title: Steve Madden

text: Since Madden was released from prison in 2005, the company quickly rebounded, increasing revenue by nearly $100 million in 2006 to $475.1 million. That same year, Steven Madden, Ltd. was named 'Company of the Year' for the second time at the Footwear News Achievement Awards.


title: Steve Madden

text: With Madden currently serving as the founder and design chief, the company continues to show growth year-over-year reporting $1.9 billion in revenue for FY2021.


title: Steve Madden

text: Madden contributed to The Doe Fund, a charity devoted to working on the causes of homelessness, addiction, and criminal recidivism.


title: Steve Madden

text: Steve Madden (played by Jake Hoffman) is featured in the Martin Scorsese film "The Wolf of Wall Street", which is based on the Jordan Belfort memoir of the same name. In the movie, Madden is seen visiting Stratton Oakmont, where Belfort gives the brokers a rousing pep talk about pushing Madden's stock. After viewing the film, Madden criticized the portrayal of him as "too nerdy."


title: Steve Madden

text: Madden admits to having abused alcohol and various drugs, and later attended court-ordered rehabilitation.


title: Steve Madden

text: Madden married Wendy Ballew, his former director of operations, in 2005 after he was released from prison. The couple have three children, twins Jack and Stevie Madden, and Goldie Ryan Madden. The couple divorced in 2015.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon () is the largest city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It straddles a bend in the South Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province. It is located along the Trans-Canada Yellowhead Highway, and has served as the cultural and economic hub of central Saskatchewan since its founding in 1882 as a Temperance colony.


title: Saskatoon

text: With a 2021 census population of 266,141, Saskatoon is the largest city in the province, and the 17th largest Census Metropolitan Area in Canada, with a 2021 census population of 317,480.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon is home to the University of Saskatchewan, the Meewasin Valley Authority (which protects the South Saskatchewan River and provides for the city's popular riverbank park spaces), and Wanuskewin Heritage Park (a National Historic Site of Canada and UNESCO World Heritage applicant representing 6,000 years of First Nations history). The Rural Municipality of Corman Park No. 344, the most populous rural municipality in Saskatchewan, surrounds the city and contains many of the developments associated with it, including Wanuskewin.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon is named after the saskatoon berry which is native to the region, and is itself derived from the Cree "". The city has a significant Indigenous population and several urban Reserves. The city has nine river crossings and is nicknamed "Paris of the Prairies" and "Bridge City".


title: Saskatoon

text: Historic neighbourhoods of Saskatoon include Nutana and Riversdale, which were separate towns before amalgamating with the town of Saskatoon and incorporating as a city in 1906. Nutana, Riversdale, their historic main streets of Broadway Avenue and 20th Street, as well as the downtown core and other central neighbourhoods are seeing significant reinvestment and redevelopment. Sutherland, the rail town annexed by the city in 1956 that lies beyond the University lands, is now another historic old city.


title: Saskatoon

text: The name "Saskatoon" (in , "Saskatoon" or the locatives: "misâskwatôminihk" , lit: "at the saskatoon berry", "misâskwatôminiskâhk" , "at the place of many saskatoon berries", "mînisihk" "at the berry") comes from the Cree inanimate noun "misâskwatômina" "saskatoon berries", which refers to the sweet, violet-coloured berry that grows in the area.


title: Saskatoon

text: City of Saskatoon archivist Jeff O'Brien wrote that the traditional story of the name is that it was due to the presence of Saskatoon berries in the area. "There is even an almost certainly apocryphal story to the effect that John Lake, upon being given a handful of these berries and told their name immediately cried "Arise, Saskatoon – Queen of the North!"


title: Saskatoon

text: However, he wrote, "the truth appears to be somewhat less dramatic. The area was long-known to the local Cree as a good place to stock up on willow wands for arrow shafts. Thus the name of the place was "Sask-kwa-tan" – roughly, "the place where willows are cut."


title: Saskatoon

text: In 1882, the Toronto-based Temperance Colonization Society was granted 21 sections of land straddling the South Saskatchewan River, between what is now Warman and Dundurn. The aim of the group was to escape the liquor trade in that city and set up a "dry" community in the Prairie region. The following year settlers, led by John Neilson Lake, arrived on the site of what is now Saskatoon and established the first permanent settlement. The settlers travelled by railway from Ontario to Moose Jaw and then completed the final leg via horse-drawn cart, as the railway had yet to be completed to Saskatoon.


title: Saskatoon

text: In 1885 the North-West Rebellion affected the tiny community in a variety of ways. Chief Whitecap and Charles Trottier passed through the present day University campus on their way to join Louis Riel's armed forces at Batoche, Saskatchewan. Following the fighting at the Battle of Fish Creek, and the Battle of Batoche, wounded Canadian soldiers convalesced at the Marr Residence which is today a historic site. A few died in care and were buried in the Pioneer Cemetery near the Exhibition Grounds.


title: Saskatoon

text: A town charter for the west side of the river was obtained in 1903, and this settlement adopted the name Saskatoon; the original townsite. which became a village that year, was renamed Nutana. In 1906 Saskatoon became a city with a population of 4,500, which included the communities of Saskatoon, Riversdale and Nutana. In 1955, a newly established community west of the city, Montgomery Place, was annexed, followed by the neighbouring town of Sutherland in 1956.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon lies on a long belt of rich, potassic chernozem in middle-southern Saskatchewan and is found in the aspen parkland biome. The lack of surrounding mountainous topography gives the city a relatively flat grid, though the city does sprawl over a few hills and into a few valleys. The lowest point in the city is the river, while the highest point is disputed between the suburb of Sutherland in the east side and the Silverwood-River Heights areas in the city's north end. Saskatoon, on a cross-section from west to east, has a general decline in elevation above sea level heading towards the river, and on the east bank of the river, the terrain is mostly level until outside the city, where it begins to decrease in elevation again.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon is divided into east and west sides by the South Saskatchewan River. It is then divided into Suburban Development Areas (SDA) which are composed of neighbourhoods. Street addresses are demarcated into north and south (for avenues aligned in those directions) and similar east and west (for streets aligned in those directions). West of the river, the demarcation line for north and south addresses is 22nd Street, while east and west are divided by Idylwyld Drive (north of 20th Street) and Avenue A (south of 20th). On the east side, in order to line up with 22nd/Idylwyld, Lorne Avenue demarcates east and west while Aird Street, a minor residential road, marks the north–south boundary, except in the Sutherland community where a separate east/west demarcation takes place with Central Avenue as the boundary (there is, however, no separate north–south divide). As a result of the unusual demarcation on the east side, few streets there actually carry a "North" or "West" designation, and only a few streets in Sutherland are demarcated "East" and "West".


title: Saskatoon

text: A second major water feature aside from the river is the Hudson Bay Slough, a remnant of a glacier-formed body of water that at one time dominated the northern end of the city. Industrial development has resulted in most of the slough being drained, however a large remnant has been preserved off Avenue C as part of RCAF Memorial Park, and another portion remains intact within the Hudson Bay Industrial area. Several residential communities also feature "man-made lakes," with Lakeview (developed from the early 1980s) being the first.


title: Saskatoon

text: Pike Lake and Blackstrap Provincial Parks are both approximately south of the city on Highway 60 and Highway 11, respectively. Batoche, a national historic site associated with the North-West Rebellion of 1885, is north of the city. Both Blackstrap and Batoche are popular destinations for school field trips.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon experiences a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen: "BSk") near the humid continental climate ("Dfb"), with typically warm summers and long, cold winters. Climate data from University of Saskatchewan, in the inner city meets semi-arid criteria. This is due to slightly higher average annual temperature and slightly lower average annual precipitation than the Airport, on the city's northwest periphery.


title: Saskatoon

text: The city has four distinct seasons and is in plant hardiness zone 3b. Saskatoon has a dry climate and sees of precipitation per year on average, with the summer being the wettest season. Saskatoon is sunnier than average in Canada as a result, averaging 2,268 hours of bright sunshine annually. The extreme temperatures are typically accompanied by below average levels of humidity. Thunderstorms are common in the summer months and can be severe with torrential rain, hail, high winds, intense lightning and, on occasion, tornadoes. The frost-free growing season lasts from 21 May to 15 September, but due to Saskatoon's northerly location, damaging frosts have occurred as late as June 14 and again as early as August. The average daytime high temperature peaks at from July 31 to August 8.


title: Saskatoon

text: The "Blizzard of 2007" was described by many residents as the worst they had seen and paralyzed the city with its low visibility, extreme cold and large volume of snow. Winds rose to over and an estimated of snow fell throughout the day. Many area residents took refuge overnight at area work places, shopping centres, hospitals and the university.


title: Saskatoon

text: The highest temperature ever recorded in Saskatoon was on 6 June 1988. The lowest temperature ever recorded was on 1 February 1893.


title: Saskatoon

text: In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Saskatoon had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.


title: Saskatoon

text: At the census metropolitan area (CMA) level in the 2021 census, the Saskatoon CMA had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.


title: Saskatoon

text: The 2021 census reported that immigrants (individuals born outside Canada) comprise 53,210 persons or 20.4% of the total population of Saskatoon. Of the total immigrant population, the top countries of origin were Philippines (11,840 persons or 22.3%), India (5,845 persons or 11.0%), China (4,695 persons or 8.8%), Pakistan (3,975 persons or 7.5%), Nigeria (2,090 persons or 3.9%), United Kingdom (2,045 persons or 3.8%), Bangladesh (1,830 persons or 3.4%), Vietnam (1,510 persons or 2.8%), United States of America (1,470 persons or 2.8%), and Iraq (1,200 persons or 2.3%).


