title: Joseph Joffre

text: On 13 June Pershing, who had landed at Boulogne that morning, met Joffre, Paul Painlevé (war minister), Viviani and Foch (chief of staff) in Paris. Joffre recommended that an American unit be rushed to France to show the flag. 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment was sent, and was reviewed by Joffre and President Poincaré as it marched up the Champs-Élysées on 4 July. Pershing rejected Painlevé's suggestion that Joffre head the liaison group of French officers who were helping to set up his supply lines; Pershing insisted on using the Atlantic ports of Brest, St Nazaire and Rochefort.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: Joffre became leader of the Supreme War Council in 1918. When he retired in 1919, he was made a member of the Académie française. In 1920 he presided over the "Jocs Florals" in Barcelona, a Catalan literary certamen (he was born in French Catalonia and his mother tongue was Catalan).


title: Joseph Joffre

text: In 1922 he was welcomed in Broadway, New York with a ticker-tape parade, a few months after Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander during World War I.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: Joffre died at the age of 78 in Paris on 3 January 1931. His body was buried on his estate at Louveciennes. His memoirs, in two volumes, were published posthumously in 1932.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: Joffre was an agnostic in religious views and had been a freemason since 1875, unlike many French generals, who were Catholic (and of the generation educated in the Catholic teaching which had grown up after the "Loi Falloux") and therefore suspected of hostility to the Third Republic.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: Joffre was generally taciturn and a man of impenetrable calm, sometimes interspersed with furious anger. He would sometimes turn up at a unit's headquarters, listen to reports, and then depart having said hardly a word, to the consternation of the officers he had just inspected. At the time of the Battle of the Marne, he was heavily dependent on his deputy chief of staff, General Henri Mathias Berthelot. Sir John French, commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, thought highly of him. Georges Boillot, winner of the French Grand Prix 1912 and 1913, was Joffre's personal driver in 1914, and Joffre's car tearing along roads became a familiar sight.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: General Hubert Lyautey thought Joffre a better logistician than strategist. His major positive contributions in 1914 were his sustained calm under pressure and the calculated reasoning of an alumnus from École Polytechnique, his ruthless dismissal of unsuccessful generals (three army commanders, ten corps commanders and thirty-eight divisional commanders, replacing them with combative men like Foch, Franchet d'Espèrey and—more junior at that stage—Petain and Nivelle), and his outstanding logistical handling of French infantry divisional movements and artillery ammunition supplies during and after the French retreat of August 1914.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: Doughty writes of the Marne: "Gallieni's role was important, but the key concept and decisions lay with Joffre." Joffre recovered from the initial disastrous attacks into Lorraine and the Ardennes and redeployed forces to the west. He kept his cool when the initial attempt to have Maunoury envelop the German west flank at Amiens failed, requiring a retreat on Paris. While the Battle of the Marne was going on, he handled the problems faced by Foch's Ninth Army at the St Gond Marshes, by de Langle's Fourth and Sarrail's Third near Verdun and by Castelnau's Second in the Nancy area.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: John Eisenhower writes that Joffre's "personality had a profound effect on the course of history" and he became a household name in the United States.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: The Joffre class of steam locomotives was a French Decauville design built by Kerr Stuart under contract during 1915 and 1916.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: A French aircraft carrier bearing Joffre's name was under construction at the start of World War II but was never completed due to France's rapid fall in 1940.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: When he visited Romania in 1920, the Casa Capșa, purveyor to the Royal Court of Romania, created the Joffre cake in his honour.


title: Joseph Joffre

text: In 1918, Mount Joffre on the Continental Divide in Western Canada was named after him. Summits with the names of other French generals are nearby: Cordonnier, Foch, Nivelle, Mangin, and Pétain.


title: 2023 Louisiana gubernatorial election

text: The 2023 Louisiana gubernatorial election will take place on October 14, 2023, to elect the next Governor of Louisiana. Incumbent Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards will be ineligible to seek a third consecutive term due to Louisiana's term limits.


title: 2023 Louisiana gubernatorial election

text: Under Louisiana's jungle primary system, all candidates will appear on the same ballot, regardless of party, and voters may vote for any candidate, regardless of their party affiliation.


title: 2023 Louisiana gubernatorial election

text: The Louisiana Republican Party endorsed Attorney General Jeff Landry's campaign on November 7, 2022, a year before the election. The party had had a full-body meeting scheduled for October 29, but it was canceled, and instead the endorsement was voted on in an exclusive meeting held over Zoom. Political reporter Jeremy Alford believed it was the earliest endorsement by the Louisiana Republican Party in recent memory and potentially ever. Landry and Eddie Rispone, a member of the Republican State Central Committee who supports him, had pushed the party to make an early endorsement, arguing that Republicans' best chance of flipping the governorship was to unite around one candidate well in advance of the election. This move was heavily criticized by other Republicans who had expressed interest in running for governor. Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser said the party's endorsement process "looks more like communist China than the Louisiana we know and love," State Treasurer John Schroder claimed it was driven by "money and inside party politics," and state senator Sharon Hewitt proclaimed "the citizens of Louisiana do not need backroom deals and political insiders telling them who should be our next governor." Michael DiResto, a member of the Republican State Central Committee, believed "the idea that a small cabal would preempt the democratic process literally under the cover of darkness and in a smoke-filled Zoom goes against the foundational values of our party." In response, Louisiana Republican Party chair Louis Gurvich said "others who are crying over this endorsement are just upset because they didn’t have the support within our party to win the endorsement for themselves."


title: Ronnie DeVoe

text: Ronald Boyd DeVoe Jr. (born November 17, 1967), is an American singer, rapper, and actor known as one of the members of the R&B/pop group New Edition, and the R&B/hip hop group Bell Biv DeVoe. He was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts.


title: Ronnie DeVoe

text: DeVoe was the second-to-last member to join New Edition (Johnny Gill being the last) after being brought in by his uncle and the group's choreographer Brooke Payne. In 1981, the group took second place at a talent show, which caught the eye of record producer Maurice Starr, who signed them to his Streetwise record label. New Edition was the biggest-selling boy band from the mid to late 1980s.


title: Ronnie DeVoe

text: After New Edition's 1990 breakup, DeVoe and fellow New Edition members Ricky Bell and Michael Bivins formed the R&B/hip-hop group Bell Biv DeVoe. Bell Biv DeVoe's 1990 debut album "Poison" sold more than 5 million copies and garnered five hit singles, such as "Poison" and "B.B.D. (I Thought It Was Me)?". In 1993, DeVoe and the group released their follow-up album "Hootie Mack".


title: Ronnie DeVoe

text: In 1996, DeVoe reunited with the other original members of New Edition to release the album "Home Again", followed by a world tour ending in 1997.


title: Ronnie DeVoe

text: In 2018, DeVoe began to appear as a guest-member of Bravo's series "The Real Housewives of Atlanta". His wife Shamari became a regular cast member when Season 11 premiered on November 4, 2018.


title: Ronnie DeVoe

text: DeVoe still performs and records with New Edition and Bell Biv DeVoe, and he is co-owner of DeVoe Broker Associates, a real estate agency in Atlanta, Georgia.


title: Ronnie DeVoe

text: He has been married to Shamari DeVoe of the R&B group Blaque since March 10, 2006. In 2017, they welcomed twin sons, Ronald III and Roman Elijah.


title: The Family (miniseries)

text: The Family is an American documentary streaming television miniseries that premiered on Netflix on August 9, 2019. The series examines a conservative Christian group—known as the Family or the Fellowship—its history, and investigates its influence on American politics.


title: The Family (miniseries)

text: The series was executive produced by Jeff Sharlet, who previously wrote books about the same organization, including "C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy" and "".


title: The Family (miniseries)

text: Critics have generally praised the series. For "Decider", Joel Keller described it as having "a lot of potential to fascinate". Joel Mayward of "Cinemayard" described the series as "chilling" but also wrote that it felt "muddled and redundant". "Vulture"s Jen Chaney noted that the series focused predominantly on the Fellowship's influence on conservatives, and excluded Democratic involvement.


title: Electron affinity

text: The electron affinity ("E") of an atom or molecule is defined as the amount of energy released when an electron attaches to a neutral atom or molecule in the gaseous state to form an anion.


title: Electron affinity

text: Note that this is not the same as the enthalpy change of electron capture ionization, which is defined as negative when energy is released. In other words, the enthalpy change and the electron affinity differ by a negative sign.


title: Electron affinity

text: In solid state physics, the electron affinity for a surface is defined somewhat differently (see below).


title: Electron affinity

text: This property is used to measure atoms and molecules in the gaseous state only, since in a solid or liquid state their energy levels would be changed by contact with other atoms or molecules.


title: Electron affinity

text: A list of the electron affinities was used by Robert S. Mulliken to develop an electronegativity scale for atoms, equal to the average of the electrons


title: Electron affinity

text: affinity and ionization potential. Other theoretical concepts that use electron affinity include electronic chemical potential and chemical hardness. Another example, a molecule or atom that has a more positive value of electron affinity than another is often called an electron acceptor and the less positive an electron donor. Together they may undergo charge-transfer reactions.


title: Electron affinity

text: To use electron affinities properly, it is essential to keep track of sign. For any reaction that "releases" energy, the "change" Δ"E" in total energy has a negative value and the reaction is called an exothermic process. Electron capture for almost all non-noble gas atoms involves the release of energy and thus are exothermic. The positive values that are listed in tables of "E" are amounts or magnitudes. It is the word "released" within the definition "energy released" that supplies the negative sign to Δ"E". Confusion arises in mistaking "E" for a change in energy, Δ"E", in which case the positive values listed in tables would be for an endo- not exo-thermic process. The relation between the two is "E" = −Δ"E"(attach).


