title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Lichen sclerosus (LS) is a chronic, inflammatory skin disease of unknown cause which can affect any body part of any person but has a strong preference for the genitals (penis, vulva) and is also known as balanitis xerotica obliterans (BXO) when it affects the penis. Lichen sclerosus is not contagious. There is a well-documented increase of skin cancer risk in LS, potentially improvable with treatment. LS in adult age women is normally incurable, but improvable with treatment, and often gets progressively worse if not treated properly. Most males with mild or intermediate disease restricted to prepuce or glans can be cured by either medical or surgical treatment.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: LS can occur without symptoms. White patches on the LS body area, itching, pain, dyspareunia (in genital LS), easier bruising, cracking, tearing and peeling, and hyperkeratosis are common symptoms in both men and women. In women, the condition most commonly occurs on the vulva and around the anus with ivory-white elevations that may be flat and glistening.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: In males, the disease may take the form of whitish patches on the foreskin and its narrowing (preputial stenosis), forming an "indurated ring", which can make retraction more difficult or impossible (phimosis). In addition there can be lesions, white patches or reddening on the glans. In contrast to women, anal involvement is less frequent. Meatal stenosis, making it more difficult or even impossible to urinate, may also occur.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: On the non-genital skin, the disease may manifest as porcelain-white spots with small visible plugs inside the orifices of hair follicles or sweat glands on the surface. Thinning of the skin may also occur.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Distress due to the discomfort and pain of lichen sclerosus is normal, as are concerns with self-esteem and sex. Counseling can help.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: According to the National Vulvodynia Association, which also supports women with lichen sclerosus, vulvo-vaginal conditions can cause feelings of isolation, hopelessness, low self-image, and much more. Some women are unable to continue working or have sexual relations and may be limited in other physical activities. Depression, anxiety, and even anger are all normal responses to the ongoing pain LS patients experience.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Although it is not clear what causes LS, several theories have been postulated. Lichen sclerosus is not contagious; it cannot be caught from another person.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Several risk factors have been proposed, including autoimmune diseases, infections and genetic predisposition. There is evidence that LS can be associated with thyroid disease.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Lichen sclerosus may have a genetic component. A high correlation of lichen sclerosus has been reported between twins and between family members.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Autoimmunity is a process in which the body fails to recognize itself and therefore attacks its own cells and tissue. Specific antibodies have been found in LS. Furthermore, there seems to be a higher prevalence of other autoimmune diseases such as diabetes mellitus type 1, vitiligo, alopecia areata, and thyroid disease.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Both bacterial as well as viral pathogens have been implicated in the etiology of LS. A disease that is similar to LS, acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans is caused by the spirochete "Borrelia burgdorferi". Viral involvement of HPV and hepatitis C are also suspected.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Since LS in females is primarily found in women with a low estrogen state (prepubertal and postmenopausal women), hormonal influences were postulated. To date though, very little evidence has been found to support this theory.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Some findings suggest that LS can be initiated through scarring or radiation, although these findings were sporadic and very uncommon.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: The disease often goes undiagnosed for several years, as it is sometimes not recognized and misdiagnosed as thrush or other problems and not correctly diagnosed until the patient is referred to a specialist when the problem does not clear up.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: A biopsy of the affected skin can be done to confirm diagnosis. When a biopsy is done, hyperkeratosis, atrophic epidermis, sclerosis of dermis and lymphocyte activity in dermis are histological findings associated with LS. The biopsies are also checked for signs of dysplasia.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: It has been noted that clinical diagnosis of BXO can be "almost unmistakable," though there are other dermatologic conditions such as lichen planus, localized scleroderma, leukoplakia, vitiligo, and the cutaneous rash of Lyme disease can have a similar appearance.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: There is no definitive cure for LS. Behavior change is part of treatment. The patient should minimize or preferably stop scratching LS-affected skin. Any scratching, stress or damage to the skin can worsen the disease. Scratching has been theorized to increase cancer risks. Furthermore, the patient should wear comfortable clothes and avoid tight clothing, as it is a major factor in the severity of symptoms in some cases.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Topically applied corticosteroids to the LS-affected skin are the first-line treatment for lichen sclerosus in women and men, with strong evidence showing that they are "safe and effective" when appropriately applied, even over long courses of treatment, rarely causing serious adverse effects. They improve or suppress all symptoms for some time, which highly varies across patients, until it is required to use them again. Methylprednisolone aceponate has been used as a safe and effective corticosteroid for mild and moderate cases. For severe cases, it has been theorized that mometasone furoate might be safer and more effective than clobetasol. Recent studies have shown that topical calcineurin inhibitors such as tacrolimus can have an effect similar to corticosteroids, but its effects on cancer risks in LS are not conclusively known. Based on limited evidence, a 2011 Cochrane review concluded that clobetasol propionate, mometasone furoate, and pimecrolimus (calcineurin inhibitor) all are effective therapies in treating genital lichen sclerosus. However, randomized-controlled trials are needed to further identify the optimal potency and regimen of topical corticosteroids and assess the duration of remission and/or the prevention of flares patients experience with these topical therapies.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Continuous usage of appropriate doses of topical corticosteroids is required to ensure symptoms stay relieved over the patient's life time. If continuously used, corticosteroids have been suggested to minimize the risk of cancer in various studies. In a prospective longitudinal cohort study of 507 women throughout 6 years, cancer occurred for 4.7% of patients who were only "partially compliant" with corticosteroid treatment, while it occurred in 0% of cases where they were "fully compliant". In a second study, of 129 patients, cancer occurred in 11% of patients, none of which were fully compliant with corticosteroid treatment. Both these studies however also said that a corticosteroid as powerful as clobetasol is not necessary in most cases. In a prospective study of 83 patients, throughout 20 years, 8 patients developed cancer. 6 already had cancer at presentation and had not had treatment, while the other 2 were not taking corticosteroids often enough. In all three studies, every single cancer case observed occurred in patients who weren't taking corticosteroids as often as the study recommended.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Continuous, abundant usage of emollients topically applied to the LS-affected skin is recommended to improve symptoms. They can supplement but not replace corticosteroid therapy. They can be used much more frequently than corticosteroids due to the extreme rarity of serious adverse effects. Appropriate lubrication should be used every time before and during sex in genital LS in order to avoid pain and worsening the disease. Some oils such as olive oil and coconut oil can be used to accomplish both the emollient and sexual lubrication function.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: In males, it has been reported that circumcision can have positive effects, but does not necessarily prevent further flares of the disease and does not protect against the possibility of cancer. Circumcision does not prevent or cure LS; in fact, "balanitis xerotica obliterans" in men was first reported as a condition affecting a set of circumcised men, by Stühmer in 1928.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Carbon dioxide laser treatment is safe and effective, and it improves symptoms over a long time, but it does not lower cancer risks.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Platelet-rich plasma was reported to be effective in one study, producing large improvements in the patients' quality of life, with an average IGA improvement of 2.04 and DLQI improvement of 7.73.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: The disease can last for a considerably long time. Occasionally, "spontaneous cure" may ensue, particularly in young girls.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Lichen sclerosus is associated with a higher risk of cancer. Skin that has been scarred as a result of lichen sclerosus is more likely to develop skin cancer. Women with lichen sclerosus may develop vulvar carcinoma. Lichen sclerosus is associated with 3–7% of all cases of vulvar squamous cell carcinoma. In women, it has been reported that 33.6 times higher vulvar cancer risk is associated with LS. A study in men reported that "The reported incidence of penile carcinoma in patients with BXO is 2.6–5.8%".


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: There is a bimodal age distribution in the incidence of LS in women. It occurs in females with an average age of diagnosis of 7.6 years in girls and 60 years old in women. The average age of diagnosis in boys is 9–11 years old.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: In 1875, Weir reported what was possible vulvar or oral LS as "ichthyosis." In 1885, Breisky described kraurosis vulvae. In 1887, Hallopeau described a series of extragenital cases of LS. In 1892, Darier formally described the classic histopathology of LS. In 1900 the concept was formed that scleroderma and LS are closely related, which continues to this day. In 1901, pediatric LS was described. From 1913 to present, the concept that scleroderma is not closely related to LS also was formed. In 1920, Taussig established vulvectomy as the treatment of choice for kraurosis vulvae, a premalignant condition. In 1927, Kyrle defined LS ("white spot disease") as an entity sui generis. In 1928, Stühmer described balanitis xerotica obliterans as a postcircumcision phenomenon. In 1936, retinoids (vitamin A) were used in LS. In 1945, testosterone was used in genital LS. In 1961, the use of corticosteroids started. Jeffcoate presented an argument against vulvectomy for simple LS. In 1971, progesterone was used in LS. Wallace defined clinical factors and the epidemiology of LS. In 1976, Friedrich defined LS as a dystrophic, not an atrophic condition; "et atrophicus" was dropped. The International Society for Study of Vulvar Disease classification system established that "kraurosis" and "leukoplakia" were no longer to be used. In 1980, fluorinated and superpotent steroids were first used in LS. In 1981, studies into HLA serotypes and LS were published. In 1984, etretinate and acetretin were used in LS. In 1987, LS was linked with Borrelia infection.


title: Lichen sclerosus

text: Lichen sclerosus et atrophicus was first described in 1887 by François Henri Hallopeau. Since not all cases of lichen sclerosus exhibit atrophic tissue, "et atrophicus" was dropped in 1976 by the International Society for the Study of Vulvovaginal Disease (ISSVD), officially proclaiming the name "lichen sclerosus".


title: Barış Arduç

text: Barış Arduç was born in 1987 in Scherzingen, Switzerland, the middle child of real estate agent couple Gülay and Erol Arduç. He descends from Ordu on his father's side and from Artvin on his mother's side. He's family is of partial Albanian descent.He has 3 siblings with his older brother Onur Arduç and brother Mert Arduç. Arduç, who finally returned to Turkey with his family from abroad at the age of 8, finished primary school in Sakarya and Gölcük. Due to the earthquake in Gölcük on August 17, 1999, he stayed with his family in Bolu. He had to move. After graduating from middle and high school in Bolu, he came to Istanbul with his family in the second year of high school and completed his secondary education here.


