title: Baraka (film)

text: Locations featured include the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Ryōan temple in Kyoto, Lake Natron in Tanzania, burning oil fields in Kuwait, the smouldering precipice of an active volcano, a busy subway terminal, the aircraft boneyard of Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, tribal celebrations of the Maasai in Kenya, and chanting monks in the Dip Tse Chok Ling monastery.


title: Baraka (film)

text: The film features a number of long tracking shots through various settings, including Auschwitz and Tuol Sleng, over photos of the people involved, past skulls stacked in a room, to a spread of bones. It suggests a universal cultural perspective: a shot of an elaborate tattoo on a bathing Japanese yakuza precedes a view of tribal paint.


title: Baraka (film)

text: Following previous DVD releases, in 2007 the original 65 mm negative was rescanned at 8K resolution with equipment designed specifically for "Baraka" at FotoKem Laboratories. The automated 8K film scanner, operating continuously, took more than three weeks to finish scanning more than 150,000 frames (taking approximately twelve to thirteen seconds to scan each frame), producing over thirty terabytes of image data in total.


title: Baraka (film)

text: After a 16-month digital intermediate process, including a 96 kHz/24-bit audio remaster by Stearns for the DTS-HD Master Audio , the result was re-released on DVD and Blu-ray in October 2008. At the time, project supervisor Andrew Oran described the reissue of "Baraka" as "arguably the highest-quality DVD that's ever been made". "Chicago Sun-Times" critic Roger Ebert described the Blu-ray release as "the finest video disc I have ever viewed or ever imagined."


title: Baraka (film)

text: A sequel to "Baraka", "Samsara", made by the same filmmakers, premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and released internationally in August 2012. Also shot in 70 mm, "Samsara" explores an arguably darker, updated version of many of the same themes as "Baraka".


title: Baraka (film)

text: "Baraka" holds a score of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes out of twenty-six reviews. Roger Ebert included the film in his "Great Movies" list, writing: "If man sends another "Voyager" to the distant stars and it can carry only one film on board, that film might be "Baraka"."


title: Baraka (film)

text: The score is by Michael Stearns and features music by, among others, Dead Can Dance, L. Subramaniam, Ciro Hurtado, Inkuyo, Brother, Anugama & Sebastiano and David Hykes.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole crickets are members of the insect family Gryllotalpidae, in the order Orthoptera (grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets). Mole crickets are cylindrical-bodied, fossorial insects about long as adults, with small eyes and shovel-like fore limbs highly developed for burrowing. They are present in many parts of the world and where they have arrived in new regions, may become agricultural pests.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole crickets have three life stages: eggs, nymphs, and adults. Most of their lives in these stages are spent underground, but adults have wings and disperse in the breeding season. They vary in their diet: some species are herbivores, mainly feeding on roots; others are omnivores, including worms and grubs in their diet; and a few are largely predatory. Male mole crickets have an exceptionally loud song; they sing from a burrow that opens out into the air in the shape of an exponential horn. The song is an almost pure tone, modulated into chirps. It is used to attract females, either for mating, or for indicating favourable habitats for them to lay their eggs.


title: Mole cricket

text: In Zambia, mole crickets are thought to bring good fortune, while in Latin America, they are said to predict rain. In Florida, where "Neoscapteriscus" mole crickets are not native, they are considered pests, and various biological controls have been used. "Gryllotalpa" species have been used as food in West Java, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, and the Philippines.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole crickets vary in size and appearance, but most of them are of moderate size for an insect, typically between long as adults. They are adapted for underground life and are cylindrical in shape and covered with fine, dense hairs. The head, fore limbs, and prothorax are heavily sclerotinised, but the abdomen is rather soft. The head bears two threadlike antennae and a pair of beady eyes. The two pairs of wings are folded flat over the abdomen; in most species, the fore wings are short and rounded and the hind wings are membranous and reach or exceed the tip of the abdomen; however, in some species, the hind wings are reduced in size and the insect is unable to fly. The fore legs are flattened for digging, but the hind legs are shaped somewhat like the legs of a true cricket; however, these limbs are more adapted for pushing soil, rather than leaping, which they do rarely and poorly. The nymphs resemble the adults apart from the absence of wings and genitalia; the wing pads become larger after each successive moult.


title: Mole cricket

text: The Gryllotalpidae are a monophyletic group in the order Orthoptera (grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets). Cladistic analysis of mole cricket morphology in 2015 identified six tribes, of which four were then new: Indioscaptorini (Scapteriscinae), Triamescaptorini, Gryllotalpellini and Neocurtillini (Gryllotalpinae), and two existing tribes, Scapteriscini and Gryllotalpini, are revised.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole cricket fossils are rare. A stem group fossil, "Cratotetraspinus", is known from the Lower Cretaceous of Brazil. Two specimens of "Marchandia magnifica" in amber have been found in the Lower Cretaceous of Charente-Maritime in France. They are somewhat more abundant in the Tertiary amber of the Baltic and Dominican regions; impressions are found in Europe and the American Green River Formation.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole crickets are not closely related to the "pygmy mole crickets", the Tridactyloidea, which are in the grasshopper suborder Caelifera rather than the cricket suborder Ensifera. The two groups, and indeed their resemblance in form to the mammalian mole family Talpidae with their powerful front limbs, form an example of convergent evolution, both developing adaptations for burrowing.


title: Mole cricket

text: Adults of most species of mole cricket can fly powerfully, if not with agility, but males do so infrequently. The females typically take wing soon after sunset, and are attracted to areas where males are calling, which they do for about an hour after sunset. This may be to mate, or they may be influenced by the suitability of the habitat for egg-laying, as demonstrated by the number of males present and calling in the vicinity.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole crickets undergo incomplete metamorphosis; when nymphs hatch from eggs, they increasingly resemble the adult form as they grow and pass through a series of up to 10 moults. After mating, a period of 1-2 weeks may occur before the female starts laying eggs. She burrows into the soil to a depth of , ( has been seen in the laboratory), and lays a clutch of 25 to 60 eggs. "Neoscapteriscus" females then retire, sealing the entrance passage, but in "Gryllotalpa" and "Neocurtilla" species, the female has been observed to remain in an adjoining chamber to tend the clutch. Further clutches may follow over several months, according to species. Eggs must be laid in moist ground, and many nymphs die because of insufficient moisture in the soil. The eggs hatch in a few weeks, and as they grow, the nymphs consume a great deal of plant material either underground or on the surface.


title: Mole cricket

text: The adults of some species of mole crickets may move as far as during the breeding season. Mole crickets are active most of the year, but overwinter as nymphs or adults in cooler climates, resuming activity in the spring.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole crickets live almost entirely below ground, digging tunnels of different kinds for the major functions of life, including feeding, escape from predators, attracting a mate (by singing), mating, and raising of young.


title: Mole cricket

text: Their main tunnels are used for feeding and for escape; they can dig themselves under ground very rapidly, and can move along existing tunnels at high speed both forwards and backwards. Their digging technique is to force the soil to either side with their powerful, shovel-like fore limbs, which are broad, flattened, toothed, and heavily sclerotised (the cuticle is hardened and darkened).


title: Mole cricket

text: Males attract mates by constructing specially shaped tunnels in which they sing. Mating takes place in the male's burrow; the male may widen a tunnel to make room for the female to mount, though in some species, mating is tail-to-tail. Females lay their eggs either in their normal burrows or in specially dug brood chambers, which are sealed when complete in the case of the genus "Neoscapteriscus" or not sealed in the case of genera "Gryllotalpa" and "Neocurtilla".


title: Mole cricket

text: Male mole crickets sing by stridulating, always under ground. In "Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa", the song is based on an almost pure tone at 3.5 kHz, loud enough to make the ground vibrate 20 cm all round the burrow; in fact, the song is unique in each species. In "G. gryllotalpa", the burrow is somewhat roughly sculpted; in "G. vineae", the burrow is smooth and carefully shaped, with no irregularities larger than 1 mm. In both species, the burrow has two openings at the soil surface; at the other end is a constriction, then a resonating bulb, and then an escape tunnel. A burrow is used for at least a week. The male positions himself head down with his head in the bulb, and his tail is near the fork in the tunnel.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole crickets stridulate like other crickets by scraping the rear edge of the left fore wing, which forms a plectrum, against the lower surface of the right fore wing, which has a ratchet-like series of asymmetric teeth; the more acute edges face backwards, as do those of the plectrum. The plectrum can move forward with little resistance, but moving it backwards makes it catch each tooth, setting up a vibration in both wings. The sound-producing stroke is the raising (levation) of the wings. The resulting song resembles the result of modulating a pure tone with a 66-Hz wave to form regular chirps. In "G. vineae", the wing levator muscle, which weighs 50 mg, can deliver 3.5 milliwatts of mechanical power; "G. gryllotalpa" can deliver about 1 milliwatt. "G. vineae" produces an exceptionally loud song from half an hour after sunset, continuing for an hour; it can be heard up to 600 m away. At a distance of 1 m from the burrow, the sound has a mean power over the stridulation cycle up to 88 decibels; the loudest recorded peak power was about 92 decibels; at the mouths of the burrow, the sound reaches around 115 decibels. "G. gryllotalpa" can deliver a peak sound pressure of 72 decibels and a mean of about 66 decibels. The throat of the horn appears to be tuned (offering low inductive reactance), making the burrow radiate sound efficiently; the efficiency increases when the burrow is wet and absorbs less sound. Mole crickets are the only insects that construct a sound-producing apparatus. Given the known sensitivity of a cricket's hearing (60 decibels), a night-flying "G. vineae" female should be able to detect the male's song at a range of 30 m; this compares to about 5 m for a typical "Gryllus" cricket that does not construct a burrow.


title: Mole cricket

text: The loudness of the song is correlated with the size of the male and the quality of the habitat, both indicators of male attractiveness. The loudest males may attract 20 females in one evening, while a quieter male may attract none. This behaviour enables acoustic trapping; females can be trapped in large numbers by broadcasting a male's song very loudly.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole crickets vary in their diets; some like the tawny mole cricket are herbivores, others are omnivores, feeding on larvae, worms, roots, and grasses, and others like the southern mole cricket are mainly predacious. They leave their burrows at night to forage for leaves and stems, which they drag underground before consumption, as well as consuming roots underground.