title: Electron affinity

text: However, if the value assigned to "E" is negative, the negative sign implies a reversal of direction, and energy is "required" to attach an electron. In this case, the electron capture is an endothermic process and the relationship, "E" = −Δ"E"(attach) is still valid. Negative values typically arise for the capture of a second electron, but also for the nitrogen atom.


title: Electron affinity

text: This expression does follow the convention Δ"X" = "X"(final) − "X"(initial) since −Δ"E" = −("E"(final) − "E"(initial)) = "E"(initial) − "E"(final).


title: Electron affinity

text: Equivalently, electron affinity can also be defined as the amount of energy "required" to detach an electron from the atom while it holds a single-excess-electron thus making the atom a negative ion, i.e. the energy change for the process


title: Electron affinity

text: If the same table is employed for the forward and reverse reactions, "without switching signs", care must be taken to apply the correct definition to the corresponding direction, attachment (release) or detachment (require). Since almost all detachments "(require +)" an amount of energy listed on the table, those detachment reactions are endothermic, or Δ"E"(detach) > 0.


title: Electron affinity

text: Although "E" varies greatly across the periodic table, some patterns emerge. Generally, nonmetals have more positive "E" than metals. Atoms whose anions are more stable than neutral atoms have a greater "E". Chlorine most strongly attracts extra electrons; neon most weakly attracts an extra electron. The electron affinities of the noble gases have not been conclusively measured, so they may or may not have slightly negative values.


title: Electron affinity

text: "E" generally increases across a period (row) in the periodic table prior to reaching group 18. This is caused by the filling of the valence shell of the atom; a group 17 atom releases more energy than a group 1 atom on gaining an electron because it obtains a filled valence shell and therefore is more stable. In group 18, the valence shell is full, meaning that added electrons are unstable, tending to be ejected very quickly.


title: Electron affinity

text: Counterintuitively, "E" does "not" decrease when progressing down most columns of the periodic table. For example, "E" actually increases consistently on descending the column for the group 2 data. Thus, electron affinity follows the same "left-right" trend as electronegativity, but not the "up-down" trend.


title: Electron affinity

text: For instance the electron affinity for benzene is negative, as is that of naphthalene, while those of anthracene, phenanthrene and pyrene are positive. "In silico" experiments show that the electron affinity of hexacyanobenzene surpasses that of fullerene.


title: Electron affinity

text: In the field of solid state physics, the electron affinity is defined differently than in chemistry and atomic physics. For a semiconductor-vacuum interface (that is, the surface of a semiconductor), electron affinity, typically denoted by "E" or "χ", is defined as the energy obtained by moving an electron from the vacuum just outside the semiconductor to the bottom of the conduction band just inside the semiconductor:


title: Electron affinity

text: In an intrinsic semiconductor at absolute zero, this concept is functionally analogous to the chemistry definition of electron affinity, since an added electron will spontaneously go to the bottom of the conduction band. At nonzero temperature, and for other materials (metals, semimetals, heavily doped semiconductors), the analogy does not hold since an added electron will instead go to the Fermi level on average. In any case, the value of the electron affinity of a solid substance is very different from the chemistry and atomic physics electron affinity value for an atom of the same substance in gas phase. For example, a silicon crystal surface has electron affinity 4.05 eV, whereas an isolated silicon atom has electron affinity 1.39 eV.


title: Electron affinity

text: The electron affinity of a surface is closely related to, but distinct from, its work function. The work function is the thermodynamic work that can be obtained by reversibly and isothermally removing an electron from the material to vacuum; this thermodynamic electron goes to the "Fermi level" on average, not the conduction band edge: formula_2. While the work function of a semiconductor can be changed by doping, the electron affinity ideally does not change with doping and so it is closer to being a material constant. However, like work function the electron affinity does depend on the surface termination (crystal face, surface chemistry, etc.) and is strictly a surface property.


title: Electron affinity

text: In semiconductor physics, the primary use of the electron affinity is not actually in the analysis of semiconductor–vacuum surfaces, but rather in heuristic electron affinity rules for estimating the band bending that occurs at the interface of two materials, in particular metal–semiconductor junctions and semiconductor heterojunctions.


title: Electron affinity

text: In certain circumstances, the electron affinity may become negative. Often negative electron affinity is desired to obtain efficient cathodes that can supply electrons to the vacuum with little energy loss. The observed electron yield as a function of various parameters such as bias voltage or illumination conditions can be used to describe these structures with band diagrams in which the electron affinity is one parameter. For one illustration of the apparent effect of surface termination on electron emission, see Figure 3 in Marchywka Effect.


title: Kasauli

text: Kasauli is a town and cantonment, located in Solan district in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The cantonment was established by the British Raj in 1842 as a Colonial hill station, from Solan, from Shimla, from Chandigarh, and from Ambala Cantt (Haryana), an important railway junction of North India.


title: Kasauli

text: Kasauli is a Cantonment Board city in district of Solan, Himachal Pradesh. The Kasauli city is divided into 6 wards for which elections are held every 5 years. The Kasauli Cantonment Board has population of 3,885 of which 2,183 are males while 1,702 are females as per report released by Census India 2011.


title: Kasauli

text: Population of Children with age of 0-6 is 406 which is 10.45% of total population of Kasauli (CB). In Kasauli Cantonment Board, Female Sex Ratio is of 780 against state average of 972. Moreover, Child Sex Ratio in Kasauli is around 888 compared to Himachal Pradesh state average of 909. Literacy rate of Kasauli city is 91.23% higher than state average of 82.80%. In Kasauli, Male literacy is around 94.05% while female literacy rate is 87.56%.


title: Kasauli

text: Kasauli has a moderate climate. Winter temperature is approximately 2 degrees Celsius, the summer temperatures rarely exceeds 32 degrees Celsius or more. The general wind direction is south-west to north-east. Total rainfall for the year is 1020 millimetres, with humidity at 90% in September and 28% in April. Sometimes snowfall is also there during early January and in winters are chilly, there are a couple of frosty nights. Minimum temperature recorded in Kasuli was -6° Celsius.


title: Kasauli

text: The Central Research Institute (CRI), originally the Pasteur Institute of India, was established at Kasauli in 1904 under its first director Sir David Semple, as an institute working in the fields of immunology and virological research.


title: Kasauli

text: The CRI works as a World Health Organization ‘Collaborating Centre’, and as an immuno-biological laboratory producing vaccines for measles and polio, and the DTP group of vaccines. It also provides a Master of Science programme in Microbiology.


title: Kasauli

text: Kasauli Baptist Church is a 1923 brick and wood building, situated close to the Sadar Bazzar. According to "The Indian Express" it is "considered a unique example of colonial architecture of the British era". In 2008 the church was damaged by a fire which destroyed all the internal furnishings.


title: Kasauli

text: Christ Church Kasauli came into existence in 1844 when Dr. Daniel Wilson (the great Metropolitan Bishop of Calcutta) appointed the Rev MJ Jennings as chaplain to the new station Kasauli for the first time, who started worship services in a barrack as there was no church building.


title: Kasauli

text: At the end of October 1844 Dr. Wilson, the Bishop of Calcutta, paid his first visitation of Kasauli and on 26 October laid the foundation stone of the future Christ Church. On 24 July 1853 the shed of the church was completed and on that day the church was used for the worship services for first time.


title: Kasauli

text: In the 1880s the church tower was raised and the public clock was placed on it during the leadership of the Rev J.B. Brunesson by importing the same from W.H. Bailey & Co of Manchester, England. The total cost of this was Rs. 2612 and 11 annas towards which Rs. 1250 was given by the Government and the balance raised by public subscription. After remaining in hibernation for many decades, in 2015 the tower clock, started ticking again with the wonderful efforts of a Good Samaritan from Chandigarh and the local EME workshop. The clock still works on mechanical gears and is now in the "Limca Book of Records" for being the oldest working tower turret clock in India. Link for the restoration story


title: Kasauli

text: Since 1970 it has been under the auspices of the Church of North India (CNI) in the diocese of Amritsar. The church contains Spanish and Italian imported stained glass windows depicting Christ, Mary, Saint Barnabas and Saint Francis.


title: Kasauli

text: The Gurudwara (Sikh house of worship and hospitality) Shri Guru Nanak Ji is located in the Garkhal bazaar near Kasauli.


title: Kasauli

text: The Kasauli Club was established by civilians and service personnel in 1880, as the Kasauli Reading and Assembly Rooms. It gained its present name in 1898 when a limited liability company and constitution were established; its first director was Sir David Semple of Kasauli's Pasteur Institute. At the time the club was for the exclusive use of the British Raj, and held social meetings, tea and dinner dances, and galas. In 1915 regimental officers at Dagshai, Solan and Subathu could be admitted as honorary members. At Independence in 1947, plans to sell the then loss-making Club failed.


title: Kasauli

text: The club was originally constructed of wood and plaster, and was typical of hill architecture. In 2001, after a 2000 restoration, it was destroyed by fire, losing "elegant, old-world furniture, [and] precious and rare books". By 2005 it had been redesigned and rebuilt in stone, and plans were put forward for a new attached gymnasium.


title: Kasauli

text: In April 2012 the Kasauli Club hosted a two-day Rhythm and Blues Festival as a benefit concert for ill children.


title: Kasauli

text: The Nahri Temple, devoted to the Goddess Durga and Lord Shiva, is thought to have been constructed around a hundred and fifty years ago. Also known as 'Jantar Mantar' and 'Choo Mantar Mahadev Temple', the temple is renowned for its festive celebration of Dushera and Shivratri. The temple boasts striking idols of the goddess Durga and Lord Shiva placed in the chamber of temple. Near this temple, there is century-old "bauri" which still offers sweet potable water. This temple is known to be visited by hundreds of pilgrims each year to present their prayers.


title: Kasauli

text: Monkey Point is situated in the Air Force Station near the Lower Mall region about from the center of town. According to the Ramayana, when Lord Hanuman was returning from the Himalayas after acquiring the "Sanjivani Booty", one of his feet touched the hill; that's why the top of the hill is in the shape of a foot. On clear nights a view of Chandigarh can be seen from Monkey Point.