title: Barış Arduç

text: Arduç first got supporting roles in 2011 in the series "Küçük Hanımefendi", "Dinle Sevgili", and "Pis Yedili". Later in 2012, he portrayed the character of Ahmet Avcıoğlu in ATV's series "Benim İçin Üzülme" which was written and directed by Mahsun Kırmızıgül and shot in Hopa, Artvin. Arduç's character, a young person who is a sports enthusiast and wants to play soccer in Trabzonspor, only appeared on the first episode and then in the flashbacks in the remaining episodes, but the character was so liked that after his death in the series a 10-meter banner was put on Trabzonspor's tribunes in his memory.


title: Barış Arduç

text: Later in 2013, he joined the cast of "Bugünün Saraylısı" from its 5th episode, a series based on the work of Refik Halid Karay and directed by Kudret Sabancı. For two seasons, he portrayed the character of businessman Selim Bayraktar, who manages the assets and companies of a young girl named Ayşen Kaya, the sole survivor of a group of companies and played by Cansu Tosun. The first season of "Bugünün Saraylısı" finished with 31 episodes, and its second season ended after 5 episodes due to low ratings.


title: Barış Arduç

text: Barış Arduç had his first cinematic debut in Hakan Yonat's 2014 movie "Sadece Sen" in which he played the character Emin on the last scene.


title: Barış Arduç

text: In November 2014, the movie "Deliha" was directed by Hakan Algül, and Arduç played the role of Şirinceli Cemil, a handsome photographer.


title: Barış Arduç

text: Arduç had his first leading role in January 2015 alongside Mehmet Aslantuğ, Hande Doğandemir, and Tomris İncer in ATV's series "Racon: Ailem İçin" in which he portrayed Tekin Atan, the adopted son and confidant of Mehmet Aslantuğ's character Kenan Korhan. Due to low ratings, the series finished after 4 episodes.


title: Barış Arduç

text: In June 2015, Arduç was cast in a leading role opposite Elçin Sangu in Star TV Romantic Comedy series "Kiralık Aşk", which was directed by Metin Balekoğlu, Barış Yöş and Şenol Sönmez and written by Meriç Acemi. Arduç, who portrayed a young and renowned successful shoe designer and business man named Ömer İplikçi, earned a great fan base in the Middle East and won many awards.


title: Barış Arduç

text: "Kiralık Aşk" which started airing in the summer months, quickly became one of the most popular series and achieved tremendous success within social media. The series's teasers on YouTube have millions of views.


title: Barış Arduç

text: Barış Arduç became the advertising face of Derimod company in 2015. The advertisement clip which showed Arduç with 6 different women in a casino, was directed by Ömer Faruk Sorak, prepared by Alametifarika, and produced by Böcek Productions. Nihat Odabaşı took the photograph for the advertisement campaign which was launched under the slogan "Derimod on my feet". The advertising campaign took its place on television, billboards, internet sites and magazines in October 2015.


title: Barış Arduç

text: In November 2017, Arduç was cast in a leading role opposite Elçin Sangu in the romantic comedy movie "Time of Happiness" / "Mutluluk Zamanı", which was directed by Şenol Sönmez.


title: Barış Arduç

text: In February 2019, Arduç was cast in a leading role in Star TV drama series "Kuzgun" as the titular character Kuzgun which is directed by Bahadır İnce. He portrayed the story of a man that returned for revenge after being away for 20 years. On 12 March 2020, it was confirmed that Arduç had been cast in Show TV's drama series "Çukur", starring Aras Bulut İynemli. Joining the series in its 3rd season, Arduç played the role of Arik Boke Erdenet, the younger brother of the main character's enemy.


title: Barış Arduç

text: Barış Arduç portrayed Fıstık İsmail in the Netflix series, "Kulüp" (The Club) in 2021. In July 2021, Akli Film, the producer of "", announced that Barış Arduç is involved in the second season of "Uyanış: Büyük Selçuklu" that is based on lives of Seljuk sultans. Arduç portrays the leading role of Alp Arslan in "".


title: Astringent

text: An astringent (sometimes called adstringent) is a chemical that shrinks or constricts body tissues. The word derives from the Latin "adstringere", which means "to bind fast". Calamine lotion, witch hazel, and yerba mansa, a Californian plant, are astringents.


title: Astringent

text: Astringency, the dry, puckering or numbing mouthfeel caused by the tannins in unripe fruits, lets the fruit mature by deterring eating. Ripe fruits and fruit parts including blackthorn (sloe berries), "Aronia" chokeberry, chokecherry, bird cherry, rhubarb, quince and persimmon fruits (especially those which are unripe), banana skins (or unripe bananas), cashew fruits and acorns are astringent. Citrus fruits, like lemons, are somewhat astringent. Tannins, being a kind of polyphenol, bind salivary proteins and make them precipitate and aggregate, producing a rough, "sandpapery", or dry sensation in the mouth. The tannins in some teas, coffee, and red grape wines like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot produce mild astringency.


title: Astringent

text: Squirrels, wild boars, and insects can eat astringent food as their tongues are able to handle the taste.


title: Astringent

text: In Ayurveda, astringent is the sixth taste (after sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter) represented by "air and earth".


title: Astringent

text: In a scientific study, the sensation of astringency was still able to be felt by subjects who had local anesthesia applied to their taste nerves, but not when both these and the trigeminal nerves were disabled.


title: Astringent

text: In medicine, astringents cause constriction or contraction of mucous membranes and exposed tissues and are often used internally to reduce discharge of blood serum and mucous secretions. This can happen with a sore throat, hemorrhages, diarrhea, and peptic ulcers. Externally applied astringents, which cause mild coagulation of skin proteins, dry, harden, and protect the skin. People with acne are often advised to use astringents if they have oily skin. Mild astringents relieve such minor skin irritations as those resulting from superficial cuts; allergies; insect bites; anal hemorrhoids; and fungal infections such as athlete's foot.


title: Astringent

text: Some common astringents are alum, acacia, sage, yarrow, witch hazel, bayberry, distilled vinegar, very cold water, and rubbing alcohol. Astringent preparations include silver nitrate, potassium permanganate, zinc oxide, zinc sulfate, Burow's solution, tincture of benzoin, and such vegetable substances as tannic and gallic acids. Balaustines are the red rose-like flowers of the pomegranate, which are very bitter to the taste. In medicine, their dried form has been used as an astringent. Some metal salts and acids have also been used as astringents. Redness-reducing eye drops contain an astringent. Use of Goulard's Extract has been discontinued due to lead poisoning.


title: Mugamoodi

text: Mugamoodi () is a 2012 Indian Tamil-language superhero film written and directed by Mysskin. The film stars Jiiva, Narain, and Pooja Hegde who makes her acting debut through this film. While Nassar, Selva and Girish Karnad play supporting roles. The film is about a martial artist who cannot tolerate injustice and corruption and hence turns into a vigilante to fight against it for a better society.


title: Mugamoodi

text: The film was dedicated to Bruce Lee. The music was composed by K with cinematography by Sathyan Sooryan. "Mugamoodi" was released theatrically on 31 August 2012 and opened to mixed reviews from critics and audience.


title: Mugamoodi

text: Anand aka "Bruce Lee", is a college graduate who hates the idea of 9-5 jobs. He studies martial arts with a group of similarly jobless friends. Attempting to recruit new students to pay tuition fees and save their school, he gets involved in a brawl and falls for Shakthi, the daughter of DCP Gaurav. In Chennai, A series of heists are happening across India, which has left dozens dead and countless amounts of money stolen. The police believe that a new robbery is about to take place. Anand's grandfather advises him to make Shakthi see him as a "Hero". Anand borrows and wears a superhero costume, who introduce introduce himself as Mugamoodi to Shakthi and tries to impress the children with his skills and accidentally ends up in the middle of a police chase. He helps the police capture one of the bandits. However, the gang shoots the captured member dead when police are transferring him and kill an Inspector, who was involved in the arrest.


title: Mugamoodi

text: The news that Mugamoodi captured one of the suspects, which police could not catch them in many months, spreads across the city and makes Shakthi begin to like Mugamoodi. Gaurav finds a match between a fingerprint from the crime scene and one from police records. Anand tries to visit Shakthi again, unmasked to reveal his identity and confess his love to her. When he arrives, he encounters a gang member, who shoots Gaurav, Anand tries to seize him, But the gunman escapes after the gun is seized by Anand and the family believe Anand shot Gaurav, so he is being chased by the police and on the run. The gang kills Viji, Anand's friend, who went with him to visit Shakthi. Anand is again seen by police alone with a dead body and is naturally thought responsible for the killing. Anand's grandfather and brother create a batman-styled-superhero costume with a blue bodysuit, a black belt with the letter M on it, a black superhero mask, black leather boots and gloves.


title: Mugamoodi

text: Gaurav survives and the gang decides to kill him and his family in the hospital. Anand (masked himself as Mugamoodi) saves them by defeating the gang with his kung fu skills and takes Gaurav's police documents containing the latest findings of the case, including the fingerprint match, because he wants to avenge Viji's death on his own. To his shock, The police findings in the documents are against Sifu Chandru, who is his martial arts teacher. Chandru reveals that he is not connected to those cases and reveals that Anguchamy aka Dragon is behind the crimes. They learned kung-fu in the same school 22 years ago. Meanwhile, Dragon also somehow learns that Mugamoodi is Anand. His gang raids Chandru's school to kill Anand, but they kill Chandru when he is nowhere to be seen. The gang seizes a port and kidnaps 30 children, along with three adults including Shakthi, as hostages to blackmail the police.


title: Mugamoodi

text: They demand Mugamoodi drive a van of gold alone and the police arrange a ship and guarantees their safety across the Indian border, The gang threaten to kill the hostages if refused. Mugamoodi agrees to drive the gold, where a fight ensues between him and Dragon. During the fight, Dragon takes off Mugamoodi's mask and reveals his identity to Shakthi. He also confesses that Anand did not shoot Gaurav, but his brother Anthony did. With the help of his grandfather and friends that had him sneaked into the port, Anand kills some key members of the gang. A fight ensues between Anand and Dragon, Dragon hangs from a ladder, holding on with a hammer. Anand tries to pull Dragon, but Dragon instead falls to his death in the sea. Anand manages to release all the hostages and Shakthi kisses him and tells him to continue his service as "Mugamoodi".


