ba’athist government, approached the Saudi king with a plan to use his Arab Afghans to drive Hussein’s forces from Kuwait.

The Saudi government sought to restrict his movements within the kingdom. Bin Laden obtained permission in early 1991 to travel to Pakistan on the pretext of checking in on some business interests and never returned to Saudi Arabia.

In early 1992 bin Laden and al-Qaeda moved to Sudan, where they remained until 1996. Al-Qaeda and the National Islamic Front (NIF), the ruling party in Sudan, enjoyed a symbiotic relationship.

The NIF granted al-Qaeda a safe haven and freedom of movement, while bin Laden made substantial investments in Sudanese industry and agriculture and undertook several large-scale construction projects to develop the infrastructure and agricultural and industrial production capacity of Sudan.

While in the Sudan, bin Laden directed his forces in actions against the communist government of South Yemen. The Arab Afghans also were sent to Bosnia, where they had a substantial impact on that conflict. Bin Laden dispatched al-Qaeda forces into Somalia in response to the buildup of U.S. forces.

In December 1992 President George H. W. Bush sent 28,000 U.S. troops into Somalia on a humanitarian mission in support of United Nations (UN) relief efforts. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda dismissed all humanitarian claims and interpreted the U.S. presence as a way of putting pressure on Islamic regimes and as an effort to establish another base from which to attack Muslim nations.

Al-Qaeda regarded Yemen as a major victory. First, even though the hotels bombed in Yemen did not house U.S. personnel, the transfer of U.S. troops out of Yemen shortly after the hotel bombings indicated to al-Qaeda that they had been successful in driving the Americans from Yemen.

Bin Laden also claimed that the militarily superior U.S. forces were driven from Somalia by a poor, ill-armed people whose only strength was their faith. In his 1996 aliran declaring war against the United States, bin Laden claimed that the most important lesson to be learned from Somalia was that the United States would flee at the first sign of resistance.

The year 1994 was a watershed for bin Laden. He survived two assassination attempts and in April was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in response to the growing threat he represented to the regime.

A jawaban step in his radicalization came in August, when the Saudi government imprisoned clerics Salman al Awdah and Safar al Hawali, who were among the first and most prominent of the clerics circulating cassettes of their sermons against the continued U.S. presence in the Arabian Peninsula, and whose imprisonment bin Laden would later mention in his 1996 fatwa.

Bin Laden and al-Qaeda left Sudan in 1996 and returned to Afghanistan, a move prompted by several factors. In addition to the assassination attempts, bin Laden faced international pressure on the NIF and its de facto leader, Hassan al-Turabi.

The United States and Saudi Arabia sought to have bin Laden silenced and his activities curtailed, and al-Turabi found it increasingly difficult to maneuver and protect bin Laden.

When Sudan started pressuring bin Laden, he returned to Jalalabad. There bin Laden and al-Qaeda entered into a symbiotic relationship with the Taliban ("the students"), who were in the process of consolidating their control over much of the country.

This relationship was similar to that with the NIF in Sudan; bin Laden and his organization gained considerable freedom of movement and protection, while his benefactors benefited from agricultural, infrastructural, and industrial investment and development.

It was during the period between bin Laden’s return to Afghanistan and the 1998 aliran that civilians became targets. Both the 1996 aliran and bin Laden’s 1997 CNN interview spoke of civilians as collateral damage, not as legitimate targets in and of themselves.

By 1998 this had changed, and the aliran issued February 22, 1998, explicitly stated that Americans and their allies, civilians and military alike, were now al-Qaeda targets anywhere they could be found.

Communications from al-Qaeda repeatedly stress their belief that Western governments oppress Muslims and Muslim nations and are engaged in a war against Islam. Bin Laden describes the presence of U.S. forces in "the Land of the Two Holy Places" (Saudi Arabia) as the greatest insult and threat faced by the Islamic world since Muhammad’s lifetime.

In addition to decrying U.S. support for Israel, the group condemns U.S. support for what it considers "apostate regimes", particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden also points to the sanctions imposed on Iraq following the Gulf War as one reason to reject any human rights arguments coming from the West.

Al-Qaeda’s idea of the ummah (community of believers; the Islamic world) in opposition to the world derives from the teachings of two prominent Islamic scholars.

Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328) was a 14th-century Islamic scholar who taught that jihad is the duty of each individual Muslim when Islam is attacked, that the Qu’ran should be interpreted literally, and that all Muslims should read the Qu’ran and Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet) for themselves and not rely on a learned clergy. A second influence on al-Qaeda was Sayyid Qutb (1906–66), an Islamist associated with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Describing the world as existing between states of belief (Islam) and unbelief (jahiliyya), Qutb condemned Western and Christian civilization. Urging jihad against all enemies of Islam, Qutb believed that there is no middle ground and that all Muslims must take to jihad when Islam is threatened.

These influences are apparent in al-Qaeda’s activities and rhetoric. Bin Laden believes that since the Christians, Jews, and Hindus have nuclear weapons, it is only fitting that Muslims obtain them as well.

Bin Laden also echoes Ibn Taymiyyah in his assertions that the Saudi government is aiding the "crusaders" in plundering the wealth of the ummah, the vast Middle Eastern oil reserves, and by acting to keep oil prices below fair-market value.

Al-Qaeda’s leadership cadre is well educated. Bin Laden has a university degree in economics, and his inner circle contains doctors; agricultural, civil, and electrical engineers; and computer scientists, but no religious scholars.

Rahman’s aliran echoed the call to attack the United States and its allies—civilian and military, anywhere in the world—and contained exhortations to sink ships, shoot down airplanes, and burn corporations and businesses.

Two separate attacks on U.S. warships were made in subsequent years, with the USS Cole attack following an unsuccessful attack on the USS The Sullivans one year earlier. On September 11, 2001, the plot masterminded by Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who were arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and 2003, respectively, proceeded along the lines of Rahman’s fatwa.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president from 1933 to 1945. He greatly expanded presidential authority, together with his policies infuriated conservatives who saw them every bit evidence of a deeper conspiracy to increment presidential ability together with undermine the Constitution.

His domestic policy (the “New Deal”) dramatically increased federal regime ability inwards an endeavor to halt the Great Depression, together with his unusual policy sought cooperation amongst Stalin inwards social club to deter together with eventually defeat fascist aggression.

Conservatives constructed numerous conspiracy theories approximately these policies, since they regarded the New Deal every bit despotic together with unconstitutional, together with cooperation amongst Stalin every bit naïve or treasonous. Conspiracy theorizing nearly FDR crested inwards the 1950s, although attacks on the New Deal together with his unusual policy move on fifty-fifty today.


Conspiracy theories were possibly inevitable given FDR’s leadership style: subtle, devious, together with disingenuous, he told unlike people unlike things, together with hated having his discussions documented. The historical tape is thence unclear plenty to permit widely divergent interpretations, including views of FDR every bit the primary manipulator.

FDR was born inwards 1882 together with educated at Groton, Harvard, together with Columbia. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 lifelong Democrat, FDR entered New York State’s senate inwards 1910. Appointed assistant secretarial assistant of the navy nether President Wilson, FDR favored U.S. interest inwards World War I together with the League of Nations. FDR ran for vice-president inwards 1920, when the Republicans won a crushing victory.

Polio permanently paralyzed his legs inwards 1921, simply undaunted, he spent the 1920s involved inwards internationalist causes together with Democratic politics. He became governor of New York inwards 1929, was elected president inwards 1932, together with was so reelected 3 times, together with died inwards Apr 1945.

In the 1930s, leftist conspiracy theorists feared that Wall Street financiers together with industrialists would sponsor a fascist coup. Some observers considered that Wall Street (or the Mafia) was behind the Feb 1933 assault that narrowly missed FDR together with mortally wounded Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, simply most considered the perpetrator, Giuseppe Zangara, a “lone nut.”

Communist journalist John L. Spivak claimed that inwards 1934 Wall Street plotted to supervene upon FDR amongst a fascist dictatorship nether marine full general Smedley Butler. The plot collapsed when Butler betrayed the cabal to Congress—though when forced to testify, the alleged conspirators naturally denied Butler’s accusations. Spivak’s argument that “Jewish finance” was behind the Butler affair—and was financing Hitler—casts considerable dubiety on the credibility of his assertions.

Some leftists held that Wall Street was behind the far-right Father Charles Coughlin, the Liberty League, together with a supposed coup plot past times General Douglas MacArthur. Many Marxists, however, considered Wall Street opposition to FDR a sham. Marxists viewed FDR every bit Wall Street’s lackey, since the New Deal co-opted liberalism, defused revolutionary discontent, together with “saved capitalism” for Wall Street.

