Drugs

Drugs

Apart from the possibility that the excessive utilisation of for sure drugs tin brand the user paranoid, illicit drugs conduct hold been at the pump of a number of conspiracy theories over the yesteryear century. One cluster of conspiracy theories surrounds the utilisation of opiates, together with some other focuses on marijuana.

Opiates

Opiates—opium, morphine, together with heroin—have figured largely inward drug conspiracies. One of the earliest conspiracy theories surrounding opiates inward the U.S. concerned Chinese immigrants on the West Coast. When Chinese immigrants began arriving inward the U.S. to a greater extent than or less 1870, their habit of smoking opium drew condemnation.

Chinese laborers, derogatorily called “coolies,” were essential to the completion of the showtime transcontinental railroad, but when economical depression beset the reason inward the belatedly nineteenth century, white fears of task competition, combined amongst Chinese opium smoking, led to repression of the Chinese population.


Nativism, xenophobia, together with the conviction that opium smoking posed a threat to U.S. club helped Pb to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigration to the United States. Other repression came inward the shape of local together with province laws that targeted Chinese Americans, equally good equally harassment yesteryear native-born whites, especially on the West Coast. In 1875 a San Francisco City ordinance banned opium smoking.

Stories of Chinese immigrants who lured white females into prostitution, along amongst media depictions of the Chinese equally depraved together with unclean, bolstered the enactment of anti-opium laws inward xi states betwixt 1877 together with 1900. On the federal level, inward 1909 President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Opium Exclusion Act, which forbade the importation of smoking opium.

Although no fully formed conspiracy theory emerged amidst anti-opium advocates, yesteryear the plow of the century the association betwixt Chinese immigrants, opium, together with societal decay illustrated the widespread belief that opium smoking (or the consumption of whatever psychoactive centre for nonmedical purposes) threatened to erode the Anglo-Saxon race’s might to propagate itself. Put some other way, during the Social Darwinist–infused days of the belatedly nineteenth together with early on twentieth centuries, drug addiction amidst white Americans was idea to termination inward racial suicide.

More delineated conspiracy theories concerning opiates materialized during together with afterward World War II. Propagating numerous drug conspiracies was Harry J. Anslinger, who served equally commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) from 1930 to 1962. Anslinger had an imposing physical appearance: somber-faced, bald, thick-chested, together with square-jawed, he resembled a cross betwixt Benito Mussolini together with the infamous British satanist Aleister Crowley (Sloman, xi).

As caput of the FBN, Anslinger dominated U.S. drug policy for 30 years, during which fourth dimension he maintained the link betwixt foreigners together with drugs, brought a high degree of bureaucratic monastic tell to federal drug policy, embarked upon a effort to demonize together with limit marijuana, melded antinarcotics policy amongst U.S. unusual policy together with safety issues, together with sought repressive measures to bargain amongst addicts together with dealers.

During World War II Anslinger charged the Japanese amongst conspiring to spread narcotics addiction throughout the West, remarking that a drugsodden patch could offering petty resistance to an invading Japanese military.

The Japanese were flooding Communist People's Republic of China amongst narcotics during the state of war but no prove corroborated their supposed programme to foment addiction inward the United States. Similarly, inward the early on mutual frigidness state of war years, Anslinger unrelentingly maintained that heroin addiction was role of Communist China’s programme for subversion inward the United States.

Lacking whatever proof of such a conspiracy, Anslinger withal fostered stories together with images of syringe-wielding Chinese soldiers poised to conduct hold over the gratis world together with outlined the details of the Chinese Communist Party’s heroin conspiracy inward his 1953 majority The Traffic inward Narcotics.

Anslinger’s conspiracy theories demonstrated the link betwixt federal drug policy together with national safety issues, which is to say that the FBN’s claims were inward line amongst America’s anticommunist mission inward Asia. The commissioner never recanted his accusations together with his claims persisted into the 1970s.

In a reversal of Anslinger’s claims, 2 other drug conspiracies emerged during the mutual frigidness war, which charged the U.S. government, non unusual nations, amongst spreading narcotics addiction together with using drugs for undemocratic purposes.

One conspiracy theory defendant the CIA, from the 1950s through the 1980s, of willingly allying itself amongst narcotics (opium, morphine, together with heroin) traffickers inward Burma, Thailand, Laos, Afghanistan, together with Islamic Republic of Pakistan equally role of the agency’s anticommunist crusade inward Asia.

