title: Dazed and Confused (film)

text: The film was released on HD DVD in 2006. The Criterion Collection released a two-disc boxed-set edition of the film on June 6, 2006, in the U.S. and Canada. Features included an audio commentary by Richard Linklater, deleted scenes, the original trailer, the 50 minute "Making Dazed" documentary that aired on the American Movie Classics channel on September 18, 2005, on-set interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, cast auditions and footage from the ten-year anniversary celebration. Also included is a 72-page book featuring new essays by Kent Jones, Jim DeRogatis, and Chuck Klosterman as well as memories from the cast and crew, character profiles and a mini reproduction of the original film poster designed by Frank Kozik. "Entertainment Weekly" gave it an "A" rating and stated that it "grants this enduring cult classic the DVD treatment it deserves".


title: Dazed and Confused (film)

text: Universal Studios released "Dazed and Confused" on Blu-ray in August 2011, in a 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer, with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack.


title: Dazed and Confused (film)

text: "The Blunt Truth" is a four-minute and twenty second long 1970s anti-cannabis hoax educational film. It appeared as a bonus feature on 2004's "Dazed and Confused: Flashback Party Edition".


title: Dazed and Confused (film)

text: The soundtrack for the film was released on September 28, 1993, by The Medicine Label, and they consist of hit songs (mostly rock) from the 1970s, the film's setting. The songs "Hurricane" by Bob Dylan, "Hey Baby" by Ted Nugent, and "Sweet Emotion" by Aerosmith were also included in the film, but not on the commercial soundtracks. "The Alien Song (For Those Who Listen)" by Milla Jovovich was briefly performed by Jovovich's character Michelle Burroughs, but was not included in the soundtrack either. Geffen Records attempted to get up-and-coming band Jackyl to do a cover of Grand Funk's "We're an American Band" to play over the end credits and be released as a single, but Linklater refused.


title: Dazed and Confused (film)

text: In September 1993, St. Martin's Press published a 127-page, softcover book () inspired by Richard Linklater's screenplay. It was compiled by Linklater, Denise Montgomery, and others, and designed by Erik Josowitz. It was presented as a kind of yearbook, with character profiles, essays by characters, a timeline focusing on the years 1973 to 1977, and various 1970s pop culture charts and quizzes. It also featured dozens of black-and-white photos from the film.


title: Chemical element

text: A chemical element is a species of atoms that have a given number of protons in their nuclei, including the pure substance consisting only of that species. Unlike chemical compounds, chemical elements cannot be broken down into simpler substances by any chemical reaction. The number of protons in the nucleus is the defining property of an element, and is referred to as its atomic number (represented by the symbol "Z") – all atoms with the same atomic number are atoms of the same element. Almost all of the baryonic matter of the universe is composed of chemical elements (among rare exceptions are neutron stars). When different elements undergo chemical reactions, atoms are rearranged into new compounds held together by chemical bonds. Only a minority of elements, such as silver and gold, are found uncombined as relatively pure native element minerals. Nearly all other naturally occurring elements occur in the Earth as compounds or mixtures. Air is primarily a mixture of the elements nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, though it does contain compounds including carbon dioxide and water.


title: Chemical element

text: The history of the discovery and use of the elements began with primitive human societies that discovered native minerals like carbon, sulfur, copper and gold (though the concept of a chemical element was not yet understood). Attempts to classify materials such as these resulted in the concepts of classical elements, alchemy, and various similar theories throughout human history. Much of the modern understanding of elements developed from the work of Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist who published the first recognizable periodic table in 1869. This table organizes the elements by increasing atomic number into rows ("periods") in which the columns ("groups") share recurring ("periodic") physical and chemical properties. The periodic table summarizes various properties of the elements, allowing chemists to derive relationships between them and to make predictions about compounds and potential new ones.


title: Chemical element

text: By November 2016, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry had recognized a total of 118 elements. The first 94 occur naturally on Earth, and the remaining 24 are synthetic elements produced in nuclear reactions. Save for unstable radioactive elements (radionuclides) which decay quickly, nearly all of the elements are available industrially in varying amounts. The discovery and synthesis of further new elements is an ongoing area of scientific study.


title: Chemical element

text: The lightest chemical elements are hydrogen and helium, both created by Big Bang nucleosynthesis during the first 20 minutes of the universe in a ratio of around 3:1 by mass (or 12:1 by number of atoms), along with tiny traces of the next two elements, lithium and beryllium. Almost all other elements found in nature were made by various natural methods of nucleosynthesis. On Earth, small amounts of new atoms are naturally produced in nucleogenic reactions, or in cosmogenic processes, such as cosmic ray spallation. New atoms are also naturally produced on Earth as radiogenic daughter isotopes of ongoing radioactive decay processes such as alpha decay, beta decay, spontaneous fission, cluster decay, and other rarer modes of decay.


title: Chemical element

text: Of the 94 naturally occurring elements, those with atomic numbers 1 through 82 each have at least one stable isotope (except for technetium, element 43 and promethium, element 61, which have no stable isotopes). Isotopes considered stable are those for which no radioactive decay has yet been observed. Elements with atomic numbers 83 through 94 are unstable to the point that radioactive decay of all isotopes can be detected. Some of these elements, notably bismuth (atomic number 83), thorium (atomic number 90), and uranium (atomic number 92), have one or more isotopes with half-lives long enough to survive as remnants of the explosive stellar nucleosynthesis that produced the heavy metals before the formation of our Solar System. At over 1.9 years, over a billion times longer than the current estimated age of the universe, bismuth-209 (atomic number 83) has the longest known alpha decay half-life of any naturally occurring element, and is almost always considered on par with the 80 stable elements. The very heaviest elements (those beyond plutonium, element 94) undergo radioactive decay with half-lives so short that they are not found in nature and must be synthesized.


title: Chemical element

text: There are now 118 known elements. In this context, "known" means observed well enough, even from just a few decay products, to have been differentiated from other elements. Most recently, the synthesis of element 118 (since named oganesson) was reported in October 2006, and the synthesis of element 117 (tennessine) was reported in April 2010. Of these 118 elements, 94 occur naturally on Earth. Six of these occur in extreme trace quantities: technetium, atomic number 43; promethium, number 61; astatine, number 85; francium, number 87; neptunium, number 93; and plutonium, number 94. These 94 elements have been detected in the universe at large, in the spectra of stars and also supernovae, where short-lived radioactive elements are newly being made. The first 94 elements have been detected directly on Earth as primordial nuclides present from the formation of the Solar System, or as naturally occurring fission or transmutation products of uranium and thorium.


title: Chemical element

text: The remaining 24 heavier elements, not found today either on Earth or in astronomical spectra, have been produced artificially: these are all radioactive, with very short half-lives; if any atoms of these elements were present at the formation of Earth, they are extremely likely, to the point of certainty, to have already decayed, and if present in novae have been in quantities too small to have been noted. Technetium was the first purportedly non-naturally occurring element synthesized, in 1937, although trace amounts of technetium have since been found in nature (and also the element may have been discovered naturally in 1925). This pattern of artificial production and later natural discovery has been repeated with several other radioactive naturally occurring rare elements.


title: Chemical element

text: List of the elements are available by name, atomic number, density, melting point, boiling point and by symbol, as well as ionization energies of the elements. The nuclides of stable and radioactive elements are also available as a list of nuclides, sorted by length of half-life for those that are unstable. One of the most convenient, and certainly the most traditional presentation of the elements, is in the form of the periodic table, which groups together elements with similar chemical properties (and usually also similar electronic structures).


title: Chemical element

text: The atomic number of an element is equal to the number of protons in each atom, and defines the element. For example, all carbon atoms contain 6 protons in their atomic nucleus; so the atomic number of carbon is 6. Carbon atoms may have different numbers of neutrons; atoms of the same element having different numbers of neutrons are known as isotopes of the element.


title: Chemical element

text: The number of protons in the atomic nucleus also determines its electric charge, which in turn determines the number of electrons of the atom in its non-ionized state. The electrons are placed into atomic orbitals that determine the atom's various chemical properties. The number of neutrons in a nucleus usually has very little effect on an element's chemical properties (except in the case of hydrogen and deuterium). Thus, all carbon isotopes have nearly identical chemical properties because they all have six protons and six electrons, even though carbon atoms may, for example, have 6 or 8 neutrons. That is why the atomic number, rather than mass number or atomic weight, is considered the identifying characteristic of a chemical element.


title: Chemical element

text: Isotopes are atoms of the same element (that is, with the same number of protons in their atomic nucleus), but having "different" numbers of neutrons. Thus, for example, there are three main isotopes of carbon. All carbon atoms have 6 protons in the nucleus, but they can have either 6, 7, or 8 neutrons. Since the mass numbers of these are 12, 13 and 14 respectively, the three isotopes of carbon are known as carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14, often abbreviated to C, C, and C. Carbon in everyday life and in chemistry is a mixture of C (about 98.9%), C (about 1.1%) and about 1 atom per trillion of C.


title: Chemical element

text: Most (66 of 94) naturally occurring elements have more than one stable isotope. Except for the isotopes of hydrogen (which differ greatly from each other in relative mass—enough to cause chemical effects), the isotopes of a given element are chemically nearly indistinguishable.


title: Chemical element

text: All of the elements have some isotopes that are radioactive (radioisotopes), although not all of these radioisotopes occur naturally. The radioisotopes typically decay into other elements upon radiating an alpha or beta particle. If an element has isotopes that are not radioactive, these are termed "stable" isotopes. All of the known stable isotopes occur naturally (see primordial isotope). The many radioisotopes that are not found in nature have been characterized after being artificially made. Certain elements have no stable isotopes and are composed "only" of radioactive isotopes: specifically the elements without any stable isotopes are technetium (atomic number 43), promethium (atomic number 61), and all observed elements with atomic numbers greater than 82.


