2019 Bolivian coup d’état

Elections and Constitution

2005 General election

Bolivia held Presidential elections on 18 December 2005. Juan Evo Morales Ayma, of Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), was elected President of Bolivia with 53.74% of the vote. He was followed by Jorge Quiroga, of the right-wing Poder Democrático Social (PODEMOS), which achieved 28.59% of support; Samuel Doria Medina, of the centrist Frente de Unidad Nacional (UN), with 7.8% of the vote; and Michiaki Nagatani Morishita, of the right-wing Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), with 6.47%. This was the first time a candidate had received an absolute majority since the flawed 1978 elections. Morales was sworn in on 22 January 2006 for a five year-term.

Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya

Early life

Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi was born in a Qasr Abu Hadi, a rural area outside the town of Sirte. His family, which was poor and lived off of goat and camel herding, came from the Qadhadhfa tribal group and was Arabised Berber and Nomadic Bedouin. Gaddafi’s exact date of birth is not known, and some sources have set it in 1942 or early 1943. He was the only surviving son and had three older sisters. His upbringing in Bedouin culture influenced him, and throughout his life, he had a special devotion for the desert.

Salvador Allende’s Chile

Early life

Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens was born on 26 June 1908 in Valparaíso, Chile. His family belonged to the upper middle class, and had a long tradition of political involvement in progressive and liberal causes. As a teenager, his main intellectual and political influence came from Juan de Marchi, an Italian-born anarchist who worked as a shoe-maker. Allende graduated with a medical degree in 1933 from the University of Chile, where he was influenced by Professor Max Westenhofer, a German pathologist who emphasised the social causes of diseases and social medicine.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict (1948-present)

1948 Arab-Israeli War

Following the Jewish declaration of independence on 14 May 1948, the armies of the surrounding Arab countries – Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon Saudi Arabia and Yemen (which were all members of the Arab League) – crossed over the Palestinian border to attack Israeli forces, thereby starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. However, several of these countries were still under colonial control, meaning their engagement could be limited. Although some irregular forces (like the Holy War Army and the Arab Liberation Army) and foreign volunteers also fought on the Arab side, their strength was always lower than that of Israel (which was almost almost-exclusively made up of paramilitary groups, like Haganah, Irgun and Lehi).

Thomas Sankara’s Burkina Faso

Early life and military academy

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was born on 21 December 1949 in Yako, a town in the colony of French Upper Volta. His father was a gendarme, meaning that, as the son of one of the few African functionaries employed by the colonial state, he enjoyed a relatively privileged position and lived in a brick house in a posher area of town. Sankara applied himself seriously to his schoolwork and achieved good results, later advancing into secondary education. His parents wanted him to become a priest, but Sankara chose to enter the popular military, which was seen as an institution which could help discipline the bureaucracy and modernise the country.

History of the region of Palestine-Israel

History of the region

Before Common Era

The region of modern-day Israel and Palestine was known as Canaan and populated by the Semitic-speaking Canaanites during the 2^nd millennium BCE. It was an independent territory during the first half of the millennium but was later conquered by the New Kingdom of Egypt from around 1550 BCE, lasting for a few centuries. The first record of the name ‘Israel’ appeared during this period, in the 1209 BCE Merneptah Stele. Biblical Hebrew and the first versions of Judaism also emerged around this time.

Causes of the Soviet famine of 1932-33

The Soviet famine of 1932 and 1933 was a major famine which affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus, the Volga Region, Kazhakstan, the South Urals and West Siberia. The number of deaths can only be estimated, but different researchers and sources like R. W. Davies, S.G. Wheatcroft, Robert Conquest, Micheal Ellman, Norman Naimark, the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Russian Duma believe the number to be anywhere between 3 million and 8.5 million deaths. While other factors may have played a part in causing the famine – like the rapid and forced economic changes of industrialisation and collectivisation, a lack of foresight and a slow and insufficient governmental response – other reasons which are less talked about also played a major role. Moreover, it would be unfair to say that the famine was intentional.

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq

Saddam Hussein was Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was born on the 28th of April 1937 in Tikrit, Iraq. Before his birth, his father and older brother both died of cancer. This led Hussein’s mother to say that she was carrying “Satan”, and she even tried to have an abortion and commit suicide. In fact, ‘Saddam’ is a title which means “one who confronts”. Saddam’s mother didn’t want anything to do with him, so the future-leader was raised by his uncle, Khairallah Talfah, a nazi sympahist. It was he who made the statement “Three that God should not have created: Persians, Jews and flies”, which his nephew also lived by. Saddam studied law for three years before dropping out of university at the age of 20 to join the Ba’ath Party in 1957.

The Seven Wonders of the World

The Seven Wonders of the World are a series of constructions of classical antiquity (between the 8th century BCE and the 5th century CE). The list varied through the years and did not stabilise until the Renaissance, and now includes the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Six of them – except for the Pyramid of Giza, which still stands relatively intact – have been destroyed, while the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may not have existed at all.

Background

The Greek conquest of much of the known western world in the 4th century BC allowed for Hellenistic travellers to discover the civilizations of the Egyptians, Persians, and Babylonians.

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide was the Ottoman Empire’s government’s systematic extermination, deportation, mass murder and starvation of some 1.5 million Armenians, starting in 1915. The male population was killed through massacre and forced labour, while women, children, the elderly and the invalid were deported into the Syrian Desert, deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape and massacre. Assyrians and Greeks were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman authority and is generally considered part of the same genocidal policy.

The Origins of the Genocide

The western portion of historical Armenia, known as Western Armenia, had come under the control of the Ottoman Empire in 1555, after which it was known as ‘Turkish’ or ‘Ottoman’ Armenia.