title: Saskatoon

text: The Saskatoon area was inhabited long before any permanent settlement was established, to which the ongoing archaeological work at Wanuskewin Heritage Park and other locations bears witness. Canada's First Nations population has been increasingly urbanized, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Saskatoon, where the First Nations population increased by 382% from 1981 to 2001; however, a portion of this increase, possibly as much as half, is believed to be due to more people identifying themselves as Indigenous in the census rather than migration or birth rate.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon has the second highest percentage of First Nations population among major Canadian cities at approximately 11.3%, behind Winnipeg at 12.2% and Regina close by with 9.9%; in certain neighbourhoods such as Pleasant Hill, this percentage exceeds 40%. Most First Nations residents are of Cree or Dakota cultural background although to a lesser extent Saulteaux, Assiniboine, and Dene communities also exist.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon also has a substantial Métis population and is close to the historically significant Southbranch Settlements to the north, as well as the Prairie Ronde settlement near Dundurn, Saskatchewan.


title: Saskatoon

text: According to the 2011 Census, 66% of the population identify as Christian, with Catholics (28.5%) making up the largest denomination, followed by United Church (10.9%), and other denominations. Others identify as Muslim (2.6%), Buddhist (0.8%), Hindu (0.7%), with traditional (indigenous) spirituality (0.5%), and with other religions. 28.5% of the population report no religious affiliation.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon's major arts venue is TCU Place, which is next to Midtown Plaza downtown. Since opening in 1967, it has hosted scores of concerts, theatrical performances, live events such as the Telemiracle telethon, high school graduation and university convocation ceremonies, and conventions. It is also home to the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra. It recently underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation to its main theatre (named in honour of former mayor and senator Sidney Buckwold).


title: Saskatoon

text: largest arena, with a capacity of 15,195 for sporting events and 14,000 for concerts. Musical acts from Saskatoon include Joni Mitchell, Kyle Riabko, Wide Mouth Mason, The Northern Pikes, The Sheepdogs, One Bad Son and The Deep Dark Woods, as well as countless others popular at both local and regional levels. The facility was the 2007 host for the Juno Awards, Canada's foremost music industry honours.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon hosts many festivals and events in the summer, including the Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan Festival, The Great Plains Comedy Festival, the Jazz Festival, the Saskatchewan Children's Festival, the Saskatoon Fringe Theatre Festival (a showcase of alternative theatre), Saskatoon Folkfest (a cultural festival), Doors Open Saskatoon, Fairy Door Tours Saskatoon and the Canada Remembers Airshow.


title: Saskatoon

text: For over 25 years, Saskatoon has hosted a gathering of antique automobiles, (mainly from the 1960s) that has grown into an event called "Cruise Weekend". The event is usually held on the last weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) in August. Activities include a poker derby, dances, and a show 'N' shine with over 800 cars from all over western Canada. No admission is charged and everyone is free to walk around and enjoy the atmosphere.


title: Saskatoon

text: The city's annual exhibition (now called the Saskatoon Exhibition but also known in previous years as Pioneer Days and "The Ex") is held every August at Prairieland Park. In the late 1990s, the Saskatoon Exhibition was rescheduled to August so that it no longer was in direct competition with the Calgary Stampede, which frequently overlapped the event.


title: Saskatoon

text: The francophone community is represented by the Fédération des francophones de Saskatoon which organizes many cultural events.


title: Saskatoon

text: Art museums in Saskatoon include the Remai Modern, located at River Landing, a development along the shoreline of the South Saskatchewan River, in the Central Business District. The art museum is situated in a building designed by Bruce Kuwabara, and houses over 8,000 works in its collection. The design for the museum won the Award of Excellence from the Canadian Architect magazine in 2011. Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and other 20th-century artists have a home in the Remai Modern museum. Opened on October 21, 2017, the Remai Modern has been listed at no. 18 in the New York Times "52 places to go in 2018: A starter kit for escaping into the world." The Remai Modern inherited the collection of the defunct Mendel Art Gallery, which operated in City Park from 1964 to 2015.


title: Saskatoon

text: The Saskatchewan Craft Council Gallery is on the main floor of the Saskatchewan Craft Council building in the Broadway Avenue area. It is Saskatchewan's only public exhibition gallery dedicated to fine craft as an art form. Saskatchewan Craft Council Gallery presents seven to eight exhibitions each year. The SCC Fine Craft Boutique, located in the gallery, features the work of over 75 SCC fine craft artists.


title: Saskatoon

text: The Ukrainian Museum of Canada is on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River. It was founded in 1941 by the Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada.


title: Saskatoon

text: The Meewasin Valley Centre, in Friendship Park, has information on Saskatoon's history, the South Saskatchewan River, and the future of the Meewasin Valley.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon is also home of the Saskatchewan Western Development Museum. This museum, one of four throughout the province, documents early pioneer life in Saskatchewan. It is noted for its interior recreation of a "Boom Town" main street, including one original building relocated from its original site. The Saskatchewan Railway Museum is just outside the city and includes displays of rolling stock and historic railway buildings from various parts of the province.


title: Saskatoon

text: The Forestry Farm Park and Zoo is a National Historic Site situated in the northeast region of the city. The Forestry Farm was a historic nursery (dating from 1913) responsible for growing many of the trees planted within the prairie provinces. In 1966 the nursery operations were discontinued and part of the region turned into a municipal park. The city zoo is also housed within the park and features over 80 species of animals.


title: Saskatoon

text: Wanuskewin Heritage Park is a National Historic Site situated five km to the north of Saskatoon. It is an Indigenous archaeological site and features displays, special events, and activities, recent renovations are on hold due to a lack of funds during the renovations.


title: Saskatoon

text: Live theatre is a central, vibrant part of Saskatoon's culture. Saskatoon is host to a number of live theatre venues such as the Persephone Theatre, which is in the Remai Arts Centre at River Landing in downtown Saskatoon, The Refinery and the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company.


title: Saskatoon

text: The Broadway Theatre primarily shows arthouse films – while the two-screen Roxy Theatre is an "atmospheric-style" second-run theatre that reopened in 2005 after sitting unused for over a decade. The remainder of the city's theatres are multiplexes. The only movie theatre in the downtown core is the Scotia Bank VIP Theatre; the Capitol 4 shut down on April 3, 2008. The city's other movie theatres are The Landmark Theatre in the new subdivision of Brighton, Rainbow Cinemas (a second-run cinema) and the Cineplex Cinemas at The Centre mall on the city's east side.


title: Saskatoon

text: Among the many movie theatres of the past that have come and gone was the Capitol Theatre, which opened in 1929 with a showing of the first talkie to be exhibited in Saskatoon. The Capitol closed in the early 1980s to make way for the Scotia Centre office tower; its name was transferred to the aforementioned Capitol 4 a block away. Saskatoon is home to a large blues/jazz community that frequents many bars and clubs known for their blues- and jazz-related acts, including Amigo's, Buds on Broadway, The Black Cat Tavern, Village Guitar & Amp Co., The Bassment, Capitol and formerly Lydia's. The Canadian rock band The Sheepdogs are from Saskatoon. Joni Mitchell calls Saskatoon her hometown. The Deep Dark Woods are from Saskatoon.


title: Saskatoon

text: One of the city's landmarks is the Delta Bessborough Hotel, known to locals as the "Bez". Built by the Canadian National Railway, it was among the last railway hotels to be started before the Great Depression of the 1930s brought their era to a close. Although the building was completed in 1932, it did not open its doors until 1935 due to the Depression. The Bessborough and the Mendel Art Gallery are the only major structures on the river side of Spadina Crescent. One of the most frequently circulated photographs of Saskatoon is of the hotel framed in one of the arches of the Broadway Bridge.


title: Saskatoon

text: The Meewasin Valley Trail follows the South Saskatchewan River through Saskatoon. Summer activities include cycling, jogging and walking through parks and natural areas. Cross-country skiing is popular during the winter months, along with skating in Kiwanis Memorial Park. Access points are found throughout the city with interpretive signage and washrooms along the route. There are parks throughout the Meewasin Valley, with washrooms, picnic facilities, and lookout points along the river bank. In the winter the Meewasin Skating Rink is open free to the public; it is in Kiwanis Memorial Park beside the Delta Bessborough hotel. The outdoor rink has been open since 1980.


title: Saskatoon

text: For years, a parcel of land west of the Traffic Bridge, south of 19th Street, and east of Avenue C has been the subject of on-again, off-again redevelopment plans. The site formerly held the Saskatoon Arena, a power plant, a branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, and the head offices of the Saskatoon Public School Division; all these structures have been demolished to make way for redevelopment, with plans for same dating back to the 1980s. The most recent version of the plan called River Landing is ongoing. Calgary developer Lake Placid has proposed a 200 million dollar mega hotel/condo project to be built on the site although Lake Placid had difficulty securing financing and missed an October 30, 2009, deadline to submit a 4.5 million dollar payment for the parcel of land which seemingly killed the deal. On November 16, 2009, it was revealed by Lake Placid that the financing should be secure within a week. In April 2010, Saskatoon City Council voted in favour of entering new negotiations with Lake Placid over the site.


title: Saskatoon

text: August 2011 of the next year proposed a major overhaul to original design which would later include building a 20-story residential and 14-story hotel towers, and a 18-story and 13-story office towers as part of River Landing Village completed in 2021.


title: Saskatoon

text: The Saskatoon Farmers' Market and some commercial sites have also been developed. Future plans separate from Lake Placid include the development of a new art gallery to replace the Mendel Art Gallery by 2014. Other landmarks in the city include the iconic Traffic Bridge (which was demolished in 2016 and is currently being replaced by a new structure evoking the appearance of the original), the University of Saskatchewan campus, and the large Viterra grain terminal which has dominated the western skyline of the city for decades and is large enough to be visible from Pike Lake Provincial Park 32 km away.


title: Saskatoon

text: The economy of Saskatoon has been associated with potash, oil and agriculture (specifically wheat), resulting in the moniker "POW City". Various grains, livestock, oil and gas, potash, uranium, gold, diamond, coal and their spin off industries fuel the economy. The world's largest publicly traded uranium company, Cameco, and the world's largest potash producer, Nutrien, have corporate headquarters in Saskatoon. Saskatoon is also the new home of BHP Billiton's Diamonds and Specialty Products business unit.


title: Saskatoon

text: Nearly two-thirds of the world's recoverable potash reserves are in the Saskatoon region. Innovation Place founded in 1980 brings together almost 150 agriculture, information technology, and environmental, life sciences and agricultural biotechnology industries in a science park or technology park setting. Saskatoon is also home to the Canadian Light Source, Canada's national synchrotron facility.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon's digital media scene is growing with start-up tech companies such as Noodlecake, Point2, Vendasta Technologies, and Zu.


title: Saskatoon

text: One of Saskatoon's nicknames, "Hub City", refers to its ideal central location within Canada for distribution and logistics. Saskatoon John G. Diefenbaker International Airport with 105,620 aircraft movements in 2008 was listed as the 19th busiest airport in Canada, 12th busiest in passenger traffic.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon is developing the South Central Business District, or block 146, which is called the River Landing Project. Long range planning is underway for an expected city population of 325,000 by 2028 (2011 MXD report).