title: Chemical element

text: Of the 80 elements with at least one stable isotope, 26 have only one single stable isotope. The mean number of stable isotopes for the 80 stable elements is 3.1 stable isotopes per element. The largest number of stable isotopes that occur for a single element is 10 (for tin, element 50).


title: Chemical element

text: The mass number of an element, "A", is the number of nucleons (protons and neutrons) in the atomic nucleus. Different isotopes of a given element are distinguished by their mass numbers, which are conventionally written as a superscript on the left hand side of the atomic symbol (e.g. U). The mass number is always a whole number and has units of "nucleons". For example, magnesium-24 (24 is the mass number) is an atom with 24 nucleons (12 protons and 12 neutrons).


title: Chemical element

text: Whereas the mass number simply counts the total number of neutrons and protons and is thus a natural (or whole) number, the atomic mass of a single atom is a real number giving the mass of a particular isotope (or "nuclide") of the element, expressed in atomic mass units (symbol: u). In general, the mass number of a given nuclide differs in value slightly from its atomic mass, since the mass of each proton and neutron is not exactly 1 u; since the electrons contribute a lesser share to the atomic mass as neutron number exceeds proton number; and (finally) because of the nuclear binding energy. For example, the atomic mass of chlorine-35 to five significant digits is 34.969 u and that of chlorine-37 is 36.966 u. However, the atomic mass in u of each isotope is quite close to its simple mass number (always within 1%). The only isotope whose atomic mass is exactly a natural number is C, which by definition has a mass of exactly 12 because u is defined as 1/12 of the mass of a free neutral carbon-12 atom in the ground state.


title: Chemical element

text: The standard atomic weight (commonly called "atomic weight") of an element is the "average" of the atomic masses of all the chemical element's isotopes as found in a particular environment, weighted by isotopic abundance, relative to the atomic mass unit. This number may be a fraction that is "not" close to a whole number. For example, the relative atomic mass of chlorine is 35.453 u, which differs greatly from a whole number as it is an average of about 76% chlorine-35 and 24% chlorine-37. Whenever a relative atomic mass value differs by more than 1% from a whole number, it is due to this averaging effect, as significant amounts of more than one isotope are naturally present in a sample of that element.


title: Chemical element

text: Chemists and nuclear scientists have different definitions of a "pure element". In chemistry, a pure element means a substance whose atoms all (or in practice almost all) have the same atomic number, or number of protons. Nuclear scientists, however, define a pure element as one that consists of only one stable isotope.


title: Chemical element

text: For example, a copper wire is 99.99% chemically pure if 99.99% of its atoms are copper, with 29 protons each. However it is not isotopically pure since ordinary copper consists of two stable isotopes, 69% Cu and 31% Cu, with different numbers of neutrons. However, a pure gold ingot would be both chemically and isotopically pure, since ordinary gold consists only of one isotope, Au.


title: Chemical element

text: Atoms of chemically pure elements may bond to each other chemically in more than one way, allowing the pure element to exist in multiple chemical structures (spatial arrangements of atoms), known as allotropes, which differ in their properties. For example, carbon can be found as diamond, which has a tetrahedral structure around each carbon atom; graphite, which has layers of carbon atoms with a hexagonal structure stacked on top of each other; graphene, which is a single layer of graphite that is very strong; fullerenes, which have nearly spherical shapes; and carbon nanotubes, which are tubes with a hexagonal structure (even these may differ from each other in electrical properties). The ability of an element to exist in one of many structural forms is known as 'allotropy'.


title: Chemical element

text: The reference state of an element is defined by convention, usually as the thermodynamically most stable allotrope and physical state at a pressure of 1 bar and a given temperature (typically at 298.15K). However, for phosphorus, the reference state is white phosphorus even though it is not the most stable allotrope. In thermochemistry, an element is defined to have an enthalpy of formation of zero in its reference state. For example, the reference state for carbon is graphite, because the structure of graphite is more stable than that of the other allotropes.


title: Chemical element

text: Several kinds of descriptive categorizations can be applied broadly to the elements, including consideration of their general physical and chemical properties, their states of matter under familiar conditions, their melting and boiling points, their densities, their crystal structures as solids, and their origins.


title: Chemical element

text: Several terms are commonly used to characterize the general physical and chemical properties of the chemical elements. A first distinction is between metals, which readily conduct electricity, nonmetals, which do not, and a small group, (the "metalloids"), having intermediate properties and often behaving as semiconductors.


title: Chemical element

text: A more refined classification is often shown in colored presentations of the periodic table. This system restricts the terms "metal" and "nonmetal" to only certain of the more broadly defined metals and nonmetals, adding additional terms for certain sets of the more broadly viewed metals and nonmetals. The version of this classification used in the periodic tables presented here includes: actinides, alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, halogens, lanthanides, transition metals, post-transition metals, metalloids, reactive nonmetals, and noble gases. In this system, the alkali metals, alkaline earth metals, and transition metals, as well as the lanthanides and the actinides, are special groups of the metals viewed in a broader sense. Similarly, the reactive nonmetals and the noble gases are nonmetals viewed in the broader sense. In some presentations, the halogens are not distinguished, with astatine identified as a metalloid and the others identified as nonmetals.


title: Chemical element

text: Another commonly used basic distinction among the elements is their state of matter (phase), whether solid, liquid, or gas, at a selected standard temperature and pressure (STP). Most of the elements are solids at conventional temperatures and atmospheric pressure, while several are gases. Only bromine and mercury are liquids at 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) and normal atmospheric pressure; caesium and gallium are solids at that temperature, but melt at 28.4 °C (83.2 °F) and 29.8 °C (85.6 °F), respectively.


title: Chemical element

text: Melting and boiling points, typically expressed in degrees Celsius at a pressure of one atmosphere, are commonly used in characterizing the various elements. While known for most elements, either or both of these measurements is still undetermined for some of the radioactive elements available in only tiny quantities. Since helium remains a liquid even at absolute zero at atmospheric pressure, it has only a boiling point, and not a melting point, in conventional presentations.


title: Chemical element

text: The density at selected standard temperature and pressure (STP) is frequently used in characterizing the elements. Density is often expressed in grams per cubic centimeter (g/cm). Since several elements are gases at commonly encountered temperatures, their densities are usually stated for their gaseous forms; when liquefied or solidified, the gaseous elements have densities similar to those of the other elements.


title: Chemical element

text: When an element has allotropes with different densities, one representative allotrope is typically selected in summary presentations, while densities for each allotrope can be stated where more detail is provided. For example, the three familiar allotropes of carbon (amorphous carbon, graphite, and diamond) have densities of 1.8–2.1, 2.267, and 3.515 g/cm, respectively.


title: Chemical element

text: The elements studied to date as solid samples have eight kinds of crystal structures: cubic, body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic, hexagonal, monoclinic, orthorhombic, rhombohedral, and tetragonal. For some of the synthetically produced transuranic elements, available samples have been too small to determine crystal structures.


title: Chemical element

text: Chemical elements may also be categorized by their origin on Earth, with the first 94 considered naturally occurring, while those with atomic numbers beyond 94 have only been produced artificially as the synthetic products of man-made nuclear reactions.


title: Chemical element

text: Of the 94 naturally occurring elements, 83 are considered primordial and either stable or weakly radioactive. The remaining 11 naturally occurring elements possess half lives too short for them to have been present at the beginning of the Solar System, and are therefore considered transient elements. Of these 11 transient elements, 5 (polonium, radon, radium, actinium, and protactinium) are relatively common decay products of thorium and uranium. The remaining 6 transient elements (technetium, promethium, astatine, francium, neptunium, and plutonium) occur only rarely, as products of rare decay modes or nuclear reaction processes involving uranium or other heavy elements.


title: Chemical element

text: No radioactive decay has been observed for elements with atomic numbers 1 through 82, except 43 (technetium) and 61 (promethium). Observationally stable isotopes of some elements (such as tungsten and lead), however, are predicted to be slightly radioactive with very long half-lives: for example, the half-lives predicted for the observationally stable lead isotopes range from 10 to 10 years. Elements with atomic numbers 43, 61, and 83 through 94 are unstable enough that their radioactive decay can readily be detected. Three of these elements, bismuth (element 83), thorium (element 90), and uranium (element 92) have one or more isotopes with half-lives long enough to survive as remnants of the explosive stellar nucleosynthesis that produced the heavy elements before the formation of the Solar System. For example, at over 1.9 years, over a billion times longer than the current estimated age of the universe, bismuth-209 has the longest known alpha decay half-life of any naturally occurring element. The very heaviest 24 elements (those beyond plutonium, element 94) undergo radioactive decay with short half-lives and cannot be produced as daughters of longer-lived elements, and thus are not known to occur in nature at all.


title: Chemical element

text: The properties of the chemical elements are often summarized using the periodic table, which powerfully and elegantly organizes the elements by increasing atomic number into rows ("periods") in which the columns ("groups") share recurring ("periodic") physical and chemical properties. The current standard table contains 118 confirmed elements as of 2021.


title: Chemical element

text: Although earlier precursors to this presentation exist, its invention is generally credited to the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, who intended the table to illustrate recurring trends in the properties of the elements. The layout of the table has been refined and extended over time as new elements have been discovered and new theoretical models have been developed to explain chemical behavior.