Conservatives believed that the New Deal was a socialist conspiracy to “collectivize America” together with tighten federal command of the economy, education, together with the individual. Ever since the 1930s, moderates together with extremists possess got regarded the New Deal every bit the root of pernicious “big government.” Extremists, however, considered that the Soviets together with their traitors within the U.S. regime excessively influenced FDR’s policies.

In their view, FDR was either a naïve dupe (or a willing tool) of communism. The John Birch Society believed FDR was the animate beingness of the “Insiders,” a grouping of financiers who command the USA through front end organizations similar the Federal Reserve together with Council on Foreign Relations. The Insiders wanted to cooperate amongst the Soviet Union to practice a one-world government, together with FDR supposedly aided the Soviets to advance this goal.

In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy agitated against an “immense” Communist conspiracy to infiltrate the Roosevelt together with Truman administrations. For decades thereafter, leftists successfully argued that McCarthy was a demagogue who manufactured evidence together with slandered innocents for partisan together with mutual frigidity state of war purposes. They viewed McCarthyism, non Communism, every bit the existent danger to the United States.

In the 1990s, however, declassified National Security Agency intercepts (“Venona”) together with KGB archives proved that hundreds of U.S. traitors nether Soviet command penetrated the Roosevelt administration. These traitors infiltrated the White House, State Department, Treasury Department, together with the Manhattan Project, amid other organizations.

Venona did non prove all of McCarthy’s claims, together with provided no back upward for his wild assertions that Roosevelt was a traitor or abetted communism, simply McCarthy’s many imitation charges obscured the truth together with greatly hindered anticommunism past times allowing existent traitors to portray themselves every bit innocent victims of McCarthyite hysteria. Venona proved that Communist traitors were a existent danger, together with that they transferred of import data together with technology scientific discipline to the Soviets.

The Soviets bought U.S. technology scientific discipline every bit good every bit stealing it. From 1929 to 1941, U.S. assistance dramatically enhanced Soviet industrial evolution together with completely modernized Soviet heavy industry. American technology scientific discipline together with preparation contributed to over two-thirds of the major Soviet industrial enterprises built inwards the 1930s.

Far-right theorists attributed this assistance to Communist infiltration of the U.S. government, to blind Wall Street greed, together with to the Insiders’ long-term programme for a one-world govern- ment. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 to a greater extent than compelling explanation was the evident necessitate to strengthen the Soviet Union against futurity High German together with Japanese aggression.

This necessitate became peculiarly urgent afterwards Nippon invaded Manchuria inwards 1931 together with Hitler assumed ability inwards 1933. From 1941 to 1945, Soviet arms produced inwards U.S.–modernized factories destroyed Hitler’s Wehrmacht, proving the wisdom of these technology scientific discipline transfers.

U.S. entry into World War II provided fertile footing for conspiracy theory. “Revisionists” argued that “establishment” histories were a whitewash that needed revision. They asserted that afterwards state of war erupted inwards Europe, Roosevelt sought pretexts for U.S. participation.

He subverted neutrality legislation, provided coin together with equipment to Britain, together with fought an undeclared state of war against High German submarines inwards the Atlantic. Revisionists claimed that when Hitler refused to convey the bait, FDR maneuvered Nippon into attacking Pearl Harbor.

In 1947, George Morgenstern wrote the “classic” Pearl Harbor move of revisionist history. Since then, other revisionists similar Stinnett possess got added details to his argument. Revisionists claimed that, inwards 1941, FDR embargoed Japanese fossil oil together with made intolerable diplomatic demands inwards social club to strength Nippon to attack.

FDR knew the Pacific Fleet was vulnerable inwards Pearl Harbor, together with knew—through decoded Japanese transmissions—where together with when Nippon would attack. FDR, the revisionists assert, withheld vital tidings from commanders inwards Honolulu, because an warning at that topographic point would campaign Nippon to cancel the attack.

Sacrificing the “tethered goat” at Pearl Harbor brought the USA into the state of war together with ensured wartime unity. Afterwards, Roosevelt successfully deflected blame for the assault from himself onto the commanders inwards Hawaii.