title: Mugamoodi

text: In September 2008, UTV Motion Pictures agreed to produce Mysskin's script, "Mugamoodi" (Mask), and subsequently signed on leading actor Suriya to play the role of the protagonist. Pre-production work for the film began in late 2008, with the film also being referred to by the media as "Agni Puthran". The film was reported to be made at a cost of 50 crore with A. R. Rahman as music composer and Suriya portraying a karate fighter in the film. However, in July 2009, Suriya opted out, and unsuccessful discussions were held with Vishal Reddy to replace him, forcing Mysskin to stall the project. As the project remained dormant, Mysskin temporarily shelved the project and moved on to script a horror film.


title: Mugamoodi

text: In October 2010, Arya signed on for the film with N. Linguswamy's Thirupathi Brothers production house replacing UTV as producers. However, within months, Arya had pulled out as had Linguswamy. In June 2011, a new Mumbai-based company had taken the production reins whilst Jiiva, after the commercial success of his political thriller "Ko", had signed on to portray the lead role. Later that month, it was announced that Narain, who had worked with Mysskin in both "Chithiram Pesuthadi" and "Anjathe", would portray the role of the lead antagonist with reports suggesting that the role would be reminiscent of The Joker / Scarecrow from English films, "The Dark Knight" and "Batman Begins" respectively. Narain claimed that his villainy in the film would be totally brutal. His character in the movie has no shades and is absolutely negative. In early July 2011, sources reported that Amala Paul had been signed up to portray the lead female character in the film, which the actress dismissed, with Dhananjayan of UTV also confirming that Amala was not approached for the role. Pooja Hegde, second runner-up of the 2011 Miss Universe India beauty pageant, was eventually finalized as the female lead. K, who had scored for Mysskin's "Yuddham Sei" in 2010, was selected as the film composer over two other music directors, while Madhan Karky would pen the lyrics, associating for the first time with Mysskin. Veteran Telugu actor Akkineni Nageswara Rao was added to the cast in November 2011, which proved false, and he was replaced by Girish Karnad, while Prakash Raj was also reported to be playing an important role. The following month, Nassar Muhammad was selected to portray a police officer. Pooja Hegde appeared as Jiiva's lover in the film.


title: Mugamoodi

text: Reports further claimed that both Jiiva and Narain would undergo special training in martial arts with experts from the Shaolin Temple in China being flown in. A large group of young aspiring artists were roped in to be part of the fight sequences which are touted be the highlight of the movie. The artists were trained for over 6 months at Mansuria Kung Fu YMCA, Nandanam, Chennai. In fact, a lot of the kung fu content of the film were handled by the Grand Master R. Shekhar.


title: Mugamoodi

text: High-end gadgets to be used in the film were reportedly designed by the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), while teams from the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) were roped in to create the costumes and looks of the characters. Furthermore, a Los Angeles-based firm would handle special effects, while action sequences are planned to be choreographed by stuntmen from Hong Kong. Costumes are designed by Gabriella Wilkins, and it is said that Jiiva's superhero outfit weighs more than 10 kg.


title: Mugamoodi

text: Shooting of the film started officially on 12 December 2011 with the opening scene of kung fu as that was so spoken about. The film is expected to be released during Summer 2012. The film was being canned in the nights in and around Triplicane in Chennai where the fight scene of Jiiva and Narain was shot in terrace. Mysskin is planning a 20-day schedule to shoot the climax at Karaikal. The shoot concluded at Karaikal where daredevil stunts were performed by the lead actor at an altitude of 180 feet high where in the Karaikal port's conveyor belt passes over. Many scenes were also filmed at AVM studio where huge hospital set was erected and also at Victoria hall, Deaf and Dumb school.; Tony Leung Siu Hung, a stunt coordinator from Hong Kong, has joined the climax shoot of the film that's being canned in a massive scale at Karaikal.


title: Mugamoodi

text: "Mugamoodi"'s score and soundtrack were composed by K, who had worked on Mysskin's previous venture "Yuddham Sei" as well. The soundtrack features eleven tracks, including a number of instrumentals. The lyrics were written by Madhan Karky and Kabilan. The soundtrack album was released on 20 July 2012 at Sathyam Cinemas; it was presented by Vijay and received by Kannada lead actor Puneeth Rajkumar.


title: Mugamoodi

text: Rediff wrote: ""Mugamoodi"'s numbers grab your attention and carry you with them". Milliblog wrote: "Tepid soundtrack from K". Behindwoods wrote: "On the whole, the music has provided a good platform for the superhero to soar".


title: Mugamoodi

text: The satellite rights of the film were sold to Sun TV. The film was released worldwide screens on 31 August 2012 and it would be the 100th film to be released in 2012. Also, it is to be noted that the director has planned for upcoming sequels of Mugamoodi. Therefore, the director has planned to release a sequel every year. The first look and trailer of Jiiva's 'Mugamoodi' took place in a grand scale on 29 June 2012 at Sathyam Cinemas. The trailer was launched by Suriya and received by director Lingusamy while the first look was released by Suriya and Gautham Vasudev Menon. "Mugamoodi" released in over 500 screens in Tamil Nadu, and also opened in neighbouring states in good number of screens as well as in northern parts of India including Delhi and Mumbai. The film released simultaneously in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, the UK, the US, and other parts of the world.


title: Mugamoodi

text: "Mugamoodi" received mixed reviews from critics. "IBN" reviewed the film positive and cited that it had a "different flavour" further adding: "For those who love the West and East's action films, "Mugamoodi" combines both to give some pleasure". "Behindwoods" Review Board rated it 3 out of 5 stating that it had a "pacy first half, [a] slow second half but [was] compensated by the overall performance and effort of the cast & crew". Malathi Rangarajan from "The Hindu" noted that it "travels on a terrain that’s new to Tamil cinema" and lauded Mysskin, saying that his "effort to make Mugamoodi appear as authentic as possible deserves to be commended". Prakash Upadhyaya of "Oneindia.in" recommended the film with a 3.5 out 5 rating.


title: Mugamoodi

text: However, "Sify" termed the film average and a "one-time watch", calling it "good in parts" and claiming that it had "very good music and background score by K, but lacks a proper script and a racy presentation". Pavithra Srinivasan of "Rediff" gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars, writing that it had "all the makings of a successful film but ends up disappointing", particularly criticizing Mysskin's screenplay that "fails him spectacularly". Vivek Ramz of "In.com" rated it 3.5 out of 5 and said that ""Mugamoodi" is no Batman, just "Kanthaswamy" revisited!"


title: John Carew

text: John Alieu Carew (born 5 September 1979) is a Norwegian former professional footballer who played as a forward. He was capped 91 times, scoring 24 goals for the Norway national team.


title: John Carew

text: Carew began his career with his local club Lørenskog, a minor club in the Akershus region. He was already considered a highly talented youngster and had gained some media attention before he was acquired by Vålerenga in 1997, and in the same year Carew was a part of the team that gained promotion to Tippeligaen and won the Norwegian Football Cup. During his two-year period at the club he played 58 matches and scored 30 goals, while his profile rose even more due to his combination of strength and goal-scoring ability.


title: John Carew

text: During the summer of 1999, Carew joined Norwegian football's most successful club of the past decade and Champions League mainstays Rosenborg in a deal worth 23 000 000 kroner. During his short spell at the club, Rosenborg proved to be a formidable team, finishing first in their group in the UEFA Champions League, a campaign that included a memorable 0–3 away win against Borussia Dortmund.


title: John Carew

text: After a string of impressive displays in the Champions League, Carew moved to Spanish club Valencia in an €8.5 million transfer, where he managed to win the La Liga title once in 2002.. Carew was also part of the Valencia side that lost on penalties in the 2001 UEFA Champions League Final to Bayern Munich, though he scored his own penalty attempt. His goals in the campaign were crucial, including a 75th-minute header in a 1–0 home win against Arsenal in the second leg of the quarter-final, which saw Valencia advance to the semi-final. In the 2002–03 Champions League campaign, Carew was once again responsible for Arsenal's exit from the competition. With Valencia needing a win in their final game of the second group phase at home against Arsenal to progress to the quarter finals, Carew scored twice in a 2–1 victory. He then spent the 2003–04 season on loan at Italian side Roma where he scored 7 goals in 26 games.


title: John Carew

text: Carew then moved to Turkey in 2004 to play with Beşiktaş. After the 2004–05 season, he was snapped up by Lyon for €7.6 million. While Carew was playing in Europe he was constantly linked with a move to the English Premiership and several failed attempts were made to sign him. He failed a medical at Fulham in 2002 and West Bromwich Albion had a bid rejected by Valencia.


title: John Carew

text: On 22 January 2007, Carew signed for Aston Villa in an exchange deal with Lyon for Milan Baroš. Carew penned a three-and-a-half-year deal at the Birmingham-based club. Carew went on to receive the No. 10 jersey left vacant by Baroš' departure.


title: John Carew

text: Carew made his debut in the 3–1 defeat to Newcastle United, but went on to score his first goal for the club in a 1–0 victory against West Ham United just three days later. Villa manager Martin O'Neill praised Carew's performance after the match.


title: John Carew

text: Carew began the season as Villa's first-choice forward and much was expected of him by the Villa fans. However, despite some promising performances, it took Carew nearly two months to score his opener for the season against Everton in a 2–0 victory. He also suffered an injury in the same game and was out of action for six weeks with a hamstring problem. He scored on his second match back in the Villa side in a 3–0 away win against Middlesbrough in November. He then followed this up with a headed goal against Blackburn Rovers in a 4–0 victory as Aston Villa began to climb the Premiership table. December brought just one goal for Carew, a 30-yard run and shot against Manchester City, but he was instrumental in several of the goals Villa scored.


