title: Granite

text: Another aspect of granite classification is the ratios of metals that potentially form feldspars. Most granites have a composition such that almost all their aluminum and alkali metals (sodium and potassium) are combined as feldspar. This is the case when KO + NaO + CaO > AlO > KO + NaO. Such granites are described as "normal" or "metaluminous". Granites in which there is not enough aluminum to combine with all the alkali oxides as feldspar (AlO < KO + NaO) are described as "peralkaline", and they contain unusual sodium amphiboles such as riebeckite. Granites in which there is an excess of aluminum beyond what can be taken up in feldspars (AlO > CaO + KO + NaO) are described as "peraluminous", and they contain aluminum-rich minerals such as muscovite.


title: Granite

text: The average density of granite is between , its compressive strength usually lies above 200 MPa, and its viscosity near STP is 3–6·10 Pa·s.


title: Granite

text: The melting temperature of dry granite at ambient pressure is ; it is strongly reduced in the presence of water, down to 650 °C at a few hundred megapascals of pressure.


title: Granite

text: Granite has poor primary permeability overall, but strong secondary permeability through cracks and fractures if they are present.


title: Granite

text: A worldwide average of the chemical composition of granite, by weight percent, based on 2485 analyses:


title: Granite

text: The medium-grained equivalent of granite is microgranite. The extrusive igneous rock equivalent of granite is rhyolite.


title: Granite

text: Granitic rock is widely distributed throughout the continental crust. Much of it was intruded during the Precambrian age; it is the most abundant basement rock that underlies the relatively thin sedimentary veneer of the continents. Outcrops of granite tend to form tors, domes or bornhardts, and rounded massifs. Granites sometimes occur in circular depressions surrounded by a range of hills, formed by the metamorphic aureole or hornfels. Granite often occurs as relatively small, less than 100 km stock masses (stocks) and in batholiths that are often associated with orogenic mountain ranges. Small dikes of granitic composition called aplites are often associated with the margins of granitic intrusions. In some locations, very coarse-grained pegmatite masses occur with granite.


title: Granite

text: Granite forms from silica-rich (felsic) magmas. Felsic magmas are thought to form by addition of heat or water vapor to rock of the lower crust, rather than by decompression of mantle rock, as is the case with basaltic magmas. It has also been suggested that some granites found at convergent boundaries between tectonic plates, where oceanic crust subducts below continental crust, were formed from sediments subducted with the oceanic plate. The melted sediments would have produced magma intermediate in its silica content, which became further enriched in silica as it rose through the overlying crust.


title: Granite

text: Early fractional crystallisation serves to reduce a melt in magnesium and chromium, and enrich the melt in iron, sodium, potassium, aluminum, and silicon. Further fractionation reduces the content of iron, calcium, and titanium. This is reflected in the high content of alkali feldspar and quartz in granite.


title: Granite

text: The presence of granitic rock in island arcs shows that fractional crystallization alone can convert a basaltic magma to a granitic magma, but the quantities produced are small. For example, granitic rock makes up just 4% of the exposures in the South Sandwich Islands. In continental arc settings, granitic rocks are the most common plutonic rocks, and batholiths composed of these rock types extend the entire length of the arc. There are no indication of magma chambers where basaltic magmas differentiate into granites, or of cumulates produced by mafic crystals settling out of the magma. Other processes must produce these great volumes of felsic magma. One such process is injection of basaltic magma into the lower crust, followed by differentiation, which leaves any cumulates in the mantle. Another is heating of the lower crust by underplating basaltic magma, which produces felsic magma directly from crustal rock. The two processes produce different kinds of granites, which may be reflected in the division between S-type (produced by underplating) and I-type (produced by injection and differentiation) granites, discussed below.


title: Granite

text: The composition and origin of any magma that differentiates into granite leave certain petrological evidence as to what the granite's parental rock was. The final texture and composition of a granite are generally distinctive as to its parental rock. For instance, a granite that is derived from partial melting of metasedimentary rocks may have more alkali feldspar, whereas a granite derived from partial melting of metaigneous rocks may be richer in plagioclase. It is on this basis that the modern "alphabet" classification schemes are based.


title: Granite

text: The letter-based Chappell & White classification system was proposed initially to divide granites into I-type (igneous source) granite and S-type (sedimentary sources). Both types are produced by partial melting of crustal rocks, either metaigneous rocks or metasedimentary rocks.


title: Granite

text: I-type granites are characterized by a high content of sodium and calcium, and by a strontium isotope ratio, Sr/Sr, of less than 0.708. Sr is produced by radioactive decay of Rb, and since rubidium is concentrated in the crust relative to the mantle, a low ratio suggests origin in the mantle. The elevated sodium and calcium favor crystallization of hornblende rather than biotite. I-type granites are known for their porphyry copper deposits. I-type granites are orogenic (associated with mountain building) and usually metaluminous.


title: Granite

text: S-type granites are sodium-poor and aluminum-rich. As a result, they contain micas such as biotite and muscovite instead of hornblende. Their strontium isotope ratio is typically greater than 0.708, suggesting a crustal origin. They also commonly contain xenoliths of metamorphosed sedimentary rock, and host tin ores. Their magmas are water-rich, and they readily solidify as the water outgasses from the magma at lower pressure, so they less commonly make it to the surface than magmas of I-type granites, which are thus more common as volcanic rock (rhyolite). They are also orogenic but range from metaluminous to strongly peraluminous.


title: Granite

text: Although both I- and S-type granites are orogenic, I-type granites are more common close to the convergent boundary than S-type. This is attributed to thicker crust further from the boundary, which results in more crustal melting.


title: Granite

text: A-type granites show a peculiar mineralogy and geochemistry, with particularly high silicon and potassium at the expense of calcium and magnesium and a high content of high field strength cations (cations with a small radius and high electrical charge, such as zirconium, niobium, tantalum, and rare earth elements.) They are not orogenic, forming instead over hot spots and continental rifting, and are metaluminous to mildly peralkaline and iron-rich. These granites are produced by partial melting of refractory lithology such as granulites in the lower continental crust at high thermal gradients. This leads to significant extraction of hydrous felsic melts from granulite-facies resitites. A-type granites occur in the Koettlitz Glacier Alkaline Province in the Royal Society Range, Antarctica. The rhyolites of the Yellowstone Caldera are examples of volcanic equivalents of A-type granite.


title: Granite

text: M-type granite was later proposed to cover those granites that were clearly sourced from crystallized mafic magmas, generally sourced from the mantle. Although the fractional crystallisation of basaltic melts can yield small amounts of granites, which are sometimes found in island arcs, such granites must occur together with large amounts of basaltic rocks.


title: Granite

text: H-type granites were suggested for hybrid granites, which were hypothesized to form by mixing between mafic and felsic from different sources, such as M-type and S-type. However, the big difference in rheology between mafic and felsic magmas makes this process problematic in nature.


title: Granite

text: Granitization is an old, and largely discounted, hypothesis that granite is formed in place through extreme metasomatism. The idea behind granitization was that fluids would supposedly bring in elements such as potassium, and remove others, such as calcium, to transform a metamorphic rock into granite. This was supposed to occur across a migrating front. However, experimental work had established by the 1960s that granites were of igneous origin. The mineralogical and chemical features of granite can be explained only by crystal-liquid phase relations, showing that there must have been at least enough melting to mobilize the magma.


title: Granite

text: However, at sufficiently deep crustal levels, the distinction between metamorphism and crustal melting itself becomes vague. Conditions for crystallization of liquid magma are close enough to those of high-grade metamorphism that the rocks often bear a close resemblance. Under these conditions, granitic melts can be produced in place through the partial melting of metamorphic rocks by extracting melt-mobile elements such as potassium and silicon into the melts but leaving others such as calcium and iron in granulite residues. This may be the origin of "migmatites". A migmatite consists of dark, refractory rock (the "melanosome") that is permeated by sheets and channels of light granitic rock (the "leucosome"). The leucosome is interpreted as partial melt of a parent rock that has begun to separate from the remaining solid residue (the melanosome). If enough partial melt is produced, it will separate from the source rock, become more highly evolved through fractional crystallization during its ascent toward the surface, and become the magmatic parent of granitic rock. The residue of the source rock becomes a granulite.


title: Granite

text: The partial melting of solid rocks requires high temperatures and the addition of water or other volatiles which lower the solidus temperature (temperature at which partial melting commences) of these rocks. It was long debated whether crustal thickening in orogens (mountain belts along convergent boundaries) was sufficient to produce granite melts by radiogenic heating, but recent work suggests that this is not a viable mechanism. In-situ granitization requires heating by the asthenospheric mantle or by underplating with mantle-derived magmas.


title: Granite

text: Granite magmas have a density of 2.4 Mg/m, much less than the 2.8 Mg/m of high-grade metamorphic rock. This gives them tremendous buoyancy, so that ascent of the magma is inevitable once enough magma has accumulated. However, the question of precisely how such large quantities of magma are able to shove aside country rock to make room for themselves (the "room problem") is still a matter of research.


title: Granite

text: Of these two mechanisms, Stokes diapirism has been favoured for many years in the absence of a reasonable alternative. The basic idea is that magma will rise through the crust as a single mass through buoyancy. As it rises, it heats the wall rocks, causing them to behave as a power-law fluid and thus flow around the intrusion allowing it to pass without major heat loss. This is entirely feasible in the warm, ductile lower crust where rocks are easily deformed, but runs into problems in the upper crust which is far colder and more brittle. Rocks there do not deform so easily: for magma to rise as a diapir it would expend far too much energy in heating wall rocks, thus cooling and solidifying before reaching higher levels within the crust.


title: Granite

text: Fracture propagation is the mechanism preferred by many geologists as it largely eliminates the major problems of moving a huge mass of magma through cold brittle crust. Magma rises instead in small channels along self-propagating dykes which form along new or pre-existing fracture or fault systems and networks of active shear zones. As these narrow conduits open, the first magma to enter solidifies and provides a form of insulation for later magma.


