title: Joy Davidman

text: In 1956, Davidman's visitor's visa was not renewed by the Home Office, requiring that she and her sons return to America. Lewis agreed to enter into a civil marriage contract with her so that she could continue to live in the UK, telling a friend that "the marriage was a pure matter of friendship and expediency". The civil marriage took place at the register office, 42 St Giles', Oxford, on 23 April 1956.


title: Joy Davidman

text: The couple continued to live separately after the civil marriage. In March 1957, Davidman was walking across her kitchen when she tripped over the telephone wire and fell to the floor, thereby breaking her left upper leg. At the Churchill Hospital, Oxford, she was diagnosed with incurable cancer, with bone metastases from breast carcinoma. It was at this time that Lewis recognised that he had fallen in love with her, realising how despondent he would feel to lose her. He wrote to a friend: "new beauty and new tragedy have entered my life. You would be surprised (or perhaps you would not?) to know how much of a strange sort of happiness and even gaiety there is between us." Davidman underwent several operations and radiation treatment for the cancer. In March 1957, Warren Lewis wrote in his diary: "One of the most painful days of my life. Sentence of death has been passed on Joy, and the end is only a matter of time."


title: Joy Davidman

text: The relationship between Davidman and C. S. Lewis had developed to the point that they sought a Christian marriage. This was not straightforward in the Church of England at the time, because she was divorced, but a friend and Anglican priest, the Reverend Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at Davidman's hospital bed on 21 March 1957. The marriage did not win wide approval among Lewis's social circle, and some of his friends and colleagues avoided the new couple.


title: Joy Davidman

text: Upon leaving the hospital a week later, she was taken to The Kilns and soon enjoyed a remission from the cancer. She helped Lewis with his writing, organised his financial records and wardrobe, and had the house renovated and redecorated. The couple went on a belated honeymoon to Wales and then by air to Ireland. In October 1959, a check-up revealed that the cancer had returned, and as of March 1960, was not responding to radiation therapy, as before. In April 1960, Lewis took Davidman on a holiday to Greece to fulfil her lifelong wish to visit there, but her condition worsened quickly upon return from the trip, and she died on 13 July 1960.


title: Joy Davidman

text: As a widower, Lewis wrote "A Grief Observed" which he published under the pseudonym of N. W. Clerk, describing his feelings and paying tribute to his wife. In the book, he recounts his wavering faith due to the overwhelming grief which he suffered after Davidman's death, and his struggle to regain that faith. Lewis developed a heart condition two years later and went into a coma, from which he recovered, but he died a year later—three years after his wife.


title: Joy Davidman

text: "Shadowlands" is a dramatised version of Davidman's life with C. S. Lewis by William Nicholson which has been filmed twice. In 1985, a television version was made by the BBC One, starring Joss Ackland as Lewis and Claire Bloom as Davidman. The BBC production won BAFTA awards for best play and best actress in 1986. Nicholson's work drew in part from Douglas Gresham's book "Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and CS Lewis". It was also performed in London as an award-winning stage play in 1989–90. The play was transferred successfully to Broadway in 1990–91 with Nigel Hawthorne and Jane Alexander starring, and was also revived in London in 2007. A cinema film version was released in 1993, with Anthony Hopkins as Jack (C. S. Lewis) and Debra Winger (in an Academy Award-nominated performance) as Joy Davidman.


title: Joy Davidman

text: C. S. Lewis wrote an epitaph originally on the death of Charles Williams; he adapted it to place on his wife's grave.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: In the context of artificial neural networks, the rectifier or ReLU (rectified linear unit) activation function is an activation function defined as the positive part of its argument:


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: where "x" is the input to a neuron. This is also known as a ramp function and is analogous to half-wave rectification in electrical engineering.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: This activation function started showing up in the context of visual feature extraction in hierarchical neural networks starting in the late 1960s. It was later argued that it has strong biological motivations and mathematical justifications. In 2011 it was found to enable better training of deeper networks, compared to the widely used activation functions prior to 2011, e.g., the logistic sigmoid (which is inspired by probability theory; see logistic regression) and its more practical counterpart, the hyperbolic tangent. The rectifier is, , the most popular activation function for deep neural networks.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: Rectified linear units find applications in computer vision and speech recognition using deep neural nets and computational neuroscience.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: Rectifying activation functions were used to separate specific excitation and unspecific inhibition in the neural abstraction pyramid, which was trained in a supervised way to learn several computer vision tasks. In 2011, the use of the rectifier as a non-linearity has been shown to enable training deep supervised neural networks without requiring unsupervised pre-training. Rectified linear units, compared to sigmoid function or similar activation functions, allow faster and effective training of deep neural architectures on large and complex datasets.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: Parametric ReLUs (PReLUs) take this idea further by making the coefficient of leakage into a parameter that is learned along with the other neural-network parameters.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: This activation function is illustrated in the figure at the start of this article. It has a non-monotonic “bump” when "x" < 0 and serves as the default activation for models such as BERT.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: The SiLU (sigmoid linear unit) or swish function is another smooth approximation, first coined in the GELU paper:


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: which is called the "softplus" or "SmoothReLU" function. For large negative formula_10 it is roughly formula_11, so just above 0, while for large positive formula_10 it is roughly formula_13, so just above formula_10.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: The logistic sigmoid function is a smooth approximation of the derivative of the rectifier, the Heaviside step function.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: The multivariable generalization of single-variable softplus is the LogSumExp with the first argument set to zero:


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: and its gradient is the softmax; the softmax with the first argument set to zero is the multivariable generalization of the logistic function. Both LogSumExp and softmax are used in machine learning.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: Exponential linear units try to make the mean activations closer to zero, which speeds up learning. It has been shown that ELUs can obtain higher classification accuracy than ReLUs.


title: Rectifier (neural networks)

text: The ELU can be viewed as a smoothed version of a shifted ReLU (SReLU), which has the form formula_23, given the same interpretation of formula_21.


title: Aztec mythology

text: Aztec mythology is the body or collection of myths of the Aztec civilization of Central Mexico. The Aztecs were Nahuatl-speaking groups living in central Mexico and much of their mythology is similar to that of other Mesoamerican cultures. According to legend, the various groups who were to become the Aztecs arrived from the north into the Anahuac valley around Lake Texcoco. The location of this valley and lake of destination is clear – it is the heart of modern Mexico City – but little can be known with certainty about the origin of the Aztec. There are different accounts of their origin. In the myth the ancestors of the Mexica/Aztec came from a place in the north called Aztlan, the last of seven "nahuatlacas" (Nahuatl-speaking tribes, from "tlaca", "man") to make the journey southward, hence their name "Azteca." Other accounts cite their origin in Chicomoztoc, "the place of the seven caves," or at Tamoanchan (the legendary origin of all civilizations).


title: Aztec mythology

text: The Mexica/Aztec were said to be guided by their god Huitzilopochtli, meaning "Left-handed Hummingbird" or "Hummingbird from the South." At an island in Lake Texcoco, they saw an eagle holding a rattlesnake in its talons, perched on a nopal cactus. This vision fulfilled a prophecy telling them that they should found their new home on that spot. The Aztecs built their city of Tenochtitlan on that site, building a great artificial island, which today is in the center of Mexico City. This legendary vision is pictured on the Coat of Arms of Mexico.


title: Aztec mythology

text: According to legend, when the Mexica arrived in the Anahuac valley around Lake Texcoco, they were considered by the other groups as the least civilized of all, but the Mexica/Aztec decided to learn, and they took all they could from other people, especially from the ancient Toltec (whom they seem to have partially confused with the more ancient civilization of Teotihuacan). To the Aztec, the Toltec were the originators of all culture; "Toltecayotl" was a synonym for culture. Aztec legends identify the Toltecs and the cult of Quetzalcoatl with the legendary city of Tollan, which they also identified with the more ancient Teotihuacan.


title: Aztec mythology

text: Because the Aztec adopted and combined several traditions with their own earlier traditions, they had several creation myths. One of these, the Five Suns, describes four great ages preceding the present world, each of which ended in a catastrophe, and "were named in function of the force or divine element that violently put an end to each one of them". Coatlicue was the mother of Centzon Huitznahua ("Four Hundred Southerners"), her sons, and Coyolxauhqui, her daughter. She found a ball filled with feathers and placed it in her waistband, becoming pregnant with Huitzilopochtli. Her other children became suspicious as to the identity of the father and vowed to kill their mother. She gave birth on Mount Coatepec, pursued by her children, but the newborn Huitzilopochtli defeated most of his brothers, who became the stars. He also killed his half-sister Coyolxauhqui by tearing out her heart using a Xiuhcoatl (a blue snake) and throwing her body down the mountain. This was said to inspire the Aztecs to rip the hearts out of their human sacrifices and throw their bodies down the sides of the temple dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, who represents the sun chasing away the stars at dawn.


title: Aztec mythology

text: Our age ("Nahui-Ollin"), the fifth age, or fifth creation, began in the ancient city of Teotihuacan. According to the myth, all the gods had gathered to sacrifice themselves and create a new age. Although the world and the sun had already been created, it would only be through their sacrifice that the sun would be set into motion and time as well as history could begin. The most handsome and strongest of the gods, Tecuciztecatl, was supposed to sacrifice himself but when it came time to self-immolate, he could not jump into the fire. Instead, Nanahuatl the smallest and humblest of the gods, who was also covered in boils, sacrificed himself first and jumped into the flames. The sun was set into motion with his sacrifice and time began. Humiliated by Nanahuatl's sacrifice, Tecuciztecatl too leaped into the fire and became the moon.