title: Chemical element

text: Use of the periodic table is now ubiquitous within the academic discipline of chemistry, providing an extremely useful framework to classify, systematize and compare all the many different forms of chemical behavior. The table has also found wide application in physics, geology, biology, materials science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, nutrition, environmental health, and astronomy. Its principles are especially important in chemical engineering.


title: Chemical element

text: The various chemical elements are formally identified by their unique atomic numbers, by their accepted names, and by their symbols.


title: Chemical element

text: The known elements have atomic numbers from 1 through 118, conventionally presented as Arabic numerals. Since the elements can be uniquely sequenced by atomic number, conventionally from lowest to highest (as in a periodic table), sets of elements are sometimes specified by such notation as "through", "beyond", or "from ... through", as in "through iron", "beyond uranium", or "from lanthanum through lutetium". The terms "light" and "heavy" are sometimes also used informally to indicate relative atomic numbers (not densities), as in "lighter than carbon" or "heavier than lead", although technically the weight or mass of atoms of an element (their atomic weights or atomic masses) do not always increase monotonically with their atomic numbers.


title: Chemical element

text: The naming of various substances now known as elements precedes the atomic theory of matter, as names were given locally by various cultures to various minerals, metals, compounds, alloys, mixtures, and other materials, although at the time it was not known which chemicals were elements and which compounds. As they were identified as elements, the existing names for anciently known elements (e.g., gold, mercury, iron) were kept in most countries. National differences emerged over the names of elements either for convenience, linguistic niceties, or nationalism. For a few illustrative examples: German speakers use "Wasserstoff" (water substance) for "hydrogen", "Sauerstoff" (acid substance) for "oxygen" and "Stickstoff" (smothering substance) for "nitrogen", while English and some romance languages use "sodium" for "natrium" and "potassium" for "kalium", and the French, Italians, Greeks, Portuguese and Poles prefer "azote/azot/azoto" (from roots meaning "no life") for "nitrogen".


title: Chemical element

text: For purposes of international communication and trade, the official names of the chemical elements both ancient and more recently recognized are decided by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which has decided on a sort of international English language, drawing on traditional English names even when an element's chemical symbol is based on a Latin or other traditional word, for example adopting "gold" rather than "aurum" as the name for the 79th element (Au). IUPAC prefers the British spellings "aluminium" and "caesium" over the U.S. spellings "aluminum" and "cesium", and the U.S. "sulfur" over the British "sulphur". However, elements that are practical to sell in bulk in many countries often still have locally used national names, and countries whose national language does not use the Latin alphabet are likely to use the IUPAC element names.


title: Chemical element

text: According to IUPAC, chemical elements are not proper nouns in English; consequently, the full name of an element is not routinely capitalized in English, even if derived from a proper noun, as in californium and einsteinium. Isotope names of chemical elements are also uncapitalized if written out, "e.g.," carbon-12 or uranium-235. Chemical element "symbols" (such as Cf for californium and Es for einsteinium), are always capitalized (see below).


title: Chemical element

text: In the second half of the twentieth century, physics laboratories became able to produce nuclei of chemical elements with half-lives too short for an appreciable amount of them to exist at any time. These are also named by IUPAC, which generally adopts the name chosen by the discoverer. This practice can lead to the controversial question of which research group actually discovered an element, a question that delayed the naming of elements with atomic number of 104 and higher for a considerable amount of time. (See element naming controversy).


title: Chemical element

text: Precursors of such controversies involved the nationalistic namings of elements in the late 19th century. For example, "lutetium" was named in reference to Paris, France. The Germans were reluctant to relinquish naming rights to the French, often calling it "cassiopeium". Similarly, the British discoverer of "niobium" originally named it "columbium," in reference to the New World. It was used extensively as such by American publications before the international standardization (in 1950).


title: Chemical element

text: Before chemistry became a science, alchemists had designed arcane symbols for both metals and common compounds. These were however used as abbreviations in diagrams or procedures; there was no concept of atoms combining to form molecules. With his advances in the atomic theory of matter, John Dalton devised his own simpler symbols, based on circles, to depict molecules.


title: Chemical element

text: The current system of chemical notation was invented by Berzelius. In this typographical system, chemical symbols are not mere abbreviations—though each consists of letters of the Latin alphabet. They are intended as universal symbols for people of all languages and alphabets.


title: Chemical element

text: The first of these symbols were intended to be fully universal. Since Latin was the common language of science at that time, they were abbreviations based on the Latin names of metals. Cu comes from cuprum, Fe comes from ferrum, Ag from argentum. The symbols were not followed by a period (full stop) as with abbreviations. Later chemical elements were also assigned unique chemical symbols, based on the name of the element, but not necessarily in English. For example, sodium has the chemical symbol 'Na' after the Latin "natrium". The same applies to "Fe" (ferrum) for iron, "Hg" (hydrargyrum) for mercury, "Sn" (stannum) for tin, "Au" (aurum) for gold, "Ag" (argentum) for silver, "Pb" (plumbum) for lead, "Cu" (cuprum) for copper, and "Sb" (stibium) for antimony. "W" (wolfram) for tungsten ultimately derives from German, "K" (kalium) for potassium ultimately from Arabic.


title: Chemical element

text: Chemical symbols are understood internationally when element names might require translation. There have sometimes been differences in the past. For example, Germans in the past have used "J" (for the alternate name Jod) for iodine, but now use "I" and "Iod".


title: Chemical element

text: The first letter of a chemical symbol is always capitalized, as in the preceding examples, and the subsequent letters, if any, are always lower case (small letters). Thus, the symbols for californium and einsteinium are Cf and Es.


title: Chemical element

text: There are also symbols in chemical equations for groups of chemical elements, for example in comparative formulas. These are often a single capital letter, and the letters are reserved and not used for names of specific elements. For example, an "X" indicates a variable group (usually a halogen) in a class of compounds, while "R" is a radical, meaning a compound structure such as a hydrocarbon chain. The letter "Q" is reserved for "heat" in a chemical reaction. "Y" is also often used as a general chemical symbol, although it is also the symbol of yttrium. "Z" is also frequently used as a general variable group. "E" is used in organic chemistry to denote an electron-withdrawing group or an electrophile; similarly "Nu" denotes a nucleophile. "L" is used to represent a general ligand in inorganic and organometallic chemistry. "M" is also often used in place of a general metal.


title: Chemical element

text: At least two additional, two-letter generic chemical symbols are also in informal usage, "Ln" for any lanthanide element and "An" for any actinide element. "Rg" was formerly used for any rare gas element, but the group of rare gases has now been renamed noble gases and the symbol "Rg" has now been assigned to the element roentgenium.


title: Chemical element

text: Isotopes are distinguished by the atomic mass number (total protons and neutrons) for a particular isotope of an element, with this number combined with the pertinent element's symbol. IUPAC prefers that isotope symbols be written in superscript notation when practical, for example C and U. However, other notations, such as carbon-12 and uranium-235, or C-12 and U-235, are also used.


title: Chemical element

text: As a special case, the three naturally occurring isotopes of the element hydrogen are often specified as H for H (protium), D for H (deuterium), and T for H (tritium). This convention is easier to use in chemical equations, replacing the need to write out the mass number for each atom. For example, the formula for heavy water may be written DO instead of HO.


title: Chemical element

text: Only about 4% of the total mass of the universe is made of atoms or ions, and thus represented by chemical elements. This fraction is about 15% of the total matter, with the remainder of the matter (85%) being dark matter. The nature of dark matter is unknown, but it is not composed of atoms of chemical elements because it contains no protons, neutrons, or electrons. (The remaining non-matter part of the mass of the universe is composed of the even less well understood dark energy).


title: Chemical element

text: The 94 naturally occurring chemical elements were produced by at least four classes of astrophysical process. Most of the hydrogen, helium and a very small quantity of lithium were produced in the first few minutes of the Big Bang. This Big Bang nucleosynthesis happened only once; the other processes are ongoing. Nuclear fusion inside stars produces elements through stellar nucleosynthesis, including all elements from carbon to iron in atomic number. Elements higher in atomic number than iron, including heavy elements like uranium and plutonium, are produced by various forms of explosive nucleosynthesis in supernovae and neutron star mergers. The light elements lithium, beryllium and boron are produced mostly through cosmic ray spallation (fragmentation induced by cosmic rays) of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.


title: Chemical element

text: During the early phases of the Big Bang, nucleosynthesis of hydrogen nuclei resulted in the production of hydrogen-1 (protium, H) and helium-4 (He), as well as a smaller amount of deuterium (H) and very minuscule amounts (on the order of 10) of lithium and beryllium. Even smaller amounts of boron may have been produced in the Big Bang, since it has been observed in some very old stars, while carbon has not. No elements heavier than boron were produced in the Big Bang. As a result, the primordial abundance of atoms (or ions) consisted of roughly 75% H, 25% He, and 0.01% deuterium, with only tiny traces of lithium, beryllium, and perhaps boron. Subsequent enrichment of galactic halos occurred due to stellar nucleosynthesis and supernova nucleosynthesis. However, the element abundance in intergalactic space can still closely resemble primordial conditions, unless it has been enriched by some means.


title: Chemical element

text: On Earth (and elsewhere), trace amounts of various elements continue to be produced from other elements as products of nuclear transmutation processes. These include some produced by cosmic rays or other nuclear reactions (see cosmogenic and nucleogenic nuclides), and others produced as decay products of long-lived primordial nuclides. For example, trace (but detectable) amounts of carbon-14 (C) are continually produced in the atmosphere by cosmic rays impacting nitrogen atoms, and argon-40 (Ar) is continually produced by the decay of primordially occurring but unstable potassium-40 (K). Also, three primordially occurring but radioactive actinides, thorium, uranium, and plutonium, decay through a series of recurrently produced but unstable radioactive elements such as radium and radon, which are transiently present in any sample of these metals or their ores or compounds. Three other radioactive elements, technetium, promethium, and neptunium, occur only incidentally in natural materials, produced as individual atoms by nuclear fission of the nuclei of various heavy elements or in other rare nuclear processes.


