title: Arab Spring

text: Tunisia experienced a series of conflicts during the three years leading up to the Arab Spring, the most notable occurring in the mining area of Gafsa in 2008, where protests continued for many months. These protests included rallies, sit-ins, and strikes, during which there were two fatalities, an unspecified number of wounded, and dozens of arrests.


title: Arab Spring

text: In Egypt, the labor movement had been strong for years, with more than 3,000 labor actions since 2004, and provided an important venue for organizing protests and collective action. One important demonstration was an attempted workers' strike on 6 April 2008 at the state-run textile factories of al-Mahalla al-Kubra, just outside Cairo. The idea for this type of demonstration spread throughout the country, promoted by computer-literate working-class youths and their supporters among middle-class college students. A Facebook page, set up to promote the strike, attracted tens of thousands of followers and provided the platform for sustained political action in pursuit of the "long revolution". The government mobilized to break the strike through infiltration and riot police, and while the regime was somewhat successful in forestalling a strike, dissidents formed the "6 April Committee" of youths and labor activists, which became one of the major forces calling for the anti-Mubarak demonstration on 25 January in Tahrir Square.


title: Arab Spring

text: In Algeria, discontent had been building for years over a number of issues. In February 2008, US Ambassador Robert Ford wrote in a leaked diplomatic cable that Algeria is "unhappy" with long-standing political alienation; that social discontent persisted throughout the country, with food strikes occurring almost every week; that there were demonstrations every day somewhere in the country; and that the Algerian government was corrupt and fragile. Some claimed that during 2010 there were as many as "9,700 riots and unrests" throughout the country. Many protests focused on issues such as education and health care, while others cited rampant corruption.


title: Arab Spring

text: In Western Sahara, the Gdeim Izik protest camp was erected southeast of El Aaiún by a group of young Sahrawis on 9 October 2010. Their intention was to demonstrate against labor discrimination, unemployment, looting of resources, and human rights abuses. The camp contained between 12,000 and 20,000 inhabitants, but on 8 November 2010 it was destroyed and its inhabitants evicted by Moroccan security forces. The security forces faced strong opposition from some young Sahrawi civilians, and rioting soon spread to El Aaiún and other towns within the territory, resulting in an unknown number of injuries and deaths. Violence against Sahrawis in the aftermath of the protests was cited as a reason for renewed protests months later, after the start of the Arab Spring.


title: Arab Spring

text: The catalyst for the escalation of protests was the self-immolation of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi. Unable to find work and selling fruit at a roadside stand, Bouazizi had his wares confiscated by a municipal inspector on 17 December 2010. An hour later he doused himself with gasoline and set himself afire. His death on 4 January 2011 brought together various groups dissatisfied with the existing system, including many unemployed persons, political and human rights activists, labor and trade unionists, students, professors, lawyers, and others to begin the Tunisian Revolution.


title: Arab Spring

text: The series of protests and demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa that commenced in 2010 became known as the "Arab Spring", and sometimes as the "Arab Spring and Winter", "Arab Awakening", or "Arab Uprisings", even though not all the participants in the protests were Arab. It was sparked by the first protests that occurred in Tunisia on 18 December 2010 in Sidi Bouzid, following Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in protest of police corruption and ill treatment. With the success of the protests in Tunisia, a wave of unrest sparked by the Tunisian "Burning Man" struck Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen, then spread to other countries. The largest, most organized demonstrations often occurred on a "day of rage", usually Friday afternoon prayers. The protests also triggered similar unrest outside the region. Contrary to expectations the revolutions were not led by Islamists:


title: Arab Spring

text: The Arab Spring caused the "biggest transformation of the Middle East since decolonization". By the end of February 2012, rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; civil uprisings had erupted in Bahrain and Syria; major protests had broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, and Sudan; and minor protests had occurred in Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Western Sahara, and Palestine. Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on 14 January 2011 following the Tunisian Revolution protests. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned on 11 February 2011 after 18 days of massive protests, ending his 30-year presidency. The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown on 23 August 2011, after the National Transitional Council (NTC) took control of Bab al-Azizia. He was killed on 20 October 2011 in his hometown of Sirte after the NTC took control of the city. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed the GCC power-transfer deal in which a presidential election was held, resulting in his successor Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi formally replacing him as president on 27 February 2012 in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Weapons and Tuareg fighters returning from the Libyan Civil War stoked a simmering conflict in Mali that has been described as 'fallout' from the Arab Spring in North Africa.


title: Arab Spring

text: During this period, several leaders announced their intentions to step down at the end of their current terms. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced that he would not seek reelection in 2015 (he ultimately retracted his announcement and ran anyway), as did Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose term was to end in 2014, although there were violent demonstrations demanding his immediate resignation in 2011. Protests in Jordan also caused the sacking of four successive governments by King Abdullah. The popular unrest in Kuwait also resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Nasser Al-Sabah's cabinet.


title: Arab Spring

text: The geopolitical implications of the protests drew global attention. Some protesters were nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. Tawakkol Karman of Yemen was co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize due to her role organizing peaceful protests. In December 2011 "Time" magazine named "The Protester" its "Person of the Year". Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda won the 2011 World Press Photo award for his image of a Yemeni woman holding an injured family member, taken during the civil uprising in Yemen on 15 October 2011.


title: Arab Spring

text: The protests in Bahrain started on 14 February, and were initially aimed at achieving greater political freedom and respect for human rights; they were not intended to directly threaten the monarchy. Lingering frustration among the Shiite majority with being ruled by the Sunni government was a major root cause, but the protests in Tunisia and Egypt are cited as the inspiration for the demonstrations. The protests were largely peaceful until a pre-dawn raid by police on 17 February to clear protestors from Pearl Roundabout in Manama, in which police killed four protesters. Following the raid, some protesters began to expand their aims to a call for the end of the monarchy. On 18 February, army forces opened fire on protesters when they tried to reenter the roundabout, fatally wounding one. The following day protesters reoccupied Pearl Roundabout after the government ordered troops and police to withdraw. Subsequent days saw large demonstrations; on 21 February a pro-government Gathering of National Unity drew tens of thousands, whilst on 22 February the number of protestors at the Pearl Roundabout peaked at over 150,000 after more than 100,000 protesters marched there and were coming under fire from the Bahraini Military which killed around 20 and injured over 100 protestors. On 14 March, GCC forces (composed mainly of Saudi and UAE troops) were requested by the government and occupied the country.


title: Arab Spring

text: King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa declared a three-month state of emergency on 15 March and asked the military to reassert its control as clashes spread across the country. On 16 March, armed soldiers and riot police cleared the protesters' camp in the Pearl Roundabout, in which 3 policemen and 3 protesters were reportedly killed. Later, on 18 March, the government tore down Pearl Roundabout monument. After the lifting of emergency law on 1 June, several large rallies were staged by the opposition parties. Smaller-scale protests and clashes outside of the capital have continued to occur almost daily. On 9 March 2012, over 100,000 protested in what the opposition called "the biggest march in our history".


title: Arab Spring

text: The police response has been described as a "brutal" crackdown on peaceful and unarmed protestors, including doctors and bloggers. The police carried out midnight house raids in Shia neighbourhoods, beatings at checkpoints, and denial of medical care in a "campaign of intimidation". More than 2,929 people have been arrested, and at least five people died due to torture while in police custody. On 23 November 2011, the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry released its report on its investigation of the events, finding that the government had systematically tortured prisoners and committed other human rights violations. It also rejected the government's claims that the protests were instigated by Iran. Although the report found that systematic torture had stopped, the Bahraini government has refused entry to several international human rights groups and news organizations, and delayed a visit by a UN inspector. More than 80 people had died since the start of the uprising.