By supplying these unsavory elements amongst funds, equipment, together with intelligence, the CIA provided a zone of protection to a greater extent than or less drug lords together with blocked investigations of their clients’ drug running. Ultimately, the CIA contributed to the global narcotics merchandise yesteryear sanctioning their allies’ involvement.

Researchers, such equally Alfred W. McCoy, conduct hold unearthed prove corroborating the link betwixt the CIA together with narcotics traffickers inward Asia but deny the existence of a full-blown conspiracy inward which the CIA intended to foster trafficking together with addiction internationally, including Europe together with the United States.

Rather, the CIA’s short-term destination of using narcotics traffickers equally self-sustaining paramilitary forces during the mutual frigidness state of war blinded the way from foreseeing the long-term increase inward the region’s drug merchandise afterward the U.S. authorities no longer needed its clients’ services. In essence, the CIA, narrowly focused on anticommunism, deemed its clients’ expanded drug trafficking abilities equally entirely “fallout” from overriding mutual frigidness state of war concerns.

For instance, when narcotics produced yesteryear CIA allies supplied U.S. addicts—as inward the instance of U.S. soldiers inward Vietnam using heroin trafficked yesteryear South Vietnamese, Laotian, together with Thai officials—the CIA, jump yesteryear law to provide intelligence on drug trafficking, illegally prevented investigations of Southeast Asian officials. Damning facts such equally these conduct hold lent the air of conspiracy to the CIA’s human relationship to the international drug trade.

Another drug conspiracy leveled at the U.S. authorities involved the Nixon administration’s drug policy together with the White House’s reorganization of federal drug enforcement agencies. In the early on 1970s President Nixon launched his “war on drugs” inward response to a burgeoning heroin epidemic inward the United States.

Like Harry J. Anslinger, Nixon cast blame on unusual nations for America’s addiction problem. Nixon favored the utilisation of federal drug command agencies equally the response to the country’s supposedly growing rates of drug abuse.

Part of Nixon’s solution entailed the creation of the Office of National Narcotics Intelligence (ONNI), Office for Drug Abuse together with Law Enforcement (ODALE), together with Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which replaced the Bureau of Narcotics together with Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), the FBN’s successor agency. The executive branch oversaw these agencies together with critics defendant the president of using them for purposes non related to drug control.

Specifically, skeptics argued that Nixon manufactured a drug scare that distracted the U.S. populace together with Congress together with allowed the direction to practise White House– controlled federal agencies that were used for surveillance together with harassment of political enemies, non apprehending drug dealers.

Critics charged ODALE together with ONNI equally beingness petty to a greater extent than than a White House soul constabulary force. ODALE, housed inward the Justice Department, was authorized to comport no-knock search warrants together with warrantless raids, equally good equally to utilisation court-ordered wiretaps. Such an way had the capacity to human activeness higher upwards the law together with did on occasions. Indeed, telephone substitution figures inward the Watergate scandal—G. Gordon Liddy, Egil Krogh, E. Howard Hunt, together with Lucein Conein— were all involved inward federal drug command agencies.

Liddy developed the creation of ODALE. Conein, a CIA agent, evidently developed a special assassination force—ostensibly aimed at major drug traffickers—within the DEA afterward that organization’s creation inward mid-1973. Krogh served equally deputy assistant for the president for law enforcement together with helped gear upwards the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP), which established federal methadone clinics.

Interestingly, the federal methadone clinics—aimed at helping heroin addicts— drew criticism from African Americans equally a ploy to maintain inner-city populations addicted to difficult drugs. In the end, the Plumbers, drawn from the Nixon administration’s drug command apparatus, together with the resulting Watergate scandal derailed Nixon’s cry for for unchecked executive power.

Marijuana

Like the opiates, conspiracy theories formed to a greater extent than or less marijuana, a drug outlawed inward 1937 yesteryear the Marijuana Tax Act. Similar to the Chinese immigrants’ negative association amongst opium smoking, marijuana was linked to some other stereotyped immigrant group, Mexicans.

During the showtime few decades of the 1900s local together with province restrictions on marijuana, especially inward the West together with Southwest, were established equally the drug was purported to get smokers to commit crimes. Tales of stoned Mexicans who craved violence together with were immune to hurting were common. Throughout the showtime one-half of the 1930s Anslinger resisted calls for federal legislation banning marijuana, believing that the states could best command the matter.

