Events, Verisoph

c. 1989 Washington Consensus formulated 0 cit. Economist John Williamson coins the term Washington Consensus for the package of liberalization, privatization, and fiscal discipline urged on developing countries. The label comes to stand for market-oriented globalization. economy ●●●

27 November 1989 Bombing of Avianca Flight 203 0 cit. A bomb planted by the Medellin drug cartel destroyed Avianca Flight 203 shortly after takeoff, killing all 110 people on board. The attack targeted a presidential candidate who was not aboard. politics / society ●●

6 December 1989 DAS building bombing in Bogota 0 cit. The Medellin cartel detonated a bus bomb outside the headquarters of Colombia's security police, killing about 63 people and injuring hundreds during Pablo Escobar's war on the state. politics / society ●●

March 1989 The World Wide Web 0 cit. Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web, a system of linked pages accessed over the internet, and opened it to the public in 1991. The web turned the internet into an everyday tool for billions. technology ●●●●●

c. 1989 Washington Consensus named 0 cit. Economist John Williamson coined the term Washington Consensus to describe a set of free market policy reforms recommended for developing economies. It came to stand for the prevailing economic orthodoxy promoted by Washington based institutions. economy ●●●●

4 June 1989 Tiananmen Square protests 0 cit. Student-led demonstrations for reform filled Tiananmen Square in spring 1989. The government declared martial law and used troops to end the protests with many deaths on 4 June. politics / society ●●●●●

1989 The Vatican and the fall of communism 0 cit. As communist governments fell across Eastern Europe, the Church under John Paul II was credited with helping inspire the change. The collapse restored Church freedom in much of the former Soviet bloc. politics / religion / society ●●●●

1989 The Washington Consensus is named 1 cit. Economist John Williamson coined the term Washington Consensus to describe a set of market-oriented policies favored by the IMF, World Bank, and US Treasury. The label came to stand, often critically, for the whole adjustment agenda. economy / politics ●●●●●

27 February 1989 The Caracazo uprising 0 cit. Days after Venezuela announced an IMF-backed austerity package that raised fuel and transport prices, riots swept Caracas and were put down with heavy loss of life. The events became a symbol of the social backlash against adjustment. politics / society ●●●

March 1989 The Brady Plan for debt reduction 0 cit. US Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady proposed converting Latin American bank debt into tradable bonds with partial write-downs. The plan brought a measure of relief after years of the crisis being treated as a liquidity rather than solvency problem. economy / politics ●●●

1989 Asus takes its name from Pegasus of Greek myth 0 cit. The Taiwanese electronics company, founded in 1989, took its name from the last letters of Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. economy / religion / technology ●●

13 April 1989 The Kerry Committee links Contras to drugs 0 cit. A Senate subcommittee led by John Kerry reported that Contra networks and their supporters were involved in drug trafficking, and that US agencies looked the other way. The findings drew limited attention at the time. politics / society ●●●

20 December 1989 Manuel Noriega turns from asset to target 0 cit. Panama's Manuel Noriega had long worked with US intelligence before the US invaded to capture him on drug charges. His arc is a textbook case of a covert asset becoming a liability. politics / war ●●●

4 June 1989 Tiananmen and the erasure of memory 0 cit. China crushes the Tiananmen Square protests and then erases them from the record, scrubbing the date and images from its media and later its internet. The event becomes the model of censorship as enforced forgetting. politics / society ●●●●

1989 Campaign to change mathematics teaching launched ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Citing Tom Loveless, Gatto argues that in 1989 a group of math-education experts launched a campaign to change the content and teaching of mathematics, which he sees as a deliberate de-emphasis of math skills. ●●

1989 Gatto's grant to pay students, 1989 ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Gatto recounts that in 1989 he secured a foundation grant to pay his students cash for work they had done for free, an experiment that backfired. ●●

1989 Last Soviet soldier leaves Afghanistan ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan ended as the last soldier withdrew. The CIA's weapons kept flowing to radical Afghan factions, seeding forces that would become al Qaeda. ●●

