Counterculture Timeline: The Eighties: End of the Cold War 1987 - 1991 Completion of Unraveling Period 1981-2001 GenX generation (Nomad/Reactive) born 1961-1981 continues to turn 20 |
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| EVENTS | ARTS | |||
| 1987 | 1987
MUSIC/CINEMA/PUBLISHING ?Ruben Blades ?Ladysmith Black Mambazo TV: Vietnam series, Thirtysomething Woody Allen: Radio Days Dirty Dancing La Bamba (Luis Valdez plays Richie Valens) Platoon (saw as 86) Cry Freedom, Mandela, Walker Good Morning, Vietnam (Fatal Attraction) (Hope and Glory) (My Life as a Dog) Sammy and Rosie Get Laid Fire From the Mountain (Nicaraguan struggle) Walker The East/The West (film by Kiyoshi Miyato on American Indians) Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow - Sinetar Growing a Business - Hawken The Great Depression of 1990 - Ravi Batra (summer?) |
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| Aug 15 &16 | Harmonic convergence |
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| Sept | Sept 1 -Brian Wilson loses legs
at Concord Naval Weapons Station (Turning third world debt into bonds) Ecuador debt-for-nature swap |
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| Oct | Oct 5 US Supreme Court refuses
to hear Native American activist Leonard Peltier appeal Oct? Bork hearings Oct 11 Second Lesbian & Gay March, Washington DC, again unreported by press. President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica wins Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the fighting in Central America. Prime interest rate raised to 9 1/4 (fifth raise this year) Oct 16 &19 Wall Street: stock market/Dow falls 508 points US attack on Iran oil platforms |
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| Nov | Gorbachev criticizes Stalin
on the 70th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, opening the door to re-examination
of the Soviet past and loosening censorship California Rural Legal Assistance and California Agrarian Action Project win suit (started 1979) against University of California for preferential research for large agri-business farmers Nov 12 Unita/SA defeat in Angola (re-check xx) |
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| Dec | INF Treaty signed by Reagan
and Gorbachev providing for elimination of medium- and shorter-range nuclear
missiles, during the first visit of a Soviet leader to the US in 14 years |
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| 1988 | Nearly every West African
country receives offers for accepting hazardous waste. ?ARDIS (Assoc for Responsible Dissent): Philip Agee, John Stockwell, Verne Lyon, Ralph McGehee, Philip Roettinger, Ilona Maria Lorenz. ?British buying up US? "NIMBY" Worst drought in 50 years & warmest Jan-May on record: farms in south & midwest US devastated; forest fires - Global warming draws public interest Three million homeless in U.S. (sez EWJ) Federal "Drug Czar" appointed to lead war on illegal drugs |
1988 MUSIC/CINEMA/PUBLISHING Tracy Chapman Michelle Shocked K.D. Lang ?Baez, Collins, + Cohen + Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Pere Ubu Dinosaurs ?Japanese Taiko drums Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares TV: thirtysomething (when did it start?) Miami Vice (ditto) The Unbearable Lightness of Being (from Kundera) Moonstruck Babette's Feast School Daze (Spike Lee) The Milagro Beanfield War Wings of Desire - Wim Wenders Bagdad Cafe Colors (Dennis Hopper) Stand and Deliver (Edward Olmos plays Jaime Escalante) The War in El Cedro (Viet vets go to Nicaragua) The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese) (Salam Bombay) Tucker (Coppola) Imagine: John Lennon (Working Girl) ?Rain Man (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) The Chalice & the Blade Matthew Fox: The Coming of the Cosmic Christ William Gibson: Mona Lisa Overdrive |
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| Jan | Restoring the Earth Conference Jan 26 Australian Aborigines mark Australia's 200th anniversary as "invasion day" |
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| Feb | Contra-Aid debate. Ft. Bragg offshore oil drilling hearing. EEC decides on 1992 Single European Market (end to internal barriers). Gorbachev announces withdrawal of all 115,000 Soviet troops from Afhanistan. Costa Rica's La Selva Protected Zone debt-for-nature swap. G.E. workers agree to pay cut to keep their jobs. Thousands of Armenians demand cancellation of a proposed chemical plant near Yerevan. |