But yesteryear 1936 Anslinger reversed course of report together with embarked on a effort inward which he showtime stated that he had underestimated the marijuana threat together with and therefore proceeded to describe the weed equally worse than heroin, together with the harbinger of decease together with discord. Drug policy scholars conduct hold attributed Anslinger’s turnaround to his sharp concern for bureaucratic survival—he used the marijuana number to justify his together with the FBN’s existence.

According to this line of thinking, Anslinger did non practise a marijuana scare; he joined ane already inward progress together with bolstered it to best of his might amongst lurid testimony at congressional hearings together with inward paper together with magazine articles. Anslinger’s article “Marijuana: Assassin of Youth,” which appeared inward the July 1937 edition of American Magazine, was a prime number illustration of FBN antimarijuana propaganda.

The article, equally did well-nigh of Anslinger’s marijuana horror stories together with other sensationalized accounts similar the Hollywood celluloid Reefer Madness, involved American youths together with linked the drug amongst serious crimes (such equally murder, rape, together with mutilation), insanity, promiscuity, together with full general immorality.

For Anslinger, the consequences of inhaling the killer weed ranged from patricide together with fratricide—as the commissioner oftentimes recounted inward the instance of a Florida youth—to the possibility that a user would plow into a “philosopher, a joyous reveler inward a musical heaven,” a contestation that linked marijuana together with jazz music (Anslinger 1937, 150). The outcome of all the scare tactics together with misinformation was the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, which initially curtailed hemp production, but ultimately served equally the footing for criminalizing marijuana users.

Countering Anslinger’s persuasion of marijuana equally a generator of offense together with decease is the conspiracy theory best articulated yesteryear Jack Herer inward Hemp together with the Marijuana Conspiracy: The Emperor Wears No Clothes. According to Herer, bureaucratic survival was non at the pump of Anslinger’s antimarijuana campaign. Rather, Anslinger’s role inward demonizing marijuana stemmed from his participation inward a concerted essay yesteryear powerful economical interests to postage out contest from the hemp industry.

Specifically, Anslinger, the E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (DuPont), work organisation magnate Andrew Mellon, together with the media giant William Randolph Hearst worked paw inward paw to forestall a growing hemp manufacture from offering cellulosebased products, such equally paper (and potentially textiles together with plastics), from competing amongst DuPont’s products. By the 1930s DuPont had developed patents for producing paper from woods pulp together with likewise had plans to brand plastics from fossil oil products.

Andrew W. Mellon, secretarial assistant of the treasury together with possessor of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh, which was ane of entirely 2 banks DuPont dealt with, appointed his time to come son-in-law to caput upwards the newly created FBN inward Dec 1930. Anslinger’s solar daytime of the month to the FBN, housed inward the Treasury Department, tied him to Mellon’s together with DuPont’s fiscal interests, which included stunting a hemp manufacture that had grown over the 1920s together with 1930s.

The Hearst paper syndicate, the nation’s largest, was likewise tied economically to the woodpaper industry. Moreover, Hearst, known for his disdain of jazz music, Mexicans, together with African Americans, readily published antimarijuana tracts that seat his newspapers inward line amongst the federal government.

Ultimately, all of these actors constituted a conspiracy orchestrated to brand hemp illegal. According to this theory, the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, far from outlawing a supposedly murderous drug, was inward fact legislation designed to farther DuPont’s fiscal fortune.

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.

Margaret baroness Thatcher of Kesteven

Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party, helped reverse the economic decline of her country. Even her enemies grudgingly respected the strong-willed "iron lady". She rejected the "consensus" politics that had characterized Britain since World War II in favor of polarizing "conviction" politics.

During her 10 years as the head of the British government, she created a successful free-market economy, but at a high price: deindustrialization of many old factory towns and, for several years, massive unemployment. Strongly nationalistic, Thatcher fought for Britain within and sometimes against the European Union.

She was lucky that the main body of the Labour Party moved to the left and Labour moderates broke away to form their own party; she defeated her divided opponents at general elections without ever winning over a majority of the voters. She also was lucky to have the opportunity to fight a short, successful, and very popular war with distant Argentina, whose brutal military dictatorship had seized a sparsely populated and almost unknown British colony, the Falkland Islands.

Labour eventually accepted her basic policies. She succeeded in changing the language of political discourse. Except for those from a few stubborn socialists, proposals for the nationalization of major industries disappeared from the debate over public policy.


