- published: 27 Oct 2011
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- Adlershof
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Adlershof
Adlershof is a locality (Ortsteil) in the borough (Bezirk) Treptow-Köpenick of Berlin, Germany.
On the southwestern side of Adlershof now is built the new City of Science, Technology and Media (WISTA). The local management seeks to establish the word "Adlershof" as a synonym for WISTA, ignoring the traditional center of Adlershof.
A part of the area known today as the "City of Science, Technology and Media", was once known as the Johannisthal Air Field. Germany's first motorized aircraft took off from here at the beginning of the 20th century. Albatros, Fokker, Rumpler and Wright made Adlershof-Johannisthal famous. In 1912 the German Experimental Institute for Aviation (Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt – DVL) made Adlershof its headquarters. Laboratories, motor test beds, wind tunnels and hangars were erected in the 20s and 30s and are historical landmarks today.
Adlershof is particularly well known for a series of competitions between various fighter aircraft designs that were held there starting in 1918. This was the first time the pilots themselves were asked for their input into the selection process; they resoundingly asked for higher speed as opposed to maneuverability, which the Idflieg had always assumed was most important.
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Argentina
Argentina
i/ˌɑrdʒənˈtiːnə/, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina [reˈpuβlika aɾxenˈtina]), is a country in South America, the continent's second largest by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations.
Argentina's continental area is between the Andes mountain range in the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It borders Paraguay and Bolivia to the north, Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast, and Chile to the west and south. Argentine claims over Antarctica, as well as overlapping claims made by Chile and the United Kingdom, are suspended by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. Argentina also claims the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which are administered by the United Kingdom as British Overseas Territories.
A recognised middle power, Argentina is Latin America's third-largest economy, with a "very high" rating on the Human development index. Within Latin America, Argentina has the fifth highest nominal GDP per capita and the highest in purchasing power terms. Analysts have argued that the country has a "foundation for future growth due to its market size, levels of foreign direct investment, and percentage of high-tech exports as share of total manufactured goods", and it is classed by investors as middle emerging economy. Argentina is a founding member of the United Nations, Mercosur, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization, and is one of the G-15 and G-20 major economies.
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Australia
Australia (
/əˈstreɪljə/), officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent as well as the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.
For at least 40,000 years before European settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who belonged to one or more of roughly 250 language groups. After discovery by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing Crown Colonies were established.
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Austria
Austria (i/ˈɒstriə/ or /ˈɔːstriə/; German: Österreich [ˈøːstɐˌʁaɪç] (
listen)), officially the Republic of Austria (German: Republik Österreich (help·info)), is a landlocked country of roughly 8.47 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The territory of Austria covers 83,855 square kilometres (32,377 sq mi) and has a temperate and alpine climate. Austria's terrain is highly mountainous due to the presence of the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 metres (12,461 ft). The majority of the population speak local Austro-Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, and German in its standard form is the country's official language. Other local official languages are Burgenland Croatian, Hungarian and Slovene.
The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty when the vast majority of the country was a part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria became one of the great powers of Europe and, in response to the coronation of Napoleon I as the Emperor of the French, the Austrian Empire was officially proclaimed in 1804. In 1867, the Austrian Empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary.
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Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria (German: Freistaat Bayern, pronounced [ˈfʁaɪʃtaːt ˈbaɪ.ɐn] ( listen)), is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of 70,548 square kilometres (27,200 sq mi), it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany. Bavaria is Germany's second most populous state (after North Rhine-Westphalia), with 12.5 million inhabitants, more than any of the three sovereign states on its borders. Bavaria's capital is Munich.
One of the oldest states of Europe, it was established as a duchy in the mid first millennium. In the 17th century, the Duke of Bavaria became a Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire. The Kingdom of Bavaria existed from 1806 to 1918, and Bavaria has since been a free state (republic). Modern Bavaria also includes parts of the historical regions of Franconia and Swabia.
The Bavarians emerged in a region north of the Alps, originally inhabited by the Gauls, which had been part of the Roman provinces of Raetia and Noricum. The Bavarians spoke Old High German but, unlike other Germanic groups, probably did not migrate from elsewhere. Rather, they seem to have coalesced out of other groups left behind by Roman withdrawal late in the 5th century. These peoples may have included the Celtic Boii, some remaining Romans, Marcomanni, Allemanni, Quadi, Thuringians, Goths, Scirians, Rugians, Heruli. The name "Bavarian" ("Baiuvarii") means "Men of Baia" which may indicate Bohemia, the homeland of the Celtic Boii and later of the Marcomanni. They first appear in written sources c. 520. Saint Boniface completed the people's conversion to Christianity in the early-8th century. Bavaria was, for the most part, unaffected by the Protestant Reformation.
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Belgium
Belgium (i/ˈbɛldʒəm/ BEL-jəm), officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO. Belgium covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres (11,787 sq mi), and it has a population of about 11 million people. Straddling the cultural boundary between Germanic and Latin Europe, Belgium is home to two main linguistic groups, the Dutch-speakers, mostly Flemish (about 60%), and the French-speakers, mostly Walloons (about 40%), plus a small group of German-speakers. Belgium's two largest regions are the Dutch-speaking region of Flanders in the north and the French-speaking southern region of Wallonia. The Brussels-Capital Region, officially bilingual, is a mostly French-speaking enclave within the Flemish Region. A German-speaking Community exists in eastern Wallonia. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in the political history and a complex system of government.
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Berlin
Berlin ( /bɜrˈlɪn/; German pronunciation: [bɛɐ̯ˈliːn] ( listen)) is the capital city of Germany and one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.5 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city and is the second most populous city proper and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union. Located in northeastern Germany, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which has 5.9 million residents from over 190 nations. Located in the European Plains, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of the city's area is composed of forests, parks, gardens, rivers and lakes.
First documented in the 13th century, Berlin was the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia (1701–1918), the German Empire (1871–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) and the Third Reich (1933–1945).Berlin in the 1920s was the third largest municipality in the world. After World War II, the city became divided into East Berlin—the capital of East Germany—and West Berlin, a West German exclave surrounded by the Berlin Wall (1961–1989). Following German reunification in 1990, the city regained its status as the capital of Germany, hosting 147 foreign embassies.
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Brandenburg
Brandenburg ( listen (help·info); Low German: Brannenborg, Lower Sorbian: Bramborska; Upper Sorbian: Braniborska) is one of the sixteen federal-states of Germany. It lies in the east of the country and is one of the new federal states that were re-created in 1990 upon the reunification of the former West Germany and East Germany. The capital is Potsdam. Brandenburg surrounds but does not include the national capital and city-state of Berlin.
Originating in the medieval Northern March, the Margraviate of Brandenburg grew to become the core of the Kingdom of Prussia, which would later become the Free State of Prussia. The eastern third of historic Brandenburg (Ostbrandenburg/Neumark) was ceded to Poland in 1945.
In late medieval and early modern times, Brandenburg was one of seven electoral states of the Holy Roman Empire, and, along with Prussia, formed the original core of the German Empire, the first unified German state. Governed by the Hohenzollern dynasty from 1415, it contained the future German capital Berlin. After 1618 the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia were combined to form Brandenburg-Prussia, which was ruled by the same branch of the House of Hohenzollern. In 1701 the state was elevated as the Kingdom of Prussia. Franconian Nuremberg and Ansbach, Swabian Hohenzollern, the eastern European connections of Berlin, and the status of Brandenburg's ruler as prince-elector together were instrumental in the rise of that state.
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Brazil
Brazili/brəˈzɪl/ (Portuguese: Brasil, IPA: [bɾaˈziw]), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil, listen (help·info)), is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas and the largest lusophone country in the world.
Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 km (4,655 mi). It is bordered on the north by Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and the French overseas region of French Guiana; on the northwest by Colombia; on the west by Bolivia and Peru; on the southwest by Argentina and Paraguay and on the south by Uruguay. Numerous archipelagos form part of Brazilian territory, such as Fernando de Noronha, Rocas Atoll, Saint Peter and Paul Rocks, and Trindade and Martim Vaz. It borders all other South American countries except Ecuador and Chile.
Brazil was a colony of Portugal from the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 until 1815, when it was elevated to the rank of kingdom and the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves was formed. The colonial bond was in fact broken in 1808, when the capital of the Portuguese colonial empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, after Napoleon invaded Portugal.Independence was achieved in 1822 with the formation of the Empire of Brazil, a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system. The country became a presidential republic in 1889, when a military coup d'état proclaimed the Republic, although the bicameral legislature, now called Congress, dates back to the ratification of the first constitution in 1824. Its current Constitution, formulated in 1988, defines Brazil as a Federal Republic. The Federation is formed by the union of the Federal District, the 26 States, and the 5,564 Municipalities.
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Bulgaria
Coordinates: 42°45′N 25°30′E / 42.75°N 25.5°E / 42.75; 25.5
Bulgariai/bʌlˈɡɛəriə/ (Bulgarian: България, IPA: [bɤ̞ɫˈɡarijɐ]), is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and the Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south and the Black Sea to the east. With a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi), Bulgaria is Europe's 14th-largest country. Its location has made it a historical crossroad for various civilisations and as such it is the home of some of the earliest metalworking, religious and other cultural artifacts in the world.
Prehistoric cultures began developing on Bulgarian lands during the Neolithic period. Its ancient history was marked by the presence of the Thracians, and later by the Greeks and Romans. The emergence of a unified Bulgarian ethnicity and state dates back to the First Bulgarian Empire, which dominated most of the Balkans and functioned as a cultural hub for Slavic peoples during the Middle Ages. With the downfall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1396, its territories came under Ottoman rule for nearly five hundred years. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 resulted in the Third Bulgarian State, recognised in 1908. The following years saw several conflicts with its neighbours, which prompted Bulgaria to align with Germany in both World Wars. In 1946 it became a Communist republic with a single-party system until 1989, when the Communist Party allowed multi-party elections. After 1990 Bulgaria transitioned to democracy and a market-based economy.
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Bundesrat of Germany
The German Bundesrat (literally "Federal Council"; pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁaːt]) is a legislative body that represents the sixteen Länder (federal states) of Germany at the federal level. It has its seat at the former Prussian House of Lords in Berlin.
The Bundesrat participates in legislation, alongside of the Bundestag, the directly elected representation of the people of Germany, with laws affecting state competences and all constitutional changes requiring the consent of the body. Functioning similarly, it is often said to be an upper house such as the US Senate or the House of Lords in the United Kingdom, although the German constitution does not declare the Bundestag and Bundesrat to form houses of a bicameral parliament (the word "Parliament" does not even occur in the Constitution). Officially, it is generally referred to as a "constitutional body" alongside the Bundestag, the President, the Government and the Federal Constitutional Court.
Bundesrath (from 1901 on: Bundesrat, according to a general spelling reform) was already the name of similar bodies in the North German Confederation (1867) and the German Empire (1871). In 1919-1933/1934 the name was Reichsrat.
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Bundestag
The Bundestag (Federal Diet; pronounced [ˈbʊndəstaːk]) is a legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag was established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier Reichstag. Norbert Lammert is the current President of the Bundestag.
With the dissolution of the German Confederation in 1866 and the founding of the German Empire (Deutsches Reich) in 1871, the Reichstag was established as the German parliament in Berlin. Two decades later, the current parliament building was erected. The Reichstag delegates were elected by direct and equal male suffrage (and not the three-class electoral system prevailing in Prussia until 1918). The Reichstag did not participate in the appointment of the Chancellor until the parliamentary reforms of October 1918. After the Revolution of November 1918 and the establishment of the Weimar Constitution, women were given the right to vote for (and serve in) the Reichstag, and the parliament could use the no-confidence vote to force the chancellor or any cabinet member to resign. In March 1933, one month after the Reichstag fire, the then president, Paul von Hindenburg, a retired war hero, gave Hitler ultimate power through Enabling Act of 1933, he remained at the post of Federal Government Chancellor (though he called himself the Führer). After this the Reichstag met only rarely to unanimously rubber-stamp the decisions of the government. It last convened on 26 April 1942.
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Canada
Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9,900,000 km2 (3,800,000 sq mi), Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.
The land that is now Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonial expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy; the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on Britain.
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China
China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the world's most-populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.
The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims Taiwan—which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity—as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War. The PRC government denies the legitimacy of the ROC.
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Cluj-Napoca
Coordinates: 46°46′N 23°35′E / 46.767°N 23.583°E / 46.767; 23.583
Cluj-Napoca (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈkluʒ naˈpoka] ( listen); German: Klausenburg; Hungarian: Kolozsvár, Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈkoloʒvaːr]; Medieval Latin: Castrum Clus, Claudiopolis; Yiddish: קלויזנבורג, Kloiznburg), commonly known as Cluj, is the second most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (324 km / 201 mi), Budapest (351 km / 218 mi) and Belgrade (322 km / 200 mi). Located in the Someşul Mic River valley, the city is considered the unofficial capital to the historical province of Transylvania. In 1790–1848 and 1861–1867, it was the official capital of the Grand Principality of Transylvania.
As of 2011, 309,136 inhabitants live within the city limits, marking a decrease from the figure recorded at the 2002 census. The Cluj-Napoca metropolitan area has a population of 392,562 people, while the population of the peri-urban area (Romanian: zona periurbană) exceeds 400,000 residents. The new metropolitan government of Cluj-Napoca became operational in December 2008. Lastly, according to the 2007 data provided by the County Population Register Service, the total population of the city is as high as 392,276 people. However, this number does not include the floating population of students and other non-residents—an average of over 20,000 people each year during 2004–2007, according to the same source.
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Cyprus
Cyprusi/ˈsaɪprəs/ (Greek: Κύπρος, Kýpros, IPA: [ˈcipɾos]; Turkish: Kıbrıs, IPA: [ˈkɯbɾɯs]), officially the Republic of Cyprus (Greek: Κυπριακή Δημοκρατία, Kypriakī́ Dīmokratía, IPA: [cipɾiaˈci ðimokɾaˈtia]; Turkish: Kıbrıs Cumhuriyeti, IPA: [ˈkɯbɾɯs dʒumhuɾijeˈti]), is an island country in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria, Lebanon, northwest of Israel and north of Egypt. Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and the Republic of Cyprus is a member state of the European Union.
The earliest known human activity on the island dates back to around the 10th millennium BC. Archaeological remains from this period include the well-preserved Neolithic village of Khirokitia, which has been declared a World Heritage Site with an "enhanced protection" status in the event of armed conflict by UNESCO, along with the archaeological sites of Paphos and the Painted Churches of the Troodos Region. Cyprus is home to some of the oldest water wells in the world.
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Czech Republic
The Czech Republic (i/ˈtʃɛk/ CHEK;Czech: Česká republika, pronounced [ˈtʃɛskaː ˈrɛpuˌblɪka] ( listen), short form Česko Czech pronunciation: [ˈtʃɛskɔ]) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the north, Germany to the west, Austria to the south and Slovakia to the east. Its capital and largest city, with 1.3 million inhabitants, is Prague.
It is a pluralist multi-party parliamentary representative democracy, a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the Visegrád Group.
The Czech state, formerly known as Bohemia, was formed in the late 9th century as a small duchy around Prague, at that time under dominance of the powerful Great Moravian Empire (which reached its greatest territorial extent during the reign of Svatopluk I from the House of Mojmír). After the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power was transferred from Moravia to Bohemia, under the Přemyslids. During the rule of Přemyslid dukes/kings and their successors, the Luxembourgs, the country reached its greatest territorial extent (13th–14th century). Life in the country was significantly affected by the Hussite wars, during which it faced economic embargo and crusades from all over Europe. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the Crown of Bohemia was gradually integrated into the Habsburg monarchy as one of its three principal parts alongside the Archduchy of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary. The Bohemian Revolt (1618–20) led to the further centralization of the monarchy including forced recatholization and Germanization. During radical reforms in the 18th century the Bohemian Crown was even de facto abolished (1749). In the 19th century the Czech lands became the industrial powerhouse of the monarchy and the core of the Republic of Czechoslovakia which was formed in 1918, following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire after World War I.
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Denmark
The Kingdom of Denmark (Danish: Kongeriget Danmark, pronounced [ˈkɔŋəʁiːəð ˈdanmɑɡ̊] ( listen)) is a constitutional monarchy and sovereign state consisting the country of Denmark in northern Europe and two autonomous constituent countries, the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic and Greenland in North America. The kingdom is a unitary state with some power being devolved from Denmark proper to Greenland and the Faroe Islands; this polity is referred to as the Danish Realm. Denmark proper is the hegemonial area, where judicial, executive, and legislative power resides. The Faroe Islands are defined to be a community of people within the kingdom, and the Greenlandic people are defined as a separate people with the right to self-determination.
Denmark is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, located southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. The country consists of a large peninsula, Jutland and many islands, most notably Zealand, Funen, Lolland, Falster and Bornholm, as well as hundreds of minor islands often referred to as the Danish Archipelago.
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Deutsche Bundesbank
The Deutsche Bundesbank (German for German Federal Bank) is the central bank of the Federal Republic of Germany and as such part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). Due to its strength and former size, the Bundesbank is the most influential member of the ESCB. Both the Deutsche Bundesbank and the European Central Bank (ECB) are located in Frankfurt am Main. It is sometimes referred to as "Buba" for Bundesbank.
The Bundesbank was established in 1957 and succeeded the Bank deutscher Länder, which introduced the Deutsche Mark on 20 June 1948. Until the euro was physically introduced in 2002, the Deutsche Bundesbank was the central bank of the former Deutsche Mark ("German Mark", sometimes known in English as the "Deutschmark").
The Deutsche Bundesbank was the first central bank to be given full independence, leading this form of central bank to be referred to as the Bundesbank model, as opposed, for instance, to the New Zealand model, which has a goal (i.e. inflation target) set by the government.
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East Germany
The German Democratic Republic (GDR; German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik [ˈdɔʏtʃə demoˈkʀaːtɪʃə ʀepuˈbliːk] or DDR), informally known as East Germany (German: Ostdeutschland), was a socialist state established by the USSR in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city. The GDR had an area of 107,771 km2 (41,610 mi2), bordering Czechoslovakia to the south, West Germany to the south and west, Poland to the east, and the Baltic Sea to the north. East Germany was dissolved upon joining the institutions of West Germany in the German reunification, on 3 October 1990.
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European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union.
The Commission operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "commissioners" ). There is one member per member state, though members are bound to represent the interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state. One of the 27 is the Commission President (currently José Manuel Durão Barroso) proposed by the European Council and elected by the European Parliament. The Council then appoints the other 26 members of the Commission in agreement with the nominated President, and then the 27 members as a single body are subject to a vote of approval by the European Parliament. The first Barroso Commission took office in late 2004 and its successor, under the same President, took office in 2010.
The term "Commission" is used either in the narrow sense of the 27-member College of Commissioners (or College) or to also include the administrative body of about 23,000 European civil servants who are split into departments called Directorates-General and Services. The internal working languages of the Commission are English, French and German. The Members of the Commission and their "cabinets" (immediate teams) are based in the Berlaymont building of Brussels.
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Finland
Coordinates: 65°N 27°E / 65°N 027°E / 65; 027
Finlandi/ˈfɪnlənd/ ( Finnish: Suomi; Swedish: Finland (help·info)), officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.
Around 5.4 million people reside in Finland, with the majority concentrated in the southern region. It is the eighth largest country in Europe in terms of area and the most sparsely populated country in the European Union. Finland is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in Helsinki and local governments in 336 municipalities, and an autonomous region of the Åland Islands. About one million residents live in the Greater Helsinki area, which consists of Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen and Vantaa, and a third of the country's GDP is produced there. Other larger cities include Tampere, Turku, Oulu, Jyväskylä, Lahti and Kuopio.
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France
France (Englishi/ˈfræns/ FRANSS or /ˈfrɑːns/ FRAHNSS; French: [fʁɑ̃s] ( listen)), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. It is often referred to as l’Hexagone ("The Hexagon") because of the geometric shape of its territory. It is the largest western European country and it possesses the second-largest exclusive economic zone in the world, covering 11,035,000 km2 (4,260,000 sq mi), just behind that of the United States (11,351,000 km2 / 4,383,000 sq mi).
Over the past 500 years, France has been a major power with strong cultural, economic, military and political influence in Europe and around the world. During the 17th and 18th centuries, France colonised great parts of North America and Southeast Asia; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, France built the second largest colonial empire of the time, including large portions of North, West and Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands.
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Free City of Danzig
The Free City of Danzig (German: Freie Stadt Danzig; Polish: Wolne Miasto Gdańsk) was a semi-autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (today Gdańsk) and surrounding areas.
The Free City was created on 15 November 1920 in accordance with the terms of Part III, Section XI of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 without a referendum. The Free City included the city of Danzig and over two hundred nearby towns, villages, and settlements. As the League of Nations decreed, the region was to remain separated from the nation of Germany, and from the newly resurrected nation of Poland. The Free City was not an independent state; it was under League of Nations protection and put into a binding customs union with Poland. Poland also had special utilization rights towards the city. The Free City was created in order to give Poland sufficient access to the sea, while at the same time recognizing that its population was mainly German.
In 1933, the City's government was taken over by the local Nazi Party and the democratic opposition was suppressed. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Free City was abolished and incorporated into the newly formed Reichsgau of Danzig-West Prussia. Widespread anti-Semitic and anti-Polish discrimination and organized murder followed.
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German Chancellery
The German Chancellery (German: Bundeskanzleramt) is a federal agency serving the executive office of the Chancellor, the head of the German federal government. The chief of the Chancellery (Chef des Bundeskanzleramtes) holds the rank of either a Secretary of State (Staatssekretär) or a Federal Minister (Bundesminister). The agency's primary function is to assist the Chancellor in coordinating the activities of the Federal Government. The current chief of the Chancellery is Minister Ronald Pofalla.
Bundeskanzleramt is also the name of the building in Berlin that houses the personal offices of the Chancellor and the Chancellery staff.
The current Chancellery building (opened in the spring of 2001) was designed by Charlotte Frank and Axel Schultes and was built by a joint venture of Royal BAM Group's subsidiary Wayss & Freytag and the Spanish Acciona from concrete and glass in an essentially postmodern style, though some elements of modernist style are evident. Occupying 12,000 square meters (129,166 square feet), it is also one of the largest government headquarters buildings in the world. By comparison, the new Chancellery building is eight times the size of the White House. A semi official Chancellor apartment is located on the top floor of the building. The 200 square meter two-room flat has thus far only been occupied by Gerhard Schröder; current Chancellor Angela Merkel prefers to live in her private apartment in Berlin.
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German Empire
The German Empire (German: Deutsches Kaiserreich) is the common name given to the state officially named the Deutsches Reich (literally: "German Realm"), designating Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.
The German Empire consisted of 27 constituent territories (most of them ruled by royal families). While the Kingdom of Prussia contained most of the population and most of the territory of the Reich; the Prussian leadership became supplanted by German leaders and Prussia itself played a lesser role. As Dwyer (2005) points out, Prussia's "political and cultural influence had diminished considerably" by the 1890s. Its three largest neighbors were rivals Imperial Russia to the east and France to the west and ally Austria-Hungary to the south.
After 1850, Germany industrialized rapidly, with a foundation in coal, iron (and later steel), chemicals and railways. From a population of 41 million people in 1871, it grew to 68 million in 1913. From a heavily rural nation in 1815, it was now predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological and scientific giant, receiving more Nobel Prizes in science than Britain, France, Russia and the United States combined.
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Germany
Germany (i/ˈdʒɜrməni/), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.
A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.
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Greece
Greecei/ˈɡriːs/ (Greek: Ελλάδα, Ellada, IPA: [eˈlaða] ( listen) historically in Katharevousa and Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάς, Hellas, IPA: [eˈlas] and [helːás] respectively), officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Elliniki Dimokratia, IPA: [eliniˈci ðimokraˈtia]), is a country in Southern Europe, politically considered part of Western Europe.Athens is the capital and the largest city in the country (its urban area also including Piraeus). The population of the country is around 11 million.
Greece has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km (8,498 mi) in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1,400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others. Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains, of which Mount Olympus is the highest at 2,917 m (9,570 ft).
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Hamburg
Hamburg ( /ˈhæmbɜrɡ/; German pronunciation: [ˈhambʊɐ̯k], local pronunciation [ˈhambʊɪç]; Low German/Low Saxon: Hamborg [ˈhaˑmbɔːx]), officially Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, is the second-largest city in Germany, the thirteenth largest German state, and the sixth-largest city in the European Union. The city is home to over 1.8 million people, while the Hamburg Metropolitan Region (including parts of the neighbouring Federal States of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein) has more than 4.3 million inhabitants. Situated on the river Elbe, the port of Hamburg is the second largest port in Europe (after the Port of Rotterdam) and 11th-largest worldwide.
Hamburg's official name, Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (German: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg), reflects Hamburg's history as a member of the medieval Hanseatic League, as a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, and that Hamburg is a city-state and one of the sixteen States of Germany.
Hamburg is a major transport hub in Northern Germany and is one of the most affluent cities in Europe. It has become a media and industrial centre, with plants and facilities belonging to Airbus, Blohm + Voss and Aurubis. The radio and television broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk and publishers such as Gruner + Jahr and Spiegel-Verlag are pillars of the important media industry in Hamburg. In total, there are more than 120,000 enterprises.
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Hungary
Hungaryi/ˈhʌŋɡəri/ (Hungarian: Magyarország [ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ] ( listen)) is a country, which is located in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The country's capital, and largest city, is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, also known as Magyar, which is part of the Finno-Ugric group and is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe.
Following a Celt (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (AD 9 - c. 430) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian prince Árpád, whose great-grandson Saint Stephen I was crowned with a crown sent by the pope from Rome in 1000 AD. The Kingdom of Hungary lasted for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centres of the Western world. After about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541–1699), Hungary was integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy, and later constituted half of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy (1867–1918).
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India
India (i/ˈɪndiə/), officially the Republic of India (Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the south-west, and the Bay of Bengal on the south-east, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west;China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north-east; and Burma and Bangladesh to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; in addition, India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.
Home to the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four of the world's major religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism—originated here, whereas Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived in the 1st millennium CE and also helped shape the region's diverse culture. Gradually annexed by and brought under the administration of the British East India Company from the early 18th century and administered directly by the United Kingdom from the mid-19th century, India became an independent nation in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was marked by non-violent resistance led by Mahatma Gandhi.
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Indonesia
Indonesia (i/ˌɪndəˈniːʒə/ IN-də-NEE-zhə or /ˌɪndoʊˈniːziə/ IN-doh-NEE-zee-ə), officially the Republic of Indonesia (Indonesian: Republik Indonesia Indonesian pronunciation: [rɛpʊblɪk ɪndɔnɛsɪa]), is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 17,508 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an elected legislature and president. The nation's capital city is Jakarta. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Malaysia. Other neighboring countries include Singapore, Philippines, Australia, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Indonesia is a founding member of ASEAN and a member of the G-20 major economies. The Indonesian economy is the world's 17th largest economy by nominal GDP.
The Indonesian archipelago has been an important trade region since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, and Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms flourished. Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Muslim traders brought Islam, and European powers brought Christianity and fought one another to monopolize trade in the Spice Islands of Maluku during the Age of Discovery. Following three and a half centuries of Dutch colonialism, Indonesia secured its independence after World War II. Indonesia's history has since been turbulent, with challenges posed by natural disasters, corruption, separatism, a democratization process, and periods of rapid economic change.
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Iran
Coordinates: 32°N 53°E / 32°N 53°E / 32; 53
Iran (i/ɪˈrɑːn/ or /aɪˈræn/;Persian: ایران [ʔiˈɾɒn] ( listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (Persian: جمهوری اسلامی ایران Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi-ye Irān), is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran", which in Persian means "Land of the Aryans", has been in use natively since the Sassanian era. It came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia ( /ˈpɜrʒə/ or /ˈpɜrʃə/). Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, "Iran" is the name used officially in political contexts.
The 18th-largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), Iran has a population of around 79 million. It is a country of particular geopolitical significance owing to its location in the Middle East and central Eurasia. Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran's direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran is a regional power, and holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Iran has the second largest proven natural gas reserves in the world and the fourth largest proven petroleum reserves.
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Israel
Coordinates: 31°N 35°E / 31°N 35°E / 31; 35
Israel, officially the State of Israel ( /ˈɪzriːəl/ or /ˈɪzreɪəl/; Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, Medīnat Yisrā'el, IPA: [me̞diˈnät jisʁäˈʔe̞l] ( listen); Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل, Dawlat Isrāʼīl, IPA: [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the south, and it contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel is defined as a Jewish and Democratic State in its Basic Laws and is the world's only Jewish-majority state.
Following the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption and implementation of the United Nations plan to partition Palestine, on 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, a state independent from the British Mandate for Palestine. Neighboring Arab states invaded the next day in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Portions of these territories, including east Jerusalem, have been annexed by Israel, but the border with the neighboring West Bank has not yet been permanently defined.[neutrality is disputed] Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have so far not resulted in peace.
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Italy
Italyi/ˈɪtəli/ (Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic or the Republic of Italy (Italian: Repubblica italiana), is a unitary parliamentary republic in south-central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within Italy, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. The territory of Italy covers some 301,338 km2 (116,347 sq mi) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 60.6 million inhabitants, it is the fifth most populous country in Europe, and the 23rd most populous in the world.
Rome, the capital of Italy, was for centuries a political and religious centre of Western civilisation as the capital of the Roman Empire and site of the Holy See. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Italy endured numerous invasions by foreign peoples, from Germanic tribes such as the Lombards and Ostrogoths, to the Byzantines and later, the Normans, among others. Centuries later, Italy became the birthplace of Maritime republics and the Renaissance, an immensely fruitful intellectual movement that would prove to be integral in shaping the subsequent course of European thought.
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Japan
Japan
i/dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国 
Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku, together accounting for ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.
Archaeological research indicates that people lived in Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other nations followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since adopting its revised constitution in 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament called the Diet.
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Knesset
The Knesset (Hebrew: הַכְּנֶסֶת [haˈkneset] ( listen); lit. the gathering or assembly; Arabic: الكنيست) is the unicameral legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem.
The legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister (although the latter is ceremonially appointed by the President), approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government. In addition, it also recommends a candidate for the State Comptroller to the President, who appoints someone to the post. It also has the power to waive the immunity of its members, remove the President and the State Comptroller from office, remove a Prime Minister convicted of an offense involving moral turpitude, and to dissolve itself and call new elections. The Prime Minister may dissolve the Knesset. However, until an election is completed, the Knesset maintains authority in its current composition.
Knesset members annually convene for plenary assemblies, or plenums, for two annual sittings of at least eight months' duration. The two sittings together form a session. The Knesset may be convened at any other time if thirty or more members demand this in writing or if the government requests. As well as approving or rejecting proposed legislation, the plenum also elects the Speaker and one or more Deputy Speakers.
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Latvia
Latviai/ˈlætviə/ (Latvian: Latvija), officially the Republic of Latvia (Latvian: Latvijas Republika), is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia (border length 343 km), to the south by Lithuania (588 km), to the east by the Russian Federation (276 km), to the southeast by Belarus (141 km), and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden. With 2,067,887 inhabitants and a territory of 64,589 km2 (24,938 sq mi) it is one of the least populous and least densely populated countries of the European Union. The capital of Latvia is Riga. The official language is Latvian and the currency is called Lats (Ls). The country has a temperate seasonal climate.
The Latvians are a Baltic people, culturally related to the Lithuanians. Together with the Finno-Ugric Livs (or Livonians), the Latvians are the indigenous people of Latvia.Latvian is an Indo-European language and along with Lithuanian the only two surviving members of the Baltic branch. Indigenous minority languages are Latgalian and the nearly extinct Finno-Ugric Livonian language. In terms of geography, territory and population Latvia is the middle of three Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Latvia and Estonia share a long common history: historical Livonia, times of German (Teutonic Order), Polish-Lithuanian, Swedish, Russian, Nazi German and Soviet rule, 13th century Christianization and 16th century Protestant Reformation. Both countries are home to a large number of ethnic Russians (26.9% in Latvia and 25.5% in Estonia) of whom some are non-citizens. Latvia is historically predominantly Protestant, except for the region of Latgalia in the southeast which is historically predominantly Roman Catholic.
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Lithuania
Lithuania (i/ˌlɪθuːˈeɪniə/ or /ˌlɪθjuːˈeɪniə/; Lithuanian: Lietuva), officially the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublika) is a country in Northern Europe, the largest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark. It borders Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and a Russian exclave (Kaliningrad Oblast) to the southwest. Lithuania has an estimated population of 3.2 million as of 2011, and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. The Lithuanians are a Baltic people, and the official language, Lithuanian, is one of only two living languages (together with Latvian) in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family.
For centuries, the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea was inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, who was crowned as King of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the first Lithuanian state, on 6 July 1253. During the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe: present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. With the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighboring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772 to 1795, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory.
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Luxembourg
Luxembourg (i/ˈlʌksəmbɜrɡ/ LUKS-əm-burg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Luxembourgish: Groussherzogtum Lëtzebuerg, French: Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, German: Großherzogtum Luxemburg, Dutch: Groothertogdom Luxemburg), is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland ("good country") in the south. Luxembourg has a population of over half a million people in an area of approximately 2,586 square kilometres (998 sq mi). A representative democracy with a constitutional monarch, it is ruled by a grand duke. It is now the world's only remaining sovereign grand duchy. The country has a highly developed economy, with the world's highest GDP (nominal) per capita according to the IMF. Its historic and strategic importance dates back to its founding as a Roman era fortress site and Frankish count's castle site in the Early Middle Ages. It was an important bastion along the Spanish Road when Spain was the principal European power influencing the whole western hemisphere and beyond in the 16th–17th centuries.
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Malta
Maltai/ˈmɒltə/, officially known as the Republic of Malta (Maltese: Repubblika ta' Malta), is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, 80 km (50 mi) south of Sicily, 284 km (176 mi) east of Tunisia and 333 km (207 mi) north of Libya, with Gibraltar 1,755 km (1,091 mi) to the west and Alexandria 1,508 km (937 mi) to the east. Malta covers just over 316 km2 (122 sq mi) in land area, making it one of the world's smallest states. It is also one of the most densely populated countries worldwide. The de facto capital city of Malta is Valletta; the largest town, Birkirkara. The main island comprises many towns, which together form one Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) with a population of 368,250 according to Eurostat. The country has two official languages, Maltese (constitutionally the national language) and English.
Throughout history, Malta's location has given it great strategic importance, and a succession of powers including the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Habsburg Spain, Knights of St John, French and the British ruled the islands. Malta gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1964 and became a republic in 1974, whilst retaining membership in the Commonwealth of Nations. Malta was admitted to the United Nations in 1964 and to the European Union in 2004. Malta is also party to the Schengen Agreement and in 2008 it became part of the eurozone.
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Mexico
Mexico (i/ˈmɛksɨkoʊ/; Spanish: México, IPA: [ˈmexiko] ( listen)), officially the United Mexican States (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos (help·info)), is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States of America; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometres (over 760,000 sq mi), Mexico is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the thirteenth largest independent nation in the world. With an estimated population of over 113 million, it is the eleventh most populous country and the most populous Spanish-speaking country. Mexico is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a Federal District, the capital city.
In Pre-Columbian Mexico many cultures matured into advanced civilizations such as the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, the Maya and the Aztec before the first contact with Europeans. In 1521, Spain conquered and colonized the territory from its base in México-Tenochtitlan, which was administered as the Viceroyalty of New Spain. This territory would eventually become Mexico as the colony's independence was recognized in 1821. The post-independence period was characterized by economic instability, the Mexican-American War and territorial cession to the United States, a civil war, two empires and a domestic dictatorship. The latter led to the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system. Elections held in July 2000 marked the first time that an opposition party won the presidency from the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
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Moritzbastei
The Moritzbastei is the only remaining part of the ancient town fortifications of Leipzig. Today it is widely known as a cultural centre.
The Moritzbastei was built as a bastion in between 1551-1554 under the supervision of the mayor Hieronymus Lotter, who was also responsible for Leipzig's Altes Rathaus (old town hall) which is one of the most important Renaissance buildings in Germany. Elector Moritz of Saxony directed the reconstruction of the town fortifications of Leipzig after it became largely destroyed during the Smalkaldic War between German Emperor Charles V and the Smalkaldic League.
After being stormed for the first time in the Thirty Years War, the Moritzbastei lost its military function in the Seven Years War. Henceforth it served as a store for trade goods and workplace for a bell founder and a book printer.
In the period 1796-1834, the first public school (1. Bürgerschule) was built over the basement of the Moritzbastei by architect Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe. It was the first school in Germany without confessional segregated classes and was destroyed in 1943 during World War II.
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Nazi Germany
The Third Reich, also Nazi Germany, is the common name for Germany when it was a totalitarian state ruled by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). On 30 January 1933 Hitler became chancellor of Germany, quickly eliminating all opposition to rule as sole leader. The state idolized Hitler as its Führer ("leader"), centralizing all power in his hands. Historians have emphasized the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups. Kessel writes, "Overwhelmingly...Germans speak with mystification of Hitler's 'hypnotic' appeal..." Under the "leader principle", the Führer's word was above all other laws. Top officials reported to Hitler and followed his policies, but they had considerable autonomy. The government was not a coordinated, cooperating body, but rather a collection of factions struggling to amass power and curry favor with the Führer. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Nazi government restored prosperity and ended mass unemployment using heavy military spending and a mixed economy of free-market and central-planning practices. Extensive public works were undertaken, including the construction of the Autobahns. The return to prosperity gave the regime enormous popularity; the suppression of all opposition made Hitler's rule mostly unchallenged.
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Netherlands
The Netherlands (i/ˈnɛðərləndz/; Dutch: Nederland [ˈneːdə(r)lɑnt] or [ˈneɪ̯də(r)lɑnt] (
listen); West Frisian: Nederlân; Papiamento: Hulanda) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with some islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is a parliamentary democracy organised as a unitary state. The country capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government is The Hague. The Netherlands in its entirety is often referred to as Holland, although North and South Holland are actually only two of its twelve provinces (a case of pars pro toto; see terminology of "the Netherlands").
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New Statesman
New Statesman is a British left-wingpolitical and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s.
The longest serving editor was Kingsley Martin (1930–60). The current editor is Jason Cowley, who assumed the post at the end of September 2008. In the 29 May 2006 issue, then-editor John Kampfner stated that the New Statesman remained "true to its heritage of radical politics". The magazine is committed to "development, human rights and the environment, global issues the mainstream press often ignores".
Historically, the magazine was sometimes affectionately referred to as "The Staggers" because of crises in funding, ownership and circulation. The nickname is now used as the title of its rolling politics blog. Its current writers and columnists include Mehdi Hasan, Will Self, David Blanchflower, John Gray and Richard Mabey. The New Statesman had a certified average circulation of 23,909 in 2011, 17,471 of which were paid copies. Traffic to the magazine's relaunched website recently reached a record high. In the first quarter of 2012, monthly unique visitors to newstatesman.com exceeded 800,000, an increase of 231 per cent since the fourth quarter of 2009, when the site was previously relaunched.
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Poland
Polandi/ˈpoʊlənd/ (Polish: Polska), officially the Republic of Poland (Polish: Rzeczpospolita Polska; Kashubian: Pòlskô Repùblika; Silesian: Polsko Republika), is a country in Central Europe, bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 sq mi), making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. Poland has a population of over 38 million people, which makes it the 34th most populous country in the world and the sixth most populous member of the European Union, being its most populous post-communist member. Poland is a unitary state made up of 16 voivodeships. Poland is a member of the European Union, NATO, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European Economic Area, International Energy Agency, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, International Atomic Energy Agency, G6, Council of the Baltic Sea States, Visegrád Group, Weimar Triangle and Schengen Agreement.
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Portugal
Portugali/ˈpɔrtʃʉɡəl/ (Portuguese: Portugal, IPA: [puɾtuˈɣaɫ]), officially the Portuguese Republic (Portuguese: República Portuguesa) is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula . Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira are part of Portugal. The country is named after its second largest city, Porto, whose Latin name was Portus Cale.
The land within the borders of the current Portuguese Republic has been continuously settled since prehistoric times: occupied by Celts like the Gallaeci and the Lusitanians, integrated into the Roman Republic and later settled by Germanic peoples such as the Suebi, Swabians, Vandals and the Visigoths. In the 8th century most of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Moorish invaders professing Islam, which were later expelled by the Knights Templar under the Order of Christ. During the Christian Reconquista, Portugal established itself as an independent kingdom from León in 1139, claiming to be the oldest European nation state.
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Republic of Ireland
Ireland (/ˈaɪərlənd/ or /ˈɑrlənd/; Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen)) is a sovereign state in Europe occupying about five-sixths of the island of Ireland. Its capital is Dublin. The population of the state was 4.59 million in 2011. It is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy, with an elected president serving as head of state. In the 1937 constitution, the name of the state is given as simply "Ireland". The Constitution of Ireland (Article 4) and the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 provides that the "Republic of Ireland" (Irish: Poblacht na hÉireann) is "the description of the state".
Ireland is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations. A developed country with the seventh highest Human Development Index, Ireland is also highly ranked for press freedom, economic freedom and democracy and political freedom.
The modern Irish state was established in 1922 as the Irish Free State, a dominion within the British Empire, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty which brought an end to the Irish War of Independence. The partition of Ireland had already been provided for in previous British legislation in 1921 in response to opposition to Irish Home Rule or independence by Unionists, who formed a majority in the north-eastern part of the country. Six of the nine counties in the northern province of Ulster were established under that legislation as Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, with which the Irish state shares its only land border. The state is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south east, and the Irish Sea to the east.
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Romania
Romania (i/roʊˈmeɪniə/ roh-MAY-nee-ə; dated: Roumania; or Rumania;Romanian: România [romɨˈni.a] ( listen)) is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast and east, and Bulgaria to the south.
At 238,400 square kilometers (92,000 sq mi), Romania is the ninth largest country of the European Union by area, and has the seventh largest population of the European Union with over 19 million people. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, the tenth largest city in the EU with about two million people.
The Kingdom of Romania emerged when the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were united under Prince Alexander Ioan Cuza in 1859. Independence from the Ottoman Empire was declared on 9 May 1877, and was internationally recognized the following year. At the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania. Greater Romania emerged into an era of progression and prosperity that would continue until World War II. By the end of the War, many north-eastern areas of Romania's territories were occupied by the Soviet Union, and Romania forcibly became a socialist republic and a member of the Warsaw Pact.
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Russia
Russiai/ˈrʌʃə/ or /ˈrʊʃə/ (Russian: Россия, tr. Rossiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, and the US state of Alaska by the Bering Strait. At 17,075,400 square kilometres (6,592,800 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area. Russia is also the eighth most populous nation with 143 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning nine time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources and is the largest producer of oil and natural gas globally. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
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Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia (i/ˌsaʊdi əˈreɪbi.ə/ or i/ˌsɔːdiː əˈreɪbi.ə/; Arabic: السعودية as-Su‘ūdīyah[citation needed] or incorrectly as-Sa‘ūdīyah, officially known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Arabic: المملكة العربية السعودية al-Mamlakah al-‘Arabīyah as-Su‘ūdīyah Arabic pronunciation (help·info)), is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab world, after Algeria. It is bordered by Jordan, and Iraq on the north and northeast, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the southeast, and Yemen on the south. The Red Sea lies to its west, and the Persian Gulf lies to the east. Saudi Arabia has an area of approximately 2,250,000 km2 (870,000 sq mi), and it has an estimated population of 27 million, of which 9 million are registered foreign expatriates and an estimated 2 million are illegal immigrants. Saudi nationals comprise an estimated 16 million people.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded by Abdul-Aziz bin Saud (known for most of his career as Ibn Saud) in 1932, although the conquests which eventually led to the creation of the Kingdom began in 1902 when he captured Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud, referred to in Arabic as the Al Saud. The Saudi Arabian government, which has been an absolute monarchy since its inception, refers to its system of government as being Islamic, though this is contested by many due to its strong basis in Salafism, a minority school of thought in Islam. The kingdom is sometimes called "The Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram (in Mecca), and Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (in Medina), the two holiest places in Islam.
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Slovakia
The Slovak Republic (short form: Slovakiai/sloʊˈvɑːkiə/ or /sləˈvækiə/; Slovak: Slovensko (help·info), long form Slovenská republika (help·info)) is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about 49,000 square kilometres (19,000 sq mi). Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south. The largest city is the capital, Bratislava, and the second largest is Košice. Slovakia is a member state of the European Union, NATO, United Nations, OECD and WTO among others. The official language is Slovak, a member of the Slavic language family.
The Slavs arrived in the territory of present day Slovakia in the 5th and 6th centuries during the migration period. In the course of history, various parts of today's Slovakia belonged to Samo's Empire (the first known political unit of Slavs), Principality of Nitra (as independent polity, as part of Great Moravia and as part of Hungarian Kingdom), Great Moravia, Kingdom of Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian Empire or Habsburg Empire, and Czechoslovakia. A separate Slovak state briefly existed during World War II, during which Slovakia was a dependency of Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1944. From 1945 Slovakia once again became a part of Czechoslovakia. The present-day Slovakia became an independent state on 1 January 1993 after the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia.
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Slovenia
Slovenia (i/sloʊˈviːniə/ sloh-VEE-nee-ə, Slovene: Slovenija), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Republika Slovenija, [reˈpublika sloˈveːnija]) is a Slavic nation state, situated in South-Central Europe, at the crossroad of main European cultural and trade routes. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Croatia to the south and southeast, and Hungary to the northeast. It covers 20,273 square kilometres (7,827 sq mi) and has a population of 2.05 million. It is a parliamentary republic, member of the European Union and NATO. Relative to its geography, history, economy, culture, and language, it is a very diverse country distinguished by a transitional character. It is characterised by a high economic and social level. Its capital and largest city is Ljubljana.
The territory of Slovenia is mainly hilly or mountainous and has an exceptionally high landscape and biological diversity and a mosaic structure, which are a result of natural attributes and the long-lasting presence of humans. Four major European geographic units interweave here: the Alps, the Dinaric Alps, the Mediterranean, with a small portion of coastline along the Adriatic Sea, and the Pannonian Plain. The climate is temperate and significantly influenced by the variety of territory, with a strong interaction of the continental climate, the sub-Mediterranean climate and Alpine climate across most of the country. The country is one of the water-richest in Europe, with a dense river network, a rich aquifer system, and significant karstic underground watercourses. Over half of the territory is covered by forest.
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South Africa
Coordinates: 30°S 25°E / 30°S 25°E / -30; 25
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is a country located at the southern tip of Africa. It is divided into nine provinces and has 2,798 kilometres (1,739 mi) of coastline. To the north of the country lie the neighbouring territories of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe; to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland; while Lesotho is an enclave surrounded by South African territory.
South Africa is multi-ethnic and has diverse cultures and languages. Eleven official languages are recognised in the constitution. Two of these languages are of European origin: South African English and Afrikaans, a language which originated mainly from Dutch that is spoken by the majority of white and Coloured South Africans. Though English is commonly used in public and commercial life, it is only the fifth most-spoken home language. All ethnic and language groups have political representation in the country's constitutional democracy comprising a parliamentary republic; unlike most parliamentary republics, the positions of head of state and head of government are merged in a parliament-dependent President.
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South Korea
South Korea ( listen), officially the Republic of Korea (Hangul: 대한민국; Hanja: 大韓民國; Daehan Minguk listen), is a sovereign state in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. The name "Korea" is derived from Goryeo, a dynasty which ruled in the Middle Ages (an initial "G" in Korean is pronounced like an English "K").
Its neighbors are China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the Korea Strait to the south. South Korea lies in the north temperate zone with a predominantly mountainous terrain. It covers a total area of 99,392 square kilometers and has a population of almost 50 million. The capital and largest city is Seoul, with a population of 9,794,304.
Archaeological findings show that the Korean Peninsula was occupied by the Lower Paleolithic period.Korean history begins with the founding of Gojoseon in 2333 BC by the legendary Dan-gun. Following the unification of the Three Kingdoms of Korea under Silla 668 AD, Korea went through the Goryeo Dynasty and Joseon Dynasty as one nation until the end of the Korean Empire in 1910, when it was annexed by Japan. After liberation and occupation by Soviet and U.S. forces at the end of World War II, the nation was divided into North and South Korea. The latter was established in 1948 as a democracy, though political turmoil and times of military rule and martial law characterized much of the period until the foundation of the Sixth Republic in 1987.
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Spain
Spain (i/ˈspeɪn/ SPAYN; Spanish: España, pronounced: [esˈpaɲa] ( listen)), officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a sovereign state and a member of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Its mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar; to the north and north east by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the northwest and west by the Atlantic Ocean and Portugal.
Spanish territory also includes the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast, and two autonomous cities in North Africa, Ceuta and Melilla, that border Morocco. Furthermore, the town of Llívia is a Spanish exclave situated inside French territory. With an area of 504,030 square kilometres (194,610 sq mi), it is the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union after France, and the fourth largest country in Europe after Russia, Ukraine and France.
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Sweden
Sweden (i/ˈswiːdən/ SWEE-dən; Swedish: Sverige [ˈsværjɛ] ( listen)), officially the Kingdom of Sweden (Swedish: Konungariket Sverige (help·info)), is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland, and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Øresund.
At 450,295 square kilometres (173,860 sq mi), Sweden is the third largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of about 9.4 million. Sweden has a low population density of 21 inhabitants per square kilometre (54 /sq mi) with the population mostly concentrated to the southern half of the country. About 85% of the population live in urban areas. Sweden's capital city is Stockholm, which is also the largest city.
Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages. In the 17th century, the country expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire. The empire grew to be one of the great powers of Europe in the 17th and early 18th century. Most of the conquered territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were lost during the 18th and 19th centuries. The eastern half of Sweden, present-day Finland, was lost to Russia in 1809. The last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Sweden by military means forced Norway into a personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, practicing "non-participation in military alliances during peacetime and neutrality during wartime". However, Sweden has been a member of the European Union since 1 January 1995 and is a member of the OECD.
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Turkey
Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (help·info)), is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia (mostly in the Anatolian peninsula) and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhchivan) and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea is to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. The Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between East Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia.
Turkey is one of the six independent Turkic states. The vast majority of the population are Muslims. The country's official language is Turkish, whereas Kurdish and Zazaki languages are spoken by Kurds and Zazas, who constitute 18% of the population.
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.
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United States
The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
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Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (Weimarer Republik [ˈvaɪmaʁɐ ʁepuˈbliːk] ( listen)) is the name given by historians to the federal republic and parliamentary representative democracy established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government. It was named after Weimar, the city where the constitutional assembly took place. Its official name was German Reich (Deutsches Reich)
Following World War I, the republic emerged from the German Revolution in November 1918. In 1919, a national assembly convened in Weimar, where a new constitution for the German Reich was written, then adopted on 11 August of that same year. The ensuing period of liberal democracy lapsed in the early 1930s, leading to the ascent of the nascent Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in 1933. The legal measures taken by the Nazi government in February and March 1933, commonly known as Gleichschaltung ("coordination") meant that the government could legislate contrary to the constitution. The republic nominally continued to exist until 1945, as the constitution was never formally repealed. However, the measures taken by the Nazis in the early part of their rule rendered the constitution irrelevant. Thus, 1933 is usually seen as the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Hitler's Third Reich.
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West Germany
West Germany (German: Westdeutschland) is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland) in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990.
During this period, West Germany and the communist East Germany were divided by the Inner German border. After 1961, West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. The enlarged Federal Republic of Germany with sixteen states (known simply as "Germany") is thus the continuation of the pre-1990 Federal Republic of Germany.
The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France (the "Western Zones"). The city of Bonn was its provisional capital city. The fourth Allied occupation zone (the East Zone, or Ostzone) was held by the Soviet Union. The parts of this zone lying east of the Oder-Neisse were in fact annexed by the Soviet Union and communist Poland; the remaining central part around Berlin became the communist German Democratic Republic (abbreviated GDR; in German Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR) with its de facto capital in East Berlin. As a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interwar democratic Weimar Republic.
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14th Dalai Lama
The 14th Dalai Lama (religious name: Tenzin Gyatso, shortened from Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, born Lhamo Dondrub, 6 July 1935) is the 14th and current Dalai Lama, as well as the longest lived incumbent. Dalai Lamas are the most influential figures in the Gelugpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, although the 14th has consolidated control over the other lineages in recent years. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, and is also well known for his lifelong advocacy for Tibetans inside and outside Tibet. Tibetans traditionally believe him to be the reincarnation of his predecessors and a manifestation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
The Dalai Lama was born in Taktser, Qinghai (also known to Tibetans as Amdo), and was selected as the rebirth of the 13th Dalai Lama two years later, although he was only formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama on 17 November 1950, at the age of 15. He inherited control over a government controlling an area roughly corresponding to the Tibet Autonomous Region just as the nascent People's Republic of China wished to assert central control over it. There is a dispute over whether the respective governments reached an agreement for a joint Chinese-Tibetan administration.
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Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.
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Alcide De Gasperi
Alcide De Gasperi (Italian pronunciation: [alˈtʃiːde de ˈɡasperi]; April 3, 1881 – August 19, 1954) was an Italian statesman and politician and founder of the Christian Democratic Party. From 1945 to 1953 he was the prime minister of eight successive coalition governments. His eight-year rule remains a landmark of political longevity for a leader in modern Italian politics. A conservative Catholic, he was one of the Founding fathers of the European Union, along with the Frenchman Robert Schuman and the German Konrad Adenauer.