title: John Carew

text: Carew scored two goals against Reading on 12 January and was unlucky not to be awarded Man of the Match which went to Martin Laursen. He scored his first hat-trick for seven years and his first ever for Aston Villa against Newcastle United on 9 February in a 4–1 win. Gareth Barry allowed him to do so by kindly relinquishing his usual penalty taking duties so Carew could score his third. On 12 April 2008, Carew scored for Aston Villa against Derby County at Pride Park in the Premier League, in the 26th minute and Villa went on to win the game 6–0. On 20 April 2008, Carew scored twice against Birmingham City in the Birmingham derby at Villa Park, which Villa went on to win 5–1. He continued his scoring run with a header the following week, in a crunch game at Everton's Goodison Park, which finished 2–2. It would be his 13th and final goal of the season, crowning him as Villa's top scorer for the 2007–08 season.


title: John Carew

text: Carew scored his first goal of the 2008–09 campaign by scoring the first goal in Aston Villa's 2–2 draw over Odense in the Intertoto Cup. On 14 August 2008, Carew signed a 12-month extension to his contract, thus taking him through to 2011 with his current deal.


title: John Carew

text: Carew scored the opening goal in Villa's 4–2 win over Manchester City at Villa Park. He then scored his second league goal against Stoke City as they went on to lose the match 3–2 when Mamady Sidibe scored a late winner. He quickly added his 3rd of the season in the 2–1 defeat of local rivals West Bromwich Albion; and with Gabriel Agbonlahor on the scoresheet again the pair began to form a formidable partnership. They both scored again and assisted each other's goals in a 4–0 victory in the Premier League at Wigan Athletic on 26 October 2008. Carew scored the winning goal in the UEFA Cup for Villa in a Group F match away to Slavia Prague on 6 November 2008, Villa midfielder Steve Sidwell struck the ball towards goal but it hit Carew and went in, therefore the goal was credited to Carew; it turned out to be the winning goal and continued Villa's 100% record in the competition's group stages and the 1–0 victory saw Villa go to the top of the group. Carew made the headlines in late October due to his personal behaviour. He was fined two weeks wages by Martin O'Neill for being in a pub near a Birmingham lap dancing club the night before Villa's UEFA cup group stage match with Ajax.


title: John Carew

text: Soon after the controversy, Carew sustained a back injury that kept him out of the side for several months. During this time, Villa boss Martin O'Neill signed England international striker Emile Heskey to fill the gap left by Carew's absence. Heskey appeared to have taken Carew's place in the starting line-up for a number of weeks. However, his own injury woes and Carew's good form on return meant the Norwegian regained his place in the side. Carew played his first game after his injury on 31 January 2009 in a goalless draw with Wigan Athletic. In the last 32 of the UEFA Cup, Carew earned Villa a first leg draw with CSKA Moscow, after going 1–0 down to Vágner Love's goal. On 1 March 2009, Carew came off the bench to score a lob-shot volley in the 2–2 draw against Stoke City in the Premier League, which was later voted the team's goal of the season. He scored an equalising goal in the away fixture against Manchester United at Old Trafford before also netting the first goal in the home tie against Everton as Villa fought back from 2–0 and 3–1 down to draw 3–3. Further goals against Hull City and Middlesbrough took his league total to an impressive 11 goals from just 25 appearances.


title: John Carew

text: Due to the persistence of fellow strikers Heskey and Agbonlahor, Carew initially struggled to hold down a regular spot in the starting eleven at the beginning of the 2009–10 campaign. Nevertheless, while being used as a substitute Carew still managed to score several important goals for Aston Villa. On 7 March 2010, manager Martin O'Neill chose to include Carew in the starting eleven in an FA Cup game against Reading. He took the opportunity characteristically and scored a hat-trick as Aston Villa came from two goals behind to defeat Reading 4–2 in the FA Cup quarter final. This made Carew the competition's top scoring striker, raising questions as to why the Norwegian was rarely included in Villa's starting eleven. Carew began to feature in the Villa team once more as the season progressed; goals against Wolverhampton Wanderers, Sunderland and Chelsea helped the Norwegian go neck and neck with Gabriel Agbonlahor as the club's joint top scorers for 2009–10.


title: John Carew

text: Due to an injury to Gabriel Agbonlahor, Carew started the new campaign upfront with support from Ashley Young. However, due to both injury concerns of his own and a loss of form, his place in the team was taken by Emile Heskey limiting him to cameo appearances from the bench. As the season progressed, Carew's first team appearances became less frequent. Later that month, he allegedly missed a Villa game due to heavy snow disrupting his travel.


title: John Carew

text: Carew spoke out about his limited chances under the new system under manager Gérard Houllier to a Norwegian TV station. Despite ongoing rumors in the press about a dispute between the former Lyon pair, Houllier revealed that Carew had been left out of the Aston Villa squad to work on his fitness. However, when Villa signed Darren Bent for £18 million, Carew's first team opportunities were further reduced.


title: John Carew

text: On 27 May 2011, Aston Villa announced that Carew was one of a number of players released by the club after their contracts expired.


title: John Carew

text: Carew joined Stoke City on loan until the end of the 2010–11 season on 21 January 2011. Following his move Carew stated that he was looking forward to a new challenge and also revealed that he rejected offers from other clubs. His arrival was welcomed by the Stoke players including Andy Wilkinson.


title: John Carew

text: Carew made his debut for City the following day at Fulham where he came on as a substitute. He scored his first goal for Stoke in a 3–2 win against Sunderland on 5 February 2011. He followed this up by scoring in the FA Cup against Brighton & Hove Albion. However a back injury slowed his progress in a Stoke shirt. After his release from Villa, Tony Pulis did not offer Carew a contract with Stoke.


title: John Carew

text: On 6 August 2011 Football League Championship side West Ham United announced the signing of Carew as a free agent. He scored his first goal for West Ham in a 2–2 draw with Crystal Palace on 1 October 2011. On 23 May 2012, Carew was released with five other players including Julien Faubert, Frank Nouble, Papa Bouba Diop, Abdoulaye Faye and Olly Lee. After the 2011–12 season, Carew did not get a new contract with West Ham.


title: John Carew

text: In August 2012, Carew was in talks with his old club Vålerenga, but Vålerenga did not accept his demand of a wage of per match. In connection with Carew's possible transfer to Vålerenga, Kjetil Siem told "Dagbladet" that he had signed an unofficial contract with Carew in 2005, when Siem was Director of Football in Vålerenga, that Carew would return to Vålerenga in 2012. He went on trial with Serie A team Internazionale in February 2013, but was not offered a contract as Inter were concerned over his fitness. In October 2013 Carew stated that he had retired.


title: John Carew

text: John Carew played 91 times for Norway, scoring 24 goals, and was part of their Euro 2000 squad. He made his full international debut on 18 November 1998, and was the first black player to represent Norway.


title: John Carew

text: In 2014, Carew starred in his first feature film, a Canadian horror called "Dead of Winter". His second film, a Norwegian-made thriller called "Høvdinger", was released on 17 July 2015.


title: John Carew

text: In 2018, Carew starred in the successful Norwegian TV-series, "Heimebane", playing as Michael Ellingsen, an aging star footballer for a local Norwegian club.


title: John Carew

text: In 2019, Carew played the role of Jungle Warrior in the Disney's dark fantasy adventure film, "" alongside Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning and Chiwetel Ejiofor.


title: John Carew

text: In June 2020, Carew's apartment in Skillebekk, Norway was searched by the authorities investigating his tax arrangements. In 2021, Carew formally requested that the authorities register him as living in Norway; the tax authorities had requested his arrest a short time before that.


title: John Carew

text: A lower court trial began in October 2022, with Carew accused of several counts of tax evasion amounting Norwegian kroner 5.4 million between 2014 and 2019. The trial lasted two weeks.


title: John Carew

text: For the period of the alleged evasion, Carew claimed that he did not live in Norway (if one lives in Norway for more than 183 days in a year, then Norwegian law says that one has to pay taxes to Norway). The trial showed that Carew's debit card was, in 2014, used between 900 and 1000 times in Norway—mostly at golf courses. The prosecution showed spreadsheets which marked every day in which the government claimed that he had been in Norway, the spreadsheets indicated 259 days in 2015 and 299 days, 282 days and 289 days in other years. Further testimony showed that Carew, after his time playing for Lyon, told French tax authorities that in 2005 and 2006 he was living in Norway, when in fact he had moved from Norway in 2000 and not moved back. Carew's apartment in London was rented-out in the long-term in 2017, according to the prosecution. Furthermore, Carew's work that year was mainly in Norway.


title: John Carew

text: Carew pleaded guilty to acting "grossly negligently" in regards to his taxes, but not with intent to defraud. On 16 November 2022, Carew was sentenced to 14 months in prison and a 537,268 Norwegian Kroner fine. (The maximum prison sentence for the tax evasion charges is six years—the prosecuting authority asked for two years.) In December 2022, media said that Carew will not appeal the verdict.


title: John Carew

text: Carew is noted for being a practicing Christian and often makes donations to charity. He also contributes to organizations like Soccer Against Crime, MOT and Ungdom mot Vold (Youth Against Violence) and was awarded the Kniksen award as Kniksen of the year in both 2005 and 2007. Since joining Aston Villa, Carew is noted for visiting children in hospitals around Birmingham and supporting Villa's initiative to donate from the payroll towards hospital running costs.


