title: Students for a Democratic Society

text: After the break-up of its rival and before dissolving in 1974 into the Committee Against Racism, the WSA continued on campuses as "the SDS". Functioning to recruit for PLP, it was a centralized, disciplined organization quite distinct from the original Port Huron movement.


title: Students for a Democratic Society

text: Beginning January 2006, a movement to revive the Students for a Democratic Society took shape. Two high school students, Jessica Rapchik and Pat Korte, decided to reach out to former members of the "Sixties" SDS (including Alan Haber, the organization's first president) and to build a new generation SDS. The new SDS held their first national convention in August 2006 at the University of Chicago. They describe themselves as a "progressive organization of student activists" intent on building "a strong student movement to defend our rights to education and stand up against budget cuts," to "oppose racism, sexism, and homophobia on campus" and to "say NO to war." They report chapters in 25 states with some thousands of supporters.


title: Chillwave

text: Chillwave (originally considered synonymous with glo-fi and hypnagogic pop) is a music microgenre that emerged in the late 2000s. It loosely emulates 1980s electropop while engaging with notions of memory and nostalgia. Common features include a faded or dreamy retro pop sound, escapist lyrics (frequent topics include the beach or summer), psychedelic or lo-fi aesthetics, mellow vocals, slow-to-moderate tempos, effects processing (especially reverb), and vintage synthesizers.


title: Chillwave

text: Chillwave was one of the first music genres to develop primarily through the Internet. The term was coined in 2009 by the satirical blog Hipster Runoff to lampoon microgenres and indie acts whose sounds resembled incidental music from 1980s VHS tapes. Prior to this, the music would have been labelled as shoegaze, dream pop, ambient, or indietronica. Leading acts included Neon Indian, Washed Out, and Toro y Moi, who gained attention during 2009's "Summer of Chillwave."


title: Chillwave

text: Many artists exploited the style's low-budget simplicity, which led to an oversaturation of acts that contributed to the original scene's demise. The phrase "chillwave" came to be used as a pejorative due to the music's perceived shallowness and reliance on nostalgia. Detractors also criticized the term for having been contrived by media publications. It heralded the early 2010s proliferation of Internet music microgenres, including vaporwave, which originated as an ironic variant of chillwave. By the mid-2010s, chillwave had faded in popularity, with most of the original artists and listeners of the genre shifting focus to other music styles.


title: Chillwave

text: Chillwave has been classified as psychedelia, bedroom pop, or electropop. Before a specific term for the music was coined, it was described as shoegaze, dream pop, ambient, or indietronica. "Pitchfork"s Nitsuh Abebe writes that, since at least 1992, the style had existed for one principal reason: "stoned, happy college kids listening to records while they fall asleep." Abebe cited Slowdive, Darla Records' "Blissed Out" ambient compilations, and Casino Versus Japan's eponymous 1998 album as examples. One of the earliest known manifestations of the genre is the Beach Boys' song "All I Wanna Do" from their 1970 album "Sunflower". Boards of Canada, whom Abebe says pre-chillwave music was often compared to, were also influential, as were Fennesz, and J Dilla's 2006 album "Donuts".


title: Chillwave

text: Ariel Pink is frequently cited as "the godfather of chillwave". He initially gained recognition in the mid-2000s through a string of home-recorded albums that reconfigured 1970s radio-rock and 1980s new wave in a lo-fi setting. The Paw Tracks record label, which distributed Pink's albums, was run by Animal Collective, who signed Pink after being impressed by a CD of his home recordings, starting with "The Doldrums" (2000). "Uncut"s Sam Richard profiled Pink as "a lo-fi legend" whose "ghostly pop sound" proved influential to chillwave acts such as Ducktails and Toro y Moi. Critic Adam Harper disputed Pink's "godfather of chillwave" status, writing that his influence on lo-fi scenes has been somewhat overstated, explaining that his music lacks "the mirror-shades-cool synth groove of chillwave ... Pink's albums are zany, personal, largely rock-based and dressed in awkward glam". Discussing chillwave's bedroom pop precursors, Allene Norton of Cellars opined that Pink is "definitely not chillwave but that kind of stuff influenced a lot of the artists making it, like Washed Out."


title: Chillwave

text: In March 2007, Animal Collective member Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) released his solo album "Person Pitch", which is credited with launching the chillwave style. The album influenced a wide range of subsequent indie music, with its sound serving as the major inspiration for chillwave and a number of soundalikes. Animal Collective itself also contributed to the movement. Their album "Merriweather Post Pavilion", released in January 2009, was particularly influential for its ambient sounds and repetitive melodies, but was not as tightly associated with the "hazy" psychedelia that chillwave was identified with. According to "Flavorwire"s Tom Hawking, chillwave acts extrapolated "the sort of ill-defined pastoral nostalgia" from Animal Collective's early work "and spun it into an entire genre." However, "Animal Collective were never really part of that scene, such as it was — they were more like its spiritual overlords".


title: Chillwave

text: In February 2008, Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox) debuted with the album "Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel". According to music journalist Larry Fitzmaurice, "it’s impossible to overstate Cox’s influence on [chillwave]" and he added that the album's "ice-sculpture ambient pop ... was streaked with themes of impermanence and memory, which would soon come to define chillwave as a whole." Lennox later contributed guest vocals to Cox's 2009 song "Walkabout", referred to as an "early chillwave totem" by Fitzmaurice.


title: Chillwave

text: Most accounts attribute "chillwave" to a July 2009 post written by "Carles", the anonymous manager of the blog Hipster Runoff. The site, which was active between 2008 and 2013, was known for its ironic posts on "alt" trends. Carles used the term to describe a host of emerging bands that appeared similar to each other. A July 27 post titled "Is WASHED OUT the next Neon Indian/Memory Cassette?" ruminated on a nascent trend involving the "musicsphere" searching for a "new 'authentic, undergroundish product' that isn't a huge brand like AnCo/GrizzBear/etc. ... It seems easiest to have a chill project, that is somewhat 'conceptual' but also demonstrates that ur band has 'pop sensibilities' or something." He proposed a list of genre names, including "Chill Bro Core", "Pitchforkwavegaze", "forkshit", and "CumWave". The post concludes:


title: Chillwave

text: A few weeks later, in August, "The Wire" journalist David Keenan coined "hypnagogic pop" to describe a trend of 2000s lo-fi and post-noise music in which indie acts began to engage with elements of cultural nostalgia, childhood memory, and outdated recording technology. Chillwave initially became subsumed under the "hypnagogic pop" and "glo-fi" labels, although "glo-fi" quickly fell out of popular usage.


title: Chillwave

text: While chillwave and hypnagogic pop both evoke the cultural aesthetics of the 1980s and 1990s, chillwave espoused a more commercial sound that emphasized "cheesy" hooks and reverb effects. According to "Pitchfork"s Miles Bowe, chillwave came to constitute a pejorative referencing the "cynical" rebranding of hypnagogic pop acts who had "streamlined [their] style to find genuine pop success." Keenan, who had previously championed hypnagogic pop, became disenchanted with many such artists, writing in 2011 that "in the reductive glare of mainstream media", chillwave had become "shorthand for a cheap form of revivalism and a valorising of bad taste".


title: Chillwave

text: Carles later explained that he had set out to throw "a bunch of pretty silly names on a blog post and [see] which one stuck." Neon Indian's Alan Palomo surmised that the tag caught on "because it was the most dismissive and sarcastic ... the term chillwave came when the era of blog-mediated music was at its height at that time." The term did not gain mainstream currency until early 2010, when it was the subject of articles by "The Wall Street Journal" and "The New York Times".


title: Chillwave

text: Chillwave flourished throughout 2008 and 2009, culminating with the 2009 "Summer of Chillwave", which was marked by an inundation of artists with names and song titles referencing summertime, the beach, or surfing. Songs were generally of low-to-moderate tempo and incorporated vintage, analog instrumentation that evoked the popular music of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although it had no specific geographical source point, chillwave was concentrated in the southern and eastern coasts of the U.S., with Brooklyn, New York figuring the most prominently. Neon Indian (Alan Palomo), Washed Out (Ernest Greene), and Toro y Moi (Chaz Bundick) were considered to be the vanguard of the chillwave movement. All three were one-man acts from the Southern U.S, while Greene and Bundick were acquaintances and collaborators.


title: Chillwave

text: Greene's "Feel It All Around" (July 2009) became the best known song of the genre, later to be employed as a backdrop for the opening sequence of the television series "Portlandia" (2011–2018). Created mostly from a slowed-down sample of Gary Low's 1983 song "I Want You", "RBMA"s Sian Rowe wrote that it "has all the things that chillwave would be defined by: lo-fi synths, laid-back filtered-out vocals and disposable camera-style photography that usually involves the beach or anything watery."


title: Chillwave

text: Neon Indian's debut "Psychic Chasms" (October 2009) was another early album that typified the genre, particularly the tracks "Deadbeat Summer", "Terminally Chill", and "Should've Taken Acid With You". Bundick's debut "Causers of This" (January 2010) drew similar attention for its style of old-fashioned, lo-fi pop. The album was acclaimed by critics and given an early endorsement by Kanye West, which lent the work significantly more popularity. "Rolling Stone" additionally dubbed Bundick the "godfather of chillwave".


title: Chillwave

text: Writing in 2019, Ian Cohen of "Stereogum" argued Dayve Hawke (variously known as Memory Tapes, Memory Cassette, and Weird Tapes) to be the fourth leading chillwave act of the era. Cohen identified Hawke's output as "quintessential chillwave documents", namely the 2009 album "Seek Magic", "probably the best album of the bunch that dropped in 2009 — and, by definition, probably the greatest chillwave album of all time."


