title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Horse meat is part of the cuisine of many countries in Europe, but is taboo in some religions and many countries. It is forbidden by Jewish law, because the horse is not a ruminant, nor does it have cloven hooves. Similarly to dogs, eating horses was a taboo for the Castro culture in Northwestern Portugal, and it is still a counter-cultural practice in the region.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Horse meat is forbidden by some sects of Christianity. In 732 CE, Pope Gregory III instructed Saint Boniface to suppress the pagan practice of eating horses, calling it a "filthy and abominable custom". The Christianisation of Iceland in 1000 CE was achieved only when the Church promised that Icelanders could continue to eat horsemeat; once the Church had consolidated its power, the allowance was discontinued. Horsemeat is still popular in Iceland and is sold and consumed in the same way as beef, lamb and pork.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In Islam, opinions vary as to the permissibility of horse meat. Some cite a hadith forbidding it to Muslims, but others doubt its validity and authority. Wild horses and asses are generally seen as halal while domesticated asses are viewed as forbidden. Various Muslim cultures have differed in the attitude in eating the meat. Historically, Turks and Persians have eaten the meat, while in North Africa this is rare.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In Canada, horse meat is legal. Most Canadian horse meat is exported to Continental Europe or Japan. In the United States, sale and consumption of horse meat is illegal in California and Illinois. However, it was sold in the US during WW II, since beef was expensive, rationed and destined for the troops. The last horse meat slaughterhouse in USA was closed in 2007. Nevertheless, discarded leisure, sport and work horses are collected and sold at auctions. They are shipped across the country by transporters to the borders of Canada in the north and Mexico in the south to be sold to horse meat butchers. The issue of horse consumption in the UK and Ireland was raised in 2013 with regards to the 2013 horse meat contamination scandal.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Horse meat is generally avoided in the Balkans, though not Slovenia, as horse is considered to be a noble animal or because eating horse meat is associated with war-time famine. However, it has a small niche market in Serbia.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Of all the taboo meat, human flesh ranks as the most heavily proscribed. In recent times, humans have consumed the flesh of fellow humans in rituals and out of insanity, hatred, or overriding hunger – never as a common part of their diet, but it is thought that the practice was once widespread among all humans.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: The Fore people of Papua New Guinea engaged in funerary cannibalism until the Australian government prohibited the practice in the late 1950s. Cannibalism was how the prion disease kuru spread, though the link wasn't proven until 1967.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Catholics, Lutherans, and Orthodox Christians view themselves as distinctly and categorically separate in substance when they are taking communion, although the bread and wine are believed to become "of the same substance" as the body and blood of Christ before being consumed, they remain bread and wine in all ways to the senses. Catholics refer to this as transubstantiation; the Orthodox believe the change occurs, but hesitate to attempt a description of the mechanism, believing it to be a sacred mystery. Most Protestants and other Christian denominations do not believe that transubstantiation (or any actual physical presence of Jesus in any form) occurs at all.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In Judaism and Samaritism, certain locusts are allowed as food (Leviticus 11:22). Otherwise, insects are not considered kosher foods. Kashrut also requires that practitioners check other foods carefully for insects. In Islam, locusts are considered lawful food and do not require ritual slaughtering.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Honey is concentrated nectar and honeydew which has been regurgitated by bees. It is considered kosher even though honey bees are not, an apparent exception to the normal rule that products of an unclean animal are also unclean. This topic is covered in the Talmud and is explained to be permissible on the grounds that the bee does not originally make the first honey, the flower does, while the bees store and dehydrate the liquid into honey. This is different from royal jelly, which is produced by bees directly and is considered non-kosher.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Kangaroo meat is banned in the U.S. state of California. The ban was first imposed in 1971; a moratorium was put in place in 2007, allowing the importation of the meat, but the ban was re-enacted in 2015.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Islamic law, Judaic law (including Noahide Law), and some laws of some Christians forbid any portion that is cut from a live animal (Genesis 9:4, as interpreted in the Talmud, Sanhedrin 59a). Judaism restricts this prohibition to land animals and birds; fish do not require kosher slaughter, but must first be killed before being eaten. However, in the case of a "ben pekuah" where a live offspring is removed from the mother's womb, these restrictions do not apply.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Examples of the eating of animals that are still alive include eating live seafood, such as "raw oyster on the half shell" and ikizukuri (live fish). Sashimi using live animals has been banned in some countries. Practices such as "Ikizukuri" are prohibited in Judaism under the law forbidding unnecessary pain to animals. However, oysters and clams are not classified as animals according to halakha (Jewish religious law) and thus may be eaten raw by non-Jews according to the Noahide laws.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Monkey brains is a dish consisting of, at least partially, the brain of some species of monkey or ape. In Western popular culture, its consumption is repeatedly portrayed and debated, often in the context of portraying exotic cultures as exceptionally cruel, callous, and/or strange.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Monkeys are revered animals in India, largely because of the monkey god Hanuman. Many Hindus are vegetarian and do not eat any kind of meat, including monkeys. Meat eating Indians also do not kill or eat monkeys. Killing and eating monkeys (or other animals which are considered wild) is a taboo and illegal in India.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In Malagasy culture, lemurs are considered to have souls ("ambiroa") which can get revenge if mocked while alive or if killed in a cruel fashion. Because of this, lemurs, like many other elements of daily life, have been a source of taboos, known locally as "fady", which can be based around stories with four basic principles. A village or region may believe that a certain type of lemur may be the ancestor of the clan. They may also believe that a lemur's spirit may get revenge. Alternatively, the animal may appear as a benefactor. Lemurs are also thought to impart their qualities, good or bad, onto human babies. In general, "fady" extend beyond a sense of the forbidden, but can include events that bring bad luck.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Primate species offered fresh and smoked in 2009 at a wildlife market by Liberia's Cavally River included chimpanzee ("Pan troglodytes"), Diana monkey ("Cercopithecus diana"), putty-nosed monkey ("C. nictitans"), lesser spot-nosed monkey ("C. petaurista"), Campbell's mona monkey ("C. campbelli"), sooty mangabey ("Cercocebus atys"), king colobus ("Colobus polykomos"), olive colobus ("Procolobus verus"), western red colobus ("P. badius").


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Between 1983 and 2002, the Gabon populations of western gorilla ("Gorilla gorilla") and common chimpanzee ("Pan troglodytes") were estimated to have declined by 56%. This decline was primarily caused by the commercial hunting, which was facilitated by the extended infrastructure for logging purposes.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In the late 1990s, fresh and smoked bonobo ("Pan paniscus") carcasses were observed in Basankusu in the Province of Équateur in the Congo Basin.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Some people consider consumption of primates to be close to human cannibalism due to monkeys and apes being close relatives of human beings.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Offal is the internal organs of butchered animals, and may refer to parts of the carcass such as the head and feet ("trotters") in addition to organ meats such as sweetbreads and kidney. Offal is a traditional part of many European and Asian cuisines, including such dishes as the steak and kidney pie in the United Kingdom or "callos a la madrileña" in Spain. Haggis has been Scotland's national dish since the time of Robert Burns. In northeast Brazil, there is a similar dish to haggis called ""buchada"", made with goats' stomach.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Except for heart, tongue (beef), liver (chicken, beef, or pork), and intestines used as natural sausage casings, organ meats consumed in the U.S. tend to be regional or ethnic specialities; for example, tripe as "menudo" or "mondongo" among Latinos and Hispanos, chitterlings in the Southern United States, scrapple on the Eastern Seaboard, fried-brain sandwiches in the Midwest, and beef testicles called Rocky Mountain oysters or "prairie oysters" in the west. In Argentina and other Spanish language countries, bull's testicles are served as "huevos de toro" or 'bull's eggs'.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In some regions, such as the European Union, brains and other organs which can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow disease") and similar diseases have now been banned from the food chain as specified risk materials.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Although eating the stomach of a goat, cow, sheep, or buffalo might be taboo, ancient cheesemaking techniques utilize stomachs (which contain rennet) for turning milk into cheese, a potentially taboo process. Newer techniques for making cheese include a biochemical process with bacterial enzymes similar to rennin and chymosin. This means that the "process" by which cheese is made (and not the cheese itself) is a factor in determining whether it is forbidden or allowed by strict vegetarians.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) data reports pork as the most widely eaten meat in the world. Consumption of pigs is forbidden in Islam, Judaism and certain Christian denominations, such as Seventh-day Adventists. This prohibition is set out in the holy texts of the religions concerned, e.g. Qur'an 2:173, 5:3, 6:145 and 16:115, Leviticus 11:7-8 and Deuteronomy 14:8. Pigs were also taboo in at least three other cultures of the ancient Middle East: the Phoenicians, Egyptians and Babylonians. In some instances, the taboo extended beyond eating pork, and it was also taboo to touch or even look at pigs.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: The original reason for this taboo is debated. Maimonides seems to have thought the uncleanness of pigs was self-evident, but mentions with particular aversion their propensity to eat feces. In the 19th century, some people attributed the pig taboo in the Middle East to the danger of the parasite trichina, but this explanation is now out of favour. James George Frazer suggested that, in ancient Israel, Egypt and Syria, the pig was originally a sacred animal, which for that reason could not be eaten or touched; the taboo survived to a time when the pig was no longer regarded as sacred, and was therefore explained by reference to its being unclean.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: More recently, Marvin Harris posited that pigs are not suited for being kept in the Middle East on an ecological and socio-economical level; for example, pigs are not suited to living in arid climates because they require more water than other animals to keep them cool, and instead of grazing they compete with humans for foods such as grains. As such, raising pigs was seen as a wasteful and decadent practice. Another explanation offered for the taboo is that pigs are omnivorous, not discerning between meat or vegetation in their natural dietary habits. The willingness to consume meat sets them apart from most other domesticated animals which are commonly eaten (cattle, sheep, goats, etc.) who would naturally eat only plants. Mary Douglas has suggested that the reason for the taboo against the pig in Judaism is three-fold: (i) it transgresses the category of ungulates, because it has a split hoof but does not chew the cud, (ii) it eats carrion and (iii) it was eaten by non-Israelites.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Most Lebanese Christians also do not eat pork, although religiously they are allowed to do so. However, because the ancestors of the Lebanese Christians were Phoenicians, they still think that pigs are filthy.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Poppy seeds are used as condiments in many cultures. In Singapore, poppy seeds are classified as "prohibited goods" by the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB).


