In 1991, the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Authority (TLLRWDA) began searching for a disposal site for dangerous toxic waste in the Hudspeth County area. According to the 1983 La Paz agreement, Hudspeth County falls in a no-contamination zone surrounding the Mexican border. Regardless, the TLLRWDA selected Sierra Blanca, a small low-income town in an environmentally fragile region.
Liechtenstein is a small country between Switzerland and Austria with a population of approximately 35,000. After World War II, Liechtenstein’s economy was in shambles. The government, a constitutional monarchy currently under the rule of Prince Hans-Adam II, implemented low corporate taxes in order to draw companies into the country. As a result, Liechtenstein currently has the second highest gross domestic product per capita in the world and has more registered companies than citizens. However, the international community has identified Liechtenstein as a tax haven
Swaziland borders South Africa and has a population of about one million. At the time of the campaign Swaziland had the world’s highest HIV infection rate and was both one of the poorest nations in the world and the home of Africa’s last absolute monarchy. While King Mswati III was a largely popular figure in Swaziland, he angered Swazis with his lavish lifestyle and high number of wives. Between 2000 and 2010, activists worked to promote a democratic government.
On Thursday, October 9, Montenegro announced its official recognition of the independent country of Kosovo, a breakaway province of Serbia. Four separate opposition political parties worked in conjunction and called for a protest in response to the recognition. They declared that the government's decision to recognize Kosovo was illegal. Reports say that on Monday, October 13, approximately 10,000 protestersappeared at the rally.
Over a period of two months in 2009, Saint Lucia prison officers organized a petition and a sick-in to protest the return of a former Director of Prisons. Hillary Herman had voluntarily left his position as Director of Prisons in 2008 (after a 7-year stay in the position). Most of the prison officers at Bordelais corrections facility in St. Lucia did not want Herman to come back. They found his strict methods to be inefficient and unfair.
Benin gained its independence from France in 1960 and was then named Dahomey. Colonel Mathieu Kérékou took power of the country in a coup in 1972 and later renamed the country the People’s Republic of Benin, organized the economy under a Marxist-Leninist ideology, and outlawed all political parties except his People’s Revolutionary Party of Benin. By the 1980s, Kérékou remained as the president of Benin, but the economy was failing. The government had to lower government aid to students and the salaries for civil servants and in 1988 the state owned banks crashed. Fa
Turks and Caicos is a British Territory of 8 islands in the Caribbean with a formal population of approximately 15,000, mostly descendants of African slaves. England appoints a Governor to the island for a minimum of three years, but the islands also have their own local government, a legislative council of 13 ministers. Because of their geographic location, the islands are a convenient stop in drug smuggling to the United States. The drug trade through the Islands climaxed in 1985, when U.S. authorities caught a native official bringing drugs to the United States.
For approximately two years, beginning in June 2008 and ending in 2010, churchgoers in the Cook Islands protested airplane flights taking place on Sundays. The protesters viewed Sunday as the day of rest but many local businesses retorted, saying that Sunday flights were crucial for the economy. The protesters’ ultimate goal was to ban all flights from taking off and landing (specifically on the island of Aitutaki) on Sundays.
Beginning in the late 1970s, women in Chuuk, one of the
states of the Federated States of Micronesia, stepped forward to protest the
abuse of alcohol. The women’s
campaign challenged traditional restrictions on women’s autonomy.
The women acted after a drunken brawl occurred in early 1977
between young men from Weno, an island municipality of Chuuk, and Wonei
Island. In response, the district
administrator called an emergency meeting and women from Fin Anisi, a religious
group attended.
In El Salvador in 1998, the Inter-American Development Bank, a branch of the World Bank, approved a loan for a reform program directed at the nation’s water sector. The loan focused on a program based on decentralization and privatization of El Salvador’s water systems. 36 million dollars of the loan was designated specifically for the promotion of private sector participation in the decentralization program.
By 1989, Bulgaria’s Communist Party Leader Todor Zhivkov had ruled the country for 35 years through a constitutionally sanctioned single-party government. Zhivkov and the communist Politburo had always quickly repressed any opposition and independent unions or organizations were illegal in the country. In the late 1980s Zhivkov and his regime had also begun an assimilation program for Muslims and ethnic Turks, which had forced nearly 300,000 Turks to leave Bulgaria in 1989 to avoid persecution. At the same time, however, reforms were sweeping through Eastern Europe as prot
After the United States dropped the first atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the initial shock of the weapons’ destructive power wore off, many countries became interested in developing electricity based off of the nuclear technology. Along with the exciting new possibilities that always accompany new technology, nuclear fission carried with it a whole host of dangerous challenges as well.