title: Aztec mythology

text: , Daniel Brinton (Ed); late 19th-century compendium of some Aztec mythological texts and poems appearing in one manuscript version of Sahagun's 16th-century codices.


title: Artisan

text: An artisan (from , ) is a skilled craft worker who makes or creates material objects partly or entirely by hand. These objects may be functional or strictly decorative, for example furniture, decorative art, sculpture, clothing, food items, household items and tools and mechanisms such as the handmade clockwork movement of a watchmaker. Artisans practice a craft and may through experience and aptitude reach the expressive levels of an artist.


title: Artisan

text: The adjective "artisanal" is often used in describing hand-processing in contrast to an industrial process, such as in the phrase "artisanal mining". Thus, "artisanal" is sometimes used in marketing and advertising as a buzz word to describe or imply some relation with the crafting of handmade food products, such as bread, beverages or cheese. Many of these have traditionally been handmade, rural or pastoral goods but are also now commonly made on a larger scale with automated mechanization in factories and other industrial areas.


title: Artisan

text: During the Middle Ages, the term "artisan" was applied to those who made things or provided services. It did not apply to unskilled manual labourers. Artisans were divided into two distinct groups: those who operated their own businesses and those who did not. The former were called masters, while the latter were the journeymen and apprentices.


title: Artisan

text: One misunderstanding many people have about this social group is that they picture them as "workers" in the modern sense: employed by someone. The most influential group among the artisans were the masters, the business owners. The owners enjoyed a higher social status in their communities, and often organised into guilds.


title: Artisan

text: Shokunin is a Japanese word for "artisan" or "craftsman", which also implies a pride in one's own work. In the words of shokunin Tashio Odate:Shokunin means not only having technical skill, but also implies an attitude and social consciousness... a social obligation to work his best for the general welfare of the people, [an] obligation both material and spiritual. Traditionally, shokunin honoured their tools of trade at New Year's – the sharpened and taken-care of tools would be placed in a tokonoma (a container or box still found in Japanese houses and shops), and two rice cakes and a tangerine (on top of rice paper) were placed on top of each toolbox, to honour the tools and express gratitude for performing their task.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The 2014 NFL season was the 95th season in the history of the National Football League (NFL) and the 49th of the Super Bowl era. The season began on Thursday, September 4, 2014, with the annual kickoff game featuring the defending Super Bowl XLVIII champion Seattle Seahawks hosting the Green Bay Packers, which resulted with the Seahawks winning. The season concluded with Super Bowl XLIX, the league's championship game, on Sunday, February 1, 2015, at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, with the New England Patriots defeating the Seahawks, in one of the closest games in Super Bowl history.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The 2014 league year began at 4 pm EST on March 11, which marked the start of the league's free agency period. The per-team salary cap was set at US$, a $10 million increase from the previous year. The so-called "legal tampering" period during which time agents representing prospective unrestricted free agent players (though not the players themselves) were allowed to have contact with team representatives with the purpose of determining a player's market value and to begin contract negotiations, began at noon (EST) on March 8.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: A total of 471 players were eligible for some form of free agency at the beginning of the free agency period. In addition, a number of highly paid players were released after the start of the league year to allow their teams to regain space under the salary cap. Among the high-profile players who changed teams via free agency were:


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Four players were assigned the non-exclusive franchise tag by their teams, which ensured that the team would receive compensation were the player to sign a contract with another team. These players were defensive end Greg Hardy (Panthers), tight end Jimmy Graham (Saints), placekicker Nick Folk (Jets) and linebacker Brian Orakpo (Redskins). Two other teams used the transition tag, which offers the player's current team a chance to match offers from other franchises and also guarantees draft pick compensation (at a lesser level than the franchise tag) if a tagged player signs elsewhere. Players given the transition tag were Jason Worilds (Steelers) and Alex Mack (Browns). Mack signed a five-year, $42 million offer sheet with the Jacksonville Jaguars which included $26 million in guaranteed money and a player option to void the contract after two seasons. The Browns matched the offer and retained Mack who became the league's highest paid center.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: One restricted free agent switched teams in 2014: wide receiver Andrew Hawkins of the Bengals was signed by the Browns. Restricted free agents are players with three or fewer seasons in the league whose contracts have expired. Teams may tender contract offers which allow them to match offers from other teams (i.e. the player's current team gets "right of first refusal") and may trigger draft pick compensation to be received from the signing team. Hawkins was tendered at the minimum level, which means the Bengals would not receive any draft compensation. The Browns signed him to a $13.6 million, four-year offer, which the Bengals declined to match. Saints safety Rafael Bush signed an offer from the Falcons, but the Saints retained Bush by matching the offer.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The 2014 NFL Draft was held May 8–10, 2014, in New York City. The draft process began with the NFL Scouting Combine, where draft-eligible players were evaluated by team personnel, which was held in Indianapolis on February 19–25. The draft included a record number of 98 non-seniors. The event was delayed roughly two weeks compared to its traditional position on the NFL calendar in late April due to a scheduling conflict at Radio City Music Hall, which had been the draft venue since . In the draft, the Houston Texans made University of South Carolina defensive end, now outside linebacker Jadeveon Clowney the first overall selection.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: There was discussion leading up to the draft as to the future of the event in New York City, where it had been held since . Given the increased interest in the draft over the past decade, there was a belief that the event may have outgrown Radio City Music Hall, which was the venue for the past nine drafts. The possibility of extending the draft to four days was also being discussed. On October 2, 2014, Auditorium Theatre in Chicago was announced as the official site for the following year's draft.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Referees Scott Green and Ron Winter retired after the season. Ron Torbert, who spent the past four seasons as a side judge, and Craig Wrolstad, who spent the past 11 seasons as a field judge, were promoted to referee to replace Green and Winter. On June 25, 2014, the NFL announced Mike Carey's retirement as a referee. Like former director of officiating Mike Pereira for Fox Sports, Carey will become the rules/refereeing analyst for CBS's NFL coverage on the network's Thursday night and Sunday afternoon games. He was replaced by Brad Allen, who spent the past nine seasons as an ACC referee. He was the first rookie NFL referee since 1962 when Tommy Bell was hired as a referee straight out of the Southeastern Conference. (NFL officials normally spend at least their first season in another position than head referee.) In addition to promoting Allen, Torbert, and Wrolstad to the referee position, ten new officials were hired, including Shawn Hochuli, son of referee Ed Hochuli.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The following rule changes were passed for the 2014 NFL season at the owners' meeting on March 26, 2014:


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The league has also instructed game officials to strictly enforce offensive pass interference, defensive holding, and illegal contact.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: A proposal to move the line of scrimmage on the extra point try from the 2-yard line to the 25-yard line to increase their difficulty (a 43-yard try as opposed to the more easily makable 20 yards) was tabled (as was a counterproposal from the Cincinnati Bengals to move it up to the 1-yard line, to encourage more two-point conversions), but the owners approved an experiment of kicking extra points snapping from the 20-yard line (a 38-yard try) for the first two weeks of the preseason. 94.3% of PATs were made during the two-week experiment, as opposed to a 99.6% success rate all of last season.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: As part of the league's deal with Microsoft, coaches will be equipped with Surface tablets to transmit images of plays taken from the top of the stadium to the sideline, eliminating the traditional practice of using printed photos and notebooks.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The seven NFL game officials will wear radio headsets to communicate with each other during games, similar to the systems used by referees at the FIFA World Cup and other higher levels of association football. With this technology, the officials will not have to move around the field to talk to each other, saving time.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The league and the player's union agreed in August to some changes to the practice squad rules. Under the new rules, each team will be able to carry up to 10 players on their practice squad, up from eight. Practice squad eligibility was also expanded by increasing the number of games in a season a player must be on the squad in order for that season to count as one of the player's three seasons of eligibility from three games to six games. Finally, each practice squad may include two players who have accrued too much playing time to be eligible for the squad under the previous rules, though these players may have no more than two accrued seasons in the league. The new rules cover the 2014 and 2015 seasons, and will lapse in 2016 absent their extension.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: A new drug policy that had been long delayed was agreed to by the league and the player's union in September. The revised policy includes testing for Human growth hormone (HGH) for the first time. Other significant changes include a higher limit for a positive test for marijuana as well as the reclassification of failed tests for amphetamines during the off-season as falling under the substance-abuse policy rather than the performance-enhancing drug (PED) policy. The changes were applied retroactively for suspensions handed out during the 2014 league year which meant that some players, including Wes Welker and Orlando Scandrick, who had failed tests due to amphetamine usage during the off-season were immediately reinstated despite being previously sentenced to four game bans.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: William Clay Ford, Sr., the owner of the Detroit Lions, died March 9, two weeks shy of his 89th birthday. Ford purchased the Lions in 1963 and had been the team's president since 1961; at the time of his death, he was the second-longest tenured owner in the NFL, behind only Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson. The team achieved only a single playoff win (in 1991) under Ford's ownership.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Ownership of the team passed to his widow, the former Martha Firestone. Ford's four children, including team vice-chairman William Clay Ford, Jr., are also involved in running the team.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Buffalo Bills owner Ralph Wilson died at age 95 on March 25. He was the founding owner of the franchise, which began in 1960 in the American Football League (AFL). Wilson played a central role in the negotiations between the AFL and NFL which eventually led to the AFL–NFL merger in . He was the last remaining NFL owner among the Foolish Club, as the original eight AFL owners were named. Wilson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2009. Coincidentally, both Wilson and Lions owner William Clay Ford, Sr. died at their respective homes in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, within three weeks of each other.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Ownership of the Bills passed to a trust headed by Wilson's widow, the former Mary McLean, and controlled by her and three other team officials. The trust put the team up for sale shortly after Wilson's death. The bidders for the team included payroll processing magnate Tom Golisano, natural gas tycoon Terrence Pegula, future President Donald Trump, a consortium including former Bills quarterback Jim Kelly and bond manager Jeffrey Gundlach, and a consortium of Jon Bon Jovi and the principals of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. Despite a poor economy and attendance declines, the team was not in immediate jeopardy of relocating, mainly because of an ironclad stadium lease signed during Wilson's lifetime that effectively prevented the team from leaving until after the 2019 season and because potential Los Angeles-based interests had been intimidated away from buying the team. The Kelly/Gundlach and Golisano groups stepped aside when the Pegulas offered to buy the team, while Trump, who admittedly was not willing to bid as much as the other bidders, did endorse a smear campaign against the Bon Jovi/MLSE bid, run by political operative Michael R. Caputo, without focusing any opposition on the Pegulas. The team was eventually sold to Pegula for a reported price of 1.4 billion dollars.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: In honor of Wilson, the Bills wore a patch bearing his initials on their jerseys throughout the 2014 season.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Tampa Bay Buccaneers' owner Malcolm Glazer died at age 85 on May 28. Glazer had owned the Buccaneers since 1995, a period which covers basically half of the team's history. The $192 million price Glazer paid set a record at the time for the price of a sports franchise. The franchise was in disarray when Glazer bought it after the death of founding owner Hugh Culverhouse. The Bucs had made the playoffs just three times in their 19 years under Culverhouse, while in the 19 seasons since Glazer took over, they made the playoffs seven times, including winning Super Bowl XXXVII in 2002.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Chuck Noll died at age 82 on June 13. Noll was widely credited with building the Steelers' dynasty of the 1970s. He coached the team to four Super Bowl victories. When he was hired in 1969, the Steelers had not won a single title in nearly 40 years. He coached multiple Hall of Fame players including: Terry Bradshaw, "Mean" Joe Greene, Mike Webster, Jack Ham, Jack Lambert, Lynn Swann, John Stallworth, and Franco Harris. Noll was a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Earl Morrall died on April 25 at the age of 79. He had a 21-year NFL career and was a notable member of the 1972 Miami Dolphins team that is the only NFL squad to ever complete a perfect season. Morrall was the second player selected in the 1956 NFL Draft and went on to play for six different NFL teams. He was named the league MVP in 1968 when he led the Baltimore Colts to a 13–1 record and the Super Bowl after replacing an injured Johnny Unitas. After joining the Dolphins in 1972 Morrall again proved to be a valuable back-up, replacing Bob Griese who suffered a broken ankle in the fifth game of the Dolphins immaculate season. Morrall started the final nine regular season games, before giving way to a healed Griese during the 1972–73 NFL playoffs. Morrall was named the Comeback Player of the Year by Pro Football Weekly for his contribution in 1972.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: In addition to those mentioned above, the following people associated with the NFL (or AFL) died in 2014:


