title: Metronome

text: Some ideas are given by Marianne Ploger and Keith Hill in "The Craft of Musical Communication". They state that notes should be subtly unequal—having no three notes the same helps to keep the music alive and interesting, in contrast to something that could be perceived as rigid and monotonous, and helps prevent any feeling of sameness and boredom in the music— the idea of "Entasis". Notes and musical phrases can also be organized in gestures—particular patterns of rhythm that come naturally—rather than strict measures. Another alternative is delaying individual notes, such as waiting slightly longer to play the notes expected at the end of a musical phrase, building anticipation. Additionally, notes played together can be allowed to go somewhat out of time with each other in a care-free fashion "sans souci"—this can create a feeling of "relaxed effortlessness" when notes are deliberately played irregularly (compared to what is notated in the score).


title: Metronome

text: This is a minority view on interpretation of this style of music, but noteworthy because of its different approach to musical time and rhythm, and its relevance to the way rhythms can be practised. The more generally accepted view is that notes inégales were played with the same amount of swing nearly all the time, like modern jazz.


title: Sophia Anne Caruso

text: Sophia Anne Caruso (born July 11, 2001) is an American actress and singer best known for originating the role of Lydia Deetz in the Broadway musical "Beetlejuice", a role for which she won a Theatre World Award. She also portrays Sophie in "The School for Good and Evil", in 2022. Other theatre credits include Girl in "Lazarus" (2015-17) and Iris in "The Nether" (2015).


title: Sophia Anne Caruso

text: Caruso was born on July 11, 2001 in Spokane, Washington to Steve Caruso, a former “club pro” golf professional, and Deena Caruso, who owned several clothing and jewelry stores. She is the youngest of three children. Caruso was involved in the local Spokane Children's Theatre, starting at age 7, before transitioning to theatre at Spokane Civic Theatre and Interplayers Professional Theatre. Caruso made her professional debut in 2011 at age nine when she played Helen Keller in the Interplayers Professional Theatre production of "The Miracle Worker" in Spokane.


title: Sophia Anne Caruso

text: Caruso’s final role in Spokane was as Tina Denmark in Ruthless! The Musical at Interplayers in June 2012. However, it never opened because actor David Gigler collapsed on stage during rehearsal just days before opening and died.


title: Sophia Anne Caruso

text: In 2014, Caruso was able to reprise her role as Tina Denmark in Ruthless! for a limited run at the Triad Theatre. The next month, she originated the role of Charlotte van Gotheem in "Little Dancer" at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.


title: Sophia Anne Caruso

text: In 2015, Caruso appeared in the off-Broadway play "The Nether" at the MCC Theater, for which she received a Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. Later than year, Caruso originated the role of "Girl" in David Bowie's musical "Lazarus" at New York Theatre Workshop in Manhattan.


title: Sophia Anne Caruso

text: She then made her Broadway debut as The Girl in "Blackbird" at the Belasco Theatre. Later that year, she appeared in the ensemble of the Encores! staged concert production of "Runaways" at New York City Center. In October 2016, she reprised her role as "Girl" in London in the King's Cross Theatre production of "Lazarus" for which she received a WhatsOnStage Award nomination for "Best Supporting Actress in a Musical".


title: Sophia Anne Caruso

text: In 2017, Caruso originated the role of Lydia Deetz in a workshop of the musical "Beetlejuice", reprising the role in the musical's tryout at the National Theatre in Washington D.C. before starring in the Broadway production beginning in March 2019. She won a Theatre World Award for the role. Caruso left the show abruptly on February 19, 2020, using her contractual out in order to pursue work in film and television.


title: Sophia Anne Caruso

text: Caruso's debut single "Toys" was released on May 22, 2020. The song was produced by Henry Hey, who worked with Caruso as the musical director of "Lazarus", and Nick Littlemore of Empire of the Sun. She plans to release an EP. In July 2022, Caruso released another single, "Snow & Ice".


title: Sophia Anne Caruso

text: Caruso was cast to star alongside Sofia Wylie as Sophie in the Netflix fantasy film "The School for Good and Evil", an adaptation of the book series by Soman Chainani.


title: Jani Lane

text: Jani Lane (born John Kennedy Oswald; February 1, 1964 – August 11, 2011) was an American singer and the lead vocalist, frontman, lyricist and main songwriter for the glam metal band Warrant. From Hollywood, California, the band experienced success from 1989 to 1996 with five albums reaching international sales of over 10 million. Lane left Warrant in 2004 and again in 2008 after a brief reunion. Lane also released a solo album, "Back Down to One," in 2003, and the album "Love the Sin, Hate the Sinner" with a new group, Saints of the Underground, in 2008. Lane contributed lead vocals and songwriting to various projects throughout his career.


title: Jani Lane

text: Lane was born John Kennedy Oswald (later changed to John Patrick Oswald), on February 1, 1964, in Akron, Ohio to Robert and Eileen Oswald. He was raised in Brimfield with four older siblings: sisters Marcine Williams, Michelle Robinson and Victoria Ley, plus older brother Eric, already an accomplished guitarist. With sisters Micki and Vicky and brother Eric harmonizing and playing guitar, Lane taught himself to play drums, guitar and piano by ear by age five. He grew up listening to Cleveland rock station WMMS (100.7 FM "The Buzzard") and was introduced to a variety of music by his older siblings.


title: Jani Lane

text: With connections from his brother Eric around the music scene (and with his parents' help), Lane made a name for himself at a very young age. He played drums under the pseudonym "Mitch Dynamite" in clubs by age 11 especially with a local band "Pokerface." By that time, his siblings had left for college or marriage, Lane's Father " Ozzie" continued to network with local bands and club owners to help promote Jani's musical talent in pursuit of his dream. Lane graduated from Field High School, in Mogadore, Ohio, a nearby city to Brimfield in 1982.


title: Jani Lane

text: Lane is credited as the vocalist/drummer on Warrant's "Latest and Greatest" CD. Throughout his career, Lane would sometimes play drums/acoustic guitar and piano with his band and played the drums in various formats and gigs with other musicians.


title: Jani Lane

text: After high school, Lane joined the band Cyren, featuring vocalist Skip Hammonds, guitarist John Weakland, bassist Don Hoover (and later Rusty Fohner) with Lane on drums and vocals. Many of Cyren's shows opened for a popular local band called Risqué. When Risqué's bassist, Al Collins, noticed Lane's vocal talents, he convinced Lane to form a new band they eventually called Dorian Gray. The new band also included Steven Chamberlin on drums and Dave Chamberlin on lead guitar. Dorian Gray was designed to have Lane as the lead vocalist and to perform original material, but Lane wasn't ready to be the lead singer and quickly returned to the drum kit. Billy Denmead was hired as lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist. After only a few shows, Collins left the band, vowing to put a band together when Lane was ready to be a lead vocalist.


title: Jani Lane

text: Lane moved to Florida in 1983 with Dorian Gray. Eventually deciding to assume a lead vocalist role, he formed Plain Jane with Collins and Chamberlin, adopting the stage name "Jani Lane" (Chamberlin would also soon rechristen himself Steven Sweet). He took the name "Jani" from his German grandparents, who spelled his name "Jani" and pronounced it "Yay-nee." Lane began vocal training with vocal coach/trainer Ron Feldmann, who introduced him to Creative Engineering, Inc. in Orlando. Lane worked there as a programmer of the animatronic character Dook LaRue, the drummer for The Rock-afire Explosion. His vocal debut was at The Station in Fern Park, Florida.


title: Jani Lane

text: Lane, Collins, and Chamberlin recorded the first Plain Jane four-track demos at their rented house in Winter Park, Florida. Although reluctant to leave Florida, they rented a trailer in the spring of 1984 and moved to California with hopes of landing a record deal. They were broke by the time they landed at the Hollywood Bowl Motel and resorted to making sandwiches with mustard packets while taking turns calling their parents for cash.


title: Jani Lane

text: Struggling to make ends meet as a musician, Lane resorted to working in a pornographic video warehouse. The band, along with a new road crew and a few girlfriends, pooled their wages and lived in a two-bedroom condominium rented by new Plain Jane guitarist Paul Noble. At one time, there were 13 people living in the crowded space.


title: Jani Lane

text: By 1985, Plain Jane had become a regular feature on the Los Angeles club circuit and opened many shows for a band called Warrant. Plain Jane's bassist and guitarist both left the band on the same day Warrant's singer and drummer quit. Erik Turner, who had founded Warrant in July 1984, was impressed by Plain Jane's songwriting and vocal performance and invited Lane and Sweet to jam with his band at Hollywood's db Sound in September 1986.


title: Jani Lane

text: After generating notoriety on the club circuit, Warrant began to attract the attention of record labels. Following an abortive deal with A&M Records over a contribution to the soundtrack for the motion picture "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure," the band signed with Columbia Records. The Columbia deal came via the partnering of Warrant and manager Tom Hulett, known for working with The Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, The Moody Blues and others. Hulett became Lane's mentor and friend until Hulett's death from cancer in 1993.