De Gasperi was born in Pieve Tesino in Tyrol, which at that time belonged to Austria-Hungary, now part of the Trentino in Italy. His father was a local police officer of limited financial means. From 1896 De Gasperi was active in the Social Christian movement. In 1900 he joined the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy in Vienna, where he played an important role in the inception of the Christian student movement. He was very much inspired by the Rerum Novarum encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. In 1904 he took an active part in the student demonstrations in favour of an Italian-language university. Imprisoned with other protesters during the inauguration of the Italian juridical faculty in Innsbruck, he was released after twenty days. In 1905, De Gasperi obtained a degree in philology.
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Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro (Italian pronunciation: [ˈaldo ˈmɔːro]; September 23, 1916 – May 9, 1978) was an Italian politician and the 39th Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968, and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years.
A leader of Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democracy, DC), Moro was considered an intellectual and a patient mediator, especially in the internal life of his party. He was kidnapped on March 16, 1978, by the left-wing Red Brigades (BR), and killed after 55 days of captivity.
Moro was born in Maglie, in the province of Lecce (Puglia), into a family from Ugento. At 4, he moved with his family to Milan, but they soon moved back to Puglia, where he gained a classical high school degree at Archita lyceum in Taranto. Till 1939 he studied Law at the University of Bari, an institution where he was later to hold the post of ordinary professor of philosophy of Law and Colonial Policy (1941) and of Criminal Law (1942).
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Alfred Dregger
Alfred Dregger (10 December 1920, Münster – 29 June 2002, Fulda) was a German politician and a leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Dregger was born in Münster. After graduating from a school in Werl, he entered the German Wehrmacht in 1939. He was wounded four times and served until the end of the war, when he commanded a battalion on the Eastern Front at the rank of Captain. In 1946 he began studying law and government at the Universities of Marburg and Tübingen, earning his doctorate in 1950.
Dregger served from 1956 to 1970 as Oberbürgermeister or mayor of Fulda; when first elected, he was the youngest mayor in West Germany. He also served from 1962 to 1972 as a member of the Landtag of Hesse. He was for a time leader of the CDU in that body, and in 1967 became state party chairman, an office which he held until 1982. In 1969 he was also elected as a member of the national board of the party. From 1972 to 1998 he was a representative in the German Bundestag; from 1982 to 1991 he was Chairman of the CDU/CSU group there.
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Andrea Riccardi
Andrea Riccardi (born 1950 in Rome) is the founder of the Community of Sant'Egidio and Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Rome III in Rome, Italy. Since November 16, 2011, he serves as Minister for International Cooperation without portfolio in the Monti Cabinet.
Andrea Riccardi is also a member of the Fondation Chirac's honour committee, ever since the foundation was launched in 2008 by former French president Jacques Chirac in order to promote world peace. He also participated as jury member in 2009 for the Prize for Conflict Prevention awarded every year by this foundation.
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Andreas Papandreou
Andreas G. Papandreou (Greek: Ανδρέας Γ. Παπανδρέου); 5 February 1919 – 23 June 1996) was a Greek economist, a socialist politician and a dominant figure in Greek politics. The son of Georgios Papandreou, Andreas was a Harvard-trained academic. He served two terms as Prime Minister of Greece (21 October 1981, to 2 July 1989, and 13 October 1993, to 22 January 1996).
His assumption of power in 1981 influenced the course of Greek political history, ending an almost 50-year long system of power dominated by conservative forces; the achievements of his successive governments include the official recognition of the Greek Resistance against the Axis, the establishment of the National Health System and the Supreme Council for Personnel Selection (ASEP), the passage of Law 1264/1982 which secured the right to strike and greatly improved the rights of workers, the constitutional amendment of 1985–1986 which strengthened parliamentarism and reduced the powers of the unelected President, the conduct of an assertive and independent Greek foreign policy, the expansion in the power of local governments, many progressive reforms in Greek Law, and granting permission to the refugees of the Greek Civil War to return home in Greece. The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) which he founded and led, was the first non-communist political party in Greek history with a mass-based organization, and introduced an unprecedented level of political and social participation in Greek society. In a poll conducted by Kathimerini in 2007, 48% of those polled called Papandreou the "most important Greek Prime Minister". In the same poll, the first four years of Papandreou's government after Metapolitefsi were voted as the best government Greece ever had.
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Andrus Ansip
Andrus Ansip (born 1 October 1956) is the current Prime Minister of Estonia, and chairman of the market liberal Estonian Reform Party (Estonian: Reformierakond).
Born in Tartu, Ansip graduated from the University of Tartu with a degree in Chemistry in 1979. He worked as an engineer at Tartu State University from 1979–1983 (with a two-year break for mandatory military service). He was an Instructor in the Industry Department and Head of the Organisational Department of the Tartu District Committee of the Estonian Communist Party from 1986–1988. Ansip has been involved in several banking and investment ventures. He has served as a Member of the Board of Directors of the People’s Bank of Tartu (Estonian: Rahvapank), Chairman of the Board of Livonia Privatisation IF, and CEO of Investment Fund Broker Ltd (Estonian: Fondiinvesteeringu Maakler AS). He also has served as Chairman of the board for Radio Tartu.
In 1998, Ansip was elected as Mayor of Tartu as a candidate of the centrist-right Reformierakond (Reform Party), a position which he held until 2004, to great popular acclaim and very high ratings in the opinion polls. He had run in previous elections for the Riigikogu, the Estonian Parliament, but had always given up his seat in order to remain Mayor. He was succeeded by fellow Reform Party member Laine Jänes.
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Angela Merkel
Angela Dorothea Merkel, German: [aŋˈɡeːla doʁoˈteːa ˈmɛʁkl̩] ( listen); née Kasner (born 17 July 1954) is the Chancellor of Germany and Chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany.
A physical chemist by professional background, Merkel entered politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989 and briefly served as the deputy spokesperson for Lothar de Maizière's democratically elected East German government prior to the German reunification. Following reunification in 1990, she was elected to the Bundestag, where she has represented the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern since. She served as Federal Minister for Women and Youth 1991–1994 and as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety 1994–1998 in Helmut Kohl's fourth and fifth cabinets. She was Secretary General of the CDU 1998–2000, and was elected chairperson in 2000. From 2002 to 2005, she was also chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary coalition.
After her election as Chancellor following the 2005 federal election, she led a grand coalition consisting of her own CDU party, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), until 2009. In the 2009 federal election, the CDU obtained the largest share of the votes, and formed a coalition government with the CSU and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).
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Anker Jørgensen
Anker Jørgensen (born 13 July 1922) is a former Danish Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. He led or represented the Social Democratic Party for well over 30 years.
Anker Henrik Jørgensen was born on 13 July 1922 in a rich area of Copenhagen to Johannes Albert Jørgensen and Maria Jørgensen. He was brought up by close members of his family. In 1948 he married Ingrid Kvist Pedersen (17 August 1922 – 18 October 1997) whom he remained married to until her death in 1997. They had 4 children. Throughout this period, he lived in the working-class area of Sydhavnen, an inner city district of Copenhagen.
He began his political carer early, and in 1950 he became a member of a trade union. He led the Danish Workers Union, SiD, between 1968 and 1972. Whilst he was chairman of the Danish Workers Union, he was elected to the Parliament of Denmark for the first of many times in 1964.
In 1972, he succeeded Jens Otto Krag as Prime Minister of Denmark following the European Union Referendum of that year. He would hold this position for 14 months until the election when he would be succeeded by liberal Poul Hartling.
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Annette Schavan
Annette Schavan (help·info) (born June 10, 1955 in Jüchen) is a German politician (CDU). She has been the Federal Minister of Education and Research since November 22, 2005.
From 1995-2005, she served as the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. During this time, she oversaw school education in Baden-Württemberg, and started a controversy when she disallowed a Muslim teacher to wear a head scarf in school, since that was seen as a religious symbol, while allowing Catholic nuns to wear their traditional habit. This was done on the accepted pretext that the cassocks of nuns and monks have an official function, while a Moslem headscarf demonstrates the unwillingness to integrate with and accept the society of a country that one has chosen to live in for material reasons in preference to one's own.
Schavan was under discussion to become the Christian Democrats' candidate for Germany's presidency in 2004, but Horst Köhler was nominated and elected. In 2005 she tried to succeed Erwin Teufel as Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, but she was defeated by her rival Günther Oettinger (also CDU) in the internal elections of the CDU.
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Antonio Segni
Antonio Segni (Italian pronunciation: [anˈtɔːnjo ˈseɲɲi]; 2 February 1891 – 1 December 1972) was an Italian politician who was the 35th Prime Minister of Italy (1955–1957, 1959–1960), and the fourth President of the Italian Republic from 1962 to 1964. Adhering to the centrist Christian Democratic party (Italian: Democrazia Cristiana – DC), he was the first Sardinian ever to become Prime Minister of Italy.
The son of a Sardinian landowning family, born in Sassari, Sardinia, he studied to become a lawyer with a degree in agricultural and commercial law. Segni joined the Italian People's Party (Italian: Partito Popolare Italiano) – the predecessor of the Christian Democratic Party – in 1919. In 1924 he was a member of the party’s national council, until all political organizations were dissolved by Benito Mussolini two years later in 1926. For the next 17 years Segni taught Agrarian Law for at the Universities of Pavia, Perugia, and Cagliari; he was also rector of Sassari University.
In 1943 Segni was one of the organizers of the new Christian Democratic Party in Sardinia. He held ministerial positions in many Christian Democrat governments from 1944 onward, despite his frail physique. Time Magazine once quoted a friend: "He is like the Colosseum; he looks like a ruin but he'll be around for a long time." In 1946, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly after World War II and then to parliament in 1948.
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António Guterres
António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, GCC (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɐ̃ˈtɔniu ɡuˈtɛʁɨʃ]; born 30 April 1949) is a Portuguese politician, a former prime minister and President of the Socialist International. Currently he is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
António Guterres was born and raised in Portugal's capital, Lisbon, son of Virgílio Dias Guterres (b. São José, Lisbon, 21 October 1913) and wife Ilda Cândida de Oliveira (b. Fundão, Donas, 12 February 1923). As a young child he already showed the abilities which would later garner him the award for Best High School Student for the year of 1965. He continued his studies at IST, where he pursued degrees in physics and electrical engineering. During his college years Guterres was never involved in the student opposition to the authoritarian regime of António de Oliveira Salazar and, from 1968, Marcelo Caetano. Instead, he dedicated himself to his studies and to meetings of the JUC (Catholic University Students Movement). In 1971 he graduated and started an academic career as Assistant Professor.
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Aníbal Cavaco Silva
Aníbal António Cavaco Silva, GCC (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɐˈniβɐɫ kɐˈvaku ˈsiɫvɐ]; born 15 July 1939), is the President of Portugal. He won the Portuguese presidential election on 22 January 2006 and was re-elected on 23 January 2011, for a second five-year term. Cavaco Silva was sworn in on 9 March 2006.
He was previously Prime Minister of Portugal from 6 November 1985 to 28 October 1995. His tenure of ten years was the longest of any Prime Minister since Salazar, and he was the first Portuguese Prime Minister to have won an absolute parliamentary majority under the current constitutional system (which was established after the country's redemocratization following the Carnation Revolution).
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Austria
Austria (i/ˈɒstriə/ or /ˈɔːstriə/; German: Österreich [ˈøːstɐˌʁaɪç] ( listen)), officially the Republic of Austria (German: Republik Österreich (help·info)), is a landlocked country of roughly 8.47 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Hungary and Slovakia to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The territory of Austria covers 83,855 square kilometres (32,377 sq mi) and has a temperate and alpine climate. Austria's terrain is highly mountainous due to the presence of the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,798 metres (12,461 ft). The majority of the population speak local Austro-Bavarian dialects of German as their native language, and German in its standard form is the country's official language. Other local official languages are Burgenland Croatian, Hungarian and Slovene.
The origins of modern-day Austria date back to the time of the Habsburg dynasty when the vast majority of the country was a part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Austria became one of the great powers of Europe and, in response to the coronation of Napoleon I as the Emperor of the French, the Austrian Empire was officially proclaimed in 1804. In 1867, the Austrian Empire was reformed into Austria-Hungary.
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Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (i/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.
Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.
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Bernhard von Bülow
Bernhard Heinrich Karl Martin von Bülow (May 3, 1849 – October 28, 1929), named in 1905 Prince (Fürst) von Bülow, was a German statesman who served as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs for three years and then as Chancellor of the German Empire from 1900 to 1909.
Bülow was described as possessing every quality except greatness. He had a round face with smiling blue eyes and a carefully trimmed moustache. He spoke several languages, was a charming conversationalist and was comfortably at home in high society with a capacity to entertain and impress even his opponents. His colleague Kiderlen referred to him as "the Eel". Although highly ambitious, he was also vain and once he obtained power and position in the German government had no overaching ambition what to do with it, allowing others to guide policy. His character made him a good choice to work well with Emperor Wilhelm II, who required agreement and flattery from his senior ministers even if sometimes they then ignored his instructions. Bülow was a fine judge of mood and an expert flatterer, but could equally be cutting and contemptuous of both friends and enemies to others. He wrote four volumes of autobiography to be published after his death, which markedly altered public perception of his character as they included his candid and malicious descriptions of others. He was a fine debater in the Reichstag, although generally lazy in carrying out his duties. He was described by Friedrich von Holstein, who for 30 years was first councilor in the foreign department and a major influence on policy throughout that time, as having "read more Macchiavelli than he could digest". His mother-in-law claimed, "Bernhard makes a secret out of everything."
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Bertie Ahern
Patrick Bartholomew "Bertie" Ahern (born 12 September 1951) is a former Irish politician who served as Taoiseach of Ireland from 26 June 1997 to 7 May 2008.
Ahern served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1977 to 2011 and he represented the constituency of Dublin Central. Before he became Taoiseach, he served in the governments of Charles Haughey and Albert Reynolds as Minister for Labour (1987–91) and Minister for Finance (1991–94). He also served briefly as Tánaiste after the break-up of Albert Reynolds' coalition government.
In 1994, Ahern was elected sixth leader of Fianna Fáil. Under Ahern's leadership Fianna Fáil led three coalition governments. After Éamon de Valera, Bertie Ahern's term as Taoiseach is the longest. Ahern resigned as Taoiseach on 6 May 2008 and was succeeded by the then Minister for Finance Brian Cowen.
Ahern was born in Drumcondra, Dublin. This is an area within the Dublin Central constituency where he has lived all his life. Ahern is the youngest of five children of Con Ahern and Julia Ahern (née Hourihane), both natives of County Cork. Con Ahern and Julia Hourihane were married in October 1937 and settled at Church Avenue, Drumcondra, where they resided for the rest of their lives. The other four children are Maurice, Kathleen, Noel and Eileen. In Dublin, Ahern's father worked as a farm manager at All Hallows College, Drumcondra. Ahern's brother Noel is also involved in politics and represented Dublin North–West in Dáil Éireann.
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Bettino Craxi
Benedetto "Bettino" Craxi (pronounced [betˈtiːno ˈkraksi]) (24 February 1934 – 19 January 2000) was an Italian politician, head of the Italian Socialist Party from 1976 to 1993, the first socialist President of the Council of Ministers of Italy from 1983 to 1987.
Craxi led the 2nd longest-lived government of Italy during the republican era (after the 2nd Silvio Berlusconi cabinet), and had strong influence in Italian politics throughout the eighties; for some time, he was a close ally of two key figures of Christian Democracy, Giulio Andreotti and Arnaldo Forlani, in a loose cross-party alliance often dubbed CAF (from the first letter of the surname Craxi-Andreotti-Forlani). Craxi had a firm grasp on a party previously troubled by factionalism, and tried to distance it from the communists and to bring it closer to Christian Democrats and other parties; his objective was to create an Italian version of European reformist socialist parties, like the German SPD or the French Socialist Party. The Italian Socialist Party reached its post-war apex when it increased its share of votes in the general election of 1987. However, the Italian Socialist Party never outgrew the much larger Italian Communist Party, whose highly charismatic leader, Enrico Berlinguer, was a fierce adversary of Craxi's policies throughout the years.
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Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation. Clinton has been described as a New Democrat. Many of his policies have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance.
Born and raised in Arkansas, Clinton became both a student leader and a skilled musician. He is an alumnus of Georgetown University where he was Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. He is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has served as the United States Secretary of State since 2009 and was a Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. Both Clintons received law degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and served as Chair of the National Governors Association.
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Boyko Borisov
Boyko Metodiev Borisov (Bulgarian: Бойко Методиев Борисов, IPA: [ˈbɔjko mɛˈtɔdiɛf boˈrisof]; born 13 June 1959) is a Bulgarian politician who has been Prime Minister of Bulgaria since July 2009. Previously he was Mayor of Sofia from 8 November 2005 until his election as Prime Minister.
After his party, GERB, won the July 2009 parliamentary election, Borisov became Bulgaria's 50th Prime Minister on 27 July 2009.
Borisov was born in 1959 in Bankya (then a village, today a town part of greater Sofia) to Ministry of Internal Affairs official Metodi Borisov and elementary school teacher Veneta Borisova. Between 1982 and 1990, he assumed different positions in the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a firefighter and later as a professor at the Police Academy in Sofia. As a National Security Office member, Borisov took part in the protection of crops and haylofts during the name-changing campaign towards ethnic Turks in the 1980s. He quit the Ministry in 1990. In 1991 he founded a private security company, Ipon-1, and later guarded personalities like Todor Zhivkov and Simeon II. Borisov has been actively participating in karate championships since 1978, serving as the coach of the Bulgarian national team and a referee of international matches. He currently has a 7th dan black belt in karate and is the chairman of the Bulgarian Karate Federation. Borisov has also been a coach for the Bulgarian national karate team for many years.
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Bronisław Geremek
Professor Bronisław Geremek [brɔˈɲiswaf ɡɛˈrɛmɛk] ( listen) (born Benjamin Lewertow on March 6, 1932 in Warsaw, died July 13, 2008 in Lubień, Poland), was a Polish social historian and politician.
Geremek was born in Warsaw on March 6, 1932. His father, a fur merchant, was murdered in Auschwitz. His mother and he were smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943 and were sheltered by Stefan Geremek. Geremek later married Bronisław's mother and Bronisław was further raised in a Roman Catholic tradition. In his adult life he considered himself neither a Jew nor a Catholic. His grandfather was a maggid, his brother Jerry, living in New York is a Jew and his sons living in Poland are Roman Catholics.
In 1954 Bronisław Geremek graduated from the Faculty of History at the Warsaw University, and in 1956–1958 he completed postgraduate studies at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris. He completed his PhD in 1960 and in 1972 he was granted a postdoctoral degree at the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). In 1989 he was appointed associate professor.
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Carlo Azeglio Ciampi
Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈkarlo adˈdzɛʎʎo ˈtʃampi] ( listen); born 9 December 1920) is an Italian politician and banker. He was the 49th Prime Minister of Italy from 1993 to 1994 and was the tenth President of the Italian Republic from 1999 to 2006. He is currently a Senator for life in the Italian Senate.
Ciampi was born in Livorno (Province of Livorno).
After receiving a doctorate in literature in 1941 from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, one of the country's most prestigious universities, he was called to military duty in Albania as a lieutenant. On 8 September 1943, on the date of the armistice with the Allies, he refused to remain in the Fascist Italian Social Republic, and took refuge in Abruzzo, in Scanno. He subsequently managed to pass the lines and reach Bari, where he joined the Partito d'Azione (and thus the Italian resistance movement).
In 1946 he married Franca Pila. That same year, he obtained a doctorate in law from the University of Pisa and began working at the Banca d'Italia. He also joined the CGIL (Trade Union), which he left in 1980.
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Charles Haughey
Charles James "Charlie" Haughey (16 September 1925 – 13 June 2006) was Taoiseach of Ireland, serving three terms in office (from December 1979 to June 1981, March 1982 to December 1982, and March 1987 to February 1992). He was also the fourth leader of Fianna Fáil (from 1979 until 1992). Haughey was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Teachta Dála (TD) in 1957 and was re-elected in every election until 1992, he represented the Dublin North-East constituency from 1957 until 1973. The constituency lines were redrawn under the Electoral (Amendment) Act 1974 in an attempt to secure re-election for the sitting Fine Gael-Labour Party government in the 1977 election and Haughey represented Dublin-Artane in 1977, this constituency was abolished in 1981 and most of Haughey's electoral area was moved into the reformed Dublin North-Central constituency which he served from 1981 until his retirement in 1992. Haughey also served as Minister for Health and Social Welfare (1977–1979), Minister for Finance (1966–1970), Minister for Agriculture (1964–1966) and Minister for Justice (1961–1964). He also served as a Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Justice during the early years of his parliamentary career.
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China
China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the world's most-populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.
The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims Taiwan—which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity—as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War. The PRC government denies the legitimacy of the ROC.
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Christian Wulff
Christian Wilhelm Walter Wulff (German pronunciation: [ˈkʁɪstjan ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈvaltɐ vʊlf]; born 19 June 1959) is a German politician and lawyer. He served as the President of Germany from 2010 to 2012. A member of the Christian Democratic Union, he served as Prime Minister of the state of Lower Saxony from 2003 to 2010. He was elected President in the 30 June 2010 presidential election, defeating opposition candidate Joachim Gauck and taking office immediately, although he was not sworn in until 2 July.
On 17 February 2012, Wulff resigned as President of Germany, facing the prospect of prosecution for allegations of corruption relating to his prior service as Prime Minister of Lower Saxony.
Wulff was born in Osnabrück and is Roman Catholic. He was the first Roman Catholic to hold the post of President of Germany since Heinrich Lübke (1959–1969). His father left the family, and he grew up with his mother. As a teenager, he took responsibility for the care of his younger sister, after his mother developed multiple sclerosis. After completing his Abitur at the Ernst Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in Osnabrück, Wulff studied law with a specialisation in economics at the University of Osnabrück. He joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in 1975. In 1987 and 1990, he passed the first and second state examinations in law, and has since worked as an attorney.
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Claudia Nolte
Claudia Nolte was born Claudia Wiesemüller on February 7, 1966 in Rostock, a town that then lay in East Germany. Nolte became a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union party (CDU), becoming the youngest cabinet minister in German history whilst in office from 1994–98. She was Federal Minister for family, seniors, women and youth affairs and has been President of the European Union Council of Ministers. Claudia is a Catholic and is active in the Catholic community. She is married to investigative journalist David Crawford of The Wall Street Journal. With her marriage in July 2008, she changed her name to Claudia Crawford.
Claudia Wiesemüller was born in 1966 and in her teenage years was refused admission to a college preparatory school due to her participation in Catholic church youth activities. East German school officials required her to learn a trade before she could enroll in college, so whilst attending a technical secondary school in Rostock, she took vocational training in marine electronics from 1982 to 1984.
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Costas Simitis
Konstantinos Simitis (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Σημίτης) (born 23 June 1936), usually referred to as Costas Simitis or Kostas Simitis, was Prime Minister of Greece and leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) from 1996 to 2004.
Costas Simitis' family has roots in Ilida (municipality).[citation needed] Ηe was born in Piraeus to Georgios Simitis, a Professor at the School of Economic and Commercial Sciences, and to his wife Fani (née Christopoulou). He studied Law at the University of Marburg in Germany and economics at the London School of Economics. He is married to Daphne Arkadiou (b. 1938)and has two daughters, Fiona and Marilena. His brother Spiros Simitis is a prominent jurist specializing on data privacy in Germany. He currently resides in the Kolonaki district of Athens.
In 1965 he returned to Greece and was one of the founders of the "Alexandros Papanastasiou" political research group . In 1967, after the military coup of 21 April, this group was transformed into Democratic Defense, an organization opposed to the military regime. Simitis escaped abroad after planting bombs in the streets of Athens (in later years he acknowledged his activities on Greek MEGA TV channel) in order to avoid being jailed and became a member of the Panhellenic Liberation Movement (PAK), led by Andreas Papandreou. He also took up a position as university lecturer in Germany. He returned to Athens in 1974 and was one of the co-founders of PAK's successor, the PASOK. In 1977 he took up a lecturer's post at the Panteion University.
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Dalia Grybauskaitė
Dalia Grybauskaitė (pronounced [ˈdaːlʲæ ɡʲrʲiːbɒʊsˈkaɪtʲeː], born 1 March 1956) is the current President of Lithuania, inaugurated on 12 July 2009. She had previously been Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Finance Minister, and European Commissioner for Financial Programming and the Budget. Often referred to as the "Iron Lady" or the "Steel Magnolia", Grybauskaitė is Lithuania's first female head of state.
Grybauskaitė was born on 1 March 1956 in a working-class family in Vilnius. Her mother, Vitalija Korsakaitė (1922–1989), was born in the Biržai region and worked as a saleswoman; her father, Polikarpas Grybauskas (1928–2008), worked as an electrician and driver. Grybauskaitė attended Salomėja Nėris High School. She has described herself as not among the best of students, receiving mostly fours in a system where five was the highest grade. Her favourite subjects were history, geography and physics.
Grybauskaitė began participating in sport at the age of eleven, and became a passionate basketball player. At the age of nineteen, she worked for a year at the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Society as a staff inspector. She then enrolled in Saint Petersburg State University, then known as Zhdanov University, as a student of political economy. At the same time, she began working in a local factory. In 1983, Grybauskaitė graduated with a citation and returned to Vilnius, taking a secretarial position at the Academy of Sciences. Work in the Academy was scarce, however, and she moved to the Vilnius Party High School, where she lectured in political economy and global finance. Between 1983 and 1990 she was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1988, she defended her PhD thesis at Moscow's Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (now the Russian Academy of State Service).
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Daniel Bahr
Daniel Bahr (born 4 November 1976) is a German politician and member of the FDP.
Bahr was born in Lahnstein. He is the FDP's expert on health politics and was chairman of the party's youth organization, the Young Liberals, from 1999 to 2004.
Bahr joined the Young Liberals (the German short form is "Julis") at the age of 14 in 1990. Two years later he became a member of their mother party FDP. From 1994 to 1996 he was chairman of the Julis in the district of Münster and subsequently became a member of its federal executive board. In 1999, he was elected chairman of the Julis.
Since 1998, Bahr has been a member of the FDP's federal executive board. In 2003, he became chairman of the party's "Zukunftsforum" (Future Forum) on "Frauen, kinderfreundliches Deutschland, Generationengerechtigkeit" ("Women, Child-friendly Germany, a Generation Fairness"). He is currently the chairman of the FDP in the Münsterland district, and leads the party's opposition against the grand coalition's health sector reform. Since 2009 he was Parliamentary State Secretary by the Federal Minister of Health, since 12 May 2011 he is Federal Minister of Health.
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David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron (pronunciation: /ˈkæmərən/; born 9 October 1966) is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. He represents Witney as its Member of Parliament (MP).
Cameron studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford, gaining a first class honours degree. He then joined the Conservative Research Department and became Special Adviser to Norman Lamont, and then to Michael Howard. He was Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton Communications for seven years.
He was defeated in his first candidacy for Parliament at Stafford in 1997, but was elected in 2001 as the Member of Parliament for the Oxfordshire constituency of Witney. He was promoted to the Opposition front bench two years later, and rose rapidly to become head of policy co-ordination during the 2005 general election campaign. With a public image of a youthful, moderate candidate who would appeal to young voters, he won the Conservative leadership election in 2005.
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Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Vana Rousseff (Brazilian Portuguese: [ˈdʒiwmɐ χuˈsɛf] born 14 December 1947) is the 36th and current President of Brazil. She is the first woman to hold the office. Prior to that, in 2005, she was also the first woman to become Chief of Staff to the President of Brazil, appointed by then President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The daughter of a Bulgarian entrepreneur, Rousseff was raised in an upper middle class household in Belo Horizonte. She became a socialist during her youth, and following the 1964 coup d'état joined various left-wing and Marxist urban guerrilla groups that fought against the military dictatorship. Rousseff was captured and jailed between 1970 and 1972 and reportedly tortured.
After her release, Rousseff rebuilt her life in Porto Alegre with Carlos Araújo, who would be her partner for 30 years. Both helped found the Democratic Labour Party (PDT) in Rio Grande do Sul, participating in several of the party's electoral campaigns. She became the Secretary of the Treasury of the city of Porto Alegre in the Alceu Collares administration, and later the Secretary of Energy of the State of Rio Grande do Sul under both Collares and Olívio Dutra administrations. In 2000, after an internal dispute in the Dutra cabinet, she left PDT and joined the Workers' Party (PT).
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Dimitris Christofias
Demetris Christofias (also spelled Dimitris Christofias) , Greek: Δημήτρης Χριστόφιας, Φασίστας, (born 29 August 1946) is a left-wing Greek Cypriot politician who has been the sixth President of Cyprus since 2008. Christofias was the General Secretary of AKEL and is Cyprus's first, and the European Union's first and so far only, communist head of state. He won the 2008 Cypriot presidential elections in the second round of voting. Throughout the election campaign, he pledged to restart talks with Turkish Cypriots in order to find a solution to the Cyprus dispute and reunify the island. He has also supported the closure of the British military bases on Cyprus.
Christofias was born on 29 August 1946 in the village of Dhikomo, Kyrenia. Christofias became involved in leftist politics early in his youth and held several positions with the youth movement of AKEL (the Progressive Party of the Working People of Cyprus). His father, who died in 1987, was a builder, member of the Pancyprian Federation of Labour (PEO).
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Dries van Agt
Andreas Antonius Maria "Dries" van Agt (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈdris fɑn ˈɑxt]; born February 2, 1931) is a retired Dutch politician of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). He served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from December 19, 1977, until November 4, 1982.
He previously served as Minister of Justice from July 6, 1971 until September 8, 1977 in the Cabinets Biesheuvel I, II and Den Uyl. And Deputy Prime Minister from May 11, 1973 until September 8, 1977 in the Cabinet Den Uyl. He resigned as Minister of Justice and Deputy Prime Minister to become the first Christian Democratic Appeal Party leader and the first Parliamentary leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal in the House of Representatives which he served from May 26, 1977 until December 19, 1977 and a Member of the House of Representatives from June 8, 1977 until December 19, 1977. Van Agt became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, leading the Cabinets Van Agt I, II and III. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs for his Third cabinet.
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Edmund Stoiber
Edmund Rüdiger Stoiber (born 28 September 1941) is a German politician, former minister-president of the state of Bavaria and former chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU). On 18 January 2007, he announced his decision to step down from the posts of minister-president and party chairman by 30 September, after having been under fire in his own party for weeks.
Edmund Stoiber was born in Oberaudorf in the district of Rosenheim, Bavaria. Prior to entering politics in 1974 and serving in the Bavarian parliament, he was a lawyer and worked at the University of Regensburg.
Stoiber is Roman Catholic. He is married to Karin Stoiber. They have three children: Constanze (1971), Veronica (1977), Dominic (1980) and five grandchildren: Johannes (1999), Benedikt (2001),Theresa Marie (2005), Ferdinand (2009) and another grandson (2011).
Stoiber attended the Ignaz-Günther-Gymnasium in Rosenheim, where he received his Abitur (high school diploma) in 1961, although he had to repeat one year for failing in Latin. His mandatory military service was with the Gebirgsdivision mountain infantry division in Mittenwald and Bad Reichenhall and was cut-short due to a knee injury. Following his military service, Stoiber studied political science and then, in the fall 1962 in Munich, law. In 1967 he passed the state law exam and then worked at the University of Regensburg in criminal law and Eastern European law. He was awarded a doctorate of jurisprudence, and then in 1971 passed the second state examination with distinction.
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Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC (9 July 1916 – 17 July 2005) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–74) and as Leader of the Conservative Party (1965–75).
Born in Broadstairs, Kent, Heath studied at Oxford and served in the Second World War. He was first elected in the 1950 general election, for Bexley and was government Chief Whip during the 1950s. Entering the Cabinet as Minister of Labour in 1959, he was then Lord Privy Seal responsible for Macmillan's unsuccessful EEC entry negotiations, then President of the Board of Trade. In 1965 Heath won the leadership of the Conservative Party against Reginald Maudling and Enoch Powell. The general election of 1966 saw the Labour government of Harold Wilson achieve a large increase in seats, however Heath remained Conservative leader.
Heath became Prime Minister after winning the 1970 general election. In 1971, Heath oversaw the decimalisation of British coinage and in 1972, he implemented major reform to the UK's system of local government. In foreign policy, Heath took the UK into the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. Heath's premiership oversaw the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, with the suspension of the Stormont parliament and the imposition of direct British rule. Unofficial talks with IRA delegates were unsuccessful, as was the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973, which caused Ulster Unionists to withdraw from the Conservative whip.
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Ehud Olmert
Ehud Olmert (Hebrew: אהוד אולמרט, IPA: [eˈhud ˈolmeʁt] ( listen), born 30 September 1945) is an Israeli politician and lawyer. He served as Prime Minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009 and before that as a Cabinet Minister from 1988 to 1992 and from 2003 to 2006. Between his first and second stints as a cabinet member, he served as Mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003.
In 2003 Olmert was re-elected to the Knesset (he had earlier served eight terms), and became a Cabinet Minister and Acting Prime Minister in the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. On 4 January 2006, after Sharon suffered a severe hemorrhagic stroke, Olmert began exercising the powers of the office of Prime Minister. Olmert led Kadima to a victory in the March 2006 elections (just two months after Sharon had suffered his stroke), and continued on as Acting Prime Minister. On 14 April, two weeks after the election, Sharon was declared permanently incapacitated, allowing Olmert to legally become Interim Prime Minister. Less than a month later, on 4 May, Olmert and his new, post-election government were approved by the Knesset, thus Olmert officially became Prime Minister of Israel.
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Elio Di Rupo
Elio Di Rupo (French pronunciation: [eljo di ʁypo]; b. 18 July 1951) is a Belgian socialist politician of Italian heritage. He is the Prime Minister of Belgium, and leader of the Socialist Party (PS). He became Prime Minister on 6 December 2011 and heads the Di Rupo I Government. Elio Di Rupo is the first francophone to hold the office since Paul Vanden Boeynants in 1979, as well as the country's first socialist Prime Minister since Edmond Leburton left office in 1974. He is also the first Belgian Prime Minister of non-Walloon or Flemish descent as well as the only openly gay leader of a European Union country.
Di Rupo is the son of two Italian immigrants. His father was born in San Valentino in Abruzzo Citeriore in the region of Abruzzo. Elio is the only child who was born in Belgium; his brothers and sisters were all born in Italy. When he was one year old, his father died in a car crash and his illiterate Roman Catholic mother was unable to raise all seven children. Because of financial reasons, three children were raised in the orphanage nearby.
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Emilio Colombo
Emilio Colombo (born 11 April 1920) is an Italian politician who was Prime Minister of Italy from 1970 to 1972. In addition to having held top positions in Italian governments, he was also active in European politics and is currently an Italian senator-for-life.
Born in Potenza, Basilicata, Colombo entered politics as a member of the Christian Democratic Party. Having held several cabinet posts, he was Prime Minister of Italy from 1970 until his resignation in 1972. Later he became President of the European Parliament (occupying that office from 1977 until 1979) and Foreign Minister of Italy (from 1980 until 1983, and again from 1992 until 1993). A decade after he last held that position, President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi bestowed Italy's highest political honour on him, by nominating him Senator for life.
Shortly after this, in November 2003, he admitted to have used cocaine (for "therapeutic purposes") over a 12- to 18-month period, and to be a homosexual.
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Enda Kenny
Enda Kenny (born 24 April 1951) is an Irish Fine Gael politician, and has been the Taoiseach since 2011. He has led Fine Gael since 2002. He served as Minister for Tourism and Trade from 1994 to 1997. He is also a two-term Vice President of the European People's Party.
Kenny has been a Teachta Dála (TD) for Mayo since 1975, having succeeded his father Henry Kenny. He is the longest-serving TD currently in Dáil Éireann, which makes him the incumbent Father of the Dáil.
Kenny led Fine Gael in the 2011 general election. He subsequently brokered an agreement with the Labour Party and formed a coalition government on 9 March 2011. He is Fine Gael's first Taoiseach since John Bruton from 1994 to 1997, and the first Fine Gael leader to win government in an election since Garret FitzGerald in 1982.
Enda Kenny was born in the village of Islandeady near Castlebar, County Mayo in 1951, the third child of five. He was educated locally at St. Patrick's National School in Cornanool and St. Gerald's College (De La Salle) in Castlebar. Kenny subsequently attended St Patrick's College of Education in Dublin and University College Galway. He briefly worked as a primary school teacher, and is a Gaeilgeoir.
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Felipe González
Felipe González Márquez (born 5 March 1942) is a Spanish socialist politician. He was the General Secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from 1974 to 1997. To date, he remains the longest-serving Prime Minister of Spain, after having served four successive mandates from 1982 to 1996.
Felipe was born in Seville, son of a farmer who had a small dairy. He has a sister named Lola González y Márquez, married to Francisco Germán Palomino y Romera, by whom she has two sons, Felipe and Germán Palomino y González. He studied Law at Seville University and started his career as attorney specialising in labour. While at the University he met members of the socialist trade union Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) that was clandestine at the time. He also contacted members of the PSOE and started taking part in the party's clandestine activity. During that time he adopted the nom de guerre Isidoro and moved to Madrid. He was elected Secretary General of the Party at the Suresnes Congress, in France.
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Francesco Cossiga
Francesco Cossiga (26 July 1928 – 17 August 2010) was an Italian politician, the 43rd Prime Minister and the eighth President of the Italian Republic. He was also a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sassari.
Cossiga was born in Sassari in the north of Sardinia. He started his political career during World War II. His name is now usually pronounced Italian pronunciation: [kosˈsiːɡa], but it was originally pronounced Italian pronunciation: [ˈkɔssiɡa], with the stress on the first syllable, meaning "Corsica". He was the cousin of Enrico Berlinguer.
He was a minister several times for the Democrazia Cristiana party (DC), notably during his stay at Viminale (Ministry for internal affairs) where he re-structured the Italian police, civil protection and secret services. In 1977, when Cossiga was minister of internal affairs, police squads organized by Cossiga shot against a demonstration in Rome, killing student Giorgiana Masi. Cossiga for many years stated that she was killed by her companions.
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Franz Josef Jung
Franz Josef Jung (born 5 March 1949) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He became Federal Minister of Defence in the Grand coalition cabinet of Angela Merkel on 22 November 2005. In October 2009 he became Minister of Labour and Social Affairs but resigned a month later.
After his military service, Franz Josef Jung studied law at the University of Mainz and is a lawyer and civil law notary. In 1978 Jung successfully completed his doctoral studies at the University of Mainz and was hence awarded the title Dr. jur. (i.e. PhD in Law). In his political career, he held various party functions in Hesse (currently as vice chairman of the CDU there) and also served as a state minister.
In September 2007 he sparked a debate by his controversial assertion to shoot down jetliners in the case of a terrorist attack on Germany. Several politicians of the opposition parties as well as politicians from the SPD, especially Reinhard Bütikofer and Kurt Beck, described his move as "unconstitutional" and called for his resignation.
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Franz Müntefering
Franz Müntefering [fʁants ˈmʏntəˌfeʁɪŋ] ( listen) (born 16 January 1940) is a German politician and industrial manager. He was Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 18 October 2008 to 13 November 2009, a position he already held from 2004 to 2005. He was Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, as well as Vice-Chancellor, from 2005 to 2007.
He was born in Neheim (now part of Arnsberg) and joined the SPD in 1966. He was a member of the Bundestag from 1975 to 1992 and again since 1998; from 1995 to 1998 he was a member of the Landtag (state parliament) of North Rhine-Westphalia.
He was Bundesgeschäftsführer (executive director) of the national SPD from 1995 to 1998, and after holding briefly the post of Minister of Transportation and Construction in the first cabinet of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, he was the first to hold the new post of SPD General Secretary from 1999 to 2002, and thereafter became leader of the SPD fraction in the Bundestag. In February 2004 he was designated to succeed Schröder as party chairman in March 2004.
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Franz von Papen
Lieutenant-Colonel Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen zu Köningen ( listen (help·info)) (29 October 1879 – 2 May 1969) was a German nobleman, General Staff officer and right-wing politician. He served as as Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and as Vice-Chancellor under Adolf Hitler in 1933–1934. He belonged to the group of close advisers to President Paul von Hindenburg in the late Weimar Republic. It was largely Papen, believing that Hitler could be controlled once he was in the government, who persuaded Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in a cabinet not under Nazi Party domination. However, Papen and his allies were quickly marginalized by Hitler and he left the government after the Night of the Long Knives, during which some of his confidants were killed by the Nazis.
Born to a wealthy and noble Catholic family in Werl, Province of Westphalia, son of Friedrich von Papen zu Köningen (1839 – 1906) and his wife Anna Laura von Steffens (1852 – 1939), Papen was educated as an officer, including a period as a military attendant in the Kaiser's Palace, before joining the German General Staff in March 1913. He entered diplomatic service in December 1913 as a military attaché to the German ambassador in the United States. He travelled to Mexico (to which he was also accredited) in early 1914 and observed the Mexican Revolution, returning to Washington, D.C. on the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. He married Martha von Boch-Galhau (1880 – 1961) on 3 May 1905.
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Franz Vranitzky
Franz Vranitzky (born 4 October 1937) is an Austrian politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), he was Chancellor of Austria from 1986 to 1997.
As the son of a foundryman, Vranitzky was born into humble circumstances in Vienna's 17th disttrict. He attended the Realgymnasium Geblergasse and studied economics, graduating in 1960. He financed his studies teaching Latin and English and as a construction worker.
As a young man, Vranitzky played basket ball and was a member of Austria's national team, which in 1960 unsuccessfully tried to qualify for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.
In 1962 he joined the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ).
In 1962, Vranitzky married Christine Christen, with whom he fathered two children.
Vranitzky began his career in 1961 at Siemens-Schuckert, but within the year switched to the National Bank of Austria. In 1969, he received a doctorate in International business studies. The following year, Hannes Androsch, minister of finance under Chancellor Bruno Kreisky had appointed him economic and financial advisor. Vranitzky served as deputy director of the Creditanstalt-Bankverein (1976–1981), briefly as its director general and as director general of the Österreichische Länderbank (1981–1984).
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François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (French: [fʁɑ̃swa mɔʁis mitɛˈʁɑ̃] ( listen); 26 October 1916 – 8 January 1996) was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the first figure from the left elected President under the Fifth Republic.
Reflecting family influences, Mitterrand started political life on the Catholic nationalist right. He served under the Vichy Regime in its earlier years. Subsequently, however, he joined the Resistance, moved to the left, and held ministerial office repeatedly under the Fourth Republic. He opposed de Gaulle's establishment of the Fifth Republic. Although at times a politically isolated figure, Mitterrand outmanoeuvred rivals to become the left's standard bearer in every presidential election from 1965 to 1988, except 1969. Elected President in the May 1981 presidential election, he was re-elected in 1988 and held office until 1995.
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Fredrik Reinfeldt
John Fredrik Reinfeldt (pronounced [ˈfreːdrɪk ˈrajnˌfɛlt] ( listen); born 4 August 1965) is the Prime Minister of Sweden, leader of the liberal conservative Moderate Party and former President of the European Council.
A native of Stockholm County, Reinfeldt joined the Moderate Youth League in 1983, and by 1992 had risen to the rank of chairman, a position he held until 1995. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1991, representing his home constituency. Following the 1994 defeat of the Moderate-led coalition government, Reinfeldt adopted a critical stance against the party leadership under Carl Bildt, which resulted in isolation within the party. However, following a change of leadership in 1999 and a bad result in the 2002 election, Reinfeldt gradually gained influence within the Moderate Party.
Reinfeldt was elected party leader on 25 October 2003, succeeding Bo Lundgren. Under his leadership, the Moderate Party has transformed its policies and oriented towards the centre, branding itself "the New Moderates" (Swedish: Nya moderaterna). Following the general elections held on 17 September 2006, Reinfeldt was elected Prime Minister by the new parliament on 5 October and presented his cabinet the following day. Together with the three other political parties in the centre-right Alliance for Sweden, Reinfeldt presides over a coalition government with the support of a narrow majority in the parliament. At the age of 41, he was the third youngest person to become Prime Minister of Sweden. After the 2010 election Reinfeldt's government was reduced to a minority government but also becoming the first centre-right government since before World War II to be re-elected, making Reinfeldt the first Moderate politician elected to two consecutive terms as Prime Minister. He is also the longest-serving Moderate Prime Minister in Swedish history.
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Friedrich Ebert
Friedrich Ebert (4 February 1871 – 28 February 1925) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
When Ebert was elected as the leader of the SPD after the death of August Bebel, the party members of the SPD were deeply divided because of the party's support for World War I. Ebert supported the Burgfrieden and tried to isolate the war opposers in the party. After the war and the end of the monarchy he served as the first President of Germany from 1919 until his death in office. Before being elected as President, he briefly served as Chancellor during the last months of the German Empire. After he was announced as the new President, the government intervened together with the army and right wing Freikorps against the leftist uprisings, which resulted in the death of several left politicians and ended the partnership of the SPD in government with the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD).
After that he changed his politics to a “policy of compensating“ between the left and the right, between the workers and the enterprises. For that he followed a policy of brittle coalitions. This resulted in some problems, for example the SPD agreed during the crisis of 1923 to an extension of the work time without extra payment for the workers, but the conservative parties hadn’t agreed to also introduce taxes for the rich as an compensation. His death, which resulted in the monarchist Paul von Hindenburg as his Presidential successor, is seen as an important break in the Weimar Republic, which ended less than a decade later.
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Frère Roger
Frère Roger (Brother Roger) (Provence, Switzerland, May 12, 1915 - Taizé, August 16, 2005), baptised Roger Louis Schütz-Marsauche, also known as Brother Roger, was the founder and prior of the Taizé Community, an ecumenical monastic community.
Roger was born the ninth and youngest child of Karl Ulrich Schütz, a Protestant pastor from Bachs in the Zürcher Unterland (Zürich Lowlands) in Switzerland, and his wife, Amélie Henriette Schütz-Marsauche, a French Protestant woman from Burgundy.
From 1937 to 1940, Roger studied Reformed theology in Strasbourg and Lausanne, where he was a leader in the Swiss Student Christian Movement, part of the World Student Christian Federation.
In 1940, he rode a bicycle from Geneva to Taizé, a small town near Mâcon, about 390 kilometres (240 mi) southeast of Paris. Taizé was then in unoccupied France, just beyond the line of demarcation to the zone occupied by German troops. For two years Brother Roger hid Jewish refugees before being forced to leave Taizé. In 1944, he returned to Taizé to found the Community, initially a small quasi-monastic community of men living together in poverty and obedience.
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Gaston Thorn
Gaston Egmond Thorn (3 September 1928 – 26 August 2007) was a Luxembourg politician who served in a number of high-profile positions, both domestically and internationally. Amongst the posts that he held were the 20th Prime Minister of Luxembourg (1974–79), President of the United Nations General Assembly (1975), and the seventh President of the European Commission (1981–85).
Thorn was born in Luxembourg City. While still at school he engaged in resistance activities during the German occupation, and spent several months in prison. After the war he studied law in Montpellier, Lausanne and Paris, and practised law in Luxembourg before entering politics in 1959, representing the liberal Democratic Party. He was Chairman of the Democratic Party from 1961.
Thorn was Foreign Minister and Foreign Trade Minister of Luxembourg from 1969 – 1980, Prime Minister from 1974 – 1979 and Minister of Economics from 1977 to 1980. He was also a member of the European Parliament from 1959 – 1969, and President of the United Nations General Assembly from 1975 – 1976.
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Georg Michaelis
Georg Michaelis (September 8, 1857 – July 24, 1936) was Chancellor of Germany for a few months in 1917. He was the first non-noble to hold the office.
Michaelis, born in Haynau in the Prussian Province of Silesia, grew up in Frankfurt (Oder). He studied jurisprudence at the University of Breslau, the University of Leipzig and the University of Würzburg from 1876 to 1884, becoming a Doctor of Laws.
From 1885 to 1889 he lived and worked in Tokyo in Japan as a law professor of the Law School of the Society for German Sciences.
After his return to Germany he became a member of the Prussian administration. In 1909 he won appointment as undersecretary of state to the Prussian Treasury in Berlin. From 1915 onwards he headed the Reichsgetreidestelle, an office responsible for the administration of Prussian corn and wheat in World War I.
After the Reichstag and the High Command forced the resignation of Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg on July 14, 1917, Michaelis became Chancellor of Germany as well as Minister President of Prussia--the first non-titled person to hold either office. As it turned out, he was also the only commoner to serve as chief minister in the history of the Hohenzollern monarchy. He remained in this position until October 31, 1917, when he was forced to resign after coming under fire for refusing to commit himself by endorsing a resolution passed by the Reichstag favoring peace without annexation or indemnities. In addition, he was increasingly seen as a puppet of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff of the General Staff.
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Georg von Hertling
Georg Friedrich Graf von Hertling (31 August 1843 – 4 January 1919) was a Bavarian politician who served as Minister-President of Bavaria 1912–1917 and then as Minister-President of Prussia and Chancellor of the German Empire from 1917 to 1918. He was the first party man to hold the office.
Hertling became professor of philosophy at the University of Munich, and while professor he published books on Aristotle (1871) and on Albertus Magnus (1880). From 1875 to 1890, and again from 1893 to 1912, he was a member of the Reichstag, and from 1909 to 1912 he led the Centre (Catholic) Party faction in the Reichstag. In 1891, the Regent of Bavaria made him a life member of the upper house of the Bavarian Landtag.
As leader of the largest party in the Bavarian Landtag, in 1912 Hertling was appointed Bavarian Minister-President and Minister for Foreign Affairs by Luitpold, Prince Regent of Bavaria. King Ludwig III later elevated him to the rank of Count. Following the outbreak of World War I, Hertling supported the policy of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg but declined to become his successor in 1917. After after the fall of Georg Michaelis in November of that year, however, he accepted appointment as German Chancellor and Minister-President of Prussia. He was the first politician to hold either post; his predecessors had either been career civil servants or military men. Given his age and conservatism, he was not equipped to overcome the influence of the military high command, led by Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff. Like Michaelis before him, he was increasingly seen as a puppet of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who constituted a virtual military dictatorship in the last year of the war. Hertling presided over the last stage of the collapse of the German home front. When it became apparent that he was unable to manage the crisis, he was forced to resign in favour of Prince Maximilian of Baden.
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George Marshall
George Catlett Marshall (December 31, 1880 – October 16, 1959) was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense. Once noted as the "organizer of victory" by Winston Churchill for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II, Marshall served as the United States Army Chief of Staff during the war and as the chief military adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As Secretary of State, his name was given to the Marshall Plan, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.
George Catlett Marshall was born into a middle-class family in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, the son of George Catlett Marshall, Sr. and Laura Emily (Bradford) Marshall. Marshall was a scion of an old Virginia family, as well as a distant relative of former Chief Justice John Marshall. Marshall graduated from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), where he was initiated into the Kappa Alpha Order, in 1901.
Following graduation from VMI, Marshall was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Until World War I, he was posted to various positions in the US and the Philippines. He served as an infantry platoon leader and company commander in the Phillipines during the Phillipine-American War and several other guerilla uprisings. He was schooled and trained in modern warfare. His pre-war service included a tour at Fort Leavenworth, KS from 1906 to 1910 as both a student and an instructor.
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George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. The eldest son of Barbara Bush and George H. W. Bush, he was born in New Haven, Connecticut. After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, Bush worked in oil businesses. He married Laura Welch in 1977 and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. In a close and controversial election, Bush was elected President in 2000 as the Republican candidate, defeating Vice President Al Gore in the Electoral College. Bush is the second American president to have been the son of a former president. He is also the brother of Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida.
Terrorist attacks occurred eight months into Bush's first term as president on September 11, 2001. In response, Bush announced the War on Terror, an international military campaign which included the war in Afghanistan launched in 2001 and the war in Iraq launched in 2003. In addition to national security issues, Bush promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, and social security reform. He signed into law broad tax cuts, the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and Medicare prescription drug benefits for seniors. His tenure saw national debates on immigration, Social Security, electronic surveillance, and enhanced interrogation techniques. His administration also withdrew the U.S. from a some international treaty processes, including the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
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Gerd Langguth
Gerd Langguth (born 18 May 1946 in Wertheim) is a professor of political science at the University of Bonn and the author of biographies of Angela Merkel and Horst Köhler.
Gerd Langguth attended the Dietrich Bonhoeffer School, a humanist Gymnasium in Wertheim am Main in Baden-Württemberg.
While at university, from 1970 to 1974 Langguth was president of the Association of Christian Democratic Students. He later worked for the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Stuttgart.
From 1976 to 1980, Gerd Langguth was a member of the Bundestag for the Christian Democratic Union. He was a member of the executive committee of the CDU. From 1981 to 1985, Langguth was director of the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung in Bonn. Between 1986 and 1987 he represented Berlin as a civil servant at a federal level. From 1988 to 1993, he was head of the European Commission's representation in Germany, in Bonn. From 1993 to 1997, Gerd Langguth was acting chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. From 2003 to 2004 he was active on the executive board of the Bürgerkonvent, a movement for political and economic reform.
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Gerhard Schröder
Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder (commonly rendered Schroeder)([ˈɡɛɐ̯haɐ̯t fʁɪts kʊʁt ˈʃʁøːdɐ] ( listen); born 7 April 1944) is a German politician, and was Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), he led a coalition government of the SPD and the Greens. Before becoming a full-time politician, he was a lawyer, and before becoming Chancellor he served as Premier of Lower Saxony (1990–1998). Following the 2005 federal election, which his party lost, after three weeks of negotiations he stood down as Chancellor in favour of Angela Merkel of the rival Christian Democratic Union. He is currently the chairman of the board of Nord Stream AG, after having been hired as a global manager by investment bank Rothschild.
