St. Lawrence Seaway

Begun in 1954 and completed in 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway, a wonder of engineering for its time, is a 2,342-mile-long series of canals, locks, and seaways constructed jointly by Canada and the United States to allow ocean-going vessels access to the Great Lakes. It streamlined shipping and created additional hydroelectric facilities along its route.

The seaway opened to commercial traffic on April 25, 1959. The total cost was $470 million, of which Canada provided $336.2 million and the United States $133.8 million. Canada’s St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation manages 13 locks, while the U.S. St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation manages two locks.

The hydroelectric facilities are administered by Ontario Power and the New York State Power Authority. Depending on weather conditions and ice management, the seaway is generally open from April to mid-December, approximately 250 days per year.

There are seven locks between Montreal and Lake Ontario, a distance of 187 miles. Each lock is 766 feet in length, 80 feet wide, and 30 feet deep, and all channels are dredged to a depth of 27 feet. To ensure proper depth it was necessary to flood some areas, displacing and relocating residents of river towns. Technically not part of the seaway, the two Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, are slightly larger and connect the upper Great Lakes with Lake Superior.


Ninety percent of the freight shipped consists of bulk commodities. Westbound traffic primarily carries cargoes of steel, coal, and iron ore; 40 percent of eastbound cargo is grain. Inter-lake trade accounts for four times the tonnage handled for international markets.

In recent years, proposals by the U.S. and Canadian governments to deepen the seaway and enlarge its locks have met with resistance. Those who seek to expand seaway traffic point out that the St. Lawrence project is operating at only half the capacity envisioned when the project began in the 1950s, while another, even older, water "highway", the Panama Canal, is achieving full capacity and more.

Opponents of the seaway’s expansion fear damage to water quality in the world’s greatest freshwater system and point to damage already caused by invasive animal and plant species introduced by shipping on the seaway. Studies claim that 182 nonnative species have entered the Great Lakes system, two-thirds of them since 1959 when the seaway opened.

Lal Bahadur Shastri

Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indian prime minister at the time of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, was born on October 2, 1901, at Mughalsarai, Uttar Pradesh. Shastri graduated from Kashi Vidya Peeth in Varanasi in 1926, attaining the degree of shastri (equivalent to a bachelor’s degree).

His surname, Shastri, was taken by him from this degree. He was attracted to the freedom movement while at school and participated in the noncooperation and civil disobedience movements launched by Mohandas K. Gandhi.

After India’s independence Shastri became the home minister of Uttar Pradesh state. He then joined politics on the national level, became the general secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in 1951, under Jawaharlal Nehru as president, and became a close confidant of Nehru.

Shastri was a humble man and tolerant of opposing viewpoints, but never wavered from his convictions. He resigned as railway minister after an accident near Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu, taking responsibility for the event. Shastri was a very capable organizer of the Congress Party and contributed to the success of his party in general elections.


After Nehru’s death on May 27, 1964, party stalwarts favored the noncontroversial Shastri as his successor as prime minister. As prime minister, he tried to solve the rising duduk perkara of food shortage in the country and worked to ameliorate the condition of the peasantry.

Shastri showed strong determination and iron will in his dealings with Pakistan. These had been bad since independence. But the second Indo-Pakistani Wars began during Shastri’s premiership. India had been humiliated in the Sino-Indian War of 1962, and Pakistan exploited the situation by fomenting trouble on the western border of India. Shastri made diplomatic efforts to solve the duduk perkara but failed.

The conflict began in the Rann of Kutch region in Gujarat in March 1965 when Pakistani infiltrators entered Kashmir. The war was a stalemate. The United Nations Security Council called for a cease-fire on September 22. Then a meeting of the premiers of India and Pakistan, arranged by Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin, took place in the city of Tashkent.

The Tashkent Agreement was signed by Shastri and Pakistani president Ayub Khan on January 10, 1966. It restored normal relations between India and Pakistan. Both armies went back to the positions they had held before the war, and the cease-fire line became the de facto border between the two countries.

Shastri suffered a heart attack and died the next day. A grateful nation awarded him with the highest honor, Bharat Ratna, posthumously. Shastri had left an indelible mark in Indian politics because of his leadership quality, honesty, and steadfast determination.

Rhodesia/Zimbabwe Independence Movements

Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia, as it was known until 1980, is a landlocked nation of 13 million people occupying the plateau between the Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers, bordered by Zambia to the north, Botswana to the west, Mozambique to the east, and South Africa to the south.

While the rest of Britain’s African colonies, including two of Rhodesia’s neighbors—Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi)—gained independence as part of a wave of decolonization, Rhodesia remained a bastion of minority white rule because of its influential European population. Even after the country gained majority rule in 1980, white control of land continued to be a crucial issue in Zimbabwe.

At midcentury, mostly because of the country’s substantial mineral wealth and fertile soil for tobacco cultivation, Rhodesia’s white population enjoyed one of the highest standards of living in the world.


The country’s black residents, however, who made up over 95 percent of the population, possessed little political power and received just 5 percent of the nation’s income. Having gained control by force roughly a half-century earlier, whites made up one-twentieth of the population but held one-third of the land.

At the end of World War II the political winds began to change. Britain moved to grant independence to many of its colonies in Asia and Africa. Rhodesia, which had been a British-chartered corporate colony at the turn of the century and a self-governing British colony since 1923, took on a new political form in 1953 with the establishment of the Central African Federation. Southern Rhodesia dominated this confederation; it exploited the copper of Northern Rhodesia and the labor of Nyasaland.

The arrival of independent rule in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) in 1964 brought considerable anxiety to the white population of Southern Rhodesia, who believed that Britain favored majority rule.

In response, in November of 1965, Ian Douglas Smith, an unabashed champion of white rule, announced the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, which cut the country’s ties with Britain and established the independent nation of Rhodesia. In a referendum, overwhelming numbers of the white population supported Smith. Britain responded by imposing diplomatic and economic sanctions.

The cold war struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union for influence around the world, including in the nations of Africa, complicated these developments. U.S. relations with Ian Smith’s white-ruled Rhodesia at the time shows the ambivalent position of the United States.

On the one hand the United States valued the support of Rhodesia, which contained vast reserves of strategic minerals, especially chromium, and adopted a strongly anticommunist stance. Yet, at the same time, the United States worried that support for Smith’s white supremacist government would cost it needed friends in rapidly decolonizing Africa.

In 1965 U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson condemned Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence and, following Britain’s lead, imposed economic sanctions. Although these sanctions could have been even stronger, U.S. trade there declined from $29 million in 1965 to $3.7 million in 1968, a real blow to the Rhodesian economy. At the same time, though, Rhodesia received substantial support from some within the United States.

The Byrd Amendment of 1971, which was enacted with the support of the Richard Nixon administration, punched a significant hole in the sanctions against Rhodesia. According to this law, the United States could not ban the importation from a non-communist nation any material needed for national defense if that same material would otherwise be purchased from a communist nation.

Since chromium, a key resource for many modern weapon systems, was also imported from the Soviet Union, the United States was forced to allow trade with Rhodesia. Imports of chromium grew from $500,000 in 1965, to $13 million in 1972, to $45 million in 1975.

Organized black resistance to white rule in Rhodesia took shape in the late 1950s, and the two main oppositional parties, parties that would dominate Zimbabwean politics well beyond independence, were established in the early 1960s.