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: The book of Leviticus in the Bible classifies the rabbit as unclean because it does not have a split hoof, even though it does chew and reingest partially digested material (equivalent to "chewing the cud" among ruminants). The consumption of rabbit is allowed in Sunni Islam, and is popular in several majority-Sunni countries (e.g. Egypt, where it is a traditional ingredient in "molokheyya"), but it is forbidden in the Ja'fari jurisprudence of Twelver Shia Islam.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In most Western cultures, rats and mice are considered either unclean vermin or pets and thus unfit for human consumption, traditionally being seen as carriers of plague.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In Ghana, "Thryonomys swinderianus" locally referred to as "Akrantie", "Grasscutter" and (incorrectly) "Bush rat" is a common food item. The proper common name for this rodent is "Greater Cane Rat", though actually it is not a rat at all and is a close relative of porcupines and guinea pigs that inhabit Africa, south of the Saharan Desert. In 2003, the U.S. barred the import of this and other rodents from Africa because of an outbreak of at least nine human cases of monkeypox, an illness never before been seen in the Western Hemisphere.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Consumption of any sort of rodent, or material originating from rodents, is forbidden in Judaism and Islam.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Islam strictly forbids the consumption of reptiles, such as crocodiles and snakes. Eating reptiles is also forbidden in Judaism. In other cultures, foods such as alligator are treasured as delicacies, and the animals are raised commercially.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In certain versions of Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism, consumption of vegetables of the onion genus are restricted. Adherents believe that these excite damaging passions. Many Hindus discourage eating onion and garlic along with non-vegetarian food during festivals or Hindu holy months of Shrawan, Puratassi and Kartik. However, shunning onion and garlic is not very popular among Hindus as compared to avoiding non-vegetarian foods, so many people do not follow this custom.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Kashmiri Brahmins forbid "strong flavored" foods. This encompasses garlic, onion, and spices such as black pepper and chili pepper, believing that pungent flavors on the tongue inflame the baser emotions.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Jains not only abstain from consumption of meat, but also do not eat root vegetables (such as carrots, potatoes, radish, turnips, etc) as doing so kills the plant and they believe in ahimsa. In the hierarchy of living entities, overwintering plants such as onions are ranked higher than food crops such as wheat and rice. The ability of onions to observe the changing of the seasons and bloom in spring is believed to be an additional 'sense' absent in lower plants. The amount of bad karma generated depends on the number of senses the creature possesses and so it is thought prudent to avoid eating onions. This also means that in some North Indian traditions, effectively all overwintering plants are considered taboo.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Chinese Buddhist cuisine traditionally prohibits garlic, "Allium chinense", asafoetida, shallot, and "Allium victorialis" (victory onion or mountain leek).


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In Yazidism, the eating of lettuce and butter beans is taboo. The Muslim religious teacher and scholar, Falah Hassan Juma, links the sect's belief of evil found in lettuce to its long history of persecution by Muslims and Christians. Historical theory claims one ruthless potentate who controlled the city of Mosul in the 13th century ordered an early Yazidi saint executed. The enthusiastic crowd then pelted the corpse with heads of lettuce.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: The followers of Pythagoras were vegetarians, and "Pythagorean" at one time came to mean "vegetarian". However, their creed prohibited the eating of beans. The reason is unclear: perhaps the flatulence they cause, perhaps as protection from potential favism, but most likely for magico-religious reasons. One legend about Pythagoras' death states that he was killed after he chose not to run through a fava bean field to escape his enemies.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower, while not taboo, may be avoided by observant Jews and other religions due to the possibility of insects or worms hiding within the numerous crevices. Likewise, fruits such as blackberries and raspberries are recommended by kashrut agencies to be avoided as they cannot be cleaned thoroughly enough without destroying the fruit.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: The common Egyptian dish mulukhiyah, a soup whose primary ingredient is jute leaves (which did not have any other culinary purpose), was banned by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah sometime during his reign (996-1021 CE). The ban applied to mulukhiyah, and also to other foodstuffs said to be eaten by Sunnis. While the ban was eventually lifted after the end of his reign, the Druze, who hold Al-Hakim in high regard and give him quasi-divine authority, continue to respect the ban, and do not eat "mulukhiyah" of any kind to this day.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Sunni Islam permits Muslims to consume the flesh of whales that have died of natural causes as there is a famous Sunni hadith which cites Muhammad's approval of such. Whale meat is forbidden (haram) in Shia Islam as whales do not have scales. In much of the world whale meat is not eaten due to the endangerment of whales but it is not traditionally forbidden. In some countries, such as the United Kingdom, it is illegal to import whale meat into the country.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Some religions – including Buddhism, Islam, Jainism, Rastafari movement, Baháʼí Faith, and various branches of Christianity such as the Baptists, the Church of God In Christ, Methodists, the Latter-day Saints, Seventh-day Adventists and the Iglesia ni Cristo – forbid or discourage the consumption of alcoholic beverages.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: The Hebrew Bible describes a Nazirite vow (Numbers 6:1-21) that includes abstinence from alcohol, specifically wine and probably barley beer (according to the Septuagint translation and the Bauer lexicon: "σικερα", from the Akkadian shikaru, for "barley beer)". The New JPS translation is: "wine and any other intoxicant". Other versions such as the NIV prohibit both alcohol and all alcohol derived products such as wine vinegar. There is no general taboo against alcohol in Judaism.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: There are also cultural taboos against the consumption of alcohol, reflected for example in the Teetotalism or Temperance movement. There is also something of a cultural taboo in several countries, against the consumption of alcohol by women during pregnancy for health reasons, as seen, for example, in the Maternity Protection Convention, 2000 by ILO.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Some religions prohibit drinking or eating blood or food made from blood. In Islam the consumption of blood is prohibited ("Haraam"). "Halal" animals should be properly slaughtered to drain out the blood. Unlike in other traditions, this is not because blood is revered or holy, but simply because blood is considered ritually unclean or "Najis", with certain narratives prescribing ablutions (in the case of no availability of water) if contact is made with it. In Judaism all mammal and bird meat (not fish) is salted to remove the blood. Jews follow the teaching in Leviticus, that since "the life of the animal is in the blood" or "blood was reserved for the forgiveness of sins and thus reserved for God", no person may eat (or drink) the blood. Iglesia ni Cristo and Jehovah's Witnesses prohibit eating or drinking any blood.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: According to the Bible, blood is only to be used for special or sacred purposes in connection with worship (Exodus chapters 12, 24, 29, Matthew 26:29 and Hebrews). In the first century, Christians, both former Jews (the Jewish Christians), and new Gentile converts, were in dispute as to which particular features of Mosaic law were to be retained and upheld by them. The Apostolic Decree suggested that, among other things, it was necessary to abstain from consuming blood:


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: "Hot drinks" are taboo for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The term is misleading as the ban is applied exclusively to coffee and tea (i.e. not hot cocoa or herbal teas). The Word of Wisdom, a code of health used by church members, outlines prohibited and allowed substances. While not banned, some Mormons avoid caffeine in general, including cola drinks. Members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church also generally avoid caffeinated drinks.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: There is a widely reported story, possibly apocryphal, that around the year 1600, some Catholics urged Pope Clement VIII to ban coffee, calling it "devil's beverage". After tasting the beverage, the pope is said to have remarked that the drink was "so delicious that it would be a sin to let only misbelievers drink it." (See the History of coffee.)


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: While human breast milk is universally accepted for infant nutrition, some cultures see the consumption of breast milk after weaning as taboo.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: Kashrut, the Jewish food regulations, classify all permissible foods into three categories: meat products, dairy products, and others, which are considered to be neither (including not just vegetable products, but also fish and eggs). A meal or dish may not contain both meat and dairy products. As well, meat and fish may not be cooked together, nor fish and milk, although fish cooked with other dairy products is permitted.


title: Food and drink prohibitions

text: In Italian cuisine, there is a widespread taboo on serving cheese with seafood, although there are several exceptions.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: Reparations for slavery is the application of the concept of reparations to victims of slavery and/or their descendants. There are concepts for reparations in legal philosophy and reparations in transitional justice. Reparations can take numerous forms, including: affirmative action, individual monetary payments, settlements, scholarships, waiving of fees, and systemic initiatives to offset injustices, land-based compensation related to independence, apologies and acknowledgements of the injustices, token measures, such as naming a building after someone, or the removal of monuments and renaming of streets that honor slave owners and defenders of slavery.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: There are instances of reparations for slavery, relating to the Atlantic slave trade, dating back to at least 1783 in North America, with a growing list of modern day examples of reparations for slavery in the United States in 2020 as the call for reparations in the US has been bolstered by protests around police brutality and other cases of systemic racism in the US. Recently in the US, the call for reparations for racism has been made alongside calls for reparations for slavery.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: Despite many calls for reparations, examples of international reparations for slavery consist of recognition of the injustice of slavery and apologies for involvement but no material compensation.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: Slavery ended in the United States in 1865 with the end of the American Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which declared that, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction". At that time, an estimated four million African Americans were set free.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: Within the political sphere, a bill demanding slavery reparations has been proposed at the national level, the "Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act," which former Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) reintroduced to the United States Congress every year from 1989 until his resignation in 2017. As its name suggests, the bill recommended the creation of a commission to study the "impact of slavery on the social, political and economic life of our nation"., however there are cities and institutions which have initiated their own reparations in the US (see for a list).