title: Jani Lane

text: As lead vocalist with Warrant, Lane wrote all of the material for the band's 1989 debut double platinum album, "Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich", including four Top 40 hit singles: "Down Boys", "Sometimes She Cries", "Big Talk" and the No. 2 "Billboard" Hot 100 hit "Heaven." The album peaked at no. 10 on The Billboard 200. Lane also wrote four Top 40 hit singles ("Cherry Pie," "I Saw Red," "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Blind Faith") for the second album, the 1990 double platinum "Cherry Pie," which peaked at no. 7 on the Billboard 200. Lane also co-wrote and performed with Warrant the song "The Power" in the 1992 movie "Gladiator". In 1992, Warrant released "Dog Eat Dog," their gold third album, which peaked at no. 25 on the Billboard 200.


title: Jani Lane

text: Lane left Warrant in March 1993 to pursue a solo career. He returned six months later, helping the band secure a new record with Tom Lipsky of CMC International. Warrant recorded "Ultraphobic" in 1995, "Belly to Belly" in 1996, "Greatest & Latest" in 1999 and a cover album, "Under the Influence," in 2001.


title: Jani Lane

text: Due to personal and business disagreements, Lane left Warrant again in 2004. In January 2008, the band's agent, The William Morris Agency, issued a new photograph of the band with Lane prominently featured, confirming his return to the band. It was the first time that all original members had been in the band since 1993. The band's first show with all original members was in May 2008 in Nashville, Tennessee. Warrant performed a series of shows during the summer of 2008, but by September, the band and Lane agreed to move forward separately due to "too much water under the bridge." Warrant and Lane both continued to perform Lane's compositions live and Lane continued to write for himself and other artists.


title: Jani Lane

text: Lane became involved in acting in the early 1990s. He made a brief appearance in "Caged Fear" and appeared in "High Strung" in 1991.


title: Jani Lane

text: In 1993, Lane started working on his first solo project. Titled "Jabberwocky," the album represented a significant musical departure from previous work. Between 1997 and 2000, demos of Lane's solo material began surfacing on the Internet, with some bids on eBay reaching an estimated $100 per copy. In 2002, Lane decided to postpone the "Jabberwocky" project and released a new project as his debut solo album. The "Jabberwocky" project remained unreleased.


title: Jani Lane

text: Lane's official debut solo album, "Back Down to One", was released on June 17, 2003, through "Z Records" and in the U.S. in 2006 on Immortal/Sidewinder Records. It carried a "power pop" sound more closely aligned with the sound of Warrant than "Jabberwocky." Shortly after the album's release, Lane was admitted to a rehabilitation center for alcohol and drug-related exhaustion.


title: Jani Lane

text: In the fall of 2004, Lane contributed lead vocals for the first ever theme song to a novel, Billy McCarthy's "The Devil of Shakespeare," along with James Young from Styx, Ron Flynt of 20/20 and Chip Z'Nuff of Enuff Z'Nuff.


title: Jani Lane

text: Lane contributed vocals on the track "Bastille Day" and "2112 Overture/Temples of Syrinx" for the Magna Carta 2005 Rush tribute album "Subdivisions."


title: Jani Lane

text: Lane had success with the "VH1 Classic Metal Mania: Stripped" discs, where the acoustic version of "I Saw Red" was included on disc 1, a new acoustic swinging version of "Cherry Pie" featured on disc 2, and a new acoustic version of "Heaven" featured on disc 3.


title: Jani Lane

text: In 2005, Lane became a fan favorite on the popular VH1 series "Celebrity Fit Club 2". His problems with alcohol were highlighted and many viewers supported his efforts at recovery.


title: Jani Lane

text: With the reissue and U.S. release of "Back Down to One" in 2006, Lane attempted to restart his version of Warrant. Although "Back Down to One" was credited as a solo release, Lane assembled a new touring band called "Jani Lane's Warrant." The band's first shows in Michigan were stopped by legal action from former bandmates objecting to his use of the Warrant logo on his posters. Lane subsequently continued touring without the Warrant name and logo.


title: Jani Lane

text: Lane lent his vocals to numerous tribute CDs during the 2000s. In 2007, he released a solo cover album titled "Photograph," featuring a collection of his tribute contributions.


title: Jani Lane

text: Keri Kelli and Lane wrote a song for Alice Cooper titled "The One That Got Away." It was recorded by Cooper on his 2008 record "Along Came a Spider". Lane also finished work on a side project, Saints of the Underground, which included Kelli and Bobby Blotzer and Robbie Crane, (both from Ratt). Their album, "Love the Sin, Hate the Sinner," was released on April 22, 2008, by Warrior Records, and was mixed by producer/engineer Andy Johns, who'd worked with The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. The album featured additional bass work by Chuck Wright (Quiet Riot, House of Lords). The band was originally called "Angel City Outlaws" when they posted their first two promo singles, "Bruised" and "Exit."


title: Jani Lane

text: In summer 2010, Lane toured with Great White, filling in for singer Jack Russell, who was recuperating from surgery after suffering internal complications.


title: Jani Lane

text: During the shooting of Warrant's "Cherry Pie" video, Lane met model Bobbie Brown, who starred in the video, and they married in July 1991. They had a daughter, Taylar, in 1992 and divorced in 1993. Their relationship was recounted in Brown's 2013 autobiography, "Dirty Rocker Boys", co-written with Caroline Ryder. In 1996, Lane married actress Rowanne Brewer, a former Miss Maryland USA. They had a daughter, Madison, in 1997 and divorced in 2005.


title: Jani Lane

text: On August 11, 2011, the Los Angeles Police Department and local news stations announced that Lane was found dead of acute alcohol poisoning at a Comfort Inn hotel in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 47. Lane was pronounced dead by fire department personnel who responded to a call shortly before 5:30 p.m.


title: Jani Lane

text: A public memorial concert with performances by Great White, Quiet Riot and L.A. Guns was held on August 29 at the Key Club in Hollywood.


title: Jani Lane

text: A biopic called Cherry Pie Guy is being made about Lane's life. Radio personality/comedian Jeff Dandurand will portray Jani and also direct the film.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The Parliament of Canada () is the federal legislature of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, and is composed of three parts: the King, the Senate, and the House of Commons. By constitutional convention, the House of Commons is dominant, with the Senate rarely opposing its will. The Senate reviews legislation from a less partisan standpoint and may initiate certain bills. The monarch or his representative, normally the governor general, provides royal assent to make bills into law.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The governor general, on behalf of the monarch, summons and appoints the 105 senators on the advice of the prime minister, while each of the 338 members of the House of Commons – called members of Parliament (MPs) – represents an electoral district, commonly referred to as a "riding", and are elected by Canadian voters residing in the riding. The governor general also summons and calls together the House of Commons, and may prorogue or dissolve Parliament, in order to either end a parliamentary session or call a general election. The governor general also delivers the Throne Speech at the opening of each new Parliament (the monarch occasionally has done so, instead of the governor general, when visiting Canada).