title: Chillwave

text: Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music that originated as an ironic variant of chillwave. It was loosely derived from the work of hypnagogic artists such as Ariel Pink and James Ferraro, and was characterized by the invocation of retro popular culture as well as the "analog nostalgia" of the chillwave scene. Amplifying the experimental tendencies of hypnagogic pop, vaporwave is cleanly produced and composed almost entirely from samples. It relied on sources such as smooth jazz, retro elevator music, R&B, and dance music from the 1980s and 1990s, along with the application of slowed-down chopped and screwed techniques, looping, and other effects.


title: Chillwave

text: Writers, fans, and artists struggled to differentiate vaporwave, chillwave, and hypnagogic pop from each other. One of the descriptions of the genre that were levied by online forums was "chillwave for Marxists". Vaporwave found wider appeal over the middle of 2012, building an audience on sites like Last.fm, Reddit, and 4chan. A wealth of its own subgenres and offshoots—some of which deliberately gesture at the genre's non-seriousness—soon followed.


title: Chillwave

text: Chillwave reached its peak in mid-2010, the same year it was received with widespread criticism. Some of the common descriptors used for the music in reviews or blog posts became clichés, including "soundscapes", "dreamy", "lush", "glowing", and "sun-kissed". The "Village Voice"s Christopher Weingarten remarked in December 2009 that "90 percent of writing about glo-fi mentions 'the summer' in some fashion. And summer's been over for, like, four months now."


title: Chillwave

text: The chillwave scene ultimately "withered and died". One major reason was a sudden oversaturation of artists, which came as a consequence of its simple production process. Writing in the "New Times Broward-Palm Beach", Reed Fischer referred to "Pitchfork"s negative review of Millionyoung's "perfectly fine album" "Replicants" (2011) as a declaration of the genre's demise. Explaining why the genre fell out of public favor, Bundick surmised that chillwave "did its thing, and once it became a thing, people stopped caring about it, even the artists [making it]."


title: Chillwave

text: In 2015, Fitzmaurice reflected that the "holy triumvirate" of Washed Out, Toro y Moi, and Neon Indian had maintained their careers in spite of the genre's decline. Tom Hawking predicted that the "chillwave era will most likely be a footnote to musical history, a faint flaring of middle-class angst in a frightening time for everyone. But that doesn't mean it's not worth examining regardless, because its simple existence says far more about a generation than the music itself ever did."


title: Chillwave

text: Referencing the genre's Brooklyn-centric origins, Hawking noted that the "fact this was such beach-centric music makes it interesting ... chillwave also strikes me as hugely middle class music. ... whereas punk reacted with anger and a desire for change, chillwave was the sound of escapism and resignation. ... it's surely no coincidence that chillwave's rise coincided with the aftermath of the 2007 sub-prime economic meltdown."


title: Chillwave

text: Eric Grandy of "The Stranger" said that the genre's practitioners shared "a kind of fond nostalgia for some vague, idealized childhood. Its posture is a sonic shoulder shrug, a languorous, musical 'whatevs'." Another attempt at identifying the common threads of the scene was offered by Jon Pareles in "The New York Times": "They're solo acts or minimal bands, often with a laptop at their core, and they trade on memories of electropop from the 1980s, with bouncing, blipping dance-music hooks (and often weaker lead voices). It's recession-era music: low-budget and danceable."


title: Chillwave

text: "Vulture"s Frank Guan writes that the evocation of summer is not "as a season of deprivation and loss of control, but [as] a summer spent in suburban quiet and prosperity, chilling indoors alone with central A/C, watching daytime TV or listening to music." One unnamed "Pitchfork" writer opined: "This music isn't easy to write about. It takes a lot of work to get past 'soundtrack to the summer' and 'makes me want to hit the beach.' So much of this summer-obsessed lo-fi is about atmosphere and feel that it can seem weird to scrutinize it."


title: Chillwave

text: In November 2009, "Pitchfork" ran an editorial feature on the "summer of chillwave". The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, who had been compared to Animal Collective, was mentioned as a "looming figure" throughout that summer's indie music. An unnamed editor argued that the similarities were more abstract than musical and that Wilson's influence stems from his legend as an "emotionally fragile dude with mental health problems who coped by taking drugs." The editor continued, "Summertime now is about disorientation: 'Should Have Taken Acid With You'; 'The Sun Was High (And So Am I)'; You take the fantasy of [Wilson's] music-- the cars, the sand, the surf-- add a dollop of melancholy and a smudge of druggy haze, and you have some good music for being alone in a room with only a computer to keep you company."


title: Chillwave

text: Chillwave was one of the first genres to acquire an identity online and one of the last phenomenons of indie music to predate Twitter's dominance of social media. According to writer Garin Pirnia, it is an example of linking musical trends by Internet outlets rather than geographic location. Pirnia wrote in 2010 (quoting Palomo), "Whereas musical movements were once determined by a city or venue where the bands congregated, 'now it's just a blogger or some journalist that can find three or four random bands around the country and tie together a few commonalities between them and call it a genre.'" In the description of "The Guardian"s Emilie Friedlander, chillwave was "the internet electronic micro-genre that launched a hundred internet electronic micro-genres (think: vaporwave, witch house, seapunk, shitgaze, distroid, hard vapor), not to mention its corollaries in [2010s] internet rap, which largely shared its collagist, hyper-referential approach to sound."


title: Chillwave

text: "Grantland"s Dave Schilling argued that the term was created to reveal "how arbitrary and meaningless" existing labels such as "shoegaze" and "dream pop" were. George McIntire of the "San Francisco Bay Guardian" described chillwave's origin as in the "throes of the blogosphere" and called the term a "cheap, slap-on label used to describe grainy, dancey, lo-fi, 1980s inspired music" and a "disservice to any band associated with it." In 2011, Carles said it was "ridiculous that any sort of press took it seriously" and that although the bands he spoke to "get annoyed" by the tag, "they understand that it's been a good thing. What about iTunes making it an official genre? It's now theoretically a marketable indie sound."


title: Chillwave

text: By 2015, the majority consensus was that chillwave was a fabricated non-genre. In 2016, Palomo described labels like "chillwave" and "vaporwave" as "arbitrary" and that he "couldn't have been more happy" about the "chillwave" descriptor falling out of favor. Toro y Moi's Chaz Bundick publicly expressed the following about the genre, saying, "I like the fact that I'm associated with it. It's cool. Not a lot of artists get a chance to be a part of some sort of movement, so I guess in a way I'm super flattered to be considered a part of that."


title: Edwina Currie

text: Edwina Currie (' Cohen; born 13 October 1946) is a British writer, broadcaster and former politician, serving as Conservative Party Member of Parliament for South Derbyshire from 1983 until 1997. She was a Junior Health Minister for two years, resigning in 1988 during the salmonella-in-eggs controversy.


title: Edwina Currie

text: By the time Currie lost her seat as an MP in 1997, she had begun a new career as a novelist and broadcaster. She is the author of six novels, and has also written four works of non-fiction. In September 2002, publication of Currie's "Diaries (1987–92)" caused a sensation, as they revealed a four-year affair with colleague (and later Prime Minister) John Major between 1984 and 1988. Currie’s record as Junior Health Minister was heavily scrutinised in the 2010s, and to a lesser extent at the time, for her close relationship with Jimmy Savile; she hired Savile as chairman of Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, where it is now known he molested and raped mentally unstable patients. Currie nonetheless expressed her “full confidence” in him.


title: Edwina Currie

text: She remains an outspoken public figure, with a reputation for being "highly opinionated," and currently earns her living as an author and media personality.


title: Edwina Currie

text: Currie was born in south Liverpool to an Orthodox Jewish family, who "disowned her when she married a non-Jewish accountant". She herself is not particularly religious, stating in a February 2000 interview that she found "religious mumbo jumbo hard to swallow in any faith". She went to the Liverpool Institute High School for Girls in Blackburne House, in the Canning area of Liverpool, where she was Deputy Head Girl.


title: Edwina Currie

text: Currie studied Philosophy, politics and economics at St Anne's College, Oxford, where she was taught by Gabriele Taylor. Subsequently, she gained an MA in economic history from the London School of Economics.


title: Edwina Currie

text: From 1975 until 1986, she was a Birmingham City Councillor for Northfield. In 1983, she stood for parliament as a Conservative Party candidate, and was elected as the member for South Derbyshire. Frequently outspoken, she was described as "a virtually permanent fixture on the nation's TV screen saying something outrageous about just about anything" and "the most outspoken and sexually interested woman of her political generation."


title: Edwina Currie

text: In September 1986, she became a Junior Health Minister. Among her comments over the next two years were—despite her not being religious—that "good Christian people" don't get AIDS, that old people who could not afford their heating bills should wrap up warm in winter and that northerners die of "ignorance and chips".


title: Edwina Currie

text: In 1988, she appointed Jimmy Savile to head up a task force to run the Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. Savile was given extraordinary power and a set of keys with complete access to every part of the hospital. He mingled repeatedly with the 800 or so patients, many teenage girls, some severely disturbed and medicated. In 2012, after Savile's death, a police investigation concluded that he had possibly been one of Britain's most prolific sex offenders.


title: Edwina Currie

text: Currie was forced to resign as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health in December 1988, after she issued a warning about salmonella in British eggs. The statement that "most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella" sparked outrage among farmers and egg producers, and caused egg sales in the country to decline rapidly, by 60 percent. The controversy gained her the nickname "Eggwina".


title: Edwina Currie

text: The loss of revenue led to the slaughter of four million hens. Although the statement was widely interpreted as referring to "most eggs produced", in fact it related to the egg production "flock"; there was indeed evidence that a mid-1980s regulation change had allowed salmonella to get a hold in flocks.


title: Edwina Currie

text: There was particular anger in Northern Ireland where egg production is a significant part of the economy. At the Christmas party of the Industrial Development Board for Northern Ireland that year the featured dish was curried eggs. To make amends, in 1990, she began the National Egg Awareness Campaign.


