^
Deaths
which occurred on a 05 June:
2005
Robert Milne, 49, a software engineer from Edinburgh, Scotland,
collapses and dies 400 meters short of the top of the 8850-meter peak of
Mount Everest.
 ^
2004 Ronald Wilson Reagan,
mediocre movie actor, born on 06 February 1911, whose biggest role
came as the 40th President of the United States (1981-1989). [03
Jul 1996 photo >]
Reagan was the second child of John Edward (“Jack”) Reagan, a struggling
shoe salesman, and Nelle Wilson Reagan. Reagan's nickname, “Dutch,”
derived from his father's habit of referring to his infant son as
his “fat little Dutchman.” After several years of moving from town
to town—made necessary in part because of Jack Reagan's alcoholism,
which made it difficult for him to hold a job—the family settled in
Dixon, Illinois, in 1920. Despite their near poverty and his father's
drinking problem, Reagan later recalled his childhood in Dixon as
the happiest period of his life. At Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois,
Reagan played American football and was active in the drama society
but earned only passing grades. A popular student, he was elected
class president in his senior year. Graduating in 1932 with a bachelor's
degree in economics and sociology, he decided to enter radio broadcasting.
He landed a job as a sportscaster at station WOC in Davenport, Iowa,
by delivering entirely from memory an exciting play-by-play description
of a Eureka College football game. Later he moved to station WHO in
Des Moines, where, as sportscaster “Dutch Reagan,” he became popular
throughout the state for his broadcasts of Chicago Cubs baseball games.
Because the station could not afford to send him to Wrigley Field
in Chicago, Reagan was forced to improvise a running account of the
games based on sketchy details delivered over a teletype machine.
In 1937 Reagan followed the Cubs
to their spring training camp in southern California, a trip he undertook
partly in order to try his hand at movie acting. After a successful
screen test at Warner Brothers, he was soon typecast in a series of
mostly B movies as a sincere, wholesome, easygoing, “good guy.” (As
many observers have noted, the characters that Reagan portrayed in
the movies were remarkably like Reagan himself.) During the next 27
years he appeared in more than 50 films, notably including Knute
Rockne, All American (1940), Kings Row (1942), and The
Hasty Heart (1950). In 1938, while filming Brother Rat,
Reagan became engaged to his costar Jane Wyman, and the couple married
in Hollywood two years later. They had a daughter, Maureen [1941 –
Aug 2001] and adopted a son, Michael, a few days after his birth in
1945. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1948. Reagan was the only
president to have been divorced. Commissioned a cavalry officer at
the outbreak of World War II, Reagan was assigned to an army film
unit based in Los Angeles, where he spent the rest of the war making
training films. Although he never left the country and never saw combat,
he and Wyman cooperated with Warner Brothers's efforts to portray
him as a real soldier to the public, and in newsreels and magazine
photos he acted out scenes of “going off to war” and “coming home
on leave.” After leaving Hollywood, Reagan became known for occasionally
telling stories about his past, including stories about his happiness
at “coming back from the war”, that were actually based on fictional
episodes in movies. Such lapses suggest that he lacked a basic interest
in the truth and that he had trouble distinguishing between reality
and fantasy.
Reagan had absorbed
the liberal Democratic opinions of his father and became a great admirer
of Franklin Roosevelt after his election in 1932. Reagan's father
eventually found work as an administrator in a New Deal office established
in the Dixon area, a fact that Reagan continued to appreciate even
after his political opinion of Roosevelt had dramatically changed.
From 1947 to 1952 Reagan served
as president of the union of movie actors, the Screen Actors Guild.
Much to the disgust of union members, he testified as a friendly witness
before the House Un-American Activities Committee and cooperated in
the blacklisting of actors, directors, and writers suspected of leftist
sympathies. Although still a Democrat at the time (he campaigned for
Harry Truman in the presidential election of 1948), Reagan's political
opinions were gradually growing more conservative. After initially
supporting Democratic senatorial candidate Helen Douglas in 1950 he
switched his allegiance to Republican Richard Nixon [09 Jan 1913 –
22 Apr 1994] midway through the campaign. He supported Republican
Dwight Eisenhower [14 Oct 1890 – 28 Mar 1969] in the presidential
elections of 1952 and 1956, and in 1960 he delivered 200 speeches
in support of Nixon's campaign for president against Democrat John
F. Kennedy [29 May 1917 – 22 Nov 1963]. He officially changed
his party affiliation to Republican in 1962.