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon was expected to see a 4.2 percent growth in gross domestic product for the year 2012. The city saw a 3.4% growth in 2004, 5.1% increase in 2005 and a 2.8% increase in 2006. Saskatoon held Canada's No. 1 economic growth spot for Canada in 2005 according to the Conference Board of Canada. The Conference Board again predicted the city would rate first for economic increase in 2012, showing a growth rate of 4.2%. The Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority (SREDA) has also been ranked amongst Canada's top ten economic development organizations by "Site Selection" magazine.


title: Saskatoon

text: From 1988 to 2016 Hitachi Canadian Industries operated a power equipment manufacturing plant. It was closed and assets acquired by Brandt Group in 2017.


title: Saskatoon

text: Municipal elections are held in the fall. Until 1954, Saskatoon's mayors served one-year terms while City Councillors (aldermen, until 1991) were elected for two years. After 1954, both served for two-year terms. Beginning with the 1970 election, terms for both were extended to three years, and to four years starting in 2016. Until the 1976 election, terms didn't start until the new year. The years of service given are actual calendar years (give or take a day or two). But beginning in 1976 year, the Mayor and Council were sworn in at the next meeting after the election, so that an alderman whose dates of service are 1976-1979 has served from Nov 1, 1976 to Nov. 5, 1979.


title: Saskatoon

text: As of October 26, 2020, Saskatoon is represented in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan by 14 of the province's 61 MLAs, 6 of which are members of the NDP and 8 of which are members of the Saskatchewan Party.


title: Saskatoon

text: As of September 20, 2021, Saskatoon is represented by 3 MPs in the Canadian House of Commons, all of which belong to the Conservative Party of Canada.


title: Saskatoon

text: The Saskatchewan Health Authority is responsible for health care delivery in the area. They operate three hospitals within the city boundaries, these include Royal University Hospital, Saskatoon City Hospital, and St. Paul's Hospital (Saskatoon). Royal University Hospital is a teaching and research hospital that operates in partnership with the University of Saskatchewan. The health authority also operates hospitals in smaller neighbouring communities. In addition to hospitals the health authority operates long-term care facilities, clinics and other health care services. Jim Pattison Children's Hospital began construction in 2014 and opened in 2019 under the auspices of what was then the Saskatoon Health Region, since absorbed into the Saskatchewan Health Authority.


title: Saskatoon

text: The Saskatoon Police Service is the primary police service for the city of Saskatoon and holds both Municipal and Provincial Jurisdiction. The following services also have jurisdiction in Saskatoon: Corman Park Police Service, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canadian National Railway Police Service and the Canadian Pacific Railway Police Service. As of December 31, 2012, the SPS had 442 sworn members, 59 Special Constables, and 136 civilian positions.


title: Saskatoon

text: The 2006 census crime data, released July 18, 2007, showed Saskatoon leading Canada in violent crime, with 1,606 violent crimes per 100,000 residents annually. However, crime statistics produced by the Saskatoon Police Service shows that crime is on the decline. In 2010, total crimes against people went up 1.28% but total crimes against property fell by 11.75%. In 2014, Saskatoon dropped to fourth highest in Canada for its CSI after being in second place for several years. Crime in Canada uses Crime Severity Index calculated using the crime rate and the severity of those crimes.


title: Saskatoon

text: In the early 1990s, the Saskatoon police were found to engage in "starlight tours," where officers would arrest Indigenous men and drive them out of the city in the dead of winter to abandon them.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon is on the Yellowhead Highway spur of the Trans-Canada Highway system, also known as Highway 16, which connects Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia. Highways 5, 7, 11, 12, 14, 41, 219, 684, and 762 all meet at Saskatoon, with Highway 60 terminating just outside the southwestern city limits. The following bridges cross the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon (in order from upstream):


title: Saskatoon

text: Construction of Saskatoon's ring road, Circle Drive, began in the mid-1960s (after first being proposed in 1913), and was completed on July 31, 2013, with the opening of the $300 million South Circle Drive project.


title: Saskatoon

text: The Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian National Railway have connections to Saskatoon. Both railways operate intermodal facilities and trans-load centres; while Canadian National Railway also operates an automotive transfer facility. Saskatoon is a stop on The Canadian passenger transcontinental rail route operated by Via Rail. The Saskatoon railway station is in the city's west end; it opened in the late 1960s as a replacement for Saskatoon's original main station which was on 1st Avenue downtown—the relocation of the station sparked a major redevelopment of the downtown that included the construction of the Midtown Plaza, TCU Place (originally named the Centennial Auditorium) and other developments. The many provincial transportation connections and geographic location of Saskatoon give it one of its nicknames "The Hub City". The Saskatchewan Railway Museum is just outside the city. Recent debates about moving all the railways out of the city are raising questions about a future LRT system, but the city's Mayor says the population is too small.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon/John G. Diefenbaker International Airport, located in the city's northwest, provides scheduled and charter airline service for the city, and is a significant hub for mining and remote locations in Northern Saskatchewan. Non-stop scheduled destinations include Calgary, Edmonton, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Ottawa, Prince Albert, Regina, Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. Seasonal and Charter service is provided to Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Phoenix and Churchill, MB. Air Canada, Westjet and Purolator Courier all have cargo facilities at the airport. Saskatoon/Corman Air Park is a general aviation airport 15 km southeast of Saskatoon.


title: Saskatoon

text: Transit services in Saskatoon are provided by Saskatoon Transit. The route system was revamped on July 2, 2006, creating increased access to most parts of the city. An up-to-date schedule is posted at Saskatoon Transit Route & Schedule Adjustments. Saskatoon was serviced by Greyhound Canada for inter-provincial bus service between Manitoba and Alberta until Greyhound discontinued service on October 31, 2018.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon has 78 elementary schools and 14 high schools, serving about 37,000 students. Saskatoon has three main school boards, the Saskatoon Public School Division, the Saskatoon Catholic School Division and the Conseil des Ecoles Fransaskoises.


title: Saskatoon

text: The western annexation of what is now called the Blairmore SDA also brought the Yarrow Youth Farm within the city limits; operated by the Province of Saskatchewan, this was a correction facility for at-risk youth. The facility was subsequently closed in March 2015 and the land, located within the under-development Kensington community, was out up for sale the following autumn.


title: Saskatoon

text: Ice hockey is one of the most popular sports in Saskatoon and is home to numerous amateur teams such as the Saskatoon Blades of the WHL, who host their games in SaskTel Centre (formerly known as Credit Union Centre and Saskatchewan Place). Saskatoon is also home to amateur teams at the Junior B and Midget AAA levels, as well as several youth teams. Saskatoon was a major league hockey city from 1921 to 1926 when the WCHL/WHL Sheiks/Crescents played. They made it as far as the league semi-finals twice, not far enough to challenge for the Stanley Cup.


title: Saskatoon

text: The biggest chance for a return of major professional hockey came in 1982. Bill Hunter, a local sports promoter, attempted to purchase the St. Louis Blues of the NHL and move it to Saskatoon, but the move was prevented by the league. This was due to Saskatchewan's and especially Saskatoon's small size in relation to both St. Louis and the other cities in the NHL at the time. However, it did cause the building of the Credit Union Centre, on the city's northern edge. Prior to hosting the 2010 World Junior Hockey tournament, the arena underwent a major expansion which increased seating capacity to approximately 15,200 and also created several new box suites.


title: Saskatoon

text: Starting in 2016, the Saskatchewan Rush played in the National Lacrosse League after moving from Edmonton. The Saskatchewan Rush won the league Championship against the Buffalo Bandits that same year.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon is home to the Saskatchewan Rattlers professional basketball team playing in the CEBL. The Rattlers won the inaugural CEBL championship in 2019.


title: Saskatoon

text: Canadian football is one of the most successful on field sports in Saskatoon. The University of Saskatchewan Huskies are one of the top University football programs in Canada, with three Vanier Cup national championships and 19 Hardy Trophy Canada West championships. The Huskies have made nine Vanier Cup appearances since 1990, and were the first team from outside of Ontario to host the Vanier Cup, hosting the game in 2006. As well, the Saskatoon Hilltops of the Canadian Junior Football League host their games at Gordie Howe Bowl. The Hilltops have won 19 national junior championships throughout their history.