title: Kasauli

text: Beja State was one of the 18 Simla Hill States, situated just below Kasauli to the west and bordered by Mahlog, Patiala, Kuthar and the Bharauli tract of Simla District around Sabathu. Beja included 45 villages, over an area of 13 km2 or 5 mi2 with 1,131 subjects.


title: Kasauli

text: The state of Mahlog was founded in 1183. Its original rulers were ruling earlier near Kalka when Mohamad Gauri attacked that area then they shifted to the Mahlog area. Initially 193 villages were in its jurisdiction but later over 300 villages were included. It was one of the biggest Princely State of Simla Hill States under the British Raj.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The Day of the Jackal (1971) is a political thriller novel by English author Frederick Forsyth about a professional assassin who is contracted by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organisation, to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The novel received admiring reviews and praise when first published in 1971, and it received a 1972 Best Novel Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The novel remains popular, and in 2003 it was listed on the BBC's survey The Big Read.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The novel is historical fiction: The OAS, as described did exist and the book opens with an accurate depiction of the attempt to assassinate de Gaulle by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry on 22 August 1962. The subsequent plot, however, is fiction.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The book begins in 1962 with the (historical) failed attempt on de Gaulle's life plotted by, among others, Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart. Following the apprehension of Bastien-Thiry and various other conspirators, the French security forces wage a short but extremely vicious underground war with the terrorists of the OAS, a militant right-wing group who believe de Gaulle to be a traitor to France after his grant of independence to Algeria.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The French secret service, particularly its covert operations directorate (the Action Service), is remarkably effective in infiltrating the terrorist organisation with their own informants, allowing them to seize and interrogate the OAS operations commander, Antoine Argoud. The failure of the Petit-Clamart assassination, and a subsequent betrayal of the next attempt on de Gaulle's life at the École Militaire, compounded by Bastien-Thiry's eventual execution by firing squad, likewise demoralise the antagonists.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Argoud's deputy, Lt-Col Marc Rodin, carefully examines what few options they have remaining and establishes that the only way to succeed in killing de Gaulle is to hire a professional mercenary from outside the organisation, who is completely unknown to both the French government and the OAS itself. After extensive inquiries, he contacts an English hitman (whose true identity is always unknown), who meets with Rodin and his two principal deputies in Vienna, and agrees to assassinate de Gaulle, although he demands a total of US$500,000 (roughly US$ million as of dollars). The killer further requires that half of the amount be paid in advance and the rest on completion. They also agree on a code name, "The Jackal". The triumvirate of OAS commanders then take up residency on the top floor of a hotel in Rome guarded by a group of ex-legionnaires to avoid the risk of being captured, like Argoud, and subsequently revealing the assassination plot under interrogation.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The remainder of this part describes the Jackal's exhaustive preparations for the forthcoming project. He first acquires a legitimate British passport under a fake name, "Alexander Duggan", which he intends to use for the majority of his operation. He then steals the passports of two foreign tourists visiting London who superficially resemble him for use as contingency identities. Masquerading as Duggan, the Jackal travels to Brussels, where he commissions a master gunsmith to build him a special suppressed sniper rifle of extreme slimness with a small supply of mercury-tipped explosive bullets. He also acquires a set of forged French identity papers from a professional forger. The latter makes the mistake of attempting to blackmail him, for which the Jackal kills him and locks his body in a large trunk where he determines it will not be found for a considerable time. After exhaustively researching a series of books and articles by, and about, de Gaulle, the Jackal travels to Paris to reconnoitre the most favourable spot and the best possible day for the assassination.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Following a series of armed robberies in France, the OAS is able to deposit the first half of the Jackal's fee in his Swiss bank account. Meanwhile, the French authorities, suspicious about Rodin and his subordinates being holed up in the hotel, composes and despatches a fake letter that lures Viktor Kowalski, one of Rodin's bodyguards (and a hulking giant) to France, where he is caught and tortured to reveal what he knows. Interpreting his incoherent ramblings, the secret service is able to decipher Rodin's plot, but knows nothing of the assassin himself bar his codename. When informed of the plan, de Gaulle (who was notoriously careless of his personal security) refuses to cancel any public appearances, modify his normal routines, or even allow any kind of public inquiry into the assassin's whereabouts to be made: any investigation, he orders, must be done in absolute secrecy.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Roger Frey, the French Minister of the Interior, organises a conference of the heads of the French security authorities. Because Rodin and his men are in a foreign hotel under heavy guard, kidnapping them for interrogation will be impossible (unless it is achieved through a commando-style operation), nor can they be executed. The rest of the meeting is at a loss to suggest how to proceed, until a Commissioner of the Police Judiciaire reasons that their first and most essential priority is to establish the Jackal's "true" identity, which is something that he insists is "pure detective work". When asked to name the best detective in France, he volunteers his own deputy commissioner: Claude Lebel.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Granted special emergency powers to conduct his investigation, Lebel does everything possible to uncover the Jackal's identity. He first calls upon his old boy network of foreign intelligence and police contacts to inquire if they have any records of a top-class political assassin. Most of the inquiries are fruitless, but in the United Kingdom, the inquiry is eventually passed on to the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, and another veteran detective, Superintendent Bryn Thomas.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: A search through Special Branch's records turns up nothing. However, one of Thomas's subordinates suggests that if the assassin were an Englishman, but primarily operated abroad, he would most probably come to the attention of the Secret Intelligence Service. Thomas makes an informal inquiry with a friend of his on the SIS's staff, who mentions hearing a rumour from an officer stationed in the Dominican Republic at the time of President Trujillo's assassination. The rumour states that a hired assassin stopped Trujillo's car with a rifle shot, allowing a gang of partisans to finish him off. Additionally, Thomas also learns that the assassin was an Englishman, whom he identifies as a man named Charles Calthrop.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: To his surprise, Thomas is summoned in person by the Prime Minister (unnamed, but most probably intended to represent Harold Macmillan), who informs him that word of his inquiries has reached higher circles in the British government. Despite the enmity felt by much of the government against France in general and de Gaulle in particular, the Prime Minister informs Thomas that de Gaulle is his friend, and that the assassin "must" be identified and stopped, with a limitless amount of resources, manpower or expenses at Thomas' disposal. Thomas is handed a commission similar to Lebel's, with temporary powers allowing him to override almost any other authority in the land. Checking out the name of Charles Calthrop, Thomas finds a match to a man living in London, said to be on holiday. While Thomas confirms that this Calthrop "was" indeed in the Dominican Republic at the time of Trujillo's death, he does not believe it justifies informing Lebel, until one of his junior detectives realises that the first three letters of his first name and surname form the French word for Jackal (Chacal).


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Unknown to any member of the council in France, there is an OAS mole among them: the mistress of an arrogant Air Force colonel attached to de Gaulle's staff. Through pillow talk, the officer unwittingly feeds the Jackal a constant stream of information as to Lebel's progress. The Englishman enters France through Italy, driving a rented Alfa Romeo sports car with his weapon soldered/wired to the chassis. Although he receives word from the OAS agent that the French are on the lookout for him, he assesses that he will succeed whatever happens and decides to take the risk. In London, the Special Branch raids Calthrop's flat, finding his passport, and deduce that he must be travelling on fake papers. When they discover that the Jackal is travelling in the name of Duggan, Lebel and a police force comes close to apprehending him in the south of France, but owing to his OAS contact, he leaves his hotel early and evades them by only an hour. With the police on the lookout for him, the Jackal seeks refuge in the château of a woman whom he encountered and seduced at the hotel: when she goes through his things and finds the weapon, he kills her and flees after disguising himself as the first of his two emergency identities. Before leaving this region of France, he disposes of Duggan's belongings in a ravine. The murder is not reported until much later that day, allowing him to board the train for Paris.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Lebel becomes suspicious of what the rest of the council label the Jackal's apparent "good luck", and has the telephones of all the members tapped, which leads him to discover the OAS agent. The disgraced Air Force colonel withdraws from the meeting and subsequently tenders his resignation. When Thomas checks out and identifies reports of stolen or missing passports in London in the preceding months, he closes in on the Jackal's remaining secondary identities.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: During a council meeting on 22 August 1963, Lebel deduces that the killer has decided to target de Gaulle three days later on 25 August, which commemorates the liberation of Paris during World War II. It is, he realises, the one day of the year when de Gaulle can definitely be counted on to be in Paris and to appear in public. Believing the inquiry to be over, the Minister orchestrates a massive, citywide manhunt for the Jackal now that he can be publicly reported as a murderer, dismissing Lebel with hearty congratulations – but the killer eludes them yet again: slipping into a gay bar while disguised as his second contingency identity, he gets himself picked up by a local man and taken to his flat, where he kills him and waits out the remaining days.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: On the 24th, the Minister summons Lebel yet again and tells him that the Jackal still cannot be found. Lebel listens to the details of the President's schedule and security arrangements, but can suggest nothing more helpful than that everyone "should keep their eyes open", much to Roger Frey's dismay. On the 25th itself, the Jackal, masquerading as a one-legged French war veteran, passes through the security checkpoints carrying his custom gun concealed in the sections of a crutch. He makes his way to an apartment building overlooking the Place du 18 Juin 1940 (in front of the soon-to-be-demolished façade of the Gare Montparnasse), where de Gaulle is presenting medals to a small group of Resistance veterans. As the ceremony begins, Lebel is walking around the street, questioning and re-questioning every police checkpoint. When he hears from one CRS guard about a one-legged veteran with a crutch, he realises what the Jackal's plan is, and rushes into the apartment building, calling for the patrol to follow him.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Having sneaked into a suitable apartment to shoot from, the Jackal prepares his weapon and takes aim at de Gaulle's head, but his first shot misses by a fraction of an inch when the President unexpectedly leans forward to kiss the cheeks of the veteran he is honouring. Outside the apartment, Lebel and the CRS man arrive on the top floor in time to hear the sound of the first, silenced shot. The CRS guard shoots off the door lock and bursts in as the Jackal is reloading: the Englishman turns and fires, killing him with a shot to the chest. At this point, the detective and the assassin, having developed grudging respect for each other during the pursuit, stare at each other briefly. The Jackal scrambles to load his third and last bullet while the unarmed Lebel snatches up the dead policeman's submachine-gun: Lebel is faster and shoots the Jackal with half a magazine-load of 9mm bullets, instantly killing him.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: In London, the Special Branch are searching Calthrop's apartment when the real Charles Calthrop storms in and demands to know what they are doing. Once it is established that Calthrop truly has been on holiday in Scotland and is totally separate to the killer, the British are left to wonder "if the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then "who the hell was he"?"