1989 George H. W. Bush sworn in as president ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The CIA celebrated as Bush, the only president who had run the agency, took office. He became his own director of central intelligence and demanded daily briefings from professionals. ●●

1989 U.S. invades Panama to seize Noriega ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After the CIA repeatedly failed to unseat its old ally Manuel Noriega, the United States mounted its biggest military operation since the fall of Saigon. Special Forces fought through Panama City to arrest the dictator. ●●

1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. The Berlin Wall, the greatest symbol of the Cold War, began to crack. The chief of the CIA's Soviet division watched it happen on CNN, with no worthwhile spies left to report from Moscow. ●●

1989 Noriega annuls Endara's election victory ai_extracted 1 cit. no story When an opposition figure, Guillermo Endara, won the presidential election held in May 1989, Noriega simply ignored the result and imposed his own can (1989) ●●

1989 Soviet Troops Withdraw from Afghanistan ai_extracted 2 cit. The last Soviet military units withdrew from Afghanistan on February 15, 1989, crossing back into Soviet territory after nearly a decade of occupation. ●●

1989 Soviet Political Opening and Agricultural Reform candidate ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Following the decisive political opening in the Soviet Union in 1989, agricultural specialists convened to consider reforms including breaking up collective farms and privatizing land to recreate the private sector that had thrived in the 1920s. ●●

1989 It also gave the Chilean economy a massive shot in the arm, since the effect rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story It also gave the Chilean economy a massive shot in the arm, since the effect was significantly to increase the savings rate (to 30 per cent of GDP by 1989, the highest in Latin America). ●●

1989 (In early 1989, it was still America’s top merger adviser, c rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story (In early 1989, it was still America’s top merger adviser, claiming $60 billion in deals during the year’s first half.) In the 1980s, it gentrified junk bonds and amassed a huge two-billion-dollar war... ●●

1989 Perkins that a Morgan issue “from the desert of Sahara” woul rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Perkins that a Morgan issue “from the desert of Sahara” would find buyers.39 For its services, the syndicate took in $57.5 million in stock (nearly $1 billion in 1989 dollars). ●●

1989 By early 1989, it had begun to fire one hundred people from the for... candidate ai_extracted 1 cit. no story If Main Street hoped that Black Monday would throw a cautionary fear into Wall Street, it was dead wrong. It only prodded the Street into more assertive, reckless behavior. Securities firms had already lost many safe, reliable businesses. ●●

1989 CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX SKYSCRAPER IN 1989, Morgan Stanley, with sixty-... rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX SKYSCRAPER IN 1989, Morgan Stanley, with sixty-four hundred employees, occupied seventeen floors of the Exxon Building on Sixth Avenue—more than Exxon itself. The building was now owned by a Mitsui unit. Stepping off the elevat... ●●

1989 Morgan Grenfell reports its first annual loss ai_extracted 1 cit. no story On December 6, 1988, Morgan Grenfell abruptly shut its securities operation, ending its chances of becoming an integrated global investment bank. There was a wholesale firing of 450 people, or a quarter of its entire payroll—one of the biggest sac... ●●

1989 By 1989, the bank had outgrown its shrine at 23 Wall rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story By 1989, the bank had outgrown its shrine at 23 Wall. Lew Preston wanted a personal computer on every banker’s desk, and trading desks required an exotic jungle of electric wiring. To accommodate a high-tech bank, Morgans bought a new forty-seven-... ●●

1989 On the eve of the bank’s departure for 60 Wall in the summer of 198... rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story By 1989, the bank had outgrown its shrine at 23 Wall. Lew Preston wanted a personal computer on every banker’s desk, and trading desks required an exotic jungle of electric wiring. To accommodate a high-tech bank, Morgans bought a new forty-seven-... ●●

1989 First Vintage Books Edition, January 1989 Copyright © rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story First Vintage Books Edition, January 1989 Copyright © 1987 by Paul Kennedy All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random Hous ●●