In 1957 the African National Congress, based in Bulawayo, and the African National Youth League, based in Salisbury (present-day Harare), combined to form the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress under Joshua Nkomo. Banned in 1959, this group was succeeded by the National Democratic Party, which was itself banned in December 1961.

Shortly thereafter, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) was established. A major split occurred in 1963, resulting in the formation of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). ZAPU was mostly Ndebele and Chinese-leaning; ZANU was mostly Shona and Soviet-leaning.

ZAPU and ZANU adopted different strategies at different times. During the 1960s, as white Rhodesians like Ian Smith grew more extreme, African nationalist methods became more militant and confrontational.

Both ZANU and ZAPU began attacking white farms in 1964, but they quickly realized they were outmatched by the Rhodesian military. A more moderate group, the African National Council—organized by Bishop Abel Muzorewa—sprang up during the early 1970s. None of these groups had much success.

The situation began to shift during the late 1970s. In 1975, after long wars, two Portuguese colonies in southern Africa, Mozambique and Angola, gained their independence. Black-ruled Mozambique became a safe haven for many of the guerrilla groups opposing the white regime in Rhodesia. In 1975 the two most important of these groups—ZANU, under Robert Mugabe, and ZAPU, under Joshua Nkomo—joined forces to become the Patriotic Front.

Jimmy Carter’s victory in the U.S. presidential election of 1976 also played a role in shifting the context of Rhodesian politics. Concerned about the U.S. reputation in other parts of black Africa, the Carter administration began to push for a settlement to the conflict. In general, the United States supported majority rule with protection of white interests.

The British called the Lancaster House Conference in an attempt to broker a lasting solution. The resulting settlement guaranteed majority rule for Zimbabwe, a transitional period for whites, and a multiparty system.

At the center of the settlement was a new constitution, which gave the vote to all Africans 18 years and older, reserved 28 seats in the parliament for whites for 10 years, and guaranteed private property rights. In the election of February 1980, voting mostly followed ethnic lines. ZANU–Popular Front won a clear majority, making its leader, Robert Mugabe, the prime minister.

ZAPU–Popular Front, which had recently split from ZANU-PF, joined the white members of parliament in opposition. Taking its name from the 14th- and 15th-century stone city of Great Zimbabwe, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980. The war for majority rule, which had cost over 25,000 lives, most of them black, was over.

Under Robert Mugabe’s rule, Zimbabwe in the 1980s pursued socialist-leaning policies not unlike those of many other countries in Africa. It expanded social programs that had been denied under white rule. And, although it claimed to want to redistribute land, in reality it moved slowly to break up successful white farms.

This cost the regime politically but it enabled Zimbabwe to continue to feed itself. Overall, during the early 1980s many Zimbabweans saw real improvements in the quality of their lives.

As the 1980s unfolded, Mugabe began to show authoritarian tendencies. Even early on he rounded up opponents, censored the press, and gave broad authority to security forces. At first he was able to get away with this because of his wide support, especially in rural areas.

Mugabe won the March 1996 election with 92.7 percent of the vote, but only a very small number of Zimbabweans bothered to vote. The decrease in voter participation revealed the growing discontent of Zimbabweans with Mugabe. On top of this, in the early 1980s a civil war that would last until 1987 broke out in Matabeleland, a stronghold of the ZAPU-PF.

In the late 1990s Mugabe initiated two very controversial programs. In 1997, he began seizing white-owned land without compensation and quietly encouraging landless blacks to move onto white farms. These farms had previously fed the nation and provided work for large numbers of people, mostly black.

In 2002 Mugabe appropriated the remaining white land and ordered white farmers to offer payments to former workers. Because many of the blacks who moved onto the white land had few farming skills, the nation soon faced a food crisis.

Critics, moreover, claimed that Mugabe handed out the best land to his family, friends, and close supporters. In another controversial move, in 1998 Mugabe deployed the military in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help its government fend off an armed rebellion.

The situation in Zimbabwe seems precarious. During the 2002 elections Mugabe rigged the voting and jailed opponents, especially the supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai. Neighboring nations supported Mugabe but other African nations, such as Kenya and Ghana, condemned his move.

Famine conditions persist in Zimbabwe, and the people struggle with skyrocketing prices and extremely high unemployment. That no system is in place to determine a successor to the aging Mugabe portends a divisive struggle to come.

The X-Files

The X-Files

The X-Files is a long-running telly series, renowned for its atmosphere of suspicion together with convoluted conspiracies. It was created past times Chris Carter, a old author together with editor (of the periodical Surfing).

It premiered on the Fox Network inwards the U.S. inwards September 1993, starring David Duchovny equally Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent Fox Mulder, together with Gillian Anderson equally Dr. Dana Scully, his partner. Though it gained petty acclaim early on inwards its run, this moody, visually stunning “quality TV” serial went on to boot the bucket starting fourth dimension a cult hitting together with and hence a pop success, eventually making the locomote past times 20 inwards the Nielsen ratings.

In a self-congratulatory but essentially accurate observation, Carter has acknowledged that “the show’s original spirit has boot the bucket form of the spirit of the country— if non the world” (qtd. inwards Knight, 54). This spirit is concerned alongside conspiracy theory, paranoia, together with the paranormal.


The X-Files generated a broad multifariousness of spin-off texts—including novels, official together with unofficial guide books, an official magazine, and, of course, academic examinations of the series—not to advert a broad multifariousness of X-Files merchandise. Hundreds of fan websites on the Internet receive got been devoted to the show, together with its fans—who came to telephone telephone themselves X-Philes—are amidst the most obsessed inwards all of pop culture.

Its complex story lines, composed of both stand-alone “monster of the week” episodes together with segments that are business office of a multi-season narrative arc known equally the X-Files “mythology,” receive got unfolded inwards to a greater extent than than ii hundred episodes over ix series, together with (to date) 1 characteristic film, X-Files: Fight the Future (1998). Over its run, the present has boot the bucket increasingly self-referential together with intertextual, offering hilarious spoofs of its ain conventions together with sending upwardly other media genres.

With Duchovny’s express participation inwards the 2000–2001 flavour (his final on the show), the serial experienced for the starting fourth dimension time important cast changes (Robert Patrick equally Agent John Doggett became Scully’s novel partner). By full general critical consensus the serial began to decline. Many commentators fifty-fifty began to inquiry the rationale (other than economic) for its continuance.

The marker to which The X-Files became business office of our cultural vocabulary inwards the 1990s together with the starting fourth dimension years of the twenty-first century tin flaming hold out demonstrated past times an telephone substitution from a first-season episode of the WB serial Angel inwards which Kendrick, an evidently sexist manly mortal detective, hassles woman mortal detective Kate Lockley (Elizabeth Rohm), who has come upwardly to believe inwards the reality of vampires.

Although Kendrick does non look to acquire the basic premise, the civilisation at large sure as shooting did, together with to “Scully” someone came to hateful to incertitude his or her questionable ideas—especially conspiracy theories.

Mulder was open-minded well-nigh all sorts of paranormal possibilities, peculiarly UFOs together with alien abduction—had he non watched his ain sis hold out abducted when he was twelve years old? Scully, however, was the ever-questioning, scientifically objective medical MD assigned to partner alongside (and rein in) Mulder inwards his investigation of the X-Files, those aberrant FBI cases that arrive at non lend themselves to normal forensic investigation.