Reagan met Nancy Davis [06 Jul 1921~], a relatively unknown actress,
at a dinner party in 1949. They married on 04 Mar 1952; actor William
Holden was best man. The Reagans appeared together in the war movie
Hell Cats of the Navy in 1957. Nancy Reagan's reactionary
political views encouraged her husband's further betrayal of the ideals
he had received from his father.
After his acting career began to decline in the 1950s, Reagan became
the host of a television drama series, General Electric Theater, as
well as spokesman for the General Electric Company. In the latter
capacity he toured GE plants around the country, delivering speeches
with a generally conservative, pro-business message. Eventually, however,
his speeches became too controversial, and he was fired as both spokesman
and television host in 1962.
Reagan
campaigned actively for Nixon in his run for governor of California
in 1962 and supported the presidential candidacy of conservative Republican
Barry Goldwater in 1964, serving as cochairman of California Republicans
for Goldwater. In the last week of the campaign he delivered a 30-minute,
nationally televised address, “A Time for Choosing,” that The Washington
Post described as “the most successful political debut since William
Jennings Bryan electrified the 1896 Democratic convention with his
‘Cross of Gold' speech.” Reagan's speech, which resulted in $1 million
in campaign contributions for Republican candidates (the most attributable
to any political speech in history), catapulted him onto the national
political stage and made him an instant hero of the Republican right.
Reagan announced his candidacy
for governor of California in 1966. The incumbent, Democrat Edmund
G. (“Pat”) Brown (who had defeated Nixon's challenge in 1962), ridiculed
Reagan's lack of experience, declaring that while he (Brown) had been
serving the public, Reagan was making Bedtime for Bonzo,
a 1951 movie in which Reagan starred with a chimpanzee. But Reagan
turned this apparent liability into an asset by portraying himself
as an ordinary citizen who was fed up with a state government that
had become inefficient and unaccountable (he made a monkey out of
Brown). The public also reacted well to Reagan's personality, in particular
to his apparent genuineness, affability, and self-deprecating sense
of humor. (When asked by a reporter how he would perform in office,
Reagan replied, “I don't know. I've never played a governor.”) Reagan
won the election by nearly one million votes. During his two terms
as governor (1966–1974), Reagan erased a substantial budget deficit
inherited from the Brown administration (through the largest tax increase
in the history of any state to that time) and instituted reforms in
the state's welfare programs. As some observers have noted, Reagan's
administrative style as governor was essentially the same as the one
he would later adopt as president: he left most of the day-to-day
business of government to assistants and department heads, preferring
to focus on larger issues of policy and vision. Reagan followed a
rigid schedule, which his aides would prepare and type up for him
daily.
Reagan made a halfhearted
bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as a favorite-son
candidate, finishing third behind Nixon and former New York governor
Nelson Rockefeller [08 Jul 1908 – 26 Jan 1979]. During his remaining
years as governor he made plans for a more serious run for the presidency,
expecting that his chance would come in 1976, at the anticipated end
of Nixon's second term. But Nixon's resignation in 1974 put Vice President
Gerald Ford [14 Jul 1913~] in the Oval Office. Unwilling to wait another
eight years, Reagan challenged Ford with a blistering critique of
his policies and appointments but lost the nomination by 60 votes.
Reagan dominated the Republican primary
elections in 1980. Although his strongest opponent, George H. W. Bush
[12 Jun 1924~], won an upset victory
in the Iowa caucuses, Reagan bounced back after a memorable performance
in a debate with other Republican candidates in Nashua, New Hampshire.
When the moderator tried to turn off Reagan's microphone, he responded
with an angry line he remembered from a Spencer Tracy movie: “I paid
for this microphone!” Reagan went on to win New Hampshire and most
of the other major primaries and entered the convention with a commanding
lead; he won the nomination on the first ballot with 1939 votes to
37 for John Anderson and 13 for Bush, who had withdrawn from the contest
before the vote. After some tense and ultimately fruitless negotiations
with representatives of Ford, Reagan chose Bush as his running mate,
and the two men campaigned against Democratic incumbents Jimmy Carter
[01 Oct 1924~] and Walter Mondale [05 Jan 1928~] on a platform promising
the incompatible (which Bush had earlier called “voodoo economics”
and would become known as reaganomics): steep tax cuts, increased
defense spending, a balanced budget; and what is not decided (though
it can be influenced) by a President: a constitutional amendment to
ban abortion.