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The Jackal is buried in an unmarked grave in a Paris cemetery, officially recorded as "an unknown foreign tourist, killed in a car accident." Aside from a priest, policeman, registrar and grave-diggers, the only other person attending the burial is Police Inspector Claude Lebel, who then leaves the cemetery to return to his family.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Over the three years immediately prior to his writing "The Day of the Jackal", Frederick Forsyth spent most of his time in West Africa covering the Biafran war, first for the BBC in 1967 and then for another eighteen months as a freelance journalist in 1968–1969. Upon his return to Britain his first book, the non-fiction "The Biafra Story: The Making of an African Legend" about that brutal civil war during which Nigeria fought to prevent the secession of its eastern province, was published as a paperback by Penguin Books in late 1969. To Forsyth's disappointment, however, the book sold very few copies and so with the arrival of the 1970s the then 31 year-old freelance journalist, international adventurer, and onetime youngest (at 19) fighter pilot in the RAF found himself both out of work and "flat broke". To solve his financial problems he thus decided to try his hand at fiction by writing a political thriller as a "one-off" project to "clear his debts". Unlike most novelists, however, Forsyth would employ the same type of research techniques that he had used as an investigative reporter to bring a sense of increased reality to his work of fiction, a story which he first began to consider writing in 1962–1963 while posted to Paris as a young Reuters foreign correspondent.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: When Forsyth arrived in 1962, French President Charles de Gaulle had just granted independence to Algeria to end the eight-year Algerian War, a highly controversial act that had incurred the wrath of the anti-decolonisation paramilitary group "Organisation Armée Secrète" (OAS) which then vowed to assassinate him. Forsyth befriended several of the President's bodyguards and personally reported from the scene of the failed August 1962 assassination attempt along the Avenue de la Libération during which de Gaulle and his wife narrowly escaped death in a fusillade of gunfire in the roadside ambush, the most serious of six overall attempts the OAS would make on his life. Forsyth incorporated an account of that real-life event to open his new novel throughout which he also employed many other aspects and details about France, its politics, the OAS, and international law enforcement that he had learned during his career as an investigative journalist. Forsyth noted that virtually all OAS members and sympathizers were known to, and under surveillance by, French authorities—a key factor in the failure of their assassination attempts. In his 2015 memoir "The Outsider", Forsyth wrote that during his time in France he briefly considered that the OAS might assassinate de Gaulle if they hired a man or team who were completely unknown to French authorities — an idea he would later expand upon in "Jackal".


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Although Forsyth wrote "The Day of the Jackal" in 35 days in January and February 1970, it remained unpublished for almost a year-and-a-half thereafter as he sought a publisher willing to accept his unsolicited approximately 140,000-word manuscript. Four publishing houses rejected it between February and September because their editors believed a fictional account of the OAS hiring a British assassin in 1963 to kill Charles de Gaulle would not be commercially successful, given the fact that he had never been shot and, when the book was written, de Gaulle was in fact still alive and retired from public life.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The editors told Forsyth that they felt that these well-known facts essentially abrogated the suspense of his fictional assassination plot against de Gaulle as readers would already know it would not and could not possibly have been successful. (De Gaulle subsequently died of natural causes at his country home in Colombey-les-Deux-Églises in November 1970 after peacefully retiring). After these rejections Forsyth took a different strategy and wrote a short summary of the novel to present to publishers, noting that the focus was "not" on the plausibility of the assassination itself, but rather on the technical details and manhunt. He persuaded London-based Hutchinson & Co. to take a chance on publishing his novel, however, they only agreed to a relatively small initial printing of just 8,000 copies for its 358-page red and gold clothbound first edition. Forsyth was signed to a three-book contract: a £500 advance for "Jackal", followed by another £6,000 advance for the second and third novels. Although the book was not formally reviewed by the press prior to its initial June 1971 UK publication, widespread word of mouth discussion resulted in brisk advance and post-publication sales leading to repeated additional printings (including some prior to its official publication date) being ordered from Hutchinson's longtime printer, Anchor Press Ltd (Tiptree, Essex), to meet booksellers' unexpectedly strong demand.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The book's unexpected success in Britain soon attracted the attention of Viking Press in New York which quickly acquired the US publication rights for $365,000 (£100,000)—a then very substantial sum for such a work and especially for that of a first-time author. These fees (the equivalent of $ million in ) were split equally between Hutchinson and Forsyth, which led the heretofore self-described "flat broke" author to observe later that he had "never seen money like it and never thought I would." Just two months after its publication in the UK the 380-page clothbound Viking first edition was released in the US at $7.95 and with a distinctive jacket designed by noted American artist Paul Bacon.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The US first edition's launch was considerably aided by two glowing reviews in the "New York Times" by senior daily book reviewer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt three days before its release, and by the American mystery writer Stanley Bernard Ellin the week after. In mid-October it reached No. 1 on the "Times" "Best Seller List" for fiction and by mid-December 136,000 copies of Viking's US edition were already in print. Over two-and-a-half million copies were sold worldwide by 1975. As in the UK, over forty years later "The Day of the Jackal" still remains in print in the US published now by Penguin Books (which acquired Viking in 1975) as a New American Library imprint. Hundreds of other print, electronic, and audio editions have been produced around the world since 1971 with many more millions of copies now in print in both English and the thirty other languages to which it has been translated including Spanish, German, French, Russian, Czech, Polish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Hebrew, Latvian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: "The Day of the Jackal" was published in serial format in 1971 in both the "London Evening Standard" and Israel's oldest daily newspaper, "Ha'aretz". Earning Forsyth the 1972 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, in 1973 it was also made into a 143-minute feature film directed by Fred Zinnemann. In 2011 a number of special "40th Anniversary" editions of "The Day of the Jackal" were released in the UK, US, and elsewhere to commemorate the four decades of continuous success of the book, the first of 18 more Forsyth novels and collections of his short stories published since the 1971 release of his seminal debut thriller.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Sky and Peacock have been ordered a television adaptation of the novel with Ronan Bennett as showrunner and Brian Kirk as director.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: The method for acquiring a false identity and UK passport detailed in the book is often referred to as the "Day of the Jackal fraud" and remained a well known security loophole in the UK until 2007. The New Zealand Member of Parliament David Garrett claimed the novel's description of identity theft inspired him to create his own fake passport as a "youthful prank". The incident further inflamed a national controversy over the law and order campaigner's criminal history.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: In 1975, the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos was dubbed "The Jackal" by "The Guardian" after one of its correspondents reportedly spotted the novel near some of the fugitive's belongings.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: A copy of the Hebrew translation of "The Day of the Jackal" was found in possession of Yigal Amir, the Israeli who in 1995 assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel.


title: The Day of the Jackal

text: Would-be assassin Vladimir Arutinian, who attempted to kill US President George W. Bush during his 2005 visit to the Republic of Georgia, was an obsessive reader of the novel and kept an annotated version of it during his planning for the assassination.


title: South Park (season 23)

text: The twenty-third season of the American animated sitcom series "South Park" premiered on Comedy Central on September 25, 2019, and concluded on December 11, 2019 after 10 episodes aired. This season contained the 300th episode of the long-running TV show; the milestone was reached on October 9, 2019, when the third episode of the season premiered. Like previous seasons, this season also had dark weeks (weeks during which no new episode would air), after episodes four and seven. Trey Parker and Matt Stone continued to write, direct, and edit every episode the week prior to air, as the duo has done since the series debuted in 1997.


title: South Park (season 23)

text: Similar to previous seasons, the season features continuing elements and a recurring storyline for the first six episodes while lampooning ICE detention centers, the 2019 film "Joker", media censorship in China, the antivaccine movement, plant based food, the Trump Administration, transgender people in sports, and the competition between traditional cable television and media streaming.


title: South Park (season 23)

text: On July 8, 2015, two months prior to the season 19 premiere, Comedy Central announced they had renewed "South Park" for an additional 30 episodes over three seasons. This renewal was in addition to the two-year contract already in place with Parker and Stone, guaranteeing "South Park" would air until at least 2019. On September 12, 2019, the show was renewed for seasons 24 through 26 until 2022.


title: South Park (season 23)

text: This season had multiple changes to the traditional theme song from the show. For the first six episodes of the season, an overall story arc focusing on Randy Marsh's marijuana farm named Tegridy Farms was featured. During these episodes, the theme song's lyrics and graphics were changed to focus on Tegridy Farms and also featured vocals by Randy Marsh and Towelie. In the episode "Board Girls", the regular theme was completely abandoned and replaced with a theme about the PC Babies, the politically correct children of PC Principal and Vice Principal Strong Woman. In the "Turd Burglars" episode, the theme returned to the show, but starring the women of South Park, in a fictional show titled "One for the Ladies". In the "Basic Cable" episode, the theme was abandoned again and replaced with a faux intro titled "The Scott Malkinson Show". The traditional theme song was put back in on the final episode "Christmas Snow".