“The Kennedy assassination, MIA’s, radiations experiments on terminal patients, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Roswell, the Tuskegee experiments—where volition it end?” Mulder asks his informant Deep Throat. For the critic Allison Graham, The X-Files is “television’s fin de siècle compendium of conspiracy theories” (Graham, 56), together with is the apotheosis of U.S. conspiratorial thinking stretching dorsum to the 1960s.

Likening Scully together with Mulder to Woodward together with Bernstein, she notes that Mulder’s sis had been snatched past times aliens spell they were watching the Watergate hearings on television. (Not surprisingly, Chris Carter has called Watergate “the most formative lawsuit of my youth” [qtd. inwards Graham, 56], together with has spoken likewise of the strong influence of Harvard psychologist John Mack’s controversial Abduction: Human Encounters alongside Aliens.)

Driven past times its “perpetual displace of suspicion” (Knight, 28), The X-Files has contemplated much worse than mere political conspiracy. We acquire inwards the mythology episodes that an international consortium (“The Syndicate”) involving mysterious, powerful men coming together inwards drawing rooms inwards London together with New York, working inwards cooperation alongside scientists from the Axis Powers supplied through Operation Paperclip, receive got known since the crash of a UFO at Roswell, New Mexico, inwards 1947 of a coming alien invasion.

Over the years conscientious viewers receive got really gradually come upwardly to realize that The Syndicate has been preparing for the end, bargaining for a delay hence that they might, equally a form of peace overture to the invaders, offering them genetically engineered human-alien hybrids, purportedly equally slaves for the powerful together with ancient conquerors together with (in secret) to develop a cure, a serum, that would preclude their ain colonization past times the pathogenic Black Oil.

They had long agone surrendered their ain loved ones—wives, children (including Mulder’s sister)—as hostages, inwards homecoming for their ain survival of the impending “viral holocaust.” “Survival,” the Well Manicured Man tells Mulder inwards the X-Files movie, “is the ultimate ideology.”

The evil but compelling Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM)—Mulder calls him “Cancer Man”—one of the series’ most interesting creations, serves, it seems, equally The Syndicate’s primary enforcer, 1 of them but working at their behest, though ever putting his self-interest first. In the fourth-season episode “Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man,” nosotros acquire (or arrive at we?) that his involvement inwards conspiracy is non express to roofing upwardly the coming alien invasion.

CSM assassinated both JFK together with Martin Luther King, fixed the 1980 U.S. Olympic H2O ice hockey upset of the Soviet Union, prevented the Buffalo Bills from ever winning the Super Bowl, together with talks regularly on the telephone alongside Saddam Hussein.... But together with hence over again nosotros are non sure of the validity of whatsoever of these “facts,” which are buried ii or iii levels deep inwards the narrative, together with CSM himself, it turns out, is a failed author of bad Robert Ludlum–ish fiction.

In “José Chung’s From Outer Space” (season 3), 1 of the series’ most masterful episodes, Scully completes her narration of the events to an author who is completing the “non-fiction scientific discipline fiction” volume of the championship together with and hence admits that it “probably doesn’t receive got the feel of closure you lot want, but it has to a greater extent than than our other cases”—a really self-conscious allusion to/defense of the often-complained-about vogue of Mulder’s together with Scully’s cases (and every X-Files episode) to halt enigmatically together with without total resolution.

It was likely inevitable inwards the climate of post-modernism that a telly serial hence focused on conspiracy would itself generate paranoid criticism. Christy Burns, drawing on Horkheimer together with Adorno, suggests that this “very postmodern show” mightiness hold out considered business office of “a grand governmental conspiracy to ‘keep the whole affair together,’ pregnant capitalism together with its volume suppression”.

The sealing off of the eyes of the Alien Rebels inwards the series, she suggests, “pokes fun at the fantasy that telly might, similar the dark oil, sneak inwards through our eyes together with ‘infect’ us alongside alien cultural influences”.

Although making “visible the buried social implications of centrist politics”, the writers together with producers of The X-Files, Burns proposes, receive got a to a greater extent than cynical hush-hush agenda inwards mind: “step[ping] beyond the temptation simply to hold out noiresque together with nihilistic, they realize their ain roles equally history bringers, via television, through which they may—wittingly or not—participate inwards yet some other conspiracy: that of draining the way out of the American masses”. Adrienne McLean, too, finds the serial both motion together with lawsuit of contemporary conspiracy culture.

“Scully together with Mulder cannot hold out joined sexually or legally,” nosotros are told, “because they are both literally together with figuratively alienated, penetrated, together with probed to the molecular bird past times omniscient together with omnipotent forces who receive got infiltrated, similar telly and, now, computers, virtually everything inwards our lives.” We stay fans of the series, she thinks, despite the anxiety it induces, because “We receive got to believe inwards the reality of something, fifty-fifty if that something is the paranoia induced past times telly itself”.

From its inception The X-Files has given alongside 1 mitt together with taken away alongside the other, perpetually abandoning the viewer inwards a “hermeneutic limbo” (Knight). The serial has non been content to but “deny all knowledge”; it has, equally Knight observes, taken equally its bailiwick “the procedure of repeatedly discovering everything you lot thought you lot knew is wrong.”

Latin American Social Issues

Latin American Social Issues

The recent history of Latin America is a story of profound political and economic change. During the second half of the 20th century, Latin America witnessed a transformation of society as the region struggled to find itself in the face of modernity and economic expansion.

Crushing poverty facilitated alternative forms of religious faith that spoke to the condition of many Latin Americans. Migration from the countryside to the city and north to the United States spoke to a yearning for a better life.

A thriving drug trade centered on a global market employed organized violence against national governments that tried to curb the trade. Centuries of oppression led to an organized and influential indigenous movement that mobilized to demand Indian rights and autonomy.


Latin American countries plunged into the uncertainty of the oil industry with the hopes of increased revenues and instead found unpredictable results and mixed blessings. These factors offer a window into the dramatic social transformation of Latin America from 1950 to the present.

Latin American spirituality underwent profound changes in recent history. Liberation theology spoke to a new turn in the role of the Catholic Church in Latin America, although it was not a phenomenon unique to the region. For centuries, the church stood as a conservative element in association with the state; the church legitimized authoritarian rule.

However, beginning in the 1960s, many priests, nuns, and lay workers drew on their personal experiences working with the poor to question the responsibility of the church in the unequal distribution of wealth in Latin America.

Some Latin American theologists began to speak of the role of the church and Christians in helping the poor, a mission clearly laid out in the Bible. Liberation theology is an understanding of the Christian faith developed out of the suffering and social injustice experienced by the poor.

As such, it is a critique of society and the ideologies supporting the dominant hegemony, including the traditional role of the Catholic Church. It gave the poor a voice and created new forms of community-based activism. Liberation theology was a formidable force in Latin America for a few decades—especially in Central America, Brazil, and Chile.

Liberation theory gained momentum in 1968 when a group of 130 Latin American bishops met in Medellín, Colombia to discuss the church and its relationship to the populace. The bishops promoted an empowering education jadwal for illiterate rural peasants that affirmed the dignity and self worth of the students. This education was carried out in small community-based groups where people could gather together to read the Bible and discuss its relevance to their lives without a priest or church building.