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Training camps for the 2014 season were held in late July through August. Teams may start training camp no earlier than 15 days before the team's first scheduled preseason game.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Prior to the start of the regular season, each team played four preseason exhibition games. The preseason schedule got underway with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game on Sunday evening, August 3. The Hall of Fame game is a traditional part of the annual Pro Football Hall of Fame induction weekend celebrating new Hall of Fame members. It was played at Fawcett Stadium which is located adjacent to the Hall of Fame building in Canton, Ohio. The game, which was televised in the U.S. on NBC, featured the New York Giants and Buffalo Bills, with the Giants winning 17–13. Continuing the recent trend of scheduling teams that are associated with former players being inducted into the Hall, the 2014 class included former Giants defensive end Michael Strahan and former Bills wide receiver Andre Reed. The others who were inducted into the Hall of Fame are linebacker Derrick Brooks, punter Ray Guy, defensive end Claude Humphrey, offensive tackle Walter Jones, and defensive back Aeneas Williams. The 65-game preseason schedule wrapped up on Thursday, August 28, a week before the start of the regular season.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The 2014 regular season featured 256 games played out over a seventeen-week schedule which began on the Thursday night following Labor Day. Each of the league's 32 teams played a 16-game schedule with one bye week for each team scheduled between weeks four and twelve. The slate featured seventeen games on Monday night including a doubleheader in the season's opening week. There were seventeen games played on Thursday, including the National Football League Kickoff game in prime time on September 4 and three games on Thanksgiving Day. The schedule also included two games played on Saturday, December 20, in the season's sixteenth week. The regular season concluded with a full slate of 16 games on Sunday, December 28, all of which, as it was since , were intra-divisional matchups.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Under the NFL's current scheduling formula, each team plays each of the other three teams in their own division twice. In addition, a team plays against all four teams in one other division from each conference. The final two games on a team's schedule are against the two teams in the team's own conference in the divisions the team was not set to play who finished the previous season in the same rank in their division (e.g. the team which finished first in its division the previous season would play each other team in their conference that also finished first in its respective division). The pre-set division pairings for 2014 were as follows:


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On March 4, 2014, the Buffalo Bills' official radio flagship (WGR) confirmed that the Bills Toronto Series would not take place in 2014 and that the future of the series, which was otherwise scheduled to run through the 2017 season, was not yet certain. The series was formally terminated on December 3, 2014.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The NFL introduced two major changes to the flexible scheduling procedure. First, the league would now be able to "cross-flex" games between CBS and Fox, enabling CBS to televise NFC away games (for the first time since 1993), and Fox to broadcast AFC away games (for the first time since 2011, and all-AFC matchups for the first time ever). The league could "cross-flex" some of these games before the start of, or during, the season. The first game affected by this "cross-flexing" change was the Week One contest between Buffalo and Chicago at Soldier Field, which aired on Fox instead of CBS; all four of the Bills' interconference games (including their Week 5 game against Detroit at Ford Field) aired on Fox, and in week 6, an all-AFC matchup, again involving the Bills (this time a division rivalry game against New England) was moved to Fox, exacerbating financial problems at Buffalo's CBS affiliate WIVB-TV. An all-NFC matchup between Carolina and Seattle was given to CBS. The aforementioned Detroit-Chicago Thanksgiving game was also given to CBS instead of Fox.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On April 23, 2014, the league announced a second major change to the flexible scheduling procedure: games could be flexed into the NBC Sunday Night time slot as soon as week 5. NBC was allowed to flex up to two games between weeks 5 and 10, while the same rules applied for the remainder of the season.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The wild card round was played on January 3–4, 2015. Divisional round games were played on January 10–11. Conference Championship Games were played on January 18 with the NFC Championship Game at 3:00 pm EST on Fox and the AFC Championship Game following at 6:30 pm EST on CBS.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Super Bowl XLIX, the 49th contesting of the Super Bowl, decided the 2014 NFL champion on February 1, 2015, with the New England Patriots defeating the defending Super Bowl XLVIII champions Seattle Seahawks, who were looking to repeat, by a score of 28–24. With a controversial play call by Seattle's head coach, Pete Carroll, they decided to try to pass the ball in for a touchdown at the 1 yard line, the ball was intercepted by rookie cornerback Malcolm Butler. Thus, New England sealed the win. The game took place at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. It was televised in the U.S. by NBC with kickoff around 6:30 p.m. EST.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The Pro Bowl is the league's all-star game. On April 9, 2014, the NFL announced that the 2015 Pro Bowl would be played the week prior to the Super Bowl at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. It was broadcast in the U.S. by ESPN on Sunday, January 25, 2015. The draft format that debuted in the 2014 Pro Bowl continued with two former players, Cris Carter and Michael Irvin, drafting their players from a select list voted by the country, and without regard to league conference. Cleveland Browns CB Joe Haden was named a captain of one of the Pro Bowl rosters alongside RB DeMarco Murray of Dallas on January 15. DE J. J. Watt of Houston and WR Antonio Brown of Pittsburgh were named opposite roster captains.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Michael Sam, an All-America defensive lineman from Missouri who was named the SEC Defensive Player of the Year in 2013, announced in February that he is gay. Sam was selected by the St. Louis Rams in the seventh round of the 2014 draft with the 249th overall selection. He became the first openly gay draftee to be selected in the NFL Draft and if he made an NFL roster, he would become the first openly gay player in the NFL.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Sam, the Rams and the NFL were publicly congratulated upon Sam's selection by U.S. president Barack Obama who called Sam's selection "an important step forward today in our Nation’s journey." However, Sam stated after the draft that he felt he "should have gone in the top three rounds easily" and there was speculation that his announcement of his sexuality caused him to fall in the draft. Sam was the first ever SEC Defensive Player of the Year to not be selected in the first round of the draft. On the other hand, Sam's performance at the NFL Scouting Combine was widely judged as "mediocre" and at least one draft analyst assessed his odds of making an NFL roster as only "slightly better than average."