title: Mole cricket

text: Besides birds, toads, and insectivorous mammals, the predators of mole crickets include subterranean assassin bugs, wolf spiders, and various beetles. The South American nematode "Steinernema scapterisci" kills "Neocapteriscus" mole crickets by introducing bacteria into their bodies, causing an overwhelming infection. "Steinernema neocurtillae" is native to Florida and attacks native "Neocurtilla hexadactyla" mole crickets. Parasitoid wasps of the genus "Larra" (Hymenoptera: Crabronidae) attack mole crickets, the female laying an egg on the external surface of the mole cricket, and the larva developing externally on the mole cricket host. "Ormia depleta" (Diptera: Tachinidae) is a specialized parasitoid of mole crickets in the genus "Neoscapteriscus"; the fly's larvae hatch from eggs inside her abdomen; she is attracted by the call of the male mole cricket and deposits a larva or more on any mole cricket individual (just as many females as males) with which she comes in contact. Specialist predators of mole cricket eggs in China and Japan include the bombardier beetle "Stenaptinus jessoensis", whereas in South America, they include the bombardier beetle "Pheropsophus aequinoctialis" (Coleoptera: Carabidae); the adult beetle lays eggs near the burrows of mole crickets, and the beetle larvae find their way to the egg chamber and eat the eggs. Fungal diseases can devastate mole cricket populations during winters with sudden rises of temperature and thaws. The fungus "Beauveria bassiana" can overwhelm adult mole crickets and several other fungal, microsporidian, and viral pathogens have been identified.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole crickets evade predators by living below ground, and vigorously burrowing if disturbed at the surface. As a last-ditch defence, they eject a foul-smelling brown liquid from their anal glands when captured; they can also bite.


title: Mole cricket

text: Mole crickets are relatively common, but because they are nocturnal and spend nearly all their lives under ground in extensive tunnel systems, they are rarely seen. They inhabit agricultural fields and grassy areas. They are present in every continent except Antarctica; by 2014, 107 species had been described and more species are likely to be discovered, especially in Asia. "Neoscapteriscus didactylus" is a pest species, originating in South America; it has spread to the West Indies and New South Wales in Australia. "Gryllotalpa africana" is a major pest in South Africa; other "Gryllotalpa" species are widely distributed in Europe, Asia, and Australia. They are native to Britain (as to Western Europe), but the former population of "G. gryllotalpa" may now be extinct in mainland Britain, surviving in the Channel Islands.


title: Mole cricket

text: Invasive species are those that cause harm in their newly occupied area, where biological control may be attempted. The first-detected invasive mole cricket species was "Neoscapteriscus didactylus", a South American species reported as a pest in St. Vincent, West Indies, as early as 1837; by 1900, it was a major agricultural pest in Puerto Rico. It had probably slowly expanded its range northwards, island by island, from South America. The only biological control program against "N. didactylus" was in Puerto Rico, and it succeeded in establishing the parasitoid wasp "Larra bicolor" from Amazonian Brazil. In 2001, "N. didactylus" in Puerto Rico seemed to be a pest only in irrigated crops and turf. Small-scale experimental applications of the nematode "Steinernema scapterisci" were made in irrigated turf, but survival of the nematode was poor. Very much later, this same species was reported as a pest in Queensland, Australia, presumably arriving by ship or plane. The next-detected invasive species was in the late 19th century in Hawaii, probably by ship. It was named as "Gryllotalpa africana", but much later as perhaps "G. orientalis". It was not identified as "Gryllotalpa krishnani" until 2020. It attacked sugarcane and was targeted with "Larra polita" from the Philippines in 1925, apparently successfully.


title: Mole cricket

text: The next detection was in Georgia, USA, and at that time was assumed to be "N. didactylus" from the West Indies. It was, in fact, three South American "Neoscapteriscus" species, "N. abbreviatus", "N . vicinus", and "N. borellii", probably having arrived in ship ballast. They caused major problems for decades as they spread in the Southeastern USA."Scapteriscus" mole cricket populations had built up since the early decades of the 20th century and damaged pastures, lawns, playing fields, and vegetable crops. From the late 1940s, chlordane had been the insecticide of choice to control them, but when chlordane was banned by the U.S. EPA in the 1970s, ranchers were left with no economic and effective control method. Especially to aid Florida ranchers, a project that became known as the UF/IFAS Mole Cricket Research Program was initiated in 1978. In 1985, a multiple-authored report was published on accomplishments. In 1988, an account was published on prospects for biological control, and in 1996 an account of promising results with biological control. The program ended in 2004 after 25 years of running monitoring stations, and in 2006 a summary publication announced success: a 95% reduction in mole cricket numbers in northern Florida, with biological control agents spreading potentially to all parts of Florida. Efforts to use "Larra bicolor" as a biological control agent in Florida began by importing a stock from Puerto Rico. It became established in a small area of southeastern Florida, but had little effect on "Neoscapteriscus" populations. A stock from Bolivia became established in northern Florida and spread widely (with some help) to most of the rest of the state and neighboring states. Its survival depends upon the availability of suitable nectar sources.


title: Mole cricket

text: Once gravid female "Ormia depleta" flies were found to be attracted to the song of "Neoscapteriscus" males in South America, a path to trap these flies with synthetic mole cricket songs was opened. Experimentation then led to a rearing method. Laborious rearing of over 10,000 flies on mole cricket hosts allowed releases of living fly pupae at many sites in Florida from the far northwest to the far south, mainly on golf courses, and mainly in 1989-1991. Populations were established, began to spread, and were monitored by use of synthetic mole cricket song. Eventually, the flies were found to have a continuous population from about 29°N then south to Miami, but the flies failed to survive the winter north of about 29°N. Shipment and release of the flies to states north of Florida was thus a wasted effort. As the flies had been imported from 23°S in Brazil and could not overwinter north of 29°N, whether flies from 30°S in Brazil might survive better in northern Florida was investigated in 1999, but they did not.


title: Mole cricket

text: The third biological control agent to target "Neoscapteriscus" in Florida was the South American nematode "Steinernema scapterisci". Small-scale releases proved it could persist for years in mole cricket-infested sandy Florida soils. Its use as a biopesticide against "Neoscapteriscus" was patented, making it attractive to industry. Industrial-scale production on artificial diet allowed large-scale trial applications in pastures and on golf courses, which succeeded in establishing populations in several counties, and these populations spread, but sales were disappointing, and the product was withdrawn from the market in 2014. Although experimental application was made in states north of Florida, only in southern Georgia was establishment of the nematode verified, suggesting little interest in the other states.


title: Mole cricket

text: The main damage done by mole crickets is as a result of their burrowing activities. As they tunnel through the top few centimetres of soil, they push the ground up in little ridges, increasing evaporation of surface moisture, disturbing germinating seeds, and damaging the delicate young roots of seedlings. They are also injurious to turf and pasture grasses as they feed on their roots, leaving the plants prone to drying out and damage by use.


title: Mole cricket

text: In their native lands, mole crickets have natural enemies that keep them under control. This is not the case when they have been accidentally introduced to other parts of the world. In Florida from the 1940s through the 1980s, they were considered pests and were described as "a serious problem". Their population densities have since declined greatly. A University of Florida entomology report suggests that South American "Neoscapteriscus" mole crickets may have entered the United States at Brunswick, Georgia, in ship's ballast from southern South America around 1899, but were at that time mistakenly believed to be from the West Indies. One possible remedy was biological pest control using the parasitoidal wasps "Larra bicolor". Another remedy that has been successfully applied is use of the parasitic nematode "Steinernema scapterisci". When this is applied in strips across grassland, it spreads throughout the pasture (and potentially beyond) within a few months and not only controls the mole crickets, but also remains infective in the soil for future years.


title: Mole cricket

text: In Zambia, "Gryllotalpa africana" is held to bring good fortune to anyone who sees it. In Latin America, "Scapteriscus" and "Neocurtilla" mole crickets are said to predict rain when they dig into the ground. In Japan in the past, they seem to have been associated with the worms/corpses/bugs that announce a person's sins to heaven in the Koshin/Koushin belief.


title: Mole cricket

text: "Gryllotalpa" mole crickets have sometimes been used as food in West Java and Vietnam. In Thailand, mole crickets () are valued as food in Isan. They are usually eaten fried along with sticky rice.


title: Mole cricket

text: In the Philippines, they are served as a delicacy called "camaro" in the province of Pampanga and are a tourist attraction. They are also served in parts of Northern Luzon.


title: Des (TV series)

text: Des is a British three-part television drama miniseries, based on the 1983 arrest of Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen, after the discovery of human remains causing the blockage of a drain near his home. The series premiered on 14 September 2020.


title: Des (TV series)

text: The drama is the ninth in a sequence of ITV miniseries featuring notorious British murder cases of the past two centuries, following on from "" (2000), "" (2002), "A Is for Acid" (2002), "The Brides in the Bath" (2003), "" (2006), "Appropriate Adult" (2011), "Dark Angel" (2016), "In Plain Sight" (2016). The next in the sequence is "The Pembrokeshire Murders" (2021).


title: Des (TV series)

text: The premiere episode was watched live by 5.4 million viewers on ITV, a benchmark previously hit in 2019 with "Cleaning Up". The peak was 5.9 and nearly a third of all viewers were watching it at the time of its airing.


title: Des (TV series)

text: The series was well received by critics and described as a "sensitive, finely worked drama showing the unrelentingly bleak reality of the monstrous narcissist". Tennant's performance was considered "one of his best in an impeccable career".


title: Des (TV series)

text: Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 89%. The website's critics consensus reads, "Des is a smartly scripted, sufficiently eerie true crime drama anchored by a chilling performance from David Tennant."


title: Des (TV series)

text: In 2021, David Tennant won the International Emmy Award for Best Actor, at the 49th International Emmy Awards, for his role in the show.


title: Mukesh Bhatt

text: Mukesh Bhatt (born 5 June 1952) is an Indian film producer and actor who has produced several Bollywood films. He is the younger brother of Mahesh Bhatt, and also the co-owner of the production company Vishesh Films, set up in 1986. He is the uncle of Pooja Bhatt, Rahul Bhatt, Shaheen Bhatt, Emraan Hashmi and Alia Bhatt.