Engaging Catholicism without a priest represented a new idea. Rural priests often served thousands of parishioners and could only visit some communities once a year. Priests, nuns, and lay people used the Medellín conference as a springboard for a new approach to their work with the poor.

Those Catholic personnel dedicated to the poor quickly learned through their charitable work that the condition of the lowest classes of Latin American society could only be relieved through sweeping structural changes. This would involve direct political action.

Some base communities served as the vehicle for political action as participants experienced an awakening, or consciousness-raising about their devalued position in society. Many Christian-based communities served not only as sites of literacy education and Bible study but also places where a reinterpretation of traditional religion promoted a transformative perspective on the world.

Latin American Social Issues

Some groups worked toward improvements in local basic services, such as healthcare and transportation. In spite of this, base communities represented a small fraction of Catholics, and by the 1980s, enthusiasm for liberation theology waned.

Protestantism is a relatively new player in Catholic Latin America. Brazil is home to Latin America’s largest Protestant community with half of the region’s estimated 40 million Protestants, but Central America boasts the largest number of evangelicals in terms of the percentage of the population.

European migration to the continent brought the traditional Protestant churches, such as German Lutheranism and British Anglicanism. Despite the influence of European immigrants, North American missionaries bear the responsibility for the tremendous growth in Protestantism in Latin America, especially evangelical forms like Pentecostalism.

Sharing liberation theology’s sense of consciousness-raising, Pentecostalism allows participants a refuge from suffering and social injustice by providing a spiritual space in which believers can regain some feeling of control over their lives.

Additionally, unlike Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism, Pentecostalism permitted anyone to become a spiritual leader, even the illiterate and poverty stricken. Women, in particular, have been attracted to evangelical churches due to their inclusive nature.

Evangelicalism has taken hold throughout the wartorn countries of Central America, especially in rural areas. In Guatemala rural Mayan women, mostly widows, fill evangelical churches in search of a sense of community that has been lost. These churches provide a network of support that replaces destroyed kinship ties. Protestant churches offer a religious alternative and a message of hope to the underdogs of society.

For women, the evangelical Protestant ban on drinking alcohol makes Protestant husbands an attractive marriage partner. In addition, the phenomenon associated with Pentecostalism in particular, such as speaking in tongues and faith healing, has given women positions of power within their religious communities.

Despite North American origins, evangelical Protestantism in Latin America is a unique phenomenon. Its churches emphasize the notion of community and belonging more than its northern counterparts. In addition, in Latin America being an evangelical does not necessarily denote a right-wing conservative political identity as it tends to in North America.

Latin America’s economic setbacks have not only influenced new religious movements but have also led to mass migrations of people. Latin Americans have moved from the countryside to the city and from Latin America to North America. Prior to the 1930s the majority of Latin America’s population resided in rural areas.

The global economic depression of the 1930s dealt a hard blow to the Latin American export economy, and rural residents began to leave the countryside. This exodus peaked over a 30-year period from 1950 to 1980 and succeeded in transforming Latin America’s social structure from predominantly rural to overwhelmingly urban.

By 1980 family-based farming was no longer viable as market-oriented modern agribusiness became the norm. Thousands streamed into Latin America’s major cities in search of industrial jobs and a better life. Women comprised a majority of the rural-urban migrants, as industrialization opened many jobs for female workers. Rapid urbanization quickly outpaced housing, basic services, and job markets.

Rural residents arrived in the cities to find dirty, disease-ridden, and overcrowded shantytowns with spotty electrical power and water shortages. Rural-urban migration caused a labor surplus, which led to the rise of a vast informal sector of the economy consisting of street vendors, rubbish scavengers, and prostitutes.

Latin Americans also migrated north to the United States for economic, political, and social reasons. Mexicans currently represent the greatest percentage of Latin Americans immigrating to the United States.

They often have come looking for work, and many resided in the south-west long before it belonged to the United States. During the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Mexicans and Mexican Americans routinely crossed back and forth over the border, with little or no regulation.

During the 1930s, the government supported the repatriation of Mexican workers to provide more jobs for Americans. However, with the onset of World War II, labor shortages fueled the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexican agricultural workers to come into the country on a temporary basis. The Bracero Program lasted until 1964.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 called for penalties for those hiring undocumented workers, but also granted amnesty to many undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. The Immigration Act of 1990 favored the legal immigration of family members of U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

Cuban Immigrants

Many Cuban immigrants came to the United States fleeing a repressive political regime. Cubans enjoyed a privileged status in relation to other Latin American immigrants due to the U.S. foreign policy on Cuba. As early as 1960 the U.S. government had created a special center for Cuban refugees, and their path to legal residence in the United States was easily cleared.

These first waves of immigrants represented the Cuban elite and middle class and individuals and families with financial resources, specialized job training, and American connections. In 1980 Fidel Castro opened the door for Cubans to leave the island, and a deluge of mostly male semi- and unskilled workers flowed into south Florida.

This migration overwhelmed U.S. authorities, and many of the refugees were placed in detention camps for months. Currently U.S. officials observe a quota on Cuban immigrants, but the Cuban-American community continues to thrive and grow.

Central Americans also have migrated to the United States seeking refuge from wars and violence that have disrupted the economy and everyday life, especially in El Salvador and Guatemala. In the 1980s migrants from El Salvador left their homes due to civil war and political repression.

Unlike Cubans fleeing political repression, many Salvadorans were denied permanent residency and deported. Churches in the U.S. southwest developed a “sanctuary movement” to protest U.S. treatment of these refugees, providing a safe haven for those fleeing violence.

In the 1990s a small minority of Salvadoran immigrants brought violence to the United States in the form of street gangs. Many of these gang members were targeted by U.S. immigration officials in Los Angeles, California, and sent back to El Salvador.

Not only are Latin Americans moving north, Latin America drugs are making the trip as well. One of the largest social problems facing Latin America is drug traficking, especially in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru. The drug trade embodies simple supply and demand economics.

This multinational drug trade negatively affects U.S.–Latin American relations as many of the region’s leaders believe that the U.S. war on drugs focuses unfairly on the supply side of the equation. Unfortunately, in countries suffering from crushing poverty, drugs represent a viable economic option. The debt crisis of the 1980s and the collapse of prices for tin and coffee on the international market fueled the Latin American drug trade.

In several Latin American countries, Peru and Bolivia in particular, the drug trade acted as an economic buffer, offering alternative sources of income when other options vanished. The drug trade creates an atmosphere of violence. Drug cartels breed corruption and threaten the integrity and stability of the state, democracy, security, public health, susila values, and international reputation.

Drug Trade

Poverty and unemployment in Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia—along with the high prices Latin American cocaine fetched in the United States—fueled the drug trade and offered viable economic alternatives. Colombia and Bolivia saw a significant boost to its national economy from drug revenues, but violence and corruption went hand-in-hand with the economic boom.

In Peru, the world’s largest producer of coca leaves, the environmental destruction wrought by the drug trade is appalling. Large tracks of rain forest have been clear-cut for cultivation, and the pesticides and herbicides used for growing coca have leached into forest water systems.