title: John Carew

text: In December 2010 Carew was a victim of fraud after he paid £100,000 for a Porsche Cayenne Gemballa which never arrived.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Richard Warner Carlson (born Richard Boynton; February 10, 1941) is an American journalist, diplomat and lobbyist who was the director of the Voice of America during the last six years of the Cold War. At the same time, he led Radio Marti broadcasting to Cuba, and was director of the U.S. Information Agency and the USIA Documentary Film Service. Carlson has also been a newspaper and wire service reporter, a magazine writer, a TV and radio correspondent and a documentary filmmaker. He is the father of conservative television host Tucker Carlson.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson was born the son of college student Richard Boynton and Dorothy Anderson, 18 and 15 years old, respectively. He was born with rickets and mildly bent legs, as Anderson had starved herself to keep the pregnancy a secret. In 1943, Richard Boynton attempted to persuade Dorothy to accompany him in stealing their baby and get married; when she refused on the grounds that she was a junior in high school and nobody but her parents knew about the baby, he shot and killed himself two blocks from her house.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Six weeks after he was born, Carlson was given to The Home for Little Wanderers, an orphanage in Boston. The home ran a classified ad about him in the local papers, under the headline: "Home Wanted for Foundling." Florence Moberger, a housewife in Malden, was the only person to respond.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Florence Moberger and her husband Carl had three children but were unable to have more. Carl and Florence agreed to foster Carlson until a family wanted to adopt him. Carlson lived with the Mobergers for over two years and stated that he developed a deep bond with the family. During that time, Carlson claimed many prospective parents came to visit him, including his birth mother, Anderson, posing as her own sister.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1943, Carlson was adopted by a wool broker and his wife, the Carlson family. Carlson's adoptive father died when he was twelve.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson graduated from the Naval Academy Preparatory School and attended the University of Mississippi through an ROTC program, holding odd jobs in between the breaks. He was discharged in 1962 and did not graduate. He then moved to Los Angeles.


title: Dick Carlson

text: When Carlson was 22, he got a job working as a "copy boy" for night city editor Glenn Binford at the "Los Angeles Times". There he met and befriended Carl Lance Brisson, the son of actress Rosalind Russell.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1963, Carlson became a reporter for United Press International. On his two days off, he wrote for Hearst movie columnist Louella Parsons in her Beverly Hills office. He also wrote for UPI's Foreign Film Bureau, contributing fan magazine stories and working under the editorship of Henry Gris, the first president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Two years later, Carlson and Brisson went to San Francisco to try to establish themselves, working as freelance independent television reporters, producing news features to sell for local and national distribution. They made less than $100 per week, until they were hired full-time by KGO-TV in San Francisco.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson and Brisson became best known for a September 1969 article in "Look", in which they linked Mayor Joseph Alioto to organized crime. Alioto later filed a $12 million libel lawsuit against the magazine. After three inconclusive jury trials, a fourth trial by judge without a jury in 1977 found that the plaintiff has sustained the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that defendant published the defamatory statements contained in the article with actual malice, that is, with reckless disregard for whether they were true or not, and was entitled to judgment in the sum of $350,000, plus costs. and the legal costs helped bring about the demise of "Look". Legal technicalities prevented Carlson and Brisson from being held as defendants in the trial. Carlson stood by the story, claiming several of their sources refused to testify or died.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1971, Carlson was hired by KABC-TV in Los Angeles. Working with producer Pete Noyes, Carlson won several awards, including a Peabody Award for an exposé they produced about car promotion fraud.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1975, Noyes took a job at KFMB-TV in San Diego, and asked Carlson to join him as a combination news anchorman and investigative reporter. However, Carlson walked away from the job after 18 months, tiring of news, calling it a "kid's game" that was "insipid, sophomoric and superficial" and laced with "a lot of arrogance and hypocrisy." He admitted to being part of that hypocrisy, by citing a piece he did that outed a local tennis player, Dr. Renée Richards, as a transsexual woman.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson also targeted G. Elizabeth Carmichael and outed her as transgender, refusing to refer to her as a woman when instructed to by the judge presiding over the trial. This story was popularized in the HBO miniseries, "The Lady and the Dale".


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1977, Carlson joined San Diego Federal Savings and Loan (later Great American First Savings), a savings and loan headed by Gordon Luce, a former cabinet member and close friend of Ronald Reagan, as its public affairs director. Within three years, he became vice president of finance.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Great American First Savings was mired in controversy due to the bank's political connections. For example, in 1984, the bank received negative press for allowing Edwin Meese, adviser to Ronald Reagan, to be 15 months delinquent on his mortgage. That same year, bank officers were accused of receiving federal jobs in exchange for being favorable toward Meese. Luce stated that he saw the loans to Meese as the "natural evolution" of mixing business, politics and friendship.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1981, the investigative television magazine "60 Minutes" had Mike Wallace interview Carlson about controversial home foreclosures executed by the bank, in which the bank had been accused of duping low-income Californians. Carlson hired a camera crew to videotape the interview and, when the "60 Minutes" cameras were not rolling during a commercial break, caught Wallace making a racist joke about blacks and Hispanics:


title: Dick Carlson

text: The following year, Carlson decided to run for mayor of San Diego in what became a contentious campaign against incumbent Roger Hedgecock, who was under indictment for perjury and conspiracy.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson was criticized for numerous infractions throughout his campaign. For example, he was criticized for speaking of his candidacy in terms of political strategy, without mentioning a vision or plans for the city. He was criticized for being "long on generalities and platitudes, but short on specifics." He was criticized as naïve for saying that the city wasn't run by the mayor, but by the city manager. He was further criticized for pledging not to spend his own money on the campaign, but going on to spend nearly $225,000 of his own money, and by "gay-baiting" –– falsely claiming that Hedgecock was supported by the gay community in an effort to turn voters away from Hedgecock. Carlson also had a comic, at one of his major fundraisers, tell a series of racist jokes for which Carlson later apologized.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson's campaign came under scrutiny for its close ties to Great American First Savings, which had direct ties to the White House. Thirty employees donated over $4,000, each, to his campaign, while only one employee donated to Hedgecock. When pressed on the connection, and on other campaign issues, Carlson began to skip candidate forums, and members of the press deemed it increasingly difficult to get ahold of him, with Carlson often not responding to the press for periods of two weeks at a time. Carlson also lacked more exposure because Hedgecock, calling Carlson "a minor candidate," refused to debate him.


title: Dick Carlson

text: After spending $1.2 million on the campaign, and outspending Hedgecock by a 2:1 margin, Carlson lost the election.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In the summer of 1986, President Reagan announced his intention to nominate Carlson as an associate director of the United States Information Agency to succeed Ernest Eugene Pell.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson became director of Voice of America, a U.S. government-funded, state-owned multimedia agency which serves as the United States federal government's official institution for non-military, external broadcasting. It broadcasts 24 hours a day in nearly 50 languages to more than 130 million people around the world, with a full-time staff of 3,000 and a part-time staff of 1,200. Carlson was the longest-serving director in VOA's 50-year history.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In June 1991, Carlson left Voice of America after President George H. W. Bush nominated him to be the U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In March 1992, Carlson became the CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a "private corporation funded by the American people" that produces and distributes programming for public broadcasting.


title: Dick Carlson

text: During his tenure, the Republican Party began its official shift on public broadcasting when it added a plank to its platform condemning public media as "misguided," "ridiculous," and undeserving of government support. The party's official position was that public media had a liberal bias and "the party looked forward to" the privatization of the system.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Critics decried that Republicans were weaponizing public broadcasting in order to make it an election issue against candidates who supported it. Carlson says he was against the platform change:


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1997, he became president and CEO of King World Public Television, a subsidiary of King World Productions, the syndicator of "Oprah", "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy!", among other successful TV shows, until the network was purchased, in the summer of 1999, by CBS for $2.5 billion.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson has testified dozens of times before various U.S. Congressional committees, including the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Relations Committee. He has also been involved in negotiations on behalf of the U.S. government with many foreign governments, including those of China, Korea, the USSR, Germany, Costa Rica, Belize, Liberia, Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa, Morocco and Israel.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1990, Carlson jointly addressed the Israeli Knesset with Malcolm Forbes, Jr. Three years later, he jointly addressed Britain's House of Commons with Richard Branson.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1997, he was an international observer at the Parliamentary Elections in Albania, overseeing polling places in the lawless region near the Greek border.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 2003, Carlson became the vice-chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the counter-terrorism institute in Washington, D.C. and Brussels, Belgium. He held the position for eight years.


title: Dick Carlson

text: From 1992 to 1997, he was also president of InterMedia, the global research consulting firm which conducts opinion surveys for government agencies in over 75 foreign countries. He is currently its Chairman.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson was an advisor of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism & Political Violence. He is also a long-time member of the European Broadcasting Union and the Asian Broadcasting Union.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 2021, Carlson was reported to be a director of Policy Impact, a lobbying firm. The firm has lobbied the United States on behalf of the Viktor Orban regime in Hungary.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson co-wrote "Snatching Hillary, A Satirical Novel" (Tulip Hill Publishing, 2014, ) with Bill Cowan.


title: Dick Carlson

text: He is the author of books: "Women in San Diego's History" (1977), "Free and Fair: The Last Two Weeks of Apartheid" (1995), and "Why Dogs Talk on Christmas Eve." (2014).


title: Dick Carlson

text: He writes a weekly newspaper column, often about terrorism and national security, for the "Pittsburgh Tribune-Review" and the "Charleston Mercury". He is a former political gossip columnist writing "The Shadow Knows" for "The Hill" newspaper in Washington, D.C. with Bill Regardie.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1967, Carlson married artist Lisa McNear (née Lombardi). They had two sons, Tucker McNear Carlson (later, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson), born in 1969, and Buckley Peck Carlson (later, Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson). Carlson and Lombardi divorced in 1976. Carlson was granted custody of Tucker and Buckley. Tucker Carlson would later say that his mother left the family when he was six, wanting to pursue a "bohemian" lifestyle.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1979, Carlson married divorcée Patricia Caroline Swanson, an heiress to the Swanson frozen-food fortune. Swanson is the daughter of Gilbert Carl Swanson, and the niece of Senator J. William Fulbright. This was the third marriage for Swanson, who legally adopted Tucker Carlson and his brother.


title: Dick Carlson

text: In 1984, Carlson was in business with Karon Luce, wife of savings and loan executive Gordon Luce, manufacturing modular cabinets.


title: Dick Carlson

text: Carlson and his wife live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and in a small Virginia town on the Chesapeake Bay. They have a summer home on an island in Maine.


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson (December 19, 1830 – May 12, 1913) was an American writer, poet, traveler, and editor. She was the sister-in-law of poet Emily Dickinson.