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The current Parliament, summoned by Governor General Mary Simon in November 2021, is the 44th Parliament since Confederation in 1867. The official languages of the Parliament are English and French.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The body consists of the Canadian monarch, represented by a viceroy, the governor general; an upper house, the Senate; and a lower house, the House of Commons. Each element has its own officers and organization. Each has a distinct role, but work in conjunction within the legislative process. This format was inherited from the United Kingdom and is a near-identical copy of the Parliament at Westminster, the greatest differences stemming from situations unique to Canada, such as the impermanent nature of the monarch's residency in the country and the lack of a peerage to form the upper chamber.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Only those who sit in the House of Commons are usually called members of Parliament (MPs); the term is not usually applied to senators (except in legislation, such as the "Parliament of Canada Act"), even though the Senate is a part of Parliament. Though legislatively less powerful, senators take higher positions in the national order of precedence. No individual may serve in more than one chamber at the same time.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The sovereign's place in the legislature, formally known as the King-in-Parliament, is defined by the "Constitution Act, 1867", and various conventions. Neither he nor his viceroy, however, participates in the legislative process save for signifying the King's approval to a bill passed by both houses of Parliament, known as the granting of Royal Assent, which is necessary for a bill to be enacted as law. All federal bills thus begin with the phrase "Now, therefore, His Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows ..." and, as such, the Crown is immune from acts of Parliament unless expressed otherwise in the act itself. The governor general will normally perform the task of granting Royal Assent, though the monarch may also do so, at the request of either the Cabinet or the viceroy, who may defer assent to the sovereign as per the constitution.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: As both the monarch and his or her representatives are traditionally barred from the House of Commons, any parliamentary ceremonies in which they are involved take place in the Senate chamber. The upper and lower houses do, however, each contain a mace, which indicates the authority of the King-in-Parliament and the privilege granted to that body by him, both bearing a crown at their apex. The original mace for the Senate was that used in the Legislative Council of the Province of Canada after 1849, while that of the House of Commons was inherited from the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, first used in 1845. Following the burning of the Centre Block on 3 February 1916, the City of London, England, donated a replacement, which is still used today. The temporary mace, made of wood, and used until the new one arrived from the United Kingdom in 1917, is still carried into the Senate each 3 February. The Senate's 1.6-metre-long mace comprises brass and gold. The Senate may not sit if its mace is not in the chamber; it typically sits on the table with the crown facing the throne, though it may, during certain ceremonies, be held by the mace bearer, standing adjacent to the governor general or monarch in the Senate.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Members of the two houses of Parliament must also express their loyalty to the sovereign and defer to his authority, as the Oath of Allegiance must be sworn by all new parliamentarians before they may take their seats. Further, the official opposition is formally called His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, to signify that, though they may be opposed to the incumbent Cabinet's policies, they remain dedicated to the apolitical Crown.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The upper house of the Parliament of Canada, the Senate (), is a group of 105 individuals appointed by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister; all those appointed must, per the constitution, be a minimum of 30 years old, be a subject of the monarch, and own property with a net worth of at least $4,000, in addition to owning land worth no less than $4,000 within the province the candidate seeks to represent. Senators served for life until 1965, when a constitutional amendment imposed a mandatory retirement age of 75. Senators may, however, resign their seats prior to that mark, and can lose their position should they fail to attend two consecutive sessions of Parliament.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The principle underlying the Senate's composition is equality amongst Canada's geographic regions (called Divisions in the Constitution): 24 for Ontario, 24 for Quebec, 24 for the Maritimes (10 for Nova Scotia, 10 for New Brunswick, and four for Prince Edward Island), and 24 for the Western provinces (six each for Manitoba, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Alberta). Additionally, senators are appointed from two geographic areas not part of any senatorial division. Newfoundland and Labrador (since 1949 the "newest" province, although "oldest" English settlement), is represented by six senators. Since 1975 each of Canada's territories is represented by 1 senator—the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and (since its formation in 1999) Nunavut. An additional 4 or 8 senators may be appointed by the governor general, provided the approval of the King is secured and the four divisions are equally represented. This power has been employed once since 1867: to ensure the passage of the bill establishing the Goods and Services Tax, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney advised Queen Elizabeth II to appoint extra senators in 1990. This results in a temporary maximum number of senators of 113, which must through attrition return to its normal number of 105.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The elected component of the Canadian Parliament is the House of Commons (), with each member chosen by a plurality of voters in each of the country's federal electoral districts, or ridings. To run for one of the 338 seats in the lower house, an individual must be at least 18 years old. Each member holds office until Parliament is dissolved, after which they may seek re-election. The ridings are regularly reorganized according to the results of each decennial national census; however, the "senatorial clause" of the "Constitution Act, 1867" guarantees each province at least as many MPs as it has senators, and the "grandfather clause" permits each province as many MPs as it had in either 1976 or 1985. The existence of this legislation has pushed the size of the House of Commons above the required minimum of 282 seats.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The powers of the Parliament of Canada are limited by the constitution, which divides legislative abilities between the federal and provincial legislatures; in general, provincial legislatures may only pass laws relating to topics explicitly reserved for them by the constitution (such as education, provincial officers, municipal government, charitable institutions, and "matters of a merely local or private nature") while any matter not under the exclusive authority of the provincial legislatures is within the scope of the federal Parliament's power. Thus, Parliament alone can pass laws relating to, among other things, the postal service, census, military, navigation and shipping, fishing, currency, banking, weights and measures, bankruptcy, copyrights, patents, First Nations, and naturalization. In some cases, however, the jurisdictions of the federal and provincial parliaments may be more vague. For instance, the federal parliament regulates marriage and divorce in general, but the solemnization of marriage is regulated only by the provincial legislatures. Other examples include the powers of both the federal and provincial parliaments to impose taxes, borrow money, punish crimes, and regulate agriculture.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The powers of Parliament are also limited by the "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms", though most of its provisions can be overridden by use of the notwithstanding clause. Such clause, however, has never been used by the federal parliament, though it has been employed by some provincial legislatures. Laws violating any part of the constitution are invalid and may be ruled unconstitutional by the courts.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Each of Parliament's two chambers is presided over by a speaker; that for the Senate is a member appointed by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister, while the equivalent for the House of Commons is a member of Parliament, who is elected by the other members of that body. In general, the powers of the latter are greater than those of the former. Following the British model, the upper chamber is essentially self-regulating, but the lower chamber is controlled by the chair, in a majoritarian model that gives great power and authority to the chair. In 1991, however, the powers of the speaker of the Senate were expanded, which reorganized the balance of power to be closer to the framework of the Commons.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The usher of the black rod of the Senate of Canada is the most senior protocol position in Parliament, being the personal messenger to the legislature of the sovereign and governor general. The usher is also a floor officer of the Senate responsible for security in that chamber, as well as for protocol, administrative, and logistical details of important events taking place on Parliament Hill, such as the Speech from the Throne, Royal Assent ceremonies, state funerals, or the investiture of a new governor general.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Other officers of Parliament include the auditor general, chief electoral officer, official languages commissioner, privacy commissioner, information commissioner, conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, public sector integrity commissioner, and commissioner of lobbying. These individuals are appointed by either one or both houses, to which they report through the speaker of that house. They are sometimes referred to as "Agents of Parliament". Another key official is the parliamentary librarian, a position established in 1871 under the "Library of Parliament Act", charged with directing the Library of Parliament.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The "Constitution Act, 1867", outlines that the governor general alone is responsible for summoning Parliament, though it remains the monarch's prerogative to prorogue and dissolve the legislature, after which the writs for a general federal election are usually dropped by the governor general at Rideau Hall. Upon completion of the election, the governor general, on the advice of the prime minister, then issues a royal proclamation summoning Parliament to assemble. On the date given, new MPs are sworn in and then are, along with returning MPs, called to the Senate, where they are instructed to elect their speaker and return to the House of Commons to do so before adjourning.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The new parliamentary session is marked by the opening of Parliament, a ceremony where a range of topics can be addressed in a Speech From the Throne given by the monarch, the governor general, or a royal delegate. The usher of the black rod invites MPs to these events, knocking on the doors of the lower house that have been slammed shut—a symbolic arrangement designed to illustrate the Commons' right to deny entry to anyone, including even the monarch (but with an exception for royal messengers). Once the MPs are gathered behind the Bar of the Senate—save for the prime minister, the only MP permitted into the Senate proper to sit near the throne dais—the House of Commons speaker presents to the monarch or governor general, and formally claims the rights and privileges of the House of Commons; and then the speaker of the Senate, on behalf of the Crown, replies in acknowledgement after the sovereign or viceroy takes their seat on the throne. The speech is then read aloud. It can outline the program of the Cabinet for the upcoming legislative session, as well as other matters chosen by the speaker.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: A parliamentary session lasts until a prorogation, after which, without ceremony, both chambers of the legislature cease all legislative business until the governor general issues another proclamation calling for a new session to begin; except for the election of a speaker for the House of Commons and his or her claiming of that house's privileges, the same procedures for the opening of Parliament are again followed. After a number of such sessions—having ranged from one to seven—a Parliament comes to an end via dissolution, and a general election typically follows. Subject to the governor general's discretion, general elections are held four years after the previous on the third Monday in October or, on the recommendation of the chief electoral officer, the following Tuesday or Monday. The governor general may dissolve Parliament and call a general election outside of these fixed dates, conventionally on the advice of the prime minister, which may be preceded by a successful motion of no confidence. The timing of such dissolutions may be politically motivated.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Both houses determine motions by voice vote; the presiding officer puts the question and, after listening to shouts of "yea" and "nay" from the members, announces which side is victorious. This decision by the Speaker is final, unless a recorded vote is demanded by members—requiring at least two in the Senate and five in the House of Commons. Members of both houses vote by rising in their places to be counted; the speaker of the Senate is permitted to vote on a motion or bill—though does so irregularly, in the interest of impartiality—and, if there is no majority, the motion is defeated. In the Commons, however, the speaker cannot vote, unless to break a tie. The speaker customarily votes in favour of the status quo. The constitution establishes the quorums to be 15 senators in the upper house and 20 members in the lower house, the speaker of each body being counted within the tally.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Voting can thus take three possible forms: whenever possible, leaving the matter open for future consideration and allowing for further discussion by the house; when no further discussion is possible, taking into account that the matter could somehow be brought back in future and be decided by a majority in the house; or, leaving a bill in its existing form rather than having it amended. For example, during the vote on the 2005 budget, which was considered a vote of confidence, the speaker of the House of Commons cast the tie-breaking vote during the second reading, moving in favour of the budget and allowing its passage. If the vote on the third reading had again been tied, the speaker would have been expected to vote against the bill, bringing down the government.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Simultaneous interpretation for both official languages, English and French, is provided at all times during sessions of both houses.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Laws, known in their draft form as bills, may be introduced by any member of either house. However, most bills originate in the House of Commons, of which most are put forward by ministers of the Crown, making them government bills, as opposed to private members' bills or private senators' bills, which are launched by MPs and senators, respectively, who are not in cabinet. Draft legislation may also be categorized as public bills, if they apply to the general public, or private bills, if they concern a particular person or limited group of people. Each bill then goes through a series of stages in each chamber, beginning with the first reading. It is not, however, until the bill's second reading that the general principles of the proposed law are debated; though rejection is a possibility, such is not common for government bills.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Next, the bill is sent by the house where it is being debated to one of several committees. The Standing Orders outline the general mandate for all committees, allowing them to review: bills as they pertain to relevant departments; the program and policy plans, as well as the projected expenditures, and the effectiveness of the implementation thereof, for the same departments; and the analysis of the performance of those departments. Most often, bills end up before a standing committee, which is a body of members or senators who specialize in a particular subject (such as foreign affairs), and who may hear testimony from ministers and experts, debate the bill, and recommend amendments. The bill may also be committed to the Committee of the Whole, a body consisting of, as the name suggests, all the members of the chamber in question. Finally, the bill could be referred to an "ad hoc" committee established solely to review the piece of legislation in question. Each chamber has their own procedure for dealing with this, with the Senate establishing special committees that function like most other committees, and the House of Commons establishing legislative committees, the chair of the latter being appointed by the speaker of the House of Commons, and is normally one of his deputies. Whichever committee is used, any amendments proposed by the committee are considered by the whole house in the report stage. Furthermore, additional amendments not proposed by the committee may also be made.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: After the report stage (or, if the committee made no amendments to the bill, immediately after the committee stage), the final phase of the bill—the third reading—occurs, at which time further amendments are not permitted in the House of Commons, but are allowed in the Senate. If it passes the third reading, the bill is sent to the other house of Parliament, where it passes through the same stages; amendments made by the second chamber require the assent of the original house in order to stand part of the final bill. If one house passes amendments that the other will not agree to, and the two houses cannot resolve their disagreements, the bill fails.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Once the bill is passed in identical form by both houses, it is presented for Royal Assent; in theory, the governor general has three options: grant Royal Assent, thereby making the bill into law; withhold Royal Assent, thereby vetoing the bill; or reserve the bill for the signification of the King's pleasure, which allows the sovereign to personally grant or withhold assent. If the governor general does grant Royal Assent, the monarch may, within two years, disallow the bill, thus annulling the law in question. In the federal sphere, no bill has ever been denied royal approval.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: In conformity with the British model, only the House of Commons may originate bills for the imposition of taxes or for the appropriation of Crown funds. The constitutional amendment procedure does make provision for the Commons overcoming an otherwise-required Senate resolution in most cases. Otherwise, the theoretical power of both houses over bills is equal, with the assent of each being required for passage. In practice, however, the House of Commons is dominant, with the Senate rarely exercising its powers in a way that opposes the will of the democratically elected house.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The federal government consists of the monarch (represented by the governor general)-in-council, which is a collection of ministers of the Crown appointed by the governor general to direct the use of executive powers. Per the tenets of responsible government, these individuals are almost always drawn from Parliament, and are predominantly from the House of Commons, the only body to which ministers are held accountable, typically during Question Period, wherein ministers are obliged to answer questions posed by members of the opposition. Hence, the person who can command the confidence of the lower chamber—usually the leader of the party with the most seats therein—is typically appointed as prime minister. Should that person not hold a seat in the House of Commons, the prime minister will, by convention, seek election to one at the earliest possible opportunity; frequently, in such situations, a junior member of Parliament who holds a safe seat will resign to allow the prime minister to run for that riding in a by-election. If no party holds a majority, it is customary for the governor general to summon a minority government or coalition government, depending on which the commons will support.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The lower house may attempt to bring down the government by either rejecting a motion of confidence—generally initiated by a minister to reinforce the Cabinet's support in the commons—or by passing a motion of no confidence—introduced by the opposition to display its distrust of the Cabinet. Important bills that form part of the government's agenda will usually be considered matters of confidence; the budget is always a matter of confidence. Where a government has lost the confidence of the House of Commons, the prime minister is obliged to either resign (allowing the governor general to appoint the leader of the Opposition to the office) or seek the dissolution of Parliament and the call of a general election. A precedent, however, was set in 1968, when the government of Lester B. Pearson unexpectedly lost a confidence vote but was allowed to remain in power with the mutual consent of the leaders of the other parties.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: In practice, the House of Commons' scrutiny of the government is quite weak in comparison to the equivalent chamber in other countries using the Westminster system. With the plurality voting system used in parliamentary elections tending to provide the governing party with a large majority, and a party system that gives leaders strict control over their caucus (to the point that MPs may be expelled from their parties for voting against the instructions of party leaders), there is often limited need to compromise with other parties. Additionally, Canada has fewer MPs, a higher turnover rate of MPs after each election, and an Americanized system for selecting political party leaders, leaving them accountable to the party membership rather than caucus, as is the case in the United Kingdom; John Robson of the "National Post" opined that Canada's parliament had become a body akin to the American Electoral College, "its sole and ceremonial role to confirm the executive in power."