Revisionists were ignored or reviled inwards the 1940s together with 1950s, since they variety dubiety on the prevailing internationalist unusual policy consensus together with attacked FDR, a liberal icon. In 1962, Roberta Wohlstetter produced a counterargument to revisionism.

She believed that conflicting “signals” together with “noise” confused U.S. tidings analysts earlier Pearl Harbor (“signals” were evidence of Japanese intentions to assault Pearl Harbor, together with “noise” was evidence of Japanese plans to assault elsewhere).

Most historians accepted her thesis that America’s prewar tidings apparatus was also poorly organized to position the correct data together inwards fourth dimension to warn Honolulu. Unfortunately, many commentators focused non on the facts, simply on personally attacking the revisionists, scorning them every bit right-wing paranoid extremists who hated the New Deal.

Interestingly, inwards the 1970s, revisionism gained currency on the Left, afterwards Vietnam together with Watergate increased distrust of the government. Some leftists today convey the Pearl Harbor revisionist declaration because they believe that analogously, President Bush knew the September xi attacks were coming together with allow them happen.

FDR’s wartime diplomacy provided additional conspiracy fodder. Rightists argued that FDR “sold out” China together with Eastern Europe into “Communist enslavement” at the Feb 1945 Yalta Conference. Most rightists attributed this to the pernicious influence of traitors similar Alger Hiss together with Harry Hopkins, although some defendant FDR of deliberate appeasement.

This fixation on Yalta was odd, since FDR genuinely made the crucial decisions on Eastern Europe at the 1943 Teheran Conference. Historian Warren Kimball convincingly showed that FDR’s wartime diplomacy reflected non treason or naïveté, simply a consistent strategy designed to make a peaceful postwar footing order.

FDR died of a cerebral hemorrhage, simply manifestly Stalin suspected assassination. Fletcher Prouty (the old Air Force officeholder together with Pentagon insider who was the model for Mr. X inwards Oliver Stone’s film, JFK) alleged that Stalin told FDR’s son, Elliott Roosevelt, that British tidings poisoned FDR.

Some rightists believed that Stalin poisoned FDR, although right-wing claims that FDR was Stalin’s dupe should Pb to the conclusion that Stalin had no motive to kill FDR.

Johann Gutenberg

Johann Gutenberg

The dissemination of knowledge occurred more quickly after Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440. Gutenberg, the son of a businessman named Friele Gensfleisch zur Laden, was born in Mainz, Germany, and was a goldsmith by profession. Movable type made of wooden blocks had been developed by the Chinese but was a time-consuming process.

In Holland and Prague, experiments on a sophisticated printing process were already taking place. Gutenberg’s goal was to reproduce medieval liturgical manuscripts by using movable pieces of metal blocks for each letter. Many copies of a book were printed without loss of color and design. An assembled page was placed into a frame, and afterward a heavy screw forced the printing block against the paper. He combined paper technology along with oil-based ink.

With the financial backing of a rich German lawyer, Johann Fust, Gutenberg established the first printing press, ushering in an kala of enlightenment. A large portion of society received an opportunity to read, and literacy was not confined to church, monastery, and nobility. The labor-intensive hand copying of books was no longer necessary, while the printing of books became fast and inexpensive.


Gutenberg published the 42 Line Bible, or the Gutenberg Bible, in Mainz in 1445 after two years of hard labor. Each column had 42 lines, and the whole Latin Bible had 1,282 pages. He printed 180 copies, out of which 47 are still extant. The words from the original Bible were not changed.

He sold copies of the Biblia Sacra at the Frankfurt Book Fair of 1455. Adolf of Nassau, the elector of Mainz, gave him a benefice in 1465. Gutenberg printed indulgences, slips of paper used by the church. He also produced parts of Aelius Donatus’s Latin grammar, Ars Minor, which had 24 editions. Persons trained by him established their own printing presses.

Within a span of 50 years about 100,000 publications emerged. In libraries, books were to be distinguished from archival materials. Very soon, literacy expanded with the printing of maps, posters, pamphlets, and newspapers. Novel ideas of Renaissance Europe were fostered and preserved. National languages replaced Latin, a change important for the creation of nation-states.

The invention of the printing press was received with opposition from the Catholic Church. The printers of Mainz fled after an attack from soldiers of the archbishop of Nassau in 1462. But European cities benefited from the printers’ skill.