title: Granite

text: These mechanisms can operate in tandem. For example, diapirs may continue to rise through the brittle upper crust through stoping, where the granite cracks the roof rocks, removing blocks of the overlying crust which then sink to the bottom of the diapir while the magma rises to take their place. This can occur as piecemeal stopping (stoping of small blocks of chamber roof), as cauldron subsidence (collapse of large blocks of chamber roof), or as roof foundering (complete collapse of the roof of a shallow magma chamber accompanied by a caldera eruption.) There is evidence for cauldron subsidence at the Mt. Ascutney intrusion in eastern Vermont. Evidence for piecemeal stoping is found in intrusions that are rimmed with "igneous breccia" containing fragments of country rock.


title: Granite

text: Assimilation is another mechanism of ascent, where the granite melts its way up into the crust and removes overlying material in this way. This is limited by the amount of thermal energy available, which must be replenished by crystallization of higher-melting minerals in the magma. Thus, the magma is melting crustal rock at its roof while simultaneously crystallizing at its base. This results in steady contamination with crustal material as the magma rises. This may not be evident in the major and minor element chemistry, since the minerals most likely to crystallize at the base of the chamber are the same ones that would crystallize anyway, but crustal assimilation is detectable in isotope ratios. Heat loss to the country rock means that ascent by assimilation is limited to distance similar to the height of the magma chamber.


title: Granite

text: Physical weathering occurs on a large scale in the form of exfoliation joints, which are the result of granite's expanding and fracturing as pressure is relieved when overlying material is removed by erosion or other processes.


title: Granite

text: Chemical weathering of granite occurs when dilute carbonic acid, and other acids present in rain and soil waters, alter feldspar in a process called hydrolysis. As demonstrated in the following reaction, this causes potassium feldspar to form kaolinite, with potassium ions, bicarbonate, and silica in solution as byproducts. An end product of granite weathering is grus, which is often made up of coarse-grained fragments of disintegrated granite.


title: Granite

text: Climatic variations also influence the weathering rate of granites. For about two thousand years, the relief engravings on Cleopatra's Needle obelisk had survived the arid conditions of its origin before its transfer to London. Within two hundred years, the red granite has drastically deteriorated in the damp and polluted air there.


title: Granite

text: Soil development on granite reflects the rock's high quartz content and dearth of available bases, with the base-poor status predisposing the soil to acidification and podzolization in cool humid climates as the weather-resistant quartz yields much sand. Feldspars also weather slowly in cool climes, allowing sand to dominate the fine-earth fraction. In warm humid regions, the weathering of feldspar as described above is accelerated so as to allow a much higher proportion of clay with the Cecil soil series a prime example of the consequent Ultisol great soil group.


title: Granite

text: Potassium-40 is a radioactive isotope of weak emission, and a constituent of alkali feldspar, which in turn is a common component of granitic rocks, more abundant in alkali feldspar granite and syenites.


title: Granite

text: Some granites contain around 10 to 20 parts per million (ppm) of uranium. By contrast, more mafic rocks, such as tonalite, gabbro and diorite, have 1 to 5 ppm uranium, and limestones and sedimentary rocks usually have equally low amounts. Many large granite plutons are sources for palaeochannel-hosted or roll front uranium ore deposits, where the uranium washes into the sediments from the granite uplands and associated, often highly radioactive pegmatites. Cellars and basements built into soils over granite can become a trap for radon gas, which is formed by the decay of uranium. Radon gas poses significant health concerns and is the number two cause of lung cancer in the US behind smoking.


title: Granite

text: Thorium occurs in all granites. Conway granite has been noted for its relatively high thorium concentration of 56±6 ppm.


title: Granite

text: There is some concern that some granite sold as countertops or building material may be hazardous to health. Dan Steck of St. Johns University has stated


title: Granite

text: that approximately 5% of all granite is of concern, with the caveat that only a tiny percentage of the tens of thousands of granite slab types have been tested. Resources from national geological survey organizations are accessible online to assist in assessing the risk factors in granite country and design rules relating, in particular, to preventing accumulation of radon gas in enclosed basements and dwellings.


title: Granite

text: A study of granite countertops was done (initiated and paid for by the Marble Institute of America) in November 2008 by National Health and Engineering Inc. of USA. In this test, all of the 39 full-size granite slabs that were measured for the study showed radiation levels well below the European Union safety standards (section 4.1.1.1 of the National Health and Engineering study) and radon emission levels well below the average outdoor radon concentrations in the US.


title: Granite

text: Granite and related marble industries are considered one of the oldest industries in the world, existing as far back as Ancient Egypt.


title: Granite

text: Major modern exporters of granite include China, India, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Spain and the United States.


title: Granite

text: The Red Pyramid of Egypt (circa 2590 BC), named for the light crimson hue of its exposed limestone surfaces, is the third largest of Egyptian pyramids. Pyramid of Menkaure, likely dating 2510 BC, was constructed of limestone and granite blocks. The Great Pyramid of Giza (c. 2580 BC) contains a huge granite sarcophagus fashioned of "Red Aswan Granite". The mostly ruined Black Pyramid dating from the reign of Amenemhat III once had a polished granite pyramidion or capstone, which is now on display in the main hall of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (see Dahshur). Other uses in Ancient Egypt include columns, door lintels, sills, jambs, and wall and floor veneer. How the Egyptians worked the solid granite is still a matter of debate. Patrick Hunt has postulated that the Egyptians used emery, which has greater hardness on the Mohs scale.


title: Granite

text: The Seokguram Grotto in Korea is a Buddhist shrine and part of the Bulguksa temple complex. Completed in 774 AD, it is an artificial grotto constructed entirely of granite. The main Buddha of the grotto is a highly regarded piece of Buddhist art, and along with the temple complex to which it belongs, Seokguram was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1995.


title: Granite

text: Rajaraja Chola I of the Chola Dynasty in South India built the world's first temple entirely of granite in the 11th century AD in Tanjore, India. The Brihadeeswarar Temple dedicated to Lord Shiva was built in 1010. The massive Gopuram (ornate, upper section of shrine) is believed to have a mass of around 81 tonnes. It was the tallest temple in south India.


title: Granite

text: Imperial Roman granite was quarried mainly in Egypt, and also in Turkey, and on the islands of Elba and Giglio. Granite became "an integral part of the Roman language of monumental architecture". The quarrying ceased around the third century AD. Beginning in Late Antiquity the granite was reused, which since at least the early 16th century became known as spolia. Through the process of case-hardening, granite becomes harder with age. The technology required to make tempered metal chisels was largely forgotten during the Middle Ages. As a result, Medieval stoneworkers were forced to use saws or emery to shorten ancient columns or hack them into discs. Giorgio Vasari noted in the 16th century that granite in quarries was "far softer and easier to work than after it has lain exposed" while ancient columns, because of their "hardness and solidity have nothing to fear from fire or sword, and time itself, that drives everything to ruin, not only has not destroyed them but has not even altered their colour."


title: Granite

text: In some areas, granite is used for gravestones and memorials. Granite is a hard stone and requires skill to carve by hand. Until the early 18th century, in the Western world, granite could be carved only by hand tools with generally poor results.


title: Granite

text: A key breakthrough was the invention of steam-powered cutting and dressing tools by Alexander MacDonald of Aberdeen, inspired by seeing ancient Egyptian granite carvings. In 1832, the first polished tombstone of Aberdeen granite to be erected in an English cemetery was installed at Kensal Green Cemetery. It caused a sensation in the London monumental trade and for some years all polished granite ordered came from MacDonald's. As a result of the work of sculptor William Leslie, and later Sidney Field, granite memorials became a major status symbol in Victorian Britain. The royal sarcophagus at Frogmore was probably the pinnacle of its work, and at 30 tons one of the largest. It was not until the 1880s that rival machinery and works could compete with the MacDonald works.


title: Granite

text: Modern methods of carving include using computer-controlled rotary bits and sandblasting over a rubber stencil. Leaving the letters, numbers, and emblems exposed and the remainder of the stone covered with rubber, the blaster can create virtually any kind of artwork or epitaph.


title: Granite

text: The stone known as "black granite" is usually gabbro, which has a completely different chemical composition.


title: Granite

text: Granite has been extensively used as a dimension stone and as flooring tiles in public and commercial buildings and monuments. Aberdeen in Scotland, which is constructed principally from local granite, is known as "The Granite City". Because of its abundance in New England, granite was commonly used to build foundations for homes there. The Granite Railway, America's first railroad, was built to haul granite from the quarries in Quincy, Massachusetts, to the Neponset River in the 1820s.


title: Granite

text: Engineers have traditionally used polished granite surface plates to establish a plane of reference, since they are relatively impervious, inflexible, and maintain good dimensional stability. Sandblasted concrete with a heavy aggregate content has an appearance similar to rough granite, and is often used as a substitute when use of real granite is impractical. Granite tables are used extensively as bases or even as the entire structural body of optical instruments, CMMs, and very high precision CNC machines because of granite's rigidity, high dimensional stability, and excellent vibration characteristics. A most unusual use of granite was as the material of the tracks of the Haytor Granite Tramway, Devon, England, in 1820. Granite block is usually processed into slabs, which can be cut and shaped by a cutting center. In military engineering, Finland planted granite boulders along its Mannerheim Line to block invasion by Russian tanks in the Winter War of 1939–40.


title: Granite

text: Granite is used as a pavement material. This is because it is extremely durable, permeable and requires little maintenance. For example, in Sydney, Australia black granite stone is used for the paving and kerbs throughout the Central Business District.