title: Saskatoon

text: The University of Saskatchewan Huskies play Canadian Interuniversity Sport league games at the University Campus. Their facilities include 6,171 seat Griffiths Stadium, 700 seat Rutherford Arena, and the state-of-the-art 2,500 seat Physical Activity Complex, opened August 2003 in conjunction with the new College of Kinesiology Building. The Huskies participate in twelve sports at the CIS level and have been most successful in football (Conference champions 18 times/National champions 3 times), men's volleyball (Conference champions 11 times/National champions 4 times) women's basketball National Champions once and men's and women's Track and Field(Conference champions 37 times/ National champions 12 times). Saskatoon is also currently constructing a new arena to be home of the university hockey team. The Merlis Belsher Place complex consists of a 2,700 spectator ice arena, and a second NHL-size ice surface. It also houses the two official NBA-size Gymnasiums. The facility is next door to the Saskatoon Field House which features an indoor track; indoor courts for tennis, badminton, soccer and basketball; a weight room; fitness/dance studios on the U of S Lands South Management Area, Saskatoon on campus.


title: Saskatoon

text: In 2007, two new sports teams came into being in Saskatoon, the Saskatchewan SWAT of the Rocky Mountain Lacrosse League and the Saskatoon Accelerators in the Canadian Major Indoor Soccer League. The Accelerators play at the Kinsmen/Henk Ruys Soccer Centre, while the SWAT play at the Gordie Howe Kinsmen Arena. There are currently no baseball teams in Saskatoon. In the past there have been various teams including the Saskatoon Yellow Jackets, Saskatoon Riot, Saskatoon Smokin' Guns, Saskatoon Stallions, and the Saskatoon Legends.


title: Saskatoon

text: Motor racing is a popular sport in Saskatoon. Saskatchewan International Raceway has been in operation for over 40 years; SIR is home to 1/4 mile IHRA drag racing and holds racing events from May to September. As well, just north of the city lies Wyant Group Raceway the paved oval track is home to local stock car racing, as well as races for several different Western Canadian series. In 2009, the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series make its inaugural stop at Wyant Group Raceway, Formerly known as Auto Clearing Motor Speedway, signalling a move to a larger profile track in Saskatoon. Marquis Downs at Prairieland Park offers live horse racing from May to October.


title: Saskatoon

text: The city also is home to a number of sports and recreation centres, including two full size soccer facilities under the control of the non-profit Saskatoon Soccer Centre organization. The Kinsmen/Henk Ruys Soccer Centre is composed of four sport court indoor fields and the SaskTel Sports Centre hosts two full sized outdoor turf fields, one indoor full sized turf field, one indoor half sized turf field, and one sport court field. Lions Skatepark was built in the Riversdale area in 2003. As well Saskatoon is home to several golf courses and various parks which include tennis courts, ball diamonds and soccer pitches for spring, summer and fall use and outdoor rinks for winter use. Blackstrap Ski Hill is also 30 minutes south of the city, however, has been closed since 2006 due to financial difficulty.


title: Saskatoon

text: Saskatoon has welcomed members of the Royal Family since 1919. The Queen most recently visited for a gala concert at Credit Union Centre, before a live audience of 12,000 and television viewers nationwide in 2005. The Queen was presented with the key to the city on the same visit, after touring the Canadian Light Source synchrotron and greeting thousands of well-wishers on a walkabout at the University of Saskatchewan (the Queen traditionally stayed at the on-campus residence of the President of the University of Saskatchewan when she visited the city). Sovereigns and consorts who have visited include Edward VIII as Prince of Wales in 1919, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1939, and Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, as Princess Elizabeth in 1951 and afterwards as Queen in 1959, 1978, 1987 and 2005.


title: Saskatoon

text: Other members of the Royal Family who have visited include Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon in 1980, the Prince of Wales (Charles) in 2001, the Princess Anne in 1982 and (as Princess Royal) in 2004, the Duke and Duchess of York (Andrew and Sarah) in 1989, and the Prince Edward in 1978. Governors General and Lieutenant Governors also pay regular visits to Saskatoon. Saskatonian Ray Hnatyshyn is credited with popularising his office as Governor General from 1990 to 1995. Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governors Barnhart, Fedoruk, McNab, Monroe, Porteous and Worobetz were all former residents of Saskatoon.


title: Saskatoon

text: Connections to the crown include the royal namesakes of about one hundred neighbourhoods, parks, streets, schools and other places. These include King George, Queen Elizabeth and Massey Place neighbourhoods, and Victoria, Coronation and Princess Diana parks. It was at one time considered that Saskatoon's Broadway Bridge would be renamed George V Bridge. Landmarks and institutions also have connections and these include the Royal University Hospital, one of four royal designations in Saskatchewan. Grade schools named for royals include Ecole Victoria School, King George School, Queen Elizabeth School, Prince Philip School and Princess Alexandra School.


title: Saskatoon

text: Existing and historic hotels with royal namesakes include the King George Hotel which has been recently converted to ultra-luxury condominiums, the King Edward Hotel, the Queen's Hotel and the Patricia Hotel. The Hotel Bessborough was named for a Canadian Governor General who visited the landmark under construction in the 1930s. The Queen Elizabeth Power Station is within the city and named after Queen Elizabeth. The Prince of Wales Promenade along the South Saskatchewan River is a focal point on the riverfront trails. In 2002, 378 Saskatoon residents were presented with Canada's Golden Jubilee Medal by vice-regals to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Queen's accession to the throne.


title: Lesbos

text: Lesbos or Lesvos ( ) is a Greek island located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of with approximately of coastline, making it the third largest island in Greece. It is separated from Asia Minor by the narrow Mytilini Strait. On the southeastern coast lies the island's capital and largest city Mytilene, whose name is also used as a moniker for the whole island.


title: Lesbos

text: The regional unit of Lesbos, with the seat in Mytilene, comprises the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Ikaria, Lemnos, and Samos. Mytilene is also the capital of the larger North Aegean region. The population of the island is 83,068, a third of whom live in the capital, while the remainder is distributed in small towns and villages. The largest are Plomari, Kalloni, the Gera Villages, Agiassos, Eresos, and Molyvos (the ancient Mythimna).


title: Lesbos

text: According to later Greek writers, Mytilene was founded in the 11th century BC by the family Penthilidae, who arrived from Thessaly and ruled the city-state until a popular revolt (590–580 BC) led by Pittacus of Mytilene ended their rule. In fact, the archaeological and linguistic record may indicate a late Iron Age arrival of Greek settlers although references in Late Bronze Age Hittite archives indicate a likely Greek presence then. The name Mytilene itself seems to be of Hittite origin. According to Homer's "Iliad", Lesbos was part of the kingdom of Priam, which was based in Anatolia. Much work remains to be done to determine just what happened and when. In the Middle Ages, it was under Byzantine and then Genoese rule. Lesbos was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1462. The Ottomans then ruled the island until the First Balkan War in 1912, when it became part of the Kingdom of Greece.


title: Lesbos

text: The island is widely known as the home of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, from whose association with homosexuality the word "lesbian" derives its modern meaning. It is also sometimes called the "Island of the Poets".


title: Lesbos

text: The name is from Ancient Greek (, 'forested, woody'), possibly a Hittite borrowing, as the original Hittite name for the island was . An older name for the island that was maintained in Aeolic Greek was ().


title: Lesbos

text: The traditional English form "Lesbos" (pronounced , also ) comes from Ancient Greek. In Modern Greek, letter is pronounced and transliterated as , producing the alternative form "Lesvos". In Greece, it is often referred to as Mytilene (), after its capital.


title: Lesbos

text: Lesbos is known to be one of the Greek island touristic hotspots, especially during its tourism season of April, May, June and July. Mytilene airport management recorded 47,379 tourists visiting Lesbos in its 2015 tourism season. The refugee crisis has since slowed down tourism to the island, with a 67.89% decrease rate from June 2015 to June 2016. 6,841 Europeans on 47 flights arrived in Lesbos during its 2016 tourism season, compared to July the previous year, which saw 18,373 Europeans fly to the island on 130 flights. 94 cruise ships full of tourists arrived in Lesbos in 2011 and only one in 2018. Of the refugee crisis' impact on tourism, Maria Dimitriou, a local shop owner from Mithymna, said, "2015 was a very good year for tourism and then, suddenly they started to arrive. The refugees began arriving in mid-July, when the hotels were full of tourists. There were refugees everywhere, lying down with all their trash. And after this, tourism stopped."


title: Lesbos

text: In 2019, the head of the Lesbos chamber of commerce, Vangelis Mirsinias, told "The Jakarta Post" that the island's administration is trying to "woo back the tourists" and they "want to remind people of how beautiful" Lesbos is." He advocated for the European Union to help in advertising and also said, "The economy is still paying the impact of the crisis. It will need time and money to change this image." Lesbos is also a hotspot for Dutch tourists and one Dutch tourist said that tourism had halted because people "did not feel like seeing all this misery" of the refugees. One local told the publication that residents had become "fed up" and "people are angry towards the government and towards Europe: they told us not to worry, the camps won't last. But it's still there", whilst another business owner explained that he had lost a third of his business and "blames all the negative media attention" for the lack of tourists. "The Jakarta Post" also reported that tourists have increased in numbers in recent years, with 63,000 arriving in 2018. The COVID-19 pandemic has also damaged the island's tourism industry.


title: Lesbos

text: In April 2022, the Greek government announced a dedication of €2 million in restoring tourism in Lesbos and four other islands. In October 2022, it was announced that Lesbos would return to the cruise ship industry. Konstantinos Moutzouris, the governor of the North Aegean Region, which Lesbos is under, explained that the region's administration will run a study "in order to develop cruise tourism on the island." The deputy governor of tourism, Nikolaos Nyktas, believed that the cruise industry "suits the island and its culture", while the head of development for the project, Ioannis Bras, said that the island could "offer a lot to the cruise market".


title: Lesbos

text: In English and most other European languages, including Greek, the term "lesbian" is commonly used to refer to homosexual women. This use of the term derives from the poems of Sappho, who was born in Lesbos and who wrote with powerful emotional content directed toward other women. Due to this association, the town of Eresos, her birthplace, is visited frequently by LGBT tourists.


