title: Illumina, Inc.

text: Illumina began offering single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping services in 2001 and launched its first system, the Illumina BeadLab, in 2002, using GoldenGate Genotyping technology. Illumina currently offers microarray-based products and services for an expanding range of genetic analysis sequencing, including SNP genotyping, gene expression, and protein analysis. Illumina's technologies are used by a broad range of academic, government, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and other leading institutions around the globe.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: On January 26, 2007, the company completed the acquisition of the British company Solexa, Inc. for ~$650M. Solexa was founded in June 1998 by Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman to develop and commercialize genome-sequencing technology invented by the founders at the University of Cambridge. Solexa, Inc. was formed in 2005 when Solexa Ltd reversed into Lynx Therapeutics of Hayward.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: Illumina also uses the DNA colony sequencing technology, invented in 1997 by Pascal Mayer and Laurent Farinelli and which was acquired by Solexa in 2004 from the company Manteia Predictive Medicine. It is being used to perform a range of analyses, including whole genome resequencing, gene-expression analysis, and small ribonucleic acid (sRNA) analysis.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: In June 2009, Illumina announced the launch of their own Personal Full Genome Sequencing Service at a depth of 30X for $48,000 per genome, and a year later dropped the price to $19,500. , Illumina reduced the price to $4,000.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: Until 2010, Illumina sold only instruments that were labeled "for research use only"; in early 2010, Illumina obtained FDA approval for its BeadXpress system to be used in clinical tests. This was part of the company's strategy at the time to open its own CLIA lab and begin offering clinical genetic testing itself.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: Illumina acquired Epicentre Biotechnologies, based in Madison, Wisconsin, on January 11, 2011. On January 25, 2012, Hoffmann-La Roche made an unsolicited bid to buy Illumina for $44.50 per share or about $5.7 billion. Roche tried other tactics, including raising its offer (to $51.00, for about $6.8 billion). Illumina rejected the offer, and Roche abandoned the offer in April.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: In 2014, the company announced a multimillion-dollar product, HiSeq X Ten, that it forecast would provide large-scale whole-genome sequencing for $1,000/genome. The company claimed that 40 such machines would be able to sequence more genomes in one year than had been produced by all other sequencers to date. In January 2014, Illumina already held 70% of the market for genome-sequencing machines. Illumina machines accounted for more than 90% of all DNA data produced. In fact, the amount of data produced by Illumina machines is such that the company invested in the acquisition of the pre-commercial firm Enancio in 2020, which had developed a DNA data compression algorithm specifically targeting Illumina data capable of reducing storage footprint by 80% (e.g. 50 GB compressed to 10 GB).


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: On July 5, 2016, Jay Flatley, who had been CEO since 1999, assumed the role of executive chairman of the board of directors. Francis deSouza took on the role of president and chief executive officer, and continues to serve on the Illumina board of directors.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: In late 2015, Illumina spun off the company GRAIL, focused on blood testing for cancer tumors in the bloodstream. In 2017 the company had planned to raise $1 billion in its second round of financing, and received funding from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos investing $100 million in series A funding, and with Illumina maintaining a 20% holding share in Grail. The company is working with a blood test trial with over 120,000 women during scheduled mammogram visits in the states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as a partnership with the Mayo Clinic. The company Grail uses Illumina sequencing technology for tests. The company plans to roll out the tests by 2019, with a cost of $500 per individual. In September 2020, Illumina announced a proposed cash and stock deal to acquire Grail for $8 billion.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: In November 2018, the company proposed the acquisition of Pacific Biosciences for $8.00 per share or around $1.2 billion in total. In December 2019, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the acquisition. The proposed deal was abandoned on January 2, 2020, with Illumina paying Pacific a $98 million termination fee.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: In March 2021, the FTC sued to block Illumina's $7.1 billion vertical merger with GRAIL. In July 2021, the European Commission opened an in-depth investigation into the GRAIL acquisition by Illumina. Against the orders of active investigations by both the US Federal Trade Commission and the EU European Commission, Illumina publicly announced it had completed its acquisition of GRAIL on August 18, 2021. The FTC urged Illumina to "unwind" the merger shortly after, and in October 2021, the European Commission ordered Illumina to keep GRAIL a separate company and adopted interim measures to prevent harm to competition, or face penalty payments up to 5% of their average daily turnover and/or fines up to 10% of their annual worldwide turnover under Articles 15 and 14 of the EU Merger Regulation respectively. In September 2022, a US administrative judge ruled against the FTC's efforts to prevent the acquisition on antitrust grounds.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: The following is an illustration of the company's mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs and historical predecessors:


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: Illumina sells a number of high-throughput DNA sequencing systems, also known as DNA sequencers, based on technology developed by Solexa. The technology features bridge amplification to generate clusters and reversible terminators for sequence determination. The technology behind these sequencing systems involves ligation of fragmented DNA to a chip, followed by primer addition and sequential fluorescent dNTP incorporation and detection.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: Three of the most popular Illumina sequencers are the MiSeq, HiSeq, and NovaSeq. From a single run, the MiSeq generates 30 million reads, the HiSeq generates 3 billion reads, and the NovaSeq generates 13 billion reads. Comparatively, the NovaSeq has the ability to generate 4 trillion bases in a day whereas Sanger sequencing can only generate one million bases per day. New machines have the capacity to sequence the entire human genome in 48 hours at the price of $1,000. Illumina sequencers are highly accurate, and only have an error once every thousand bases.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: Illumina sequencing happens within the "flow cells". These flow cells are small in size and are housed in the flow cell compartment. In MiSeq sequencers, the flow cell can generate between 1 million and 30 million reads per run. The HiSeq flow cell is larger than that of the MiSeq and has the ability to generate 3 billion reads per run. Lastly, the NovaSeq flow cell is the largest of the three and can generate 13 billion reads per run. Flow cell clustering happens when a denatured DNA sample is placed in a flow cell. Primers already in the flow cell channel capture and bind to the ends of the short denatured DNA sample. Then, DNA polymerase is added and the DNA building blocks are introduced. This results in a newly synthesized strand constrained to the bottom of the flow cell. Next, the original template strand is washed out binding the newly synthesized strand to the other DNA sequence present on the surface. DNA polymerase and building blocks are introduced again forming a new strand. These steps are repeated until about 1,000 copies are made in a cluster.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: In 2005, co-founder and former Chief Scientific Officer Anthony Czarnik sued Illumina. In the case, Czarnik v. Illumina Inc., the trial court granted Illumina's motion to dismiss in part but allowed Czarnik's correction of inventorship claims to continue.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: In 2010, Cornell University and Life Technologies filed a lawsuit against Illumina, alleging that its microarray products infringed on eight patents held by the university and exclusively licensed to the start-up. The case was settled in April 2017 without any finding of fault. In September 2017 both parties asked to have the settlement reviewed, with Cornell accusing both Illumina and Life Technologies of misrepresentation and fraud. Cornell claimed that ThermoFisher had promised to settle the suit with Illumina and asked for the Markman wording to be dropped so that it could file a subsequent suit involving other patents invented at Cornell. Instead of filing the suit, ThermoFisher and Illumina settled another lawsuit in California and secretly sublicensed those very same patents. In 2018, Dr. Monib Zirvi filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York against Illumina and some of its key employees claiming that they knowingly incorporated ideas and ZipCode DNA sequences invented in the Barany Lab in Illumina's patent applications. Although this suit was dismissed, it was only after Illumina and its attorneys claimed that some of those IP misappropriation were “storm warnings” and thus statutes of limitations had run out on those particular claims. Dr. Monib Zirvi also filed a FOIA case in New Jersey in 2020 for unredacted copies for key NIH grants that Illumina filed early in its existence. William Noon, an in-house attorney at Illumina, had filed a FOIA request for 4 of these key grants as well in January 2015.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: Illumina was a party in a patent lawsuit against competitor Ariosa Diagnostics. The litigation began in 2012 with Verinata Health filing suit against Ariosa. Illumina joined the suit after acquiring Verinata in 2013. Ariosa subsequently brought a counterclaim against Illumina. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Ariosa, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed. Ariosa initially pursued an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, but the two parties resolved the dispute before the Court decided whether to take the case.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: In February 2016, Illumina filed a lawsuit against Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Illumina claimed that Oxford Nanopore infringed its patents on the use of a biological nanopore, "Mycobacterium smegmatis" porinA (MspA), for sequencing systems. In August 2016 the parties settled their lawsuit.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: In February 2020, Illumina filed a patent infringement suit against BGI relating to its "CoolMPS" sequencing products. In return BGI has filed patent infringement lawsuits for violation of federal antitrust and California unfair competition laws, claiming use of "fraudulent behavior" to obtain or enforce sequencing patents that it has asserted against BGI, preventing the firm from entering the US market. However, in May 2022, Illumina was ordered to pay $333 million to a U.S. unit of BGI in California for infringing two patents of DNA-sequencing systems. The jury of the case also said that Illumina willfully infringed the patents, and that their former accusation of BGI's infringement was invalid.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: On May 6, 2022, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware rendered a verdict that Illumina willfully infringed two patents owned by Complete Genomics, and awarded approximately $334 million to CGI in past damages. The jury also invalidated three patents owned by Illumina.


title: Illumina, Inc.