title: Edwina Currie

text: Long after the furore died down, in 2001, it was revealed that a covered-up Whitehall report produced months after Currie's resignation found that there had been a "salmonella epidemic of considerable proportions".


title: Edwina Currie

text: In 1991, Currie became the first Conservative MP to appear on the BBC topical panel show "Have I Got News for You". She appeared again two years later, in a special episode commemorating the release of Margaret Thatcher's memoirs, opposite fellow Liverpudlian (and Liverpool Institute alumnus) Derek Hatton.


title: Edwina Currie

text: During the 1992 general election campaign, Currie poured a glass of orange juice over Labour's Peter Snape shortly after an edition of the Midlands-based television debate show "Central Weekend" had finished airing. Speaking about the incident later, Currie said "I just looked at my orange juice, and looked at this man from which this stream of abuse was emanating, and thought 'I know how to shut you up.'"


title: Edwina Currie

text: After the 1992 general election, she declined a request from Prime Minister John Major to take up a position as Minister of State for the Home Office.


title: Edwina Currie

text: In February 1994 Currie, a member of the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality (TORCHE), tabled an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill to lower the age of consent for male homosexual sexual acts from 21 to 16, which would mean an equal age of consent with opposite-sex couples if it passed. This amendment was defeated by 307 votes to 280, although a subsequent amendment resulted in the reduction of the age of consent for male homosexual acts from 21 to 18; final equalisation with an age of consent at 16 was voted through parliament in late 2000, becoming law in January 2001. In a speech in the House of Commons Currie said, "it is time to seize our homophobic instincts and chuck them on the scrapheap of history, where they belong". In February 1994, Currie voted against the death penalty for murder, having previously voted and spoken in favour of it in July 1983; she had also supported it in June 1988 and December 1990.


title: Edwina Currie

text: In June 1994, she contested the European Parliament seat of Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes, but lost the seat to Labour's Eryl McNally by 94,837 votes to 61,628 votes. Currie was MP for South Derbyshire for 14 years; however, along with many other Tory MPs, she lost her parliamentary seat in the 1997 general election.


title: Edwina Currie

text: Currie attempted to be selected as a Conservative candidate for the European Parliament election of 1999, but was unsuccessful.


title: Edwina Currie

text: After nearly a quarter of a century away from politics, it was announced in February 2021 that Currie would contest her home ward of Whaley Bridge on Derbyshire County Council at that year's local elections. She was challenging the incumbent, Ruth George of the Labour Party. The race was notable for pitting two former MPs against one another in an election for a council seat. On 7 May, it was announced that Currie had failed in her bid to win the marginal seat, receiving only 1,878 votes to George's 2,544.


title: Edwina Currie

text: Currie has written six novels: "A Parliamentary Affair" (1994), "A Woman's Place" (1996), "She's Leaving Home" (1997), "The Ambassador" (1999), "Chasing Men" (2000) and "This Honourable House" (2001). She has also written four works of non-fiction: "Life Lines" (1989), "What Women Want" (1990), "Three Line Quips" (1992) and "Diaries 1987–92" (2002).


title: Edwina Currie

text: From the time she lost her seat in 1997, Currie has maintained a presence in the media. From 1998 to 2003, she hosted a late evening talk show on BBC Radio 5 Live, "Late Night Currie". In 2002, she moved to HTV, presenting the television programme "Currie Night" until 2003. Since then, she has appeared in a string of reality television programmes, such as "Wife Swap" in which she and her second husband John swapped places with John McCririck and his wife, Jenny. Currie appeared on a charity edition of the television quiz show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" on 17 September 2005, partnering Conservative speech-writer and lobbyist Derek Laud. She has also appeared in the reality cooking show "Hell's Kitchen" with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, and "Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes", both in 2006.


title: Edwina Currie

text: Currie was interviewed about the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series "Tory! Tory! Tory!" She was the first woman to win "Celebrity Mastermind" on 23 June 2004, specialising in the life of Marie Curie. She also won "All Star Family Fortunes" on 3 January 2009. She appeared in Channel 4's "Come Dine with Me" in February 2009 where she finished third. She made a second appearance on the show during Channel 4's "Alternative Election Night" coverage, with Rod Liddle, Brian Paddick and Derek Hatton as her competitors. She also appeared in James May's Show "James May's Toy Stories" where she helped him build a bridge made entirely out of Meccano in Liverpool.


title: Edwina Currie

text: In September 2011, Currie took part in the ninth series of "Strictly Come Dancing". She was paired with professional dancer Vincent Simone. On 9 October, she and Simone were the first couple to be eliminated from the competition.


title: Edwina Currie

text: In November 2014, Currie took part in the fourteenth series of "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" entering the jungle on Day 5 of the competition, and finishing in fourth place.


title: Edwina Currie

text: On 1 July 1972, Edwina married accountant Ray Currie in Barnstaple, Devon. They had two children, Debbie and Susie. Currie and her husband separated in 1997, but did not finalise their divorce until 2001. During that marriage, Currie had a four-year affair with John Major, later Prime Minister, which she revealed in September 2002. Edwina and Ray were the subject of an edition of the BBC's "The Other Half" documentary series, broadcast in March 1984.


title: Edwina Currie

text: On 24 May 2001, in Southwark, Currie married retired detective John Jones, whom she had met when he was a guest on her radio programme in 1999. Jones died on 1 November 2020.


title: Edwina Currie

text: Currie's "Diaries (1987–92)", published in 2002, caused a sensation, as they revealed a four-year affair with John Major between 1984 and 1988, while both were married to other people. The affair started while she was a backbencher and Major was the government whip in Margaret Thatcher's government. After Major's promotion to Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the relationship ended, but the two remained friends. Currie apparently ceased the affair when it became dangerous and impractical owing to the presence of bodyguards who had to be avoided.


title: Edwina Currie

text: After publication, Major made a statement saying that he was ashamed of the affair and had privately revealed the matter to his wife. Currie said she had been in love with him for years after the end of the affair, and that he had been "the love of her life". However, only weeks after revealing the affair, she publicly criticised Major, accusing him of sexism and racism and of being "one of the less competent prime ministers".


title: Edwina Currie

text: The admission came after years of denial of any affair while in office and a successful libel action against playwright David Hare, who had said a sexually voracious murderer played by Charlotte Rampling in his film "Paris by Night" (1988) was an "Edwina Currie-like" figure. Currie had also produced several novels with explicitly erotic content – and political background – such as "A Parliamentary Affair". Following publication of her diaries, Express Newspapers lawyers re-examined documents in a libel case to see if there was anything in the diaries which would allow them to reopen the case and recoup damages. In March 2000, Currie had been awarded £30,000 against them following a 1997 article entitled "How Edwina is now the vilest lady in Britain."


title: Edwina Currie

text: In September 2004, Currie took part in a sponsored cycle ride across Poland, near to the area where ancestors of hers lived, for Marie Curie Cancer Care.


title: Edwina Currie

text: In June 2005, in her role as a patron of the British Heart Foundation, Currie championed a campaign to raise awareness of the effect of heart disease on women. In May 2007, the patient charity MRSA Action UK announced Currie as their patron.


title: Edwina Currie

text: In October 2011, Currie took part in EuroVoice, an event supported by the European Youth Parliament. In November 2011, Currie accepted the position of President of the Tideswell Male Voice Choir.


title: Edwina Currie

text: As part of the 2009 TV Show "Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway", Currie teamed up with Declan Donnelly and two other celebrities to release a cover version of the Wham! hit song "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go." Her daughter, Debbie, had previously released a single.


title: Land of Goshen

text: The land of Goshen (, Modern: "ʾEreẓ Gōšen", Tiberian: "ʾEreṣ Gōšen") is named in the Hebrew Bible as the place in Egypt given to the Hebrews by the pharaoh of Joseph (Book of Genesis, ), and the land from which they later left Egypt at the time of the Exodus. It is believed to have been located in the eastern Nile Delta, lower Egypt; perhaps at or near Avaris, the seat of power of the Hyksos kings.


title: Land of Goshen

text: If the Septuagint reading "Gesem" is correct, the word, which in its Hebrew form has no known meaning, may mean "cultivated"—comparing the Arabic root "j-š-m", "to labor". Egyptologists have suggested a connection with the Egyptian word "qis", meaning "inundated land". Because Goshen was apparently the same region, called by the Greeks the "Arabian nome," which had its capital at Phakousa. The name represented the Egyptian Pa-qas (Brugsch, Geog., I, 298), the name of a town, with the determinative for "pouring forth". Donald Redford, while not disputing the location of Goshen, gives a different origin for the name, deriving it from "Gasmu," the rulers of the Bedouin Qedarites who occupied the eastern Delta from the 7th century BCE, but John Van Seters thinks this unlikely.


title: Land of Goshen

text: According to the "Joseph narrative" in the Book of Genesis, the sons of Jacob (Israel) who were living in Hebron, experienced a severe famine that lasted for seven years. Word was that Egypt was the only kingdom able to supply food, and thus the sons of Jacob (Israel) journeyed there to buy goods. In the second year of famine, the Vizier of Egypt, Joseph, invited the sons of Israel to live in Egyptian territory. They settled in the country of Goshen. Goshen is described as the best land in Egypt, suitable for both crops and livestock. It has been suggested that this location may have been somewhat apart from Egypt, because states, "Ye may dwell in the land of Goshen; for every shepherd is an abomination unto the Egyptians." After the death of Joseph and those of his generation, the following generations of Israelites had become populous in number. The Egyptians feared potential integration or takeover, so they enslaved the Israelites.


title: Land of Goshen

text: Four hundred thirty years later, to the day, Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, from Goshen (Ramesses) to Succoth, the first waypoint of the Exodus. They pitched at 41 locations after initially crossing the Nile Delta to the east, and then also crossing the Red Sea, to the last station being the "plains of Moab".