title: Chemical element

text: In addition to the 94 naturally occurring elements, several artificial elements have been produced by human nuclear physics technology. , these experiments have produced all elements up to atomic number 118.


title: Chemical element

text: The following graph (note log scale) shows the abundance of elements in our Solar System. The table shows the twelve most common elements in our galaxy (estimated spectroscopically), as measured in parts per million, by mass. Nearby galaxies that have evolved along similar lines have a corresponding enrichment of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. The more distant galaxies are being viewed as they appeared in the past, so their abundances of elements appear closer to the primordial mixture. As physical laws and processes appear common throughout the visible universe, however, scientist expect that these galaxies evolved elements in similar abundance.


title: Chemical element

text: The abundance of elements in the Solar System is in keeping with their origin from nucleosynthesis in the Big Bang and a number of progenitor supernova stars. Very abundant hydrogen and helium are products of the Big Bang, but the next three elements are rare since they had little time to form in the Big Bang and are not made in stars (they are, however, produced in small quantities by the breakup of heavier elements in interstellar dust, as a result of impact by cosmic rays). Beginning with carbon, elements are produced in stars by buildup from alpha particles (helium nuclei), resulting in an alternatingly larger abundance of elements with even atomic numbers (these are also more stable). In general, such elements up to iron are made in large stars in the process of becoming supernovas. Iron-56 is particularly common, since it is the most stable element that can easily be made from alpha particles (being a product of decay of radioactive nickel-56, ultimately made from 14 helium nuclei). Elements heavier than iron are made in energy-absorbing processes in large stars, and their abundance in the universe (and on Earth) generally decreases with their atomic number.


title: Chemical element

text: The abundance of the chemical elements on Earth varies from air to crust to ocean, and in various types of life. The abundance of elements in Earth's crust differs from that in the Solar System (as seen in the Sun and heavy planets like Jupiter) mainly in selective loss of the very lightest elements (hydrogen and helium) and also volatile neon, carbon (as hydrocarbons), nitrogen and sulfur, as a result of solar heating in the early formation of the solar system. Oxygen, the most abundant Earth element by mass, is retained on Earth by combination with silicon. Aluminum at 8% by mass is more common in the Earth's crust than in the universe and solar system, but the composition of the far more bulky mantle, which has magnesium and iron in place of aluminum (which occurs there only at 2% of mass) more closely mirrors the elemental composition of the solar system, save for the noted loss of volatile elements to space, and loss of iron which has migrated to the Earth's core.


title: Chemical element

text: The composition of the human body, by contrast, more closely follows the composition of seawater—save that the human body has additional stores of carbon and nitrogen necessary to form the proteins and nucleic acids, together with phosphorus in the nucleic acids and energy transfer molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP) that occurs in the cells of all living organisms. Certain kinds of organisms require particular additional elements, for example the magnesium in chlorophyll in green plants, the calcium in mollusc shells, or the iron in the hemoglobin in vertebrate animals' red blood cells.


title: Chemical element

text: The concept of an "element" as an undivisible substance has developed through three major historical phases: Classical definitions (such as those of the ancient Greeks), chemical definitions, and atomic definitions.


title: Chemical element

text: Ancient philosophy posited a set of classical elements to explain observed patterns in nature. These "elements" originally referred to "earth", "water", "air" and "fire" rather than the chemical elements of modern science.


title: Chemical element

text: The term 'elements' ("stoicheia") was first used by the Greek philosopher Plato in about 360 BCE in his dialogue Timaeus, which includes a discussion of the composition of inorganic and organic bodies and is a speculative treatise on chemistry. Plato believed the elements introduced a century earlier by Empedocles were composed of small polyhedral forms: tetrahedron (fire), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and cube (earth).


title: Chemical element

text: Aristotle, c. 350 BCE, also used the term "stoicheia" and added a fifth element called aether, which formed the heavens. Aristotle defined an element as:


title: Chemical element

text: In 1661, Robert Boyle proposed his theory of corpuscularism which favoured the analysis of matter as constituted by irreducible units of matter (atoms) and, choosing to side with neither Aristotle's view of the four elements nor Paracelsus' view of three fundamental elements, left open the question of the number of elements. The first modern list of chemical elements was given in Antoine Lavoisier's 1789 "Elements of Chemistry", which contained thirty-three elements, including light and caloric. By 1818, Jöns Jakob Berzelius had determined atomic weights for forty-five of the forty-nine then-accepted elements. Dmitri Mendeleev had sixty-six elements in his periodic table of 1869.


title: Chemical element

text: From Boyle until the early 20th century, an element was defined as a pure substance that could not be decomposed into any simpler substance. Put another way, a chemical element cannot be transformed into other chemical elements by chemical processes. Elements during this time were generally distinguished by their atomic weights, a property measurable with fair accuracy by available analytical techniques.


title: Chemical element

text: The 1913 discovery by English physicist Henry Moseley that the nuclear charge is the physical basis for an atom's atomic number, further refined when the nature of protons and neutrons became appreciated, eventually led to the current definition of an element based on atomic number (number of protons per atomic nucleus). The use of atomic numbers, rather than atomic weights, to distinguish elements has greater predictive value (since these numbers are integers), and also resolves some ambiguities in the chemistry-based view due to varying properties of isotopes and allotropes within the same element. Currently, IUPAC defines an element to exist if it has isotopes with a lifetime longer than the 10 seconds it takes the nucleus to form an electronic cloud.


title: Chemical element

text: By 1914, seventy-two elements were known, all naturally occurring. The remaining naturally occurring elements were discovered or isolated in subsequent decades, and various additional elements have also been produced synthetically, with much of that work pioneered by Glenn T. Seaborg. In 1955, element 101 was discovered and named mendelevium in honor of D.I. Mendeleev, the first to arrange the elements in a periodic manner.


title: Chemical element

text: Ten materials familiar to various prehistoric cultures are now known to be chemical elements: Carbon, copper, gold, iron, lead, mercury, silver, sulfur, tin, and zinc. Three additional materials now accepted as elements, arsenic, antimony, and bismuth, were recognized as distinct substances prior to 1500 AD. Phosphorus, cobalt, and platinum were isolated before 1750.


title: Chemical element

text: Most of the remaining naturally occurring chemical elements were identified and characterized by 1900, including:


title: Chemical element

text: The first transuranium element (element with atomic number greater than 92) discovered was neptunium in 1940. Since 1999 claims for the discovery of new elements have been considered by the IUPAC/IUPAP Joint Working Party. As of January 2016, all 118 elements have been confirmed as discovered by IUPAC. The discovery of element 112 was acknowledged in 2009, and the name "copernicium" and the atomic symbol "Cn" were suggested for it. The name and symbol were officially endorsed by IUPAC on 19 February 2010. The heaviest element that is believed to have been synthesized to date is element 118, oganesson, on 9 October 2006, by the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia. Tennessine, element 117 was the latest element claimed to be discovered, in 2009. On 28 November 2016, scientists at the IUPAC officially recognized the names for four of the newest chemical elements, with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117, and 118.


title: Pandora's box

text: Pandora's box is an artifact in Greek mythology connected with the myth of Pandora in Hesiod's c. 700 B.C. poem "Works and Days". Hesiod reported that curiosity led her to open a container left in the care of her husband, thus releasing physical and emotional curses upon mankind. Later depictions of the story have been varied, while some literary and artistic treatments have focused more on the contents than on Pandora herself.


title: Pandora's box

text: The container mentioned in the original account was actually a large storage jar, but the word was later mistranslated. In modern times an idiom has grown from the story meaning "Any source of great and unexpected troubles", or alternatively "A present which seems valuable but which in reality is a curse".


title: Pandora's box

text: According to Hesiod, when Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus, the king of the gods, took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. Pandora opened a jar left in her care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world. Though she hastened to close the container, only one thing was left behind – usually translated as Hope, though it could also have the pessimistic meaning of "deceptive expectation".


title: Pandora's box

text: From this story has grown the idiom "to open a Pandora's box", meaning to do or start something that will cause many unforeseen problems. A modern, more colloquial equivalent is "to open a can of worms".


title: Pandora's box

text: The word translated as "box" was actually a large jar (πίθος "pithos") in Greek. Pithoi were used for storage of wine, oil, grain or other provisions, or, ritually, as a container for a human body for burying, from which it was believed souls escaped and necessarily returned. Many scholars see a close analogy between Pandora herself, who was made from clay, and the clay jar which dispenses evils.


title: Pandora's box

text: The mistranslation of "pithos" is usually attributed to the 16th-century humanist Erasmus who, in his Latin account of the story of Pandora, changed the Greek "pithos" to "pyxis", meaning "box". The context in which the story appeared was Erasmus' collection of proverbs, the "Adagia" (1508), in illustration of the Latin saying "Malo accepto stultus sapit" (from experiencing trouble a fool is made wise). In his version the box is opened by Epimetheus, whose name means 'Afterthought' – or as Hesiod comments, "he whom mistakes made wise".


title: Pandora's box

text: There were alternative accounts of jars or urns containing blessings and evils bestowed upon humanity in Greek myth, of which a very early account is related in Homer's "Iliad":


title: Pandora's box

text: On the floor of Jove's palace there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Jove the lord of thunder mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Jove sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men.