title: Mukesh Bhatt

text: Bhatt is the son of Nanabhai Bhatt (1915–1999), a Hindi film director and producer. His father was a Gujarati Brahmin and mother a Gujarati Muslim. Nanabhai's brother, Balwant Bhatt (1909–1965) was also a Hindi film director. He is married to Nilima Bhatt. Bhatt has one daughter named Sakshi and a son Vishesh; Vishesh Films was named after him. For 30 years Mukesh along with his brother Mahesh produced movies under the banner of Vishesh films. However owing to differences between the brothers, Mukesh Bhatt took over Vishesh films and in May 2021, it was publicly announced that Mahesh Bhatt was no more associated with the firm.


title: Mukesh Bhatt

text: Bhatt's first film as producer was "Jurm" (1990) with Vinod Khanna, however, the film was not very successful. Then he collaborated with Gulshan Kumar to produce the love story, "Aashiqui" (1990), starring debutantes Rahul Roy and Anu Agarwal. The film was directed by his brother Mahesh Bhatt. The films that followed "Aashiqui" were all big hits. These included "Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin" (1991) and "Sadak" (1991) released under the banner of Vishesh Films. All of these films starred Pooja Bhatt along with prominent actors like Aamir Khan and Sanjay Dutt.


title: Mukesh Bhatt

text: Bhatt produced more films in the following years, such as, "Sir" (1993) starring Naseeruddin Shah, "Naajayaz" (1995), "Criminal" (1995), and "Fareb" (1996). The 1998 film "Ghulam", was yet another success for the producer. In 1999, "Sangharsh" starring Preity Zinta and Akshay Kumar was successful venture for the producer, while the horror films "Raaz" (2002), and its sequel "Raaz – The Mystery Continues" (2009), both were received positively. In 2004, he introduced his nephew Emraan Hashmi on the big screen with the film "Footpath", also starring Bipasha Basu. His recent ventures as producer include, "Zeher" (2005), "Kalyug" (2005), "Gangster" (2006), "Woh Lamhe" (2006), "Jannat" (2008), "Tum Mile" (2009) and "Crook" (2010).


title: Mukesh Bhatt

text: He produced along with his brother Mahesh Bhatt "Hamari Adhuri Kahani" (2015) with Emraan Hashmi and Vidya Balan in leading roles. It is based on the love story of Bhatt's parents, Nanabhai Bhatt, Shirin Mohammad Ali and his stepmother.


title: Mukesh Bhatt

text: https://www.thepersonality.info/2020/08/mukesh-bhatt-biography.html [https://www.thepersonality.info/2020/08/mukesh-bhatt-biography.html mukesh bhatt bio [हिंदी<nowiki>]</nowiki>]


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Ronald Cornett Hawkins (January 10, 1935 – May 29, 2022) was an American singer-songwriter, long based in Canada, whose career spanned more than half a century.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: His career began in Arkansas, United States, where he was born and raised. He found success in Ontario, Canada, and lived there for most of his life. He was highly influential in the establishment and evolution of rock music in Canada.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Also known as "Rompin' Ronnie", "Mr. Dynamo" or "The Hawk", he was one of the key players in the 1960s rock scene in Toronto. He performed all across North America and recorded more than 25 albums. His hit songs include covers of Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days" (retitled "Forty Days") and Young Jessie's "Mary Lou", a song about a gold digger. Other well-known recordings are a cover of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" (without the question mark), "Hey! Bo Diddley", and "Susie Q", which was written by his cousin, rockabilly artist Dale Hawkins.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Hawkins was a talent scout and mentor of the musicians he recruited for his band, The Hawks. Roy Buchanan was an early Hawks guitarist on the song "Who Do You Love". The most successful of his students were those who left to form The Band. Robbie Lane and the Disciples made their name opening for Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks at the Yonge Street bars in Toronto, and eventually became his backing band. Others he had recruited later formed Janis Joplin's Full Tilt Boogie Band, Crowbar, Bearfoot, and Skylark. Hawkins was still playing 150 engagements a year in his 60s.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Hawkins was born on January 10, 1935, in Huntsville, Arkansas, the son of Flora ( Cornett), a schoolteacher, and Jasper Hawkins, a barber. In 1945, the family, which included Hawkins’s older sister Winifred, moved to Fayetteville, where Hawkins was educated in the city’s public schools, graduating from Fayetteville High School in 1952. Musicianship ran in Hawkins's family; Hawkins's father, uncles, and cousins had toured the honky-tonk circuit in Arkansas and Oklahoma in the 1930s and 1940s. His uncle Delmar "Skipper" Hawkins, a road musician, had moved to California about 1940 and joined cowboy singing star Roy Rogers's band, the Sons of the Pioneers. Hawkins' cousin, Dale Hawkins, the earliest white performer to sing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and the Regal Theater in Chicago, recorded the rhythm and blues song "Suzie Q" in 1957. Beginning at age eleven, Ronnie Hawkins sang at local fairs and before he was a teenager shared a stage with Hank Williams. He recalled that Williams was too drunk to perform, and his band, the Drifting Cowboys, invited members of the audience to get on the stage and sing. Hawkins accepted the invitation and sang some Burl Ives songs he knew.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: As a teenager, Hawkins ran bootleg liquor from Missouri to the dry counties of Oklahoma in his modified Ford Model A, sometimes making three hundred dollars a day. He claimed in later years that he continued the activity until he was nineteen or twenty, and that it was how he made the money to buy into nightclubs. He had already formed his first band, the Hawks, when he graduated from high school in 1952, following which he studied physical education at the University of Arkansas, where in 1956 he dropped out just a few credits short of graduation.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Hawkins then enlisted in the United States Army, but he was required to serve only six months, having already completed ROTC training. Soon after his arrival at Fort Sill in Oklahoma for Army Basic Combat Training, he was having a drink at the Amvets club when an African American quartet began to play their music. Hearing the first notes so stirred him that he jumped onto the stage and started singing. "It sounded like something between the blues and rockabilly ... me being a hayseed and those guys playing a lot funkier." The experience caused Hawkins to realize what kind of music he really wanted to play, and he joined the four black musicians, who renamed themselves the Blackhawks.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: The group had been performing a sort of jazz/blues something like Cab Calloway's music of the 1940s, and Hawkins sought to introduce contemporary influences to their repertoire. With another new member, blues saxophonist A.C. Reed, they created some of the South's most dynamic music sounds. "[I]nstead of doing a kind of rockabilly that was closer to country music, I was doing rockabilly that was closer to soul music, which was exactly what I liked." The band encountered prejudice, as many white people in the American South of the 1950s could not accept an integrated band and considered rock 'n' roll and rhythm and blues the devil's music.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: The Blackhawks disbanded when his enlistment ended. Hawkins went back to Fayetteville, and two days later he got a call from Sun Records, who wanted him to front the house session band. By the time he got to Memphis, though, the group had already broken up. Nevertheless, he took advantage of the opportunity to cut two demos, Lloyd Price's "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" and Hank Williams's "A Mansion on the Hill", but the recordings attracted no attention. The demo session guitarist, Jimmy Ray "Luke" Paulman, suggested that Hawkins join him at his home in Helena, Arkansas, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta region, a hotbed of blues, rhythm and blues, and country music, an offer which he eagerly accepted.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Immediately upon arriving in Helena, Hawkins and Paulman found Paulman's brother George (standup bass) and their cousin Willard "Pop" Jones (piano) and formed a band they named The Hawks. Drummer Levon Helm, who had grown up in nearby Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, first played with the group at the Delta Supper Club in early 1957 when George Paulman invited him to sit in them for their closing set. Helm reminisced years later that Hawkins, accompanied by Luke Paulman, drove his Model A out to the Helm's cotton farm, arriving in a cloud of dust to talk to Helm's parents. Helm remembered him as "a big ol' boy in tight pants, sharp shoes and a pompadour hanging down his forehead." Helm listened to Hawkins negotiate an agreement with his parents, who insisted that he graduate high school before he could join The Hawks and go to Canada. Helm practiced diligently on a makeshift drum kit to improve his skills, and when he graduated in May, he was good enough to play drums in the band.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Hawkins's live act included back flips and a "camel walk" that preceded Michael Jackson's similar moonwalk by three decades. His stage persona gained him the monikers "Rompin' Ronnie" and "Mr. Dynamo". Hawkins also owned and operated the Rockwood Club in Fayetteville, where some of rock and roll's earliest pioneers came to play, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Conway Twitty.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: With Helm's graduation from high school, he joined The Hawks and they went to Canada, where the group met success. On April 13, 1959, they auditioned for Morris Levy, owner of Roulette Records in New York. Only four hours later, they entered the studio and recorded their first record tracks. Their first single, "Forty Days", was a barely disguised knockoff of Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days" with the song "Mary Lou" by Young Jessie on the B-side; it reached number 26 on the US pop charts, becoming Hawkins's biggest hit.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: After spending nearly three months in Canada, the band returned to the South, with their base in Hawkin's home town of Fayetteville. The band's gigs in the southern states were mostly one-nighters or short run performances in Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Helm loved to drive, and would drive the band two or three hundred miles to the next show in Hawkin's old Chevy, which Hawkins eventually replaced with a Cadillac towing a trailer containing their equipment.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Hawkins and the group had begun touring Canada in 1958 as the Ron Hawkins Quartet on the recommendation of Conway Twitty, who told him Canadian audiences wanted to hear rockabilly. Their bassist George Paulman was abusing liquor and pills, so Hawkins left him behind, and they played without a bass on their first tour of Ontario. Their first gig was at the Golden Rail Tavern in Hamilton, Ontario, where, according to booking agent Harold Kudlets, all the bartenders quit when they heard the band's sound and saw Hawkins's stunts on stage. In 1959 he performed a number of live shows in the country and signed a five-year contract with Roulette Records. Working out of Toronto, Ronnie Hawkins and The Hawks cut the LP "Ronnie Hawkins" in 1959, and with Fred Carter, Jr. taking Jimmy Ray "Luke" Paulman's place on lead guitar, they cut another LP, "Mr. Dynamo", the next year, both of them recorded on the Roulette label.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: He subsequently moved to Canada and in 1964 became a permanent resident. In 2017, he moved from Stoney Lake Manor in Douro-Dummer, where he had resided since 1970, to Peterborough, Ontario. Hawkins was an institution of the Ontario music scene for over 40 years. When he first came to Ontario he played gigs at places like the Grange Tavern in Hamilton, where Conway Twitty got his start, and made it his home base. In Toronto, where The Hawks dominated the local scene, Hawkins opened his own night club, the Hawk's Nest, on the second floor of Le Coq d'Or Tavern on Yonge street, playing there for months at a time.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: After the move to Canada, The Hawks, with the exception of drummer Levon Helm, dropped out of Hawkins's band. Their vacancies were filled by Southwest Ontarians Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. David Clayton-Thomas, a Canadian and future lead vocalist of the American group Blood, Sweat & Tears, said he heard The Hawks when he got out of prison in 1962: "We young musicians would sit there by the bar at Le Coq d'Or and just hang on every note." This version of the Hawks, wearing mohair suits and razor-cut hair, were the top group among those who played Le Coq d'Or, a rowdy establishment at the center of the action on the Yonge Street strip in Toronto. They were able to stay out of most of the bar fights that broke out there almost every night.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Robbie Robertson wrote in his 2016 memoir "Testimony" about how he and his band The Suedes had opened for The Hawks at the Dixie Arena in the west end of Toronto when he was fifteen. He described Hawkins spinning, flipping, and camel walking when Jimmy Ray "Luke" Paulman launched into a solo on his lead guitar, then tumbling and landing at Paulman's feet. He said of the show, "It was the most violent, dynamic, primitive rock 'n' roll I had ever witnesssed, and it was addictive." It was also the first time he saw Levon Helm, whom he described as a "young beam of light on drums" at the center of it all.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: The Hawks were playing at Le Coq d'Or for a couple more weeks, and Robertson hung around them as much as possible, hoping he could absorb some of their southern "mojo". One afternoon he overheard Hawkins say he needed some new songs since they were going into the studio to record the next month. Hoping to ingratiate himself, Robertson stayed up all night and wrote two songs, "Someone Like You and "Hey Boba Lu", and played them for Hawkins the next day. The showman was impressed and recorded both of them for his new album, "Mr Dynamo".