title: Granite

text: Curling stones are traditionally fashioned of Ailsa Craig granite. The first stones were made in the 1750s, the original source being Ailsa Craig in Scotland. Because of the rarity of this granite, the best stones can cost as much as US$1,500. Between 60 and 70 percent of the stones used today are made from Ailsa Craig granite, although the island is now a wildlife reserve and is still used for quarrying under license for Ailsa granite by Kays of Scotland for curling stones.


title: Granite

text: Granite is one of the rocks most prized by climbers, for its steepness, soundness, crack systems, and friction. Well-known venues for granite climbing include the Yosemite Valley, the Bugaboos, the Mont Blanc massif (and peaks such as the Aiguille du Dru, the Mourne Mountains, the Adamello-Presanella Alps, the Aiguille du Midi and the Grandes Jorasses), the Bregaglia, Corsica, parts of the Karakoram (especially the Trango Towers), the Fitzroy Massif, Patagonia, Baffin Island, Ogawayama, the Cornish coast, the Cairngorms, Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the Stawamus Chief, British Columbia, Canada.


title: Oganesson

text: Oganesson is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Og and atomic number 118. It was first synthesized in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, near Moscow, Russia, by a joint team of Russian and American scientists. In December 2015, it was recognized as one of four new elements by the Joint Working Party of the international scientific bodies IUPAC and IUPAP. It was formally named on 28 November 2016. The name honors the nuclear physicist Yuri Oganessian, who played a leading role in the discovery of the heaviest elements in the periodic table. It is one of only two elements named after a person who was alive at the time of naming, the other being seaborgium, and the only element whose eponym is alive today.


title: Oganesson

text: Oganesson has the highest atomic number and highest atomic mass of all known elements. The radioactive oganesson atom is very unstable, and since 2005, only five (possibly six) atoms of the isotope oganesson-294 have been detected. Although this allowed very little experimental characterization of its properties and possible compounds, theoretical calculations have resulted in many predictions, including some surprising ones. For example, although oganesson is a member of group 18 (the noble gases) – the first synthetic element to be so – it may be significantly reactive, unlike all the other elements of that group. It was formerly thought to be a gas under normal conditions but is now predicted to be a solid due to relativistic effects. On the periodic table of the elements it is a p-block element and the last one of period 7.


title: Oganesson

text: The possibility of a seventh noble gas, after helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon, was considered almost as soon as the noble gas group was discovered. Danish chemist Hans Peter Jørgen Julius Thomsen predicted in April 1895, the year after the discovery of argon, that there was a whole series of chemically inert gases similar to argon that would bridge the halogen and alkali metal groups: he expected that the seventh of this series would end a 32-element period which contained thorium and uranium and have an atomic weight of 292, close to the 294 now known for the first and only confirmed isotope of oganesson. Danish physicist Niels Bohr noted in 1922 that this seventh noble gas should have atomic number 118 and predicted its electronic structure as 2, 8, 18, 32, 32, 18, 8, matching modern predictions. Following this, German chemist Aristid von Grosse wrote an article in 1965 predicting the likely properties of element 118. It was 107 years from Thomsen's prediction before oganesson was successfully synthesized, although its chemical properties have not been investigated to determine if it behaves as the heavier congener of radon. In a 1975 article, American chemist Kenneth Pitzer suggested that element 118 should be a gas or volatile liquid due to relativistic effects.


title: Oganesson

text: In late 1998, Polish physicist Robert Smolańczuk published calculations on the fusion of atomic nuclei towards the synthesis of superheavy atoms, including oganesson. His calculations suggested that it might be possible to make element 118 by fusing lead with krypton under carefully controlled conditions, and that the fusion probability (cross section) of that reaction would be close to the lead–chromium reaction that had produced element 106, seaborgium. This contradicted predictions that the cross sections for reactions with lead or bismuth targets would go down exponentially as the atomic number of the resulting elements increased.


title: Oganesson

text: In 1999, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory made use of these predictions and announced the discovery of elements 118 and 116, in a paper published in "Physical Review Letters", and very soon after the results were reported in "Science". The researchers reported that they had performed the reaction


title: Oganesson

text: In 2001, they published a retraction after researchers at other laboratories were unable to duplicate the results and the Berkeley lab could not duplicate them either. In June 2002, the director of the lab announced that the original claim of the discovery of these two elements had been based on data fabricated by principal author Victor Ninov. Newer experimental results and theoretical predictions have confirmed the exponential decrease in cross sections with lead and bismuth targets as the atomic number of the resulting nuclide increases.


title: Oganesson

text: The first genuine decay of atoms of oganesson was observed in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, by a joint team of Russian and American scientists. Headed by Yuri Oganessian, a Russian nuclear physicist of Armenian ethnicity, the team included American scientists of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California. The discovery was not announced immediately, because the decay energy of Og matched that of Po, a common impurity produced in fusion reactions aimed at producing superheavy elements, and thus announcement was delayed until after a 2005 confirmatory experiment aimed at producing more oganesson atoms. The 2005 experiment used a different beam energy (251 MeV instead of 245 MeV) and target thickness (0.34 mg/cm instead of 0.23 mg/cm). On 9 October 2006, the researchers announced that they had indirectly detected a total of three (possibly four) nuclei of oganesson-294 (one or two in 2002 and two more in 2005) produced via collisions of californium-249 atoms and calcium-48 ions.


title: Oganesson

text: In 2011, IUPAC evaluated the 2006 results of the Dubna–Livermore collaboration and concluded: "The three events reported for the "Z" = 118 isotope have very good internal


title: Oganesson

text: Because of the very small fusion reaction probability (the fusion cross section is or ) the experiment took four months and involved a beam dose of calcium ions that had to be shot at the californium target to produce the first recorded event believed to be the synthesis of oganesson. Nevertheless, researchers were highly confident that the results were not a false positive, since the chance that the detections were random events was estimated to be less than one part in .


title: Oganesson

text: In the experiments, the alpha-decay of three atoms of oganesson was observed. A fourth decay by direct spontaneous fission was also proposed. A half-life of 0.89 ms was calculated: decays into by alpha decay. Since there were only three nuclei, the half-life derived from observed lifetimes has a large uncertainty: .


title: Oganesson

text: The identification of the nuclei was verified by separately creating the putative daughter nucleus directly by means of a bombardment of with ions,


title: Oganesson

text: and checking that the decay matched the decay chain of the nuclei. The daughter nucleus is very unstable, decaying with a lifetime of 14 milliseconds into , which may experience either spontaneous fission or alpha decay into , which will undergo spontaneous fission.


title: Oganesson

text: In December 2015, the Joint Working Party of international scientific bodies International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) recognized the element's discovery and assigned the priority of the discovery to the Dubna–Livermore collaboration. This was on account of two 2009 and 2010 confirmations of the properties of the granddaughter of Og, Fl, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as the observation of another consistent decay chain of Og by the Dubna group in 2012. The goal of that experiment had been the synthesis of Ts via the reaction Bk(Ca,3n), but the short half-life of Bk resulted in a significant quantity of the target having decayed to Cf, resulting in the synthesis of oganesson instead of tennessine.


title: Oganesson

text: From 1 October 2015 to 6 April 2016, the Dubna team performed a similar experiment with Ca projectiles aimed at a mixed-isotope californium target containing Cf, Cf, and Cf, with the aim of producing the heavier oganesson isotopes Og and Og. Two beam energies at 252 MeV and 258 MeV were used. Only one atom was seen at the lower beam energy, whose decay chain fitted the previously known one of Og (terminating with spontaneous fission of Fl), and none were seen at the higher beam energy. The experiment was then halted, as the glue from the sector frames covered the target and blocked evaporation residues from escaping to the detectors. The production of Og and its daughter Lv, as well as the even heavier isotope Og, is also possible using this reaction. The isotopes Og and Og may also be produced in the fusion of Cm with Ti projectiles. A search beginning in summer 2016 at RIKEN for Og in the 3n channel of this reaction was unsuccessful, though the study is planned to resume; a detailed analysis and cross section limit were not provided. These heavier and likely more stable isotopes may be useful in probing the chemistry of oganesson.


title: Oganesson

text: Using Mendeleev's nomenclature for unnamed and undiscovered elements, oganesson is sometimes known as "eka-radon" (until the 1960s as "eka-emanation", emanation being the old name for radon). In 1979, IUPAC assigned the systematic placeholder name "ununoctium" to the undiscovered element, with the corresponding symbol of "Uuo", and recommended that it be used until after confirmed discovery of the element. Although widely used in the chemical community on all levels, from chemistry classrooms to advanced textbooks, the recommendations were mostly ignored among scientists in the field, who called it "element 118", with the symbol of "E118", "(118)", or even simply "118".


title: Oganesson

text: Before the retraction in 2001, the researchers from Berkeley had intended to name the element "ghiorsium" ("Gh"), after Albert Ghiorso (a leading member of the research team).


title: Oganesson

text: The Russian discoverers reported their synthesis in 2006. According to IUPAC recommendations, the discoverers of a new element have the right to suggest a name. In 2007, the head of the Russian institute stated the team were considering two names for the new element: "flyorium", in honor of Georgy Flyorov, the founder of the research laboratory in Dubna; and "moskovium", in recognition of the Moscow Oblast where Dubna is located. He also stated that although the element was discovered as an American collaboration, who provided the californium target, the element should rightly be named in honor of Russia since the Flyorov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at JINR was the only facility in the world which could achieve this result. These names were later suggested for element 114 (flerovium) and element 116 (moscovium). Flerovium became the name of element 114; the final name proposed for element 116 was instead "livermorium", with "moscovium" later being proposed and accepted for element 115 instead.


title: Oganesson

text: Traditionally, the names of all noble gases end in "-on", with the exception of helium, which was not known to be a noble gas when discovered. The IUPAC guidelines valid at the moment of the discovery approval however required "all" new elements be named with the ending "-ium", even if they turned out to be halogens (traditionally ending in "-ine") or noble gases (traditionally ending in "-on"). While the provisional name ununoctium followed this convention, a new IUPAC recommendation published in 2016 recommended using the "-on" ending for new group 18 elements, regardless of whether they turn out to have the chemical properties of a noble gas.