title: South Park (season 23)

text: On October 7, 2019, "South Park" was reportedly banned from the Chinese Internet with videos, mentions, and discussion forums for the animated series being removed and shut down in response to episode 2 of the season, "Band in China". Later in the day "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone mockingly apologized.


title: Diamonds and Pearls

text: Diamonds and Pearls is the thirteenth studio album by American recording artist Prince, and the first with his new backing band The New Power Generation. It was released on October 1, 1991, by Paisley Park Records and Warner Bros. Records. The album produced several hit singles, including "Gett Off", "Cream", "Money Don't Matter 2 Night", "Insatiable", and the title track. Dancers Lori Werner (then dancing under the stage name of Lori Elle) and Robia LaMorte, known as "Diamond" and "Pearl" respectively, appeared on the holographic cover (re-pressings of the album are non-holographic). Diamond and Pearl also appeared in the music videos for "Cream", "Strollin'", "Gett Off", and the title track, and also participated in Prince's Diamonds and Pearls Tour.


title: Diamonds and Pearls

text: "Diamonds and Pearls" contains a hybrid of music styles, from the funk of "Daddy Pop", "Jughead", and first single "Gett Off", to some of the more mainstream pop/rock songs Prince had recorded in some time, such as "Cream", "Money Don't Matter 2 Night" and the title song. "Willing and Able" was used in a video montage during the closing credits of CBS' coverage of Super Bowl XXVI.


title: Diamonds and Pearls

text: One of the earliest songs that ended up on "Diamonds and Pearls" was "Live 4 Love", a track from 1989. The bulk of the material would be composed in 1990, however. A few songs evolved during Prince's Nude Tour in 1990, notably "The Flow" and "Schoolyard". Prince decided to place an emphasis on rap with this album, handing the reins over to Nude Tour dancer, Tony M. An early version of the album from November 1990 consisted of the following:


title: Diamonds and Pearls

text: Most of these songs went through minor to major revisions before being released, and five of them did not make the cut at all. The five songs that were omitted from the album are "The Flow", "Violet the Organ Grinder", "Horny Pony", "Something Funky (This House Comes)", and "Schoolyard". "The Flow" would be revised for the "Love Symbol Album". A later version of the album had "Horny Pony" in the place of "Gett Off", a newly written track that replaced it at the last minute. In fact, "Horny Pony" still exists on the track listing, written in red over "Gett Off", and is mentioned in the lyrics to "Push".


title: Super Sherman

text: The Sherman M-50 and the Sherman M-51, both often referred to abroad as the Super Sherman, were modified versions of the American M4 Sherman tank that served with the Israel Defense Forces from the mid-1950s to early 1980s. The M-51 was also referred to as the Isherman (i.e. Israeli Sherman). However, the nicknames "Super Sherman" and "Isherman" were never officially used by the Israeli Defense Forces.


title: Super Sherman

text: In 1953, an Israeli military delegation visited France to examine the then-new AMX-13/75 light tank, which was armed with the high-velocity CN 75-50 75 mm tank gun. While the tank's main gun was considered satisfactory, its armor was deemed to be too light. Eventually, Israel did purchase the AMX-13, but, in a similar parallel development, it was decided that the 75mm main guns of the AMX-13s Israel bought would be grafted to the more-familiar and the better-armored hull of the American M4 Sherman medium tank, which was the standard tank of the IDF's armored units (a large quantity of post-WWII Sherman tanks ended up under Israeli military service from 1948 onwards) during the period of the early 1950s.


title: Super Sherman

text: This project started in 1954 and in 1955, a prototype turret was sent from France to Israel. In March 1956, Israeli Ordnance Corps military facilities began to convert (up-gun) their Sherman tanks with 75mm tank guns of AMX-13s bought and received from France. The 75mm tank gun was known in Israel as the "M-50" and, as a result, the up-gunned Sherman was designated as the Sherman M-50. The M-50 was similar to the WWII-era British Sherman Firefly tank in that it possessed the original smaller type of Sherman tank turret (as used by US Shermans which carry the original 75mm M3 tank gun) which was fitted with a large counterweight at the turret's rear end to balance the weight of a longer and heavier tank gun.


title: Super Sherman

text: The first 50 units were based on M4A4 hulls, had a Continental R-975 gasoline engine and VVSS suspension. However, the increased weight of the vehicle combined with narrow tracks led to poor off-road mobility. It was also putting too much strain on the engine, resulting in frequent mechanical failures. Consequently, for the rest of the conversions, hulls fitted with HVSS suspension and Cummins V-8 diesel engine were adopted. These subvariants were sometimes referred to as the M-50 Continental and M-50 Cummins, or M-50 "Degem Alef and M-50 "Degem Bet respectively. Diesel engines were also preferred since diesel fuel is less flammable than gasoline, which factors into battlefield survivability. In total, about 300 M-50s were built by 1964 (though it's possible that this number includes 120 155 mm self-propelled guns on Sherman chassis, also designated M-50).


title: Super Sherman

text: In the 1960s, 180 Sherman tanks received a shortened version of the even more powerful French 105 mm Modèle F1 gun. The barrel length of the gun was reduced from 56 caliber to 51 and it was equipped with a unique double-baffle muzzle brake; ammunition was altered to use a smaller cartridge. In Israel the gun was designated "M-51" and the tank the Sherman M-51. M4A1 hulls and the larger T23 turrets (from 76 mm armed Shermans) were used for the conversion. All tanks were fitted with Cummins diesel engines and HVSS suspension. The tank was displayed to the public for the first time during the Independence Day ceremony in 1965.


title: Super Sherman

text: Abroad the M-50 was known as "Super Sherman" (the "Continental" variant as Mark I and the "Cummins" variant as Mark II) and the M-51 as either "Super Sherman", "Isherman" (i.e. "Israeli Sherman") or "M4A1 Revalorise". These designations were never used in Israel. The only tank model designated Super Sherman by the IDF was the M4A1 with 76 mm M1 gun and HVSS suspension, which was named "Super Sherman M-1".


title: Super Sherman

text: The first 25 M-50s were finished just in time for Operation Kadesh – the Israeli 29 October 1956 invasion of the Sinai – against the Egyptian Army (which also employed its own up-gunned version of the M4 Sherman, fitted with the French AMX-13 turret, making it equal to the M-50 in firepower).


title: Super Sherman

text: In 1964, Israel neared completion of its National Water Carrier to divert water from the Sea of Galilee as allocated in the multinational 1955 Unified (Johnston) Plan. The Arab nations were in uproar, and Syria began a project to divert water into Jordan (the Headwater Diversion Plan). Maj General Israel Tal had trained Israeli tank gunners to shoot beyond and, on March 6, 1965, an M-50, commanded by Tal, engaged a Syrian recoilless rifle that had killed an Israeli tractor driver; Tal personally destroyed the recoilless rifle at long range. A few days later, General Tal, with an M-50 and a Centurion Mk III tank, was waiting for a chance to fire upon the Syrian water diverting project. When Syrian gunners fired on a border patrol, Tal's M-50 and the Centurion fired on eight tractors away, and destroyed them all in two minutes with 10 shots – Tal destroyed 5 tractors with his M-50's 75 mm gun, and the Centurion destroyed the remainder.


title: Super Sherman

text: Both the M-50 and M-51 saw combat in the Six-Day War that left the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Sinai peninsula in Israeli hands, often fighting against Soviet World War II-era armor like the T-34-85 (for example at the Battle of Abu-Ageila). Both were also employed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War alongside and against much more modern tanks. The use of such seemingly obsolete tanks was necessary given the desperate nature of the fighting.


title: Super Sherman

text: In combat against the Arab armies, the M-51 proved itself capable of fighting newer, heavier tanks like the Soviet-built T-54/55/T-62. The M-51's 105 mm gun could penetrate these adversaries using HEAT ammunition. The M-51 served well during its time, and is regarded as an excellent example of how an obsolete tank (the Sherman) can be upgraded beyond the limits of its original capabilities.


title: Super Sherman

text: The M-50 Continentals were retired by 1972. The M-50 Cummins and M-51 were gradually phased out in late 1970s to early 1980s. During the Lebanese Civil War, some 75 M-50s were given as aid to the Israeli-supported Lebanese Christian militias – Kataeb Regulatory Forces (19), Tigers Militia (20), Guardians of the Cedars (1), the Lebanese Forces (40), and the South Lebanon Army (35) – in 1976; two tanks were later captured by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which employed them in the defense of West Beirut during the June 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.


title: Super Sherman

text: About 100 of the remaining tanks of this model were sold to Chile in the late 1980s. Some of those were fitted with the IMI-OTO 60 mm Hyper Velocity Medium Support (HVMS) gun, and were often referred to as M-60. This variant was never used by the IDF. Chile used its Shermans until 1999, when they were replaced by the Leopard 1. The few M-51s that Israel retained were converted into engineer vehicles and self-propelled artillery.


title: Iskandar

text: Iskandar, Iskander, Askander, Eskinder, or Scandar ( ( "Eskandar" or سکندر "Skandar"), is a variant of the given name Alexander in cultures such as Iran (Persia), Arabia and others throughout the Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia. In Egypt, its bearers are mostly of Christian (Coptic) descent. Originally referring to Alexander the Great, it was transmitted through works such as the "Iskandarnamah" and the "Sirr al-Asrar", and became a popular name for rulers in the medieval period.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: Mark Z. Danielewski (; born March 5, 1966) is an American fiction author. He is most widely known for his debut novel "House of Leaves" (2000), which won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. His second novel, "Only Revolutions" (2006), was nominated for the National Book Award.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: Danielewski began work on a prolapsed 27-volume series, "The Familiar", although he completed only 5 volumes before halting the project in 2017.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: Danielewski's work is characterized by an intricate, multi-layered typographical variation, or page layout, which he refers to as "signiconic". Sometimes known as visual writing, the typographical variation corresponds directly, at any given narratological point in time, to the physical space of the events in the fictional world as well as the physical space of the page and the reader. Early on, critics characterized his writing as being ergodic literature, and Danielewski has described his style as:Signiconic = sign + icon. Rather than engage those textual faculties of the mind remediating the pictorial or those visual faculties remediating language, the signiconic simultaneously engages both in order to lessen the significance of both and therefore achieve a third perception no longer dependent on sign and image for remediating a world in which the mind plays no part."