Schröder was born in Mossenberg, today an outlying centre of Blomberg, in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia. His father, Fritz Schröder, a lance corporal in the Wehrmacht, was killed in action in World War II in Romania on 4 October 1944, a few months after Gerhard's birth. His mother Erika worked as an agricultural laborer so that she could support herself and her two sons.
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Giorgio Napolitano
Giorgio Napolitano (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒordʒo napoliˈtaːno]; born 29 June 1925) is an Italian politician who has been the 11th President of Italy since 2006. A long-time member of the Italian Communist Party and later the Democrats of the Left, he served as President of the Chamber of Deputies from 1992 to 1994 and as Minister of the Interior from 1996 to 1998.
Appointed as a Senator for life in 2005, he was subsequently elected as President of Italy on 10 May 2006; his term started with the swearing-in ceremony held on 15 May 2006. He is the first President of Italy to have been a member of the Italian Communist Party.
Giorgio Napolitano was born in Naples. In 1942 he matriculated at the University of Naples Federico II. He adhered to the local University Fascist Youth ("Gioventù Universitaria Fascista"), where he met his core group of friends, who shared his membership in the Italian fascism. As he would later state, the group "was in fact a true breeding ground of anti-fascist intellectual energies, disguised and to a certain extent tolerated".
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Giulio Andreotti
Giulio Andreotti (Italian pronunciation: [ˈʤuːljo andreˈɔtti]; born January 14, 1919) is an Italian politician of the now dissolved centrist Christian Democracy party. He served as the 42nd Prime Minister of Italy from 1972 to 1973, from 1976 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1992. He also served as Minister of the Interior (1954 and 1978), Defense Minister (1959–1966 and 1974) and Foreign Minister (1983–1989) and he has been a senator for life since 1991. He is also a journalist and author.
He is sometimes called Divo Giulio (from Latin Divus Iulius, "divine Julius", an epithet of Julius Caesar). The movie Il Divo tells about Andreotti's links with the Mafia and won the Prix du Jury at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.
Andreotti was born in Rome into a family from Segni. He studied law in Rome, during which time he was member of the Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (FUCI, or Italian Catholic University Federation), which was then the only Catholic university association allowed by the Fascist government. Its members included many of the future leaders of the Italian Democrazia Cristiana (or DC, the Christian Democracy party). In July 1939, while Aldo Moro was president of FUCI, Andreotti became director of its magazine Azione Fucina. In 1942, when Moro was enrolled in the Italian Army, Andreotti succeeded him as president of FUCI, a position he held until 1944.
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Guido Westerwelle
Guido Westerwelle (German pronunciation: [ˈɡiːdo ˈvɛstɐˌvɛlə]; born December 27, 1961) is a German liberal politician, who, since 28 October 2009, has been serving as the Foreign Minister in the second cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and who was Vice Chancellor of Germany from 2009 to 2011. He is the first openly gay person to hold either of those positions. He has been the chairman of the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP) since May 2001, but stepped down in 2011. A lawyer by profession, he has been a member of the Bundestag since 1996.
Guido Westerwelle was born in Bad Honnef in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He graduated from Ernst Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in 1980 after academic struggles resulted in his departure from previous institutions where he was considered an average student at best, but substandard otherwise. He studied law at the University of Bonn from 1980 to 1987. Following the First and Second State Law Examinations in 1987 and 1991 respectively, he began practicing as an attorney in Bonn in 1991. In 1994, he earned a doctoral degree in law from FernUniversität Hagen.
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Gustav Bauer
Gustav Adolf Bauer (help·info) (6 January 1870 – 16 September 1944) was a German Social Democratic Party leader and Chancellor of Germany from 1919 to 1920.
Born in Darkehmen (now Ozyorsk, Kaliningrad Oblast) near Königsberg in East Prussia, Bauer, who rose to notice through his leadership of a white-collar trade union, served from 1908 to 1918 as chairman of the General Commission of Trade Unions for all of Germany. A member of the Reichstag, Bauer entered Prince Max of Baden's government in October 1918 as Minister of Labour, a role which he continued to hold in the government of Philipp Scheidemann after the war. When Scheidemann resigned in June 1919 to protest the Treaty of Versailles, Bauer became Chancellor, serving until March 1920, when he resigned shortly after the failure of the Kapp Putsch.
Bauer resigned from the Social Democratic Party and the Reichstag in disgrace in February 1925, after it appeared that he had accepted improper payments in the Barmat Scandal and then lied about it, but was reinstated in 1926.
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Gustav Stresemann
Gustav Stresemann (help·info) (May 10, 1878 – October 3, 1929) was a German politician and statesman who served as Chancellor in 1923 and Foreign Minister 1923–1929, during the Weimar Republic. He was co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.
Stresemann's politics defy easy categorization. Arguably, his most notable achievement was reconciliation between Germany and France, for which he and Aristide Briand received the Peace Prize. During a period of political instability and fragile, short-lived governments, he was generally seen as the most influential cabinet member in most of the Weimar Republic's existence.
During his political career, he represented three successive liberal parties; he was the dominant figure of the German People's Party during the Weimar Republic.
Stresemann was born on May 10, 1878 in the Köpenicker Straße area of southeast Berlin, the youngest of seven children. His father worked as a beer bottler and distributor, and also ran a small bar out of the family home, as well as renting rooms for extra money. The family was lower middle class, but relatively well-off for the neighbourhood, and had sufficient funds to provide Gustav with a high-quality education. Stresemann was an excellent student, particularly excelling in German literature and poetry. In an essay written when he left school, he noted that he would have enjoyed becoming a teacher, but he would only have been qualified to teach languages or the natural sciences, which were not his primary areas of interest. Thus, he entered the University of Berlin in 1897 to study political economy. Through this course of studies, Stresemann was exposed to the principal ideological arguments of his day, particularly the German debate about socialism.
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Guy Verhofstadt
Guy Verhofstadt (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɣiː vərˈɦɔfstɑt] ( listen); born Guy Maurice Marie Louise Verhofstadt, 11 April 1953) is a Belgian politician, who served as the 47th Prime Minister of Belgium from 1999 to 2008. Since 2009, he has served as a Member of the European Parliament and leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
Born in 1953 in Dendermonde, he became president of the Flemish Liberal Student's Union (1972–1974) while studying law at the University of Ghent. He quickly became the secretary of Willy De Clercq, who was at that time the president of the Flemish liberal party (Party for Freedom and Progress, PVV). In 1982, at age 29, he became president of the party. In 1985 he was elected into the Chamber of Deputies, and became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Budget under Prime Minister Wilfried Martens. Because of his economic views and his young age, he became known as "Baby Thatcher". Another nickname from that era is "da joenk", a Brabantian dialect expression meaning "that kid" (in a pejorative sense, referring to his rather iconoclastic and immature style).
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Gyula Horn
Gyula Horn (born on July 5, 1932, Budapest) is a Hungarian politician and the third Prime Minister of the Republic of Hungary, from 1994–1998.
He is remembered because as the last Communist Foreign Minister of Hungary, he played a major role in the demolishing of the "Iron Curtain" for East Germans in 1989, contributing to the later unification of Germany, and for the Bokros package, the biggest fiscal austerity programme in post-communist Hungary, launched under his premiership, in 1995.
He was born in Budapest. Gyula Horn first studied in a lower technicians' school in Hungary. He graduated from the Rostov-on-Don College of Economics and Finance in 1954. He is married, he has a daughter and a son.
In 1954 Horn joined the Hungarian communist party, then called the Hungarian Working People's Party. In November 1956 he joined the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSzMP) established by János Kádár to lead the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolution against Soviet occupation and communist rule.
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György Konrád
György (George) Konrád (born April 2, 1933) is a Hungarian novelist and essayist, known as an advocate of individual freedom.
Konrad was born in Berettyóújfalu, near Debrecen into an affluent Jewish family. He graduated in 1951 from the Madách Secondary School in Budapest, entered the Lenin Institute and eventually studied literature, sociology and psychology at the Eötvös Loránd University. In 1956 he participated in the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet occupation, but did not kill anybody, although he had a gun. In fact, in light of his later attitude towards 56-veterans his honesty about his alleged democratic values been questioned.
Due to oppositional activities he was warned by the public prosecutor and was later fired from his work. In 1977 he received a DAAD- scholarship which enabled him to stay in West Berlin along with Iván Szelényi. After writing The Intellectual on the Road to Class Power with Szelényi, he hid the manuscript at his brother in law Ernő Sándor. Konrád was arrested in 10/22 1974. After this incident communist leading party ideologist György Aczél personally asked Konrád not to emigrate. In a letter to Aczél, Konrád made a few terms for his staying. This letter was also published in the Hungarian daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet and was also used as evidence in the Konrád vs Lovas slander trial, where Konrád sought retribution on the publicist István Lovas who have presented Konráds doubtful past in 2003. During this trial the Supreme Court of Budapest stated:
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Göran Persson
Hans Göran Persson (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈʝœːran ˈpæːʂɔn]) (born 20 January 1949) was the Prime Minister of Sweden from 1996 to 2006 and the leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party from 1996 to 2007. He was Minister for Finance from 1994 to 1996.
Conceding defeat in the September 2006 general election, he announced that he would resign as party leader, and Mona Sahlin was elected to succeed him as party leader in March 2007. Since August 2007 he has worked as a part time corporate lobbyist for the JKL Group.[citation needed]
Persson was born in Vingåker in Södermanland, Sweden, in a working-class home. He has in recent years revealed that he wanted to become a priest as a young man; however, he applied to the college in Örebro where he took courses in social science (mainly sociology). He completed 80 college credits (120 ECTS credits) in the subject before he left the college in 1971 without graduating. According to himself he had at the time almost completed an education in social and political sciences.[citation needed] As the college later received credentials as a full university, the renamed Örebro University gave him an honorary PhD in medicine in February 2005, an award that provoked some controversy.
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Hans Luther
Hans Luther (10 March 1879 – 11 May 1962) was a German politician and Chancellor of Germany.
Born in Berlin, Luther started in politics in 1907 by becoming the town councillor in Magdeburg. He continued on becoming secretary of the German Städtetag in 1913 and then mayor of Essen in 1918. In December 1922, Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno appointed Luther minister of Food and Agriculture.
He kept his position in 1924 when Wilhelm Marx became Chancellor. In 1925, he was appointed Chancellor of Germany, but Marx resumed office the following year. Luther also briefly acted as head of state following the death of Friedrich Ebert.[citation needed]
In 1930, Hans Luther was made president of Reichsbank. Soon after he was made German ambassador to the United States, a position he held from 1933 to 1937, after which he retired.
In 1933 Luther, lectured at the Columbia University campus. Luther's speech stressed Hitler's "peaceful intentions" toward his European neighbors. Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia's president, rejected student appeals to cancel the invitation, calling the request "illiberal" and citing the need for academic freedom.
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Hans-Peter Friedrich
Hans-Peter Friedrich (born March 10, 1957 in Naila, Bavaria) is a German politician, representative of the Christian Social Union (CSU). He has been a member of the Bundestag of Germany since 1998. In the ongoing coalition negotiations with the Free Democratic Party, Friedrich was responsible for the portfolio of housing and development. On 2 March 2011 he was selected to succeed Thomas de Maizière as Federal Minister of the Interior. On 3 March 2011 Friedrich was appointed.
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Heinrich Brüning
Heinrich Brüning ( listen (help·info)) (26 November 1885 – 30 March 1970) was Chancellor of Germany from 1930 to 1932, during the Weimar Republic. He was the longest serving Chancellor of the Weimar Republic.
Soon after Brüning took power, he was confronted by an economic crisis caused by the Great Depression. Brüning responded with a tightening of credit and a rollback of all wage and salary increases. These policies made him very unpopular and lost him the support of the Reichstag. During much of Brüning's tenure, he based his administration on presidential emergency decree ("Notverordnung"). He coined the term "authoritative (or authoritarian) democracy" to describe this form of government based on the cooperation of the president and toleration of the parliament.
Brüning remains a controversial figure in German politics. His intentions were to protect the Republican government, but his policies contributed to the gradual demise of the Weimar Republic.
Born in Münster in Westphalia, Brüning lost his father when he was one year old and thus his elder brother Hermann Joseph played a major part in his upbringing. Although brought up as a devout Catholic, Brüning was also influenced by Lutheranism's concept of duty, since the Münster region was home to both Catholics, who formed a majority (especially in the western part) and some Prussian-influenced Protestants.
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Heinrich Krone
Heinrich Krone (December 1, 1895 in Hessisch Oldendorf – August 15, 1989 in Bonn) was a German Christian-Democratic politician.
Shortly after beginning his Theology study in 1914, Krone was drafted into service in World War I. After the war Krone continued his study, joining the Catholic Center Party in 1923. He held a variety of positions within the party before being elected to the Reichstag in 1925. He remained in the Reichstag until 1933. Immediately following the fall of the Third Reich Krone played an integral role in establishing the new Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in Berlin. In 1949 he served in the first post-war West German Bundestag. From 1955 to 1961 he served as the chairman of the CDU faction in the Bundestag, and was a trusted colleague of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. He remained in the Bundestag until 1969, serving several times as a minister under Chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard.
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Helmut Kohl
Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (German pronunciation: [ˈhɛlmuːt ˈkoːl]; born 3 April 1930) is a German conservative politician and statesman. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 (of West Germany between 1982 and 1990 and of the reunited Germany between 1990 and 1998) and the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to 1998. His 16-year tenure was the longest of any German chancellor since Otto von Bismarck and oversaw the end of the Cold War and the German reunification. Kohl is widely regarded as one of the main architects of the German reunification and, together with French President François Mitterrand, the Maastricht Treaty, which contributed to the creation of the European Union.
Kohl and Mitterrand were the joint recipients of the Karlspreis in 1988. In 1998, Kohl was named Honorary Citizen of Europe by the European heads of state or government for his extraordinary work for European integration and cooperation, an honour previously only bestowed on Jean Monnet. In 1996, he won the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award in International Cooperation.
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Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt (German pronunciation: [ˈhɛlmʊt ˈʃmɪt]; born 23 December 1918) is a German Social Democratic politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Prior to becoming chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting Foreign Minister. He is the oldest surviving German Chancellor and the last surviving person to have been solely Chancellor of West Germany (Helmut Kohl was Chancellor of both West Germany and reunified Germany). He is also the oldest living Federal German Minister, after the death of his Interior Minister Werner Maihofer.
Helmut Schmidt was born in Hamburg, as son of two teachers. He studied at Hamburg Lichtwark School, graduating in 1937. He was conscripted into military service and began serving with an anti-aircraft battery at Vegesack near Bremen during World War II. After brief service on the Eastern Front he returned to Germany in 1942 to work as a trainer and advisor at the Reichsluftfahrtministerium. Also in 1942, on 27 June, he married his childhood sweetheart Hannelore "Loki" Glaser (3 March 1919 – 21 October 2010), with whom he fathered two children: Helmut Walter (26 June 1944–February 1945, died of meningitis), and Susanne (b. 1947), who works in London for Bloomberg Television. Toward the end of the war, from December 1944 onwards, he served as an Oberleutnant in the artillery on the Western Front. He was captured by the British in April 1945 on Lüneburg Heath and was a prisoner of war until August. During his service in World War II Schmidt was awarded the Iron Cross.
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Hendrik Brugmans
Hendrik Brugmans (Amsterdam 13 December 1906 - Bruges 12 March 1997) was the son of historian Hajo Brugmans and Maria Keizer. He studied history of French literature at the Universiteit van Amsterdam and the Sorbonne University in Paris.
Brugmans, who was one of the intellectual leaders of the European Movement and co-founder and first president of the Union of European Federalists, was rector of the College of Europe in Bruges between 1950 and 1972.
Brugmans was awarded the Karlspreis in 1951. In 1972 he retired from work, but he remained living in Bruges. Brugmans died on the age of 90 years in 1997. The year after his death the College of Europe honoured Brugmans by naming that academic year the Brugmans promotion and by creating an annual lecture named after him. One of the buildings of the new Verversdijk site of the College in Bruges is also named after him.
Since 2010, the students of the College of Europe have honoured him further by holding an annual football tournament named the Hendrik Brugmans Memorial Cup. The tournament includes both current and former students of the College of Europe. The winner of the 2012 edition is the F.C. Natolinsky team.
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Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger ( /ˈkɪsɪndʒər/; born May 27, 1923) is a German-born American writer, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. A recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, he served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. After his term, his opinion was still sought by many subsequent presidents and many world leaders.
A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. During this period, he pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People's Republic of China, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. Various American policies of that era, including the bombing of Cambodia, remain controversial to many.
Kissinger is still a controversial figure today. He is the founder and chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm.
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Herman Van Rompuy
Herman Achille Van Rompuy (pronounced [ˈɦɛɾmɑn vɑn ˈɾɔmpœy] ( listen); born 31 October 1947) is the first long-term and full-time President of the European Council (until the Treaty of Lisbon, the position had rotated among the prime ministers of the member states for six months each, since then they choose a President of their meetings for a 2½ year period, renewable once). This is an unelected position. A Belgian politician of the Christian Democratic and Flemish party, Van Rompuy served as the 49th prime minister of Belgium from 30 December 2008 until his predecessor (Yves Leterme) succeeded him on 25 November 2009. He has the Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold.
On 19 November 2009 Van Rompuy was elected by the members of the European Council as the first full time President of the European Council under the Treaty of Lisbon. He was appointed to chair the institution for the period starting from 1 December 2009 until 31 May 2012, though he only took up his position officially on 1 January 2010. On 1 March 2012 Herman Van Rompuy was re-elected by the heads of state or government of the 27 EU member states. His second term will last two and a half years, from 1 June 2012 to 30 November 2014.
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Horst Köhler
Horst Köhler (pronounced [ˈhɔɐ̯st ˈkøːlɐ] ( listen); born 22 February 1943) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union. He was President of Germany from 2004 to 2010. As the candidate of the two Christian Democratic sister parties, the CDU and the CSU, and the liberal FDP, Köhler was elected to his first five-year term by the Federal Assembly on 23 May 2004 and was subsequently inaugurated on 1 July 2004. He was reelected to a second term on 23 May 2009. Just a year later, on 31 May 2010, he resigned from his office in a controversy over his comment on the role of the German Bundeswehr in light of a visit to the troops in Afghanistan.
Köhler is an economist by profession. Prior to his election as President, Köhler had a distinguished career in politics and the civil service and as a banking executive. He was President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1998 to 2000 and head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2000 to 2004.
Because the office of President is less influential than that of the Chancellor and is mostly concerned with ceremonial matters, Köhler was a highly popular politician during his tenure. He has called for more influence for the President and has suggested the President should be directly elected (as was the case under Germany's Weimar Constitution).
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Horst Seehofer
Horst Lorenz Seehofer (born 4 July 1949) is a German politician (CSU). He served as the Federal Minister for Health and Social Security from 1992 to 1998 and as the Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in the cabinet of Angela Merkel from 2005 to 2008. In October 2008 he became chairman of the CSU and Minister-President of Bavaria.
He is married to Karin Seehofer.
He has been a member of the Lower House of the German Parliament (Bundestag) in Germany since 1980. Horst Seehofer was Federal Minister for Health and Social Security from 1992 to 1998 in the cabinet of Helmut Kohl. He then became assistant chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group of the Bundestag in October 1998. Because of his disagreement with flat-rate contributions (Gesundheitsprämie) to the federal health insurance he resigned from his post on 22 November 2004 but remained the assistant chairman of the CSU and kept his mandate. Since joining the Bundestag Horst Seehofer has kept his mandate as a directly elected delegate (Direktkandidat) from his Constituency Ingolstadt. At the 2005 federal election he received 65.9 percent of the votes in his district. Seehofer was appointed Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in the cabinet of Angela Merkel and stayed in office from 2005 to 2008.
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Hu Jintao
Hu Jintao (Pinyin: Hú Jǐntāo, pronounced [xǔ tɕìntʰɑ́ʊ]; born 21 December 1942) is the current Paramount leader of the People's Republic of China. He has held the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China since 2002, President of the People's Republic of China since 2003, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission since 2004, succeeding Jiang Zemin as the chief of the fourth generation of leadership of the Communist Party of China.
Hu has been involved in the Communist party bureaucracy for most of his adult life, notably as Party secretary for Guizhou province and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and then later first Secretary of the CPC Secretariat and Vice-President under former leader Jiang Zemin. Hu is the first leader of the Communist Party without any significant revolutionary credentials. As such, his rise to the presidency represented China's transition of leadership from establishment communists to younger, more pragmatic technocrats.
During his term in office, Hu has reintroduced state control in some sectors of the economy that were relaxed by the previous administration, and has been conservative with political reforms. Along with his colleague, Premier Wen Jiabao, Hu presided over nearly a decade of consistent economic growth and development that cemented China as a major world power. He sought to improve socio-economic equality domestically through the Scientific Development Concept, which aimed to build a "Harmonious Society" that was prosperous and free of social conflict. Meanwhile, Hu kept a tight lid on China politically, cracking down on social disturbances, ethnic minority protests, and dissident figures. In foreign policy, Hu advocated for "China's peaceful development", pursuing soft power in international relations and a business-oriented approach to diplomacy. Through Hu's tenure, China's influence in Africa, Latin America, and other developing countries has increased.
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Ilse Aigner
Ilse Aigner (born 7 December 1964) is a German politician and member of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU).
Aigner was born in Feldkirchen-Westerham, Rosenheim, Bavaria and entered Angela Merkel's grand coalition cabinet as Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection on 31 October 2008. She succeeded Horst Seehofer who had become minister president of Bavaria.
Aigner completed a professional training as a telecommunications technician in 1985 and joined the electrical installation business of her parents. In 1990 she graduated from the technical academy with the degree of a State Certified Engineer and worked for several years for Eurocopter in the development of helicopter electric systems.
Aigner was elected first in 1994 to the Bavarian State Parliament. Since 1998 she is a member of the German Bundestag, winning always an absolute majority of the votes in her electoral district. Aigner has been outspoken in her criticisms of Facebook. She feels that Facebook needs to do more with its settings to protect its users' privacy.
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Jack Lynch
John Mary "Jack" Lynch (15 August 1917 – 20 October 1999) was the Taoiseach of Ireland, serving two terms in office; from 1966 to 1973 and 1977 to 1979.
Lynch was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork in 1948, and was re-elected at each general election until his retirement in 1981. He previously served as Minister for Finance (1965–1966), Minister for Industry and Commerce (1959–1965), Minister for Education (1957–1959), Minister for the Gaeltacht (1957) and as a Parliamentary Secretary. He was the third leader of Fianna Fáil from 1966 until 1979, succeeding the hugely influential Seán Lemass. Lynch was the last Fianna Fáil leader to secure (in 1977) an overall majority in the Dáil. Historian and journalist T. Ryle Dwyer has called him "the most popular Irish politician since Daniel O'Connell."
Prior to his political career Lynch had a successful sporting career as a dual player of Gaelic games. He played hurling with his local club Glen Rovers and with the Cork senior inter-county team from 1936 until 1950. Lynch also played Gaelic football with his local club St. Nicholas' and with the Cork senior inter-county team from 1936 until 1946. He is widely regarded[by whom?] as one of the greatest dual players of all-time.
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Jacob Zuma
Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma (born 12 April 1942) is the President of South Africa,elected by parliament following his party's victory in the 2009 general election.
Zuma is the President of the African National Congress (ANC), the governing political party, and was Deputy President of South Africa from 1999 to 2005. Zuma is also referred to by his initials JZ and his clan name Msholozi. Zuma became the President of the ANC on 18 December 2007 after defeating incumbent Thabo Mbeki at the ANC conference in Polokwane. Zuma was also a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), briefly serving on the party's Politburo until he left the party in 1990. On 20 September 2008, Thabo Mbeki announced his resignation after being recalled by the African National Congress's National Executive Committee, following a conclusion by Judge Nicholson of improper interference in the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), including the prosecution of Jacob Zuma for corruption.
Zuma has faced significant legal challenges. He was charged with rape in 2005, but was acquitted. In addition, he fought a long legal battle over allegations of racketeering and corruption, resulting from his financial advisor Schabir Shaik's conviction for corruption and fraud. On 6 April 2009, the National Prosecuting Authority decided to drop the charges, citing political interference.
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Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac ( /ʒɑːk ʃɨˈræk/; French pronunciation: [ʒɑk ʃiʁak]; born 29 November 1932) is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 (making him the only person to hold the position of Prime Minister twice under the Fifth Republic), and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.
After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, a term at Harvard University and the École nationale d'administration (ENA), Chirac began his career as a high-level civil servant, and soon entered politics. He subsequently occupied various senior positions, including Minister of Agriculture, Minister of the Interior, Prime Minister, Mayor of Paris, and finally President of the French Republic.
Chirac's internal policies included lower tax rates, the removal of price controls, strong punishment for crime and terrorism, and business privatisation. He also argued for more socially responsible economic policies, and was elected in 1995 after campaigning on a platform of healing the "social rift" (fracture sociale). After less statist policy when he was Prime Minister (1986–1988), he changed his method. Then, his economic policies, based on dirigisme, state-directed ideals, stood in opposition to the laissez-faire policies of the United Kingdom, which Chirac famously described as "Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism". Chirac is the second-longest serving President of France (two full terms, the first of seven years and the second of five years), after François Mitterrand. As President, he also served as an ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra and Grand Master of the French Légion d'honneur.
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Jacques Santer
Jacques Santer (born 18 May 1937 in Wasserbillig) is a Luxembourg politician.
He was finance minister of Luxembourg from 1979 until 1989, and the 22nd Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1984 to 1995, as a member of the Christian Social People's Party, which has been the leading party in the Luxembourg government since 1979. As Prime Minister of Luxembourg he also led the negotiations on the Single European Act, which effectively set aside the 20-year old Luxembourg Compromise.
Santer became the ninth President of the European Commission in 1995 as a compromise choice between the United Kingdom and a Franco-German alliance, after the Franco-German nominee Jean-Luc Dehaene was vetoed by British prime minister John Major. Santer selection was barely ratified by a European Parliament upset with the process for which Commission presidents are selected.
In the same year, 1995, Santer became the first recipient of the Vision for Europe Award.
Allegations of corruption concerning individual EU-commissioners led to an investigation into administrative failings (incompetence and malpractice) by an independent group of experts. Despite clearing most commissioners, the report stated that they had not found a single person showing the slightest sense of responsibility. Because the implicated commissioners refused to resign and because the President of the European Commission did not have the power to dismiss individual commissioners, Santer and his entire commission resigned on 15 March 1999, the very day of the report's publication (see Santer Commission: Resignation).
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James Callaghan
Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff, KG, PC (27 March 1912 – 26 March 2005), was a British Labour politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980. Commonly known as Jim Callaghan (and nicknamed "Sunny Jim", "Gentleman Jim", "Lucky Jim" or "Big Jim"), Callaghan is the only person to have served in all four of the Great Offices of State: Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary.
Callaghan was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1964 to 1967 during a turbulent period in the British economy in which he had to wrestle with a balance of payments deficit and speculative attacks on the pound sterling. In November 1967, the Government was forced to devalue the pound sterling despite having already denied this would be done, both publicly and to the House of Commons. Callaghan offered to resign, but was persuaded to swap his ministerial post with Roy Jenkins, becoming Home Secretary from 1967 to 1970. In that capacity, Callaghan took the decision to use the Army to support the police in Northern Ireland, after a request from the Northern Ireland Government.
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Jan Peter Balkenende
Jan Pieter "Jan Peter" Balkenende (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈjɑn ˈpetər ˈbɑlkənˌɛndə] ( listen)) (born May 7, 1956) is a Dutch politician of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). He served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from July 22, 2002 until October 14, 2010.
He previously served as a Member of the House of Representatives from May 19, 1998 until July 22, 2002. After then CDA Party leader and Parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives Jaap de Hoop Scheffer stepped down after a internal power struggle, between him and then CDA Party Chair Marnix van Rij. Balkenende succeed him in both positions, and became the CDA Lijsttrekker for the Dutch general election of 2002. The CDA became the surprising winner of the election, gaining 14 seats (from 29 to 43) and becoming the largest party in the House of Representatives. This success was in part owed to Balkenende and to his neutral attitude in the debate with LPF leader Pim Fortuyn, for not having participated in the supposed ‘demonization’ by the political Left. Fortuyn was assassinated during the national election campaign on May 6, 2002.
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Janez Janša
Ivan Janša (born 17 September 1958), baptized and best known as Janez Janša, is a Slovenian politician who has been Prime Minister of Slovenia since February 2012. He served as Prime Minister from 2004 to 2008, and has led the Slovenian Democratic Party since 1993. Janša was Minister of Defense from 1990 to 1994, holding that post during the Slovenian War of Independence (June–July 1991).
Born to a Roman Catholic working-class family of Grosuplje, he was called Janez (a version of the same name, known as John in English) since childhood. His father was a member of the Slovenian Home Guard from Dobrova near Ljubljana who had escaped Communist retaliation due to his young age. Janez graduated from the University of Ljubljana with a degree in Defence Studies in 1982, and became a trainee in the Defence Secretariate of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. In his younger years, he was a member of the League of Communists and one of the leaders of its youth wing. He became president of the Committee for Basic People's Defence and Social Self-Protection of the Alliance of Socialist Youth of Slovenia (ZSMS).
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Javier Solana
Francisco Javier Solana de Madariaga, KOGF (Spanish pronunciation: [fɾanˈθisko xaˈβjer soˈlana ðe maðaˈɾjaɣa], born 14 July 1942) is a Spanish physicist and Socialist politician. After serving in the Spanish government under Felipe González (1982–1995) and Secretary General of NATO (1995–1999), he was appointed the European Union's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Secretary General of the Council of the European Union and Secretary-General of the Western European Union and held these posts from October 1999 until December 2009.
Solana was born in Madrid, Spain. He comes from a well-known Spanish family, being the grand nephew of Spanish League of Nations disarmament chief, diplomat, writer and European integrationist Salvador de Madariaga (Javier's grandfather, Rogelio de Madariaga y Castro and Salvador de Madariaga were cousins). His father was a chemistry professor, Luis Solana San Martín, who died when Javier was nineteen. His mother, Obdulia Madariaga Pérez, died in 2005. Javier is the third of five children. His older brother Luis was once imprisoned for his political activities opposing the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, subsequently became a distinguished leader in the Spanish telecommunications industry and was one of the first socialist members of the Trilateral Commission.
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Jean Monnet
Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ mɔnɛ]; 9 November 1888 – 16 March 1979) was a French political economist and diplomat. He is regarded by many as a chief architect of European Unity and is regarded as one of its founding fathers. Never elected to public office, Monnet worked behind the scenes of American and European governments as a well-connected pragmatic internationalist.
Monnet was born in Cognac, Charente, into a family of cognac merchants. At the age of sixteen, he abandoned his university-entrance examinations part way through and moved to London where he spent some years in the City of London with Mr. Chaplin, the agent of his father's company. Subsequently, he traveled widely – to Scandinavia, Russia, Egypt, Canada, and the United States – for the family business.
Monnet believed that the only path that would lead to an Allied victory lay in the merging of France and Britain's war efforts and he reflected on a concept that would co-ordinate war resources. In 1914, young Monnet was allowed to meet French Premier René Viviani on this issue. The French government agreed in principle upon his plans. During the first years of the war Monnet had not much success, promoting and pressing internationally for a better organization of the allied economic cooperation. However, finally, stronger combines like the Wheat Executive (end of 1916) and the Allied Maritime Transport Council (end of 1917) were set into work and had a big share[citation needed] in winning the war.
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Jean-Claude Juncker
Jean-Claude Juncker (Luxembourgish: [ʒ̊ɑːŋ kloːd ˈjʊŋkɐ]; born 9 December 1954) is a Luxembourg politician, 23rd and current Prime Minister of Luxembourg since 20 January 1995. He is the longest-serving head of government of any European Union state, and the longest-serving democratically elected current head of any government in the world. He has been President of the Euro Group, the political control over the euro currency, since the creation of a semi-permanent position in 2005.
Elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Christian Social People's Party in 1984, Juncker was immediately promoted to Jacques Santer's cabinet as Minister for Work. He was Luxembourg's Minister for Finances from 1989 to 2009, and became Prime Minister when Santer became President of the European Commission in 1995. In his capacity of Prime Minister, he also served two six-month terms as President of the European Council, in 1997 and 2005.
Juncker was born in Redange and spent most of his childhood in Belvaux. His father had fought in World War II after being forcibly recruited into the Wehrmacht, and was a steelworker and a member of the Confederation of Christian Trade Unions. Juncker studied at Clairefontaine in Belgium before returning to Luxembourg to attain his baccalaureate in the Lycée Michel Rodange. Around that time, in 1974, he joined the Christian Social People's Party. Juncker went on to study law at the University of Strasbourg, attaining a Master of Law degree in 1979. Although he was sworn in to the Luxembourg Bar Council in 1980, he never practised as a lawyer.
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Jean-Claude Trichet
Jean-Claude Trichet (pronounced: [ʒɑ̃ klod tʁiʃɛ]; born 20 December 1942) is a French civil servant who was the president of the European Central Bank, a position he held from 2003 to 2011. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements. In 2008, Trichet ranked fifth on Newsweek’s list of the world's most powerful along with economic triumvirs Ben Bernanke (fourth) and Masaaki Shirakawa (sixth).
Born in Lyon, France, Trichet was educated at the École des Mines de Nancy, from which he graduated in 1964. He later trained at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (best known as Sciences Po), finishing in 1966, and the École nationale d'administration (ENA) from 1969–1971, two French higher education institutions in the field of political science and state administration.
In 1987 Trichet became a member of an influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty. Later, in 1993 he was appointed governor of Banque de France. On 1 November 2003 he took Wim Duisenberg's place as president of the European Central Bank. (Most European Union leaders present at a 1998 special summit believed that Wim Duisenberg had agreed to a compromise with the French representatives and would step down from his office halfway through his eight-year term.[citation needed])
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Jean-Luc Dehaene
Jean-Luc Dehaene (Dutch pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ːˈlʏk dəˈɦaːnə] ( listen); born Jean Luc Joseph Marie Dehaene, 7 August 1940) is a Belgian politician.
He was born in Montpellier, France, when his parents were fleeing German troops. He got into politics through the Algemeen Christelijk Werknemersverbond (General Christian Workers' Union) (ACW), a trade union which was closely linked to the Christelijke Volkspartij (Christian People's Party) (CVP). In 1981, he became Minister of Social Affairs and Institutional Reform, until 1988, when he became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Communications and Institutional Reform.
In 1992, after both Guy Verhofstadt and Melchior Wathelet had failed, he managed to form a governing coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. This became one of Belgium's most important governments, because it successfully transformed Belgium into a federal state. In March 1993, Dehaene offered the King the resignation of his government, because of diverging views on how to handle the public finances. However, within a week the differences were put aside.
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Jens Otto Krag
Jens Otto Krag (Danish pronunciation: [jɛns ʌto ˈkʁɑːʊ̯ˀ]) (September 15, 1914 – June 22, 1978) was a Danish politician. He was Prime Minister from 1962 to 1968 and again from 1971 to 1972.
Krag was born in Randers, Denmark. He joined the Danish Social Democratic Party youth organization in 1930 and rose through the ranks of the party. In the 1930s he moved to Copenhagen and studied economics at the University of Copenhagen while remaining very active in the party.
During World War II, he was Danish supply director and advisor to the labor unions on economic matters. He was elected to Parliament (Folketinget) in 1947 and became Commerce Minister. He supported the strengthening of the Danish military and Danish membership of NATO in 1949.
In 1950 Krag resigned from Parliament partially due to a conflict with Vilhelm Buhl and H. C. Hansen and, in order to become more fluent in the English language and see more of the world, requested a position at the Danish embassy in the United States. He received the position, and was in America until 1953 when he was re-elected to parliament and became a minister without portfolio. He was minister of the new department of foreign economic affairs from 1953 until 1958 and Foreign Minister from 1958 until 1962.
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Jerzy Buzek
Jerzy Karol Buzek [ˈjɛʐɨ ˈbuzɛk] ( listen) (born 3 July 1940) is a Polish engineer, academic lecturer and politician who was the ninth post-Cold War Prime Minister of Poland from 1997 to 2001. He has been a member of the European Parliament since 13 June 2004, and he was elected as President of the European Parliament on 14 July 2009, succeeding Hans-Gert Pöttering. He is married to Ludgarda Buzek and is the father of Polish actress Agata Buzek.
Jerzy Karol Buzek was born to a Lutheran family on 3 July 1940 in what is now Smilovice in the Czech Republic. He was born into the prominent Buzek family, which participated in Polish politics in the Second Polish Republic during the interbellum. The family was part of the Polish community in Zaolzie. Buzek's father was an engineer. After the Second World War, his family moved to Chorzów. He is a Protestant.
In 1963 Jerzy Buzek graduated from the Mechanics-and-Energy Division of the Silesian University of Technology, specialising in chemical engineering. He became a scientist in the Chemical Engineering Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Since 1997 he has been a professor of technical science. He is also an honorary doctor of the universities in Seoul and Dortmund.
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Joachim Gauck
Joachim Gauck pronounced [joːˈʔaxiːm ɡaʊ̯k] (born 24 January 1940 in Rostock) is the current President of Germany (since 18 March 2012). A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany.
During the Peaceful Revolution, he was a co-founder of the New Forum opposition movement in East Germany, which contributed to the downfall of the Soviet-backed dictatorship of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). In 1990 he served as a member of the only freely elected People's Chamber for the Alliance 90. Following German reunification, he was elected by the Bundestag as the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives, serving from 1990 to 2000. As Federal Commissioner, he earned recognition as a "Stasi hunter" and "tireless pro-democracy advocate," exposing the crimes of the former communist secret police.
He was nominated as the candidate of the SPD and the Greens for President of Germany in the 2010 election, but narrowly lost to Christian Wulff, the candidate of the government coalition. His candidacy was met by significant approval of the population and the media; Der Spiegel described him as "the better President" and the Bild called him "the president of hearts." After Christian Wulff had stepped down, Gauck was elected President with 991 of 1228 votes in the Federal Convention in the 2012 election, as a nonpartisan consensus candidate of the CDU, the CSU, the FDP, the SPD and the Greens.
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Joachim Sauer
Joachim Sauer (born April 19, 1949) is a German quantum chemist, full professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is the husband of the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel.
Sauer studied chemistry from 1967 to 1972 at the Humboldt University of Berlin and was awarded a doctorate in chemistry in 1974. He continued to do research there until 1977 when he joined the Academy of Sciences, Central Institute of Physical Chemistry in Berlin, one of the leading scientific institutes of the former GDR (East Germany).
For a brief time during and after the German reunification (1990–1991) he was the Deputy Technical Director (Catalysis and Sorption) for BIOSYM Technologies, San Diego/USA (now Accelrys). He remained an advisor for BIOSYM until 2002.
In 1992 he joined the Max Planck Society as Head of the Quantum Chemistry Group in Berlin. Since 1993 he has been a full professor of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is an active research scientist in quantum chemistry and computational chemistry.
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John Bruton
John Gerard Bruton (born 18 May 1947) is an Irish politician who served as Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland from 1994 to 1997. A minister under two taoisigh, Liam Cosgrave and Garret FitzGerald, Bruton held a number of the top posts in Irish government, including Minister for Finance (1981–1982 and 1986–1987), and Minister for Industry, Trade, Commerce and Tourism (1983–1986). He became leader of Fine Gael in 1990 and served as Taoiseach from 1994 until 1997, leading the Rainbow Coalition government of Fine Gael–Labour Party–Democratic Left.
Bruton was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a TD for Meath in 1969, and served continuously until his retirement from domestic politics in 2004. He served as the Ambassador of the European Union to the United States from 2004–2009, and is a former Vice-President of the European People's Party (EPP).
John Gerard Bruton was born to a wealthy, Catholic farming family in Dunboyne, County Meath and educated at Clongowes Wood College.
Oliver Coogan notes in his Politics and War in Meath 1913–23 that Bruton's granduncle was one of the farmers in south Meath who prevented the traditionally Anglo-Irish ascendency hunt from proceeding in the area during the Irish War of Independence.
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John Major
Sir John Major, KG, CH, PC, ACIB (born 29 March 1943) is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. He held the posts of Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cabinet of Margaret Thatcher and was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon from 1979 to 2001.
Despite Thatcher's "notorious" assertion that "she expected to continue in control as a backseat driver," Major's mild and consensual style was seen as complete contrast to Thatcher's forceful and confrontational manner. Early in his term, he presided over British participation in the First Gulf War (March 1991) and negotiated "Game, Set and Match for Britain" at the Maastricht Treaty (December 1991). Despite the British economy then being in recession he led the Conservatives to a fourth consecutive election victory, winning the most votes in British electoral history in the 1992 general election, albeit with a much reduced majority in the House of Commons. He is to date, the last Conservative leader to win an outright majority in a general election.
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Joop den Uyl
Johannes Marten den Uijl, known as Joop den Uyl (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈjoːp dɛn ˈœyl]; August 9, 1919 – December 24, 1987) was a Dutch politician of the Labour Party (PvdA). He served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from May 11, 1973 until December 19, 1977.
He previously served as a Member of the House of Representatives from November 6, 1956 until June 5, 1963. He became Minister of Economic Affairs from April 14, 1965 until November 22, 1966 in the Cabinet Cals. He became the Labour Party Party leader on September 13, 1966 and served as the Parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives from February 15, 1967 until May 11, 1973 and again a Member of the House of Representatives from February 23, 1967 until May 11, 1973. Den Uyl became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, leading the Cabinet Den Uyl.
After his prime-ministership, Den Uyl remained in active politics and returned as the Parliamentary leader in House of Representatives from January 16, 1978 until September 10, 1981 and a Member of the House of Representatives from January 16, 1978 until September 11, 1981. He became Minister of Social Affairs and Employment, Minister for Suriname and Netherlands Antilles Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister from September 11, 1981 until May 29, 1982 in the Cabinet Van Agt II. After the fall of this cabinet, Den Uyl again became the Parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives from September 7, 1982 until his resignation as Parliamentary leader and as the Labour Party Party leader on July 21, 1986, he was succeeded in both positions by Wim Kok. He served as a Member of the House of Representatives for the last time from September 16, 1982 until his death on December 24, 1987.
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Joseph Bech
Joseph Bech (17 February 1887 – 8 March 1975) was a Luxembourgian politician. He was the 15th Prime Minister of Luxembourg, serving for eleven years, from July 16, 1926 until November 5, 1937. He returned to the position after World War II, becoming the 17th Prime Minister, serving for another four years, from 29 December 1953 until 29 March 1958.
Bech studied Law at Freiburg and Paris, before qualifying as a lawyer in 1914. The same year, on 30 June, he was elected to the Luxembourgian Chamber of Deputies for the newly-founded Party of the Right, representing the Canton of Grevenmacher.
On 15 April 1921, Bech was appointed to Émile Reuter's cabinet, holding the positions of Director-General for the Interior and Director-General for Education. In 1925, Bech lost these positions, as the Party of the Right's was edged out of government by a coalition of all other parties, who formed the government under Pierre Prüm.
When Prüm's coalition collapsed, in 1926, Bech became Prime Minister, which he remained until 1937.
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Joseph Goebbels
Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels (help·info) (German: [ˈɡœbəls]; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism.
Goebbels earned a Ph.D. from Heidelberg University in 1921, writing his doctoral thesis on 19th century romantic drama; he then went on to work as a journalist and later a bank clerk and caller on the stock exchange. He also wrote novels and plays, but they were rejected by publishers. Goebbels came into contact with the National Socialist German Worker's Party (NSDAP) or Nazi Party in 1923 during the French occupation of the Ruhr and became a member in 1924. He was appointed Gauleiter (regional party leader) of Berlin. In this position, he put his propaganda skills to full use, combating the local socialist and communist parties with the help of Nazi papers and the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (Brownshirts). By 1928, he had risen in the party ranks to become one of its most prominent members.
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Joseph Luns
Joseph Marie Antoine Hubert Luns (August 28, 1911 – July 17, 2002) was a Dutch politician and diplomat of the defunct Catholic People's Party (KVP) now merged into the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). He was the longest-serving Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs from September 2, 1952 until July 6, 1971 and later became the 5th (and also longest-serving) Secretary General of NATO for 13 years from October 1, 1971 until June 25, 1984.
Joseph Luns was born in a Roman Catholic, francophile and artistic family. His mother’s family originated from Alsace-Lorraine and had moved to Belgium after the annexation of the region by the German Reich in 1871. His father Huib Luns was a versatile artist and a gifted educationalist, who ended his career as professor of architectural drawing at the Technical University of Delft. Luns got his secondary education in Amsterdam and Brussels. He opted to become a commissioned officer of the Dutch Royal Navy, but registered too late to be selected. Therefore, Luns decided to study law at Amsterdam University during the period 1932-1937. Like his father, Luns demonstrated a preference for conservative and authoritarian political parties and an interest in international politics. As a young student he positioned himself on the political right, favoring a strong authority for the state and being of the opinion that socialism, due to its idealistic ideology, had fostered the rising of fascism and nazism. Luns himself had been a silent member of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB), but left in 1936 before this party chose a strongly anti-semitic course.
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Joseph Wirth
Karl Joseph Wirth, known as Joseph Wirth, (6 September 1879 Freiburg im Breisgau – 3 January 1956 Freiburg im Breisgau) was a German politician of the Catholic Centre Party who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1921 to 1922.
The son of a working engineer, he was educated at the University of Freiburg. In 1908 he was appointed to the chair of Economics at the Technical College of Freiburg, and after his election as a municipal councillor in 1911 he devoted himself to financial questions. In 1913 he obtained a seat as a member of the Catholic Centre Party in the diet of Baden, and in 1918 was appointed Minister of Finance. In January 1919 he was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly which sat at Weimar.
In March 1920, when the ministry was reconstructed after the Kapp Putsch, he received the portfolio of finance, which he continued to hold in subsequent ministries. His task was to carry out the system of increased national taxation which his predecessor Matthias Erzberger had induced the Reichstag to adopt. When in May 1921 the Allied ultimatum on reparation was presented to Germany and the sanctions enforced on the Rhine, the Fehrenbach-Simons ministry, which had rejected the London terms, resigned, and Wirth was called upon to form a new cabinet. He succeeded in obtaining the cooperation of a number of able Democrats, Catholics and Socialists, including the prominent industrialist and economist Walther Rathenau as Minister of Reconstructions. Wirth himself retained the portfolio of finance. The new ministry then accepted the Allies' reparation terms — 132 billion marks (£6,600,000,000) payable in yearly instalments of £100,000,000 plus the proceeds of a 25% duty on German exports. By August 31, 1921, Germany had paid the first half-yearly instalment of £50,000,000, and in the following October Rathenau succeeded in concluding a comprehensive agreement with France for paying reparations in kind for the reconstruction of the devastated regions.
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José Manuel Barroso
José Manuel Durão Barroso (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ mɐnuˈɛɫ duˈɾɐ̃w bɐˈʁozu]; born 23 March 1956) is the 11th and current President of the European Commission and a Portuguese politician. He served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 6 April 2002 to 17 July 2004.
Durão Barroso (as he is known in Portugal) graduated in Law from the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon and has an MSc in Economic and Social Sciences from the University of Geneva (Institut Européen de l'Université de Genève) in Switzerland. His academic career continued as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon. He did research for a PhD at Georgetown University and Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C. but his CV does not list any doctoral degree (except honorary). He is a 1998 graduate of the Georgetown Leadership Seminar. Back in Lisbon, Barroso became Director of the Department for International Relations at Lusíada University (Universidade Lusíada). He received honorary degrees from many Universities listed under honorary degrees.
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José María Aznar
José María Alfredo Aznar López (Spanish pronunciation: [xoˈse maˈɾia aθˈnar] ( listen); born 25 February 1953) served as the Prime Minister of Spain from 1996 to 2004. He is on the board of directors of News Corporation and is also a member of the Club de Madrid.
Aznar, born in Madrid in 1953, was the son of Manuel Aznar Acedo, army official, journalist and radio broadcaster, and grandson of Manuel Aznar Zubigaray, a prominent journalist during the Franco era. Both father and grandfather held governmental positions during the years of Spain under Franco. He studied law at the Complutense University of Madrid, graduating in 1975, becoming a Spanish Tax Authority inspector in 1976.
As a teenager, Aznar was a member of the Frente de Estudiantes Sindicalistas (FES), a Student Union supporting the Falange, Franco's one-party fascist organization. After 1977 it would become Falange Española Independiente (FEI).
After the death of Francisco Franco and the restoration of democracy, Aznar joined Alianza Popular (AP) in January 1979, a few months after his wife. In March he became the Secretary General of the party in La Rioja, occupying the post until 1980. In February 1981 he joined the AP's National executive committee. He became Assistant Secretary General in February 1982.
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José Sócrates
José Sócrates Carvalho Pinto de Sousa, GCIH (born 6 September 1957), commonly known as José Sócrates (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ ˈsɔkɾɐtɨʃ]), is a Portuguese politician who was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 12 March 2005 to 21 June 2011.
For the second half of 2007, he acted as the President-in-Office of the Council of the European Union. In addition to these posts, José Sócrates was Portugal's Minister for Youth and Sports and one of the organisers of the UEFA Euro 2004 football championship in Portugal, as well as being a former Environment Minister in the governments of António Guterres.
On 23 March 2011, he submitted his resignation to the president after parliament rejected his government's austerity measures in a vote, leading to the Portuguese legislative election of 2011. After losing the election, held on 5 June 2011, he resigned as Secretary-General of the Socialist Party.
José Sócrates was born in Porto on 6 September 1957, and was registered as a newborn in Vilar de Maçada, Alijó municipality, in northeastern Portugal, since the locality was his family ancestral homeland. However, the young José Sócrates lived throughout his childhood and teen years with his father, a divorced building designer, in the city of Covilhã, Cova da Beira subregion, in central inland Portugal, in the Centro region. His parents are Fernando Pinto de Sousa (b. Vilar de Maçada, Alijó, 15 November 1926) and wife and remote relative Maria Adelaide de Carvalho Monteiro (b. Vilar de Maçada, Alijó, 8 October 1931). He has two younger siblings, António Carvalho Pinto de Sousa, born circa 1962, and Ana Maria Carvalho Pinto de Sousa, died in 1988. He is a descendant of the illegitimate daughter of António José Girão Teixeira Lobo Barbosa (Porto, Sé, 9 January 1715 – Alijó, Vilar de Maçada), Fidalgo of the Royal Household and Knight of the Order of Christ, thrice distant relative of Diogo Cão.
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Julia Gillard
Julia Eileen Gillard (born 29 September 1961) is the 27th and current Prime Minister of Australia, in office since 24 June 2010.
Gillard was born in Barry, Wales and migrated with her family to Adelaide, Australia in 1966, attending Mitcham Demonstration School and Unley High School. In 1982 Gillard moved to Melbourne. She graduated from the University of Melbourne with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees in 1986. In 1987, Gillard joined the law firm Slater & Gordon working in industrial law, before entering politics.
Gillard was elected at the 1998 federal election to the House of Representatives seat of Lalor, Victoria, for the Australian Labor Party. Following the 2001 federal election, Gillard was elected to the shadow cabinet with the portfolios of Population and Immigration. The Reconciliation and Indigenous Affairs and the Health portfolios were added in 2003. In December 2006, Kevin Rudd was elected Labor leader and Leader of the Opposition, with Gillard as deputy leader.
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Jyrki Katainen
Jyrki Tapani Katainen (born October 14, 1971) is the current Prime Minister of Finland and the chairman of the National Coalition Party.
Katainen grew up in Siilinjärvi and was a part-time teacher until he became a member of the Siilinjärvi municipal council in 1993. He was elected member of the Finnish Parliament (Eduskunta) from the district of Northern Savonia in 1999, served as the vice-chairman of his party since 2001, becoming its leader in 2004.
In March 2003, he was elected Vice President of the European People's Party (EPP) for a three-year term.
In the 2007 parliamentary election, the National Coalition led by Katainen won the second place from the Social Democrats. Katainen became the Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in the new cabinet with Center, National Coalition, Greens, and Swedish People's party.
In November 2008, the Financial Times named Katainen as the best finance minister in Europe. Katainen warned in 2009 that Europe's leaders must do more to prepare voters for “exit strategies” that bring spiralling public sector debts back under control, noting that "It is always politically difficult but we simply have no choice. We will have to do very painful things in forthcoming years when the economy has started to recover."
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Jürgen Trittin
Jürgen Trittin (born 25 July 1954) is a German Green politician. He was Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety from 1998 to 2005 in Germany.
Trittin was born in Bremen. He earned a university degree in Social Economy in Göttingen and worked as journalist.
His political career started in 1982 as Secretary of the Alternative-Greens-Initiative List (AGIL) Group in the Göttingen City Council (until 1984). From 1984 to 1985, he worked as Press Spokesman for the Greens Group in the Lower Saxony State Assembly, which he joined in 1985 as member of the state parliament.
From 1990 to 1994, Jürgen Trittin was the Lower Saxony Minister for Federal and European Affairs and the Head of the Lower Saxony State Mission to the Federal Government in a coalition cabinet with the SPD, led by then minister president of Lower Saxony Gerhard Schröder (SPD).
After Schröder's SPD won an absolute majority in the state elections in 1994, the coalition with the Greens was ended. Trittin now worked as Member of the Lower Saxony State Assembly and as Deputy Chairman of the Alliance 90/The Greens group in that parliament. In 1994, he became Spokesman (Chairman) of the national Green Party.