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 1999, African-American lawyer and activist Randall Robinson, founder of the TransAfrica advocacy organization, wrote that America's history of race riots, lynching, and institutional discrimination have "resulted in $1.4 trillion in losses for African Americans". Economist Robert Browne stated the ultimate goal of reparations should be to "restore the black community to the economic position it would have if it had not been subjected to slavery and discrimination". He estimates a fair reparation value anywhere between $1.4 to $4.7 trillion, or roughly $142,000 () for every black American living today. Other estimates range from $5.7 to $14.2 and $17.1 trillion.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 2014, American journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates published an article titled "The Case for Reparations", which discussed the continued effects of slavery and Jim Crow laws and made renewed demands for reparations. Coates makes reference to Rep. John Conyers Jr.'s aforementioned H.R.40 Bill, pointing out that Congress's failure to pass this bill expresses a lack of willingness to right their past wrongs.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In September 2016, the United Nations' Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent encouraged Congress to pass the aforementioned H.R.40 Bill to study reparations proposals, but the Working Group did not directly endorse any specific reparations proposal. The report noted that there exists a legacy of racial inequality in the United States, explaining that, "Despite substantial changes since the end of the enforcement of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another, continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of African Americans today." The report notes that a "dangerous ideology of white supremacy inhibits social cohesion among the US population".


title: Reparations for slavery

text: The topic of reparations gained renewed attention in 2020 as the Black Lives Matter movement named reparations as one of their policy goals in the United States.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 2020, rapper T.I. supported reparations that would give every African American $1,000,000 and asserted that slavery caused mass incarcerations, poverty and other ills.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: Opposition to slavery reparations is reflected in the general population. In a study conducted by "YouGov" in 2014, only 37% of Americans believed that slaves should have been provided compensation in the form of cash after being freed. Furthermore, only 15% believed that descendants of slaves should receive cash payments. The findings indicated a clear divide between black and white Americans on this issue. The study summarized their findings, noting: "Only 6% of white Americans support cash payments to the descendants of slaves, compared to 59% of black Americans. Similarly, only 19% of whites – and 63% of blacks – support special education and job training programs for the descendants of slaves."


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 2014, in response to Ta-Nehisi Coates's article, "The Case for Reparations", conservative journalist Kevin D. Williamson published an article titled "The Case Against Reparations." In it, Williamson argues: "The people to whom reparations are owed are long dead".


title: Reparations for slavery

text: The African Reparations Movement, also known as ARM UK, was formed in 1993 following the Abuja Proclamation declared at the First Pan-African Conference on Reparations, in Abuja, Nigeria in the same year. The conference was convened by the Organisation of African Unity and the Nigerian government. On 10 May 1993 Bernie Grant MP, tabled a motion in the House of Commons that the House welcomes the proclamation and recognised that the proclamation ""calls upon the international community to recognise that the unprecedented moral debt owed to African people has yet to be paid, and urges all those countries who were enriched by enslavement and colonisation to review the case for reparations to be paid to Africa and to Africans in the Diaspora; acknowledges the continuing painful economic and personal consequences of the exploitation of Africa and Africans in the Diaspora and the racism it has generated; and supports the OAU as it intensifies its efforts to pursue the cause of reparations."" The motion was sponsored by Bernie Grant, Tony Benn, Tony Banks, John Austin-Walker, Harry Barnes, and Gerry Bermingham. An additional forty-six Labour Party MPs signed to support the motion including future leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: The Abuja Proclamation called for national reparations committees to be set up throughout Africa and the Diaspora. Bernie Grant formed ARM UK as the co-founder and chairperson, with a core group including: secretary, Sam Walker; treasurer Linda Bellos and trustees Patrick Wilmott, Stephen Small, Dorothy Kuya and Hugh Oxley. The aims of the organisation were to:


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 2004, controversial reparations lawyer Ed Fagan launched a class action lawsuit against insurance market Lloyd's of London for their role in insuring slave ships involved in the transatlantic slave trade. The case was unsuccessful.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: On 27 November 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a statement expressing "deep sorrow" for Britain's role in the slave trade, saying it been "profoundly shameful". The statement was criticized by reparations activists in Britain, with Esther Stanford stating that Blair should have issued "an apology of substance" which would then be followed by "various reparative measures including financial compensation." Blair issued another apology in 2007 after meeting with Ghanaian President John Kufuor.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: On 24 August 2007, then-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone publicly apologized for London's role in the transatlantic slave trade during a commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the passing of the 1807 Slave Trade Act. In the speech, Livingston called on the British government to pass legislation to created a UK-wide Annual Slavery Memorial Day, which would commemorate slavery.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 1999, the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission called for the West to pay $777 trillion to Africa within five years.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In September 2001, the United Nations sponsored the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa. The Durban Review Conference sponsored a resolution stating that the West owed reparations to Africa due to the "racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance" that the Atlantic slave trade caused. Leaders of several African nations supported this resolution. The former Minister of Justice of Sudan, Ali Mohamed Osman Yassin, stated that the slave trade is responsible for the current problems plaguing Africa.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: Having attained its independence from France in 1804 through a brutal and costly war, the case for reparations to Haiti was tenable. Shortly thereafter, France would demand that the newly founded Haiti pay the French government and slaveholders 90 million francs for the "theft" of the slaves' own lives (Compensated emancipation) and the land that they had turned into profitable sugar and coffee-producing plantations in order to formally recognize the fledgling nation's independence. This debt was financed by French banks and the American Citibank, and finally paid off in 1947.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: This century long extortion inflicted upon Haiti by her former colonizer would provide further grounds for a modern day discussion regarding possible reparations.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 2003, then-President of Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide demanded that France compensate Haiti for over $21 billion, the modern equivalent of the 90 million gold francs Haiti was forced to pay to gain international recognition.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 2007, Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo formally called on European nations to pay reparations for the slave trade. President Jagdeo stated, "Although some members of the international community have recognized their active role in this despicable system, they need to go step further and support reparations." In 2014, the Parliament of Guyana established a "Reparations Committee of Guyana" to further investigate the impact of slavery and create formal demands for reparations.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 2011, Antigua & Barbuda called for reparations at the United Nations, saying "that segregation and violence against people of African descent had impaired their capacity for advancement as nations, communities and individuals". More recently, in 2016, Ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to the United States, Sir Ronald Sanders, called on Harvard University "to demonstrate its remorse and its debt to unnamed slaves from Antigua and Barbuda." According to Sanders, Isaac Royall Jr., who was the first endowed professor of law at Harvard, relied on the slaves on his plantation in Antigua when establishing Harvard Law School. Sanders recommended these reparations come in the form of annual scholarships for Antiguans and Barbudans.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 2004, a coalition of Jamaican activists, including Rastafari members demanded that European nations which had participated in the slave trade should fund the resettlement of 500,000 Rastafari in Ethiopia (which they estimated to be 72.5 billion pound sterling, or roughly, $150,000 USD per person). The demand was rejected by the British government. In 2012, the Jamaican government revived its reparations commission, to consider the question of whether the country should seek an apology or reparations from Britain for its role in the slave trade. The opposition cited Britain's role in abolishing the slave trade as a reason that Britain should issue no reparations. In 2021, the Jamaican government again revisited the idea of reparations for slavery. It was reported that the Jamaican government was seeking some 7 billion pound sterling in reparations for the damages of slavery, including the 20,000,000 paid out to former slave owners by the British government.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: Also in 2012, the Barbadian government established a twelve-member Reparations Task Force, to be responsible for sustaining the local, regional and international momentum for reparations. Barbados is reportedly "currently leading the way in calling for reparations from former colonial powers for the injustices suffered by slaves and their families."


title: Reparations for slavery

text: In 2013, in the first of a series of lectures in Georgetown, Guyana, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the 1763 Berbice Slave Revolt, Principal of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, Sir Hilary Beckles urged Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries to emulate the position adopted by the Jews who were persecuted during the Second World War and have since organized a Jewish reparations fund.


title: Reparations for slavery

text: Following Sir Hilary Beckles's advice, the CARICOM Reparations Commission was created in September 2013. In 2014, 15 Caribbean nations unveiled the "CARICOM Ten Point Plan for Reparatory Justice" which spelled out demands for reparations from Europe "...for the enduring suffering inflicted by the Atlantic slave trade". Among these demands were formal apologies from all nations involved (as opposed to "statements of regret"), repatriation of displaced Africans to their homeland, programs to help Africans learn about and share their histories, and institutions to improve slavery descendants' literacy, physical health, and psychological health. Representatives of Caribbean states have repeatedly announced their intention to bring the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). However, no action has been taken. Moreover, from the perspective of international law, it is disputed whether slavery, genocide and other crimes against humanity had been outlawed at the time they were committed in the Caribbean. As international law knows the principle of intertemporal law, in principle today's prohibitions cannot be applied retroactively. Still, some lawyers have argued that exceptions to the principle of intertemporal law are applicable in cases of crimes against humanity, as European states and their representatives could not expect slavery to be legal in the future (referred to as teleological reduction of the principle).