Some of the elite did not want to keep printed books along with hand-copied manuscripts in libraries. This dissipated gradually, and the printing press spread all over Europe. In 1476 William Caxton established the first printing press in England at Westminster.

printing press

He published Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’ Arthur. In the 1480s, a printing press opened in Andalusia, Spain. By the end of the 15th century, the printing industry existed in 250 cities of Europe. The 1,000 printing presses published 35,000 titles and 20 million copies.

Afterward, Roman type styles replaced Gothic types and metal screws were used in place of wooden ones. The printing press in the 15th century was modest compared to a modern press. A standard press having five workers could publish only five books a year, but an important discovery had been made in the history of human civilization.

Statues of Gutenberg adorn many places in Germany and notable institutions are named after him. Gutenberg is credited with transforming medieval Europe into a modern society, bringing about a scientific revolution.

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was an actor who served two terms as the 33rd governor of California and later served two terms as the 40th president of the United States. Reagan’s presidency contributed to the end of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union and witnessed the collapse of communism in eastern europe.

At the end of Reagan’s administration, the United States was enjoying its longest period of peacetime prosperity without recession or depression. His administration cut taxes, reformed the tax code, offered a temporary solution to the Social Security issue, reduced inflation, continued deregulation of business, and increased military spending.

Critics have commented that Reagan was unconcerned with income inequality, and his dedication to military spending increased the federal deficit as well as trade deficits internationally and may have been instrumental in causing the stock market crash of 1987.

Overall, Reagan was one of the most popular U.S. presidents of the 20th century, exiting office more popular than when he began. Nicknamed the Great Communicator by the media, Reagan dominated the decade of the 1980s in the United States to such an extent that the two are linked inextricably together.


Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois, and was raised with strong Christian values. He attended high school in the nearby town of Dixon. In 1928 Reagan entered Eureka College, where he studied economics and sociology. Reagan graduated in 1932. After graduation, he worked as a radio sports announcer.

Following a 1937 screen test, Reagan won a Hollywood contract and began a lengthy acting career, appearing in 53 films over the next two decades. In 1940 he played the role of George Gipp in the film Knute Rockne, All American.

In the film, Reagan delivers the memorable line "Win one for the Gipper!" From this role, Reagan acquired the nickname "the Gipper", which he retained throughout his life. In 1935 Reagan was commissioned as a reserve cavalry officer in the U.S. Army.

After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States became involved in World War II, and Reagan was activated and assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit in the U.S. Army Air Forces, which made training and propaganda films. Reagan’s efforts to go overseas for combat were rejected due to his astigmatism.

While in Hollywood, Reagan married actress Jane Wyman in 1940 and had a daughter, Maureen, and later adopted a son, Michael. Following his divorce, Reagan married Nancy Davis, also an actress, in 1952, and had two children, Patricia Ann and Ronald Prescott.

Reagan became president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1947 to 1952 and again from 1959 to 1960. Although raised in a strong Democratic household, Reagan shifted his political views, primarily because of the Republican Party’s strong condemnation of communism.

He became involved in disputes over the issue of communism in the film industry. During the 1950s Senator Joseph McCarthy initiated a series of hearings to root out communism in the United States.

Particular scrutiny was placed on Hollywood, and actors marked as communists faced exile from the film industry. Reagan claimed that Hollywood was being infiltrated by communists and kept watch on suspected actors for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

As Reagan’s film career waned, he moved to television, hosting and performing for, General Electric Theater and starring in television movies. His employment for General Electric required extensive travel as a GE spokesman. Reagan delivered numerous anticommunist speeches, which brought him to the attention of the Republicans.

In 1966 Reagan was elected governor of California by a margin of 1 million votes, and he was reelected in 1970. During his first term Reagan froze government hiring but approved tax increases to balance the budget.

In 1969 Reagan sent 2,200 National Guard troops to disband a student protest on the Berkeley campus of the University of California. He worked to reform welfare and opposed construction projects that hindered conservation or transgressed onto American Indian ranches.

Although Reagan supported capital punishment, his efforts to enforce this position were hindered by the Supreme Court of California’s decision to invalidate all death sentences passed prior to 1972. A constitutional amendment quickly overturned this decision.

Reagan’s first attempt to secure the Republican nomination for president in 1968 was unsuccessful. He tried again in 1976 against incumbent Gerald Ford, but was narrowly defeated at the Republican National Convention. In 1980 Reagan won the Republican nomination and selected as his running mate former Texas congressman George H. W. Bush.