title: Pandora's box

text: In a major departure from Hesiod, the 6th-century BC Greek elegiac poet Theognis of Megara states that


title: Pandora's box

text: The poem seems to hint at a myth in which the jar contained blessings rather than evils. It is confirmed in the new era by an Aesopic fable recorded by Babrius, in which the gods send the jar containing blessings to humans. Rather than a named female, it was a generic "foolish man" (ἀκρατὴς ἄνθρωπος) who opened the jar out of curiosity and let them escape. Once the lid was replaced, only hope remained, "promising that she will bestow on each of us the good things that have gone away." This aetiological version is numbered 312 in the Perry Index.


title: Pandora's box

text: In the Renaissance, the story of the jar was revisited by two immensely influential writers, Andrea Alciato in his "Emblemata" (1534) and the Neo-Latin poet Gabriele Faerno in his collection of a hundred fables ("Fabulum Centum", 1563). Alciato only alluded to the story while depicting the goddess Hope seated on a jar in which, she declares, "I alone stayed behind at home when evils fluttered all around, as the revered muse of the old poet [Hesiod] has told you". Faerno’s short poem also addressed the origin of hope but in this case it is the remainder of the "universal blessings" ("bona universa") that have escaped: "Of all good things that mortals lack,/Hope in the soul alone stays back."


title: Pandora's box

text: An idea of the nature of the blessings lost is given in a Renaissance engraving by Giulio Bonasone, where the culprit is Pandora’s husband, Epimetheus. He is shown holding the lid of a large storage jar from which female representations of the Roman virtues are flying up into the air. They are identified by their names in Latin: security (salus), harmony (concordia), fairness (aequitas), mercy (clementia), freedom (libertas), happiness (felicitas), peace (pax), worth (virtus) and joy (laetitia). Hope (spes) is delayed on the lip and holds aloft the flower that is her attribute.


title: Pandora's box

text: In Hesiodic scholarship, the interpretive crux has endured: Is the hope imprisoned within a jar full of evils to be considered a benefit for humanity, or a further curse? A number of mythology textbooks echo the sentiments of M. L. West: "[Hope's retention in the jar] is comforting, and we are to be thankful for this antidote to our present ills." Some scholars such as Mark Griffith, however, take the opposite view: "[Hope] seems to be a blessing withheld from men so that their life should be the more dreary and depressing." The interpretation hangs on two related questions: First, how is "elpis" to be rendered, the Greek word usually translated as "hope"? Second, does the jar preserve "elpis" for men, or keep it away from men?


title: Pandora's box

text: As with most ancient Greek words, "elpis" can be translated a number of ways. A number of scholars prefer the neutral translation of "expectation." Classical authors use the word "elpis" to mean "expectation of bad," as well as "expectation of good." Statistical analysis demonstrates that the latter sense appears five times more than the former in all of extant ancient Greek literature. Others hold the minority view that "elpis" should be rendered "expectation of evil" ("vel sim").


title: Pandora's box

text: The answer to the first question largely depends on the answer to the second one: should the jar be interpreted as a prison, or a pantry? The jar certainly serves as a prison for the evils that Pandora released – they only affect humanity once outside the jar. Some have argued that logic dictates, therefore, that the jar acts as a prison for "elpis" as well, withholding it from the human race. If "elpis" means expectant hope, then the myth's tone is pessimistic: All the evils in the world were scattered from Pandora's jar, while the one potentially mitigating force, hope, remains locked securely inside. A less pessimistic interpretation understands the myth to say: countless evils fled Pandora's jar and plague human existence; the hope that humanity might be able to master these evils remains imprisoned inside the jar. Life is not hopeless, but human beings are hopelessly human.


title: Pandora's box

text: It is also argued that hope was simply one of the evils in the jar, the false kind of hope, and was no good for humanity, since, later in the poem, Hesiod writes that hope is empty (498) and no good (500) and makes humanity lazy by taking away their industriousness, making them prone to evil.


title: Pandora's box

text: In "Human, All Too Human", philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that "Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment."


title: Pandora's box

text: An objection to the "hope is good/the jar is a prison" interpretation counters that, if the jar is full of evils, then what is expectant hope – a blessing – doing among them? This objection leads some to render "elpis" as the expectation of evil, which would make the myth's tone somewhat optimistic: although mankind is troubled by all the evils in the world, at least it is spared the continual expectation of evil, which would make life unbearable.


title: Pandora's box

text: The optimistic reading of the myth is expressed by M. L. West. "Elpis" takes the more common meaning of expectant hope. And while the jar served as a prison for the evils that escaped, it thereafter serves as a residence for Hope. West explains, "It would be absurd to represent either the presence of ills by their confinement in a jar or the presence of hope by its escape from one." Hope is thus preserved as a benefit for humans.


title: Pandora's box

text: Neither Alciato nor Faerno had named who was responsible for opening the jar beyond saying it was a "mortal". During the Renaissance it is the name of Epimetheus that is mentioned as often as not, as in the engraving by Bonasone noticed above and the mention of Pandora's partner in a rondeau that Isaac de Benserade took it on himself to insert into his light-hearted version of the Metamorphoses (1676) - although Ovid had not in fact written about it himself.


title: Pandora's box

text: The etching by Sébastien Le Clerc that accompanied the poem in the book shows Pandora and Epimetheus seated on either side of a jar from which clouds of smoke emerge, carrying up the escaping evils. The lid of the jar is quite plainly in Epimetheus’ hand. Paolo Farinati, an earlier Venetian artist, was also responsible for a print which laid the blame on Epimetheus, depicting him as lifting the lid from the jar that Pandora is holding. Out of it boils a cloud which carries up a man and a dragon; between them they support a scroll reading ""sero nimirum sapere caepit"" (finding out too late), in reference to the meaning of Epimetheus' name in Greek.


title: Pandora's box

text: Another Venetian print, ascribed to Marco Angelo del Moro (active 1565 – 1586), is much more enigmatic. Usually titled "Pandora's Box, or The Sciences that Illuminate the Human Spirit", it portrays a woman in antique dress opening an ornate coffer from which spill books, manuscripts, snakes and bats. By Pandora's side is a woman carrying a burning brand, while a horned figure flees in the opposite direction. Above is a curved vault painted with signs of the zodiac to which the sun-god Apollo is pointing, while opposite him another figure falls through the stars. Commentators ascribe different meanings to these symbols as contradictory as the contents of the chest. In one reading, the hand Pandora holds up to her face makes her the figure of Ignorance. Alternatively her eyes are protected because she is dazzled and the snakes crawling from the chest are ancient symbols of wisdom. Apollo, seated above, points to Aquarius, the zodiacal sign of January/February, which marks the "Ascent of the Sun" from the trough of winter. The falling figure opposite him may be identified either as Lucifer or as night fleeing before the dawn; in either case, the darkness of ignorance is about to be dispelled. The question remains whether the box thus opened will in the end be recognised as a blessing; whether the ambiguous nature of knowledge is either to help or to hurt.


title: Pandora's box

text: In later centuries the emphasis in art has generally been on the person of Pandora. With few exceptions, the box has appeared merely as her attribute. René Magritte's street scene of 1951, however, one of the few modern paintings to carry the title "Pandora's Box", is as enigmatic as were the Renaissance allegorical prints.


title: Pandora's box

text: In the first half of the 18th-century, three French plays were produced with the title "Pandora's Box" ("La Boîte – or Boëte – de Pandore"). In each of these, the main interest is in the social and human effects of the evils released from the box and in only one of them does Pandora figure as a character. The 1721 play by Alain René Lesage appeared as part of the longer "La Fausse Foire". It was a one-act prose drama of 24 scenes in the "commedia dell'arte" style. At its opening, Mercury has been sent in the guise of Harlequin to check whether the box given by Jupiter to the animated statue Pandora has been opened. He proceeds to stir up disruption in her formerly happy village, unleashing ambition, competition, greed, envy, jealousy, hatred, injustice, treachery and ill-health. Amid the social breakdown, Pierrot falls out with the bride he was about to marry at the start of the play and she becomes engaged instead to a social upstart.


title: Pandora's box

text: The play by Philippe Poisson (1682-1743) was a one-act verse comedy first produced in 1729. There Mercury visits the realm of Pluto to interview the ills shortly to be unleashed on mankind. The characters Old Age, Migraine, Destitution, Hatred, Envy, Paralysis, Quinsy, Fever and Transport (emotional instability) report their effects to him. They are preceded by Love, who argues that he deserves to figure among them as a bringer of social disruption. The later play of 1743 was written by Pierre Brumoy and subtitled "curiosity punished" ("la curiosité punie"). The three-act satirical verse comedy is set in the home of Epimetheus and the six children recently created by Prometheus. Mercury comes on a visit, bringing the fatal box with him. In it are the evils soon to subvert the innocence of the new creations. Firstly seven flatterers: the Genius of Honours, of Pleasures, Riches, Gaming (pack of cards in hand), Taste, Fashion (dressed as Harlequin) and False Knowledge. These are followed by seven bringers of evil: envy, remorse, avarice, poverty, scorn, ignorance and inconstancy. The corrupted children are rejected by Prometheus but Hope arrives at the end to bring a reconciliation.


title: Pandora's box

text: It is evident from these plays that, in France at least, blame had shifted from Pandora to the trickster god who contrives and enjoys mankind's subversion. Although physical ills are among the plagues that visit humanity, greater emphasis is given to the disruptive passions which destroy the possibility of harmonious living.