title: Parliament of Canada

text: At the end of the 20th century and into the 21st, analysts—such as Jeffrey Simpson, Donald Savoie, and John Gomery—argued that both Parliament and the Cabinet had become eclipsed by prime ministerial power. Thus, defeats of majority governments on issues of confidence are very rare. In contrast, a minority government is more volatile, and is more likely to fall due to loss of confidence. The last prime ministers to lose confidence votes were Stephen Harper in 2011, Paul Martin in 2005 and Joe Clark in 1979, all involving minority governments. The passage of the "Reform Act" and resulting changes to the "Parliament of Canada Act", in 2015, were a response to this trend and an attempt to increase the power and independence of MPs.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Parliament possesses a number of privileges, collectively and accordingly known as parliamentary privilege, each house being the guardian and administrator of its own set of rights. Parliament itself determines the extent of parliamentary privilege, each house overseeing its own affairs, but the constitution bars it from conferring any "exceeding those at the passing of such an Act held, enjoyed, and exercised by the [British House of] Commons... and by the Members thereof."


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The foremost dispensation held by both houses of Parliament is that of freedom of speech in debate; nothing said within the chambers may be questioned by any court or other institution outside of Parliament. In particular, a member of either house cannot be sued for slander based on words uttered in the course of parliamentary proceedings, the only restraint on debate being set by the standing orders of each house. Further, MPs and senators are immune to arrest in civil (but not criminal) cases, from jury service and attendance in courts as witnesses. They may, however, be disciplined by their colleagues for breach of the rules, including contempt of Parliament—disobedience of its authority; for example, giving false testimony before a parliamentary committee—and breaches of its own privileges.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The Canadian Heraldic Authority, on 15 April 2008, granted the Parliament of Canada, as an institution, a heraldic achievement composed of symbols of the three elements of Parliament: the escutcheon of the Royal Arms of Canada with the maces of the House of Commons and Senate crossed behind.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Following the cession of New France to the United Kingdom in the 1763 Treaty of Paris, Canada was governed according to the Royal Proclamation issued by King George III in that same year. To this was added the Quebec Act, by which the power to make ordinances was granted to a governor-in-council, both the governor and council being appointed by the British monarch in Westminster, on the advice of his or her ministers there. In 1791, the Province of Quebec was divided into Upper and Lower Canada, each with an elected legislative assembly, an appointed legislative council, and a governor, mirroring the parliamentary structure in Britain.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: During the War of 1812, American troops set fire to the buildings of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada in York (now Toronto). In 1841, the British government united the two Canadas into the Province of Canada, with a single legislature composed of, again, an assembly, council, and governor general; the 84 members of the lower chamber were equally divided among the two former provinces, though Lower Canada had a higher population. The governor still held significant personal influence over Canadian affairs until 1848, when responsible government was implemented in Canada.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The actual site of Parliament shifted on a regular basis: From 1841 to 1844, it sat in Kingston, where the present Kingston General Hospital now stands; from 1844 until the 1849 fire that destroyed the building, the legislature was in Montreal; and, after a few years of alternating between Toronto and Quebec City, the legislature was finally moved to Ottawa in 1856, in 1857.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The modern-day Parliament of Canada came into existence in 1867, in which year the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland passed the "British North America Act, 1867", uniting the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Canada—with the Province of Canada split into Quebec and Ontario—into a single federation called the Dominion of Canada. Though the form of the new federal legislature was again nearly identical to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the decision to retain this model was made with heavy influence from the just-concluded American Civil War, which indicated to many Canadians the faults of the American federal system, with its relatively powerful states and a less powerful federal government. The "British North America Act" limited the powers of the provinces, providing that all subjects not explicitly delegated to them by that document remain within the authority of the Canadian Parliament, while simultaneously giving the provinces unique powers in certain agreed-upon areas of jurisdiction.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: Full legislative autonomy was granted by the Statute of Westminster, 1931, passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Though the statute allowed the Parliament of Canada to repeal or amend previously British laws as they applied to Canada, it did not permit amendment to Canada's constitution, including the British North America Acts. Hence, whenever a constitutional amendment was sought by the Canadian Parliament, the enactment of a British law was necessary, though Canada's consent was required. The Parliament of Canada was granted limited power to amend the constitution by a British Act of Parliament in 1949, but it was not permitted to affect the powers of provincial governments, the official positions of the English and French languages, rights of any class of persons with respect to schools, or the maximum five-year term of the legislature.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: While her father, King George VI, had been the first Canadian monarch to grant royal assent in the legislature—doing so in 1939—Queen Elizabeth II was the first sovereign to deliver the speech from the throne. This event, in 1957, was the first time television cameras were allowed into the chambers of parliament, as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast the speech nation-wide.