title: Arab Spring

text: Even a decade after the 2011 uprisings, the situation in Bahrain remained unchanged. The regime continued suppression against all forms of dissent. Years after the demonstrations, the Bahraini authorities are known to have accelerated their crackdown. They have been targeting human rights defenders, journalists, Shiite political groups and social media critics.


title: Arab Spring

text: Saudi government forces quashed protests in the country and assisted Bahraini authorities in suppressing demonstrations there.


title: Arab Spring

text: Inspired by the uprising in Tunisia and prior to his entry as a central figure in Egyptian politics, potential presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei warned of a "Tunisia-style explosion" in Egypt.


title: Arab Spring

text: Protests in Egypt began on 25 January 2011 and ran for 18 days. Beginning around midnight on 28 January, the Egyptian government attempted, somewhat successfully, to eliminate the nation's Internet access, in order to inhibit the protesters' ability to use media activism to organize through social media. Later that day, as tens of thousands protested on the streets of Egypt's major cities, President Hosni Mubarak dismissed his government, later appointing a new cabinet. Mubarak also appointed the first Vice President in almost 30 years.


title: Arab Spring

text: The U.S. embassy and international students began a voluntary evacuation near the end of January, as violence and rumors of violence escalated.


title: Arab Spring

text: On 10 February, Mubarak ceded all presidential power to Vice President Omar Suleiman, but soon thereafter announced that he would remain as president until the end of his term. However, protests continued the next day, and Suleiman quickly announced that Mubarak had resigned from the presidency and transferred power to the Armed Forces of Egypt. The military immediately dissolved the Egyptian Parliament, suspended the Constitution of Egypt, and promised to lift the nation's thirty-year "emergency laws". A civilian, Essam Sharaf, was appointed as Prime Minister of Egypt on 4 March to widespread approval among Egyptians in Tahrir Square. Violent protests, however, continued through the end of 2011 as many Egyptians expressed concern about the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces' perceived sluggishness in instituting reforms and their grip on power.


title: Arab Spring

text: Hosni Mubarak and his former interior minister Habib el-Adly were sentenced to life in prison on the basis of their failure to stop the killings during the first six days of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. His successor, Mohamed Morsi, was sworn in as Egypt's first democratically elected president before judges at the Supreme Constitutional Court. Fresh protests erupted in Egypt on 22 November 2012. On 3 July 2013, the military overthrew the replacement government and President Morsi was removed from power.


title: Arab Spring

text: The aftermath of the uprising that took place in Egypt was deemed to turn out successfully. However, a December 2020 report published by PRI's "The World", a US-based public radio news magazine, the Egyptian government increased its executions by more than twofold. As a result, the government put to death approximately 60 people. This included human rights activists of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), who were arrested in November 2020. The executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, Stephen McInerney cited that a majority of pro-democracy activists have escaped Egypt and those who couldn't have gone in hiding. The Project on Middle East Democracy mentioned using encrypted communication channels to talk to the activists, concerning the protection of their whereabouts. Western countries have overlooked these issues including, the United States, France, and several other European countries. According to the founder of Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington, DC, even after 10 years of the Arab spring, the country is at its lowest point for human rights.


title: Arab Spring

text: Anti-government protests began in Libya on 15 February 2011. By 18 February, the opposition controlled most of Benghazi, the country's second-largest city. The government dispatched elite troops and militia in an attempt to recapture it, but they were repelled. By 20 February, protests had spread to the capital Tripoli, leading to a television address by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who warned the protestors that their country could descend into civil war. The rising death toll, numbering in the thousands, drew international condemnation and resulted in the resignation of several Libyan diplomats, along with calls for the government's dismantlement.


title: Arab Spring

text: Amidst ongoing efforts by demonstrators and rebel forces to wrest control of Tripoli from the Jamahiriya, the opposition set up an interim government in Benghazi to oppose Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's rule. However, despite initial opposition success, government forces subsequently took back much of the Mediterranean coast.


title: Arab Spring

text: On 17 March, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was adopted, authorising a no-fly zone over Libya, and "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. Two days later, France, the United States and the United Kingdom intervened in Libya with a bombing campaign against pro-Gaddafi forces. A coalition of 27 states from Europe and the Middle East soon joined the intervention. The forces were driven back from the outskirts of Benghazi, and the rebels mounted an offensive, capturing scores of towns across the coast of Libya. The offensive stalled however, and a counter-offensive by the government retook most of the towns, until a stalemate was formed between Brega and Ajdabiya, the former being held by the government and the latter in the hands of the rebels. Focus then shifted to the west of the country, where bitter fighting continued. After a three-month-long battle, a loyalist siege of rebel-held Misrata, the third largest city in Libya, was broken in large part due to coalition air strikes. The four major fronts of combat were generally considered to be the Nafusa Mountains, the Tripolitanian coast, the Gulf of Sidra, and the southern Libyan Desert.


title: Arab Spring

text: In late August, anti-Gaddafi fighters captured Tripoli, scattering Gaddafi's government and marking the end of his 42 years of power. Many institutions of the government, including Gaddafi and several top government officials, regrouped in Sirte, which Gaddafi declared to be Libya's new capital. Others fled to Sabha, Bani Walid, and remote reaches of the Libyan Desert, or to surrounding countries. However, Sabha fell in late September, Bani Walid was captured after a grueling siege weeks later, and on 20 October, fighters under the aegis of the National Transitional Council seized Sirte, killing Gaddafi in the process. However, after Gaddafi was killed, the Civil War continued.


title: Arab Spring

text: Protests in Syria started on 26 January 2011, when a police officer assaulted a man in public at "Al-Hareeka Street" in old Damascus. The man was arrested right after the assault. As a result, protesters called for the freedom of the arrested man. Soon a "day of rage" was set for 4–5 February, but it was uneventful. On 6 March, the Syrian security forces arrested about 15 children in Daraa, in southern Syria, for writing slogans against the government. Soon protests erupted over the arrest and abuse of the children. Daraa was to be the first city to protest against the Ba'athist government, which has been ruling Syria since 1963.


title: Arab Spring

text: Thousands of protesters gathered in Damascus, Aleppo, al-Hasakah, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor, and Hama on 15 March, with recently released politician Suhair Atassi becoming an unofficial spokesperson for the "Syrian revolution". The next day there were reports of approximately 3000 arrests and a few casualties, but there are no official figures on the number of deaths. On 18 April 2011, approximately 100,000 protesters sat in the central Square of Homs calling for the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad. Protests continued through July 2011, the government responding with harsh security clampdowns and military operations in several districts, especially in the north.


title: Arab Spring

text: On 31 July, Syrian army tanks stormed several cities, including Hama, Deir Ez-Zour, Abu Kamal, and Herak near Daraa. At least 136 people were killed, the highest death toll in any day since the start of the uprising. On 5 August 2011, an anti-government demonstration took place in Syria called "God is with us", during which the Syrian security forces shot the protesters from inside the ambulances, killing 11 people consequently. The Arab Spring events in Syria subsequently escalated into the Syrian Civil War.


title: Arab Spring

text: Following the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid, a series of increasingly violent street demonstrations through December 2010 ultimately led to the ousting of longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011. The demonstrations were preceded by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, lack of freedom of speech and other forms of political freedom, and poor living conditions. The protests constituted the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia in three decades and resulted in scores of deaths and injuries, most of which were the result of action by police and security forces against demonstrators. Ben Ali fled into exile in Saudi Arabia, ending his 23 years in power.


title: Arab Spring

text: A state of emergency was declared and a caretaker coalition government was created following Ben Ali's departure, which included members of Ben Ali's party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), as well as opposition figures from other ministries. The five newly appointed non-RCD ministers resigned almost immediately. As a result of continued daily protests, on 27 January Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi reshuffled the government, removing all former RCD members other than himself, and on 6 February the former ruling party was suspended; later, on 9 March, it was dissolved. Following further public protests, Ghannouchi himself resigned on 27 February, and Beji Caid Essebsi became Prime Minister.