December 1989 The Malta Summit declares the Cold War over 0 cit. Weeks after the Berlin Wall fell, George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev meet at Malta and declare the Cold War at an end. Forty years of superpower confrontation gave way, briefly, to talk of a new world order. diplomacy / politics ●●●

1989 cult was first exposed in early rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story cult was first exposed in early April 1989. ●●

1989 THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD With the collapse of the S... rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD With the collapse of the Soviet sphere of influence in 1989, new instability has emerged in Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Pe ●●

1989 When we met in early 1989, he told me how he and Shevardnadze had concluded sometime in the 1970s th rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story When we met in early 1989, he told me how he and Shevardnadze had concluded sometime in the 1970s that the communist system needed to be changed from top to bottom. ●●

1989 For four years after the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, this dialogue was inhibited by the Amer rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story For four years after the events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, this dialogue was inhibited by the American refusal to engage in high-level contacts—a measure never employed against the Soviet Union even at the height of the Cold War. ●●

1989 Excerpts of Gorbachev’s speech to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, July 6, 1989, in The rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Excerpts of Gorbachev’s speech to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, July 6, 1989, in The New York Times, July 7, 1989, p. ●●

1989 “Gorbachev, in Finland, Disavows Any Right of Regional Intervention,” The New York Times, October 26 rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story “Gorbachev, in Finland, Disavows Any Right of Regional Intervention,” The New York Times, October 26, 1989, p. ●●

1989 “Gorbachev Lends Honecker a Hand,” The New York Times, October 7, 1989, p rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story “Gorbachev Lends Honecker a Hand,” The New York Times, October 7, 1989, p. ●●

1989 1989: In March 1989 Berners-Lee had his design in place and offici... rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story splayed information, and server software that could respond to requests from the network. In March 1989 Berners-Lee had his design in place and officially submitted a funding proposal to the top manag ●●

1989 1989: e that could respond to requests from the network. In March 1989 Berne rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story e that could respond to requests from the network. In March 1989 Berners-Lee had his design in place and officially submitted a funding proposal to th ●●

1989 Information history in 1989 rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story roughout its history”♦ is meant to be included. So for mackerel (“a well-known sea-fish, Scomber scombrus, much used for food”) the second edition in 1989 listed nineteen alternative spellings. ●●

1989 Pittston miners' strike begins ai_extracted 1 cit. In a notable illustration of the applicability of the propaganda model, the nine-month-long Pittston miners’ strike that began in April 1989 was accorded much less attention, and less friendly treatme ●●

1989 he war, victims’ remains were transferred to or rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story he war, victims’ remains were transferred to or maintained by some of Germany’s leading medical research facilities. Hence the exterminated continued to provide organic service to German medicine. In 1989, the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, the successor to Hallervorden’s center, admitted ●●

1989 This changed suddenly with the end of the cold war in 1989. rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story This changed suddenly with the end of the cold war in 1989. ●●

1989 Tiananmen protests and the 1989 crackdown ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The contemporaneous Gorbachev reforms in the former Soviet Union inspired the Tiananmen protest movement and the government’s bloody crackdown in June 1989. ●●

1989 China permits village elections ai_extracted 1 cit. no story The Chinese government has permitted village elections in rural areas since 1989 to elect village committees and village leaders with certain limited local powers. ●●

1989 It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that stable liberal democracy finally spre candidate ai_extracted 1 cit. no story It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that stable liberal democracy finally spread throughout Western Europe, and not until the collapse of communism in 1989–1991 that it was extended into Eastern Europe as well. ●●

1989 20,000 peo- ple had been packed into it; rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story 20,000 peo- ple had been packed into it; the December 1989 invasion—10 hours of heavy assault—left 15,000 homeless ●●

1989 After the invasion, one of the docu- ments rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story After the invasion, one of the docu- ments the Iraqis found in a Kuwaiti intelligence file was a memorandum concerning a ●●

1989 In July, while all these warnings were ostensibly rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In July, while all these warnings were ostensibly being ignored, the Pentagon was busy running its computerized command ●●

1989 5° In a visit to San Salvador in rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story 5° In a visit to San Salvador in February 1989, Vice President Dan Quayle told army lead- ers that death squad killings ●●