title: Land of Goshen

text: In 1885, Édouard Naville identified Goshen as the 20th nome of Egypt, located in the eastern Delta, and known as "Gesem" or "Kesem" during the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt (672–525 BCE). It covered the western end of the Wadi Tumilat, the eastern end being the district of Succoth, which had Pithom as its main town, extended north as far as the ruins of Pi-Ramesses (the "land of Rameses"), and included both crop land and grazing land.


title: Alice (South Korean TV series)

text: Alice () is a South Korean television series starring Kim Hee-sun and Joo Won. It aired on SBS from August 28 to October 24, 2020, every Friday and Saturday at 22:00 (KST). It is described as "a human sci-fi drama about a magical time travel of a woman who resembles a dead woman and a man who lost his emotions". It was made available on Netflix.


title: Alice (South Korean TV series)

text: In the year 2050, Alice (temporal agency) specializes in sending clients back through time to see dead loved ones to find peace and closure; they also police time incursions. Alice agents Yoon Tae-yi (Kim Hee-sun) and Yoo Min-hyuk (Kwak Si-yang) travelled to the year 1992 Seoul to search for "The Book of Prophecy" (a book that predicts the fates of certain people and end of time travel) and found it. However, Lee Se-hoon (Park In-soo), agent of the mysterious "Teacher" (rogue group that wants to continue manipulating time), found the young Tae-yi and murdered her father for the book. Before her father died, he gave the final page to little Tae-yi before her adult counterpart arrived. Tae-yi and Min-hyuk acquired the book and had local police arrest Se-hoon. When Tae-yi realized she was pregnant, Min-hyuk (the father) encouraged Tae-yi to abort the child as time traveling (radiation) would cause serious defects. Tae-yi then disappeared with the book to carry her child.


title: Alice (South Korean TV series)

text: Tae-yi would rename herself as Park Sun-young and single-handedly raised her son, Park Jin-gyeom (Joo Won). Born with Alexithymia, he has difficulty recognizing his own emotions and his classmates called him a psychopath. He unknowingly has the ability to manipulate time in life-and-death situations. In 2010, Jin-gyeom found his mother murdered and vowed to find her killer. Orphaned without a family, Detective Go Hyeon-seok (Kim Sang-ho) and classmate Kim Do-yeon (Lee Da-in) looked after him. By 2020, Jin-gyeom becomes a detective under Hyeon-seok and learns about time travelers, Alice, the Teacher, and the truth behind his mother's death.


title: Alice (South Korean TV series)

text: This is the first acting role of actor Joo Won since he was discharged from his mandatory military service on February 5, 2019.


title: Alice (South Korean TV series)

text: On July 31, 2020, SBS released photos from the first script reading of the series attended by the cast and crew of the show.


title: Mad Men (season 7)

text: The seventh and final season of the American television drama series "Mad Men" premiered on April 13, 2014, and concluded on May 17, 2015, on AMC. The season consists of 14 episodes split into two, seven-episode parts: the first half, titled "The Beginning", aired from April 13 to May 25, 2014; and the second half, titled "The End of an Era", aired from April 5 to May 17, 2015. The first part of the seventh season was released on Blu-ray/DVD on October 21, 2014, and the second half was released on October 13, 2015. Each episode in the season has a running time of approximately 48 minutes, with the exception of the final two episodes which are 54 and 57 minutes, respectively.


title: Mad Men (season 7)

text: The first part of season 7 begins in January 1969, several weeks after the Thanksgiving 1968 ending of season 6, with characters dealing with the dynamics of lives and offices being split between New York and Los Angeles, and ends in July 1969. The second part of season 7 takes place between April and November 1970.


title: Mad Men (season 7)

text: The seventh season of "Mad Men" received general acclaim. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 87% of 52 critics reviewed the season favorably. The site's consensus is: "Just in time to rekindle viewers' interest, "Mad Men" gets back on track for one last season, revisiting its steady, deliberate pace and style on its way to a sure-to-be-compelling climax." On Metacritic, the first part of the seventh season scored 85 out of 100 based on 26 reviews; the second part scored 83 out of 100, based on 19 reviews, both indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Mad Men (season 7)

text: For the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards, the first half of the season was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series, Jon Hamm was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, Christina Hendricks was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, and Robert Morse was nominated for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. For the 67th Writers Guild of America Awards, the series was nominated for Best Drama Series and Jonathan Igla and Matthew Weiner were nominated for Best Episodic Drama for "A Day's Work".


title: Mad Men (season 7)

text: For the 31st TCA Awards, the series was nominated for Program of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Drama, and Hamm won for Individual Achievement in Drama. For the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards, Jon Hamm won for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series after eight consecutive nominations. The series received nominations for Outstanding Drama Series, Elisabeth Moss for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, Christina Hendricks for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, Semi Chellas and Matthew Weiner for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for "Lost Horizon", and Weiner in the same category for "Person to Person". For the 68th Writers Guild of America Awards, the series won for Best Drama and Matthew Weiner was nominated for Best Episodic Drama for "Person to Person". For the 22nd Screen Actors Guild Awards, the cast was nominated for Best Drama Ensemble and Jon Hamm was nominated for Best Drama Actor. For the 73rd Golden Globe Awards, Jon Hamm won for Best Drama Actor. For the 68th Directors Guild of America Awards, Matthew Weiner was nominated for Outstanding Directing – Drama Series for "Person to Person".


title: Demi Rose

text: Demi Rose Mawby (born 27 March 1995) is an English model, former DJ, and social media celebrity. , she has over 19 million followers on Instagram.


title: Demi Rose

text: Mawby was born on March 27, 1995, in Birmingham, England and went to John Willmott School for secondary school. She was also a student at Walsall College.


title: Demi Rose

text: Mawby joined Instagram at age 18. She has an account on OnlyFans, an internet content subscription service based in London. In May 2015, she performed as a model in DJ Khaled's song video, ""How Many Times"". She was briefly contacted with Taz's Angels, an American group of models, and left the group in November 2015 to return to the UK.


title: Demi Rose

text: Mawby has appeared in several magazines such as WorldStarHipHop, FHM, Nuts, Zoo, and others. She has landed the cover of Sixty6 magazine in December 2016. She is also a global ambassador of PrettyLittleThing, a UK-based fashion retailer.


title: Demi Rose

text: In 2016, Mawby was dating American rapper Tyga. Mawby's father, Barrie Mawby, died in October 2018 from cancer, and her mother, Christine Mawby, died from a stomach infection in June 2019.


title: Monarchism

text: Monarchism is the advocacy of the system of monarchy or monarchical rule. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government independently of any specific monarch, whereas one who supports a particular monarch is a royalist. Conversely, the opposition to monarchical rule is referred to as republicanism.


title: Monarchism

text: Depending on the country, a royalist may advocate for the rule of the person who sits on the throne, a regent, a pretender, or someone who would otherwise occupy the throne but has been deposed.


title: Monarchism

text: Monarchical rule is among the oldest political institutions. The similar form of societal hierarchy known as chiefdom or tribal kingship is prehistoric. Chiefdoms provided the concept of state formation, which started with civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley civilization. In some parts of the world, chiefdoms became monarchies.


title: Monarchism

text: Monarchs have generally ceded power in the modern era, having substantially diminished since World War I and World War II. This process can be traced back to the 18th century, when Voltaire and others encouraged "enlightened absolutism", which was embraced by the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II and by Catherine II of Russia.


title: Monarchism

text: In 1685 the Enlightenment began. This would result in new anti-monarchist ideas which resulted in several revolutions such as the 18th century American Revolution and the French Revolution which were both additional steps in the weakening of power of European monarchies. Each in its different way exemplified the concept of popular sovereignty upheld by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1848 then ushered in a wave of revolutions against the continental European monarchies. World War I and its aftermath saw the end of three major European monarchies: the Russian Romanov dynasty, the German Hohenzollern dynasty, including all other German monarchies and the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg dynasty.


title: Monarchism

text: With the arrival of socialism in Eastern Europe by the end of 1947, the remaining Eastern European monarchies, namely the Kingdom of Romania, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Kingdom of Albania, the Kingdom of Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, were all abolished and replaced by socialist republics.


title: Monarchism

text: Central Africa: In 1966, the Central African Republic was overthrown at the hands of Jean-Bédel Bokassa during the Saint-Sylvestre coup d'état. He established the Central African Empire in 1976 and ruled as Emperor Bokassa I until 1979, when he was subsequently deposed during Operation Caban and Central Africa returned to republican rule.


title: Monarchism

text: Ethiopia: In 1974, one of the world's oldest monarchies was abolished in Ethiopia with the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie.


title: Monarchism

text: China: China possessed a monarchy from prehistoric times up until 1912, when Emperor Puyi was deposed. He was briefly restored to the throne for twelve days during the Manchu Restoration in 1917, but this attempt was quickly undone by republican forces. The end of the Chinese monarchy ushered in the Republic of China.


title: Monarchism

text: India: In India, monarchies recorded history of thousands of years before the country was declared a republic country in 1950. King George VI had previously been the last Emperor of India until August 1947, when the British Raj dissolved. Karan Singh served as the last prince regent of Jammu and Kashmir until November 1952.


title: Monarchism

text: Iran: Monarchism possessed an important role in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and also played a role in the modern political affairs of Nepal. Nepal was one of the last states to have had an absolute monarch, which continued until King Gyanendra was peacefully deposed in May 2008 and the country became a federal republic.


title: Monarchism

text: Japan: The Japanese Emperor is the last remaining head of state with the title of "Emperor". The Imperial House of Japan is the world's oldest, having existed continuously since at least the 6th century. Since the adoption of the 1947 Japanese constitution, the Emperor has been made a ceremonial head of state, without any nominal political powers. Today, Naruhito serves as the Emperor of Japan and enjoys wide support from the Japanese population.