title: Arab Spring

text: On 23 October 2011 Tunisians voted in the first post-revolution election to elect representatives to a 217-member constituent assembly that would be responsible for the new constitution. The leading Islamist party, Ennahda, won 37% of the vote, and elected 42 women to the Constituent Assembly.


title: Arab Spring

text: On 26 January 2014 a new constitution was adopted. The constitution is seen as progressive, increasing human rights, gender equality, and government duties toward people, laying the groundwork for a new parliamentary system and making Tunisia a decentralized and open government.


title: Arab Spring

text: On 26 October 2014 Tunisia held its first parliamentary elections since the 2011 Arab Spring and its presidential election on 23 November 2014, finishing its transition to a democratic state. These elections were characterized by a decline in Ennahdha's popularity in favor of the secular Nidaa Tounes party, which became the first party of the country.


title: Arab Spring

text: In the United Arab Emirates, the Arab Spring saw a sudden and intense demand for democratic reforms. However, government repression of human rights, including unlawful detentions and torture, quelled the opposition and silenced dissenters. Even years after the Arab Spring uprisings, the Emirates remain in staunch opposition to free speech.


title: Arab Spring

text: In 2011, 133 peaceful political activists — including academics and members of a social organization, Islah — signed a petition calling for democratic reforms. Submitted to the Emirati monarch rulers, the petition demanded elections, more legislative powers for the Federal National Council and an independent judiciary.


title: Arab Spring

text: In 2012, the authorities arrested 94 of the 133 journalists, government officials, judges, lawyers, teachers and student activists, who were detained in secret detention facilities. For a year, until the trial began in March 2013, the 94 prisoners were subjected to enforced disappearances and torture. As the “unfair” trial ended on 2 July 2013, 69 men were convicted on the basis of evidence acquired through forced confessions, and received harsh prison sentences of up to 15 years.


title: Arab Spring

text: The case came to be known as “UAE-94”, following which freedom of speech was further curbed. For years, these prisoners have been under arbitrary detention, with some “held in incommunicado, and denied their rights”. In July 2021, "Amnesty International" called the UAE authorities to immediately release 60 prisoners of the UAE-94 case, who remained detained nine years after their arrest.


title: Arab Spring

text: Following the 2011 petition, the UAE authorities also arrested five prominent human rights defenders and government critics who did not sign the petition. All were pardoned the next day but have been facing a number of unfair acts of the government. One of the prominent Emirati activists, Ahmed Mansoor, reported being beaten twice since then. His passport was confiscated and nearly $140,000 were stolen from his personal bank account. Most of the human rights activists have been victims of the UAE government's intimidation for years.


title: Arab Spring

text: Protests occurred in many towns in both the north and south of Yemen starting in mid-January 2011. Demonstrators in the South mainly protested against President Saleh's support of Al Qaeda in South Yemen, the marginalization of the Southern people and the exploitation of Southern natural resources. Other parts of the country initially protested against governmental proposals to modify the constitution of Yemen, unemployment and economic conditions, and corruption, but their demands soon included a call for the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been facing internal opposition from his closest advisors since 2009.


title: Arab Spring

text: A major demonstration of over 16,000 protesters took place in Sana'a on 27 January 2011, and soon thereafter human rights activist and politician Tawakel Karman called for a "Day of Rage" on 3 February. According to "Xinhua News", organizers were calling for a million protesters. In response to the planned protest, Ali Abdullah Saleh stated that he would not seek another presidential term in 2013.


title: Arab Spring

text: On 3 February, 20,000 protesters demonstrated against the government in Sana'a, others participated in a "Day of Rage" in Aden that was called for by Tawakel Karman, while soldiers, armed members of the General People's Congress, and many protestors held a pro-government rally in Sana'a. Concurrent with the resignation of Egyptian president Mubarak, Yemenis again took to the streets protesting President Saleh on 11 February, in what has been dubbed a "Friday of Rage". The protests continued in the days following despite clashes with government advocates. In a "Friday of Anger" held on 18 February, tens of thousands of Yemenis took part in anti-government demonstrations in the major cities of Sana'a, Taiz, and Aden. Protests continued over the following months, especially in the three major cities, and briefly intensified in late May into urban warfare between Hashid tribesmen and army defectors allied with the opposition on one side and security forces and militias loyal to Saleh on the other.


title: Arab Spring

text: After Saleh pretended to accept a Gulf Cooperation Council-brokered plan allowing him to cede power in exchange for immunity from prosecution only to back away before signing three separate times, an assassination attempt on 3 June left him and several other high-ranking Yemeni officials injured by a blast in the presidential compound's mosque. Saleh was evacuated to Saudi Arabia for treatment and handed over power to Vice President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, who largely continued his policies and ordered the arrest of several Yemenis in connection with the attack on the presidential compound. While in Saudi Arabia, Saleh kept hinting that he could return any time and continued to be present in the political sphere through television appearances from Riyadh starting with an address to the Yemeni people on 7 July. On 13 August, a demonstration was announced in Yemen as "Mansouron Friday" in which hundreds of thousands of Yemenis called for Saleh to go. The protesters joining the "Mansouron Friday" were calling for establishment of "a new Yemen". On 12 September Saleh issued a presidential decree while still receiving treatment in Riyadh authorizing Hadi to negotiate a deal with the opposition and sign the GCC initiative.


title: Arab Spring

text: On 23 September, three months since the assassination attempt, Saleh returned to Yemen abruptly, defying all earlier expectations. Pressure on Saleh to sign the GCC initiative eventually led to his doing so in Riyadh on 23 November. Saleh thereby agreed to step down and set the stage for the transfer of power to his vice president. A presidential election was then held on 21 February 2012, in which Hadi (the only candidate) won 99.8% of the vote. Hadi then took the oath of office in Yemen's parliament on 25 February. By 27 February Saleh had resigned from the presidency and transferred power to Hadi. The replacement government was overthrown by Houthi rebels on 22 January 2015, starting the Yemeni Civil War and the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.


title: Arab Spring

text: In the aftermath of the Arab Spring in various countries, there was a wave of violence and instability commonly known as the Arab Winter or Islamist Winter. The Arab Winter was characterized by extensive civil wars, general regional instability, economic and demographic decline of the Arab League and overall religious wars between Sunni and Shia Muslims.


title: Arab Spring

text: Although the long-term effects of the Arab Spring have yet to be shown, its short-term consequences varied greatly across the Middle East and North Africa. In Tunisia and Egypt, where the existing regimes were ousted and replaced through a process of free and fair election, the revolutions were considered short-term successes. This interpretation is, however, problematized by the subsequent political turmoil that emerged, particularly in Egypt. Elsewhere, most notably in the monarchies of Morocco and the Persian Gulf, existing regimes co-opted the Arab Spring movement and managed to maintain order without significant social change. In other countries, particularly Syria and Libya, the apparent result of Arab Spring protests was a complete societal collapse.


title: Arab Spring

text: Social scientists have endeavored to understand the circumstances that led to this variation in outcome. A variety of causal factors have been highlighted, most of which hinge on the relationship between the strength of the state and the strength of civil society. Countries with stronger civil society networks in various forms underwent more successful reforms during the Arab Spring; these findings are also consistent with more general social science theories such as those espoused by Robert D. Putnam and Joel S. Migdal.


title: Arab Spring

text: One of the primary influences that have been highlighted in the analysis of the Arab Spring is the relative strength or weakness of a society's formal and informal institutions prior to the revolts. When the Arab Spring began, Tunisia had an established infrastructure and a lower level of petty corruption than did other states, such as Libya. This meant that, following the overthrow of the existing regime, there was less work to be done in reforming Tunisian institutions than elsewhere, and consequently it was less difficult to transition to and consolidate a democratic system of government.