title: 2014 NFL season

text: ESPN aired Sam's reaction to being drafted which included an embrace and celebratory kiss with his partner. Miami Dolphins safety Don Jones tweeted a negative reaction to the display, which caused the Dolphins to fine him and ban him from participation in off-season team activities until he undergoes sensitivity training.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On August 30, Sam was cut by the Rams a few days before the regular season was to start. On September 3, the Dallas Cowboys added Sam to their practice squad; he was released from the practice squad on October 21.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: During the offseason, a major headline was many current and former cheerleaders filing lawsuits against their respective NFL teams for unfair labor practices. Members of the Buffalo Jills, Cincinnati Ben–Gals, Jets Flight Crew, Oakland Raiderettes, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers Cheerleaders all filed lawsuits against their respective teams (or, in the case of the Jills, the non-profit organization that runs the Jills) for violating their respective state laws for labor practices, stating that they were required to meet certain appearance standards in both weight and make-up (at the expense of the cheerleaders) and attend mandatory unpaid practices, while being paid very little for each game, and in some cases, only receiving a lump sum payment after the season. One lawsuit by a Raiderette, who had a young child at home and was prompted by her husband to initiate the lawsuit, was ruled as a seasonal job in federal court and thus not subject to minimum wage laws, but still was pending in a California state court and that state's more stringent labor laws. Most controversial was the Jills' "Jiggle Test" that became public knowledge. The Jills suspended operations indefinitely in response to the lawsuit. It has been speculated that all NFL teams might drop their cheerleading squads in response to the lawsuits instead of paying their squads accordingly despite having the financial means to do so, though the Cleveland Browns are considering adding cheerleaders to the team.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On June 18, 2014, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, in a 2–1 decision, invalidated some of the trademark protections of the Washington Redskins, stating that the use of the team name "Redskins" constituted an ethnic slur. The Redskins are not required to change their name. However, if the decision is upheld on appeal (the team intends to appeal and has no intention of changing the team name), they will not be able to prevent counterfeiters from manufacturing certain knockoff Redskins' apparel.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: With the Minnesota Vikings playing their first of two consecutive seasons at the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium (see below), the university has asked the Vikings to keep the Washington team's name from being used in printed materials or uttered by the game announcer at the stadium. The college has also requested that the Redskins wear their throwback jerseys without the team name and logo when they visit the Vikings on November 2. University officials said that the use of the Redskins name at their stadium violates the institution's affirmative action, diversity and equal opportunity policy. Lester Bagley, the Vikings' executive vice president of public affairs, said that the team is still deciding how it will handle the college's request.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On July 23, Pat Bowlen, the Denver Broncos' owner since , relinquished control of the team due to his battle with Alzheimer's disease. Bowlen has been privately battling the disease since 2009 after experiencing short-term memory loss, and has since taken a reduced role with the team, resulting in team president Joe Ellis and executive vice president/general manager John Elway making team decisions. Ellis and Elway will now assume full control of the team, though Bowlen's long-term plan is for one of his seven children to run the team in the future, preventing the Broncos from being put up for sale.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay was arrested on March 16 near his home in Carmel, Indiana, on suspicion of driving under the influence (DUI) after failing field sobriety tests. A search of Irsay's vehicle revealed "numerous prescription medication bottles containing pills" as well as almost $30,000 in cash. Preliminary charges of DUI and four counts of possession of a controlled substance were filed against Irsay, who was jailed overnight. Irsay entered a rehabilitation facility shortly after his release from jail. Irsay had undergone treatment for prescription drug addiction previously in the early 2000s. Irsay returned to the Colts shortly before the draft in May.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: In late May, Irsay was charged with two misdemeanor counts in the incident: operating a vehicle while intoxicated and operating a vehicle with a controlled substance in the body. Prosecutors allege Irsay was under the influence of oxycodone or hydrocodone, both of which are prescription opioid narcotic pain medications.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Irsay pleaded guilty on September 2 to one count of operating a vehicle while intoxicated (OWI), which is a Class C misdemeanor in Indiana. He was sentenced to one year of probation during which he is forbidden from consuming or possessing alcohol and his driving privileges were revoked for a period of one year and 40 days. He will be subject to random drug testing as a condition of his probation. In addition, the judge stipulated that any subsequent OWI charge in a five-year period will be treated as a felony. The NFL banned Irsay from any contact with his team for six games and also levied a fine of $500,000. He was also forbidden from doing any media interviews or making comments related to the team on social media during the suspension. It was expected that Irsay's daughter, Carlie Irsay-Gordon, would assume control of the team during his absence.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On February 15, 2014, Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice and his fiancée Janay Palmer were both arrested for assault after a physical altercation that took place at Revel Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Celebrity news website TMZ posted a video of Rice dragging Palmer's body out of an elevator at the casino. The Ravens issued a statement following TMZ's release of the video, calling Rice's domestic violence arrest a "serious matter."


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On March 27, 2014, a grand jury indicted Rice on charges of third-degree aggravated assault, which could carry a jail sentence of three to five years in prison and a fine of up to $15,000. Charges against Palmer were dropped. Rice and Palmer were married the day after his indictment. Rice pleaded guilty to one count of third degree aggravated assault and was accepted into a pretrial intervention program for first-time offenders on May 20. Under the terms of the plea deal, the charges would be dropped and expunged from Rice's record if he meets the conditions imposed by the judge for the next 12 months.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Rice was suspended by the NFL for the first two games of the 2014 NFL season on July 25. On September 8, TMZ released footage from a camera inside the elevator in which the assault took place. The video appears to show Rice punching Palmer in the face causing Palmer to immediately fall to the ground, perhaps striking her head on the elevator's handrail on the way to the floor, and leaving her motionless. Within hours of the video's release, the Baltimore Ravens terminated Rice's contract. Shortly thereafter, Goodell announced that Rice had been suspended from the league indefinitely.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Rice, along with the players' union, appealed the indefinite suspension on the grounds that a player cannot be disciplined twice for the same incident. The union requested that Goodell recuse himself from hearing the appeal (as he normally would under the league's personal conduct policy) since he will be a witness in the proceedings.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: In late November, Rice was reinstated. It's reported that there are four teams looking into picking up Rice for the 2015 season. Two of those teams have been identified as the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: As a result of widespread criticism of the two-game suspension handed down in the Ray Rice case, which was considered too lenient by many commentators, the NFL announced a new policy on dealing with domestic violence on August 28. Under the new policy the first offense of domestic violence would be punishable by a minimum six-game suspension without pay; a second offense would result in a "lifetime" ban from the league. These rules will apply to all league personnel, including executives and owners, not just players. A person who receives a "lifetime" ban would be eligible to petition the league for reinstatement after one year. The penalty for the first offense could be increased by a number of factors including a previous incident prior to joining the league, the use of a weapon, an act committed against a pregnant woman and the presence of a child.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: According to an Associated Press article on ESPN, the player's union has questioned why the NFL's domestic violence training and education program "treats all players as perpetrators." In a memo sent to the NFL Players Association members on Thursday by Executive Director DeMaurice Smith and obtained Friday by the Associated Press, the union also said the plan, "doesn't build a positive consensus to warning signs." Smith and union special counsel Teri Patterson described two meetings this month with the league in which an NFLPA commission was briefed on the league's approach to educating players, coaches, executives, owners and NFL personnel about domestic violence. He wrote that a "good overview of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse" was presented. But "it did not address larger issues of violence in and outside of the home."


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The NFL said of the "perpetrators" claim: "Nothing could be further from the truth. The presentation expressly recognizes that people in the NFL are often falsely portrayed and that the actions of a few damage the reputations of many." "What the program teaches is that everyone can and should be part of the solution," the league statement said. The union memo also said the "NFL's presentation doesn't focus on follow-ups and providing continuous resources at the clubs to address potentially violent situations as well as preventing them." The NFL's educational program was shown to the AP on Oct. 7, and it included information from a memo sent to the 32 clubs on Sept. 18 that pointed out local resources available to all team personnel and their families. That document indicated a plan was in place to provide those resources and follow-ups for those who need it. The union memo to the players also said the NFL presentation "doesn't include any psychological information about the type of behavior that could lead to acts of violence or warning signs of negative behavior, but instead seemed to focus almost entirely on what happens after a violent incident has been committed."


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The league's plan calls for experts who work in the psychological space to offer a research perspective of societal issues, recognized that these are intimate crimes that impact people in many ways. The program calls for each club to have such experts available to the teams, or what NFL calls "the entire club family." That can include a clinician, human resource workers, player engagement executives, security personnel and a mental health professional who works with the club. The union added that although the league indicated that the trainers for this educational program will be experts, the NFL did not list any specific names, titles or relevant backgrounds of the people they intend to utilize for the training. Previously, the NFL announced an advisory group that includes authorities in the domestic violence area such as Tony Porter, Beth E. Richie, Rita Smith, Jane Randel and Lisa Friel. Another NFLPA observation was: "Too much reliance was placed on using former players to participate in the training. While one former players possess the right qualifications and experience to train personnel on these issues, the league's inability to articulate who these players are raises concerns that call into question the effectiveness of the training." Many of the player ambassadors, as the NFL calls them, have personal testimonies around these issues and might be helpful, but they would not deliver the education program. The union added: "The league stated that at each presentation, they will distribute information on suggested local (team city/state specific) resources for domestic violence and sexual assault prevention specialists, licensed club mental health clinicians, club human resource directors and director of Player Engagement.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The NFLPA commission members recommended that a broader net of resources be included, such as faith-based counselors and male-focused community organizations, etc. The NFL did not provide any explanation as to why one resource was chosen over another or how those resources would be specifically integrated into the workplace, if at all." In response to the union memo, the NFL said: "We were pleased to meet with the union and are working to incorporate their suggestions into the presentations is the start of a process of education that will continue in future years."