Carter began the
campaign in a vulnerable position. Inflation had increased from 6%
to more than 12% per annum since his first year in office, and unemployment
and interest rates were also high. An even more important factor than
the economy, however, was Carter's apparent inability to resolve the
Iran hostage crisis, which had continued for almost a year at the
time of the election. On 04 November 1979, a mob of Iranian students
stormed the US embassy in Tehran, Iran, and took the diplomatic staff
there hostage. In April 1980, after months of fruitless negotiations
with students and officials of Iran's revolutionary government (which
had sanctioned the takeover), Carter ordered a military rescue operation,
which failed dramatically. The hostage crisis contributed to a general
public perception of the Carter administration as weak and indecisive,
and the failed rescue mission reinforced Reagan's charge that the
Democrats had allowed the country's military to deteriorate badly.
In their only debate of the campaign, Reagan memorably reminded his
national television audience of the country's economic problems by
asking, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Carter,
for his part, tried to make the most of Reagan's image among some
of the electorate as an extremist and a warmonger, charging that as
president Reagan would eliminate cherished social programs and threaten
world peace. Reagan's smiling response to such charges—“There you
go again” (a line he had practiced in preparation for the debate)—did
not directly address the point, but it did convey a disarming image
of sincerity, self-confidence, and friendliness, which most voters
found appealing. On election day Reagan defeated Carter and John Anderson
(who ran as an independent) with 51% of the popular vote to Carter's
41% and Anderson's 7%; the vote in the electoral college was 483 to
Carter's 49.
Reagan's presidency
began on a dramatic note when, at a luncheon after the inaugural ceremony,
he announced that Iran had agreed to release the remaining American
hostages. The timing of Iran's decision led to suspicions that the
Reagan campaign had made a secret deal with the Iranians to prevent
the Carter administration from unveiling a so-called “October surprise”,
the release of the hostages in October 1980, before election day.
On 30 March 1981, a deranged drifter,
John W. Hinckley, Jr., fired six shots from a .22 caliber revolver
at Reagan as he left a Washington DC hotel. One of the bullets entered
Reagan's chest, puncturing a lung and lodging one inch from his heart;
another critically wounded Press Secretary James Brady. Rushed to
George Washington University Hospital for emergency surgery, Reagan
joked with doctors as he was being wheeled into the operating room:
“I hope you're all Republicans.” After his release 12 days later,
Reagan made a series of carefully staged public appearances designed
to give the impression that he was recovering quickly, though in fact
he remained seriously weakened for months and his workload was sharply
curtailed.
In August 1981, 13'000
members of the national union of air traffic controllers, the Professional
Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), one of the few unions
to endorse Reagan in the 1980 election, walked off their jobs, demanding
higher pay and better working conditions. As federal employees, the
PATCO members were forbidden by law to strike, and Reagan, on the
advice of Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis, refused to negotiate
and gave them 48 hours to return to work. Most of the striking controllers
ignored the ultimatum and were promptly fired. The firings caused
delays and reductions in air traffic.
Following
the so-called “supply-side” economic program he propounded in his
campaign, Reagan proposed massive tax cuts, 30% reductions in both
individual and corporate income taxes over a three-year period, which
he believed would stimulate the economy and eventually increase revenues
from taxes as income levels grew. At the same time, he proposed large
increases in military expenditures ($1.5 trillion over a five-year
period) and significant cuts in “discretionary” spending on social-welfare
programs such as education, food stamps, low-income housing, school
lunches for poor children, Medicaid (the major program of health insurance
for the poor), and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).
In 1981 Congress passed most of the president's budget proposals,
though the tax cut was scaled back slightly, to 25%.
