For Want of A Sandwich - A Franz Ferdinand Lives Wikibox TL
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Libertarian is an American term, the term used worldwide is Objectivism.
...One of the many Rwandas.
Fantastic! For my next request I select the 1936 United States Presidential Election!
List of tax havens
Top 10 tax havens in 2021 according to the International Clearing Union, matching the criteria of very low rates of taxation for foreign investors and high financial secretary :
- Dubai
- Katanga
- Switzerland
- Abu Dhabi
- Zanzibar
- Bermuda
- Costa Rica
- Monaco
- Fiji
- Vemarana
Charles S. Menem
Charles Saul Menem (Dearborn, MI 2 July 1930 - Bethesda, MD 14 February 2021) was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 41st Governor of Michigan from 1975 to 1983 and as Senator for the same state, serving from 1983 to his death. He also ran for President of the United States, running in the Republican primaries in 1988, 1996 and 2004, running as the Republican presidential nominee in the latter.
Charles S. Menem was born to Arab immigrants to Michigan ; his parents had first moved from Syria to Argentina in the 1910s, before the First Argentine Civil War allowed them to relocate to the United States as war refugees. The only Arab American to serve in the Senate, Menem practiced Sunni Islam in his youth before converting to Episcopalianism. Graduating from Michigan State University and Harvard, he returned to Detroit to work as a corporate lawyer for Ford.
Close to then Governor George W. Romney, Menem joined the Republican party, rising as state chairman in 1973 ; in the days where working-class Michigan was a battlefield state between Progressives and Republicans, Menem ran for the 1974 Republican nomination for Governor, securing it and going on to defeat, in a grassroots campaign, incumbent Progressive Governor Sander Levin.
A rising star of the Republican Party, Menem managed to build as Governor a strong minorities-blue and white collar coalition, in the days preceding the 1983 economic crisis, when the automobile industry was still thriving. Easily re-elected in 1978, his eccentricities (renovating the gubernatorial mansion and adorning it with a golf course, a small zoo, servants, a barber and even a buffoon) earned him a strong popularity, along with his populist speeches and his fiscally conservative policies. Menem grew increasingly interested in Objectivist theories stemming from Russia and their adaptation to the American ethos as libertarianism. As he completed his second gubernatorial term, Menem looked forward to grabbing Walter Reuther’s longheld seat in the Senate in the 1982 midterms ; Reuther died before election day, and Menem went on to defeat his own pick for remplacement, Secretary of State Richard H. Austin. Menem would hold his Senate seat for almost forty years.
As Senator, Menem was re-elected in 1988, 1994, 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2018, being re-elected with comfortable margins in an increasingly Progressive state, the closest contests being in 1994, after the heavily publicized divorce of Menem from his first wife (he would later marry a former Miss America contestant) and in 2006, after his quixotic presidential campaign. Menem was socially moderate and was well-known for his association with lobbyists, with many of his opponents accusing him of outright nepotism and corruption (in spite of many federal investigations, none of these were proven true). Nationally, he became a leader of the libertarian wing of the GOP, associating himself with the Koch brothers, Senator Barry Goldwater, Jr. and like-minded lawmakers, promising a better distribution of wealth under such a system, vehemently criticizing big government and contributing to the success of these theories within the Republicans, who were back in the 1980s trying to reinvent themselves as credible alternatives to both Progressives and Conservatives.
Nationally, Menem dreamt of installing himself into the White House (one of the motivations, he admitted, to his religious conversion), and was mentioned as a prospective candidate as early as 1980 ; he threw his hat in the ring for the first time in 1988, when Libertarians were still a minority within the GOP, abandoning after a poor result in the New Hampshire primary to his main rival, Ohio Governor Jack Chirac ; in 1996, Menem announced his candidacy, before withdrawing weeks before the Iowa caucus, in order to help his fellow Libertarian, Massachusetts Governor William Weld, clinch the nomination. The calculation proved right, as Weld went on to become candidate and, in a huge upset, President. Senator Menem then pressured the President-Elect into awarding him the Department of State or of Treasury ; Weld didn’t return his calls, seeing that a like-minded Senator in a swing state would be a better asset in the upper house than as another addition to his cabinet of rivals. The Weld Administration would only last four years and Menem would remain for more than twenty years, but Menem bore such a grudge against Weld that he publically criticized the first Republican administration in more than two decades.