title: Lesbos

text: Lesbos lies in the far east of the Aegean sea, facing the Turkish coast (Gulf of Edremit) from the north and east; at the narrowest point, the Mytilini Strait is about wide. In late Palaeolithic/Mesolithic times it was joined to the Anatolian mainland before the end of the Last Glacial Period.


title: Lesbos

text: The shape of the island is roughly triangular, but it is deeply intruded by the gulfs of Kalloni, with an entry on the southern coast, and of Gera, in the southeast.


title: Lesbos

text: The island is forested and mountainous with two large peaks, Mount Lepetymnos at and Mount Olympus at (not to be confused with Mount Olympus in Thessaly on the Greek mainland), dominating its northern and central sections. The island's volcanic origin is manifested in several hot springs and the two gulfs.


title: Lesbos

text: Lesbos is verdant, aptly named "Emerald Island", with a greater variety of flora than expected for the island's size. Eleven million olive trees cover 40% of the island together with other fruit trees. Forests of Mediterranean pines, chestnut trees and some oaks occupy 20%, and the remainder is scrub, grassland or urban.


title: Lesbos

text: The island has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate ("Csa" in the Köppen climate classification). The mean annual temperature is , and the mean annual rainfall is . Its exceptional sunshine makes it one of the sunniest islands in the Aegean Sea. Snow and very low temperatures are rare.


title: Lesbos

text: The entire territory of Lesbos is "Lesvos Geopark", which is a member of the European Geoparks Network (since 2000) and Global Geoparks Network (since 2004) on account of its outstanding geological heritage, educational programs and projects, and promotion of geotourism.


title: Lesbos

text: This geopark was enlarged from former "Lesvos Petrified Forest Geopark". Lesbos contains one of the few known petrified forests, called Petrified forest of Lesbos, and it has been declared a Protected Natural Monument. Fossilised plants have been found in many localities on the western part of the island. The fossilised forest was formed during the Late Oligocene to Lower–Middle Miocene, as determined by the intense volcanic activity in the area. Neogene volcanic rocks dominate the central and western part of the island, comprising andesites, dacites and rhyolites, ignimbrite, pyroclastics, tuffs, and volcanic ash. The products of the volcanic activity covered the vegetation of the area and the fossilization process took place during favourable conditions. The fossilized plants are silicified remnants of a sub-tropical forest that existed on the northwest part of the island 20–15 million years ago.


title: Lesbos

text: According to Classical Greek mythology, Lesbos was the patron god of the island. Macareus of Rhodes was reputedly the first king whose many daughters bequeathed their names to some of the present larger towns. In Classical myth his sister, Canace, was killed to have him made king. The place names with female origins are claimed by some to be much earlier settlements named after local goddesses, who were replaced by gods; however, there is little evidence to support this. Homer refers to the island as ""Macaros edos"", the seat of Macar. Hittite records from the Late Bronze Age name the island "Lazpa" and must have considered its population significant enough to allow the Hittites to "borrow their gods" (presumably idols) to cure their king when the local gods were not forthcoming. It is believed that emigrants from mainland Greece, mainly from Thessaly, entered the island in the Late Bronze Age and bequeathed it with the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, whose written form survives in the poems of Sappho, amongst others.


title: Lesbos

text: The abundant grey pottery ware found on the island and the worship of Cybele, the great mother-goddess of Anatolia, suggest the cultural continuity of the population from Neolithic times. When the Persian king Cyrus the Great defeated Croesus (546 BC) the Ionic Greek cities of Anatolia and the adjacent islands became Persian subjects and remained such until the Persians were defeated by the Greeks at the Battle of Salamis (480 BC). The island was governed by an oligarchy in archaic times, followed by quasi-democracy in classical times. For a short period it was a member of the Athenian confederacy, its apostasy from which is recounted by Thucydides in the "Mytilenian Debate", in Book III of his "History of the Peloponnesian War". In Hellenistic times, the island belonged to various Successor kingdoms until 79 BC when it passed into Roman hands.


title: Lesbos

text: During the Middle Ages it belonged to the Byzantine Empire. In 802, the Byzantine Empress Irene was exiled to Lesbos after her deposition, and died there. The island served as a gathering base for the fleet of the rebel Thomas the Slav in the early 820s.


title: Lesbos

text: In the 10th century, it was part of the theme of the Aegean Sea, while in the late 11th century it formed a "dioikesis" under a "kourator" in Mytilene. In the 1090s, the island was briefly occupied by the Seljuk Turkish emir Çaka Bey, but he was unable to capture Methymna, which resisted throughout. In the 12th century, the island became a frequent target for plundering raids by the Republic of Venice.


title: Lesbos

text: After the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) the island passed to the Latin Empire, but was reconquered by the Empire of Nicaea sometime after 1224. In 1354, it was granted as a fief to the Genoese Francesco I Gattilusio, whose family ruled Lesbos until it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1462. It remained under Turkish rule, named () in Turkish. During Ottoman rule, the compulsory devshirme system was implemented in the island, where the locals and the state representatives negotiated for the levy. For example, in the winter of 1603-4, 105 boys were levied from the island during the winter. In 1912, the island was taken by Greek forces during the First Balkan War.


title: Lesbos

text: The cities of Mytilene and Methymna have been bishoprics since the 5th century. By the early 10th century, Mytilene had been raised to the status of a metropolitan see. Methymna achieved the same by the 12th century.


title: Lesbos

text: The oldest artifacts found on the island may date to the late Paleolithic period. Important archaeological sites on the island are the Neolithic cave of Kagiani, probably a refuge for shepherds, the Neolithic settlement of Chalakies, and the extensive habitation of Thermi (3000–1000 BC). The largest habitation is found in Lisvori (2800–1900 BC) part of which is submerged in shallow coastal waters. There are also several archaic, classical Greek and Roman remains. Vitruvius called the ancient city of Mytilene "magnificent and of good taste". Remnants of its medieval history are three impressive castles.


title: Lesbos

text: Lesbos is the birthplace of several famous people. In archaic times, Arion developed the type of poem called dithyramb, the progenitor of tragedy, and Terpander invented the seven note musical scale for the lyre. Two of the nine lyric poets in the Ancient Greek canon, Alcaeus and Sappho, were from Lesbos. Phanias wrote history. The seminal artistic creativity of those times brings to mind the myth of Orpheus to whom Apollo gave a lyre and the Muses taught to play and sing. When Orpheus incurred the wrath of the god Dionysus he was dismembered by the Maenads and of his body parts his head and his lyre found their way to Lesbos where they have "remained" ever since. Pittacus was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. In classical times Hellanicus advanced historiography, Theophrastus, the father of botany, succeeded Aristotle as the head of the Lyceum. Aristotle and Epicurus lived there for some time, and it is there that Aristotle began systematic zoological investigations. In later times lived Theophanes, the historian of Pompey's campaigns, Longus wrote the famous novel Daphnis and Chloe, and much later the historian Doukas wrote the history of the early Ottoman Turks. In modern times the poet Odysseus Elytis, descendant of an old family of Lesbos, received the Nobel Prize.


title: Lesbos

text: Twelve historic churches on the island were listed together on the 2008 World Monuments Fund's Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in the world. The churches range in date from the Early Christian Period to the 19th century. Exposure to the elements, outmoded conservation methods, and increased tourism are all threats to the structures. The following are the 12 churches:


title: Lesbos

text: Lesbos is a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region, and since 2019 it consists of two municipalities: Mytilene and West Lesbos. Between the 2011 Kallikratis government reform and 2019, there was one single municipality on the island: Lesbos, created out of the 13 former municipalities on the island. At the same reform, the regional unit Lesbos was created out of part of the former Lesbos Prefecture.


title: Lesbos

text: The economy of Lesbos is essentially agricultural in nature, with olive oil being the main source of income. Tourism in Mytilene, encouraged by its international airport and the coastal towns of Petra, Plomari, Molyvos and Eresos, contribute substantially to the economy of the island. Fishing and the manufacture of soap and ouzo, the Greek national liqueur, are the remaining sources of income.


title: Lesbos

text: Due to its proximity to the Turkish mainland, Lesbos is one of the Greek islands most affected by the European migrant crisis that started in 2015. Refugees of the Syrian Civil War came to the island in multiple vessels every day. As of June 2018, 8,000 refugees were trapped when a deal between Europe and Turkey removed their route to the continent in 2016. After that, living conditions deteriorated and the possibility for movement on to Europe dimmed. Moria Refugee Camp was the largest of the refugee camps and held twice as many people as it was designed to accommodate. By May 2020, Moria had 17,421 refugees living there.


title: Lesbos

text: On September 9, 2020, thousands of migrants fled from the overcrowded Moria camp, after a fire broke out. At least 25 firefighters, with 10 engines, were battling the flames both inside and outside the facility. A smaller-scale facility, the Pikpa camp catered for a segment of the refugee population until its closure in October 2020, whereupon the occupants were transferred to the "old" Kara Tepe Refugee Camp.


title: Lesbos

text: The Greek government maintains that the fires were started deliberately by migrants protesting that the camp had been put in lockdown due to a COVID-19 outbreak amongst the migrants in the camp. On September 16, 2020, four Afghan men were formally charged with arson for allegedly starting the fire. Two other migrants, both aged 17, which is below the age of full adult criminal responsibility in Greece, were also allegedly involved in starting the fire, and were held in police detention on the mainland.


