Japanese Americans

Japanese Americans

The Japanese American population became the target of a paranoid displace inwards the USA after the surprise Japanese laid on on Pearl Harbor on seven Dec 1941. Thousands of West-Coast Japanese Americans were incarcerated inwards concentration camps inwards 1942.

While white America believed these Japanese Americans were potential saboteurs too a “fifth column” inside the United States, the belief inwards a Japanese “conspiracy” was non a novel phenomenon—it built on a lengthy history of suspicion too racism toward Japanese Americans since their arrival inwards the USA inwards the belatedly nineteenth century.

Japanese began arriving inwards the United States, principally on the West Coast, from the 1880s too were rapidly confronted past times racist opposition. Labor too trade unions inwards item led the way, seeking to forestall Japanese settling too working inwards the United States.


Such attitudes emerged from a history of anti-Chinese sentiment; the Japanese were likewise disadvantaged due to laws that prevented them from becoming citizens (only “white” immigrants could teach citizens, dating dorsum to a 1770 law). Only the second generation (known equally Nisei), those born inwards the United States, could last citizens.

In the early on twentieth century the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst, along amongst a let on of anti-Japanese organizations, joined inwards the anti-Japanese crusade, trumpeting the “Yellow Peril.” They predicted that the Japanese would “crowd out the white race” on the West Coast.

The Japanese victory over Russia inwards the Russo-Japanese War made Nihon appear a threatening Pacific power. Further, diverse Japanese American community organizations were viewed equally sinister, too were fifty-fifty sometimes perceived equally purpose of an eventual plot to bring over the United States.

Such paranoia had existent results inwards pressuring politicians to bring stronger measures against the Japanese. An alien Earth law enacted inwards California inwards 1913 was a response to agitation that Japanese were taking over farmland too crowding out white farmers.

It was inwards practise largely ineffective, too so led to increased, rather than diminished, tensions too fears of Japanese conspiracies. The Immigration Act of 1924 hitting the Japanese especially strongly, reducing the let on of immigrants to a negligible number.

Thus, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, revealing the vulnerability of the USA too pitching it into a tearing Pacific war, in that location was already an atmosphere of mistrust too paranoia toward Japanese Americans that was arrive at to last heightened to hysteria.

There was likewise a history of racist authorities policies that, when added to the “exigencies of war” past times which too so much has frequently been justified, made the violation of commutation civil liberties acceptable. In the days next Pearl Harbor, “enemy aliens” became the target of federal too Earth authorities security measures.

The 8 Dec 1941 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle recorded the get-go roundup of “suspicious characters” too noted that the San Francisco police pull were mobilized to come across the threat of “sabotage.”

Despite protestations of loyalty from the Japanese American community, belief that they were all potential saboteurs, spies, too 5th columnists arrive at to aid a Japanese laid on on mainland America was pervasive.

By Feb 1942, many areas were barred to enemy aliens, which, the San Francisco Chronicle argued, would guard against “sabotage too other 5th column activities”; on iii Feb the paper likewise quoted California Attorney General Earl Warren, who declared “every alien Japanese should last considered inwards the calorie-free of a potential 5th columnist.”

Newspapers fomented this anti-Japanese hysteria, too along amongst a armed forces neat to utilization strong internal security measures too politicians acutely aware of the ask to response to the demands of their constituents, it was peradventure inevitable that simply about activity would last taken.

Military leaders spoke of the threat of the “fifth column”; they were likewise neat to apportion at to the lowest degree purpose of the blame for the disaster of Pearl Harbor on a Hawaiian–Japanese American 5th column.

At the same time, people similar Walter Lippmann, 1 of America’s almost respected journalists too social commentators, talked of the imminent danger of laid on from both without too inside the West Coast.

Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, caput of the Western Defense Command, sanctioned bulk searches of Japanese homes, too a system past times which Japanese Americans were forced to register too were prevented from traveling. Slowly rights were stripped from Japanese Americans.

On xiii February, a Pacific Coast congressional delegation sent President Franklin D. Roosevelt a unanimous recommendation urging “immediate evacuation of all persons of Japanese lineage,” too half-dozen days later on Roosevelt signed Exceutive Order 9066 past times which over 120,000 people, a bulk of whom were U.S. citizens, were pose into concentration camps.

There were legal appeals disceptation the unconstitutionality of these actions but petty was done. Over the remaining years of World War II, simply about groups were released too resettled inwards the East too Midwest; others were pressured to renounce their citizenship too simply about of these, along amongst simply about noncitizens, were repatriated to Japan.

The state of war years saw the culmination of a deepseated racist mistrust of Japanese Americans; the years next the state of war saw movements to terminate legal discrimination against Asian Americans, including the Japanese.

But recognition of what was done inwards World War II was slow. Ultimately, inwards Feb 1976, Gerald Ford signed Proclamation 4417, formally recognizing the events of the state of war years equally a “national mistake.”

In the 1980s, a Commission on the Wartime Relocation too Internment of Civilians reported on the events too opened the agency for redress, financial too otherwise, for the survivors.

The handling of Japanese Americans from their arrival inwards the USA until the terminate of World War II reveals how racial paranoia too fearfulness toward an ethnic grouping tin last exaggerated into a belief inwards conspiracies to undermine republic too threaten safety, too given the correct circumstances tin teach a footing for unjust actions too a threat to the really republic inwards whose bring upward these actions are invoked.