The United States was suffering from a period of high inflation and unemployment, fuel shortages resulting from instability in the petroleum market, and the international humiliation of the yearlong confinement of U.S. hostages in Iran. Reagan became popular, consequently winning in a landslide over incumbent Jimmy Carter. The Republican presidential victory accompanied a 12-seat change in the Senate, the first Republican Senate majority in over 25 years.

First Days

Reagan assumed the office of president on January 20, 1981. The Iran hostage crisis ended with the release of the U.S. captives the same day, which led to allegations that a covert agreement delaying their release had been negotiated between the Iranian government and Reagan’s future cabinet.

On March 30 Reagan was nearly killed in an assassination attempt but quickly recovered and returned to office. Reagan’s first official act was to end oil price controls.

In 1981 Reagan fired the majority of federal air traffic controllers when they embarked on an illegal strike, setting limits for public employees unions and signaling the acceptability of businesses’ taking stronger bargaining positions with unions.

Reagan steered his desired domestic legislation through Congress in an effort to stimulate economic growth and reduce inflation and unemployment. He followed a plan calling for cutbacks on taxes and government expenditures, refusing to deviate from this course when the strengthening of national defenses increased the national deficit.

To curb inflation, Reagan supported Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker’s plan to tighten the monetary supply by dramatically increasing interest rates. Reagan also sponsored wide-ranging tax cuts to boost business investment.

Reagan simultaneously limited the growth of welfare and other social programs. Beginning in 1983 the economy began to recover. However, increased military spending as part of Reagan’s cold war policy caused the national deficit to soar.

A renewal of U.S. self-confidence due to a recovering economy and heightened international prestige propelled Reagan and Bush to win their second term in an unprecedented landslide against Democratic challengers Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, winning the electoral votes in 49 out of 50 states.

During his second term, Reagan overhauled the income tax code, eliminating many deductions and exempting millions of people with low incomes. Although Reagan’s opponents claimed his economic policies increased the gap between the rich and the poor, the income of all economic groups rose in real terms.

He also passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, granting compensation to Japanese Americans who had been interned during World War II. Reagan signed legislation authorizing capital punishment for offenses involving murder in the context of illegal drug trafficking and launched a "war on drugs", which was led by Nancy Reagan.

Reagan was staunchly against abortion. Although his appointees to the Supreme Court—including Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman Supreme Court justice—shifted the balance in favor of conservatism, the Supreme Court voted to uphold Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion. The gay rights movement criticized Reagan for not responding adequately to the arrival of HIV-AIDS in the mid-1980s.

However, the Reagan administration spent almost $6 billion on HIV and AIDS research. By 1986, Reagan had endorsed large-scale prevention and research efforts. In 1984, Reagan was the first U.S. president to invite an openly homosexual couple to spend an evening at the White House.

Foreign Policy

Reagan’s foreign policy during his presidency called for "peace through strength" and a close alliance with Britain. Reagan confronted the Soviet Union head-on, arguing that only from a position of military superiority could the United States negotiate an end to the cold war and secure U.S. interests abroad.

Reagan reasoned that the Soviet Union could not keep up with the United States in a full-scale arms race. He increased defense spending 35 percent while seeking improved diplomatic relations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

In keeping with this Reagan Doctrine, he actively supported anticommunist efforts in Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Reagan administration supported Afghani insurgents, including Osama bin Laden; Poland’s Solidarity movement; the contras in Nicaragua; and rebel forces in Angola.

The United States increased military funding for anticommunist dictatorships in Latin America and was accused of assassinating several Latin American heads of state. A communist attempt to seize power in Grenada in 1983 prompted a U.S. invasion.

Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles and to continue disarmament. However, Reagan supported the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which proposed the launching of a space-based defense system to render the United States invulnerable to a nuclear attack. Opponents of the plan labeled it Star Wars and argued that the plan was unrealistic and violated international treaties.

In 1985 Reagan conducted a goodwill visit to Germany. He visited Kolmeshohe Cemetery to pay respects to the soldiers there, unaware that many had been members of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s Waffen-SS. Reagan also visited the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he condemned the Holocaust.