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: A year later, in 1960, Robertson pawned his prized 1957 Fender Stratocaster to buy a bus ticket south from Toronto to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to audition for a job with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, "the most wicked rock 'n' roll band around". Levon Helm met the guitarist at the Greyhound bus station and initiated him into the ways of the Deep South. This was Robertson's first time in the South, and he was hoping to take the place of Fred Carter, Jr., who had played with Hawkins's cousin, Dale Hawkins, and Roy Orbison. The band went to Levon Helm's home town of Helena in the Mississippi Delta, where Robertson spent some time at the Helms' family farm.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Then he and Helm returned to the Rainbow Inn, a local motel in which Hawkins had ensconced the band, and practiced songs from the Hawks' repertoire. The motel was owned by a local ferry operator, Charlie Halbert, who had helped many musicians just starting out in the business, including Conway Twitty and Elvis Presley. When Hawkins offered him the job, Robertson asked how much he would be paid, and Hawkins responded, "Well, son, you won't make much money, but you'll get more pussy than Frank Sinatra." Hawkins, with Helm in tow, then went to England to promote his new record, where they met Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, who were on tour there. Meanwhile, still at the Rainbow Inn, Robertson tried to learn as much of the band's repertoire as he could, in an environment that he recalled as "rockabilly boot camp".


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Before leaving on the trip to England, Hawkins took Robertson to the Delta Supper Club, a notorious hangout in West Helena, where an irate patron had chainsawed the bar down the middle. While waiting for Hawkins's and Helm's return, Robertson practiced, listening to stacks of records he had bought in Memphis with his first week's paycheck. His haul of music included records by Ray Charles, bluesmen Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, B. B. King, Junior Parker, and T-Bone Walker, rockabilly singer and guitarist Warren Smith, and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. When Hawkins and his new Hawks lineup recorded the album "Mojo Man" in New York City in 1961, Robertson's lead guitar work showed the influence of other Chicago bluesmen such as Buddy Guy and Otis Rush as well.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Along with Helm, all The Hawks left Hawkins in 1964 to form a group which came to be named The Band. Robertson describes an event that led to the parting in chapter nine of "Testimony". The decision came after Hawkins tried to prevent Rick Danko's girlfriend from coming to the shows. Hawkins wanted the group to mingle with the crowd, and Danko wanted to sit with her instead. Other issues included diverging musical interests, and pay. Hawkins was often absent from shows, leaving The Hawks to play without him. Levon felt they should be paid more when Hawkins didn't show up. There was a confrontation and things came to a head. They went to work for Bob Dylan in 1965, touring with him for a year, and were his backup band on "The Basement Tapes". Hawkins continued to perform and record, and did a few tours in Europe.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: In December 1969, Hawkins hosted John Lennon and Yoko Ono for a stay at his home in Mississauga, Ontario, during the couple's campaign to promote world peace. Lennon signed his erotic "Bag One" lithographs during his stay there. Lennon also did a radio promo for a Hawkins single, a version of The Clovers song "Down in the Alley". When their visit ended, Lennon and Ono, with Hawkins and his wife Wanda as part of their entourage, took the CNR Rapido train to Montreal, where they engaged in their Bed-in for Peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Hawkins later rode with them on a train to Ottawa to see then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Lennon also enlisted Hawkins as a peace ambassador, and Hawkins traveled to the border of China and Hong Kong with journalist Ritchie Yorke bearing an anti-war message.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: In 1970 Hawkins recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, laying down tracks for an ultimately unproduced album entitled "Ronnie Hawkins". Among the studio musicians was Duane Allman, whose backing led two tracks from the session to be included on the Duane Allman Anthology - Volume II released in 1974: Carl Perkins' rockabilly hit "Matchbox", and the Don Gibson country & western tune "Don't Tell Me Your Troubles", featuring Allman on dobro. Four more tracks from that album were included on Skydog, a 2016 Duane Allman retrospective: "One More Night," "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," "Down in the Alley," and "Who Do You Love." "Matchbox" was also included on Skydog.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: In the early 1970s, Hawkins noticed guitarist Pat Travers performing in Ontario nightclubs and was so impressed by the young musician that he invited him to play in his band. Travers joined the group, but balked when Hawkins told him he wanted him to play "old ’50s and ’60s rockabilly tunes". Years later, Travers told an interviewer, "... he wanted me to play them exactly the same, same sound, same picking, same everything. For a 19-, 20-year-old kid, that wasn't exactly what I wanted to do. But he said, 'You can do this, son, and you’ll be better than a hundred guitar players, because this is where it all comes from. You need to know this stuff. It's like fundamental.' And he was right". Travers later had a successful recording career and became an influential guitarist in the 1970s hard rock genre.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: In 1975, Bob Dylan cast Hawkins to play the role of "Bob Dylan" in the movie, "Renaldo and Clara". The following year, he was a featured performer at the Band's Thanksgiving Day farewell concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, which was documented in the 1978 film "The Last Waltz". Robbie Robertson said of it in 2020, "If there was anything wrong that night, it was that the cocaine wasn't very good." Hawkins sampled some of the powder and told the other performers that there was so much flour and sugar in it that they would be "sneezing biscuits" for three months afterward. Hawkin's 1984 LP, "Making It Again", garnered him a Juno Award as Canada's best Country Male Vocalist. In addition to his career as a musician, he become an accomplished actor, hosting his own television show "Honky Tonk" in the early 1980s and appearing in such films as Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" alongside his friend Kris Kristofferson, and in the action/adventure film "Snake Eater".<ref name="https://books.google.com/books?id=qW8rAUX6yvIC&pg=PA329"></ref> His version of the song "Mary Lou" was used in the 1989 slasher film, "".


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: On January 10, 1995, Hawkins celebrated his 60th birthday by sponsoring a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto, which was documented on the album "Let It Rock". The concert featured performances by Hawkins, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Band, and Larry Gowan. Canadian musician Jeff Healey sat in on guitar as well. Hawkins's band, the Hawks, or permutations of it, backed the performers. All of the musicians performing that night were collectively dubbed "the Rock 'n' Roll Orchestra".


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: In 2002, Hawkins was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer which went into remission, which he attributed in the film documentary to a miracle by the 'Big Rocker' and Adam 'Dreamhealer' McLeod, a 16 year old healer from Vancouver, B.C. His remarkable remission was featured in the 2012 film "Ronnie Hawkins: Still Alive and Kicking".


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Hawkins died in the early morning of May 29, 2022, at the age of 87 from unspecified causes. The cancer reportedly never returned.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Wanda, their two sons, Ronnie Hawkins Jr. and singer-songwriter Robin Hawkins, who had served as his guitarist since the 1980s and wrote his hit 'Can't Stop Rockin', and daughter Leah Hawkins, a singer-songwriter who had been his backup singer, and his grandchildren, Robin's four children, Tara, Troy, Jacob and Zack.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: In 2002, October 4 was declared "Ronnie Hawkins Day" by the city of Toronto as he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame, in recognition of his lifetime contribution to music and his generous support of the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario and other charitable organizations. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame at the Canadian Music Industry Awards on March 4, 2004. His pioneering contribution to the genre was also recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: On May 2, 2013, Hawkins was named an Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada. His investiture was held on May 7, 2014. The citation reads:


title: Ronnie Hawkins

text: Other awards include a Juno Award for "Making it Again" in 1984, the Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award from the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, presented at the Juno Awards of 1996 and a Special Achievement Award from the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers (SOCAN) in 2007.


title: Cartoon Saloon

text: Cartoon Saloon is an Irish animation film, short film and television studio based in Kilkenny which provides film TV and short film services. The studio is best known for its animated feature films "The Secret of Kells", "Song of the Sea", "The Breadwinner" and "Wolfwalkers". Their works have received five Academy Award nominations, their first four feature length works all received nominations for Best Animated Feature and one for Best Animated Short Film ("Late Afternoon"). The company also developed the cartoon series "Skunk Fu!", "Puffin Rock", "Dorg Van Dango" and "Vikingskool". As of 2020, the studio employs 300 animators.