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Susan Huntington Gilbert was born December 19, 1830, in Old Deerfield, Massachusetts, the youngest of six children born to Thomas and Harriet (Arms) Gilbert. She was orphaned by the time she was eleven years old, after her mother died in 1837 and her father in 1841. Gilbert lived with her aunt, Sophia (Arms) Van Vranken, in Geneva, New York, until the late 1840s. She then lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her sister Harriet and brother-in-law William Cutler. In Amherst, she attended Utica Female Academy and Amherst Academy for one semester in the fall of 1847.


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: In 1853, she was engaged to Austin Dickinson. Their marriage in the Van Vranken home on July 1, 1856, was "a quiet wedding" with "very few friends and [only Susan's] brothers & sisters, a little cake–a little ice cream." Although the young couple contemplated moving to Michigan, Austin's father Edward Dickinson ensured they would stay in Amherst by making Austin a law partner and building the couple a made-to-order house, the Evergreens, on a lot next door to the Dickinson Homestead. A generous dowry from Susan's brothers helped furnish the Evergreens, a fashionable home with oak sideboards and a green marble fireplace adorned with Antonio Canova's sculpture "Cupid and Psyche", Gothic chairs, and Victorian paintings.


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson was viewed as the "most graceful woman in Western Massachusetts", "astute and cosmopolitan", as well as "The Power" increasingly given to "frivolity, snobbery, and ruthlessness". She was known as a "sensitive editor" who was Emily Dickinson's "most responsive reader", a "remarkably perceptive... mentor of some standing" who supposedly refused to edit Emily's poems for publication.


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: She was affectionately called "Dollie" by Emily, and characterized as an "Avalanche of Sun", a "breath from Gibraltar" uttering "impregnable syllables", "Domingo" in spirit, and "Imagination" itself whose words are of "Silver genealogy."


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Emily Dickinson often described her love for Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. In various letters, Emily compared her love for Susan to Dante's love for Beatrice, Swift's for Stella, and Mirabeau's for Sophie de Ruffey, and compared her tutelage with Susan to one with Shakespeare. Emily appears to have valued Susan's opinions about writing and reading. On Emily's "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers", Susan wrote that the first verse was so compelling that "I always go to the fire and get warm after thinking of it, but I never can again;" a few years later, Thomas Wentworth Higginson paraphrased Emily's critical commentary, echoing Susan's –"If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. . ."


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Susan's enactment of simple ritual for profound utterance is perhaps best displayed in the simple flannel robe she designed and in which she dressed Emily for death, laying her out in a white casket, cypripedium and violets (symbolizing faithfulness) at her neck, two heliotropes (symbolizing devotion) in her hand. This final act over Emily's body underscores "their shared life, their deep and complex intimacy" and that they both anticipated a "postmortem resurrection" of that intimacy. Besides swaddling her beloved friend's body for burial, Susan penned Emily's obituary, a loving portrayal of a strong, brilliant woman, devoted to family and to her neighbors, and to her writing, for which she had the most serious objectives and highest ambitions. Though "weary and sick" at the loss of her dearest friend, Susan produced a piece so powerful that Higginson wanted to use it as the introduction to the 1890 Poems [indeed, it did serve as the outline for Todd's introduction to the second volume of Poems in 1891]. Susan concludes the obituary pointing readers' attentions to Emily as writer, and to the fact that her words would live on. Among her daughter Martha's papers is evidence that these same four lines were used again in a Dickinson ceremony, perhaps to conclude Susan's own funeral:


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Susan Dickinson wrote essays, reviews, journals, poems, letters, and memorials constantly throughout her life. She also produced commonplace books and scrapbooks of her own publications in the "Springfield Republican", as well as of clippings about admired figures such as Queen Victoria.


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: She published several stories in the "Springfield Republican"–"A Hole in Haute Society" (August 2, 1908), "The Passing of Zoroaster" (March 1910), "The Circus Eighty Years Ago" (early 1900s), and possibly "The Case of the Brannigans" (though this may be by her daughter, Martha).. In January 1903, writing from Rome, Susan published a lengthy review of "Harriet Prescott's [Spofford] Early Work" as a letter to the editor of the "Republican". Arguing for republication of Spofford's early work, she quotes "my sister-in-law, Emily Dickinson" as an authority, reiterating the latter's delighted reader's response–"That is the only thing I ever saw in my life I did not think I could have written myself. You stand nearer the world than I do. Send me everything she writes"–and quoting Dickinson's declaration, "for love is stronger than death", in her own critique of Prescott's "Circumstance". In "Annals of the Evergreens", a typescript that was not published until the 1980s, Susan praises Prescott's "Pomegranate Flowers" at the outset, then proceeds to describe an Evergreens life rich in cultural exchange, reading Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, Thomas de Quincey, Julia Ward Howe, Thomas Carlyle, and Shakespeare, and entertaining many distinguished visitors–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist Wendell Phillips, landscape designer Frederick Olmsted.


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Susan Dickinson was criticized for not seeing Emily's poems published. In the 1890 letter to Higginson, Susan described how she had imagined a volume of Emily's writings with "many bits of her prose-passages from early letters quite surpassing the correspondence of Gunderodi[e] with Bettine [von Arnim] [a romantic friendship celebrated by Goethe]. . . [using] quaint bits to my children. . . Of course I should have forestalled criticism by only printing them."


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: In a March 1891 letter to Ward, she elaborated on her vision for such a volume which would also include Emily's "illustrations", "showing her witty humorous side, which has all been left out" of the 1890 "Poems". Susan's outline for the volume shows that she would not have divided the poems into the conventional categories of "Life", "Love", "Time and Eternity", and "Nature" but would have emphasized poetry's integration with quotidian experience.


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Besides publishing critical pieces and stories, Susan published at least one poem, "Love's Reckoning", in the Republican, and wrote quite a few others:


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Drafts of her "Oh" and "A Dirge" ("Feb/95") are recorded in her Florentine commonplace book. Though more conventional in form than Emily's, Susan's poems attend to many of the same subjects–"There are autumn days of the Spring" distinctly echoes both "These are the days when Birds come back" and "The Crickets / sang / And set the / Sun", and "The Sun kept low as an oven" recalls the "Stooping as low as the / kitchen window – " of "Blazing in Gold – and / Quenching – in Purple!" and "The sun kept stooping – stooping – low." Their correspondence was a creative wellspring for Susan as well as for Emily—on Susan's copy of "The Crickets / sang / And Set the / Sun" are several lines of Susan's response to Emily's work, recounting a few lines from Milton's "Comus":


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Where John Milton had written "create a soul", Susan wrote "create a seal", perhaps because she was recalling the lines from memory or revising them a bit. And, upside down, Susan added a few lines from Scott's Redgauntlet:


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Susan Dickinson's writing suggests she had a profound appreciation of nature. She favored landscape paintings depicting the splendors of the natural world. In the Evergreens, John F. Kensett's "Sunset with Cows" (1856) bears Susan's name on the back, and in one of her manuscript poems, she wrote -"I'm waiting but the cows not back."


title: Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson

text: Late in her life, Susan turned increasingly to the rituals of High Church and considered becoming a Roman Catholic. In the 1880s, she spent almost every Sabbath for six years establishing a Sunday school in Logtown, a poor village in present-day Belchertown not far from Amherst.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: Mount Mitchell, known in Cherokee as Attakulla, is the highest peak of the Appalachian Mountains and the highest peak in mainland eastern North America. It is located near Burnsville in Yancey County, North Carolina; in the Black Mountain subrange of the Appalachians, about northeast of Asheville. It is protected by Mount Mitchell State Park and surrounded by the Pisgah National Forest. Mount Mitchell's elevation is above sea level.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: The peak is the highest mountain in the United States east of the Mississippi River, and the highest in all of eastern North America south of the Arctic Cordillera. The nearest higher peaks are in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the highland foothills of Colorado. The mountain's topographic isolation is calculated from the nearest discernible single higher point: Lone Butte, which is 1,189 miles (1,913 km) away in southeastern Colorado.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: The Cherokee people, who long occupied this area as part of their homeland, called the mountain "Attakulla."


title: Mount Mitchell

text: European-American settlers first called the mountain Black Dome for its rounded shape. They later named it after Elisha Mitchell, a professor at the University of North Carolina, who first explored the Black Mountain region in 1835. He determined that the height of the range exceeded by several hundred feet that of Mount Washington in New Hampshire. The latter had been commonly thought at the time to be the highest point in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. Mitchell fell to his death at nearby Mitchell Falls in 1857, where he had returned to verify his earlier measurements.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: A road (NC 128) connects the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway to a parking lot where a steep paved trail leads through a conifer forest to the summit. The stone observation tower on the summit was torn down in late 2006. A new observation deck was constructed and opened to visitors in January 2009.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: Mount Mitchell was formed during the Precambrian when marine deposits were metamorphosed into gneiss and schist. These metasedimentary rocks were later uplifted during the Alleghenian orogeny. The soils are well drained, dark brown and stony with fine-earth material ranging in texture from sandy clay loam to loam or sandy loam; Burton and Craggey are the most common series around the summit.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: The mountain's summit is coated in a dense stand of Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest, which consists primarily of two evergreen species—the red spruce and the Fraser fir. Most of the mature Fraser firs, however, were killed off by the non-native Balsam woolly adelgid in the latter half of the 20th century. The high elevations expose plant life to high levels of pollution, including acid precipitation in the form of rain, snow, and fog. These acids damage the red spruce trees in part by releasing natural metals from the soil, such as aluminum, and by leaching important minerals. To what extent this pollution harms the high-altitude ecosystem is debatable.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: While the mountain is still mostly lush and green in the summer, many dead Fraser fir trunks can be seen due to these serious problems. Reducing air pollution is a difficult issue, as the pollutants are often carried by air to this area from long distances. Sources can be local or hundreds of miles away, requiring cooperation from as far away as the Midwest.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: Wildflowers are abundant all summer long. Young fir and spruce trees do well in the subalpine climate, and their cones feed the birds along with wild blueberry and blackberry shrubs.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: The second highest point in eastern North America, Mount Craig at , is roughly a mile to the north of Mount Mitchell.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: The summit area of Mount Mitchell is marked by a warm-summer humid continental climate (Köppen "Dfb"), with mild summers and long, moderately cold winters, being more similar to southeastern Canada than the southeastern U.S. The monthly daily average temperature ranges from in January to in July. The coldest temperature ever recorded in the state occurred there on January 21, 1985 when it fell to , during a severe cold spell that brought freezing temperatures as far south as Miami. It is also the coldest average reporting station in the state at , well below any other station.