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Karl Carstens
Karl Carstens (14 December 1914 – 30 May 1992) was a German politician. He served as President of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1979 to 1984.
Carstens was born in the City of Bremen, the son of a commercial school teacher, who had been killed at the Western Front of World War I shortly before his birth. He studied law and political science at the universities of Frankfurt, Dijon, Munich, Königsberg, and Hamburg from 1933 to 1936, gaining a doctorate in 1938 and taking the Second Staatsexamen degree in 1939. In 1949 he also received a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree from Yale Law School.
From 1939 to 1945, during the Second World War, Carstens was a member of an anti-aircraft artillery (Flak) unit in the Wehrmacht, reaching the rank of Leutnant (Second Lieutenant) by the war's end. In 1940 he joined the Nazi Party, reportedly he had applied for admission in 1937 to avoid detrimental treatment when he worked as a law clerk. He had, however, joined the Nazi SA paramilitary organisation already in 1934.
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Klaus Töpfer
Klaus Töpfer (born 29 July 1938 in Waldenburg, Germany; now Wałbrzych, Poland) is a German politician (CDU) and environmental politics expert. From 1998 to 2006 he was executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Töpfer studied economics in Mainz, Frankfurt and Münster. In 1968 he earned his doctorate at the University of Münster. After functioning as government official, professor and adviser on development politics he became minister for the Environment and Health in the regional government of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1985. In 1987 Töpfer became German Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety under Chancellor Helmut Kohl. From 1994 to 1998 he served as Federal Minister for Regional Planning, Civil Engineering and Urban Development. He was member of the Bundestag from 1990 to 1998 and member of the Steering Committee of the CDU from 1992 to 1998.
In 1998 Töpfer was appointed Under Secretary General of the United Nations, General director of the United Nations office in Nairobi and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. In June 2006 he was succeeded in this office by Achim Steiner. As director of UNEP, he has had a key role in gauging and attempting to remedy the environmental costs of the 2004 Asian tsunami.
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Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (German pronunciation: [ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈhɛɐman ˈjoːzɛf ˈaːdənaʊɐ]; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman. As Chancellor of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963, he led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that forged close relations with old enemies France and the United States. In his years in power Germany achieved prosperity, democracy, stability and respect. He was the first chancellor (head of government) of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, called West Germany), 1949–63. He was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a coalition of Catholics and Protestants that under his leadership became and has since remained the most dominant in Germany.
Adenauer, dubbed "Der Alte" ("the old one"), belied his age as the oldest elected leader in world history by his intense work habits and his uncanny political instinct. He displayed a strong dedication to a broad vision of democracy, capitalism, and anti-Communism. A shrewd politician, Adenauer was deeply committed to a Western-oriented foreign policy and restoring the position of West Germany on the world stage. He worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction in World War II to a central position in Europe, rebuilt its army and came to terms with France, helped make possible Western European unification, opposed rival East Germany, and made his nation a member of NATO and a firm ally of the United States.
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Kristina Schröder
Kristina Schröder (born Köhler, 3 August 1977) is a German politician. She is currently serving as the Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (since 30 November 2009). She has served as a Member of Parliament since 2002.
Schröder was born in Wiesbaden, Hesse. After finishing her abitur in 1997, she studied sociology, history, philosophy, and political science at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. She earned her Diplom in 2002, and her Ph.D. in 2009. Her doctoral thesis was Gerechtigkeit als Gleichheit? Eine empirische Analyse der objektiven und subjektiven Responsivität von Bundestagsabgeordneten, supervised by Jürgen W. Falter. Following her appointment as government minister, her doctoral research came under close scrutiny for its heavy reliance on research assistance by her party. In 2011 it was reported that an assistant of Falter had been paid by Schröder for working on the statistical data on which the thesis was based. The university's president stated there was no evidence for any wrongdoing, and that legwork undertaken by aides was scientifically legitimate and accepted practise.
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Kurt Georg Kiesinger
Kurt Georg Kiesinger (German pronunciation: [ˈkʊʁt ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈkiːzɪŋɐ]; 6 April 1904–9 March 1988) was a German politician affiliated with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He was Chancellor of West Germany from 1 December 1966 until 21 October 1969.
Born in Ebingen, Kingdom of Württemberg (now Baden-Württemberg), Kiesinger was educated in Berlin and became a lawyer. As a student, he joined the (non-couleur wearing) Roman Catholic corporations Alamannia Tübingen and Askania-Burgundia Berlin. He became a member of the Nazi Party in February 1933, a few weeks after Hitler became chancellor. In 1940, he was called to arms but avoided mobilization by finding a job in the foreign ministry's radio propaganda department, rising quickly to become the ministry's connection with Goebbels' propaganda ministry. After the war, he was interned and spent 18 months in the Ludwigsburg camp before being released as a case of mistaken identity. During the controversies of 1966, the magazine Der Spiegel unearthed a Memorandum dated November 7th 1944 (five months before the war's end) by which a colleague denounced to Himmler a conspiracy including Kiesinger that was propagating defaitism and hampering anti-Jewish actions within their department and several others.
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Kurt von Schleicher
Kurt von Schleicher ( Kurt von Schleicher (help·info), 7 April 1882 – 30 June 1934) was a German general and the last Chancellor of Germany during the era of the Weimar Republic. Seventeen months after his resignation, he was assassinated by order of his successor, Adolf Hitler, in the Night of the Long Knives.
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Kurt Westergaard
Kurt Westergaard (born 13 July 1935 as Kurt Vestergaard) is a Danish cartoonist who created the controversial cartoon of the Islamic prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb in his turban. This cartoon was the most contentious of the 12 Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, which met with strong and sometimes violent reactions from Muslims worldwide. Since the drawing of the cartoon, Westergaard has received several death threats and murder attempts. As a result, he is under constant police protection.
Westergaard was born on 13 July 1935 in the village of Døstrup, in the Himmerland area of Jutland. He grew up in a conservative Christian (Inner Mission) environment in Himmerland, going to Sunday school. Westergaard was introduced to Cultural Radicalism during high school in the 1950s, which he experienced as an "epiphany" and a liberation from the religious subjugation of his childhood.
Westergaard is a trained schoolteacher, educated at Ranum Seminarium. After working as a teacher for some time, he later enrolled at the University of Copenhagen to study psychology. He subsequently worked as a teacher for handicapped children, and has been principal of a school in the Djursland area for the handicapped.
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Lamberto Dini
Lamberto Dini (help·info) (born March 1, 1931) is an Italian politician and economist. He was the 75th Prime Minister of Italy from 1995 to 1996 and Foreign Minister from 1996 to 2001.
After studying Economics in his native city of Florence, Dini took up a post at the International Monetary Fund in 1959, where he worked his way up until he served as Executive Director for Italy, Greece, Portugal and Malta between 1976 and 1979. Then, in October 1979, he moved to the Banca d'Italia, where he served as executive until May 1994. When the Governor of the Bank of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, with whom Dini had developed a rivalry, was called upon to serve as Premier, in April, 1993, Dini was widely tipped to succeed him, but was passed over (allegedly on Ciampi's instigation) in favour of Antonio Fazio.
Dini scored a comeback, though, when Silvio Berlusconi formed the Berlusconi I Cabinet in May 1994, in which Dini served as Treasury Minister. Due to a split between Berlusconi and his coalition partner Umberto Bossi, the Lega Nord leader, Berlusconi's government collapsed in December 1994, after a mere seven months in power. In January 1995, Dini was appointed Prime Minister by President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. Though he was not noted as a left-winger, Dini, was given the confidence vote of the left-wing parties (apart from the Communist Refoundation) and by Lega Nord, whereas his erstwhile partners in the right-wing government chose to abstain whilst citing benevolence. In theory, his cabinet was a technocratic one.
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Lee Myung-bak
Lee Myung-bak (Hangul: 이명박; Hanja: 李明博; /ˌliː ˌmjʌŋ ˈbɑːk/; Korean: [i mjʌŋbak̚]; born 19 December 1941) is the President of South Korea. Prior to his presidency, he was the CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction and the mayor of Seoul. He is married to Kim Yoon-ok and has three daughters and one son. His older brother is Lee Sang-deuk, a South Korean politician. He attends the Somang Presbyterian Church. Lee is a graduate of Korea University and also received an honorary degree from Paris Diderot University on May 13, 2011.
Lee altered the South Korean government's approach to North Korea, preferring a more hardline strategy in the wake of increased provocation from the North, but is also supportive of regional dialogue with Russia, China, and Japan. Under Lee, South Korea has been increasing its visibility and influence in the global scene, resulting in the hosting of the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit. However, there remains significant controversy in Korea in regards to high profile government initiatives which have caused some factions to engage in civil opposition and protests against the incumbent government and President Lee's Saenuri Party (formerly the Grand National Party). The reformist faction within the Saenuri Party is at odds against Lee Myung-bak.
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Leo Tindemans
Leonard Clemence “Leo” Tindemans (Dutch: [ˈleˑ(ɪ̯)oˑ ˈtɪndəmɑns] ( listen)) (born 16 April 1922) is a Belgian politician and the 43rd Prime Minister. He was born in Zwijndrecht.
Tindemans was affiliated with the CVP. This party is strong in the northern region of Flanders. Tindemans was elected to the Belgian Chamber of Representatives in 1961 and re-elected in 1965, 1968, 1971, 1974, 1977 and 1978. From 1965 to 1973 Tindemans also served as the mayor of Edegem.
In 1968 Tindemans became minister tasked with the relations between the communities (1968–1972) during which he prepared the first constitutional reform which saw Belgium start transforming into a federal state. In 1972 he became minister for agriculture (1972–1973). In 1973 he became deputy Prime Minister and minister for the budget (1973–1974). Tindemans served as Prime Minister of two Belgian governments, from 25 April 1974 to 20 October 1978. His first cabinet was a minority government formed by the Christian-democrats and liberals. When his first government fell in 1977, Tindemans won the snap general election which followed and formed his second cabinet with the Christian-democrats, socialists and Flemish nationalists. His second government (1977–1978) fell due to the controversy surrounding the Egmont pact.
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Leo von Caprivi
Georg Leo Graf von Caprivi de Caprera de Montecuccoli (English: Count George Leo of Caprivi, Caprera, and Montecuccoli, born Georg Leo von Caprivi; 24 February 1831 – 6 February 1899) was a German major general and statesman, who succeeded Otto von Bismarck as Chancellor of Germany. Caprivi served as German Chancellor from March 1890 to October 1894. As part of Kaiser Wilhelm's "new course" in foreign policy, Caprivi abandoned Bismarck's military, economic, and ideological cooperation with Russia, and was unable to forge a close relationship with Britain. He negotiated commecial treaties and emphasized the reorganization of the German military.
He was born in Charlottenburg (then a town in the Prussian Province of Brandenburg, today a district of Berlin) the son of jurist Julius Leopold von Caprivi (1797 – 1865), who later became a judge at the Prussian supreme court and member of the Prussian House of Lords. His father's family was of Italian and Slovene origin, their original surname was Kopriva and they originated from Koprivnik (Nesseltal) near Kočevje in the Kočevski Rog (Hornwald) region of Lower Carniola (present-day Slovenia). The Caprivis were ennobled during the 17th century Ottoman–Habsburg wars, they later moved to Landau in Silesia. His mother was Emilie Köpke, daughter of Gustav Köpke, headmaster of the Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster and teacher of Caprivi's predecessor Otto von Bismarck.
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Liam Cosgrave
Liam Cosgrave (born 13 April 1920) is a former Irish Fine Gael politician who served as Taoiseach (1973–77) and as Leader of Fine Gael (1965–77). He was a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1943 to 1981.
Born in Dublin, Cosgrave was the son of W. T. Cosgrave, the first President of the Executive Council in the newly formed Irish Free State. After qualifying as a barrister he decided to embark on a political career. He was elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1943 general election and sat in opposition alongside his father. The formation of the first inter-party government in 1948 saw Cosgrave become a Parliamentary Secretary to Taoiseach John A. Costello. He formally became a cabinet member in 1954 when he was appointed Minister for External Affairs. The highlight of his three-year tenure was Ireland's successful entry into the United Nations. In 1965 Cosgrave was the unanimous choice of his colleagues to succeed James Dillon as leader of Fine Gael. He lost the 1969 general election to the incumbent Jack Lynch, but won the 1973 general election and became Taoiseach in a Fine Gael-Labour Party government.
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Lothar de Maizière
Lothar de Maizière (German pronunciation: [də mɛˈzi̯ɛːɐ̯]; born 2 March 1940) is a German Christian Democratic politician. In 1990, he served as the only democratically elected Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic, and as such was the last leader of an independent East Germany.
De Maizière was born in Nordhausen, Thuringia, and studied viola at the Hanns Eisler College of Music in East Berlin from 1959 to 1965. He played in the Berlin Symphony Orchestra before going on to study law (by distance learning, through the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin from 1969 to 1975.
In March, 1990, in the only free election held in East Germany, Lothar de Maizière was elected to the Volkskammer as a member of the East German Christian Democratic Union. One month later, he succeeded Hans Modrow as Premier and held this position from April 12th until October 2, 1990; on October 3rd, the East German state was reunified with the Federal Republic of Germany (from 1949 to 1990, West Germany). As premier, De Maizière signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (the so-called "2+4 treaty"), which ended the four wartime allied powers' rights and responsibilities in Berlin and Germany, and which preceded German reunification. The treaty provided that it would be signed by the four allies and the two Germanies but ratified only by newly reunified Germany and the allies.
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Ludwig Erhard
Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard (German pronunciation: [ˈluːdvɪk ˈɛʁhaʁt]; 4 February 1897 – 5 May 1977) was a German politician affiliated with the CDU and Chancellor of West Germany from 1963 until 1966. He is notable for his leading role in German postwar economic reform and economic recovery ("Wirtschaftswunder", German for "economic miracle"), particularly in his role as Minister of Economics under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1949 to his own ascension to the Chancellorship in 1963.
Born in Fürth, Kingdom of Bavaria, from 1913 to 1916 Erhard was a commercial apprentice. After his apprenticeship he worked as retail salesman in his father's draper's shop.
He joined the German forces during World War I 1916 as an artilleryman, fought in Romania and was seriously injured near Ypres in 1918. Erhard could no longer work as a draper and began to study economics, first in Nuremberg, later in Frankfurt am Main. He received his PhD from Franz Oppenheimer in 1925.
During his time in Frankfurt he married Luise Lotter (1893–1975), widow Schuster, on 11 December 1923. After his graduation they moved to Fürth and he became executive in his parents' company in 1925. After three years he became assistant at the Institut für Wirtschaftsbeobachtung der deutschen Fertigware, a marketing research institute. Later, he became deputy director of the institute.
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Persian: محمود احمدینژاد, Mahmūd Ahmadinezhād [mæhˈmuːd(-e) æhmædiːneˈʒɒːd] ( listen),English: /ɑːkməˈdɪnɨʒɒd/; born 28 October 1956) is the sixth and current President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the main political leader of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, a coalition of conservative political groups in the country. An engineer and teacher from a poor background, Ahmadinejad joined the Office for Strengthening Unity after the Islamic Revolution. Appointed a provincial governor, he was removed after the election of President Mohammad Khatami and returned to teaching. Tehran's council elected him mayor in 2003. He took a religious hard line, reversing reforms of previous moderate mayors. His 2005 presidential campaign, supported by the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, garnered 62% of the runoff election votes, and he became President on 3 August 2005. His second presidency term ends on August 3, 2013. He is not eligible to run for another term under the current Iranian constitution.
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Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS, née Roberts (born 13 October 1925) is a British politician and the longest-serving (1979–1990) British prime minister of the 20th century, and the only woman ever to have held the post. A Soviet journalist nicknamed her the "Iron Lady", which later became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As prime minister, she implemented conservative policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.
Originally a research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975 Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition, as well as the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became prime minister after winning the 1979 general election.
After entering 10 Downing Street, Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives to reverse what she perceived as Britain's precipitous national decline. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and high unemployment, until economic recovery and the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her Community Charge (popularly referred to as "poll tax") was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership.
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Mariano Rajoy
Mariano Rajoy Brey (Spanish pronunciation: [maˈɾjano raˈxoi]; born 27 March 1955) is a Spanish People's Party politician and the current Prime Minister of Spain, having served since 21 December 2011.
Under Prime Minister José María Aznar, Rajoy was Minister of Public Administration from 1996 to 1999 and Minister of Education from 1999 to 2000; he then served as Deputy Prime Minister from 2000 to 2003. Rajoy led the People's Party into the March 2004 general election, but that election was won by the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the aftermath of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Subsequently Rajoy was Leader of the Opposition from 2004 to 2011.
Born 27 March 1955 in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. Rajoy is the grandson of Enrique Rajoy Leloup, one of the drafters of the Statute of Autonomy of Galicia in 1932, who was removed from university teaching by the dictatorship to the early 1950s. He is the son of Mariano Rajoy Sobredo jurist, president of the Provincial Court Pontevedra, the city where he grew up.
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Mark Rutte
Mark Rutte (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmɑrk ˈrʏtə]; born 14 February 1967) is a Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). He has been the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and Minister of General Affairs since 14 October, 2010 as head of the cabinet.
He previously served as State Secretary for Social Affairs and Employment from 22 July 2002 to 17 June 2004 in the Cabinets Balkenende I and II. Subsequently he was State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science from 17 June 2004 until his resignation on 27 June 2006, when he was elected to succeed Jozias van Aartsen as the new VVD party leader.
At the 2006 general election the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy under Rutte lost six seats and he became opposition leader, serving during the Cabinet Balkenende IV. After the fall of the Cabinet Balkenende IV, a snap election was called, and Rutte was once again the VVD's lijsttrekker (top party list candidate) for the 2010 general election. The VVD won the highest number of votes cast, resulting in their occupying 31 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives. After a long formation period, Rutte became prime minister and formed a cabinet. When he was sworn in on 14 October 2010, he became the first liberal Prime Minister in the Netherlands in 92 years. He resigned on 23 April 2012 after his government fell due to an impasse in talks on an austerity budget.
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Matti Vanhanen
Matti Taneli Vanhanen ( pronunciation (help·info)) (born November 4, 1955) is a Finnish politician who was Prime Minister of Finland from 2003 to 2010. He was also Chairman of the Centre Party, and in the second half of 2006 he was President of the European Council. In his earlier career he was a journalist.
Vanhanen is the son of professor Tatu Vanhanen and Anni Tiihonen. He is an abstainer of alcohol and 2 meters tall.
He studied political science at the University of Helsinki, graduating as a Master of Social Sciences in 1989. He was chairman of the Centre Party Youth League from 1980 to 1983. He also served as a member of the Espoo City Council from 1981 to 1984. Vanhanen used to work as a journalist. He was an editor (1985–1988) and editor-in-chief (1988–1991) at the local newspaper Kehäsanomat. In a column in Suomenmaa (the Centre Party’s organ), he strongly condemned the Baltic Star pro-Estonian independence demonstration held in Helsinki in July 1985, calling the demonstration "provocative".
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Michael Glos
Michael Glos (born December 14, 1944 in Brünnau, Bavaria) is a German politician (CSU) who served as Minister for Economics and Technology from November 22, 2005, until February 10, 2009.
After the secondary school level, he made an apprenticeship as miller and became master in 1967. Starting 1968, he managed his parents' flour mill in Prichsenstadt.
Since 1970, Glos is a member of the CSU. In 1972 he was the first chairman of the CSU-chapter of his hometown Prichsenstadt. From 1975 to 1993, he was chairman of the CSU-district of Kitzingen. Since 1976 he is part of the executive board of the CSU Lower Franconia. Since then he is member of presidency of the CSU Bavaria. From 1993 to 2005, he was chairman of the CSU parliamentary group and deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group.
From 1972 to 1978, he was member of the district council of Prichsenstadt and, from 1975 to 1993, member of the council of the district (Kreistag) of Kitzingen. In 1976, Glos was elected to the Bundestag.
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Mirek Topolánek
Mirek Topolánek (Czech pronunciation: [ˈmɪrɛk ˈtopolaːnɛk]) (born 15 May 1956) is a former prime minister of the Czech Republic and former President of the European Council. A member of the Civic Democratic Party, he was chairman of the center-right party between November 2002 and March 2010, succeeding Václav Klaus, who was elected President in 2003.
On 24 March 2009, Topolánek announced his resignation as Prime Minister – and that of his governing coalition, after it lost a no-confidence vote in the Czech House of Deputies. He remained in office until 8 May, at which point Jan Fischer took office as an independent Prime Minister leading an interim caretaker government
Mirek Topolánek attended a military high school in Opava, where he became a Socialistic Union of Youth member which he claimed to be semi-obligatory for future officers. After finishing he studied at Brno University of Technology where he received an Ing. degree in mechanical engineering. In 1996 he won a scholarship for Training Course in Management of small and medium enterprise (MIM) in Cyprus and also attended a post-graduate Course in Corporate Management (Centre for Management Training, Čelákovice CZ).
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Norbert Röttgen
Norbert Röttgen (born 2 July 1965) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. He was Federal Minister for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety from 2009 to 2012.
Röttgen graduated from the Gymnasium of Rheinbach. After completing his Abitur, he started to study law at the University of Bonn in 1984. He passed his first law examination in 1989, his second examination in 1993 and practised as a lawyer in Cologne. He obtained a legal doctorate from the University of Bonn in 2001.
Röttgen joined the CDU in 1982 while he was still a highschool student. From 1992 until 1996, he served as the chair of the Junge Union, the youth organisation of CDU in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. He was elected to the Bundestag in 1994. From 2002 until 2005 he served as the legal policy spokesman of the Parliamentary group of CDU/CSU.
During the First Cabinet of the Grand Coalition of Angela Merkel in 2005, he served as the Chief Parliamentary Secretary of the CDU/CSU Parliamentary group in the Bundestag until 2009.
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Olaf Scholz
Olaf Scholz (German pronunciation: [ˈoːlɐf ˈʃɔlts]; born (1958-06-14)14 June 1958 in Osnabrück) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Mayor of Hamburg since 7 March 2011.
From May to October 2001 he was Minister of the Interior (Innensenator) of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and from 2002 to 2004 he was general secretary of the SPD. Scholz succeeded Franz Müntefering as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, when the latter left office in 2007.
In 2010 Olaf Scholz participated in the annual Bilderberg Meeting in Sitges, Spain.
On 20 February 2011 the Social Democrats led by Scholz won the Hamburg state election, 2011 with 48.3% of the votes, resulting in 62 out of 121 seats in the Hamburg Parliament. Scholz resigned as a member of the seventeenth Bundestag on 11 March 2011 shortly after his election as First Mayor.
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Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg (1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman who dominated European affairs from the 1860s to his dismissal in 1890. After a series of short victorious wars he unified numerous German states into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership, then created a "balance of power" that preserved peace in Europe from 1871 until 1914.
As Minister President of Prussia 1862–90, Bismarck provoked wars that made Prussia dominant over Austria and France, and lined up the smaller German states behind Prussia. In 1867 he also became Chancellor of the North German Confederation. Bismarck designed and created the German Empire in 1871, becoming its first Chancellor and largely controlling its affairs until he was removed by Kaiser (Emperor) William II in 1890. His diplomacy of Realpolitik and powerful rule gained him the nickname the "Iron Chancellor". As Henry Kissinger has noted, "The man of 'blood and iron' wrote prose of extraordinary directness and lucidity, comparable in distinctiveness to Churchill's use of the English language."
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Paavo Lipponen
Paavo Tapio Lipponen ( pronunciation (help·info)) (born 23 April 1941) is a Finnish politician and former reporter. He was Prime Minister of Finland from 1995 to 2003, and Chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Finland from 1993 to 2005. He also served as Speaker of the Parliament of Finland from 2003–2007 and was his party's nominee in the 2012 Finnish presidential election but received only 6.7% of the votes, making it the biggest defeat the Social Democratic Party has ever had in Finnish Presidential elections.
Lipponen was born in Turtola (subsequently renamed Pello), son of Orvo Lipponen and his wife Hilkka Iisalo. Paavo's maternal grandparents were Jaakko Antero Ingman/Iisalo (a distant relative of Count Adolf Fredrik Munck af Fulkila and Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim) and his wife Siiri Törnroos. Paavo Lipponen spent his childhood and youth in Kuopio.
Receiving his gymnasium diploma from the Lyceum of Kuopio in 1959, he then studied philosophy and literature at Dartmouth College for one year.
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Pat Cox
Pat Cox (born 28 November 1952) is an Irish politician and former television current affairs presenter. He was President of the European Parliament from 2002 to 2004 and served as a member of the European Parliament from 1989–2004.
Before this Cox was a journalist and presenter with RTÉ's Today Tonight and then a Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork South–Central. He is now the President of the European Movement International.
Born in Dublin but raised in Limerick, Cox was educated at Ardscoil Rís in Limerick, the University of Limerick and Trinity College, Dublin. Cox is married to Cathy, and lived at Ashboro, Shanakiel in the Cork northside suburb of Sunday's Well for 16 years.
Cox first came to prominence as a journalist, then a presenter, with RTÉ's Today Tonight, a four nights a week current affairs programme which dominated the Irish television schedules in the 1980s. He stood as a Fianna Fáil candidate at the 1979 local elections. Cox left the programme to become a political candidate. He was elected an MEP in 1989 for the constituency of Munster, representing the Progressive Democrats (PDs). At the 1992 general election he was also elected to Dáil Éireann as a Teachta Dála (TD) for Cork South–Central.
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Paul Kirchhof
Paul Kirchhof (born February 21, 1943 in Osnabrück) is a German jurist and tax law expert. He is also a professor of law, member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and a former judge in the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (Bundesverfassungsgericht), the highest court in Germany.
Kirchhof obtained a doctorate at the early age of 25 having studied law in Freiburg and Munich. He then became director of the Institute for Tax Law (Institut für Steuerrecht) at the University of Münster. In 1987 he was finally appointed to the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in Karlsruhe, where he remained a judge until 1999. He then assumed the position of professor at the University of Heidelberg School of Law.
During the 2005 federal election campaign, Angela Merkel, leader of the CDU/CSU, announced that Kirchhof would serve as minister of finance if she formed a government. Kirchhof proposed a graduated income tax rate of 15, 20 and 25%. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder successfully mocked Kirchhof during the SPD′s campaign, calling him "that professor from Heidelberg", implying Kirchhof an ivory-towered point of view.
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Pedro Passos Coelho
Pedro Manuel Mamede Passos Coelho (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈpeðɾu mɐnuˈɛɫ mɐˈmɛðɨ ˈpasuʃ kuˈeʎu]; born in Coimbra, July 24, 1964) is Portuguese politician, leader of the Social Democratic Party and Prime Minister of Portugal. Passos Coelho started very early in politics, becoming the national leader of the youth branch of the PSD. A business manager by trade, he was elected President of the Social Democratic Party and has led the XIX Governo Constitucional (19th Constitutional Government of Portugal) as head of government since 21 June 2011.
Pedro Passos Coelho was born in the parish of Sé Nova in Coimbra, Portugal, in 24 July 1964. He is the youngest son of a medical doctor, António Passos Coelho (born Vale de Nogueiras, Vila Real, Douro, 31 May 1926) and the woman he married in 1955, a nurse, Maria Rodrigues Santos Mamede (born Santana da Serra, Ourique, Baixo Alentejo, c. 1930). He has an older sister, Maria Teresa Mamede Passos Coelho, a medical doctor, and an older brother, Miguel Mamede Passos Coelho, who was born with cerebral palsy.
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Peter Altmaier
Peter Altmaier (born 18 June 1958 in Ensdorf, Saarland) is a German politician. He has been a member of the CDU since 1976. A jurist by profession, he worked for the European Commission from 1990 to 1994. He has been a member of the Bundestag since 1994. Since 2005, he has been a secretary of state in the Federal Ministry of the Interior (Germany). From 2006 to 2011 Altmaier was president of Europa-Union Deutschland, the German section of the Union of European Federalists. Altmaier replaced Norbert Röttgen as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety on 22 May 2012.
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Peter Ramsauer
Peter Ramsauer (born 10 February 1954) is a German politician. He is qualified as a professional miller in accordance with the traditional occupation of his ancestry while holding the degree of PhD in Management, is married and has four daughters. On 28 October 2009, he was appointed Federal Minister of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs in the second cabinet of Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Ramsauer's wife Susanne is a cousin of American actress Sandra Bullock.
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Petr Nečas
Petr Nečas (born 19 November 1964; Czech pronunciation: [ˈpɛtr̩ ˈnɛtʃas]) is the current Prime Minister of the Czech Republic and Leader of the Civic Democratic Party. He was sworn into office on 28 June 2010.
Previously, from 4 September 2006 to 8 May 2009, Nečas was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labour and Social Affairs. In 1991, Nečas became a member of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS). In March 2010, he replaced Mirek Topolánek as the leader of the party. The Civic Democratic Party won second place in the May 2010 Czech legislative election and shortly after that Nečas announced his intention to stand for the post of the chairman of the party.
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Philipp Scheidemann
Philipp Scheidemann (26 July 1865, Kassel, Electorate of Hesse – 29 November 1939, Copenhagen) was a German Social Democratic politician, who proclaimed the Republic on 9 November 1918, and who became the second Chancellor of the Weimar Republic.
He was by trade a printer, but in 1895 took to editing socialist newspapers, first at Giessen and afterwards successively at Nuremberg, Offenbach and Kassel. Scheidemann became a Reichstag delegate from Solingen for the Social Democrats in 1903, and soon rose to be one of the principal leaders of the party. During the First World War, Scheidemann, along with Friedrich Ebert was leader of the majority faction of the party, which continued to vote for war credits, limiting his opposition to the war to urging the negotiation of a compromise peace. In June 1918, Scheidemann was elected vice-president of the Reichstag. When the Social Democrats were included in the cabinet for the first time in Prince Max of Baden's government in October 1918, Scheidemann entered the government as a minister without portfolio.
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Pierre Werner
Pierre Werner (29 December 1913 - 24 June 2002) was a Luxembourg politician. Pierre Werner was born in Saint-André-lez-Lille, Nord, France to parents from Luxembourg. During the Nazi occupation of Luxembourg (1940–45) Werner, working as a banker, gave clandestine support to the resistance against the occupation forces. After World War 2 he became the Controller of the banking system in his country. He attended the Bretton Woods conference which set up the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Werner entered the Luxembourg government as Finance Minister in 1953, and was 19th and 21st Prime Minister from 1959 to 1974 and from 1979 to 1984. He also served as Minister for Culture.
As Prime minister, Werner, a Christian Democrat, undertook the diversification of the national economy, hard hit by a major Europe-wide crisis in the steel industry, by attracting new industrial investments, as well as financial services to the Grand Duchy. He placed Luxembourg on the map of global satellite communications. He is remembered for having used “tripartite” social mediation (industry, labour and government) to overcome the severe steel crisis which lasted from 1979 to 1984. He placed the process of European integration at the centre of the policy of his country. With friends such as Joseph Bech, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, Werner was a determined advocate of European integration. During his terms in office, he negotiated the relocation of several European institutions to Luxembourg.
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Poles
The Polish people, or Poles (Polish: Polacy [pɔˈlat͡sɨ]; singular: Polak), are a nation indigenous to Poland. They speak the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe. The Polish word for a Polish person is "Polak" (masculine) and "Polka" (feminine).
The preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland defines the Polish nation as comprising all the citizens of Poland. Poland's inhabitants live in the following historic regions of the country: Wielkopolska, Małopolska, Mazovia, Pomerania, Warmia, Mazury, Podlasie, Kujawy and Silesia. A wide-ranging Polish diaspora exists throughout Europe (Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine), the Americas (the United States, Brazil and Argentina) and Australia. Chicago, in the United States, has the world's largest urban Polish population after Warsaw.
Over a thousand years ago, the Polans of Giecz, Gniezno and Poznań — an influential tribe in Wielkopolska — succeeded in uniting Lechitic tribes under what became the Piast dynasty, thus giving rise to the Polish state.
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Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Italian: Giovanni Paolo II, Polish: Jan Paweł II), born Karol Józef Wojtyła (Polish: [ˈkarɔl ˈjuzɛf vɔjˈtɨwa]; 18 May 1920, Wadowice, Republic of Poland – 2 April 2005, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City), reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005. He was the second-longest serving Pope in history and the first non-Italian since 1523.
John Paul II was acclaimed as one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century. He was instrumental in ending communism in his native Poland and eventually all of Europe. John Paul II significantly improved the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, Islam, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. Though criticised by progressives for upholding the Church's teachings against artificial contraception and the ordination of women, and by traditionalists for his support of the Church's Second Vatican Council and its reform, he was also widely praised for his firm, orthodox Catholic stances.
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Poul Nyrup Rasmussen
Poul Oluf Nyrup Rasmussen (Danish pronunciation: [ˈpɒʊ̯l ˈnyːˀɔb ˈʁɑsmusn̩], informally Poul Nyrup, born 15 June 1943), was Prime Minister of Denmark from 25 January 1993 to 27 November 2001 and President of the Party of European Socialists (PES) from 2004 to 2011. He was the leader of the governing Social Democrats from 1992 to 2002. He was a member of the European Parliament from 2004–09.
Rasmussen was born to a working-class family in Esbjerg in 1943. His parents were Oluf Nyrup Rasmussen and Vera Eline Nyrup Rasmussen. He was educated at the University of Copenhagen, earning a M.sc. degree in Economics in 1971. While studying he was active in the social democratic student union Frit Forum, where he met some of his future political colleagues. He paid his way through university by doing several jobs, like counting traffic and being a part-time delivery boy.
Rasmussen replaced Svend Auken, the long serving leader of the Social Democrats, after his failure to form a government with the Radikale Venstre after the 1990 election, despite good results for both parties. Many in the party felt that Auken had stuck to a too left wing agenda, scuttling a possible deal with the more centrist Radikale Venstre.
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Poul Schlüter
Poul Holmskov Schlüter (Danish pronunciation: [pʌʊ̯l hʌlmsɡʌʊ̯ slydɐ], 3 April 1929) is a Danish politician, who served as Prime Minister of Denmark from 1982 to 1993.
Born in Tønder, south Jutland, he graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1957 with a degree in law, and joined the bar in 1960. Schlüter was a member of the Danish Parliament (Folketinget) for the Conservative People's Party from 1964 to 1994. He was also Chairman of the Conservative People's Party from 1974 to 1977 and from 1981 to 1993.
In 1982, after Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen was forced to resign, Schlüter cobbled together a four-party coalition and was appointed his successor. He was the first member of the Conservative People's Party to become Prime Minister, as well as the first conservative to hold the office since 1901. During his time as Prime Minister, he was named "Nordic Politician of the Year" (in 1984). He has since been granted a large number of Danish and international awards and medals.
Previously, he had served as a member of the Council of Europe from 1971 to 1974, and had headed the Danish Delegation to the Nordic Council, where he served as a member of the Council Presidium, in 1978 and 1979. He retired as Prime Minister in 1993 after an inquiry found that he had misinformed the Danish Parliament. The case was known as the Tamil Case, (in Danish: "Tamilsagen"), as it involved asylum requests from Tamil refugees.
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Rainer Barzel
Rainer Candidus Barzel (June 20, 1924 – August 26, 2006) was a German politician of the CDU.
Born in Braunsberg, East Prussia (present-day Braniewo, Poland), Barzel served as Chairman of the CDU from 1971 and 1973 and ran as the CDU's candidate for Chancellor of Germany in the 1972 federal elections, losing to Willy Brandt's SPD.
The 1972 election is commonly regarded as an indirect referendum on Chancellor Brandt's Ostpolitik (eastern policy), which called for normalized relations with the GDR and the USSR, and which Barzel vehemently opposed. In April 1972, an attempt by Barzel and the CDU/CSU to call a motion of no confidence against Brandt's government failed by two votes because of Stasi bribes. Following the motion, Barzel would have succeeded Brandt as Chancellor of Germany. The government, in consideration of the fact that it had lost its parliamentary majority and that parliamentary work was stalled, reacted by calling new elections, which it won decisively—1972 was the only time before 1998 and after World War II that the SPD outpolled the CDU, it still represents the SPD's highwater mark as a vote share, and these elections had the highest turnout ever.
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Rainer Brüderle
Rainer Brüderle (born 22 June 1945 in Berlin)[citation needed] is a German politician and member of the FDP. He served as Minister of Economics and Transport of Rhineland-Palatinate from 1987–1998. On 28 October 2009, he was appointed Federal Minister for Economics and Technology in the Cabinet Merkel II. On 12 May 2011, Brüderle left Federal Minister for Economics and Technology. Since 10 May 2011, he is chairman of a parliamentary group of his party.
M.P. Rainer Brüderle holds a Diplom in economics from the University of Mainz.[citation needed] He has been a member of the German Bundestag since the 1998 election.
On the 14 September 2011, Rainer Brüderle announced that the article of the Vice Chancellor Philipp Rösler, about the possible benefits of a Greek bankruptcy for the rest of the countries of the Eurozone, in the newspaper Die Welt, confirms the opinion of a large number of European Ministers of Finances.[citation needed]
Brüderle is a member of the board of German television network ZDF.
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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (IPA: [ɾeˈd͡ʒep tajˈjip ˈæɾdoan]; born 26 February 1954) has been Prime Minister of Turkey since 2003 and is chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which holds a majority of the seats in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Erdoğan served as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. He graduated in 1981 from Marmara University's Faculty of Economics and Commercial Sciences. Erdoğan was also a semi-professional footballer from 1969 to 1982.
Erdoğan was elected Mayor of Istanbul in the local elections of 27 March 1994. He was banned from office and sentenced to a prison term for reciting a poem during a public address in the province of Siirt on 12 December 1997. The poem was allegedly quoted from a book published by a state enterprise and one that had been recommended to teachers by the Ministry of Education. After six months in prison, Erdoğan established the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) on August 14, 2001. From its first year, the AK Party became the largest publicly-supported political movement in Turkey. In the general election of 2002 the AK Party won nearly two-thirds of the seats in parliament, forming the first single-party government for 9 years.
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Robert Fico
Robert Fico (Slovak pronunciation: [ˈrɔbɛrt ˈfit͡sɔ]), (born 15 September 1964) is a Slovak politician who has been Prime Minister of Slovakia since April 2012. Previously he was Prime Minister from 4 July 2006 until 8 July 2010.
Fico was born in 1964, in the town of Topoľčany. His father was a forklift operator and his mother worked in a shoe store. He has two siblings, and is married to Svetlana Ficová; they have one son.
Fico graduated from the Law Faculty of the Comenius University at Bratislava, in what was then Czechoslovakia, and later worked for the Institute of State and Law of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1987. After the Velvet Revolution of 1989, and the collapse of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Fico joined the Party of the Democratic Left (SDL), a successor of the Communist Party of Slovakia. From 1994 to 2000 Fico represented Slovakia as its legal counsel at the European Court of Human Rights but lost all 14 cases which he handled.
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Robert Schuman
Robert Schuman (French pronunciation: [ʁɔbɛʁ ʃuman]; 29 June 1886 – 4 September 1963) was a noted Luxembourgish-born French statesman. Schuman was a Christian Democrat (M.R.P.) and an independent political thinker and activist. Twice Prime Minister of France, a reformist Minister of Finance and a Foreign Minister, he was instrumental in building post-war European and trans-Atlantic institutions and is regarded as one of the founders of the European Union, the Council of Europe and NATO.
Schuman was a man of several cultures. His father, Jean-Pierre Schuman (1837–1900), was born in Évrange, Lorraine, just across the border with Luxembourg. Jean-Pierre Schuman was a French citizen, but after Alsace-Lorraine was annexed by the German Empire in 1871, he became a German citizen. Robert's mother, Eugénie Duren (1864–1911), a Luxembourger born in Bettembourg, became a German citizen by marriage in 1884.
Schuman was born in 1886 in Clausen, a suburb of Luxembourg as a German by virtue of the principle of jus sanguinis. His mother tongue was Luxembourgish but he was taught French and Standard German at school. Since he learned French only in school (which is mandatory in Luxembourg), he spoke it with a distinct accent.
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Roman Herzog
Roman Herzog (born 5 April 1934) is a German politician as a member of the Christian Democratic Union, (CDU) and served as President of Germany from 1994 to 1999. He was the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany to be elected to office after the reunification of Germany that took place in 1990. Prior to office he served as a judge of the constitutional court.
Roman Herzog was born in Landshut, Bavaria in 1934 to a Protestant family.
He studied law in Munich and took his first juristic state exam in 1957. In 1958, he gained the title Doctor juris and worked as an assistant at the University of Munich until 1964, where he also passed his second juristic state exam. For his paper Die Wesensmerkmale der Staatsorganisation in rechtlicher und entwicklungsgeschichtlicher Sicht ("Characteristics of State Organization from a Juristic and Developmental-Historical Viewpoint"), in 1964 he was awarded the title of professor, a title of academic distinction in Germany, and taught at the University of Munich until 1966. From 1966 he taught state law and political science as a full professor at the Free University of Berlin (FUB). In 1969, he accepted a chair of public law at the German University of Administrative Sciences and was university president from 1971 to 1972.
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Romano Prodi
Romano Prodi (Italian pronunciation: [roˈmaːno ˈprɔːdi] ( listen); born 9 August 1939) is an Italian politician and statesman. He served as the Prime Minister of Italy, from 17 May 1996 to 21 October 1998 and from 17 May 2006 to 8 May 2008. He was also the tenth President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004.
Prodi ran in 1996 as lead candidate of The Olive Tree coalition, winning the general election and serving as Prime Minister of Italy until 1998. Following the victory of his coalition The Union over the House of Freedoms led by Silvio Berlusconi in the April 2006 Italian elections Prodi was in power again. On 24 January 2008, he lost a vote of confidence in the Senate house, and consequently tendered his resignation as Prime Minister to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, but continued in office for almost four months for routine business, until early elections were held and a new government was formed.
On 14 October 2007, Prodi became the first President of the Democratic Party upon foundation of the party.
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Ronald Pofalla
Ronald Pofalla (born May 15, 1959 in Weeze) is a German politician, currently serving as the Chief of Staff of the German Chancellery and a Federal Minister for Special Affairs in the Second Cabinet Merkel.
From 2004 to 2005 he was deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU's parliamentary group in the Bundestag, and served as the Secretary General of the CDU from 2005 to 2009, when he was appointed to cabinet, succeeding Thomas de Maizière as Chief of Staff.
Pofalla studied social pedagogy at the Fachhochschule in Kleve. After finishing with a Diplom in 1981 he studied law at the University of Cologne. In 1991 he passed the second Staatsexamen. Since that time Pofalla has been licensed to work as a lawyer.
Pofalla has been a member of the CDU since 1975. At first he was engaged in the Junge Union. He was chairman of the JU in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1986 to 1992.
Since 1990 he has been a member of the Bundestag.
Ronald Pofalla has been repeatedly critizised for being rude towards other representatives of the Bundestag and other secretaries of the German government. In September 2011 he seriously insulted Wolfgang Bosbach, senior group leader of the CDU/CSU-group in the Bundestag after an in-house discussion about the enhancement of the European Financial Stability Facility.
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Roy Jenkins
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician.
The son of a Welsh coal miner who later became a union official and Labour MP, Roy Jenkins served with distinction in World War II. Elected to Parliament as a Labour member in 1948, he served in several major posts in Harold Wilson's First Government. As Home Secretary from 1965–1967, he sought to build what he described as "a civilized society", with measures such as the effective abolition in Britain of capital punishment and theatre censorship, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, relaxing of divorce law, suspension of birching and the legalisation of abortion. As Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1967–1970, he pursued a tight fiscal policy later praised by Margaret Thatcher. In 1970, he was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, but resigned in 1972 because he supported entry to the Common Market, while the party opposed it.
When Wilson re-entered government in 1974 Jenkins returned to the Home Office, but, increasingly disenchanted by the swing to the left of the Labour Party,[citation needed] he chose to leave British politics in 1976 and was appointed President of the European Commission in 1977, serving until 1981: he was the first and to date only British holder of this office. In 1981, dismayed with the Labour Party's continuing leftward drift, he was one of the "Gang of Four" - Labour moderates who formed the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In 1982 he won a famous by-election in a Conservative seat and returned to parliament; but after disappointment with the performance of the SDP in the 1983 election he resigned as SDP leader.
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Ruprecht Polenz
Ruprecht Polenz (May 26, 1946 in Denkwitz near Bautzen) is a German politician and member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) political party.
Polenz is married and has four children.
Polenz became senior member of the CDU party on April 10, 2000 under the presidency of Angela Merkel.
He has been chairman of the foreign committee of the lower house of the German Parliament, the Bundestag since 2005. He was secretary-general of the CDU from April to November 2000.
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Ruud Lubbers
Rudolphus Franciscus Marie "Ruud" Lubbers (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈryt ˈlʏbərs] ( listen); born May 7, 1939) is a retired Dutch politician of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). He served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from November 4, 1982 until August 22, 1994.
He previously served as Minister of Economic Affairs from May 11, 1973 until December 19, 1977 in the Cabinet den Uyl. He became a Member of the House of Representatives from December 22, 1977 until November 4, 1982. When the Parliamentary leader of Christian Democratic Appeal in the House of Representatives Wim Aantjes resigned of a World War II controversy, Lubbers succeed him as Parliamentary leader, he served from November 7, 1978 until November 4, 1982. When the Christian Democratic Appeal Party leader and sitting Prime Minister Dries van Agt announced his retirement, Lubbers was chosen to succeed him. Lubbers became Prime Minister of the Netherlands, leading the Cabinets Lubbers I, II and III. Lubbers was regarded by many during his time in office as an ideological heir to Margaret Thatcher. One of his campaign slogans was: "meer markt, minder overheid" (more market, less government).
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Sigmar Gabriel
Sigmar Gabriel (born 12 September 1959 in Goslar) is a German politician currently chairing the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
On 15 December 1999, after the resignation of Gerhard Glogowski, who had succeeded Gerhard Schröder in office, Gabriel became Minister-President of Lower Saxony and served until 4 March 2003. After being voted out of office, he became the SPD's "Representative for Pop Culture and Pop Discourse" from 2003 to 2005, for which he was bestowed the nickname Siggi Pop. From 2005 to 2009 he was the Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in the first cabinet of Angela Merkel (CDU).
He has promoted the International Renewable Energy Agency. He called the speeches of Thilo Sarrazin, his party colleague who wrote critically about immigration, "verbal violence," . Gabriel called Israel an "Apartheid-Regime".
Following the SPD's defeat in the federal election of 2009, Franz Müntefering resigned from the position of party chairman of the Social Democratic Party. Gabriel was nominated as his successor and was elected on 13 November 2009. Gabriel was re-elected as party chairman for a further two years at the SPD party conference in Berlin on 5 December 2011, receiving 91.6% of the vote.
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Silvio Berlusconi
Silvio Berlusconi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈsilvjo berluˈskoːni] ( listen); born 29 September 1936) is an Italian politician and media tycoon who served three times as Prime Minister of Italy from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. Berlusconi is also the controlling shareholder of Mediaset and owner of A.C. Milan. He is nicknamed Il Cavaliere (The Knight) for his knighthood to the Order of Merit for Labour, which he received in 1977.
Berlusconi is the longest-serving post-war Prime Minister of Italy, and third longest-serving since Italy's unification, after Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Giolitti, holding three separate terms. Technically, he has been sworn in four times because after a cabinet reshuffle, as happened with Berlusconi in 2005, the new ministry is sworn in and subjected to a vote of confidence. He is the leader of the People of Freedom political movement, a centre-right party he founded in 2009. From November 2009 to November 2011, he was the most senior leader of the G8 countries. In 2012, Forbes magazine ranked him as the 169th richest man in the world with a net worth of US$5.9 billion.
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Stephen Harper
Stephen Joseph Harper, PC MP (born April 30, 1959) is the 22nd and current Prime Minister of Canada and leader of the Conservative Party. Harper became prime minister when his party formed a minority government after the 2006 federal election. He is the first prime minister from the newly reconstituted Conservative Party, following a merger of the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance parties.
Harper has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for the riding of Calgary Southwest in Alberta since 2002. Earlier, from 1993 to 1997, he was the MP for Calgary West. He was one of the founding members of the Reform Party, but did not seek re-election, and instead joined, and shortly thereafter led, the National Citizens Coalition. In 2002, he succeeded Stockwell Day as leader of the Canadian Alliance (the successor to the Reform Party) and returned to parliament as Leader of the Opposition. In 2003, he reached an agreement with Progressive Conservative leader Peter MacKay for the merger of their two parties to form the Conservative Party of Canada. He was elected as the party's first non-interim leader in March 2004.
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Thomas de Maizière
Karl Ernst Thomas de Maizière (German pronunciation: [də mɛˈzi̯ɛːɐ̯]; born 21 January 1954) is a German politician (CDU), currently serving as the Minister of Defence (since 3 March 2011) in the Second Cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
A close confidant of Merkel, he served as Chief of Staff at the Chancellor's Office and Federal Minister for Special Affairs in the First Cabinet Merkel from 2005 to 2009. Prior to his appointment to the federal cabinet, he served as a cabinet minister of the state of Saxony, including as Chief of Staff, Minister of Finance and Minister of Justice. In the federal cabinet, prior to his appointment as Minister of Defence, he served as Minister of the Interior.
Thomas de Maiziere was born in Bonn to the later Inspector general of the Bundeswehr, Ulrich de Maizière. He graduated at the Aloisiuskolleg in Bonn and studied law and history at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster and the University of Freiburg, he passed his first state examination in law in 1979 and his second 1982, earning his doctorate of law (Dr. jur.) in 1986.
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Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He resigned from all of these positions in June 2007.
Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election of July 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under his leadership, the party used the phrases "New Labour" and "New Socialism" to define its policy, and moved away from its support of state socialism since the 1960s and created a new version of the ethical socialism that was last pursued by Clement Attlee. Critics of Blair claim that "New Labour" did not adhere to socialism as claimed, and that it effectively advocated capitalism. Blair subsequently led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1997 general election. At 43 years old, he became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. In the first years of the New Labour government, Blair's government implemented a number of 1997 manifesto pledges, introducing the minimum wage, Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and carrying out devolution, establishing the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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Traian Băsescu
Traian Băsescu (born November 4th, 1951 in Basarabi, Romania) is the current president of Romania, serving since 2004. Mayor of Bucharest from 2000 to 2004, he was elected president in 2004, suspended from office in 2007 but reconfirmed a month later in a plebiscite. He was re-elected president for a second 5-year term in 2009, amidst allegations of electoral fraud that were ultimately dismissed by the Constitutional Court of Romania.
Băsescu was born in Basarabi (renamed Murfatlar in 2007), near the port city of Constanţa, the largest Romanian port on the Black Sea. Băsescu's father, Dumitru (d. 2002), was an army officer; his mother's first name is Elena (d. 2010). He has a brother, Mircea (b. 1953). Traian Băsescu and his wife Maria have two daughters.
Băsescu graduated from the Naval Institute of Constanţa in 1976 and became a merchant marine deck officer at Navrom, the Romanian state-owned shipping company. Between 1981 and 1987 he served as Captain on Romanian commercial ships. Throughout his career, questions have been raised about Basescu's links to the Securitate, the security services of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. But Basescu has said his links with the former Securitate were minimal, though some contact was obligatory at the time for somebody working abroad in a senior position. In 1984 he was promoted to Captain of the oil tanker Biruinţa, the largest ship of the then Romanian commercial fleet. In 1989, Băsescu moved to Belgium to head the Navrom Agency in Antwerp.
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Ulla Schmidt
Ursula (Ulla) Schmidt (born June 13, 1949 in Aachen) is a German politician. She is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
In 1976 she was a candidate of the Maoist "Kommunistischer Bund Westdeutschland" (KBW) (Communist League of West Germany) for the Federal Assembly of Germany (Bundestag) in Aachen. The KBW dissolved completely in 1985.
In 1983 she changed to the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). There she is a member of the local (Aachen) leadership and of the "Seeheimer Kreis".
In 2001, she became Federal Minister for Health under Gerhard Schröder. A year later, the responsibility for social security was added to her portfolio and she was appointed Federal Minister for Health and Social Security.
In November 2005, she again became Federal Minister for Health in the grand coalition of Angela Merkel. Social security was reunited with the portfolio of labour, which in 2002 had been added to that of the Federal Minister for Economics.
In 2009, she criticized statements made by Pope Benedict XVI, who claimed that condom usage promoted AIDS.
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Ursula von der Leyen
Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen (born 8 October 1958 in Ixelles, Brussels) is a German politician of the conservative Christian Democratic Union.
Since 30 November 2009, she has served as the Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs in the Second Cabinet Merkel. In the First Cabinet Merkel (2005–2009), she served as Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. By profession she is a physician.
Ursula von der Leyen is the daughter of Ernst (Carl Julius) Albrecht, a prominent CDU politician and European Commission official, as well as a long-time Prime Minister of Lower Saxony.
She was born in Ixelles in Brussels, where her father worked for the European Commission (as a Director-General from 1969), and lived in Belgium until she was 13 years old. In 1971 the family moved to Lehrte in Hanover.
Ursula von der Leyen, is a descendant of Baron Ludwig Knoop, a cotton merchant of the city-state of Bremen and one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the 19th century.
Ursula von der Leyen started her studies in 1977 in the field of economics, at the universities of Göttingen, Münster and London School of Economics. In 1980, she decided to drop her studies in economics, as she was more interested in medicine.[citation needed]
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Valdis Dombrovskis
Valdis Dombrovskis (born 5 August 1971) is the Prime Minister of Latvia. He previously served as Minister for Finance of Latvia and as a Member of the European Parliament for the New Era Party.