title: Pandora's box

text: Two poems in English dealing with Pandora's opening of the box are in the form of monologues, although Frank Sayers preferred the term monodrama for his recitation with lyrical interludes, written in 1790. In this Pandora is descending from Heaven after being endowed with gifts by the gods and therefore feels empowered to open the casket she carries, releasing strife, care, pride, hatred and despair. Only the voice of Hope is left to comfort her at the end. In the poem by Samuel Phelps Leland (1839-1910), Pandora has already arrived in the household of Epimetheus and feels equally confident that she is privileged to satisfy her curiosity, but with a worse result. Shutting the lid too early, she thus "let loose all curses on mankind/ Without a hope to mitigate their pain". This is the dilemma expressed in the sonnet that Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote to accompany his oil painting of 1869–71. The gifts with which Pandora has been endowed and that made her desirable are ultimately subverted, "the good things turned to ill…Nor canst thou know/ If Hope still pent there be alive or dead." In his painting Rossetti underlines the point as a fiery halo streams upward from the opening casket on which is inscribed the motto "NESCITUR IGNESCITUR" (unknown it burns).


title: Pandora's box

text: While the speakers of the verse monologues are characters hurt by their own simplicity, Rossetti's painting of the red-robed Pandora, with her expressive gaze and elongated hands about the jewelled casket, is a more ambiguous figure. So too is the girl in Lawrence Alma-Tadema's watercolour of Pandora (see above), as the comments of some of its interpreters indicate. Sideways against a seascape, red-haired and naked, she gazes down at the urn lifted towards her "with a look of animal curiosity", according to one contemporary reviewer, or else "lost in contemplation of some treasure from the deep" according to another account. A moulded sphinx on the unopened lid of the urn is turned in her direction. In the iconography of the time, such a figure is usually associated with the "femme fatale", but in this case, the crown of hyacinths about her head identifies Pandora as an innocent Greek maiden. Nevertheless, the presence of the sphinx at which she gazes with such curiosity suggests a personality on the cusp, on the verge of gaining some harmful knowledge that will henceforth negate her uncomplicated qualities. The name of Pandora already tells her future.


title: Parliamentary system

text: A parliamentary system, or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democratic governance of a state (or subordinate entity) where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the support ("confidence") of the legislature, typically a parliament, to which it is accountable. In a parliamentary system, the head of state is usually a person distinct from the head of government. This is in contrast to a presidential system, where the head of state often is also the head of government and, most importantly, where the executive does not derive its democratic legitimacy from the legislature.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Countries with parliamentary systems may be constitutional monarchies, where a monarch is the head of state while the head of government is almost always a member of parliament, or parliamentary republics, where a mostly ceremonial president is the head of state while the head of government is regularly from the legislature. In a few parliamentary republics, among some others, the head of government is also head of state, but is elected by and is answerable to parliament. In bicameral parliaments, the head of government is generally, though not always, a member of the lower house.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Parliamentarianism is the dominant form of government in Europe, with 32 of its 50 sovereign states being parliamentarian. It is also common in the Caribbean, being the form of government of 10 of its 13 island states, and in Oceania. Elsewhere in the world, parliamentary countries are less common, but they are distributed through all continents, most often in former colonies of the British Empire that subscribe to a particular brand of parliamentarianism known as the Westminster system.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Since ancient times, when societies were tribal, there were councils or a headman whose decisions were assessed by village elders. Eventually, these councils have slowly evolved into the modern parliamentary system.


title: Parliamentary system

text: The first parliaments date back to Europe in the Middle Ages: specifically in 1188 Alfonso IX, King of Leon (Spain) convened the three states in the Cortes of León. An early example of parliamentary government developed in today's Netherlands and Belgium during the Dutch revolt (1581), when the sovereign, legislative and executive powers were taken over by the States General of the Netherlands from the monarch, King Philip II of Spain. The modern concept of parliamentary government emerged in the Kingdom of Great Britain between 1707 and 1800 and its contemporary, the Parliamentary System in Sweden between 1721 and 1772.


title: Parliamentary system

text: In England, Simon de Montfort is remembered as one of the fathers of representative government for convening two famous parliaments. The first, in 1258, stripped the king of unlimited authority and the second, in 1265, included ordinary citizens from the towns. Later, in the 17th century, the Parliament of England pioneered some of the ideas and systems of liberal democracy culminating in the Glorious Revolution and passage of the Bill of Rights 1689.


title: Parliamentary system

text: In the Kingdom of Great Britain, the monarch, in theory, chaired cabinet and chose ministers. In practice, King George I's inability to speak English led the responsibility for chairing cabinet to go to the leading minister, literally the "prime" or first minister, Robert Walpole. The gradual democratisation of parliament with the broadening of the voting franchise increased parliament's role in controlling government, and in deciding whom the king could ask to form a government. By the 19th century, the Great Reform Act of 1832 led to parliamentary dominance, with its choice "invariably" deciding who was prime minister and the complexion of the government.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Other countries gradually adopted what came to be called the Westminster system of government, with an executive answerable to the lower house of a bicameral parliament, and exercising, in the name of the head of state, powers nominally vested in the head of state – hence the use of phrases such as "Her Majesty's government" (in constitutional monarchies) or "His Excellency's government" (in parliamentary republics). Such a system became particularly prevalent in older British dominions, many of which had their constitutions enacted by the British parliament; such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Irish Free State and the Union of South Africa. Some of these parliaments were reformed from, or were initially developed as distinct from their original British model: the Australian Senate, for instance, has since its inception more closely reflected the US Senate than the British House of Lords; whereas since 1950 there is no upper house in New Zealand. Many of these countries such as Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados have severed institutional ties to Great Britain by becoming republics with their own ceremonial Presidents, but retain the Westminster system of government.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Democracy and parliamentarianism became increasingly prevalent in Europe in the years after World War I, partially imposed by the democratic victors, the United States, Great Britain and France, on the defeated countries and their successors, notably Germany's Weimar Republic and the First Austrian Republic. Nineteenth-century urbanisation, the Industrial Revolution and modernism had already made the parliamentarist demands of the Radicals and the emerging movement of social democrats increasingly impossible to ignore; these forces came to dominate many states that transitioned to parliamentarism, particularly in the French Third Republic where the Radical Party and its centre-left allies dominated the government for several decades. However, the rise of Fascism in the 1930s put an end to parliamentary democracy in Italy and Germany, among others.


title: Parliamentary system

text: After the Second World War, the defeated fascist Axis powers were occupied by the victorious Allies. In those countries occupied by the Allied democracies (the United States, United Kingdom, and France) parliamentary constitutions were implemented, resulting in the parliamentary constitutions of Italy and West Germany (now all of Germany) and the 1947 Constitution of Japan. The experiences of the war in the occupied nations where the legitimate democratic governments were allowed to return strengthened the public commitment to parliamentary principles; in Denmark, a new constitution was written in 1953, while a long and acrimonious debate in Norway resulted in no changes being made to that country's strongly entrenched democratic constitution.


title: Parliamentary system

text: A parliamentary system may be either bicameral, with two chambers of parliament (or houses) or unicameral, with just one parliamentary chamber. A bicameral parliament usually consists of a directly elected lower house with the power to determine the executive government, and an upper house which may be appointed or elected through a different mechanism from the lower house.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Scholars of democracy such as Arend Lijphart distinguish two types of parliamentary democracies: the Westminster and Consensus systems.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Implementations of the parliamentary system can also differ as to how the prime minister and government are appointed and whether the government needs the explicit approval of the parliament, rather than just the absence of its disapproval. Some countries such as India also require the prime minister to be a member of the legislature, though in other countries this only exists as a convention.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Furthermore, there are variations as to what conditions exist (if any) for the government to have the right to dissolve the parliament:


title: Parliamentary system

text: The parliamentary system can be contrasted with a presidential system which operates under a stricter separation of powers, whereby the executive does not form part of—nor is appointed by—the parliamentary or legislative body. In such a system, parliaments or congresses do not select or dismiss heads of governments, and governments cannot request an early dissolution as may be the case for parliaments (although the parliament may still be able to dissolve itself, as in the case of Cyprus). There also exists the semi-presidential system that draws on both presidential systems and parliamentary systems by combining a powerful president with an executive responsible to parliament: for example, the French Fifth Republic.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Parliamentarianism may also apply to regional and local governments. An example is the city of Oslo, which has an executive council (Byråd) as a part of the parliamentary system. The devolved nations of the United Kingdom are also parliamentary and which, as with the UK Parliament, may hold early elections - this has only occurred with regards to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2017 and 2022.


title: Parliamentary system

text: A few parliamentary democratic nations such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc. have enacted laws which prohibit floor crossing or switching parties after the election. Under these laws, elected representatives will lose their seat in the parliament if they go against their party in votes.


title: Parliamentary system

text: In the UK parliament, a member is free to cross over to a different party. In Canada and Australia, there are no restraints on legislators switching sides.


title: Parliamentary system

text: A few parliamentary democracies such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand have weak or non-existent checks on the legislative power of their Parliaments, where any newly approved Act shall take precedence over all prior Acts. All laws are equally unentrenched, wherein judicial review may not outright annul nor amend them, as frequently occurs in other parliamentary systems like Germany. Whilst the head of state for both nations (Monarch, and or Governor General) has the de-jure power to withhold assent to any bill passed by their Parliament, this check has not been exercised in Britain since the 1708 Scottish Militia Bill.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Whilst both the UK and New Zealand have some Acts or parliamentary rules establishing supermajorities or additional legislative procedures for certain legislation, such as previously with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (FTPA), these can be bypassed through the enactment of another that amends or ignores these supermajorities away, such as with the Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019 - bypassing the 2/3rd supermajority required for an early dissolution under the FTPA -, which enabled the early dissolution for the 2019 general election.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Parliamentarism metrics allow a quantitative comparison of the strength of parliamentary systems for individual countries. One parliamentarism metric is the Parliamentary Powers Index.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Parliamentary systems like that found in the United Kingdom are widely considered to be more flexible, allowing rapid change in legislation and policy as long as there is a stable majority or coalition in parliament, allowing the government to have 'few legal limits on what it can do' Due to the first-past-the-post voting method, this system produces the classic "Westminster Model" with the twin virtues of strong but responsive party government. This electoral system providing a strong majority in the House of Commons, paired with the fused power system results in a particularly powerful Government able to provide change and 'innovate'.