The involvement of guerrillas in the drug trade has further complicated the situation, and threats to the integrity of the state continue in these nations. Despite billions of U.S. dollars poured into curbing the Latin American drug trade, major traffickers have been affected very little.

The drug trade has impacted Latin American indigenous groups in remote rural areas, as they are often caught in the crossfire between traffickers and the government. In Peru many have fled the countryside for shanty-towns in the cities, hoping to escape the violence brought on by traffickers and guerrillas, especially the Shining Path.

Such issues have led to an explosion of indigenous groups organizing for a better life. The sophistication and power of indigenous organizations forced many Latin American states to negotiate with Indian peoples and create new legislation that protected their rights.

The traditional relationship between the state and its native peoples is changing, with indigenismo policies that strove for assimilation abandoned in favor of embracing multiculturalism and pluriethnicity. Despite claims of embracing multiculturalism, not all Latin American states have actually implemented policies aimed at improving the lives of indigenous peoples.

One of the best-known indigenous movements occurred in 1994 in Chiapas, Mexico. Landless Maya formed the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) as an outlet for their struggle for rights and recognition in national life. The EZLN briefly occupied several towns in Chiapas. When negotiations with the Mexican state began, the first demands of the Zapatistas centered on Indian autonomy and rights.

The EZLN did not advocate a separation from the Mexican nation-state, but rather called for the state to implement the tenets of the constitution of 1917 regarding indigenous peoples. The Zapatistas drew international attention to the plight of Mexico’s indigenous population and provided inspiration to other Indian groups in Latin America.

Oil Industry

The oil industry directly affects the quality of life for all Latin Americans; unpredictable oil prices have varying impacts on the economy as a whole. Latin America has a few significant oil-producing countries: Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. In fact, Mexico and Venezuela have become key suppliers to the United States. Latin America’s oil industry has undergone many transformations.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, foreign owners controlled significant portions of the Latin American oil economy, with the exception of Mexico, which nationalized its oil industry in 1938. By the 1970s Latin America’s oil industry was mostly nationalized, as foreign investors looked to the oil fields of the Middle East instead.

The Latin American oil industry has been subject to the volatile political, economic, and social history of Latin America, with varying degrees of success. While some nations expected their large oil reserves to clear the way for economic development, the region’s major oil-exporting economies experienced obstacles in transforming oil revenues into a continuous source of funding.

High oil prices aided significant producers that were dependent on exports for revenue and foreign exchange, like Mexico, Venezuela, and Ecuador. For oil-importing countries, such as Brazil, Peru and Chile, the price of oil served as a vital factor in inflation, production costs, the trade balance, and currency strength. In the past 20 years, oil prices have been more precarious than any other export commodity.

The impact of an unpredictable oil market fluctuates depending on a nation’s reliance on oil production and exports. The historical and current state of Latin America’s oil industry suggests that it is the management of oil resources, not oil wealth itself, that can create economic problems.

Latin America’s tremendous economic growth and development after 1950 transformed the region but intensified the misery of many Latin Americans. Rapid growth and urbanization led to mass migrations of people trying to find a niche in a hostile environment. Industrial progress brought thousands of rural residents into Latin America’s major cities with the hope of a living wage, but failed to alleviate poverty.

Devastating poverty fuels the drug trade, which for many peasants and indigenous people offers the only viable economic endeavor for survival. The oil industry, especially in Mexico and Venezuela, promised hope but has seemingly failed to materialize into concrete change for the better.

Liberation theology and the growth of evangelical Protestantism speak to a suffering poor searching for a ray of light in a bleak world. The promises of prosperity that accompanied economic growth proved to be empty for many people in Latin America. Although Latin America experienced economic progress, true transformations of society and social justice continue to elude the region.

Gerald L. K. Smith

Gerald L. K. Smith

From the 1940s until his expiry inward 1976 Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith was 1 of the nearly outspoken in addition to prolific antisemitic conspiracy theorists inward the United States. Smith stands out, non then much for the originality, quality, or fifty-fifty the consistency of his ideas, but rather for his mightiness to communicate them.

Born inward Pardeeville, Wisconsin, inward 1898, Smith was the scion of a fundamentalist Christian household unit of measurement who adhered to a literal interpretation of the Bible based upon the New Testament. After graduating from academy inward 1922, Smith became a preacher and, next a meteoric ascent through a succession of ministries inward the Midwest, arrived inward Shreveport, Louisiana, during the 1929 Stock Market Crash.

Thereafter Smith rose to prominence equally the charismatic main lieutenant to Huey P. Long, the demagogic governor of Louisiana, on whose behalf he ran the Share Our Wealth organization, which gave him access to its 200,000-strong mailing list, his nearly vital property inward futurity years. However, when Long was assassinated inward 1935, Smith proved incapable of rallying his political legacy.


Shedding his populist back upwards for the New Deal, Smith became increasingly led past times antisemitic conspiracy theories, veering rightward in addition to fiercely criticizing President Roosevelt. In 1937 Smith formed the Committee of One Million equally a vehicle for his choice ready of Christian “Americanism.”

By 1942 the organisation had brought Smith three 1 chiliad one thousand followers in addition to an impressive make of influential in addition to wealthy backers, including Henry Ford, who shared his analysis of the impending danger of “Jewish Communism,” which mirrored that of Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

As his admiration for Nazism grew, Smith briefly joined William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts. He was likewise associated amongst doc Francis Townsend in addition to Father Charles E. Coughlin, the antisemitic “radio priest,” amongst whom he founded the Union Party in addition to which made him a genuinely national figure.

However, Smith was expelled from the political party inward 1942 because of his allegedly disruptive behavior. That same twelvemonth Smith went populace amongst the “call” he had received to salve Christian America from the “enemies of Christ.”

Smith’s obstreperous back upwards of the Dies Committee’s investigation of “un-American” activities ensured that, dissimilar many less prominent antisemites, he escaped indictment during the Grand Sedition Trial inward 1944.

Unscathed, Smith reemerged afterwards the state of war at the caput of the Christian Nationalist Party (CNP), envisaged equally a continuation of the isolationist America First Party upon whose founder, Captain Earl Southard, Smith had exerted considerable influence.

The CNP was complemented past times the formation inward 1947 of his personal vehicle, the Christian Nationalist Crusade (CNC), whose mouthpiece, Cross in addition to Flag, drew upon the Committee of One Million’s all-important subscription lists.

Smith’s tireless evangelizing was remarkably successfully inward weaving together Judaism, communism, in addition to civil rights equally business office of 1 vast conspiracy, which he traced dorsum to the Order of the Illuminati. However, piece this gave the politics of McCarthyism an added antisemitic dimension, Smith never regained his prewar stature.

Although he continued his wide-ranging correspondence amongst many populace figures, his antisemitism, non to cite his personal idiosyncrasies, had effectively pushed him beyond the pale. His 1 time powerful vocalization continued to go muted past times the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) policy of “dynamic silence,” which effectively smothered his access to the media past times depriving him of publicity.

Smith retired to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, inward the slow 1960s where, despite the objections of the AJC, he built a religious topic commons centered upon a seven-story statue of Jesus, Christ of the Ozarks. Smith died in addition to was buried at the pes of this crumbling building inward 1976, the championship of his posthumously published autobiography, Besieged Patriot, an unconscious commentary on his subsequent descent into political oblivion.

