Browsing: Politics

A Brief History On February 14, 2005, former Lebanese Prime Minister and then a multi-billionaire Rafic Hariri was blown up while driving in his motorcade in Beirut by a suicide car bomb.  Born in Sidon, Lebanon in 1944, Hariri worked as a teacher and in the construction business in Saudi Arabia where he made his fortune, He returned to his war torn homeland where he was a force for peace, only to be assassinated by Hezbollah terrorists a year after he left office. Digging Deeper As a young adult, Hariri went to Saudi Arabia to seek work in 1965, soon…

A Brief History On February 10, 1967, the United States adopted the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, a new national law that deals with the succession to the Presidency of the United States, and a topic of recent debate during the Trump Administration.  Starting with the 23rd Amendment adopted in June of 1960, there have been a total of 5 new Amendments adopted during this author’s lifetime, and one Amendment that is glaringly absent by its lack of ratification by the States Digging Deeper The United States Constitution was adopted in 1789, a magnificent historical document that created a nation…

A Brief History On February 7, 1992, signatories from the 12 member states of the European Economic Community signed the Maastricht Treaty, so named after the city in which it was signed, Maastricht, The Netherlands, which more or less created a modern United States of Europe, although it is actually called The European Union.  The European Union, or EU, now has a total of 28 nations aligned with each other to a common purpose of open travel and trade and economic unity.  Boasting about a quarter of the entire world’s wealth, the EU is collectively the only other serious economic…

A Brief History On February 4, 1992, Hugo Chavez, leader of the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200, headed an attempted coup against the lawful government of Venezuela.  While the coup attempt failed, another attempt in November of 1992 was also staged, even though Chavez was in prison at the time.  The second attempt also failed, but Chavez was later released from prison after only 2 years and was elected President of Venezuela in 1998, a post he held until his death in 2013.  The Chavez years were no less tumultuous than the political chaos he and his cohorts replaced, and today the…

A Brief History On January 30, 1835, for the first time in American History an assassination attempt was made on the President of the United States.  Richard Lawrence, a 35 year old housepainter that had immigrated to the United States from England pulled the triggers on 2 pistols aimed at the back of President Andrew Jackson, but incredibly both pistols misfired and the assassination attempt failed.  In the decades that followed, several other attempted assassinations of American Presidents have taken place, with Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy fatally wounded by their assassins. Digging Deeper Lawrence had come to the…