title: Parliamentary system

text: The United Kingdom's fused power system is often noted to be advantageous with regards to accountability. The centralised government allows for more transparency as to where decisions originate from, this directly contrasts with the United States' system with former Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon saying "the president blames Congress, the Congress blames the president, and the public remains confused and disgusted with government in Washington". Furthermore, ministers of the U.K. cabinet are subject to weekly Question Periods in which their actions/policies are scrutinised; no such regular check on the government exists in the U.S. system.


title: Parliamentary system

text: In his 1867 book "The English Constitution", Walter Bagehot praised parliamentary governments for producing serious debates, for allowing for a change in power without an election, and for allowing elections at any time. Bagehot considered the four-year election rule of the United States to be unnatural, as it can potentially allow a president who has disappointed the public with a dismal performance in the second year of his term to continue on until the end of his four-year term. Under a parliamentary system, a prime minister that has lost support in the middle of his term can be easily replaced by his own peers with a more popular alternative, as the Conservative Party in the UK did with successive prime ministers David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss.


title: Parliamentary system

text: Although Bagehot praised parliamentary governments for allowing an election to take place at any time, the lack of a definite election calendar can be abused. Under some systems, such as the British, a ruling party can schedule elections when it believes that it is likely to retain power, and so avoid elections at times of unpopularity. (from 2011, election timing in the UK was partially fixed under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which was repealed by the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022.) Thus, by a shrewd timing of elections, in a parliamentary system, a party can extend its rule for longer than is feasible in a presidential system. This problem can be alleviated somewhat by setting fixed dates for parliamentary elections, as is the case in several of Australia's state parliaments. In other systems, such as the Dutch and the Belgian, the ruling party or coalition has some flexibility in determining the election date. Conversely, flexibility in the timing of parliamentary elections can avoid periods of legislative gridlock that can occur in a fixed period presidential system. In any case, voters ultimately have the power to choose whether to vote for the ruling party or someone else.


title: Parliamentary system

text: According to Arturo Fontaine parliamentary systems in Europe have yielded very powerful heads of government which is rather what is often criticized about presidential systems. Fontaine compares United Kingdom's Margaret Thatcher to the United States' Ronald Reagan noting the former head of government was much more powerful despite governing under a parliamentary system. The rise to power of Viktor Orbán in Hungary has been claimed to show how parliamentary systems can be subverted. The situation in Hungary was according to Fontaine allowed by the deficient separation of powers that characterises parliamentary and semi-presidential systems. Once Orbán's party got 70% of the vote in a single election there was no institution that was able to balance the concentration of power. In a presidential system it would require two or three separate elections to create the same effect; the presidential election, the lower chamber election and the upper chamber election. Fontaine also notes as a warning example of the flaws of parliamentary systems that if the United States would have had a parliamentary system Donald Trump could, as head of government, have dissolved the United States Congress.


title: Parliamentary system

text: The ability for strong parliamentary governments to push legislation through with the ease of fused power systems such as in the United Kingdom, whilst positive in allowing rapid adaptation when necessary e.g. the nationalisation of services during the world wars, in the opinion of some commentators does have its drawbacks. The flip-flopping of legislation back and forth as the majority in parliament changed between the Conservatives and Labour over the period 1940–1980, contesting over the nationalisation and privatisation of the British Steel Industry resulted in major instability for the British steel sector.


title: Parliamentary system

text: In R. Kent Weaver's book "Are Parliamentary Systems Better?", he writes that an advantage of presidential systems is their ability to allow and accommodate more diverse viewpoints. He states that because "legislators are not compelled to vote against their constituents on matters of local concern, parties can serve as organizational and roll-call cuing vehicles without forcing out dissidents."


title: Parliamentary system

text: All current parliamentary democracies see the indirect election or appointment of their head of government. As a result, the electorate has limited power to remove or install the person or party wielding the most power. Although strategic voting may enable the party of the prime minister to be removed or empowered, this can be at the expense of voters first preferences in the many parliamentary systems utilising first past the post, or having no effect in dislodging those parties who consistently form part of a coalition government, as with the current Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte and his party the VVD's 4 terms in office, despite their peak support reaching only 26.6% in 2012, earning him the epithet 'Teflon Rutte' for his ability to survive elections.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: The Jalisco New Generation Cartel () or CJNG, formerly known as "Los Mata Zetas", is a semi-militarized Mexican criminal group based in Jalisco which is headed by Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes ("El Mencho"), one of the world's most-wanted drug lords. The cartel has been characterized by its aggressive use of extreme violence and its public relations campaigns. Although the CJNG is particularly known for diversifying into various types of criminal rackets, drug trafficking (primarily cocaine and methamphetamine) as well as stealing crude oil remain among their most profitable criminal activities. The cartel has also been noted for cannibalizing some of its victims, sometimes during the training of new sicarios or cartel members as well as using drones to attack their enemies. U.S. prosecutors have said operatives of the cartel tried to buy belt-fed M-60 machine guns in the United States, and once brought down a Mexican military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: As of 2020, the CJNG is generally considered by the Mexican government to be the most dangerous criminal organization in Mexico and the second most powerful drug cartel in the country after Cártel de Sinaloa. CJNG is heavily militarized and violent compared to other criminal organizations. They have a special operations group and other groups for specific types of warfare. An inside look at CJNG’s hitman training program revealed a strict environment with high stakes. The CJNG is the most dominant criminal group in the state of Jalisco but the cartel also dominates criminal and drug operations in the states of Nayarit and Colima, with the latter being an important area for shipments of South American cocaine and chemical precursors from Asia. While this cartel is best known for its fights against the Zetas and Templarios, it has also been heavily battling Cárteles Unidos for control of Aguililla, Michoacán and its surrounding territories, including the city of Tepalcatepec. More recently, tensions have also begun to rise against the CJNG's arch-rival, the Sinaloa Cartel within the states of Chiapas and Zacatecas.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: Jalisco New Generation Cartel started as one of the splits of Milenio Cartel, the other being La Resistencia. La Resistencia accused CJNG of giving up Oscar Valencia ("El Lobo") to the authorities and called them Los Torcidos ("The Twisted Ones"). The Jalisco Cartel defeated La Resistencia and took control of Millenio Cartel's smuggling networks.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: Jalisco New Generation Cartel expanded its operation network from coast to coast in only six months, making it one of the criminal groups with the greatest operating capacity in Mexico as of 2012. The Sinaloa Cartel, once led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera (a.k.a. "El Chapo"), has used the Jalisco New Generation Cartel as its armed wing to fight off Los Zetas in Guzmán's turf and to carry out incursions to other territories like Nuevo Laredo and Veracruz in the past. In the period following the emergence of the CJNG cartel, homicides, kidnappings and the discoveries of mass graves spiked in Jalisco. Currently, along with the armed conflicts, petroleum theft and criminal extortion, the CJNG is also said to have over 100 methamphetamine labs throughout Mexico. Based on the average street value, these volumes could net upwards of $8.1 billion for cocaine and $4.6 billion for crystal meth each year.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: In 2017, the CJNG reportedly broke its alliance with Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada of the Sinaloa Cartel. By 2018, the CJNG became the second most powerful cartel in Mexico. In 2018, CJNG co-founder Érick Valencia Salazar and former high ranking CJNG leader Carlos Enrique Sánchez also both left the cartel and co-founded a rival cartel called the Nueva Plaza Cartel. The CJNG are currently fighting "La Nueva Plaza" cartel for control of the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco; La Unión Tepito in Mexico City; Los Viagras and La Familia Michoacana for the states of Michoacán and Guerrero; Los Zetas in the states of Veracruz and Puebla; Cártel del Noreste in Zacatecas; the Cártel de Sinaloa in Baja California, Sonora, Juárez, Zacatecas and Chiapas; as well as the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel in Guanajuato. They currently have an alliance with the Cártel del Golfo in Zacatecas, La Línea in Juárez and several smaller cartels in Mexico City which help it fight against La Unión Tepito.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: Combatting CJNG is proving difficult because of the recent reorganization of the police force in Mexico. The retention and hiring of new police officers is poor, and without enforcers of the law, many of Mexico’s smaller communities lack a police presence. Vigilantism is one way in which these communities are resisting the control of cartels. Although the government is asking these groups to lay down their arms, the vigilantes continue with some success.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: In March 2019, Texas Republican congressman Chip Roy introduced a bill that would list the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the Gulf Cartel and the Cártel del Noreste faction of Los Zetas as foreign terrorist organizations. Former United States President Donald Trump had also expressed interest in designating cartels as terrorist organizations. However, he halted plans to do so at the request of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. From 2018 to 2020, the CJNG engaged in 298 reported acts of gang related violence; more than any other cartel during the period. By 2020, U.S. counter-drug officials considered CJNG its "biggest criminal drug threat" and Mexico's former security commissioner called the group "the most urgent threat to Mexico's national security".