title: Parliament of Canada

text: The Canadian House of Commons and Senate last requested the Parliament of the United Kingdom to enact a constitutional amendment in 1982, in the form of the "Canada Act 1982" which included the "Constitution Act, 1982". This legislation terminated the power of the British Parliament's ability to legislate for Canada and the authority to amend the constitution was transferred to the Canadian House of Commons, the Senate, and the provincial legislative assemblies, acting jointly. Most amendments require the consent of the Senate, the House of Commons, and the legislative assemblies of two-thirds of the provinces representing a majority of the population; the unanimous consent of provincial legislative assemblies is required for certain amendments, including those affecting the sovereign, the governor general, the provincial lieutenant governors, the official status of the English and French languages, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the amending formulas themselves.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Greenwich (, ) is a town in southwestern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. At the 2020 census, the town had a total population of 63,518. The largest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast, Greenwich is home to many hedge funds and other financial services firms. Greenwich is a principal community of the Bridgeport–Stamford–Norwalk–Danbury metropolitan statistical area, which comprises all of Fairfield County.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut as well as in the six-state region of New England. The town is named after Greenwich, a royal borough of London in the United Kingdom.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The town of Greenwich was settled in 1640, by the agents Robert Feake and Captain Daniel Patrick, for Governor Theophilus Eaton of New Haven Colony, who purchased the land from the Siwanoy Indians in exchange of 25 English coats. One of the founders was Elizabeth Fones Winthrop, daughter-in-law of John Winthrop, founder and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. What is now called Greenwich Point was known for much of the area's early history as "Elizabeth's Neck" in recognition of Elizabeth Fones and their 1640 purchase of the Point and much of the area now known as Old Greenwich. Greenwich was declared a township by the Connecticut General Assembly in Hartford on May 11, 1665.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: During the American Revolution, General Israel Putnam made a daring escape from the British on February 26, 1779, in Greenwich. Although British forces captured and sacked the town, Putnam was able to warn Stamford.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: In 1974, Gulliver's Restaurant and Bar, on the border of Greenwich and Port Chester, burned, killing 24 young people.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: In 1983, the Mianus River Bridge, which carries traffic on Interstate 95 over an estuary, collapsed, resulting in the death of three people.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: For many years, Greenwich Point (locally termed "Tod's Point"), was open only to town residents and their guests. However, a lawyer sued, saying his rights to freedom of assembly were threatened because he was not allowed to go there. The lower courts disagreed, but the Supreme Court of Connecticut agreed, and Greenwich was forced to amend its beach access policy to all four beaches in 2001. These beaches include Greenwich Point Park, Island Beach, Great Captain Island, and Byram Park.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: According to the United States Census Bureau in 2000, the town had a total area of , of which is land and , or 28.88%, is water. In terms of area, Greenwich is twice the size of Manhattan. The town is bordered to the West by Port Chester, New York, Rye Brook, New York, and White Plains, New York. To the North it is bordered by Armonk, New York, and Banksville, New York. To the South it is bordered by the Long Island Sound. To the East, it is bordered by Stamford, Connecticut.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The U.S. Census Bureau recognizes nine CDPs within the town: Byram, Cos Cob, Glenville, Indian Field, Old Greenwich, Pemberwick, Riverside, Rock Ridge and the Greenwich CDP covering the historic municipal center of the town. The USPS lists separate zip codes for Greenwich, Cos Cob, Old Greenwich, and Riverside. Additionally, Greenwich is often further divided into several smaller, unofficial neighborhoods.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The Hispanic and Latin American population is concentrated in the southwestern corner of the town. In 2011, numerous neighborhoods were voted by the "Business Insider" as being the richest neighborhoods in America.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: More than half of the island (on the west side) is a bird sanctuary off-limits to members of the public without permission to visit. As of 2006 the island is available for overnight stays for those with permits, otherwise the east side is open from dawn until dusk.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Great Captain Island is also off the coast of Greenwich, and includes the southernmost point in Connecticut. There is a U.S. Coast Guard lighthouse on this island, as well as a designated area as a bird sanctuary. The lighthouse is a skeletal tower.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Island Beach or "Little Captain Island" once was the venue for the town's annual Island Beach Day. Ventriloquist Paul Winchell and his dummy, Jerry Mahoney, once came for a show, and on another occasion the Connecticut National Guard let adults and children fire machine guns into the water, according to an article in the "Greenwich Time".


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Island Beach has changed over the decades. The bathhouse once on the island's eastern shore is gone, and erosion is slowly eating away at the beaches themselves.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Greenwich experiences a humid continental climate ("Dfa"); however, it is quite close to a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification "Cfa"). During winter storms, it is common for the area north of the Merritt Parkway to receive significantly heavier snowfall than the area closer to the coast, due to the moderating influence of Long Island Sound.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: At the 2020 U.S. census, there were 63,518 people in Greenwich. Per the American Community Survey's 2018 estimates, the population of Greenwich grew to 62,574. There were 24,234 housing units, 22,251 households, and 16,322 families in 2018. The town's racial makeup consisted of 72.8% non-Hispanic whites, 3.3% Blacks or African Americans, 0.1% American Indian or Alaska Natives, 7.6% Asian Americans, and 2.2% multiracial Americans. Hispanic and Latin American residents made up 13.8% of the estimated population.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The average household size from 2014 to 2018 grew to 2.78 and the average family size was 3.28. The median household income excluding capital gains was $142,819 and the average income was $272,636. Including capital gains, the median household income in 2014 was $511,411. The per capita income for the town was $98,467.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: At the census of 2000, there were 61,101 people, 23,230 households, and 16,237 families residing in the town. The population density was . There were 24,511 housing units at an average density of . At the census estimates of 2013, the racial makeup of the town was 80.90% White, 4.90% Black, 0.10% Native American, 7.80% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, and 2.50% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 13.90% of the population.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: There were 23,230 households, out of which 33.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 59.4% were married couples living together, 8.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 30.1% were non-families. 24.8% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.60 and the average family size was 3.12.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: In the town the population was spread out, with 25.4% under the age of 18, 4.1% from 18 to 24, 28.8% from 25 to 44, 25.7% from 45 to 64, and 15.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females, there were 90.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.2 males.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Greenwich is home to two of the wealthiest zip codes in Connecticut, 06830 and 06831, with average adjusted gross incomes of $638,560 and $721,550, and median household incomes of $109,250 and $155,417, respectively. In recent decades, the town has attracted wealthy expats from around the globe due to its extremely low tax rate, school system, and proximity to Manhattan, which is an hour by Metro North (per mta.info).


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The median listing price for a home in the town was $2.3 million in 2021. The coastal neighborhood of Belle Haven, along with Backcountry, have some of the wealthiest single family real estate in the world. In 2014, the highest asking price for a residential property in town was the Copper Beech Estate at $190 million. It later sold for $120 million.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Greenwich, along with Stamford, are the economic centers of Fairfield County and its metropolitan statistical area. Prominent companies based in the town of Greenwich are: AQR Capital, Blue Harbour Group, Blue Sky Studios/20th Century Animation, Blyth, Inc., Cambridge Solutions, First Reserve Corporation, Interactive Brokers, Nestlé Waters North America, North Street Capital, Silver Point Capital, Viking Global Investors, W. R. Berkley, a holding company for subsidiaries that sell property-casualty insurance, XFL, and XPO Logistics. Other major institutions in the township are Greenwich Hospital, Hyatt Regency, Tudor Investment Corporation, Eversource Energy, Brunswick School, and Camuto Group.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Greenwich is home to the Greenwich International Film Festival, which acts in coordination with nonprofits to promote socially conscious filmmaking in the city's downtown in an annual June festival, in addition to screenings and events held year-round.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The Greenwich Symphony Orchestra begun in 1958 as the Greenwich Philharmonia, it became fully professional by 1967. The Greenwich Choral Society, founded in 1925, performs locally and elsewhere, including in New York City and Europe.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The Greenwich post office contains a mural, "The Packet Sails from Greenwich Green", painted in 1939 by Victoria Hutson Huntley.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The Bruce Museum is a town-owned institution with sections devoted to art and natural history. Putnam Cottage (Knapp Tavern) historic house museum, is also located within Greenwich.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Acacia Lodge No. 85, Ancient, Free & Accepted Masons, founded in 1857 in the top level of the old Cos Cob School House, is located in the town. Its members were originally of Union Lodge No. 5, founded 1763, and though its "home base" was Stamford, it was given the jurisdiction of "Stamford, Horseneck and parts adjacent." Union Lodge often met in Greenwich, and the first recorded meeting place was Knapp's Tavern on the King's Highway.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Arch Street, The Greenwich Teen Center has age-specific programs and events on weekdays and weekends.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Greenwich Public Schools operates the public schools. Greenwich High School is the district's sole high school. elementary schools had the same pattern of racial segregation as the town as a whole with Hispanic students concentrated in the two elementary schools in the southwestern corner of the district, New Lebanon and Hamilton Avenue. The 3 middle schools have balanced enrollment. There is a Connecticut racial diversity law which requires that the percentage of students in an ethnic group in a school may not deviate by more than 25% from the average for the district. Thus, , the district was out of compliance and was searching for solutions.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The town of Greenwich is one political and taxing body, but consists of several distinct sections or neighborhoods, such as Banksville, Byram, Cos Cob, Glenville, Mianus, Old Greenwich, Riverside and Greenwich (sometimes referred to as central, or downtown, Greenwich). Of these neighborhoods, three (Cos Cob, Old Greenwich, and Riverside) have separate postal names and ZIP codes.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The town has three selectmen and a Representative Town Meeting (RTM). The RTM must approve all budgets, and consists of 230 elected representatives. RTM members are not paid. The three selectmen are elected on a town-wide basis, although each person can only vote for two members. This assures that there will almost always be one Democrat and two Republicans or two Democrats and one Republican. While voter registration is skewed in the Republicans' favor, they do not have a lock on the First Selectman's chair, and Democrats have held the seat recently. Many of the other town committees have equal representation between Democrats and Republicans, regardless of the vote breakdown, since each individual can only vote for half as many seats as are available.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Greenwich, Connecticut was a mostly Democrat jurisdiction up through 1892, voting for the Democrat in 13 of the 17 presidential elections from that party's founding in the mid-1820s up through 1892. Then the GOP would win Greenwich in 27 of the 28 presidential elections from 1896 to 2004, and in three of the last four presidential elections, the Democrat has carried the town.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The largest share of the vote received by a Democratic presidential candidate is the 64.56% of the vote received by Martin Van Buren in 1836, the largest share of the vote received by a Republican presidential candidate is the 78.25% of the vote received by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, and the largest percentage of the vote receive by third-party presidential candidates was the 27.61% of the vote received by the third-party candidates in the 1912 presidential election. Most prominently, Theodore Roosevelt under the Bull Moose Party.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The town is served by the Metro-North Railroad's New Haven Line (the four stations, from west to east, are Greenwich, Cos Cob, Riverside, and Old Greenwich) and is approximately a 50-minute train ride to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan on the express train and a 60-minute ride on the local. The Amtrak Acela, Northeast Regional, and Vermonter trains stop in the adjacent city of Stamford.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Interstate 95 goes through the southern end of town, and there are four exits from I-95 in Greenwich, exits 2 through 5. The Boston Post Road (also known as East or West Putnam Avenue or simply Route 1) also goes through town, as does the Merritt Parkway, although the Merritt Parkway is a considerable distance from the downtown area. Interstate 684 passes through Greenwich, but cannot be entered or exited there, and the nearest interchange is at the Westchester County Airport in New York State.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Westchester County Airport is the closest commercial airport to Greenwich. It takes approximately 15 minutes to drive from the town's center. This is followed by LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York, a 35-minute drive approximately. John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, is the closest international airport, a one-hour drive approximately. Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey is also easily accessible from Greenwich, taking approximately one hour to drive to.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: According to the DataHaven Community Wellbeing Survey, a statewide program funded by various agencies and philanthropies, 4% of adults in Greenwich are "transportation insecure," meaning that they have had to stay at home during the past year due to a lack of adequate transportation. The comparable rate for all adults statewide is 13%.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: The town of Greenwich is protected by the paid career members of the Greenwich Fire Department (GFD) and eight all-volunteer fire companies, in addition to a Fire Police Patrol. The paid GFD is made up of 106 paid firefighters, who staff 6 Engine Companies and 1 Truck Company, as well as several special units, in 6 Fire Stations (shared with volunteer companies), under the command of a Deputy Chief (Tour Commander) per shift, who in-turn reports to the Chief of Department. The 7 volunteer fire companies are made up of a total of approximately 100 volunteer firefighters, who man 9 volunteer engines, 2 volunteer ladders, 4 tankers, 6 squads, 3 utility units, 3 marine units (fireboats), 1 dive rescue unit, 1 special operations unit, 1 heavy rescue and several other support units. The volunteer fire companies are quartered in 7 of the fire stations, located throughout the town, and respond to emergency calls with the paid GFD Units. The all-volunteer fire companies are each commanded by a District Chief, who in-turn reports to a Deputy Chief of the GFD, who reports to the Chief of Department. There is also the Cos Cob Fire Police Patrol, one of the only remaining Fire Police Patrols in Fairfield County, Connecticut. The Patrol operates 2 Units, Patrol 2 (P2) and Utility 2 (U2). The paid Greenwich Fire Department and the 7 all-volunteer Greenwich Fire Companies respond to, on average, approximately 5,000 emergency calls annually.


