Browsing: Politics

A Brief History On June 8, 1949, the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by English writer Eric Blair, writing as George Orwell, was published, telling a story of a dystopian future where an intrusive government controls all, sees all, and wages never ending war. Digging Deeper Modeled after the regimes of the USSR under Stalin and Germany under Adolf Hitler, the novel terrified a generation about the dangers of big government and what the future might hold.  Politicians and others often referred to the work in an effort to prevent the creep of government power. Some other novels that have shaped public…

A Brief History On June 4, 1989, an estimated tens of thousands Chinese military troops opened fire on perhaps a million Chinese protestors at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the capital of China.  While numbers of troops, protestors, and casualties are only estimates, because historically, governments cannot be counted on to provide accurate accounts of embarrassing events, as many as 10,000 or more of the peaceful protestors may have died in the massacre. Digging Deeper Not only were hundreds or thousands of people shot, but many others were also trampled in the rush to avoid the gunfire or crushed under the…

A Brief History On June 3, 1980, the long history of the Statue of Liberty was threatened by a bomb that exploded at the base of the statue, although luckily no one was killed and damage was minimal. Digging Deeper The alleged culprits in the 1980 bomb attack were Croatian nationalists that wanted to be separated from Yugoslavia to form their own country.  Directing their anger against the US during the Cold War seems a strange way to demand freedom from communism! Completed in 1886 as a gift to the US from France, the actual name of the statue is…

A Brief History On May 30, 1972, a British far left terrorist group went on trial for conducting 25 bombings over the previous two years.  The soi-disant “Angry Brigade” saw eight of their members tried for the bombings, but only four of them were convicted.  In any case, the trial was the end of the cleverly named group. Digging Deeper Targets of the Angry Brigade included banks, embassies, conservative politicians, and even a beauty contest.  Luckily, no one was killed in the bombings, although one person was injured.  At least two people were the subject of assassination attempts by the…

A Brief History On May 24, 1993, Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, a Mexican Roman Catholic archbishop of the see of Guadalajara, was gunned down by 14 bullets while at the Guadalajara International Airport, allegedly because he was mistaken for drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán by rival drug cartel gunmen out to assassinate El Chapo. Digging Deeper Six other people were killed along with the Cardinal, allegedly by Mexican-American contract killers hired by the Tijuana Cartel to kill the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, Guzmán.  In spite of the carnage wrought that day, nobody has ever been convicted and…