Council On Unusual Relations

Council on Foreign Relations

Founded at the closed of World War I, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an influential organization devoted to the report of unusual policy. Ever since 1952, when Emmanuel Josephson’s John Birch Society (JBS) inwards particular—have viewed the CFR equally a conspiratorial cabal amongst designs on global power.

Although the autumn of the Iron Curtain necessitated alteration to the theory of a CFR-Communist conspiracy, the JBS silent argues that the Council is genuinely a grouping of “establishment Insiders” intent on creating a socialist “One World Government.”

CFR members are good positioned for this coup, equally they tin live on found inwards the highest positions of the authorities (Henry Kissinger, George Bush, together with Bill Clinton); finance (the Rockefellers together with innumerable New York bankers); the legal Blue Planet (Supreme Court Justices O’Connor, Ginsburg, together with Breyer); together with the media (editors of the New York Times together with network tidings anchors); non to cite inwards other clandestine cabals such equally the Trilateral Commission together with the Bohemian Grove group.


According to the conspiracy theorists, contemporary political developments such equally the liberalization of global merchandise (e.g., NAFTA, GATT) together with the ascension of the United Nations are the outset steps toward the CFR’s ultimate goals: the halt of national sovereignty together with the enslavement of the entire Blue Planet nether the banner of their centralized, all-powerful “world government.” In this “New World Order,” U.S. armed forces forces volition live on employed equally oppressive agents of the global supergovernment—UN “peace-keeping” missions are simply the tip of this iceberg.

To live on fair, at that spot are a non bad many “charges” that members of the CFR would non assist to dispute, but the Council’s outlook on the New World Order is radically dissimilar from that of the JBS because of the historical context out of which the whole thought developed.

When the CFR was founded inwards 1919, Woodrow Wilson’s bespeak for a utopian international community constituted the starting betoken for many CFR members’ views on U.S. unusual policy. If World War I was to live on the “war to halt all wars,” it was essential to arrive at a novel international community that could repose the tensions betwixt nationstates earlier serious conflicts erupted.

What was needed, argued the Wilsonians, was less jingoistic nationalism together with to a greater extent than international cooperation; a displace toward creating “One World” from the divided, fractured Blue Planet of 1919 (and, indeed, since this was prior to the rabid anticommunism of the mutual coldness war, or then members thought inwards price of a “socialist” Blue Planet order, which was to locomote immensely unpopular 3 decades on).

Of course, for a multifariousness of reasons, lack of amount U.S. participation beingness one, the League of Nations never fulfilled this role, together with within a decade Europe was speedily descending into or then other era of bloodshed. The Council’s investigations into the causes of World War II exclusively reinforced the Wilsonian ideals of many members. The sectionalization of the world’s non bad powers combined amongst rampant nationalism had produced the preconditions for fascism, genocide, together with the almost amount devastation of Europe.

Council on Foreign Relations

Supporters of the CFR today would debate that the Council’s advocacy for a New World Order must live on understood inwards this context, together with that the displace toward international cooperation nether the aegis of the United Nations heralds an era of increasing peace together with prosperity rather than an Orwellian nightmare.

“Mainstream” critics together with historians of the CFR similar Robert Schulzinger (who genuinely suggests that much of the Council’s locomote is cliché-ridden together with ineffectual) debate that the Council’s ideas simply mirror the transformations brought on past times globalization, together with that to read the similarity betwixt the CFR’s ideas together with global developments equally involving a causal link is simply a mistake.

Thus, equally far equally the New World Order goes, it seems equally though ane man’s secular utopia is or then other man’s apocalypse; the sectionalization betwixt the 2 perspectives is completely unbridgeable, together with the apocalyptic side of the split is inevitably dismissed past times mainstream civilization equally “extreme.”

The accuse of elitism, however—the claim that the CFR is a network of “insiders” that shape an allpowerful East Coast “establishment”—is less easily dispelled, since the CFR is quite self-consciously elitist. The CFR argues that international relations should live on studied past times serious, dispassionate minds costless from the taint of impurities such equally nationalism.

At the outset of the mutual coldness war, for instance, George Kennan published his forthwith infamous “X” article inwards the CFR’s journal, Foreign Affairs, together with raised then much world hysteria surrounding the Soviet menace that the Council began to fearfulness that the number of U.S-Soviet relations would live on hijacked past times demagogues (and, inwards stance of what loomed on the horizon inwards McCarthyism, perchance this fearfulness was non misplaced). If the CFR is “secretive,” debate its proponents, it is because sometimes heightened world consciousness genuinely plant against the proper ends of international politics.

Even mainstream academics, however—people who would themselves no uncertainty live on designated “insiders” past times the JBS—might good debate that spell the CFR’s tillage of its status equally an elite organization may non accurately live on termed conspiratorial, it is non at all clear that it represents a positive evolution inwards U.S. political culture.

Togo

Togo is a small, narrow republic in western Africa. Slightly fewer than 22,000 square miles, with a north south distance of about 340 miles, Togo is situated between Ghana and Benin. The capital and largest city of Lomé is located on the western side of the 56 kilometer coastline on the Gulf of Guinea.

In spite o its small size, Togo’s population is diverse. There are 37 ethnic groups among its nearly 6 million people, who practice traditional religions, Christianity, and Islam. French is the official language although the African languages Ewe and Kabiyé are also taught.