title: Arab Spring

text: Also crucial was the degree of state censorship over print, broadcast, and social media in different countries. Television coverage by channels like Al Jazeera and BBC News provided worldwide exposure and prevented mass violence by the Egyptian government in Tahrir Square, contributing to the success of the Egyptian Revolution. In other countries, such as Libya, Bahrain, and Syria, such international press coverage was not present to the same degree, and the governments of these countries were able to act more freely in suppressing the protests. Strong authoritarian regimes with high degrees of censorship in their national broadcast media were able to block communication and prevent the domestic spread of information necessary for successful protests.


title: Arab Spring

text: Countries with greater access to social media, such as Tunisia and Egypt, proved more effective in mobilizing large groups of people, and appear to have been more successful overall than those with greater state control over media. Although social media played a large role in shaping the events of revolutions social activism did not occur in a vacuum. Without the use of street level organization social activists would not have been as effective. Even though a revolution did take place and the prior government has been replaced, Tunisia's government can not conclude that another uprising will not take place. There are still many grievances taking place today.


title: Arab Spring

text: Due to tourism coming to a halt and other factors during the revolution and Arab Spring movement, the budget deficit has grown and unemployment has risen since 2011. According to the World Bank in 2016, "Unemployment remains at 15.3% from 16.7% in 2011, but still well above the pre-revolution level of 13%." Large scale emigration brought on by a long and treacherous civil war has permanently harmed the Syrian economy. Projections for economic contraction will remain high at almost 7% in 2017.


title: Arab Spring

text: Still to this day, in countries affected by the Arab Spring, there is great division amongst those who prefer the status quo and those who want democratic change. As these regions dive ever deeper into political conflict time will show if new ideas can be established or if old institutions will still stand strong. The largest change from the pre-revolution to the post-revolution was in the attempt to break up political elites and reshape the geopolitical structure of the middle east. It is speculated that many of the changes brought on by the Arab Spring will lead to a shifting of regional power in the Middle East and a quickly changing structure of power.


title: Arab Spring

text: The support, even if tacit, of national military forces during protests has also been correlated to the success of the Arab Spring movement in different countries. In Egypt and Tunisia, the military actively participated in ousting the incumbent regime and in facilitating the transition to democratic elections. Countries like Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, exhibited a strong mobilization of military force against protesters, effectively ending the revolts in their territories; others, including Libya and Syria, failed to stop the protests entirely and instead ended up in civil war. The support of the military in Arab Spring protests has also been linked to the degree of ethnic homogeneity in different societies. In Saudi Arabia and Syria, where the ruling elite was closely linked with ethnic or religious subdivisions of society, the military sided with the existing regime and took on the ostensible role of protector to minority populations. Even aside from the military issue, countries with less homogeneous ethnic and national identities, such as Yemen and Jordan, seem to have exhibited less effective mobilization on the whole. The apparent exception to this trend is Egypt, which has a sizable Coptic minority.


title: Arab Spring

text: The presence of a strong, educated middle class has been noted as a correlate to the success of the Arab Spring in different countries. Countries with strong welfare programs and a weak middle class, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, as well as countries with great economic disparity and an impoverished working class—including Yemen, Libya, and Morocco—did not experience successful revolutions. The strength of the middle class is, in turn, directly connected to the existing political, economic, and educational institutions in a country, and the middle class itself may be considered an informal institution. In very broad terms, this may be reframed in terms of development, as measured by various indicators such as the Human Development Index: rentier states such as the oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf exhibited less successful revolutions overall.


title: Arab Spring

text: Charting what he calls the 'new masses' of the twenty-first century, Sociologist Göran Therborn draws attention to the historical contradictory role of the middle class. The Egyptian middle class has illustrated this ambivalence and contradiction in 2011 and 2013: "The volatility of middle-class politics is vividly illustrated by the sharp turns in Egypt, from acclamation of democracy to adulation of the military and its mounting repression of dissent, effectively condoning the restoration of the ancien régime minus Mubarak.


title: Arab Spring

text: Some trends in political Islam resulting from the Arab Spring noted by observers (Quinn Mecham and Tarek Osman) include:


title: Arab Spring

text: "The repercussions of the 2011 uprisings have influenced Middle Eastern youth's experiences providing impetus for questioning perennial sacred beliefs and positions, and forging ahead avant-garde views and responses to the constraints they face."


title: Arab Spring

text: Contrary to the common discourse, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley from The New Yorker argue that the divide in the post-Arab Spring in the Middle East is not sectarianism:


title: Arab Spring

text: Agha and Malley point out that even in Syria there has been a misrepresentation of the conflict, that the Assad regime relied on an alliance that included middle class Sunnis along with other religious minorities. Prior to the uprising, the Syrian regime enjoyed some financial and political support from Sunni Gulf states. The "select rich urban bourgeoisie, the Sunni Damascene in particular", according to Tokyo University researcher Housam Darwisheh, "now has a direct interest in preserving stability and their relations with the regime as long as their businesses prosper." In the view of the Arab sociologist Halim Barakat, "the persistence of communal cleavages complicates rather than nullifies social class consciousness and struggles."


title: Arab Spring

text: Very few analysts of the Arab societies foresaw a mass movement on such a scale that might threaten the existing order. In his 1993 sociological study of the Arab societies, culture and state, Barakat stated confidently that "one should expect the first Arab popular revolution to take place in Egypt or Tunisia. This does not, however, exclude the possibility that revolutions may occur in more pluralistic societies as well." What was prevalent, according to the Syrian writer and political dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh was three 'springs' that ensured the status quo. One of which was a "spring of despotic states that receive assistance and legitimacy from a world system centered around stability". Most democracy protests do not result in reforms.


title: Arab Spring

text: Two months into the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, "The Economist" magazine in a leader article spoke about a new generation of young people, idealists, "inspired by democracy", which made revolutions. Those revolutions, the article stated, "are going the right way, with a hopeful new mood prevailing and free elections in the offing". For those on the streets of Egypt the predominant slogan was "bread, freedom and social justice".


title: Arab Spring

text: Some observers, however, have questioned the revolutionary nature of the 'Arab Spring'. A social theorist specialising in social movements and social change in the Middle East, Asef Bayat, has provided an analysis based on his decades-long of research as "a participant-observer" (in his own words). In his appraisal of the Arab revolutions, Bayat discerns a remarkable difference between these revolutions and the revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s in countries like Yemen, Nicaragua and Iran. The Arab revolutions, argues Bayat, "lacked any associated intellectual anchor" and the predominant voices, "secular and Islamists alike, took free market, property relations, and neoliberal rationality for granted" and uncritically. New social movements' define themselves as horizontal networks with aversion to the state and central authority. Thus their "political objective is not to capture the state", a fundamental feature in the twentieth-century revolutionary movements. Instead of revolution or reform, Bayat speaks of 'refolution'.


title: Arab Spring

text: Wael Ghonim, an Internet activist who would later gain an international fame, acknowledged that what he had intended by founding a Facebook page was a "simple reaction to the events in Tunisia" and that "there was no master plans or strategies" a priori. That the objective was reform to be achieved through peaceful means and not revolution was explicitly put forward by April 6 Movement, one of the leading forces of the Egyptian uprising, in their statements. It called for "coalition and co-operation between all factions and national forces to reach the reform and the peaceful change of the conditions of Egypt". "Even in Tahrir Square with so many people and the rising level of demands," recalls an activist in the movement, "we were very surprised by the people wanting the downfall of the regime; and not a single one of us had expected this." In comparing the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, researcher Housam Darwisheh concludes: "The Egyptian uprising, in neither dismantling the ancien regime nor creating new institutional mechanisms to lead the transition, permitted the so-called 'deep state' to reassert itself while the deepening polarization led many non-Islamists to side with the military against the MB [the Muslim Brotherhood]."