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| March | Mar 16 Puget Sound oil spill. Mar 16 Iranscam indictments. Mar 17 US soldiers sent to Honduras Mar 24 Another Stock Market drop |
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| April | Apr 18 Attack on Iraq + Palestinian
leader shot Apr 25 Greenpeace & the Danish Government debate Association of Martime Incinerators before scientific committee of the London Dumping Convention over proposal for world-wide ban on incineration of toxic wastes at sea, which European countries have been doing since 1969 (about 90,000 tons toxic waste a year) Apr 26 ?Shell? oil spill - Suisun Bay |
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| May | U.S. inflation worries starting
again). Hungary: Kadar out after 32 years. Lilco agrees to sell unfinished Long Island Shoreham nuclear power plant to NY for $1 to be dismantled (ck for more recent ???) May-Jun Reagan visits Gorbachev in Moscow & signs xxx |
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| June | June 1 Brazilian govt recognizes
Native American right to remain in their territories. Jn? Australian govt agrees to negotiate first treaty with Aborigines. The Khian Sea, which left Philadelphia Oct 1986 with 10,000 tones of incinerator ash, has been refused permission to dump in the Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Haiti, & Guinea-Bissau June/July Dollar rises (through summer) 120 to 135 yen |
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| July | U.K.:Big summer of House
Party/Acid House all-night dance events (Ecstasy at The Hacienda, Manchester). Hospital wastes found on US east coast beaches. Sunday before 31st: 100,000 people link hands on the north German coast to protest government complacency in fighting epidemic which has killed 4000 North Sea seals in the last three months |
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| Aug | Cease fire in Angola (13 yrs
civil war). Cease fire in Iran-Iraq war (8 yrs)/ USSR starts withdrawal from Afghanistan (after 8 1/2 yrs) - 100,000 troops to be out by Feb 15 (13,00 have been killed; 22,000 wounded) Hopeful initiatives underway in Cyprus & Western Sahara. "Vietnam may withdraw from Cambodia". Poland agrees to talk with Walesa (after 8 yrs). Aug 27 55,000 attend 25th anniversary Washington Civil Rights March. |
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| Sept | Sept 8 Boise, Idaho: 4 white
supremacists plead guilty to plotting bombings, robberies & the murder
of Morris Dees. NYT: "Is the cold war drawing to a close?" Sept 12 - 40,000 demonstrate in Budapest against Danube dam [Utne Jan/Feb 1989 p. 88] [don't I have this earlier??] Sept 19 Burma & Haiti rebel. Sept 29 80,000 in West Berlin protest IMF policies, 400 arrested. (Sept Savings & loans failures continuing) |
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| Oct | Albert Hoffman Institute founded
L.A. & Switzerland re-legalizes LSD research. Energy Dept finally admits problems with nuclear arms industry and nuclear plants. Oil prices dropping again - below 10 dollars/barrel. Oct? (8 months after Armenians in Feb) 50,000 Latvians, Estonians, & Lithuanians link arms in a human chain stretching 150 km along the shore of the severely polluted Baltic Sea (Utne July/August 1989 p. 47) |
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| Nov | Robert Morris sends Internet
Worm (computer virus). Nov Bush elected (vs Dukakis) but with Democratic Congress and with both candidates supporting environmentalism. Also Insurance reforms in California. Thailand: protests against dam. |
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| Dec | (Dec 7? U.N. adopts global weather
resolution) (explain?). Dec 8? Gorbachev speech at U.N. (then hurries home after Georgia earthquake). Dec 14 US agrees to talk to PLO. Dec 23? Peace in Namibia. Dec? Chico Mendes, rubber tapper & rain forest activist, murdered in Brazil At UN, Gorbachev announces he will cut Soviet troops by 500,000. "Intifada started". |
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| when? | EEC/US "on the brink of
trade war" Benazir Bhutto elected in Pakistan |
| 1989 | U.S. average family income regains
1973 level (only with two wage-earners) |
1989 MUSIC/CINEMA/PUBLISHING Mississippi Burning High Hopes (U.K.) Dead Poets Society Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee) Batman Comic Book Confidential (She-Devil) Story of Women/Une Affaires des Femmes (Chabrol) Woody Allen: Crimes and Misdemeanors Born on the Fourth of July Sex, Lies and Videotape Roger and Me (more 1990) Distant Voices, Still Lives (UK) |