The results were mixed. A severe recession in 1982 pushed the nation's
unemployment rate to nearly 11%, the highest it had been since the
Great Depression. Bankruptcies and farm foreclosures reached record
levels. The country's trade deficit increased from $25 billion in
1980 to $111 billion in 1984. In addition, the huge increases in military
spending, combined with insufficient cuts in other programs, produced
massive budget deficits, the largest in the country's history; by
the end of Reagan's second term the deficits would contribute to a
tripling of the national debt, to more than $2.5 trillion. In order
to address the deficit problem, Reagan backed away from strict supply-side
theories to support a $98.3 billion tax increase in 1982. By early
1983 the economy had begun to recover, and by the end of that year
unemployment and inflation were significantly reduced and remained
relatively low in later years. Economic growth continued through the
remainder of Reagan's presidency. But the tax cuts and the fruits
of economic growth benefited mainly the wealthy, and the gap between
rich and poor had grown wider.
In keeping with his aim of reducing the role of government in the
country's economic life, Reagan cut the budgets of many government
departments and relaxed or ignored the enforcement of laws and regulations
administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department
of Interior, the Department of Transportation, and the Civil Rights
Division of the Department of Justice, among other agencies. After
the administration and Congress reduced regulations governing the
savings and loan industry in the early 1980s, many savings institutions
expanded recklessly through the decade and eventually collapsed,requiring
bailouts by the federal government that cost taxpayers some $500 billion.
During his tenure in office Reagan
appointed more than half the federal judiciary and three new justices
of the Supreme Court: El Paso native Sandra Day O'Connor [26 Mar 1930~],
the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy [23
Jul 1936~], and Antonin Scalia [11 Mar 1936~]. He also elevated William
Rehnquist [01 Oct 1924~] to chief justice in 1986 upon the retirement
of Warren Burger [17 Sep 1907 – 25 Jun 1995].
When Reagan entered office in 1980 he believed that the United States
had grown weak militarily and had lost the respect it once commanded
in world affairs. Aiming to restore the country to a position of moral
as well as military preeminence in the world, he called for massive
increases in the defense budget to expand and modernize the military
and urged a more aggressive approach to combating communism and related
forms of leftist totalitarianism.
Reagan's
militant anticommunism, combined with his penchant for harsh anti-Soviet
rhetoric, was one of many factors that contributed to a worsening
of relations with the Soviet Union in the first years of his presidency.
At his first press conference as president, Reagan audaciously questioned
the legitimacy of the Soviet government; two years later, in a memorable
speech in Florida, he denounced the Soviet Union as “an evil empire”
and “the focus of evil in the modern world.” The Soviets responded
by saying that Reagan's remarks showed that his administration “can
think only in terms of confrontation and bellicose, lunatic anticommunism.”
The behavior of the Soviet Union itself also strained relations, especially
in December 1981, when the communist government of Poland, under intense
pressure from Moscow, imposed martial law on the country to suppress
the independent labor movement Solidarity; and in September 1983,
when the Soviets shot down a Korean airliner en route from Alaska
to Seoul as it strayed over strategically sensitive territory on Sakhalin
Island. All 269 persons aboard were killed, including 61 from the
US. Reagan's massive military spending program, the largest in US
peacetime history, was undoubtedly another factor.
A significant component of Reagan's military buildup was his 1983
proposal for a space-based missile defense system that would use lasers
and other as yet undeveloped killing technologies to destroy incoming
Soviet nuclear missiles well before they could reach their targets
in the United States. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), dubbed
“Star Wars” after the popular science-fiction movie of the late 1970s,
was denounced by the Soviets, including Gorbachev, as a dangerous
escalation of the arms race, a position also taken by many critics
at home. Meanwhile, others argued that the project was technologically
impossible and potentially a “black hole” in the country's defense
budget. Although Reagan never abandoned his support for SDI, it was
eventually reconceived as a much smaller and more conventional defensive
system than the one he originally proposed.
US-Soviet relations improved considerably during Reagan's second term,
not least because Reagan softened his anticommunist rhetoric and adopted
a more encouraging tone toward the changes then taking place in the
Soviet Union. At a dramatic summit meeting in Reykjavík, Iceland,
in October 1986, Gorbachev proposed a 50% reduction in the nuclear
arsenals of each side, and for a time it seemed as though a historic
agreement would be reached. Although the summit ended in failure owing
to differences over SDI, it was followed up in December 1987 by a
treaty eliminating intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) on European
soil. The INF Treaty was the first arms-control pact to require an
actual reduction in nuclear arsenals rather than merely restricting
their proliferation.
