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Gang Of Four (pro-Contra)
In the U.S. political history of the 1980s, the Gang of Four refers to Bernard W. Aronson, Bruce P. Cameron, Robert S. Leiken, and Penn Kemble, four advocates of U.S. Congressional funding for the Nicaraguan Contras, who were engaged in an armed campaign in opposition to the Sandinista government, during the Reagan presidency. The four were prominent policy analysts and activists in the U.S. Democratic Party. Background During the 1980s in Nicaragua, the Contras were engaged in an armed campaign against the Sandinista government. In the beginning, the Contras consisted largely of former members of the National Guard of Somoza, the dictator who had been overthrown in the 1979 Revolution. The Contras were joined also by former revolutionaries who had turned against the Sandinista policies; a third source of personnel were farmers angered by the Sandinista land reform and American Indians. In response, several Miskito groups eventually formed guerrilla groups in the 1980s, whic ...
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Bernard W
Bernard (''Bernhard'') is a French and West Germanic masculine given name. It is also a surname. The name is attested from at least the 9th century. West Germanic ''Bernhard'' is composed from the two elements ''bern'' "bear" and ''hard'' "brave, hardy". Its native Old English reflex was ''Beornheard'', which was replaced by the French form ''Bernard'' that was brought to England after the Norman Conquest. The name ''Bernhard'' was notably popular among Old Frisian speakers. Its wider use was popularized due to Saint Bernhard of Clairvaux (canonized in 1174). Bernard is the second most common surname in France. Geographical distribution As of 2014, 42.2% of all known bearers of the surname ''Bernard'' were residents of France (frequency 1:392), 12.5% of the United States (1:7,203), 7.0% of Haiti (1:382), 6.6% of Tanzania (1:1,961), 4.8% of Canada (1:1,896), 3.6% of Nigeria (1:12,221), 2.7% of Burundi (1:894), 1.9% of Belgium (1:1,500), 1.6% of Rwanda (1:1,745), 1.2% of Germany ( ...
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Rio Coco
River Wangki in Miskitu or Río Coco, in Spanish, formerly known as the Río Segovia, Cape River, or Yara River, is a river located on the border of northern Nicaragua and southern Honduras. It is the longest river that runs entirely within the Central American isthmus with a total length of . The river originates in the Somoto Canyon National Monument, near where the Pan American Highway crosses into Nicaragua, and flows through low mountainous terrain into the Caribbean Sea at Cabo Gracias a Dios; the middle and lower reaches form the Honduras-Nicaragua border. On September 7, 2007, major international news wires reported that the Río Coco was over above normal stage, two days after category 5 Hurricane Felix made landfall. Location See also *Honduras–Nicaragua border *List of rivers of the Americas This is a list of rivers of the Americas, it includes major historical or physiological significant rivers of the Americas grouped by region where they are loc ...
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The New Republic
''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in humanitarian and moral passion and one based in an ethos of scientific analysis". Through the 1980s and 1990s, the magazine incorporated elements of the Third Way and conservatism. In 2014, two years after Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes purchased the magazine, he ousted its editor and attempted to remake its format, operations, and partisan stances, provoking the resignation of the majority of its editors and writers. In early 2016, Hughes announced he was putting the magazine up for sale, indicating the need for "new vision and leadership". The magazine was sold in February 2016 to Win McCormack, under whom the publication has returned to a more progressive stance. A weekly or near-weekly for most of its history, the magazine currently pu ...
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Solidarity (Polish Trade Union)
Solidarity ( pl, „Solidarność”, ), full name Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity" (, abbreviated ''NSZZ „Solidarność”'' ), is a Polish trade union founded in August 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland. Subsequently, it was the first independent trade union in a Warsaw Pact country to be recognised by the state. The union's membership peaked at 10 million in September 1981, representing one-third of the country's working-age population. Solidarity's leader Lech Wałęsa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and the union is widely recognised as having played a central role in the end of Communist rule in Poland. In the 1980s, Solidarity was a broad anti-authoritarian social movement, using methods of civil resistance to advance the causes of workers' rights and social change. Government attempts in the early 1980s to destroy the union through the imposition of martial law in Poland and the use of political repression failed. Operati ...