text: In March 2022, Illumina sued Helmy Eltoukhy and Amir Talasaz, the co-founders of Guardant, over stealing trade secrets. Guardant called the lawsuit “frivolous and retaliatory” and framed it as a response to its concerns about the Illumina-Grail merger. Guardant also claimed the lawsuit was filed in order to suppress competition in the marketplace.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Counterinsurgency (COIN) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionaries" and can be considered war by a state against a non-state adversary. Insurgency and counterinsurgency campaigns have been waged since ancient history. However, modern thinking on counterinsurgency was developed during decolonization. Within the military sciences, counterinsurgency is one of the main operational approaches of irregular warfare.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: During insurgency and counterinsurgency, the distinction between civilians and combatants is often blurred. Counterinsurgency may involve attempting to win the hearts and minds of populations supporting the insurgency. Alternatively, it may be waged in an attempt to intimidate or eliminate civilian populations suspected of loyalty to the insurgency through indiscriminate violence.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Counterinsurgency is normally conducted as a combination of conventional military operations and other means, such as demoralization in the form of propaganda, psy-ops, and assassinations. Counter-insurgency operations include many different facets: military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken to defeat insurgency.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: To understand counterinsurgency, one must understand insurgency to comprehend the dynamics of revolutionary warfare. Insurgents capitalize on societal problems, often called gaps; counter-insurgency addresses the closing of those gaps. When the gaps are wide, they create a sea of discontent, creating the environment in which the insurgent can operate.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: In "The Insurgent Archipelago", John Mackinlay puts forward the concept of an evolution of the insurgency from the Maoist paradigm of the golden age of insurgency to the global insurgency of the start of the 21st century. He defines this distinction as "Maoist" and "post-Maoist" insurgency.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: The third Marques of Santa Cruz de Marcenado (1684–1732) is probably the earliest author who dealt systematically in his writings with counterinsurgency. In his "Reflexiones Militares", published between 1726 and 1730, he discussed how to spot early signs of an incipient insurgency, prevent insurgencies, and counter them, if they could not be warded off. Strikingly, Santa Cruz recognized that insurgencies are usually due to real grievances: "A state rarely rises up without the fault of its governors." Consequently, he advocated clemency towards the population and good governance, to seek the people's "heart and love".


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Liddell Hart attributed the failure of counterinsurgencies to various causes. First, as pointed out in the Insurgency addendum to the second version of his book "Strategy: The Indirect Approach", a popular insurgency has an inherent advantage over any occupying force. He showed as a prime example the French occupation of Spain during the Napoleonic wars. Whenever Spanish forces managed to constitute themselves into a regular fighting force, the superior French forces beat them every time.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: However, once dispersed and decentralized, the irregular nature of the rebel campaigns proved a decisive counter to French superiority on the battlefield. Napoleon's army had no means of effectively combating the rebels, and in the end, their strength and morale were so sapped that when Wellington was finally able to challenge French forces in the field, the French had almost no choice but to abandon the situation.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Counterinsurgency efforts may be successful, especially when the insurgents are unpopular. The Philippine–American War, the Shining Path in Peru, and the Malayan Emergency have been the sites of failed insurgencies.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Hart also points to the experiences of T. E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt during World War I as another example of the power of the rebel/insurgent. Though the Ottomans often had advantages in manpower of more than 100 to 1, the Arabs' ability to materialize out of the desert, strike, and disappear again often left the Turks reeling and paralyzed, creating an opportunity for regular British forces to sweep in and finish the Turkish forces off.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: In both the preceding cases, the insurgents and rebel fighters were working in conjunction with or in a manner complementary to regular forces. Such was also the case with the French Resistance during World War II and the National Liberation Front during the Vietnam War. The strategy in these cases is for the irregular combatant to weaken and destabilize the enemy to such a degree that victory is easy or assured for the regular forces. However, in many modern rebellions, one does not see rebel fighters working in conjunction with regular forces. Rather, they are home-grown militias or imported fighters who have no unified goals or objectives save to expel the occupier.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: According to Liddell Hart, there are few effective counter-measures to this strategy. So long as the insurgency maintains popular support, it will retain all of its strategic advantages of mobility, invisibility, and legitimacy in its own eyes and the eyes of the people. So long as this is the situation, an insurgency essentially cannot be defeated by regular forces.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: David Galula gained his practical experience in counterinsurgency as a French Army officer in the Algerian War. His theory of counterinsurgency is not primarily military, but a combination of military, political and social actions under the strong control of a single authority.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: With his four principles in mind, Galula goes on to describe a general military and political strategy to put them into operation in an area that is under full insurgent control:


title: Counterinsurgency

text: According to Galula, some of these steps can be skipped in areas that are only partially under insurgent control, and most of them are unnecessary in areas already controlled by the government. Thus the essence of counterinsurgency warfare is summed up by Galula as "Build (or rebuild) a political machine from the population upward."


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Robert Grainger Ker Thompson wrote "Defeating Communist Insurgency" in 1966, wherein he argued that a successful counterinsurgency effort must be proactive in seizing the initiative from insurgents. Thompson outlines five basic principles for a successful counterinsurgency:


title: Counterinsurgency

text: In "The Three Pillars of Counterinsurgency", Dr. David Kilcullen, the Chief Strategist of the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism of the U.S. State Department in 2006, described a framework for interagency cooperation in counterinsurgency operations. His pillars – Security, Political and Economic – support the overarching goal of Control, but are based on Information:


title: Counterinsurgency

text: The overall goal, according to this model, "is not to reduce violence to zero or to kill every insurgent, but rather to return the overall system to normality — noting that 'normality' in one society may look different from normality in another. In each case, we seek not only to establish control, but also to consolidate that control and then transfer it to permanent, effective, and legitimate institutions."


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Military historian Martin van Creveld, noting that almost all attempts to deal with insurgency have ended in failure, advises:


title: Counterinsurgency

text: In examining why so many counterinsurgencies by powerful militaries fail against weaker enemies, Van Creveld identifies a key dynamic that he illustrates by the metaphor of killing a child. Regardless of whether the child started the fight or how well armed the child is, an adult in a fight with a child will feel that he is acting unjustly if he harms the child and foolish if the child harms him; he will, therefore, wonder if the fight is necessary.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Van Creveld argues that "by definition, a strong counterinsurgent who uses his strength to kill the members of a small, weak organization of insurgents – let alone the civilian population by which it is surrounded, and which may lend it support – will commit crimes in an unjust cause," while "a child who is in a serious fight with an adult is justified in using every and any means available – not because he or she is right, but because he or she has no choice." Every act of insurgency becomes, from the perspective of the counterinsurgent, a reason to end the conflict, while also being a reason for the insurgents to continue until victory. Trường Chinh, second in command to Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, wrote in his "Primer for Revolt":


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Van Creveld thus identifies "time" as the key factor in counterinsurgency. In an attempt to find lessons from the few cases of successful counterinsurgency, of which he lists two clear cases: the British efforts during The Troubles of Northern Ireland and the 1982 Hama massacre carried out by the Syrian government to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood, he asserts that the "core of the difficulty is neither military nor political, but moral" and outlines two distinct methods.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: The first method relies on superb intelligence, provided by those who know the natural and artificial environment of the conflict as well as the insurgents. Once such superior intelligence is gained, the counterinsurgents must be trained to a point of high professionalism and discipline such that they will exercise discrimination and restraint. Through such discrimination and restraint, the counterinsurgents do not alienate members of the populace besides those already fighting them, while delaying the time when the counterinsurgents become disgusted by their own actions and demoralized.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: General Patrick Walters, the British commander of troops in Northern Ireland, explicitly stated that his objective was not to kill as many terrorists as possible but to ensure that as few people on both sides were killed. In the vast majority of counterinsurgencies, the "forces of order" kill far more people than they lose. In contrast and using very rough figures, the struggle in Northern Ireland had cost the United Kingdom three thousand fatal casualties. Of the three thousand, about seventeen hundred were civilians...of the remaining, a thousand were British soldiers. No more than three hundred were terrorists, a ratio of three to one.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: If the prerequisites for the first method – excellent intelligence, superbly trained and disciplined soldiers and police, and an iron will to avoid being provoked into lashing out – are lacking, van Creveld posits that counterinsurgents who still want to win must use the second method exemplified by the Hama massacre. In 1982, the regime of Syrian president Hafez al-Assad was on the point of being overwhelmed by the countrywide insurgency of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Assad sent a Syrian Army division under his brother Rifaat to the city of Hama, known to be the center of the resistance.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Following a counterattack by the Brotherhood, Rifaat used his heavy artillery to demolish the city, killing between ten and 25 thousand people, including many women and children. Asked by reporters what had happened, Hafez al-Assad exaggerated the damage and deaths, promoted the commanders who carried out the attacks, and razed Hama's well-known great mosque, replacing it with a parking lot. With the Muslim Brotherhood scattered, the population was so cowed that it would be years before opposition groups dared to disobey the regime again and, van Creveld argues, the massacre most likely saved the regime and prevented a bloody civil war.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Van Creveld condenses al-Assad's strategy into five rules while noting that they could easily have been written by Niccolò Machiavelli:


title: Counterinsurgency

text: In "Counterinsurgency’s Impossible Trilemma", Dr. Lorenzo Zambernardi, an Italian academic now working in the United States, clarifies the tradeoffs involved in counterinsurgency operations. He argues that counterinsurgency involves three main goals, but in real practice, a counterinsurgent needs to choose two goals out of three. Relying on economic theory, this is what Zambernardi labels the "impossible trilemma" of counterinsurgency. Specifically, the impossible trilemma suggests that it is impossible to simultaneously achieve: 1) force protection, 2) distinction between enemy combatants and non-combatants, and 3) the physical elimination of insurgents.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: According to Zambernardi, in pursuing any two of these three goals, a state must forgo some portion of the third objective. In particular, a state can protect its armed forces while destroying insurgents, but only by indiscriminately killing civilians as the Ottomans, Italians, and Nazis did in the Balkans, Libya, and Eastern Europe. It can choose to protect civilians along with its own armed forces instead, avoiding so-called collateral damage, but only by abandoning the objective of destroying the insurgents. Finally, a state can discriminate between combatants and non-combatants while killing insurgents, but only by increasing the risks for its own troops, because often insurgents will hide behind civilians, or appear to be civilians. So a country must choose two out of three goals and develop a strategy that can successfully accomplish them while sacrificing the third objective.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Zambernardi's theory posits that to protect populations, which is necessary to defeat insurgencies and to physically destroy an insurgency, the counterinsurgent's military forces must be sacrificed, risking the loss of domestic political support.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Another writer who explores a trio of features relevant to understanding counterinsurgency is Akali Omeni. Within the contemporary context, COIN warfare by African militaries tends to be at the margins of the theoretical debate – even though Africa today is faced with a number of deadly insurgencies. In "Counter-insurgency in Nigeria", Omeni, a Nigerian academic, discusses the interactions between certain features away from the battlefield, which account for battlefield performance against insurgent warfare. Specifically, Omeni argues that the trio of historical experience, organisational culture (OC) and doctrine, help explain the institution of COIN within militaries and their tendency to reject the innovation and adaptation often necessary to defeat insurgency. These three features, furthermore, influence and can undermine the operational tactics and concepts adopted against insurgents. The COIN challenge, therefore, is not just operational; it also is cultural and institutional before ever it reflects on the battlefield.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: According to Omeni, institutional isomorphism is a sociological phenomenon that constrains the habits of a military (in this case, the Nigerian military) to the long-established, yet increasingly ineffective, ideology of the offensive in irregular warfare. As Omeni writes,


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Whereas the Nigerian military’s performance against militias in the Niger Delta already suggested the military had a poor grasp of the threat of insurgent warfare; it was further along the line, as the military struggled against Boko Haram’s threat, that the extent of this weakness was exposed. At best, the utility of force, for the Nigerian military, had become but a temporary solution against the threat of insurgent warfare. At worst, the existing model has been perpetuated at such high cost, that urgent revisionist thinking around the idea of counterinsurgency within the military institution may now be required. Additionally, the military’s decisive civil war victory, the pivot in Nigeria’s strategic culture towards a regional role, and the institutional delegitimization brought about by decades of coups and political meddling, meant that much time went by without substantive revisionism to the military’s thinking around its internal function. Change moreover, where it occurred, was institutionally isomorphic and not as far removed from the military’s own origins as the intervening decades may have suggested.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Further, the infantry-centric nature of the Nigerian Army's battalions, traceable all the way back to the Nigerian Civil War back in the 1960s, is reflected in the kinetic nature of the Army's contemporary COIN approach. This approach has failed to defeat Boko Haram in the way many expected. Certainly, therefore, the popular argument today, which holds that the Nigerian Army has struggled in COIN due to capabilities shortcomings, holds some merit. However, a full-spectrum analysis of the Nigeria case suggests that this popular dominant narrative scarcely scratches the surface of the true COIN challenge. This population-centered challenge, moreover, is one that militaries across the world continue to contend with. And in attempting to solve the COIN puzzle, state forces over the decades have tried a range of tactics.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Starting in the early 2000s, micro-level data has transformed the analysis of effective counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. Leading this work is the "information-centric" group of theorists and researchers, led by the work of the Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) group at Princeton University, and the Conflict and Peace, Research and Development (CPRD) group at the University of Michigan. Berman, Shapiro, and Felter have outlined the modern information-centric model. In this framework, the critical determinant of counterinsurgent success is information about insurgents provided to counterinsurgents, such as insurgent locations, plans, and targets. Information can be acquired from civilian sources (human intelligence, HUMINT), or through signals intelligence (SIGINT).


title: Counterinsurgency

text: With regard to tactics, the terms "drain the sea" or "drain the water" involves the forced relocation or elimination of the civilian population ("water") to expose the rebels or insurgents ("fish"). In other words, relocation deprives the aforementioned of the support, cover, and resources of the local population. This is typically targeted in that it specifically targets the demographic that supports the insurgency in a limited area where insurgency is taking place, but is indiscriminate from an individual perspective. Examples of use of this technique in counterinsurgency include Bar Kokhba revolt, Second Anglo-Boer War, Greek Civil War, General Order No. 11 (1863) in the American Civil War, Rohingya conflict, and Xinjiang conflict.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: "Draining the sea" can also be accomplished through genocide by killing the population blamed for the insurgency. During World War II, Nazi Germany's counterinsurgency (, ) became intertwined with the Final Solution. Indiscriminate violence also has a deterrent effect. Edward Luttwak stated, "A massacre once in a while remained an effective warning for decades."


title: Counterinsurgency

text: A downside of such methods of counterinsurgency is their severity may provoke increased resistance from the targeted population. In contemporary times, concerns about public opinion and international law can rule out counterinsurgency campaigns using indiscriminate violence.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: The oil spot approach is the concentration of counterinsurgent forces into an expanding, secured zone. The origins of the expression is to be found in its initial use by Marshal Hubert Lyautey, the main theoretician of French colonial warfare and counterinsurgency strategy. The oil spot approach was later one of the justifications given in the Pentagon Papers for the Strategic Hamlet Program.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Cordon and search is a military tactic, one of the basic counterinsurgency operations in which an area is cordoned off and premises are searched for weapons or insurgents. Other related operations are "Cordon and knock" and "Cordon and kick". "Cordon and search" is part of a new doctrine called Stability and Support Operations or SASO. It is a technique used where there is no hard intelligence of weapons in the house and therefore is less intense than a normal house search. It is used in urban neighborhoods. The purpose of the mission is to search a house with as little inconvenience to the resident family as possible.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Air power can play an important role in counterinsurgency, capable of carrying out a wide range of operations:


title: Counterinsurgency

text: In General David Petraeus’ "Counterinsurgency Field Manual", one of the many tactics described to help win in counterinsurgency warfare involves the use of public diplomacy through military means. Counterinsurgency is effective when it is integrated "into a comprehensive strategy employing all instruments of national power," including public diplomacy. The goal of COIN operations is to render the insurgents as ineffective and non-influential, by having strong and secure relations with the population of the host nation.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: An understanding of the host nation and the environment that the COIN operations will take place in is essential. Public diplomacy in COIN warfare is only effective when there is a clear understanding of the culture and population at hand. One of the largest factors needed for defeating an insurgency involves understanding the populace, how they interact with the insurgents, how they interact with non-government organizations in the area, and how they view the counterinsurgency operations themselves.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Ethics is a common public diplomacy aspect that is emphasized in COIN warfare. Insurgents win their war by attacking internal will and the international opposition. In order to combat these tactics, the counterinsurgency operations need to treat their prisoners and detainees humanely and according to American values and principles. By doing this, COIN operations show the host nation's population that they can be trusted and that they are concerned about the well-being of the population in order to be successful in warfare.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: A population that expects the incumbent government to deliver public goods, services, and security frequently supports the counterinsurgency, and a major event that increases popular expectations of future public goods and service delivery can trigger a shift in public attitudes away from the insurgency and toward the counterinsurgency. "Political, social, and economic programs are usually more valuable than conventional military operations in addressing the root causes of the conflict and undermining the insurgency." These programs are essential in order to gain the support of the population. These programs are designed to make the local population feel secure, safe, and more aligned with the counterinsurgency efforts; this enables the citizens of the host nation to trust the goals and purposes of the counterinsurgency efforts, as opposed to the insurgents’. A counterinsurgency is a battle of ideas and the implementation and integration of these programs is important for success. Social, political and economic programs should be coordinated and administered by the host nation's leaders, as well. Successful COIN warfare allows the population to see that the counterinsurgency efforts are including the host nation in their re-building programs. The war is fought among the people and for the people between the insurgents and the counterinsurgents.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: A counterinsurgency is won by utilizing strategic communications and information operations successfully. A counterinsurgency is a competition of ideas, ideologies, and socio-political movements. In order to combat insurgent ideologies one must understand the values and characteristics of the ideology or religion. Additionally, counterinsurgency efforts need to understand the culture of which the insurgency resides, in order to strategically launch information and communication operations against the insurgent ideology or religion. Counterinsurgency information operatives need to also identify key audiences, communicators, and public leaders to know whom to influence and reach out to with their information.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Public diplomacy in information operations can only be achieved by a complete understanding of the culture it is operating in.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Counterinsurgency operations must be able to perceive the world from the locals’ perspective. To develop a comprehensive cultural picture counterinsurgency efforts should invest in employing "media consultants, finance and business experts, psychologists, organizational network analysts, and scholars from a wide range of disciplines." Most importantly, counterinsurgency efforts need to be able to understand why the local population is drawn into the insurgent ideology, like what aspects are appealing and how insurgents use the information to draw their followers into the ideology. Counterinsurgency communication efforts need a baseline understanding of values, attitudes, and perceptions of the people in the area of operations to conduct successful public diplomacy to defeat the enemy.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Developing information and communication strategies involve providing a legitimate alternate ideology, improving security and economic opportunity, and strengthening family ties outside of the insurgency. In order to conduct public diplomacy through these means, counterinsurgency communication needs to match its deeds with its words. Information provided through public diplomacy during a counterinsurgency cannot lie, the information and communication to the people always have to be truthful and trustworthy in order to be effective at countering the insurgents. Public diplomacy in counterinsurgency to influence the public thoughts and ideas is a long time engagement and should not be done through negative campaigning about the enemy.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Conducting public diplomacy through relaying information and communicating with the public in a counterinsurgency is most successful when a conversation can happen between the counterinsurgency team and the local population of the area of operation. Building rapport with the public involves "listening, paying attention, and being responsive and proactive" which is sufficient for the local population to understand and trust the counterinsurgency efforts and vice versa. This relationship is stringent upon the counterinsurgents keeping their promises, providing security to the locals, and communicating their message directly and quickly in times of need.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Understanding and influencing the cognitive dimension of the local population is essential to winning counterinsurgency warfare. The people's perception of legitimacy about the host nation and the foreign country's counterinsurgency efforts is where success is determined. "The free flow of information present in all theaters via television, telephone, and Internet, can present conflicting messages and quickly defeat the intended effects." Coordination between the counterinsurgency operations, the host nation, and the local media in the information presented to the public is essential to showing and influencing how the local population perceives the counterinsurgency efforts and the host nation.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Public opinion, the media, and rumors influence how the people view counterinsurgency, the government hosting their efforts, and the host nation legitimacy. The use of public diplomacy to strategically relay the correct messages and information to the public is essential to success in a counterinsurgency operation. For example, close relationships with media members in the area is essential to ensure that the locals understand the counterinsurgency objectives and feel secure with the host nation government and the counterinsurgency efforts. If the local media is not in sync with the counterinsurgency operatives then they could spread incomplete or false information about the counterinsurgency campaign to the public.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: "Given Al Qaeda’s global reach, the United States must develop a more integrated strategic communication strategy for counter-insurgency with its allies to diminish violent rhetoric, improve its image abroad, and detect, deter, and defeat this social movement at its many levels." Information operations and communicative abilities are one of the largest and most influential aspects of public diplomacy within a counterinsurgency.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Public diplomacy is especially important as modern insurgents are more easily able to gain support through a variety of sources, both local and transnational, thanks to advances in increased communication and globalization. Consequently, modern counter-insurgency requires attention to be focused on an insurgency's ecosystem from the national to the local level, in order to deprive the insurgency of support and prevent future insurgent groups from forming.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: During the Vietnam War, counterinsurgency initially formed part of the earlier war as Diem had implemented the poorly conceived Strategic Hamlet Program, a similar model to the Malayan Emergency, which had opposite effects by leading to increased recruitment to the Viet Cong. Similarly economic and rural development formed a key strategy as part of Rural Affairs development. While the earlier war was marked by considerable emphasis on counterinsurgency programs, the US Armed Forces initially relied on very little if any theoretical doctrine of counterinsurgency during the Ground-Intervention phase. Conventional warfare using massive fire-power and failure to implement adequate counterinsurgency had extremely negative effects and was the strategy whom the NVA were adept at countering through the protracted political and military warfare model. Following the replacement of General William Westmoreland, newer concepts were tried including a revival of earlier COIN strategies including Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support. The US and its allies also implemented the Phoenix Program, which targeted the Viet Cong political infrastructure through capture, defection or assassination of VC members.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: British forces were able to employ the relocation method with considerable success during the "Malayan Emergency". The Briggs Plan, implemented fully in 1950, relocated Chinese Malayans into protected "New Villages", designated by British forces. By the end of 1951, some 400,000 ethnic Chinese had moved into the fortifications. Of this population, the British forces were able to form a "Home Guard", armed for resistance against the Malayan Communist Party, an implementation mirrored by the Strategic Hamlet Program later used by US forces in South Vietnam. Despite British claims of a victory in the Malayan Emergency, military historian Martin van Creveld noted that the end result of the counterinsurgency, namely the withdrawal of British forces and establishment of an independent state, are identical to that of Aden, Kenya and Cyprus, which are not considered victories.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: The Dutch formulated a new strategy of counterinsurgency warfare, during the Aceh War by deploying light-armed Marechaussee units and using scorched earth tactics.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: In 1898 Van Heutsz was proclaimed governor of Aceh, and with his lieutenant, later Dutch Prime Minister Hendrikus Colijn, would finally conquer most of Aceh. They followed Hurgronje's suggestions, finding cooperative "uleebalang" or secular chiefs that would support them in the countryside and isolating the resistance from their rural support base.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: During the South Sulawesi Campaign Captain Raymond Westerling of the KST, Special Forces of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army used the Westerling Method. Westerling ordered the registration of all Javanese arriving in Makassar due to the large numbers of Javanese participating in the Sulawesi resistance. He also used scouts to infiltrate local villages and to identify members of the resistance.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Based on their information and that of the Dutch military intelligence service, the DST surrounded one of more suspected villages during night, after which they drove the population to a central location. At daybreak, the operation began, often led by Westerling. Men would be separated from women and children. From the gathered information Westerling exposed certain people as terrorists and murderers. They were shot without any further investigation. Afterwards Westerling forced local communities to refrain from supporting guerillas by swearing on the Quran and established local self-defence units with some members recruited from former guerrillas deemed as "redeemable".


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Westerling directed eleven operations throughout the campaign. He succeeded in eliminating the insurgency and undermining local support for the Republicans. His actions restored Dutch rule in southern Sulawesi. However, the Netherlands East Indies government and the Dutch Army command soon realised that Westerling's notoriety led to growing public criticism. In April 1947 the Dutch government instituted an official inquiry of his controversial methods. Raymond Westerling was put on the sidelines. He was relieved of his duties in November 1948.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: France had major counterinsurgency wars in its colonies in Indochina and Algeria. McClintock cited the basic points of French doctrine as:


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Much of the thinking was informed by the work of earlier leading French theoreticians of colonial warfare and counterinsurgency, Marshals Bugeaud, Gallieni and Lyautey.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: While McClintock cites the 1894 Algerian governor, Jules Cambon, as saying "By destroying the administration and local government we were also suppressing our means of action. ...The result is that we are today confronted by a sort of human dust on which we have no influence and in which movements take place which are unknown to us." Cambon's philosophy, however, did not seem to survive into the Algerian War of Independence(1954–1962), .