1989 In October 1989, former Salvadorean Army commando Cesar rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In October 1989, former Salvadorean Army commando Cesar Vielman Joya Martinez, in an interview on the CBS Evening News, ●●

1989 FMLN guerrillas launch major offensive in El Salvador ai_extracted 1 cit. no story A major offensive launched by the guerrillas in late 1989—in which they “brought the war home” to wealthy neighborhoods ●●

1989 In October 1989, President Bush, perhaps in reaction rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story In October 1989, President Bush, perhaps in reaction to this congressional rejection, and in anticipation of the upcomin ●●

1989 72; Dilip Hiro, The Longest War: The Iran- rejected ai_extracted 1 cit. no story 72; Dilip Hiro, The Longest War: The Iran- Iraq Military Conflict (London, 1989), p ●●

c. 1989 Chicago police detective Jon Burge torture scandal comes to light 0 cit. Evidence mounted through the late 1980s and 1990s that Chicago police commander Jon Burge and detectives under his command had tortured more than 100 suspects, mostly Black men, using electric shock, suffocation, and beatings to extract confessions between 1972 and 1991. Burge was never charged for the torture itself due to statutes of limitations, but was convicted of perjury and obstruction in 2010 for lying about it under oath. Chicago later created a reparations fund for Burge torture survivors, the first of its kind in the United States. politics ●●●

20 December 1989 F-117 stealth fighter's first combat use 0 cit. U.S. Air Force F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft flew their first combat missions during the invasion of Panama, Operation Just Cause, though their bombing accuracy that night was later criticized. The aircraft's radar-evading design, developed in secret through the 1980s, marked a major shift in air power technology. Stealth aircraft went on to play a much larger and more effective role in the 1991 Gulf War. technology / war ●

1989 Berners-Lee proposes the World Wide Web to CERN ai_extracted 1 cit. no story Berners-Lee formally proposed his hypertext networking design to CERN managers. ●●

1989 John Williamson coins the term Washington Consensus 0 cit. Economist John Williamson coins the term Washington Consensus to describe a set of ten policy prescriptions, including fiscal discipline, privatization, deregulation, and trade liberalization, that the U.S. Treasury, IMF, and World Bank commonly recommended to developing countries and Latin America. The term became shorthand, often used critically, for the global spread of Chicago School and neoliberal policy through international lending institutions. diplomacy / economy ●●●

9 November 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet-style central planning 0 cit. The Berlin Wall falls, and within two years the Soviet bloc's centrally planned economies collapse, discrediting comprehensive state planning in the eyes of most Western economists. The event was widely read as a vindication of Hayek's warnings in The Road to Serfdom and gave momentum to market-oriented reform across the former communist world. economy / politics ●●●

7 November 1989 UNTAG oversees Namibia's first free elections 0 cit. The UN Transition Assistance Group supervised Namibia's first democratic elections for a Constituent Assembly, with SWAPO winning a plurality of seats but falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to write the constitution unilaterally. The election followed a ceasefire and the phased withdrawal of South African forces earlier in the year. The resulting assembly negotiated a constitution by consensus among the parties. politics ●●

March 1989 The Brady Plan restructures developing-country debt 0 cit. US Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady proposed a plan letting commercial banks exchange defaulted developing-country loans for tradeable bonds at a discount, backed by US Treasury collateral. The plan reduced the total debt stock for some Latin American countries but left borrowing nations dependent on continued IMF-approved economic policies to qualify, extending the conditionality regime rather than ending it. economy ●