Togo has one of Africa’s highest rates of population growth and highest rates of deforestation. Over two thirds of the population are engaged in agriculture and lives in areas with limited safe drinking water. In addition to other serious health problems, either HIV or AIDS results in about 10,000 deaths per year.

The slave trade was carried on in Togo during and after the 1600s. Germany made the territory the protectorate of Togoland in 1884 and during the next decade determined the permanent boundaries through agreements with France and Britain. The port city of Lomé was built by the Germans for shipment of goods from the interior.

In 1914 Germany surrendered Togoland to British and French troops. After World War I, France received Togoland in exchange for interior land granted to the British. After World War II, the United Nations gave Britain and France joint control of the territory.

In 1956 British Togo became part of the Gold Coast, which later became Ghana, while French Togo moved for independence. Under the leadership of Sylvanus Olympio, the National Union Party gained control of French Togo and refused an overture to unite with Ghana.

The United Nations granted membership to the new country in 1960. Three years later, Premier Olympio was assassinated in a military coup that installed Nicolas Grunitzky as president. A new constitution was drafted and approved by the nation.

When the army staged a second coup in 1967, the new government, headed by Étienne Eyadéma, dismissed the legislature and threw out the constitution. Eyadéma and his party, Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais (RPT, or Togolese People’s Assembly), created a new constitution.

In the elections that followed, Eyadéma was almost unanimously reelected president. On the 13th anniversary of his takeover of the government, Eyadéma announced the Third Togolese Republic. Unrest continued to plague Togo, and in 1986 France sent troops to help quell another attempted coup. Eyadéma was reelected to another seven-year term the same year.

Map of Togo

Eyadéma agreed in 1991 to work with a transitional government until general elections could be held. A national referendum in 1992 approved a new constitution. Among the provisions of the constitution were the establishment of multiparty elections and term limits for officials. In the 1993 election Eyadéma was still able to emerge as the victor for another term.

The elections resulted in a new legislature, which demanded concessions. In 1994 he appointed Edem Kodjo prime minister of a new coalition government. Nevertheless Eyadéma was reelected in 1998 and in 2003, after the legislature removed the term limits from the constitution.

When President Eyadéma died in February 2005, he was succeeded by his son Faure Gnassingbe. The succession, supported by the military but not by the constitution, was challenged by popular protest and a threat of sanctions from regional leaders. Gnassingbe easily won the elections he held in April 2005.

Marshal Tito (Josip Broz)

Josip Broz was born on May 7, 1892, and died on May 4, 1980. His life was caught up in some of the most momentous events of the 20th century. He fought in World War I, took part in the Russian Revolution, became a leader of guerrilla resistance to the German occupation of Yugoslavia, and after World War II until his death he was the leader of the country.

During this period, he defied Joseph Stalin over the communist consolidation of power in Yugoslavia. "Tito" was a pseudonym that he adopted during his underground activities, and it was with this name that he became well known during World War II.

Tito was born in the village of Kumroves, some 50 kilometers northwest of Zagreb in what was then Austria-Hungary. His native village is located in the valley of the river Sutla, which served as a boundary between Croatia and Slovenia. Tito’s father was a Croatian peasant, and his mother was Slovenian from a village across the river.

In 1907, at the age of 15, he left home and went to the town of Sisak (Croatia), where he became an apprentice to a locksmith. Tito completed his apprenticeship in 1910 and began a series of mechanic jobs, which took him to factories across central Europe.


In the autumn of 1913 Tito was called up for his military service, which he did with the 25th Croatian Territorial Infantry Regiment based in Zagreb. When Austria-Hungary attacked Serbia in July 1914, Tito, already a sergeant, was sent to fight on the Serbian front.

In January 1915 his regiment was transferred to Galicia in anticipation of a Russian offensive. There Tito was put in charge of a reconnoitering section operating behind enemy lines. However, during a Russian attack in April 1915, he was seriously wounded and taken as a prisoner of war (POW).

It was during this time that Tito began sympathizing with the ideas of Bolshevism. In June 1917 he escaped from the POW camp and made his way to Petrograd in search of work, but the suppression of Bolshevik demonstrations forced him to flee to Finland.

While attempting to cross the border he was captured and sent back to the POW camp, but he escaped on the way and arrived in Bolshevik-controlled Omsk in Siberia in autumn 1917. He enrolled in the Red Guard and applied for membership in the Communist Party.

Marshal Tito and Winston Churchill in 1944 in Naples, Italy

When the Bolsheviks retook Omsk in 1919, he started making his way back to Croatia. Tito returned to Kumrovec in October 1920, where he found that his village had become part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (changed to Yugoslavia in 1929).

Upon his return he joined the newly founded Communist Party in Zagreb and became active in the union movement. During the 1920s he worked as a mechanic in factories across Yugoslavia. In 1927 he became secretary of the Metalworkers’ Union of Croatia.

His activities brought him to the attention of the police, and in August 1928 he was arrested. Upon his release from prison in 1934 Tito resumed full-time clandestine activities for the Yugoslav Communist Party.

In February 1935 he was sent to Moscow for training with the Balkan Department of the Comintern. He stayed there until September 1936, when he was sent back to consolidate the Yugoslav party and recruit volunteers to fight in the Spanish civil war.