title: Arab Spring

text: According to Cambridge sociologist Hazem Kandil, the Muslim Brotherhood did not aim at taking power during the events leading up to the toppling of Mubarak. The biggest and most organised organisation in Egypt in fact negotiated with the regime in "infamous talks between Morsi and the then vice-president Omar Suleiman", and "an informal deal was reached: withdraw your members from Tahrir Square, and we allow you to form a political party." Then the Brotherhood wavered whether to file a presidential candidate and did not push for a new constitution, choosing to work with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF):


title: Arab Spring

text: George Lawson from the London School of Economics places the Arab uprisings within the post-Cold War world. He characterises the uprisings as "largely unsuccessful revolution" and that they "bare a family resemblance to the 'negotiated revolutions'... Negotiated revolutions ... seek to transform political and symbolic fields of action, but without a concomitant commitment to a program of economic transformation." In this 'negotiated revolution', comments Bayat, "revolutionaries had in effect little part in the 'negotiations'." What has been treated by some analysts as intellectual weakness of the revolutionary movement is partly due to the pre-2011 stifling cultural environment under repressive regimes. Although Egyptian intellectuals enjoyed a bigger margin of freedom than their counterparts in Tunisia, cultural figures sought protection from political players, and instead of leading criticism, they complied.


title: Arab Spring

text: The post-Cold War era saw the emergence of the idea and practice of gradual reform and liberal agenda. It saw an influx of humanitarian projects, NGOs and charity work, liberal think tanks and emphasis on civil society work. This new juncture seemed to have made the idea and prospect of revolution an outdated project. The focus instead shifted to individual freedoms and free market. The new idea of civil society was different from the kind of civil society Antonio Gramsci, for instance, envisaged: 'a revolution before the revolution'.


title: Arab Spring

text: In her field study in Yemen, anthropologist Bogumila Hall depicts the effects of what she terms as "the marketization of civil society and its heavy reliance on donors", which "led to a largely depoliticized form of activism that by passed, rather than confronted, the state". Hall, with her focus on the "muhammashīn" (the marginalized) in Yemen, described how in the 1990s and 2000s international NGOs established charity projects and workshops "to teach slum dwellers new skills and behaviours". But, besides the "modest changes" brought by the NGOs, concludes Hall, "delegating the problem of the "muhammashīn" to the realm of development and poverty alleviation, without addressing the structural causes underlying their marginalisation, had a depoliticising effect. It led to a widely held assumption, also shared by the "muhammashīn", that ending marginalisation was a matter for experts and administrative measures, not politics."


title: Arab Spring

text: When Arab regimes viewed NGOs' leaders and other similar organisations with suspicion, accusing Western governments of providing funding and training to 'illegal organisations' and fomenting revolution, diplomatic cables reported "how American officials frequently assured skeptical governments that the training was aimed at reform, not promoting revolutions". And when the Egyptian uprising was gaining its momentum, the American president Barack Obama "did not suggest that the 82-year-old leader step aside or transfer power... the argument was that he really needed to do the reforms, and do them fast. Former ambassador to Egypt (Frank G.) Wisner publicly suggested that Mr. Mubarak had to be at the center of any change, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that any transition would take time." Some activists, who read the American thinker and nonviolence advocate Gene Sharp, obtained training from foreign bodies, including the Serbian opposition movement Otpor!, and April 6 Movement modelled its logo after Otpor's. Otpor, writes Bayat in his discussion of the agencies of the Arab Spring activism in Tunisia and Egypt, obtained funds from well-known American organisations such as the American National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the International Republican Institute. Thus Otpur, in line with these organisations' advocacies, "pushed for political reform through nonradical, electoral, and market-driven language and practices".


title: Arab Spring

text: Early 2019 witnessed two uprisings: one in Algeria and another in Sudan. In Algeria under pressure of weeks of protests, the head of the army forced the ailing twenty-year-serving president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to abdicate. In Sudan, after four months of protests, the Sudani defense minister ousted longtime President Omar al-Bashir in a coup. Writing about what he calls "a rebirth of Tahrir Square", the prominent Lebanese novelist and critic Elias Khoury, averred that "perhaps the secret of the Arab Spring lies not in its victories or defeats, but in its ability to liberate people from fear." Despite the "faded spirit of Tahrir Square" and an outcome that Khoury describes as a "monarchy that abrogates legal standards", a renaissance of resistance is unstoppable:


title: Arab Spring

text: There was a need, suggested Khoury, to turn "the uprisings of the Arab Spring into an intellectual, political and moral project that gives meaning to the goals of freedom, democracy and social justice". From the outset the 2011 Arab uprisings raised the banner of 'social justice'. The concept, what it means and how to achieve it has been a major subject of discussion and contention since then.


title: Arab Spring

text: In its economic and social manifesto, the Tunisian Ennahda Movement states that the movement "adopts the social and solidarised market economy within a national approach based on free economic activity, freedom of ownership, production and administration on the one hand, and social justice and equal opportunities on the other hand" and that "national capital has to be the axis in the development process." The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt mainly focuses on "reform of existing political systems in the Arab world. It embraces the idea of political activism and social responsibility, organising charitable works and social support programmes as part of its outreach to its core support base of lower-income populations."


title: Arab Spring

text: On its part the International Centre for Transitional Justice has set nine 'concrete and tangible' goals with focus on "accountability for serious violations of human rights, access to justice, facilitating peace processes, advancing the cause of reconciliation and reforming the state and social institutions". One of those goals was taken up by Truth and Dignity Commission (Tunisia) that recorded and submitted to the relevant court the human rights abuses which had been committed by the Tunisian regime. A new climate of freedom of speech, freedom of organisation and elections characterised the political environment of post-Ben Ali Tunisia.


title: Arab Spring

text: Some observers and social analysts remarked, however, that the issue of social justice remained a rhetoric or was marginalised. According to Fathi Al-Shamikhi, an expert in debt issues and founder of the Tunisian association RAID, different social forces played a crucial role in matters related to social demands and achieving social justice. "This role varies between those who advocate these demands and those who reject them, according to the social nature of each of these forces."


title: Arab Spring

text: "Bread, freedom and social justice" were the main slogans of the Arab revolutions. But although social and economic demands were raised, argued researcher and former editor in chief of the Egyptian Al-Shorouq Newspaper, Wael Gamal, "they were pushed aside in the political arena, and more attention was given to issues such as the transfer of power arrangements, the constitution first, the elections first, democratic transformation and the religious-secular conflict."


title: Arab Spring

text: With the survival of the regime in Egypt and the rolling back of what was gained in the short period after the overthrow of Mubarak, the persistence, or even the worsening, of the socio-economic conditions that led to the Tunisian uprising, a Saudi-led intervention in Bahrain assisted the defeat of the uprising in the country, and especially the descent of other uprisings into brutal civil wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, with acute humanitarian crises, there are


title: Arab Spring

text: Writing in April 2019, amidst an offensive to take Libya's capital Tripoli by Khalifa Haftar who gained the backing of the U.S. president Donald Trump, Marwan Kabalan argued that "counter-revolutionary forces are seeking to resurrect the military dictatorship model the Arab Spring dismantled." Kapalan contended that "regional and world powers have sponsored the return of military dictatorships to the region, with the hope that they would clean up the Arab Spring 'mess' and restore order." He also referred to Western powers' history of backing military rule in the region, and how American interests in the Middle East clashed with French but mainly with British ones, citing the American supported coups in Syria and Egypt, but generally how, as former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted, the United States "pursued stability at the expense of democracy... and achieved neither". Kabalan concluded:


title: Arab Spring

text: Analyst H. A. Hellyer attributes the persistence of autocracy and dictatorship, as well as counter-revolution, to structures that go back to colonialism. But also to the forms the states in the MENA region took in the postcolonial era and the social pacts that were established in the process. What we are seeing today since 2011, argues Hellyer, is a clash between those "inherited structures" and the new "demographic realities" of the populations of the region.


