Word: unioneers
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...fall of the Berlin Wall, albeit a very striking and photogenic event, had an entire article devoted to it, whereas the event that made it possible, the June 4 election in Poland, was only very briefly mentioned. The start of it all was the work of the Solidarity trade union, which by 1989 had been operating for a decade, and had survived martial law in Poland when there was no thought of such a movement in other Eastern bloc countries. Of course, Gorbachev played a significant role in that he allowed Poland to hold partially free elections - the first country...
Lebedev seems an unlikely person to make that case. A few weeks earlier, near the center of Moscow in a stately pink building where he sometimes works and sleeps, Lebedev gave me a condensed history of the Russian state since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 - the beginnings of post-Soviet capitalism, the rise of the oligarchs, the loans-for-shares scandal, his acquisition of National Reserve Bank, the rise of Putin, the fall of the oligarchs, his 28% stake in Aeroflot, the Khodorkovsky affair, the forthcoming launch of his restaurant in London, the end of democracy...
...Erdenebileg is the elder statesman of Mongolia's neo-Nazis, Shari Mungun-Erdene, the 23-year-old leader of the roughly 200-strong Mongolian National Union (MNU), is the new kid on the block and sports a swastika tattoo on his chest. The MNU takes vigilante action against law-breaking outsiders, Mungun-Erdene says, mainly Chinese. When I ask what kind of action, he replies, "Whatever it takes so that they don't live here." At other times, though, he comes across as an overzealous adolescent. He opens his laptop to show photos of his neo-Nazi buddies. But beside...
...supported coups and assassinations in places such as Guatemala and the Dominican Republic to install leaders considered sympathetic to U.S. interests. Despite this legacy, many Americans were unaware of the CIA's clandestine operations until May 1960, when a U-2 spy plane was downed over the Soviet Union. The folks in Langley, Va., suffered another collective black eye from the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba the following year...
...case--bolstered by numerous bipartisan victories--is impressive. Among the highlights are battles to secure funding for HIV/AIDS research at a time when at least one colleague still favored quarantining the nation's gay men on a remote island; passing toxic-pollutants regulation in the wake of the 1984 Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India; and slapping nutritional labels on packaged food despite protests from lobbyists. Though brimming with wonky details, the book is a fast-paced civics primer for anyone who wants a reminder of what good governance can accomplish...