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Post-WWII doctrine, as in Indochina, took a more drastic view of ""Guerre révolutionnaire"", which presented an ideological and global war, with a commitment to total war. Countermeasures, in principle, needed to be both political and military; "No measure was too drastic to meet the new threat of revolution." French forces taking control from the Japanese did not seem to negotiate seriously with nationalist elements in what was to become Vietnam, and reaped the consequences of overconfidence at Điện Biên Phủ.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: It occurred to various commanders that soldiers trained to operate as guerrillas would have a strong sense of how to fight guerrillas. Before the partition of French Indochina, French "Groupement de commandos mixtes aéroportés" (GCMA), led by Roger Trinquier, took on this role, drawing on French experience with the Jedburgh teams. GCMA, operating in Tonkin and Laos under French intelligence, was complemented by Commandos Nord Viêt-Nam in the North. In these missions, the SOF teams lived and fought with the locals. One Laotian, who became an officer, was Vang Pao, who was to become a general in Hmong and Laotian operations in Southeast Asia while the US forces increased their role.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: The French counterinsurgency in colonial Algeria was a savage one. The 1957 Battle of Algiers resulted in 24,000 detentions, with most tortured and an estimated 3,000 killed. It may have broken the National Liberation Front infrastructure in Algiers, but it also killed off French legitimacy as far as "hearts and minds" went.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Counterinsurgency requires an extremely capable intelligence infrastructure endowed with human sources and deep cultural knowledge. This contributes to the difficulty that foreign, as opposed to indigenous, powers have in counterinsurgency operations.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: One of France's most influential theorists was Roger Trinquier. The "Modern Warfare" counterinsurgency strategy described by Trinquier, who had led anti-communist guerrillas in Indochina, was a strong influence on French efforts in Algeria.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Trinquier's view was that torture had to be extremely focused and limited, but many French officers considered its use corrosive to its own side. There were strong protests among French leaders: the Army's most decorated officer, General Jacques Pâris de Bollardière, confronted General Jacques Massu, the commander of French forces in the Battle of Algiers, over orders institutionalizing torture, as "an unleashing of deplorable instincts which no longer knew any limits." He issued an open letter condemning the danger to the army of the loss of its moral values "under the fallacious pretext of immediate expediency", and was imprisoned for sixty days.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: As some of the French Army protested, other parts increased the intensity of their approach, which led to an attempted military coup against the French Fourth Republic itself. Massu and General Raoul Salan led a 1958 coup in Algiers, demanding a new Republic under Charles de Gaulle. When de Gaulle's policies toward Algeria, such as a 1961 referendum on Algerian self-determination, did not meet the expectations of the colonial officers, Salan formed the underground Organisation armée secrète (OAS), a right-wing terrorist group, whose actions included a 1962 assassination attempt against de Gaulle himself.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: France has had taken Barnett's Leviathan role in Chad and Ivory Coast, the latter on two occasions, most significantly in 2002–2003. The situation with France and Ivory Coast is not a classic FID situation, as France attacked Ivorian forces that had provoked UN peacekeepers.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Another noteworthy instance of counterinsurgency in West Africa is the Nigerian Armed Forces experience against the Boko Haram insurgency. Military operations against the group occur predominantly in the far northeast areas of Nigeria. These operations have been ongoing since June 2011, and have greatly expanded within the Lake Chad Basin sub-region of West Africa.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: There have been many insurgencies in India since its independence in 1947. The Kashmir insurgency, which started by 1989, was brought under control by the Indian government and violence has been reduced. A branch of the Indian Army known as the Rashtriya Rifles (RR) was created for the sole purpose of destroying the insurgency in Kashmir, and it has played a major role in doing so. The RR was well supported by Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and state government police.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: The Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS) is located in the northeastern town of Vairengte in the Indian state of Mizoram. Personnel from countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Bangladesh and Vietnam have attended this school. High quality graduate level training by a joint staff of highly trained special operators at Camp Taji Phoenix Academy and the Counterinsurgency Centre For Excellence is provided in India as well as many Indian Officers.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Portugal's experience in counterinsurgency resulted from the "pacification" campaigns conducted in the Portuguese African and Asian colonies in the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: In the 1960s and early 1970s, Portugal conducted large-scale counterinsurgency operations in Angola, Portuguese Guinea and Mozambique against independentist guerrillas supported by the Eastern Bloc and China, as well by some Western countries. Although these campaigns are collectively known as the "Portuguese Colonial War", there were in fact three different ones: the Angolan Independence War, the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence and the Mozambican War of Independence. The situation was unique in that small armed forces – those of Portugal – were able to conduct three counterinsurgency wars at the same time, in three different theatres of operations separated by thousands of kilometers. For these operations, Portugal developed its own counterinsurgency doctrine.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: The most familiar Russian counterinsurgency is the War in Afghanistan from 1979–1989. However, throughout the history of Czarist Russian, the Russians fought many counterinsurgencies as new Caucasian and Central Asian territory were occupied. It was in these conflicts that the Russians developed the following counterinsurgency tactics:


title: Counterinsurgency

text: These tactics, generally speaking, were carried over into Soviet use following the 1917 revolution for the most part, save for the integration of political-military command. This tactical blueprint saw use following the First and Second World Wars in Dagestan, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Siberia, Lithuania and Ukraine. This doctrine was ultimately shown to be inadequate in The Soviet War in Afghanistan, mostly due to insufficient troop commitment, and in the Wars in Chechnya.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: The United States has conducted counterinsurgency campaigns during the Philippine–American War, the Vietnam War, the post-2001 War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in increased interest in counterinsurgency within the American military, exemplified by the 2006 publication of a new joint Army Field Manual 3-24/Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3-33.5, "Counterinsurgency", which replaced the documents separately published by the Army and Marine Corps 20–25 years prior. Views of the doctrine contained in the manual have been mixed. The 2014 version of FM 3-24/MCWP 3–33.5 acquired a new title, "Insurgencies and Countering Insurgencies", it consists of three main parts,


title: Counterinsurgency

text: In the recent conflicts the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) has been increasingly involved conducting special operations especially the training and development of other states' military and security forces. This is known in the special operations community as foreign internal defense. It was announced 14 January 2016 that 1,800 soldiers from the 101st's Headquarters and its 2nd Brigade Combat Team will deploy soon on regular rotations to Baghdad and Erbil to train and advise Iraqi Army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces who are expected in the coming months to move toward Mosul, the Islamic State's de facto headquarters in Iraq.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: The 101st Airborne Division will serve an integral role in preparing Iraqi ground troops to expel the Islamic State group from Mosul, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the division's soldiers during a January 2016 visit to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the 101st Airborne Division that "The Iraqi and Peshmerga forces you will train, advise and assist have proven their determination, their resiliency, and increasingly, their capability, but they need you to continue building on that success, preparing them for the fight today and the long hard fight for their future. They need your skill. They need your experience."


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Foreign internal defense policymaking has subsequently aided in Iraqi successes in reclaiming Tikrit, Baiji, Ramadi, Fallujah, and Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.


title: Counterinsurgency

text: Recent evaluations of U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan have yielded mixed results. A comprehensive study by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction concluded that "the U.S. government greatly overestimated its ability" to use COIN and stabilization tactics for long term success. The report found that "successes in stabilizing Afghan districts rarely lasted longer than the physical presence of coalition troops and civilians." These findings are corroborated by scholarly studies of U.S. counterinsurgency activities in Afghanistan, which determined that backlashes by insurgents and the local population were common.


title: Cloud iridescence

text: Cloud iridescence or irisation is a colorful optical phenomenon that occurs in a cloud and appears in the general proximity of the Sun or Moon. The colors resemble those seen in soap bubbles and oil on a water surface. It is a type of photometeor. This fairly common phenomenon is most often observed in altocumulus, cirrocumulus, lenticular, and cirrus clouds. They sometimes appear as bands parallel to the edge of the clouds. Iridescence is also seen in the much rarer polar stratospheric clouds, also called nacreous clouds.


title: Cloud iridescence

text: The colors are usually pastel, but can be very vivid or mingled together, sometimes similar to mother-of-pearl. When appearing near the Sun, the effect can be difficult to spot as it is drowned in the Sun's glare. This may be overcome by shielding the sunlight with one's hand or hiding it behind a tree or building. Other aids are dark glasses, or observing the sky reflected in a convex mirror or in a pool of water.


title: Cloud iridescence

text: Irisations are named after the Greek goddess Iris, goddess of rainbows and messenger of Zeus and Hera to the mortals below.


title: Cloud iridescence

text: Iridescent clouds are a diffraction phenomenon caused by small water droplets or small ice crystals individually scattering light. Larger ice crystals do not produce iridescence, but can cause halos, a different phenomenon.


title: Cloud iridescence

text: Irisation is caused by very uniform water droplets diffracting light (within 10 degrees from the Sun) and by first order interference effects (beyond about 10 degrees from the Sun). It can extend up to 40 degrees from the Sun.


title: Cloud iridescence

text: If parts of clouds contain small water droplets or ice crystals of similar size, their cumulative effect is seen as colors. The cloud must be optically thin, so that most rays encounter only a single droplet. Iridescence is therefore mostly seen at cloud edges or in semi-transparent clouds, while newly forming clouds produce the brightest and most colorful iridescence. When the particles in a thin cloud are very similar in size over a large extent, the iridescence takes on the structured form of a corona, a bright circular disk around the Sun or Moon surrounded by one or more colored rings.


title: Guido Rodríguez

text: Guido Rodríguez (born 12 April 1994) is an Argentine professional footballer who plays as a defensive midfielder for La Liga club Real Betis and the Argentina national team.


title: Guido Rodríguez

text: Rodríguez began his career with River Plate, whom he debuted for in 2014. He stayed with the club until 2016. He struggled for playing time, only managing to appear in sixteen league matches and twice in the Copa Argentina. Rodríguez also spent time on loan with Defensa y Justicia in 2016, managing fifteen league appearances.


title: Guido Rodríguez

text: In the summer of 2016, Rodríguez joined Mexican side Club Tijuana. He made 39 league appearances and scored five goals.


title: Guido Rodríguez

text: On 7 July 2017, Rodríguez joined Club América in a reported $7 million deal, reuniting with former Tijuana manager Miguel Herrera.


title: Guido Rodríguez

text: On 9 June 2017, Rodríguez earned his first call-up with the Argentina national team for the friendly match against Brazil in Melbourne. He came on as a substitute for Paulo Dybala in Argentina’s 1–0 win.


title: Guido Rodríguez

text: He scored his first international goal in Argentina's second group match of the 2021 Copa América on 18 June 2021, the only goal in a 1–0 victory against Uruguay.


title: Lath and plaster

text: Lath and plaster is a building process used to finish mainly interior dividing walls and ceilings. It consists of narrow strips of wood (laths) which are nailed horizontally across the wall studs or ceiling joists and then coated in plaster. The technique derives from an earlier, more primitive process called wattle and daub.


title: Lath and plaster

text: Lath and plaster largely fell out of favour in the U.K. after the introduction of plasterboard in the 1930s. In Canada and the United States, wood lath and plaster remained in use until the process was replaced by transitional methods followed by drywall (the North American term for plasterboard) in the mid-twentieth century.


title: Lath and plaster

text: The wall or ceiling finishing process begins with wood or metal laths. These are narrow strips of wood, extruded metal, or split boards, nailed horizontally across the wall studs or ceiling joists. Each wall frame is covered in lath, tacked at the studs. Wood lath is typically about wide by long by thick. Each horizontal course of lath is spaced about away from its neighboring courses. Metal lath is available in by sheets.