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: Choi Soon-sil (; born June 23, 1956) is an individual known primarily for her involvement in the 2016 South Korean political scandal, which stemmed from her influence over the 11th President of South Korea, Park Geun-hye.


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: Choi Soon-sil was born on June 23, 1956 as the fifth daughter in her family. Choi's father is Choi Tae-min, who was the leader of a cult combining various elements of Buddhism, Christianity, and traditional Korean Shamanism. Her mother is Im Sun-yi. She is alleged to have founded the "Eight Fairies" group associated with the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye.


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: She claimed to have entered Dankook University in 1975. However, upon later research it was discovered that she was only auditing classes. She was married to Kim Young-ho from 1982 to 1986 and they had a son in 1983. She was then married to Chung Yoon-hoi from 1995 to 2014, and they had a daughter in 1996, dressage athlete Chung Yoo-ra. Chung Yoon-hoi had served as secretary to Choi Soon-sil's father, Choi Tae-min, and served as chief of staff to President Park Geun-hye during her time as a congresswoman in the National Assembly.


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: Choi's relationship with Park Geun-hye is believed to trace back to at least 1977. During her college years, Choi was the president of the National College Student Union, a student organization whose purpose was to “establish an uptight identity, a determined patriotism, and an independent value system”. On June 10, 1977, the union held an opening meeting in Hanyang University that was attended by Park Geun-hye, the daughter of then-president Park Chung-hee, where the leader of the Saemaul peace corps sat to the right of Park and future president Lee Myung-bak sat to her left.


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: During the 1980s, Choi started managing a real estate business and operating kindergartens. In 1983, she acquired a 45-pyong (about 149 square meters) parcel of land in Yeoksam-dong, Seoul. In September 1985, she acquired a 108-pyong (about 347 square meters) parcel of land in Sinsa-dong, where she built a 4-story building and operated a kindergarten in the building. In July 1988, she bought a 200-pyong (about 661 square meters) parcel of land in Sinsa-dong under a joint-contract with a partner. Later, Choi bought back the joint shares of her partner and became the sole owner of the property. From 1992 to 1996, Choi established and operated Jubel GmbH jointly with Chung Yoon-hoi, who she would marry during this period. In July 2003, Choi invested in the construction of a building with 7 floors above ground and 2 floors underground, which was later referred to as "M building". Chung Yoon-hoi's company was a tenant in this building. In February 2008, Choi sold the kindergarten building to a savings bank.


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: In 1989, Choi translated a child-care instruction book entitled "How To Hold Your Children’s Habit Upright" with Kim Kwang-Ung. This book stated that Choi was the vice president of a research center affiliated with the Korea Institute of Culture.


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: In 2006, Park Geun-hye was attacked by a person with a razor while attending the election campaign of Seoul mayoral candidate Oh Se-hoon as the leader of Grand National Party. Choi Soon-sil looked after Park while she was hospitalized. After leaving the hospital, Park continued to receive treatment at the home of Choi Soon-sil's older sister, Choi Soon-deuk.


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: At the outbreak of the 2016 political scandal, Choi operated a café and an Italian restaurant called “Testa Rossa" in Nonhyeon-dong, located in Gangnam, Seoul. The business had been operating since December 2014 in a remodeled building, where the first and second floor served as the café and restaurant and the third floor served as Choi's private office. An insider gave testimony that stated Choi had been meeting with politicians, influential businessmen, and business tycoons on the 2nd and 3rd floors of this building.


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: In 2016, Choi was involved in a scandal that alleged that she was responsible for masterminding governmental policy and decision-making during Park's administration. After these allegations arose, prosecutors ordered raids on offices and homes linked to Choi, where further evidence to support the claims were found. It is also alleged that Choi ordered Korean prosecutors to indict Japanese journalist Tatsuya Kato, Seoul Bureau chief of "Sankei Shimbun", on defamation charges after he reported that President Park and Chung Yoon-hoi had a secret seven-hour meeting with Choi after the sinking of MV Sewol during an extended period after the sinking in which President Park could not be contacted.


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: On October 31, 2016, Choi met with prosecutors. Choi told reporters, “Please, forgive me. I’m sorry. I committed a sin that deserves death”. On November 20, Choi Soon-sil was officially charged by the prosecutors for intervening in state affairs and using her influence to force chaebols to donate tens of millions of dollars to foundations and businesses she controlled.


title: Choi Soon-sil

text: On 23 June 2017, the Seoul Central District Court found Choi guilty of charges of obstruction of duty by using her presidential ties to get her daughter admitted to Ewha Womans University and receive good grades, and sentenced her to three years of imprisonment. On 13 February 2018, the Seoul Central District Court found Choi guilty of charges of abuse of power, bribery, and interfering in government business, which extended her prison sentence by 20 years and ordered her to pay a fine of ₩18 billion (US$16.6 million).


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. His best known works include "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima", Symphony No. 3, his "St Luke Passion", "Polish Requiem", "Anaklasis" and "Utrenja". Penderecki's "oeuvre" includes four operas, eight symphonies and other orchestral pieces, a variety of instrumental concertos, choral settings of mainly religious texts, as well as chamber and instrumental works"."


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Born in Dębica, Penderecki studied music at Jagiellonian University and the Academy of Music in Kraków. After graduating from the Academy, he became a teacher there and began his career as a composer in 1959 during the Warsaw Autumn festival. His "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" for string orchestra and the choral work "St. Luke Passion" have received popular acclaim. His first opera, "The Devils of Loudun", was not immediately successful. In the mid-1970s, Penderecki became a professor at the Yale School of Music. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Penderecki's composition style changed, with his first violin concerto focusing on the semitone and the tritone. His choral work "Polish Requiem" was written in the 1980s and expanded in 1993 and 2005.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Penderecki won many prestigious awards, including the Prix Italia in 1967 and 1968; the Wihuri Sibelius Prize of 1983; four Grammy Awards in 1987, 1998 (twice), and 2017; the Wolf Prize in Arts in 1987; and the University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1992. In 2012, Sean Michaels of "The Guardian" called him 'arguably Poland's greatest living composer'.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Penderecki was born on 23 November 1933 in Dębica, the son of Zofia and Tadeusz Penderecki, a lawyer. Penderecki's grandfather, Robert Berger, was a highly talented painter and director of the local bank at the time of Penderecki's birth; Robert's father Johann, a German Protestant, moved to Dębica from Breslau (now Wrocław) in the mid-19th century. Out of love for his wife, he subsequently converted to Catholicism. Penderecki's grandmother Stefania was an Armenian from Stanislau in Austria-Hungary (present-day Ivano-Frankivsk in Western Ukraine). Penderecki used to go to the Armenian Church in Kraków with her. He was the youngest of three siblings; his sister, Barbara, was married to a mining engineer, and his older brother, Janusz, was studying law and medicine at the time of his birth. Tadeusz was a violinist and also played piano.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: In 1939, the Second World War broke out, and Penderecki's family moved out of their apartment, as the Ministry of Food was to operate there. After the war, Penderecki began attending grammar school in 1946. He began studying the violin under Stanisław Darłak, Dębica's military bandmaster who organized an orchestra for the local music society after the war. Upon graduating from grammar school, Penderecki moved to Kraków in 1951, where he attended Jagiellonian University.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: He studied violin with Stanisław Tawroszewicz and music theory with Franciszek Skołyszewski. In 1954, Penderecki entered the Academy of Music in Kraków and, having finished his studies on violin after his first year, focused entirely on composition. Penderecki's main teacher there was Artur Malawski, a composer known for his choral and orchestral works, as well as chamber music and songs. After Malawski's death in 1957, Penderecki took further lessons with Stanisław Wiechowicz, a composer primarily known for his choral works. At the time, the 1956 overthrow of Stalinism in Poland lifted strict cultural censorship and opened the door to a wave of creativity.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Upon graduating from the Academy of Music in Kraków in 1958, Penderecki took up a teaching post at the Academy. His early works show the influence of Anton Webern and Pierre Boulez (Penderecki was also influenced by Igor Stravinsky). Penderecki's international recognition began in 1959 at the Warsaw Autumn with the premieres of the works "Strophen", "Psalms of David", and "Emanations", but the piece that truly brought him to international attention was "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" (see threnody and atomic bombing of Hiroshima), written in 1960 for 52 string instruments. In it, he makes use of extended instrumental techniques (for example, playing behind the bridge, bowing on the tailpiece). There are many novel textures in the work, which makes extensive use of tone clusters. He originally titled the work "8' 37"", but decided to dedicate it to the victims of Hiroshima.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: "Fluorescences" followed a year later; it increases the orchestral density with more wind and brass, and an enormous percussion section of 32 instruments for six players, including a Mexican güiro, typewriters, gongs and other unusual instruments. The piece was composed for the Donaueschingen Festival of contemporary music of 1962, and its performance was regarded as provocative and controversial. Even the score appeared revolutionary; the form of graphic notation that Penderecki had developed rejected the familiar look of notes on a staff, instead representing music as morphing sounds. His intentions at this stage were quite Cagean: 'All I'm interested in is liberating sound beyond all tradition'.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Another noteworthy piece of this period is the "Canon" for 52 strings and 2 tapes. This is in a similar style to other pieces in the late 1950s in its use of sound masses, dramatically juxtaposed with traditional means although the use of standard techniques or idioms is often disguised or distorted. Indeed, the Canon brings to mind the choral tradition and indeed the composer has the players sing, albeit with the performance indication of "bocca chiusa" (with closed mouth) at various points; nevertheless, Penderecki uses the 52 'voices' of the string orchestra to play in massed glissandi and harmonics at times – this is then recorded by one of the tapes for playback later on in the piece. It was performed at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1962 and caused a riot although curiously the rioters were young music students and not older concertgoers.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: At the same time, he started composing music for theater and film. The first theater performance with Penderecki's music was "Złoty kluczyk" ("Golden Little Key") by Yekaterina Borysowa directed by Władysław Jarema (premiered on 12 May 1957 in Krakow at the "Groteska" Puppet Theater). In 1959, at the Cartoon Film Studio in Bielsko-Biała, he composed the music for the first animated film, "Bulandra i diabeł" ("Coal Miner Bulandra and Devil"), directed by Jerzy Zitzman and Lechosław Marszałek.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: In 1959, he wrote the score for Jan Łomnicki's first short fiction film, "Nie ma końca wielkiej wojny" ("There is no End to the Great War", WFDiF Warszawa). In the following years, he created over twenty original musical settings for dramatic and over 40 puppet performances, and composed original music for at least eleven documentary and feature films as well as for twenty-five animated films for adults and children.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: The large-scale "St. Luke Passion" (1963–66) brought Penderecki further popular acclaim, not least because it was devoutly religious, yet written in an avant-garde musical language, and composed within Communist Eastern Europe. Various different musical styles can be seen in the piece. The experimental textures, such as were employed in the "Threnody", are balanced by the work's Baroque form and the occasional use of more traditional harmonic and melodic writing. Penderecki makes use of serialism in this piece, and one of the tone rows he uses includes the BACH motif, which acts as a bridge between the conventional and more experimental elements. The Stabat Mater section toward the end of the piece concludes on a simple chord of D major, and this gesture is repeated at the very end of the work, which finishes on a triumphant E major chord. These are the only tonal harmonies in the work, and both come as a surprise to the listener; Penderecki's use of tonal triads such as these remains a controversial aspect of the work.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Penderecki continued to write sacred music. In the early 1970s he wrote a Dies irae, a Magnificat, and Canticum Canticorum Salomonis (Song of Songs) for chorus and orchestra.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Penderecki's preoccupation with sound culminated in "De Natura Sonoris I" (1966), which frequently calls upon the orchestra to use non-standard playing techniques to produce original sounds and colours. A sequel, "De Natura Sonoris II", was composed in 1971: with its more limited orchestra, it incorporates more elements of post-Romanticism than its predecessor. This foreshadowed Penderecki's renunciation of the avant-garde in the mid-1970s, although both pieces feature dramatic glissandos, dense clusters, use of harmonics, and unusual instruments (the musical saw features in the second piece).