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was indicted by a Houston grand jury on a felony charge of injury to a child on September 12. The charge stemmed from a beating with a tree branch, or switch, which Peterson allegedly administered to his 4-year-old son as a disciplinary measure. Peterson turned himself in for arrest following the indictment.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The Vikings announced following the arrest that Peterson would be deactivated and would not play in the team's game that weekend. The following Monday the team announced that Peterson would be allowed to rejoin the team. The team reversed direction two days later and placed Peterson on the inactive list pending resolution of the charges.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy was arrested on charges of domestic violence after an altercation with his girlfriend which took place on May 13. In July, Hardy was found guilty of assaulting a female and communicating threats and sentenced to 18 months of probation in a trial before a district judge. Hardy immediately requested a trial by jury which under North Carolina's legal system means that the terms of the sentencing are put on hold pending the jury trial.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Because the legal process had not yet played out, Hardy was not disciplined immediately by either the league or the Panthers and he was allowed to play in the team's first game. However, following the outcry surrounding the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson situations, Hardy was de-activated for the Panther's second game and was subsequently placed on the inactive list until the charges are adjudicated. Hardy continued to get paid, but was not allowed to have any contact with the Panthers organization.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: In July 2014 it was reported that Jon Bon Jovi and the principals of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (a consortium between Bills Toronto Series lessee Edward Rogers III and Larry Tanenbaum) had joined forces as equal partners to bid on the Buffalo Bills, with Bon Jovi the proposed controlling owner. It was also reported that the group had conducted a feasibility study in early 2013 on the construction of an NFL stadium in Toronto. Following protests by Buffalo area fans against the Toronto group, including radio stations banning Bon Jovi's music, Bon Jovi wrote a public letter to Bills fans saying that the group's objective was to "make the Bills successful in Buffalo" and committing to work with all levels of government "to identify the best possible site in the Buffalo area for a new stadium", though it noticeably did not promise to keep the team in Buffalo. The group claimed it had plans to meet with developers in the Buffalo region to discuss the construction of a new stadium. However, there was widespread skepticism about the sincerity of the group's pledge to keep the team in Buffalo, with a sports franchise relocation expert quoted as saying that if they did intend to move the club, "I would suggest never saying that publicly" due to the legal implications of selling the team to a group planning on relocating it.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The Toronto group was one of four known to have submitted a preliminary bid for the franchise. The other groups, which intend to keep the club in Buffalo, were: eventual winner Terrence Pegula, owner of the Buffalo Sabres; Donald Trump, who formerly owned the New Jersey Generals; and Tom Golisano, former owner of the Buffalo Sabres. Trump described his chances of being the successful bidder as "very, very unlikely because I'm not going to do something totally stupid." Other Canadians who explored purchasing the team include John Bitove, who was co-founder the Toronto Raptors, and the family of Francesco Aquilini, who owns the Vancouver Canucks, though it is unknown if they intended to move the team. Though Tanenbaum and Rogers had significant wealth, it had been reported that the Toronto group's bid was limited by Bon Jovi's resources and his desire to be the controlling partner; NFL regulations require the controlling partner to have a 30% equity stake. Los Angeles-based interests largely stayed away from the Bills, citing concerns over the stadium's lease and the fear that politicians will place intense scrutiny on any person who attempts to move the Bills out of Buffalo; multibillionaire Eli Broad declined to place a bid on the team for those reasons.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The sale was completed on September 9, to the Pegulas for a reported amount of 1.4 billion dollars which made the Bills purchase the most expensive in league history. The sale was done in time for the Pegulas to be unanimously approved at the NFL's owners meeting on October 6–8. Terry Pegula, owns the Buffalo Sabres and development projects in the Buffalo area. The Pegulas intend to keep the team in Western New York for the long term.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Any possible relocation had one of the other bidders won (or if Pegula resells the team to anyone in the future) could not happen under the terms of the Bills' current lease on Ralph Wilson Stadium until the end of the 2019 season and would have, at least on paper, required league endorsement (whether the league could, in and of itself, stop a relocation is unclear; Al Davis moved the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles in 1982 against the league's wishes). And a relocation fee, which had been speculated to be $100–$200 million, could be charged by the NFL, though this could be offset by an increase in franchise value in a larger market. Goodell has said the two votes would be held separately. Of the owners who made their position known, Jerry Jones was believed to have been in favor of the Bills moving to Toronto, while John Mara, Robert Wood Johnson IV, the Green Bay Packers Board of Directors, and Shahid Khan indicated they would have most likely opposed moving the team.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On July 29, 2014, reports surfaced that the Oakland Raiders were considering relocating to San Antonio in after owner Mark Davis met with San Antonio civic leaders the week before at the encouragement of former Raider Cliff Branch, which Davis was in town to visit for a local ceremony for Branch. The Raiders themselves had acknowledged Davis being in San Antonio for the event for Branch before news broke about a possible relocation, but wouldn't confirm nor deny that Davis also mentioned being there discussing moving his team east. Among the two existing NFL teams in Texas, Houston Texans' owner Bob McNair and Dallas Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones—the latter of which has San Antonio as part of his territorial rights and previously voiced support of an NFL team moving there when the New Orleans Saints temporarily played in San Antonio in 2005 due to damages to the Superdome following Hurricane Katrina—both favor an NFL team playing in San Antonio.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Though San Antonio is a smaller market than the San Francisco Bay Area, the Raiders wouldn't be sharing the market with another NFL team, and would only compete with the NBA's San Antonio Spurs among major sports teams. Additionally, the Raiders would use the Alamodome as a temporary home until an NFL-specific stadium could be constructed. The team's lease at the O.co Coliseum was expiring after the 2014 season.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On September 3, 2014, the city of Oakland reached a tentative deal to build a new football stadium in Oakland, which would result in the Coliseum being demolished; Davis did not respond to the proposal, which would also force the Oakland Athletics to build a new stadium of their own (which they have yet to agree to do), while Alameda County (co-owners of the current stadium) indicated they would probably not support the plan. Davis, in the meantime, continued to negotiate with San Antonio officials and had team officials scout the Alamodome to determine if it would be suitable for the NFL.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The Rams and the St. Louis CVC began negotiating deals to get the Rams home stadium, the Edward Jones Dome into the top 25 percent of stadiums in the league (i.e., top eight teams of the thirty two NFL teams in reference to luxury boxes, amenities and overall fan experience). Under the terms of the lease agreement, the St. Louis CVC was required to make modifications to the Edward Jones Dome in 2005. However, then-owner, Georgia Frontiere, waived the provision in exchange for cash that served as a penalty for the city's noncompliance. The City of St. Louis, in subsequent years, made changes to the score board and increased the natural lighting by replacing panels with windows, although the overall feel remained dark. The minor renovations which totaled about $70 million did not bring the stadium within the specifications required under the lease agreement. On February 1, 2013, an Arbitrator (3 panel) selected to preside over the arbitration process found that the Edward Jones Dome was not in the top 25% of all NFL venues as required under the terms of the lease agreement between the Rams and the CVC. The Arbitrator (3 panel) further found that the estimated $700 million in proposed renovations by the Rams was not unreasonable given the terms of the lease agreement. Finally, the City of St. Louis was ordered to pay the Rams attorneys' fees which totaled a reported $2 million.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Publicly, city, county and state officials expressed no interest in providing further funding to the Edward Jones Dome in light of those entities, as well as taxpayers, continuing to owe approximately $300 million more on that facility. As such, if a resolution is not reached by the end of the 2014–2015 NFL season and the City of St. Louis remains non-compliant in its obligations under the lease agreement, the Rams would be free to nullify their lease and relocate.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On January 31, 2014, both the "Los Angeles Times" and the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" reported that Rams owner Stan Kroenke purchased 60 acres of land adjacent to the Forum in Inglewood, Los Angeles County, California. It was, by the most conservative estimates, sufficient land on which an NFL-proper stadium may be constructed. The purchase price was rumored to have been between US$90–100 million. Commissioner Roger Goodell represented that Mr. Kroenke informed the league of the purchase. As an NFL owner, any purchase of land in which a potential stadium could be built must be disclosed to the league. This development further fueled rumors that the Rams intend to return its management and football operations to Southern California. The land was initially targeted for a Walmart Supercenter but Walmart could not get the necessary permits to build the center. Kroenke is married to Ann Walton Kroenke who is a member of the Walton family and many of Kroenke's real estate deals have involved Walmart properties.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: The 4th Annual NFL Honors, saluting the best players and plays from 2014 season, was held at Phoenix Symphony Hall in Phoenix, Arizona on January 31, 2015.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: 2014 was the first season under a nine-year television contract with CBS (almost all AFC afternoon away games), Fox (almost all NFC afternoon away games), NBC (Sunday Night Football games, Thanksgiving night game, and the Kickoff game); and an eight-year contract with ESPN (Monday Night Football games). Among the changes from the previous television contracts were allowing games to be "cross-flexed" between CBS and Fox, enabling CBS to televise NFC away games, and Fox to broadcast AFC away games ("see above)". NBC was given the rights to broadcast a Divisional playoff game, and their Spanish language sister network Mun2 simulcasted select NBC games, with Spanish language graphics and play-by-play during the Thanksgiving game; Mun2 changed their branding to the more sports-centric NBC Universo with their Spanish simulcast of Super Bowl XLIX. The contract also allowed ESPN to televise a Wild Card playoff game (which, like other NFL games carried on cable, was simulcast on an over-the-air station in each of the team's primary market). In addition, ESPN began exclusively televising all Pro Bowls for the next eight seasons.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: Under a new, one-year contract, CBS also took over the production of "Thursday Night Football" and aired the first eight games of the package, plus half of a Week 16 Saturday doubleheader, in simulcast with NFL Network. The arrangement was meant to bring more prominence and higher production values to "TNF", which had historically hosted the league's least-watched primetime games. As part of the arrangement, CBS affiliates were given the right of first refusal to air the required local simulcasts of "TNF" games solely broadcast elsewhere by NFL Network. The agreement was renewed for the 2015 season.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: CBS made several personnel changes following the retirements of Don Criqui, Marv Albert, and Dan Dierdorf from the NFL broadcast booth. Brian Anderson and Tom McCarthy joined as play-by-play announcers, while Chris Simms (Phil Simms' son) and Trent Green joined as color commentators, both of whom come over from Fox Sports. CBS used a three-man announcing crew of Andrew Catalon, Steve Beuerlein and Steve Tasker on select regional NFL games, a departure from the typical practice of reserving three-man crews for national and high-profile contests. Mike Carey joined the broadcast team as the network's in-house rules expert. Jim Nantz and Phil Simms handled play-by-play for the "Thursday Night Football" games. There were also changes to "The NFL Today", as Shannon Sharpe and Dan Marino both left the panel, replaced by Bart Scott and Tony Gonzalez.