title: Monarchism

text: Albania: The last separate monarchy to take root in Europe, Albania began its recognised modern existence as a principality (1914) and became a kingdom after a republican interlude in 1925–1928. Since 1945 the country has operated as an independent republic. The Albanian Democratic Monarchist Movement Party (founded in 2004) and the Legality Movement Party (founded in 1924) advocate restoration of the House of Zogu as monarchs—the concept has gained little electoral support.


title: Monarchism

text: Austria-Hungary: Following the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed. The Constitutional Assembly of German Austria passed the Habsburg Law, which permanently exiled the Habsburg family from Austria. Despite this, significant support for the Habsburg family persisted in Austria. Following the Anschluss of 1938, the Nazi government suppressed monarchist activities. By the time Nazi rule ended in Austria, support for monarchism had largely evaporated.


title: Monarchism

text: In Hungary, the rise of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919 provoked an increase in support for monarchism; however, efforts by Hungarian monarchists failed to bring back a royal head of state, and the monarchists settled for a regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy, to represent the monarchy until it could be restored. Horthy ruled as regent from 1920 to 1944. During his regency, attempts were made by Karl von Habsburg () to return to the Hungarian throne, which ultimately failed. Following Karl's death in 1922, his claim to the Kingdom of Hungary was inherited by Otto von Habsburg (1912–2011), although no further attempts were made to take the Hungarian throne.


title: Monarchism

text: France: During the French Revolution, the French First Republic was proclaimed in 1792 following the overthrow of Louis XVI. The Republic failed, and transitioned into the First French Empire under Napoleon I in 1804. Napoleon's fall in 1814 led to the Bourbon Restoration in France under Louis XVIII. The restored Kingdom of France lasted until 1830, save a brief period during the Hundred Days (1815) when Napoleon attempted to retake control. In 1830, King Charles X was overthrown during the July Revolution and replaced with his cousin, Louis Philippe I, who reigned as "King of the French". Louis Phillipe I ruled for 18 years, until his abdication due to the French Revolution of 1848. After this, the French Second Republic was formed, which lasted for just four years. Its first president, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, initiated a coup in 1851 and proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III the following year, establishing the Second French Empire. It lasted until 1870, and was succeeded by the French Third Republic.


title: Monarchism

text: Following Napoleon III's fall in 1870, Henri, Count of Chambord was offered the French throne, but he declined due to a disagreement with the French government. Due to his refusal, the French royalists intended to offer the crown to the Orleanist Prince Philippe, Count of Paris upon Henri's death. However, Henri lived longer than expected, and by the time of his death in 1883, support for monarchy had weakened too greatly to offer Phillipe the crown.


title: Monarchism

text: Since then, figures and groups such as Charles Maurras (1868–1952) and Action Française (founded in 1899) have advocated for the restoration of the monarchy. During World War II, many French monarchists fought (1940–1944) with the French Resistance. Some, such as Henri d'Astier de la Vigerie pushed for a coup against Vichy France, which would restore Henri, Count of Paris to the throne of France as King. However, this idea was stopped by Dwight D. Eisenhower, among others. After the war, Henri enjoyed wide popularity and maintained a friendship with Charles de Gaulle, whom he tried to convince to support a restoration of the monarchy. While de Gaulle was sympathetic, he ultimately abandoned the idea, and no serious attempt to restore the monarchy ever came to fruition. Today, the majority of French monarchists, a minority in France, are Orléanists and advocate for a restoration of the crown under Jean, Count of Paris, pretender to the throne as "Jean IV". A smaller monarchist group, known as Legitimists, instead support Louis Alphonse de Bourbon, styled "Louis XX".


title: Monarchism

text: Germany: In 1920s Germany a number of monarchists gathered around the German National People's Party (founded in 1918), which demanded the return of the Hohenzollern monarchy and an end to the Weimar Republic; the party retained a large base of support until the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, as Adolf Hitler staunchly opposed monarchism.


title: Monarchism

text: Italy: The aftermath of World War II saw the return of monarchist/republican rivalry in Italy, where a referendum was held on whether the state should remain a monarchy or become a republic. The republican side won the vote by a narrow margin, and the modern Republic of Italy was created.


title: Monarchism

text: Liechtenstein: There have been 16 monarchs of the Principality of Liechtenstein since 1608. The current Prince of Liechtenstein, Hans-Adam II, has reigned since 1989. In 2003, during a referendum, 64.3% of the population voted to increase the power of the prince.


title: Monarchism

text: Norway: The position of King of Norway has existed continuously since the unification of Norway in 872. Following the dissolution of union with Sweden and the abdication of King Oscar II of Sweden as King of Norway, the 1905 Norwegian monarchy referendum saw 78.94% of Norway's voters approving the government's proposition to invite Prince Carl of Denmark to become their new king. Following the vote, the prince then accepted the offer, becoming King Haakon VII.


title: Monarchism

text: In 2022, the Norwegian parliament held a vote on abolishing the monarchy and replacing it with a republic. The proposal failed, with a 134–35 result in favor of retaining the monarchy. The idea was highly controversial in Norway, as the vote was spearheaded by the sitting Minister of Culture and Equality, who had sworn an oath of loyalty to King Harald V of Norway the previous year. Additionally, when polls were conducted, it was found that 84% of the Norwegian public supported the monarchy, with only 16% unsure or against the monarchy.


title: Monarchism

text: Russia: Monarchy in the Russian Empire collapsed in March 1917, following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. Parts of the White movement, and in particular émigrés and their (founded in 1921 and now based in Canada) continued to advocate for monarchy as "the sole path to the rebirth of Russia". In the modern era, a minority of Russians, including Vladimir Zhirinovsky (1946–2022), have openly advocated for a restoration of the Russian monarchy. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna is widely considered the valid heir to the throne, in the event that a restoration occurs. Other pretenders and their supporters dispute her claim.


title: Monarchism

text: Spain: In 1868, Queen Isabella II of Spain was deposed during the Spanish Glorious Revolution. The Duke of Aosta , an Italian prince, was invited to rule and replace Isabella. He did so for a three-year period, reigning as Amadeo I before abdicating in 1873, resulting in the establishment of the First Spanish Republic. The republic lasted less than two years, and was overthrown during a coup by General Arsenio Martínez Campos. Campos restored the Bourbon monarchy under Isabella II's more popular son, Alfonso XII.


title: Monarchism

text: After the 1931 Spanish local elections, King Alfonso XIII voluntarily left Spain and republicans proclaimed a Second Spanish Republic.


title: Monarchism

text: After the assassination of opposition leader José Calvo Sotelo in 1936, right-wing forces banded together to overthrow the Republic. During the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, General Francisco Franco established the basis for the Spanish State (1939–1975). In 1938, the autocratic government of Franco claimed to have reconstituted the Spanish monarchy "in absentia" (and in this case ultimately yielded to a restoration, in the person of King Juan Carlos).


title: Monarchism

text: In 1975, Juan Carlos I became King of Spain and began the Spanish transition to democracy. He abdicated in 2014, and was succeeded by his son Felipe VI.


title: Monarchism

text: United Kingdom: In England, royalty ceded power to other groups in a gradual process. In 1215, a group of nobles forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, which guaranteed the English barons certain liberties and established that the king's powers were not absolute. King Charles I was executed in 1649, and the Commonwealth of England was established as a republic. Highly unpopular, the republic was ended in 1660, and the monarchy was restored under King Charles II. In 1687–88, the Glorious Revolution and the overthrow of King James II established the principles of constitutional monarchy, which would later be worked out by Locke and other thinkers. However, absolute monarchy, justified by Hobbes in "Leviathan" (1651), remained a prominent principle elsewhere.


title: Monarchism

text: Following the Glorious Revolution, William III and Mary II were established as constitutional monarchs, with less power than their predecessor James II. Since then, royal power has become more ceremonial, with powers such as refusal to assent last exercised in 1708 by Queen Anne. Once part of the United Kingdom (1801–1922), southern Ireland rejected monarchy and became the Republic of Ireland in 1949. Support for a ceremonial monarchy remains high in Britain: Queen Elizabeth II (), possessed wide support from the U.K.'s population.


title: Monarchism

text: Vatican City State: The Vatican City State is considered to be Europe's last absolute monarchy. The micronation is headed by the Pope, who doubles as its monarch according to the Vatican constitution. The nation was formed under Pope Pius XI in 1929, following the signing of the Lateran Treaty. It was the successor state to the Papal States, which collapsed under Pope Pius IX in 1870. Pope Francis (in office from 2013) serves as the nation's absolute monarch.


title: Monarchism

text: Canada: Canada possesses one of the world's oldest continuous monarchies, having been established in the 16th century. Queen Elizabeth II had served as its sovereign since her ascension to the throne in 1952 until her death in 2022.


title: Monarchism

text: Costa Rica: The struggle between monarchists and republicans led the country to confront each other in the Costa Rican civil war of 1823. Political figures who stand out as Costa Rican monarchists include Joaquín de Oreamuno y Muñoz de la Trinidad, José Santos Lombardo y Alvarado and José Rafael Gallegos Alvarado. among others .Costa Rica stands out for being one of the few countries with a foreign monarchism, that is, where the monarchists did not intend to establish an indigenous monarchy. Costa Rican monarchists were loyal to Emperor Agustín de Iturbide of the First Mexican Empire.


title: Monarchism

text: Honduras: After the independence of the general captaincy of Guatemala from the Spanish empire, she joined the First Mexican Empire for a brief period, this unleashed the division of the Honduran elites. These were divided between the annexationists, made up mostly of illustrious spaniskh-descendant families and members of the conservative party who supported the idea of being part of an empire, and the liberals who wanted Central America to be a separate nation under a republican system.