title: Cartoon Saloon

text: Cartoon Saloon was established in Kilkenny during 1999 by Tomm Moore, Nora Twomey, and Paul Young. The three were all alumni of the Ballyfermot College of Further Education’s animation degree course. Cartoon Saloon began working on a trailer for its first feature film, "The Secret of Kells", that same year. However, the film did not enter full production until 2005; the company animated corporate work such as advertisements as they searched for funding. Meanwhile the studio of 12 animators relied on commercial and corporate work including web-site design and CD ROM production with Paul Young focusing on illustration whilst Tomm Moore undertook the animation.


title: Cartoon Saloon

text: Both "The Secret of Kells" and the studio’s second feature "Song of the Sea" were inspired by "The Thief and the Cobbler" and "Mulan" while the founders were in university. Tomm Moore, the director of both films, said "Some friends in college and I were inspired by Richard Williams' unfinished masterpiece "The Thief and the Cobbler" and the Disney movie "Mulan", which took indigenous traditional art as the starting point for a beautiful style of 2D animation. I felt that something similar could be done with Irish art." A 2001 meeting with Les Armateurs proved instrumental in the effort to secure funding for "The Secret of Kells", and the company helped in the production of the final film.


title: Cartoon Saloon

text: The success and Oscar nomination of the film in 2009 led to major offers for Cartoon Saloon, but the studio chose to remain independent. This led to a difficult time financially for the company for a few years with the partners having to take out personal loans to keep the studio afloat.


title: Cartoon Saloon

text: As of 2021, Cartoon Saloon is in production of its TV series, "Vikingskool" and Nora Twomey's second feature for Netflix, " My Father's Dragon".


title: Cartoon Saloon

text: The studio provides animation, illustration and design services for clients ranging from Disney to BBC to Cartoon Network.


title: Cartoon Saloon

text: Cartoon Saloon also provided the graphics for the successful Emperor of the Irish exhibition at Trinity College Dublin, in 2014.


title: Dax Harwood

text: David Michael Harwood (born June 30, 1984) is an American professional wrestler. He is currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW) under the ring name Dax Harwood, where he and his FTR tag team partner, Cash Wheeler, he also makes appearances in their sister promotion Ring Of Honor, as well as partner promotions Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide and New Japan Pro-Wrestling. Harwood is also known for his time in WWE, under the ring name Scott Dawson. In WWE he held both the Raw and SmackDown as well as the NXT Tag Team Championship and WWE 24/7 Championship along with his partner Dash Wilder.


title: Dax Harwood

text: Harwood made his professional wrestling debut in 2004. He wrestled for a variety of independent promotions as KC McKnight, most notably for CWF Mid-Atlantic, AWA Superstars of Wrestling and a number of NWA-affiliated organizations including NWA Anarchy and Pro Wrestling Zero1. In 2010, he made an appearance for Ring of Honor (ROH) in a dark match prior to "ROH The Big Bang!". He also wrestled at various North Carolina independents including United Professional Wrestling Association in Wilmington, working with the likes of Zane and Dave Dawson, Daniel Messina, Charlie Dreamer, Marcus Shields, etc.


title: Dax Harwood

text: Harwood signed with WWE in 2012 and was assigned to the WWE Performance Center, taking the ring name Scott Dawson. He made his television debut on March 7, 2013 episode of "NXT", teaming with Judas Devlin in a two-on-one handicap loss to Adrian Neville. Dawson made a further appearance in an enhancement role on April 10 episode of "NXT", in a six-man tag-team defeat against The Shield.


title: Dax Harwood

text: In May 2013, Dawson formed a tag-team with Garrett Dylan, with the two managed by Sylvester Lefort. On June 26 episode of "NXT" Dawson and Dylan lost a number one contender's match for the NXT Tag Team Championship to Corey Graves and Kassius Ohno. The team disbanded shortly afterwards when Dylan was released from the company. Following Dylan's release, Dawson initially worked as a singles competitor with little success and then formed a tag-team with Alexander Rusev, who was also being managed by Lefort. Rusev and Dawson participated unsuccessfully in a contendership battle royal for the NXT Tag Team Championship on September 12 episode of "NXT". Their alliance ended when Rusev turned on Lefort in favor of being managed by Lana, and shortly afterwards Dawson suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament which ruled him out of action for several months.


title: Dax Harwood

text: On his return from injury, Dawson formed a team with Dash Wilder, with the two performing extensively at live events under the name The Mechanics. The duo made their debut on July 31, 2014 episode of "NXT", losing to the team of Bull Dempsey and Mojo Rawley. The duo made only one further televised appearance in 2014, losing to Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady on October 23 episode of "NXT", but continued to wrestle extensively at house shows. On the June 10, 2015 episode of "NXT", Dawson faced Samoa Joe in a losing effort during the show's main event.


title: Dax Harwood

text: Dawson and Wilder's team resurfaced and picked up their first televised win on the July 29, 2015 episode of "NXT", defeating Amore and Cassady. The duo were involved in an 8-man tag-team match that was taped prior to . At , Dawson and Wilder were defeated in the semi-finals of the "Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic" by eventual winners Finn Bálor and Samoa Joe. On the October 21 episode of "NXT", The Mechanics' ring name was changed to Dash and Dawson. On the November 11 episode of "NXT", Dawson and Wilder defeated the Vaudevillains to win the NXT Tag Team Championship. They subsequently defended the titles against Enzo Amore and Colin Cassady at . Beginning in February 2016, the duo began performing under the team name The Revival. Dawson made his WWE main roster debut alongside Wilder at Roadblock, once again defending their NXT Tag Team Championships against Amore and Cassady. On April 1 at , The Revival lost the NXT Tag Team Championship to American Alpha (Chad Gable and Jason Jordan) but the two won back the titles from American Alpha two months later at . At , The Revival retained the titles against Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa. On November 19, 2016 at The Revival lost the tag team titles in a two out of three falls match to #DIY (Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano). They failed in their attempt at winning back the titles at on April 1, 2017; in a triple threat tag team elimination match.


title: Dax Harwood

text: On the Raw after WrestleMania 33 April 3 episode of "Raw", The Revival answered an open challenge issued by The New Day. The Revival defeated The New Day, and afterwards attacked Kofi Kingston, who was not participating in the match. The team was on hiatus due to Wilder's injury. Wilder returned seven weeks later on the May 22, 2017 episode of "Raw", walking backstage during the sneak attack on Enzo Amore, Big Cass would later accuse both Wilder and Dawson as the attackers, but they denied this. Two weeks later, on the "Raw" after Extreme Rules, The Revival also denied their involvement during the sneak attack on Cass, bringing out another suspect in Big Show.


title: Dax Harwood

text: The June 19, 2017 episode of "Raw" revealed that The Revival had nothing to do with the attack and that Cass was never attacked. Corey Graves finally came to the conclusion that Cass was indeed the culprit behind Enzo's sneak attack after The Revival stated their alibi of being innocent. Wilder returned to in ring competition on the June 26 taping of Main Event aired on June 30, teaming with Dawson to defeat Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows by pinfall, Dawson would have his first pinfall loss to Kalisto the following week.


title: Dax Harwood

text: On August 7, 2017, WWE announced that over the weekend of August 5–6 at a live event in Canada, Dawson suffered an injury to his right bicep in a match against Cesaro and Sheamus. He was out of action for 5 to 6 months. Dawson returned on the December 18 episode of "Raw" with Wilder to defeat Heath Slater and Rhyno. The Revival participated in the Raw Tag Team Eliminator tournament to crown new champions, but lost in the semi-finals to Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt. At SummerSlam 2018 Pre-show, The Revival lost to Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel in an attempt to become the new Raw Tag Team champions. At Survivor Series, they were part of Team Raw, but lost to Team SmackDown in the 10-on-10 Survivor Series tag team elimination match.


title: Dax Harwood

text: Following this they began a feud against Lucha House Party and suffered various losses in handicap matches. On the December 17, 2018 episode of "Raw", they defeated Lucha House Party, The B-Team and AOP in a Fatal 4-Way Match receiving a title shot for the Raw Tag Team Titles. During the next two Raw episodes they challenged Bobby Roode and Chad Gable for the titles but Dawson and Wilder were unsuccessful to win the matches in controversial fashion.


title: Dax Harwood

text: Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer reported that the duo asked for their release from their WWE contracts following their match against Lucha House Party on the January 14, 2019 episode of "Raw". On the February 11, 2019 episode of Raw, Dawson and Wilder defeated the team of Roode and Gable to win the Raw Tag Team Championships. They lost their titles at WrestleMania 35 to the team of Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins. On the August 12, 2019 during a scheduled tag team match at "Raw" episode post-SummerSlam in which The Revival were facing Lucha House Party (Lince Dorado and Gran Metalik, with Kalisto), R-Truth ran out from backstage, being chased by several wrestlers. The match was called off and The Revival performed a "Hart Attack" on Truth and simultaneously pinned him to become the first co-champions of the 24/7 Championship. Moments later, R-Truth pinned Dawson, with the help of Carmella, and regained the title.


title: Dax Harwood

text: After leaving WWE, Dawson (now known as Dax Harwood) and Wilder (now known as Cash Wheeler) adopted the new name of FTR and appearing at All Elite Wrestling (AEW) shows. They debuted on the May 27, 2020 episode of "AEW Dynamite", attacking The Butcher and The Blade. In July 2020, after appearing on AEW television programming for two months despite not being under contract with the company, Harwood and Wheeler signed multi-year contracts with AEW. In November 2020, Harwood and Wheeler revealed in an interview with Talk Sport journalist Alex McCarthy that they wanted to join AEW, despite being offered a huge amount of money to stay in the WWE, because they kept getting pulled from main roster events in the WWE, with Wheeler stating "We knew it was time for us to move on because money is great, and I am so fortunate and lucky to take care of my beautiful wife and perfect little six year old daughter because of professional wrestling, but that’s what it’s because of – professional wrestling."


title: Dax Harwood

text: Dawson made his video game debut as a playable character in "WWE 2K17", and has since appeared in "WWE 2K18", "WWE 2K19", and "WWE 2K20".


title: Dax Harwood

text: Harwood has been married to Maria Nickopoulos since 2012. Together, they have a daughter, Finley Gray (born 2014).


title: Dax Harwood

text: He played college football at East Carolina University before transferring to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and getting a degree in business communication. His family's home in Whiteville, North Carolina was severely damaged by Hurricane Florence.


title: Dax Harwood

text: Harwood stated in a May 2020 interview that, out of all his matches up to this point in time, his all-time favorite was a two-out-of-three falls match between The Revival and American Alpha which took place during a live event, while his favorite on-screen match was The Revival's two-out-of-three falls match against DIY at in 2016, stating "In WWE, that'll be our legacy. I'm very very proud of that match." In a November 7, 2020 interview, Harwood described FTR's upcoming match with The Young Bucks at Full Gear as a "dream match," stating "When you go around calling yourself the best tag team of the generation, you cannot get too much more pressure than that. So, this match, to a lot of people, it is a dream match and it is a match we are excited about." On November 11, 2020, four days after Full Gear, Harwood released a statement on his Twitter page expressing great praise for this match with the Young Bucks and hoped for a rematch. On April 4, 2022, Harwood stated on Twitter that their match with The Briscoe Brothers at Supercard of Honor was the best match of FTR's career, also describing it as "their masterpiece".