title: Lesbos

text: After the closure of the Moria camp, a temporary facility was rapidly set up at Kara Tepe. The Greek government announced in November 2020 that a new closed reception centre will be built in the Vastria area near Nees Kydonies, on the border between Mytilene and Western Lesbos, and will be completed by late 2021.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: Clear and Present Danger is a 1994 American action thriller film directed by Phillip Noyce and based on Tom Clancy's 1989 novel of the same name. It is a sequel to "The Hunt for Red October" (1990) and "Patriot Games" (1992). All three movies featured Clancy's character Jack Ryan, though Ford only played the role in the last two. It is the last film version of Clancy's novels to feature Harrison Ford as Ryan and James Earl Jones as Vice Admiral James Greer, as well as the final installment directed by Noyce.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: As in the novel, Ryan is appointed CIA Acting Deputy Director (Intelligence) (DDI), and discovers he is being kept in the dark by colleagues who are conducting a covert war against a drug cartel in Colombia, apparently with the approval of the President. The film premiered in theaters in the United States on August 3, 1994, and was a major financial success, earning over $200 million at the box office.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: A United States Coast Guard vessel intercepts and boards a U.S. registered yacht in the Caribbean Sea. Evidence shows that the ship's previous occupants, American businessman Peter Hardin and his family, were murdered by the occupying Colombian crew. CIA analyst Jack Ryan learns that Hardin was laundering money for the South American Cali Cartel. Drug lord Ernesto Escobedo ordered Hardin's murder for embezzling millions in drug profits. U.S. President Bennett, Hardin's close friend, discreetly authorizes National Security Advisor James Cutter to initiate covert operations in Colombia to destroy the cartel.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: Ryan is appointed acting Deputy Director of Intelligence when Admiral James Greer undergoes treatment for pancreatic cancer. Ryan requests Congress increase funding to support Colombians fighting the drug cartels, giving his assurance there is no U.S. military involvement. Ryan is unaware that Cutter will use the funds to assemble RECIPROCITY, a special forces team recruited by CIA operative John Clark, and aided by Robert Ritter, the CIA Deputy Director of Operations. President Bennett sends Ryan to negotiate with the Colombian government to allow the United States to seize Escobedo's assets, including $650 million hidden in off-shore accounts. Escobedo's intelligence officer, Colonel Félix Cortez, secretly orders the Cartel to ambush Ryan's convoy. Jack survives, though several colleagues are killed, including Dan Murray and FBI Director Emile Jacobs. Cortez's identity is ascertained after he murders Murray's secretary, Moira, who was an unwitting informant.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: Escobedo, blamed for the attack, organizes a meeting with the other Cartel heads. RECIPROCITY discovers this and launches an airstrike on the meeting location. Escobedo and Cortez, en route to the gathering, barely escape unscathed. Cortez learns Americans were responsible and brokers a deal with Cutter: Cortez will kill Escobedo to assume leadership, then will reduce drug shipments to the U.S. and allow American law enforcement to make regular arrests to influence public opinion that the United States is winning the drug war. In exchange, Cortez wants the location of RECIPROCITY and all CIA support eliminated to establish his position within the Cartel. Cutter accepts Cortez's deal, then strands Clark's team, who are overwhelmed by Cortez's mercenaries in the jungle.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: Unbeknownst to Cutter, U.S. surveillance monitored his conversation with Cortez. Ryan accesses Ritter's computer and obtains evidence regarding the illegal Colombian operations. Ritter, however, warns Ryan that because he obtained funding for the operation, Congress will hold Ryan solely responsible, whereas Ritter and Cutter have been granted President Bennett's pre-emptive pardons from any wrongdoing. Jack flies to Bogota to seek out Clark, unaware Cutter and Ritter have falsely told Clark that Ryan betrayed RECIPROCITY. Ryan and Clark team up after Clark realizes Ritter and Cutter deceived them both.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: Ryan and Clark procure a helicopter and fly to RECIPROCITY's last known position. They find team sniper Chavez, who reports that most members were killed; Captain Ramirez and one remaining squad member were captured. Ryan meets with Escobedo and informs him of Cortez's deception, whilst Clark simultaneously commences rescuing his men who are being held captive in a coffee facility fronting Escobedo's cocaine operation. Escobedo confronts Cortez but is killed by Cortez's associate. Ryan narrowly escapes with Clark and the freed prisoners. Chavez kills Cortez during the escape, saving Ryan. Back in the United States, Ryan confronts President Bennett and refuses to help cover up the conspiracy. He testifies before the Congressional Oversight Committee about the recent events.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: After completing "The Hunt for Red October", John McTiernan had wanted to direct an adaptation of "Clear and Present Danger", and departed from the production after an early script by John Milius was rejected in favor of "Patriot Games". Milius's first draft was more faithful to the original book than the final film, and he later added the sequence where Jack Ryan is ambushed in SUVs. He said that the original ending had Cortez going to Washington to kill the National Security Advisor, only to be killed in a mugging by drug addicts. After Clancy's dissatisfaction with "Patriot Games", he was reluctant to allow any further adaptations of his material, but acquiesced after negotiations with Paramount Pictures and a large financial deal. In March 1992, Donald E. Stewart was hired to rewrite Milius's script to provide greater screen time to Jack Ryan. After Clancy openly criticized the script, Steven Zaillian rewrote it further in an attempt to gain his approval. Milius was retained during production to provide consultation on the action scenes.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: The film was shot in Mexico after the studio decided that filming on-location in Colombia was too dangerous, with Mexico City standing in for Bogotá and the Hacienda San Gabriel de la Palmas in Cuernavaca serving as a set for Escobedo's headquarters. Ironically, the decision to produce the film in Mexico encountered further difficulties due to the outbreak of the Chiapas conflict. The film ran drastically behind schedule and over budget, and part of the footage shot in the United States was destroyed due to the 1994 Northridge earthquake. After negative results from test screenings, parts of the film were reshot using scenes written by Stewart and Zaillian.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: The film's musical score was composed by James Horner. Milan Records released an album featuring selections from the score on August 2, 1994.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: An expanded two-disc collector's edition was released in 2013 by specialty label Intrada Records. The new version now includes the complete score by Horner, remixed from the original scoring master tapes with cues appearing in the same order as they appear in the film.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: Some parts of the soundtrack are based on the music from James Horner's soundtrack for "Gorky Park", but played with different instruments.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: The film received positive reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a rating of 80% based on reviews from 45 critics, with an average score of 6.90/10. The site's consensus states: "Perfecting the formula established in earlier installments, "Clear and Present Danger" reunites its predecessor's creative core to solidly entertaining effect." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average out of 100 to critics' reviews, "Clear and Present Danger" received a score of 74 based on 14 reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: Mick LaSalle, writing for the "San Francisco Chronicle", commented how it "delights in an almost boyish way in the trappings of power: rocket launchers and high-tech missiles, flags, ceremony and political double-speak."


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: James Berardinelli, who wrote for "ReelViews", remarked, ""Clear and Present Danger" is all plot and no characters. The people running around on screen have about as much depth as the sheen of sweat on Harrison Ford's forehead. Jack Ryan is the most disappointing of all. He's disgustingly virtuous: a flawless fighter for good and justice, a Superman without the cape. I spent half the movie wondering if this guy was ever going to show anything to mark him as vaguely human." In "", author Matthew Alford formulated a critique of the film, pointing out that supporting characters like Cutter and Ritter are pointedly squeamish about the use of force. He queried, "Where is this abundance of sensitivity from the US national security apparatus towards the people of Latin America in the real world?". He concluded, "The answers are all too obvious, except to a Hollywood hooked on schmaltz, willfully ignorant of reality and in thrall to power."


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: "Clear and Present Danger" opened strongly at the U.S. box office, grossing $20,348,017 in its first weekend and holding the top spot for two weeks. It went on to gross an estimated $122 million in the U.S., and $94 million in foreign revenue for a worldwide total of $216 million.


title: Clear and Present Danger (film)

text: The film was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Sound (Donald O. Mitchell, Michael Herbick, Frank A. Montaño and Art Rochester) and Best Sound Effects Editing (John Leveque and Bruce Stambler), but lost both awards to "Speed".


