Portal:Politics
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The Politics portal
Politics refers to a set of activities associated with the governance of a country, or an area. It involves making decisions that apply to members of a group.
It refers to achieving and exercising positions of governance—organized control over a human community, particularly a state. The academic study focusing on just politics, which is therefore more targeted than general political science, is sometimes referred to as politology (not to be confused with politicology, a synonym for political science).
In modern nation-states, people have formed political parties to represent their ideas. They agree to take the same position on many issues and agree to support the same changes to law and the same leaders.
An election is usually a competition between different parties. Some examples of political parties worldwide are: the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, the Democratic Party (D) in the United States, the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany and the Bhartiya Janata Party in India.
Politics is a multifaceted word. It has a set of fairly specific meanings that are descriptive and nonjudgmental (such as "the art or science of government" and "political principles"), but does often colloquially carry a negative connotation. The word has been used negatively for many years: the British national anthem as published in 1745 calls on God to "Confound their politics", and the phrase "play politics", for example, has been in use since at least 1853, when abolitionist Wendell Phillips declared: "We do not play politics; anti-slavery is no half-jest with us."
A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against adversaries. Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level.
A political system is a framework which defines acceptable political methods within a given society. The history of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity, with seminal works such as Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics and the works of Confucius.
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The Belarusian Republican Youth Union is an organized youth group in the Eastern European country of Belarus. The goals of the BRSM are to promote patriotism and to instill individual moral values into the youth of Belarus, using activities such as camping, sporting events and visiting memorials. The organization, which was created by a merger of other youth groups in 2002, is the successor of the Leninist Communist Youth League of the Belorussian SSR. While it is only one of a few youth groups inside Belarus, it is the largest and receives much backing from the Belarusian government. The BRSM has been accused of using methods of coercion and empty promises to recruit members and of being used as a propaganda tool by the Lukashenko Government.
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Andrew Gregg Curtin (1817–1894) was a U.S. lawyer and politician. He served as the 15th Governor of Pennsylvania during the American Civil War. During the Civil War, Curtin organized the Pennsylvania reserves into combat units, and oversaw the construction of the first Union military camp for training militia. After the Battle of Gettysburg, Governor Curtin was the principal force behind the establishment of the National Cemetery there. After serving two terms as governor, Curtin was appointed ambassador to Russia by Ulysses S. Grant, and he later served in the House of Representatives from 1881 until 1887.
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News and Current Events
- May 21: Nickey Iyambo, former vice-president of Namibia, dies aged 82
- May 18: Governor of US state of Alabama signs state anti-abortion measure
- May 15: Polish leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski promises stricter punishments for child abusers
- May 12: Pope Francis instructs reporting of sexual abuse to higher church authorities
- March 28: Thousands march in anti-Brexit protest, London
- March 15: Former Trump advisor, Paul Manafort, receives second sentence in U.S. Federal Court
- February 25: Texas federal judge says drafting only men violates United States Constitution
- February 21: Sixteen states sue U.S. President Trump to stop declaration of emergency for border wall
- February 17: Francis D'Souza, former Deputy Chief Minister of Goa, dies aged 64
- February 12: German migrant rescue charity renames ship after drowned Syrian toddler
May 27: Andrew Yang (yang2020.com) and Scott McCatty (votescotty.com) 2020 presidential candidates are planning a debate on Telegram. 35.138.243.249 (talk) 12:36, 27 May 2019 (UTC)dnb
Selected biography
Phạm Ngọc Thảo (1922–1965), a major provincial leader in South Vietnam and infiltrator of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), was a communist agent of the Viet Minh and later the Vietnam People's Army. As the overseer of Ngô Đình Nhu's Strategic Hamlet Program in the early 1960s, he deliberately forced the program forward at unsustainable speeds, constructing poorly equipped and poorly defended villages, in order to foster rural resentment against the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem, Nhu's elder brother. Thao was posthumously promoted by the ARVN to the rank of one-star general and awarded the title of Heroic war dead (Vietnamese: Liệt sĩ). After the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War, the communist government awarded him the same title and paid war pensions to his family, claiming him as one of their own.
Did you know...
- ...that the Communist League of America was formed after some members of the Communist Party USA were expelled for Trotskyism?
- ...that Nazi scientists claimed to have trained a dog to call "Adolf Hitler" as "Mein Führer"?
- ...that for many years, the Russian Soviet Republic did not have its Communist Party?
- ...that the World War II idea of Polish-Czechoslovakian confederation was eventually discarded by the Czechs, whose leader chose instead to believe in the Soviet Union promises of alliance?
- ...that just before the invasion of Poland, members of the German minority from Deutscher Volksverband were trained in sabotage by the Abwehr agents arriving in Poland from Germany?
- ...that the Proletarian Revolutionary Organisation of Nepal proposed a synthesis of Buddhism and Maoism in 1977?
In this month
- June 28, 2004 - Canadian federal elections occur; the Liberal party loses its absolute majority.
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