title: 2014 NFL season

text: On Fox, the most notable personnel change was the demotion of Pam Oliver, the network's top sideline reporter for nearly 20 years, to the second broadcast team as Erin Andrews took over the spot on the first broadcast team. 2014 was Oliver's last year covering NFL games for Fox. Other personnel changes include the additions of Donovan McNabb, David Diehl, Kirk Morrison, and Brendan Ayanbadejo to Fox's stable of color commentators, replacing outgoing commentators Tom McCarthy, Brian Billick and Tim Ryan. Brady Quinn also joined the Fox stable. Also briefly joining Fox's play-by-play stable was UFC announcer Mike Goldberg; Goldberg's time doing NFL telecasts was cut short after one game, and he was replaced by Tim Brando, who came over from CBS.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: General elections were held in Chile on 21 November 2021, including presidential, parliamentary and regional elections. Voters went to the polls to elect the President of the Republic to serve a four-year term, 27 of 50 members of the Senate to serve an eight-year term in the National Congress, all 155 members of the Chamber of Deputies to serve a four-year term in the National Congress, and all 302 members of the regional boards to serve a three-year term. Following an electoral reform in 2015, the Senate increased its membership from 38 to 43 in 2017, and grew to its full size of 50 seats after this election. This election cycle was characterized as being the most polarized in modern Chilean history and a departure from political normality in Chile, being held in the backdrop of the 2019 protests, the writing of a new constitution and the global COVID-19 pandemic. Continuing with the results of the elections held on 15–16 May 2021 for mayors, governors and members of the Constitutional Convention, the main center-left and center-right coalitions that had ruled the country since the end of the military dictatorship saw a significant decrease in their support, especially in the presidential election.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: For the parliamentary election, the center-right coalition Chile Podemos Más kept their position as the largest bloc in both chambers and even increased their number of senators, despite losing more than 10 percentage points from the previous election. In the left wing, the new coalition Apruebo Dignidad had important gains at the expense of the center-left New Social Pact (NPS), becoming the second largest bloc in the Chamber of Deputies. However, NPS kept more seats in the Senate. New parties, like the far-right Republican Party and the populist Party of the People, also gained several seats. Consequently, the newly elected Congress was split evenly between the combined left and combined right, with the non-aligned congresspeople holding the balance of power.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Seven candidates ran for the presidency. The candidates for the traditional centrist coalitions finished in fourth and fifth place, while two candidates from newly formed parties and coalitions, José Antonio Kast and Gabriel Boric, qualified for the second round, after no candidate received more than 50% of the vote. Before the 2021 Presidential election, Chile's political system had repeatedly bounced between centre-right and centre-left control, with little structural movement occurring between presidents. This was in part due to the 1980 constitution impeding changes to Chile's economic system and ensuring privatisation of many essential services like water, electricity and transportation. Voters in this election desired change and thus chose to scrap the traditional polictical parties and move candidates of new parties foreward. José Antonio Kast, of the far-right Republican Party, ran a campaign on populist and christian conservative values with a strong "law and order" message, drawing comparisons with former US president Donald Trump and current Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. In stark contrast, Gabriel Boric, a member of the Social Convergence party and the candidate of the left-wing coalition, campaigned on a progressive message reflecting the ideas behind the 2019 protests. He pushed for broadening the social safety net, higher taxes on the wealthy, combating climate change, social justice, and change to the current privatized pension system. Boric also supported the ongoing writing of a new Chilean constitution, while Kast repeatedly said he would interfere to stop its ratification if elected.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Despite narrowly lagging behind Kast in the first round, Boric won the second round with 55.87% of the vote, a larger margin than pre-election polls predicted, with Kast conceding defeat shortly after polls closed. At 35 years old, Gabriel Boric became the youngest president ever elected in Chile and the one elected with the largest number of votes in Chilean history. Turnout in the second round increased to 55.7%, the largest number since voting became voluntary in Chile in 2013. All the newly elected authorities, including president-elect Boric, began their terms on 11 March 2022.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: The President is elected using the two-round system; if no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round, a second round will be held.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: In the National Congress, the 155 members of the Chamber of Deputies are elected from 28 multi-member constituencies with between three and eight seats by open list proportional representation. Seats are allocated by the d'Hondt method. The 50 members of the Senate are elected for eight-year terms, with around half of the Senators renewed at each general election. Senators are elected from 16 multi-member constituencies of between two and five seats based on the regions. The 2021 elections will see 27 members elected, representing the regions of Antofagasta, Biobío, Coquimbo, O'Higgins, Los Lagos, Los Ríos, Magallanes and Santiago Metropolitan Region.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Below is the list of candidacies for president accepted by the Electoral Service on 27 August 2021. Boric's and Sichel's candidacies were automatically accepted after they were proclaimed the winner of their respective primaries by the Election Court.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: The coalition decided its presidential candidate in the publicly-funded primaries held nationwide on 18 July 2021, which was won by lawmaker Gabriel Boric with 60% of the vote.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: On 17 March 2021, Boric's party, Social Convergence, proclaimed him as its presidential candidate. The Commons Party's leadership also announced on 17 March 2021 that it would propose Boric as its presidential candidate in a meeting of the party's leadership the following Saturday. On 23 March 2021, Democratic Revolution, the coalition's largest party, proclaimed him as its presidential candidate. On May 29, 2021, the Common Force movement gave its support to Boric, after he beat Marcelo Díaz in a plebiscite held on May 27–28. On 17 August 2021 the Acción Humanista movement proclaimed him as its candidate.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: The center-right coalition (previously ) participated in the publicly-funded primaries held nationwide on 18 July 2021. Former minister Sebastián Sichel beat the other three candidates by 49% of the vote.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Sichel was minister of Social Development and president of BancoEstado during the second administration of President Sebastián Piñera. He participated as an independent candidate in the primary, supported by former PDC supporters and other centrist political movements.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: The New Social Pact center-left coalition (formerly Constituent Unity) held a primary on 21 August 2021, which was won by Christian Democrat Senator Yasna Provoste by over 60% of the vote, with a turnout of around 150,000. They failed to reach an agreement to participate in the national publicly-funded primaries held on 18 July 2021. Both Paula Narváez and Carlos Maldonado —the other primary candidates— had urged the need for a primary to define a sole coalition candidate. Provoste said on 30 May 2021 that she is available to compete if her party deems it necessary. On 23 July 2021 she officially launched her candidacy during a ceremony in her native city of Vallenar, in northern Chile. She was proclaimed by the Christian Democratic Party as its candidate on 17 August 2021.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: In May 2021, José Antonio Kast discarded the idea of making a presidential primary together with . Then, on 6 August 2021, the Christian Conservative Party together with the Republican Party and other independents registered with the Chilean Electoral Service the pact "Christian Social Front" for the parliamentary elections of November. Kast officially registered his candidacy before the Electoral Service on 19 August 2021.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Boric was endorsed by Enríquez-Ominami and Provoste. Former President Michelle Bachelet returned to Chile from her role as UN Human Rights High Commissioner to formally endorse Boric.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: On 9 December, parliamentarians and public figures from over 15 countries signed a statement endorsing Boric.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: On the day of the second round on 19 December, voters at bus stops in rural parts of the country, and large municipalities in the Santiago Metropolitan Region, such as Puente Alto, San Bernardo, and Maipú, waited hours for public bus services in the blazing sun to reach their polling stations, due to a shortage of public bus services available on that day.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Soon after these reports came in, local authorities and citizens in these municipalities took to social media to show Red Metropolitana de Movilidad bus terminals and parking decks full of unused city buses. This led to speculation that the incumbent government was suppressing voters by reducing bus services to prevent them from casting their votes. Apparently, most complaints of delays came from neighborhoods where Gabriel Boric had stronger levels of support.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Leading figures from Boric's campaign, such as Izkia Siches cried foul, accusing the government of trying to help Kast win the election. Boric said "the government has a responsibility" to solve the problem to allow voters to be ferried to vote with the unused buses. The elections authority Servel expressed similar concerns to Transport Minister Gloria Hutt.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: The government spokesman Jaime Bellolio called the Boric campaign's claim as a "blatant lie", and denied that the government was suppressing voters, claiming that there were between 5,000 and 6,000 buses running in the Metropolitan Region. However, this was contradicted by transport authorities, which stated that only 3,000 buses were operating. The transport authority however, also stressed that the number of buses was 55 percent more than a usual Sunday and between 3 percent or 4 percent greater than on the first round of election in November.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: A Transantiago bus driver claimed that only 40 percent of the bus drivers available were driving that day, despite statements from the government that they were operating buses on a normal work schedule. As a result, carpools were organized through social media, while private services like Uber and Cabify offered ride discounts for voters to travel to polling stations.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: In the evening, just before polls closed, Transport Minister Gloria Hutt apologized, acknowledging the government was slow to react to the situation and blamed the delays on road work and traffic, but denied that the government was engaging in voter suppression.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Turnout for the second round rose by 1.2 million from the first round, and from 47.3% in the first round to 55.6%, the highest level for any Chilean election since voting ceased to be compulsory in 2012.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Gabriel Boric won the election with 55.9% of the vote and is set to become the youngest president in Chile's history and youngest state leader in the world.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: A post-election survey showed that despite their endorsement of Kast, 59% of Parisi's voters and 23% of Sichel's voters voted for Boric, while 82% of Yasna Provoste's supporters, 83% of Marco Enríquez-Ominami's supporters, and 92% of Eduardo Artés's supporters voted for Boric.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: On 19 December 2021, shortly after the preliminary results of the second round were publicized, Kast conceded defeat and congratulated Boric through a tweet saying "I have just talked to Gabriel Boric and have congratulated him for his big triumph. From now on he is the president-elect of Chile and deserves all of our respect and constructive collaboration. Chile is always first". Later that day, Kast visited Boric at the latter's campaign headquarters in central Santiago. Boric thanked Kast during his victory speech, saying "we must build bridges for our compatriots to live better, because that is the people of Chile's demand".