title: Greenwich, Connecticut

text: Located at 11 Bruce Place, GPD has 87 police officers, 22 detectives, 19 sergeants, 10 lieutenants, 3 captains, and one deputy chief with 20+ civilian dispatchers and administrative personnel. and includes a K-9 unit.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU). Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve member states of the European Communities, it announced "a new stage in the process of European integration" chiefly in provisions for a shared European citizenship, for the eventual introduction of a single currency, and (with less precision) for common foreign and security policies. Although these were widely seen to presage a "federal Europe", the focus of constitutional debate shifted to the later 2007 Treaty of Lisbon. In the wake of the Eurozone debt crisis unfolding from 2009, the most enduring reference to the Maastricht Treaty has been to the rules of compliance – the "Maastricht criteria" – for the currency union.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Against the background of the end of the Cold War and the re-unification of Germany, and in anticipation of accelerated globalisation, the treaty negotiated tensions between member states seeking deeper integration and those wishing to retain greater national control. The resulting compromise faced what was to be the first in a series of EU treaty ratification crises.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Having "resolved to continue the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe", the Treaty proposes "further steps to be taken in order to advance European integration" under seven titles.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Title I, Common Provisions, establishes the European Union (EU) on the foundation of the three, already partially merged, European Communities: the European Economic Community (EEC), the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). It confirms among its objectives are "the introduction of a citizenship of the Union" common to the nationals of the Member States; "economic and monetary union, ultimately including a single currency"; and "a common foreign and security policy including the eventual framing of a common defence".


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Title II, Provisions Amending the Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community, reformulates the EEC as the central "pillar" of the Union. It amends the EEC's Treaty of Rome constitution, renaming it the European Community to reflect the Union's broader ambition. Amendments incorporate (as detailed in attached protocols) a staged progression toward monetary union including the price-stability-first criteria for adoption of the single currency and for the operations of the prospective European Central Bank (ECB).


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Other amendments create the office of European Ombudsman, expand the Structural Fund assistance to the poorer EU regions; and broaden Community competencies in education, culture, public health, consumer protection, trans-European networks, industry and the environment.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: In these and other areas which do not fall within Community's "exclusive competence", in accordance with "the principle of subsidiarity" action is to be taken only if, "by reason of the scale or effects", the objectives cannot be more "efficiently" achieved by the Member States themselves.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: In several of these areas, the Treaty seeks to enhance the "democratic functioning" of the institutions by conceding the directly elected European Parliament rights not only of consultation but also of co-decision. It also grants the Parliament the power to confirm (and therefore to veto) Council nominations for the European Commission, the Community's secretariat.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Titles III and IV amend the treaties establishing the ECSC and Euratom to complete their absorption into the structure of European Community.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Title V and VI extend existing intergovernmental consultations on foreign-policy, security and defence matters, and on "cooperation in the fields of justice and home affairs." In both cases, Member States are to "inform and consult one another within the Council [of Ministers]", but otherwise cooperate independently of Community institutions.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Title VII, Final Provisions, covers a number of anomalous issues. Provided that all Member States ratify, it rules that the Treaty should come into force on 1 January 1993.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Annexed to the Treaty is a Protocol, and an Agreement, on Social Policy. With a view to ensuring that the dynamic of the European Single Market respect certain minimum social and employment protections, these allow the Council of Ministers to approve relevant proposals from the European Commission on the basis of a qualified majority rather than unanimous consent.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: The United Kingdom was not a party of the Agreement on Social Policy and secured an "opt out" from the protocol. It was to do the same with respect to the "obligation" to enter the final, single-currency, stage of monetary union (the UK would not have to give up Pound sterling).


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: In consequence of the Dutch Presidency of the Council of the European Communities during the previous six months of negotiation, the Treaty was signed in the Netherlands, in the city of Maastricht. The twelve members of the European Communities signing the Treaty on 7 February 1992 were Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: The Treaty noted that it should be "ratified by the High Contracting Parties in accordance with their respective constitutional requirement". In the cases of Denmark, France and Ireland this required referendums.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: In the first Danish referendum, on 2 June 1992, the treaty was rejected by a margin of 50.7% to 49.3%. Concessions secured by the end of year in Edinburgh including, critically, the same exemption secured by Britain from the single currency (Denmark would not have to give up the krone), allowed for a second referendum. On 18 May 1993, Maastricht Treaty was endorsed by a vote of 56.7%.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: In Ireland, the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution, allowing the state to ratify the Treaty, was approved in a referendum held on 18 June 1992 with the support of 69.1% of votes cast.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: In September 1992, a referendum in France narrowly supported the ratification of the treaty, with 50.8% in favour. This narrow vote for ratification in France, known at the time as the ", led Jacques Delors to comment that "Europe began as an elitist project in which it was believed that all that was required was to convince the decision-makers. That phase of benign despotism is over."


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: In the United Kingdom parliament ratification did not command a clear majority. In protest against the social-policy opt out, Labour opposed, while "anti-federalists" split the governing Conservatives. Prime Minister John Major was able to face down his "Maastricht Rebels" only by tying ratification to the survival of the government in a vote of confidence.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: From the establishment of the European Economic Community in 1957, integrationists argued the free movement of workers was the logical corollary of the free movement of capital, goods and services and integral to the establishment of a common (and later single) European market. In time, the tension between the transferred worker as "a mobile unit of production" contributing to the success of the single market, and the reality of the Community migrants as individuals, seeking to exercise "a personal right" to live and work in another state for their own, and their families', welfare, asserted itself. The Treaty built on the growing suggestion that there was a Community-wide basis for citizenship rights.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: The Treaty rules that "every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union". This common and parallel citizenship accords the Member State migrants not only the civil right to take up residence and employment, but also, and for the first time, political rights. In a new EU country of residence Member-State nationals have the right to vote, and to stand, in both local and European elections. Unresolved in the Treaty is the question of their access to social rights. Political debate continued as to who should have access to public services and welfare systems funded by taxation.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: French President François Mitterrand was forced to abandon the centrepiece of his Socialist programme in 1983, a job creating reflation, due to speculation against the franc. Since then, Mitterrand had been committed to drawing Germany into a currency partnership. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989, Germany sought re-unification. France, the UK, and the rest of Europe expressed their concerns over re-unification. When German Chancellor Helmut Kohl asked for re-unification in 1990, Mitterrand would only accept in the event Germany would abandon the Deutsche Mark and adopt a common currency. Without consulting Karl Otto Pöhl, President of the Bundesbank, Kohl accepted the deal. Despite this win for France, it was widely perceived that the cost of German cooperation was German dictation of the rules for a single currency. The Bundesbank had signalled that Germany's economic success would come before being "a good european".