title: Oganesson

text: The scientists involved in the discovery of element 118, as well as those of 117 and 115, held a conference call on 23 March 2016 to decide their names. Element 118 was the last to be decided upon; after Oganessian was asked to leave the call, the remaining scientists unanimously decided to have the element "oganesson" after him. Oganessian was a pioneer in superheavy element research for sixty years reaching back to the field's foundation: his team and his proposed techniques had led directly to the synthesis of elements 107 through 118. Mark Stoyer, a nuclear chemist at the LLNL, later recalled, "We had intended to propose that name from Livermore, and things kind of got proposed at the same time from multiple places. I don't know if we can claim that we actually proposed the name, but we had intended it."


title: Oganesson

text: In internal discussions, IUPAC asked the JINR if they wanted the element to be spelled "oganeson" to match the Russian spelling more closely. Oganessian and the JINR refused this offer, citing the Soviet-era practice of transliterating names into the Latin alphabet under the rules of the French language ("Oganessian" is such a transliteration) and arguing that "oganesson" would be easier to link to the person.


title: Oganesson

text: In June 2016, IUPAC announced that the discoverers planned to give the element the name "oganesson" (symbol: "Og"). The name became official on 28 November 2016. In 2017, Oganessian commented on the naming:


title: Oganesson

text: The naming ceremony for moscovium, tennessine, and oganesson was held on 2 March 2017 at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.


title: Oganesson

text: In a 2019 interview, when asked what it was like to see his name in the periodic table next to Einstein, Mendeleev, the Curies, and Rutherford, Oganessian responded:


title: Oganesson

text: Other than nuclear properties, no properties of oganesson or its compounds have been measured; this is due to its extremely limited and expensive production and the fact that it decays very quickly. Thus only predictions are available.


title: Oganesson

text: The stability of nuclei quickly decreases with the increase in atomic number after curium, element 96, whose half-life is four orders of magnitude longer than that of any subsequent element. All nuclides with an atomic number above 101 undergo radioactive decay with half-lives shorter than 30 hours. No elements with atomic numbers above 82 (after lead) have stable isotopes. This is because of the ever-increasing Coulomb repulsion of protons, so that the strong nuclear force cannot hold the nucleus together against spontaneous fission for long. Calculations suggest that in the absence of other stabilizing factors, elements with more than 104 protons should not exist. However, researchers in the 1960s suggested that the closed nuclear shells around 114 protons and 184 neutrons should counteract this instability, creating an island of stability in which nuclides could have half-lives reaching thousands or millions of years. While scientists have still not reached the island, the mere existence of the superheavy elements (including oganesson) confirms that this stabilizing effect is real, and in general the known superheavy nuclides become exponentially longer-lived as they approach the predicted location of the island. Oganesson is radioactive and has a half-life that appears to be less than a millisecond. Nonetheless, this is still longer than some predicted values.


title: Oganesson

text: Calculations using a quantum-tunneling model predict the existence of several heavier isotopes of oganesson with alpha-decay half-lives close to 1 ms.


title: Oganesson

text: Theoretical calculations done on the synthetic pathways for, and the half-life of, other isotopes have shown that some could be slightly more stable than the synthesized isotope Og, most likely Og, Og, Og, Og, Og, Og and Og (the last reaching the "N" = 184 shell closure). Of these, Og might provide the best chances for obtaining longer-lived nuclei, and thus might become the focus of future work with this element. Some isotopes with many more neutrons, such as some located around Og, could also provide longer-lived nuclei.


title: Oganesson

text: In a quantum-tunneling model, the alpha decay half-life of was predicted to be with the experimental Q-value published in 2004. Calculation with theoretical Q-values from the macroscopic-microscopic model of Muntian–Hofman–Patyk–Sobiczewski gives somewhat lower but comparable results.


title: Oganesson

text: Oganesson is a member of group 18, the zero-valence elements. The members of this group are usually inert to most common chemical reactions (for example, combustion) because the outer valence shell is completely filled with eight electrons. This produces a stable, minimum energy configuration in which the outer electrons are tightly bound. It is thought that similarly, oganesson has a closed outer valence shell in which its valence electrons are arranged in a 7s7p configuration.


title: Oganesson

text: Consequently, some expect oganesson to have similar physical and chemical properties to other members of its group, most closely resembling the noble gas above it in the periodic table, radon.


title: Oganesson

text: Following the periodic trend, oganesson would be expected to be slightly more reactive than radon. However, theoretical calculations have shown that it could be significantly more reactive. In addition to being far more reactive than radon, oganesson may be even more reactive than the elements flerovium and copernicium, which are heavier homologs of the more chemically active elements lead and mercury respectively. The reason for the possible enhancement of the chemical activity of oganesson relative to radon is an energetic destabilization and a radial expansion of the last occupied 7p-subshell. More precisely, considerable spin–orbit interactions between the 7p electrons and the inert 7s electrons effectively lead to a second valence shell closing at flerovium, and a significant decrease in stabilization of the closed shell of oganesson. It has also been calculated that oganesson, unlike the other noble gases, binds an electron with release of energy, or in other words, it exhibits positive electron affinity, due to the relativistically stabilized 8s energy level and the destabilized 7p level, whereas copernicium and flerovium are predicted to have no electron affinity. Nevertheless, quantum electrodynamic corrections have been shown to be quite significant in reducing this affinity by decreasing the binding in the anion Og by 9%, thus confirming the importance of these corrections in superheavy elements. 2022 calculations expect the electron affinity of oganesson to be 0.080(6) eV.


title: Oganesson

text: By utilizing Monte Carlo simulations and molecular dynamics methods benchmarked against highly accurate relativistic coupled cluster calculations, it could be shown that oganesson has a melting point of and a boiling point of . The underlying reason for this behavior can be found in spin-orbit relativistic effects (non-relativistic oganesson would melt around 220 K). Thus oganesson would probably be a solid rather than a gas under standard conditions, though still with a rather low melting point.


title: Oganesson

text: Oganesson is expected to have an extremely broad polarizability, almost double that of radon. Because of its tremendous polarizability, oganesson is expected to have an anomalously low first ionization energy of about 860 kJ/mol, similar to that of cadmium and less than those of iridium, platinum, and gold. This is significantly smaller than the values predicted for darmstadtium, roentgenium, and copernicium, although it is greater than that predicted for flerovium. Its second ionization energy should be around 1560 kJ/mol. Even the shell structure in the nucleus and electron cloud of oganesson is strongly impacted by relativistic effects: the valence and core electron subshells in oganesson are expected to be "smeared out" in a homogeneous Fermi gas of electrons, unlike those of the "less relativistic" radon and xenon (although there is some incipient delocalisation in radon), due to the very strong spin-orbit splitting of the 7p orbital in oganesson. A similar effect for nucleons, particularly neutrons, is incipient in the closed-neutron-shell nucleus Og and is strongly in force at the hypothetical superheavy closed-shell nucleus 164, with 164 protons and 308 neutrons. Moreover, spin-orbit effects may cause bulk oganesson to be a semiconductor, with a band gap of  eV predicted. All the lighter noble gases are insulators instead: for example, the band gap of bulk radon is expected to be  eV.


title: Oganesson

text: The only confirmed isotope of oganesson, Og, has much too short a half-life to be chemically investigated experimentally. Therefore, no compounds of oganesson have been synthesized yet. Nevertheless, calculations on theoretical compounds have been performed since 1964. It is expected that if the ionization energy of the element is high enough, it will be difficult to oxidize and therefore, the most common oxidation state would be 0 (as for the noble gases); nevertheless, this appears not to be the case.


title: Oganesson

text: Calculations on the diatomic molecule showed a bonding interaction roughly equivalent to that calculated for , and a dissociation energy of 6 kJ/mol, roughly 4 times of that of . Most strikingly, it was calculated to have a bond length shorter than in by 0.16 Å, which would be indicative of a significant bonding interaction. On the other hand, the compound OgH exhibits a dissociation energy (in other words proton affinity of oganesson) that is smaller than that of RnH.


title: Oganesson

text: The bonding between oganesson and hydrogen in OgH is predicted to be very weak and can be regarded as a pure van der Waals interaction rather than a true chemical bond. On the other hand, with highly electronegative elements, oganesson seems to form more stable compounds than for example copernicium or flerovium. The stable oxidation states +2 and +4 have been predicted to exist in the fluorides and . The +6 state would be less stable due to the strong binding of the 7p subshell. This is a result of the same spin-orbit interactions that make oganesson unusually reactive. For example, it was shown that the reaction of oganesson with to form the compound would release an energy of 106 kcal/mol of which about 46 kcal/mol come from these interactions. For comparison, the spin-orbit interaction for the similar molecule is about 10 kcal/mol out of a formation energy of 49 kcal/mol. The same interaction stabilizes the tetrahedral T configuration for , as distinct from the square planar D one of , which is also expected to have; this is because OgF is expected to have two inert electron pairs (7s and 7p). As such, OgF is expected to be unbound, continuing an expected trend in the destabilisation of the +6 oxidation state (RnF is likewise expected to be much less stable than XeF). The Og–F bond will most probably be ionic rather than covalent, rendering the oganesson fluorides non-volatile. OgF is predicted to be partially ionic due to oganesson's high electropositivity. Oganesson is predicted to be sufficiently electropositive to form an Og–Cl bond with chlorine.


title: Oganesson

text: A compound of oganesson and tennessine, OgTs, has been predicted to be potentially stable chemically.