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: Danielewski was born in New York City to Tad Danielewski, a Polish avant-garde film director, and Priscilla Decatur Machold. Mark was Tad's second child and his first with Priscilla; Mark's sister Anne, also known as Poe, was born two years later. The Danielewski family moved continuously for Tad's various film projects, and by the age of 10, Mark had lived in six countries: Ghana, India, Spain, Switzerland, Britain and the United States. He and his sister went to high school in Provo, Utah. Danielewski has said that these experiences helped him appreciate creativity in all its forms and showed him that "there was much to be learned out there." Not much else is known about his early life.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: In 1985 Danielewski, aged 19, visited his half-brother, who was living on Rue des Belles Feuilles in Paris. Here, he began writing on a manual typewriter and enjoying the actual process of writing for the first time. During this period he wrote a story called "Where Tigers Dance", which he has called "so unfinished it didn't deserve to be called incomplete," but has said that it continued "to roam around" in his imagination.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: In 1988 Danielewski graduated from Yale with a degree in English Literature; he had studied under John Hollander, Stuart Moulthrop, and John Guillory. He was also inspired by Harold Bloom. In 1989 he moved to Berkeley, California, where he enrolled in an intensive Latin course at the University of California, Berkeley. He then pursued graduate studies at the USC School of Cinema-Television in Los Angeles. During this time he became involved with "Derrida", a documentary about the career and philosophy of Algerian-born French literary critic and philosopher Jacques Derrida. Danielewski was an assistant editor, sound technician and cameraman, and can be seen adjusting the sound equipment in Derrida's suit jacket at one point in the film. He graduated with an MFA in 1993, the year his father died. It was also the year he had the idea of a house bigger on the inside than the outside, an image which would become his first novel, "House of Leaves".


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: Danielewski has been a cat lover throughout his life. Cats show up in a myriad of ways throughout his works and are a main topic in his series "The Familiar". In January 2016, Danielewski adopted two Devon Rex kittens, Archimedes and Meifumado, after his previous Devon Rex companions, Sibyl and Carl died.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: Danielewski dates the origin of his debut novel "House of Leaves" to 1990 and a story that he wrote after finding out that his father was dying:


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: 1990. My father was head of the USC School of Theater. I was living in New York. Then I got the phone call. The 'Mark your father is dying' phone call. He was in the hospital. Renal failure, cancer. I got on a Greyhound bus and headed west. Over the course of three sleepless nights and three sleepless days I wrote a 100+ page piece entitled Redwood. I remember using a fountain pen. I barely had the change to buy sodas and snacks along the way and there I am scratching out words with this absurdly expensive thing of polished resin and gold. I'd like to say it was a Pelikan, but I don't think that's correct. Another thing I seem to remember: the paper I was writing on had a pale blue cast to it. There was also something about how the pen seemed to bite into the paper at the same time as it produced these lush sweeps of ink. A kind of cutting and spilling. Almost as if a page could bleed. My intention had been to present this piece of writing as a gift to my father. As has been mentioned many times before, my father responded with the suggestions that I pursue a career at the post office. I responded by reducing the manuscript to confetti, going so far as to throw myself a pity parade in a nearby dumpster. My sister responded by returning later to that dumpster, rescuing the confetti, and taping it all back together.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: Writing "House of Leaves" took ten years, and between 1993 and 1999, Danielewski made a living as a tutor, barista, and plumber. He eventually found a literary agent in Warren Frazier, who, according to Danielewski, "fell in love with it." They went to roughly thirty-two publishers before Edward Kastenmeier from Pantheon decided to take on the project. Small sections of the book were downloadable off the internet before the release of the first edition, and it is said that these sections "circulated through the underbellies of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Francisco, through strip clubs and recording studios, long before publication"though very few were able to experience the book this way initially.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: The first edition hardback, which featured special signed inserts, was released on February 29, 2000, and Pantheon released the hardback and paperback editions simultaneously on March 7, 2000. The novel went on to win the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and gain a considerable cult following. "House of Leaves" has been translated into numerous languages, including Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish, and Turkish. It has been taught in universities.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: A 2013 "New York Times" article featured a conversation between Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill, and made reference to the novel:


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: Joe and Stephen were having another typical conversation: hashing out what novel could be considered the "Moby-Dick" of horror. 'That one with all the footnotes, they argued – no, not that one, the other one: Mark Danielewski's "House of Leaves".'


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: On June 18, 2018, Danielewski released a TV pilot script for the novel in the "House of Leaves" book club on Facebook.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: In 2000, Danielewski toured Borders Books and Music locations across America with his sister Poe to promote his book and her album "Haunted", which has many elements of "House of Leaves". The album features Danielewski reading from "House of Leaves" on several tracks, as well as audio recordings that Tad Danielewski left for Mark and Poe, which they found after his death. In 2001, a remake of Poe's song "Hey Pretty (Drive-By 2001 Mix)," which featured Danielewski reading from "House of Leaves", reached #13 on Billboard's Alternative Chart. That summer, Poe and Danielewski spent three months as the opening act for Depeche Mode's 2001 North American tour. On this tour, he played Madison Square Garden. He also composed the song "A Rose Is a Rose," which Poe sang on the "Lounge-a-Palooza" compilation album.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: After the publication of "House of Leaves", Danielewski worked on two projects in tandem: his second novel "Only Revolutions," and a novella, "The Fifty Year Sword", an "adult ghost story". Danielewski created the book itself with the Dutch artist Peter van Sambeek. The recto pages of the book are empty except for page numbers and van Sambeek's art. The Dutch publishing house De Bezige Bij published 1000 first editions on October 31, 2005, and 1000 second editions on October 31, 2006. Little is actually known about the inspiration for the story, or the exact time period during which it was written.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: In 2010, Danielewski announced that he would do a stage performance of "The Fifty Year Sword", the first of which were on October 31, 2010 at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in Los Angeles. There were two back-to-back sold-out performances that night. The production featured music, five people reading the words of the five speakers in the novella (including Betsy Brandt, who played Marie Schrader on "Breaking Bad"), and shadow casting by Christine Marie. On October 31, 2011, Danielewski produced a slightly modified production back to back at REDCAT again. There was live music by Partch Ensemble percussionists Matthew Cook and T.J. Troy, as well as Christine Marie's shadow casting and five actors reading. The two performances were again sold out.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: In 2012, Pantheon released another edition of "The Fifty Year Sword". This edition of the book includes more than 80 hand-stitched illustrations, new typography, and textual changes that were developed thanks to the REDCAT productions. Pantheon organised a book tour to support it, and thanks to an ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, the production of "The Fifty Year Sword" went to five cities around the United States in conjunction with the book release tour for the Pantheon release of "The Fifty Year Sword". These performances, smaller in production than the REDCAT performances, featured different actors at every city, including "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Darrell Hammond in New York. Pianist Christopher O'Riley, a longtime friend and fan of Danielewski, also toured for these performances. The final performance of the tour, on October 31, 2012, was another back-to-back, sold-out production at REDCAT.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: Danielewski came up with the concept for his second novel, "Only Revolutions", while he was touring for "House of Leaves" and working on "The Fifty Year Sword". He had initially wanted to write something along the lines of a ""House of Leaves, Part 2"", set in China or elsewhere. However, his publishers pushed for him to do something more complex, with more colors, typographical intricacies and constraints. There are seven colors in "Only Revolutions", as opposed to four in "House of Leaves". The novel also requires constant physical manipulation to read, whereas only certain sections of "House of Leaves" require readers to flip the book around.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: As the work progressed it became obvious to Danielewski that the novel was something of a counterpoint to "House of Leaves"; in fact, he has said in interviews that "Only Revolutions" is centrifugal while "House of Leaves" is centripetal. This aspect of the novel was brought to the forefront in the endpapers in the hardback versions of "Only Revolutions", released September 12, 2006, as well as the "A Spoiler" published by the French literary magazine "Inculte" in 2007. A paperback edition of the book was published on July 10, 2007, an audiobook featuring music by Danny Elfman was also released that year, and an interactive ebook version was released through Apple's iBooks on December 15, 2015.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: "Only Revolutions" was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and has been translated into French, Dutch, and German. Like "House of Leaves", "Only Revolutions" has a cult following and has been taught in universities. In 2013, two graduate students at UC Santa Barbara created an "Only Revolutions" database called Vizor.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: Danielewski a fan of the Scottish rock band Biffy Clyro, as they discovered when Danielewski attended one of their shows after they borrowed the title "Only Revolutions" for their album of the same name. They collaborated for a performance on March 2, 2011, which included readings of "Only Revolutions" by Danielewski, musical performances by Biffy Clyro, and a Q&A exploring how the book inspired the album. All proceeds went to Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles-based non-profit that offers training and support to at-risk and formerly gang-involved youth.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: According to Danielewski's comments before his reading/performance of "Parable #8: Z is for Zoo," he began work on "The Familiar" in 2006, he was finishing "Only Revolutions". It was originally supposed to be a 27-volume project. On September 15, 2010, Danielewski announced the work on his message board: "Later this month publishers will receive the first 5 volumes of Mark Z. Danielewski's 27 volume project entitled "The Familiar". The story concerns a 12-year-old girl who finds a kitten. ..." Danielewski expected the series to take him over a decade to complete. The first installment, "", was released on May 12, 2015. "Volume 2: Into the Forest" was released on October 27, 2015, "Volume 3: Honeysuckle and Pain" was published on June 14, 2016, "Volume 4: Hades" was released February 7, 2017, and "Volume 5: Redwood" completed Season One when it was released on October 31, 2017. On February 2, 2018, Danielewski announced via a Facebook post that "The Familiar" had been paused, saying "I must agree with Pantheon that for now the number of readers is not sufficient to justify the cost of continuing."