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: In Britain the Maastricht rebellion drew on the experience of Black Wednesday. On 16 September 1992 the British government had been forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), after a failed and costly attempt to keep the pound above its mandated exchange rate limit. Sterling's release from the ERM was then followed in the UK by an economic recovery and a significant fall in unemployment. The ERM was the centrepiece of the European Monetary System (EMS), set up on voluntary basis in 1978 to reduce the "barrier" that exchange-rate volatility presented for intra-Community commerce (and for the management of payments under the Common Agricultural Policy).


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Britain had signed up to the ERM in 1990 as a token of the government's commitment to control inflation (then running at three times the rate of Germany). From the beginning of 1990, high German interest rates, set by the Bundesbank to counteract inflationary impact of the expenditure on German reunification, caused significant stress across the whole of the ERM. By the time of their own ratifications debates, France and Denmark also found themselves under pressure in foreign exchange markets, their currencies trading close to the bottom of their ERM bands.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Having "resolved to achieve the strengthening and the convergence and to establish an economic and monetary union including... a single and stable currency", the Treaty ruled that "Member States shall regard their economic policies as a matter of common concern", and that the obligations assumed should be a matter for "mutual surveillance." Commonly known as the Maastricht criteria, these obligations represented the performance thresholds for member states to progress toward the third stage of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the adoption the common currency (designated at the 1995 Madrid European as the Euro).


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: The four "convergence criteria", as detailed in attached protocols, impose control over inflation, public debt and the public deficit, exchange rate stability and domestic interest rates. With limited leeway granted in exceptional circumstances, the obligations are to maintain:


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: 1. Inflation at a rate no more than 1.5 percentage points higher than the average of the three best performing (lowest inflation) Member States;


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: 2. a "budgetary position" that avoids "excessive" government deficits defined in ratios to gross domestic product (GDP) of greater than 3% for annual deficits and 60% for gross government debt;


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: 3. the exchange rate of the national currency within "the normal fluctuation margins by the exchange-rate mechanism of the European Monetary System without


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: 4. nominal long-term interest rates no more than 2 percentage points higher than in the three Member States with the lowest inflation.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: These criteria in turn dictated the mandate of the European System of Central Banks comprising the national central banks, but to include the prospective currency-issuing European Central Bank. As envisaged by the Treaty, the ECB replaced its shadow European Monetary Institute on 1 June 1998, and began exercising its full powers with the introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: The Treaty dedicates the EU central banking system to price stability, and gives it "a degree of independence from elected officials" greater even "than that of its putative model, the German Bundesbank". Whereas the Bundesbank, under article 12 of its constitution, is "bound to support the general economic policy of the [German] Federal Government", the obligation of the ECB to "support the general economic policies in the Community" is to be "without prejudice" to price stability, the Bank's "primary objective". It is further conditioned by the express understanding that "neither the ECB, nor a national central bank, nor any member of their decision-making bodies, shall seek or take instructions from Community institutions or bodies from any Government of a Member State or from any other body."


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Seeming to further preclude any possibility of the single-currency banking system being used to regulate European financial markets in support of expansionary – potentially inflationary – policies, the Treaty expressly prohibits the ECB or any Member State central extending "overdraft facilities or any other type of credit facility" to "Community institutions or bodies, central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of Member States", or the purchase from them debt instruments.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: In ruling out any role for the future ECB and euro in national, or Union-coordinated, reflationary policies Maastricht affirmed what by the late 1980s was the general economic-policy orthodoxy within the Community. This has been described as a "reversed Keynesianism": macro-economic policy not to secure a full-employment level of demand, but, through the restrictive control of monetary growth and public expenditure, to maintain price and financial market stability; micro economic policy, not to engineer income and price controls in support of fiscal expansion, but to encourage job creation by reducing barriers to lower labour costs. The commitment to monetary union and the convergence criteria denied member states the resort to currency deflation to ease balance-of-payments constraints on domestic spending, and left labour market "flexibility" as the only means of coping with asymmetric economic shocks.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: These constraints were to become the focus of political scrutiny and public protest in the new-century European debt crisis. Beginning in 2009 with Greece, the governments of several Euro-zone countries (Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Cyprus) declared themselves unable to repay or refinance their government debt or to bail out over-indebted banks without assistance from third parties. The "austerity" they had subsequently to impose as a condition of assistance from Germany and other of their trade-surplus EU partners, raised calls for new arrangements to better manage payment imbalances between member states, and ease the burden of adjustment upon wage-, and benefit-, dependent households. Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis credited the Maastricht criteria with framing of a union of deflation and unemployment.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Taking issue in defence of the Maastricht criteria, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble argued that "the old way to stimulate growth will not work." There is a real "moral hazard" in allowing Member States to accumulate higher debts within the Eurozone – higher debts which, ultimately, have no relationship to higher growth. The Maastricht criteria, he insisted, were correct in placing the onus for growth on "competitiveness, structural reforms, investment, and sustainable financing".


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Set alongside the European Community, the cooperation proposed in the Maastricht Treaty on foreign and security policy, and on justice and home affairs, were characterised in official commentary as the second and third "pillars" of the Union. The Treaty, however, proposed no significant departures in these areas. Coordination in foreign and security policy had taken place since the beginning of the 1970s under the name of European Political Cooperation (EPC), which had been first written into the treaties by the 1987 Single European Act. Cooperation on law enforcement, criminal justice, asylum, and immigration and other judicial matters was being pursued under the 1990 Schengen Agreement and Convention.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: The new provisions called on governments to "inform and consult one another within the Council of Ministers", but otherwise continued cooperation on the basis of intergovernmental liaison outside of the EC and its institutions. The West European Union, an until recently moribund club within NATO, is described as "an integral part of the development of the Union", and asked it to help "elaborate and implement decisions and actions of the Union which have defence implications. Yet it is clear that nothing is to be construed as systematically constraining the foreign or defence policies of the individual Member States. "Failing a Council decision", which would require unanimity, a Member State is free to take such action as it considers "necessary". This, in part, was a concession to United Kingdom which continued to insist on the sufficiency of the North Atlantic alliance (supported by the neutral, non-aligned, Member States, the Republic of Ireland and Austria, at the 1997 Amsterdam summit the UK prevented a merger of the WEU and the EU),


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: As an implicit presumption subsidiarity may have been considered a check upon the supranational development of the EEC. But in making it an explicit constitutional principle the Maastricht Treaty opened up "debates about whether this strengthened the states, regions or local government vis-à-vis the EU or vice versa". Subsidiarity can be read as a federalising principle. For every endeavour it poses the question of whether national or Community policy is the most effective means, and elevates simple utility above any deference to national or local feeling.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: Sceptics note that the Treaty offers no legally actionable definition of subsidiarity. Rather there are "a series of tentative indications for Community action in a document full of imprecise concepts: 'sufficiently', 'better achieved', 'what is necessary', 'to achieve the objectives', subjective notions which leave the way wide open for interpretation or practical developments." Jacques Santer, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, conceded that consensus around the principle of subsidiarity had been possible only because "it conceals different interpretations".


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: The 1992 Treaty may have introduced a more consequential constitutional principle in its promotion "co-decision". It introduced procedures that made the European Parliament "co-legislator with the Council of Ministers" and have since been developed and extended to nearly all areas where the Council decides by qualified majority voting. The "foundations of co-decision in the Maastricht Treaty" have led to the "trialogues" involving the European Parliament, Council and Commission, which have become standard legislative practice.


title: Maastricht Treaty

text: In establishing the European Union the Maastricht Treaty amended the treaties that had established the European Communities in the 1950s. Following the EU accessions of Austria, Finland, and Sweden, it was in turn amended by the treaties of Amsterdam (1997), and Nice (2001). Following the accession of a further twelve states, ten from the former Eastern Bloc – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – plus Cyprus and Malta, and an aborted Treaty on a European Constitution, Maastricht was more comprehensively revisited. The 2007 Lisbon amends and incorporates the Maastricht Treaty as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.


title: General Butt Naked

text: Joshua Milton Blahyi (born September 30, 1971), better known by his nom de guerre General Butt Naked, is a Liberian evangelical preacher, writer and former warlord best known for his actions during the First Liberian Civil War. During the conflict, Blahyi led a group of soldiers which fought on the side of rebel group United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) before converting to Christianity and becoming a pastor in 1996.


title: General Butt Naked

text: Born in the Liberian capital of Monrovia to a Krahn family, Blahyi was handed by his father to several tribal elders who initiated him as a high priest in 1982 at the age of eleven. After Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) officer Samuel K. Doe staged a coup d'état against President William R. Tolbert in 1980, the new regime employed Blahyi to perform black magic rituals at the presidential palace in Monrovia to help him win the 1985 general election.