title: Monarchism

text: The greatest example of this separation was in the two most important cities of the province, on the one hand Comayagua, which firmly supported the legitimacy of Iturbide I as emperor and remained a pro-monarchist bastion in Honduras, and on the other hand Tegucigalpa who supported the idea of forming a federation of Central American states under a republican system.


title: Monarchism

text: Mexico: After obtaining independence from Spain, the First Mexican Empire was established under Emperor Agustín I. His reign lasted less than one year, and he was forcefully deposed. In 1864, the Second Mexican Empire was formed under Emperor Maximilian I. Maximilian's government enjoyed French aid, but opposition from America, and collapsed after three years. Much like Agustín I, Maximilian I was deposed and later executed by his republican enemies. Since 1867, Mexico has not possessed a monarchy.


title: Monarchism

text: Today, some Mexican monarchist organizations advocate for Maximilian von Götzen-Iturbide or Carlos Felipe de Habsburgo to be instated as the Emperor of Mexico.


title: Monarchism

text: Nicaragua: The miskito ethnic group inhabits part of the Atlantic coast of Honduras and Nicaragua, by the beginning of the 17th century the said ethnic group was reorganized under a single chief known as Ta Uplika, for the reign of his grandson King Oldman I this group had a very close relationship With the English, they managed to turn the Mosquitia coast into an English protectorate that would decline in the 19th century until it completely disappeared in 1894 with the abdication of Robert II.


title: Monarchism

text: Currently, the Miskitos who are shot between the two countries have denounced the neglect of their communities and abuses committed by the authorities. As a result of this, in Nicaragua several Miskito people began a movement of separatism from present-day Nicaragua and a re-institution of the monarchy.


title: Monarchism

text: United States: English settlers first established the colony of Jamestown in 1607, taking its name after King James VI and I. For 169 years, the Thirteen Colonies were ruled by the authority of the British crown. The Thirteen American Colonies possessed a total of 10 monarchs, ending with George III. During the American Revolutionary War, the colonies declared independence from Britain in 1776. Despite erroneous popular belief, the Revolutionary war was in fact fought over independence, not anti-monarchism as is commonly believed. In fact, many American colonists who fought in the war against George III were monarchists themselves, who opposed George, but desired to possess a different king. Additionally, the American colonists received the financial support of Louis XVI and Charles III of Spain during the war.


title: Monarchism

text: After the U.S. declared its independence, the form of government by which it would operate still remained unsettled. At least two of America's Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton and Nathaniel Gorham, believed that America should be an independent monarchy, . Various proposals to create an American monarchy were considered, including the Prussian scheme which would have made Prince Henry of Prussia king of the United States. Hamilton proposed that the leader of America should be an elected monarch, while Gorham pushed for a hereditary monarchy. U.S. military officer Lewis Nicola also desired for America to be a monarchy, suggesting George Washington accept the crown of America, which he declined. All attempts ultimately failed, and America was founded a Republic.


title: Monarchism

text: During the American Civil War, a return to monarchy was considered as a way to solve the crisis, though it never came to fruition. Since then, the idea has possessed low support, but has been advocated by some public figures such as Ralph Adams Cram, Solange Hertz, Leland B. Yeager, Michael Auslin, Charles A. Coulombe, and Curtis Yarvin.


title: Monarchism

text: The majority of current monarchies are constitutional monarchies. In most of these, the monarch wields only symbolic power, although in some, the monarch does play a role in political affairs. In Thailand, for instance, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who reigned from 1946 to 2016, played a critical role in the nation's political agenda and in various military coups. Similarly, in Morocco, King Mohammed VI wields significant, but not absolute power.


title: Monarchism

text: Liechtenstein is a democratic principality whose citizens have voluntarily given more power to their monarch in recent years.


title: Monarchism

text: There remain a handful of countries in which the monarch is the true ruler. The majority of these countries are oil-producing Arab Islamic monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Other strong monarchies include Brunei and Eswatini.


title: Monarchism

text: Absolute monarchy stands as an opposition to anarchism and, additionally since the Age of Enlightenment; liberalism, communism and socialism.


title: Monarchism

text: Otto von Habsburg advocated a form of constitutional monarchy based on the primacy of the supreme judicial function, with hereditary succession, mediation by a tribunal is warranted if suitability is problematic.


title: Monarchism

text: British political scientist Vernon Bogdanor justifies monarchy on the grounds that it provides for a nonpartisan head of state, separate from the head of government, and thus ensures that the highest representative of the country, at home and internationally, does not represent a particular political party, but all people. Bogdanor also notes that monarchies can play a helpful unifying role in a multinational state, noting that "In Belgium, it is sometimes said that the king is the only Belgian, everyone else being either Fleming or Walloon" and that the British sovereign can belong to all of the United Kingdom's constituent countries (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), without belonging to any particular one of them.


title: Monarchism

text: Thomas Hobbes wrote that the private interest of the monarchy is the same with the public. The riches, power, and humour of a monarch arise only from the riches, strength, and reputation of his subjects. An elected Head of State is incentivised to increase his own wealth for leaving office after a few years whereas a monarch has no reason to corrupt because he would be cheating himself.


title: Monarchism

text: Thomas Hobbes wrote that a monarch can receive wise counsel with secrecy while an assembly cannot. Advisors to the assembly tend to be well-versed more in the acquisition of their own wealth than of knowledge; are likely to give their advices in long discourses which often excite men into action but do not govern them in it, moved by the flame of passion instead of enlightenment. Their multitude is a weakness.


title: Monarchism

text: Thomas Hobbes wrote that the resolutions of a monarch are subject to no inconsistency save for human nature; in assemblies, inconsistencies arise from the number. For in an assembly, as little as the absence of a few or the diligent appearance of a few of the contrary opinion, "undoes today all that was done yesterday".


title: Monarchism

text: Thomas Hobbes wrote that a monarch cannot disagree with himself, out of envy or interest, but an assembly may and to such a height that may produce a civil war.


title: Monarchism

text: The International Monarchist League, founded in 1943, has always sought to promote monarchy on the grounds that it strengthens popular liberty, both in a democracy and in a dictatorship, because by definition the monarch is not beholden to politicians.


title: Monarchism

text: British-American libertarian writer Matthew Feeney argues that European constitutional monarchies "have managed for the most part to avoid extreme politics"—specifically fascism, communism, and military dictatorship—"in part because monarchies provide a check on the wills of populist politicians" by representing entrenched customs and traditions. Feeny notes that European monarchies—such as the Danish, Belgian, Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian, and British—have ruled over countries that are among the most stable, prosperous, and free in the world.


title: Monarchism

text: Socialist writer George Orwell argued a similar point, that constitutional monarchy is effective at preventing the development of Fascism.


title: Monarchism

text: "The function of the King in promoting stability and acting as a sort of keystone in a non-democratic society is, of course, obvious. But he also has, or can have, the function of acting as an escape-valve for dangerous emotions. A French journalist said to me once that the monarchy was one of the things that have saved Britain from Fascism...It is at any rate possible that while this division of function exists a Hitler or a Stalin cannot come to power. On the whole the European countries which have most successfully avoided Fascism have been constitutional monarchies... I have often advocated that a Labour government, i.e. one that meant business, would abolish titles while retaining the Royal Family.’


title: Monarchism

text: Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn took a different approach, arguing that liberty and equality are contradictions. As such, he argued that attempts to establish greater social equality through the abolishment of monarchy, ultimately results in a greater loss of liberty for citizens. He believed that equality can only be accomplished through the suppression of liberty, as humans are naturally unequal and hierarchical. Kuehnelt-Leddihn also believed that people are on average freer under monarchies than they are under democratic republics, as the latter tends to more easily become tyrannical through ochlocracy. In "Liberty or Equality", he writes:


title: Monarchism

text: There is little doubt that the American Congress or the French Chambers have a power over their nations which would rouse the envy of a Louis XIV or a George III, were they alive today. Not only prohibition, but also the income tax declaration, selective service, obligatory schooling, the fingerprinting of blameless citizens, premarital blood tests—none of these totalitarian measures would even the royal absolutism of the seventeenth century have dared to introduce.


title: Monarchism

text: Hans-Hermann Hoppe also argues that monarchy helps to preserve individual liberty more effectively than democracy.


title: Monarchism

text: In a 1943 essay in "The Spectator", "Equality", British author C.S. Lewis criticized egalitarianism, and its corresponding call for the abolition of monarchy, as contrary to human nature, writing, A man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be 'debunked'; but watch the faces, mark well the accents, of the debunkers. These are the men whose tap-root in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach—men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch...Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.


title: Monarchism

text: Oxford political scientists Petra Schleiter and Edward Morgan-Jones wrote that in monarchies, it is more common to hold elections than non-electoral replacements.


title: Monarchism

text: Criticism of monarchy can be targeted against the general form of government—monarchy—or more specifically, to particular monarchical governments as controlled by hereditary royal families. In some cases, this criticism can be curtailed by legal restrictions and be considered criminal speech, as in lèse-majesté. Monarchies in Europe and their underlying concepts, such as the Divine Right of Kings, were often criticized during the Age of Enlightenment, which notably paved the way to the French Revolution and the proclamation of the abolition of the monarchy in France. Earlier, the American Revolution had seen the Patriots suppress the Loyalists and expel all royal officials. In this century, monarchies are present in the world in many forms with different degrees of royal power and involvement in civil affairs:


title: Monarchism

text: The twentieth century, beginning with the 1917 February Revolution in Russia and accelerated by two world wars, saw many European countries replace their monarchies with republics, while others replaced their absolute monarchies with constitutional monarchies. Reverse movements have also occurred, with brief returns of the monarchy in France under the Bourbon Restoration, the July Monarchy, and the Second French Empire, the Stuarts after the English Civil War and the Bourbons in Spain after the Franco dictatorship.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (, born Akbar Hashemi Bahramani, 25 August 1934 – 8 January 2017) was an Iranian politician, writer, and one of the founding fathers of the Islamic Republic who was the fourth president of Iran from 1989 to 1997. He was the head of the Assembly of Experts from 2007 until 2011 when he decided not to nominate himself for the post. He was also the chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: During his 40-year tenure, Rafsanjani amassed a large amount of power serving as the speaker of parliament, Commander-in-Chief during the Iran–Iraq War, President, and chose Ali Khamenei as the supreme leader of Iran. His powerful role and control over Iranian politics earned him the name "Akbar Shah".