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: In 1968 Penderecki received the State Prize 1st class. During the jubilee of the People's Republic of Poland he received the Commander's Cross (1974) and Knight's Cross of Order of Polonia Restituta (1964).


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Towards the end of the decade, Penderecki received a commission to write for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. The result was "Kosmogonia", a piece of twenty minutes for 3 soloists (soprano, tenor, bass), mixed choir and orchestra. The Los Angeles Philharmonic premiered the piece on 24 October 1970 with Zubin Mehta as conductor and Robert Nagy as tenor. The piece uses texts from ancient writers Sophocles and Ovid in addition to contemporary statements from Soviet and American astronauts to musically explore the idea of the cosmos.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: In the mid-1970s, while he was a professor at the Yale School of Music, Penderecki's style began to change. The Violin Concerto No. 1 largely leaves behind the dense tone clusters with which he had been associated, and instead focuses on two melodic intervals: the semitone and the tritone. This direction continued with the Symphony No. 2 (1980), which is harmonically and melodically quite straightforward; the symphony is sometimes referred to as the "Christmas Symphony" due to the opening phrase of the Christmas carol "Silent Night" appearing three times during the work.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Penderecki explained this shift by stating that he had come to feel that the experimentation of the avant-garde had gone too far from the expressive, non-formal qualities of Western music: 'The avant-garde gave one an illusion of universalism. The musical world of Stockhausen, Nono, Boulez and Cage was for us, the young – hemmed in by the aesthetics of socialist realism, then the official canon in our country – a liberation...I was quick to realise however, that this novelty, this experimentation, and formal speculation, is more destructive than constructive; I realised the Utopian quality of its Promethean tone'. Penderecki concluded that he was 'saved from the avant-garde snare of formalism by a return to tradition'. Penderecki wrote relatively little chamber music. However, compositions for smaller ensembles range in date from the start of his career to the end, reflecting the changes his style of writing has undergone.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: In 1975 the Lyric Opera of Chicago asked him to write a work to commemorate the US Bicentennial in 1976; this became the opera "Paradise Lost." Delays to the project however meant it did not see its premiere until 1978. The music continued to illustrate Penderecki's move away from avant-garde techniques: it is tonal music and the composer explained: 'This is not music by the angry young man I used to be'.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: In 1980, Penderecki was commissioned by Solidarity to compose a piece to accompany the unveiling of a statue at the Gdańsk shipyards to commemorate those killed in anti-government riots there in 1970. Penderecki responded with "Lacrimosa", which he later expanded into one of the best-known works of his later period, the "Polish Requiem" (1980–84, 1993, 2005). Later, he tended towards more traditionally conceived tonal constructs, as heard in works such as the Cello Concerto No. 2 and the Credo, which received the Grammy Award for best choral performance for the world-premiere recording made by the Oregon Bach Festival, which commissioned the piece. The same year, Penderecki was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Spain, one of the highest honours given in Spain to individuals, entities, organizations or others from around the world who make notable achievements in the sciences, arts, humanities, or public affairs. Invited by Walter Fink, he was the eleventh composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2001. He conducted the Credo on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Helmuth Rilling, 29 May 2003. Penderecki received an honorary doctorate from the Seoul National University, Korea, in 2005 and the University of Münster, Germany, in 2006. His notable students include Chester Biscardi and Walter Mays.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: In celebration of his 75th birthday, he conducted three of his works at the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2008, among them Ciaccona from the "Polish Requiem".


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: In 2010, he worked on an opera based on Phèdre by Racine for 2014, which was never realized, and expressed his wish to write a 9th symphony. In 2014, he was engaged in the creation of a choral work to coincide with the Armenian genocide centennial. In 2018, he conducted Credo in Kyiv at the 29th Kyiv Music Fest, marking the centenary of Polish independence.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Penderecki had three children, first a daughter Beata with pianist Barbara Penderecka ( Graca), whom he married in 1954. They later divorced. He then had a son, Łukasz (b. 1966), and daughter, Dominika (b. 1971), with his second wife, Elżbieta Penderecka ( Solecka), whom he married on 19 December 1965. He lived in the Kraków suburb of Wola Justowska. He was also a keen gardener and established a 15-hectare arboretum near his manor house in Lusławice.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Penderecki died after a long illness in his home in Kraków, Poland, on 29 March 2020. He was buried at the National Pantheon in Kraków on 29 March 2022.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: In 1979, a bronze bust by artist Marian Konieczny honouring Penderecki was unveiled in The Gallery of Composers' Portraits at the Pomeranian Philharmonic in Bydgoszcz. His monument is located on the Celebrity Alley at the Scout Square ("Skwer Harcerski") in Kielce.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: The Led Zeppelin guitarist and founding member Jimmy Page was an admirer of the composer's groundbreaking work "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima" during his teenage years. This would be reflected later by Page's use of the violin bow on his guitar.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: The composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood cited Penderecki as a major influence. For Radiohead's 1997 album "OK Computer", Greenwood wrote a part for 16 stringed instruments playing quarter tones apart, inspired by Penderecki. Greenwood visited Penderecki in 2012 and wrote a work for strings, "48 Responses to Polymorphia", which Penderecki conducted in various performances throughout Europe. Penderecki credited Greenwood for introducing his music to a new generation.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Penderecki's compositions include operas, symphonies, choral works, as well as chamber and instrumental music.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Krzysztof Penderecki composed between 1959 and 1968 original music for at least eleven documentary and feature films as well as for twenty-five animated films for adults and children.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Some of Penderecki's music has been adapted for film soundtracks. "The Exorcist" (1973) features his String Quartet and "Kanon For Orchestra and Tape"; fragments of the Cello Concerto and "The Devils of Loudun". Writing about "The Exorcist", the film critic for "The New Republic" wrote that 'even the music is faultless, most of it by Krzysztof Penderecki, who at last is where he belongs'. Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980) features six pieces of Penderecki's music: "Utrenja II: Ewangelia", "Utrenja II: Kanon Paschy", "The Awakening of Jacob", "De Natura Sonoris No. 1", "De Natura Sonoris No. 2" and "Polymorphia". David Lynch has used Penderecki's music in the soundtracks of the films "Wild at Heart" (1990), "Inland Empire" (2006), and the TV series "Twin Peaks" (2017). In the film "Fearless" (1993) by Peter Weir, the piece "Polymorphia" was once again used for an intense plane crash scene, seen from the point of view of the passenger played by Jeff Bridges. Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" was also used during one of the final sequences in the film "Children of Men" (2006). Penderecki composed music for Andrzej Wajda's 2007 Academy Award nominated film "Katyń", while Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" (2010) featured his Symphony No. 3 and "Fluorescences".


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Some of Penderecki's oeuvre inspired Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead to release an album, which thereafter appeared in his score for "There Will Be Blood", a 2007 Paul Thomas Anderson film.