title: Eva Amurri

text: Amurri was born on March 15, 1985 in New York City, to Italian director Franco Amurri and American actress Susan Sarandon (whose mother's ancestry was Italian). Amurri was raised by her mother and long-time partner Tim Robbins. She has two maternal half-brothers, Jack and Miles, as well as two paternal half-siblings from her father's marriage to Heide Lund, Leone and Augusta, and two stepsisters, Tallulah and Ruby, from Lund's previous marriage to a British aristocrat.


title: Eva Amurri

text: She attended Friends Seminary (Manhattan) for middle school, and graduated from Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York, and Brown University.


title: Eva Amurri

text: Amurri had a role in the 2002 film "The Banger Sisters", in which her mother starred, with Amurri playing the daughter of her mother's character. She guest-starred, along with her mother, on an episode of "Friends" in Season 7 Episode 15 ("The One with Joey's New Brain") in which she is slapped by Sarandon. In 2004, she appeared in "Saved!". She guest-hosted "Attack of the Show" with Kevin Pereira. She had a role in the third season of the Showtime series "Californication", where she played Jackie, a stripper, student and love interest of central character Hank Moody. Amurri played the leading role in the 2008 film "Middle of Nowhere".


title: Eva Amurri

text: In 2009, she appeared as Shelly in the episode "The Playbook" of "How I Met Your Mother". Amurri starred in the thriller film "Isolation", directed by Stephen T. Kay.


title: Eva Amurri

text: In 2010, she appeared in the Fox series "House" as Nicole in the episode "The Choice". In 2012, she appeared in Happy Madison Productions' "That's My Boy" as young Mary McGarricle. Her mother also appeared in the film as McGarricle's older self.


title: Eva Amurri

text: Amurri married former Major League Soccer player and former NBC Sports broadcaster Kyle Martino on October 29, 2011, in Charleston, South Carolina. They have three children: daughter Marlowe Mae was born on August 9, 2014, son Major James was born on October 19, 2016 and son Mateo Antoni was born March 13, 2020. In August 2015, Amurri revealed she had a miscarriage at nine weeks. On November 15, 2019, Amurri and Martino announced that they were separating, just two months after they announced they were expecting their third child together. As of March 2020, the couple finalized their divorce. Amurri resides in Westport, Connecticut.


title: Belial

text: Belial (, "Bəlīyyaʿal") is a term occurring in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament which later became personified as the devil in Christian texts of the New Testament. Alternate spellings include Baalial, Balial, Belhor, Beliall, Beliar, Berial, Bylyl and Beliya'al. In the Secret Book of John, an early Gnostic text, the ruler of the underworld is referred to as Belias.


title: Belial

text: "Belial" is a Hebrew word "used to characterize the wicked or worthless". The etymology of the word is often understood as "lacking worth", from two common words: "beli-" (בְּלִי "without-") and "ya'al" (יָעַל "to be of value").


title: Belial

text: Some scholars translate it from Hebrew as "worthless" ("Beli yo'il"), while others translate it as "yokeless" ("Beli ol"), "may he have no rising" or "never to rise" ("Beli ya'al"). Only a few etymologists have believed it to be an invented name from the start.


title: Belial

text: The word occurs twenty-seven times in the Masoretic Text, in verses such as the Book of Proverbs (), where the King James Version (KJV) translates the Hebrew phrase "adam beli-yaal" as "a naughty person".


title: Belial

text: In the Hebrew text, the phrase is either "sons of Belial" or simply "sons of worthlessness". Phrases beginning with "sons of" are a common Semitic idiom, such as "sons of destruction" or "sons of lawlessness".


title: Belial

text: Of these 27 occurrences, the idiom "sons of Belial" (בְּנֵֽי־בְלִיַּעַל "beni beliyaal") appears 15 times to indicate worthless people, including idolaters (Deuteronomy 13:13), the men of Gibeah (Judges 19:22, 20:13), the sons of Eli (1 Samuel 2:12), Nabal, and Shimei. The Geneva Bible (1560) uses "wicked", and at the Book of Judges 19:22 has the marginal note ""Ebr" [Hebrew] "men of Belial: that is, given to all wickednes."" In the KJV these occurrences are rendered with "Belial" capitalised:


title: Belial

text: "Belial" is applied to ideas, words, and counsel, to calamitous circumstances, and most frequently, to worthless men of the lowest sort, such as men who would induce worship of other gods; those of Benjamin who committed the sex crime at Gibeah; the wicked sons of Eli; insolent Nabal; opposers of God's anointed, David; Rehoboam's unsteady associates; Jezebel's conspirators against Naboth; and men in general who stir up contention. Indicating that the enemy power would no longer interfere with the carrying out of true worship by his people in their land, YHWH declared through his prophet: "No more will any worthless person pass again through you. In his entirety he will certainly be cut off."


title: Belial

text: The term "belial" appears frequently in Jewish texts of the Second Temple period (texts classified by Christians as the Old Testament pseudepigrapha and apocrypha). Also a large number of references to Belial are evidenced in the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran from 1948.


title: Belial

text: In "The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness", one of the Dead Sea scrolls, Belial is the leader of the Sons of Darkness:


title: Belial

text: You made Belial for the pit, angel of enmity; in darkness is his domain, his counsel is to bring about wickedness and guilt. All the spirits of his lot are angels of destruction, they walk in the laws of darkness; towards it goes their only desire.


title: Belial

text: In the "Rules of the Community", God is depicted as saying, "I shall not comfort the oppressed until their path is perfect. I shall not retain Belial within my heart." Belial controls scores of demons, which are specifically allotted to him by God for the purpose of performing evil. Belial, despite his malevolent disposition, is considered an angel.


title: Belial

text: Belial's presence is found throughout the War Scrolls and is established as the force occupying the opposite end of the spectrum of God. In Col. I, verse 1, the first line of the document, it is stated that "the first attack of the Sons of Light shall be undertaken against the forces of the Sons of Darkness, the army of Belial." This dichotomy sheds light on the negative connotations that Belial held at the time.


title: Belial

text: The "War Scroll" and "the Thanksgiving hymns" both delve into the idea that Belial is accursed by God and his people, and shows how the existence of Belial in this world can be attributed to the mysteries of God since we can not know why he permits the dealings of Belial to persist.


title: Belial

text: In the "Dead Sea Scrolls", Belial is further contrasted with God. These are the Angel of Light and the Angel of Darkness. The Manual of Discipline identifies the Angel of Light as God himself. The Angel of Darkness is identified in the same scroll as Belial.


title: Belial

text: Also in "The Dead Sea Scrolls" is a recounting of a dream of Amram, the father of Moses, who finds two watchers contesting over him. One is Belial who is described as the King of Evil and Prince of Darkness. Belial is also mentioned in the "Fragments of a Zadokite Work" (which is also known as The Damascus Document (CD)), which states that during the eschatological age, "Belial shall be let loose against Israel, as God spoke through Isaiah the prophet." The "Fragments" also speak of "three nets of Belial" which are said to be fornication, wealth, and pollution of the sanctuary. In this work, Belial is sometimes presented as an agent of divine punishment and sometimes as a rebel, as Mastema is. It was Belial who inspired the Egyptian sorcerers, Jochaneh and his brother, to oppose Moses and Aaron. The "Fragments" also say that anyone who is ruled by the spirits of Belial and speaks of rebellion should be condemned as a necromancer and a wizard.


title: Belial

text: Belial is also mentioned in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. The author of the work seems to be a dualist because he presents Belial as God's opponent, not as a servant, but does not mention how or why this came to be. Simeon 5:3 says that fornication separates man from God and brings him near to Belial. Levi tells his children to choose between the Law of God and the works of Belial It also states that when the soul is constantly disturbed, the Lord departs from it and Belial rules over it. Naphtali contrasts the Law and will of God with the purposes of Belial. Also, in 20:2, Joseph prophesies that when Israel leaves Egypt, they will be with God in light while Belial will remain in darkness with the Egyptians. Finally, the Testament describes that when the Messiah comes, the angels will punish the spirits of deceit and Belial and that the Messiah will bind Belial and give to his children the power to trample the evil spirits.


title: Belial

text: In the Ascension of Isaiah, Belial is the angel of lawlessness and "the ruler of this world", and identified as Samael and Satan.


title: Belial

text: The spelling found in most manuscripts of 2 Corinthians is actually "Beliar" (Βελιάρ) not "Belial" (Βελίαλ). This is the reading preferred by textual scholars and the change of -l to -r is attributed to a common change in Aramaic pronunciation.


title: Belial

text: The Jewish Greek Septuagint, later the Old Testament of the early Christian church, generally renders the "sons of Belial" verses in the Hebrew Bible either as "lawless men", by idioms "sons of the pestilence", rather than a personal name "sons of Belial":


title: Belial

text: The Septuagint also avoids Belial in the singular so Shimei (2 Samuel 16:7) when he cursed David, "Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial" is rendered "you lawless man" ("paranomos"), and Hannah to Eli "Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial" is rendered "don't count your maidservant as a daughter of the pest." The Latin Vulgate and Syriac Peshitta Old Testaments in some cases follow the Greek, in other literalize as Hebrew. The single New Testament use is preserved "Belial" in Latin and Syriac.


title: Belial

text: In the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (by Bartholomew) of the New Testament apocrypha, Belial was visible along with 666 fallen angels when Michael was commanded by Jesus to show Hell to his disciples.


title: Belial

text: The Talmud and rabbinical interpretation generally follow a non-supernatural view, an allegorical personification of evil, as with rabbinical interpretations of evil. The phrase "sons of Belial" from the Torah continued to retain currency.


title: Belial

text: The 17th-century grimoire "The Lesser Key of Solomon" mentions Belial, as does Aleister Crowley's "Goetia" (1904) and Anton LaVey's "The Satanic Bible" (1969). In "The Satanic Bible" ("The Book of Belial"), Belial means "without a master", and symbolizes independence, self-sufficiency, and personal accomplishment.