Born in Riga to a family with Polish roots, Dombrovskis graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Latvia. He earned a Bachelor's degree in economics for engineers from Riga Technical University in 1995 and a Master's degree in physics from the University of Latvia in 1996. He has worked as a laboratory assistant at the Institute of Physics of Mainz University, Germany from 1995 to 1996, as an assistant at the Institute of Solid-State Physics of the University of Latvia in 1997, and as a research assistant at the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1998.
Dombrovskis has been a Member of the Board of the New Era Party since 2002. He was Minister of Finance of Latvia from 2002 to 2004 and a Member of the Latvian Parliament during its 8th parliamentary term (2002–2004). Then he was Observer at the Council of the European Union (2003–2004).
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Viktor Klima
Viktor Klima (born 4 June 1947) is an Austrian Social Democrat politician and businessman. He was chancellor of Austria from 1997 to 2000.
Born in Schwechat, Lower Austria, Klima started working for the then state-owned OMV oil company in 1969 and remained with the company up to the beginning of his political career in 1992, in his later years serving as a member of their management board.
Although Klima was then unknown to the majority of Austrians, in 1992 Chancellor Franz Vranitzky made him Minister of Transportation and Nationalised Industry, a position Klima held till 1996, when he became Minister of Finance for a year.
In 1997, upon Vranitzky's resignation, Klima was elected chairman of the Social Democratic party and was sworn in as Chancellor of Austria, having renewed the grand coalition between his own party (Social Democratic Party of Austria, SPÖ) and the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), with Wolfgang Schüssel serving as his vice chancellor.
Influenced by the "Third Way" strategy of other European leaders such as Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder, under Klima's chairmanship the Social Democrats played down their allegiance to Marxism and thus to their own political roots and very clearly continued their move from the political left towards the centre, frequently using spin doctors and embracing populism as a political strategy.
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Viktor Orbán
Viktor Orbán (Orbán Viktor, Hungarian pronunciation: [orbaːn viktor]; born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian conservative politician who is Prime Minister of Hungary having also served from 1998 to 2002. He leads Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Union, which with the Christian Democratic People's Party in the 2010 elections won 52.73% of the votes and a two thirds majority (supermajority) of seats in the parliament of Hungary.
He was born on 31 May 1963 in Székesfehérvár and spent his childhood in two nearby villages, Alcsútdoboz and Felcsút. In 1977 his family moved to Székesfehérvár.
Orbán graduated from secondary school, where he studied English, in 1981. In the following two years he completed his military service, then studied law at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. After graduating from that institution in 1987 he lived in Szolnok for the two years, commuting to Budapest where he had a job as a sociologist at the Management Training Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.
In 1989 Orbán received a scholarship from the Soros Foundation and spent four months in Oxford, where he studied at Pembroke College. His personal tutor in politics was Zbigniew Pelczynski. Orban quit Oxford in January 1990 and returned to Hungary to win a seat in Hungary's first post-communist parliament.
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Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин; IPA: [vɫɐˈdʲimʲɪr vɫɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ ˈputʲɪn] ( listen); born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician who has been the President of Russia since 7 May 2012. Putin previously served as President from 2000 to 2008 and as Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000, and again from 2008 to 2012. Putin also serves as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when president Boris Yeltsin resigned in a surprising move. Putin won the 2000 presidential election; in 2004 he was re-elected for a second term lasting until 7 May 2008.
Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term. After his successor Dmitry Medvedev won the 2008 presidential election, Putin was nominated by Medvedev to be Russia's Prime Minister; Putin took office on 8 May 2008 and a period of so-called "tandemocracy" followed. In September 2011, Putin and Medvedev agreed he should seek a third, non-consecutive term in the 2012 presidential election, which he won in the first round on 4 March 2012.
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Volker Kauder
Volker Kauder (born 3 September 1949 in Sinsheim) is a German CDU politician. Since 21 November 2005 he has been Chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag after a short term as Secretary General of the CDU. He has been a member of parliament since 1990.
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Václav Havel
Václav Havel (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːt͡slaf ˈɦavɛl] ( listen); 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician.
Havel was the ninth and last president of Czechoslovakia (1989–1992) and the first president of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). He wrote more than 20 plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally.
Havel was voted 4th in Prospect magazine's 2005 global poll of the world's top 100 intellectuals. At the time of his death he was Chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation. He was the founder of the VIZE 97 Foundation and the principal organizer of the Forum 2000 annual global conference.
Havel was one of the signatories of the Charter 77 manifesto, a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, and a council member of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Havel received many recognitions, including the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the freedom medal of the Four Freedoms Award, and the Ambassador of Conscience Award.
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Walter Hallstein
Walter Hallstein (17 November 1901 – 29 March 1982) was a German politician and professor.
He was one of the key figures of European integration after World War II, becoming the first President of the Commission of the European Economic Community, serving from 1958 to 1967. He famously defined his position as "a kind of Prime Minister of Europe". His name is associated with the Hallstein Doctrine, a key doctrine in West German foreign policy during the Cold War.
Hallstein was born in Mainz, Germany, the son of a government building officer. He studied law in Bonn, Munich and Berlin and graduated in 1925 with a doctoral dissertation on the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles with regard to insurance policies. From 1926 he worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign Private and International Private Law in Berlin. In 1930, at the age of 28, he was appointed professor for private law and company law at the University of Rostock (Rostock), where he remained until 1941. During Nazism Hallstein was a member of National Socialist People's Welfare and national socialist professional associations for lawyers and judges. In 1941 he was appointed professor of civil law at the University of Frankfurt (Frankfurt am Main). He was also, at the same time, director of the university's Institute for Comparative Law and Commercial Law.
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Walter Scheel
Walter Scheel (German pronunciation: [ˈvaltɐ ˈʃeːl]; born 8 July 1919) is a German politician (FDP). He served as Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development from 1961 to 1966, Foreign Minister of Germany and Vice Chancellor from 1969 to 1974, acting Chancellor of Germany from 7 May to 16 May 1974 (following the resignation of Willy Brandt after the Guillaume Affair), and finally as President of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1974 to 1979.
He is currently the oldest former German president alive and the longest-lived German head of state.
Scheel was born in Solingen (now in North Rhine-Westphalia). During World War II, he served in the Luftwaffe, the last years of the war as a radar operator on a Bf 110 night fighter.
When his Free Democratic Party reentered government in a coalition with Konrad Adenauer's Christian Democratic Union in 1961, Scheel was appointed federal minister of economic cooperation and development. He continued in that office under Chancellor Ludwig Erhard but brought about the downfall of the latter in late 1966 of which he had become the leader, out of the coalition government. A Christian Democratic / Social Democratic Grand Coalition followed. During this time, in 1968, Scheel took over the party presidency from right wing liberal Erich Mende.
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Werner Faymann
Werner Faymann (German pronunciation: [ˈvɛɐ̯nɐ ˈfaɪman]; born 4 May 1960) is Chancellor of Austria and chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Austria SPÖ (see Faymann cabinet).
Born in Vienna, Austria,[citation needed] he studied law at the University of Vienna for two years but did not graduate.
From 1985 to 1988 Faymann was a consultant at the Zentralsparkasse Bank (now Bank Austria), which he left to become director and provincial chairman of the Viennese Tenants' counselling. He was also provincial chairman of Socialist Youth Vienna (Sozialistische Jugend Wien) from 1985 until 1994, when he became a member of the Viennese state parliament and municipal council; where he held various positions concerning housing construction and urban renewal.
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Wilfried Martens
Wilfried Martens (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈβ̞ɪlfɾiˑt ˈmɑɾtəns] ( listen); born Wilfried Achiel Emma Martens, 19 April 1936) is a Belgian politician. He was born in Sleidinge (East Flanders). Martens was the 44th Prime Minister of Belgium from 3 April 1979 to 6 April 1981 and 17 December 1981 to 7 March 1992.
Martens was a Chair of the Belgian Christian People's Party (now renamed Christian Democratic and Flemish party (CD&V)) from 1972–79, sitting as a Deputy in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives (federal parliament) from 1974–91, and serving as a Senator from 1991 – 94.
He co-founded the European People's Party (EPP) in 1976 and has been EPP President since 1992.
From 1993 he was President of the European Union of Christian Democrats (EUCD), until its merger with the EPP in 1996. Martens also negotiated with Finnish conservative politician Sauli Niinistö the merger of the European Democrat Union (EDU) into the EPP (formally concluded in 2002). The successful fusion of all centre-right European organisations into the EPP – currently the largest transnational European political party with 75 member-parties from 40 countries – is widely recognised as an important achievement of his European political legacy.
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Wilhelm Cuno
Wilhelm Carl Josef Cuno (July 2, 1876 – January 3, 1933) was a German politician who was the Chancellor of Germany from 1922 to 1923. He was born in Suhl, Prussian Saxony. Cuno's government is best known for its passive resistance of the French occupation of the Ruhr Area (1922–1923). Cuno's government was also responsible for its poor handling of economic problems. In order to pay off the state's debts, the government under Cuno printed vast amounts of money, leading to hyperinflation which peaked in the summer of 1923. A wave of strikes began in August 1923 and on Cuno and his cabinet resigned on August 12, 1923.
Cuno received education as a lawyer in Berlin and Heidelberg. He was employed by the Reich Treasury Department in 1907. During World War I Cuno was involved in arrangements for food supplies for the German army, but quit civil service to join the Hapag shipping company in 1917. In December 1918 Cuno was promoted to the Hapag's general director. As an economic expert Cuno participated in the post-war negotiations on reparations and peace terms. The importance of his position as Hapag executive increased after the company became one of the leading shippers of goods between the U.S. and Germany.
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Wilhelm Marx
Wilhelm Marx (January 15, 1863– August 5, 1946) was a German lawyer, Catholic politician and a member of the Centre Party. He was Chancellor of the German Reich twice, from 1923 to 1925 and again from 1926 to 1928, and also served briefly as minister president of Prussia in 1925, during the Weimar Republic.
Born in Cologne to a teacher, Marx passed his Abitur at the Marzellengymnasium in 1881. He then studied jurisprudence at the University of Bonn. As student he became a member of K.St.V. Arminia. After his degree in law, he worked as an assessor in both Cologne and Waldbröl and later in the land registry in Simmern. From 1894 Marx worked as a judge in Elberfeld. Ten years later, he returned to Cologne and Düsseldorf, where he had the highest rank possible in Prussia for a Catholic who was also active in the Centre Party.
Marx married Johanna Verkoyen in 1891 and they had four children.
He served as Chancellor of Germany from 1923 to 1925 and again from 1926 to 1928, and was the Centre Party's (and, in the second round, the entire Weimar Coalition's) candidate in the 1925 presidential election. But in the runoff he was defeated by Paul von Hindenburg, as Ernst Thälmann the Communist candidate also stood and split the vote.
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Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt (born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; German pronunciation: [ˈvɪli ˈbʁant]; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) 1964–1987.
Brandt's most important legacy was Ostpolitik, a policy aimed at improving relations with East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. This policy caused considerable controversy in West Germany, but won Brandt the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971.
In 1974, Brandt resigned as Chancellor after Günter Guillaume, one of his closest aides, was exposed as an agent of the Stasi, the East German secret service.
Willy Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm in the Free City of Lübeck (German Empire) to Martha Frahm, an unwed mother who worked as a cashier for a department store. His father was an accountant from Hamburg named John Möller, whom Brandt never met. As his mother worked six days a week, he was mainly brought up by his mother's stepfather Ludwig Frahm and his second wife Dora.
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Wim Kok
Willem "Wim" Kok (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈʋɪm ˈkɔk] ( listen)); born September 29, 1938) is a retired Dutch politician of the Labour Party (PvdA). He served as Prime Minister of the Netherlands from August 22, 1994 until July 22, 2002.
A former Trade Union Leader, Kok served as Chairman of the Netherlands Association of Trade Unions from 1972 until 1976 when it merged to form the Federation Netherlands Labour Movement, Kok served as its first Chairman from 1976 until 1986 when he left to enter politics. He was elected as a Member of the House of Representatives on June 3, 1986 after the Dutch general election of 1986. The Labour Party Party leader and Parliamentary leader of the Labour Party in the House of Representatives Joop den Uyl announced that he was stepping down after serving twenty years as Party leader. Kok was elected to succeed him and became Party leader and the Parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives on July 21, 1986 and served as opposition leader during the parliamentary period of the Cabinet Lubbers II. For the Dutch general election of 1989 Kok became the lijsttrekker and the Labour Party lost 3 seats but the following cabinet formation resulted in a coalition agreement with the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) which formed the Cabinet Lubbers III. Kok became Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister serving from November 7, 1989 until August 22, 1994.
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Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, Hon. RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British Conservative politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century, he served as Prime Minister twice (1940–45 and 1951–55). A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States.
Churchill was born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jenny Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young army officer, he saw action in British India, the Sudan, and the Second Boer War. He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns.
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Wolfgang Schäuble
Wolfgang Schäuble [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ ˈʃɔʏblə] (born 18 September 1942) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), currently serving as the Federal Minister of Finance in the Second Cabinet Merkel.
From 1984 to 1991 he was a member of Helmut Kohl's cabinet, first as Federal Minister for Special Affairs of Germany and Chief of the Chancellery and then as Federal Minister of the Interior. Between 1991 and 2000, he was chairman of the CDU/CSU group in the parliament, and from 1998 to 2000 also CDU party chairman. He served again as Federal Minister of the Interior in the First Cabinet Merkel from 2005 to 2009.
Schäuble was born in Freiburg im Breisgau as the son of a tax finance advisor. After completing his Abitur in 1961, Schäuble studied law and economics in Freiburg im Breisgau and Hamburg, which he completed in 1966 and 1970 by passing the First and Second State Examinations respectively, becoming a fully qualified lawyer.
In 1971 Schäuble obtained his doctorate in law, with a dissertation called "The public accountant's professional legal situation within accountancy firms".
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Wolfgang Schüssel
Wolfgang Schüssel (German pronunciation: [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ ˈʃʏsəl]; born 7 June 1945) is an Austrian People's Party politician. He was Chancellor of Austria for two consecutive terms from February 2000 to January 2007. While being recognized as a rare example of an active reformer in contemporary Austrian politics, his governments were also highly controversial from the beginning, starting with the fact that he formed a coalition government with Jörg Haider's Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) on both occasions. In 2011, he retired from being an active member of parliament due to charges of corruption against members of his governments.
Born in Vienna, Schüssel attended that city's Schottengymnasium, a well known Roman Catholic gymnasium for boys, where he took his Matura exams in 1963. He went on to study at the University of Vienna, receiving a Doctorate in Law in 1968.
Schüssel was secretary of the parliamentary group of the Austrian People's Party from 1968 to 1975. From 1975 to 1991, he was Secretary General of the Austrian Business Federation, a sub-organization of the Austrian People's Party.
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Wolfgang Tiefensee
Wolfgang Tiefensee (born January 4, 1955 in Gera) is a German SPD politician. He was the Federal Minister for Transport, Building and Urban Development in the grand coalition cabinet led by Angela Merkel since November 22, 2005.
Originally an electrical engineer, he turned to politics in 1989, during the democratization process of the German Democratic Republic. Tiefensee was elected mayor of Leipzig in 1998, and was re-elected with 67.1% of the vote in April 2005. Before 2005, he declined offers of a position in the federal government, stating his place was in Leipzig.
As mayor, he put great effort into Leipzig's bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games. While Leipzig unexpectedly won the campaign to tender the German bid, the middle-sized city did not get past the first round of the international competition, which was in fact won by London.
Wolfgang Tiefensee, whose father was the musician and conductor Siegfried Tiefensee, is also known for playing the cello, a talent that he successfully incorporated into Leipzig's Olympic bid. His brother, Eberhard Tiefensee, is a Catholic priest and professor of theology at the University of Erfurt.
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Yasuo Fukuda
Yasuo Fukuda (福田 康夫, Fukuda Yasuo?, born 16 July 1936) was the 91st Prime Minister of Japan, serving from 2007 to 2008. He was previously the longest-serving Chief Cabinet Secretary in Japanese history, serving for three and a half years (2000–2004) under Prime Ministers Yoshirō Mori and Junichiro Koizumi.
Following the resignation of Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, Fukuda was elected as President of the Liberal Democratic Party and became Prime Minister in September 2007. Fukuda was the first son of a former Japanese Prime Minister (Takeo Fukuda) to also take up the post.
On 1 September 2008, Fukuda announced his resignation, triggering another LDP leadership election. Although Japan hosted the G8 summit meeting without mishap during Fukuda's time in office, Fukuda himself earned little or no credit from ordinary Japanese, and when he resigned, he became the first of the G8 leaders to leave office.
He is a member of the Club de Madrid, a group of more than 80 former Presidents and Prime ministers of democratic countries, which works to strengthen democratic leadership and governance.
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Yoshihiko Noda
Yoshihiko Noda (野田 佳彦, Noda Yoshihiko?, born 20 May 1957) is the current Prime Minister of Japan, a member of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), and a member of the House of Representatives (lower house) in the Diet (national legislature). He was named to succeed outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan as a result of a runoff vote against Banri Kaieda in his party, and was formally appointed by the Emperor on 2 September 2011.
Noda was born in Funabashi, Chiba, as a son of a member of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Unlike many prominent Japanese politicians, Noda has no family connections to Nagatachō. His parents were too poor to pay for a wedding reception.
Noda graduated from Chiba Prefectural Funabashi Senior High School in 1975. Then, Noda graduated from Waseda University School of Political Sciences and Economics in 1980 and was later accepted into the prestigious Matsushita Institute, an institution founded by Panasonic founder Konosuke Matsushita that grooms future civic leaders of Japan. While attending the Matsushita Institute, Noda read household gas meters as a part-time job in his native Chiba Prefecture, partially in order to get to know his future constituents better in preparation for a run for office. He was elected to the assembly of Chiba Prefecture for the first time in 1987 at the age of 29.
wn.com/Yoshihiko_Noda -
Yulia Tymoshenko
Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko (Ukrainian: Юлія Володимирівна Тимошенко, pronounced [ˈjulijɑ ʋɔlɔˈdɪmɪriʋnɑ tɪmɔˈʃɛnkɔ]), née Grigyan (Ukrainian: Ґріґян), born 27 November 1960, is a Ukrainian politician. She was the Prime Minister of Ukraine from 24 January to 8 September 2005, and again from 18 December 2007 to 4 March 2010. She placed third in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women 2005. Tymoshenko is the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" party and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.
She has been a practising economist and academic. Prior to her political career, Yulia Tymoshenko was a successful but controversial businesswoman in the gas industry, becoming by some estimates one of the richest people in the country. Before becoming Ukraine's first female Prime Minister in 2005, Tymoshenko co-led the Orange Revolution.
Tymoshenko was a candidate in the Ukrainian presidential elections of 2010, but lost this election to Viktor Yanukovych (Tymoshenko received 45.47% of the votes in the second and final round of this election). At first Tymoshenko challenged the election results, claiming the vote was rigged, but withdrew her appeal on 20 February 2010, stating, "It became clear that the court is not out to establish the truth".
wn.com/Yulia_Tymoshenko
Merkel, Angela Filmography
- Kriegsversprechen II - Terrormanagement im 21. Jahrhundert (2012)
- Herr Wichmann aus der dritten Reihe (2012)
- Willkommen Baku (2012)
- Des Wahnsinns fetteste Beute (2011)
- Der Kategorische Imperativ (2011)
- Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland (2011)
- Little Spain (2011)
- Das System - Alles verstehen heißt alles verzeihen (2011)
- Lola - Der Deutsche Filmpreis 2010 (2010)
- Russian Lessons (2010)
- Kriegsversprechen (2009)
- Die Partei (2009)
- In Berlin (2009)
- Les arbitres (2009)
- Wahlarena - Zuschauer fragen Angela Merkel (2009)
- Max Planck: Umsturz mit Melancholie (2008)
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
- Srpnová noc: Prímý prenos z minulosti (2008)
- Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement (2007)
- Der Geist des Geldes (2007)
- Unter falscher Flagge (2007)
- Die Kanzlerin (2006)
- 2006 FIFA World Cup (2006)
- Deutschland. Ein Sommermärchen (2006)
- FIFA World Cup 2006: Final Draw (2005)
- Denk ich an Deutschland - Herr Wichmann von der CDU (2003)
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Euro Summit: Angela Merkel press conference (German)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 19:40
- Updated: 02 Dec 2012
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's press conference in the wake of the euro summit in Brussels on the 27th of October 2011.
http://wn.com/Euro_Summit_Angela_Merkel_press_conference_German
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's press conference in the wake of the euro summit in Brussels on the 27th of October 2011.
Iron Frau 3? 'Merkel's TINA to give Germans no choice'
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:30
- Updated: 04 Dec 2012
Germany's Christian Democratic Union is using its annual meeting to celebrate their leader the Iron Frau. Angela Merkel looks set to run for a third term as Chancellor in the next year's general elections. And this party congress has been labelled "The Merkel Show". German politician Stephan Werhahn believes Germany doesn't have any real alternative but to let the show go on... RT LIVE rt.com Subscribe to RT! www.youtube.com Like us on Facebook www.facebook.com Follow us on Twitter twitter.com Follow us on Google+ plus.google.com RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 500 million YouTube views benchmark.
http://wn.com/Iron_Frau_3?_'Merkel's_TINA_to_give_Germans_no_choice'
Germany's Christian Democratic Union is using its annual meeting to celebrate their leader the Iron Frau. Angela Merkel looks set to run for a third term as Chancellor in the next year's general elections. And this party congress has been labelled "The Merkel Show". German politician Stephan Werhahn believes Germany doesn't have any real alternative but to let the show go on... RT LIVE rt.com Subscribe to RT! www.youtube.com Like us on Facebook www.facebook.com Follow us on Twitter twitter.com Follow us on Google+ plus.google.com RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 500 million YouTube views benchmark.
- published: 04 Dec 2012
- views: 76
- author: RussiaToday
Merkel begins battle for third term in office
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:33
- Updated: 04 Dec 2012
Armed with a physics doctorate, cool pragmatism and the ability to compromise, Angela Merkel has risen to become one of the most powerful women in the world. As she prepares for Germany's general election next year, she'll be hoping her popularity at home - and with certain foreign powers - will outweigh those of her detractors in Greece and other struggling EU nations. Profile of Angela Merkel. Duration: 02:32
http://wn.com/Merkel_begins_battle_for_third_term_in_office
Armed with a physics doctorate, cool pragmatism and the ability to compromise, Angela Merkel has risen to become one of the most powerful women in the world. As she prepares for Germany's general election next year, she'll be hoping her popularity at home - and with certain foreign powers - will outweigh those of her detractors in Greece and other struggling EU nations. Profile of Angela Merkel. Duration: 02:32
- published: 03 Dec 2012
- views: 37
- author: AFP
ANGELA MERKEL In ATHENS: Thousands CLASH With POLICE. NAZI Uniforms And SWASTIKAS
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:05
- Updated: 23 Nov 2012
ANGELA MERKEL In ATHENS: Thousands CLASH With POLICE. NAZI Uniforms And SWASTIKAS Greek police fired teargas and stun grenades at protesters in central Athens on Tuesday when they tried to break through a barrier and reach visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Tens of thousands of demonstrators defied a ban on protests, gathering in Syntagma square to voice their displeasure with the German leader, who many blame for forcing painful cuts on Greece in exchange for two EU-IMF bailout packages worth over 200 billion euros. Some pelted police with rocks, bottles and sticks, and tried to bust through a barricade set up to protect Merkel and her delegation, who were meeting with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras at his office several hundred meters away. Police detained dozens of protesters in what they said was one of the biggest demonstrations in months. Merkel is visiting Greece for the first time since Europe's debt crisis erupted here three years ago to deliver a message of support, but no new money, to a nation hammered by recession and fighting to stay in the euro. She was given the red carpet treatment and full military honors when she arrived at Athens airport in the early afternoon. Samaras greeted her with a handshake as she exited the German air force jet and a band played the German and Greek national anthems. In the centre of Athens, the reception was less warm. On the central square next to parliament, four people dressed in German military uniforms and riding ...
http://wn.com/ANGELA_MERKEL_In_ATHENS_Thousands_CLASH_With_POLICE_NAZI_Uniforms_And_SWASTIKAS
ANGELA MERKEL In ATHENS: Thousands CLASH With POLICE. NAZI Uniforms And SWASTIKAS Greek police fired teargas and stun grenades at protesters in central Athens on Tuesday when they tried to break through a barrier and reach visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Tens of thousands of demonstrators defied a ban on protests, gathering in Syntagma square to voice their displeasure with the German leader, who many blame for forcing painful cuts on Greece in exchange for two EU-IMF bailout packages worth over 200 billion euros. Some pelted police with rocks, bottles and sticks, and tried to bust through a barricade set up to protect Merkel and her delegation, who were meeting with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras at his office several hundred meters away. Police detained dozens of protesters in what they said was one of the biggest demonstrations in months. Merkel is visiting Greece for the first time since Europe's debt crisis erupted here three years ago to deliver a message of support, but no new money, to a nation hammered by recession and fighting to stay in the euro. She was given the red carpet treatment and full military honors when she arrived at Athens airport in the early afternoon. Samaras greeted her with a handshake as she exited the German air force jet and a band played the German and Greek national anthems. In the centre of Athens, the reception was less warm. On the central square next to parliament, four people dressed in German military uniforms and riding ...
- published: 09 Oct 2012
- views: 2930
- author: Tsiyonut times
Who is Angela Merkel?
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:27
- Updated: 22 Nov 2012
Channel 4 looks at Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor and leader of one of the strongest economies in Europe.
http://wn.com/Who_is_Angela_Merkel?
Channel 4 looks at Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor and leader of one of the strongest economies in Europe.
- published: 21 Nov 2012
- views: 342
- author: Channel4News
Angela Merkel rejects UK-EU 'divorce' call before talks
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:07
- Updated: 08 Nov 2012
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has issued a warning to Britain not to deliver any ultimatums and she said British people would not be happy if they were alone in the world. David Cameron welcomed Mrs Merkel to Downing Street on Wednesday night for talks about the future size of the EU budget - which is a big bone of contention for many of Mr Cameron's Conservative MPs.
http://wn.com/Angela_Merkel_rejects_UK-EU_'divorce'_call_before_talks
The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has issued a warning to Britain not to deliver any ultimatums and she said British people would not be happy if they were alone in the world. David Cameron welcomed Mrs Merkel to Downing Street on Wednesday night for talks about the future size of the EU budget - which is a big bone of contention for many of Mr Cameron's Conservative MPs.
- published: 08 Nov 2012
- views: 214
- author: NEWSHD2012
Chancellor Angela Merkel's gift to Hillary Clinton
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:26
- Updated: 26 Nov 2012
Now it's official, Angela Merkel does have a sense of humor. Hillary Clinton and Vice President Biden honored German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a State luncheon. Chancellor Angela Merkel's "funny" gift to Hillary Clinton was a framed FAZ front page from April 15, 2011. See also my Post from this date "Partnerlook at the Chancellery: www.theworldofhillaryclinton.com and find out who is who. www.theworldofhillaryclinton.com
http://wn.com/Chancellor_Angela_Merkel's_gift_to_Hillary_Clinton
Now it's official, Angela Merkel does have a sense of humor. Hillary Clinton and Vice President Biden honored German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a State luncheon. Chancellor Angela Merkel's "funny" gift to Hillary Clinton was a framed FAZ front page from April 15, 2011. See also my Post from this date "Partnerlook at the Chancellery: www.theworldofhillaryclinton.com and find out who is who. www.theworldofhillaryclinton.com
- published: 07 Jun 2011
- views: 48850
- author: Christian Kautz
'Multiculturalism utterly failed in Germany' - Merkel
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:59
- Updated: 03 Dec 2012
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that attempts at creating a multi-cultural society in Germany have "utterly failed." Merkel was addressing a national meeting of the youth wing of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. Her comments come amid a rise in anti-immigrant feeling in the country. A study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation this week revealed a quarter of Germans sympathize with nationalist or racist sentiments. A third who took part in the poll said foreigners should be sent home if there wasn't enough work. www.youtube.com
http://wn.com/'Multiculturalism_utterly_failed_in_Germany'_Merkel
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that attempts at creating a multi-cultural society in Germany have "utterly failed." Merkel was addressing a national meeting of the youth wing of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. Her comments come amid a rise in anti-immigrant feeling in the country. A study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation this week revealed a quarter of Germans sympathize with nationalist or racist sentiments. A third who took part in the poll said foreigners should be sent home if there wasn't enough work. www.youtube.com
- published: 17 Oct 2010
- views: 102597
- author: RussiaToday
Angela Merkel's press conference after the EU Council Summit - October 2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:36
- Updated: 26 Nov 2012
Angela Merkel's press conference after the EU Council Summit - October 2012
http://wn.com/Angela_Merkel's_press_conference_after_the_EU_Council_Summit_October_2012
Angela Merkel's press conference after the EU Council Summit - October 2012
- published: 19 Oct 2012
- views: 1378
- author: EUXTV
Angela Merkel drenched in beer
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:31
- Updated: 01 Dec 2012
A young waiter has been filmed spilling five full glasses of beer over German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
http://wn.com/Angela_Merkel_drenched_in_beer
A young waiter has been filmed spilling five full glasses of beer over German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
- published: 27 Feb 2012
- views: 75363
- author: SunriseOn7
Chancellor Angela Merkel on Deepening German-US Relations
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:48
- Updated: 26 Nov 2012
Chancellor Angela Merkel dedicated her weekly podcast on June 30, 2012, to transatlantic relations, calling especially for even closer trade and economic relations. This video is in German with English subtitles. © The Press and Information Office of the Federal Government
http://wn.com/Chancellor_Angela_Merkel_on_Deepening_German-US_Relations
Chancellor Angela Merkel dedicated her weekly podcast on June 30, 2012, to transatlantic relations, calling especially for even closer trade and economic relations. This video is in German with English subtitles. © The Press and Information Office of the Federal Government
- published: 06 Jul 2012
- views: 1607
- author: GermanEmbassyPress
Angela Merkel 'deeply regrets' resignation of German President Christian Wulff
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:03
- Updated: 26 Nov 2012
As German President Christain Wulff resigns over sleaze probe scandal, Angela Merkel says she will seek cross-party consensus for a new president.
http://wn.com/Angela_Merkel_'deeply_regrets'_resignation_of_German_President_Christian_Wulff
As German President Christain Wulff resigns over sleaze probe scandal, Angela Merkel says she will seek cross-party consensus for a new president.
- published: 17 Feb 2012
- views: 12985
- author: telegraphtv
Nigel Farage speaks to Angela Merkel - 7th November 2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:02
- Updated: 02 Dec 2012
Nigel Farage MEP speech at the European Parliament shortly before Merkel's visit to the UK to negotiate the EU budget after it has rejected in the House of Commons.
http://wn.com/Nigel_Farage_speaks_to_Angela_Merkel_7th_November_2012
Nigel Farage MEP speech at the European Parliament shortly before Merkel's visit to the UK to negotiate the EU budget after it has rejected in the House of Commons.
- published: 08 Nov 2012
- views: 1206
- author: MightyDemocracy
Tension In Athens Greece Ahead Of Angela Merkel Visit Greeks
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:45
- Updated: 15 Oct 2012
Click here to subscribe: youtube.com Greece is bracing itself for strikes, protests and potential violence as German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives in Athens to signal her strongest support yet for a government struggling to implement fresh austerity cuts. Merkel is the first German chancellor to visit Greece in decades and is making her first trip since the debt crisis began here three years ago. Deemed highly symbolic, Merkel's seven-hour stay signals the attempt by Europe's most powerful lender to keep its poorest peer, Greece, within the 17-nation eurozone. Merkel also has a desire to further mend relations with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who was among the Chancellor's most outspoken critics at the start of the crisis. "The stakes are enormous," said George Pagoulatos, professor of European Politics and Economy at Athens University. "It is a seminal moment for Europe."
http://wn.com/Tension_In_Athens_Greece_Ahead_Of_Angela_Merkel_Visit_Greeks
Click here to subscribe: youtube.com Greece is bracing itself for strikes, protests and potential violence as German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives in Athens to signal her strongest support yet for a government struggling to implement fresh austerity cuts. Merkel is the first German chancellor to visit Greece in decades and is making her first trip since the debt crisis began here three years ago. Deemed highly symbolic, Merkel's seven-hour stay signals the attempt by Europe's most powerful lender to keep its poorest peer, Greece, within the 17-nation eurozone. Merkel also has a desire to further mend relations with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who was among the Chancellor's most outspoken critics at the start of the crisis. "The stakes are enormous," said George Pagoulatos, professor of European Politics and Economy at Athens University. "It is a seminal moment for Europe."
- published: 09 Oct 2012
- views: 1965
- author: Queuenews
Cuts, Crises and Bailouts - Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Euro Crisis | People & Politics
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:28
- Updated: 19 Oct 2012
Chancellor Angela Merkel has been taking a bruising over her plans to rescue the euro by enforcing strict austerity measures. The defeat of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the resignation of the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte have left her further isolated. At the same time, conditions in Greece continue to deteriorate, leading to increasing pressure that they abandon the euro. For more go to: www.dw.de/dw/episode/0,,15930237,00.html
http://wn.com/Cuts,_Crises_and_Bailouts_Chancellor_Angela_Merkel_and_the_Euro_Crisis_|_People_Politics
Chancellor Angela Merkel has been taking a bruising over her plans to rescue the euro by enforcing strict austerity measures. The defeat of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the resignation of the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte have left her further isolated. At the same time, conditions in Greece continue to deteriorate, leading to increasing pressure that they abandon the euro. For more go to: www.dw.de/dw/episode/0,,15930237,00.html
- published: 27 May 2012
- views: 1491
- author: deutschewelleenglish
Angela Merkel Explains The Plan End The Eurozone Crisis
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 12:41
- Updated: 17 Sep 2012
June 29, 2012 BBC News MOXNews.com
http://wn.com/Angela_Merkel_Explains_The_Plan_End_The_Eurozone_Crisis
June 29, 2012 BBC News MOXNews.com
- published: 29 Jun 2012
- views: 1059
- author: MOXNEWSd0tC0M
Soros: Angela Merkel was the creator of the European crisis
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:36
- Updated: 02 Dec 2012
George Soros explains to Reuters' Chrystia Freeland how German Chancellor Angela Merkel's actions in 2008 could lead to the disintegration of the European Union. Consequently, a disorderly default of European sovereignties may lead to a global financial meltdown worse than 2008. He explains his analysis here.
http://wn.com/Soros_Angela_Merkel_was_the_creator_of_the_European_crisis
George Soros explains to Reuters' Chrystia Freeland how German Chancellor Angela Merkel's actions in 2008 could lead to the disintegration of the European Union. Consequently, a disorderly default of European sovereignties may lead to a global financial meltdown worse than 2008. He explains his analysis here.
- published: 04 Nov 2011
- views: 13586
- author: ReutersVideo
Angela Merkel Arrives at the European Council Summit - October 2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:11
- Updated: 14 Nov 2012
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's arrival and doorstep interview at the October 2012 European Council Summit. Merkel said that no decisions will be made at the summit, but the European heads of state will discuss developments on monetary and economic union. "During our regular October Summit we want to discuss developments on monetary and economic union. Part of these discussions is also the banking supervisory mechanism that has already been prepared by finance ministers. We want to stress that we want to work really quickly and in depth. Secondly, it will be about closer economic coordination, particularly in the Eurozone. Thirdly, it will be about fiscal cooperation and fourthly, on democratic legitimization that could concern our national parliaments, as well as the European Parliament. There will be no decisions during this Summit, we prepare the decisions for December and we have to put things on the right track first." More EU News and Policy Debates at: www.euractiv.com
http://wn.com/Angela_Merkel_Arrives_at_the_European_Council_Summit_October_2012
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's arrival and doorstep interview at the October 2012 European Council Summit. Merkel said that no decisions will be made at the summit, but the European heads of state will discuss developments on monetary and economic union. "During our regular October Summit we want to discuss developments on monetary and economic union. Part of these discussions is also the banking supervisory mechanism that has already been prepared by finance ministers. We want to stress that we want to work really quickly and in depth. Secondly, it will be about closer economic coordination, particularly in the Eurozone. Thirdly, it will be about fiscal cooperation and fourthly, on democratic legitimization that could concern our national parliaments, as well as the European Parliament. There will be no decisions during this Summit, we prepare the decisions for December and we have to put things on the right track first." More EU News and Policy Debates at: www.euractiv.com
- published: 18 Oct 2012
- views: 1138
- author: EUXTV
Angela Merkel arrives in R.Moldova
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:56
- Updated: 27 Nov 2012
Angela Merkel arrives in R.Moldova
http://wn.com/Angela_Merkel_arrives_in_RMoldova
Angela Merkel arrives in R.Moldova
- published: 22 Aug 2012
- views: 1545
- author: raduialoveni
Martin Callanan speech to Angela Merkel
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:31
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
Martin Callanan MEP, leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament, delivered a speech to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the 7th November 2012. He told the German Chancellor that he had sympathy with German taxpayers. However, he also warned that removing national economic sovereignty was a recipe for social unrest, which would take too long to implement to have meaningful effect on the current crisis. He told the German Chancellor that Germany faces the same fundamental choices as at the start of the crisis -- namely to produce the 'Big Bazooka' needed, or to allow some countries to be unshackled from an overvalued currency. He called for the currency crisis to be tackled so that the EU can focus on the real challenge of its decline in global competitiveness. He also wished her well with her meeting with Prime Minister Cameron today, arguing that as members of the group of nations calling for budgetary discipline, they should stand firm in arguing for a better focused EU budget, not a bigger budget.
http://wn.com/Martin_Callanan_speech_to_Angela_Merkel
Martin Callanan MEP, leader of the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament, delivered a speech to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the 7th November 2012. He told the German Chancellor that he had sympathy with German taxpayers. However, he also warned that removing national economic sovereignty was a recipe for social unrest, which would take too long to implement to have meaningful effect on the current crisis. He told the German Chancellor that Germany faces the same fundamental choices as at the start of the crisis -- namely to produce the 'Big Bazooka' needed, or to allow some countries to be unshackled from an overvalued currency. He called for the currency crisis to be tackled so that the EU can focus on the real challenge of its decline in global competitiveness. He also wished her well with her meeting with Prime Minister Cameron today, arguing that as members of the group of nations calling for budgetary discipline, they should stand firm in arguing for a better focused EU budget, not a bigger budget.
- published: 08 Nov 2012
- views: 237
- author: ECREuroParl
Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel says EU Must Win Together EPP Global News
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:59
- Updated: 21 Nov 2012
SBARTSTV Rare Global News. Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel says EU must win together EPP News.
http://wn.com/Chancellor_of_Germany_Angela_Merkel_says_EU_Must_Win_Together_EPP_Global_News
SBARTSTV Rare Global News. Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel says EU must win together EPP News.
- published: 19 Nov 2012
- views: 50
- author: SBARTSTV
Athens raises security level for Angela Merkel visit
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:08
- Updated: 09 Oct 2012
Athens raises security level for Angela Merkel visit.There is tight security in Athens ahead of a visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, her first since the eurozone crisis erupted nearly three years ago. Some 7000 police officers are on duty, public gatherings are banned in certain areas of the city and protesters have been warned to "protect the peace". The visit comes as Greece bids to pass new cuts of 13bn euros (£10.5bn; $17bn) to qualify for more bailout cash.
http://wn.com/Athens_raises_security_level_for_Angela_Merkel_visit
Athens raises security level for Angela Merkel visit.There is tight security in Athens ahead of a visit by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, her first since the eurozone crisis erupted nearly three years ago. Some 7000 police officers are on duty, public gatherings are banned in certain areas of the city and protesters have been warned to "protect the peace". The visit comes as Greece bids to pass new cuts of 13bn euros (£10.5bn; $17bn) to qualify for more bailout cash.
- published: 09 Oct 2012
- views: 248
- author: DEEPUSRI55
ANGELA MERKEL IN ATHEN GRIECHENLAND
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:03
- Updated: 12 Nov 2012
ANGELA MERKEL IN ATHEN GRIECHENLAND
http://wn.com/ANGELA_MERKEL_IN_ATHEN_GRIECHENLAND
ANGELA MERKEL IN ATHEN GRIECHENLAND
- published: 07 Oct 2012
- views: 904
- author: rodibill
photo: AP / Bassem Tellawi
04 Dec 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) â President Barack Obama warned Syria on Monday that the use of chemical weapons would be "totally unacceptable" and that the country's leaders would be held accountable ... Obama stopped short of detailing those consequences....(size: 6.7Kb)
photo: UN / Shareef Sarhan
02 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Guest Writer Gilad Atzmon. Israel suffered a humiliating defeat at The UN recently. The nations of the world stood up and said NO to the Jewish state - NO to Israeli occupation, NO to Israeli human rights abuse, NO to Jewish racism. In effect, they stood up and confessed to serious Zio-fatigue ... This is a very good news indeed. But interestingly, this united opposition to Israel is not in response to Israeli strength ... ....(size: 2.6Kb)
photo: USAF / Senior Airman Patrice Clarke
02 Dec 2012
There have been "multiple explosions" near an airfield at a US base in eastern Afghanistan, Nato has said. Afghan intelligence officials told the BBC seven suicide attackers targeted the base in Jalalabad, and witnesses said that gunfire was heard ... Counter claims ... There were no Nato casualties in the attack, officials said ... ....(size: 1.7Kb)
photo: AP / Anja Niedringhaus
03 Dec 2012
UNITED NATIONS. UN leader Ban Ki-moon warned Sunday that if Israel implemented its latest plan for new settlements it would deal an “almost fatal blow” to any prospects for peace with the Palestinians. Israel’s announcement about the 3,000 Jewish settler homes, whose planned location was not revealed, came in the wake of a historic vote by the United Nations General Assembly to upgrade Palestine’s diplomatic status ... ....(size: 4.2Kb)
photo: AP / Patrick Semansky
02 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. Much like the United States, the Vikings were a paradoxical and duplicitous civilization. Not only were they highly skilled shipbuilders and tremendous explorers, not to mention their expertise in the fishing, farming and trading industries, but they helped establish and contribute to the nation-states of France, England, Ireland, Germany, Russia, and Iceland ... This came to mind when Pfc....(size: 5.5Kb)
Deutsche Welle
05 Dec 2012
It's Angela Merkel's day - she was just re-elected for the seventh time as head of her party, the Christian Democratic Union ... Chancellor Angela Merkel, who for 12 years has been head of the CDU, does not fit the cliché of a superstar ... Delegates appreciate her way of conducting politics - Berlin parliamentarian Stefanie Vogelsang thinks Merkel is just great ... She was even elected as party substitute for Merkel, if need be....(size: 4.5Kb)
The Daily Telegraph
05 Dec 2012
A tearful Angela Merkel has been overwhelmingly re-elected her party's leader as she kicked off her bid for a third term, saying only she could steer Germany through turbulence at home and abroad. Angela Merkel after her re-election as party leader during the CDU's annual party meeting in Hanover (Reuters) ... 'British' man who would be Merkel 02 Dec 2012 ... Protests at Merkel visit....(size: 10.5Kb)
photo: AP / Virginia Mayo
05 Dec 2012
For three years German chancellor Angela Merkel has rallied her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) behind often unpopular euro zone crisis measures by declaring them “Alternativlos” – without any real alternative ... In brief European remarks, Dr Merkel demanded a European banking regulator “worth the name” and support for a financial transaction tax even without full euro zone support....(size: 3.3Kb)
Deutsche Welle
05 Dec 2012
innovation, education and sustainability ... German concerns Netanyahu and Merkel ... This is why he thinks Chancellor Angela Merkel should raise Germany's concerns ... He is hopeful that "Chancellor Merkel will speak out openly and clearly, without breaking the close and historical Israeli-German ties.” He added that due to Germany's special responsibility for Israel, the government should more openly endorse the two-state solution ... ....(size: 4.1Kb)
Chicago Sun-Times
05 Dec 2012
Updated. December 4, 2012 8.53PM. Some people are early adopters. They must be first with the latest technology, so they can show off how cutting edge and plugged-in they are. Me, I am of the “use it until it breaks” school ... Or maybe I’m so out of touch I don’t even hear echoes of the latest sites anymore ... So leap to Twitter to check out the papal action ... “Come on Ratzinger,” a writer who is (not) German chancellor Angela Merkel tweeted ... ....(size: 5.2Kb)
Newstrack India
04 Dec 2012
Berlin, Dec 4 (IANS) German Chancellor Angela Merkel was re-elected leader of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) Tuesday with strong support, displaying her overwhelming popularity and party unity that would help her to win next year's general elections, Xinhua reported ... Angela Merkel....(size: 2.2Kb)
Zeenews
04 Dec 2012
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been re-elected as her party's leader with a landslide majority of 98 per cent of the vote ... "I'm flabbergasted and moved," Merkel told a ......(size: 1.0Kb)
Zeenews
04 Dec 2012
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been re-elected as her party's leader with a landslide majority of 98 per cent of the vote ... "I'm flabbergasted and moved," Merkel told a ......(size: 1.0Kb)
The Guardian
04 Dec 2012
Angela Merkel holds bunches of flowers after being re-elected as chairman of her Christian Democratic Union party ... Angela Merkel might be the most powerful woman in Europe, known invariably as the iron lady or Germany's "Mutti" (mum), but she fought back the tears on Tuesday, visibly struggling to swallow a lump in her throat as members of her ......(size: 5.2Kb)
The Times of India
04 Dec 2012
The political life of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe's most influential leader and the oft-proclaimed world's most powerful woman, is a tale of paradoxes, driven by her own enigmatic nature. While angry protesters marching the streets of Athens, Lisbon and Madrid brandish caricatures of Merkel in Nazi garb, the 58-year-old enjoys a level of domestic popularity unseen by any post-war leader before her....(size: 3.7Kb)
DNA India
04 Dec 2012
The News & Observer
04 Dec 2012
German Chancellor and chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Party, CDU, Angela Merkel delivers her keynote speech at the Party's 2012 convention in Hannover, Tuesday, Dec ... The ruling CDU will elect a new board and re-elect Angela Merkel as the party's chairwoman at the convention ... BERLIN -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been re-elected as her party's leader with a landslide majority of 98 percent of the vote....(size: 17.2Kb)
Denver Post
04 Dec 2012
German Chancellor and chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Party, CDU, Angela Merkel delivers her keynote speech at the Party's 2012 convention in Hannover, Tuesday, Dec ... The ruling CDU will elect a new board and re-elect Angela Merkel as the party's chairwoman at the convention ... The ruling CDU will elect a new board and re-elect Angela Merkel as the party's chairwoman at the convention....(size: 4.3Kb)
| Angela Merkel | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Chancellor of Germany | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 22 November 2005 |
|
| President | Horst Köhler Christian Wulff Joachim Gauck |
| Deputy | Franz Müntefering Frank-Walter Steinmeier Guido Westerwelle Philipp Rösler |
| Preceded by | Gerhard Schröder |
| Minister of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety | |
| In office 17 November 1994 – 26 October 1998 |
|
| Chancellor | Helmut Kohl |
| Preceded by | Klaus Töpfer |
| Succeeded by | Jürgen Trittin |
| Minister of Women and Youth | |
| In office 18 January 1991 – 17 November 1994 |
|
| Chancellor | Helmut Kohl |
| Preceded by | Ursula Lehr |
| Succeeded by | Claudia Nolte |
| Member of the Bundestag | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 2 December 1990 |
|
| Preceded by | Constituency established |
| Constituency | Stralsund-Nordvorpommern- Rügen |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Angela Dorothea Kasner (1954-07-17) 17 July 1954 (age 57) Hamburg, West Germany (now Germany) |
| Political party | Christian Democratic Union (1990–present) |
| Other political affiliations |
Democratic Awakening (1989–1990) |
| Spouse(s) | Ulrich Merkel (1977–1982) Joachim Sauer (1998–present) |
| Alma mater | University of Leipzig |
| Religion | Lutheran |
| Signature |  |
Angela Dorothea Merkel, German: [aŋˈɡeːla doʁoˈteːa ˈmɛʁkl̩] ( listen);[1] née Kasner (born 17 July 1954) is the Chancellor of Germany and Chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).[2] Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany.
A physical chemist by professional background, Merkel entered politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989 and briefly served as the deputy spokesperson for Lothar de Maizière's democratically elected East German government prior to the German reunification. Following reunification in 1990, she was elected to the Bundestag, where she has represented the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern since. She served as Federal Minister for Women and Youth 1991–1994 and as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety 1994–1998 in Helmut Kohl's fourth and fifth cabinets. She was Secretary General of the CDU 1998–2000, and was elected chairperson in 2000. From 2002 to 2005, she was also chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary coalition.
After her election as Chancellor following the 2005 federal election, she led a grand coalition consisting of her own CDU party, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), until 2009. In the 2009 federal election, the CDU obtained the largest share of the votes, and formed a coalition government with the CSU and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).[3]
In 2007, Merkel was President of the European Council and chaired the G8, the second woman (after Margaret Thatcher) to do so. She played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. One of her priorities was also to strengthen transatlantic economic relations by signing the agreement for the Transatlantic Economic Council on 30 April 2007. Merkel is seen as playing a crucial role in managing the financial crisis at the European and international level, and has been referred to as "the decider."[4] In domestic policy, health care reform and problems concerning future energy development have been major issues of her tenure.
Angela Merkel has for several years been described as the world’s most powerful woman and as "the de facto leader of the European Union".[5][6]
Contents |
Early life[link]
Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner in Hamburg, West Germany, the daughter of Horst Kasner (1926–2011),[7] native of Berlin, and his wife, Herlind (born 1928 in Danzig, as Herlind Jentzsch), a teacher of English and Latin. Her mother was once a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.[8] In an interview with Der Spiegel in 2000, Merkel stated that she was one quarter Polish.[9] The Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung, attempting to establish if this referred to her grandparents on her mother's side, Willi Jentzsch and Gertrud Drange, reported that, according to their researches, they were both of German descent and lived in Danzig where Willi Jentzsch was a Gymnasium teacher.[10] She has a brother, Marcus (born 7 July 1957), and a sister, Irene (born 19 August 1964).
Merkel's father studied theology in Heidelberg and, afterwards, in Hamburg. In 1954 her father received a pastorate at the church in Quitzow (near Perleberg in Brandenburg), which then was in East Germany, and the family moved to Templin. Thus Merkel grew up in the countryside 80 km (50 mi) north of Berlin. Gerd Langguth, a former senior member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, states in his book[11] that the family's ability to travel freely from East to West Germany during the following years, as well as their possession of two automobiles, leads to the conclusion that Merkel's father had a "sympathetic" relationship with the communist regime, since such freedom and perquisites for a Christian pastor and his family would have been otherwise impossible in East Germany.
Like most pupils, Merkel was a member of the official, Socialist-led youth movement Free German Youth (FDJ). However, she did not take part in the secular coming of age ceremony Jugendweihe, which was common in East Germany, and was confirmed instead. Later, at the Academy of Sciences, she became a member of the FDJ district board and secretary for "Agitprop" (Agitation and Propaganda). Merkel herself claimed that she was secretary for culture. When Merkel's onetime FDJ district chairman contradicted her, she insisted that: "According to my memory, I was secretary for culture. But what do I know? I believe I won't know anything when I'm 80."[12] Merkel's progress in the compulsory Marxism-Leninism course was graded only genügend (sufficient, passing grade) in 1983 and 1986.[13]
At school, she learned to speak Russian fluently, and was awarded prizes for her proficiency in Russian and Mathematics.[14] Merkel was educated in Templin and at the University of Leipzig, where she studied physics from 1973 to 1978. While a student, she participated in the reconstruction of the ruin of the Moritzbastei, a project students initiated to create their own club and recreation facility on campus. Such an initiative was unprecedented in the GDR of that period, and initially resisted by the University of Leipzig. However, with backing of the local leadership of the SED party, the project was allowed to proceed.[15] Merkel worked and studied at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Adlershof from 1978 to 1990. After being awarded a doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) for her thesis on quantum chemistry,[16] she worked as a researcher and published several papers.
In 1989, Merkel got involved in the growing democracy movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall, joining the new party Democratic Awakening. Following the first (and only) democratic election of the East German state, she became the deputy spokesperson of the new pre-unification caretaker government under Lothar de Maizière.[17]
Member of Bundestag and cabinet minister[link]
At the first post-reunification general election in December 1990, she was elected to the Bundestag from the constituency Stralsund – Nordvorpommern – Rügen, which is coextensive with the district of Vorpommern-Rügen. This has remained her electoral district until today. Her party merged with the west German CDU[18] and she became Minister for Women and Youth in Helmut Kohl's 3rd cabinet. In 1994, she was made Minister for the Environment and Nuclear Safety, which gave her greater political visibility and a platform on which to build her political career. As one of Kohl's protégées and his youngest cabinet minister, she was referred to by Kohl as "mein Mädchen" ("my girl").[19]
Leader of the opposition[link]
When the Kohl government was defeated in the 1998 general election, Merkel was named Secretary-General of the CDU. In this position, Merkel oversaw a string of Christian Democrat election victories in six out of seven state elections in 1999 alone, breaking the SPD-Green coalition's hold on the Bundesrat, the legislative body representing the states. Following a party financing scandal, which compromised many leading figures of the CDU (most notably Kohl himself, who refused to reveal the donor of DM 2,000,000 claiming he had given his word of honour and the then party chairman Wolfgang Schäuble, Kohl's hand-picked successor, who wasn't cooperative either), Merkel criticized her former mentor, Kohl, and advocated a fresh start for the party without him. She was elected to replace Schäuble, becoming the first female chair of her party, on 10 April 2000. Her election surprised many observers, as her personality offered a contrast to the party she had been chosen to lead; Merkel is a Protestant, originating from predominantly Protestant northern Germany, while the CDU is a male-dominated, socially conservative party with strongholds in western and southern Germany, and the Bavarian sister party, the CSU, has deep Catholic roots.