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: With the capture of Óscar Orlando Nava Valencia and the death of Ignacio Coronel Villarreal, of the Sinaloa Cartel, a power vacuum emerged and the Milenio Cartel (then loyal to the Sinaloa Cartel) broke into smaller factions. Being the most notable the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) headed by Nemesio Oseguera ""El Mencho"" (who suspected the Sinaloa cartel had betrayed their leaders ) and La Resistencia headed by Ramiro Pozos ""El Molca"" who switched alliances to form a brief alliance with Los Zetas (La Resistencia was founded by Sinaloa to counter Los Zetas), and started a turf war for the control of the region.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: Some members of the Milenio Cartel, then a Sinaloa Cartel branch, who splintered and formed the CJNG were Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes ("El Mencho"), Érick Valencia Salazar ("El 85") and Martín Arzola Ortega ("El 53"). With this split, a turf war against La Resistencia, headed by Ramiro Pozos ("El Molca"), and "Los Zetas" for the control of the region started. Emilio Alejandro Pulido Saldaña , better known as "El Tiburón", was considered to be a co-founder as well.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: In June 2009, inside an abandoned truck in a residential neighborhood in Cancún, Quintana Roo, the Mexican authorities discovered the corpses of three men. Along with their remains was found the following message:


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: These murdered men were then linked to individuals who had been shown in a video on YouTube while being interviewed by masked men armed with assault rifles. A number of videos online confirmed the existence of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which was dedicated at that time to kill Gulf Cartel and Zeta members alike. In the interrogation videos done by the Mata Zetas, the captured cartel members confessed their criminal activities and gave out the names of police commanders and politicians who provided them with protection. According to Terra Networks, the government agency of the SIEDO received a phone call on 1 July 2009 from an unidentified man who said that the cartel members of Los Zetas were going to be "kidnapped and eliminated" from Cancún and Veracruz.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: In spring 2011, the CJNG declared war on all other Mexican cartels and stated its intention to take control of the city of Guadalajara. However, by midsummer, the group appeared to have been reunited with its former partners in the Sinaloa Cartel. In addition to maintaining its anti-Zetas alliance with the Gulf Cartel, the Sinaloa Cartel in 2011 affiliated itself with the Knights Templar in Michoacán. To counter Los Zetas in the state of Jalisco, the Sinaloa Cartel affiliated itself with the CJNG.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: On 20 September 2011, two trucks containing 35 dead bodies were found at an underpass near a shopping mall in Boca del Río, Veracruz. All of the corpses were alleged to be members of Los Zetas, but it was later proven that only six of them had been involved in minor crime incidents, and none of them were involved with organized crime. Some of the victims had their hands tied and showed signs of having been tortured. According to "El Universal", at around 17:00 an undetermined number of vehicles blocked a major avenue in Boca del Río. Once the traffic stopped, armed men abandoned two trucks in the middle of the highway. They opened the doors of the trucks and pulled out the thirty-five corpses, leaving a written message behind. Other gunmen pointed their weapons at the frightened drivers. The gunmen then fled the scene. Consequently, the stunned motorists began to grab their cellphones and post messages on Twitter warning other drivers to avoid the area. The message left behind stated the following:


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: The "Blog del Narco" reported on 21 September 2011 that the message was supposedly signed by Gente Nueva, an enforcer group that works for Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the top boss of the Sinaloa cartel. Nonetheless, on 27 September 2011, the CJNG released a video claiming they had carried out these attacks. They apologized for the massacres in Veracruz but reiterated their efforts to fight off Los Zetas, who, they claimed, "are not invincible." In the CJNG video, five men wearing balaclavas and completely black clothing are shown sitting behind a table. Then the man with the microphone states that the Matazetas are "warriors without a face, but proudly Mexicans," and that their objective is to eradicate Los Zetas. They claim in the video that they respect the Mexican Armed Forces and understand the government's stance against the drug cartels. The men in the video state that they understand and respect the government's decision of refusing to negotiate with the cartels. They also criticize the politicians who have protected Los Zetas. In addition, they claim that the "Matazetas" are "prohibited to extort, kidnap, steal, abuse, or do anything that will affect the national patrimony," and that they are the "armed wing of the Mexican people."


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: On 6 October 2011 in Boca del Río, Veracruz, 36 bodies were found by the Mexican authorities in three different houses. The Navy first discovered 20 bodies inside a house in a residential neighborhood. While searching at another house they found 11 more bodies. The third and final house contained one body. Four other bodies were confirmed separately by the state government of Veracruz. A day later, Reynaldo Escobar Pérez, the State Justice Attorney General, stepped down and resigned due to the drug-violence. And a day after his resignation, 10 more bodies were found throughout the city of Veracruz. The CJNG was also responsible for 67 killings in Veracruz on 7 October 2011.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: In response to the multiple executions between the drug cartels, the federal government launched a military-led operation in the state of Veracruz, known in Spanish as "Operativo Veracruz Seguro". In October 2011, the state of Veracruz was a disputed territory between Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel. Francisco Blake Mora, Secretary of the Interior at the time, said that the operation was implemented to serve the following goals:


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: Despite the strong military presence, the authorities discovered seven bodies inside a Ford Lobo on 8 October 2011 in Veracruz. On 22 December 2011, three public buses were attacked by drug cartel members on Federal Highway 105 in Veracruz, leaving 16 dead. Three U.S. citizens were among those dead. Soon after the shootouts, which happened in the early morning, the authorities carried out an operation to find those responsible, killing five gunmen. The U.S. Consulate in Matamoros asked Americans to avoid traveling on highways between cities in the late hours of the night.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: In Tampico Alto, Veracruz, on 23 December 2011 the Mexican authorities found 10 dead bodies after an anonymous call from a citizen. The corpses were dumped on a dirt road, and all of them were handcuffed and presented signs of torture. Nine out of the ten bodies were decapitated. Earlier in February 2011, Saturnino Valdés Llanos, the mayor of the municipality of Tampico Alto, was kidnapped in February 2011; his body was left in a garbage dump with 10 more bodies a week later. On 25 December 2011 near Tampico, Tamaulipas, a city on the border with Veracruz, 13 bodies were found inside an 18-wheeler truck. According to officials, the truck had license plates from Veracruz. Authorities indicated that this massacre was related to the other mass murders that had occurred in Veracruz. On 9 February 2012, the Mexican authorities exhumed 15 bodies from clandestine mass graves in Acayucan, Veracruz. According to government sources, by March 2012, the homicide rate in Veracruz and its surrounding territories had decreased. President Felipe Calderón attributed the low homicide rates to the Operation Veracruz, the military-led operation implemented in October 2011.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: On 3 May 2012 in Boca del Río, Veracruz, three photojournalists who covered the crime events in Veracruz were slain and dumped in several plastic bags in a canal. Press freedom groups indicated that the three journalists had "temporarily fled Veracruz after receiving threats [in 2011]." Over the past eighteen months, seven journalist have been killed in Veracruz alone. There are only a few journalists reporting on crime-related stories in the state. Upon the arrest of several members of the cartel, the authorities confirmed in August 2012 that the CJNG was responsible for killing five journalists in Veracruz.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: On 23 November 2011, a total of 26 bodies—16 of them burned to death—were located in several abandoned vehicles in Sinaloa. The incident began at early hours of the morning in Culiacán, Sinaloa with the discovery of a vehicle on fire. When the police forces managed to put down the flames, they found inside the vehicle a dozen of bodies burned to death, and with wood remains on top of them. All of the victims were handcuffed. Later on at 07:00 hours, anonymous calls from civilians notified the police that another vehicle in the northern city limits of Culiacán was on fire. The vehicle on fire was a Ford Ranger, and inside were four bodies with bulletproof vests and handcuffed. During the night, 10 more bodies were found throughout several different municipalities.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: The killings were allegedly carried out by Los Zetas as a response to the massacres done by the "Matazetas" (CJNG) in Veracruz. Stratfor believes that this major move by Los Zetas into the territory of the Sinaloa Cartel demonstrates the Zeta's ability to attack the "heart of those cartels' territories."


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: On 24 November 2011, three trucks containing 26 bodies were found in an avenue at Guadalajara, Jalisco. All of them were male corpses. At around 7:00 pm, the Guadalajara police received numerous anonymous calls from civilians reporting that "several vehicles with more than 10 bodies had been abandoned" in a major avenue. Upon the arrival of the police forces, they found a green Dodge Caravan in the middle lane of the highway, along with a Nissan Caravan just 66 feet (20 meters) away; on the farthest right lane was a white van. Reports state that Los Zetas and the Milenio Cartel are responsible for the massacre of these twenty-six alleged Sinaloa Cartel members. In addition, in November 2011, three men from the Milenio Cartel were arrested and linked to the massacre of the twenty-six people. The authorities concluded that only six of the twenty-six that were killed had criminal records, and another ten of those dead were reported as disappeared by their family members. Among those killed were small-business entrepreneurs; a cook; a mechanic; a dentist; a truck driver; and a house painter, among others.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: According to the testimonies of several family members, a group of heavily armed men abducted several people by force. One of the witnesses said that some teenagers were "drinking soda in front of a store when armed men" in two trucks abducted them. The family of one of the kidnapped victims claimed that their loved one was "a teenager without vices or problems," and that the versions of him being part of a cartel are unjust and false. Other families claimed that their loved ones did not have any problems with anybody and were honest workers. Nevertheless, when the cartel members arrested were interrogated by the authorities, they claimed that those killed in the massacre were not innocent, and formed part of "Los Torcidos" (another name for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel). When asked if they had tortured them, the cartel members replied that they did not. One of the killers confessed that he had plans of leaving the criminal organization but was threatened with death by his own organization if he decided to do so.


title: Jalisco New Generation Cartel

text: Authorities concluded that this massacre was almost a "replica" of what happened two months earlier in Veracruz, and investigators mentioned that this massacre is a response to the killings done by the "Matazetas" against Los Zetas in the state of Veracruz.