title: Belial

text: In 1937, Edgar Cayce used the term "sons of belial" and "sons of the law of one" for the first time in one of his deep trance readings given between 1923 and 1945. Cayce was often referred to as the "sleeping prophet" who gave over 2,500 readings to individuals while in a deep trance state. While his definition of the sons of belial was consistent with the Hebrew meaning of "worthless" individuals focused on self-gratification, Cayce went on to use the term frequently to compare opposing human forces at work in pre-historical times related to the early development of Atlantis.


title: Belial

text: Popular culture in the 20th century included many references to Belial; notably in the celebrated silent film "Nosferatu" (1922), Aldous Huxley's novel "Ape and Essence" (1948), Philip K. Dick's novel "The Divine Invasion" (1981), the cult horror film "Basket Case" (1982), Dean Koontz's novel "Phantoms" (1983), and Graham Masterton's novel "Master of Lies" (1991). Belial has also experienced a resurgence in popularity during the 21st Century in numerous media, with video games being the most prominent.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens (, , ; 26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean physician and socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 3 November 1970 until his death on 11 September 1973. He was the first Marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy in Latin America.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Allende's involvement in Chilean politics spanned a period of nearly forty years, having covered the posts of senator, deputy and cabinet minister. As a life-long committed member of the Socialist Party of Chile, whose foundation he had actively contributed to, he unsuccessfully ran for the national presidency in the 1952, 1958, and 1964 elections. In 1970, he won the presidency as the candidate of the Popular Unity coalition, in a close three-way race. He was elected in a run-off by Congress, as no candidate had gained a majority.


title: Salvador Allende

text: As president, Allende sought to nationalize major industries, expand education and improve the living standards of the working class. He clashed with the right-wing parties that controlled Congress and with the judiciary. On 11 September 1973, the military moved to oust Allende in a coup d'état supported by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As troops surrounded La Moneda Palace, he gave his last speech vowing not to resign. Later that day, Allende committed suicide, though there has been some controversy about the cause of his death with some believing it was an assassination.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Following Allende's death, General Augusto Pinochet refused to return authority to a civilian government, and Chile was later ruled by a military junta until 1990, ending more than four decades of uninterrupted democratic governance. The military junta that took over dissolved the Congress of Chile, suspended the Constitution, and began a program of persecuting alleged dissidents, in which at least 3,095 civilians disappeared or were killed.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Allende was born on 26 June 1908 in Santiago. He was the son of Salvador Allende Castro and Laura Gossens Uribe. Allende's family belonged to the Chilean upper middle class and had a long tradition of political involvement in progressive and liberal causes. His grandfather was a prominent physician and a social reformist who founded one of the first secular schools in Chile. Salvador Allende was of Basque and Belgian descent. In 1909 he moved with his family to the city of Tacna (then under Chilean administration), living there until 1916, since in that year he would move back to his country in the city of Iquique. In 1918 he studied at the National Institute of Santiago, and in 1919 to 1921 he studied at the Liceo de Valdivia. In 1922 he entered the Eduardo de la Barra school at the age of 16, studying there until 1924.


title: Salvador Allende

text: As a teenager, his main intellectual and political influence came from the shoe-maker Juan De Marchi, an Italian-born anarchist, in 1925 he attended the military service in the Cuirassier Regiment of Tacna. Allende was a talented athlete in his youth, being a member of the Everton de Viña del Mar sports club (named after the more famous English football club of the same name). In 1926 at the age of 18 he studied medicine at the University of Chile in Santiago and in 1927 was elected President of the Student Center. In 1928 he entered the Grand Lodge of Chile and in 1929 he was elected vice president of the Federation of Students of the University of Chile, (FECH). In 1930, he became the representative of the students of the School of Medicine.


title: Salvador Allende

text: During his time at medical school Allende was influenced by Professor Max Westenhofer, a German pathologist who emphasized the social determinants of disease and social medicine. In 1931 he was relegated to the North and expelled from the university. However, in that same year, he retook his sixth year of medical school and graduated at 23 years of age. In 1932 he began to practice his profession as an anatomo-pathologist in the Morgue of the Van Buren Hospital. He became the union leader of the Valparaíso doctors, becoming 1st Regional Secretary in Valparaíso. In 1935, at the age of 27, he was relegated to the city of Caldera for the second time, and in 1936 he was imprisoned in the Popular Front in Valparaíso. In 1937 he was elected Deputy of Valparaíso and Aconcagua and in 1938 he served as Undersecretary General of the Socialist Party of Chile.


title: Salvador Allende

text: In 1933 Allende co-founded with Marmaduque Grove and others a section of the Socialist Party of Chile in Valparaíso and became its chairman. He married Hortensia Bussi with whom he had three daughters. He was a Freemason, a member of the Lodge Progreso No. 4 in Valparaíso. In 1933, he published his doctoral thesis "Higiene Mental y Delincuencia" (Crime and Mental Hygiene) in which he criticized Cesare Lombroso's proposals.


title: Salvador Allende

text: In 1938, Allende was in charge of the electoral campaign of the Popular Front headed by Pedro Aguirre Cerda. The Popular Front's slogan was "Bread, a Roof and Work!" After its electoral victory, he became Minister of Health in the Reformist Popular Front government which was dominated by the Radicals. While serving in that position, Allende was responsible for the passage of a wide range of progressive social reforms, including safety laws protecting workers in the factories, higher pensions for widows, maternity care, and free lunch programmes for schoolchildren.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Upon entering the government, Allende relinquished his congressional seat for Valparaíso, which he had won in 1937. Around that time, he wrote "La Realidad Médico Social de Chile" ("The social and medical reality of Chile"). After the Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, Allende was one of 76 members of the Congress who sent a telegram to Adolf Hitler denouncing the persecution of Jews. Following President Aguirre Cerda's death in 1941, he was again elected deputy while the Popular Front was renamed Democratic Alliance.


title: Salvador Allende

text: In 1945, Allende became senator for the Valdivia, Llanquihue, Chiloé, Aisén and Magallanes provinces; then for Tarapacá and Antofagasta in 1953; for Aconcagua and Valparaíso in 1961; and once more for Chiloé, Aisén and Magallanes in 1969. He became president of the Chilean Senate in 1966. During the 50's Allende introduced legislation that established the Chilean national health service, the first program in the Americas to guarantee universal health care.


title: Salvador Allende

text: His three unsuccessful bids for the presidency (in the 1952, 1958 and 1964 elections) prompted Allende to joke that his epitaph would be "Here lies the next President of Chile." In 1952, as candidate for the "Frente de Acción Popular" (Popular Action Front, FRAP), he obtained only 5.4% of the votes, partly due to a division within socialist ranks over support for Carlos Ibáñez. In 1958, again as the FRAP candidate, Allende obtained 28.5% of the vote. This time, his defeat was attributed to votes lost to the populist Antonio Zamorano. This explanation has been questioned by modern research that suggest Zamorano's votes came from across the political spectrum.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Declassified documents show that from 1962 through 1964, the CIA spent a total of $2.6 million to finance the campaign of Eduardo Frei and $3 million in anti-Allende propaganda "to scare voters away from Allende's FRAP coalition". The CIA considered its role in the victory of Frei a great success.


title: Salvador Allende

text: They argued that "the financial and organizational assistance given to Frei, the effort to keep Durán in the race, the propaganda campaign to denigrate Allende—were 'indispensable ingredients of Frei's success'", and they thought that his chances of winning and the good progress of his campaign would have been doubtful without the covert support of the Government of the United States. Thus, in 1964 Allende lost once more as the FRAP candidate, polling 38.6% of the votes against 55.6% for Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei. As it became clear that the election would be a race between Allende and Frei, the political rightwhich initially had backed Radical Julio Durán– settled for Frei as "the lesser evil".


title: Salvador Allende

text: Allende was considered part of the moderate wing of the Socialists, with support from the Communists who favored taking power via parliamentary democracy; in contrast, the left-wing of the Socialists (led by Carlos Altamirano) and several other far-left parties called for violent insurrection. Some argue, however, that this was reversed at the end of his period in office.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Allende won the 1970 Chilean presidential election as leader of the Unidad Popular ("Popular Unity") coalition. On 4 September 1970, he obtained a narrow plurality of 36.2% to 34.9% over Jorge Alessandri, a former president, with 27.8% going to a third candidate (Radomiro Tomic) of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). According to the Chilean Constitution of the time, if no presidential candidate obtained a majority of the popular vote, Congress would choose one of the two candidates with the highest number of votes as the winner. Tradition was for Congress to vote for the candidate with the highest popular vote, regardless of margin. Indeed, former president Jorge Alessandri had been elected in 1958 with only 31.6% of the popular vote, defeating Allende.


title: Salvador Allende

text: One month after the election, on 20 October, while the Senate had still to reach a decision and negotiations were actively in place between the Christian Democrats and the Popular Unity, General René Schneider, Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army, was shot resisting a kidnap attempt by a group led by General Roberto Viaux. Hospitalized, he died of his wounds three days later, on 23 October. Schneider was a defender of the "constitutionalist" doctrine that the army's role is exclusively professional, its mission being to protect the country's sovereignty and not to interfere in politics.


title: Salvador Allende

text: General Schneider's death was widely disapproved of and, for the time, ended military opposition to Allende, whom the Congress finally chose on 24 October. On 26 October, President Eduardo Frei named General Carlos Prats as commander in chief of the army to replace René Schneider. Allende assumed the Presidency on 3 November 1970 after signing a "Statute of Constitutional Guarantees" proposed by the Christian Democrats in return for their support in Congress. In an extensive interview with Régis Debray in 1972, Allende explained his reasons for agreeing to the guarantees. Some critics have interpreted Allende's responses as an admission that signing the "Statute" was only a tactical move.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Upon assuming the presidency, Allende began to carry out his platform of implementing a socialist programme called "La vía chilena al socialismo" ("the Chilean Path to Socialism"). That included nationalization of large-scale industries (notably copper mining and banking), and government administration of the health-care system, educational system (with the help of a United States educator, Jane A. Hobson-Gonzalez from Kokomo, Indiana), a programme of free milk for children in the schools and in the shanty towns of Chile, and an expansion of the land seizure and redistribution already begun under his predecessor Eduardo Frei Montalva, who had nationalized between one-fifth and one-quarter of all the properties listed for takeover. Allende also intended to improve the socio-economic welfare of Chile's poorest citizens; a key element was to provide employment, either in the new nationalized enterprises or on public-work projects.