Following Merkel's election as CDU leader, she enjoyed considerable popularity among the German population and was favoured by many Germans to become Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's challenger in the 2002 election. However, she did not receive enough support in her own party and particularly its sister party (the Bavarian Christian Social Union, or CSU), and was subsequently out-manoeuvred politically by CSU leader Edmund Stoiber, to whom she eventually ceded the privilege of challenging Schröder; however, he squandered a large lead in the opinion polls to lose the election by a razor-thin margin. After Stoiber's defeat in 2002, in addition to her role as CDU chairwoman, Merkel became leader of the conservative opposition in the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag. Her rival, Friedrich Merz, who had held the post of parliamentary leader prior to the 2002 election, was eased out to make way for Merkel.[citation needed]
Merkel supported a substantial reform agenda concerning Germany's economic and social system and was considered to be more pro-market than her own party (the CDU); she advocated changes to German labour law, specifically removing barriers to laying off employees and increasing the allowed number of work hours in a week, arguing that existing laws made the country less competitive because companies cannot easily control labour costs at times when business is slow.[20]
Merkel argued for Germany's nuclear power to be phased out less quickly than the Schröder administration had planned.[21]
Merkel advocated a strong transatlantic partnership and German-American friendship. In the spring of 2003, defying strong public opposition, Merkel came out in favour of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, describing it as "unavoidable" and accusing Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of anti-Americanism. She criticised the government's support for the accession of Turkey to the European Union and favoured a "privileged partnership" instead. In doing so, she reflected public opinion that grew more hostile toward Turkish membership of the European Union.[22]
Path to election[link]
On 30 May 2005, Merkel won the CDU/CSU nomination as challenger to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the SPD in the 2005 national elections. Her party began the campaign with a 21 point lead over the SPD in national opinion polls, although her personal popularity lagged behind that of the incumbent. However, the CDU/CSU campaign suffered[citation needed] when Merkel, having made economic competence central to the CDU's platform, confused gross and net income twice during a televised debate. She regained some momentum after she announced that she would appoint Paul Kirchhof, a former judge at the German Constitutional Court and leading fiscal policy expert, as Minister of Finance.[citation needed]
Merkel and the CDU lost ground after Kirchhof proposed the introduction of a flat tax in Germany, again undermining the party's broad appeal on economic affairs and convincing many voters that the CDU's platform of deregulation was designed to benefit only the rich. This was compounded by Merkel proposing to increase VAT to reduce Germany's deficit and fill the gap in revenue from a flat tax. The SPD were able to increase their support simply by pledging not to introduce flat taxes or increase VAT. Although Merkel's standing recovered after she distanced herself from Kirchhof's proposals, she remained considerably less popular than Schröder, and the CDU's lead was down to 9% on the eve of the election.
On 18 September 2005, Merkel's CDU/CSU and Schröder's SPD went head-to-head in the national elections, with the CDU/CSU winning 35.3% (CDU 27.8%/CSU 7.5%) of the second votes to the SPD's 34.2%. Neither the SPD-Green coalition nor the CDU/CSU and its preferred coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party, held enough seats to form a majority in the Bundestag, and both Schröder and Merkel claimed victory. A grand coalition between the CDU/CSU and SPD faced the challenge that both parties demanded the chancellorship. However, after three weeks of negotiations, the two parties reached a deal whereby Merkel would become Chancellor and the SPD would hold 8 of the 16 seats in the cabinet.[23][24] The coalition deal was approved by both parties at party conferences on 14 November 2005.[25] Merkel was elected Chancellor by the majority of delegates (397 to 217) in the newly assembled Bundestag on 22 November 2005, but 51 members of the governing coalition voted against her.[26]
Reports had indicated that the grand coalition would pursue a mix of policies, some of which differ from Merkel's political platform as leader of the opposition and candidate for Chancellor. The coalition's intent was to cut public spending whilst increasing VAT (from 16 to 19%), social insurance contributions and the top rate of income tax.[27]
Merkel had stated that the main aim of her government would be to reduce unemployment, and that it is this issue on which her government will be judged.[28]
Chancellor of Germany[link]
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Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
On 22 November 2005, Merkel assumed the office of Chancellor of Germany following a stalemate election that resulted in a grand coalition with the SPD. She was re-elected in 2009 with a larger majority and was able to form a governing coalition with the FDP.
Foreign policy[link]
On 25 September 2007, Merkel met the 14th Dalai Lama for "private and informal talks" in Berlin in the Chancellery amid protest from China. China afterwards cancelled separate talks with German officials, including talks with Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries.[29]
One of her priorities was to strengthen transatlantic economic relations by signing at the White House the agreement for the Transatlantic Economic Council on 30 April 2007. The Council is co-chaired by an EU and US official, and aims at removing barriers to trade in a further integrated transatlantic free trade area[30]. This project has been described as ultra-liberal by the socialist and french politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, who fear a transfer of sovereignty from citizens to multinationals and an alignment of the European Union on the american foreign policy and institutions[31][32].
Der Spiegel reported that tensions between Chancellor Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama[33] were eased during a meeting between the two leaders in June 2009. Commenting on a White House Press Conference held after the meeting, Spiegel stated, "Of course the rather more reserved chancellor couldn't really keep up with [Obama's]...charm offensive," but to reciprocate for Obama's "good natured" diplomacy, "she gave it a go...by mentioning the experiences of Obama's sister in Heidelberg, making it clear that she had read his autobiography".[34]
Russia[link]
In 2006 Merkel expressed concern for overreliance on Russian energy, but she received little support from others in Berlin.[35]
Iran[link]
According to the news agency Mehr (as reported in the Mail & Guardian Online and Deutsche Welle, quoting AFP), in August 2006, Merkel received a letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.[36][37] According to the reports, Merkel said that the letter contained "unacceptable" criticism of Israel and "put in question" the Jewish state's right to exist, and that therefore she would not formally respond to the letter.
Israel[link]
On 16 March 2008, Merkel arrived in Israel to mark the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state. She was greeted at the airport by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, an honor guard and many of the country's political and religious leaders, including most of the Israeli Cabinet.[38] Until then, US President George W. Bush had been the only world leader Olmert had bestowed with the honor of greeting at the airport.[39][40] Merkel spoke before Israel's parliament, the only foreigner who was not a head of state to have done so,[41] although this provoked rumbles of opposition from Israeli MPs on the far right.[42] At the time, Merkel was also both the President of the European Council and the chair of the G8. Merkel has supported Israeli diplomatic initiatives, opposing the Palestinian bid for membership at the UN. However, Merkel was offended when settlement building continued beyond the Green Line,[43] and felt personally betrayed by the Israeli government's behavior. [44]
Liquidity crisis[link]
Following major falls in worldwide stock markets in September 2008, the German government stepped in to assist the mortgage company Hypo Real Estate with a bailout which was agreed on October 6, with German banks to contribute €30 billion and the Bundesbank €20 billion to a credit line.[45]
On 4 October 2008, a Saturday, following the Irish Government's decision to guarantee all deposits in private savings accounts, a move she strongly criticized,[46] Merkel said there were no plans for the German Government to do the same. The following day, Merkel stated that the government would guarantee private savings account deposits, after all.[47] However, two days later, on 6 October 2008, it emerged that the pledge was simply a political move that would not be backed by legislation.[48] Other European governments eventually either raised the limits or promised to guarantee savings in full.[48]
India[link]
In 2011,[49] India became the first Asian country to hold a joint cabinet meeting with Germany when Merkel visited.[49]
Failure of multiculturalism[link]
In October 2010 Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany had "utterly failed",[50] stating: "The concept that we are now living side by side and are happy about it does not work"[51] and that "we feel attached to the Christian concept of mankind, that is what defines us. Anyone who doesn't accept that is in the wrong place here."[52] She continued to say that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values. This has added to a growing debate within Germany[53] on the levels of immigration, its effect on Germany and the degree to which Muslim immigrants have integrated into German society.
Approval[link]
Midway through her second term, Merkel's approval plummeted in the country, resulting in heavy losses in state elections for her party.[54] A poll in August 2011 found her coalition with only 36% support compared to a rival coalition which had 51%.[55] However, she scored well on her handling of the recent euro crisis (69% rated her performance as good rather than poor), and her approval rating reached an all-time high of 77% in February 2012.[56]
Cabinets[link]
The first cabinet of Angela Merkel was sworn in at 16:00 CET, on 22 November 2005.
On 31 October 2005, after the defeat of his favoured candidate for the position of Secretary General of the SPD, Franz Müntefering indicated that he would resign as Chairman of the party in November, which he did. Ostensibly responding to this, Edmund Stoiber (CSU), who was originally nominated for the Economics and Technology post, announced his withdrawal on 1 November 2005. While this was initially seen as a blow to Merkel's attempt at forming a viable coalition and cabinet, the manner in which Stoiber withdrew earned him much ridicule and severely undermined his position as a Merkel rival. Separate conferences of the CDU, CSU, and SPD approved the proposed Cabinet on 14 November 2005
The second cabinet of Angela Merkel was sworn in on 28 October 2009.[57]
Personal life[link]
In 1977, Angela Kasner married physics student Ulrich Merkel. The marriage ended in divorce in 1982.[58] Her second and current husband is quantum chemist and professor Joachim Sauer, who has largely remained out of the media spotlight. They first met in 1981,[59] became partners later and married privately on 30 December 1998.[60] She has no children, but Sauer has two adult sons from a previous marriage.[61]
Honours[link]
In 2006, Angela Merkel was awarded the Vision for Europe Award for her contribution toward greater European integration. In 2007, Merkel was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[62][63] In March 2006, the Italian President of the Republic gave the German Chancellor the recognition of Dama di Gran Croce Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana.
She received the Karlspreis (Charlemagne Prize) for 2008 for distinguished services to European unity.[64][65]
In January 2008, Merkel was awarded Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.[66] She was also awarded the honorary doctorate from Leipzig University in June 2008,[67] University of Technology in Wrocław (Poland) in September 2008[68] and Babeş-Bolyai University from Cluj-Napoca, Romania on 12 October 2010 for her historical contribution to the European unification and for her global role in renewing international cooperation.[69][70][71] In March 2008 she received the B’nai B’rith Europe Award of Merit.[72]
Merkel topped Forbes magazine's list of "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2011.[73]
New Statesman named Angela Merkel in "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures" 2010.[74]
On June 16, 2010, the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington D.C. awarded Chancellor Merkel its Global Leadership Award (AICGS) in recognition of her outstanding dedication to strengthening German-American relations.[75]
On September 21, 2010, the Leo Baeck Institute, a research institution in New York City devoted to the history of German-speaking Jewry, awarded Angela Merkel the Leo Baeck Medal. The medal was presented by former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and current Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, W. Michael Blumenthal, who cited Merkel's support of Jewish cultural life and the integration of minorities in Germany.[76]
On 15 February 2011, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama.[77] The medal is presented to people who have made an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.[78]
On 31 May 2011, she received the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for the year 2009 from the Indian government. She received the award for International understanding.[79]
Comparisons[link]
As a female politician from a centre right party who is also a scientist, Merkel has been compared by many in the English-language press to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Some have referred to her as "Iron Lady", "Iron Girl", and even "The Iron Frau" (all alluding to Thatcher, whose nickname was "The Iron Lady"—Thatcher also has a science degree: an Oxford University degree in chemistry). Political commentators have debated the precise extent to which their agendas are similar.[80] Later in her tenure, Merkel acquired the nickname "Mutti" (a familiar form of 'mother'), said by Der Spiegel to refer to an idealised mother figure from the 1950s and 1960s.[81]
In addition to being the first female German chancellor, the first to represent a Federal Republic of Germany that included the former East Germany (though she was born in the West and moved to the East a few weeks after her birth, when her father decided to return to East Germany as a Lutheran pastor[82]), and the youngest German chancellor since the Second World War, Merkel is also the first born after World War II, and the first chancellor of the Federal Republic with a background in natural sciences. She studied physics; her predecessors studied law, business or history or were military officers, among others.
Forbes has named her the fourth most powerful person in the world as of 2011.[83]
Controversy[link]
Merkel has been criticised for being personally present and involved at the M100 Media Award handover[84] to Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. This happened at a time of fierce emotional debate in Germany over disparaging remarks about Muslim immigrants made by the former Deutsche Bundesbank executive Thilo Sarrazin.[85] The Zentralrat der Muslime[86][87] and the left party[88] (Die Linke) as well as the German Green Party[89][90] criticised the action by the centre-right chancellor. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper wrote: "This will probably be the most explosive appointment of her chancellorship so far."[91] Others have praised Merkel and called it a brave and bold move for the cause of freedom of speech.
In September 2010, concerning a debate on integration, Merkel said to the Frankfurter Allgemeine that "Germans will see more mosques".[92] In October 2010, following a speech by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany Christian Wulff during the German reunification day, she stated that "Islam is part of Germany".[93]
Members of her cabinet and Merkel herself also support the idea of, and are already introducing, Islamic education and classes in schools.[94][95][96][97]
References[link]
- ^ Langguth, Gerd (2005) (in German). Angela Merkel. Munich: dtv. p. 50. ISBN 3-423-24485-2. "Merkel wollte immer mit der Betonung auf dem 'e' Angela genannt werden.(Merkel always wanted her first name to be pronounced with the stress on the 'e'.)"
- ^ "Curriculum vitae: Angela Merkel". German Federal Press and Information Office. http://www.bundeskanzlerin.de/Webs/BK/En/Angela-Merkel/angela-merkel.html. Retrieved 2012-02-21. "Since 2000 Chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union . . ."
- ^ "Germany's Merkel begins new term". BBC. 2009-10-28. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8329490.stm. Retrieved 2009-11-01.
- ^ "Can Angela Merkel Fix Europe's Economic Crisis?". NPR. http://www.npr.org/2011/12/08/143292255/can-angela-merkel-save-europe. Retrieved 2012-05-15.
- ^ "Angela Merkel 'world's most powerful woman'". The Daily Telegraph (London). 24 August 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8720698/Angela-Merkel-worlds-most-powerful-woman.html.
- ^ Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/profile/angela-merkel/.
- ^ "Merkels Vater gestorben - Termine abgesagt" (in German). newsecho.de. 2011-09-03. http://www.newsecho.de/news/ticker/Sa6pk0PGTGs/merkels_vater_gestorben_termine_abgesagt. Retrieved 2011-09-08.
- ^ "Was an Angela Merkels Mutter vorbildlich ist" (in German). Welt Online. 26 September 2008. http://www.welt.de/politik/article2496274/Was-an-Angela-Merkels-Mutter-vorbildlich-ist.html. Retrieved 31 July 2010. "'Nein, in der SPD bin ich nicht mehr.'"
- ^ "Mut zu Zwischentönen" (in German). Spiegel.de. 2000-12-25. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-18124491.html. Retrieved 2011-08-19.
- ^ "Politik in den preußischen Genen? / »Bin zu einem Viertel polnisch«: Nicht nur Elbinger Taxifahrer fragen nach Angela Merkels Wurzeln [Politics in the Prussian genes? /” Are you a quarter Polish“: It's not only Elbinger cab drivers asking about Angela Merkel's roots (please can a native speaker check translation)]" (in German). Webarchiv-server.de. 22 January 2011. http://www.webarchiv-server.de/pin/archiv11/0320110122paz06.htm. Retrieved 2012-05-15.
- ^ Langguth, Gerd (August 2005) [2005] (in German). Angela Merkel. Munich: dtv. ISBN 3-423-24485-2.
- ^ "Die Schläferin" (in German). Der Spiegel. 2009-11-09. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-67682698.html. Retrieved 2011-08-19.
- ^ "Glänzend in Physik, mäßig in der Ideologie" (in German). Der Spiegel. 2010-01-31. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,675061,00.html. Retrieved 2010-06-07. ""Nach meiner Erinnerung war ich Kultursekretärin. Aber was weiß ich denn? Ich glaube, wenn ich 80 bin, weiß ich gar nichts mehr", sagt sie."
- ^ Langguth, Gerd (August 2005) (in German). Angela Merkel. DTV. p. 50. ISBN 3-423-24485-2.
- ^ "Drogenwahn auf der Dauerbaustelle" (in German). Spiegel Online. 2009-03-27. http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/authoralbumbackground/3852/drogenwahn_auf_der_baustelle.html. Retrieved 2011-08-19.
- ^ Merkel, Angela (1986) (in German). Untersuchung des Mechanismus von Zerfallsreaktionen mit einfachem Bindungsbruch und Berechnung ihrer Geschwindigkeitskonstanten auf der Grundlage quantenchemischer und statistischer Methoden (Investigation of the mechanism of decay reactions with single bond breaking and calculation of their velocity constants on the basis of quantum chemical and statistical methods). Berlin: Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic (dissertation). cited in Langguth, Gerd (August 2005) (in German). Angela Merkel. Munich: DTV. p. 109. ISBN 3-423-24485-2. and listed in the Catalogue of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek under subject code 30 (Chemistry)
- ^ Langguth, Gerd (August 2005) [2005] (in German). Angela Merkel. Munich: dtv. pp. 112–137. ISBN 3-423-24485-2.
- ^ "Des Altkanzlers mahnende Worte" (in German). Zeit Online. 2010-10-01. http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2010-10/kohl-in-berlin. Retrieved 2011-08-19.
- ^ "Kohls unterschätztes Mädchen" (in German). Spiegel Online. 2005-05-30. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,357997,00.html. Retrieved 2011-08-19.
- ^ "Merkel fordert längere Arbeitszeit" (in German). Der Spiegel. 2003-05-18. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,249207,00.html. Retrieved 2011-08-27.
- ^ "Merkel: Nuclear phase-out is wrong". World Nuclear News. 2008-06-10. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP_Merkel_Nuclear_phase_out_is_wrong_1006081.html. Retrieved 2011-08-27.
- ^ Marlies Casier and Joost Jongerden, eds. Nationalisms and Politics in Turkey (2010) p 110
- ^ "Merkel named as German chancellor". BBC News. 2005-10-10. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4325600.stm. Retrieved 2011-08-27.
- ^ CNN.com[dead link]
- ^ "German parties back new coalition". BBC News (BBC News Online). November 14, 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4434812.stm
- ^ "Merkel becomes German chancellor". BBC News (BBC News Online). November 22, 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4458430.stm
- ^ "German coalition poised for power". BBC News (BBC News Online). November 11, 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4429518.stm
- ^ "Merkel defends German reform plan". BBC News (BBC News Online). November 12, 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4431262.stm
- ^ "Euronews.net, Merkel meets with the Dalai Lama". Euronews.net. http://euronews.net/index.php?page=info&article=444371&lng=1. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/international/files/tec_framework_en.pdf
- ^ http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9203t_jean-luc-melenchon-le-futur-grand-m_news
- ^ http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xpvina_intervention-de-jean-luc-melenchon-sur-la-defense_news
- ^ "'They're Not Getting any Warmer': Merkel Faces Difficult Talks in Washington". Spiegel.de. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,632026,00.html. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ "A Trans-Atlantic Show of Friendship: Obama Praises His 'Friend Chancellor Merkel'". Spiegel.de. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,632961,00.html. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ "Dependence on Russian gas worries some – but not all – European countries". The Christian Science Monitor. 2008-03-06. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2008/0306/p06s01-wogn.html. Retrieved 2011-08-23.
- ^ "Ahmadinejad Claims Holocaust Invented to Embarrass Germany". Deutsche Welle. 2006-08-28. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2149241,00.html. Retrieved 2008-10-23.
- ^ EQBALI, ARESU (2006-08-28). "Ahmadinejad: Holocaust was made up". Mail and Guardian Online. http://www.mg.co.za/article/2006-08-28-ahmadinejad-holocaust-was-made-up. Retrieved 2008-10-21.
- ^ "Chancellor of Germany goes to Israel". The New York Times. 2008-03-16. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/16/news/mideast.php. Retrieved 2011-09-03.
- ^ Roger Boyes, Berlin (2008-03-18). "German Chancellor Angela Merkel tightens ties for Israel's 60th". The Australian. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23391392-2703,00.html. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ "Friends in high places". Economist.com. 2008-03-19. http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10881121. Retrieved 2011-09-03.
- ^ "Photo Gallery: Merkel Wishes Israel Happy 60th". Spiegel.de. 2008-03-17. http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-29889-3.html#backToArticle=541892. Retrieved 2011-09-03.
- ^ MacIntyre, Donald (2008-03-13). "Israeli hardliners 'will walk out' when Merkel addresses Knesset in German". London: Independent.co.uk. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israeli-hardliners-will-walk-out-when-merkel-addresses-knesset-in-german-795013.html. Retrieved 2011-09-03.
- ^ "Merkel: Israel Must Stop Settlement Building". Jewishfederations.org. http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=202704. Retrieved 2012-05-15.
- ^ Keinon, Herb (2011-01-31). "PM, Merkel disagree openly on settlements - Diplomacy & Politics". Jpost.com. http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=206071. Retrieved 2012-05-15.
- ^ Parkin, Brian; Suess, Oliver (6 October 2008). "Hypo Real Gets EU50 Billion Government-Led Bailout". Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=amxJTktF7JMs&refer=home. Retrieved 2008-10-06.
- ^ "Germany guarantees all private bank accounts". Forbes.com. http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/10/05/ap5510085.html. Retrieved 2008-10-06. [dead link]
- ^ Whitlock, Craig (2008-10-06). "Germany to guarantee Private Bank Accounts". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/05/AR2008100500816.html?hpid=sec-business. Retrieved 2008-10-06.
- ^ a b "Bank uncertainty hits UK shares". BBC. 2008-10-06. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7654182.stm. Retrieved 2008-10-06.
- ^ a b "Angela Merkel in India for joint cabinet meet". The Times of India. 2011-05-31. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Angela-Merkel-in-India-for-joint-cabinet-meet/articleshow/8659994.cms. Retrieved 2011-09-08.
- ^ "Merkel says German multicultural society has failed". BBC News. 2010-10-17. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11559451.
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ^ "Zentralrat der Juden kritisiert Seehofer: Debatte ist scheinheilig und hysterisch" (in German). Südwestrundfunk. http://www.swr.de/nachrichten/-/id=396/nid=396/did=7030978/166vg7v/index.html. Retrieved 2010-10-21. "Wir fühlen uns dem christlichen Menschenbild verbunden, das ist das, was uns ausmacht. Wer das nicht akzeptiert, der ist bei uns fehl am Platz" [dead link]
- ^ "Germany's charged immigration debate". BBC News. 2010-10-17. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11532699. Retrieved 2011-09-14.
- ^ Pidd, Helen (2011-02-21). "Angela Merkel's party crushed in Hamburg poll". London: The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/21/angela-merkel-crushed-hamburg-polls. Retrieved 2011-08-23.
- ^ "German opposition hits 11-year high in polls". France24. 2011-08-05. http://www.zimbio.com/Chancellor+Angela+Merkel/articles/tvb0mRYv0RF/German+opposition+hits+11+year+high+polls. Retrieved 2011-08-23.
- ^ "Union dank Merkel im Umfrage-Aufwind". Stern.de. 2012-02-10. http://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/union-dank-merkel-im-umfrage-aufwind-1784909.html. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
- ^ Penfold, Chuck (2009-10-30). Merkel's new cabinet sworn in. Deutsche Welle, 30 October 2009. Retrieved on 2009-11-01 from DW-world.de.
- ^ "Biographie: Angela Merkel, geb. 1954". Dhm.de. http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/biografien/MerkelAngela/index.html. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ "Joachim Sauer, das Phantom an Merkels Seite" (in German). Die Zeit. 2009-08-14. http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article4321502/Joachim-Sauer-das-Phantom-an-Merkels-Seite.html. Retrieved 2010-06-11.
- ^ "Das diskrete Glück" (in German). Bild. 2008-12-28. http://www.bild.de/BILD/news/politik/2008/12/28/angela-merkel/bild-am-sonntag-erzaehlt-die-geschichte-einer-liebe-ohne-prunk-und-blitzlicht.html. Retrieved 2010-06-11.
- ^ Font size Print E-mail Share Page 1 of 2 By James M Klatell (2006-08-09). "Germany's First Fella, Angela Merkel Is Germany's Chancellor; But Her Husband Stays Out Of The Spotlight". CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/09/world/main1879305.shtml. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ American Friends of the Hebrew University[dead link]
- ^ "Honorary Doctorates – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem". .huji.ac.il. http://www3.huji.ac.il/htbin/hon_doc/doc_search.pl. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ "Charlemagne Prize 2008: Angela Merkel". Aachen.de. http://www.aachen.de/EN/sb/pr_az/karls_pr/99einstieg_karlspreis.html. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ Karlspreis.de (German)
- ^ "Bundesverdienstkreuz für Merkel". tagesschau.de. http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/merkelgrosskreuz2.html. Retrieved 2010-03-02. [dead link]
- ^ "Pressemitteilung 2008/106 der Universität Leipzig" (in German). Universität Leipzig. 2008-05-20. http://db.uni-leipzig.de/aktuell/index.php?modus=pmanzeige&pm_id=3032. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ "Doktorat honoris causa dla Merkel,Rzeczpospolita" (in (Polish)). Rp.pl. 2008-09-24. http://www.rp.pl/artykul/195272_Doktorat_honoris_causa_dla_Merkel.html. Retrieved 2010-03-02.
- ^ Universitatea Babes-Bolyai. Web.ubbcluj.ro. Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ Angela Merkel a primit titlul de Doctor Honoris Causa al Universităţii Babeş-Bolyai. Realitatea .Net (2010-10-12). Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ Cancelarul Germaniei, Angela Merkel, a primit titlul de Doctor Honoris Causa al UBB Cluj | Romania Libera. Romanialibera.ro. Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ John P. Reeves. "B'nai B'rith Europe grants Award of Merit to DR. Angela MERKEL". B'nai B'rith Europe. http://www.bnaibritheurope.org/bbe/content/view/596/121/lang,en_GB/. ". . . Dr Angela Merkel Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany was the recipient of a Gold Medal for outstanding services, the B’nai B’rith Europe Award of Merit, being the highest accolade of BBEurope"
- ^ Serafin, Tatiana (2006-08-31). "The 100 Most Powerful Women: #1 Angela Merkel". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/11/06women_Angela-Merkel_34AH.html. Retrieved 2009-05-01.
Serafin, Tatiana (2007-08-30). "The 100 Most Powerful Women: #1 Angela Merkel". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/11/biz-07women_Angela-Merkel_34AH.html. Retrieved 2009-05-17.
Serafin, Tatiana (2008-08-27). "The 100 Most Powerful Women: #1 Angela Merkel". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/11/biz_powerwomen08_Angela-Merkel_34AH.html. Retrieved 2009-05-17.
Serafin, Tatiana (2009-08-19). "The 100 Most Powerful Women: #1 Angela Merkel". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/11/power-women-09_Angela-Merkel_34AH.html. Retrieved 2009-08-20.
"Merkel most powerful woman in world: Forbes". Euronews. 2011-08-26. http://www.euronews.net/2011/08/26/merkel-most-powerful-woman-in-world-forbes/. Retrieved 2011-12-19. - ^ "Angela Merkel – 50 People Who Matter 2010". http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2010/09/iron-frau-angela-merkel-greek. Retrieved 29 September 2010.
- ^ "Chancellor Angela Merkel Receives Global Leadership Award"[dead link]
- ^ Baeck, Leo. (2010-08-22) LBI Presents Leo Baeck Medal to Chancellor Angela Merkel | Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Leobaeckinstitute.wordpress.com. Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ Russell among 15 Presidential Medal of Freedom honorees. NBA.com (2010-11-18). Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ "Executive Order 11085". Wikisource. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_11085. Retrieved 2011-04-01. "The Medal may be awarded by the President as provided in this order to any person who has made an especially meritorious contribution to (1), the security or national interests of the United States, or (2) world peace, or (3) cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."
- ^ "Angela Merkel Receives Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding". ABC live. 2011-06-01. http://abclive.in/national/national/478-angela-merkel-jawaharlal-nehru-award-.html. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
- ^ Risen, Clay (July 5, 2005). "Is Angela Merkel the next Maggie Thatcher?". Slate (Slate (magazine)). http://www.slate.com/id/2122001/
- ^ Kurbjuweit, Dirk (11 March 2009). "Merkel's Dream of a Place in the History Books". Spiegel Online International. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,659018,00.html.
- ^ Langguth, Gerd (August 2005) (in German). Angela Merkel. Munich: DTV. p. 10. ISBN 3-423-24485-2.
- ^ "The World's Most Powerful People". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/powerful-people/list/. Retrieved 2012-01-04.
- ^ "Merkel honours Mohammad cartoonist at press award". Reuters. 2010-09-08. http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-51367120100908.
- ^ The Sarrazin Debate: Germany Is Becoming Islamophobic. Spiegel.de. Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ BBC: Germany's Central Muslim Council (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland) criticised Mrs. Merkel for attending the award ceremony.8 September 2010. A ZMD spokesman, Aiman Mazyek, told public broadcaster Deutschlandradio that the Chancellor was honouring someone "who in our eyes kicked our prophet, and therefore kicked all Muslims". He said giving Mr Westergaard the prize in a "highly charged and heated time" was "highly problematic".
- ^ "Merkel honours Danish Muhammad cartoonist Westergaard". BBC News. 2010-09-08. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11236158.
- ^ DIE LINKE: Merkels Affront gegen Muslime. Die-linke.de. Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ Grüne/Bündnis 90 Spokesman Renate Künast: "I wouldn't have done it," said Green Party floor leader Renate Künast. It was true that the right to freedom of expression also applies to cartoons, she said. "But if a chancellor also makes a speech on top of that, it serves to heat up the debate."
- ^ Award for Danish Muhammad Cartoonist: Merkel Defends Press Freedom, Condemns Koran-Burning. Spiegel.de. Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ Ehrung des Mohammed-Karikaturisten: Angela Merkels Risiko – Integration – Feuilleton. Faz.Net (2010-09-08). Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ (German) Islam: Merkel – Deutsche werden mehr Moscheen sehen – Nachrichten Politik – Deutschland – WELT ONLINE. Welt.de (2010-09-18). Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ (German) Merkel gegen Seehofer: "Der Islam ist Teil Deutschlands". n-tv.de. Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ REGIERUNGonline – Islamunterricht an Schulen. Bundesregierung.de (2009-05-17). Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ (German) Islam-Unterricht | Aktuelle News, Hintergründe und Bilder auf. Stern.de. Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ (German) Bundesregierung: De Maizière dringt auf Islam-Unterricht an Schulen – Nachrichten Politik – Deutschland – WELT ONLINE. Welt.de. Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
- ^ Integration: Schäuble und Muslime planen Islam-Unterricht an deutschen Schulen. Spiegel.de. Retrieved on 2011-04-18.
Bibliography[link]
- Bolgherini, Silvia; Grotz, Florian, eds. (2010). Germany After the Grand Coalition: Governance and Politics in a Turbulent Environment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-62285-2. Studies of the "Grand Coalition" of 2005–09 and the first Merkel government.
- Mills, Cliff (2008). Angela Merkel. New York: Chelsea House. ISBN 978-0-7910-9496-9.
External links[link]
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- Official Website of Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (English)
- Merkel's personal website (German)
- Merkel on her party's website (English)
- Angela Merkel in the German National Library catalogue (German)
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Ursula Lehr |
Minister of Women and Youth 1991–1994 |
Succeeded by Claudia Nolte |
| Preceded by Klaus Töpfer |
Minister of the Environment and Reactor Safety 1994–1998 |
Succeeded by Jürgen Trittin |
| Preceded by Gerhard Schröder |
Chancellor of Germany 2005–present |
Incumbent |
| Preceded by Matti Vanhanen |
President of the European Council 2007 |
Succeeded by José Sócrates |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by Peter Hintze |
Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Union 1998–2000 |
Succeeded by Ruprecht Polenz |
| Preceded by Wolfgang Schäuble |
Leader of the Christian Democratic Union 2000–present |
Incumbent |
| Preceded by Friedrich Merz |
Parliamentary Leader of the CDU/CSU 2002–2005 |
Succeeded by Volker Kauder |
| Diplomatic posts | ||
| Preceded by Vladimir Putin |
Chairperson of the Group of 8 2007 |
Succeeded by Yasuo Fukuda |
| Academic offices | ||
| Preceded by Jerzy Buzek |
Speaker at the College of Europe Opening Ceremony 2010 |
Succeeded by Giorgio Napolitano |
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Merkel, Angela |
| Alternative names | Merkel, Angela Dorothea (full name) |
| Short description | German politician |
| Date of birth | 17 July 1954 |
| Place of birth | Hamburg, Germany |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Angela_Merkel
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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Hillary Rodham Clinton | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| 67th United States Secretary of State | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office January 21, 2009 |
|
| President | Barack Obama |
| Deputy | William Burns (2011-present) James Steinberg (2009-2011) |
| Preceded by | Condoleezza Rice |
| United States Senator from New York |
|
| In office January 3, 2001 – January 21, 2009 |
|
| Preceded by | Daniel Patrick Moynihan |
| Succeeded by | Kirsten Gillibrand |
| First Lady of the United States | |
| In office January 20, 1993 – January 20, 2001 |
|
| Preceded by | Barbara Bush |
| Succeeded by | Laura Bush |
| First Lady of Arkansas | |
| In office January 11, 1983 – December 12, 1992 |
|
| Preceded by | Gay Daniels White |
| Succeeded by | Betty Tucker |
| In office January 9, 1979 – January 19, 1981 |
|
| Preceded by | Barbara Pryor |
| Succeeded by | Gay Daniels White |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Hillary Diane Rodham (1947-10-26) October 26, 1947 (age 64) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic Party (1968–present) |
| Other political affiliations |
Republican Party (before 1968) |
| Spouse(s) | Bill Clinton |
| Children | Chelsea Clinton |
| Residence | Chappaqua, New York |
| Alma mater | Wellesley College Yale Law School |
| Profession | Lawyer |
| Religion | Methodist |
| Signature |  |
| Website | Official website |
|
Tenure as Secretary of State, 2009– |
|
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( /ˈhɪləri daɪˈæn ˈrɒdəm ˈklɪntən/; born October 26, 1947) is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. In the 2008 election, Clinton was a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A native of Illinois, Hillary Rodham first attracted national attention in 1969 for her remarks as the first student commencement speaker at Wellesley College. She embarked on a career in law after graduating from Yale Law School in 1973. Following a stint as a Congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas in 1974 and married Bill Clinton in 1975. Rodham cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in 1977 and became the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978. Named the first female partner at Rose Law Firm in 1979, she was twice listed as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992 with husband Bill as Governor, she successfully led a task force to reform Arkansas's education system. She sat on the board of directors of Wal-Mart Stores and several other corporations.
In 1994, as First Lady of the United States, her major initiative, the Clinton health care plan, failed to gain approval from the U.S. Congress. However, in 1997 and 1999, Clinton played a role in advocating the creation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence Act. Her years as First Lady drew a polarized response from the American public. The only First Lady to have been subpoenaed, she testified before a federal grand jury in 1996 due to the Whitewater controversy, but was never charged with wrongdoing in this or several other investigations during her husband's administration. The state of her marriage was the subject of considerable speculation following the Lewinsky scandal in 1998.
After moving to the state of New York, Clinton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2000. That election marked the first time an American First Lady had run for public office; Clinton was also the first female senator to represent the state. In the Senate, she initially supported the Bush administration on some foreign policy issues, including a vote for the Iraq War Resolution. She subsequently opposed the administration on its conduct of the war in Iraq and on most domestic issues. Senator Clinton was reelected by a wide margin in 2006. In the 2008 presidential nomination race, Hillary Clinton won more primaries and delegates than any other female candidate in American history, but narrowly lost to Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
Obama went on to win the election and appoint Clinton as Secretary of State; Clinton became the first former First Lady to serve in a president's cabinet. She has put into place institutional changes seeking to maximize departmental effectiveness and promote the empowerment of women worldwide, and has set records for most-traveled secretary for time in office. She has been at the forefront of the U.S. response to the Arab Spring, including advocating for the military intervention in Libya. She has used "smart power" as the strategy for asserting U.S. leadership and values in the world and has championed the use of social media in getting the U.S. message out.
Contents
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Early life and education[link]
Early life[link]
Hillary Diane Rodham[nb 1] was born at Edgewater Hospital in Chicago, Illinois.[1][2] She was raised in a United Methodist family, first in Chicago and then, from the age of three, in suburban Park Ridge, Illinois.[3] Her father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham (1911–1993), was the son of Welsh and English immigrants;[4] he managed a successful small business in the textile industry.[5] Her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell (1919–2011), was a homemaker of English, Scottish, French, French Canadian, and Welsh descent.[4][6] Hillary grew up with two younger brothers, Hugh and Tony.
File:HRCEarlyYearsExhibitClintonPresidentialCenter.jpg
Mementos of Hillary Rodham's early life are shown at the William J. Clinton Presidential Center.
As a child, Hillary Rodham was a teacher's favorite at her public schools in Park Ridge.[7][8] She participated in swimming, baseball, and other sports.[7][8] She also earned numerous awards as a Brownie and Girl Scout.[8] She attended Maine East High School, where she participated in student council, the school newspaper, and was selected for National Honor Society.[1][9] For her senior year, she was redistricted to Maine South High School, where she was a National Merit Finalist and graduated in the top five percent of her class of 1965.[9][10] Her mother wanted her to have an independent, professional career,[6] and her father, otherwise a traditionalist, was of the opinion that his daughter's abilities and opportunities should not be limited by gender.[11]
Raised in a politically conservative household,[6] at age thirteen Rodham helped canvass South Side Chicago following the very close 1960 U.S. presidential election, where she found evidence of electoral fraud against Republican candidate Richard Nixon.[12] She then volunteered to campaign for Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in the U.S. presidential election of 1964.[13] Rodham's early political development was shaped most by her high school history teacher (like her father, a fervent anticommunist), who introduced her to Goldwater's classic The Conscience of a Conservative,[14] and by her Methodist youth minister (like her mother, concerned with issues of social justice), with whom she saw and met civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., in Chicago in 1962.[15]
Wellesley College years[link]
In 1965, Rodham enrolled at Wellesley College, where she majored in political science.[16] During her freshman year, she served as president of the Wellesley Young Republicans;[17][18] with this Rockefeller Republican-oriented group,[19] she supported the elections of John Lindsay and Edward Brooke.[20] She later stepped down from this position, as her views changed regarding the American Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.[17] In a letter to her youth minister at this time, she described herself as "a mind conservative and a heart liberal."[21] In contrast to the 1960s current that advocated radical actions against the political system, she sought to work for change within it.[22] In her junior year, Rodham became a supporter of the antiwar presidential nomination campaign of Democrat Eugene McCarthy.[23] Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Rodham organized a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley's black students to recruit more black students and faculty.[23] In early 1968, she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government Association and served through early 1969;[22][24] she was instrumental in keeping Wellesley from being embroiled in the student disruptions common to other colleges.[22] A number of her fellow students thought she might some day become the first woman President of the United States.[22] So she could better understand her changing political views, Professor Alan Schechter assigned Rodham to intern at the House Republican Conference, and she attended the "Wellesley in Washington" summer program.[23] Rodham was invited by moderate New York Republican Representative Charles Goodell to help Governor Nelson Rockefeller's late-entry campaign for the Republican nomination.[23] Rodham attended the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami. However, she was upset by how Richard Nixon's campaign portrayed Rockefeller and by what she perceived as the convention's "veiled" racist messages, and left the Republican Party for good.[23]
Main article: Hillary Rodham senior thesis
Rodham wrote her senior thesis, a critique of the tactics of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky, under Professor Schechter.[25] (Years later, while she was First Lady, access to the thesis was restricted at the request of the White House and it became the subject of some speculation.)[25]
In 1969, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts,[26] with departmental honors in political science.[25] Following pressure from some fellow students,[27] she became the first student in Wellesley College history to deliver its commencement address.[24] Her speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes.[22][28][29] She was featured in an article published in Life magazine,[30] due to the response to a part of her speech that criticized Senator Edward Brooke, who had spoken before her at the commencement.[27] She also appeared on Irv Kupcinet's nationally syndicated television talk show as well as in Illinois and New England newspapers.[31] That summer, she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in Mount McKinley National Park and sliming salmon in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which fired her and shut down overnight when she complained about unhealthy conditions).[32]
Yale Law School and postgraduate studies[link]
Rodham then entered Yale Law School, where she served on the editorial board of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action.[33] During her second year, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center,[34] learning about new research on early childhood brain development and working as a research assistant on the seminal work, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973).[35][36] She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital[35] and volunteered at New Haven Legal Services to provide free legal advice for the poor.[34] In the summer of 1970, she was awarded a grant to work at Marian Wright Edelman's Washington Research Project, where she was assigned to Senator Walter Mondale's Subcommittee on Migratory Labor. There she researched migrant workers' problems in housing, sanitation, health and education.[37] Edelman later became a significant mentor.[38] Rodham was recruited by political advisor Anne Wexler to work on the 1970 campaign of Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate Joseph Duffey, with Rodham later crediting Wexler with providing her first job in politics.[39]
In the late spring of 1971, she began dating Bill Clinton, also a law student at Yale. That summer, she interned at the Oakland, California, law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.[40] The firm was well known for its support of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and radical causes (two of its four partners were current or former Communist Party members);[40] Rodham worked on child custody and other cases.[nb 2] Clinton canceled his original summer plans, in order to live with her in California;[41] the couple continued living together in New Haven when they returned to law school.[42] The following summer, Rodham and Clinton campaigned in Texas for unsuccessful 1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern.[43] She received a Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1973,[26] having stayed on an extra year to be with Clinton.[44] Clinton first proposed marriage to her following graduation, but she declined.[44]
Rodham began a year of postgraduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.[45] Her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law", was published in the Harvard Educational Review in late 1973.[46] Discussing the new children's rights movement, it stated that "child citizens" were "powerless individuals"[47] and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but that instead courts should presume competence except when there is evidence otherwise, on a case-by-case basis.[48] The article became frequently cited in the field.[49]
Marriage and family, law career and First Lady of Arkansas[link]
From the East Coast to Arkansas[link]
During her postgraduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[50] and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children.[51] In 1974 she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal.[52] Under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar and senior member Bernard Nussbaum,[35] Rodham helped research procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for impeachment.[52] The committee's work culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.[52]
By then, Rodham was viewed as someone with a bright political future; Democratic political organizer and consultant Betsey Wright had moved from Texas to Washington the previous year to help guide her career;[53] Wright thought Rodham had the potential to become a future senator or president.[54] Meanwhile, Clinton had repeatedly asked her to marry him, and she continued to demur.[55] However, after failing the District of Columbia bar exam[56] and passing the Arkansas exam, Rodham came to a key decision. As she later wrote, "I chose to follow my heart instead of my head".[57] She thus followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas, rather than staying in Washington where career prospects were brighter. He was then teaching law and running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in his home state. In August 1974, Rodham moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and became one of only two female faculty members in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.[58][59] She gave classes in criminal law, where she was considered a rigorous teacher and tough grader, and was the first director of the school's legal aid clinic.[60] She still harbored doubts about marriage, concerned that her separate identity would be lost and that her accomplishments would be viewed in the light of someone else's.[61]
Early Arkansas years[link]
File:HillaryRodhamBillClintonLittleRockHouse1adjusted.jpg
Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton lived in this 980 square feet (91 m2) house in the Hillcrest neighborhood of Little Rock from 1977 to 1979 while he was Arkansas Attorney General.[62]
Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton bought a house in Fayetteville in the summer of 1975, and Hillary finally agreed to marry.[63] Their wedding took place on October 11, 1975, in a Methodist ceremony in their living room.[64] She announced she was keeping the name Hillary Rodham,[64] to keep their professional lives separate and avoid apparent conflicts of interest and because "it showed that I was still me,"[65] although her decision upset their mothers.[66] Bill Clinton had lost the congressional race in 1974, but in November 1976 was elected Arkansas Attorney General, and so the couple moved to the state capital of Little Rock.[67] There, in February 1977, Rodham joined the venerable Rose Law Firm, a bastion of Arkansan political and economic influence.[68] She specialized in patent infringement and intellectual property law[33] while also working pro bono in child advocacy;[69] she rarely performed litigation work in court.[70]
Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977[71] and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979.[72] The latter continued her argument that children's legal competence depended upon their age and other circumstances and that in serious medical rights cases, judicial intervention was sometimes warranted.[48] An American Bar Association chair later said, "Her articles were important, not because they were radically new but because they helped formulate something that had been inchoate."[48] Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as "one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades",[73] while conservatives said her theories would usurp traditional parental authority,[74] allow children to file frivolous lawsuits against their parents,[48] and argued that her work was legal "crit" theory run amok.[75]
In 1977, Rodham cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund.[33][76] Later that year, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Rodham had been the 1976 campaign director of field operations in Indiana)[77] appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation,[78] and she served in that capacity from 1978 until the end of 1981.[79] From mid-1978 to mid-1980,[nb 3] she served as the chair of that board, the first woman to do so.[80] During her time as chair, funding for the Corporation was expanded from $90 million to $300 million; subsequently she successfully fought President Ronald Reagan's attempts to reduce the funding and change the nature of the organization.[69]
Following her husband's November 1978 election as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, her title for twelve years (1979–1981, 1983–1992). Clinton appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year,[81] where she secured federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas's poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.[82]
In 1979, Rodham became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm.[83] From 1978 until they entered the White House, she had a higher salary than that of her husband.[84] During 1978 and 1979, while looking to supplement their income, Rodham made a spectacular profit from trading cattle futures contracts;[85] an initial $1,000 investment generated nearly $100,000 when she stopped trading after ten months.[86] The couple also began their ill-fated investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation real estate venture with Jim and Susan McDougal at this time.[85]
On February 27, 1980, Rodham gave birth to a daughter, Chelsea, her only child. In November 1980, Bill Clinton was defeated in his bid for reelection.
Later Arkansas years[link]
Bill Clinton returned to the governor's office two years later by winning the election of 1982. During her husband's campaign, Rodham began to use the name Hillary Clinton, or sometimes "Mrs. Bill Clinton", to assuage the concerns of Arkansas voters;[nb 4] she also took a leave of absence from Rose Law to campaign for him full-time.[87] As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton was named chair of the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee in 1983, where she sought to reform the state's court-sanctioned public education system.[88][89] In one of the Clinton governorship's most important initiatives, she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association, to establish mandatory teacher testing and state standards for curriculum and classroom size.[81][88] In 1985, she also introduced Arkansas's Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth, a program that helps parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy.[90] She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.[91][92]
Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm while she was First Lady of Arkansas. She earned less than the other partners, as she billed fewer hours,[93] but still made more than $200,000 in her final year there.[94] She seldom did trial work,[94] but the firm considered her a "rainmaker" because she brought in clients, partly thanks to the prestige she lent the firm and to her corporate board connections.[94] She was also very influential in the appointment of state judges.[94] Bill Clinton's Republican opponent in his 1986 gubernatorial reelection campaign accused the Clintons of conflict of interest, because Rose Law did state business; the Clintons deflected the charge by saying that state fees were walled off by the firm before her profits were calculated.[95]
From 1982 to 1988, Clinton was on the board of directors, sometimes as chair, of the New World Foundation,[96] which funded a variety of New Left interest groups.[97] From 1987 to 1991, she chaired the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession,[98] which addressed gender bias in the law profession and induced the association to adopt measures to combat it.[98] She was twice named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America: in 1988 and in 1991.[99] When Bill Clinton thought about not running again for governor in 1990, Hillary considered running, but private polls were unfavorable and, in the end, he ran and was reelected for the final time.[100]
Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992)[101] and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992).[1][102] In addition to her positions with nonprofit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–1992),[103] Wal-Mart Stores (1986–1992)[104] and Lafarge (1990–1992).[105] TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law.[94][106] Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart's board, added following pressure on chairman Sam Walton to name a woman to the board.[106] Once there, she pushed successfully for Wal-Mart to adopt more environmentally friendly practices, was largely unsuccessful in a campaign for more women to be added to the company's management, and was silent about the company's famously anti-labor union practices.[104][106][107]
Bill Clinton presidential campaign of 1992[link]
Hillary Clinton received sustained national attention for the first time when her husband became a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination of 1992. Before the New Hampshire primary, tabloid publications printed claims that Bill Clinton had had an extramarital affair with Arkansas lounge singer Gennifer Flowers.[108] In response, the Clintons appeared together on 60 Minutes, where Bill Clinton denied the affair but acknowledged "causing pain in my marriage."[109] This joint appearance was credited with rescuing his campaign.[110] During the campaign, Hillary Clinton made culturally disparaging remarks about Tammy Wynette and her outlook on marriage,[nb 5] and about women staying home and baking cookies and having teas,[nb 6] that were ill-considered by her own admission. Bill Clinton said that in electing him, the nation would "get two for the price of one", referring to the prominent role his wife would assume.[111] Beginning with Daniel Wattenberg's August 1992 The American Spectator article "The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock", Hillary Clinton's own past ideological and ethical record came under conservative attack.[74] At least twenty other articles in major publications also drew comparisons between her and Lady Macbeth.[112]
First Lady of the United States[link]
Role as First Lady[link]
When Bill Clinton took office as president in January 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady of the United States, and announced that she would be using that form of her name.[113] She was the first First Lady to hold a postgraduate degree[114] and to have her own professional career up to the time of entering the White House.[114] She was also the first to have an office in the West Wing of the White House in addition to the usual First Lady offices in the East Wing.[45][115] She was part of the innermost circle vetting appointments to the new administration, and her choices filled at least eleven top-level positions and dozens more lower-level ones.[116] She is regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history, save for Eleanor Roosevelt.[117][118]
Some critics called it inappropriate for the First Lady to play a central role in matters of public policy. Supporters pointed out that Clinton's role in policy was no different from that of other White House advisors and that voters were well aware that she would play an active role in her husband's presidency.[119] Bill Clinton's campaign promise of "two for the price of one" led opponents to refer derisively to the Clintons as "co-presidents",[120] or sometimes the Arkansas label "Billary".[81][121] The pressures of conflicting ideas about the role of a First Lady were enough to send Clinton into "imaginary discussions" with the also-politically-active Eleanor Roosevelt.[nb 7] From the time she came to Washington, she also found refuge in a prayer group of The Fellowship that featured many wives of conservative Washington figures.[122][123] Triggered in part by the death of her father in April 1993, she publicly sought to find a synthesis of Methodist teachings, liberal religious political philosophy, and Tikkun editor Michael Lerner's "politics of meaning" to overcome what she saw as America's "sleeping sickness of the soul" and that would lead to a willingness "to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the twentieth century, moving into a new millennium."[124][125] Other segments of the public focused on her appearance, which had evolved over time from inattention to fashion during her days in Arkansas,[126] to a popular site in the early days of the World Wide Web devoted to showing her many different, and frequently analyzed, hairstyles as First Lady,[127][128] to an appearance on the cover of Vogue magazine in 1998.[129]
Health care and other policy initiatives[link]
See also: Clinton health care plan of 1993
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In January 1993, Bill Clinton appointed Hillary Clinton to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, hoping to replicate the success she had in leading the effort for Arkansas education reform.[131] She privately urged that passage of health care reform be given higher priority than the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (which she was also unenthusiastic about the merits of).[132][133] The recommendation of the task force became known as the Clinton health care plan, a comprehensive proposal that would require employers to provide health coverage to their employees through individual health maintenance organizations. Its opponents quickly derided the plan as "Hillarycare"; some protesters against it became vitriolic, and during a July 1994 bus tour to rally support for the plan, she was forced to wear a bulletproof vest at times.[134][135]
The plan did not receive enough support for a floor vote in either the House or the Senate, although Democrats controlled both chambers, and the proposal was abandoned in September 1994.[134] Clinton later acknowledged in her book, Living History, that her political inexperience partly contributed to the defeat, but mentioned that many other factors were also responsible. The First Lady's approval ratings, which had generally been in the high-50s percent range during her first year, fell to 44 percent in April 1994 and 35 percent by September 1994.[136] Republicans made the Clinton health care plan a major campaign issue of the 1994 midterm elections,[137] which saw a net Republican gain of fifty-three seats in the House election and seven in the Senate election, winning control of both; many analysts and pollsters found the plan to be a major factor in the Democrats' defeat, especially among independent voters.[138] The White House subsequently sought to downplay Hillary Clinton's role in shaping policy.[139] Opponents of universal health care would continue to use "Hillarycare" as a pejorative label for similar plans by others.[140]
Along with Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, she was a force behind the passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997, a federal effort that provided state support for children whose parents could not provide them with health coverage, and conducted outreach efforts on behalf of enrolling children in the program once it became law.[141] She promoted nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses and encouraged older women to seek a mammogram to detect breast cancer, with coverage provided by Medicare.[142] She successfully sought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health.[45] The First Lady worked to investigate reports of an illness that affected veterans of the Gulf War, which became known as the Gulf War syndrome.[45] Together with Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice.[45] In 1997, she initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as First Lady.[45][143] In 1999, she was instrumental in the passage of the Foster Care Independence Act, which doubled federal monies for teenagers aging out of foster care.[143] As First Lady, Clinton hosted numerous White House conferences, including ones on Child Care (1997),[144] on Early Childhood Development and Learning (1997),[145] and on Children and Adolescents (2000).[146] She also hosted the first-ever White House Conference on Teenagers (2000)[147] and the first-ever White House Conference on Philanthropy (1999).[148]
Clinton traveled to 79 countries during this time,[149] breaking the mark for most-traveled First Lady held by Pat Nixon.[150] She did not hold a security clearance or attend National Security Council meetings, but played a soft power role in U.S. diplomacy.[151] A March 1995 five-nation trip to South Asia, on behest of the U.S. State Department and without her husband, sought to improve relations with India and Pakistan.[152] Clinton was troubled by the plight of women she encountered, but found a warm response from the people of the countries she visited and a gained better relationship with the American press corps.[152][153] The trip was a transformative experience for her and presaged her eventual career in diplomacy.[154] In a September 1995 speech before the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Clinton argued very forcefully against practices that abused women around the world and in the People's Republic of China itself,[155] declaring "that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights".[155] Delegates from over 180 countries heard her say: "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all."[156] In doing so, she resisted both internal administration and Chinese pressure to soften her remarks.[149][156] She was one of the most prominent international figures during the late 1990s to speak out against the treatment of Afghan women by the Islamist fundamentalist Taliban.[157][158] She helped create Vital Voices, an international initiative sponsored by the United States to promote the participation of women in the political processes of their countries.[159] It and Clinton's own visits encouraged women to make themselves heard in the Northern Ireland peace process.[160]
Whitewater and other investigations[link]
For more details on these investigations, see Whitewater controversy, Travelgate, Filegate, and Hillary Rodham cattle futures controversy.