title: Lath and plaster

text: In Canada and the United States the laths were generally sawn, but in the United Kingdom and its colonies, riven or split hardwood laths of random lengths and sizes, were often used. Early American examples featured split beam construction, as did examples put up in rural areas of the U.S. and Canada well into the second half of the 19th century. Splitting the timber along its grain greatly improved the laths' strength and durability. As Americans and Canadians expanded west, saw mills were not always available to create neatly planed boards and the first crop of buildings in any new western or northern settlement would be put up with split beam lath. In some areas of the U.K. reed mat was also used as a lath.


title: Lath and plaster

text: Temporary lath guides are then placed vertically to the wall, usually at the studs. Lime or gypsum plaster is then applied, typically using a wooden board as the application tool. The applier drags the board upward over the wall, forcing the plaster into the gaps between the lath and leaving a layer on the front the depth of the temporary guides, typically about . A helper feeds new plaster onto the board, as the plaster is applied in quantity. When the wall is fully covered, the vertical lath "guides" are removed, and their "slots" are filled in, leaving a fairly uniform undercoat.


title: Lath and plaster

text: In three coat plastering it is standard to apply a second layer in the same fashion, leaving about of rough, sandy plaster (called a "brown coat" or "browning" (UK)). A smooth, white finish coat goes on last. After the plaster is completely dry, the walls are ready to be painted. In this article's photo ("lath seen from the back...") the curls of plaster are called "keys" and are necessary to keep the plaster on the lath. Traditional lime based mortar/plaster often incorporates horsehair which reinforces the plasterwork, thereby helping to prevent the keys from breaking away.


title: Lath and plaster

text: In addition to wood lath, various types of metal lath began to be used toward the end of the 19th century. Metal lath is categorized according to weight, type of ribbing, and whether the lath is galvanized or not. Metal lathing was spaced across a center, attached by tie wires using lathers' nippers. Sometimes, the mesh was dimpled to be self-furring.


title: Lath and plaster

text: In use as early as 1900, rock lath (also known as "button board," "plaster board" or "gypsum-board lath"), is a type of gypsum wall board (essentially an early form of drywall) with holes spaced regularly to provide a 'key' for wet plaster. Rock lath was typically produced in sheets sized . The purpose of the four-foot length is so that the sheet of lath exactly spans three interstud voids (overlapping half a stud at each end of a four-stud sequence in standard construction), the studs themselves being spaced apart on center (United States building code standard measurements). By the late 1930s, rock lath was the primary method used in residential plastering.


title: Lath and plaster

text: Lath and plaster methods have mostly been replaced with modern drywall or plasterboard, which is faster and less expensive to install, and much less susceptible to settlement and vibration.


title: Lath and plaster

text: One continued advantage of using traditional lath is for ornamental or unusual shapes. For instance, building a rounded wall would be difficult if drywall were used exclusively, as drywall is not flexible enough to allow tight radii. Wire mesh, often used for exterior stucco, is also found in combination or replacement of lath and plaster which serves similar purpose.


title: Lath and plaster

text: Traditional lath and plaster (including rock and metal lath varieties) has superior sound-proofing qualities when used with lime or gypsum plaster, which is denser than modern drywall.


title: Lath and plaster

text: In many historic buildings lath and plaster ceilings play a major role for the prevention of fire spread. They are critical to the protection of horizontal elements such as timber joisted floors, including the flooring on top, which in terms of fire performance is often in a poor condition due to the presence of gaps.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: I'm Not Ashamed is a 2016 American biographical drama film directed by Brian Baugh and based on the journals of Rachel Scott, the first victim of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Columbine, Colorado. Scott, played by Masey McLain, serves as the protagonist of the film; the story of both gunmen, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, is intertwined with hers. The film was distributed by Pure Flix Entertainment. It received negative reviews from critics and audiences. It performed poorly at the box office as well, with revenue of $2.1 million compared to the $1.5 million budget of the film.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: In Littleton, Colorado, a young Rachel Joy Scott witnesses her father leave her family in the middle of the night. Her mother then struggles financially and encourages her children to pray for financial help. Rachel begins to become more spiritual in embracing her Christian faith.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: By 1998, Rachel is a sophomore at Columbine High School; she becomes rebellious and begins sneaking out to hang out with her friends, Madison, Gabby, and Celine. During the summer, Rachel's mother sends her to her cousins in Louisiana, where her spirituality grows. The next year, on the first day of school, Rachel witnesses the jocks picking on Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Eric then threatens to harm them.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: Later that year, Rachel begins to get involved with the head of the drama club, Alex Dickerson, and during a rehearsal, the two kiss. Later on, at a breakthrough meeting, Rachel meets Nathan Ballard, a homeless youth whose mother is a heroin addict. With Rachel's help, Nathan is able to be put up at another kid's house. Nathan is grateful.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: One day, Rachel's stepfather, Larry, finds a beer bottle from a party in the car, and Rachel loses her right to the car, becoming rebellious again. At the first performance of the school play, Nathan arrives and begins to fight with Alex, embarrassing Rachel. At a party that night, Rachel discovers Alex cheating on her with Madison. She then begins to be bullied more often by others and even considers suicide at one point. However, with Nathan's encouragement, Rachel turns back to her faith and inspires other Christian students to not give up hope, despite being bullied. Meanwhile, Eric and Dylan plan their revenge on the school.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: One day, Rachel tries to help Celine with family issues but is rebuffed. At prom, she reconciles with Rachel, revealing that she has issues with her mother. Not long after, Alex tries to reconcile with Rachel, but she declines his apology.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: On April 20, 1999, Rachel reconciles with Madison, and the two make plans to hang out the next day. At lunch, Rachel has an emotional conversation with a fellow student, Dave Rogers, about family issues. Rachel calms him by saying that everything happens for a reason. Just then, Eric and Dylan come out of the parking lot and begin shooting at Rachel and Richard Costaldo. Richard is knocked unconscious, while Rachel struggles to get away. Eric and Dylan corner her, and Eric asks her if she still believes in God, and when Rachel tells him that she does, he shoots her. The assailants then storm the school, killing 11 other students and one teacher before taking their own lives. In the aftermath, U.S. President Bill Clinton (via archive footage) addresses the nation that the prayers of the American people are with Littleton, but also says that citizens must do more to reach out to our children teach them to express anger and resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: All of Rachel's friends pay tribute to her after the shooting. At Rachel's funeral, Nathan gives a eulogy, stating that he always loved her.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: Sometime after, Rachel's mother finds a note on a dresser in their house, that Rachel had written years before. The note states that she will one day "touch millions of people's hearts".


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: The film was based on the book "The Journals of Rachel Scott", by Debra Klingsporn, and Beth Nimmo, mother of Rachel Scott, who was one of the executive producers of the film. Benny Proffitt, Christian author, speaker and co-founder of Christian youth group, First Priority, oversaw the creation of the film and helped to ensure the integrity of the story throughout the film's production.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: No police or FBI reports, nor any eyewitness reports, mentions the killers having said anything to Rachel before her death. Police and FBI investigations as well as abundant amount of evidence shows that Scott was shot from afar without any conversation taking place.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: The movie further shows Richard Castaldo, the student shot directly alongside Rachel and who only survived the attack by feigning death, later recalled hearing Rachel weeping as she curled into a ball upon the grass, before hearing a final gunshot as Harris and Klebold approached them. This coincides with how Castaldo described the events.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: The film was also criticized for suggesting that Klebold and Harris were influenced in their actions because the school taught evolution instead of creation.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: In October 2015, an official trailer for the film that was uploaded to YouTube by Pure Flix was removed, and the Pure Flix channel suspended. As a result, the producers of the film accused YouTube of an anti-Christian bias, and claimed that they were not "provided with any clear explanation or substantiation" of why the trailer was removed, though they speculated that it may have been because of a Change.org petition saying it glorified the shooting. YouTube stated that the trailer was flagged by the community, and noted that due to the volume of reports they receive, they sometimes make the wrong call when such mass-flaggings occur.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: The film has since been released on DVD, including a German version in 2017 and a French version in 2020.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: The film opened in 505 theaters on October 21, 2016, and played at 516 theaters in its widest release. Its lifetime box-office take was $2,082,980.


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: The film was panned by critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 20% based on 10 reviews, with an average rating of 4.15/10. On Metacritic, the film received a score of 31 out of 100, based on 6 reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".


title: I'm Not Ashamed

text: Jordan Hoffman of "The Guardian" gave the film a rating of two out of five stars, writing: "To use the senseless death of a school shooting victim to promote one's warped political agenda is, to use a trendy term, deplorable", although he praised McLain's portrayal of Rachel Scott, saying she was the film's "saving grace" and "a terrific, warm and engaging performer". Vadim Rizov of "The A.V. Club" gave the film a grade of "D+", calling it "just another vehicle for a series of scenes in which devout characters remind each other that God has it all under control" and that "the political implications are very unsavory". Noel Murray of the "Los Angeles Times" noted that, while the film placed "a welcome emphasis on accepting people for who they are, [...] the forced ironies of having infamous teen mass-murderers interact with the heroine feels more than a little exploitative." Felix Vasquez Jr. of Cinema Crazed also referred to the film as "exploitative", writing: "I'm sure in reality Rachel Joy Scott was a nice person with good intentions and a fine heart. I just wish we could hear her story without an agenda attached to it."