In part because Thatcher was personally abrasive, she was controversial in her own Conservative Party. It was a rebellion among her nominal supporters that ended her political career. According to rumor, moreover, she did not get along with the other important woman in the British government, Queen Elizabeth II.

Intelligence and hard work, not family connections, explain Thatcher’s rise to power. Her principles owed much to the middle-class values of her upbringing. Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on October 13, 1925, in Grantham, a small town in eastern England. Her father was a grocer, and the family lived over his shop. Active in civic affairs, her father served for many years on the city council and at one point held the title of mayor.

After attending local state schools Margaret Roberts studied chemistry at Somerville College, a women’s college that was part of Oxford University. Already politically minded, she was elected president of Oxford’s student Conservative organization in 1946, the year after Labour had crushed her party in the general election that followed the defeat of Nazi Germany.

After university she worked for several years as a research chemist. In addition, she stood for Parliament, always for seats that were hopeless for her party. During her political campaigns she met Dennis Thatcher, a wealthy businessman, whom she married in 1951. She left her first career as a research chemist to study law.

In 1953 she gave birth to twins, Carol and Mark. Thatcher was in her mid-30s when in 1959 she was elected to the House of Commons for the safe Conservative seat of Finchley in north London. Two years later she was appointed to a bau kencur position in the Harold Macmillan government as parliamentary secretary at the ministry of pensions and national service.

Thatcher’s first cabinet office came in the Edward Heath government. In 1970 she was appointed minister for education. As part of broader cuts in spending she eliminated free milk for school-children. The Labour Party attacked her as the heartless "Thatcher, the milk snatcher".

Heath’s failure to stand up to the trade unions successfully and his defeat in two 1974 general elections cost him the support of many Conservatives. Despite his weakness, his principal colleagues were reluctant to challenge him. Thatcher, a midlevel figure in the Conservative Party with limited ministerial experience, dared in 1975.

After the first ballot Heath withdrew, and on the second ballot Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party. Four years later, the Conservatives won the general election, and Thatcher became prime minister. She also led her party to victory in the next two general elections.

Her policies during her more than a decade as prime minister came to be called "Thatcherism". She acknowledged that many of her ideas came from an older Conservative politician, Sir Keith Joseph. He argued that Britain needed to revive its entrepreneurial spirit.

Thatcher became prime minister during a two-sided economic crisis: a depression accompanied by rising prices. She made her first priority fighting double-digit inflation. She cut government spending, with higher education suffering particularly hard.

She increased interest rates and sales taxes and eventually income taxes too. Manufacturing shrank, and several million workers lost their jobs. It took years for this bitter medicine to cure runaway inflation, but it did. Some members of Thatcher’s own party thought that the human cost of her policies was unacceptable.

Convinced that the welfare state had ruined Britain, Thatcher wanted to encourage individualism and discourage reliance on the state. Consequently, she made it easy for tenants in council houses (public housing) to buy their homes. Pressured by an increase in rent, hundreds of thousands did. As property owners, they were more inclined to vote Conservative.

Committed to competition and capitalism, Thatcher regarded the nationalized industries as a dead weight handicapping the British economy. In the early 1980s she sold off minor parts of the state’s array of industries, such as the railroad hotels, but it was not until the mid-1980s that privatization became dramatic. At this time Thatcher sold the telephone system, the gas industry, the principal automobile and truck manufacturers, the steel industry, and water companies.

Thatcher worried that the power of Britain’s militant trade unions crippled the economy. She decided to tame them. In 1984 Parliament enacted legislation that required a majority vote by secret ballot for a legal strike. In the same year, the leader of the coal miners challenged the management of one of the last nationalized industries. He hoped to block the closing of unprofitable mines.

He used outside militants to intimidate working miners. These tactics offended public opinion. Worried about their own jobs, few other unions supported the miners. After nearly a year, the strike collapsed. As a result of competition from oil and natural gas, the coal mining industry soon shrank to almost nothing.

Priding herself on her decisiveness and rarely conciliatory toward opponents, Thatcher did not care how many people she alienated. She rejected compromise as weakness. Victory over Argentina in the Falklands War was perhaps her only success that nearly everybody applauded.

She refused any compromise when members of the Irish Republican Army, imprisoned in Ulster, started a hunger strike to be recognized as political prisoners. Ten IRA men died of starvation. Labour controlled many local councils, including that of greater London.