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: In a September, 2017 interview on KCRW's "Bookworm", Danielewski said the following when discussing "The Familiar" as it relates to the progression of literature:


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: "And that's where I think literature finally has to move; we're very good at giving people a voice but we have not begun, strenuously enough, to give voice to that which will never have a voice: the voice of the waves, the animals, the plants, this world we inhabit""


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: From June 5 – September 9, 2015, Danielewski's "THROWN""," a reflection on Matthew Barney's "CREMASTER 2", was displayed at the Guggenheim Museum during its Storylines exhibition.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: In December 2018, Danielewski released "A Christmas Eve Carol" as a holiday card for his readers, saying, "I wrote this over twenty years ago and it kept me going when the holidays seemed too dark (and, yeah, they still get dark). Thanks to family and an old friend, I finally finished it or at least managed to come up with this threadbare recording. It's pretty much how I sing it to myself and these days to my little girl. So this year, in lieu of a holiday card with an inky, mischievous cat, please accept these few notes. They've given me comfort. May they give you comfort too ... whatever the hour, whatever the night."


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: In 2010, Danielewski formed a group of translators, researchers, graphic designers, professors, students, and other professionals who work directly with him on various aspects of his work. The atelier has had various members, and in 2012 it was named Atelier Z. It functions like an artistic atelier or studio, with apprentice artists assisting to a master artist as they work on their own endeavors. The members have been listed in the credits of Danielewski's books since 2012.


title: Mark Z. Danielewski

text: The atelier seems to have grown directly out of the collaborative work on the Pantheon edition of "The Fifty Year Sword", which coincided with the first ever performances of any of Danielewski's work under his own guise. He has spoken in interviews about a group that was working with him on the stitching/artwork for the first Pantheon edition of "The Fifty Year Sword", and there is evidence of some of these people working on the productions of "The Fifty Year Sword". In 2015, the Danielewski and Atelier Z released the first collection of Yarn + Ink, official "House of Leaves" and "The Familiar" apparel.


title: Bill of attainder

text: A bill of attainder (also known as an act of attainder or writ of attainder or bill of penalties) is an act of a legislature declaring a person, or a group of people, guilty of some crime, and punishing them, often without a trial. As with attainder resulting from the normal judicial process, the effect of such a bill is to nullify the targeted person's civil rights, most notably the right to own property (and thus pass it on to heirs), the right to a title of nobility, and, in at least the original usage, the right to life itself.


title: Bill of attainder

text: In the history of England, the word "attainder" refers to people who were declared "attainted", meaning that their civil rights were nullified: they could no longer own property or pass property to their family by will or testament. Attainted people would normally be punished by judicial execution, with the property left behind escheated to the Crown or lord rather than being inherited by family. The first use of a bill of attainder was in 1321 against Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester and his son Hugh Despenser the Younger, Earl of Gloucester, who were both attainted for supporting King Edward II. Bills of attainder passed in Parliament by Henry VIII on 29 January 1542 resulted in the executions of a number of notable historical figures.


title: Bill of attainder

text: The use of these bills by Parliament eventually fell into disfavour due to the potential for abuse and the violation of several legal principles, most importantly the right to due process, the precept that a law should address a particular form of behaviour rather than a specific individual or group, and the separation of powers, since a bill of attainder is necessarily a judicial matter. The last use of attainder was in 1798 against Lord Edward FitzGerald for leading the Irish Rebellion of 1798. The House of Lords later passed the Pains and Penalties Bill 1820, which attempted to attaint Queen Caroline, but it was not considered by the House of Commons. No bills of attainder have been passed since 1820 in the UK. Attainder remained a legal consequence of convictions in courts of law, but this ceased to be a part of punishment in 1870.


title: Bill of attainder

text: In the Thirteen Colonies, some colonists were inspired to the American Revolution because of anger at the injustice of attainder. American dissatisfaction with British attainder laws resulted in their being prohibited in the United States Constitution in 1789. Bills of attainder are forbidden to both the federal government and the states, reflecting the importance that the Framers attached to this issue. Every state constitution also expressly forbids bills of attainder. The U.S. Supreme Court has invalidated laws under the Attainder Clause on five occasions.


title: Bill of attainder

text: Unlike the United States Constitution, the Constitution of Australia contains no specific provision prohibiting the Commonwealth Parliament from passing bills of attainder. However, the High Court of Australia has ruled that bills of attainder are unconstitutional, because it is a violation of the separation of powers doctrine for any body to wield judicial power other than a Chapter III courtthat is, a body exercising power derived from Chapter III of the Constitution, the chapter providing for judicial power. One of the core aspects of judicial power is the ability to make binding and authoritative decisions on questions of law, that is, issues relating to life, liberty or property. The wielding of judicial power by the legislative or executive branch includes the direct wielding of power and the indirect wielding of judicial power.


title: Bill of attainder

text: The state constitutions in Australia contain few limitations on government power. Bills of attainder are considered permissible because there is no entrenched separation of powers at the state level. However, section 77 of the Constitution of Australia permits state courts to be invested with Commonwealth jurisdiction, and any state law that renders a state court unable to function as a Chapter III court is unconstitutional. The states cannot structure their legal systems to prevent them from being subject to the Australian Constitution.


title: Bill of attainder

text: An important distinction is that laws seeking to direct judicial power (e.g. must make orders) are unconstitutional, but laws that concern mandatory sentencing, rules of evidence, non-punitive imprisonment, or tests, are constitutional.


title: Bill of attainder

text: State parliaments are however free to prohibit parole boards from granting parole to specific prisoners. For instance, sections 74AA and 74AB of the Corrections Act 1986 in Victoria significantly restricts the ability of the parole board to grant parole to Julian Knight or Craig Minogue. These have been upheld by the High Court of Australia and are distinguished from bills of attainder since the original sentence (life imprisonment) stands; the only change is the administration of parole.


title: Bill of attainder

text: In two cases of attempts to pass bills (in 1984 for Clifford Olson and in 1995 for Karla Homolka) to inflict a judicial penalty on a specific person, the speakers of the House and Senate, respectively, have ruled that Canadian parliamentary practice does not permit bills of attainder or bills of pains and penalties.


title: Bill of attainder

text: The word "attainder" is part of English common law. Under English law, a criminal condemned for a serious crime, whether treason or felony (but not misdemeanour, which referred to less serious crimes), could be declared "attainted", meaning that his civil rights were nullified: he could no longer own property or pass property to his family by will or testament. His property could consequently revert to the Crown or to the mesne lord. Any peerage titles would also revert to the Crown. The convicted person would normally be punished by judicial executionwhen a person committed a capital crime and was put to death for it, the property left behind escheated to the Crown or lord rather than being inherited by family. Attainder functioned more or less as the revocation of the feudal chain of privilege and all rights and properties thus granted.


title: Bill of attainder

text: Due to mandatory sentencing, the due process of the courts provided limited flexibility to deal with the various circumstances of offenders. The property of criminals caught alive and put to death because of a guilty plea or jury conviction on a not guilty plea could be forfeited, as could the property of those who escaped justice and were outlawed; but the property of offenders who died before trial, except those killed during the commission of crimes (who fell foul of the law relating to "felo de se"), could not be forfeited, nor could the property of offenders who refused to plead and who were tortured to death through "peine forte et dure".


title: Bill of attainder

text: On the other hand, when a legal conviction did take place, confiscation and "corruption of blood" sometimes appeared unduly harsh for the surviving family. In some cases (at least regarding the peerage) the Crown would eventually re-grant the convicted peer's lands and titles to his heir. It was also possible, as political fortunes turned, for a bill of attainder to be reversed. This sometimes occurred long after the convicted person was executed.


title: Bill of attainder

text: Unlike the mandatory sentences of the courts, acts of Parliament provided considerable latitude in suiting the punishment to the particular conditions of the offender's family. Parliament could also impose non-capital punishments without involving courts; such bills are called bills of pains and penalties.


title: Bill of attainder

text: Bills of attainder were sometimes criticised as a convenient way for the king to convict subjects of crimes and confiscate their property without the bother of a trial – and without the need for a conviction or indeed any evidence at all. It was however relevant to the custom of the Middle Ages, where all lands and titles were granted by a king in his role as the "fount of honour". Anything granted by the king's wish could be taken away by him. This weakened over time as personal rights became legally established.


title: Bill of attainder

text: The first use of a bill of attainder was in 1321 against Hugh le Despenser, 1st Earl of Winchester and his son Hugh Despenser the Younger, Earl of Gloucester. They were both attainted for supporting King Edward II during his struggle with the queen and barons.


title: Bill of attainder

text: In England, those executed subject to attainders include George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence (1478); Thomas Cromwell (1540); Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (1540); Catherine Howard (1542); Thomas, Lord Seymour (1549); Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford (1641); Archbishop William Laud of Canterbury (1645); and James Scott, Duke of Monmouth. In the 1541 case of Catherine Howard, King Henry VIII was the first monarch to delegate royal assent, to avoid having to assent personally to the execution of his wife.


title: Bill of attainder

text: After defeating Richard III and replacing him on the throne of England following the Battle of Bosworth Field, Henry VII had Parliament pass a bill of attainder against his predecessor. It is noteworthy that this bill made no mention of the Princes in the Tower, although it does declare him guilty of "shedding of Infants blood".