title: Arab Spring

text: Compromise and dialogue with the entrenched regimes, followed by elections in Tunisia and Egypt have produced either limited change or counter-revolution. In the first quarter of 2019 protests and mass mobilisation in Sudan and Algeria succeeded in toppling the head of states, but it seems there is a dilemma, argues scholar and fellow at Woodrow Wilson Center Marina Ottaway. The demands of the genuine grassroots movements are unlikely, unfortunately, "to be attained through a peaceful process – one without violence and the violation of the human rights of many". Ottaway points out to the experiences of Algeria and Egypt when in the former the regime annulled the results of the elections in the early 1990s and in the latter when the military carried out a bloody repression of the Muslim Brotherhood government during the 2013 coup.


title: Arab Spring

text: For contemporary activists, protesting in Tahrir Square in the last decade always meant "a battle to control the space, especially under an authoritarian regime and heavy police state". In an environment where people distrust formal politics, they find the streets almost the only space available to them to express their grievances, discontent and solidarity. As sociologist Bayat puts it, urban streets are not only a physical place for "street politics", but they also "signify a different but crucial symbolic utterance, one that transcends the physicality of street, to convey collective sentiments of a nation or a community". Researcher Atef Said makes a connection between previous events that took place in Tahrir and the 2011 occupation of the Square. "Spaces," writes Said, "carry meanings that are constructed over time, redeployed and reconfigured in the present, and carried forward as inspiration for the future."


title: Arab Spring

text: In a survey conducted by the National Center for Social and Criminological Research in Egypt, and its results published by the daily al-Masry al-Youm, just a week before the beginning of the uprising, the sample of 2,956 people expressed that achieving justice and political stability, lowering prices, having access to clean drinking water, and providing comfortable transportation topped the list of changes they desired for their country.


title: HDFC Bank

text: HDFC Bank Limited (also known as HDB) is an Indian banking and financial services company headquartered in Mumbai. It is India's largest private sector bank by assets and world's 10th largest bank by market capitalisation . It is the third largest company by market capitalisation of $122.50 billion on the Indian stock exchanges. It is also the fifteenth largest employer in India with nearly 150,000 employees.


title: HDFC Bank

text: HDFC Bank was incorporated in 1994 as a subsidiary of the Housing Development Finance Corporation, with its registered office in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Its first corporate office and a full-service branch at Sandoz House, Worli were inaugurated by the then Union Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh.


title: HDFC Bank

text: , the bank's distribution network was at 6,378 branches across 3,203 cities. It has installed 430,000 POS terminals and issued 23,570,000 debit cards and 12 million credit cards in FY 2017. It has a base of 1,52,511 permanent employees as of 30 June 2022.


title: HDFC Bank

text: HDFC Bank provides a number of products and services including wholesale banking, retail banking, treasury, auto loans, two-wheeler loans, personal loans, loans against property, consumer durable loan, lifestyle loan and credit cards. Along with this various digital products are Payzapp and SmartBUY.


title: HDFC Bank

text: HDFC Bank merged with Times Bank in February 2000. This was the first merger of two private banks in the New Generation private sector banks category. Times Bank was established by Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd., commonly known as The Times Group, India's largest media conglomerate.


title: HDFC Bank

text: In 2008, Centurion Bank of Punjab (CBoP) was acquired by HDFC Bank. HDFC Bank's board approved the acquisition of CBoP for ₹95.1 billion in one of the largest mergers in the financial sector in India.


title: HDFC Bank

text: In 2021, the bank acquired a 9.99% stake in FERBINE, an entity promoted by Tata Group, to operate a Pan-India umbrella entity for retail payment systems, similar to National Payments Corporation of India.


title: HDFC Bank

text: In September 2021, the bank partnered with Paytm to launch a range of credit cards powered by the global card network Visa.


title: HDFC Bank

text: In March 2020, Housing Development Finance Corporation, parent company of HDFC Bank, made an investment of ₹1,000 crores in Yes Bank. As per the scheme of reconstruction of Yes Bank, 75% of the total investment by the corporation would be locked in for three years. On 14 March, Yes Bank allotted 100 crore shares of the face value of ₹2 each for consideration of ₹10 per share (including ₹8 premium) to the Corporation aggregating to 7.97 percent of the post issue equity share capital of Yes bank.


title: HDFC Bank

text: The equity shares of HDFC Bank are listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India. Its American depositary receipts are listed on the NYSE issued through JP Morgan Chase Bank.


title: HDFC Bank

text: Its global depository receipts (GDRs) was listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange but was terminated by board of directors following its low trading volume.


title: HDFC Bank

text: Parivartan is an umbrella term for all of the corporate social responsibility initiatives by HDFC Bank.


title: HDFC Bank

text: HDFC Bank spent Rs 634.91 crore towards Parivartan,in FY 2020-21. Out of Rs 634.9 crore, over Rs 110 crore was allocated and utilised towards initiatives focused on COVID-19 relief.


title: HDFC Bank

text: On 2 December 2020, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) ordered HDFC Bank to temporarily halt the issuance of new credit cards and all planned activities under the bank's Digital 2.0 program citing incidents of outages in the bank's internet banking, mobile banking and payment utility services.


title: HDFC Bank

text: On 29 January 2020, RBI imposed a monetary penalty on HDFC Bank for failure to undertake on-going due diligence in case of 39 current accounts opened for bidding in the initial public offer.


title: HDFC Bank

text: Altico Capital and Dubai's Mashreq Bank have approached RBI, accusing HDFC Bank of violating regulatory provisions by debiting part of the funds the company had raised through external commercial borrowing (ECB) and parked at the bank. They claimed that HDFC bank's decision to transfer money from the account may be a violation of the RBI's end-use rule.


title: HDFC Bank

text: On 27 May 2021, RBI imposed a penalty of Rs 10 crore on HDFC Bank for deficiencies in regulatory compliances with regard to its auto loan portfolio.The said penalty was imposed in regards to the contraventions of certain provisions of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949.


title: The Imitation Game

text: The Imitation Game is a 2014 American historical drama film directed by Morten Tyldum and written by Graham Moore, based on the 1983 biography "" by Andrew Hodges. The film's title quotes the name of the game cryptanalyst Alan Turing proposed for answering the question "Can machines think?", in his 1950 seminal paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing, who decrypted German intelligence messages for the British government during World War II. Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Charles Dance, and Mark Strong appear in supporting roles.


title: The Imitation Game

text: "The Imitation Game" was released theatrically in the United States on November 28, 2014. The film grossed over $233 million worldwide on a $14 million production budget, making it the highest-grossing independent film of 2014. It received eight nominations at the 87th Academy Awards, winning for Best Adapted Screenplay; five nominations at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards; and three nominations at the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards. It also received nine BAFTA nominations, and won the People's Choice Award at the 39th Toronto International Film Festival.


title: The Imitation Game

text: In 1951, two policemen, Nock and Staehl, investigate the mathematician Alan Turing after an apparent break-in at his home. During his interrogation by Nock, Turing tells of his time working at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.


title: The Imitation Game

text: In 1928, the young Turing is unhappy and bullied at boarding school. He develops a friendship with Christopher Morcom, who sparks his interest in cryptography. Turing develops romantic feelings for him, but Christopher soon dies from tuberculosis.


title: The Imitation Game

text: When Britain declares war on Germany in 1939, Turing travels to Bletchley Park. Under the direction of Commander Alastair Denniston, he joins the cryptography team of Hugh Alexander, John Cairncross, Peter Hilton, Keith Furman, and Charles Richards. The team are trying to analyze the Enigma machine, which the Nazis use to send coded messages.