However, despite this litany of personal failure his longevity ensured that Smith provided a formative influence for successive generations of far-right activists whose influence continues to resonate today. Having moved to Los Angeles inward 1953 Smith, the CNC, in addition to its youth displace became the organizational focus for a burgeoning clique of Christian Identity preachers centered inward Southern California.

Paradoxically derived from simply about elements of philosemitic British Israelitism, the vehemently antisemitic theology of Christian Identity believes that Christians, non Jews, are God’s “chosen people,” the truthful descendants of Abraham, piece Jews are viewed equally the literal “seed of Satan” descended from Cain, the progeny of an unholy spousal human relationship betwixt Eve in addition to Satan inward the Garden of Eden. At a stroke, globe history became the titanic make out betwixt 2 diametrically opposed bloodlines representing skillful in addition to evil, Aryan in addition to Jew, God in addition to the Devil.

While Smith played a prominent purpose inward popularizing Christian Identity in addition to linking it to political extremism, he was non responsible for the antisemitic perversion of British Israelite theology. This had occurred before nether the influence of Howard Rand in addition to William J. Cameron, the latter the editor of Henry Ford’s infamous Dearborn Independent.

Smith’s importance for the development of Christian Identity is to go judged non past times his ideas, but past times the coherence of the sophisticated modern propaganda network that he bestowed upon its adherents.

Indeed, many influential Christian Identity preachers similar Wesley Swift, who ofttimes accompanied Smith on his speaking tours in addition to acted equally his bodyguard, outset achieved prominence through CNC-sponsored Bible lectures. This ideological transmission traveled both ways in addition to Swift appears to convey had a powerful reciprocal influence on Smith, whom he introduced to the fundamental “truth” of Christian Identity.

In this observe Smith held a seat of pivotal importance, forming a personal in addition to ideological brace betwixt the traditions of Depression-era antisemitism in addition to the violent neo-Nazi groups of the 1970s similar Aryan Nations in addition to the Christian Defense League, whose leaders saw themselves equally heirs to Swift’s ministry building and, past times implication, to that of Smith himself.

Uss Maine

USS Maine

At 9:40 P.M. on xv Feb 1898, the USS Maine, moored inwards Havana Harbor, Cuba, exploded, killing 266 men. The devastation took house inwards an already tense province of affairs betwixt Spain, which had purplish command over Cuba, in addition to the United States, where sympathy for Cuban independence was strong.

The crusade of the explosion was non similar a shot apparent, in addition to inwards the the States speculation that it was perpetrated past times the Castilian was rife, a theory that was actively promoted past times the sensationalist press.

Although state of war betwixt Espana in addition to the the States was in all likelihood inevitable, the sinking of the Maine in addition to the theory that Espana had caused it led to an overwhelming world sentiment inwards favor of state of war in addition to the avenging of the Maine. The Spanish-American War began on 24 Apr 1898, after Congress recognized Cuban independence on twenty April. The slogan “Remember the Maine!” was to live on a pop 1 inwards rallying U.S. back upwardly for the war.


The the States had taken an involvement inwards Republic of Cuba since the middle of the nineteenth century when Cuban nationalists began to struggle for independence. Motivations for this involvement were numerous: sympathy for the destination of independence in addition to liberty from a corrupt Old World ability (a long cherished American ideal); humanitarian involvement inwards the Earth of the Cuban people; in addition to economical interests inwards merchandise with, in addition to assets in, Cuba.

The U.S. people supported the Cubans’ struggle in addition to provided them amongst money, guns, in addition to supplies. The Cleveland direction was reluctant to intervene, but when William McKinley assumed the presidency inwards 1897, the force for intervention became stronger.

Diplomatic events inwards 1898 revealed Spain’s unwillingness to negotiate amongst the the States over the Cuban situation. It was also unclear simply what the U.S. demanded from Spain—many inwards the direction were unsure whether Cubans were capable of governing themselves.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 alphabetic quality from the Castilian ambassador, Dupuy de Lôme, was published inwards the William Randolph Hearst paper the New York Journal on nine February. In the alphabetic quality de Lôme insulted President McKinley, outraging the American public. Only half dozen days later, word came that the Maine, which had been sent to Havana inwards Jan every bit an ostensibly friendly gesture, had been sunk.

The Maine had been commissioned every bit a battleship (although it was originally classified every bit an armored cruiser) on 17 September 1895. Her captain inwards 1898 was Charles D. Sigsbee, who sent the regime annotation to Washington informing them of the disaster. In role it read: “Maine blown upwardly inwards Havana Harbor in addition to destroyed.

Many wounded in addition to doubtless to a greater extent than killed in addition to drowned .... Public persuasion should live on suspended until farther report” (March, 316). Despite Sigsbee’s plea against jumping to conclusions in addition to the refusal of the U.S. regime to speculate on the crusade of the explosion, world persuasion began to brand its ain judgment, inflamed past times the “yellow press” of Hearst in addition to his rival, Joseph Pulitzer.

Pulitzer’s New York World of 17 Feb 1898 ran the headline, “Maine Explosion Caused past times Bomb or Torpedo?” amongst a graphic example of the Maine exploding (complete amongst bodies beingness thrown from the ship) beneath.

Articles quoted “experts” speculating that “a torpedo was used,” in addition to the wounded survivors of the Maine expressed their persuasion that it was “a deep pose plot of Spaniards.” Three days later, Sigsbee himself was quoted every bit believing “a submarine mine blew upwardly the Maine” (New York World, twenty Feb 1898).

By 24 February, non fifty-fifty 10 days after the explosion, headlines ran inwards the World that left no uncertainty that the papers believed that it had been no accident: “Experts at Havana Say Some Great Exterior Force Rent in addition to Sunk the Ship” in addition to “Fifty Physical Proofs that Maine Was Blown Up past times a Mine or Torpedo.”

The speculation inwards the press inwards the commencement days after the explosion was based on piddling actual evidence, but fed into the growing world clamor for activeness against the Spanish.

The regime continued to turn down to comment, instead waiting for the results of the official investigation that had been launched similar a shot after the disaster. Divers in addition to armor experts were sent to investigate the physical testify of the wreck, in addition to a Naval Court of Inquiry was held.

The world believed that it would furnish concrete testify of Castilian guilt. At the same time, the Castilian conducted their ain investigation (as the Maine had blown upwardly inwards their territorial waters) in addition to concluded that it was caused past times an internal explosion.

On 28 March, the official study was submitted. It concluded that 2 explosions had occurred: “In the persuasion of the Court, the Maine was destroyed past times the explosion of a submarine mine, which caused the partial explosion of 2 or to a greater extent than of her frontwards magazines.

The Court has been unable to obtain evidence, fixing the responsibleness for the devastation of the Maine upon whatever mortal or persons” (March, 327). While it was clear that Espana had most to lose inwards going to war, the world was to a greater extent than than willing to attribute the guilt for this to them.

The neutral findings of the courtroom opened the agency to this. The press jumped at the lead a opportunity to inflame the issue. Hearst’s slogan was “Remember the Maine, in addition to to hell amongst Spain!” On 22 April, the the States blockaded Cuba, in addition to a hateful solar daytime after volunteers were called for.