title: Salvador Allende

text: In November 1970 3,000 scholarships were allocated to Mapuche children in an effort to integrate the indigenous minority into the educational system, payment of pensions and grants was resumed, an emergency plan providing for the construction of 120,000 residential buildings was launched, all part-time workers were granted rights to social security, a proposed electricity price-increase was withdrawn, diplomatic relations were restored with Cuba, and political prisoners were granted an amnesty. In December that same year, bread prices were fixed, 55,000 volunteers were sent to the south of the country to teach writing and reading skills and to provide medical attention to a sector of the population that had previously been ignored, a central commission was established to oversee a tri-partite payment plan in which equal place was given to government, employees and employers, and a protocol agreement was signed with the United Centre of Workers which granted workers representational rights on the funding board of the Social Planning Ministry. An obligatory minimum wage for workers of all ages (including apprentices) was established, free milk was introduced for expectant and nursing mothers and for children between the ages of 7 and 14, free school-meals were established, rent reductions were carried out, and the construction of the Santiago subway was rescheduled so as to serve working-class neighbourhoods first. Workers benefited from increases in social-security payments, an expanded public-works program, and a modification of the wage and salary adjustment mechanism (which had originally been introduced in the 1940s to cope with the country's chronic inflation), while middle-class Chileans benefited from the elimination of taxes on modest incomes and property. In addition, state-sponsored programs distributed free food to the country's neediest citizens, and in the countryside, peasant councils were established to mobilise agrarian workers and small proprietors. In the government's first budget (presented to the Chilean congress in November 1970), the minimum taxable income-level was raised, removing from the tax pool 35% of those who had paid taxes on earnings in the previous year. In addition, the exemption from general taxation was raised to a level equivalent to twice the minimum wage. Exemptions from capital taxes were also extended, which benefitted 330,000 small proprietors. The extra increases that Frei had promised to the armed forces were also fully paid. According to one estimate, purchasing power went up by 28% between October 1970 and July 1971.


title: Salvador Allende

text: The rate of inflation fell from 36.1% in 1970 to 22.1% in 1971, while average real wages rose by 22.3% during 1971. Minimum real wages for blue-collar workers were increased by 56% during the first quarter of 1971, while in the same period real minimum wages for white-collar workers were increased by 23%, a development that decreased the differential ratio between blue- and white-collar workers' minimum wage from 49% (1970) to 35% (1971). Central government expenditures went up by 36% in real terms, raising the share of fiscal spending in GDP from 21% (1970) to 27% (1971), and as part of tats expansion, the public sector engaged in a huge housing program, starting to build 76,000 houses in 1971, compared to 24,000 for 1970. During a 1971 emergency program, over 89,000 houses were built, and during Allende's three years as president an average of 52,000 houses were constructed annually. Although the acceleration of inflation in 1972 and 1973 eroded part of the initial increase in wages, they still rose (on average) in real terms during the 1971–73 period.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Allende's first step in early 1971 was to raise minimum wages (in real terms) for blue-collar workers by 37%–41% and by 8%–10% for white-collar workers. Education, food, and housing assistance expanded significantly, with public-housing starts going up twelvefold and eligibility for free milk extended from age 6 to age 15. A year later, blue-collar wages were raised by 27% in real terms and white-collar wages became fully indexed. Price controls were also set up, while the Allende Government introduced a system of distribution networks through various agencies (including local committees on supply and prices) to ensure that shopkeepers adhered to the new rules.


title: Salvador Allende

text: The new Minister of Agriculture, Jacques Chonchol, promised to expropriate all estates which were larger than eighty "basic" hectares (about 200 acres). That promise was kept, with no farm in Chile exceeding that limit by the end of 1972. Within eighteen months the Latifundia (extensive agricultural estates) had been abolished. The agrarian reform had involved the expropriation of 3,479 properties which, added to the 1,408 properties incorporated under the Frei government, made up some 40% of the total agricultural land area in the country.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Particularly in rural areas, the Allende government launched a campaign against illiteracy, while adult education programs expanded, together with educational opportunities for workers. From 1971 to 1973, enrolments in kindergarten, primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools all increased. The Allende government encouraged more doctors to begin practising in rural and low-income urban areas, and built additional hospitals, maternity clinics, and especially neighborhood health-centers that remained open for longer hours to serve the poor. Improved sanitation and housing facilities for low-income neighborhoods also equalized health-care benefits, while hospital councils and local health councils were established in neighborhood health-centers as a means of democratizing the administration of health policies. The councils gave central-government civil-servants, local-government officials, health-service employees, and community workers the right to review budgetary decisions.


title: Salvador Allende

text: The Allende government also sought to bring the arts (both serious and popular) to the mass of the Chilean population by funding a number of cultural endeavours. With eighteen-year-olds and illiterates now granted the right to vote, mass participation in decision-making was encouraged by the Allende government, with traditional hierarchical structures now challenged by socialist egalitarianism. The Allende Government was able to draw upon the idealism of its supporters, with teams of "Allendistas" travelling into the countryside and shanty towns to perform volunteer work. The Allende government also worked to transform Chilean popular culture through formal changes to school curriculum and through broader cultural education initiatives, such as state-sponsored music festivals and tours of Chilean folklorists and nueva canción musicians. In 1971, the purchase of a private publishing house by the state gave rise to "Editorial Quimantu", which became the center of the Allende Government's cultural activities. In the space of two years, 12 million copies of books, magazines, and documents (8 million of which were books) specializing in social analysis, were published. Cheap editions of great literary works were produced on a weekly basis, and in most cases were sold out within a day. Culture came into the reach of the masses for the first time, who responded enthusiastically. "Editorial Quimantu" encouraged the establishment of libraries in community organizations and trade unions. Through the supply of cheap textbooks, it enabled the Left to progress through the ideological content of the literature made available to workers.


title: Salvador Allende

text: To improve social and economic conditions for women, the Women's Secretariat was established in 1971, which took on issues such as public laundry facilities, public food programs, day-care centers, and women's health care (especially prenatal care). The duration of maternity leave was extended from 6 to 12 weeks, while the Allende Government steered the educational system towards poorer Chileans by expanding enrollments through government subsidies. A "democratisation" of university education was carried out, making the system tuition-free, which led to an 89% rise in university enrollments between 1970 and 1973. The Allende Government also increased enrollment in secondary education from 38% in 1970 to 51% in 1974. Enrollment in education reached record levels, including 3.6 million young people, and 8 million school textbooks were distributed among 2.6 million pupils in primary education. An unprecedented 130,000 students were enrolled by the universities, which became accessible to peasants and workers. The illiteracy rate was reduced from 12% in 1970 to 10.8% in 1972, while the growth in primary school enrollment increased from an annual average of 3.4% in the period 1966–70 to 6.5% in 1971–1972. Secondary education grew at a rate of 18.2% in 1971–1972, and the average school enrollment of children between the ages of 6 and 14 rose from 91% (1966–70) to 99%.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Social spending was dramatically increased, particularly for housing, education, and health, and a major effort was made to redistribute wealth to poorer Chileans. As a result of new initiatives in nutrition and health, together with higher wages, many poorer Chileans were able to feed and clothe themselves better than ever before. Public access to the social security system was increased, and state benefits such as family allowances were raised significantly. The redistribution of income enabled wage and salary earners to increase their share of national income from 51.6% (the annual average between 1965 and 1970) to 65% while family consumption increased by 12.9% in the first year of the Allende Government. In addition, while the average annual increase in personal spending had been 4.8% in the period 1965–70, it reached 11.9% in 1971. During the first two years of Allende's presidency, state expenditure on health rose from around 2% to nearly 3.5% of GDP. According to Jennifer E. Pribble, the new spending "was reflected not only in public health campaigns, but also in the construction of health infrastructure". Small programs targeted at women were also experimented with, such as cooperative laundries and communal food preparation, together with an expansion of child-care facilities.


title: Salvador Allende

text: The National Supplementary Food Program was extended to all primary school pupils and to all pregnant women, regardless of their employment or income condition. Complementary nutritional schemes were applied to malnourished children, while antenatal care was emphasized. Under Allende, the proportion of children under the age of 6 with some form of malnutrition fell by 17%. Apart from the existing Supply and Prices councils (community-based bodies which controlled the distribution of essential groups in working-class districts, and were a popular, not government, initiative), community-based distribution centers and shops were developed, which sold directly in working-class neighborhoods. The Allende government felt obliged to increase its intervention in marketing activities, and state involvement in grocery distribution reached 33%. The CUT (central labor confederation) was accorded legal recognition, and its membership grew from 700,000 to almost 1 million. In enterprises in the Area of Social Ownership, an assembly of the workers elected half of the members of the management council for each company. Those bodies replaced the former board of directors.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Minimum pensions were increased by amounts equal to two or three times the inflation rate, and between 1970 and 1972, such pensions increased by a total of 550%. The incomes of 300,000 retirement pensioners were increased by the government from one-third of the minimum salary to the full amount. Labor insurance cover was extended to 200,000 market traders, 130,000 small shop proprietors, 30,000 small industrialists, small owners, transport workers, clergy, professional sportsmen, and artesans. The public health service was improved, with the establishment of a system of clinics in working-class neighborhoods on the peripheries of the major cities, providing a health center for every 40,000 inhabitants. Statistics for construction in general, and house-building in particular, reached some of the highest levels in the history of Chile. Four million square metres were completed in 1971–72, compared to an annual average of million between 1965 and 1970. Workers were able to acquire goods which had previously been beyond their reach, such as heaters, refrigerators, and television sets. As further noted by Ricardo Israel Zipper,


title: Salvador Allende

text: "By now meat was no longer a luxury, and the children of working people were adequately supplied with shoes and clothing. The popular living standards were improved in terms of the employment situation, social services, consumption levels, and income distribution."