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The War in Abkhazia was fought between Georgian government forces for the most part and Abkhaz separatist forces, Russian government armed forces and North Caucasian militants between 1992 and 1993. Ethnic Georgians who lived in Abkhazia fought largely on the side of Georgian government forces. Ethnic Armenians and Russians within Abkhazia's population largely supported the Abkhazians and many fought on their side. The separatists received support from thousands of North Caucasus and Cossack militants and from the Russian Federation forces stationed in and near Abkhazia.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The handling of this conflict was aggravated by the civil strife in Georgia proper (between the supporters of the ousted Georgian president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia – in office 1991–1992 – and the post-coup government headed by Eduard Shevardnadze) as well as by the Georgian–Ossetian conflict of 1989 onwards.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Significant human rights violations and atrocities were reported on all sides, peaking in the aftermath of the Abkhaz capture of Sukhumi on 27 September 1993, which (according to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) was followed by a large-scale campaign of ethnic cleansing against the ethnic Georgian population. A fact-finding mission dispatched by the UN Secretary General in October 1993 reported numerous and serious human rights violations committed both by Abkhazians and by Georgians. Approximately 5,000 ethnic Georgians and 4,000 Abkhaz were reported killed or missing, and 250,000 Georgians became internally displaced or refugees.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The war heavily affected post-Soviet Georgia, which suffered considerable financial, human and psychological damage. The fighting and subsequent continued sporadic conflict have devastated Abkhazia. In Abkhazia the conflict is officially named Patriotic War of the People of Abkhazia.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The situation in the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Abkhazia had been tense since the end of the 1980s when the anti-Soviet, Georgian opposition began demanding independence from the Soviet Union. In March 1989, Abkhaz nationalists demanded in the Lykhny Declaration the official establishment of a separate Soviet Socialist Republic (based on the precedent of the existence of a separate Abkhazian SSR from 1921 to 1931, which was associated with the Georgian SSR by a confederative "Union Treaty"). The Declaration was signed by the rector of the Sukhumi University. Ethnic Georgian students of the university announced protests, but these were forbidden by the Georgian government. Nevertheless, the students rallied and were attacked by ethnic Abkhazians. The Georgian anti-Soviet movement was outraged by the event and included the claims of the students against Abkhazian secession into its list of slogans by several thousand Georgian demonstrators in Tbilisi. In response to the protests Soviet troops were dispatched to Tbilisi, resulting in the April 9 tragedy.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: In the aftermath, the first armed clashes between the representatives of the Abkhazian and Georgian populations took place on 16–17 July 1989 in Sukhumi. The conflict was sparked by the decision of the Georgian government to convert the Georgian sector of Sukhumi State University into a branch of Tbilisi State University. Abkhazians vehemently opposed to the new university, saw it as an instrument to extend Georgian dominance. Although the USSR Supreme Soviet concluded that the Georgian government had no legal right to authorize the new university, an entrance exam was scheduled for 15 July. The resulting civil unrest quickly turned into militarized clashes that, according to official accounts, resulted in 18 deaths and at least 448 wounded, 302 of whom were Georgian. In response, Interior Ministry troops were deployed to quell the unrest.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: By July 1990, since neither side had felt strong enough to force the issue militarily, Georgian-Abkhaz antagonisms became largely relegated to the legislatures, demarcating Abkhazia as a legal contest, a "war of laws", until armed hostilities broke out in August 1992. During that time, the government of the Soviet Union had very few options to prevent inter-ethnic conflicts, being itself on the verge of collapse.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Ethnic allocations, or quotas, were introduced prior to the 1991 elections to the Supreme Soviet of Abkhazia, resulting in a composition that did not accurately reflect the ethnicity of the constituent population. Thus, of 65 seats, the Abkhazians (17% of the population) gained 28; Georgians (45%), 26; with the remaining 11 being divided amongst other groupings (Armenians, Russians; the latter comprising 33% of the population).


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: In June 1992 the tensions over autonomy approached a critical stage, when Abkhaz militants attacked the government buildings in Sukhumi. On 23 July 1992, the Abkhazian separatist government proclaimed the independence of the region, though this was not internationally recognized. On 14 August 1992, Georgian police and National Guard units were dispatched to restore government control over Abkhazia. The ranks of Georgian troops were filled partially by "emptying the jails" as some of the inmates were released on the condition that they fight in Abkhazia. Fighting broke out the same day. On 18 August 1992, the separatist government fled from Sukhumi to Gudauta. Georgian government forces subsequently captured large parts of Abkhazia.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: On 22 August 1992, the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus published a decree of its president Musa Shanibov and the chairman of the parliament Iysuph Soslanbekov: "As there is no other way to withdraw Georgian occupants' army from the territory of the sovereign Abkhazia and in order to implement the resolution of the 10th Session of the CMPC, we order:


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: On 25 August, Giorgi Karkarashvili, the Georgian military commander, announced via television that the Georgian forces would not take any POWs. He promised that no harm would be done to peaceful residents of Abkhazia and that peace talks would be conducted. He warned separatists that if the peace talks didn't succeed and if 100,000 Georgians were killed, that the remaining 97,000 ethnic Abkhaz, who supported Ardzinba, would perish. Karkarashvili later allegedly threatened the Abkhaz politician Vladislav Ardzinba not to take any actions that would leave the Abkhaz nation without descendants and thus placed the responsibility for future deaths on Ardzinba personally. Later, his speech was used by the separatists as propaganda and to justify their own actions.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Significant ethnic cleansing accompanied by atrocities occurred on both sides with Abkhazians displaced from Georgian-held territory and vice versa. Many human rights abuses, principally looting, pillage and other outlaw acts, along with hostage-taking and other violations of humanitarian law, were committed by all sides throughout Abkhazia.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: After taking Sukhumi, Georgian forces (including Mkhedrioni paramilitaries) engaged in "vicious, ethnically based pillage, looting, assault and murder." In addition to the looting, Abkhaz cultural monuments were destroyed in a manner that, according to some reports, suggested deliberate targeting. University buildings were sacked and museums and other cultural collections broken up. The irreplaceable Abkhaz national archives were burned by Georgian troops. Reportedly, local firefighters didn't attempt to douse the blaze. A family of Abkhaz refugees from Sukhumi claimed that drunken Georgian troops broke into their apartment firing automatic weapons, and telling them "to leave Sukhumi forever, because Sukhumi is Georgian." According to the family, the Georgian soldiers stole jewelry, assaulted the husband, and then threw them all out into the street. The same witnesses reported seeing dead Abkhaz civilians, including women and elderly people, scattered in the streets, even though the fighting had ended days before.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: At the end of this stage of the conflict, the Georgian Army had taken most of Abkhazia. Pockets of Abkhaz forces were besieged in parts of Ochamchira District and Tkvarcheli, while in Gudauta they were pinched between Georgian troops in Gagra and Sukhumi.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: On 3 September 1992, a ceasefire was negotiated in Moscow. According to the agreement, Georgian forces were obliged to withdraw from Gagra district. The Georgian side carried out the implementation of the agreement and left its positions. As a result, the local Georgian population of Gagra remained defenseless. The ceasefire was soon violated by the Abkhaz side. Thousands of volunteer paramilitaries, mainly Chechens and Cossacks from the militarized Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus (CMPC) and the Abkhaz military, equipped with T-72 tanks, BM-21 Grad rocket launchers, Sukhoi Su-25 attack planes, and helicopters. Georgia accused Russia of supplying this equipment, as it had not been previously used by the Abkhaz. Abkhaz and CMPC forces attacked the town of Gagra on 1 October. The small Georgian force remaining in the town briefly defended Gagra before retreating, then regrouped and recaptured the town. The Abkhaz and CMPC forces reconsolidated and launched another attack, capturing Gagra on 2 October. The Russian navy began to blockade the seaport near Gagra. The naval vessels: "SKP-Bezukoriznenniy", "KIL-25", "BTH-38", "BM-66", "Golovin", "Landing 345", "Aviation 529" ("SU-25", "SU-27"), "MI- and Anti-Aircraft 643". Regiments were commanded by the first deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, G. Kolesnikov, took part in the occupation of Gagra. The Russian tanker "Don" delivered 420 tons of fuel to Separatist-held Gudauta.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Thousands of Georgian soldiers and civilians fled north, entering Russia before being transported to Georgia proper. With the Abkhaz conquest of Gagra, those who remained were forcibly expelled, and a total of 429 were killed. One Georgian woman recalled watching her husband being tortured and buried alive:


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: According to the newspaper "Free Georgia" Chechens and other northern Caucasians rounded up captured soldiers and civilians at the local stadium and executed them. Some were decapitated and their heads were used to play football. After a commission composed of Russian deputies, (as well as a commission of Michael van Praag) went to Gagra and did not confirm the fact of such a brutal attitude towards the Georgians, this newspaper admitted in November that "the episode at the stadium was not confirmed".