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Outgoing president Sebastián Piñera had a video call with president-elect Boric, which was broadcast live on TV and radio, complying with one of the country's electoral traditions since the transition to democracy. During their conversation, Piñera congratulated Boric and said "when we divide [our country] in wars between ourselves, things always go wrong. We all hope you make a very good government for Chile and the Chileans and I am sure you will do your best". Boric said "I am going to be the President of all Chileans, because I believe it is important to interpret everyone and agreements should be between all of the people and not inside four walls".


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Boric was also congratulated by President of the Constitutional Convention, Elisa Loncón. The leader of Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco, , dismissed Boric as being together with Kast "two faces of the same coin" and warned that Boric will maintain "the colonial-format capitalist system". Llaitul pledged to continue "the path of revolutionary autonomism".


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Among international leaders who congratulated Boric are President of Argentina Alberto Fernández, Vice President Cristina Kirchner, President of Bolivia Luis Arce, President of the Chamber of Senators of Bolivia Andrónico Rodríguez, former President of Brazil Lula da Silva, President of Colombia Iván Duque, President of Costa Rica Carlos Alvarado, President of Ecuador Guillermo Lasso, Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France Jean-Yves Le Drian, Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, President of Peru Pedro Castillo, President of Uruguay Luis Lacalle Pou, President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro, and opposition leaders of Venezuela Juan Guaidó and Henrique Capriles. The European Union, via its High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, also congratulated Boric on his victory in the second round and pointed to "strengthening" relations with the Chilean government.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro had a late and cold reaction to Boric's election. He pointed out that "half of the population abstained" in the election, and referred to Boric as "that Boric". Boric responded to Bolsonaro's comments by stating that "clearly we are very different". Bolsonaro's son Eduardo, who had supported Kast, had a harsher reaction, stating that Chile was set on a path similar to Maduro's Venezuela with Boric. He mentioned the –8% drop that occurred in the Santiago Stock Exchange following the election and linked Boric to the violence that erupted in Chile in 2019.


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: President of the United States Joe Biden had a phone conversation with president-elect Boric on 30 December, on which Biden congratulated Boric for his victory. In a press statement published by the White House, Biden "applauded Chile's free and fair elections as a powerful example to the region and the world", and also underscored the cooperation between Chile and the U.S. to "promote a green and equitable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and to address the existential threat posed by climate change". Biden also sent through the president-elect his condolences for the death of 14-year old Valentina Orellana-Peralta, who was killed in a police shootout at Los Angeles, California on 23 December. Boric later posted on his Twitter account about the conversation he had with President Biden, stating that "In addition to the shared joy for our respective electoral victories, we talked about common challenges such as fair trade, climate crisis and strengthening democracy. We will continue to talk."


title: 2021 Chilean general election

text: Due to the low results in the parliamentary election, 12 political parties were dissolved by the Electoral Service: Christian Conservative Party (1 deputy), Citizens (1), Democratic Independent Regionalist Party (1), Equality Party, Green Ecological Party (2), Humanist Party (3), Progressive Party, National Citizen Party, New Time, Patriotic Union, Revolutionary Workers Party and United Centre (1). 9 deputies became independent politicians before joining the new Congress.


title: Pino Palladino

text: Giuseppe Henry "Pino" Palladino (born 17 October 1957) is a Welsh musician, songwriter, and record producer. A prolific session bassist, he has played bass for acts such as The Who, the John Mayer Trio, Nine Inch Nails, Gary Numan, Jeff Beck and D'Angelo.


title: Pino Palladino

text: The son of a Welsh mother and Italian father (from Campobasso), Giuseppe Henry Palladino was born in Cardiff on 17 October 1957. He attended a Catholic school. He began playing guitar at age 14 and bass guitar at 17. He bought his first fretless bass one year later, playing mostly R&B, funk and reggae with a rock and roll backbeat.


title: Pino Palladino

text: Palladino was drawn to Motown and jazz at an early age, and took classical guitar lessons. He liked Led Zeppelin and Yes and started a rock band.


title: Pino Palladino

text: In 1982, Palladino recorded with Gary Numan on the album "I, Assassin". Following this, he was asked to contribute to Paul Young's debut album. Young's cover version of "Wherever I Lay My Hat (That's My Home)" by Marvin Gaye became a hit in Europe, and Palladino subsequently joined Young's band, the Royal family. He received offers to record with Joan Armatrading, Go West, and David Gilmour. He cites as early influences James Jamerson, Danny Thompson, and Norman Watt-Roy and also admires Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, Bootsy Collins, Larry Graham, Michael Henderson, Anthony Jackson, Marcus Miller, and Rocco Prestia.


title: Pino Palladino

text: In 1988/89, Pino played on the Don Henley album "The End of the Innocence" playing on three tracks including the single "New York Minute".


title: Pino Palladino

text: In 1991, he joined The Law with Paul Rodgers, formerly of Bad Company, and drummer Kenney Jones, who succeeded Keith Moon in The Who after Moon died, and recorded the album "The Law."


title: Pino Palladino

text: In the 1990s, Palladino alternated between fretless bass and fretted and 4-string and 6-string bass. He played with Melissa Etheridge, Richard Wright, Elton John, and Eric Clapton.


title: Pino Palladino

text: He played on Mike Lindup's first solo album, "Changes", with Dominic Miller on guitar and Manu Katché on drums.


title: Pino Palladino

text: In 1999, he began working with Richard Ashcroft of The Verve on Ashcroft's debut solo album, "Alone With Everybody".


title: Pino Palladino

text: After The Who's bassist John Entwistle died the night before the start of their first tour in two years, Palladino became the band's bass guitarist on tour. In 2006, he joined the remaining band members on their first album in twenty-four years, "Endless Wire". He played with The Who at the Super Bowl XLIV half-time show in 2010 with Simon Townshend on guitar, Zak Starkey on drums, and John "Rabbit" Bundrick on keyboards. In 2012, he toured with The Who on their "Quadrophenia" revival. He stopped touring with The Who in 2016, but is still occasionally involved in studio sessions, appearing on their 2019 album titled "Who".


title: Pino Palladino

text: Palladino met Steve Jordan in the mid-1980s while both were working as session musicians, which blossomed into a friendship. Jordan credits Palladino's apparent ability to "feel" changes in music, through melodies, basslines, and an embrace of genres of nearly every kind. According to Jordan, he had planned to meet up with John Mayer and Willie Weeks in January 2005 to perform "Tsunami Aid: A Concert of Hope" for victims of the tsunami that struck southeast Asia. Weeks was unable to make the performance, and Jordan suggested Palladino, who had heard some of Mayer's work and was willing to come. Beginning a set that included the Jimi Hendrix song "Bold as Love", the three found a chemistry together. They recorded an album and toured as a trio.


title: Pino Palladino

text: They released the album "Try!", on 22 November 2005. The eleven-track live album includes cover versions of "Wait Until Tomorrow" by Jimi Hendrix and "I Got a Woman" by Ray Charles, two songs from Mayer's album "Heavier Things", and new songs by Mayer. In addition, Mayer, Palladino, and Jordan are credited as songwriters on three songs: "Good Love Is on the Way", "Vultures", and "Try!". Palladino appeared on Mayer's third album "Continuum", fourth album "Battle Studies" and seventh album "The Search for Everything".


title: Pino Palladino

text: In March and April 2006, Palladino toured with Jeff Beck and played with J. J. Cale, and Eric Clapton on their 2006 album "The Road to Escondido". In 2009, he formed a trio with keyboardist Philippe Saisse and Simon Phillips.


title: Pino Palladino

text: In 2013, he played on the Nine Inch Nails album "Hesitation Marks" and was a member of the touring band. Additionally, he co-produced José James' album "No Beginning No End" (2013).


title: Pino Palladino

text: Palladino is noted for his use of the fretless bass on many albums. While it was typical for a bass in a commercial track to have a rather generic sound and stay "playing the low notes", Palladino preferred a different sound, combining fretless tone with an octaver effect, and basslines that frequently added chords, lead lines, and counter-melodies in the higher range of the instrument. Typical of this style was his playing on Paul Young's "Wherever I Lay My Hat". His equipment at that time included a fretless 1979 Music Man StingRay Bass and Boss octave pedal (OC-2).