Following
the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, Reagan dispatched 800
marines to join an international force to oversee the evacuation of
Palestinian guerrillas from West Beirut, then surrounded by Israeli
troops. After Israel withdrew its troops from the Beirut area in September
1983, the marine contingent remained, along with forces from Italy,
France, and Britain, to protect the fragile Lebanese government, thereby
identifying itself with one of the factions in the country's long
and bloody civil war, which had begun in 1975. On the morning of 23
October 1983, a suicide bomber drove a truck laden with explosives
into the marine compound at the Beirut airport, killing 241 marines
and wounding 100 others. Although later investigations blamed the
marine chain of command for poor security at the base and “serious
errors in judgment,” Reagan decided to accept full blame for the tragedy
himself, saying that the marine commanders had “suffered enough.”
Reagan withdrew the marines from Lebanon in February 1984.
In the Caribbean island nation of Grenada, Prime Minister Maurice
Bishop was deposed and executed in a bloody coup by radical elements
of his leftist New Jewel Movement. Less than a week later, and only
one day after the bombing of the marine compound in Lebanon, Reagan
ordered an invasion, which he justified as necessary to prevent the
country from becoming a dangerous Soviet outpost and to protect American
students at the medical school there. Joined by a contingent of troops
from neighboring Caribbean countries, US forces quickly subdued elements
of the Grenadan army and a small number of Cuban soldiers and construction
workers. It seemed that the administration had staged the invasion
to divert public attention from the bombing in Lebanon.
In January 1986 Reagan announced the imposition of economic sanctions
on Libya and froze the country's assets in the United States, charging
the Libyan government of General Muammar al-Qaddafi [1942~] with sponsoring
acts of international terrorism, including the December 1985 attacks
on offices of the Israeli airline El Al in Rome and Vienna. In March
1986 a US Navy task force conducted “freedom of navigation” exercises
in the Gulf of Sidra, beyond the self-proclaimed territorial boundary
Libya called the “Line of Death.” Libya fired antiaircraft missiles
at US warplanes, and the United States responded with attacks on Libyan
ships and missile installations. Then, on 05 April 1986, two persons,
including a US serviceman, were killed by a bomb explosion in a discotheque
in West Berlin. Blaming Libya, the United States carried out retaliatory
bombing raids on “terrorist-related targets” in Libya on 14 and 15
April 1986, including an attack on Qaddafi's residential compound
in Tripoli which killed his 15-month-old adopted daughter and more
than 40 other persons (Qaddafi
on 06 Jun 2004: “I express my profound regrets over Reagan's
death before he appeared before justice to be held to account for
his ugly crime in 1986 against Libyan children.”).
In keeping with Reagan's belief that the United States should do more
to prevent the spread of communism, his administration expanded military
and economic assistance to friendly Third World governments battling
leftist insurgencies, and he actively supported guerrilla movements
and other opposition forces in countries with leftist governments.
This policy, which became known as the Reagan Doctrine, was applied
with particular zeal in Latin America. During the 1980s the United
States supported military-dominated governments in El Salvador in
a bloody civil war with the Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional
(FMLN), providing the country with some $4 billion in military and
economic aid and helping to organize and train elite units of the
Salvadoran army.
In Nicaragua,
following the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship by the Frente Sandinista
de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in 1979, the Sandinista government strengthened
its ties to Cuba and other countries of the socialist bloc, a move
that the Reagan administration regarded as a threat to the national
security of the United States. In 1981 Reagan authorized $20 million
to recruit and train a band of anti-Sandinista guerrillas, many of
whom were former supporters of Somoza, to overthrow the Sandinista
government. Numbering about 15'000 by the mid-1980s, the “Contras,”
as they came to be called, were never a serious military threat to
the Sandinistas, though they did cause millions of dollars in damage
to the Nicaraguan economy through their attacks on farms and cooperatives,
infrastructure, and other civilian targets. Using its influence in
international lending agencies such as the World Bank, the United
States was able to block most Nicaraguan loan requests from 1982,
and in 1985 the administration declared a trade embargo. These measures,
combined with Contra attacks and the Sandinista's own mismanagement,
effectively undermined the Nicaraguan economy by the end of the 1980s.