During 1937 the factionalism within the Yugoslav Communist Party increased, and in the atmosphere of uncertainty Tito asserted his authority by setting up an interim secretariat under his leadership. Moscow offered him provisional approval in the beginning of 1939, and Tito was officially confirmed as a secretary at a party congress in October 1940.

In April of 1941 the Axis powers invaded, occupied, and partitioned Yugoslavia, which triggered a civil war in the country. Tito formed the Partisan Army of National Liberation, which waged guerrilla war against the occupying forces. In the process Tito’s partisans also turned against rival guerrilla organizations, in particular the internationally recognized "Chetniks" of Draža Mihailovic´.

Tito and his partisans emerged victorious from the war, and, despite his promises to form a government of national unity, he immediately began consolidating his authority and establishing communist rule over the territory of Yugoslavia.

At the same time Tito was entertaining ideas of leading a Balkan federation involving Albania, Bulgaria, and potentially Greece. The prospect of a regional federation under Tito’s leadership seemed likely during 1947 and brought Tito into a direct confrontation with Stalin.

In 1948 the Yugoslav Communist Party was excluded from the Cominform (the postwar name for the Comintern), and this turned Tito into the first communist leader to break with the Soviet Union. This gave him both new international prominence and domestic appeal, which helped him consolidate his position in Yugoslavia.

In domestic affairs Tito promoted the principles of brotherhood and workers’ self-management (a form of market-oriented socialism), in parallel with his ongoing suppression of internal dissent.

His death in 1980 was a shock for the country, and the seeming stability of Yugoslavia began to crack under the strains of national factionalism. Many commentators trace the origins of the 1990s Yugoslav dissolution to Tito’s authoritarian rule.

Third World/Global South

The term Third World applies to those nations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Western Hemisphere that mostly secured independence from the imperial powers after World War II. In the cold war construct the First World, dominated by the United States, also included Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.

These nations were wealthy, highly industrialized, urban, largely secular, democratic, and had capitalist economies. The Second World consisted of the Soviet bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union.

These nations were industrialized but not as wealthy as the First World; they were secular, authoritarian, and had socialist economics. The Third World nations, consisting of two-thirds of the world’s population, were poor, rural, and agrarian, with traditional societies.


After the breakup of the Soviet bloc and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the terms no longer applied and because most of the nations of the Third World were south of the equator the term Global South came to be used as a collective label for these nations.

The gap between rich and poor nations grew in the 20th century. As the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru commented, "The poor have to run fast just to keep up". Third World countries were caught in a cycle of poverty, with low incomes and low production. After independence many became dictatorships and attempted to improve their economies, usually unsuccessfully, by adopting socialist systems on the Soviet state capitalist model.

Economists often referred to the poor developing nations as low-GDP (low Gross Domestic Product) countries, meaning they produced little in the way of goods and services. Countries in the Global South adopted a wide variety of methods to break out of the cycle of poverty.

In China Mao Zedong led a socialist revolution and mobilized the masses, but only with privatization after his death did the Chinese economy begin to take off. India, the world’s most populous democracy, adopted a capitalist approach; India also successfully applied the technology of the Green Revolution, the use of hybrid seeds to increase agricultural productivity.

At the beginning of the 20th century, India suffered major famines but by the end of the century it was exporting foodstuffs. India and many other poor nations also invested heavily in education. In Southeast Asia educated workers became the backbone of industrialization and the development of high-tech firms.

Other nations built huge development projects, such as the Aswan Dam in Egypt and the Three Gorges Dam in China. Following Western advice in the 1950s and 1960s, many Third World nations concentrated on industrialization, to the detriment of the agricultural sector. That, along with ecological changes, droughts along wide bands of Africa, civil wars, political corruption, and instability, contributed to large famines and mass starvation in many African nations.

In the Middle East oil-producing nations joined a cartel, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to gain increased revenues from their major resource. They then used the new revenues to build modern infrastructures. Kuwait was able to provide a complete welfare system from cradle to grave for its small population.

Other countries, such as the "little dragons" in Southeast Asia (Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore), attracted foreign businesses and industries. Many nations in South America and Africa also borrowed vast amounts of money from private and public Western banks, such as the World Bank, to bring much-needed capital into their countries.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also provided assistance in welfare, food, education, and healthcare. Brazil used foreign loans to create new industries and provide jobs, but it, along with many other countries, became ensnared in a web of indebtedness that was impossible to repay.

By the 1990s rich nations promised but often failed to deliver increased foreign aid and to forgive or restructure the debts of these nations, especially the poorest in Africa. Other nations had some modest successes in adopting appropriate technology to establish small, inexpensive grassroots projects.

Population growth also contributed to economic problems. In Kenya the population doubled every 18 years and in Egypt every 26 years, compared to every 92 in the United States. By 2000 the world’s population had exceeded 6 billion, from 1 billion in 1800. It was expected to reach 9 billion by 2054.

In poor countries high infant mortality contributed to the desire to have many children in hopes that at least some would survive to adulthood and be able to care for their parents, especially their mothers, in their old age. To limit its population China adopted a draconian one-child policy and strictly enforced it through its totalitarian system.

India adopted numerous approaches in attempts to limit population growth; these were often accepted by urban elites, but peasants continued to value large families. In societies where women had low status, having children, especially boys, brought status and the hope of some security.

The educational status of many improved, and literacy rates improved, although in many countries boys enjoyed higher rates of education than girls. While programs to empower women were often successful, they were also resisted by traditional and religious leaders.