First Lady Clinton was a subject of several investigations by the United States Office of the Independent Counsel, the independent prosecutor of the United States Congress, and others. Some believed the Independent Counsels were politically motivated.[161][162]
The Whitewater controversy was the focus of media attention from the publication of a New York Times report during the 1992 presidential campaign,[163] and throughout her time as First Lady. The Clintons had lost their late-1970s investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation;[164] at the same time, their partners in that investment, Jim and Susan McDougal, operated Madison Guaranty, a savings and loan institution that retained the legal services of Rose Law Firm[164] and may have been improperly subsidizing Whitewater losses.[163] Madison Guaranty later failed, and Clinton's work at Rose was scrutinized for a possible conflict of interest in representing the bank before state regulators that her husband had appointed;[163] she claimed she had done minimal work for the bank.[165] Independent counsels Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Clinton's legal billing records; she said she did not know where they were.[166][167] The records were found in the First Lady's White House book room after a two-year search, and delivered to investigators in early 1996.[167] The delayed appearance of the records sparked intense interest and another investigation about how they surfaced and where they had been;[167] Clinton's staff attributed the problem to continual changes in White House storage areas since the move from the Arkansas Governor's Mansion.[168] After the discovery of the records, on January 26, 1996, Clinton became the first First Lady to be subpoenaed to testify before a Federal grand jury.[166] After several Independent Counsels had investigated, a final report was issued in 2000 that stated there was insufficient evidence that either Clinton had engaged in criminal wrongdoing.[169]
Scrutiny of the May 1993 firings of the White House Travel Office employees, an affair that became known as "Travelgate", began with charges that the White House had used audited financial irregularities in the Travel Office operation as an excuse to replace the staff with friends from Arkansas.[170] The 1996 discovery of a two-year-old White House memo caused the investigation to focus more on whether Hillary Clinton had orchestrated the firings and whether the statements she made to investigators about her role in the firings were true.[171][172] The 2000 final Independent Counsel report concluded she was involved in the firings and that she had made "factually false" statements, but that there was insufficient evidence that she knew the statements were false, or knew that her actions would lead to firings, to prosecute her.[173]
Following deputy White House counsel Vince Foster's July 1993 suicide, allegations were made that Hillary Clinton had ordered the removal of potentially damaging files (related to Whitewater or other matters) from Foster's office on the night of his death.[174] Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr investigated this, and by 1999, Starr was reported to be holding the investigation open, despite his staff having told him there was no case to be made.[175] When Starr's successor Robert Ray issued his final Whitewater reports in 2000, no claims were made against Hillary Clinton regarding this.[169]
An outgrowth of the Travelgate investigation was the June 1996 discovery of improper White House access to hundreds of FBI background reports on former Republican White House employees, an affair that some called "Filegate".[176] Accusations were made that Hillary Clinton had requested these files and that she had recommended hiring an unqualified individual to head the White House Security Office.[177] The 2000 final Independent Counsel report found no substantial or credible evidence that Hillary Clinton had any role or showed any misconduct in the matter.[176]
In March 1994, newspaper reports revealed her spectacular profits from cattle futures trading in 1978–1979;[178] allegations were made in the press of conflict of interest and disguised bribery,[179] and several individuals analyzed her trading records, but no formal investigation was made and she was never charged with any wrongdoing.[179]
Lewinsky scandal[link]
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In 1998, the Clintons' relationship became the subject of much speculation when investigations revealed that the President had had extramarital relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.[180] Events surrounding the Lewinsky scandal eventually led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton by the House of Representatives. When the allegations against her husband were first made public, Hillary Clinton stated that they were the result of a "vast right-wing conspiracy",[181] characterizing the Lewinsky charges as the latest in a long, organized, collaborative series of charges by Bill Clinton's political enemies[nb 8] rather than any wrongdoing by her husband. She later said that she had been misled by her husband's initial claims that no affair had taken place.[182] After the evidence of President Clinton's encounters with Lewinsky became incontrovertible, she issued a public statement reaffirming her commitment to their marriage,[183] but privately was reported to be furious at him[184] and was unsure if she wanted to stay in the marriage.[185]
There was a variety of public reactions to Hillary Clinton after this: some women admired her strength and poise in private matters made public, some sympathized with her as a victim of her husband's insensitive behavior, others criticized her as being an enabler to her husband's indiscretions, while still others accused her of cynically staying in a failed marriage as a way of keeping or even fostering her own political influence.[186] Her public approval ratings in the wake of the revelations shot upward to around 70 percent, the highest they had ever been.[186] In her 2003 memoir, she would attribute her decision to stay married to "a love that has persisted for decades" and add: "No one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does. Even after all these years, he is still the most interesting, energizing and fully alive person I have ever met."[187]
Traditional duties[link]
Clinton initiated and was Founding Chair of the Save America's Treasures program, a national effort that matched federal funds to private donations to preserve and restore historic items and sites,[188] including the flag that inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner" and the First Ladies Historic Site in Canton, Ohio.[45] She was head of the White House Millennium Council,[189] and hosted Millennium Evenings,[190] a series of lectures that discussed futures studies, one of which became the first live simultaneous webcast from the White House.[45] Clinton also created the first White House Sculpture Garden, located in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, which displayed large contemporary American works of art loaned from museums.[191]
In the White House, Clinton placed donated handicrafts of contemporary American artisans, such as pottery and glassware, on rotating display in the state rooms.[45] She oversaw the restoration of the Blue Room to be historically authentic to the period of James Monroe,[192] the redecoration of the Treaty Room into the presidential study along 19th century lines,[193] and the redecoration of the Map Room to how it looked during World War II.[193] Clinton hosted many large-scale events at the White House, such as a Saint Patrick's Day reception, a state dinner for visiting Chinese dignitaries, a contemporary music concert that raised funds for music education in public schools, a New Year's Eve celebration at the turn of the 21st century, and a state dinner honoring the bicentennial of the White House in November 2000.[45]
Senate election of 2000[link]
Main article: United States Senate election in New York, 2000
When the long-serving United States Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, announced his retirement in November 1998, several prominent Democratic figures, including Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, urged Clinton to run for Moynihan's open seat in the United States Senate election of 2000.[194] Once she decided to run, the Clintons purchased a home in Chappaqua, New York, north of New York City, in September 1999.[195] She became the first First Lady of the United States to be a candidate for elected office.[196] Initially, Clinton expected to face Rudy Giuliani, the Mayor of New York City, as her Republican opponent in the election. However, Giuliani withdrew from the race in May 2000 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and having developments in his personal life become very public, and Clinton instead faced Rick Lazio, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives representing New York's 2nd congressional district. Throughout the campaign, opponents accused Clinton of carpetbagging, as she had never resided in New York nor participated in the state's politics before this race. Clinton began her campaign by visiting every county in the state, in a "listening tour" of small-group settings.[197] During the campaign, she devoted considerable time in traditionally Republican Upstate New York regions.[198] Clinton vowed to improve the economic situation in those areas, promising to deliver 200,000 jobs to the state over her term. Her plan included tax credits to reward job creation and encourage business investment, especially in the high-tech sector. She called for personal tax cuts for college tuition and long-term care.[198]
The contest drew national attention. Lazio blundered during a September debate by seeming to invade Clinton's personal space trying to get her to sign a fundraising agreement.[199] The campaigns of Clinton and Lazio, along with Giuliani's initial effort, spent a record combined $90 million.[200] Clinton won the election on November 7, 2000, with 55 percent of the vote to Lazio's 43 percent.[199] She was sworn in as United States Senator on January 3, 2001.
United States Senator[link]
Main article: Senate career of Hillary Rodham Clinton
First term[link]
Upon entering the Senate, Clinton maintained a low public profile and built relationships with senators from both parties.[201] She forged alliances with religiously inclined senators by becoming a regular participant in the Senate Prayer Breakfast.[122][202]
Clinton served on five Senate committees: Committee on Budget (2001–2002),[203] Committee on Armed Services (since 2003),[204] Committee on Environment and Public Works (since 2001),[203] Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (since 2001)[203] and Special Committee on Aging.[205] She was also a Commissioner of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe[206] (since 2001).[207]
Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, Clinton sought to obtain funding for the recovery efforts in New York City and security improvements in her state. Working with New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, she was instrumental in quickly securing $21 billion in funding for the World Trade Center site's redevelopment.[202][208] She subsequently took a leading role in investigating the health issues faced by 9/11 first responders.[209] Clinton voted for the USA Patriot Act in October 2001. In 2005, when the act was up for renewal, she worked to address some of the civil liberties concerns with it,[210] before voting in favor of a compromise renewed act in March 2006 that gained large majority support.[211]
Clinton strongly supported the 2001 U.S. military action in Afghanistan, saying it was a chance to combat terrorism while improving the lives of Afghan women who suffered under the Taliban government.[212] Clinton voted in favor of the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution, which authorized United States President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq, should such action be required to enforce a United Nations Security Council Resolution after pursuing with diplomatic efforts.
After the Iraq War began, Clinton made trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to visit American troops stationed there. On a visit to Iraq in February 2005, Clinton noted that the insurgency had failed to disrupt the democratic elections held earlier, and that parts of the country were functioning well.[213] Noting that war deployments were draining regular and reserve forces, she cointroduced legislation to increase the size of the regular United States Army by 80,000 soldiers to ease the strain.[214] In late 2005, Clinton said that while immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake, Bush's pledge to stay "until the job is done" was also misguided, as it gave Iraqis "an open-ended invitation not to take care of themselves."[215] Her stance caused frustration among those in the Democratic Party who favored immediate withdrawal.[216] Clinton supported retaining and improving health benefits for veterans, and lobbied against the closure of several military bases.[217]
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Senator Clinton voted against President Bush's two major tax cut packages, the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.[218] Clinton voted against the 2005 confirmation of John G. Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States and the 2006 confirmation of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court.[219]
In 2005, Clinton called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how hidden sex scenes showed up in the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.[220] Along with Senators Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, she introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act, intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games. In 2004 and 2006, Clinton voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment that sought to prohibit same-sex marriage.[218][221]
Looking to establish a "progressive infrastructure" to rival that of American conservatism, Clinton played a formative role in conversations that led to the 2003 founding of former Clinton administration chief of staff John Podesta's Center for American Progress, shared aides with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, founded in 2003, and advised the Clintons' former antagonist David Brock's Media Matters for America, created in 2004.[222] Following the 2004 Senate elections, she successfully pushed new Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid to create a Senate war room to handle daily political messaging.[223]
Reelection campaign of 2006[link]
Main article: United States Senate election in New York, 2006
In November 2004, Clinton announced that she would seek a second Senate term. The early frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, withdrew from the contest after several months of poor campaign performance.[224] Clinton easily won the Democratic nomination over opposition from antiwar activist Jonathan Tasini.[225] Clinton's eventual opponents in the general election were Republican candidate John Spencer, a former mayor of Yonkers, along with several third-party candidates. She won the election on November 7, 2006, with 67 percent of the vote to Spencer's 31 percent,[226] carrying all but four of New York's sixty-two counties.[227] Clinton spent $36 million for her reelection, more than any other candidate for Senate in the 2006 elections did. Some Democrats criticized her for spending too much in a one-sided contest, while some supporters were concerned she did not leave more funds for a potential presidential bid in 2008.[228] In the following months, she transferred $10 million of her Senate funds toward her presidential campaign.[229]
Second term[link]
Clinton opposed the Iraq War troop surge of 2007.[230] In March 2007, she voted in favor of a war-spending bill that required President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq by a deadline; it passed almost completely along party lines[231] but was subsequently vetoed by President Bush. In May 2007, a compromise war funding bill that removed withdrawal deadlines but tied funding to progress benchmarks for the Iraqi government passed the Senate by a vote of 80–14 and would be signed by Bush; Clinton was one of those who voted against it.[232] Clinton responded to General David Petraeus's September 2007 Report to Congress on the Situation in Iraq by saying, "I think that the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief."[233]
In March 2007, in response to the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, Clinton called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.[234] In May and June 2007, regarding the high-profile, hotly debated comprehensive immigration reform bill known as the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007, Clinton cast several votes in support of the bill, which eventually failed to gain cloture.[235]
As the financial crisis of 2007–2008 reached a peak with the liquidity crisis of September 2008, Clinton supported the proposed bailout of United States financial system, voting in favor of the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, saying that it represented the interests of the American people.[236] It passed the Senate 74–25.
Presidential campaign of 2008[link]
Main article: Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2008
Clinton had been preparing for a potential candidacy for United States President since at least early 2003.[237] On January 20, 2007, Clinton announced via her web site the formation of a presidential exploratory committee for the United States presidential election of 2008; she stated, "I'm in, and I'm in to win."[238] No woman had ever been nominated by a major party for President of the United States. In April 2007, the Clintons liquidated a blind trust, that had been established when Bill Clinton became president in 1993, to avoid the possibility of ethical conflicts or political embarrassments in the trust as Hillary Clinton undertook her presidential race.[239] Later disclosure statements revealed that the couple's worth was now upwards of $50 million,[239] and that they had earned over $100 million since 2000, with most of it coming from Bill Clinton's books, speaking engagements, and other activities.[240]
Clinton led candidates competing for the Democratic nomination in opinion polls for the election throughout the first half of 2007. Most polls placed Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina as Clinton's closest competitors.[241] Clinton and Obama both set records for early fundraising, swapping the money lead each quarter.[242] By September 2007, polling in the first six states holding Democratic primaries or caucuses showed that Clinton was leading in all of them, with the races being closest in Iowa and South Carolina. By the following month, national polls showed Clinton far ahead of Democratic competitors.[243] At the end of October, Clinton suffered a rare poor debate performance against Obama, Edwards, and her other opponents.[244][245][246] Obama's message of "change" began to resonate with the Democratic electorate better than Clinton's message of "experience".[247] The race tightened considerably, especially in the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, with Clinton losing her lead in some polls by December.[248]
In the first vote of 2008, she placed third in the January 3 Iowa Democratic caucus to Obama and Edwards.[249] Obama gained ground in national polling in the next few days, with all polls predicting a victory for him in the New Hampshire primary.[250][251] However, Clinton gained a surprise win there on January 8, defeating Obama narrowly.[252] Explanations for her New Hampshire comeback varied but often centered on her being seen more sympathetically, especially by women, after her eyes welled with tears and her voice broke while responding to a voter's question the day before the election.[252][253]
The nature of the contest fractured in the next few days. Several remarks by Bill Clinton and other surrogates,[254] and a remark by Hillary Clinton concerning Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lyndon B. Johnson,[nb 9] were perceived by many as, accidentally or intentionally, limiting Obama as a racially oriented candidate or otherwise denying the post-racial significance and accomplishments of his campaign.[255] Despite attempts by both Hillary Clinton and Obama to downplay the issue, Democratic voting became more polarized as a result, with Clinton losing much of her support among African Americans.[254][256] She lost by a two-to-one margin to Obama in the January 26 South Carolina primary,[257] setting up, with Edwards soon dropping out, an intense two-person contest for the twenty-two February 5 Super Tuesday states. Bill Clinton had made more statements attracting criticism for their perceived racial implications late in the South Carolina campaign, and his role was seen as damaging enough to her that a wave of supporters within and outside of the campaign said the former President "needs to stop."[258]
On Super Tuesday, Clinton won the largest states, such as California, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, while Obama won more states; they almost evenly split the total popular vote.[259][260] But Obama was gaining more pledged delegates for his share of the popular vote due to better exploitation of the Democratic proportional allocation rules.[261]
The Clinton campaign had counted on winning the nomination by Super Tuesday, and was unprepared financially and logistically for a prolonged effort; lagging in Internet fundraising, Clinton began loaning her campaign money.[247][262] There was continuous turmoil within the campaign staff and she made several top-level personnel changes.[262][263] Obama won the next eleven February caucuses and primaries across the country, often by large margins, and took a significant pledged delegate lead over Clinton.[261][262] On March 4, Clinton broke the string of losses by winning in Ohio among other places,[262] where her criticism of NAFTA, a major legacy of her husband's presidency, had been a key issue.[264] Throughout the campaign, Obama dominated caucuses, which the Clinton campaign largely ignored organizing for.[247][261][265] Obama did well in primaries where African Americans or younger, college-educated, or more affluent voters were heavily represented; Clinton did well in primaries where Hispanics or older, non-college-educated, or working-class white voters predominated.[266][267] Some Democratic party leaders expressed concern that the drawn-out campaign between the two could damage the winner in the general election contest against Republican presumptive nominee John McCain, especially if an eventual triumph for Clinton was won via party-appointed superdelegates.[268]
Clinton's admission in late March, that her repeated campaign statements about having been under hostile fire from snipers during a 1996 visit to U.S. troops at Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia-Herzegovina were not true, attracted considerable media attention and risked undermining both her credibility and her claims of foreign policy expertise as First Lady.[269]
On April 22, she won the Pennsylvania primary, and kept her campaign alive.[270] However, on May 6, a narrower-than-expected win in the Indiana primary coupled with a large loss in the North Carolina primary ended any realistic chance she had of winning the nomination.[270] She vowed to stay on through the remaining primaries, but stopped attacks against Obama; as one advisor stated, "She could accept losing. She could not accept quitting."[270] She won some of the remaining contests, and indeed, over the last three months of the campaign she won more delegates, states, and votes than Obama, but she failed to overcome Obama's lead.[262]
Following the final primaries on June 3, 2008, Obama had gained enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee.[271] In a speech before her supporters on June 7, Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama, declaring, "The way to continue our fight now to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama."[272] By campaign's end, Clinton had won 1,640 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,763;[273] at the time of the clinching, Clinton had 286 superdelegates to Obama's 395,[274] with those numbers widening to 256 versus 438 once Obama was acknowledged the winner.[273] Clinton and Obama each received over 17 million votes during the nomination process,[nb 10] with both breaking the previous record.[275] Clinton also eclipsed, by a very large margin, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm's 1972 mark for most primaries and delegates won by a woman.[276] Clinton gave a passionate speech supporting Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and campaigned frequently for him in Fall 2008, which concluded with his victory over McCain in the general election on November 4.[277] Clinton's campaign ended up severely in debt; she owed millions of dollars to outside vendors and wrote off the $13 million that she lent it herself.[278]
Secretary of State[link]
Main article: Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State
Nomination and confirmation[link]
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Wikinews has related news: Hillary Clinton nominated as US Secretary of State |
In mid-November 2008, President-elect Obama and Clinton discussed the possibility of her serving as U.S. Secretary of State in his administration,[279] and on November 21, reports indicated that she had accepted the position.[280] On December 1, President-elect Obama formally announced that Clinton would be his nominee for Secretary of State.[281] Clinton said she was reluctant to leave the Senate, but that the new position represented a "difficult and exciting adventure".[281] As part of the nomination and in order to relieve concerns of conflict of interest, Bill Clinton agreed to accept several conditions and restrictions regarding his ongoing activities and fundraising efforts for the Clinton Presidential Center and Clinton Global Initiative.[282]
The appointment required a Saxbe fix, passed and signed into law in December 2008.[283] Confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began on January 13, 2009, a week before the Obama inauguration; two days later, the Committee voted 16–1 to approve Clinton.[284] By this time, her public approval rating had reached 65 percent, the highest point since the Lewinsky scandal.[285] On January 21, 2009, Clinton was confirmed in the full Senate by a vote of 94–2.[286] Clinton took the oath of office of Secretary of State and resigned from the Senate that same day.[287] She became the first former First Lady to serve in the United States Cabinet.[288]
Tenure[link]
Clinton spent her initial days as Secretary of State telephoning dozens of world leaders and indicating that U.S. foreign policy would change direction: "We have a lot of damage to repair."[289] She advocated an expanded role in global economic issues for the State Department and cited the need for an increased U.S. diplomatic presence, especially in Iraq where the Defense Department had conducted diplomatic missions.[290] She pushed for a larger international affairs budget;[290] the Obama administration's proposed 2010 budget contained a 7 percent increase for the State Department and other international programs.[291] In March 2009, Clinton prevailed over Vice President Joe Biden on an internal debate to send an additional 20,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan.[292] An elbow fracture and subsequent painful recuperation caused Clinton to miss two foreign trips in June 2009.[292][293]
Clinton announced the most ambitious of her departmental reforms, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, which establishes specific objectives for the State Department's diplomatic missions abroad; it is modeled after a similar process in the Defense Department that she was familiar with from her time on the Senate Armed Services Committee.[294] (The first such review was issued in late 2010 and called for the U.S. leading through "civilian power" as a cost-effective way of responding to international challenges and defusing crises.[295] It also sought to institutionalize goals of empowering women throughout the world.[156]) In September, Clinton unveiled the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative at the annual meeting of her husband's Clinton Global Initiative.[296] The new initiative seeks to battle hunger worldwide as a strategic part of U.S. foreign policy, rather than just react to food shortage emergencies as they occur, and emphasizes the role of women farmers.[296] In October, on a trip to Switzerland, Clinton's intervention overcame last-minute snags and saved the signing of an historic Turkish–Armenian accord that established diplomatic relations and opened the border between the two long-hostile nations.[297][298] In Pakistan, she engaged in several unusually blunt discussions with students, talk show hosts, and tribal elders, in an attempt to repair the Pakistani image of the U.S.[154]
In a major speech in January 2010, Clinton drew analogies between the Iron Curtain and the free and unfree Internet.[299] Chinese officials reacted negatively towards it, and it garnered attention as the first time a senior American official had clearly defined the Internet as a key element of American foreign policy.[300] By mid-2010, Clinton and Obama had forged a good working relationship; she was a team player within the administration and a defender of it to the outside, and was careful that neither she nor her husband would upstage him.[301] She met with him weekly, but did not have the close, daily relationship that some of her predecessors had had with their presidents.[301] In July 2010, Secretary Clinton visited Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan and Afghanistan, all the while preparing for the July 31 wedding of daughter Chelsea amid much media attention.[302] In late November 2010, Clinton led the U.S. damage control effort after WikiLeaks released confidential State Department cables containing blunt statements and assessments by U.S. and foreign diplomats.[303][304] A few of the cables released by WikiLeaks concerned Clinton directly: they revealed that directions to members of the foreign service, written by the CIA, had gone out in 2009 under her (systematically attached) name to gather biometric and other personal details on foreign diplomats, including officials of the United Nations and U.S. allies.[305][306][307]
The 2011 Egyptian protests posed the biggest foreign policy crisis for the administration yet.[308] Clinton was in the forefront of U.S. public response to it, quickly evolving from an early assessment that the government of Hosni Mubarak was "stable" to a stance that there needed to be an "orderly transition [to] a democratic participatory government" to a condemnation of violence against the protesters.[309][310] Obama also came to rely upon Clinton's advice, organization, and personal connections in the behind-the-scenes response to developments.[308] As protests spread throughout the region, Clinton was at the forefront of a U.S. response that she recognized was sometimes contradictory, backing some regimes while supporting protesters against others.[311] As the 2011 Libyan civil war took place, Clinton's shift in favor of military intervention was a key turning point in overcoming internal administration opposition and gaining the backing for, and Arab and U.N. approval of, the 2011 military intervention in Libya.[311][312][313] She later used U.S. allies and what she called "convening power" to help keep the Libyan rebels unified as they eventually overthrew the Gaddafi regime.[313] Following the successful May 2011 U.S. mission to kill Osama bin Laden, Clinton played a key role in the administration's decision not to release photographs of the dead al-Qaeda leader.[314] In a December 2011 speech before the United Nations Human Rights Council, she said that the U.S. would advocate for gay rights abroad and that "Gay rights are human rights" and that "It should never be a crime to be gay."[315] The same month saw her conclude the first visit to Burma by a U.S. secretary of state since 1955, as she met with Burmese leaders as well as opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and sought to support the 2011 Burmese democratic reforms.[316]
Throughout her tenure, Clinton has looked towards "smart power" as the strategy for asserting U.S. leadership and values, combining military strength with U.S. capacities in global economics, development aid, and technology.[313] She has also greatly expanded the State Department's use of social media, including Facebook and Twitter, both to get its message out and to help empower people vis à via their rulers.[313] And in the Mideast turmoil, Clinton particularly saw an opportunity to advance one of the central themes of her tenure, the empowerment and welfare of women and girls worldwide.[156] By now Clinton had set the record for most-traveled Secretary of State for a comparable period of time, logging 465,000 miles (748,000 km) and visiting 79 countries.[156] (Time magazine wrote that "Clinton's endurance is legendary."[313]) Throughout her term, Clinton had indicated she had no interest in running for president again[317] or in holding any other office. In March 2011, she expanded upon that by saying she was not interested in serving a second term as Secretary of State should Obama be re-elected in 2012.[312][318]
Political positions[link]
Main article: Political positions of Hillary Rodham Clinton
In a Gallup poll conducted during May 2005, 54 percent of respondents considered Clinton a liberal, 30 percent considered her a moderate, and 9 percent considered her a conservative.[319]
Several organizations attempted to measure Clinton's place on the political spectrum scientifically using her Senate votes. National Journal's 2004 study of roll-call votes assigned Clinton a rating of 30 in the political spectrum, relative to the then-current Senate, with a rating of 1 being most liberal and 100 being most conservative.[320] National Journal's subsequent rankings placed her as the 32nd-most liberal senator in 2006 and 16th-most liberal senator in 2007.[321] A 2004 analysis by political scientists Joshua D. Clinton of Princeton University, Simon Jackman and Doug Rivers of Stanford University found her to be likely the sixth-to-eighth-most liberal Senator.[322] The Almanac of American Politics, edited by Michael Barone and Richard E. Cohen, rated her votes from 2003 through 2006 as liberal or conservative, with 100 as the highest rating, in three areas: Economic, Social, and Foreign; averaged for the four years, the ratings are: Economic = 75 liberal, 23 conservative; Social = 83 liberal, 6 conservative; Foreign = 66 liberal, 30 conservative. Average = 75 liberal, 20 conservative.[nb 11]
Interest groups also gave Clinton scores based on how well her Senate votes aligned with the positions of the group. Through 2008, she had an average lifetime 90 percent "Liberal Quotient" from Americans for Democratic Action[323] and a lifetime 8 percent rating from the American Conservative Union.[324]
Writings and recordings[link]
As First Lady of the United States, Clinton published a weekly syndicated newspaper column titled "Talking It Over" from 1995 to 2000, distributed by Creators Syndicate.[325] It focused on her experiences and those of women, children and families she met during her travels around the world.[1]
In 1996, Clinton presented a vision for the children of America in the book It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us. The book made the New York Times Best Seller list and Clinton received the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 1997 for the book's audio recording.[326]
Other books released by Clinton when she was First Lady include Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets (1998) and An Invitation to the White House: At Home with History (2000). In 2001, she wrote an afterword to the children's book Beatrice's Goat.[327]
In 2003, Clinton released a 562-page autobiography, Living History. In anticipation of high sales, publisher Simon & Schuster paid Clinton a near-record advance of $8 million.[328] The book set a first-week sales record for a nonfiction work,[329] went on to sell more than one million copies in the first month following publication,[330] and was translated into twelve foreign languages.[331] Clinton's audio recording of the book earned her a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.[332]
Cultural and political image[link]
Hillary Clinton has frequently been featured in the media and popular culture from a wide spectrum of perspectives. In 1995, New York Times writer Todd Purdum labeled Clinton "the First Lady as Rorschach test",[333] an assessment echoed at the time by feminist writer and activist Betty Friedan, who said, "Coverage of Hillary Clinton is a massive Rorschach test of the evolution of women in our society."[334]
Clinton has often been described in the popular media as a polarizing figure,[333][335][336][337][338][339] with some arguing otherwise.[339][340] James Madison University political science professor Valerie Sulfaro's 2007 study used the American National Election Studies' "feeling thermometer" polls, which measure the degree of opinion about a political figure, to find that such polls during Clinton's First Lady years confirm the "conventional wisdom that Hillary Clinton is a polarizing figure", with the added insight that "affect towards Mrs. Clinton as first lady tended to be very positive or very negative, with a fairly constant one fourth of respondents feeling ambivalent or neutral."[341] University of California, San Diego political science professor Gary Jacobson's 2006 study of partisan polarization found that in a state-by-state survey of job approval ratings of the state's senators, Clinton had the fourth-largest partisan difference of any senator, with a 50 percentage point difference in approval between New York's Democrats and Republicans.[342]
Northern Illinois University political science professor Barbara Burrell's 2000 study found that Clinton's Gallup poll favorability numbers broke sharply along partisan lines throughout her time as First Lady, with 70 to 90 percent of Democrats typically viewing her favorably while 20 to 40 percent of Republicans did not.[343] University of Wisconsin–Madison political science professor Charles Franklin analyzed her record of favorable versus unfavorable ratings in public opinion polls, and found that there was more variation in them during her First Lady years than her Senate years.[344] The Senate years showed favorable ratings around 50 percent and unfavorable ratings in the mid-40 percent range; Franklin noted that, "This sharp split is, of course, one of the more widely remarked aspects of Sen. Clinton's public image."[344] McGill University professor of history Gil Troy titled his 2006 biography of her Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady, and wrote that after the 1992 campaign, Clinton "was a polarizing figure, with 42 percent [of the public] saying she came closer to their values and lifestyle than previous first ladies and 41 percent disagreeing."[345] Troy further wrote that Hillary Clinton "has been uniquely controversial and contradictory since she first appeared on the national radar screen in 1992"[346] and that she "has alternately fascinated, bedeviled, bewitched, and appalled Americans."[346]
File:RoseLawFirmRear2008.jpg
Clinton worked at Rose Law Firm for fifteen years. Her professional career and political involvement set the stage for public reaction to her as First Lady.
Burrell's study found women consistently rating Clinton more favorably than men by about ten percentage points during her First Lady years.[343] Jacobson's study found a positive correlation across all senators between being women and receiving a partisan-polarized response.[342] Colorado State University communication studies professor Karrin Vasby Anderson describes the First Lady position as a "site" for American womanhood, one ready made for the symbolic negotiation of female identity.[347] In particular, Anderson states there has been a cultural bias towards traditional first ladies and a cultural prohibition against modern first ladies; by the time of Clinton, the First Lady position had become a site of heterogeneity and paradox.[347] Burrell, as well as biographers Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta, Jr., note that Clinton achieved her highest approval ratings as First Lady late in 1998, not for professional or political achievements of her own, but for being seen as the victim of her husband's very public infidelity.[186][343] University of Pennsylvania communications professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson saw Hillary Clinton as an exemplar of the double bind, who though able to live in a "both-and" world of both career and family, nevertheless "became a surrogate on whom we projected our attitudes about attributes once thought incompatible", leading to her being placed in a variety of no-win situations.[334] Quinnipiac University media studies professor Lisa Burns found press accounts frequently framing Clinton both as an exemplar of the modern professional working mother and as a political interloper interested in usurping power for herself.[348] University of Indianapolis English professor Charlotte Templin found political cartoonists using a variety of stereotypes – such as gender reversal, radical feminist as emasculator, and the wife the husband wants to get rid of – to portray Hillary Clinton as violating gender norms.[349]
Over fifty books and scholarly works have been written about Hillary Clinton, from many different perspectives. A 2006 survey by The New York Observer found "a virtual cottage industry" of "anti-Clinton literature",[350] put out by Regnery Publishing and other conservative imprints,[350] with titles such as Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House, Hillary's Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton's Ruthless Agenda to Take the White House, and Can She Be Stopped? : Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless .... Books praising Clinton did not sell nearly as well[350] (other than the memoirs written by her and her husband). When she ran for Senate in 2000, a number of fundraising groups such as Save Our Senate and the Emergency Committee to Stop Hillary Rodham Clinton sprang up to oppose her.[351] Van Natta, Jr., found that Republican and conservative groups viewed her as a reliable "bogeyman" to mention in fundraising letters,[352] on a par with Ted Kennedy and the equivalent of Democratic and liberal appeals mentioning Newt Gingrich.[352]
Going into the early stages of her presidential campaign for 2008, a Time magazine cover showed a large picture of her, with two checkboxes labeled "Love Her", "Hate Her",[353] while Mother Jones titled its profile of her "Harpy, Hero, Heretic: Hillary".[354] Democratic netroots activists consistently rated Clinton very low in polls of their desired candidates,[355] while some conservative figures such as Bruce Bartlett and Christopher Ruddy were declaring a Hillary Clinton presidency not so bad after all[356][357] and an October 2007 cover of The American Conservative magazine was titled "The Waning Power of Hillary Hate".[358] By December 2007, communications professor Jamieson observed that there was a large amount of misogyny present about Clinton on the Internet,[359] up to and including Facebook and other sites devoted to depictions reducing Clinton to sexual humiliation.[359] She noted that, in response to widespread comments on Clinton's laugh,[360] that "We know that there's language to condemn female speech that doesn't exist for male speech. We call women's speech shrill and strident. And Hillary Clinton's laugh was being described as a cackle."[359] Use of the "bitch" epithet, which taken place against Clinton going back to her First Lady days and was seen by Karrin Vasby Anderson as a tool of containment against women in American politics,[361] flourished during the campaign, especially on the Internet but via conventional media as well.[362] Following Clinton's "choked up moment" and related incidents before the January 2008 New Hampshire primary, both The New York Times and Newsweek found that discussion of gender's role in the campaign had moved into the national political discourse.[363][364] Newsweek editor Jon Meacham summed the relationship between Clinton and the American public by saying that the New Hampshire events, "brought an odd truth to light: though Hillary Rodham Clinton has been on the periphery or in the middle of national life for decades ... she is one of the most recognizable but least understood figures in American politics."[364]
Once she became Secretary of State, Clinton's image seemed to dramatically improve among the American public and become one of a respected world figure.[365] She gained consistently high approval ratings (by 2011, the highest of her career except for during the Lewinsky scandal),[366] and her favorable-unfavorable ratings during 2010 and 2011 were easily the highest of any active, nationally prominent American political figure.[365][367][368] She continued to do well in Gallup's most admired man and woman poll; in 2011 she was named the most admired woman by Americans for the tenth straight time and the sixteenth time overall.[369]
Awards and honors[link]
Main article: Hillary Rodham Clinton awards and honors
Clinton has received many awards and honors during her career from American and international organizations for her activities concerning health, women, and children.
Electoral history[link]
Main article: Electoral history of Hillary Rodham Clinton
| New York United States Senate election, 2000 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| Democratic | Hillary Rodham Clinton | 3,747,310 | 55.3 | ||
| Republican | Rick Lazio | 2,915,730 | 43.0 | ||
| New York United States Senate election, 2006 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| Democratic | Hillary Rodham Clinton | 3,008,428 | 67.0 | +11.7 | |
| Republican | John Spencer | 1,392,189 | 31.0 | -12.0 | |
Notes[link]
- ^ In 1995, Hillary Clinton said her mother had named her after Sir Edmund Hillary, who, with Sherpa Tenzing, was the first mountaineer to scale Mount Everest, and that was the reason for the unusual "two L's" spelling of her name. However, the Everest climb did not take place until 1953, more than five years after she was born. In October 2006, a Clinton spokeswoman said she was not named after the mountain climber. Instead, this account of her name's origin "was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add." See Hakim, Danny (October 17, 2006). "Hillary, Not as in the Mount Everest Guy". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/nyregion/17hillary.html. Retrieved April 25, 2008.
- ^ Gerstein, Josh (November 26, 2007). "Hillary Clinton's Radical Summer". The New York Sun. http://www.nysun.com/national/hillary-clintons-radical-summer/66933/. Retrieved May 9, 2009. Gerstein finds it is unclear exactly which cases beyond child custody ones Rodham worked on at the Treuhaft firm. Anti-Clinton writers such as Barbara Olson would later charge Hillary Clinton with never repudiating Treuhaft's ideology, and for retaining social and political ties with his wife and fellow communist Jessica Mitford. (Olson 1999, pp. 56–57) Research by The New York Sun in 2007 revealed that Mitford and Hillary Clinton were not close, and had a falling out over a 1980 Arkansas prisoner case. See Gerstein, Josh (November 27, 2007). "Hillary Clinton's Left Hook". The New York Sun. http://www.nysun.com/national/hillary-clintons-left-hook/67002/. Retrieved May 9, 2009.
- ^ For the start date, see Brock 1996, p. 96. Secondary sources give inconsistent dates as to when her time as chair ended. Primary sources indicate that sometime between about April 1980 and September 1980, Rodham was replaced as chair by F. William McCalpin. See Subcommittee On The Departments Of State, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations; Justice,; Commerce,; Judiciary, the; Agencies, Related (1980). House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Departments of State, Justice, Commerce, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations. U.S. House of Representatives. http://books.google.com/?id=KWRBPOdZCdAC&q=%22legal+services+corporation%22+rodham+baby&dq=%22legal+services+corporation%22+rodham+baby. Rodham is still chair after having given birth "a few weeks ago"; Chelsea Clinton was born on February 27, 1980. And see "Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice, of the Committee of the Judiciary, House of Representatives". Background release, Legal Services Corporation, September 1980. U.S. House of Representatives. September 21, 27, 1979. http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/cgi-bin/lib/hearing.cgi?file=81601609%20page=0001. pp. 388–403, exact reference p. 398, which shows McCalpin as chair in September 1980.
- ^ Bill Clinton's advisers thought her use of her maiden name to be one of the reasons for his 1980 gubernatorial reelection loss. During the following winter, Vernon Jordan, Jr. suggested to Hillary Rodham that she start using the name Clinton, and she began to do so publicly with her husband's February 1982 campaign announcement. She later wrote that "I learned the hard way that some voters in Arkansas were seriously offended by the fact that I kept my maiden name" (Clinton 2003, pp. 91–93; see also Morris 1996, p. 282).
- ^ During the political damage control over the Gennifer Flowers episode during the 1992 campaign, Hillary Clinton said in the joint 60 Minutes interview, "I'm not sitting here as some little woman 'standing by my man' like Tammy Wynette. I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect him, and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together." The seemingly sneering reference to country music provoked immediate criticism that Clinton was culturally tone-deaf, and Tammy Wynette herself did not like the remark because her classic song "Stand by Your Man" is not written in the first person. See "2000: Hillary Clinton is first First Lady in Senate". BBC News Online. November 7, 2000. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/7/newsid_4385000/4385582.stm. Retrieved October 1, 2007. Wynette added that Clinton had "offended every true country music fan and every person who has 'made it on their own' with no one to take them to a White House." See Troy 2006, p. 42. A few days later, on Prime Time Live, Hillary Clinton apologized to Wynette. Clinton would later write that she had been careless in her choice of words and that "the fallout from my reference to Tammy Wynette was instant – as it deserved to be – and brutal." See Clinton 2003, p. 108. The two women later resolved their differences, with Wynette appearing at a Clinton fund raiser.
- ^ Less than two months after the Tammy Wynette remarks, Hillary Clinton was facing questions about whether she could have avoided possible conflicts of interest between her governor husband and work given to the Rose Law Firm, when she remarked, "I've done the best I can to lead my life ... You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life" (Clinton 2003, p. 109). The "cookies and teas" part of this statement prompted even more culture-based criticism of Clinton's apparent distaste for women who had chosen to be homemakers; the remark became a recurring campaign liability (Bernstein 2007, pp. 205–206). Clinton subsequently offered up some cookie recipes as a way of making amends, and would later write of her chagrin: "Besides, I've done quite a lot of cookie baking in my life, and tea-pouring too!" (Clinton 2003, p. 109).
- ^ The Eleanor Roosevelt "discussions" were first reported in 1996 by Washington Post writer Bob Woodward; they had begun from the start of Hillary Clinton's time as First Lady. See Clines, Francis X. (June 25, 1996). "Mrs. Clinton Calls Sessions Intellectual, Not Spiritual". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/25/us/mrs-clinton-calls-sessions-intellectual-not-spiritual.html. Following the Democrats' loss of congressional control in the 1994 elections, Clinton had engaged the services of human potential expert Jean Houston. Houston encouraged Clinton to pursue the Roosevelt connection, and while no psychic techniques were used with Clinton, critics and comics immediately suggested that Clinton was holding séances with Eleanor Roosevelt. The White House stated that this was merely a brainstorming exercise, and a private poll later indicated that most of the public believed these were indeed just imaginary conversations, with the remainder believing that communication with the dead was actually possible. See Wheen, Francis (July 26, 2000). "Never mind the pollsters". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,347240,00.html. Retrieved October 2, 2007. In her 2003 autobiography, Clinton titled an entire chapter "Conversations with Eleanor", and stated that holding "imaginary conversations [is] actually a useful mental exercise to help analyze problems, provided you choose the right person to visualize. Eleanor Roosevelt was ideal [as a trail-blazer and controversial First Lady]." (Clinton 2003, pp. 258–259)
- ^ Clinton was referring to the Arkansas Project and its funder Richard Mellon Scaife, Kenneth Starr's connections to Scaife, Regnery Publishing and its connections to Lucianne Goldberg and Linda Tripp, Jerry Falwell, and others. See Kirn, Walter (February 9, 1998). "Persecuted or Paranoid? A look at the motley characters behind Hillary Clinton's 'vast right-wing conspiracy'". Time. http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/02/02/time/kirn.html.
- ^ Hillary Clinton said to a news correspondent asking for reaction to an Obama remark earlier in the day about his possibly representing false hope: "I would point to the fact that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done. That dream became a reality, the power of that dream became real in people's lives because we had a president who said we are going to do it, and actually got it accomplished." See for transcript: Hulse, Carl; Healy, Patrick (January 11, 2008). "Bill Clinton Tries to Tamp Down 'Fairy-Tale' Remark About Obama". The New York Times. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/bill-clinton-tries-to-tamp-down-fairy-tale-remark-about-obama/. Retrieved January 28, 2008. See for actual interview: Garrett, Major (January 7, 2008). "Clinton's Candid Assessment". Fox News. http://bourbonroom.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/01/07/clintons-candid-assessment/. Retrieved January 28, 2008. [dead link]
- ^ "2008 Democratic Popular Vote". RealClearPolitics. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/democratic_vote_count.html. Retrieved July 8, 2008. The popular vote count for a nomination process is unofficial, and meaningless in determining the nominee. It is difficult to come up with precise totals due to some caucus states not reporting popular vote totals and thus having to be estimated. It is further difficult to compare Clinton and Obama's totals, due to only her name having been on the ballot in the Michigan primary.
- ^ See Barone, Michael; Cohen, Richard E. (2008). The Almanac of American Politics. National Journal. p. 1126. And 2006 edition of same, 1152. The scores for individual years are [highest rating 100, format: liberal, (conservative)]: 2003: Economic = 90 (7), Social = 85 (0), Foreign = 79 (14). Average = 85 (7). 2004: Economic = 63 (36), Social = 82 (0), Foreign = 58 (41). Average = 68 (26). 2005: Economic = 84 (15), Social = 83 (10), Foreign = 66 (29). Average = 78 (18). 2006: Economic = 63 (35), Social = 80 (14), Foreign = 62 (35). Average = 68 (28).
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- ^ a b c Brock 1996, p. 4. Her father was an outspoken Republican, while her mother kept quiet but was "basically a Democrat." See also Bernstein 2007, p. 16
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- ^ a b c Bernstein 2007, p. 29
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- ^ Bernstein 2007, pp. 313–314
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- ^ Maraniss 1995, p. 317.
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- ^ a b c Data for table is from "Favorability: People in the News: Hillary Clinton". The Gallup Organization. 2009. http://www.gallup.com/poll/1618/Favorability-People-News.aspx. Retrieved April 6, 2009. See also Franklin, Charles H. (January 21, 2007). "Hillary Clinton, Favorable/Unfavorable, 1993–2007". Political Arithmetik. http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com/2007/01/hillary-clinton-favorableunfavorable.html. Retrieved January 26, 2008. for confirmation of trend line and historical interpretation.
- ^ Bernstein 2007, pp. 170–175
- ^ Smith, Sally Bedell (2007). For Love of Politics: Inside the Clinton White House. Random House. p. 117. ISBN 1-4000-6324-8.
- ^ Gergen, David (2000). Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership Nixon to Clinton. Simon & Schuster. p. 280.
- ^ a b Bernstein 2007, pp. 400–402
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- ^ Richter, Paul; Pierson, David (January 23, 2010). "Sino-U.S. ties hit new snag over Internet issues". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-google-china23-2010jan23,0,3919601.story.
- ^ Landler, Mark; Wong, Edward (January 22, 2010). "China Rebuffs Clinton on Internet Warning". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/asia/23china.html.
- ^ a b Landler, Mark; Cooper, Helene (March 19, 2010). "From Bitter Campaign to Strong Alliance". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/us/politics/19policy.html.
- ^ Noveck, Jocelyn (July 24, 2010). "New role for Clintons: parents of the bride". Chicago Sun-Times. http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2530514,CST-NWS-clinton25.article.
- ^ Sheridan, Mary Beth (November 30, 2010). "Clinton treads carefully in leading massive damage-control campaign". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/29/AR2010112906258.html.
- ^ Dougherty, Jill; Labott, Elise (December 16, 2010). "WikiLeaks stirs anarchy online". CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/15/sweep.wikileaks/index.html.
- ^ Booth, Roger; Borger, Julian (November 28, 2010). "US diplomats spied on UN leadership". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-spying-un.
- ^ MacAskill, Ewen; Booth, Robert (December 2, 2010). "CIA drew up UN spying wishlist for diplomats". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/wikileaks-cables-cia-united-nations.
- ^ Tandon, Shaun (December 2, 2010). "Arrest Warrant for WikiLeaks Chief as Chaos Spreads". The China Post. Agence France-Presse. http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/americas/2010/12/02/282146/Arrest-warrant.htm.
- ^ a b Thrush, Glenn (February 2, 2011). "Hillary Clinton plays key role in dance with Hosni Mubarak". Politico. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48658.html. Retrieved February 5, 2011.
- ^ "Factbox – Evolution of U.S. stance on Egypt". Reuters. February 2, 2011. http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFN0219913120110202?sp=true. Retrieved February 4, 2011.
- ^ "Hillary urges probe into new Cairo violence". The Nation. February 4, 2011. http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/International/04-Feb-2011/Hillary-urges-probe-into-new-Cairo-violence.
- ^ a b Cooper, Helene; Myers, Steven Lee (March 18, 2011). "Obama Takes Hard Line With Libya After Shift by Clinton". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/africa/19policy.html. Retrieved March 20, 2011.
- ^ a b Thrush, Glenn (March 17, 2011). "Day after saying no second term, a big win for Hillary Clinton". Politico. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51515.html. Retrieved March 17, 2011.
- ^ a b c d e Calabresi, Massimo (November 7, 2011). "Hillary Clinton and the Rise of Smart Power". Time: pp. 26–31.
- ^ Ambinder, Marc; Cooper, Matthew (May 4, 2011). "Why Obama Nixed the Photo Release". National Journal. http://www.nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/why-obama-nixed-the-photo-release-20110504.
- ^ "Hillary Clinton declares 'gay rights are human rights'". BBC News Online. December 7, 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16062937.
- ^ Burke, Jason (November 30, 2011). "Hillary Clinton begins Burma visit". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/hillary-clinton-burma-visit-reform-hopes.
- ^ Barr, Andy (October 14, 2009). "Hillary Clinton: I'd have hired Barack Obama". Politico. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28278.html. Retrieved October 14, 2009.
- ^ "Clinton says no to second term". CNN. March 16, 2011. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/16/clinton-running-for-president/. Retrieved March 17, 2011.
- ^ "Poll: Mixed messages for Hillary Clinton". CNN. May 26, 2005. http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/26/hillary.clinton/index.html. Retrieved February 5, 2007.
- ^ Curry, Tom (July 14, 2005). "Clinton burnishes hawkish image". msnbc.com. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8573139/. Retrieved August 23, 2006.
- ^ Friel, Brian; Cohen, Richard E.; Victor, Kirk (January 31, 2008). "Obama: Most Liberal Senator In 2007". National Journal. http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/. Retrieved April 25, 2008.
- ^ Clinton, Joshua D.; Jackman, Simon; Rivers, Doug (October 2004). ""The Most Liberal Senator"? Analyzing and Interpreting Congressional Roll Calls" (PDF). Political Science & Politics: 805–811. http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/TheMostLiberalSenator-Clinton.pdf.
- ^ "Voting Records". Americans for Democratic Action. http://www.adaction.org/pages/publications/voting-records.php. Retrieved March 21, 2009. Average consists of a 95 in 2001 through 2004 and 2006, a 100 in 2005, a 75 in 2007, and a 70 in 2008 (the decline in the final two years was due to missed votes while campaigning for president).
- ^ "2008 U.S. Senate Votes". American Conservative Union. http://www.acuratings.org/2008senate.htm. Retrieved March 21, 2009. [dead link] Lifetime rating is given.[dead link]
- ^ "Hillary Rodham Clinton – Talking It Over". Creators Syndicate. http://www.creators.com/opinion/hillary-clinton.html. Retrieved August 24, 2007.
- ^ Bernstein 2007, p. 446
- ^ Apuzzo, Matt (November 16, 2005). "Read a Book, Buy a Goat". The Day. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=eyAiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=rHIFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2745,3345580.
- ^ Bernstein 2007, p. 544
- ^ Donahue, Deirdre (June 17, 2003). "Clinton memoir tops Best-Selling Books list". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2003-06-17-hillary-list_x.htm. Retrieved January 11, 2008.
- ^ "Clinton's Book Sales Top 1 Million". Associated Press. July 9, 2003. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-75361570.html. Retrieved May 9, 2009.
- ^ "Hillary Rodham Clinton". William J. Clinton Presidential Center. http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org/the-administration/hillary-rodham-clinton. Retrieved May 9, 2009.
- ^ "Gorbachev and Clinton win Grammy". BBC News Online. February 9, 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3472495.stm. Retrieved January 10, 2008.
- ^ a b Purdum, Todd S (July 24, 1995). "The First Lady's Newest Role: Newspaper Columnist". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/24/us/the-first-lady-s-newest-role-newspaper-columnist.html.
- ^ a b Jamieson, Kathleen Hall (1995). "Hillary Clinton as Rorschach Test". Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership. Oxford University Press. pp. 22–25. ISBN 0-19-508940-5.
- ^ Dowd, Maureen (May 18, 1992). "Hillary Clinton as Aspiring First Lady: Role Model, or a 'Hall Monitor' Type?". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/18/us/1992-campaign-candidate-s-wife-hillary-clinton-aspiring-first-lady-role-model.html.
- ^ Sullivan, Amy (July/August 2005). "Hillary in 2008?". Washington Monthly. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0507.sullivan1.html. Retrieved September 30, 2007.
- ^ Daniel Schorr (July 16, 2006). Hillary Clinton's Polarizing Force as a Candidate (audio). National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5560786. Retrieved February 5, 2007.
- ^ Cox, Ana Marie (August 19, 2006). "How Americans View Hillary: Popular but Polarizing". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1229053,00.html. Retrieved February 5, 2007.
- ^ a b Davis, Lanny (October 10, 2007). "Hillary Clinton: Not Polarizing and Highly Electable". The Hill. http://pundits.thehill.com/2007/10/10/hillary-clinton-not-polarizing-and-highly-electable/. Retrieved March 3, 2008.
- ^ Estrich, Susan (2005). The Case for Hillary Clinton. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-083988-0. pp. 66–68.
- ^ Sulfaro, Valerie A. (September 2007). "Affective evaluations of first ladies: a comparison of Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush" (Fee or registration required). Presidential Studies Quarterly 37 (3): 486–514. DOI:10.1111/j.1741-5705.2007.02608.x. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-33219066_ITM.
- ^ a b Jacobson, Gary (August 2006) (Proceedings). Partisan Differences in Job Approval Ratings of George W. Bush and U.S. Senators in the States: An Exploration. Annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.
- ^ a b c Burrell, Barbara (October 2000). "Hillary Rodham Clinton as first lady: the people's perspective". The Social Science Journal 37 (4): 529–546. DOI:10.1016/S0362-3319(00)00094-X.