29 March 1989 Michael Milken indicted 0 cit. A federal grand jury indicted Michael Milken, the Drexel Burnham banker who had built the junk-bond financing that fueled much of the 1980s takeover and leveraged-buyout wave, on 98 counts of racketeering and securities fraud. The case centered on insider trading and stock parking schemes rather than the legality of junk bonds or leveraged buyouts themselves. Milken pleaded guilty to a reduced set of six counts in April 1990 and was sentenced to ten years in prison, later reduced. economy ●●

c. 1989 Martin Short Publishes Inside the Brotherhood unproven 0 cit. Journalist Martin Short published 'Inside the Brotherhood', a follow-up investigation into Freemasonry that included allegations of Masonic influence over local council planning decisions, contract awards, and appointments in several English towns. Short named specific cases he said showed favoritism, while acknowledging that most Masonic membership had no bearing on official decisions. The book, like Knight's, is a journalistic account whose individual claims vary in how well they are documented; readers and later inquiries treated its broadest claims of organised control as unproven. culture / politics ●●

14 October 1989 First mainstream recognition of Prince Hall Freemasonry 0 cit. The Grand Lodge of Connecticut voted to formally recognize the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Connecticut, becoming the first predominantly white "mainstream" US Grand Lodge to do so. The vote ended nearly two centuries in which mainstream American Grand Lodges had refused to recognize Prince Hall lodges as regular, and opened the door to a wider wave of recognitions. culture / society ●●●

12 February 1989 Murder of Pat Finucane 0 cit. Pat Finucane, a Belfast solicitor who had represented republican clients including hunger strikers, was shot dead in front of his wife and children by UDA gunmen. Later official reviews established that a British Army intelligence agent inside the UDA was involved in the killing and that security force personnel supplied information used to target him. The case became the most prominent single example of alleged state collusion in loyalist violence. politics / war ●●●

c. May 1989 Stevens Inquiry launched 0 cit. British police officer John Stevens was appointed to lead an investigation into allegations that British Army intelligence and RUC Special Branch had colluded with loyalist paramilitaries by leaking security force intelligence on republican and nationalist targets. It was the first of what became three linked Stevens Inquiries over the following fourteen years, examining collusion in a series of loyalist killings including that of Pat Finucane. Investigators later reported that their work was obstructed, including by a fire that destroyed the inquiry's Belfast office in 1990. politics ●●

19 October 1989 Guildford Four convictions quashed 0 cit. The Court of Appeal quashed the convictions of the Guildford Four after new evidence showed police had fabricated interview notes and withheld evidence supporting the defendants' alibis. All four had spent fifteen years in prison for a bombing they did not commit. The case, alongside the Birmingham Six case, prompted a broader reckoning with wrongful convictions of Irish people during the 1970s and reforms to police interrogation and disclosure practices. politics / society ●●

18 December 1989 Security Service Act puts MI5 on a statutory footing 0 cit. The Security Service Act 1989 gave MI5 statutory recognition for the first time in its eighty-year history, formally avowing its existence and defining its functions in law. It also created a tribunal for complaints against the Service. Before this, the government had never officially acknowledged MI5's existence. politics ●●●

15 April 1989 Hillsborough disaster 0 cit. A human crush at Hillsborough football stadium during an FA Cup semi-final killed 97 Liverpool supporters, the worst disaster in British sporting history. An initial inquiry and inquest blamed fan behaviour and returned verdicts of accidental death, while police reports were later found to have been altered to shift blame away from South Yorkshire Police. Campaigning by victims' families eventually led to a fresh independent review of the evidence. society ●●●

c. 1989 The Civil Cooperation Bureau exposed in South Africa 0 cit. The Civil Cooperation Bureau was a covert unit of the apartheid South African Defence Force set up in the late 1980s to act against opponents of the state at home and abroad. Its existence and its links to assassinations were exposed by the Harms Commission and later detailed before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It stands as a documented example of a state running a clandestine armed unit outside the normal police and military structure. politics / society ●●

23 August 1989 The Baltic Way human chain 0 cit. About two million people joined hands in a chain stretching across the three Baltic states to protest Soviet control. It marked 50 years since the pact that led to their annexation. The peaceful demonstration became a symbol of their drive to regain independence, achieved in 1991. politics / society ●●

9 November 1989 The 1989 revolutions and the fall of the Berlin Wall 0 cit. A wave of mostly peaceful revolutions swept communist governments from power across Eastern Europe, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and others broke from Soviet control within months. The changes ended the Cold War division of Europe. politics / society ●●●