In 2004, Menem finally won the presidential nomination, managing to defeat his main competitor, former Vice President John Kasich ; Charles S. Menem selected retired General Wesley Clark as his running mate and campaigned on a platform of returned purchasing power and massive derugation. Nevertheless, at 74, Menem was not the same firebrand that he was in the 80s, and his populist campaigning style didn’t appealed to Republican voters in New England and the Southwest, where they mostly present. Running against a popular incumbent such as Frank Keating, the old Senator was also no match to his colleague John Edwards’ modern and hopeful campaign, and General Clark proved to be a poor running mate. Accused by the left to be an authoritarian and incompetent lawmaker devoted to the lobbyists, and by the right of being a Republican in name only, a womanizer and a crypto-Muslim, Menem fared poorly in the debates and ended the election as a distant third, falling to 21,6 %.
It appeared that Carlos Menem would soon retire ; after a strong challenge in the 2006 election from Progressive candidate Alma Wheeler Smith, Menem would survive two more elections, before passing away at 90, after an urinary infection that had led him to an induced coma. Governor of Michigan Dan Kildee is mandated by law to organize a special election during the year 2021 to fill Menem’s term up to 2024, and the longheld Republican seat seems to be an easy Progressive pick.
Réginald Fils-Aimé
Réginald Fils-Aimé (born 25 March 1961 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti) is the current President of Haiti, serving a single six-year term since his inauguration on 14 May 2016, after being elected in the 2016 Haitian presidential election, as the candidate of the Rally of Progressive National Democrats (Rassemblement des Démocrates Nationaux Progressistes).
Born into a upper-middle-class family in Port-au-Prince, as his parents were participating in politics, Fils-Aimé benefitted from the American help given to Haiti during his youth, enjoying scholarships that allowed him to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in applied economics and management from Cornell University. Returning to his country of birth to work in the thriving industrial sector, he aligned himself with the presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, that took power in 1987 ; as such and being one of the few Haitians who had studied in the United States, he climbed rapidly in the Haitian economy, managing to become Haiti’s first millionaire before his 40th birthday. However, as the Aristide regime grew more and more authoritarian, the industry tycoon distanced himself from the President, joining Leslie Manigat’s RDNP.
After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Fils-Aimé became very popular as he gave away his personal fortune to help relieve the suffering population and rebuild the devastated city of Port-au-Prince ; after Aristide was overthrown by the military later in the year and free regular elections were organized, he was elected deputy for Port-au-Prince and funded the unsuccessful campaign of Manigat in 2010. Becoming a household name in Haiti, he reluctantly pursued the RDNP presidential nomination in 2016 after Manigat offered to step aside ; he was elected with 64 % of the popular vote in the second round, defeating independent candidate Wyclef Jean.
As President of Haiti, Fils-Aimé intensified diplomatic and economic relations with the Havana Organization, allowing Haitian economy to continue his double-digit growth, in spite of the damage dealt by Hurricane Matthew a few months into his presidency, later putting his efforts into dealing with the outbreak of Wuchang Pneumonia in the Americas ; under his term (limited to one under the 2010 constitutional reform), Haiti continues to be the fastest growing economy in the Americas. In order to limit the arrival of refugees from the Hispaniolan Civil War and secure the borders of Haiti, Fils-Aimé ordered the Haitian military to intervene in their eastern neighbour’s ongoing conflict, securing the border and later petitioning the Havana Organization for a full-scale military intervention. On 7 February 2021, President Fils-Aimé was victim of an assassination attempt, that left him unscathed but killed one of his bodyguards ; the perpetrator, a Hispaniolan refugee, admitted under police watch to being an field agent from Hispaniolan intelligence. In light of this assassination attempt, US President Russ Feingold has promised to look further into the Hispaniolan issue.