Thatcher considered their spending profligate, and so she had Parliament abolish the troublesome councils. She regarded the European Community without enthusiasm. Protective of British sovereignty, she was suspicious of the animo toward economic and political centralization within the European Union.

In contrast to her ambivalence toward Europe, she was a staunch ally of the United States. She was particularly close to President Ronald Reagan. Although they were much alike in their economic and foreign policies and their insistence upon law and order, Thatcher did not share Reagan’s concern for budpekerti issues in politics.

She voted to decriminalize homosexuality and to legalize abortion. Thatcher’s relationship with the United States was, in part, the result of political realism. The world’s most powerful nation was a useful ally. Her realism also showed in her conciliatory relationship toward Mikhail Gorbachev, the last ruler of the Soviet Union.

She recognized the importance of the reforms that he advocated in changing the nature of communism in his powerful country and the flexibility that he showed outside the Soviet Union. Unlike Reagan, she was not so entranced with Gorbachev as to propose mutual nuclear disarmament, but she did think the Soviet leader was somebody with whom she could "do business".

In her last years as prime minister Thatcher blundered politically, which gave an opening to her numerous enemies within the Conservative Party. In her biggest mistake, she proposed a reform of local government finance widely denounced as an unfair poll tax. Except for the well-off, nearly all households would pay more than they had in the past.

Perhaps because she was preparing for war against Iraq in alliance with the United States, Thatcher paid insufficient attention to the political situation at home. She also erred by making provocatively anti–European Union remarks that caused her foreign secretary to resign. One of her old enemies, a former defense secretary, challenged Thatcher for the party leadership in late 1990.

When she failed to win on the first ballot, she withdrew and threw her support to one of her loyalists, John Major. After Major became Conservative Party leader and prime minister, Thatcher quickly alienated her one-time favorite. Calling herself a "good back-seat driver", she interfered too much, undermining the new prime minister’s authority.

In retirement Thatcher took a nonhereditary peerage (baroness Thatcher of Kesteven) that made her a member of the House of Lords. She also wrote her memoirs. She outraged public opinion by visiting the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet while he was under house arrest in Britain. Most people believed that he was guilty of torturing and murdering opponents in his home country.

By the first years of the 21st century, Thatcher’s physical and mental health began to fail. She rarely made public appearances and no longer gave speeches. Her husband died in 2003, and her children sometimes proved to be an embarrassment.

Her son, Mark, became involved in an abortive coup against an African government. Her daughter, Carol, appeared on a widely viewed and undignified "reality" television program. According to her, Thatcher suffered from a form of dementia that destroyed her short-term memory.

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.

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.

Mohammad Mossadeq - Iranian Nationalist

Mohammad Mossadeq

Mohammad Mossadeq led the oil nationalization movement in Iran in the early 1950s. Mirza Mohammad Khan (later Mossadeq al-Saltaneh) was born in 1882 into a wealthy aristocratic family closely connected to the royal family of the Qajar dynasty.

His father, Mirza Hedayat Ashtiyani, served the Qajar government as the minister of budget and finance from 1874 to 1895. Mossadeq, who was deeply influenced by his mother’s progressive opinions about female roles in society, tried to extend the rights of women in Iran.

When his father died, Mossadeq succeeded him in the family profession as a mostowfi (auditor). He was appointed chief mostowfi in the province of Khorasan at the age of 14. Mossadeq, who supported the Constitutional Revolution, was elected to the First National Assembly as a deputy from Isfahan.

However, his credentials were rejected because he had not yet attained the minimum legal age to serve as a deputy in Parliament. He studied public finance in Paris and obtained a doctoral degree in law at Neuchâtel University in Switzerland in 1914. After returning to Iran, he held several important posts successively, including vice minister of finance, governor of Fars, minister of finance, governor of Azerbaijan, and foreign minister.


After Reza Khan ousted the Qajar shah from the throne during the 1921 coup and established the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925, Mossadeq became a leader in the nationalist opposition to the Pahlavi dictatorship. Mossadeq was imprisoned in 1940. When Reza Shah was dethroned by the Allies in 1941 for sympathizing with the Nazis, and his son Mohammad Reza was installed as the new shah, Mossadeq was released.

In 1944 Mossadeq was elected as a deputy from Tehran to the 14th Parliament. During that time, he played a significant role in enacting the Single-Article Bill, which forbade the government from granting foreign concessions without the approval of parliament.

