WORDS ABOUT CURRENT POLITICAL AFFAIRS

This word group is mostly based on the online article ‘Direct democracy Demonstrations in Greece‘ shared in a previous post. Double-click on the words you are not familiar with to see definitions and examples in a pop-up window.

Indignant citizens’ gathering at the main square of Heraklion

demonstrator cutbacks Parliament privatize banner
apathy lay off mike surge moderate moderator obsequious wage coup confined parliamentarian indignant frustrated revolutionary inevitable regime levy steep taxes well-off middle class capitalist elite magnate corrupt debt net wealth launder money declare income Minister mandate substantial purchase rivalry apparatus intelligence outlay joblessness parliamental immunity try trial jail pitchfork detest well-to-do rev up provocation fundamental straightforwardly vision simultaneous fierce constitutional leadership intellectuals lot party policy consistent with subjected to censure institution seek struggling explosion representative oligarchy individuality bent articulate integrated convention segregated anchor impulse fore rank and file hierarchical inheritance blossom backlash

The motto ‘Wake Up!’ was formed by burning candles.

Other terms in the article:

1) American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is an American insurance corporation. According to the 2011 Forbes Global 2000 list, AIG was the 29th-largest public company in the world. It was listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average from April 8, 2004 to September 22, 2008. (More on Wikipedia.)

2) The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients. (More on Wikipedia.)

3) Xe Services LLC (pronounced /ˈziː/ zee) is a private military company founded in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark. It is better known by its former names, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide. Xe is currently the largest of the U.S. State Department’s three private security contractors. Of the 987 contractors Xe provides, 744 are U.S. citizens. At least 90% of the company’s revenue comes from government contracts. Xe provided security services in Iraq to the United States federal government, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency on a contractual basis. (More on Wikipedia.)

4) Louis XVI (23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) ruled as King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792. Suspended and arrested as part of the insurrection of 10 August during the French Revolution, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of high treason, and executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793 as “Citoyen Louis Capet”. He is the only king of France ever to be executed. (More)

5) Marie Antoinette assumed the title of Queen of France and of Navarre when her husband, Louis XVI of France, ascended the throne upon the death of Louis XV in May 1774. At the height of the French Revolution, Louis XVI was deposed and the monarchy abolished on 10 August 1792; the royal family was subsequently imprisoned at the Temple Prison. Nine months after her husband’s execution, Marie Antoinette was herself tried, convicted of treason, and executed by guillotine on 16 October 1793. (More)

6) Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, sociologist, historian, political economist, political theorist, journalist and revolutionary socialist, who developed the socio-political theory of Marxism. His ideas have since played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement. He published various books during his lifetime, with the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Capital (1867–1894), many of which were co-written with his friend, the fellow German revolutionary socialist Friedrich Engels. (More)

7) Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato’s teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle’s writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. (More)

8) The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) ( /ˈsnɪk/) was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. SNCC grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support SNCC’s work in the South, allowing full-time SNCC workers to have a $10 a week salary. Many unpaid volunteers also worked with SNCC on projects in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, and Maryland. (More)

9) Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country’s New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969. SDS has been an important influence on student organizing in the decades since its collapse. Participatory democracy, direct action, radicalism, student power, shoestring budgets, and its organizational structure are all present in varying degrees in current American student activist groups. (More)