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The white genocide, white extinction, or white replacement conspiracy theory is a white supremacist conspiracy theory which states that there is a deliberate plot, often blamed on Jews, to promote miscegenation, interracial marriage, mass non-white immigration, racial integration, low fertility rates, abortion, governmental land-confiscation from whites, organised violence, and eliminationism in white-founded countries in order to cause the extinction of whites through forced assimilation, mass immigration, and violent genocide. Less frequently, black people, Hispanics, and Muslims are blamed for the secret plot, but merely as more fertile immigrants, invaders, or violent aggressors, rather than the masterminds.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: White genocide is a political myth based on pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and ethnic hatred, and is driven by a psychological panic often termed "white extinction anxiety". White people are not dying out or facing extermination. The purpose of the conspiracy theory is to justify a commitment to a white nationalist agenda in support of calls to violence.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The theory was popularized by white separatist neo-Nazi David Lane around 1995, and has been leveraged as propaganda in Europe, North America, South Africa, and Australia. Similar conspiracy theories were prevalent in Nazi Germany and have been used in the present-day interchangeably with, and as a broader and more extreme version of, Renaud Camus's 2011 "The Great Replacement," focusing on the white population of France. Since the 2019 Christchurch and El Paso shootings, of which the shooters' manifestos decried a "white replacement" and have referenced the concept of "Great Replacement", Camus's conspiracy theory (often called "replacement theory" or "population replacement"), along with Bat Ye'or's 2002 Eurabia concept and Gerd Honsik's resurgent 1970s myth of a Kalergi plan, have all been used synonymously with "white genocide" and are increasingly referred to as variations of the conspiracy theory.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: In August 2018, United States President Donald Trump was accused of endorsing the conspiracy theory in a foreign policy tweet instructing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate South African "land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers", claiming that the "South African government is now seizing land from white farmers". Unsubstantiated claims that the South African farm attacks on farmers disproportionately target whites are a key element of the conspiracy theory, portrayed in media as a form of gateway or proxy issue to "white genocide" within the wider context of the Western world. The topic of farm seizures in South Africa and Zimbabwe has been a rallying cry of white nationalists and alt-right groups who use it to justify their vision of white supremacy.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The idea of a distinct white human race began with German physician and anthropologist Johann Blumenbach, who in 1775 claimed that there were five such races, Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian (or Negroid), and American Indian. Previously, François Bernier had in 1684 published a four-page essay postscript which posited five races, combining Europeans ("except for part of Muscovy") with inhabitants of the northern coastal regions of Africa, as well as Arabia, Persia, Mongolia, India, and parts of China, Myanmar, Thailand, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, and described skin color as "merely accidental". Prior classifications of ethnicity and culture were narrower and more mutable through antiquity, drawing distinctions closer to those of tribal and familial groups, and were based on environmental factors such as geography and climate as well as appearance, physiology, and learned behaviors such as language and diet. Present-day racial and ethnic distinctions are only loosely correlated with genetic ancestry, with which they are being replaced in medical science.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The idea of a "replacement" of indigenous white people under the guidance of a hostile elite can be further traced back to pre-WWII antisemitic conspiracy theories which posited the existence of a Jewish plot to destroy Europe through miscegenation, especially in Édouard Drumont's antisemitic bestseller "La France juive" (1886). Commenting on this resemblance, historian Nicolas Lebourg and political scientist Jean-Yves Camus suggest that Renaud Camus's contribution in "The Great Replacement" (2011) was to replace the antisemitic elements with a clash of civilizations between Muslims and Europeans. Also in the late 19th century, imperialist politicians invoked the "Péril jaune" (Yellow Peril) in their negative comparisons of France's low birth-rate and the high birth-rates of Asian countries. From that claim arose an artificial, cultural fear that immigrant-worker Asians soon would "flood" France. This danger supposedly could be successfully countered only by increased fecundity of French women. Then, France would possess enough soldiers to thwart the eventual flood of immigrants from Asia. Maurice Barrès's nationalist writings of that period have also been noted in the ideological genealogy of the "Great Replacement", Barrès contending both in 1889 and in 1900 that a replacement of the native population under the combined effect of immigration and a decline in the birth rate was happening in France.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The conspiracy theory had precursors in early 20th-century eugenics theories, which were popular in white-majority countries such as Australia and New Zealand, where it was feared that non-white immigrants would eventually supplant the white population.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: In 1916, the American eugenicist and lawyer Madison Grant wrote a book entitled "The Passing of the Great Race" which, while largely ignored when it first appeared, went through four editions, becoming part of popular culture in 1920s America and, in the process, spawned the ideology that the founding-stock of the United States, the so-called Nordic race, were under extinction threats from assimilation with non-whites. Grant wrote of it:


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Grant claimed that the race which "built" America was in danger of extinction unless the US reined in immigration of Jews and others.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Adolf Hitler wrote to Grant to thank him for writing "The Passing of the Great Race", calling it "my Bible". Incorporating Grant's theory, Nazis employed the conspiracy theory widely as propaganda, as exemplified in a 1934 pamphlet written for the "Research Department for the Jewish question" of Walter Frank's "Reich Institute" with the title "Are the white people dying: the future of the white and the colored peoples in the light of biological statistics". Nazis used the conspiracy theory as a call to arms in a bid to gain power through cultural hegemony and scapegoating Jews by leveraging long-running historical prejudices.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Prior to Nazis coming to power, German eugenicists, including Jewish medical and psychiatric professionals, did consider Jews to be distinct from white Europeans, but not so "degenerate" or unfit as to require anything more than guidance avoiding heritable disease via marriage counseling and, as early as 1918, screening for Jews wishing to emigrate to Palestine.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The modern conspiracy theory can be traced back to post-war European neo-Nazi circles, especially René Binet's 1950 book "Théorie du Racisme." The latter influenced French 1960s far-right movements such as "Europe-Action", which argued that "systematic race mixing [was] nothing more than a slow genocide"."" In December 1948, Binet's newspaper "L'Unité" wrote: "We accuse the Zionists and anti-racists of the crime of genocide because they claim to be imposing on us a crossbreeding that would be the death and destruction of our race and civilization".


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The term "white genocide" appeared sporadically in the American Nazi Party's "White Power" newspaper as early as 1972 and was used by the White Aryan Resistance in the 1970s and 1980s, where it primarily referred to contraception and abortion. The conspiracy theory was developed by the neo-Nazi David Lane in his "White Genocide Manifesto" (, origin of the later use of the term), where he made the claim that the government policies of many Western countries had the intent of destroying white European culture and making white people an "extinct species". Lane—a founding member of the organization The Order—criticized miscegenation, abortion, homosexuality, Jewish control of the media, "multi-racial sports", the legal repercussions against those who "resist genocide", and the "Zionist Occupation Government" that he said controls the United States and the other majority-white countries and which encourages "white genocide".


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Shortly after Lane's "Manifesto," the Aryan Nations published their 1996 "Declaration of Independence" stating that the Zionist Occupation Government sought "the eradication of the white race and its culture" as "one of its foremost purposes". It accused such Jews of subverting the constitutional rule of law; responsibility for post-Civil War Reconstruction; subverting the monetary system with the Federal Reserve System, confiscating land and property; limiting freedoms of speech, religion, and gun ownership; murdering, kidnapping and imprisoning patriots; abdicating national sovereignty to the United Nations; political repression; wasteful bureaucracy; loosening restrictions on immigration and drug trafficking; raising taxes; polluting the environment; commandeering the military, mercenaries, and police; denying Aryan cultural heritage; and inciting immigrant insurrections. Of these accusations, only passage of the Federal Reserve Act, ratification of the Charter of the United Nations, and imprisonment of members of The Order were cited as specific instances.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Another strand developed in Europe in the 1970s by Austrian neo-Nazi Gerd Honsik, who distorted the early 20th century writings of Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi with his invention of the Kalergi plan conspiracy theory, which was popularized in a 2005 book.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: In 1966, Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith was described as having convinced white Rhodesians that their only alternative to his government's Rhodesian Bush War was "dictatorship and white genocide" by communist-backed black nationalist guerrillas.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: White supremacists are described as being obsessed with the treatment of the formerly dominant white minorities in Zimbabwe and South Africa by the black majorities where "the diminished stature of whites is presented as an ongoing genocide that must be fought." In particular, the story of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was formerly known, ruled by a segregationist government under which most black people were denied the right to vote, holds a particular fascination for white supremacists. Zimbabwe's disastrous economic collapse under the leadership of its second black president, Robert Mugabe, together with the Mugabe government's policies towards the white minority has been cited by white supremacists as evidence of both the inferiority of blacks and a case of genocide against whites. In alt-right and white supremacist groups, there is much nostalgia for Rhodesia, which is seen as a state that fought valiantly for white supremacy in Africa in the 1960–1970s until it was betrayed.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: In 2008, the conspiracy theory spread beyond its explicit neo-Nazi and white nationalist origins, to be embraced by the newly founded alt-right movement. Discussion threads on the white nationalist Internet forum Stormfront often center around the theme of white people being subjected to genocidal policies by their governments. The concept has also been popularized by the alt-right and alt-lite movements in the United States. The notion of racial purity, homogeneity or "racial hygiene" is an underlying theme of the white genocide discourse and it has been used by people with neo-Nazi and white supremacist backgrounds.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: While individual iterations of the conspiracy theory vary on who is assigned blame, Jewish influence, people who hate whites, and liberal political forces are commonly cited by white supremacists as being the main factors leading to a white genocide. This view is held by prominent figures such as David Duke, who cites Jews and "liberal political ideals" as the main causes. White nationalist Robert Whitaker, who coined the phrase "anti-racist is a code word for anti-white" in a widely circulated 2006 piece seeking to popularize the white genocide concept online, used "anti-White" to describe those he believed are responsible for the genocide of white people, and continued to view it as a Jewish conspiracy while emphasizing that others also supported the "anti-White" cause. However, the view that Jews are responsible for a white genocide is contested by other white supremacist figures, such as Jared Taylor.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Starting with French author Renaud Camus and his 2011 book "Le Grand Remplacement," the conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement focused on a displacement of French whites by predominantly Muslim population from the Middle East and Africa, then turned into a pan-European concept which spread across most major countries' politics on the continent. Despite a common reference to a "genocide" of indigenous white peoples and a global plan led by a conspiring power, Camus's theory does not include an antisemitic Jewish plot. His removal of antisemitism from the original neo-Nazi theory (which has been replaced in the European context with Islamophobia), along with his use of simple catch-all slogans, have been cited as reasons for its broader appeal.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The Great Replacement has also been compared with the European Islamophobic strain of Bat Ye'or's 2002 Eurabia conspiracy theory, and with ideas expressed by far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, in his "2083: A European Declaration of Independence" manifesto. Since the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, where the shooter named his manifesto "The Great Replacement", the French-originated phrase has been widely established as synonymous with "white genocide", used by mainstream Western media interchangeably, and deemed largely responsible for the emerging term of "white replacement".