Women’s work continued to be undervalued and underpaid. Child labor was yet another problem. Globalization and privatization in the late 20th century actually caused some nations to become poorer as prices for agricultural goods and raw materials dropped.

In some Global South nations, such as India, a few people became millionaires, but most remained desperately poor. In the 1990s, incomes in 54 nations actually declined, and in Zimbabwe life expectancy fell from 56 to 331, compared to over 80 in the United States and Japan. Disease, especially AIDS, contributed to further economic and social problems, particularly in many southern African countries.

At the 2000 Millennium Summit, world leaders agreed to institute programs aimed at cutting in half the number of people living on under $1 a day and at halving the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015. Five years later the commitments of the donor nations, especially the United States, had fallen short of the promises made, and it remained uncertain whether the goals would be met.

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.

Lyndon Larouche

Lyndon LaRouche

Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr., has had a long as well as controversial career on the fringes of U.S. politics—running several times for president inwards the 1970s, 1980s, as well as 1990s—and equally the founder as well as leader of a cultlike political organisation that subscribes to a host of conspiracy theories that defy categorization equally left or correct wing.

Born inwards New Hampshire to French Canadian immigrant parents inwards 1922, LaRouche was raised equally a Quaker, the liberal organized religious belief to which both his woman parent (a sometime evangelical Protestant) as well as his begetter (born a Roman Catholic) had converted.

LaRouche’s begetter never got along with the pacifist Quakers as well as had a falling out with the church’s political wing—the American Friends Service Committee—over only about embezzled funds. Both the father’s combativeness as well as his alleged fiscal misdeeds would hold upwards repeated inwards the son’s afterward political career.


While LaRouche the younger attended, but did non graduate from, Northeastern University, he was largely an autodidact, delving deeply into the works of the groovy philosophers. He was, he afterward claimed, especially taken with the moral reasoning of Immanuel Kant.

True to his Quaker roots, LaRouche was assigned to a Civilian Public Service campsite for conscientious objectors during World War II. Following the conflict, he drifted toward the Trotskyist left, joining the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) inwards 1948.

While a dedicated organizer for the political party for to a greater extent than than xv years, LaRouche eventually had a falling-out with his swain Trotskyists inwards 1966, going on to organize a chapter of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), a Maoist-leaning group.

The PLP chapter, which included many sometime members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a radical, anti–Vietnam War movement, became involved inwards the radical takeover of Columbia University inwards 1968. In the wake of the sit-in, LaRouche organized the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), ostensibly to utilization a political alliance betwixt educatee activists as well as task organizers, out of the collapsing SDS.

During the early on 1970s, LaRouche as well as the NCLC fought bitter sectarian fights with the SWP as well as the Communist Party of the U.S.A. (CPUSA) that occasionally became violent. The destination was command of the far left motility inwards New York and, inwards this struggle, LaRouche began to educate the ii tactics that would score his futurity political career. The outset was smear tactics, the careful planting of outlandish rumors as well as stories virtually political enemies.

LaRouche would afterward become on to assault the personal reputations of widely disparate populace figures from sometime secretarial assistant of nation Henry Kissinger to liberal Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner. The 2nd was hear control. Beginning inwards 1973, LaRouche established mandatory “ego-stripping” sessions for all NCLC chapters, where psychological humiliation was employed to bind members to the organization.

Along with the psychological manipulation came indoctrination inwards the LaRouche worldview, which combined diverse conspiracy theories with a cult-like belief inwards the leadership as well as genius of LaRouche himself. LaRouche’s conspiracy theory was global inwards scope. In it, humanity was essentially divided into 3 camps: the “oligarchs,” the “sub-humans,” as well as the “humanists.”

The oligarchs were those who secretly manipulated basis events; the sub-humans were the vast bulk of humanity who had no thought what was going on; as well as the humanists—the followers of LaRouche—were those nobly fighting to disclose the oligarchs.

As LaRouche drifted from left to correct as well as dorsum again, the composition of the oligarchs was broad ranging as well as included, alongside other institutions, the United Nations, the National Council of Churches, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, as well as the British majestic family, the latter largely responsible, argued LaRouche, for the basis drug trade.

In addition, LaRouche pointed an accusing finger at to a greater extent than traditional targets of U.S. conspiratorial thinking— the Trilateralists, the Federal Reserve Board, as well as the Zionist movement. If the objects of LaRouche’s conspiratorial thinking ranged widely, their aim was simple: genocide.

As LaRouche had it, the aim of the oligarchs is to cut basis population to nether 1 billion then they tin ship away thereby to a greater extent than easily proceed their domain over the planet. Even equally LaRouche was formulating his conspiratorial worldview, his organization—the NCLC had spun off the U.S. Labor Party (USLP) inwards 1971—was delving into electoral politics.

In 1976, its peak year, the USLP ran 140 candidates inwards 21 states—including LaRouche for president—but solely received a paltry 154,000 votes. Disbanding the political party inwards 1978, LaRouche as well as his followers—now numbering several hundred—began conducting a “stealth” get within the Democratic Party.

In 1986, LaRouche followers took the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor as well as secretarial assistant of nation inwards Illinois. Denounced yesteryear the caput of their ticket—Democratic gubernatorial candidate Adlai Stevenson III—both candidates lost, however.