4 June 1989 The Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown 0 cit. Students and workers filled Beijing's Tiananmen Square for weeks calling for democratic reform and an end to corruption. The government sent in the army, killing protesters and bystanders in and around the square. The death toll is disputed and censored in China, with estimates ranging from a few hundred to several thousand. politics / society ●●●

17 November 1989 The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia 0 cit. Mass peaceful protests, sparked by the beating of student demonstrators, brought down Czechoslovakia's communist government within weeks. The dissident playwright Vaclav Havel became president by year's end. Its near-bloodless course gave it the name the Velvet Revolution. politics / society ●●

16 December 1989 The Romanian Revolution topples Ceausescu 0 cit. Protests that began in Timisoara spread nationwide and turned violent as security forces fired on crowds. Unlike the peaceful changes elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Romania's revolution was bloody, and the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were executed after a hasty trial. It ended communist rule in the country. politics / war ●●

1989 Crenshaw coins the term "intersectionality" 0 cit. Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined "intersectionality" to describe how Black women face overlapping racism and sexism that neither alone explains. The concept became central to third-wave feminism and later social movements. culture / society ●●

March 1989 The Brady Plan writes down some debt 0 cit. US Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady accepts that some debt must be forgiven, swapping old loans for tradable 'Brady bonds' at a discount. It gave partial relief to middle-income debtors while keeping the conditions attached. The plan eased the worst of the crisis without ending the underlying dependence on outside finance. diplomacy / economy ●●

27 February 1989 The Caracazo: austerity turns deadly 0 cit. Riots erupt in Venezuela after a new IMF-backed austerity package raises fuel and transport prices, and the crackdown kills hundreds. The Caracazo became a symbol of the human cost of structural adjustment. Similar 'IMF riots' struck other cities where subsidy cuts hit the poor hardest. economy / politics ●●

1989 Reforming Section 2 after the Ponting acquittal 0 cit. After a jury refused to convict civil servant Clive Ponting, who leaked documents about the Falklands War and argued he served the public interest, pressure grew to reform the sweeping 1911 law. The Official Secrets Act of 1989 replaced the blanket Section 2 with narrower categories, but it removed the public-interest defence that had saved Ponting. Reformers were split on whether it was a real improvement or a tighter net. politics / society ●●

24 March 1989 Exxon Valdez spills in Alaska 0 cit. The tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground and spills millions of gallons of crude into pristine Alaskan waters. The disaster fouled hundreds of miles of coast, became a symbol of the industry's risks, and reshaped US oil-spill law. science / society ●●

c. 1989 Big Oil funds climate-science denial 0 cit. Oil companies and allies form groups such as the Global Climate Coalition to question the science of global warming and block emissions limits. Investigations and the firms' own records document a decades-long campaign to sow doubt even as their scientists understood the risk. politics / science ●●●

c. August 1989 Gazprom created from the Soviet gas ministry 0 cit. The Soviet Ministry of the Gas Industry was reorganized into the state concern Gazprom, which kept control of Russia's vast gas reserves and pipeline network. The firm became a commercial arm of the state and a tool of foreign policy toward Europe. It remains one of the clearest examples of a company that doubles as an instrument of national power. diplomacy / economy / politics ●●

1989 The Kerry Committee report on the Contras and drugs 0 cit. A Senate subcommittee led by John Kerry concluded that some Nicaraguan Contra networks were tied to drug traffickers and that US agencies had been slow to act on the evidence while the Contras served American policy. The report stopped short of alleging a deliberate CIA drug operation but found the government had looked the other way. politics / war ●●

1989 The indictment and capture of Manuel Noriega 0 cit. The United States invaded Panama and seized its ruler Manuel Noriega, who was convicted in a US court of drug trafficking and racketeering. Noriega had for years been a paid US intelligence asset even as he worked with cocaine traffickers, a contradiction at the heart of the case. politics / war ●●