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| Jan | Jan 5 Riots against African
students in China. ? Matthew Fox's banning. Salmon Rushdie: Satanic Verses Libyan chemical weapon plant. Jan 24 "Dow Jones back to Oct. 17 level" Jan 30-Feb 3 Record cold E & N U.S. (Alaska storm) |
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| Feb | Feb 4 Paraguay: Stroessner (dictator
35 years) unseated in military coup. Feb? Antarctic oil spill/ Feb ?First? public demonstrations of Virtual Reality Salmon Rushdie receives death threat. Feb [last??] Russian soldiers come back from Afghanistan. |
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| March | Time Inc and Warner merge to
create the largest media company. Gorbachev declares the failure of Stalinist collectivization and centralized control of agriculture, and proposed to return land to families and allows first contested elections in USSR. Mar 10 Hungary: new constitution & Lithuania: Si-u-dees(t) to win 30/42 Mar 13 Tibet demonstrations third world debt Mar 24 Exxon Valdez oil spill - Alaska (Prince William Sound) 37,415 tons Mar 27 USSR: first contested elections Mar-Apr UK: "No winter in Europe this last year & things are blooming 2 months early |
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| April | Gorbachev purges USSR Central
Committee of those opposing reform Apr 6 Vietnam volunteer GIs return, after 2 month visit Apr 7 Annual reclaim the test site demo ?starts Apr 9 Georgia, ?USSR: 17 die Wash D.C. Pro-Choice March 100,000 Apr 10 Gas prices raised Apr 12 Abbie Hoffman dead Bush? announces renewal all water leases: Orange Cove near Fresno, Friant Dam Apr 26 Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China demonstrations start Apr 28 170 conscientious objectors have left South Africa in 4 years; Mobil leaves South Africa due to end of tax credits |
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| May | Hungary: demolition of first
part of East-West wall on Austrian border May 8 (eve) Georgia demo - 20 killed (USSR) May 11 Panama: government calls election void, Bush sending troops May 15 Russians getting Vietnam to pull out of Cambodia (by Sept) -> talks w China Gorbachev to China May 14-18 China demonstrations in Tienanmen Square during USSR-China talks May 31 "18th day" China demonstrations: ?100,000 in Tienanmen Square |
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| June | June 3-4 China: police attack
demonstrators in Tienanmen Square, end demonstration. June 4 Solidarity wins in Poland. June 5 Khomeini dead. Prime 11 1/2 -> 11% June 6 Sacramento: Rancho Seco voted down J 5-10 Uzbeck youths Fergona Valley attack Misketi Turks June 8 Poland's first free election since the Communists took over brings overwhelming victory for Solidarity candidates June 12 Expansion of Native American water rights upheld by Supreme Court Falwell announces Moral Majority to end Aug. 31 June Heavy rains in Ohio, flooding in 13 eastern U.S. states U.K.: drought (most since summer 1976) ?summer another attempt at re-introducing the mini |
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| Aug 23 | 2 million in Balkans form
human chain on the 50th anniversary of the secret agreement which made them
part of the Soviet Union |
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| Sept 10 | Hungary opens its border
with Austria to allow the exit of East Germans gathered at West German Embassy
in Budapest. |
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| Oct Oct 17 SF quake |
Oct 1 East German leader
Erich Honecker tries to deal with flood of East Germans escaping through
Hungary and Czechoslovakia (200,000 by November) by allowing those in Prague
and Warsaw to leave for the West by train, then tries to stem the flow with
a ban on visas for travel to Czechoslovakia Oct 7 Hungarian Communist party reconstitutes itself as Socialist Party Oct 8 week before: Donald Trump bid to take over American Airlines, United & Northwest airlines also embroiled in takeovers since last spring = 3 of the largest airline carriers Oct 13 Dow drops 190? points Oct 17 Hungarian parliament revises constitution to allow multiparty system and free elections planned for 1990 Oct 18 East Germany: Honecker replaced by Egon Krenz Oct 28 East Germany: Krenz eases travel restrictions for East Germans Oct 28 Czechoslovakia: Arrest of playwright Vaclav Havel and others provokes protest by 10,000; police break up demonstration. |