title: Bill of attainder

text: Although deceased by the time of the Restoration, the regicides John Bradshaw, Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and Thomas Pride were served with a bill of attainder on 15 May 1660 backdated to 1 January 1649 (NS). After the committee stages, the bill passed both the Houses of Lords and Commons and was engrossed on 4 December 1660. This was followed with a resolution that passed both Houses on the same day:


title: Bill of attainder

text: In 1685, when the Duke of Monmouth landed in West England and started a rebellion in an effort to overthrow his uncle, the recently enthroned James II, Parliament passed a bill of attainder against him. After the Battle of Sedgemoor, this made it possible for King James to have the captured Monmouth put summarily to death. Though legal, this was regarded by many as an arbitrary and ruthless act.


title: Bill of attainder

text: In 1753, the Jacobite leader Archibald Cameron of Lochiel was summarily put to death on the basis of a seven-year-old bill of attainder, rather than being put on trial for his recent subversive activities in Scotland. This aroused some protests in British public opinion at the time, including from people with no Jacobite sympathies.


title: Bill of attainder

text: The last use of attainder was in 1798 against Lord Edward FitzGerald for leading the Irish Rebellion of 1798.


title: Bill of attainder

text: In 1688, King James II of England (VII of Scotland), driven off by the ascent of William III and Mary II in the Glorious Revolution, came to Ireland with the sole purpose of reclaiming his throne. After his arrival, the Parliament of Ireland assembled a list of names in 1689 of those reported to have been disloyal to him, eventually tallying between two and three thousand, in a bill of attainder. Those on the list were to report to Dublin for sentencing. One man, Lord Mountjoy, was in the Bastille at the time and was told by the Irish Parliament that he must break out of his cell and make it back to Ireland for his punishment, or face the grisly process of being drawn and quartered. The parliament became known in the 1800s as the "Patriot Parliament".


title: Bill of attainder

text: Later defenders of the Patriot Parliament pointed out that the ensuing "Williamite Settlement forfeitures" of the 1690s named an even larger number of Jacobite suspects, most of whom had been attainted by 1699.


title: Bill of attainder

text: In the Westminster system (and especially in the United Kingdom), a similar concept is covered by the term "private bill" (a bill which upon passage becomes a private Act). Note however that "private bill" is a general term referring to a proposal for legislation applying to a specific person; it is only a bill of attainder if it punishes them; private bills have been used in some Commonwealth countries to effect divorce. Other traditional uses of private bills include chartering corporations, changing the charters of existing corporations, granting monopolies, approving of public infrastructure and seizure of property for those, as well as enclosure of commons and similar redistributions of property. Those types of private bills operate to take away private property and rights from certain individuals, but are usually not called "bill of pains and penalties". Unlike the latter, Acts appropriating property with compensation are constitutionally uncontroversial as a form of compulsory purchase.


title: Bill of attainder

text: The last United Kingdom bill called a "Pains and Penalties Bill" was the Pains and Penalties Bill 1820 and was passed by the House of Lords in 1820, but not considered by the House of Commons; it sought to divorce Queen Caroline from King George IV and adjust her titles and property accordingly, on grounds of her alleged adultery, as did many private bills dealing with divorces of private persons.


title: Bill of attainder

text: No bills of attainder have been passed since 1820 in the UK. Attainder as such remained a legal consequence of convictions in courts of law, but this ceased to be a part of punishment in 1870.


title: Bill of attainder

text: Previously secret British War Cabinet papers released on 1 January 2006 have shown that, as early as December 1942, the War Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Axis officials if captured. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had then advocated a policy of summary execution with the use of an act of attainder to circumvent legal obstacles. He was dissuaded by Richard Law, a junior minister at the Foreign Office, who pointed out that the United States and the Soviet Union still favoured trials.


title: Bill of attainder

text: Bills of attainder were used throughout the 18th century in England, and were applied to British colonies as well. Some colonists were inspired to the American Revolution because of anger at the injustice of attainder. Although at least one American state, New York, used a 1779 bill of attainder to confiscate the property of British loyalists (called Tories) as both a penalty for their political sympathies and means of funding the rebellion, American dissatisfaction with British attainder laws resulted in their being prohibited in the U.S. Constitution ratified in 1789.


title: Bill of attainder

text: The United States Constitution forbids legislative bills of attainder: in federal law under , Clause 3 ("No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed"), and in state law under . The fact that they were banned even under state law reflects the importance that the Framers attached to this issue.


title: Bill of attainder

text: Within the U.S. Constitution, the clauses forbidding attainder laws serve two purposes. First, they reinforce the separation of powers by forbidding the legislature to perform judicial or executive functions, as a bill of attainder necessarily does. Second, they embody the concept of due process, which is reinforced by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.


title: Bill of attainder

text: Every state constitution also expressly forbids bills of attainder. For example, Wisconsin's constitution Article I, Section 12 reads:


title: Bill of attainder

text: In contrast, the Texas Constitution omits the clause that applies to heirs. It is unclear whether a law that called for heirs to be deprived of their estate would be constitutional in Texas.


title: Bill of attainder

text: Two of the United States Supreme Court's first decisions on the meaning of the bill of attainder clause came after the American Civil War. In "Ex parte Garland", 71 U.S. 333 (1866), the court struck down a federal law requiring attorneys practising in federal court to swear that they had not supported the rebellion. In "Cummings v. Missouri", 71 U.S. 277 (1867), the Missouri Constitution required anyone seeking a professional's license from the state to swear they had not supported the rebellion. The Supreme Court overturned the law and the constitutional provision, arguing that the people already admitted to practice were subject to penalty without judicial trial. The lack of judicial trial was the critical affront to the Constitution, the Court said.


title: Bill of attainder

text: Two decades later, however, the Court upheld similar laws. In "Hawker v. New York", 170 U.S. 189 (1898), a state law barred convicted felons from practising medicine. In "Dent v. West Virginia", 129 U.S. 114 (1889), a West Virginia state law imposed a new requirement that practising physicians had to have graduated from a licensed medical school or they would be forced to surrender their license. The Court upheld both laws because, it said, the laws were narrowly tailored to focus on an individual's qualifications to practice medicine. That was not true in "Garland" or "Cummings".


title: Bill of attainder

text: The Court changed its "bill of attainder test" in 1946. In "United States v. Lovett", 328 U.S. 303 (1946), the Court confronted a federal law that named three people as subversive and excluded them from federal employment. Previously, the Court had held that lack of judicial trial and the narrow way in which the law rationally achieved its goals were the only tests of a bill of attainder. But the "Lovett" Court said that a bill of attainder 1) specifically identified the people to be punished; 2) imposed punishment; and 3) did so without benefit of judicial trial. As all three prongs of the bill of attainder test were met in "Lovett", the court held that a Congressional statute that bars particular individuals from government employment qualifies as punishment prohibited by the bill of attainder clause.


title: Bill of attainder

text: The Taft–Hartley Act (enacted in 1947) sought to ban political strikes by Communist-dominated labour unions by requiring all elected labour leaders to take an oath that they were not and had never been members of the Communist Party USA, and that they did not advocate violent overthrow of the U.S. government. It also made it a crime for members of the Communist Party to serve on executive boards of labour unions. In "American Communications Association v. Douds", 339 U.S. 382 (1950), the Supreme Court had said that the requirement for the oath was not a bill of attainder because: 1) anyone could avoid punishment by disavowing the Communist Party, and 2) it focused on a future act (overthrow of the government) and not a past one. Reflecting current fears, the Court commented in "Douds" on approving the specific focus on Communists by noting what a threat communism was. The Court had added an "escape clause" test to determining whether a law was a bill of attainder.


title: Bill of attainder

text: In "United States v. Brown", 381 U.S. 437 (1965), the Court invalidated the section of the statute that criminalized a former communist serving on a union's executive board. Clearly, the Act had focused on past behaviour and had specified a specific class of people to be punished. Many legal scholars assumed that the "Brown" case effectively, if not explicitly, overruled "Douds". The Court did not apply the punishment prong of the "Douds" test, leaving legal scholars confused as to whether the Court still intended it to apply.


title: Bill of attainder

text: The Supreme Court emphasized the narrowness and rationality of bills of attainder in "Nixon v. Administrator of General Services", 433 U.S. 425 (1977). During the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Congress passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, which required the General Services Administration to confiscate former President Richard Nixon's presidential papers to prevent their destruction, screen out those which contained national security and other issues which might prevent their publication, and release the remainder of the papers to the public as fast as possible. The Supreme Court upheld the law in "Nixon", arguing that specificity alone did not invalidate the act because the President constituted a "class of one". Thus, specificity was constitutional if it was rationally related to the class identified. The Court modified its punishment test, concluding that only those laws which historically offended the bill of attainder clause were invalid. The Court also found it significant that Nixon was compensated for the loss of his papers, which alleviated the punishment. The Court modified the punishment prong by holding that punishment could survive scrutiny if it was rationally related to other, nonpunitive goals. Finally, the Court concluded that the legislation must not be intended to punish; legislation enacted for otherwise legitimate purposes could be saved so long as punishment was a side-effect rather than the main purpose of the law.


title: Bill of attainder

text: A number of cases which raised the bill of attainder issue did not reach or have not reached the Supreme Court, but were considered by lower courts.


title: Bill of attainder

text: In 1990, in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Congress enacted the Oil Pollution Act to consolidate various oil spill and oil pollution statutes into a single unified law, and to provide for a statutory regime for handling oil spill cleanup. This law was challenged as a bill of attainder by the shipping division of ExxonMobil.


title: Bill of attainder

text: In 2003, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down the Elizabeth Morgan Act as a bill of attainder.


title: Bill of attainder

text: After the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution in late 2009 barring the community organising group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) from receiving federal funding, the group sued the U.S. government. Another, broader bill, the Defund ACORN Act, was enacted by Congress later that year. In March 2010, a federal district court declared the funding ban an unconstitutional bill of attainder. On 13 August 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed and remanded on the grounds that only 10 percent of ACORN's funding was federal and that did not constitute "punishment".


title: Bill of attainder

text: There is argument over whether the Palm Sunday Compromise in the Terri Schiavo case was a bill of attainder.