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: Penderecki was an honorary doctor and honorary professor of several universities: Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., University of Glasgow, Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw, Seoul National University, Universities of Rochester, Bordeaux, Leuven, Belgrade, Madrid, Poznan and St. Olaf College (Northfield, Minnesota), Duquesne University, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, University of Pittsburgh (PA), University of St. Petersburg, Beijing Conservatory, Yale University and Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster (Westphalia) (2006 Faculty of Arts).


title: Krzysztof Penderecki

text: He was an honorary member of the following academies and music companies: Royal Academy of Music (London), Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome), Royal Swedish Academy of Music (Stockholm), Academy of Arts (London), Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires), the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, Academy of Arts in Berlin, Académie Internationale de Philosophie et de l'Art in Bern, and the Académie Nationale des Sciences, Belles-lettres et Arts in Bordeaux. In 2009, he became an honorary citizen of the city of Bydgoszcz.


title: Irina Godunova

text: Irina Feodorovna Godunova, later Alexandra (1557–1603) was a Tsaritsa of Russia by marriage to Tsar Feodor I Ivanovich (r. 1584–1598) and the sister of Tsar Boris Godunov (r. 1598–1605). For nine days after the death of her spouse in 1598, she upheld a dubious power position as de facto autocrat.


title: Irina Godunova

text: The precise dates of some of the events in Irina's life are uncertain. Most sources indicate that she was picked by Ivan the Terrible to be the wife of the tsarevich Feodor in 1580 or 1581, although some sources say this occurred as early as 1574. At 23 or 24 (assuming the latter dates), she would have been considered old for a bride in Muscovy, where the common age for marriage was in the mid-teens, and it is not certain why she married so relatively late in life. Her marriage was arranged by her brother, who successfully managed to secure a place in the Tsar's inner circle and the status of boyar through his sister's marriage.


title: Irina Godunova

text: Irina reportedly surpassed her spouse in intelligence, education and sophistication, and she quickly acquired influence over Feodor, and learned to navigate in court affairs. Feodor was reportedly mentally underdeveloped and physically weak and the marriage was childless, but Tsar Ivan did not interfere in their marriage.


title: Irina Godunova

text: Throughout her husband's reign (and, indeed, ever since her marriage), Irina was expected to produce a male heir. Feodor was physically and mentally frail and, were he to die without male issue, it was questionable whether his half-brother, Dmitri, would be considered legitimate, as he was the result of Ivan the Terrible's seventh marriage and the Orthodox Church recognized only up to four marriages as legitimate. Indeed, even with Dmitri as a possible successor, Irina remained under pressure to produce an heir and in 1585, she traveled to the Trinity-St. Sergei Monastery north of Moscow in hopes of a miraculous cure for her alleged infertility, but still she did not bear a child until 1592 — a daughter named Feodosia Fedorovna who died less than two years later in January 1594.


title: Irina Godunova

text: The couple's continued infertility led to court intrigue. Thus, in 1585, Metropolitan Dionysius proposed that Feodor divorce Irina, blaming her for being infertile and arguing that, for the good of the state and the dynasty, the Tsar ought to remarry and produce a male heir. The suggestion was seen as an effort on the part of the Shuiskies and other boyar clans to undercut the Godunovs. In response, Boris Godunov had the metropolitan deposed and confined to the Khutyn Monastery just outside Novgorod the Great. In 1587, several leading boyar families advised Feodor to divorce Irina for the same reason. As a response, Feodor approved of the punishment proposed by Irina and Boris for the boyars and had the boyar daughters who had been suggested as a replacement for Irina forcibly made nuns.


title: Irina Godunova

text: With the death of Dmitry under strange circumstances in Uglich, north of Moscow, on 15 May 1591, Irina was placed under increasing pressure to produce an heir. If she failed and Feodor died without a son, the Rurikid dynasty that had ruled Rus and Muscovy since the ninth century would become extinct, likely resulting in a bloody succession struggle. The couple remained barren for more than a decade, although whether this was due to Feodor's poor health or to infertility on Irina's part is uncertain.


title: Irina Godunova

text: Tsaritsa Irina had great influence during the reign of Feodor and participated in state affairs. Initially she did so discreetly without advertising her influence. Soon, however, she began participating in government more directly, frequently placing her own name on Feodor's decrees. Irina also became well known abroad, corresponding with Queen Elizabeth I of England and Patriarch Meletis Pigasos of Alexandria. Feodor trusted Irina, deferred to her, did not wish to exalt himself at her expense, trusted her to handle the affairs of state for him and relied on her advice. The Tsar named a new fortress Tsaritsyn (Volgograd) after her to strengthen her authority.


title: Irina Godunova

text: Upon her husband's death on 17 January 1598, the Rurikids in the male line were extinct. Some days before his death, on 3 January, Feodor had stated that Irina would become a nun after his death and made her promise to honor his wish. However, after his death, Irina, with no other candidate to the throne, announced her intention to "take power for a short time, so as to protect the Tsardom from tumult".


title: Irina Godunova

text: No woman had ever before reigned in her own right in Rus' or Russia. The Godunov family convinced the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church to grant its consent to Irina as an autocrat, and the Boyar Duma to pledge loyalty to her as "Great Sovereign". The legal situation was difficult, however: as Irina had never been crowned, she had no authority to hold or convey power: furthermore, although the church and nobility was willing to accept her rule, the public in Moscow rioted at the suggestion of her succession and called her "shameless". For nine days after the death of Feodor, the situation was unclear and Irina was de facto ruler. Her first act as sovereign was to declare an amnesty of prisoners to win good will of the public, but this act failed as it released dangerous criminals and caused discontent.


title: Irina Godunova

text: Nine days after the death of her spouse, "in order to prevent great revolt", Irina relinquished formal power to the Boyar Duma and de facto power to her brother Boris Godunov. She retired (some historians call it an abdication) to the Novodevichy Monastery (Convent) on the south side of Moscow, where she took monastic vows under the name Aleksandra. In fact, it was at the monastery that Boris Godunov was asked by Patriarch Job of Moscow and the Zemsky Sobor to become tsar. Upon the wish of her brother, her name always preceded any other member of the imperial family in the church prayers until her death.


title: Irina Godunova

text: Irina died on 27 October 1603 (others sources give the date 26 September, still others the year 1604) in the Novodevichy Monastery.


title: Irina Godunova

text: Several embroideries created by Irina are in the collection of the State Historical Museum on Red Square (along with similar work by Sophia Palaiologina, the wife of Ivan III, and Anastasia, the first wife of Ivan the Terrible.)


title: William Bennett

text: William John Bennett (born July 31, 1943) is an American conservative politician and political commentator who served as secretary of education from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. He also held the post of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under George H. W. Bush.


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett was born July 31, 1943 to a Catholic family in Brooklyn, the son of Nancy ("née" Walsh), a medical secretary, and F. Robert Bennett, a banker. His family moved to Washington, D.C., where he attended Gonzaga College High School. He graduated from Williams College in 1965, where he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Society, and received a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in political philosophy in 1970. He also has a J.D. from Harvard Law School, graduating in 1971.


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett was an associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Boston University from 1971 to 1972, and then became an assistant professor of philosophy and an assistant to John Silber, the president of the college, from 1972 to 1976. In May 1979, Bennett became the director of the National Humanities Center, a private research facility in North Carolina, after the death of its founder Charles Frankel.


title: William Bennett

text: In 1981 President Reagan appointed Bennett to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), where he served until Reagan appointed him secretary of education in 1985. Reagan originally nominated Mel Bradford to the position, but due to Bradford's pro-Confederate views Bennett was appointed in his place. This event was later marked as the watershed in the divergence between paleoconservatives, who backed Bradford, and neoconservatives, led by Irving Kristol, who supported Bennett.


title: William Bennett

text: While at NEH, Bennett published ""To Reclaim a Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education"", a 63-page report. It was based on an assessment of the teaching and learning of the humanities at the baccalaureate level, conducted by a blue-ribbon study group of 31 nationally prominent authorities on higher education convened by NEH.


title: William Bennett

text: In May 1986, Bennett switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party. In September 1988, Bennett resigned as secretary of education, to join the Washington law firm of Dunnels, Duvall, Bennett, and Porter. In March 1989 he returned to the federal government, becoming the first Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, appointed by President George H. W. Bush. He was confirmed by the Senate in a 97–2 vote. He left that position in December 1990.


title: William Bennett

text: In April 2004, Bennett began hosting "Morning in America", a nationally syndicated radio program produced and distributed by Dallas, Texas-based Salem Communications. The show aired live weekdays from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time, and was one of the only syndicated conservative talk shows in the morning drive time slot. However, its clearances were limited due to a preference for local shows in this slot, and the show got most of its clearances on Salem-owned outlets. "Morning in America" was also carried on Sirius Satellite Radio, on Channel 144, also known as the Patriot Channel. Bennett retired from full-time radio on March 31, 2016.


title: William Bennett

text: In 2008, Bennett became the host of a CNN weekly talk show, "Beyond the Politics". The show did not have a long run, but Bennett remained a CNN contributor until he was fired in 2013 by then-new CNN president, Jeff Zucker.


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett has been moderating "The Wise Guys", a Sunday night show on Fox News, since January 2018. Carried on Fox Nation as well, participants include Tyrus, Byron York, Ari Fleischer, Victor Davis Hanson, and others.


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett writes for National Review Online, "National Review" and "Commentary", and is a former senior editor of "National Review."


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett is a member of the National Security Advisory Council of the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He was co-director of Empower America and was a Distinguished Fellow in Cultural Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Long active in United States Republican Party politics, he is now an author and speaker.