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani became president of Iran after winning the 1989 election. He served another term by winning the election in 1993. In the 2005 election he ran for a third term in office, placing first in the first round of elections but ultimately losing to rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the run-off. He and his family faced political isolation for their support of the opposition in 2009. Rafsanjani entered the race for the 2013 presidential election, but he was disqualified by the Guardian Council. With Hassan Rouhani's election, in which Rafsanjani openly supported him, the Rafsanjani family gradually recovered their political reputation. Rafsanjani died in 2017, following a heart attack, in a hospital in Tehran at the age of 82. Although government officials attributed his death to cardiac arrest, his sudden death prompted speculation that he had been assassinated. His family strongly asserted that he had been murdered. Further investigation revealed that his body was highly radioactive.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani has been described as a pragmatic Islamic conservative. "The Economist" called him a "veteran kingmaker". He supported a capitalist free market position domestically, favoring privatization of state-owned industries and a moderate position internationally, seeking to avoid conflict with the United States and the West. He was also the founder of, and one of the Board of Trustees of, Azad University. In 2003, "Forbes" estimated his personal wealth to be in excess of US$1 billion.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani was born on 25 August 1934 in the village of Bahreman near the city of Rafsanjan in Kerman Province, to a wealthy family of pistachio farmers. He had seven siblings. His father, Mirza Ali Hashemi Behramani, was a pistachio merchant, one of Kerman's famous businessmen. His mother, Hajie Khanom Mahbibi Hashemi, died at the age of 90 on 21 December 1995. One of his brothers, Mohammad Hashemi, is the former director of IRIB. From childhood onward Rafsanjani did not see himself as a peasant, according to family members.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: He left at the age of 14 to study theology in Qom. There he became acquainted with the ideas of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the most senior dissident cleric who later became the founder of the Islamic Republic, on the political rule of the clergy. He studied theology. His other teachers were Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, Mohammad-Reza Golpaygani, Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari, Abdul-Karim Ha'eri Yazdi, Shahab al-Din Mar'ashi Najafi, Nematollah Salehi Najafabadi, Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i, and Hussein-Ali Montazeri.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: When he was studying at Qom Seminary, he became interested in politics under Ruhollah Khomeini. He was one of the opposers of Mohammad Reza Shah's White Revolution and accompanied Khomeini. With Khomeini's exile, Hashemi's role in the fight against the Shah and representing Khomeini in the country was highlighted. This opposition eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment. He was arrested 7 times from 1960 until 1979 and was in jail for four years and 5 months in total due to his clandestine activities against the Pahlavi regime. Despite the anti-Western attitude of revolutionaries, he had traveled to 20 states of the United States. Khomeini made him the financial manager of the revolutionary struggle as well as the bridge with other revolutionary groups.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Among the groups that had a deep bond with Hashemi, was the Islamic Coalition Party, which is known as responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Hassan Ali Mansur. This communication was another reason for his arrest. In prison, he found the opportunity to become familiar with other groups opposed to the Shah.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: After the victory of Iranian Revolution, Hashemi became one of the members of Council of Islamic Revolution. He was one of the powerful members of the council from its establishment. He was also deputy interior minister at that time and later became the acting interior minister.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: He was one of the 28 founders of Traditional right-wing Combatant Clergy Association and also one of the members of the central committee of Islamic Republican Party at the first years of the revolution. Years later, it was he who requested IRP's dissolution. His political acumen and Khomeini's full trust helped Rafsanjani as one of the most powerful politicians in Iran at that time. At the time, he was the closest person to the Khomeini and ruled as his "eyes and ears". According to the "Gold", Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was established with the help of Hashemi.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: During the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, Hashemi Rafsanjani mentioned it as "one of the largest manufacturer in the history". However, on the tenth anniversary of the revolution, he said in an interview that according to the experiences of these years, the hostage was "wrong".


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Hashemi served as one of the Tehran's Friday Prayer Imams (for next thirty years), Representative of Khomeini at Defense High Council (after death of Mostafa Chamran) and Second-in-Command of Iran's Joint Chiefs of Staff in the last year of Iran–Iraq War. He forced Khomeini to accept to end the war. Only three months after his appointment as Iran's deputy commander-in-chief, Iran accepted United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 and eight-year war was ended.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Iran's first Election Law was developed with Hashemi's partnership. He nominated as one of the Islamic Republican Party's candidates in the 1980 legislative election in Tehran. He gained 1,151,514 (54%) votes and ranked 15. Rafsanjani was the Speaker of Parliament of Iran for 9 years. He was elected as the speaker in 1980 in the first season of Parliament after the Iranian Revolution. He was also chairman in the second season and first year of the third parliament. After the death of Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic and election of then-President Ali Khamenei as new supreme leader, he joined the 1989 presidential race and became the President, leaving Parliament.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: He had a determining role in the dismissal of Abulhassan Banisadr as commander-in-chief of Iranian military and then his impeachment in the parliament as Iran's first president in June 1981. In the summer of 1981, he protested to the veto of the parliament's plan by the Guardian Council and informed it to Ruhollah Khomeini. This led to the establishment of Expediency Discernment Council, which later he chaired the council. He had an active role in Iran–Contra affair, which was divulged by Mehdi Hashemi and failed. Mehdi Hashemi was executed but Rafsanjani was the loser at internal dimension.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: In October 1981 presidential election, when he voted to Ali Khamenei, he said it's vote of "Imam (Khomeini), clerics and the parliament". During differences between Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Khamenei, Hashemi cleverly managed to keep the position favor or against these two perspectives and take the middle position. According to Bahman Bakhtiari, at that time Mousavi was the leader of the left-wing, and Khamenei the right-wing. With the death of Khomeini (one of the supporters of leftists), leftists were weakened. In such circumstances, Hashemi leaped for a powerful presidency.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani adopted an "economy-first" policy, supporting a privatization policy against more state-owned economic tendencies in the Islamic Republic. Another source describes his administration as "economically liberal, politically authoritarian, and philosophically traditional" which put him in confrontation with more radical deputies in the majority in the Majles of Iran.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: As president, Rafsanjani was credited with spurring Iran's reconstruction following the 1980–88 war with Iraq. His reforms, despite attempting to curb the powers of the ultra-conservatives, failed to do so, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards received increasing power from Khamenei during his presidency. He was also accused of corruption by both conservatives and reformists, and was known for tough crackdowns on dissent.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani advocated a free market economy. With the state's coffers full, Rafsanjani pursued an economic liberalization policy. Rafsanjani's support for a deal with the United States over Iran's nuclear program and his free-market economic policies contrasted with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies, who advocate maintaining a hard line against Western intervention in the Middle East while pursuing a policy of economic redistribution to Iran's poor. By espousing World Bank inspired structural adjustment policies, Rafsanjani desired a modern industrial-based economy integrated into the global economy.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani urged universities to cooperate with industries. Turning to the quick pace of developments in today's world, he said that with "the world constantly changing, we should adjust ourselves to the conditions of our lifetime and make decisions according to present circumstances". Among the projects he initiated are Islamic Azad University.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: During his presidency, a period in which Rafsanjani is described by western media sources as having been the most powerful figure in Iran, people ordered executed by the judicial system of Iran included political dissidents, drug offenders, Communists, Kurds, followers of the Baháʼí Faith, and even Islamic clerics.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: The Iranian Mojahedin were recognized as a terrorist organization by both the Iranian government as well as the United States CIA. Regarding the Mojahedin, Rafsanjani said ("Ettela'at", 31 October 1981):


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani also worked with Khamenei to maintain the stability of government after the death of Khomeini.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Following years of deterioration in foreign relations under Khomeini during the Iran–Iraq War, Rafsanjani sought to rebuild ties with Arab states as well as with countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus, including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. However, relations with European countries and the United States remained poor, even though Rafsanjani had a track record of handling difficult situations and defusing crises.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: He condemned both the United States and Ba'athist Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. After the war he strove to renew close ties with the West, although he refused to lift Khomeini's fatwa against the British author Salman Rushdie for his "Satanic Verses".


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani said that Iran is ready to assist Iraq, "expecting nothing in return", he also said that "peace and stability" is a function of the "evacuation of the occupiers."


