The Londoner

1778 On February 6, 1778, France and America concluded an alliance by signing two treaties, a treaty of amity and commerce and a military alliance.  The nations exchanged ambassadors, and France and England were soon at war.  Parliament soon passed bills calling for reconciliation with America and sent a peace commission to Philadelphia to try to achieve a settlement.  The Americans, however, refused to accept the commission and declared that any person who met with the commission would be branded an enemy of the United States.  Congress responded that the only basis for reconciliation would be a full withdrawal of all British troops from American soil and recognition of American independence.  The war would continue. The Battle of Monmouth In May Sir Henry Clinton replaced General Howe and, hearing that a French fleet was en route to America, decided to move his army back to New York.  The Americans reoccupied Philadelphia on June 18, and Washingto

The Finnish Army was raised in the revolutionary year of 1918. On the 16th of January 1918, General Lieutenant Carl Gustav Mannerheim was commissioned by the Finnish senate to unite all the home guard (Suojeluskunta) units and to form an army for the new republic. At that time, Finland was divided into two parts, White Finland and Red Finland. Red Finland was controlled by mostly left wing Socialists from the former Finnish Autonomous Republic of Russia, while White Finland was striving to create a relatively democratic state, independent from Soviet Russia. White Finland was decidedly anti-Communist, and Mannerheim and his newly formed troops sided with them. Nearly 200,000 Finns took part in this war and about 18,000 were killed, including civilians. Also on the side of the Whites, was the German Baltic Division lead by Rüdiger von der Goltz (12,000 men) which landed in Hanko, Finland. There were still Russian troops in Finland when the war betwen the Reds and Whites began, and abou

They fought side by side with the Germans during World War II , but Finnish war veterans say they were no enemies of the west - they simply wanted land back from the Russians. Ninety-two-year-old Tauno Viiri still has vivid memories of the first day of what would be known as the Finnish Winter War. The Finns had been expecting a Russian attack, but the Russian artillery assault that occurred November 20, 1939 was devastating. "The whole southern sky was ablaze, like thunderballs all over it," said Viiri, who immigrated to Canada in the 1950s and now lives in Vancouver. "An awful din. I've never seen anything like that - I've seen thunderstorms, alright, but this was quite different." The Russians, whose army outnumbered the Finns by two to one, thought Finland would be a pushover and expected to be marching through the streets of Helsinki in two weeks

But the vote, at least for now, did little to bring either the Palestinians or the Israelis closer to the goal they claim to seek: two states living side by side, or increased Palestinian unity. Israel and the militant group Hamas both responded critically to the day’s events, though for different reasons. The new status will give the Palestinians more tools to challenge Israel in international legal forums for its occupation activities in the West Bank, including settlement-building, and it helped bolster the Palestinian Authority , weakened after eight days of battle between its rival Hamas and Israel. But even as a small but determined crowd of 2,000 celebrated in central Ramallah in the West Bank, waving flags and dancing, there was an underlying sense of concerned resignation. “I hope this is good,” said Munir Shafie, 36, an electrical engineer who was there. “But how are we going to benefit?” Still, the General Assembly vote — 138 coun

Still hard to believe, I told a friend the other day while trying to fathom the election results, that pot is legal in my state, gays are free to marry, and a black man who vowed to raise taxes on the rich won a majority of the popular vote for president, back to back — the first time any Democrat has done that since Franklin Roosevelt’s second election in 1936. And yet only one in four voters identified themselves as “liberal” in national exit polls. Conservatives were 35 percent, and moderates the plurality, at 41 percent. The number of voters who agreed to the “l” tag was up by three percentage points, for what it’s worth, from 22 percent in 2008. What’s going on here, demography and democracy seem to be saying at the same time, is the advance of progressive political ideas by a majority that spurns an obvious label. Liberals have long been a distinct minority; liberalism, in its better forms, has been triumphant at key times since the founding of the Republic. Abr