Ion Mihai Pacepa
General Ion Mihai Pacepa (28 October 1928-14 February 2021) was a Romanian politician and military officer ; as head of a military junta that overthrew longtime Capitanul Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, he led the Romanian State during the Romanian Civil War (1968-1971), before defecting to the monarchist forces in 1970 and becoming Prime Minister for the newly established Kingdom of Wallachia from its independence on 2 July 1971 to his dismissal on 16 July 1978.
Born in Bucharest to Transylvanian migrants, who had fled the Danubian War, Ion Mihai Pacepa adhered to the Iron Guard in his youth and joined the Romanian military after graduating in industrial chemistry. Serving in the Second Hungarian-Romanian War and benefitting from military training in Russia, Pacepa was a rising colonel in the Army when the Third Hungarian-Romanian War started in 1968. After the war ended in utter defeat, Pacepa joined other military officers in a military coup on 21 August 1968 against the aging Capitanul ; taking the head of the military junta, he failed to deal with the various uprisings across the country that erupted into the Romanian Civil War.
If Pacepa, as acting head of the Romanian State, was very successful into destroying democratic opposition during the Battle of Bucharest (1969), he could only see the tide turning against the Romanian State, when Russian forces invaded Bessarabia before declaring its independence as the Kingdom of Moldavia ; as the war became limited to Wallachia, monarchist forces enjoyed more and more successes and Pacepa decided to take contact with King Mihai and his supporters in order to strike a deal ; after being promised the leadership of the future kingdom and his elevation to the rank of General and head of the royal army, Pacepa defected on 31 October 1970, surrendering the majority of the Romanian State’s Army and the whole, ruined city of Bucharest. He then led the Royal Army against the remnants of the Romanian State, before the Treaty of Budapest split Romania between Moldavia and Wallachia, a situation that would last until 1997. As promised, King Mihai appointed General Pacepa as the first Prime Minister of the token kingdom.
General Pacepa would rule as an iron-fisted dictator, quelling dissent and concentrating his forces into rebuilding Wallachia ; nevertheless, the earthquake of 4 March 1977 that further destroyed Bucharest proved to be the last draw to Pacepa’s rule, after it was revealed that humanitarian relief and financial help had been embezzled by the Prime Minister. After riots asking for democracy had begun throughout Wallachia during the spring of 1978, and after being informed of the scandal, King Mihai decided to dismiss his Prime Minister on 16 July 1978, establishing democracy in the process.
Pacepa only retired from the Wallachian military in 1995, but was still sidelined during the existence of the small state, trying to form his own political party, the Conservative Party (Partidul Conservator), that only enjoyed mediocre success in general elections. Insisting upon taking full command during the Moldavian-Wallachian War, he was only given administrative tasks during the war. Ion Mihai Pacepa retired from political and military duties in 1995 ; two years later, Romanian was reunified. Quite forgotten, the General died of Wuchang pneumonia on 14 February 2021, living from a small military pension in an apartment in Bucharest.
Spoiler alert : there won't be Garner, Jack Reed ou Huey Long.
"Eat apples !"
Well, now I want his biography.
I must admit that as a Frenchman, I'm not that familiar with the Rush, even if I tend to think of him as a barking buffoon on the air. But I have an idea for sure.
Does he end up a judge? He seems to have been related to several. I was talking about Carlos Menem though. I liked what you did with him.
Beatrix, Duchess of Oldenburg
Beatrix, Duchess of Oldenburg (born 1971) is a German princess who also served as Reich Minister of Social Affairs, from 24 September 2017 to 13 December 2020, in the Söder II-III Cabinets. The granddaughter of Grand Duke Nikolaus, she adhered to the DVP, belonging to the Integralist faction. First serving as German Ambassador to the Netherlands, she joined the government in 2017.