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Iran gave humanitarian help to the victims of the conflict. Iran sent truckloads of food and medicine to Iraq, and thousands of Kuwaiti refugees were given shelter in Iran.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani voiced support to Prince Abdullah's peace initiative and to "everything the Palestinians agree to". He also stated that what he called "Iran's international interests" must take precedence over those of Iranian allies in Syria and Lebanon.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Ayatollah Rafsanjani was a supporter of Iran's nuclear program. In 2007 Rafsanjani reiterated that the use of weapons of mass destruction was not part of the Islamic Republic culture. Rafsanjani said: "You [US and allies] are saying that you cannot trust Iran would not use its nuclear achievements in the military industries, but we are ready to give you full assurances in this respect." According to "The Economist", he is regarded by many Iranians "as the only person with the guile and clout to strike a deal with the West to end economic sanctions" imposed upon the country due to its nuclear program.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: After the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the need for a road map for the future was felt in order to end the historical gap between the country Iran development programs in the first government of Hashemi Rafsanjani.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: The fifth government soon managed to recover the economy and moved the arrowhead of the indicators in a different direction. The first action of the fifth government was devoted to designing the first development plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The men that Hashemi had chosen to run the country took over the task of drafting the plan, and the first development plan was approved by the parliament at the end of 1990. The general goals of this program are rebuilding and equipping the defense base, rebuilding and modernizing production and infrastructure capacities and population centers damaged during the imposed war, quantitative expansion and qualitative improvement of public culture, creating economic growth, providing the minimum basic needs of the people, determining and modifying the pattern Consumption, organization reform and executive and judicial management of the country were considered.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: The most important characteristics of the two periods of Hashemi Rafsanjani's government were the developmental and building approach, the establishment of a free economy in the country, and the use of Extraterritorial jurisdiction managers and technocrats. characteristic of the construction government was that it paid much attention to the development of industrial and transportation infrastructure.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Post-presidency, Rafsanjani delivered a sermon at Tehran University in the summer of 1999 praising government use of force to suppress student demonstrations.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: In 2000, in the first election after the end of his presidency, Rafsanjani ran again for Parliament. In the Tehran contest, Rafsanjani came in 30th, or last, place. At first, he was not among the 30 representatives of Tehran elected, as announced by the Iranian Ministry of the Interior, but the Council of Guardians then ruled numerous ballots void, leading to accusations of ballot fraud in Rafsanjani's favor.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: In December 2006, Rafsanjani was elected to the Assembly of Experts representing Tehran with more than 1.5 million votes, which was more than any other candidate. Ahmadinejad's opponents won the majority of local election seats. On 4 September 2007 he was elected Chairman of the Assembly of Experts, the body that selects Iran's supreme leader, in what was considered a blow to the supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He won the chairmanship with 41 votes of the 76 cast. His ultraconservative opponent, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, received 31 votes. Rafsanjani was re-elected to the position on 10 March 2009, running against Mohammad Yazdi. He received 51 votes compared to Yazdi's 26. On 8 March 2011, he withdrew from the election and Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani was elected as his replacement.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Following his presidency, Rafsanjani also became an advocate of greater freedom of expression and tolerance in Iranian society. In a speech on 17 July 2009, Rafsanjani criticized restriction of media and suppression of activists, and put emphasis on the role and vote of people in the Islamic Republic constitution. The event has been considered by analysts as the most important and most turbulent Friday prayer in the history of contemporary Iran. Nearly 1.5 to 2.5 million people attended the speech in Tehran.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: During the 2009 presidential election, Rafsanjani's former rival and incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, won a disputed landslide victory over challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi. His daughter was arrested on 21 June by plain clothes Basij during the subsequent protest and later sentenced to six months in jail on charges of spreading propaganda against the Islamic Republic.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani was chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which is responsible for appointing or removing the Supreme Leader, who has been rumored to not be in the best of health. After the disputed results of the election were certified by the Supreme Leader, Rafsanjani was reported to have called a meeting of the Assembly of Experts, but it is unknown what the outcome or disposition of this meeting actually was. During this time Rafsanjani relocated from Tehran to Qom, where the country's religious leaders sit. However, for the most part, Rafsanjani was silent about the controversial 12 June election and its aftermath.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: On 17 July 2009, Rafsanjani publicly addressed the election crisis, mass arrests and the issue of freedom of expression during Friday prayers. The prayers witnessed an extremely large crowd that resembled the Friday prayers early after the revolution. Supporters of both reformist and conservative parties took part in the event. During prayers, Rafsanjani argued the following:


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: All of us the establishment, the security forces, police, parliament and even protestors should move within the framework of law... We should open the doors to debates. We should not keep so many people in prison. We should free them to take care of their families. ... It is impossible to restore public confidence overnight, but we have to let everyone speak out. ... We should have logical and brotherly discussions and our people will make their judgments. ... We should let our media write within the framework of the law and we should not impose restrictions on them. ... We should let our media even criticize us. Our security forces, our police and other organs have to guarantee such a climate for criticism.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: His support for the Green Movement reinvigorated his image among the urban middle-class segments of Iranian society who made up the bulk of the movement and solidified Rafsanjani's role as a backer of factions within Iran that advocated the reform of the system to ensure its survival.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: On 8 March 2011 Rafsanjani lost his post as chairman of the powerful Assembly of Experts, replaced by Ayatollah Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani. Rafsanjani stated that he withdrew from the election for chairman to "avoid division." The loss was said to be the result of intensive lobbying "in recent weeks" by "hardliners and supporters" of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and part of Rafsanjani's gradual loss of power over the years.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: On 11 May 2013, Rafsanjani registered for the 14 June presidential election with just minutes to spare. Former reformist president Mohammad Khatami endorsed him. However, on 21 May 2013, Iran's electoral center, Guardian Council disqualified him from standing in the presidential election. On 11 June 2013, Rafsanjani endorsed moderate Hassan Rouhani in the elections for Iran's presidency saying the candidate was "more suitable" than others for presidency.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Reformers had enjoyed his support in recent years, helping to tilt the balance of power towards more moderate forces who managed to win the presidential poll in 2013 with the victory of Hassan Rouhani and parliamentary elections in 2016.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani could not act as a political horse trader—for example, he could not prevent reformist candidates from being disqualified—but his role in guiding reformist politicians was a crucial one and, up to a point, he was able to influence Khamenei by preventing him from making one-sided decisions. Hardliners now have a chance to completely surround the Supreme Leader and block moderate influences. Rafsanjani played politics the way it was played during the time of Ayatollah Khomeini—or at least, that is what he wanted you to believe—but with his death the so-called "Imam's Line," key figures from the beginning of the Revolution, who were close to Khomeini—is near its end.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: He also kept his traditional connections with the clergy in the holy city of Qom and with conservative forces within the political establishment, which made it difficult for hardliners to form a strong front against moderate forces.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: After winning reelection to his seat at Assembly of Experts as Tehran district's first person, Rafsanjani announced that it was the last time that he joined an election as a candidate and will be retired from politics at the end of the current term. He also said "Now I can die with peace of mind" after seeing election of a moderate parliament in the 2016 legislative election.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani died on 8 January 2017, at 19:30 () due to a heart attack in a pool. He was brought immediately to Tajrish's "Shohada-ye Tajrish" Hospital in north Tehran, as reported by Iranian state-run media. He was 82 years old at the time of his death. The government announced three days of national mourning and a public holiday on his funeral day. Black banners were raised in Tehran and other cities and some posters showed the Supreme Leader and Rafsanjani together smiling. Five days of mourning also observed in the southern province of Kerman, where Ayatollah Rafsanjani's hometown of Rafsanjan is located.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Two months after his death, a highway in Northern Tehran was renamed in his honour. Many streets in other cities also named Hashemi Rafsanjani. The central building of Azad University also named as Hashemi Building and a statue of him was installed outside of the building. Kerman International Airport was also renamed to Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani Airport.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: In 2018 Hassan Rouhani ordered the Iranian supreme national security council to reopen an investigation into Rafsanjani's death. Family members stated that although an autopsy had not been performed, the level of radioactivity in his body was "10 times what is considered permissible" and that Rafsanjani's daughter Fatemeh and his wife also had unusually high levels of radioactivity.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Rafsanjani was sought by the Argentinian government for ordering the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires. It was based on the allegation that senior Iranian officials planned the attack in an August 1993 meeting, including Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, Mohammad Hejazi, Khamenei's intelligence and security advisor, Rafsanjani, then president, Ali Fallahian, then intelligence minister, and Ali Akbar Velayati, then foreign minister.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: After his loss at the presidential elections in 2005, a growing tension between him and President Ahmadinejad arose. Rafsanjani has criticized Ahmadinejad's administration several times for conducting a purge of government officials, slow move towards privatization and recently hostile foreign policy in particular the atomic energy policy. In return Ahmadinejad fought back that Rafsanjani failed to differentiate privatization with the corrupt takeover of government-owned companies and of foreign policies which led to sanctions against Iran in 1995 and 1996. He also implicitly denounced Rafsanjani and his followers by calling those who criticize his nuclear program as "traitors".


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: During a debate with Mir-Hossein Moussavi in 2009 presidential election, Ahmadinejad accused Hashemi of corruption. Hashemi released an open letter in which he complained about what he called the president's "insults, lies and false allegations" and asked the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to intervene.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: In his latter years, Rafsanjani had disagreements with Ali Khamenei who has the last say in everything in Iran. Khamenei even indirectly called Rafsanjani a traitor. Following his death, Khamanei said of Rafsanjani, " I don’t know any other figure with whom I have had so many shared experiences and long history in ups and downs of this era which made history."


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: According to him, the problem of having political party undertook by common sense and people. In other word Islam has not definite opinion on parties. Islam placed the duty of having party on the shoulders of peoples themselves. Islam has not any disagreement with partition. He believes that all parties before Islamic revolution in Iran controlled by Shah Regime and there was no original party in that time. In fact with victory of Islamic revolution, the existence of part becomes necessary for revolution.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Before Iranian Revolution, Rafsanjani was active in the anti-Shah activities and reportedly associated with the Islamic Coalition's "shura-ye ruhaniyat" () and the People's Mujahedin.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: Although Rafsanjani was a member of the pragmatic-conservative Combatant Clergy Association, he had a close bond to the Executives of Construction Party and Moderation and Development Party. In 2009, Rafsanjani ceased activity in the Combatant Clergy Association, despite remaining a member.


title: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

text: He was regarded as flip-flopping between conservative and reformist camps since the election of Mohammad Khatami, supporting reformers in that election, but going back to the conservative camp in the 2000 parliamentary elections as a result of the reformist party severely criticizing and refusing to accept him as their candidate. Reformists, including Akbar Ganji, accused him of involvement in murdering dissidents and writers during his presidency. In the end, the major differences between the Kargozaran and the reformists party weakened both and eventually resulted in their loss at the presidential elections in 2005. However, Rafsanjani regained close ties with the reformers since he lost the 2005 presidential elections to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.