title: General Butt Naked

text: In 1989, National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) rebel leader Charles Taylor launched a rebellion against Doe's regime, sparking a civil war. Blahyi joined ULIMO, a rival militia group, and operated primarily around the Monrovia area. During the conflict, Blahyi and his men, a group of soldiers known as the Naked Base Commandos, fought without clothing and perpetrated numerous atrocities, including child sacrifice and cannibalism.


title: General Butt Naked

text: Blahyi abandoned his life as a warlord and turned to preaching after undergoing a religious conversion in 1996, attributing these actions to receiving a vision of Jesus. In 2008, Blahyi testified at the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, claiming that his victims numbered at least 20,000 individuals. The public testimony brought mixed reactions and led to international attention, leading Blahyi to be featured in several documentaries.


title: General Butt Naked

text: Joshua Milton Blahyi was born on September 30, 1971 in Monrovia, Liberia. He was born into a Krahn family, some of whom resided in Sinoe County, located in the south of the country; among the Krahn people, belief in child sacrifice and black magic was common. When he was seven years old, his father granted parental control over him to several Krahn elders, who arranged for Blahyi to be a warrior and initiated him as a high priest in 1982, when he was at the age of eleven.


title: General Butt Naked

text: As Blahyi noted in his memoirs, the role of high priest included overseeing human sacrifices. Blahyi, like other Krahn priests, would use visions to determine which individual would be sacrificed. After receiving the vision, Blahyi would "give the victim’s last name to its village elders", who would then lead a procession to the sacrifice victim's house, abducting and then sacrificing them atop an altar; after Blahyi stated a invocation, the victim would then be ritually dismembered.


title: General Butt Naked

text: In 1980, Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) master-sergeant Samuel Doe staged a coup d'état, overthrowing then-President William Tolbert. Blahyi claims that Doe employed him to perform black magic rituals to influence the 1985 Liberian general election, although Doe's victory relied more practically on destroying most of the opposition's ballots. Blahyi later explained his support for Doe as being based on a sense of tribal loyalty, as they were both members of the same ethnic group.


title: General Butt Naked

text: In 1989, Charles Taylor, a rebel leader in the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), launched a rebellion against Doe, sparking the First Liberian Civil War. After Doe was murdered and his regime collapsed in 1990, the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) was founded by Krahn and Mandinka refugees and former AFL soldiers in 1991. Blahyi became a member of ULIMO and fought against the NPFL and rival militias, which came to control most of Liberia amidst the conflict.


title: General Butt Naked

text: During the conflict, Blahyi became a warlord, leading a unit of several dozen combatants (consisting primarily of child soldiers) known as the Naked Base Commandos which operated primarily around the Monrovia area. The unit, including Blahyi himself, frequently wore no clothing except for their shoes and magic charms, earning Blahyi the nom de guerre 'General Butt Naked'. Blahyi claimed that this practice made him and his soldiers "immune to bullets." During the conflict, Blahyi's forces perpetrated numerous atrocities, including cannibalism and human sacrifice.


title: General Butt Naked

text: Blahyi would later claim that he had received a vision from the Devil during the conflict; in the vision, the Devil told him that he would become "a great warrior and should practice human sacrifice and cannibalism to increase his power." Recalling the atrocities he and his soldiers perpetrated against civilians during the conflict, Blahyi stated in an interview, “sometimes, I would enter under the water where children were playing. I would dive under the water, grab one, carry him under and break his neck. Sometimes I'd cause accidents. Sometimes I'd just slaughter them."


title: General Butt Naked

text: Blahyi also made his soldiers consume psychoactive drugs in order to make them more alert and willing to follow Blahyi's orders. He would later recall that whenever the Naked Base Commandos captured a town, “I had to make a human sacrifice. They bring to me a living child that I slaughter and take the heart out to eat it." The rival militias, including the Naked Base Commandos, frequently fought with each other over control over Liberia's lucrative diamond fields and gold mines, and Blahyi traded gold and diamonds with Mexican drug cartels for weapons and cocaine.


title: General Butt Naked

text: On April 6, 1996, the NPFL launched an operation to arrest ULIMO rebel leader Roosevelt Johnson in the Monrovia region, leading to Blahyi and other militias affiliated with Johnson to resist the attempt by force of arms. The ensuring confrontation led to an intense firefight breaking out, which ultimately resulted in the forced displacement of half of Monrovia's population. According to Damon Tabor of "The New Yorker", during the firefight a bystander reported seeing Blahyi standing atop a truck, "holding an assault rifle in one hand and a man's severed genitals in the other."


title: General Butt Naked

text: In 1996, as the civil war was drawing to a close, Blahyi claimed that as he saw the blood of a child on his hands, he received a vision of Jesus Christ, who "asked [Blahyi] to stop being a slave." After receiving the vision, Blahyi eventually converted to Christianity and became an evangelical preacher, ministering to Liberian refugees in Ghana along with former combatants who had served under him during the conflict. From 2006 onwards, Blahyi also made several visits to Monrovia's slums in an effort to engage with and assist former child soldiers who were living there.


title: General Butt Naked

text: In 2008, Blahyi became the first Liberian warlord to testify before the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was established by the Legislature of Liberia after the conflicts to investigate reports of atrocities allegedly perpetrated during the First and Second Liberian Civil Wars. During his testimony, which was broadcast live on television in Liberia, Blahyi testified that he believed the number of murders committed by him and the Naked Base Commandos to be at least 20,000 in total. He was recommended for prosecutorial amnesty by the commission.


title: General Butt Naked

text: In Liberia, his testimony elicited mixed responses; among the Liberian general public, Blahyi was both publicly praised and criticized for his actions during the war. The testimony also led to Blahyi becoming "front-page news" among Liberian press outlets, and several international journalists, including reporters from the "Daily Mail" and "Vice Media", travelled to Liberia to conduct interviews with him. In 2007, Blahyi established Journeys Against Violence, a non-governmental organization with the stated aim of helping former combatants and street children to reintegrate into society.


title: General Butt Naked

text: Blahyi has publicly called for Liberia to establish a war crimes court in order to prosecute suspected war criminals, arguing that former warlords such as current Liberian senator Prince Johnson should go on trial in order "to account for their individual roles played and the actions of their respective troops which committed atrocities and war crimes during the Liberian civil conflicts." In an appearance on a Liberian talk show, Blahyi stated that he lives in regret almost every time not just because of the people who he made childless, but children who he deprived of their parents."


title: General Butt Naked

text: During his career as an evangelical preacher, Blahyi has attracted numerous benefactors from outside Liberia, including Bojan Jancic, a Christian pastor based in West Village, New York City. He would later write the foreword to "The Redemption of an African Warlord", an autobiography written in 2013 by Blahyi and published by Destiny Image Publishers, described by Tabor as a "small Christian press". Jancic wrote in the book's foreword that "Not since the conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus have I ever heard a conversion story more radically compelling."


title: General Butt Naked

text: Blahyi's notoriety and public testimony has led to numerous appearances in popular culture. In 2010, journalists from "Vice News" produced a documentary called "The Vice Guide to Liberia" as part of their road travel series "The Vice Guide to Travel". In the documentary, Blahyi conducted an interview with the journalists, where he claimed that the planned withdrawal of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) in 2011 would lead to further violence breaking out in Liberia. The filmmakers also filmed Blahyi conducting a sermon in Monrovia in front of numerous former child soldiers.


title: General Butt Naked

text: In 2011, filmmakers Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion produced a documentary about Blahyi titled "The Redemption of General Butt Naked", which was screened at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. The documentary primarily focused on Blahyi's career as an ULIMO rebel leader and his life after converting to Christianity, documenting his efforts to both rehabilitate former military personnel under his command and reach out to the survivors of his atrocities in order to reconcile with them; interspersed between these was footage of his 2008 war crimes testimony.


title: General Butt Naked

text: The documentary received positive reviews; a review by Kirk Honeycutt for "The Hollywood Reporter" praised the documentary for foregoing "any personal judgments to let audiences draw their own conclusions", arguing that the filmmakers have "caught lightning in a bottle". Another review in "Screen International" by David D'Arcy was also positive, noting that the filmmakers had depicted the impact of the Liberian civil wars, describing the documentary as "staggeringly cinematic" and "one of the best titles since John Waters’s "Pecker"" which had "bravura visual flourishes".


title: General Butt Naked

text: "The Book of Mormon", a 2013 satirical musical comedy written by screenwriters Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone, features a character named "General Butt Fucking Naked"; the character is depicted in the musical as a Ugandan warlord, as he was originally modeled after infamous Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) commander Joseph Kony. Parker noted in an interview with "Comingsoon.net" that "warlords in Liberia have such colorful names and we were reading about the one named General Butt Naked. We just ripped off his joke, basically."


title: Deron Williams

text: Deron Michael Williams ( ; born June 26, 1984) is an American former professional basketball player. He played college basketball for the Illinois Fighting Illini before being drafted third overall in the 2005 NBA draft by the Utah Jazz. A three-time NBA All-Star with the Jazz and Brooklyn Nets, Williams also played for Beşiktaş of the Turkish Basketball League during the 2011 NBA lockout, and was a gold medal winner on the United States national team at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics.