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Abortion in the UK (last updated August 2, 2003) (back to top)
The United Kingdom has not seen the same kind of violence that has sometimes marked the anti-abortion movement in the United States, and in 1993 it took one dramatic step to ensure that such violence did not emerge there.
In March 1993, Don Treshman, the head of the Texas-based Rescue America, came to London with some supporters to establish a European presence. Within days, the British government served him with a deportation order, describing his presence as "not conducive to the common good." Treshman left the country, and the deportation order was upheld in August 1993 by an immigration appeal tribunal, which noted that Treshman "avoided condemning [violence] in unequivocal terms, and what he said could lead those who supported his aims to conclude that violence was justified."
Abortion in Great Britain
Overall, abortion in Great Britain has been less controversial than in the United States. Explanations for why might include the different religious contexts of the two countries, different societal attitudes towards sexuality, and a legal context shaped in Great Britain by the legislature versus one shaped in the United States through judicial decisions by the highest court.
Abortion in Great Britain is legally permissible under the 1967 Abortion Act as amended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990 in non-emergency situations if two doctors decide that one of the following conditions is met :
- (A) The continuation of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman greater than if the pregnancy were terminated
- (B) The termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman
- (C) The pregnancy has not exceeded its 24th week and the continuance of the pregnancy would involve greater risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman
- (D) The pregnancy has not exceeded its 24th week and the continuance of the pregnancy would involve greater risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman's existing children
- (E) There is a substantial risk that the child would be seriously handicapped if born.
According to the UK's Office of National Statistics, there were about 176,400 abortions performed on female residents of England and Wales in 2001, or about 16.3 per 1,000 such women.
Abortion Violence in the United States
According to the National Abortion Federation, there were 17 bombing incidents, 17 attempted murders, 7 murders, and 116 arson incidents in the United States from 1988 to 2002, with most of these incidents occurring in the early to middle 1990s. Such violence, such as the March 1994 murder of Dr. David Gunn, seems to have tainted the broader anti-abortion movement and has resulted in new legal tools for prosecuting those blocking access to clinics such as the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) act that became law in May 1994.
In its 2002 report, the NAF stated that "vigorous law enforcement has worked to deter the most violent acts against individuals and clinics," and "anti-choice extremists increasingly shifted their focus [in 2002] toward intensifying their harassment and intimidation of individual women as they visited reproductive health clinics."
Several individuals placed on the FBI's "ten most wanted fugitives" list for crimes committed in their opposition to abortion have been arrested in recent years.
James Charles Kopp was convicted in March 2003 for the October 1998 murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an obstetrician-gynecologist who performed abortions at a women's clinic in Buffalo, New York. Kopp was placed on the FBI's "ten most wanted fugitives" list in June 1999, apprehended in France in March 2001, and returned to the United States in June 2002. Two people who helped Kopp while he was on the run, Loretta Marra and Dennis Malvasi, pled guilty to conspiracy charges in April 2003.
Another prominent anti-abortionist, Eric Robert Rudolph, was arrested in May 2003. Rudolph was charged with the January 1998 bombing of a health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, in which a police officer was killed, and with other bombings in Atlanta, Georgia that injured more than 150 people.
Sources: The UK's Department of Health has information on abortion on-line here, and the UK's Office of National Statistics is on-line here. T.J. Millings, Abortion protests, American-style, are foreign to Britons, Houston Chronicle, April 4, 1993. William E. Schmidt, U.S. abortion protesters shunned by the British, New York Times, April 13, 1993. Stefanie Asin, Anti-abortionist says British trip a success, despite four days in jail, Houston Chronicle, April 15, 1993. Jo Ann Zuniga, Deportation of abortion foe upheld, group leader loses appeal in Britain, Houston Chronicle, August 6, 1993. The National Abortion Federation is on-line here and its "Analysis of Trends of Violence and Disruption Against Reproductive Health Care Clinics for 2002" is on-line here. Information about James Charles Kopp and Eric Robert Rudolph is available through the U.S. Department of Justice, on-line here.
Racial Tensions in the UK (last updated August 8, 2003) (back to top)
This episode seems to be inspired by reports that far-right groups helped foster the race riots in three northern UK towns in the summer of 2001, and it taps into a renewed debate over race relations given the UK's growing minority and immigrant population.
Race Riots
Race riots in the summer of 2001 in three northern UK towns renewed attention to community race relations, especially with concerns as to whether communities are cohesive and whether minorities segregate themselves from the overall community. The riots took place in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham from April to July 2001, and involved hundreds of predominantly young white and Asian men.
According to a report led by Home Office minister John Denham into the disturbances' causes, the areas where the disturbances took place were all poor, had seen little dialogue across racial and cultural lines, and had seen months of racial tension beforehand. The Denham report also noted that far-right organizations such as the British National Party had been active in some areas and helped raise tensions there.
Immigration Policy
Immigration policy has also become controversial, and the UK approved a major reform of immigration policy, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, in November 2002.
The number of people granted settlement in the UK has generally risen in recent years, with the number more than doubling from 1997 to 2000 before a fall in 2001, according to statistics by the Home Office. The greatest influx in 2001 was from Asia (about 40%, about half of which from the Indian subcontinent alone), followed by Africa (about 29%). Just over half the people granted settlement are joining a family member already in the UK, about 25 percent are refugees or have been granted asylum, about 15 percent are coming for employment-reasons, and 7 percent are granted settlement on a discretionary basis.
Asylum in particular has drawn much controversy. The number of asylum seekers more than doubled from 1997 to 2001. Given the increase in applications, the number of decisions granting people asylum or granted exceptional leave to remain (ELR) has also increased, though the percentage of successful applications has remained about 20 to 30 percent during this period, except for 1999, when almost half of the decisions that year granted asylum or ELR.
About 92.2 percent of the United Kingdom's population in 2001-02 is white, with about 7.6 percent being from a minority ethnic group, according to the Office of National Statistics. Indians and Pakistanis comprise about 3.0 percent of the total population (about 38.4 percent of the minority population), blacks about 2.0 percent of the total population, and Chinese about 0.3 percent. People of a mixed background comprise about 0.8 percent of the total population, with about half from white and black Caribbean backgrounds.
Sources: The Home Office is on-line here; Control of Immigration Statistics: United Kingdom, 2001, and the Denham report can be found there. The National Statistics office is on-line here.
Intimate-Partner Violence (last updated October 9, 2002) (back to top)
Intimate partner violence - violence committed against someone by his or her current or former spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend - is usually directed more towards women than men, but became less common in the United States overall from 1993 to 1999, according to a 2001 study by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics.
In 1999, there were about six violent crimes committed against women by their intimate partners per 1,000 women; this marked a 41 percent decline from the per capita rate of intimate-partner crimes against women in 1993. Women were victimized in 85 percent of the intimate-partner violent crimes committed in 1999, and 74 percent of those murdered by an intimate partner in 1999 were women.
Younger women generally were more likely to experience intimate-partner violence than older women; there were 16 victimizations per 1,000 women aged 16-24, and 9 victimizations per 1,000 women aged 25-34. As for murders, there were 2.1 murders per 1,000 women aged 35-49, compared to 1.6 murders per 1,000 women aged 20-24.
About 10 percent of the intimate-partner victimizations between 1993 and 1999 were between male intimate-partners, and about 2 percent were between female intimate-partners.
Sources: The Bureau of Justice Statistics has published several reports on intimate-partner violence. Intimate Partner Violence and Age of Victim, 1993-99, was originally published in October 2001 and is on-line here. Intimate Partner Violence was published in May 2000 and is on-line here.
Nostradamus (1503-1566) (last updated September 15, 2002) (back to top)
Hailed by some as a prophet, Michel de Notredame, best known as Nostradamus, was a doctor and poet in 16th-century France (born in 1503, died in 1566). Some of the nearly 1,000 verses that he wrote and that were compiled in groups of 100 known as "Centuries" have been interpreted as predicting future events, but these verses are ambiguous, open to much interpretation, and have been seen as truly predictive only in retrospect.
Most recently, some have claimed that the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were somehow predicted by Nostradamus. There are three verses that people have commonly pointed to, although two of the verses are more readily applied to other events, and one was actually not written by Nostradamus but by a young student who wanted to demonstrate how an ambiguous "prophecy" could be open to much interpretation and could eventually be seen in hindsight as predictive.
- "At 45 degrees the sky will burn / Fire to approach the great new city: / In an instant a great scattered flame will leap up / When one will want to demand proof of the Normans." (Century 6, Quatrain 97) New York is actually located below the 41 degree latitude mark and is just one of the many cities that has the word "new" in its name and that have developed since Nostradamus's time (Naples was considered the classic "new city" during his time), fire did not approach New York but resulted from the crashes and explosion, and Normans in Nostradamus's time were what we would consider the French or the Vikings, not New Yorkers or North Americans or United States citizens.
- "The year 1999, seventh month / From the sky will come a great King of Terror / To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols, / Before and after Mars to reign by good luck." (Century 10, Quatrain 72) Many wrote before 1999 about the coming doom to befall sometime that summer, but nothing of that magnitude seemed to come to pass, and now some have quoted the verse as if it instead referred to the ninth month of the new century. The King of Terror has been interpreted as everything from the Hale-Bopp comet to global warming. How September 11 has anything to do with the "King of the Mongols" or the reign of Mars is similarly unclear.
- "In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb." This verse was not even written by Nostradamus, but by a Brock University student in the late 1990s, Neil Marshall, as part of an essay criticizing the notion of Nostradamus as a prophet. "Let the prophecy rest for a year. Add a couple thousand more. Eventually, one of [the possible interpretations of the verse] will fit close enough with events that have happened in the future that the prophecy will appear to come true," Marshall wrote. Sure enough, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, people began circulating the verse (sometimes expanded to refer to a third great war) as if it had been written by Nostradamus, ironically helping prove the student's point.
Nostradamus himself stated that he deliberately obscured his prophecies, ostensibly to avoid causing offense to those doubting his powers and to not offend his divine inspiration. "Many times in the week I am overtaken by an ecstasy; having rendered my nocturnal studies agreeable through long calculation, I have composed books of prophecies, of which each contains one hundred astronomical quatrains of prophecies. I have sought to polish them a bit obscurely," he wrote in a preface to his eldest son in 1555. "They are perpetual prophecies, for they extend from now to the year 3797" (thus leading some to the conclusion that the world will end in that year).
Many have criticized Nostradamus's method over the years, with Neil Marshall one of the more recent. Critic Eugene Parker wrote in 1920 that Nostradamus had a three-part method: "Firstly, he takes past events and gives them a figurative garb which renders them unrecognizable, putting them in the future tense. Again, he describes a well-chosen series of probabilities, based on contemporary conditions, and treats them likewise. Thirdly, he makes a series of random shots all of which are unlikely but still possible." Noted skeptic James Randi has also pointed out that "prophets" such as Nostradamus and, more recently, Jeanne Dixon make lots of predictions but are remembered not for their success rate but for the few times they actually turned out to be accurate, ignoring their rate of misses, and that they often deflect criticism by crediting God for their successes and their faulty interpretations for their misses.
In any event, Nostradamus apparently was quite explicit in one prophecy which is not contained in the Centuries but in the preface he wrote in 1555. "From this moment, before 177 years, 3 months and 11 days have passed (roughly June 22, 1732), by pestilence, long famine, wars and, most of all, by floods, the world will be so diminished, with so few remaining, that no one will be found willing to work the fields, which will remain wild for as long a period as they had been tilled." This does not seem to have occurred.
Sources: Translations are taken from Edgar Leoni's scholarly Nostradamus and his Prophecies (Dover Publications, 2000, reprinted from the 1961 edition), which includes both the original French text as best reconstructed and an English translation. James Randi, The Mask of Nostradamus (Prometheus Books, 1993). Urban Legends References Pages has information here, and a copy of Neil Marshall's essay here. Some e-mail hoaxes referenced a page on the Brock University's web server, which was taken down but still can be seen here.
Turkey and the Kurds (last updated August 8, 2003) (back to top)
The Kurds' struggle for independence from Turkey, or at least for political rights within Turkey, has gone on for decades, and has sometimes been labeled civil war or terrorism. However, the most prominent organization for the Kurds has generally renounced violence since 1999 and violent incidents have become less common.
PKK / KADEK
Established around the early 1980s, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) is recognized by the United States government as a foreign terrorist organization, though the group has changed its approach and even its name in recent years. These changes follow the arrest and conviction of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was arrested in February 1999 and whose subsequent death sentence was commuted in October 2002 to life imprisonment.
(Apparently in protest of Ocalan's arrest, Kurdish protesters briefly occupied several embassies throughout Europe in February 1999; such incidents probably inspired this episode).
Ocalan announced a peace initiative in August 1999, and the PKK announced in January 2000 that it would seek only political rights within Turkey rather than an independent state and that it would only use nonviolent means. The number of violent incidents between Turkish forces and PKK guerillas reportedly dropped from thousands to under a hundred in 2000, and in April 2002 the PKK changed its name to the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress (KADEK) and further committed itself to nonviolent activities.
Nonetheless, the Turkish government has accused PKK/KADEK's recent actions of being a ploy for legitimacy and has highlighted KADEK's refusal to disarm several thousand trained fighters located in northern Iraq, Turkey and Iran. "Despite the new rhetoric of PKK calling for peace and democracy, the organization has neither decommissioned its arms not its militants have surrendered themselves to the Turkish justice authorities," the Turkish government says on a web page accessed in August 2002 about terrorism (on-line here).
Background
The roots of the conflict between Kurds and the Turkish government lies in Turkey's policy that it is a unitary state where there are no minorities except for non-Muslims. Such a policy was first imposed by modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal (better known as Ataturk, the "father of the Turks"), in the 1920s and has been maintained since. Efforts to organize political groups specifically on behalf of Kurds have reportedly been shut down as "separatist," and use of the Kurdish language has faced some restrictions.
Human Rights Watch reported after Ocalan's 1999 arrest that "any attempt to assert political or cultural rights based on Kurdish identity is looked upon as treason and as a threat to the very foundations of the Turkish state - and punished accordingly. The denial of cultural and political rights has generated a long-standing sense of grievance among some sectors of the Kurdish minority."
Fighting between Turkish authorities and groups such as the PKK began in the 1980s, and the Turkish government declared a state of emergency in southeastern Turkey in 1987 that remained in some provinces into 2002. Human Rights Watch reported in 1995 that the conflict was an "increasingly bitter war" between the Turkish government and the PKK and had resulted in "over 19,000 deaths, including some 2,000 death-squad killings of suspected PKK sympathizers, two million internally displaced, and more than 2,200 villages destroyed, most of which were burned down by Turkish security forces." Human Rights Watch in its 1995 report accused both sides of violating international law.
Kurds make up about a fifth of Turkey's population and their homeland, Kurdistan, spans what is now the southeastern region of Turkey as well as Iran, Iraq, and Syria. The Kurdish language is considered very distinct from Turkish.
Sources: The United States Department of State describes PKK/KADEK as a foreign terrorist organization in its 2002 "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report on-line here, and prior reports have included information on Turkey and are on-line; the State Department reports on the 1999 embassy seizures in its 1999 chronology of terrorist incidents on-line here. The Turkish government's web page on terrorism and PKK/KADEK is on-line here. Human Rights Watch's report on the Kurds in the wake of Abdullah Ocalan's 1999 arrest is on-line here, and its 1995 report on the conflict, "Weapons Transfers and Violations of the Laws of War in Turkey," is on-line here.
Globalization Protests (last updated August 9, 2003) (back to top)
Globalization protests involving hundreds of thousands of people have become commonplace since the protests against the World Trade Organization talks in Seattle in December 1999. Such protests became mixed with anti-war demonstrations after the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States and later as the United States and the United Kingdom prepared for their military action in Iraq in early 2003.
Such protests bring together people of a wide variety of generally-left-leaning backgrounds and perspectives, but generally argue that institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund are undemocratic institutions that favor international trade and fiscal discipline over labor and environmental standards.
Some of the institutions most commonly targeted are :
- The World Trade Organization (WTO). Founded in 1995, the World Trade Organization implements the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and other trade agreements that reduce tariffs and prevent countries from restricting trade or selectively favoring certain trading partners.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the WTO, at least from some critics' perspective, is its court-like dispute-settling mechanism. WTO member countries can accuse another of having protective or discriminatory policies, and if successful in their complaint, the other country must change its policy accordingly. This becomes controversial because countries have different environmental and labor standards, and laws or rules promulgated for reasons not necessarily related to trade can be struck down in the name of free trade. Such rulings do not necessarily mean that the WTO is anti-environment or anti-labor, but it does mean that pro-environment or pro-labor policies in the United States have to be designed in ways that do not overly discriminate against other countries. For more on the WTO, go here.
- The International Monetary Fund (IMF). A United Nations agency operating out of Washington DC, the IMF lends money to countries with macroeconomic problems, assists countries with their financial policies, and monitors international economic and financial developments and policies. Some have criticized the IMF for imposing economic conditions and policy restrictions along with its loans and for not forgiving poorer countries' debt outright, but the IMF has responded that such policies are necessary to ensure loan repayment and that countries make the policy changes needed for long-term economic stability and growth.
The IMF had about $100 billion in credits and loans outstanding to 89 countries as of January 2003. Since 1996, the IMF and the World Bank have operated the Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), which seeks to help poor countries reduce debt and to use the resulting savings to reduce poverty. As of March 2002, 26 countries (22 of them in Africa) had taken the economic reforms and poverty-reduction policies required by the enhanced HIPC Initiative and were receiving relief which would amount to about $40 billion over time, about half of their total debt. For more on debt relief, go here.
- The World Bank (officially known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development). A United Nations agency operating out of Washington DC, the World Bank loans money to help poorer countries with long-term economic development and with infrastructure projects. Some criticize the World Bank's priorities in giving out loans and, again, for not relieving poorer countries' debt. The World Bank, along with the IMF, launched in 1996 the Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), which seeks to help poor countries reduce debt and to use the resulting savings to reduce poverty. For more on debt relief, go here.
- The G-8 Summits. The annual G-8 summit is a meeting of the leaders of the world's major industrial democracies to discuss international issues. The summits began in 1975 with just six countries (France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States); Canada joined in 1976, the European Community in 1977, and Russia began full participation in 1998. The presidency of the G-8 and the responsibility of hosting the summit rotate each year. The United States will hold the 2004 summit in Sea Island, Georgia. The United Kingdom last hosted the G-8 summit in 1998 and will host the summit again in 2005.
The Seattle protests occurred in December 1999, when the WTO member countries met in an attempt to lay the groundwork for a new round of trade negotiations dealing especially with the politically difficult issue of agriculture. Protesters with different agendas but one common enemy took over the city, leading Seattle's mayor to declare a state of civil emergency, and that round of WTO talks ultimately collapsed without agreement on major issues.
Subsequent protests have occasionally resulted in violence, injuries, and even some deaths.
Sources: The World Trade Organization is on-line here. The International Monetary Fund is on-line here. The World Bank is on-line here. The University of Toronto maintains the G8 Information Centre on-line here.
Assassination of the President and of Major Candidates (last updated April 12, 2003) (back to top)
There have been four successful presidential assassinations and two successful assassinations of major presidential candidates in the United States.
|
| Date
| President/Candidate
| Attempt's Result
| Assailant, Motive
|
|
| Jan. 30, 1835
| Andrew Jackson
| failed
| Richard Lawrence,
declared insane
|
|
| Apr. 14, 1865
| Abraham Lincoln
| killed
| John Wilkes Booth,
Confederate loyalist
|
|
| July 2, 1881
| James Garfield
| killed
| Charles Guiteau,
disgruntled office-seeker
|
|
| Sept. 6, 1901
| William McKinley
| killed
| Leon Czolgosz,
anarchist
|
|
| Oct. 14, 1912
| Theodore Roosevelt
(former president, then-current candidate)
| wounded
| John Schrank,
declared insane
|
|
| Feb. 15, 1933
| Franklin D. Roosevelt
(president-elect at the time)
| missed
| Guiseppe Zangara,
anarchist
|
|
| Nov. 1, 1950
| Harry S Truman
| failed
| Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola,
Puerto Rican independence
|
|
| Nov. 22, 1963
| John F. Kennedy
| killed
| Lee Harvey Oswald,
motive unknown
|
|
| June 4, 1968
| Robert F. Kennedy
(candidate)
| killed
| Sirhan Sirhan,
opposed Kennedy's views toward Israel-Arab conflict
|
|
| May 15, 1972
| George C. Wallace
(candidate)
| wounded
| Arthur Bremer,
motive unknown
|
|
| Sept. 5, 1975
| Gerald Ford
| failed
| Lynette Alice Fromme,
member of "Manson family"
|
|
| Sept. 22, 1975
| Gerald Ford
| failed
| Sara Jane Moore,
revolutionary
|
|
| Mar. 30, 1981
| Ronald Reagan
| wounded
| John W. Hinckley, Jr.,
declared insane
|
The two most famous assassinations of a sitting president are, of course, the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln (fatally shot by John Wilkes Booth in Washington in 1865) and John F. Kennedy (fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas in 1963). The other two were James Garfield, fatally shot in 1881 by a disgruntled would-be political appointee, and William McKinley, who was fatally shot by an anarchist in 1901.
Of these presidents, only JFK was receiving formal protection at the time. The Secret Service, originally an anti-counterfeiting agency that Lincoln had agreed to begin just before being killed, did not assume full-time protection of presidents until 1902, the year after McKinley's death.
Unsuccessful Assassination Attempts
Besides these four assassinations, there have been several publicly-known assassination attempts in the last few decades.
The most violent was the November 1, 1950 attack by two Puerto Rican nationalists on the Blair House, the President's official guest house where Harry S. Truman was staying while the White House was undergoing repairs. Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola stormed the Blair House and shot several members of the White House Police before being stopped (Truman was taking a nap at the time and was not injured). Torresola shot Private Leslie Coffelt of the White House Police, but Coffelt managed to kill Torresola with a single shot before succumbing himself; Coffelt died later that night. Collazo was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death by electrocution; Truman commuted the sentence on July 24, 1952 to life imprisonment just as Puerto Rico's new constitution went into effect.
The next series of known assaults occurred in September 1975, when two women separately tried to kill Gerald Ford a few weeks apart from each other. First was Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme, 26, a follower of Charles Manson who was stopped by Secret Service agents as she tried shooting Ford. Then there was Sara Jane Moore, 45, who apparently had her shot deflected by a disabled Vietnam veteran bystander and then was apprehended by local police.
On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley, 26, shot Ronald Reagan in an attempt to attract the attention of young actress Jodie Foster. Reagan did not instantly know that he had been hit but was rushed to the hospital and was taken into surgery. Despite the injury, neither Reagan nor his staff invoked the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, which was designed to coordinate the temporary transition of executive authority in the wake of a president's incapacitation. Reagan survived the surgery and returned to the White House on April 11, but took months to fully recover.
Interestingly enough, Reagan was not the first president to be shot and survive, only the first to do so while in office. Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning in an ultimately unsuccessful to reclaim the White House when he was shot in the chest in 1912 by a man later determined to be insane. As Philip Melanson wrote in his book Politics of Protection, "The bullet probably would have killed the former president if it was not for the fact that it struck his metal glasses case, then was slowed by the 50-page speech that Roosevelt had double-folded in his breast pocket. This may be the only instance in history in which the political system unquestionably benefited from a very long speech." Roosevelt went on with the speech.
Assassination of Presidential Candidates
Moving beyond attacks on presidents while in office, there are several incidents worth noting here. Besides the attack on Teddy Roosevelt, FDR was shot at in 1933 shortly before inaugurated (the shooter missed FDR but did kill Chicago's mayor), presidential candidate Robert K. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, and presidential candidate George Wallace was shot and paralyzed in May 1972.
Reports have surfaced of assassination plans that did not ultimately put the president's life at immediate risk. In 1981, the Secret Service instituted new protections in lieu of a reported Libyan hit squad sent to kill Reagan (this was also the year that security analysts argued in the Washingtonian magazine that sophisticated assassination techniques meant that the president would not "survive a real-life James Bond movie"). In June 1993, Bill Clinton authorized air strikes against Iraq after reports of an assassination attempt on former President George Bush. Other incidents undoubtedly exist but are not publicly known.
Secret Service's Expanding Mandate
The Secret Service's mandate has expanded in the wake of presidential assassination attempts. The Secret Service assumed full-time protection duties in 1902 in the wake of McKinley's death, and began protecting the president-elect in 1908. After the 1950 attack on Truman, Congress permanently authorized the protection of the president, his immediate family and the president-elect. After JFK's assassination, Congress authorized the lifetime protection of former presidents and their spouses (this was changed in 1997 so that presidents elected from then on would only receive protection for 10 years after office). After the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Congress authorized the protection of major presidential and vice-presidential candidates and nominees in 1968.
Under federal law, the Secret Service protects major presidential and vice-presidential candidates (as decided by the Secretary of the Treasury after consultation with an advisory committee) within 120 days of the general election. Senator Palmer would thus not receive Secret Service protection until late August of the election year, several months after the events of the first season of 24.
Sources: Frederick M. Kaiser, Presidential Assassinations and Assaults: Characteristics and Impact on Protective Procedures, Presidential Studies Quarterly, volume 11, page 545 (fall 1981). Philip Melanson, Politics of Protection (Praeger, 1984). A history of the United States Secret Service is available on-line here. The Secret Service's protection mandate is codified at 18 USC 3056.
Northern Ireland (last updated August 10, 2003) (back to top)
Northern Ireland - the six northeastern provinces of Ireland that Britain retained control of when it gave independence to the rest of the island in 1922 - has seen a long-running campaign of internal violence stemming largely from the Catholic minority's desire for independence and its distrust of the Protestant majority. This violence began in the late 1960s and has been called "the troubles" by many.
In recent years, parties representing the Protestant/Loyalist majority and the Catholic/Nationalist minority have taken steps towards a lasting peace, the most significant being the Good Friday Agreement which was reached in April 1998 and which established a consensus government. However, violent incidents as well as disagreements about the pace of disarmament and other reforms have threatened to unravel the entire peace process several times.
A Multi-Dimensional Struggle
The "troubles" has many dimensions, not simply that of religion, though distrust between the Protestant majority and the Catholic minority is widespread and steeped in history. There is also an economic component, as Northern Ireland has faced economic depression and Catholics have borne the brunt of unemployment and job discrimination. Another line has been drawn between those who support or oppose the Good Friday Agreement.
Some of the major parties involved include:
- Unionist/Loyalist, Protestant
- Ulster Unionist Party, largest party in Northern Ireland, for the Protestant majority, wants to stay as part of the United Kingdom. Led by David Trimble, who was elected as First Minister of the Northern Ireland Executive's and has returned to office since resigning in protest in mid-2001, and who shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume.
- Ulster Democratic Party, political wing of Ulster Defense Association. The UDA has continued violent actions since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and was "specified" by Britain in October 2001, thus indicating that the British government considered the cease-fire with the UDA and some other groups to be ended. The UDP was dissolved in November 2001.
- Protestant Democratic Unionist Party. Led by Rev. Ian Paisley, who campaigned against passage of the Good Friday Agreement.
- Nationalist/Republican, Catholic
- Social Democratic and Labor Party, Ulster's largest nationalist party. Led for decades by John Hume, who led the party for decades until resigning in 2001, and who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 with David Trimble.
- Provisional Irish Republican Army. Received some support from groups in the United States, such as the Ireland Northern Aid Committee (Noraid). One prominent member was Bobby Sands, who was one of 10 republican prisoners who died on a hunger strike in 1981 protesting prison conditions.
- Sinn Fein. Political wing of the IRA. Led by Gerry Adams, the controversial IRA/Sinn Fein leader to whom President Bill Clinton granted visas in the mid-1990s to help Adams' credibility in moving towards decommissioning.
- The Real IRA. Considered a foreign terrorist organization by the United States, the Real IRA (RIRA) broke off from the IRA in early 1998 and opposes the peace process.
Reaching the Good Friday Agreement
Real movement towards peace in Northern Ireland began in the early 1990s. In December 1993, the "Downing Street Declaration" was issued, promising inclusive political talks. The Irish Republican Army then called a "total cessation" of military operations on August 31, 1994, followed by a similar cease-fire by loyalist paramilitaries. On February 21, 1995, the British and Irish governments then issued a frameworks document proposing a basis for negotiations, but the process stalled over disagreements about the IRA decommissioning its weapons.
U.S. President Bill Clinton was involved in these steps, reportedly first by encouraging British Prime Minister John Major into signing the Downing Street Declaration. He then enraged Britain by granting visas to Gerry Adams and allowing him to raise money while in the United States. This move ended a long ban on official contact between the United States and Sinn Fein, but was designed to encourage Adams and the IRA into decommissioning. Adams arrived for the first time on February 1, 1994, and then returned several times after that, even being honored at a White House dinner on St. Patrick's Day in 1995.
In November 1995, the British and Irish governments agreed to separate political discussions from and to establish an international body that would provide an independent assessment of decommissioning. That body was headed by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who served at Clinton's request. In January 1996, that commission issued a report that urged all sides to maintain the cease-fire and to begin decommissioning during the process of all-party negotiations, rather than before or after, and not as an act of surrender but as a demonstration of "a willingness to address differences through political means." Britain rejected the proposal, the IRA officially ended its cease-fire in February 1996, and negotiations stalled for months.
With the election of Tony Blair as the UK's prime minister in May 1996, all parties began to resume negotiations. They finally reached an agreement on April 10, 1998, which happened to be Good Friday, thus giving rise to the agreement's name, the Good Friday Agreement (it is officially known as the Belfast Agreement). George Mitchell brokered the deal, and Clinton was personally involved as well, talking with several participants and reportedly talking several out of walking out of the negotiations. Later in 1998, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1998 to David Trimble and John Hume for the Good Friday Agreement.
The agreement met with popular approval, as shown by a referendum held in Northern Ireland on May 22, 1998. Despite vigorous opposition by some, such as Rev. Ian Paisley of the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party, voters approved the Good Friday Agreement by 71 percent to 29 percent, a large enough margin to ensure considerable support from both Protestants and Catholics. In a simultaneous referendum in the Republic of Ireland, voters approved the agreement by 94 percent.
Under the agreement, a 108-member National Assembly holds legislative power. To ensure "cross-community support," members of the assembly are required to register whether they are unionist, nationalist, or other, and "key" decisions must have sufficient support from both unionist and nationalist designations to pass. The assembly jointly elects, as a "key" decision, its First Minister and Deputy First Minister, who preside over an Executive Committee. Under the agreement, reforming the police system was delegated to an independent commission.