The large sums of coin LaRouche spent on politicking—including expensive nationally run commercials for his presidential candidacies inwards the 1980s—came from several sources. One was intelligence gathering. LaRouche’s publication, Executive Intelligence Review, with its mix of officially leaked tidings as well as insider scuttlebutt, was widely subscribed to inwards Reagan-era Washington.

H5N1 2nd source of coin came from LaRouche’s followers themselves. As with many, to a greater extent than religiously oriented cults, LaRouche acolytes—many of whom were college graduates as well as immature professionals—were required to attain their worldly assets as well as alive lives of penury for the skillful of the organization.

Last, the LaRouche organisation operated a right-wing boiler room fund-raising performance that would frequently play on the fears of elderly Americans who were told that solely LaRouche as well as his organisation stood betwixt the the States as well as a triumphant oligarchy.

It was this concluding tactic that ultimately brought virtually the downfall of LaRouche as well as his organization. In social club to back upwards their leader’s political career as well as increasingly lavish lifestyle, operatives began to engage inwards credit carte du jour fraud, running upwards huge bills on the cards of elderly citizens who had donated money.

In 1986, federal agents raided LaRouche’s estate as well as headquarters inwards Virginia. Despite beingness on trial for postal service fraud as well as other crimes inwards 1988, LaRouche also managed to run for president in 1 trial again, equally he would utilization from prison theater inwards 1992.

Ailing, LaRouche was released from the Federal Medical Center inwards 1993. While his organization remains a shadow of its sometime self, LaRouche has continued his political career, running for the presidency inwards 1996 as well as 2000.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was one of the most eloquent 20th-century voices for religion in an increasingly secular world. As a distinguished paleontologist and a Jesuit priest, he tried to synthesize evolutionary science with the incarnation of Christ.

His ideas were new, speculative, and bold enough to figure into deliberations as diverse as the founding of the United Nations and the formulation of several Vatican Council documents. Even today his name is cited for a spiritual perspective on the convergence of human communication due to the Internet.

He was born in France into a devout Catholic family of 11 children in 1881. His father was an intellectual and a farmer, and his mother was a great-grand-niece of Voltaire. Teilhard’s father provided his son a keen interest in science, and his mother an inclination toward mysticism.

He received a top-notch Jesuit education and entered their novitiate aktivitas by 1899. By 1911 he was ordained a priest after doing assignments in England and Egypt. World War I interrupted further studies in geology, and he saw action on the front lines. His close calls with death prompted him to consider a more speculative approach to science.


After the war he brilliantly defended his doctorate at the Sorbonne in 1922. Soon thereafter he accepted the chair of the geology department at the Institut Catholique. From this platform he now began to publicize ideas about the synthesis of science and religion, and the resulting controversy cost him his license at the Institut and forced him abroad to do his research and study.

For almost the rest of his career he lived abroad, almost as in a self-imposed exile. Most of that time he spent in China (1926–46), and there he collaborated with the Chinese Geological Survey and helped to discover the Peking Man skull. He wrote his important books, The Divine Milieu and The Human Phenomenon, during these years.

For one brief time after World War II he returned to France, but the Jesuits refused to allow him to take an academic position lest he receive more critical scrutiny. He was banned from lecturing in public or publishing his writings. He decided to go to New York in 1951. Lonely and suffering, he died on Easter Sunday, 1955, and is buried in a Jesuit cemetery there.

From a scientific point of view it is difficult to establish the methodology and provability of Teilhard’s ideas. He has clearly advanced the fields of geology, stratigraphy, and paleontology, with a supreme competence in the areas of China and the Far East. However, his dominant interest and the source of his infamy was in "anthropogenesis", a new study focusing on the evolutionary position of humanity.

He proposed that evolution had entered a new phase with the emergence of humanity, whereby complexity and consciousness converged and spiritualized evolution. The selesai development of humanity he termed the "Omega Point", and he connected this perfection with Christ.

In 1962 the Catholic Church issued a warning against the uncritical acceptance of Teilhard’s theories, though it did not question his scientific contributions or his integrity of faith. The best way of categorizing his unsystematized though eloquent speculation is as process theology, or perhaps even as a form of Christian pantheism.

Meriwether Lewis

Meriwether Lewis

The swell explorer furnishes perhaps the earliest representative of what became a swell American tradition: the dearest celebrity whose ignominious, untimely decease spawned conspiracy theories intended to restore unopen to of the hero’s dignity.

Lewis’s apparent suicide at a remote inn off the Natchez Trace inwards Oct 1809, when he was only thirty-five years old, ignited a tardily simmering cauldron of choice explanations. By the conspiracy-happy 1990s, these included assassination past times agents of General James Wilkinson, with a cover-up orchestrated past times Thomas Jefferson himself.

Background

H5N1 soldier past times occupation, the Virginia-born Lewis was Jefferson’s individual secretarial assistant for a fourth dimension earlier achieving international fame past times successfully leading an expedition to the Pacific together with dorsum betwixt 1803 together with 1806.


Firming upwardly the U.S. claim to the just-completed Louisiana Purchase together with laying the groundwork for subsequently expansion into the Pacific Northwest spell also bringing dorsum a wealth of scientific information, Lewis together with his colleague William Clark became the novel nation’s initiative off existent celebrities, likely surpassing many of the founders themselves. President Jefferson rewarded his protégé with an appointment equally governor of the Louisiana Territory he had simply explored, a postal service that Jefferson regarded equally the second-highest inwards the land.