1989 Narcoterror and the assassination of Luis Carlos Galán 0 cit. The Medellín cartel waged open war on the Colombian state, gunning down presidential frontrunner Luis Carlos Galán and bombing Avianca Flight 203. The campaign of assassinations and bombings showed a cartel powerful enough to threaten a nation's government. politics / war ●●

c. 1989 Scholars name the pattern: the politics of the belly 0 cit. Scholars have offered a shared framework that Kenya's story often illustrates. Jean-Francois Bayart's 'The State in Africa' (1989) calls it the 'politics of the belly', where holding office is treated as a licence to eat. Bruce Berman ties the habit to the inherited colonial state, and Michela Wrong later borrowed a Kenyan phrase, 'it's our turn to eat', for the same idea: that each group in power expects its turn at the public purse. This is an interpretation argued by these writers, not an established fact about anyone's motives. politics / society ●●

c. 1989 The government admits torturing Mwakenya suspects 0 cit. By 1989 the Moi government publicly acknowledged that Mwakenya suspects had been tortured, a rare admission for a regime that usually denied such claims. Mwakenya is often described as the only movement whose members the state conceded it had abused. The admission did little to change practice at the time, but it stands in the record. politics ●●

c. 1989 Smith Hempstone arrives as US ambassador 0 cit. With the Cold War ending, Washington sent Smith Hempstone as ambassador to Kenya. Unlike his predecessors, he openly criticized Moi's one-party rule and human rights record. His arrival marked a shift from quiet backing toward public pressure for reform. diplomacy / politics ●●

1989 The Washington Consensus is codified 0 cit. Economist John Williamson lists ten policy prescriptions, from fiscal discipline to privatization and liberalization, that Washington institutions broadly agreed on for developing economies. This is the reform rationale in its own words: correct the failures of over-large, over-indebted states. Its defenders argue the alternative was continued fiscal collapse, not a healthy state. economy / politics ●●●

29 December 1989 The Nikkei peaks at nearly 39,000 0 cit. On the last trading day of 1989 the Nikkei 225 stock average closed at 38,915, its all-time high. Japanese assets and companies looked poised to dominate the world. It was the top of the bubble, though few recognized it at the time. economy ●●●●

November 1989 The screening exercise and the pink card 3 cit. The government ran a screening drive that forced ethnic Somalis to appear before committees and prove they were citizens, singling them out by ethnicity while others were not screened. Those cleared were issued a special pink verification card they had to carry on top of the national ID. People judged non-citizens were detained and many were deported, and the pink card became a lasting mark of second-class status. politics / society ●●●

1989 Protests stop the KANU tower planned for Uhuru Park 0 cit. The government backed a plan to build a huge Kenya Times media complex in Uhuru Park, topped by a tower and a statue of President Moi, on public open space. Wangari Maathai led a campaign against it, writing letters and rallying opposition despite ridicule from officials. Foreign backers pulled out and the project was abandoned, leaving the park intact. environment / politics ●●●

1989 NCPB turns maize into state food politics 1 cit. The National Cereals and Produce Board system made maize a political crop: depots, agents, prices, payments, imports, storage and strategic reserves all ran through state machinery. This gave farmers a buyer and the country a grain buffer, but it also made maize vulnerable to patronage, delayed payments and politically timed supply decisions. economy / politics / society ●●●●

19 June 1990 Schengen Implementing Convention wikidata 0 cit. ●●●

1990 Collapse of the Japanese bubble ai_extracted 1 cit. From 1990 onward bank loan growth slowed, asset prices fell, speculators went bankrupt, and about 100 trillion yen of loans turned into bad debts, pushing Japan into its worst recession since the Great Depression. ●●●●

1990 Japan becomes the world's top direct investor ai_extracted 1 cit. In 1990 Japanese foreign direct investment reached $48 billion, overtaking portfolio investment, and Japan became the world's number one provider of direct investment. ●●●

March 1990 Unemployment hits record low of 2 percent ai_extracted 1 cit. At the height of the boom's labor shortage, Japanese unemployment fell to a record low of 2 percent in March 1990. ●●