title: Salvador Allende

text: Chilean presidents were allowed a maximum term of six years, which may explain Allende's haste to restructure the economy. Not only was a major restructuring program organized (the Vuskovic plan), he had to make it a success if a socialist or communist successor to Allende was going to be elected. In the first year of Allende's term, the short-term economic results of Minister of the Economy Pedro Vuskovic's expansive monetary policy were highly favorable: 12% industrial growth and an 8.6% increase in GDP, accompanied by major declines in inflation (down from 34.9% to 22.1%) and unemployment (down to 3.8%). However, by 1972, the Chilean "escudo" had an inflation rate of 140%. The average Real GDP contracted between 1971 and 1973 at an annual rate of 5.6% ("negative growth"); and the government's fiscal deficit soared while foreign reserves declined. The combination of inflation and price controls, together with the disappearance of basic commodities from supermarket shelves, led to the rise of black markets in rice, beans, sugar, and flour. The Chilean economic situation was also somewhat exacerbated due to a US-backed campaign to fund worker strikes in certain sectors of the economy. The Allende government announced it would default on debts owed to international creditors and foreign governments. Allende also froze all prices while raising salaries. His implementation of the policies was strongly opposed by landowners, employers, businessmen and transporters associations, and some civil servants and professional unions. The rightist opposition was led by the National Party, the Roman Catholic Church (which in 1973 was displeased with the direction of educational policy), and eventually the Christian Democrats. There were growing tensions with foreign multinational corporations and the government of the United States.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Allende also undertook the pioneeristic Project Cybersyn, a distributed decision support system for decentralized economic planning, developed by British cybernetics expert Stafford Beer. Based on the experimental viable system model and the neural network approach to organizational design, the Project consisted of four modules: a network of telex machines ("Cybernet") in all state-run enterprises that would transmit and receive information with the government in Santiago. Information from the field would be fed into statistical modeling software ("Cyberstride") that would monitor production indicators, such as raw material supplies or high rates of worker absenteeism, in "almost" real time, alerting the workers in the first case and, in abnormal situations, if those parameters fell outside acceptable ranges by a very large degree, also the central government. The information would also be input into an economic simulation software ("CHECO", for "CHilean ECOnomic simulator") which featured a Bayesian filtering and control setting that the government could use to forecast the possible outcome of economic decisions. Finally, a sophisticated operations room ("Opsroom") would provide a space where managers could see relevant economic data, formulate feasible responses to emergencies, and transmit advice and directives to enterprises and factories in alarm situations by using the telex network. In conjunction with the system, the Cybersyn development team also planned the so-called Cyberfolk device system, a closed television circuit connected to an interactive apparatus that would enable the citizenry to actively participate in economic and political decision-making.


title: Salvador Allende

text: In 1971, Chile re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba, joining Mexico and Canada in rejecting a previously established Organization of American States convention prohibiting governments in the Western Hemisphere from establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Shortly afterward, Cuban president Fidel Castro made a month-long visit to Chile. Originally the visit was supposed to be one week; however, Castro enjoyed Chile and one week led to another. But, despite his attitude of socialist solidarity, Castro was reportedly critical of Allende's policies. “Marxism is a revolution of production," Castro is said to have stated, whereas "Allende's was a revolution of consumption."


title: Salvador Allende

text: In October 1972, the first of what were to be a wave of strikes was led first by truckers, and later by small businessmen, some (mostly professional) unions and some student groups. Other than the inevitable damage to the economy, the chief effect of the 24-day strike was to induce Allende to bring the head of the army, general Carlos Prats, into the government as Interior Minister. Allende also instructed the government to commandeer trucks to keep the nation from coming to a halt. Government supporters also helped to mobilize trucks and buses but violence served as a deterrent to full mobilization, even with police protection for the strike-breakers. Allende's actions were eventually declared unlawful by the Chilean appeals court and the government was ordered to return trucks to their owners.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Throughout his presidency, racial tensions between the poor descendants of indigenous people, who supported Allende's reforms, and the white elite increased.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Allende raised wages on a number of occasions throughout 1970 and 1971, but the wage hikes were negated by ongoing inflation of Chile's fiat currency. Although price rises had been high even under Frei (27% a year between 1967 and 1970), a basic basket of consumer goods rose by 120% from 190 to 421 escudos in one month alone, August 1972. From 1970 to 1972, while Allende was in government, exports fell 24% and imports rose 26%, with imports of food rising an estimated 149%.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Export income fell due to a hard-hit copper industry: the price of copper on international markets fell by almost a third, and post-nationalization copper production fell as well. Copper is Chile's single most important export (more than half of Chile's export receipts were from that sole commodity). The price of copper fell from a peak of $66 per ton in 1970 to only $48–49 in 1971 and 1972. Chile was already dependent on food imports, and the decline in export earnings coincided with declines in domestic food production following Allende's agrarian reforms.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Throughout his presidency, Allende remained at odds with the Chilean Congress, which was dominated by the Christian Democratic Party. The Christian Democrats (who had campaigned on a socialist platform in the 1970 elections, but drifted away from those positions during Allende's presidency, eventually forming a coalition with the National Party) , continued to accuse Allende of leading Chile toward a Cuban-style dictatorship, and sought to overturn many of his more radical policies. Allende and his opponents in Congress repeatedly accused each other of undermining the Chilean Constitution and acting undemocratically.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Allende's increasingly bold socialist policies (partly in response to pressure from some of the more radical members within his coalition), combined with his close contacts with Cuba, heightened fears in Washington. The Nixon administration continued exerting economic pressure on Chile via multilateral organizations, and continued to back Allende's opponents in the Chilean Congress. Almost immediately after his election, Nixon directed CIA and U.S. State Department officials to "put pressure" on the Allende government. His economic policies were used by economists Rudi Dornbusch and Sebastián Edwards to coin the term macroeconomic populism.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Salvador Allende took office in a difficult international context. Chile was aligned with the United States in 1970. Elsewhere in Latin America, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia were ruled by conservative military dictatorships (soon to be joined by Uruguay). Colombia and Venezuela also had conservative, but democratically elected, governments. Only Cuba, Peru and Mexico viewed the Chilean socialist experiment with sympathy. Under Allende's presidency, Chile joined the Non-Aligned Movement, a position that was then almost unique in Latin America.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Chile, which until then had been fussy about ideological boundaries, diversified its diplomatic and trade relations, regardless of the internal political regime of each country. The government established diplomatic relations with two Latin American countries (Cuba and Guyana), seven African countries (Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zaire), three European countries (Albania, East Germany and Hungary) and seven Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, North Korea, China, Mongolia, South Vietnam and North Vietnam).


title: Salvador Allende

text: It tries to promote Latin American integration. At the 1971 Latin American Economic and Social Council, the Chilean representative Gonzalo Martner García formulated four major proposals, summarized by the historian Jorge Magasich: "1) to ask the United States for a moratorium on external debt for a decade in order to allocate these sums to development policies; 2) to create a Latin American central bank to "invest Latin America's reserves, 70% of which are in the United States", to receive "the region's deposits and assets" and to coordinate the operations of the central banks in order to protect the region from financial turbulence ; 3) Promote the creation of a global technology fund for development, fed by compulsory contributions of licenses, industrial processes and other funds for research, so as to limit the abuses associated with technological property; 4) Create a Latin American organisation for the development of science and technology appropriate to the region."


title: Salvador Allende

text: He began negotiations with Bolivia over the historical dispute between the two countries (the latter having lost access to the sea since the War of the Pacific between 1879 and 1884) and welcomed Bolivia's maritime request. Nevertheless, relations became tense again following a coup d'état by Bolivian General Hugo Banzer in August 1971. At the same time, Chile granted asylum to thousands of political exiles from Latin American countries.


title: Salvador Allende

text: Salvador Allende openly rejected the influence of the Organization of American States (OAS), a body close to the US government, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which favored the interests of more developed countries. On the other hand, he was a fervent defender of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which he considered to be more representative since it allowed economic and trade issues to be negotiated on an equal legal footing. In a speech to UNCTAD, he also warned of the policy of the United States, Japan and the European Economic Community to progressively eliminate obstacles to free trade. He said that "freeing up trade (...) erases at a stroke the benefits that the Generalised System of Preferences brings to developing countries".


title: Salvador Allende

text: Allende's Popular Unity government tried to maintain normal relations with the United States. But when Chile nationalized its copper industry, the United States government cut off support and increased its support to opposition. Forced to seek alternative sources of trade and finance, Chile gained commitments from the Soviet Union to invest some $400 million in Chile in the next six years. Allende's government was disappointed that it received far less economic assistance from the USSR than it hoped for. Trade between the two countries did not significantly increase and the credits were mainly linked to the purchase of Soviet equipment. Moreover, credits from the Soviet Union were much less than those provided to the People's Republic of China and countries of Eastern Europe. When Allende visited the USSR in late 1972 in search of more aid and additional lines of credit after 3 years, he was turned down.


title: Salvador Allende

text: The United States opposition to Allende started several years before he was elected President of Chile. Declassified documents show that from 1962 to 1964, the CIA spent $3 million on anti-Allende propaganda "to scare voters away from Allende's FRAP coalition", and spent a total of $2.6 million to finance the presidential campaign of Eduardo Frei.