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: Anthony “Tony Jack” Joseph Giacalone (January 9, 1919 – February 23, 2001), also known as Tony Jocks, was a Sicilian-American organized crime figure in Detroit. He served as a capo in the Detroit Partnership, and later as a street boss. In terms of Mafia organization, he was listed by the FBI in 1963 as one of the “Big Men” and deemed an administrator or heir apparent. He came to public notice during the 1970s investigations into the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, as he was one of two Mafia members – the other being Anthony Provenzano – that Hoffa had arranged to meet on the day he disappeared. In 1976, Giacalone was sentenced to 10 years in prison for tax evasion. He died of natural causes on February 23, 2001.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: Giacalone was born on January 9, 1919, on the Eastside of Detroit. He was born to Sicilian immigrant parents, the oldest son of seven siblings. He often helped his father, Giacomo, sell produce from the back of a horse-drawn wagon in the Indian Village section of Detroit. He began to aspire to work in organized crime after seeing the wealth its leaders had, in contrast to the meager living his father earned. He particularly looked up to his father's relative Salvatore "Sam" Catalanotte, a leading figure in Detroit's growing Italian underworld. Giacalone was charged with his first criminal offense at the age of 18, the first of multiple run-ins with the law.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: By the time he was in his 30s, he was working as a pickup man in the local numbers racket, run by Peter Licavoli, and as collector of delinquent gambling debts for Joe Zerilli. Both of these men were highly respected in local crime organizations and they helped protect Giacalone from the law. Between 1950 and 1952 he was arrested multiple times for various gambling offenses, but avoided prosecution. In August 1954, he had his first conviction after 14 arrests. He was sentenced to 8 months in jail and ordered to pay court costs. After that stint in jail he served another 7 days in jail for refusing to testify before the grand jury investigating gambling in the Detroit area.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: Giacalone gained national fame in the 1970s with the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. Prior to then, there had been growing tension between Hoffa and several Mafia members, who opposed his plans to return to prominence in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The latter included Giacalone, Anthony Provenzano and Giacalone's brother Vito. Despite the mounting strain between the two groups, it appears as though there were never any public displays of ill will or malicious intent; though he, along with his brother Vito, was allegedly involved in a plot gone awry to rob a safe belonging to Hoffa in Washington D.C. On July 30, 1975, Hoffa, who had mentioned his plans to acquaintances and family members to meet with Giacalone and Provenzano at 2:00 p.m. at the Machus Red Fox restaurant parking lot in Bloomfield Township, a Detroit suburb; was never seen again. It has been posited that Giacolone may have been motivated by the fact that Hoffa would not acquiesce to Mafia demands and retire. Though Giacalone was suspected of being involved in a conspiracy to murder Hoffa, Giacalone and Provenzano, who denied having scheduled any such meeting or appointment with Hoffa, were found not to have been near the restaurant that afternoon. In 1976, Giacalone was sentenced to 10 years in prison for tax evasion at FCI, Oxford, Wisconsin.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: Giacalone died on February 23, 2001, aged 82. He had been admitted to St. John's Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit for heart failure and complications arising from kidney disease. He was buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Southfield, Michigan.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: On August 9, 1954, Giacalone was arrested for the bribery of a patrolman on the racket squad of the Detroit Police Department. Giacalone offered $200 a month in return for information regarding any possible gambling raids. He was sentenced to 8 months in jail in addition to a $500 fine. He was arrested for a similar offense in June 1963, bribing Lieutenant James W. Thomas with $50 a month to look the other way in regard to a numbers gambling operation. This arrest, his fifteenth, led to an investigation of his mafia-related activities. Giacalone was charged with bribery conspiracy, but was freed on $7,500 bond. This sudden conviction led Detroit Police Commissioner George Edwards to believe that Giacalone was not only the boss of the numbers racket in southeastern Michigan, but also the head of the Detroit Mafia. Edwards later testified in front of the Senate's permanent investigations subcommittee in October 1963, and identified Giacalone as the Mafia gambling boss of the Detroit area. In November 1963, Giacalone and his brother, Vito Giacalone, were indicted in a Washington tax evasion hearing. The brothers received over $40,000 as fake sales representatives of two companies also indicted in the testimony. Giacalone's hearing in 1964 for bribing Lt. Thomas caused quite a stir within the legal system. It was originally set for February 28, 1964, before being pushed later into 1965. Judge Joseph A. Gillis, who was assigned to Giacalone's case, felt that Edwards’ previous public assertions about Giacalone were not fair to his trial.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: Giacalone was finally ordered to stand trial in July 1965 for his charges related to the bribery of Lt. Thomas. As of January 16, 1966, Giacalone had been arrested 15 times, and convicted only once, which was the bribery case that had been to court 41 times and heard by six judges, but still had not been to trial. This case took a turn in March 1966 when Lt. Thomas admitted to the jury that he had lied and given false testimony about where he had written reports about the alleged bribes from Giacalone. The next month, Giacalone's co-defendant, Harrison “Chink” Brown, had been dismissed due to lack of evidence about his involvement in the alleged bribe. Less than a week later, Giacalone and another co-defendant, Claude E. Williams, were found not guilty by a jury after a 2.5 hour deliberation. Lt. Thomas was ultimately suspended from his position with the Detroit Police Department, but was later reinstated in July of that same year.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: In July 1966, Giacalone along with Dominic P. “Fats” Corrado were arrested in Montreal due to entering Canada illegally. They were deported back to the United States shortly thereafter from Windsor, and were barred from the country. In May 1967, Giacalone agreed to answer four questions for George E. Bowles, the Grand Juror of Wayne County, in exchange for no jail time. The questions concerned any possible business Giacalone may have conducted with Paul Quaglia, a Detroit policeman. Giacalone refused to answer one of the questions, and ultimately was indicted and spent a week in jail. In March 1968, Giacalone, with his brother Vito, was among 127 people arrested during a raid of a gambling operation in Detroit Two months later, they were also arraigned on charges regarding a large-scale loanshark racket, which included the conspiracy to extort. Only a week later, Giacalone was charged with more misdemeanor offenses regarding illegal gun possession. He was found guilty on these charges in August 1968, but was only put on probation and fined instead of jail time because he was described as a “family man” in his defense. Giacalone was found guilty of blackjack possession in November 1968, he was held on a $5,000 bond and was sentenced to 4.5 to 5 years in prison the following January. Less than a week later in November, Giacalone was indicted with 11 other men on seven counts of federal offenses regarding their alleged loansharking operation, he was later found innocent with his brother in October 1969.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: While Giacalone was free on bond regarding his blackjack charges, a warrant was issued in February 1969 for an alleged gambling operation in addition to bribery, these charges were dropped in November 1969. The Giacalone brothers were indicted on three counts each of federal income tax evasion in January 1972. These charges were dismissed later that year in June, but this was overturned by the Circuit Court of Appeals in May 1973. The trials began in March 1974, and they were again acquitted the next month. About a year later in April 1975, Giacalone was again indicted for tax evasion between 1968 and 1971. In May 1975, Giacalone was arrested and indicted in Detroit for mail fraud and conspiracy, he was acquitted of these charges in September 1976.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: Giacalone's name blew up in newspapers nationwide in the summer of 1975, regarding the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. Giacalone was allegedly supposed to meet with Hoffa on the day of his disappearance, but Giacalone denied this. Giacalone was quizzed by authorities for any connections to Hoffa's disappearance.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: In June 1976, Giacalone was sentenced to ten years in prison in addition to a $30,000 fine for tax evasion. He posted bond despite the Assistant United States attorney labeling him as a “danger to the community”.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: The Luxurious Hotel Gotham was declared “the finest hotel in the country owned and operated by colored,” and figures like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Sammy Davis Jr. filled the Gotham's long list of visitors. John White (one of the Gotham's owners) was a gambling man involved in alternative forms of earning money. Soon after its opening, the Gotham became known as “the fortress of the numbers racket in Detroit”. At this time, Tony Giacalone was Detroit's boss of the numbers racket, thus it is hardly surprising that his unlisted telephone number was contained in White's personal directory. White's numbers operation was wildly successful because Giacalone and the Mafia supplied the daily lottery's winning number combinations, gambling paraphernalia, but most importantly protection from law enforcement and any other trouble. Giacalone himself was recorded on wire-tap bribing police officers for information on upcoming gambling raids at his establishments like the Gotham. Although this earned Giacalone 8 months in the Detroit House of Corrections and a $500 fine (roughly $5,000 today), it did little to hinder the progress of numbers operations like White's and rackets like Giacalone's.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: The Gotham's penthouse, reserved exclusively for gambling, saw policemen, politicians, and other wealthy individuals come and go on a daily basis. Even after the Gotham officially closed for business in 1962, White's numbers operation continued. This served as an opportunity to conduct a Federal raid, which was carried out that November. Officials discovered, among many other things, that the Gotham raked in over $21 million annually (equivalent to $166 million today). Unfortunately for Federal officials, despite arresting and later convicting 41 people including John White, the only link uncovered between Giacalone and the Gotham was that of his phone number. This served little purpose to authorities other than to confirm what they already knew; the mafia assisted numbers operators in Detroit.


title: Anthony Giacalone

text: He was played by Patrick Gallo in Martin Scorsese's 2019 film "The Irishman". In the film, Anthony Giacalone's role is more understated, as a character he does not have a significant or essential role. The movie chooses to ignore the FBI's interest in him as a suspect in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.