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett was the Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute. He was also a commentator for CNN until 2013.


title: William Bennett

text: He is an advisor to Project Lead The Way and Beanstalk Innovation. He is on the advisory board of Udacity, Inc., Viridis Learning, Inc. and the board of directors of Vocefy, Inc. and Webtab, Inc.


title: William Bennett

text: According to internal White House records from January 6, 2021, Bennett spoke on the phone with then-President Donald Trump just before Trump went to the "Save America" rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol.


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett tends to take a conservative position on affirmative action, school vouchers, curriculum reform, and religion in education. As education secretary, he asked colleges to better enforce drug laws and supported a classical education. He frequently criticized schools for low standards. In 1987 he called the Chicago Public Schools system "the worst in the nation." He coined the term "the blob" to describe the state education bureaucracy, a term which was later taken up in Britain by Michael Gove.


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett is a staunch supporter of the War on Drugs and has been criticized by some for his views on the issue. On "Larry King Live", he said that a viewer's suggestion of beheading drug dealers would be "morally plausible." He also "lamented that we still grant them [drug dealers] habeas corpus rights."


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett is a member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and was one of the signers of the January 26, 1998 PNAC Letter sent to President Bill Clinton, which urged Clinton to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power.


title: William Bennett

text: In 2003, it became publicly known that Bennett - who had spent years preaching about family values and personal responsibility - was a high-stakes gambler who lost millions of dollars in Las Vegas. Criticism increased in the wake of Bennett's publication, "The Book of Virtues", a compilation of moral stories about courage, responsibility, friendship and other examples of virtue. Joshua Green of the "Washington Monthly" said that Bennett failed to denounce gambling because of his own tendency to gamble. Also, Bennett and Empower America, the organization he co-founded and headed at the time, opposed an extension of casino gambling in the United States.


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett said that his habit had not put himself or his family in any financial jeopardy. After Bennett's gambling problem became public, he said he did not believe his habit set a good example, that he had "done too much gambling" over the years, and his "gambling days are over". "We are financially solvent," his wife Elayne told "USA Today". "All our bills are paid." She added that his gambling days are over. "He's never going again," she said.


title: William Bennett

text: Several months later, Bennett qualified his position, saying "So, in this case, the excessive gambling is over." He explained "Since there will be people doing the micrometer on me, I just want to be clear: I do want to be able to bet the Buffalo Bills in the Super Bowl."


title: William Bennett

text: On September 28, 2005, in a discussion on Bennett's "Morning in America" radio show, a caller to the show proposed that "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" could preserve Social Security if abortion had not been permitted since "Roe v. Wade". Bennett responded that aborting by all African-American babies, "If you wanted to reduce crime, you could—if that were the sole purpose—you could abort every black baby in this country and the crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett's best-known written work may be "" (1993), which he edited; he has also authored and edited eleven other books, including "The Children's Book of Virtues" (which inspired an animated television series) and "The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals" (1998).


title: William Bennett

text: In 1967, as a graduate student, Bennett went on a single blind date with Janis Joplin. He later lamented, “That date lasted two hours, and I’ve spent 200 hours talking about it."


title: William Bennett

text: Bennett married his wife, Mary Elayne Glover, in 1982. They have two sons, John and Joseph. Elayne is the president and founder of "Best Friends Foundation", a national program promoting sexual abstinence among adolescents.


title: ATM card

text: An ATM card is a payment card or dedicated payment card issued by a financial institution (i.e. a bank) which enables a customer to access their financial accounts via its and others' automated teller machines (ATMs) and to make approved point of purchase retail transactions (i.e. gas stations, grocery, hardware, department stores, etc.) ATM cards are not credit cards or debit cards. ATM cards are payment card size and style plastic cards with a magnetic stripe and/or a plastic smart card with a chip that contains a unique card number and some security information such as an expiration date or CVVC (CVV). ATM cards are known by a variety of names such as bank card, MAC (money access card), client card, key card or cash card, among others. Other payment cards, such as debit cards and credit cards can also function as ATM cards. Charge and proprietary cards cannot be used as ATM cards. The use of a credit card to withdraw cash at an ATM is treated differently to a point of sale transaction, usually attracting interest charges from the date of the cash withdrawal. Interbank networks allow the use of ATM cards at ATMs of private operators and financial institutions other than those of the institution that issued the cards.


title: ATM card

text: ATM cards can also be used on improvised ATMs such as "mini ATMs", merchants' card terminals that deliver ATM features without any cash drawer. These terminals can also be used as cashless scrip ATMs by cashing the receipts they issue at the merchant's point of sale.


title: ATM card

text: The size of ATM cards is and rounded corners with a radius of 2.88–3.48 mm, in accordance with ISO/IEC 7810#ID-1, the same size as other payment cards, such as credit, debit and other cards. They also have a printed or embossed bank card number conforming with the ISO/IEC 7812 numbering standard.


title: ATM card

text: All ATMs, at a minimum, will permit cash withdrawals of customers of the machine's owner (if a bank-operated machine) and for cards that are affiliated with any ATM network the machine is also affiliated. They will report the amount of the withdrawal and any fees charged by the machine on the receipt. Most banks and credit unions will permit routine account-related banking transactions at the bank's own ATM, including deposits, checking the balance of an account, and transferring money between accounts.


title: ATM card

text: The use of the ATM card for in store purchases or refunds is allowed only with pre-approved retailers, but not for on-line transactions.


title: ATM card

text: For other types of transactions through telephone or online banking, this may be performed with an ATM card without in-person authentication. This includes account balance inquiries, electronic bill payments, or in some limited cases, online purchases (see Interac Online).


title: ATM card

text: Canada's Interac and Mastercard's Maestro are examples of networks that link bank accounts with point-of-sale equipment.


title: ATM card

text: Some debit card networks also started their lives as ATM card networks before evolving into full-fledged debit card networks such as STAR (Interbank Network), and others such as: Development Bank of Singapore (DBS)'s Network for Electronic Transfers (NETS) and Bank Central Asia (BCA)'s Debit BCA, both of them were later on adopted by other banks (with Prima Debit being the Prima interbank network version of Debit BCA).


title: ATM card

text: Due to increased illegal copies of cards with a magnetic stripe, the European Payments Council established a Card Fraud Prevention Task Force in 2003 that spawned a commitment to migrate all ATMs and POS applications to use a chip-and-PIN solution by the end of 2010. The "SEPA for Cards" has completely removed the magnetic stripe requirement from Maestro debit cards.


title: Target Field

text: Target Field is a baseball stadium in the historic warehouse district of downtown Minneapolis. Since its opening in 2010, the stadium has been the home ballpark of Major League Baseball's Minnesota Twins. The stadium hosted the 2014 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. It also has also served as the home of other local and regional baseball events.


title: Target Field

text: The ballpark is open-air; though originally designed for baseball, it has also hosted football, soccer, hockey games, and concerts.


title: Target Field

text: In 2010, "ESPN The Magazine" ranked Target Field as the number one baseball stadium experience in North America.


title: Target Field

text: Target Field is the Twins/Senators sixth ballpark, and the franchise's third in Minnesota. The Twins had played 28 seasons at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, and before that 21 seasons at Metropolitan Stadium. The Twins shared both facilities with the Minnesota Vikings, and the Metrodome with the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers football team.


title: Target Field

text: The final budget for construction was $435 million, of which $175 million was paid by the Twins and $260 million was paid by Hennepin County by way of a 0.15% county-wide sales tax. An additional $120 million in infrastructure costs were split between the county ($90 million), the team ($20 million), Target Corporation ($4.5 million), the Minnesota Department of Transportation ($3.5 million) and the Minnesota Ballpark Authority ($2 million) bringing the project's total cost to US$555 million.


title: Target Field

text: The Twins were in their 13th season in the Metrodome when they formally declared their desire to find a new home on July 18, 1994. Carl Pohlad, owner of the Twins, told the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission (owners of the Metrodome) the current facility was "economically obsolete" due to changes in the economy of Major League Baseball. This declaration started a process which would culminate nearly 16 years later with the opening of Target Field. In the intervening years, many ideas, financing plans and possible locations came and went. The long process included threats of relocation, infighting between the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and numerous pieces of legislation (both passed and not passed) at various levels of government. The process spanned the terms of three Minnesota governors, five mayors of Minneapolis or St. Paul, and even two long-tenured Twins managers.


title: Target Field

text: Immediately following Pohlad's 1994 declaration of intent, the Twins began making plans to build a new, retractable-roof stadium on a site just north of the Metrodome. Extensive conceptual work went into the site and stadium. At that time, the desired site was largely underused as surface parking, despite being adjacent to the Mississippi River, and located in the city's historic milling district. It included land which would be used for the Guthrie Theater (2006), Gold Medal Park (2007), and high-end housing.


title: Target Field

text: The riverfront plan formed the basis for all of the early discussions, and was first presented to the Minnesota Legislature during the 1996 session. It did not pass, largely due to widespread public sentiment that Pohlad, Minnesota's second most wealthy citizen, should pay for a new facility himself.


title: Target Field

text: After that failure, private negotiations between Pohlad and Governor Arne Carlson yielded a deal which was brought to the 1997 legislative session. The Twins had agreed to make an up-front financial contribution to kick-start the project, as well as sell 49% of team ownership to the state. This plan unraveled when local media reported that the complicated "contribution" to be made by the team amounted to a loan from Pohlad which was to be repaid with interest. Public outrage made passing this plan impossible.