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Abkhaz forces, largely supported by the Russian military presence in the region, were now in control over Gagra, Gudauta (where a former Russian military base remains) and Tkvarcheli and rapidly approaching Sukhumi.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: In December 1992, Abkhaz troops began the shelling of Georgian-held Sukhumi. On 4 March 1993, Eduard Shevardnadze, head of the State Council of Georgia, arrived in the capital of the region to take control over the defensive operations in the city. The Minister of Economy, Beslan Kobakhia, arrived in Sukhumi during the negotiations with Goga Khaindrava. According to Kobakhia, separatist leader Ardzinba would resign if Shevardnadze would do the same. He didn't approve of the vandalism in Gagra and noted that Abkhazia officially never declared its intention to secede from Georgia. As commander-in-chief of Georgian Military Forces, Eduard Shevardnadze issued the order "measures on the defense of Ochamchira and the Sukhumi regions" that stated: ""Military formations of different countries are concentrating in Gudauta and Gumista area. We have information that those forces have the serious goal of seizing Sukhumi and bringing chaos and turmoil to all of Georgia."" On 10 February, Shevardnadze appointed Guram Gabiskiria as Mayor of Sukhumi. Meanwhile, the Georgian Parliament made an official declaration blaming Russia for aggression against Georgia and demanding the withdrawal of all Russian military forces from the territory of Abkhazia.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: On 16 March 1993, at 6 and 9 am the Abkhaz and the Confederation forces launched a full-scale attack on Sukhumi resulting in mass destruction and heavy casualties among civilians. At 2 am the Abkhaz side began artillery bombardments of Georgian positions at the Gumista River and Sukhumi. Later in the day several Russian Su-25 planes attacked Sukhumi through the morning of the next day. A Russian special detachment led the operation followed by Abkhaz fighters and CMPC volunteers. They crossed the Gumista River and took part of Achadara, but Georgian forces successfully stopped their advance.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: On 14 May, a short-lived ceasefire was signed. According to Georgian sources, on 2 July Russian navy ship landed up to 600 Russian Airborne Troops close to the village Tamishi, and engaged in a fierce battle with Georgian troops. The battle was one of the bloodiest in the war, with several hundred killed and wounded on both sides. Despite initial setbacks, the Georgian forces managed to retake their positions. In July, Russian detachments, Abkhaz military and CMPC volunteers captured the villages of Akhalsheni, Guma and Shroma of the Sukhumi region.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The villages along the Gumista river (north and east of Sukhumi) such as Achadara, Kamani and Shroma, which were heavily populated by ethnic Georgians became a strategically important area, which enabled motorized units to reach Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia. After a failed attempt to storm Sukhumi from the west, the Abkhaz formations and their allies diverted their offensive on the northern and eastern sides of Sukhumi. On 2 July 1993 under Russian military directives and naval support, the Abkhaz and their (Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus) allies attacked the villages on the Gumista river. The Georgian side didn't expect any offensive from the northern or eastern side of Sukhumi District. The Georgian forces suffered heavy losses (as many as 500 dead within an hour of the attack) and the defensive line around Sukhumi was breached by the Abkhaz offensive. On 5 July 1993, Abkhaz, Armenian Bagramyan battalion, Russian and North Caucasian detachments stormed the villages of Akhalsheni, Guma and Shroma of Sukhumi district. The last offensive took place on 9 July, on the village of Kamani. Kamani was a Svan (sub-ethnic group of the Georgian people) village, which also included an Orthodox Church (named after St. George) and convent. After the fall of the village, most of its inhabitants (including nuns and priests) were killed by Abkhaz formations and their allies (see Kamani massacre).


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: By this time, Abkhaz separatists occupied almost all the strategic heights and began to besiege Sukhumi. Soon after, the Chairman of the Georgian Council of Defense of Abkhazia Tamaz Nadareishvili resigned due to ill health and was succeeded by Member of the Georgian Parliament Zhiuli Shartava.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: On 15 August 1993, Greece carried out a humanitarian operation, Operation Golden Fleece, evacuating 1,015 Greeks who had decided to flee from the war-ridden Abkhazia.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Similarly, 170 Estonians of Abkhazia were evacuated with three flights by the Republic of Estonia in 1992 (according to another source, around 400 Estonians altogether fled to Estonia during the war).


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Another Russian-mediated ceasefire was agreed in Sochi on 27 July and lasted until 16 September, when Abkhazian separatists violated the agreement (citing Georgia's failure to comply with the terms of the agreement) and launched a large-scale offensive against Sukhumi. During the siege, Russian jets dropped thermobaric bombs on Georgian residential districts in Sukhumi and Georgian villages along the Gumista River. Russian journalist Dmitry Kholodov stayed in Sukhumi before it fell, and reported that the city was repeatedly shelled by Russian forces, causing heavy civilian casualties.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: After a fierce battle, Sukhumi fell on 27 September. Shevardnadze appealed to the population of Sukhumi by radio:


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: After the Abkhaz capture of the city one of the largest massacres of the war was committed against the remaining and trapped Georgian civilians in the city. Almost all members of the Georgian-backed Abkhaz government, who refused to leave the city, including Guram Gabiskiria, Raul Eshba and Zhiuli Shartava, were murdered.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Eduard Shevardnadze left the city narrowly escaping death. Soon Abkhaz forces and the Confederates overran the whole territory of Abkhazia, but the upper Kodori Valley remained in Georgian hands. The total defeat of Georgian forces was accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of the Georgian population.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: In the concluding phase of the battle of Sukhumi, the Abkhaz forces shot down three Georgian civilian airliners belonging to Transair Georgia, killing 136 people (some of whom were Georgian soldiers).


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Large numbers (about 5,000) of Georgian civilians and servicemen were evacuated by Russian ships during the last hours of the battle.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: After the fall of Sukhumi thousands of refugees started to flee Gali, Ochamchira and the Sukhumi regions. The plight of refugees became deadly due to snow and cold on the pathway in the Kodori Gorge. Georgian authorities were unable to evacuate all remaining civilians (previously many people were evacuated from Sukhumi by the Russian navy and by the Ukrainian air forces.) The refugees started to move in through the Kodori Gorge on foot, bypassing the Gali region, which was blocked by advancing Abkhaz separatist forces. The crossing of the Kodori Gorge on foot became another death trap for the fleeing IDPs. Most of the people who didn't survive the crossing died of cold and starvation. The survivors who reached the Svan mountains were attacked and robbed by local criminal groups. One of the survivors recalls the crossing:


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: According to the United States State Department Commission on Foreign Relations and International Relations, 104th Cong., 1st Sess., Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1994, at 815 (Joint Comm. Print 1995), the victorious Abkhaz separatists "moved through captured towns with prepared lists and addresses of ethnic Georgians, plundered and burned homes and executed designated civilians." Georgians were specifically targeted, but all non-Abkhaz suffered.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: As a result of the war, around 250,000 people (mainly Georgians) fled from or were forced out of Abkhazia. In September 1994, several reports indicated ethnic clashes between Abkhaz and Armenians, a significant part of whom supported the former during the war. Chechen militants of the CMPC later left Abkhazia to take part in the First Chechen War with Russia.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The ethnic cleansing and massacres of Georgians has been officially recognized by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) conventions in 1994, 1996 and again in 1997 during the Budapest, Istanbul and Lisbon summits and condemned the "perpetrators of war crimes committed during the conflict". On 15 May 2008, the UN General Assembly adopted (by 14 votes to 11, with 105 abstentions) a resolution A/RES/62/249 in which it "Emphasizes the importance of preserving the property rights of refugees and internally displaced persons from Abkhazia, Georgia, including victims of reported "ethnic cleansing", and calls upon all Member States to deter persons under their jurisdiction from obtaining property within the territory of Abkhazia, Georgia in violation of the rights of returnees".


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The former resident of Ochamchire district, Leila Goletiani, who was taken prisoner by Abkhaz separatists, gave the following account of her captivity to the Russian film director Andrei Nekrasov:


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Although Russia officially claimed neutrality during the war in Abkhazia, Russian military officials and politicians were involved in the conflict in several ways. Russia's warfare market was the main source of weapons for both conflicting sides; it thus unofficially supported the Abkhaz and Georgia side. Finally Russia carried out some humanitarian operations in Abkhazia.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Russian arms used by Georgia were transferred to it under the bilateral agreements with Russia and included main battle tanks, armored personnel carriers, heavy artillery and heavy mortars. The whole Akhaltsikhe motorised rifle division was turned over to Georgia on 22 September 1992. Some weapons were gained by local raids on Russian Army bases in Akhalkalaki, Batumi, Poti and Vaziani by irregular Georgian paramilitary forces. After several attacks, the Soviets declared it would defend its bases with force.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Prior to the outbreak of the war, the Abkhaz leadership arranged for the redeployment of a Russian airborne battalion from the Baltic states to Sukhumi. According to the Russian historian Svetlana Mikhailovna Chervonnaya, a number of Russian security servicemen also arrived in Abkhazia as "tourists" during that summer: "The main load in the preparation of Abkhazian events was given to staff of the former KGB. Almost all of them got appointments in Abkhazia under cover of neutral establishments, which had nothing to do with their real activities. To distract attention, various ruses were resorted to, such as the private exchange of apartments, or the necessity of moving one’s place of work to Abkhazia due to a sudden deterioration of health."