At the time of the presidential election
of 1984, Reagan was at the height of his popularity. Using slogans
such as “It's morning in America” and “America is back,” his reelection
campaign emphasized the country's economic prosperity and its renewed
leadership role in world affairs. On election day Reagan and Bush
easily defeated their Democratic opponents, Walter Mondale and Geraldine
Ferraro [26 Aug 1935~], by 59% to 41% of the popular vote; in the
electoral college Reagan received 525 votes to Mondale's 49, the largest
number of electoral votes of any candidate in history. With most of
the country behind him, Reagan's prospects in his second term appeared
bright. Only two years later, however, he would become embroiled in
the worst scandal of his political career, one that would cost him
much popular and party support and significantly impair his ability
to lead the country.
In early
November 1985, at the suggestion of the head of the National Security
Council (NSC), William (“Bud”) McFarlane, Reagan authorized a secret
initiative to sell antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran in exchange
for that country's help in securing the release of US citizens held
hostage by terrorist groups in Lebanon. The initiative directly contradicted
the administration's publicly stated policy of refusing to negotiate
with terrorists or to aid countries, such as Iran, that supported
international terrorism. News of the arms-for-hostages deal, first
made public in November 1986 (only one month after Reagan ordered
raids on Libya in retaliation for its alleged involvement in the Berlin
bombing), proved intensely embarrassing to the president. Even more
damaging, however, was the announcement later that month by Attorney
General Edwin Meese that a portion of the $48 million earned from
the sales had been diverted to a secret fund to purchase weapons and
supplies for the Contras in Nicaragua. The diversion was undertaken
by an obscure NSC aide, US Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Oliver
North, with the approval of McFarlane's successor at the NSC, Rear
Admiral John Poindexter. North, as it was later revealed, had also
engaged in private fund-raising for the Contras. These activities
constituted a violation of a law passed by Congress in 1984 (the second
Boland Amendment) that forbade direct or indirect US military aid
to the Contra insurgency.
In response
to the crisis, by this time known as the Iran-Contra Affair, Reagan
fired both North and Poindexter and appointed a special commission,
headed by former senator John Tower of Texas (the Tower Commission),
to investigate the matter. An independent counsel, Judge Lawrence
Walsh, was also appointed, and the House and Senate began joint hearings
to examine both the arms sales and the military assistance to the
Contras. As a result of Walsh's investigations, North and Poindexter
were convicted on charges of obstructing justice and related offenses,
but their convictions were overturned on appeal, on the ground that
testimony given at their trials had been influenced by information
they had supplied to Congress under a limited grant of immunity. Reagan
accepted responsibility for the arms-for-hostages deal but denied
any knowledge of the diversion. Although no evidence came to light
to indicate that he was more deeply involved, many in Congress and
the public remained skeptical. Nevertheless, most of the public eventually
appeared willing to forgive him for whatever they thought he had done,
and his popularity, which had dropped dramatically during the first
months of the crisis, gradually recovered.
In the presidential election of 1988 Reagan campaigned actively for
the Republican nominee, Vice President Bush. In large part because
of Reagan's continued popularity, Bush defeated Democratic candidate
Michael Dukakis [03 Nov 1933~] by 54% to 46% in the popular vote;
the vote in the electoral college was 426 to 40. Reagan retired to
his home in Los Angeles, where he wrote his autobiography, An
American Life (1990). In a 06
November 1994 letter to the people of the US, Reagan courageously
disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, a degenerative
brain disorder. To alert observers, Reagan's declining health had
been evident for many years. Mindful of her husband's diminished capacity,
Nancy Reagan occasionally would screen him from the press by intercepting
reporters' questions and then whispering an appropriate response in
his ear. Reagan's health problems made public appearances difficult
for the former president and he soon faded away.
[see also The
New York Times
obituary] |
2004 Martin Heemeyer, 52, in Granby, Ohio, soon after midnight,
in a D-5 Caterpillar bulldozer he armor-plated with a layer of concrete
between two plates of 12mm-steel, at which police had been shooting and
dropping explosives down the exhaust, after he began, at 15:00 the previous
day, to damage these buildings (plus vehicles, utility poles, and trees):
the Mountain Park Concrete plant, Liberty Savings Bank, the town hall and
library, the Sky-Hi News office, Maple Street Builders, Mountain Parks Electric,
Xcel Energy, Kopy Kat Graphics & Printing, the home of the late Mayor
L.R. "Dick" Thompson, and Gambles General Hardware store where it stopped
in the rubble of a warehouse at 16:40. Heemeyer was armed with a .50-caliber
gun, but seems to have been careful not to hurt anybody. Heemeyer was angry
after the April 2002 dismissal of his lawsuit opposing a 2000 city council
decision that allowed the concrete plant to be built near his muffler shop
(which he sold in the fall of 2002). Heemeyer had also paid a $2500 fine
for not having a septic tank and for having junk cars at his business. The
police finally used a blowtorch at 02:00 to open up the bulldozer cab.