title: Referee (association football)

text: In association football, the referee is the person responsible for interpreting and enforcing the Laws of the Game during a match. The referee is the final decision-making authority on all facts connected with play, and is the match official with the authority to start and stop play and impose disciplinary action against players and coaches during a match.


title: Referee (association football)

text: At most levels of play the referee is assisted by two assistant referees (formerly known as linesmen), who advise the referee on whether the ball leaves the playing area and any infringements of the Laws of the Game occurring outside of the view of the referee. The final decision on any decision of fact rests with the referee who has authority to overrule an assistant referee. At higher levels of play the referee may also be assisted by a fourth official who supervises the teams' technical areas and assists the referee with administrative tasks, and, at the very highest levels, additional assistant referees and/or video assistant referees. Referees and other game officials are licensed and trained by its member national organisations.


title: Referee (association football)

text: Referees and assistant referees are regulated at a national level. FIFA requires that each national organisation establish a referees committee composed of former officials that has authority over refereeing in that territory. FIFA also mandate that referees pass tests to show sufficient physical fitness and knowledge of the Laws of the Game, as well as an annual medical. Generally, referees are required to have greater experience in order to officiate higher level matches (see, for example, the multiple tiers of refereeing in England). The most elite officials, those who are permitted to officiate international games, are listed on the FIFA International Referees List.


title: Referee (association football)

text: Referees wear a kit distinguishing themselves from the players. Usually this comprises a shirt of a different colour to the players of both teams.


title: Referee (association football)

text: In the early 20th century, referees wore a blazer rather than a shirt similar to that of the players. Traditionally that uniform was almost always all black, unless one of the teams was wearing a very dark shirt in which case the referee would wear another colour (usually red) to distinguish themself from both teams.


title: Referee (association football)

text: At the 1994 World Cup finals, new shirts were introduced that gave officials a choice of burgundy, yellow or white, and at the same time the creation of the Premier League in England saw referees wear green jerseys: both changes were motivated by television considerations. Since then, most referees have worn either yellow or black, but the colours and styles adopted by individual associations vary greatly. For international contests under the supervision of FIFA, Adidas uniforms are worn because Adidas is the current sponsor. FIFA allows referees to wear five colours: black, red, yellow, green and blue. Along with the jersey, referees are required to wear black shorts, black socks (with white stripes in some cases), and black shoes. The badge, which displays the referee's license level and year of validity, is often affixed to the left chest pocket.


title: Referee (association football)

text: All referees carry a whistle, a watch, penalty cards, a data wallet with pen and paper, and a coin for determining which team has the choice of ends or kick-off. Most are encouraged to have more than one of each on them in case they drop a whistle or a pen runs out and so on. Often, referees utilise two watches so that they can use one to calculate time lost for stoppages for the purposes of added time. At the highest levels, referees wear a full duplex radio with customised headset to communicate between with their assistants, and assistant referees use electronic flags, which send a signal to the referee when a button is pushed. In matches with goal-line technology, referees will have on their person a device to receive the system's alerts.


title: Referee (association football)

text: Referees use a whistle to help them control matches. The whistle is sometimes needed to stop, start or restart play but should not be used for all stoppages, starts or restarts. FIFA's Laws of the Game document gives guidance as to when the whistle should and should not be used. Overuse of the whistle is discouraged since, as stated in the Laws, "A whistle which is used too frequently unnecessarily will have less impact when it is needed." The whistle is an important tool for the referee along with verbal, body and eye communication.


title: Referee (association football)

text: Before the introduction of the whistle, referees indicated their decisions by waving a white handkerchief. The whistles that were first adopted by referees were made by Joseph Hudson at Mills Munitions in Birmingham, England. The Acme Whistle Company (based at Mills Munitions Factory) first began to mass-produce pea whistles in the 1870s for the Metropolitan Police Force. It is frequently stated the referee's whistle was first used in a game between Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Norfolk in 1878; however the last such fixture known to have taken place between the two clubs was in 1874. The Nottingham Forest account book of 1872 apparently recorded the purchase of an "umpire's whistle" and in 1928 an article by R M Ruck about his playing days in the early 1870s referred to the use of a whistle by umpires to indicate an infringement.


title: Referee (association football)

text: The whistle was not mentioned in the Laws of the Game until 1936 when an IFAB Decision was added as footnote (b) to Law 2, stating "A Referee's control over the players for misconduct or ungentlemanly behaviour commences from the time he enters the field of play, but his jurisdiction in connection with the Laws of the Game commences from the time he blows his whistle for the game to start."


title: Referee (association football)

text: In 2007, when IFAB greatly expanded the Laws of the Game, an Additional Instructions section became available, which is a full page of advice on how and when the whistle should be used as a communication and control mechanism by the referee.


title: Referee (association football)

text: Referees in football were first described by Richard Mulcaster in 1581. In this description of "foteball" he advocates the use of a "judge over the parties". In the modern era, referees are first advocated in English public school football games, notably Eton football in 1845. A match report from Rochdale in 1842 shows their use in a football game between the Bodyguards Club and the Fearnought Club.


title: Referee (association football)

text: In the early years of the codified sport it was assumed that disputes could be adequately settled by discussion between gentlemen players who would never deliberately commit a foul. However, as play became more competitive, the need for officials grew. Initially there existed two umpires, one per team, who could be appealed to with the referee (the game's timekeeper) being "referred" to if the umpires couldn't agree.


title: Referee (association football)

text: The promotion of referees to the dominant position they occupy today, and the reformation of umpires into the linesmen role, occurred as part of a major restructuring of the laws in 1891.


title: Referee (association football)

text: The predominant system of positioning and division of responsibility used by football match officials throughout the world is known as the "Diagonal system of control (DSC)".


title: Referee (association football)

text: The referee has final decision-making authority on all matters. The referee is assisted by two assistant referees who advise the referee. An assistant referee's judgement is enforced only if the referee accepts that judgement, and the referee has the authority to unilaterally overrule an assistant referee. The referee is the only official empowered with starting and stopping play, and meting out disciplinary actions such as cautions or send-offs.


title: Referee (association football)

text: The two assistant referees are instructed by the referee to each patrol half of a single touchline on opposite sides of the field. For example, on a field running north–south, one assistant referee (AR) would run on the eastern touchline from the north goal line to the halfway line, while the other assistant referee would run on the western touchline from the south goal line to the halfway line. In general, the assistant referees' duties would be to indicate (using their flags) when an offside offence has occurred in their half, when a ball has left the pitch, and if a foul has been executed out of the view of the referee (typically in their quadrant of the field). Generally, the ARs will position themselves in line with either the second to last opponent or the ball – whichever is closer to the goal line – to better judge offside infractions. However, the assistant referee will have specific positioning with respect to corner kicks, penalty kicks, and throw-ins.


title: Referee (association football)

text: The referee patrols the length of the field to cover the ground not covered by their two assistants, generally running in a diagonal pattern from the southeast quadrant of the field towards the northwest quadrant; hence the term "diagonal system of control" (DSC). Note that this pattern is not a specific route but a general guideline that should be modified to the style of play, nature of the game, the location of play at a given time, etc. In some cases the referee may even exit the field if it aids in their decision-making ability. The main idea is that the referee and assistants using the DSC should be able to position themselves quickly and easily to observe the important aspects of play (offside, ball in or out of play, goal-scoring opportunities, challenges for the ball) from multiple angles with multiple sets of eyes.


title: Referee (association football)

text: Note that the description above refers to a left diagonal system of control, known as "running a left" or "standard diagonal". If, before the match, the centre referee on this field decides to run from southwest to northeast, then the assistants must position themselves accordingly and the result will be a right diagonal system of control, otherwise referred to as "running a right" or "reverse diagonal".


title: Referee (association football)

text: In many cases in England, referees use more of a 'curve' based on a line running from the edge of the 18 yard box, and when near the centre circle they then curve to a line level with the other 18 yard box line. This is similar to the diagonal system, but with the speed of modern football it is easier to keep up with play. This also helps the referee avoid being in a common "passing lane" through the centre circle itself.


title: Referee (association football)

text: In international matches the left-wing diagonal shown above has been universal since the 1960s. It is now predominant across the world. England until recently was an exception to this convention. Until 1974 referees in the Football League were required to run both diagonals during a match, most opting to run from right wing to right wing in the first half before switching to the left-wing diagonal for the second half. The chief reason for this alternation was to avoid linesmen wearing down the same part of the touchline during matches – this was important given the generally lower quality of pitches at the time. However switching diagonal was also justified in terms of allowing officials to patrol different areas of the field during games. From the 1974–75 season English referees were allowed to run the same diagonal throughout the same match. Most initially opted for the right-wing diagonal although over the years the left-wing diagonal became increasingly popular and the preferred choice of most referees by the early 2000s. From 2007–08 the left-wing diagonal has been mandatory in English professional football although some referees at lower levels still use the opposite approach.


title: Referee (association football)

text: Its implementation as a standard practice for referees is attributed to Sir Stanley Rous, former referee and President of FIFA from 1961 to 1974.


title: Referee (association football)

text: While the Laws of the Game mandate a single referee with assistants as described above, other systems are authorized either experimentally or explicitly by some governing organizations.