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: By 2017, at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, white nationalists were referencing the conspiracy theory as tiki torch-wielding protestors, who yelled "You will not replace us!" and "Jews will not replace us!". In response, Camus stated that he did not support Nazis or violence, but that he could understand why white Americans felt angry about being replaced, and that he approved of the sentiment.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: "White genocide anxiety", "white displacement anxiety", and the most commonly referred to, "white extinction anxiety" or panic, are said to be a key driving force behind the conspiracy theory and its supporters' adherence to it. The thesis, often cited as an explanation for some sections of white society's resistance to racial diversity, is reported as virtually inseparable from the conspiracy theory itself.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Former diplomat and scholar Alfredo Toro Hardy, who credits journalist Charles M. Blow with the term "white extinction anxiety", has outlined how "the anxieties related to the changing racial landscape of the United States" were at the heart of the concept, and propelled policies such as the Trump administration's "extreme measures against Southern immigrants". In this regard, Trump has been accused of capitalizing on "white genocide anxiety" with claims that immigration had "changed the fabric of Europe", and empowering his supporters in media, such as Laura Ingraham, to stoke fears of "massive demographic changes" within the US. Science journalist Ronald Bailey proposes that Trump is merely "the latest demagogue to rise to power by stoking white folks' ethnic fears", and that "white extinction panics" have historically occurred in the US each time the foreign-born population reached above 13 percent.Blow has defined "white extinction anxiety" as the fear that white people will become a minority, stripped of their race-based privilege. Analyzing the concept, he examined Pat Buchanan's rhetoric (described by Bailey as a form of blood and soil mantra); of whether the nations of Europe and North America had the "will and capacity to halt the invasion of the countries" before immigration altered the "political, social, racial, ethnic – character of the country entirely." Addressing Buchanan's arguably ethnic nationalist conclusions that "You cannot stop these sentiments of people who want to live together with their own and they want their borders protected", Blow said, "Make no mistake here, Buchanan is talking about protecting white dominance, white culture, white majorities and white power".


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Anti-racism activist Jane Elliott has suggested that this anxiety, or "Fear of White Genetic Annihilation", is so great that political leaders will resort to any measures in order to prevent the white extinction event that they believe is unfolding, including measures such as the Alabama abortion ban. Anders Behring Breivik's core ideology, and motivations behind his white supremacist attacks, has been described as white extinction anxiety. He had written: "This crisis of mass immigration and sub-replacement fertility is an assault on the European people that, if not combated, will ultimately result in the complete racial and cultural replacement of the European people".


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: According to professor Alexandra Minna Stern, who has detailed the connection between the conspiracy theory and the anxiety-framed concept, factions of the alt-right are distorting fertility statistics into a "conspiratorial campaign of white extinction" which is being fueled by a looming "white extinction anxiety". This phenomenon is driving alt-right strategies such as encouraging couples of Western and Northern European ethnicity to have up to eight children.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The white genocide conspiracy theory has continuously recurred among the far-right in a variety of forms, all centered around a core theme of white populations being replaced, removed, or simply killed.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Far-right and alt-right figures, such as singer Steve Hofmeyr, have claimed that a "white genocide" is taking place in South Africa. The South African singer, songwriter, political activist, actor, and TV presenter supports and promotes the conspiracy theory. "The Conversation" has credited Hofmeyr with popularizing the concept. In January 2017, media reported that Hofmeyr was set to meet US President-elect Donald Trump to discuss "white genocide" in South Africa. Hofmeyr later thanked Trump when the latter shared a tweet asking "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers."


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The manifesto of far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, entitled "2083: A European Declaration of Independence", devotes an entire section to an alleged "genocide" against Afrikaners. It also contains several other references to alleged persecution of whites in South Africa and the attacks on white farmers. Mike Cernovich, an American alt-right commentator, has previously stated that "white genocide in South Africa is real". The survivalist group the Suidlanders has claimed credit for internationally publicizing the risks of a race war and ethnic cleansing against whites.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Africa Check, a fact-checking organisation, rejected these claims as false in 2013: "In fact, whites are less likely to be murdered than any other race group." Africa Check reported that while whites account for nearly 9% of the South African population they represent just 1.8% of murder victims. Lizette Lancaster from the Institute for Security Studies has said that "Whites are far less likely to be murdered than their black or coloured counterparts." British journalist Joe Walsh reported that the murder rates in the mainly white suburbs of Johannesburg were far lower than in the black townships of Johannesburg, leading him to conclude: "If there was any kind of genocide being carried out against white people in the country then the safest areas of the continent's most dangerous city would not be predominately white."


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: South African journalist Lynsey Chutel reported in 2018: "After a peak in 2001/2002, the number of farm attacks—rape, robbery and other forms of violent crime short of murder—has decreased to about half. Similarly, the number of murders on farms peaked in 1997/1998 at 153, but today that number is below 50." Chutel stated that although some of the murders of white farmers may indeed be racially motivated, South Africa is a country with a high violent crime rate and white farmers are "isolated and believed to be wealthy". In the period July 2017 to July 2018, 47 farmers of all races were killed in South Africa, down from 66 murdered between July 2016 and July 2017. The worst year for farm murders in South Africa was 1998, when 153 farmers were killed. Between April 2016 and March 2017, there were a total of 19,016 murders in South Africa, suggesting that farmers are not especially likely to be killed in South Africa. Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch has condemned the misuse of his groups' reports of the threat of polarization in South Africa to further the idea of "white genocide".


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Much of the white genocide claims in South Africa rest on a misrepresentation of the Afrikaner people as conforming to the popular "Boer" stereotype as hard-working, devoutly Calvinist, gun-loving farmers. In 1989, the British journalist Patrick Brogan noted that the Afrikaners once called themselves "Boers" () because that was what they were, but the term "Boer" fell out of use in the 20th century as most of the Afrikaners moved to urban areas, making the term "Boer" highly anachronistic. Brogan concluded the popular "Boer" stereotype does not accurately describe the majority of the Afrikaners, whose way of life is very similar to that of middle-class people in other Western nations.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Even mainstream American conservatives who often championed the causes of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa, seeing both regimes as having supposedly more enlightened policies towards black people than the policy of integration in the United States, embraced the variants of the white genocide theory as part of the defense of Rhodesia and South Africa. In 2015, the Canadian journalist Jeet Heer wrote: "The idea that whites in America have a natural affinity with white colonialists in Africa did not spring from the neo-Nazi far-right, but rather the conservative movement that coalesced around "National Review" in the 1950s." In the July 1988 edition of "Commentary", David Roberts, Jr compared Nelson Mandela to Pol Pot and the African National Congress (ANC), the now ruling party in South Africa, to the Khmer Rouge, implying that the ANC would exterminate South African whites if it came to power. Shortly before his death in 2005 Samuel T. Francis, the former editor of the conservative "Washington Times", warned about the possibility of a "white genocide" in South Africa.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Simon Roche, an Afrikaner nationalist from South Africa and a spokesman for the survivalist group, the Suidlanders, that exists in his words "to prepare a Protestant Christian South African Minority for a coming violent revolution," visited the US in 2017 to promote the thesis that the white minority in South Africa is faced with the threat of ethnic cleansing. Roche stated he went to the US to "raise awareness of and support for the Caucasian Christian conservative "volk" [people] of South Africa ... There's a natural affinity with conservative white Americans."


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The Afrikaner group AfriForum's deputy director Ernst Roets has been erroneously linked by Radio 702, which it later apologised for, to false claims of white genocide, and South African government authorization of uncompensated seizures of land from white farmers. Roets' 2018 book "Kill the Boer" argues that the government is also complicit in attacks on white farmers, and characterizes the events as ethnic cleansing. Another South African, Willem Petzer, appeared as a guest on Gavin McInnes's podcast, accusing the ANC government of planning genocide.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Figures on the right of French politics, such as Renaud Camus, have claimed that a "white genocide" or "Great Replacement" is occurring in France. Camus's definition, which focuses largely on the white Christian population in France, has been used in media interchangeably with white genocide, and described as a narrower, less extreme and more nationally focused version of the broader conspiracy theory. Despite his focus on the specific demographics of France, Camus also believes all Western countries are facing a form of "ethnic and civilizational substitution".


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: In June 2017, Senator Stéphane Ravier's aide, running as one of the National Front's candidates, endorsed the conspiracy theory. Publishing a blonde girl's photograph with the words "Say no to white genocide"; days before the 2017 French legislative election, Ravier's assistant gave a political ultimatum "the National Front or the invasion".


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: The 2015 New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne resulted in accusations that the federal government and media were deliberately avoiding public interest reporting on 1,200 sexual assaults by thousands of young male Muslim immigrants. Apologies for hesitancy by public television channel ZDF strengthened claims of a "Lügenpresse" (lying press) by populist and far-right parties as evidence for widespread conspiracy by German institutions. The unprecedented scale of border crossings during 2015 and 2016 compelled Chancellor Angela Merkel to impose "temporary restrictions" on transit across the border with Austria. The alt-right conspiracy website Zero Hedge listed statistics on migrant crime in Germany alongside statements from politicians and news articles, presented as "contradictions confirming a deep-state level of conspiracy ... to push through a pro-immigration policy in Germany". During the 2017 German election campaign, the far-right Alternative for Germany party ran advertisements featuring a pregnant woman's abdomen with the slogan, "New Germans? We'll make them ourselves." Events like the 2015 New Year's Eve sexual assaults, and the great replacement conspiracy theory also further radicalized right-wing extremist Stephan Ernst, who in response assassinated the local politician Walter Lübcke in 2019. Based on protocols of his first confession, Ernst made Lübcke responsible for letting non-white refugees into the country.


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: A state-sponsored campaign led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has employed a wide range of historical anti-Semitic tropes to accuse philanthropist George Soros of engaging in conspiracies to support and deceive the public about nonwhite immigrants. Orbán has accused Soros, a Jew whose family survived hostile conditions during Hungary's Nazi occupation, of being a Nazi himself, and has introduced legislation known as the "Stop Soros law" to criminalize organized support of immigrants. These fabrications have become popular with the alt-right in Europe and the US. Orbán's 2018 campaign slogan was, "Christianity is Europe's last hope", saying, "our worst nightmares can come true. The West falls as it fails to see Europe being overrun."


title: White genocide conspiracy theory

text: Hundreds of Polish Facebook groups such as "Stop White Genocide" have produced and disseminated images depicting African and Middle eastern people as belonging to separate "primitive" species, lacking the human intelligence of white Europeans. Websites such as "Conspiracy Files" have fabricated allegations of political compacts to bolster nonwhite immigration against popular will, such as agreements signed by EU leaders and African nations to increase Europe's African population to 300 million by 2068, making native whites, "minorities within their own homeland".