2002 Israelis Sgt. Dotan Reisel, 22, Corp. Liron Avitan, 19, Sgt.
Violetta Hizgayev, 19, Staff Sgt. Eliran Buskila, 21, Corp. Vladimir Morari,
19, Staff Sgt. Zvika Gelberd, 20, Staff Sgt. Gennadi Issakov, 20, Corp.
Dennis Bleuman, 20, Zion Agmon, 50, all 9 from Hadera;
Corp. Avraham Barzilai, 19; Sgt. Sariel Katz, 21; Sgt.
Yigal Nedipur, 21; Staff Sgt. David Stanislavsky, 23, all 4 from
Netanya; Sgt. Sivan Wiener, 19, from Holon; Adi
Dahan, 17, from Afula; Shimon Timsit, 35, from
Tel-Aviv; Eliyahu Timsit, 32, from Sderot; and
Hamze Samudi, Palestinian driver of a suicide car bomb which explodes
next to a bus near Megiddo junction, Israel, at about 07:15. 13 of the dead
are Israeli soldiers, as are most of the 38 injured. The bus is completely
destroyed and nothing recognizable remains of the attacking car other than
an engine block. The Egged 830 bus had left Tel Aviv at 05:50 bound for
Tiberias, and was traveling from Afula to Hadera. The Jerusalem Brigades,
the military wing of Islamic Jihad, announces that it is its doing, to mark
the 35th anniversary of the start of Six-Day War, in which Israel captured
the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that the “martyr” driving the
car was from Jenin. A few hours later the Israelis attack Jenin with tanks
and machine-gun fire from helicopters, and call it “a routine operation”.
^
1993: 24 UN peacekeepers massacred in Somalia
In the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, twenty-four
Pakistani UN peacekeepers are ambushed and massacred while inspecting a
weapons storage site. The attack occurs in the southern portion of the city,
which is under the control of Somali warlord General Mohammed Aidid. The
next day, the UN Security Council issues an emergency resolution tacitly
calling for the arrest of Aidid, and US and UN forces began an extensive
search for the elusive strongman.
In
late 1992, civil war, clan-based fighting, and the worst African drought
of the century created famine conditions that threatened one-fourth of Somalia’s
population with starvation. In August, the UN began a peacekeeping mission
to the country to assure the distribution of food and medical aid. On 04
December, with deteriorating security and the UN troops unable to control
Somalia’s warring factions, US President George H. W. Bush [12
Jun 1924~] ordered 25'000 US soldiers into Somalia. Although he promised
the troops involved that the humanitarian mission was not an open-ended
commitment, "Operation Restore Hope" remained unresolved when Bill Clinton
took over the presidency on 20 January 1993.
Like his predecessor, Clinton was anxious to bring the US troops home, and
in May the mission was formally handed back to the UN By June, only 4200
US soldiers remained. However, on 05 June the Pakistani peacekeepers are
massacred by Aidid, and US forces escalate their attacks on Aidid's strongholds,
resulting in increased US casualties. On 26 August, four hundred elite US
soldiers from Delta Force and the US Rangers arrived on a mission to bolster
the US force in Somalia and capture Aidid. Two months later, on 03 Octoberand
04 October, eighteen of these soldiers were killed and eighty-four wounded
during a disastrous assault on Mogadishu’s Olympia Hotel in search of Aidid.
The bloody battle, which lasted seventeen hours, was the most violent US
combat firefight since Vietnam. Three days later, with Aidid still at large,
President Clinton cut his losses and ordered a total US withdrawal. On 25
March 1994, the last US troops left Somalia. |
^
On
a 05 June:
Known primarily for a single work, The Wealth of Nations
(1776), the first comprehensive system of political economy, 