On April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon, a drilling rig located in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded. The explosion killed 11 individuals who worked on the rig and resulted in an underwater oil leak which authorities were unable to plug for three months. The oil washed ashore across the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, threatening wildlife and local economy alike.
At the beginning of April 1961, after nearly seven years of war in Algeria as France tried to maintain its control there, French President Charles de Gaulle announced that he would begin negotiations with the Algerian nationalists and soon relinquish control of the colony. At the time France had approximately 500,000 soldiers stationed in Algeria and very few remaining at home. Several of the generals in Algeria, however, did not want to concede to the Algerian nationalists.
Gibraltar is a small piece of land on the southwestern tip of Spain, yet has been the territory of Britain since the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Spain has been attempting to get Gibraltar back since then, causing tension between the two countries. Gibraltar wished to remain British.
Beginning in early 2007, foreign workers in the Northern Mariana Islands (mainly Saipan, the most populated of the islands) campaigned for the United States government to take control of the Islands' immigration policy. The Northern Mariana Islands are located in the Western Pacific, in the region of Japan and the Philippines.
Prior to Iran’s revolution in 1979, women gained many rights that were retracted after the revolution concluded. Campaigns for women’s rights since the revolution have not sought additional rights, but wished to maintain the rights women had already earned. One such campaign was the One Million Signatures campaign, which aimed to persuade the Majles (parliament) to reform gender-discriminatory laws. The campaign also looked to educate citizens, and particularly women, about the negative impact of these laws on the lives of women and society as a whole.
On January 14 1993, the Essential Industries Dispute Settlement Board (EIDSB) agreed to a ruling regarding a dispute between Bermudian hotel workers and hoteliers. Hotel workers, represented by the Bermuda Industrial Union (BIU), claimed that they were owed over $1 million in tips from the hoteliers. The hoteliers, members of the Hotel Employers of Bermuda (HEB), argued that the hotel workers hadn’t properly requested compensation for the tips. The EIDSB’s initial ruling was characterized by ambiguous wording and as a result, both parties interpreted the ruling to be in their favor.
@font-face {
font-family: "Cambria";
In Burkina Faso from December 1998 through September 2001, protesters demonstrated against the government’s supposed cover-up of journalist Norbert Zongo’s homicide. Prior to his death, Zongo, a prominent writer for an independent magazine, was known for his criticisms of the government with regards to its policy of impunity (that is, perpetrators of violent crimes are neither taken to court nor punished).
In the fall of 1964, student activists at the University of California at Berkeley set up information tables on campus and solicited donations for civil rights causes. However, according to existing rules at that time, fundraising for political parties was limited exclusively to the Democratic and Republican school clubs. On September 16, 1964, Dean of Students Katherine A.
Late seminal gay artist David Wojnarowicz created video work “A Fire in My Belly” as an expression of his outrage at the 1980’s AIDS epidemic, his own AIDS diagnosis, and the death of his lover and mentor, Peter Hujar. Curator Jonathon Katz included “A Fire in My Belly” in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery show, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, in Washington, DC.
Across much of the world during the mid-1980s, students on university campuses led boycott, divestment, and other solidarity campaigns targeting the apartheid government of South Africa. This solidarity movement played a fundamental role in the ultimate dismantling of the apartheid state, spawning institutional and governmental pressure beyond just educational institutions. This student-catalyzed movement emerged around 1985, and by 1990, with the release of Nelson Mandela, most of the groups' campaigns were successful.
The direct action campaign against nuclear testing in Amchitka Island began with an organization called the Society for Pollution and Environmental Control (SPEC), which grew from a group of ecologists, journalists, and activists in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. When the United States announced an underground test of a 1-megaton nuclear bomb on Amchitka Island, Alaska, SPEC began their protests.
The Virgin Islands is a group of islands between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The northeastern islands are known as the British Virgin Islands (BVI) while the southwestern islands are known as the Virgin Islands of the United States. Due to the natural beauty of the islands, developers and government officials have historically had an interest in strengthening the tourist industry.