In October 1949 a group of politicians, university students, merchants, and guilds in the Tehran bazaar (marketplace) gathered in front of the shah’s palace to protest the rigging of the 16th parliamentary election.

These protesters, led by Mossadeq, established the National Front. Under Mossadeq’s leadership, the National Front drove the movement to nationalize the British-run petroleum industry. The oil nationalization law was approved by both the Senate and Parliament in March 1951.

Mossadeq was elected prime minister on April 30, 1951. The British government and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) opposed the oil nationalization law and sued the Iranian government in the International Court in the Hague. Mossadeq attempted to establish Iranian political and economic independence and to democratize the system established by the Pahlavis; he favored both the nationalization of the oil industry and domestic reforms.

However, his government fell in August 1953 as the result of a coup d’état that was backed by the United States that opposed the oil nationalization and Mossadeq’s alleged communist ties. Mohammad Reza returned to power and Mossadeq was imprisoned on charges of acting against Iran. He was subsequently placed under house arrest; Mossadeq died at age 85 on March 5, 1967. He is regarded as a national hero.

Nigeria

Map of Nigeria

Nigeria is located in western Africa on the Gulf of Guinea between Benin and Cameroon. It occupies 923,768 square kilometers (356,667 square miles), making it one-third larger than the U.S. state of Texas. Nigeria stretches 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) from north to south, and is 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) wide from the Atlantic coast to its eastern border.

Nigeria’s population has grown extremely rapidly from 35 million to over 137 million in 2004. It is home to one out of every six Africans. The population is extremely diverse and contains as many as 250 separate ethnic groups and a reported 500 languages.

The major population divisions include the Hausa (29 percent), who live in the north; the Yoruba (21 percent), who occupy the southwest; the Igbo or Ibo (18 percent), who are in the southeast; and the Ijaw (10 percent), who reside in the east.


The Fulani (9 percent), found primarily in the north, along with a large number of smaller groups, complete the essential Nigerian ethnic matrix. This societal complexity makes for enormous governing difficulties.

There is also the divide of religion, with the north heavily Muslim and the south largely Christian. One attempt to foster better unity was the adoption of English as the nation’s official language. Fifty percent of the population now has a basic command, although there are many more who speak a smattering of broken or “pidgin” English.

Administratively the nation is currently divided into 36 states and one capital territory. Abuja, located in the center of the country, became the nation’s capital in 1991, replacing in this capacity the large port city of Lagos with its over 13 million people.

National Mosque in the capital Abuja

Modern Nigeria is a product of the late 19th-century British Empire builders. Before this time it was part of a wide-ranging section of West Africa made up of many peoples and territories, all occupying much smaller tribal areas. Lagos became a full British colony in 1861.

The country’s name is taken from the river Niger. The actual official designation of Nigeria is often attributed to the wife of a colonial official who in 1898 merged Niger with “ia” to create today’s identity, which means literally “black area.”

All of West Africa, including Nigeria, was the subject of even earlier European interest. The Portuguese came to the area in the late 15th century, attracted by the lucrative slave trade with local tribes.

The profits were such that the Portuguese slave trading monopoly was broken in the 16th century as other Europeans, including the British, wanted a share of the riches. Lagos and Badagry became important markets for the exchange of a variety of products, particularly gin and firearms.

Although the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire and in the United States after 1807, British commercial interest in the area didn’t decline, and the penetration of the interior rivers by steamships began in earnest after the 1840s.

Lagos became a key base and, in 1886, the National African Company, later the Royal Niger Company, received a royal charter to oversee trade in the Niger Delta, which included governing rights. The company’s interests also expanded northward.

These operations became too expensive and, in 1897, the company’s governing provisions were removed, and the British government asserted its authority, creating in 1900 a North Nigeria Protectorate. By 1902 after a time of armed resistance, the Sokoto Caliphate and Kano submitted to British authority.

Frederick Lugard, Governor-General of Nigeria (1914–1919)

Lugard, who had become governor-general, now combined all the protectorates with Lagos to form, in January 1914, the Federation of Nigeria. A policy of indirect rule followed during which local tribal leaders, emirs, and sultans administered their areas in conjunction with the colonial civil service.

As late as the 1930s only a few hundred British officers were in country. Infrastructure was improved, including railroad construction to the north, but education in the Muslim areas lagged behind Christian-led efforts in the south. The north remained essentially a distinct enclave.