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| Nov | Nov 4 500,000 demonstrate
in East Berlin to Nov 7, when government resigns Nov 8 East Germans again pouring into West Germany via Czechoslovakia; East German Politburo resigns and is replaced by a smaller body. Nov 9 East Germany opens its borders - "Berlin wall comes down" Nov 13-14 Czechoslovakia opens its borders Nov 17 Czech: 10-20,000 teens try to march to Wenceslaus(sp?) Square, Prague; 400 injured Nov 18 Czech: strike at schools, invitations of forbidden speakers; Town meetings start; Civic Forum formed Nov 21-22 Czechoslovakia: 1 million demonstrators - over next week becomes general strike Nov 24 350,000 Czechs demonstrate in Prague, party leaders resign Nov 26 Hungarians hold free vote and deprive party of chance to hold a presidential election before a parliament is elected. Nov 27 Czechoslovakia general strike Nov 28 Czechoslovakia party announces it will adopt new constitution, allow non-Communist ministers, abandon compulsory teaching of Marxism, and allow freer press and Hungary announces first free election Nov 30 Czechoslovakia eases travel restrictions to the West |
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| Dec | Dec 14 NATO announces troop
reduction Dec 18 demonstrations in Romania (Dec 19 764,000 in current US army) 89 Dec 20 US invades Panama Dec 22 Caescescu overthrown, Rumania (Dec 27 disco line dance craze) |
| 1990 | ||||
| Jan | Myles Horton, founder of Highlander Folk School, dies Jan 22 Stock Market drops 77 points Jan 24 Secret Service agents raid homes of Acid Phreak and Phiber Optik and confiscate computer? equipment (California Drought Year #4) |
1990 MUSIC/CINEMA/PUBLISHING TV: Twin Peaks (April 1990-June 1991) Robert Bly |
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| Feb | week before Feb 2? South African
transit workers win strike Feb 2 Secret Service agents raid Len Rose, aka Terminus Feb 2 South African government legalizes ANC Feb 4 Colombia gives half its forest to indigenous tribal peoples Feb 7 USSR legalizes multi-party Feb 7 Secret Service raids three more computer hackers Feb 11 South Africa: Mandela released Feb 14 Drexel Burnham Lambert junk bond kings: bankruptcy Feb 15 Secret Service raids Craig Neidorf, editor of Phrack on-line magazine Feb 16 Lithuania ? declares independence? when? Latvia & Estonia declares independence 90 Feb 21 Tokyo stock market drop (1000 yen?) "due to interest drop" (4.5%) Feb 25 Nicaraguan election: Sandanistas defeated by Chamorro |
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| Mar | Mar 1 Secret Service raids Steve
Jackson Games Mar 16 GOP Lee Atwater's change of heart |
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| May 9 | Secret Service announces 28
new hacker raids under Operation Sun Devil |
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| 20 years after Earth Day evenets ?start of New York City's enviro group;s summer first intercontinental Indian meeting, Ecuador [Utne #48 p 74] |
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| July 8 | Sunday before this - monetary
and economic reunion of Germany (?adopted?) |
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| Aug | Iraq invades Kuwait |
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| Oct 3 | Germanys reunite |
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| Nov | Nov 12 -14 "Clearing squatters
E. Berlin" Nov 19 Paris: CFE treaty signed, 22 nation |
| 1991 | US average wage is no higher
than 1973, adjusted for inflation (Jan MacWorld: multimedia) Jan 12 US Congress authorizes Gulf War after three days debate Jan 16- U.S. bombs Iraq out of Kuwait March Los Angeles: citizen videos cop beating of Rodney King June 11 FDIC insolvent - 440 banks failing; S&Ls 80 billion + 50 billion coming + June 17 N Ireland: half population under 28; all parties but Sinn Fein meet about home rule ("after 17 years of England's involvement since troubles started") 1974- June 17 South Africa: Apartheid laws repealed June 21 South Africa: ends ban law Aug 18 attempted USSR coup Oct 20 Oakland fire (+ Bill Graham dead) Dec or Jan 92? USSR reformation as commonwealth Dec 31? cease fire in El Salvador |
1991 MUSIC/CINEMA/PUBLISHING Awakenings Alice (Woody Allen) The Doors To Sleep with Anger A Rage in Harlem Thelma & Louise Dances with Wolves Paris Is Burning The Fisher King The Commitments Dec? or Jan 92? Paul Simon to South Africa |
| On to The Nineties: End of Time 1992-2011 |