- ^ a b Franklin, Charles H (January 21, 2007). "Hillary Clinton, Favorable/Unfavorable, 1993–2007". Political Arithmetik. http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com/2007/01/hillary-clinton-favorableunfavorable.html. Retrieved January 26, 2008.
- ^ Troy 2006, p. 60.
- ^ a b Troy 2006, p. 4.
- ^ a b Anderson, Karrin Vasby (2003). "The First Lady: A Site of 'American Womanhood'". In Molly Meijer Wertheimer. Inventing a Voice: The Rhetoric of American First Ladies of the Twentieth Century. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 21. ISBN 0-7425-2971-1.
- ^ Burns 2008, pp. 135–136, 140–141.
- ^ Templin, Charlotte (1999). "Hillary Clinton as Threat to Gender Norms: Cartoon Images of the First Lady". Journal of Communication Inquiry 23 (1): 20–36. DOI:10.1177/0196859999023001002.
- ^ a b c Smith, Ben (March 12, 2006). "Da Hillary Code". The New York Observer. http://www.observer.com/node/38532. Retrieved October 3, 2007.
- ^ Levy, Clifford J (October 27, 2000). "Clinton Rivals Raise Little Besides Rage". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/27/nyregion/clinton-rivals-raise-little-besides-rage.html. Retrieved September 29, 2007.
- ^ a b Van Natta Jr., Don (July 10, 1999). "Hillary Clinton's Campaign Spurs A Wave of G.O.P. Fund-Raising". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/10/us/hillary-clinton-s-campaign-spurs-a-wave-of-gop-fund-raising.html.
- ^ "The Presidential Ambitions of Hillary Clinton". Time. August 26, 2006. http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20060828,00.html. Retrieved September 27, 2007.
- ^ Hitt, Jack (January/February 2007). "Harpy, Hero, Heretic: Hillary". Mother Jones. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/harpy_hero_heretic_hillary.html. Retrieved October 7, 2007.
- ^ Brooks, David (September 25, 2007). "The Center Holds". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/opinion/25brooks.html. Retrieved September 30, 2007.
- ^ Bartlett, Bruce (May 1, 2007). "Get Ready for Hillary". Creators Syndicate. http://www.creators.com/opinion/bruce-bartlett/conservatives-for-hillary.html. Retrieved September 30, 2007.
- ^ Kirkpatrick, David D. (February 19, 2007). "As Clinton Runs, Some Old Foes Stay on Sideline". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/us/politics/19clinton.html. Retrieved September 30, 2007.
- ^ "Contents: October 22, 2007 Issue". The American Conservative. October 22, 2007. Archived from the original on October 26, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20071026051323/http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_10_22/index1.html. Retrieved October 29, 2007.
- ^ a b c "Transcript: December 7, 2007". Bill Moyers Journal (PBS). December 7, 2007. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12072007/transcript1.html. Retrieved December 10, 2007.
- ^ Kurtz, Howard (October 3, 2007). "Hillary Chuckles; Pundits Snort". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/02/AR2007100201940.html. Retrieved December 10, 2007.
- ^ Anderson, Karrin Vasby (1999). "'Rhymes with rich': 'Bitch' as a tool of containment in contemporary American politics". Rhetoric & Public Affairs 2 (4): 599–623. DOI:10.1353/rap.2010.0082.
- ^ Falk, Erika (2007). Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns. University of Illinois Press. pp. 161–163. ISBN 0-252-07511-0.
- ^ Kantor, Jodi (January 10, 2008). "Women's Support for Clinton Rises in Wake of Perceived Sexism". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/us/politics/10women.html. Retrieved January 13, 2008.
- ^ a b Meacham, Jon (January 21, 2008). "Letting Hillary Be Hillary". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/91795. Retrieved March 16, 2008.
- ^ a b Torregrossa, Luisita Lopez (October 12, 2010). "Hillary Clinton Leads the Pack in Bloomberg Popularity Poll". Politics Daily. http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/12/hillary-clinton-leads-the-pack-in-bloomberg-popularity-poll/.
- ^ Saad, Lydia (March 30, 2011). "Hillary Clinton Favorable Near Her All-Time High". Gallup Organization. http://www.gallup.com/poll/146891/Hillary-Clinton-Favorable-Near-Time-High.aspx. Retrieved April 3, 2011.
- ^ [[Nate Silver |Silver, Nate]] (November 17, 2010). "Is Pelosi America's Most Unpopular Politician?". The New York Times. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/is-pelosi-americas-most-unpopular-politician/.
- ^ Bailey, Holly (September 16, 2011). "Poll: A third of Americans believe Clinton would've been a better president". Yahoo! News. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/poll-third-americans-believe-clinton-ve-better-president-152358495.html.
- ^ "Gallup: Obama, Hillary Clinton are most admired, again and again". Los Angeles Times. December 28, 2011. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/12/gallup-poll-obama-and-hillary-clinton-top-most-admired-list-again.html.
Bibliography[link]
- Bernstein, Carl (2007). A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-40766-9.
- Brock, David (1996). The Seduction of Hillary Rodham. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0-684-83451-0.
- Burns, Lisa M. (2008). First Ladies and the Fourth Estate: Press Framing of Presidential Wives. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-87580-391-1.
- Clinton, Hillary Rodham (2003). Living History. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-2224-5.
- Gerth, Jeff; Van Natta, Jr., Don (2007). Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-01742-6.
- Heilemann, John; Halperin, Mark (2010). Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-173363-6.
- Kornblut, Anne E. (2009). Notes from the Cracked Ceiling: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and What It Will Take for a Woman to Win. New York: Crown Books. ISBN 0-307-46425-3.
- Maraniss, David (1995). First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-87109-9.
- Morris, Roger (1996). Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America. New York: Henry Holt. ISBN 0-8050-2804-8.
- Olson, Barbara (1999). Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Washington: Regnery Publishing. ISBN 0-89526-197-9.
- Troy, Gil (2006). Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0-7006-1488-5.
Further reading[link]
Main article: List of books by or about Hillary Rodham Clinton
External links[link]
| Find more about Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wikipedia's sister projects: | |
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Images and media from Commons |
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News stories from Wikinews |
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Quotations from Wikiquote |
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Source texts from Wikisource |
- "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton". U.S. Department of State. http://www.state.gov/secretary/.
- "Hillary Clinton.com – Friends of Hillary". http://www.hillaryclinton.com.
- "Hillary Rodham Clinton". The White House. http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/first-ladies/hillaryclinton. Official Biography of First Lady Clinton
- Biography at WhoRunsGov.com at The Washington Post
- Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- Voting record maintained by The Washington Post
- Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart
- Issue positions and quotes at On the Issues
- Financial information at OpenSecrets.org
- Campaign finance reports and data at the Federal Election Commission
- Appearances on C-SPAN programs
- Appearances on Charlie Rose
- Appearances at the Internet Movie Database
- Collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Collected news and commentary at The Wall Street Journal
- Collected news and commentary at The Guardian
- Works by or about Hillary Rodham Clinton in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Open Directory Project
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Clinton, Hillary Rodham |
| Alternative names | Rodham, Hillary Diane |
| Short description | U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, U.S. First Lady |
| Date of birth | 1947-10-26 |
| Place of birth | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
Not to be confused with Christian Wolff.
| Christian Wulff | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| President of Germany | |
| In office 2 July 2010 – 17 February 2012 |
|
| Chancellor | Angela Merkel |
| Preceded by | Horst Köhler |
| Succeeded by | Joachim Gauck |
| Prime Minister of Lower Saxony | |
| In office 4 March 2003 – 30 June 2010 |
|
| Preceded by | Sigmar Gabriel |
| Succeeded by | David McAllister |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1959-06-19) 19 June 1959 (age 53) Osnabrück, West Germany (now Germany) |
| Political party | Christian Democratic Union |
| Spouse(s) | Christiane Wulff (m. 1988–2006, divorced) Bettina Körner (m. 2008–present) |
| Children | Annalena Linus |
| Alma mater | University of Osnabrück |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
| Signature |  |
| Website | Official website |
Christian Wilhelm Walter Wulff (German pronunciation: [ˈkʁɪstjan ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈvaltɐ vʊlf]; born 19 June 1959) is a German politician and lawyer. He served as the President of Germany from 2010 to 2012. A member of the Christian Democratic Union, he served as Prime Minister of the state of Lower Saxony from 2003 to 2010.[1] He was elected President in the 30 June 2010 presidential election, defeating opposition candidate Joachim Gauck and taking office immediately,[2] although he was not sworn in until 2 July.[3]
On 17 February 2012, Wulff resigned as President of Germany, facing the prospect of prosecution for allegations of corruption relating to his prior service as Prime Minister of Lower Saxony.[4]
Contents |
Early life and education[link]
Wulff was born in Osnabrück and is Roman Catholic. He was the first Roman Catholic to hold the post of President of Germany since Heinrich Lübke (1959–1969).[5] His father left the family, and he grew up with his mother. As a teenager, he took responsibility for the care of his younger sister, after his mother developed multiple sclerosis.[6] After completing his Abitur at the Ernst Moritz Arndt Gymnasium in Osnabrück, Wulff studied law with a specialisation in economics at the University of Osnabrück. He joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in 1975.[7] In 1987 and 1990, he passed the first and second state examinations in law, and has since worked as an attorney.
Political career[link]
Since 1975, Wulff has been a member of the CDU. From 1978 to 1980, he served as federal chairman of the Schülerunion, a political high school student organization affiliated with the Christian Democrats. From 1979 to 1983, he was on the executive board of the Junge Union and became its regional chairman in Lower Saxony in 1983. However, he decided to resign from the board in order to pursue his law degree, which he completed in 1986. The same year, he was elected a city councillor in his hometown. Since 1984, he has sat on the CDU's regional party council of Lower Saxony, serving as its chairman since 1994.
The Christian Democrats made Wulff candidate for Premier in the run-up of the 1994 Legislative Assembly elections. However, the popular incumbent Gerhard Schröder won and secured an absolute majority in the Lower Saxony legislature, leading some observers to doubt the wisdom of the provincial party nominating a young and neophyte candidate for Premier. After four years in opposition, the 1998 legislative assembly election brought another opportunity for Wulff to become Premier. Indeed, the federal Christian Democrat party, led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl, pinned their hopes on Wulff – a Wulff victory would have stopped the inevitable rise of Schröder to the Social Democrat nomination for Chancellor. However, supported by a wave of sympathy for his candidacy for chancellor in the 1998 federal election, Schröder was returned to power by an enhanced majority – leaving Wulff to serve five more years as provincial leader of the opposition.
Schröder won the 1998 federal election, leaving the post of Premier to his anointed successor, Interior minister Gerhard Glogowski. The latter soon stumbled over a scandal involving free travel paid by TUI and was succeeded by Sigmar Gabriel. In the wake of the 1999 scandal, as well as rising discontent with Schröder's federal cabinet, the Christian Democrats rose in the opinion polls and became a serious contender for power in the 2003 assembly election.
Wulff has been one of the four deputy chairmen of the CDU party at the federal level since 7 November 1998, and has been a board member of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation since 2003.
2003 state election[link]
With Lower Saxony announcing deeper cuts of education and municipal services, the stage was set for the 2003 election campaign. Wulff entered the race as the favourite to win the election and essentially campaigned on a platform of fiscal restraint and clear-cut reforms in the areas of law enforcement and education. Both issues were decisive in the assembly elections that led to a change in fortunes for the two major parties. The Christian Democrats, in the political wilderness since the 1990 Schröder victory, were returned to power in the Legislative Assembly, gaining 48.3% of the vote. Wulff was sworn in as Premier on 4 March 2003, as the head of a coalition between centre-right Christian Democrats and liberal Free Democrats (FDP).
Policies[link]
As Premier, Wulff pursued a multitude of reforms, including a restructuring of the primary education system in Lower Saxony, as well as an increase of police officers on the beat. When Wulff took office, Lower Saxony faced a severe budget crisis, resulting from years of public deficits. Painful cuts to public expenditure were enacted and implemented against considerable political resistance. The measures included cuts in university funding and in benefits for the blind. Other policies concern the reform of the administration (especially the abolition of certain district authorities). Budgetary problems have continued to overshadow Wulff's policies, albeit with somewhat less pressure. Many measures have remained controversial.
Prior to the 2005 Federal Election, Wulff had been mentioned as a potential candidate for the German chancellorship. Surprisingly, in a spring 2005 poll, 28 percent of all respondents named Wulff as their preferred candidate for the Christian Democrat nomination for Chancellor in the 2006 election.[8] As Wulff only began his first term as Premier in early 2003, he is likely to dismiss such speculations.[9] Speculation had particularly increased since the December 2004 Christian Democrat federal convention in Düsseldorf, when Wulff was re-elected deputy leader of the federal party with roughly 86 per cent of all delegates supporting him. However, the premature dissolution of the Bundestag in 2005 and the subsequent election of Chancellor Angela Merkel has largely put an end to further speculation about Wulff's future.
A Wulff candidacy for the CDU nomination for Chancellor was seen to appeal to northerners and liberals within the Christian Democrats. Outside the mold of a typical conservative, he may have been able to attract swing voters disillusioned with the slowness of reforms, as well as the rather high rates of unemployment in Germany. Indeed, the Premier worked on increasing his visibility beyond Lower Saxony's confines, particularly by appearing frequently on TV shows and giving interviews to the national newspapers. Moreover, Wulff is also acquiring a profile on a broad range of issues, including the reform of the German language, Medicare and social security reform, as well as a modernisation of Germany's federal constitution, the Grundgesetz.[10] In fact, the Premier recently criticised the consensus reached between the Christian Democrat and Social Democrat parties on the modernisation of Germany's constitution, stating that he felt that the provinces had not been given sufficient powers to deal with their own affairs. Wulff has also taken a conservative stand on nuclear energy, advocating an extension of the deadlines for the decommissioning of Germany's nuclear reactors.[11]
In a speech, Wulff also expressed his opposition to euthanasia and warned of a retreat of moral values. This can be seen as the first attempt to formulate a value-based agenda for the 2008 legislative assembly, and more importantly, the 2009 federal elections. In this context, it is important to note that Chancellor Angela Merkel had been severely criticized for a lack of emotional warmth during the 2005 federal election campaign, leading to a worse-than-expected result for the Christian Democrats.
Wulff announced on 8 January that Lower Saxony would become the first province to approve a new model according to which the government will temporarily pay part of the salaries for low-salary jobs, if the employers concerned are willing to employ an employee concerned on a long-term basis. This pilot is supposed to make new jobs more affordable in Germany's notoriously high-wages environment.[12]
Wulff and the 2005 federal elections[link]
Due to his popularity in Lower Saxony, and in federal opinion polls, Wulff was considered to be a contender for the office of Chancellor.
After the 23 May announcement that federal elections were to be advanced to September 2005, Wulff announced that he was not a candidate for the Christian Democrat nomination for Chancellor, particularly as he had not completed his first term as Premier of Lower Saxony. Instead, Wulff declared his support for Angela Merkel, the CDU leader in the Bundestag. Although there was speculation that Wulff would be given a position in the new government, entering federal politics, he remained Premier of Lower Saxony.
President of Germany[link]
Wulff was elected President of Germany on 30 June 2010 to follow Horst Köhler, who had resigned on 31 May 2010. He won 625 of 1242 votes on the third ballot of the Federal Convention.[13] He became Germany's youngest president at the age of 51[5] and was sworn in on 2 July 2010 in front of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat.
His main contender in the election was Joachim Gauck, a civil rights activist from East Germany and a former Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives. Himself not a member of any party, Gauck was nominated by the opposition SPD and Greens as their presidential candidate on 3 June.
Wulff was succeeded as Premier of Lower Saxony by David McAllister.[14] Wulff's candidacy for President of Germany in the 2010 presidential election was formally confirmed by Angela Merkel, Guido Westerwelle and Horst Seehofer, the heads of the CDU, FDP and CSU parties, during the evening of 3 June 2010.
In August 2011, President Wulff opened an economists' conference on with a speech on the euro. He criticized the European Central Bank (ECB), which had entered a second round of bond buy-ups from heavily indebted euro-zone nations, calling the plan to stabilize the euro "legally and politically questionable".[15]
Scandals and resignation[link]
In December 2011, allegations emerged over President Christian Wulff’s former ties with affluent businessmen. While he was still Premier of Lower Saxony, the state parliament inquired whether Wulff had any business ties with friend and millionaire entrepreneur Egon Geerkens. He denied that he had, concealing that he had received a private loan of some €500,000 from Geerkens' wife Edith in 2008 to purchase a house. Geerkens even admitted to managing the deal.[16] On 22 December, Wulff made a public statement apologizing for his handling of the loan affair and conceded that he should have made his personal records available more quickly. "That was not straightforward and I am sorry," he added.[17]
Just when the affair seemed to settle down, it was revealed that President Wulff had applied undue pressure on Springer Press to delay or even prevent initial revelations on the loan scandal until he was back from a visit abroad. When Wulff found out that the BILD tabloid was going to break the story, he called editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann, but only reached his voice mail and left a message in which he angrily threatened a "final break" in relations with the Springer publishing house and to take legal action.[18] By the beginning of January 2012, President Wulff lost support by the public, commentators called for him to resign, the opposition increased pressure again, and his own party was distancing itself from him for his attempted censure of freedom of the press.[19]
On the evening of 4 January 2012, Wulff gave a much anticipated interview in a program broadcast jointly by the two main public TV stations ARD and ZDF.[20] He declared that he wanted to stay in office and that the call to Diekmann had been a "serious mistake" that was "unworthy" of a president and for which he had already apologised.[21][22] For the sake of transparency, he further promised to have his office publish the responses to some 400 recent press inquiries online and initially posted a summary,[23] but then revoked his promise a few days later, citing confidentiality issues and organizational difficulties.[24] Within a week however, several newspapers began making use of their right to publish their own enquiries with the respective responses.[25][26] On 18 January, Wulff’s lawyer announced[27] and presented online transcripts of legally released journalists’ questions and their respective answers.[28]
As more allegations of possible corruption emerged, the prosecutors in Hanover, the capital city of the state of Lower Saxony, sought the Bundestag to lift Wulff’s immunity as President to investigate possible granting and/or accepting of undue advantages.[29] Pre-empting this, Wulff resigned on 17 February 2012.[30] As a reason for his resignation, Wulff stated that "(the German people's) trust and thus his effectiveness have been seriously damaged" and that "for this reason it is no longer possible for him to exercise the office of president at home and abroad as required." The media reaction stressed that Wulff's resignation was inevitable[31] and that it presented another challenge for Merkel, who will have to find another candidate amidst the Eurozone crisis.[31][32]
A new presidential election was required within a month to elect his successor. Until the new President was elected, Horst Seehofer of the Christian Social Union (CSU) was acting president.[32] The new president, Joachim Gauck, was elected on 18 March by a Federal Convention.[33]
Family[link]
Christian Wulff met his first wife, lawyer Christiane Vogt (born 1961), when they were both law students in Osnabrück in 1983. They married in March 1988, and have a daughter, Annalena (born 1993). In June 2006, Wulff announced that he would divorce his wife. Wulff subsequently married an aide from the PM's Office, Bettina Körner[34] (born 1973 in Hanover), on 21 March 2008 in a low-key ceremony. She has a son from a previous relationship, and on 12 May 2008, she gave birth to their first child together, also a boy.[3]
References[link]
- ^ Curriculum vitae of Prime Minister Christian Wulff – Office of the Prime Minister
- ^ "Christian Wulff zum Bundespräsidenten gewählt". Official Website of German Bundestag. 30 June 2010. http://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2010/30377887_kw25_bundesversammlung_nachher/index.jsp. Retrieved 30 June 2010. "Mit der Annahme der Wahl hat Wulff zugleich sein neues Amt angetreten."
- ^ a b Buergin, Rainer; Parkin, Brian (30 June 2010). "Merkel's Presidential Candidate Wulff Wins in Third-Round Vote". Bloomberg Businessweek. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-30/merkel-s-presidential-candidate-wulff-wins-in-third-round-vote.html. Retrieved 30 June 2010. "Wulff, who is married with one daughter and a son, will be sworn in on 2 July."
- ^ Waterfield, Bruno (17 February 2012). "Blow to Merkel as German president resigns". The Daily Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/9088324/Blow-to-Merkel-as-German-president-resigns.html.
- ^ a b "Germany’s new president Christian Wulff embracing his second wife | Language Creates Value". Common-talk.com. 16 July 2010. http://www.common-talk.com/cms/node/9937. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ "Christian Wulff im Porträt" (in G4erman). Kleine Zeitung. 30 June 2010. http://www.kleinezeitung.at/nachrichten/politik/aussenpolitik/2366743/christian-wulff-sieht-sich-nicht-alpha-tier.story. Retrieved 8 July 2010.
- ^ "Biography of Wulff, Christian". Archontology.org. http://www.archontology.org/nations/german/germ_1949a/wulff.php. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ n24.de (German)[dead link]
- ^ Ehrlich, Peter (8 December 2004). "In der Ruhe liegt die Kraft" (in German). Financial Times Deutschland. http://www.ftd.de/pw/de/1102146523308.html?nv=cpm. Retrieved 8 July 2010.
- ^ "Wie macht das bloß der Wulff?" (in German). Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 21 October 2004. http://www.faz.net/s/Rub6EAA9BF249C249FE86A5EFF3F83DC130/Doc~E339323623A95412081F4B5DEC6308A30~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html. Retrieved 8 July 2010.
- ^ "Auch Wulff fordert längere Laufzeiten" (in German). Tagesschau. 6 January 2006. http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID5113864_REF2,00.html. Retrieved 8 July 2010.
- ^ von Borstel, Stefan (9 January 2006). "Niedersachsen führt Kombilohn ein" (in German). Die Welt. http://www.welt.de/print-welt/article189672/Niedersachsen_fuehrt_Kombilohn_ein.html. Retrieved 8 July 2010.
- ^ www.bundespraesident.de Bundespräsidialamt, Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. Retrieved 1 July 2010.
- ^ http://www.manager-magazin.de/politik/artikel/0,2828,703986,00.html (German)
- ^ The German President Is 'Behaving Like a Populist'
- ^ "'President Wulff Lied'". Spiegel Online International. 12 December 2011. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,804631,00.html. Retrieved 4 January 2012.
- ^ "German President Apologizes for Handling of Loan Affair". Spiegel Online International. 22 December 2011. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,805409,00.html. Retrieved 4 January 2012.
- ^ "President Accused of Threatening Tabloid Newspaper". Spiegel Online International. 1 January 2012. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,806665,00.html. Retrieved 4 January 2012.
- ^ "'Wulff Has Destroyed His Last Remnants of Credibility'". Spiegel Online International. 3 January 2012. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,806899,00.html. Retrieved 4 January 2012.
- ^ "Das Interview mit Bundespräsident Christian Wulff (original German)". ARD (broadcaster). 4 January 2012. http://www.ardmediathek.de/ard/servlet/content/3517136?documentId=9181010.
- ^ "Fernseh-Interview von Bundespräsident Christian Wulff". Office of the Federal President. 4 January 2012. http://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Berichte/DE/Reisen-und-Termine/2012/01/120104-Interview.html.
- ^ "President Wulff clings on". The Local. 4 January 2012. http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20120104-39917.html. Retrieved 5 January 2012.
- ^ "Zusammenfassende Stellungnahme zu den Medienanfragen an Christian Wulff (in German)". Redeker Sellner Dahs law office for the Office of the Federal President. 5 January 2012. http://www.redeker.de/main-V2.php/de/news/pm20120105.html. Retrieved 5 January 2012.
- ^ "Antworten auf 400 Fragen an Wulff bleiben geheim (in German)". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 10 January 2012. http://faz.net/aktuell/politik/affaere-des-bundespraesidenten-wulffs-antworten-werden-doch-nicht-veroeffentlicht-11599816.html. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
- ^ "German President Blasted by Party Allies". Spiegel Online International. 12 January 2012. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,808822,00.html. Retrieved 12 January 2012.
- ^ "Die "Welt" veröffentlicht alle Fragen zur Causa Wulff (in German)". Die Welt. http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article13812449/Die-Welt-veroeffentlicht-alle-Fragen-zur-Causa-Wulff.html. Retrieved 12 January 2012.
- ^ "Veröffentlichung der Journalistenanfragen an Christian Wulff und der gegebenen Antworten (in German)". Redeker Sellner Dahs law office for the Office of the Federal President. 18 January 2012. http://www.redeker.de/main-V2.php/de/news/pm20120118.html. Retrieved 1 February 2012.
- ^ "Erläuternde Hinweise zur Veröffentlichung der Journalistenanfragen an Christian Wulff und der gegebenen Antworten (in German)". Redeker Sellner Dahs law office for the Office of the Federal President. 18 January 2012. http://pdf.redeker.de/. Retrieved 1 February 2012. transcript files are listed at bottom of page
- ^ "German President Wulff quits in home loan scandal". BBC. 17 February 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17072479. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ "German President Resigns – Wulff Announces He Will Step Down". Spiegel Online International. 17 January 2012. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,815910,00.html. Retrieved 17 January 2012.
- ^ a b "German president quits over scandal – Europe". Al Jazeera English. 4 October 2011. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/02/2012217101341425171.html. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ a b Chris Morris (17 February 2012). "BBC News – German President Wulff quits in home loan scandal". BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17072479. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
- ^ "German Bundestag: Election of the Federal President". Bundestag.de. 16 February 2007. http://www.bundestag.de/htdocs_e/bundestag/elections/federal_convention/index.jsp. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
- ^ Fischer, Sebastian; Schröder, Alwin; Volkery, Carsten (8 December 2006). "Von Bin Baden bis Bin Nacktbaden" (in German). Der Spiegel. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,453378,00.html. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
External links[link]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Christian Wulff |
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Jürgen Gansäuer |
Leader of the Christian Democratic Union of Lower Saxony 1994–2008 |
Succeeded by David McAllister |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by Sigmar Gabriel |
Prime Minister of Lower Saxony 2003–2010 |
Succeeded by David McAllister |
| Preceded by Horst Köhler |
President of Germany 2010–2012 |
Succeeded by Joachim Gauck |
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Wulff, Christian |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | German politician, Prime Minister of Lower Saxony 2003–2010, President of Germany 2010–2012 |
| Date of birth | 1959 |
| Place of birth | Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, Germany |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/Christian_Wulff
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http://es.wn.com/Christian Wulff
http://ru.wn.com/Вульф, Кристиан
http://pt.wn.com/Christian Wulff
http://id.wn.com/Christian Wulff
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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Wulff
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Nigel Farage MEP |
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|---|---|
 |
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| Leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 5 November 2010 |
|
| Preceded by | Jeffrey Titford |
| In office 27 September 2006 – 27 November 2009 |
|
| Preceded by | Roger Knapman |
| Succeeded by | Lord Pearson of Rannoch |
| Member of the European Parliament for South East England |
|
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 15 July 1999 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1964-04-03) 3 April 1964 (age 48) Kent, England, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | UK Independence Party |
| Spouse(s) | Gráinne Hayes (1988-1997, divorced) Kirsten Mehr (1999-present) |
| Children | 4 |
| Alma mater | Dulwich College |
| Religion | Church of England |
| Website | Nigel Farage MEP |
Nigel Paul Farage ( /ˈfærɑːʒ/, FARR-ahzh;[1] born 3 April 1964, Farnborough, Kent), is a British politician and is the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP),[2] a position he also held from September 2006 to November 2009. He is a Member of the European Parliament for South East England and co-chairs the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.
Farage is a founding member of the UKIP, having left the Conservative Party in 1992 after they signed the Maastricht Treaty. Having unsuccessfully campaigned in European and Westminster parliamentary elections for UKIP since 1994, he gained a seat as an MEP for South East England in the 1999 European Parliament Election — the first year the regional list system was used — and was re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage describes himself as a libertarian and rejects the notion that he is a conservative.
In September 2006, Farage became the UKIP Leader and led the party through the 2009 European Parliament Election in which it received the second highest share of the popular vote, defeating Labour and the Liberal Democrats with over two million votes. However he stepped down in November 2009 to concentrate on contesting the Speaker John Bercow's seat of Buckingham in the 2010 general election.
At the 2010 General Election, Farage failed to unseat John Bercow and received only the third highest share of the vote in the constituency. Shortly after the polls opened on 6 May 2010, Nigel Farage was injured in an aircraft crash in Northamptonshire. The two-seated PZL-104 Wilga 35A had been towing a pro-UKIP banner when it flipped over and crashed shortly after takeoff. Both Farage and the pilot were hospitalised with non-life-threatening injuries.[3]
In November 2010, Farage successfully stood in the 2010 UKIP leadership contest,[4] following the resignation of its leader, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. Farage was also ranked 41st (out of 100) in The Daily Telegraph's Top 100 most influential right-wingers poll in October 2009, citing his media savvy and his success with UKIP in the European Elections.[5] Farage was ranked 58th in the 2010 list compiled by Iain Dale and Brian Brivati for the Daily Telegraph.
Contents |
Background[link]
Farage was educated at Dulwich College before joining a commodity brokerage firm in London. He ran his own brokerage business from the early 1990s until 2002. In his early 20s Farage was diagnosed with testicular cancer but made a full recovery.[6]
Farage has been married twice. He married Gráinne Hayes in 1988, with whom he had two children: Samuel (1989) and Thomas (1991). In 1999 he married Kirsten Mehr, a German national, by whom he has two more children, Victoria (born 2000) and Isabelle (born 2005).[7]
Farage has also penned his own memoirs, entitled "Fighting Bull." It outlines the founding of UKIP and his personal and political life so far.
Political career[link]
Conservative Party[link]
Active in the Conservative Party from his school days, Farage left the party in 1992 when John Major's government signed the Treaty on European Union at Maastricht.
UKIP and the European Parliament[link]
Farage became a founding member of UKIP in 1993.
He was elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage is presently the leader of the thirteen-member UKIP contingent in the European Parliament, and co-leader of the multinational eurosceptic group, Europe of Freedom and Democracy.
UKIP party leadership[link]
On 12 September 2006, Farage was elected leader of UKIP with 45% of the vote, 20% ahead of his nearest rival.[8] He pledged to bring discipline to the party and to maximise UKIP's representation in local, parliamentary and other elections.[citation needed] In a PM programme interview on BBC Radio 4 that day he pledged to end the public perception of UKIP as a single-issue party and to work with allied politicians in the Better Off Out campaign, committing himself not to stand against the MPs who have signed up to that campaign (ten in all at this moment).
At his maiden speech to the UKIP conference on 8 October 2006, he told delegates that the party was "at the centre-ground of British public opinion" and the "real voice of opposition". Farage said: "We've got three social democratic parties in Britain — Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative are virtually indistinguishable from each other on nearly all the main issues" and "you can't put a cigarette paper between them and that is why there are nine million people who don't vote now in general elections that did back in 1992."[9]
At 10pm on 19 October 2006, Farage took part in a three-hour live interview and phone-in with James Whale on national radio station talkSPORT. Four days later, Whale announced on his show his intention to stand as UKIP's candidate in the 2008 London Mayoral Election. Farage said that Whale "not only has guts, but an understanding of what real people think". However Whale later decided not to stand and UKIP was represented by Gerard Batten.[10] He stood again for UKIP leadership in 2010 after his successor Lord Pearson stood down.[4] On the 5th November 2010 it was announced Farage had won the leadership contest.[11]
Westminster elections[link]
Farage had unsuccessfully contested UK parliamentary elections for UKIP five times, both before and after his election as an MEP in 1999. Under the 2002 European Union decision to forbid MEPs from holding a dual mandate, if he was ever elected to the House of Commons, he would have to resign his seat as an MEP.
When he contested the Bromley & Chislehurst constituency in a May 2006 by-election, organised after the sitting MP representing it, eurosceptic Conservative Eric Forth, died, Farage came third, winning 8% of the vote, beating the Labour Party candidate. This was the second-best by-election result recorded by UKIP out of 25 results, and the first time since the Liverpool Walton by-election in 1991 that a party in government had been pushed into fourth place in a parliamentary by-election on mainland Britain.
2010 UK General election[link]
On 4 September 2009 Farage resigned as leader of UKIP to concentrate on his campaign to become Member of Parliament for Buckingham at Westminster in the 2010 general election.[12] He later told Times journalist Camilla Long that UKIP internal fights took up too much time.[13]
He stood against Buckingham MP John Bercow, the newly elected Speaker of the House of Commons, despite a convention that the speaker, as a political neutral, is not normally challenged in his or her bid for re-election by any of the major parties.[14]
On 6 May, on the morning the polls opened in the election, just before eight o'clock Farage was involved in a light aircraft crash, suffering injuries described as non-life-threatening. A spokesperson told the BBC that "it was unlikely Mr Farage would be discharged from hospital today [6 May][15] Although his injuries were originally described as minor, his sternum and ribs were broken, and his lung punctured.[16] The Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) report said that the aeroplane was towing a banner, which caught in the tailplane, forcing the nose down.[17]
Farage came third with 8,401 votes. Bercow was re-elected, and in second place with 10,331 votes was John Stevens, a former Conservative MEP who campaigned as an independent accompanied by "Flipper the Dolphin" (a reference to MPs flipping second homes).[18]
On 1 December 2010, the pilot of the aircraft involved in the accident was charged with threatening to kill Farage. He was also charged with threatening to kill an AAIB official involved in the investigation into the accident.[19] In April 2011, Justin Adams was found guilty of making death threats. The judge said the defendant was "clearly extremely disturbed" at the time the offences happened adding "He is a man who does need help. If I can find a way of giving him help I will."[20]
Alternative Vote referendum, May 2011[link]
Farage declared himself personally in favour of the Alternative Vote system of May 2011, saying first-past-the-post is a "nightmare" for UKIP. However, the party's stance has to be decided by its central policy making committee.[21]
May 2012 London Mayor & Local elections[link]
In a "bizarre cock-up," UKIP forgot to put their party name on their candidate's ballot paper for the London mayoral election, 2012[22], Laurence Webb appearing as "A fresh choice for London." Farage admitted the mistake describing it as an internal error.[22]
Interviewed by the following Sunday by Andrew Neil and asked about "the game plan", Farage welcomed the "average 13% vote" across the country, and stated that the party was preparing for County council in 2013, European elections in 2014 and a general election in 2015.[23] The party was no longer just a protest vote, it would have a full manifesto with policies including selective schools, help to small businesses by "getting rid of excessive labour practices" and an energy policy not based on wind turbines.[23] UKIP was here to stay ..frankly the Tory Eurosceptics were in the wrong party and would be better off joining UKIP. Asked what would happen to UKIP if the Tories made a Manifesto commitment to a European referendum, Farage said they had already failed to honour a "cast iron" commitment for a referendum on the Lisbon treaty.[23]
Challenging Farange's viewpoint, Neil said UKIP aspired to come top of the European elections but whilst UKIP wanted to join the big time, they were still seen as "unprofessional, amateur and even unacceptable" after their press officer called Baroness Warsi "a bitch".[23] Farage regretted "the wrong choice of words" but further described Warsi as "the lowest grade chairman the Tory party has ever had."[23] Neil then mocked the so called internal error which had made Farage "a joke".[23] "The blunt truth is" UKIP "didn't win any more seats, the performance in London was terrible and they were still a one man band."[23] Farage conceded London was a failure but they had won council seats elsewhere. He invited Tories who couldn't stand Cameron to help him.[23]
Controversies and whistleblowing[link]
Copyright infringement[link]
In 1999 the BBC spent four months filming a documentary about his European elections campaign but didn't show it. Farage, then head of UKIP's South East office, asked for a video and got friends to make illegal copies which were sold for £5 through the UKIP magazine. Surrey Trading Standards investigated and Farage has admitted the offence.[24]
Expenses disclosure[link]
In May 2009, The Guardian reported that Farage had said in a speech to the Foreign Press Association that over ten years as a member of the European Parliament he received £2 million of taxpayers' money in staff, travel, and other expenses on top of his £64,000 a year salary.[25]
The former Europe Minister, Denis MacShane, said that this showed that Farage was "happy to line his pockets with gold". Farage called this a "misrepresentation",[26] pointing out that the money had been used to promote UKIP's message and staff salaries, not his own salary, but he welcomed the focus on the issue of MEP expenses, claiming that "[o]ver a five year term each and every one of Britain's 78 MEPs gets about £1 million. It is used to employ administrative staff, run their offices and to travel back and forth between their home, Brussels and Strasbourg."[27]
Jacques Barrot[link]
On 18 November 2004, Farage announced in the European Parliament that Jacques Barrot, the French Commissioner designate, had been barred from elected office in France for 2 years, after being convicted in 2000 of embezzling £2 million from government funds and diverting it into the coffers of his party. He claimed that French President Jacques Chirac had granted Barrot amnesty. Although initial BBC reports claimed that, under French law, it was illegal even to mention the conviction,[28] the prohibition in question only applies to French officials in the course of their duties.[29] The president of the Parliament, Josep Borrell, enjoined him to retract his comments under threat of "legal consequences".[30] However, the following day it was confirmed that Barrot had received an 8 month suspended jail sentence in the case, and that this had been quickly expunged by the amnesty decided by Chirac and his parliamentary majority. The Commission's president, Jose Manuel Barroso admitted that he had not known of Barrot's criminal record when appointing him as a Commission vice-president.[citation needed] The Socialist and Liberal groups in the European Parliament then joined UKIP in demanding the resignation of Barrot for failing to disclose the conviction during his confirmation hearings.
José Manuel Barroso[link]
During the spring of 2005, Farage requested that the European Commission disclose where the individual Commissioners had spent their holidays. The Commission did not provide the information requested, on the basis that the Commissioners had a right of privacy. The German newspaper Die Welt reported that the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso had spent a week on the yacht of the Greek shipping billionaire Spiro Latsis. It emerged soon afterwards that this had occurred a month before the Commission under Barroso's predecessor Romano Prodi approved 10.3 million euro of Greek state aid for Latsis' shipping company.[31] It also became known that Peter Mandelson, then a member of the Commission, had accepted a trip to Jamaica from an unrevealed source.
Farage persuaded around 75 MEPs from across the political divide to back a motion of no confidence in Barroso, which would be sufficient to compel Barroso to appear before the European Parliament to be questioned on the issue.[32] The motion was successfully tabled on 12 May 2005, and Barroso appeared before Parliament[33] at a debate on 26 May 2005. The motion was heavily defeated. A Conservative MEP, Roger Helmer, was expelled from his group, the European People's Party - European Democrats (EPP-ED) in the middle of the debate by that group's leader Hans-Gert Poettering as a result of his support for Farage's motion.
Joseph Daul[link]
In January 2007, the French farmers' leader Joseph Daul was elected the new leader of the European People's Party–European Democrats (EPP-ED), the European Parliamentary grouping which then included the British Conservatives. The UK Independence Party almost immediately revealed that Daul had been under judicial investigation in France since 2004 as part of an inquiry into the alleged misuse of public funds worth €16 million (£10.6 million) by French farming unions."[34] It was not suggested that Daul had personally benefited, but was accused of "complicity and concealment of the abuse of public funds." Daul accused Farage of publicising the investigation for political reasons and threatened to sue Farage, but did not do so though the court dropped all charges against him.
Prince Charles[link]
Prince Charles gave a speech to the European Parliament on 14 February 2008, in which he called for EU leadership in the war against climate change. During the standing ovation that followed, Farage was the only MEP to remain seated and went on to describe the Prince's advisers as "naïve and foolish at best."[35] Farage continued: "How can somebody like Prince Charles be allowed to come to the European Parliament at this time to announce he thinks it should have more powers? It would have been better for the country he wants to rule one day if he had stayed home and tried to persuade Gordon Brown to give the people the promised referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon." The leader of the UK Labour Party's MEPs, Gary Titley, accused Farage of anti-Royalism. Titley said: "I was embarrassed and disgusted when the Leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, remained firmly seated during the lengthy standing ovation Prince Charles received. I had not realised Mr Farage's blind adherence to right wing politics involved disloyalty and discourtesy to the Royal Family. He should be thoroughly ashamed of himself and should apologise to the British people he represents."[35]
Herman Van Rompuy[link]
After the speech of Herman Van Rompuy on 24 February 2010 in the European parliament, Farage—to protests from other MEPs—addressed the first long-term President of the European Council saying that he has the "charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of low grade bank clerk".[36] Farage questioned the legitimacy of Van Rompuy's appointment asking "Who are you? I'd never heard of you, nobody in Europe had ever heard of you", he also asserted that Van Rompuy's "intention is to be the quiet assassin of European democracy and of European nation states."[36] In the same speech he also referred to Belgium, the home of Van Rompuy, as "pretty much a non-country".[37] Van Rompuy commented afterwards, "There was one contribution that I can only hold in contempt, but I'm not going to comment further."[36] After refusing to apologise for behaviour that was, in the words of the President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, "inappropriate, unparliamentary and insulting to the dignity of the House", Farage was reprimanded and had his right to ten days' allowance (expenses) rescinded.[38] [39]
The President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, said after his meeting with Farage:
I defend absolutely Mr Farage's right to disagree about the policy or institutions of the Union, but not to personally insult our guests in the European Parliament or the country from which they may come. [. . .] I myself fought for free speech as the absolute cornerstone of a democratic society. But with freedom comes responsibility - in this case, to respect the dignity of others and of our institutions. I am disappointed by Mr Farage's behaviour, which sits ill with the great parliamentary tradition of his own country. I cannot accept this sort of behaviour in the European Parliament. I invited him to apologise, but he declined to do so. I have therefore - as an expression of the seriousness of the matter - rescinded his right to ten days' daily allowance as a Member.[39]
Questioned by Camilla Long, Farage declared of his speech "it wasn't abusive, it was right."[13]
European economic governance[link]
He spoke of the EU being "German-dominated" in a speech at the European-Parliament on 18 November 2011.[40]
Views on the euro[link]
From taking office as a UKIP MEP in 1999, Farage has often voiced opposition to the "euro project". His argument is that "a one size fits all interest rate" cannot work for countries with structurally different economies, often using the example of Greece and Germany to emphasise contrast. He predicted the need for 'bailouts' before European Commission and European Central Bank officials admitted that these steps would be necessary. Specifically, Farage predicted that Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain would all require such assistance. To date, Spain is the only predicted country that has not asked for a 'bailout'. Although Spain and Italy have both had indirect assistance from the ECB, whereby secondary government bonds are bought by the central bank, they are prohibited from purchasing new bonds. Farage warns: "You can ignore the markets if you want to, but in time the markets will not ignore you". Farage also reinforces Germany's argument that Italy "should never have joined the euro".
Farage predicts that if the situation continues it will lead to violence due to the people's inability to "determine their own futures through the ballot box" as it will become the only "logical" tool to enable them to escape from their "economic prison" i.e. the Eurozone. He proclaims "I can only hope and pray that the euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens."
Farage strongly opposes the use of 'bailouts' and claims that "buying your own debt with tax payers money" will not solve the problem and that, "if we do, the next debt crisis won't be a country", "it will be the European Central Bank itself".[41][42]
Electoral performance[link]
Nigel Farage has contested several elections under the United Kingdom Independence Party banner:
- Itchen, Test and Avon, European Parliament Election 1994 - 12,423 votes, representing 5.2% of total votes cast
- Eastleigh by-election, 1994 - 952, 1.4%
- Salisbury, 1997 general election - 3,332, 5.7%
- European Parliament election, 1999 - elected member for South East England from party list
- Bexhill and Battle, 2001 general election - 3,474, 7.8%
- European Parliament election, 2004 - elected member for South East England from party list
- South Thanet, 2005 general election - 2,079, 5.0%
- Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, 2006 - 2,307, 8.0%
- European Parliament election, 2009 - elected member for South East England from party list.
- Buckingham, 2010 general election - 8,410, 17.4%
Footnotes[link]
- ^ "Farage vs Paxman". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K27fm4lyWm0. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
- ^ "Nigel Farage Re-Elected UKIP Party Leader". http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/UKIP-Nigel-Farage-Re-Elected-As-Leader-Of-The-UK-Independence-Party-Taking-Over-From-Lord-Pearson/Article/201011115795811?lpos=Politics_Carousel_Region_3&lid=ARTICLE_15795811_UKIP%3A_Nigel_Farage_Re-Elected_As_Leader_Of_The_UK_Independence_Party%2C_Taking_Over_From_Lord_Pearson. Retrieved 22 November 2011.
- ^ Edwards, Richard (7 May 2010). "Daily Telegraph". London: The Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7685912/General-Election-2010-Ukips-Nigel-Farage-has-lucky-escape-after-election-stunt-plane-crash.html. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
- ^ a b Andrew Sparrow "Nigel Farage to stand for Ukip leadership again", The Guardian, 3 September 2010
- ^ Dale, Iain; Brivati, Brian (5 October 2009). "Daily Telegraph". London: The Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/6256390/Top-100-most-influential-Right-wingers-50-1.html. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
- ^ Simon Hattenstone. "Nigel Farage, Ukip: 'Other party leaders live in a PC world.' | Politics". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/05/nigel-farage-ukip-interview. Retrieved 2012-04-06.
- ^ Watts, Robert (2007-03-11). "Making plans with Nigel". London: The Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/11/nukip11.xml. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ^ "Politics | UKIP 'voice of British majority'". London: BBC News Online. 2006-10-07. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5415252.stm?ls.
- ^ [2][dead link]
- ^ "UKIP: Nigel Farafe Re-Elected As Leader Of the UK Independence Party, Taking Over From Lord Pearson". Sky News. 5 November 2010. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/UKIP-Nigel-Farage-Re-Elected-As-Leader-Of-The-UK-Independence-Party-Taking-Over-From-Lord-Pearson/Article/201011115795811?lpos=Politics_First_UK_News_Article_Teaser_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15795811_UKIP:_Nigel_Farage_Re-Elected_As_Leader_Of_The_UK_Independence_Party,_Taking_Over_From_Lord_Pearson. Retrieved 5 November 2010.
- ^ Farage to quit as UKIP Leader, UKIP website, Retrieved 4 September 2009
- ^ a b Camilla Long "Nigel Farage: Brimming over with bile and booze", The Times, 21 March 2010
- ^ "Farage to stand against Speaker". London: BBC News Online. 2009-09-03. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8235626.stm.
- ^ Nigel Farage injured in plane crash in Northamptonshire, BBC News Website, Retrieved 6 May 2010
- ^ Nigel Farndale (2010-11-18). "Nigel Farage: born to rant". London: Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/ukip/8128877/Nigel-Farage-born-to-rant.html. Retrieved 2010-11-23.
- ^ "AAIB Bulletin: 11/2010 G-BWDF 6 May 2010 at 0659 hrs". Air Accidents Investigation Branch. http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources/PZL-104%20Wilga%2035A,%20G-BWDF%2011-2010.pdf. Retrieved 2010-11-23.
- ^ Dowling, Tim (7 May 2010). "Election results: Ukip's Nigel Farage finishes behind John Bercow and Flipper". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/07/nigel-farage-ukip-john-bercow. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
- ^ "Crash pilot 'threatened to kill UKIP's Nigel Farage'". BBC News online. 1 December 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-11886985. Retrieved 1 December 2010.
- ^ "Nigel Farage death threats crash pilot guilty". BBC News online. 14 April 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-13082655. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
- ^ "AV referendum: Where parties stand". BBC News. 13 January 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11609887. Retrieved 11-02-2011.
- ^ a b George Eaton (4 May 2012). "How UKIP became "Fresh Choice for London"". New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/how-ukip-became-fresh-choice-london. Retrieved 1 Jun 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Nigel Farage calls on Conservative MPs to join UKIP". BBC news. 6 May 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17974787. Retrieved 1 Jun 2012.
- ^ Robert Watts "Making plans with Nigel", Sunday Telegraph, 11 March 2007
- ^ Helm, Toby (2009-05-24). "Ukip leader boasts of his £2m in expenses | Politics | The Observer". London: Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/24/mps-expenses-ukip-nigel-farage. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ "McShane misses the point on expenses - UK Independence Party". Ukip.org. 2009-05-19. http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/1053-mcshane-misses-the-point-on-expenses. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ "MEP expense spotlight turns focus to EU - UK Independence Party". Ukip.org. 2009-05-25. http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/1068-mep-expense-spotlight-turns-focus-to-eu. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ "BBC NEWS | Europe | Profile: Jacques Barrot". Newswww.bbc.net.uk. 2004-11-22. http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/2/hi/europe/4032113.stm. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ The prohibition contained in the French penal code against mentioning crimes covered by an amnesty only concerns French officials who may hear of such crimes in the course of their duties (CP L133-11), and does not apply generally (L133-10).
- ^ "Impressions on the new European Commission (2), 18/11/2004 - MEP Nigel Farage replies to Parliament President Josep Borrell who urged him to reflect on his comments and the possible legal consequences.". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPLkcgaWc0o. Retrieved 22 November 2011.
- ^ Castle, Stephen (2005-05-26). "Barroso survives confidence debate over free holiday with Greek tycoon - Europe, World - The Independent". London: News.independent.co.uk. http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article223215.ece. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ "Bloomberg.com". Bloomberg.com. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=aFq2hOeCcYZc&refer=europe. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ "Europe | Barroso rebuffs yacht questions". London: BBC News. 2005-05-25. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4578261.stm. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ Waterfield, Bruno (2007-01-13). "EU Right's new leader at heart of funds inquiry". London: Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/13/wdaul13.xml. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ a b "Politics | UKIP anger at prince's EU speech". London: BBC News. 2008-02-14. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7245183.stm. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ a b c "Tirade against 'damp rag' EU president shocks MEPs". London: BBC News. 2010-02-24. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8535121.stm. Retrieved 2010-02-24.
- ^ EUX.TV YouTube channel - Nigel Farage harangues EU President Herman van Rompuy Uploaded on 24 February 2010; Retrieved 27 February 2010
- ^ "MEP Nigel Farage fined over 'insulting' tirade". BBC News. 2010-03-02. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8544904.stm. Retrieved 2010-03-21.
- ^ a b "EP President Jerzy BUZEK on MEP Nigel FARAGE - 68659". European Parliament. 2010-03-03. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/eng-internet-publisher/eplive/expert/shotlist/20100303SHL92842. Retrieved 2010-03-21.
- ^ Going Viral: Nigel Farage on 'German- dominated' EU at the Daily Mail
- ^ ""Nigel Farage - Europe Trapped Inside an Economic Prison" (A collage of speeches by UKIP Leader Nigel Farage MEP in the European Parliament in Strasbourg and Brussels as Co-President of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group (EFD). Excerpts relate to the euro currency crisis leading up to the bailouts of Greece (May 2010), Ireland (November 2010) and Portugal (April 2011). Video credit ~ europarl: http://www.youtube.com/user/europarl)". 22 April 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVJ-MdikNr0. Retrieved 22 November 2011.
- ^ | europarl speech archives, with full list of all of Mr Farage's speeches in plenary that are referred to in my original source video | accessdate=2011-04-27
References[link]
- 2002 Amnesty law
- Penal Code, articles L133-9, L133-10, L133-11
External links[link]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Nigel Farage |
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Nigel Farage |
- Nigel Farage MEP Official website
- Nigel Farage on Twitter
- Nigel Farage Profile at European Parliament website
- UKIP MEPs Official website of the UK Independence Party in the European Parliament
- Europe of Freedom and Democracy Political group in the European Parliament
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by ? |
Chairman of the UK Independence Party 1998–2000 |
Succeeded by Mike Nattrass |
| Preceded by Roger Knapman |
Leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party 2006–2009 |
Succeeded by The Lord Pearson of Rannoch |
| Preceded by Jeffrey Titford |
Leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party 2010–present |
Incumbent |
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Farage, Nigel |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | British politician |
| Date of birth | 3 April 1964 |
| Place of birth | Kent, United Kingdom |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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| Martin Callanan MEP | |
|---|---|
| Leader of the Conservative Party in the European Parliament | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 23 November 2010 |
|
| Preceded by | Timothy Kirkhope |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1961-08-08) 8 August 1961 (age 50) Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Profession | Engineer |
Martin Callanan (born 8 August 1961) is a British Conservative Party politician. He has been a Member of the European Parliament for the North East England constituency since 1999, and was re-elected in 2004 and 2009.[1]
Callanan was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. Before becoming an MEP, he stood as a parliamentary candidate for Washington (in the 1987 election), Gateshead East (in the 1992 election), and Tynemouth (in the 1997 election).[2]
He vehemently opposed the erection of the "Angel of the North" sculpture by Antony Gormley.[3]
Before his election to the European Parliament, Callanan worked as a project engineer at Scottish and Newcastle breweries and holds a BSc degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Newcastle Polytechnic.[4] Callanan was the last Conservative member of Gateshead Borough Council, before standing down in 1996. He is a member of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. Callanan is a regular contributor to ConservativeHome, writing a monthly report.[5]
References[link]
- ^ "European Election 2009: North East". BBC News. 7 June 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/elections/euro/09/html/ukregion_33.stm. Retrieved 10 June 2009.
- ^ "Martin Callanan MEP at conservatives.com". http://www.conservatives.com/People/Members_of_the_European_Parliament/Callanan_Martin.aspx. Retrieved 31 July 2011.
- ^ "Why the nation needs an Angel of the South", The Guardian, 29 January 2008
- ^ "Profile at martincallanan.com". http://www.martincallanan.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=37&Itemid=5.
- ^ http://conservativehome.blogs.com/parliament/martin_callanan_mep/
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Callanan, Martin |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | British politician |
| Date of birth | 8 August 1961 |
| Place of birth | Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
 |
This article about a Member of the European Parliament from the United Kingdom is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
http://wn.com/Martin_Callanan
Related pages:
http://de.wn.com/Martin Callanan
http://pl.wn.com/Martin Callanan
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Callanan
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