title: Mount Mitchell

text: Unlike the lower elevations in the surrounding regions, heavy snows often fall from December to March, with accumulating in the Great Blizzard of 1993 and in the January 2016 blizzard. Due to the high elevation, precipitation is heavy and reliable year-round, averaging for the year, with no month receiving less than of average precipitation. The summit is often windy, with recorded gusts of up to .


title: Mount Mitchell

text: Mount Mitchell recorded a new state record of of precipitation in 2018, which is also the highest total rainfall recorded during a calendar year anywhere east of the Cascade Range in the Contiguous United States.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Max Blumenthal (born December 18, 1977) is an American journalist, author and blogger who is the editor of "The Grayzone" website, which is known for spreading conspiracy theories and engaging in denial of atrocities committed by dictatorial regimes. He was a writer for "The Nation", AlterNet, "The Daily Beast", "Al Akhbar", and Media Matters for America, and has contributed to Al Jazeera English, "The New York Times" and the "Los Angeles Times". He has been a writing fellow of the Nation Institute. He is a regular contributor to Russian state-owned Sputnik and RT, and has been accused of spreading Russian propaganda.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal has written four books. His first, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party" (2009), made the "Los Angeles Times" and "New York Times" bestsellers lists. He was awarded the 2014 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book for "", which was published in 2013.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal was born on December 18, 1977, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Jacqueline (née Jordan) and Sidney Blumenthal. His father is a journalist and writer who served as an aide to President Bill Clinton. Blumenthal graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In late 2011, Blumenthal joined Lebanon's "Al Akhbar" newspaper primarily to write about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and foreign-policy debates in Washington, DC. When he left the publication in June 2012 in protest at its coverage of the Syrian Civil War, he considered the newspaper to have a pro-Assad editorial line followed by such individuals as Amal Saad-Ghorayeb. He wrote that it "gave me more latitude than any paper in the United States to write about ... Israel and Palestine", but he had ultimately tired of "jousting with Assad apologists". He added: "In the end, Assad will be remembered as an authoritarian tyrant." Blumenthal formerly contributed weekly articles to the "AlterNet" website, serving as a senior writer from September 2014.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal has contributed to broadcasts on RT (formerly known as Russia Today) on many occasions. In December 2015, during a visit to Moscow presumed by multiple sources to have been paid for by the Kremlin, Blumenthal was a guest at RT's "10 Years On Air" anniversary party attended by President Vladimir Putin, then-Lieutenant General Michael Flynn of the United States and English politician Ken Livingstone. In an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News in November 2017, Blumenthal defended RT against "the charge that it’s Kremlin propaganda."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: He has contributed on multiple occasions to "Sputnik" radio, as well as to Iran's Press TV and China's CGTN. Blumenthal founded "The Grayzone" website within a month after his visit to Moscow. In an October 2019 article for "New Politics" magazine, Gilbert Achcar wrote that Blumenthal's "Grayzone", along with the World Socialist Web Site, has "the habit of demonizing all left-wing critics of Putin and the likes of Assad by describing them as 'agents of imperialism' or some equivalent".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal's articles and video reports have been published by "The Daily Beast", "The Nation", "The Huffington Post" (for which he contributed from 2009 to 2011), "Al Jazeera English", "The New York Times", the "Los Angeles Times", "Washington Monthly", and "Columbia Journalism Review".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal won the Online News Association's Independent Feature Award for his 2002 "Salon" article, "Day of the Dead". In the article, he concluded the homicides of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico were connected to the policies of corporate interests in the border city. Blumenthal wrote about the rise of the so-called "Minuteman" movement for "Salon" in 2003, describing its members as "border vigilantes" who "have harassed and detained hundreds, perhaps thousands, of migrants suspected of entering the country illegally."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In 2010, Blumenthal covered the federal immigration enforcement program known as Operation Streamline for "Truthdig". "The program represents the entrenchment of a parallel nonproductive economy promoting abuse behind the guise of law enforcement and crime deterrence", he wrote.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal testified as a prosecution witness for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in their civil suit, known as "Vicente v. Barnett", against Arizona businessman Roger Barnett. Barnett was ordered to pay $73,000 in damages for assaulting a group of migrants near the US–Mexico border.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In 2014, Blumenthal covered hunger strikes by undocumented migrants held in the privatized Northwest Detention Center for "The Nation".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal's book, "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party" (2009), was a bestseller on both the "Los Angeles Times" and "New York Times" bestsellers lists. The work was inspired by the psychologist Erich Fromm who analyzed the personality of those "eager to surrender their freedom" via an identification with authoritarian causes and powerful leaders.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: For Blumenthal, a "culture of personal crisis" has defined the American "radical right". In a 2009 interview with CNN, he commented: "The GOP has become subsumed by dysfunctional personalities with no capacity for restraining themselves, either from acting out hysterically or from their most devious urges. For these internally conflicted figures, who will continue to produce new and increasingly bizarre scandals, right-wing political crusading is simply a form of self-medication."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In early June 2009, Blumenthal posted a 3-minute video on YouTube, titled "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem on the Eve of Obama's Cairo Address". The video, a photo montage of possibly drunk Jewish-American young people in Jerusalem, was recorded the day before President Barack Obama's Cairo address on June 4. Some youths used obscenities and racist rhetoric about President Obama and Arabs, referring to Obama as a "nigger" and "like a terrorist". According to "The Jerusalem Post", the video "garnered massive exposure and caused a firestorm in the media and the Jewish world". A Bradley Burston op-ed in "Haaretz" described the video as "an overnight Internet sensation".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal's video gained 400,000 views before YouTube removed it for unspecified terms-of-use violations. "The Huffington Post" had refused to publish it, and its Tel Aviv sequel was briefly on that website, before it resurfaced on "Mondoweiss". Referring to the Jerusalem video, the "Jewish Telegraphic Agency" quoted Blumenthal as stating: "I won't ascribe motives to YouTube I am unable to confirm, but it is clear there is an active campaign by right-wing Jewish elements to suppress the video by filing a flood of complaints with YouTube".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Referring to death threats he had received for publishing the video, he ascribed individuals "emotional need to stop this video by eliminating" him as "a feature of right-wing psychology around the world". Blumenthal saw his interviewees as part of the "indoctrination" of Taglit-Birthright tours intended for diaspora Jews, in which he had himself participated in 2002. Around 2009, he described himself as a "non-Zionist" liberal, and considered the identification of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism as a "cynical ploy by the Israel lobby".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In 2011, Blumenthal reported that Israeli occupation forces and Bahraini monarchy guards trained American police departments in anti-protester techniques, including torture, and quoted Fordham University Law Professor Karen J. Greenberg. Contacted by Jeffrey Goldberg of "The Atlantic" and Adam Serwer of "Mother Jones", Greenberg told Goldberg that while she "never made such a statement", Blumenthal "was looking for corroboration but I told him I didn't have any." She told Serwer that "I did not intend to assert these allegations as fact ... the entire sense of the quote is inaccurate."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal said that he had quoted Greenberg accurately, accused her of denying she had made the statement, and believed that she had since been "intimidated by Goldberg and the pro-Israel forces he represents." Greenberg had made the same comments to Adam Serwer of "Mother Jones".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal has written two books based on the periods of time he spent in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied territories in the West Bank. He documented what he said were Israeli and Palestinian war crimes in two books: "" (2013) and "The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza" (2015).