title: Pino Palladino

text: From the 1990s onward, Palladino has leaned mainly towards a Fender Precision Bass. He used his 1963 Sunburst Fender Precision on "Voodoo", using heavy gauge LaBella strings (tuned down to DGCF), a foam mute, and an Ampeg B-15 amplifier. He has also played Fender Jaguar Bass, Lakland Jazz Bass, and Larry Graham Signature JJ-4B Bass.


title: Pino Palladino

text: The Fender Pino Palladino Signature Precision Bass is modeled after two of Pino's Fender Precision Basses. The body features faded fiesta red paint over desert sand paint, based on Palladino's 1961 Precision Bass, while the neck shape and round-lam rosewood fretboard are based on his 1963 sunburst Precision Bass.


title: Pino Palladino

text: In 1992, Pino married Marilyn "Maz" Roberts, a member of Paul Young's vocal group, the Fabulous Wealthy Tarts. They have three children: Fabiana, Giancarla, and Rocco, who are all involved in the music industry.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: Jewish Bolshevism, also Judeo–Bolshevism, is an anti-communist and antisemitic canard, which alleges that the Jews were the originators of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and that they held primary power among the Bolsheviks who led the revolution. Similarly, the conspiracy theory of Jewish Communism alleges that Jews have dominated the Communist movements in the world, and is related to the Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory (ZOG), which alleges that Jews control world politics.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: In 1917, after the Russian Revolution, the antisemitic canard was the title of the pamphlet "The Jewish Bolshevism", which featured in the racist propaganda of the anti-communist White movement forces during the Russian Civil War (1918–1922). During the 1930s, the Nazi Party in Germany and the German American Bund in the United States propagated the antisemitic theory to their followers, sympathisers, and fellow travellers. In Poland, "Żydokomuna" was a term for the antisemitic opinion that the Jews had a disproportionately high influence in the administration of Communist Poland. In far-right politics, the antisemitic canards of "Jewish Bolshevism", "Jewish Communism", and the ZOG conspiracy theory are catchwords falsely asserting that Communism is a Jewish conspiracy.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: The conflation of Jews and revolution emerged in the atmosphere of destruction of Russia during World War I. When the revolutions of 1917 crippled Russia's war effort, conspiracy theories developed far from Berlin and Petrograd. Some commentators in Britain ascribed the revolution to an "apparent conjunction of Bolsheviks, Germans and Jews". By December 1917, five of the twenty-one members of the Communist Central Committee were Jews: the commissar for foreign affairs, the president of the Supreme Soviet, the deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, the president of Petrograd Soviet, and the deputy director of the Cheka secret police.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: The worldwide spread of the concept in the 1920s is associated with the publication and circulation of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a fraudulent document that purported to describe a secret Jewish conspiracy aimed at world domination. The expression made an issue out of the Jewishness of some leading Bolsheviks (such as Leon Trotsky) during and after the October Revolution. Daniel Pipes said that "primarily through "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", the Whites spread these charges to an international audience." James Webb wrote that it is rare to find an antisemitic source after 1917 that "does not stand in debt to the White Russian analysis of the Revolution".


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: Antisemitism in the Russian Empire existed both culturally and institutionally. The Jews were restricted to live within the Pale of Settlement, and suffered pogroms.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: As a result, many Jews supported gradual or revolutionary changes within the Russian Empire. Those movements ranged among the far left (Jewish Anarchism, Bundists, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks,) and moderate left (Trudoviks) and constitutionalist (Constitutional Democrats) parties. According to the 1922 Bolshevik party census, there were 19,564 Jewish Bolsheviks, comprising 5.21% of the total, and in the 1920s of the 417 members of the Central Executive Committee, the party Central Committee, the Presidium of the Executive of the Soviets of the USSR and the Russian Republic, the People's Commissars, 6% were ethnic Jews. Between 1936 and 1940, during the Great Purge, Yezhovshchina and after the rapprochement with Nazi Germany, Stalin had largely eliminated Jews from senior party, government, diplomatic, security and military positions.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: Some scholars have grossly exaggerated Jewish presence in the Soviet Communist Party. For example, Alfred Jensen said that in the 1920s "75 per cent of the leading Bolsheviks" were "of Jewish origin". According to Aaronovitch, "a cursory examination of membership of the top committees shows this figure to be an absurd exaggeration".


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: In 2013, speaking about the Schneerson Collection at the Moscow Jewish Museum and the Center for Tolerance, Russian President Vladimir Putin erroneously noted that "The decision to nationalize the library was made by the first Soviet government, and Jews were approximately 80–85% members". According to historian Vladimir Ryzhkov, Putin's ignorant statement about the predominance of Jews in the Council of People's Commissars is due to the fact that "during the years of perestroika, he read the tabloid press". Some media outlets also criticized the statements of the President of the Russian Federation. So the editors of the newspaper "Vedomosti", condemning the head of state for marginality, posted the following statistics:"If we discard the speculations of pseudoscientists who know how to find the Jewish origin of every revolutionary, it turns out that in the first composition of the Council of People's Commissars of Jews there were 8%: of its 16 members, only Leon Trotsky was a Jew. In the government of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic of 1917–1922 Jews were 12% (six out of 50 people). Apart from the government, the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) on the eve of October 1917 had 20% Jews (6 out of 30), and in the first composition of the political bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) – 40% (3 out of 7)".— Vedomosti (dated 17 June 2013).


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: Walter Laqueur traces the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy theory to Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, for whom Bolshevism was "the revolt of the Jewish, Slavic and Mongolian races against the German (Aryan) element in Russia". Germans, according to Rosenberg, had been responsible for Russia's historic achievements and had been sidelined by the Bolsheviks, who did not represent the interests of the Russian people, but instead those of its ethnic Jewish and Chinese population.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: Michael Kellogg, in his Ph.D. thesis, argues that the racist ideology of Nazis was to a significant extent influenced by White émigrés in Germany, many of whom, while being former subjects of the Russian Empire, were of non-Russian descent: ethnic Germans, residents of Baltic lands including Baltic Germans, and Ukrainians. Of particular role was their "Aufbau" organization (Aufbau: Wirtschafts-politische Vereinigung für den Osten (Reconstruction: Economic-Political Organization for the East)). For example, its leader was instrumental in making "The Protocols of The Elders of Zion" available in German language. He argues that early Hitler was rather philosemitic, and became rabidly antisemitic after 1919 under the influence of the White émigré convictions about the conspiracy of the Jews, an unseen unity from financial capitalists to Bolsheviks, to conquer the world. Therefore, his conclusion is that White émigrés were at the source of the Nazi concept of Jewish Bolshevism. Annemarie Sammartino argues that this view is contestable. While there is no doubt that White emigres were instrumental in reinforcing the idea of 'Jewish Bolshevism' among Nazis, the concept is also found in many German early post–World War I documents. Also, Germany had its own share of Jewish Communists "to provide fodder for the paranoid fantasies of German antisemites" without Russian Bolsheviks.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: During the 1920s, Hitler declared that the mission of the Nazi movement was to destroy "Jewish Bolshevism". Hitler asserted that the "three vices" of "Jewish Marxism" were democracy, pacifism and internationalism, and that the Jews were behind Bolshevism, communism and Marxism.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: In Nazi Germany, this concept of Jewish Bolshevism reflected a common perception that Communism was a Jewish-inspired and Jewish-led movement seeking world domination from its origin. The term was popularized in print in German journalist Dietrich Eckhart's 1924 pamphlet "" ("Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin") which depicted Moses and Lenin as both being Communists and Jews. This was followed by Alfred Rosenberg's 1923 edition of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in 1925, which saw Bolshevism as "Jewry's twentieth century effort to take world dominion unto itself".


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: According to French spymaster and writer Henri Rollin, "Hitlerism" was based on "anti-Soviet counter-revolution" promoting the "myth of a mysterious Jewish–Masonic–Bolshevik plot", entailing that the First World War had been instigated by a vast Jewish–Masonic conspiracy to topple the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires and implement Bolshevism by fomenting liberal ideas.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: A major source for propaganda about Jewish Bolshevism in the 1930s and early 1940s was the pro-Nazi and antisemitic international "Welt-Dienst" news agency founded in 1933 by Ulrich Fleischhauer.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: Within the German Army, a tendency to see Soviet Communism as a Jewish conspiracy had grown since the First World War, something that became officialized under the Nazis. A 1932 pamphlet by Ewald Banse of the Government-financed German National Association for the Military Sciences described the Soviet leadership as mostly Jewish, dominating an apathetic and mindless Russian population.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: By the mid thirties, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda had created a special agency called the Anti-Komintern, which was dedicated to creating anti-communist propaganda and heavily publicizing their theory of Judeo-Bolshevism.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: Propaganda produced in 1935 by the psychological war laboratory of the German War Ministry described Soviet officials as "mostly filthy Jews" and called on Red Army soldiers to rise up and kill their "Jewish commissars". This material was not used at the time, but served as a basis for propaganda in the 1940s.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels speaking at the Nuremberg Party Rally in September 1935 said:


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: Members of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) were encouraged to fight against the "Jewish Bolshevik sub-humans". In the pamphlet "The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organization", published in 1936, "Reichsführer-SS" Heinrich Himmler wrote:


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: After Operation Barbarossa Nazi propaganda depicted the war as a "European crusade against Bolshevism" and Waffen-SS units were consisting largely or solely of foreign volunteers and conscripts.


title: Jewish Bolshevism

text: Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel gave an order on 12 September 1941 which declared: "the struggle against Bolshevism demands ruthless and energetic, rigorous action above all against the Jews, the main carriers of Bolshevism".