The theory that the Castilian had sunk the Maine clearly contributed to a potent world persuasion encouraged past times the press favoring war. While it was non the exclusively element introduce inwards a complicated diplomatic situation, it was a meaning one. The Maine remained a patriotic symbol around which back upwardly for the state of war cohered.

What, then, was the “true” story? Admiral H. G. Rickover conducted a novel exam into the explosion inwards 1976. He noted the problems of the master copy 1898 U.S. inquiry: limited expertise, piteous diving weather inwards the harbor, in addition to inadequate questioning during the hearings all contributed to an research that was non every bit comprehensive every bit it should receive got been, given the import of its result. Even contemporary experts questioned the likelihood of a mine having been the crusade of the disaster.

Public pressure level to produce something amongst the Maine wreck led to Congress appropriating $650,000 inwards 1910 to take the wreck in addition to recover the bodies soundless at that topographic point for burial inwards Arlington Cemetery. The Army Corps of Engineers were given primary responsibleness for the endeavor. In 1911, a novel board of investigation arrived inwards Havana amongst to a greater extent than expertise than 1898.

They took detailed records of the harm in addition to many photographs in addition to diagrams. Nevertheless, their ultimate decision (while differing from 1898 inwards technical detail) was that the primary explosion was soundless due to the placing of a mine, which had pose off some other explosion inwards the magazines.

For the purposes of Rickover’s study, 2 experts reexamined all the testify in addition to concluded that inwards fact the primary explosion had been an internal one, mayhap caused past times burn inwards a bunker setting off explosions inwards the magazines.

The story of the sinking of the USSMaine is clearly fundamental to the story of the Spanish-American War; but it also raises issues that receive got to produce amongst the role of the press inwards creating “conspiracy theories” to adapt their purposes (increased circulation in addition to jingoism), every bit good every bit the number of scientific testify in addition to its role inwards establishing “truth.” In this story, technical testify is fundamental inwards determining the “true” story of the Maine in addition to whether a state of war was started over an accident.

Certainly the role of technical or scientific testify continues to live on fundamental to society’s ask to create upwardly one's hear the “truth” of events, but this story also reveals that technical testify (which is non infallible) tin live on given also much power. Rickover speculates whether a dissimilar consequence powerfulness receive got occurred if the 1898 research had come upwardly to a dissimilar conclusion.

While that tin exclusively e'er live on hypothesis, it withal raises the number of simply how of import the “conspiracy theory” most the Maine—reinforced past times the “truth” of a scientific research in addition to the inflammatory actions of the press—was inwards shaping the course of study of history.

The X-Files

The X-Files

The X-Files is a long-running telly series, renowned for its atmosphere of suspicion together with convoluted conspiracies. It was created past times Chris Carter, a old author together with editor (of the periodical Surfing).

It premiered on the Fox Network inwards the U.S. inwards September 1993, starring David Duchovny equally Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent Fox Mulder, together with Gillian Anderson equally Dr. Dana Scully, his partner. Though it gained petty acclaim early on inwards its run, this moody, visually stunning “quality TV” serial went on to boot the bucket starting fourth dimension a cult hitting together with and hence a pop success, eventually making the locomote past times 20 inwards the Nielsen ratings.

In a self-congratulatory but essentially accurate observation, Carter has acknowledged that “the show’s original spirit has boot the bucket form of the spirit of the country— if non the world” (qtd. inwards Knight, 54). This spirit is concerned alongside conspiracy theory, paranoia, together with the paranormal.


The X-Files generated a broad multifariousness of spin-off texts—including novels, official together with unofficial guide books, an official magazine, and, of course, academic examinations of the series—not to advert a broad multifariousness of X-Files merchandise. Hundreds of fan websites on the Internet receive got been devoted to the show, together with its fans—who came to telephone telephone themselves X-Philes—are amidst the most obsessed inwards all of pop culture.

Its complex story lines, composed of both stand-alone “monster of the week” episodes together with segments that are business office of a multi-season narrative arc known equally the X-Files “mythology,” receive got unfolded inwards to a greater extent than than ii hundred episodes over ix series, together with (to date) 1 characteristic film, X-Files: Fight the Future (1998). Over its run, the present has boot the bucket increasingly self-referential together with intertextual, offering hilarious spoofs of its ain conventions together with sending upwardly other media genres.

With Duchovny’s express participation inwards the 2000–2001 flavour (his final on the show), the serial experienced for the starting fourth dimension time important cast changes (Robert Patrick equally Agent John Doggett became Scully’s novel partner). By full general critical consensus the serial began to decline. Many commentators fifty-fifty began to inquiry the rationale (other than economic) for its continuance.

The marker to which The X-Files became business office of our cultural vocabulary inwards the 1990s together with the starting fourth dimension years of the twenty-first century tin flaming hold out demonstrated past times an telephone substitution from a first-season episode of the WB serial Angel inwards which Kendrick, an evidently sexist manly mortal detective, hassles woman mortal detective Kate Lockley (Elizabeth Rohm), who has come upwardly to believe inwards the reality of vampires.

Although Kendrick does non look to acquire the basic premise, the civilisation at large sure as shooting did, together with to “Scully” someone came to hateful to incertitude his or her questionable ideas—especially conspiracy theories.

Mulder was open-minded well-nigh all sorts of paranormal possibilities, peculiarly UFOs together with alien abduction—had he non watched his ain sis hold out abducted when he was twelve years old? Scully, however, was the ever-questioning, scientifically objective medical MD assigned to partner alongside (and rein in) Mulder inwards his investigation of the X-Files, those aberrant FBI cases that arrive at non lend themselves to normal forensic investigation.

“The Kennedy assassination, MIA’s, radiations experiments on terminal patients, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Roswell, the Tuskegee experiments—where volition it end?” Mulder asks his informant Deep Throat. For the critic Allison Graham, The X-Files is “television’s fin de siècle compendium of conspiracy theories” (Graham, 56), together with is the apotheosis of U.S. conspiratorial thinking stretching dorsum to the 1960s.

Likening Scully together with Mulder to Woodward together with Bernstein, she notes that Mulder’s sis had been snatched past times aliens spell they were watching the Watergate hearings on television. (Not surprisingly, Chris Carter has called Watergate “the most formative lawsuit of my youth” [qtd. inwards Graham, 56], together with has spoken likewise of the strong influence of Harvard psychologist John Mack’s controversial Abduction: Human Encounters alongside Aliens.)

Driven past times its “perpetual displace of suspicion” (Knight, 28), The X-Files has contemplated much worse than mere political conspiracy. We acquire inwards the mythology episodes that an international consortium (“The Syndicate”) involving mysterious, powerful men coming together inwards drawing rooms inwards London together with New York, working inwards cooperation alongside scientists from the Axis Powers supplied through Operation Paperclip, receive got known since the crash of a UFO at Roswell, New Mexico, inwards 1947 of a coming alien invasion.

Over the years conscientious viewers receive got really gradually come upwardly to realize that The Syndicate has been preparing for the end, bargaining for a delay hence that they might, equally a form of peace overture to the invaders, offering them genetically engineered human-alien hybrids, purportedly equally slaves for the powerful together with ancient conquerors together with (in secret) to develop a cure, a serum, that would preclude their ain colonization past times the pathogenic Black Oil.