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Tip O'Neill
Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill Jr. (December 9, 1912 – January 5, 1994) was an American politician who served as the 47th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1987, representing northern Boston, Massachusetts, as a Democrat from 1953 to 1987. The only Speaker to serve for five complete consecutive Congresses, he is the third longest-serving Speaker in American history after Sam Rayburn and Henry Clay in terms of total tenure and longest-serving in terms of continuous tenure (Rayburn and Clay served multiple terms in the Speakership). Born in North Cambridge, Massachusetts, O'Neill began campaigning at a young age, volunteering for Al Smith's campaign in the 1928 presidential election. After graduating from Boston College, O'Neill won election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he became a strong advocate of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies. He became Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1949 and ...
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Speaker Of The United States House Of Representatives
The speaker of the United States House of Representatives, commonly known as the speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives. The office was established in 1789 by Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. The speaker is the political and parliamentary leader of the House and is simultaneously its presiding officer, ''de facto'' leader of the body's majority party, and the institution's administrative head. Speakers also perform various other administrative and procedural functions. Given these several roles and responsibilities, the speaker usually does not personally preside over debates. That duty is instead delegated to members of the House from the majority party. Nor does the speaker regularly participate in floor debates. The Constitution does not require the speaker to be an incumbent member of the House of Representatives, although every speaker thus far has been. The speaker is second in the United States president ...
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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ...
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Daniel Ortega
José Daniel Ortega Saavedra (; born 11 November 1945) is a Nicaraguans, Nicaraguan revolutionary and politician serving as President of Nicaragua since 2007. Previously he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as coordinator of the Junta of National Reconstruction (1979–1985) and then as President of Nicaragua (1985–1990). In the 1984 Nicaraguan general election, Ortega won Nicaragua's presidential election as the FSLN's candidate. A Marxist–Leninist, Ortega pursued a program of nationalization, land reform, wealth redistribution, and the Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign during his first period in office. A leader in the Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN), he implemented policies to achieve leftist reforms across Nicaragua. In later years, Ortega's left-wing radical politics cooled significantly, leading him to pursue pro-business policies and even rapprochement with the Catholic Church. This was followed i ...
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Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975, after having a career in entertainment. Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois. He graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and began to work as a sports announcer in Iowa. In 1937, Reagan moved to California, where he found Ronald Reagan filmography, work as a film actor. From 1947 to 1952, Reagan served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild, working to Hollywood blacklist, root out alleged communist influence within it. In the 1950s, he moved to a career in television and became a spokesman for General Electric. From 1959 to 1960, he again served as the guild's president. In 1964, his speech "A Time for Choosing" earned him national attention as a new conservative figure. Building a network of supporters, Reagan was 1966 Califo ...
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Boland Amendment
The Boland Amendment is a term describing three U.S. legislative amendments between 1982 and 1984, all aimed at limiting U.S. government assistance to the Contras in Nicaragua. The first Boland Amendment was part of the House Appropriations Bill of 1982, which was attached as a rider to the Defense Appropriations Act of 1983, named for the Massachusetts Democrat, Representative Edward Boland, who authored it. The House of Representatives passed the Defense Appropriations Act 411–0 on December 8, 1982, and it was signed by President Ronald Reagan on December 21, 1982. The amendment outlawed U.S. assistance to the Contras for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government, while allowing assistance for other purposes. Beyond restricting overt U.S. support of the Contras, the most significant effect of the Boland Amendment was the Iran–Contra affair, during which the Reagan Administration circumvented the Amendment, without consent of Congress, in order to continue s ...
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Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and performing covert actions. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. President Harry S. Truman had created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is a ...
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Nicaraguan Democratic Force
The Nicaraguan Democratic Force (', or FDN) was one of the earliest Contra groups, formed on August 11, 1981 in Guatemala City. It was formed to oppose Nicaragua's revolutionary Sandinista government following the 1979 overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. It merged the 15th of September Legion, which comprised mostly former members of Somoza's National Guard, with the Nicaraguan Democratic Union, an organization of émigrés from the business and professional classes. The new FDN also began assimilating the MILPAS movement, bands led by disenchanted former MAP-ML guerrillas. The FDN military was under the command of former National Guard colonel Enrique Bermúdez. The FDN was heavily backed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Reagan administration. Famous commanders These are some of the FDN's better-known ''comandantes'': *Suicida – ''Pedro Pablo Ortiz Centeno''. Former Guard sergeant, operated in the Jalapa area. Legendary for his eagerness for battle, but never fu ...
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