Nationalism became an increasing factor during the 1930s and was essentially motivated by the notion of Pan-Africanism. Yet a Nigerian sense of nationalism was made more difficult by the area’s many regional and tribal divides.

The end of World War II left Britain weary of the demands and costs of empire, and moves toward change occurred as early as 1946. At this time a constitutional reform was introduced that created in the first instance three regional legislatures. A fourth midwest regional legislature was added in 1963. Full self-government came to these regions in the 1950s.

The desired goal was the formation of a federal legislative structure for all of Nigeria, a system that the north finally agreed to join in 1959. Direct elections occurred in 1959, and a federal government was founded. This new government, meeting for the first time in 1960, declared Nigeria’s independence on October 1.

Princess Alexandra opens the newly independent Nigerian Federal Parliament
in Lagos on 3 October 1960

This sense of national hope proved short-lived. Old antagonisms emerged and threatened any idea of lasting unity. The conflicts came quickly with the Yoruba opposing western regional reorganizations.

This lack of stability undermined the national government, creating a pattern for the future that would include ethnic fighting and massive corruption. In 1963 Nigeria became a federal republic with an elected president in an effort to strengthen central authority. The elections in 1964 produced more arguments and rioting over suspected electoral fraud.

The Nigerian National Alliance took control of parliament, and the United Progressive Grand Alliance of eastern and western groups became their main opposition. This unsettled situation led eastern Igbo-dominated army officers to stage a coup in January 1966.

Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi took command and instituted bloody purges of the political establishment. Fighting broke out within the army itself. After only four months in charge General Ironsi was dead, and Yakubu Gowon, a lieutenant colonel soon to be general, had taken over as leader of the military government.

The situation failed to settle, particularly after the Hausa murdered approximately 20,000 Igbo who lived in the north. Retaliations led to more discord, motivating the eastern region’s military governor, Lieutenant Colonel Odemugwu Ojukwu, to declare on May 30, 1967, the eastern region an independent entity called the Republic of Biafra.

Lieutenant Colonel Odemugwu Ojukwu

This situation led to a bloody civil war, perhaps the worst in modern African history. The war lasted three years and cost numerous lives. At war’s end the victorious Federal side declared a period of reconciliation and launched a campaign to reconstruct the devastated area.

Nigeria was now firmly in the hands of Gowon’s Supreme Military Council, which did promise a return to civilian rule in 1976. Efforts were made to transform the economy from its agricultural base to a more modern mixed economy. There were serious attacks on corruption and moves to control the government’s role in the expanding oil industry, which from the late 1960s saw Nigeria become one of the world’s largest exporters.

Criticism of Gowon’s rule was steadily mounting. While attending a 1975 Organization of African Unity conference, Gowan found himself the victim of another coup led by the Sandhurst-trained brigadier general Murtala Mohammed.

General Mohammed consolidated his authority, purged government offices, created more administrative states, and put military governors in control of the media. He also imported new Soviet aircraft for the military. His time in office, though, proved short-lived.

He was assassinated by fellow officers in 1976. His replacement was General Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yoruba, who would years later become Nigeria’s president. In 1979 Obasanjo produced a new constitution based on the U.S. model and prepared for elections to return the country to civilian rule.

The fall in oil prices in 1981 brought problems for the new government as debts mounted. The result was a poor business climate. Blame was projected onto many quarters, violence was frequent, and foreign workers were expelled. The unrest also brought an end to the Shehu Shagari presidency, which again saw a disgruntled military react, cancelling Shagari’s 1983 election.

Mohammed Buhari, the chief of the army, took over the government with the standard promises to end corruption and reverse the fortunes of the state. However, Buhari didn’t last long, and in August 1985 he was overthrown by General Ibrahim Babangida. General Sani Abacha gave his support to this coup, and in 1990 he positioned himself for later rule when he became minister of defense.

General Sani Abacha, 10th President of Nigeria

Army control did not reverse the economic crisis, which was now dire. Currency devaluation was demanded as a term for continued International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank financial support in the form of loans. Again a return to civilian rule was planned, and state elections were scheduled for 1991, with a presidential election to follow in 1993.

To the military’s surprise, Moshood Abiola won. The military, however, rejected the result, Babangida imprisoned Abiola, and in the midst of continuing confusion General Sani Abacha took over as military president.

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.