title: Target Field

text: Later that same year, the voters in Minneapolis overwhelmingly approved a referendum which prevented the city of Minneapolis from ever spending more than $10 million on a professional sports facility without approval from voters. This effectively removed the city from consideration as a financial partner for a new Twins ballpark.


title: Target Field

text: Meanwhile, the Twins’ Metrodome lease was set to expire in 1998. Governor Carlson felt the issue pressing enough that he called a special session of the Minnesota Legislature for that fall. In advance of the session, Pohlad announced he had signed a letter of intent to sell the team to a potential ownership group in North Carolina (Piedmont Triad) led by Don Beaver. The sale would be nullified if either a new stadium was approved in Minnesota, or a referendum to build a new stadium in Greensboro failed.


title: Target Field

text: The Minnesota legislature not only defeated the stadium bill, but passed a resolution urging Congress to intervene in what it saw to be the worst practices of professional sports. Then, on May 5, 1998, voters in Greensboro rejected the ballpark referendum by a wide margin and the sale of the team was cancelled. Meanwhile, the public had come to view Pohlad very unfavorably.


title: Target Field

text: St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman jumped into this void with an enthusiastic pitch to move the Twins to his city. Several downtown locations were offered, the most likely option being adjacent to the new Xcel Energy Center (though another site considered was in the Lowertown neighborhood, a location which eventually became CHS Field, home of the St. Paul Saints). A referendum was scheduled to ask St. Paul voters to approve a sales tax increase for the city's contribution to the project, which would have been an open-air ballpark. Once again, Pohlad agreed to "sell" the team contingent upon the outcome of a referendum. This sale would have been to a group led by Minnesota-based billionaires Glen Taylor and Robert Naegele. Because Pohlad was so unpopular, it was thought that removing him from the transaction might help the prospects of the referendum, but it did not. On November 2, 1999, St. Paul voters rejected the plan by a large margin and the concept quickly evaporated.


title: Target Field

text: The threat of the Twins moving to St. Paul had caught the attention of the business community in Minneapolis, which, up to this point, had been largely silent on the issue. During the run-up to the St. Paul referendum in 1999, an independent working group was formed by Minneapolis businessmen Bruce Lambrecht and Rich Pogin, representatives of a group of investors which owned the Rapid Park parking lot in the historic warehouse district on the northern edge of downtown Minneapolis. This group, initially known as Minnesota Urban Ballpark, and later as MN Twinsville, formed with the express purpose of bringing their land into the discussion about sites for a new Twins ballpark.


title: Target Field

text: At first, the 8-acre site appeared to be an extremely unlikely location for a modern professional baseball facility. Besides being far smaller than most MLB sites (modern facilities typically require ), it was hemmed in by railroad tracks, a freeway, and two city streets passing on bridges. Though very near to Target Center, it was also adjacent to the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC), more commonly known as the city's "garbage burner," considered by some to be an undesirable neighbor for a ballpark.


title: Target Field

text: But the site's perceived liabilities were easily offset by significant assets. Careful measurements were made by Lambrecht and local architect David Albersman, which proved that there was enough room for a baseball field and the amenities associated with a Major League ballpark. The site was adjacent to three large, underused parking ramps, and at the potential nexus of a light rail line then being planned (ultimately the Metro Transit Blue Line), and a commuter rail line also under consideration (the eventual Northstar Line). It was also controlled by a single owner who would be a willing seller. This fact alone would significantly simplify the process of acquisition by a governmental entity for a large-scale project. Owing largely to these logistical advantages, as well as an expansive view of the Minneapolis skyline, and the persistence of Lambrecht and Pogin's group, this site would eventually come to house Target Field.


title: Target Field

text: In early 2000, Lambrecht's group commissioned a visit by Earl Santee of Populous (then known as HOK Sport) to evaluate whether the site had the potential to house Major League Baseball. His visit, independent of the Twins and all government entities, happened with no publicity whatsoever. Santee reviewed the site and reacted with skepticism, but saw no fatal flaws, nothing that made a ballpark impossible. He agreed to provide the working group with a concept drawing of a ballpark on that site, an image which was first published in August 2000, and quickly became the center of their ultimately successful campaign.


title: Target Field

text: As Santee's dramatic drawing became more widely published, and Lambrecht and Pogin ramped up their lobbying efforts, others began to realize the advantages of the site. This included Mark Oyaas, founder of New Ballpark, Inc., a separate group of downtown Minneapolis business leaders, who sought to create a private financing plan for a stadium. They quickly settled on Rapid Park as their preferred ballpark site, which enhanced its visibility significantly. The Twins, however, completely ignored Rapid Park, and kept their distance from all of the ad hoc working groups. They would eventually go on record as believing that the Rapid Park site was too small and constrained to house the type of facility they sought to build.


title: Target Field

text: The city of Minneapolis created a panel of citizens known as C-17 to consider various financing models. Their final report, issued in February 2001, while not specifically recommending a site, heavily featured the concept drawing of the Rapid Park site on multiple pages. The committee recommended that the city continue its discussions with New Ballpark, Inc., in the hopes of finding a private financing solution. Even before the work of the C-17 was complete, another (unnamed) group of staff analysts within city government, working with the Metropolitan Community Development Agency (MCDA), formally recommended the Rapid Park site to the City Council.


title: Target Field

text: Simultaneously, the Twins assembled a 130-member advisory group, dubbed Minnesotans for Major League Baseball, which met to discuss possible stadium alternatives. Their deliberations included a meeting with Bud Selig, commissioner of baseball, to discuss economic issues within the sport. Their final report did not recommend a site (and did not even mention Rapid Park), but did provide advice to the team on how to proceed in winning public approval for any plan.


title: Target Field

text: Late in 2000, Twins CEO Chris Clouser proposed playing three games in a temporary outdoor stadium to be built adjacent to the Mall of America in Bloomington. He hoped to demonstrate the pleasures of outdoor baseball as a way of jump-starting the political process. The proposal ran into problems from insurance companies, the Minnesota Vikings (who stood to lose Metrodome revenue) and Major League Baseball. It was ultimately scrapped.


title: Target Field

text: During the 2001 legislative session, the Twins pushed for a new financing plan based on ideas gleaned from their advisory committee. The $300 million site-neutral plan would have featured a $150 million contribution from the Pohlads, $50 million from private enterprises, and the remaining $100 million in the form of an interest-free loan from the state of Minnesota. Many viewed the deal as significantly better for taxpayers than the 1997 plan. But the details of the financial arrangements once again were very complicated. Ultimately, the proposal fell victim to a political climate filled with distaste for the economics of baseball, general anti-stadium sentiments, and an unrelated budget standoff which nearly shut down the Minnesota government.


title: Target Field

text: Despite that legislative misfire, in the summer of 2001 the city of Minneapolis became quite serious about the warehouse district site for a ballpark, after selecting the Twins' preferred riverfront site to house the new Guthrie Theater. Though no deal was struck to purchase the Rapid Park land at that time, an initial valuation of $10 million was assumed by the city for a roughly parcel. Though not a realistic amount, it did fall conveniently within the restrictions of the 1997 referendum. The Twins were not involved in these discussions, and still exhibited no public interest whatsoever in the warehouse district location.


title: Target Field

text: The Twins, stung by the repeated rejections, and feeling that they had no real prospects for a new ballpark in the Twin Cities, next became officially associated with Major League Baseball's long-rumored "contraction" plans. On November 6, 2001, MLB owners voted 28–2 to authorize the elimination of two teams, the Twins and the Montreal Expos (though the teams were not named publicly). The Pohlads were reportedly offered a $250 million check to fold their franchise.


title: Target Field

text: This attempt at placing more pressure on decision-makers ultimately failed—spectacularly and quickly—when, a mere 10 days later, Hennepin County District Court Judge Harry Crump ruled that the Twins, by virtue of Major League Baseball's federal anti-trust exemption, could not act as a typical business and simply buy out their Metrodome lease. Their standing as a community asset meant that they had an obligation to honor the lease and continue playing. His decision was upheld by the Minnesota Court of Appeals on January 21, 2002, and the Minnesota Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal on February 5, 2002, effectively ending contraction as a negotiating tactic (though its echoes would remain until a new labor agreement between MLB and the MLBPA was reached on August 30, 2002).


title: Target Field

text: Even as the Twins were forced to continue playing in 2002, the seeds of the eventual financing solution were sown when Hennepin County, in which the city of Minneapolis is located, began to express interest in being a financial partner in a ballpark. Unfortunately for the Twins, Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura wanted to foster competition between the various localities, thinking it would spur more creativity in the structure of any deal. Instead, St. Paul legislators, led by new mayor Randy Kelly, and aided by Hennepin County legislators wanting to keep their constituents off the hook, played hardball, and amended the ballpark bill so that only cities—not counties—could become financial partners in a ballpark. They knew that this move would eliminate both Hennepin County and Minneapolis (by virtue of the $10 million cap on any contribution), and leave only St. Paul as a viable partner. The bill passed, and Ventura signed it, but the strategy backfired. The Twins investigated and quickly rejected St. Paul as an implausible place to build. Nothing came of the bill, and it effectively ended any serious talk of the team moving to St. Paul.


title: Target Field

text: As 2002 ended, the Twins proclaimed publicly their dissatisfaction with the Rapid Park site. Twins president Dave St. Peter was quoted as saying that the site was "set off to the side of Downtown, and [has] the garbage incinerator issue."


title: Target Field

text: With the 2003 Minnesota Legislature locked in bitter budget issues, the ballpark was never a central focus. No ballpark bill was passed during the session.