Despite his sense equally Jefferson’s presidential “staff,” Lewis was no politician, together with found his post-expedition life deeply disappointing. Delaying his movement to the territorial uppercase for almost a year, Lewis searched for a married adult woman together with planned to issue the journals of the expedition, but never managed to larn either projection off the ground.

Once ensconced at St. Louis, Lewis performed terribly equally territorial governor, clashing with to a greater extent than experienced politicians similar Territorial Secretary Frederick Bates, who called his superior “a large baby,” together with getting the affairs of his purpose muddled plenty to have got unopen to expenditures rejected past times the War Department. In September 1809, Lewis ready out on a trip to Washington to clear his bring upwardly together with consider his publishers.

Southern Death Trip

The trip did non go real well. Although conspiracy theorists indicate out that footling was said of it spell Lewis was alive, Jefferson, William Clark, together with others admitted after his decease that the novel governor had developed serious psychological problems, including intense, habitual hypochondria, for which Lewis oftentimes medicated himself; a terrible drinking problem; together with what nosotros would telephone phone today depression. Alcoholism was a mutual affliction inwards the frontier state of war machine together with seems to have got worsened inwards Lewis’s representative nether the stress of his political together with personal failures.

Only ii hundred miles into the journey, downriver from St. Louis at New Madrid, Lewis had to live taken ashore from his boat together with treated for unopen to real, imagined, or self-induced illness. He made out his concluding volition together with testament together with only reembarked on the voyage when earthquakes broke out inwards the area, leading his fearful valet to have got his master copy set dorsum on the boat.

At his side past times side port of call, Fort Pickering nigh present-day Memphis, Lewis arrived inwards a nation of “mental derangement,” inebriated together with suicidal. The fort commander, Major Gilbert Russell, had Lewis removed from his boat together with detained him for ii weeks, restricting his alcohol intake to “claret together with a footling white wine” together with posting guards to forbid the explorer from doing violence to himself.

Lewis recovered his senses together with promised never to bear upon intoxicants again. He borrowed money together with horses from Russell, together with ready out for Washington overland, via the Natchez Trace, on 29 September 1809.

Apparently Lewis barbarous off the railroad vehicle rather rapidly during his concluding journey. His traveling companion after Fort Pickering, Indian agent James Neelly, found him “deranged” 1 time again equally they crossed the Chickasaw Nation, where they had to halt together with allow Lewis residual for ii days.

Shortly after, Neelly brought the suspicion of generations of conspiracy theorists on himself past times going after unopen to lost horses together with sending Lewis on alone, planning to run into 50 miles farther upwardly the Trace, at the abode of a white identify unit of measurement that accommodated travelers inwards a identify called Grinder’s Stand inwards present-day Lewis County, Tennessee.

Lewis appeared at the Grinder (also spelled Griner) business solid on the eve of 10 Oct 1809, together with though the accounts of what happened at that spot differ inwards unopen to particulars, all concord that the governor was inwards a highly agitated nation of mind. Priscilla Griner, the lady of the business solid together with the only witness to give testimony, remembered Lewis pacing dorsum together with forth inwards the room where he was lodged talking loudly to himself “like a lawyer.”

In the wee hours of eleven October, Griner heard ii pistol shots but was also frightened to investigate. Through the cracks inwards the log building, however, she saw that Lewis had blasted away component subdivision of his ain skull, shot himself inwards the side, together with also tried to cutting his ain pharynx with a razor, but none of it was plenty to convey immediate death.

Cowering with her children, Griner heard the explorer quest for H2O but ignored his pleas out of fright together with saw him crawl off moaning. There are several variations of Lewis’s concluding words, but 1 appropriate remark recurs: “How difficult it is to die.”

Conspiracy Theories

Few questions were raised nigh Lewis’s decease at the time, but offset inwards the 1840s, stories began to circulate that he was murdered, specially inwards Tennessee. Even then, according to historian Dawson A. Phelps, the storey did non have much world comment for unopen to other one-half century, past times which fourth dimension the murder interpretation had larn an established tradition with the locals together with the Lewis family. From the 1890s on, it began to have occasional endorsements from Lewis together with Clark scholars.

Even this tradition was non necessarily a conspiracy theory. Those distraught past times the pathfinder’s poor terminate may have got taken comfort inwards the thought of murder-not-suicide, but the few concrete ideas they circulated nigh who mightiness have got killed him or why were vague together with rather mundane inwards nature.

The leading explanation was Lewis had been killed past times robbers, perhaps his ain retainer Pernier. The prove for a conspiracy or fifty-fifty murder is sparse to nonexistent, resting largely on legend, rumors generations removed from the source, together with the willing disbelief of subsequently admirers that the swell human being could have got been capable of such degrading together with desperate behavior.

Some have got fingered lone eyewitness Priscilla Griner equally an accomplice who lied to encompass upwardly for her supposedly absent hubby Robert together with unknown others. The legends tell of Robert existence tried for murder but acquitted for lack of evidence.

It is sure as shooting truthful that Mrs. Griner’s credibility equally a witness is less than total, but that truly undermines the conspiracy theory further. Priscilla embroidered her original storey for an interviewer twenty-nine years after Lewis’s death, adding stuff that made the events hold off to a greater extent than suspicious.