title: Max Blumenthal

text: "Goliath", published by Nation Books, outlines what Blumenthal characterizes as Israel's aggressive shift to the far-right, and its crackdown on local activism. In the preface, he writes: "Americans' tax dollars and political support [that] are crucial in sustaining the present state of affairs" in Israel. The book consists of 73 short chapters. Chapter titles include "To the Slaughter", "The Concentration Camp", "The Night of Broken Glass", "This Belongs to the White Man" and "How to Kill Goyim and Influence People".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: The book received a positive review from Nancy Murray in "Race & Class", calling it "a work of unsettling but scrupulous and courageous truth-telling". It was also positively reviewed in the "Journal of Palestine Studies" by Steven Salaita, who called it "one of the most important titles published on the Israel-Palestine conflict in the past few years".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Eric Alterman, writing for "The Nation" wrote that its author "proves a profoundly unreliable narrator" and his book will "do nothing to advance the interests of the occupation’s victims." His article and an extract from Blumenthal's book in the same issue led to many letters being received by "The Nation", several of which were published in the next issue rebuking "The Nation" for publishing Alterman's article. Abdeen Jabara, past president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, wrote that he was troubled by "The Nation" presenting "two sides" by allowing Alterman to do a "hatchet job" on Blumenthal's work, because "there is no equivalency between whatever Palestinians have done or are doing and what Israel and Zionism have done to the Palestinians." Other correspondents, among them Charles H. Manekin, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland and former Director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies, challenged the accuracy of Alterman's article.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Alterman's statement in his original piece about the book being "technically accurate" was queried and he explained it was an issue of context, as Blumenthal "tells us only the facts he wishes us to know and withholds crucial ones that undermine his relentlessly anti-Israel narrative." Jonathan S. Tobin, writing in "Commentary" magazine, described the book as having a "complete lack of intellectual merit or integrity".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: An event was held at the University of Pennsylvania on October 17, 2013, featuring Ian Lustick and Blumenthal discussing "Goliath". Blumenthal objected to what he saw as "Israel's attempt to engineer and maintain a Jewish, non-indigenous majority." Blumenthal said: "there is absolutely no way for Jewish people in Israel/Palestine to become indigenized under the present order. And that's what really has to happen." Consequently, they should be "willing to be a part of the Arab world." A "choice needs to be placed to the Israeli Jewish population" (which he also referred to as the "settler-colonial population") "and it can only be placed to them through external pressure." "The maintenance and engineering of a non-indigenous demographic majority is non-negotiable", he said.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Philip Weiss of the "Mondoweiss" website responded to Blumenthal's comments saying that "similar attitudes about indigenous culture have been used in intolerant ways in our society. I see some intolerance in that answer." In the Acknowledgements to "Goliath", Blumenthal wrote that websites such as "Electronic Intifada" and "Mondoweiss" had "provided essential outlets for much of the reporting" contained in the book. Petra Marquardt-Bigman wrote that the "single-minded effort in "Goliath" to portray Israel in an extremely biased way in order to promote comparisons to Nazi Germany that would justify political campaigns aimed at eliminating the Jewish state qualifies even under the most stringent criteria" as being antisemitic.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In 2013, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that the center ranked Blumenthal in ninth place in their "Top Ten 2013 Anti-Semitic, Anti-Israel Slurs". Hier said that "we judge him by what he wrote. He crossed the line into outright anti-Semitism" and that "he quotes approvingly characterizations of Israeli soldiers as 'Judeo-Nazis'". Blumenthal responded by saying the Wiesenthal Center's list associated him with such people as American writer Alice Walker. He commented that he, Richard Falk, and Roger Waters (who also appear on the list) "had stiff competition: Ayatollah Khomeini [sic, Khamenei] was number one."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Responding on Twitter, Blumenthal posted a cartoon by Carlos Latuff, who had appeared on the list the previous year. Marquardt-Bigman reported that the cartoon depicted Hier as mad; Blumenthal has defended Latuff on Twitter. Gilad Atzmon praised "Goliath" on the "Veterans Today" website: "I really want Blumenthal’s book to succeed and be read widely". He thought Blumenthal had "brilliantly though unwittingly managed to produce a pretty impressive journalistic account in support of my criticism of Jewish identity politics and tribal supremacy".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal appeared before the on September 25, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium, to testify on allegations of war crimes and genocide by Israel against residents of the Gaza Strip during Operation Protective Edge. Blumenthal was in Gaza during Protective Edge and, according to Richard Falk in "The Nation", provided an analysis of the "political design that appeared to explain the civilian targeting patterns". During his appearance at the Russell Tribunal, Blumenthal made a comparison between Israel and ISIL.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: A few days later, Blumenthal and Rania Khalek created the Twitter hashtag #JSIL; "The Jewish State of Israel in the Levant", intended as a comparison between Israel and the Islamic State terrorist organization.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal and Canadian-Israeli journalist David Sheen were invited by Inge Höger and Annette Groth, members of The Left (Die Linke) party, to speak with them in the German parliament in Berlin, the Bundestag, with the meeting being scheduled for November 12, 2014. Blumenthal and Steen stated that Höger and Groth's party colleague Gregor Gysi, tried to cancel the meetings, because Gysi wished to dissociate the Left Party from anti-Israel campaigns.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Before the cancellation, Volker Beck of the Green Party described Blumenthal as someone who sought to "invoke consistently anti-Semitic comparisons between Israel and Nazism", Weinthal had presented his evidence about Blumenthal's writings and activism to Gysi.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Later, Blumenthal and Sheen waited for Gysi to discuss his claim they were antisemites, an assertion Gysi denied making. Gysi, followed by the two other parliamentary members, left his office and crossed down a corridor to enter a restroom, where Sheen and Blumenthal followed him, but failed to force their entry. The two MPs held their meeting with Sheen and Blumenthal in a non-party room, but cut all links with them after hearing about the incident with Gysi. Blumenthal and Sheen were banned from setting foot in the Bundestag again. In an e-mail explaining the ban, Bundestag president Norbert Lammert stated: "Every attempt to exert pressure on members of parliament, to physically threaten them and thus endanger the parliamentary process is intolerable and must be prevented".


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In "The 51 Day War" (2015), Blumenthal writes that he was in Gaza during and following Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli military offensive in Gaza during the summer of 2014. Blumenthal said that the catalyst for the military offensive was the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers by a Hamas cell. He stated that the Israel's West Bank operation was not aimed at rescuing the teens, who were known to be dead, or capturing their killers, but destroying a political agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority by targeting the Palestinian Unity Government. The book is based on his own observations and interviews with citizens, physicians, and others. He writes that, during the operation, Israel targeted Palestinian civilians and media organisations, conducted execution-style killings and attacked refugee shelters.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: According to Petra Marquardt-Bigman, Blumenthal testified at the Russell Tribunal that he arrived in Gaza "at the onset of a five-day humanitarian ceasefire on August 14". She said his interviews at the end of July indicated he was in Washington, DC which suggested he was probably elsewhere, rather than "on the ground", for the first few weeks of the war. She said a tweet by Blumenthal on August 22, indicated he had by then left the area. Marquardt-Bigman wrote that "The 51 Day War" was marketed as an "explosive work of reportage" and that Blumenthal "went to Gaza only some two weeks before the end of the fighting". Marquardt Bigman wrote that certain of his tweets show an "uncritical acceptance of the terror group’s propaganda", a reference to Hamas. She said Blumenthal returned to Gaza to cover the "victory rallies" around the time Hamas accepted an indeterminate ceasefire.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Of the Battle of Shujaiya in July 2014 in "51 Days War", Blumenthal wrote of the Al-Qassam Brigades (the military wing of Hamas) who ambushed IDF soldiers, that although they "had not vanquished the vaunted Israeli Army", "they delivered a bloody nose to its most elite units." Sonali Kolhatkar wrote in the "Los Angeles Review of Books" that "Blumenthal’s casting of the Al-Qassam Brigades as an army of resistance against a brutal aggressor is an essential transgression from the standard narrative of the Middle East conflict."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In a video recording of an event at the London School of Economics in March 2016, Blumenthal described the Al-Qassam commandos as having "burst into the [Nahal Oz] Israeli base and kill[ed] every soldier they encountered in hand-to-hand combat. [...] The message it sent to young Palestinians in the West Bank, in Jerusalem and abroad, was incredible ... You see your people in commando uniforms, bursting into a military base and showing up the occupier."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: "Kirkus Reviews" described the book as being "Explosive, pull-no-punches reporting that is certain to stir controversy." "The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza" was awarded a Palestine Book Award that year by the "Middle East Monitor". Avi Benlolo CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center told "The Canadian Jewish News" in 2016: "While shunned by conventional media outlets, the book is popular on major anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi and conspiracy theory websites such as Stormfront and David Duke's Rense, where his work is used to promote anti-Jewish hate."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Blumenthal, an advocate of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, was invited to speak about "The 51 Day War" at a Toronto PEN Canada event in February 2016. Blumenthal said: "What certain groups — which are very partisan right-wing groups affiliated with the Republican Party in the US and the Conservative Party here — decided to do is to declare me an anti-Semite, that I actually hate Jews." He explained: "However I decide to observe Judaism is irrelevant, because in their view, you can disagree all you want with Moses, but you can’t disagree with King Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu]."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: At the beginning of February 2016, it became known via a release of emails from the State Department that, during Hillary Clinton's four years as Secretary of State, Sidney Blumenthal had sent her at least 19 articles by Max Blumenthal concerning Israel which she had distributed among her staff. In August 2010, Clinton emailed the elder Blumenthal to say: "Pls congratulate Max for another impressive piece. He’s so good." Alan Dershowitz, also an associate of the Clintons, warned of the potential for problems over the connection with someone so critical of Israel.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: When author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel died in July 2016, Max Blumenthal tweeted that "Wiesel went from a victim of war crimes to a supporter of those who commit them", referring to Israel, and "did more harm than good and should not be honored". According to Blumenthal, Wiesel "repeatedly lauded Jewish settlers for ethnically cleansing Palestinians in East Jerusalem". Wiesel was criticized for supporting Elad, an Israeli group which encourages Jewish settlement in the area.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In a statement to "The Jerusalem Post", Jake Sullivan, then senior policy adviser for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, said: "Secretary Clinton emphatically rejects these offensive, hateful, and patently absurd statements about Elie Wiesel." He added: "She believes they are wrong in all senses of the term. She believes that Max Blumenthal and others should cease and desist in making them."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In September 2013, Blumenthal reported for "The Nation" from the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan on the conditions in which Syrian refugees were living. He wrote of being "staunchly against US strikes, mainly because I believe they could exacerbate an already horrific situation without altering the political reality in any meaningful way". The refugees in Zaatari deserved to be heard and commented in the article: "there was not one person I spoke to in Zaatari who did not demand US military intervention at the earliest possible moment."


title: Max Blumenthal

text: After Blumenthal's visit to Moscow in December 2015, according to a 2018 article by Janine di Giovanni in "The New York Review of Books", he began to promote views supportive of Bashar al Assad and the Syrian government's position. Blumenthal was, di Giovanni wrote, among a group of "Assad apologists." Following the December 2015 trip, he said the White Helmets were connected to Al-Qaeda and anti-Assad Syrians were members of the group. In his opinion, the group was "driven by a pro-interventionist agenda conceived by the Western governments and public relations groups that back them" and were being used as a Trojan horse, an excuse for the United States to propose having "70,000 American servicemen" invade Syria.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: In an article for "New Politics", Charles Davis said that Blumenthal had implied in an October 2016 article that the White Helmets were involved in a "false flag conspiracy" to claim a UN convoy to rebel-held Aleppo had been bombed by the Syrian and Russian military. Davis wrote: "In fact, a White Helmets member was among the first civilians to appear on camera at the scene of the attack, declaring in English that 'the regime helicopters targeted this place with four barrel [bombs]'." Blumenthal said the account provided by the White Helmets "remains unconfirmed by both the UN and SARC, and no evidence of barrel bombs has been produced". The UN later concluded their convoy had been hit by barrel bombs dropped by a Syrian regime helicopter.


title: Max Blumenthal

text: Charles Davis stated that "The Grayzone" published an article by Blumenthal and Benjamin Norton which cast doubt on the Syrian government's responsibility for the 2017 Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. Blumenthal and Norton cited a report by Seymour Hersh which said sarin was not used in the attack. A week before their article was published, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed the presence of sarin and a United Nations investigation later said the Syrian government was responsible.