The first National Assembly elections were held on June 25, 1998, and the results ensured power-sharing between unionist and nationalist sides. Two Unionist parties (the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party) won a combined 48 seats, and two Nationalist parties (the Social Democratic and Labour Party and Sinn Fein) won a combined 42 seats. David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, was then elected by the assembly as first minister, with Seamus Mallon, a nationalist, as deputy first minister.
Difficulties in Implementation
Implementation of the agreement is a long-term, multi-faceted process. Since the process began, the number of British troops in Northern Ireland has dropped to around 13,000, the lowest since the early 1970s, and the economy has grown with new jobs and revived tourism. However, the issue of decommissioning has continued to plague the process and proven the biggest obstacle to success.
To prevent the entire agreement from collapsing over the IRA's failures to begin decommissioning as scheduled and to meet with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD), the UK has even suspended the Northern Ireland Executive several times. Britain first suspended the executive for almost four months in early 2000, beginning when the Ulster Unionist Party threatened to withdraw from the agreement and ending only after the IRA finally pledged on May 6, 2000 to put its arms completely "beyond use."
Protesting the IRA's continued failure to begin decommissioning as promised, Trimble did resign as first minister on July 1, 2001, and the IRA proposed and then withdrew a plan to commission in August. Britain again suspended the Assembly and Executive for one day in August 2001 and for another day in September. Finally, this latest crisis ended in late October when the IRA issued a statement that it had implemented a scheme developed with the IICD, which the IICD acknowledged as a "significant" event. Trimble then urged the Ulster Unionist Party to return to the Northern Ireland Executive, and he was re-elected as First Minister in November 2001.
Historical Background
From 1801 to 1921, the entire island of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, along with Britain and Scotland. However, nationalism continued to thrive, and culminated in the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-21. Afterwards, the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 partitioned Ireland into the Irish Free State, which consisted of most of the island and was free of the commonwealth, and Northern Ireland, which consisted of six predominantly Protestant counties of northeast Ulster and remained under British control. The Irish Free State's government then declared itself a republic in 1948. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, had its own parliament and prime minister but remained an uneasy part of the United Kingdom.
Concentrated in Northern Ireland, the "troubles" began in the late 1960s, arguably a continuation of the struggle from the 1920s or a new phenomenon emerging from new economic problems. The IRA protested, and Britain cracked down, first with the internment of suspected republicans and then by sending armed forces to Ireland. The conflict took on an air of terror, with Protestant and Catholic paramilitary groups targeting leaders and using terrorist tactics such as car bombs, both in Northern Ireland and in Britain. The worst year, by far, was 1972, which saw the most deaths as well as the January 30, 1972 incident generally known as "Bloody Sunday," in which eight unarmed Irish republicans were shot by British soldiers. The following year, Britain imposed direct rule to deal with the deteriorating political and security situation.
The United States' Involvement
The United States' role in Northern Ireland has expanded slowly over the course of the troubles. Jimmy Carter was the first president to address the Northern Ireland problem, publicly asking in August 1977 for a peaceful resolution and urging Irish Americans to stop sending money and weapons to republican organizations in Northern Ireland. However, the United States did not take an active role in the issue, and was only indirectly involved by monitoring pro-republican groups such as the Irish Northern Aid Committee (Noraid) and cracking down on arms shipments by such groups.
As the British and Irish governments took steps forward, the United States became more involved. With the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, the British and Irish governments recognized that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom until a majority vote in the area said otherwise, but that Ireland was to have a formal voice in Northern Ireland affairs.
To support that agreement, the United States began sending economic aid to Ireland and Northern Ireland, with President Ronald Reagan invoking Carter's promise almost a decade earlier. Beginning in 1986, the United States has contributed aid each year to the International Fund for Ireland, of which 75 percent is required to go to Northern Ireland. As the main contributor to the fund, the United States gave more than $300 million by 2001 and now gives about $25 million a year.
Sources: Joseph E. Thompson, American Policy and Northern Ireland (Praeger Publishers, 2001). Jack Holland, Hope Against History: The course of conflict in Northern Ireland (Henry Holt and Company, 1999). George J. Mitchell, Making Peace (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). An excellent Internet site on the "troubles" is the Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN), which collected the data for the graphs on deaths attributed to the "troubles" and on British army personnel in Northern Ireland, is online here. US State Department country background notes on Ireland and the United Kingdom are available via the department's website, on-line here. The State Department's 1999 Country Report on Economic Policy and Trade Practices on Ireland is on-line here. The complete text of the Good Friday Agreement is available on-line here. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission is on-line here. Information on the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize to John Hume and David Trimble, including their Nobel lectures, is on-line here.
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