title: The Imitation Game

text: Turing is difficult to work with, and considers his colleagues inferior; he works alone to design a machine to decipher Enigma messages. After Denniston refuses to fund the construction of the machine, Turing writes to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who puts Turing in charge of the team and funds the machine. Turing fires Furman and Richards and places a difficult crossword in newspapers to find replacements. Joan Clarke, a Cambridge graduate, passes Turing's test but her parents will not allow her to work with the male cryptographers. Turing arranges for her to live and work with the female clerks who intercept the messages and shares his plans with her. With Clarke's help, Turing warms to the other colleagues, who begin to respect him.


title: The Imitation Game

text: Turing's machine, which he names Christopher, is constructed, but cannot determine the Enigma encryption settings quickly enough; the Germans reset them each day. Denniston orders it to be destroyed and Turing fired, but the other cryptographers threaten to leave if Turing goes. After Clarke plans to leave on the wishes of her parents, Turing proposes marriage, which she accepts. During their reception, Turing confirms his homosexuality to Cairncross, who warns him to keep it secret. After overhearing a conversation with a female clerk about messages she receives from the same German coder, Turing has an epiphany, realising he can program the machine to decode words he already knows exist in certain messages. One German coder always opens his first message with a standard plaintext German script. That reveals enough of the day's Enigma code that Christopher can quickly decode all the day's messages. After he recalibrates the machine, it quickly decodes a message and the cryptographers celebrate. They learn a convoy is about to be attacked, but Turing realises that if they suddenly reroute the convoy and attack the U-boats, the Germans will realize Enigma is compromised and change the machinery. Therefore, the team at Bletchley Park cannot act on every decoded message. Turing creates a statistical model to indicate which warnings to send to maximize destruction and minimize discovery.


title: The Imitation Game

text: Turing discovers that Cairncross is a Soviet spy. When Turing confronts him, Cairncross argues that the Soviets are allies working for the same goals, and threatens to retaliate by disclosing Turing's sexuality. When the top MI6 agent Stewart Menzies appears to threaten Clarke, Turing reveals that Cairncross is a spy. Menzies reveals he knew this already and planted the messages Cairncross leaks to the Soviets for British benefit. Fearing for her safety, Turing tells Clarke to leave Bletchley Park, revealing that he is a homosexual. Clarke states she always suspected but insists they would have been happy together anyway. Turing then tells her he never cared for her, and only used her for her cryptography skills. Heartbroken, she decides to stay anyway, deeming this the single most important task she will undertake, and she now refuses to cow to what Turing or her parents want her to do, or think of her decisions. After the war, Menzies tells the cryptographers to destroy their work, because MI6 wants governments to think they had unbreakable code machines. He tells the team that they should never see one another again or share what they have done.


title: The Imitation Game

text: In 1952, Turing is convicted of gross indecency and, in lieu of a jail sentence, undergoes chemical castration so he can continue his work. Clarke visits him in his home and witnesses his physical and mental deterioration. She comforts him by saying that his work saved millions of lives.


title: The Imitation Game

text: The epilogue reveals that after a year of government-mandated hormonal therapy, Turing committed suicide on June 7, 1954. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a posthumous Royal Pardon, honouring his work which would eventually go on to create the modern computer.


title: The Imitation Game

text: Before Cumberbatch joined the project, Warner Bros. bought the screenplay for a reported seven-figure sum because of Leonardo DiCaprio's interest in playing Turing. In the end, DiCaprio did not come on board and the rights of the script reverted to the screenwriter. Black Bear Pictures subsequently committed to finance the film for $14 million. Various directors were attached during development including Ron Howard and David Yates. In December 2012, it was announced that "Headhunters" director Morten Tyldum would helm the project, making the film his English-language directorial debut.


title: The Imitation Game

text: Principal photography began on September 15, 2013 in Britain. Filming locations included Turing's former school, Sherborne, Bletchley Park, where Turing and his colleagues worked during the war, and Central Saint Martins campus on Southampton Row in London. Other locations included towns in England such as Nettlebed (Joyce Grove in Oxfordshire) and Chesham (Buckinghamshire). Scenes were also filmed at Bicester Airfield and outside the Law Society building in Chancery Lane, and at West London Film Studios. Principal photography finished on November 11, 2013.


title: The Imitation Game

text: The bombe seen in the film is based on a replica of Turing's original machine, which is housed in the museum at Bletchley Park. However, production designer Maria Djurkovic admitted that her team made the machine more cinematic by making it larger and having more of its internal mechanisms visible.


title: The Imitation Game

text: The film's title refers to Turing's proposed test of the same name, which he discussed in his 1950 paper on artificial intelligence entitled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence".


title: The Imitation Game

text: The Weinstein Company acquired the film for $7 million in February 2014, the highest amount ever paid for US distribution rights at the European Film Market. The film is also a recipient of Tribeca Film Festival's Sloan Filmmaker Fund, which grants filmmakers funding and guidance with regard to innovative films that are concerned with science, mathematics, and technology.


title: The Imitation Game

text: In June 2014, it was announced that Alexandre Desplat would provide the original score of the film. It was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in London. Desplat uses continuous piano arpeggios to represent both Turing's thinking mind and the workings of a mechanical machine. He said of the complexity of the continuity and structure of the score:


title: The Imitation Game

text: [W]hen the camera at the end of the film has those beautiful shots of the young boy, the young Alan, and he's meeting with the professor who's telling him his friend Christopher is dead, and the camera is pushing in on him, I play Christopher's theme that we heard very early on in the film. There's a simple continuity there. It's the accumulation of these moments that I can slowly but surely play that make it even stronger.


title: The Imitation Game

text: The score received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score, losing to the score of "The Grand Budapest Hotel", also composed by Desplat.


title: The Imitation Game

text: Following the Royal Pardon granted by the British government to Turing on December 24, 2013, the filmmakers released the first official promotional photograph of Cumberbatch in character beside Turing's bombe. In the week of the anniversary of Turing's death in June 2014, "Entertainment Weekly" released two new stills which marked the first look at the characters played by Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Matthew Beard, and Allen Leech. On what would have been Turing's 102nd birthday on June 23, "Empire" released two photographs featuring Mark Strong and Charles Dance in character. Promotional stills were taken by photographer Jack English, who also photographed Cumberbatch for "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy".


title: The Imitation Game

text: Princeton University Press and Vintage Books both released film tie-in editions of Andrew Hodges' biography "Alan Turing: The Enigma" in September 2014. The first UK and US trailers were released on July 22, 2014. The international teaser poster was released on September 18, 2014 with the tagline "The true enigma was the man who cracked the code".


title: The Imitation Game

text: In November 2014, the Weinstein Company co-hosted a private screening of the film with Digital Sky Technologies billionaire Yuri Milner and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Attendees of the screening at Los Altos Hills, California included Silicon Valley's top executives, such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Airbnb's Nathan Blecharczyk, and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Director Tyldum, screenwriter Moore, and actress Knightley were also in attendance. In addition, Cumberbatch and Zuckerberg presented the Mathematics Prizes at the Breakthrough Awards on November 10, 2014 in honour of Turing.


title: The Imitation Game

text: The bombe re-created by the filmmakers has been on display in a special "The Imitation Game" exhibition at Bletchley Park since November 10, 2014. The year-long exhibit features clothes worn by the actors and props used in the film.


title: The Imitation Game

text: The official film website allowed visitors to unlock exclusive content by solving cryptic crossword puzzles supposedly conceived by Turing. The website puzzle was a shorter version of the "Daily Telegraph" puzzle of January 13, 1942 that was actually used in Bletchley Park recruitment during the war (and the puzzle was not set by Turing, who was no good at them). Google, which sponsored the New York Premiere of the film, launched a competition called "The Code-Cracking Challenge" on November 23, 2014. It is a skill contest where entrants must crack a code provided by Google. The prize/s will be awarded to entrant/s who crack the code and submit their entry the fastest.


