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tariff

(Encyclopedia)tariff, tax on imported and, more rarely, exported goods. It is also called a customs duty. Tariffs may be distinguished from other taxes in that their predominant purpose is not financial but economi...

International Peace Bureau

(Encyclopedia)International Peace Bureau (IPB), organization est. 1891 in Bern, Switerland, by Fredrik Bajer and other members of the third World Peace Congress. Dedicated to promoting world peace, it brought toget...

Woman's Christian Temperance Union

(Encyclopedia)Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), organization that seeks to upgrade moral life, especially through abstinence from alcohol. The National WCTU of the United States was founded (1874) in Cleve...

Veterans of Foreign Wars

(Encyclopedia)Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), organization created (1899) at Columbus, Ohio, by veterans of the Spanish-American War. It received a charter from Congress in 1936. The organization later admitted vet...

WHO

(Encyclopedia)WHO: see World Health Organization. ...

Amnesty International

(Encyclopedia)Amnesty International (AI,) human-rights organization founded in 1961 by Englishman Peter Benenson; it campaigns internationally against the detention of prisoners of conscience, for the fair trial of...

Communications Satellite Corporation

(Encyclopedia)Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat), organization incorporated (1962) by an act of Congress to establish a commercial system of international communications using artificial satellites. Alth...

Jouhaux, Léon

(Encyclopedia)Jouhaux, Léon lāôNˈ zho͞o-ōˈ [key], 1879–1954, French Socialist labor leader. He headed the Confédération Générale du Travail from 1909 to 1947, when he resigned in protest against its al...

Marshall Plan

(Encyclopedia)Marshall Plan or European Recovery Program, project instituted at the Paris Economic Conference (July, 1947) to foster economic recovery in certain European countries after World War II. The Marshall ...

Carlton Club

(Encyclopedia)Carlton Club, British political and social club (founded 1832). Located in London, it was long the center of the Conservative party organization. Since World War II the club has been primarily social....

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