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: According to another Russian expert, Evgeni Kozhokin, director of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, prior to the outbreak of hostilities, Abkhaz guardsmen had been supplied with weaponry by Russia's 643rd anti-aircraft missile regiment and a military unit stationed in Gudauta. Ardzinba had major supporters in Moscow as well, including Vice President Alexander Rutskoy and the Chechen speaker of the Russian Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Khasbulatov.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: After the eruption of armed conflict, the Abkhaz separatist paramilitary units, along with their political supporters fled to Gudauta from where they obtained significant amount of military and financial aid. In Gudauta, the Russian Army base housed and trained Abkhaz paramilitary units and provided protection for the leader of the Abkhaz separatists, Vladislav Ardzinba. The high level of corruption in the Russian military also contributed in the leakage of Russian arms to both sides.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: From the outset of the hostilities, the Soviets called upon both sides to negotiate and it brokered several ceasefires, which mostly proved ineffective (Sukhumi offensive was undertaken by the Abkhaz side in violation of the previous ceasefire agreement). On the other hand, the Russian military offered protection to the retreating Abkhaz detachments during the summer 1992 Georgian offensive. In November 1992, the Russian Air Force conducted heavy air strikes against the villages and towns in Abkhazia predominantly populated by Georgians. In response, the Georgian Defense Ministry accused Russia for the first time in public of preparing a war against Georgia in Abkhazia. This led to the Georgian attacks on targets under Russian and Abkhaz control and the retaliation from the Russian forces.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The Soviets attitude began to tilt further to the Abkhaz side, after a Russian MI-8 helicopter (reportedly carrying humanitarian aid) was brought down by Georgian forces on 27 October, which triggered retaliation from Russian forces. On 14 December 1992, the Russian military suffered the loss of another military helicopter, carrying evacuees from Tkvarcheli, resulting in 52 to 64 deaths (including 25 children). Although Georgian authorities denied any responsibility, many believed the helicopter was shot down by the Georgian forces. On 16 December, the government of Georgia requested the Russians to evacuate their nationals from Abkhazia via other routes, foremost the Black Sea, but also to limit the number of missions flown from Gudauta, the main Russian air base in the area. However, this incident "raised the level of general malevolence in the war and catalyzed more concerted Russian military intervention on the Abkhaz side." The town of Tkvarcheli had been besieged by Georgian forces and its population (mostly Abkhaz, Georgians and Russians) suffered a severe humanitarian crisis. Russian military helicopters supplied the city with food and medicine and mobilized Russian-trained fighters to defend the city.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The Human Rights Watch states: "Although the Russian government continued to declare itself officially neutral in the war, parts of Russian public opinion and a significant group in the parliament, primarily Russian nationalists, who had never been favourably disposed toward the Georgians, began to tilt toward the Abkhaz at least by December." During this period the Abkhaz side obtained a large number of armor, tanks (T-72 and T-80) and heavy artillery. The question remains whether there were specific orders concerning the transfer of weapons to Abkhaz side and if so, whom they were issued by. Russian border guards allowed the Chechen fighters led by Shamil Basayev to cross into Abkhazia or at least did nothing to prevent them from arriving in the conflict zone. The defense minister in the secessionist government and one of the main organizers of the Abkhaz armed units was the professional Russian military officer Sultan Sosnaliyev from the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The most obvious example of Russian support to the Abkhaz side in 1993 was the bombing of Georgian-held Sukhumi by Russian fighter-bombers. The Russian Defence minister Pavel Grachev consistently denied it, but after Georgians succeeded in bringing down one SU-27 fighter-bomber and UN experts identified the dead pilot as Russian it became irrefutable. Nevertheless, some equipment was turned over to Georgia according to the previous agreements in 1993. Russian general Grachev claimed that Georgian side has painted the aircraft to resemble Russian Air Force aircraft and bombed their own positions, killing hundreds of their own people in Eshera and Sukhumi. This statement raised anger and utter contempt among Georgians toward the Russian side.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The Russian journalist Dmitry Kholodov, who has witnessed the Russian bombardment of Sukhumi, wrote a couple of compiling reports with detailed description of humanitarian catastrophe:


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: On 25 February, the Georgian Parliament appealed to the UN, European Council and Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces from Abkhazia and stating that Russia waged "an undeclared war" against Georgia.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Georgian Parliament adopted another resolution on 28 April 1993, which openly blamed Russia in political facilitation of ethnic cleansing and genocide against Georgians.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Russian policy during the final battle for Sukhumi in September 1993, immediately, after the breach of the ceasefire by the Abkhaz forces, appeared to follow several lines. Russian officials condemned the attack, issued calls to Abkhaz forces to cease the offensive and its accompanying human rights violations and reportedly cut off electricity and telephone service to parts of Abkhazia from September to December 1993. Russia also supported resolutions in the Security Council condemning Abkhaz forces for breaching the ceasefire. At the same time, the Russian government criticized the Georgian government for refusing, once the attack was underway, to negotiate. As the Human Rights Watch report notes "it is doubtful, however that Russian forces in or near Abkhazia were as surprised as the Russian government seemed to be. Initiating an offensive as large as the one undertaken, in three different directions at once, must have required extensive movement of forces and resupply during the days leading up to it." Russian forces on the Georgian-Abkhaz border, who were supposed to police the ceasefire made no attempt to forestall the attack. The Abkhaz weapons were stored near the front and were returned to the Abkhaz by Russian military mission when hostilities restarted. Ataman Nikolay Pusko, a notable commander of some 1,500 Cossack volunteers fighting against Georgians in Abkhazia, later claimed that his sotnia was the first to enter Sukhumi. Pusko and two other Cossack atamans in Abkhazia, Mikhail Vasiliyev and Valery Goloborodko, all died in unclear circumstances from 1993 to 1994.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: In a "Time" magazine article published on 4 October 1993, Georgians said Russian Army officers provided Abkhazian separatists, at the beginning using mere hunting rifles and shotguns, with sophisticated weapons like BM-21 multiple rocket launchers and Sukhoi SU-25 jet aircraft, plus battlefield intelligence.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: In the beginning of the conflict (August 1992) Russia evacuated many people from Abkhazian resorts by means of Black Sea fleet and Russian Air Force. As the war progressed Russia began to supply humanitarian aid to both sides, it also brokered numerous agreements concerning the exchange of prisoners of war. In the course of the war, Russian humanitarian efforts were chiefly focused on the town of Tkvarcheli, which had large ethnic Russian population and was besieged by the Georgian forces. The landmines installed along the mountain highway to this town made Russian helicopters the only safe means of transportation into it. However, Russian navy also evacuated tens of thousands of Georgian civilians, after the fall of Gagra (October 1992) and Sukhumi (September 1993) to the separatist forces.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Georgia effectively lost control over Abkhazia and the latter established as a de facto independent territory. The relations between Russia and Abkhazia improved in the late 1990s and the economic blockade of Abkhazia was lifted. The laws were also passed allowing other countries to become part of Russian Federation, which was interpreted by some as an offer to Abkhazia and other unrecognised countries of the former Soviet Union.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Georgia claimed that Russian army and intelligence contributed decisively to the Georgian defeat in the Abkhazian war and considered this conflict (along with the Georgian Civil War and Georgian–Ossetian War) as one of Russia's attempt of restoring its influence in the post-Soviet area.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: At the end of the war, the Russian Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev said at the UN General Assembly: "Russia realizes that no international organization or group of states can replace our peacekeeping efforts in this specific post-Soviet space."


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: A wide array of opinions on Russian policy with respect to Georgia and Abkhazia is expressed in the Russian media and parliament. Leonid Radzikhovsky, a political analyst and independent journalist, wrote that gaining new territories is the last thing Russia needs and compared the support of foreign separatists to throwing stones at one's neighbours, while living in the glass house.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: On 28 August 2006, Senator Richard Lugar, then visiting Georgia's capital Tbilisi, joined the Georgian politicians in criticism of the Russian peacekeeping mission, stating that "the U.S. administration supports the Georgian government’s insistence on the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from the conflict zones in Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali district."


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: During the war the peace mediation was done first by Russia and second by the UN. From 1993 onwards, the pressure for a peace settlement mounted from UN, Russia and the then Group of Friends of Georgia (Russia, U.S., France, Germany and UK). In December 1993, an official ceasefire was signed by Georgian and Abkhaz leaders under the aegis of the UN and with Russia as intermediary. The venues shifted from Geneva to New York and finally to Moscow. On 4 April 1994 the "declaration on measures for a political settlement of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict" was signed in Moscow. Instead of the deployment of a traditional UN peacekeeping force, the deployment of a CIS, mainly Russian peacekeeping forces, was agreed in Moscow on 14 May 1994. In June 1994, CIS peacekeeping forces comprising only the Russian soldiers were deployed along the administrative border between Abkhazia and the remaining Georgia. The UN mission (UNOMIG) also arrived. However, these could not prevent further atrocities against the Georgians in the following years (around 1,500 deaths have been reported by the Georgian government in the post-war period). On 14 September 1994, Abkhaz leaders appeared on local TV to demand that all ethnic Georgians depart from the region by 27 September (the anniversary of the capture of Sukhumi). On 30 November 1994, Abkhazia promulgated a new constitution declaring independence of the breakaway region. However, none of the foreign governments recognised this. On 15 December 1994, the US State Department condemned Abkhazia's declaration of independence. On 21 March 1995, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees accused Abkhaz militias of torturing and murdering dozens of returning ethnic Georgian refugees in Gali District.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: The United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) was established in 1993 to monitor the ceasefire and later expanded to observe the operation of the CIS peacekeeping forces. The Organization for Security in Europe (OSCE) and other international organizations are also involved in monitoring developments. Negotiations toward a permanent peace settlement have made little progress, but the Georgian and Abkhaz governments have agreed to limit the size of their military forces and extend the authorization for UNOMIG. Meanwhile, Georgian refugees maintain a government in exile.


title: War in Abkhazia (1992–1993)

text: Both sides during conflict were mainly equipped with Soviet made weaponry, though Georgian forces had much more heavy weapons at the start of war, Abkhaz forces acquired many advanced weapons from Russia and at the end of war had decisive edge in weaponry, employing many SAM and MANPAT Systems, meanwhile Georgian forces had problems with supplying needed weapons and equipment to forces in Abkhazia, mainly because there was no foreign support and difficulties acquiring weapons from abroad.


title: Alameda, California

text: Alameda ( ; ; Spanish for "tree-lined path") is a city in Alameda County, California, located in the East Bay region of the Bay Area. The city is primarily located on Alameda Island, but also spans Bay Farm Island and Coast Guard Island, as well as a few other smaller islands in San Francisco Bay. The city's estimated population in 2019 was 77,624.


title: Alameda, California

text: Alameda occupies what was originally a peninsula connected to Oakland. Much of it was low-lying and marshy. The higher ground nearby and adjacent parts of what is now downtown Oakland were the site of one of the largest coastal oak forests in the world. Spanish colonists called the area "Encinal", meaning "forest of evergreen oak". "Alameda" is Spanish for "grove of poplar trees" or "tree-lined avenue." It was chosen as the name of the city in 1853 by popular vote.


title: Alameda, California

text: The inhabitants at the time of the arrival of the Spanish in the late 18th century were a local band of the Ohlone tribe. The peninsula was included in the vast Rancho San Antonio granted in 1820 to Luis Peralta by the Spanish king who claimed California. The grant was later confirmed by the Republic of Mexico upon its independence in 1821 from Spain.