They had long agone surrendered their ain loved ones—wives, children (including Mulder’s sister)—as hostages, inwards homecoming for their ain survival of the impending “viral holocaust.” “Survival,” the Well Manicured Man tells Mulder inwards the X-Files movie, “is the ultimate ideology.”

The evil but compelling Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM)—Mulder calls him “Cancer Man”—one of the series’ most interesting creations, serves, it seems, equally The Syndicate’s primary enforcer, 1 of them but working at their behest, though ever putting his self-interest first. In the fourth-season episode “Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man,” nosotros acquire (or arrive at we?) that his involvement inwards conspiracy is non express to roofing upwardly the coming alien invasion.

CSM assassinated both JFK together with Martin Luther King, fixed the 1980 U.S. Olympic H2O ice hockey upset of the Soviet Union, prevented the Buffalo Bills from ever winning the Super Bowl, together with talks regularly on the telephone alongside Saddam Hussein.... But together with hence over again nosotros are non sure of the validity of whatsoever of these “facts,” which are buried ii or iii levels deep inwards the narrative, together with CSM himself, it turns out, is a failed author of bad Robert Ludlum–ish fiction.

In “José Chung’s From Outer Space” (season 3), 1 of the series’ most masterful episodes, Scully completes her narration of the events to an author who is completing the “non-fiction scientific discipline fiction” volume of the championship together with and hence admits that it “probably doesn’t receive got the feel of closure you lot want, but it has to a greater extent than than our other cases”—a really self-conscious allusion to/defense of the often-complained-about vogue of Mulder’s together with Scully’s cases (and every X-Files episode) to halt enigmatically together with without total resolution.

It was likely inevitable inwards the climate of post-modernism that a telly serial hence focused on conspiracy would itself generate paranoid criticism. Christy Burns, drawing on Horkheimer together with Adorno, suggests that this “very postmodern show” mightiness hold out considered business office of “a grand governmental conspiracy to ‘keep the whole affair together,’ pregnant capitalism together with its volume suppression”.

The sealing off of the eyes of the Alien Rebels inwards the series, she suggests, “pokes fun at the fantasy that telly might, similar the dark oil, sneak inwards through our eyes together with ‘infect’ us alongside alien cultural influences”.

Although making “visible the buried social implications of centrist politics”, the writers together with producers of The X-Files, Burns proposes, receive got a to a greater extent than cynical hush-hush agenda inwards mind: “step[ping] beyond the temptation simply to hold out noiresque together with nihilistic, they realize their ain roles equally history bringers, via television, through which they may—wittingly or not—participate inwards yet some other conspiracy: that of draining the way out of the American masses”. Adrienne McLean, too, finds the serial both motion together with lawsuit of contemporary conspiracy culture.

“Scully together with Mulder cannot hold out joined sexually or legally,” nosotros are told, “because they are both literally together with figuratively alienated, penetrated, together with probed to the molecular bird past times omniscient together with omnipotent forces who receive got infiltrated, similar telly and, now, computers, virtually everything inwards our lives.” We stay fans of the series, she thinks, despite the anxiety it induces, because “We receive got to believe inwards the reality of something, fifty-fifty if that something is the paranoia induced past times telly itself”.

From its inception The X-Files has given alongside 1 mitt together with taken away alongside the other, perpetually abandoning the viewer inwards a “hermeneutic limbo” (Knight). The serial has non been content to but “deny all knowledge”; it has, equally Knight observes, taken equally its bailiwick “the procedure of repeatedly discovering everything you lot thought you lot knew is wrong.”

John Peter Zenger

John Peter Zenger trial

John Zenger (1680–1746), a German-born printer working inwards New York City, constitute himself at the see of a political brawl inwards 1732 past times printing a alphabetic quality from New York Supreme Court main justice Lewis Morris.

The alphabetic quality was a minority consider inwards the illustration of Governor William Cosby against respected as well as elderly statesman Rip Van Dam, who had acted equally governor for well-nigh a twelvemonth awaiting Cosby’s arrival from England to laid out his term.

Cosby insisted on receiving his salary for that time, as well as Van Dam refused. Since no courtroom inwards New York would yield the determination Cosby wanted, he constructed a “Court of Exchequer” from the colony’s Supreme Court, as well as instructed it to gain upwards one's heed his illustration without a jury.


Although 2 of the judges constitute for Cosby, nether intense pressure, the third, Lewis Morris, dissented and, later beingness replaced past times Cosby, circulated his consider inwards the shape of a pamphlet printed past times Zenger.

Although Zenger knew that printers were held responsible for their work, his newspaper, the New York Weekly Journal, continued to pose out songs, cartoons, as well as articles critical of Cosby as well as his activities, including taking coin from the New York Assembly as well as violating the colony’s laws past times attempting to rig an election for assemblymen against Lewis Morris.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 challenger paper, the New York Gazette, controlled past times Cosby’s supporter, Francis Harison, rebutted these charges equally libelous as well as untrue. Cosby pressured the Supreme Court to instruct an indictment against Zenger equally a libeler, but 2 grand juries, noting that Zenger had non written the material, refused to convey charges.

Frustrated, the governor entered into a conspiracy to convey downward Zenger, ordering a Supreme Court bench warrant issued on data filed past times his attorney general, Richard Bradley.

Unable to pay the £800 bail, Zenger remained nether arrest for viii months inwards the Old City Jail equally an object of much sympathy as well as support, much of it stirred past times his wife’s continuing publication of the Journal.

The illustration live on came to case inwards August 1735. The governor intended to accept the illustration tried past times his handpicked Supreme Court justices Delancey as well as Philipps alone, but Zenger’s lawyers objected successfully.

Cosby as well as his conspirators thus attempted to choose a jury puddle composed of Cosby’s employees as well as supporters, but Judge Delancey, horrified at this transparent manipulation of the system, refused to comply. Cosby thus attempted to disbar Zenger’s attorneys, but was thwarted when the famous Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton agreed to human activity on Zenger’s behalf.

Prosecuted past times Attorney General Bradley, who defendant Zenger of seditious libel against Governor Cosby, the printer adopted a unique defense forcefulness at Hamilton’s insistence: Zenger would non competition the fact that he printed the materials, but would claim that it could non live libel because they were true.

Bradley pointed out that the libel police describe of New York did non recognize truth equally a defense forcefulness against a accuse of libel, but Hamilton countered alongside the declaration that the police describe ought to allow the complaints of men who had been oppressed or wronged to live aired publicly. Although this had no legal back upwards inwards the colony, Hamilton could plough to the jury as well as inquire for nullification of an unjust statute.

In his closing remarks, Hamilton spoke non of Zenger equally an individual, but equally the representative of the press, as well as asked them to vote inwards favor of a gratis press unrestricted past times arbitrary government. Delancey instructed the jury to observe Zenger guilty, which, nether the law, he was, but they returned alongside a “not guilty” verdict.

This unmarried nullification did non modify New York law, but it sent a clear message that the people of the colony, and, past times extension, those of the other British colonies inwards the Americas, would non tolerate unjust prosecutions past times corrupt government, as well as that they valued an independent press inwards which to circulate their views.

Despite the powerful conspiracy brought to behave past times Cosby, as well as his misuse of the judicial as well as electoral system, Zenger as well as his illustration triumphed to buy the farm a bulwark against other conspiracies as well as restrictions on journalism.