Her subsequently business organization human relationship included the claim that ii men came to the business solid looking for lodging together with quarreled with Lewis, along with other conspiratorial details: 3 shots instead of two, pregnant that Lewis’s ii pistols (the sort that had to live loaded after each shot) could non have got done the job; together with an apparent central of vesture betwixt Lewis together with his retainer sometime inwards the night.

The most thoroughgoing Lewis conspiracy theory was propounded past times muckraking pop historian (and Pulitzer Prize winner) David Leon Chandler inwards his 1994 book, The Jefferson Conspiracies. Departing from the commons practice, Chandler endorsed Mrs. Griner’s revised 1838 business organization human relationship inwards full, together with surmised that Lewis was murdered spell trying to escape inwards his servant’s clothes, mayhap past times or with the assist of his quondam companion Neelly.

As the championship of the majority made obvious, Chandler was eager to live the Woodward together with Bernstein of the early on American commonwealth together with describe the murder all the agency dorsum to the White House, or at to the lowest degree Monticello.

Recounting the history of the Aaron Burr conspiracy together with the treasonous activities of General Wilkinson (a Castilian spy together with Burr crony equally good equally the ranking official inwards the frontier army), Chandler theorized that Lewis carried unopen to sort of prove against Wilkinson together with was hunted downwardly past times the general’s henchmen, who thus fabricated the tales of drunkenness together with suicide that became the official interpretation.

Chandler was able to give Jefferson himself only a modest purpose inwards the titular conspiracies. His major accusation was that the just-retired president helped forestall farther investigation past times accepting the suicide explanation also rapidly together with lending acceptance to the thought that Lewis was an alcoholic.

Jefferson’s alleged motive was to avoid exposing Wilkinson, whose integrity Jefferson had publicly certified past times maintaining him inwards an of import state of war machine postal service together with past times using him equally the star authorities witness inwards Aaron Burr’s recent treason trial.

Although Jefferson’s confidence inwards Wilkinson was politically calculated together with extremely misplaced, Chandler’s theories take hold real footling water. Resting the crux of his declaration on the half-hearted nature of the investigation, he echoed the modern assassination conspiracy literature, but begged the query of what sort of investigation could mayhap have got been conducted at thus remote a location at such an early on date.

If 1 accepts the far-fetched premise of hired political assassins stalking the American woods inwards 1809, to kill a national hero, thus Lewis’s best friend together with boyfriend explorer, William Clark, also has to live included inwards the conspiracy. No human being knew Lewis, got along with him better, or respected him more, but Clark accepted the official business organization human relationship simply equally readily equally Jefferson.

The “Jefferson conspiracy” against Meriwether Lewis is best considered equally anachronistic speculation that tells us to a greater extent than nigh late-twentieth-century pop civilization than it does nigh Lewis or Jefferson.

Taiwan (Republic of China)

The Nationalist (Kuomintang, or KMT) government of the Republic of China (ROC) lost the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan, an island province that had been seized by Japan in 1895 and returned to China after World War II.

About 2 million people from mainland China fled to Taiwan, joining about 6 million people who had earlier migrated to the island, mainly from the Fujian (Fukien) province across the Taiwan Strait.

Chiang Kai-shek, who was elected president of China under the constitution in 1947 and who had stepped down in 1949, resumed his presidency in 1950. He was reelected president four more times and died in 1975. Chiang ruled Taiwan in an authoritarian manner and invoked martial law because of the threat of invasion from the communist-ruled People’s Republic of China (PRC).

With the failure of the George Marshall mission to mediate the Chinese civil war, the United States became a bystander in the Chinese conflict until the invasion of Communist North Korea (later aided by "volunteers" from the PRC) of pro-Western South Korea in 1950.


The U.S. Seventh Fleet then began to patrol the Taiwan Strait to prevent a PRC invasion of Taiwan, and in 1952 the United States and the ROC signed a Mutual Defense Treaty (ended in 1979), which provided protection for Taiwan.

By 1954 Chiang’s government had completed a successful equitable land reform that transferred ownership to cultivators. Resource-poor Taiwan relied on social and educational reforms to produce a literate citizenry. U.S. economic aid helped to reform all aspects of the economy so that an even greater rate of growth became possible when it ended in 1964.

Industrial development began with labor-intensive light industries that capitalized on a literate workforce. Infrastructure building allowed the economy to shift to heavy, and later high technology, industries.

In 1978 the National Assembly elected Chiang Ching-kuo (son of Chiang Kai-shek) president; he was reelected in 1984 and died in 1989. Chiang Ching-kuo accelerated the rapid economic development of Taiwan, called an economic miracle by the rest of the world. He began political reforms that ended martial law, granted freedom of the press, and allowed opposition political parties.

The Chiang "dynasty" ended with Chiang Ching-kuo’s death (he had disavowed succession by his family members), and he was followed by his vice president, Lee Teng-hui. Lee continued democratization and won two more terms, the second by a universal suffrage vote (rather than election by the National Assembly) under an amended constitution.

In the 2000 election, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party candidate won the presidency. Taiwan thus added to its accomplishments the "political miracle" of a peaceful transformation from one-party rule to multiparty democracy without violence.

With a population of 23 million, it continued to be one of the most advanced and prosperous nations in Asia. However, Taiwan’s political future remained unclear because of the PRC’s stated goal of national unification, by force if necessary.