Reagan declared war against international terrorism, taking a strong stand against the Lebanese Hizbollah terrorist organization, which was holding Americans as hostages and attacking civilian targets following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Reagan’s administration also took a strong stance against Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza. U.S. involvement in Lebanon led to a limited United Nations mandate for an international force. The September 16, 1982, massacre of Palestinians in Beirut prompted Reagan to form a new international force.

Diplomatic pressure forced a peace agreement between Israel and Lebanon and U.S. forces withdrew following an October 1983 bombing that killed over 200 marines. Reagan sent U.S. bombers to Libya after evidence revealed government involvement in an attack on U.S. soldiers in a West Berlin nightclub.

Reagan’s administration maintained the controversial position that the Salvadoran FMLN and Honduran guerrilla fighters, as well as a wing of the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC), constituted terrorist organizations.

During the Iran-Iraq War, Reagan sent naval escorts to the Persian Gulf to maintain the free flow of oil for U.S. use. The Reagan administration came to increasingly side with Iraq under the assumption that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was less a threat than Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

While supporting Iraq, the United States covertly supplied Iran with military weapons in order to fund contra rebels in Nicaragua. This arrangement, known as the Iran-contra affair, became a huge scandal. Reagan declared his ignorance of the arrangement. As a result, 10 members of Reagan’s administration were convicted and many others were forced to resign.

Reagan addressed the nation from the White House one last time in January 1989, prior to the inauguration of George H. W. Bush as the 41st president. Reagan returned to his estate, Rancho del Cielo, in california, eventually moving to Bel Air, Los Angeles.

In 1989 Reagan received an honorary British knighthood and was made Grand Cordon of the Japanese Order of the Chrysanthemum. In the early 1990s he made occasional appearances for the Republican Party and in 1993 was granted the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1994 Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. His health worsened following a fall in January 2001 that shattered his hip and rendered him immobile. By late 2003 Reagan had entered the simpulan stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and he died of pneumonia on June 5, 2004. He was buried at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

Printing Invention in China

Printing Invention in China

Paper and printing were both invented by the Chinese, with immense importance for the advancement of civilization in China and worldwide. Papermaking was invented in China around 100 c.e. The technology spread to the Muslim world in the eighth century by Chinese papermakers taken prisoners by Muslims in Central Asia; it spread to Spain by the Moors in the 12th century.

In 175 leaders of the Han dynasty (202 b.c.e.–220 c.e.) ordered that the Confucian classics be engraved on stone slabs to ensure their correct transmission. Scholars began to make rubbings from the stones with paper; copies made from rubbings were the precursors of block printing.

The popularity of Buddhism in China in the post-Han centuries created a demand for printed charms, holy pictures, and religious texts by the pious. The earliest printed books were made during the Tang (T’ang) dynasty (618–909). They were Buddhist texts carved onto pear-wood blocks, which were inked with India ink (made with soot from oil lamps).


A sheet of paper was pressed over the block, which became a printed page. Some Tang kala printed texts (including a copy of the Diamond Sutra printed in 868) have been preserved in the caves in Dunhuang (Tun-huang), an important early center of Chinese Buddhism in north-western China.

Feng Dao (Feng Tao) is regarded in China as the publisher of the first books. He lived in the 10th century in Chengdu (Chengtu) in Sichuan (Szechwan) province, then a center of the printing industry.

He received a commission from the government and spent 21 years between 932 and 953 editing and printing a set of the Confucian classics. Since Confucianism was China’s state ideology and school curriculum and the state examinations were based on the Confucian canons, it was important for the government to issue a definitive text.

The technology quickly spread to Korea and Japan. Private printers were soon printing histories, Buddhist and Daoist (Taoist) treatises, and other works, using both wood and metal blocks. Under the Song (Sung) dynasty (960–1279) Chinese printed books reached their high point.

The next step in printing was development of the movable type, which a contemporary work credits to a man named Bi Sheng (Pi Sheng), who experimented with movable fonts made of iron during the 1040s. This invention made books more available and cheaper.

In 970 the printing press in China began to print money, the first country to use paper currency. Paper currency was common during the following Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), and it was one of the marvels Marco Polo described in the book of his travels.

Papermaking spread from China westward via the Silk Road, to the Arabs in the eighth century, and the Arabs spread the technology to Europe. The first paper mill in Europe was built in France in 1189. Printing also spread westward from China during the 13th century when China met Europe under the Mongol empire.