title: The Imitation Game

text: In November 2014, ahead of the film's US release, "The New York Times" reprinted the 1942 puzzle from "The Daily Telegraph" used in recruiting codebreakers at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. Entrants who solved the puzzle could mail in their results for a chance to win a trip for two to London and a tour of Bletchley Park.


title: The Imitation Game

text: TWC launched a print and online campaign on January 2, 2015 featuring testimonials from leaders in the fields of technology, military, academia, and LGBTQ groups (all influenced by Turing's life and accomplishments) to promote the film and Turing's legacy. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales all gave tribute quotes. There were also testimonials from LGBT leaders including HRC president Chad Griffin and GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis and from military leaders including the 22nd United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates.


title: The Imitation Game

text: The film had its world premiere at the 41st Telluride Film Festival in August 2014, and played at the 39th Toronto International Film Festival in September. It had its European premiere as the opening film of the 58th BFI London Film Festival in October 2014. It began a limited theatrical release on November 28, 2014 in the United States, two weeks after its premiere in the United Kingdom on November 14. The US distributor TWC stated that the film would initially debut in four cinemas in Los Angeles and New York, expanding to six new markets on December 12, before being released nationwide on Christmas Day.


title: The Imitation Game

text: "The Imitation Game" was released on March 31, 2015 in the United States in two formats: a one-disc standard DVD and a Blu-ray with a digital copy of the film.


title: The Imitation Game

text: "The Imitation Game" grossed $91.1 million in North America and $142.4 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $233.5 million, against a budget of $14 million. It was the top-grossing independent film release of 2014.


title: The Imitation Game

text: The film opened at number two at the UK box office behind the big-budget film "Interstellar", earning $4.3 million from 459 screens. Its opening box office figure was the third highest opening weekend haul for a British film in 2014. Its opening was 107% higher than that of "Argo", 81% higher than "Philomena" and 26% higher than "The Iron Lady" following its debut.


title: The Imitation Game

text: Debuting in four cinemas in Los Angeles and New York on November 28, the film grossed $479,352 in its opening weekend with a $119,352 per-screen-average, the second highest per-screen-average of 2014 and the 7th highest of all time for a live-action film. Adjusted for inflation, it outperformed the Weinstein Company's own Oscar-winning films "The King's Speech" ($88,863 in 2010) and "The Artist" ($51,220 in 2011), which were also released on Thanksgiving weekend. The film expanded into additional markets on December 12 and was released nationwide on Christmas Day.


title: The Imitation Game

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads: "With an outstanding starring performance from Benedict Cumberbatch illuminating its fact-based story, "The Imitation Game" serves as an eminently well-made entry in the 'prestige biopic' genre." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 49 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The film received a rare average grade of "A+" from market-research firm CinemaScore, and a 90% "definite recommend" rating from its core audience, according to PostTrak. It was also included in both the National Board of Review and American Film Institute's "Top 10 Films of 2014".


title: The Imitation Game

text: "The New York Observer"s Rex Reed declared that "one of the most important stories of the last century is one of the greatest movies of 2014". Kaleem Aftab of "The Independent" gave the film a five-star review, hailing it the "Best British Film of the Year". "Empire" described it as a "superb thriller" and "Glamour" declared it "an instant classic". Peter Debruge of "Variety" added that the film is "beautifully written, elegantly mounted and poignantly performed". Critic Scott Foundas stated that the "movie is undeniably strong in its sense of a bright light burned out too soon, and the often undignified fate of those who dare to chafe at society's established norms". Critic Leonard Maltin asserted that the film has "an ideal ensemble cast with every role filled to perfection". Praise went to Knightley's supporting performance as Clarke, Goldenberg's editing, Desplat's score, Faura's cinematography and Djurkovic's production design. The film was enthusiastically received at the Telluride Film Festival and won the "People's Choice Award for Best Film" at TIFF, the highest prize of the festival.


title: The Imitation Game

text: Cumberbatch's performance was met with widespread acclaim from critics. "TIME" ranked Cumberbatch's portrayal number one in its Top 10 film performances of 2014, with the magazine's chief film critic Richard Corliss calling Cumberbatch's characterisation "the actor's oddest, fullest, most "Cumberbatchian" character yet ... he doesn't play Turing so much as inhabit him, bravely and sympathetically but without mediation". Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" declared Turing "the role of Cumberbatch's career", while A.O. Scott of "The New York Times" stated that it is "one of the year's finest pieces of screen acting". Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" asserted that the actor "gives an explosive, emotionally complex" portrayal. Critic Clayton Davis stated that it is a "performance for the ages ... proving he's one of the best actors working today". Foundas of "Variety" wrote that Cumberbatch's acting is "masterful ... a marvel to watch", Manohla Dargis of "The New York Times" described it as "delicately nuanced, prickly and tragic" and Owen Gleiberman of the BBC proclaimed it an "emotionally tailored perfection". It is "a storming performance from Cumberbatch: you'll be deciphering his work long after the credits roll" declared Dave Calhoun of "Time Out". In addition, Claudia Puig of "USA Today" concluded in her review, "It's Cumberbatch's nuanced, haunted performance that leaves the most powerful impression". "The Hollywood Reporter"s Todd McCarthy reported that the undeniable highlight of the film was Cumberbatch, "whose charisma, tellingly modulated and naturalistic array of eccentricities, talent at indicating a mind never at rest and knack for simultaneously portraying physical oddness and attractiveness combine to create an entirely credible portrait of genius at work". Gossip blogger Roger Friedman wrote at the end of his review, "Cumberbatch may be the closest thing we have to a real descendant of Sir Laurence Olivier".


title: The Imitation Game

text: While praising the performances of Cumberbatch and Knightley, Catherine Shoard of "The Guardian" stated that the film is "too formulaic, too efficient at simply whisking you through and making sure you've clocked the diversity message," going on to raise concerns about the film's alleged reluctance to show Turing "romantically or sexually involved with a man. Tim Robey of "The Telegraph" described it as "a film about a human calculator which feels ... a little too calculated". British historian Alex von Tunzelmann, writing for "The Guardian" in November 2014, pointed out many historical inaccuracies in the film, saying in conclusion: "Historically, "The Imitation Game" is as much of a garbled mess as a heap of unbroken code". Journalist Christian Caryl also found numerous historical inaccuracies, describing the film as constituting "a bizarre departure from the historical record" that changed Turing's rich life to be "multiplex-friendly". L.V. Anderson of "Slate" magazine compared the film's account of Turing's life and work to the biography it was based on, writing, "I discovered that "The Imitation Game" takes major liberties with its source material, injecting conflict where none existed, inventing entirely fictional characters, rearranging the chronology of events, and misrepresenting the very nature of Turing's work at Bletchley Park". Andrew Grant of "Science News" wrote, "... like so many other Hollywood biopics, it takes some major artistic license – which is disappointing, because Turing's actual story is so compelling." Computing historian Thomas Haigh, writing in the journal "Communications of the ACM", said that "the film is a bad guide to reality but a useful summary of everything that the popular imagination gets wrong about Bletchley Park", that it "combines the traditional focus of popular science writing on the lone genius who changes the world with the modern movie superhero narrative of a freak who must overcome his own flaws before he can save the world", and that, together with the likes of "A Beautiful Mind" and "The Theory of Everything", is part of a trend of "glossy scientific biopic[s]" that emphasize those famous scientists who were surrounded by tragedy rather than those who found contented lives, which in turn affects the way "[s]ome kinds of people, and work, have become famous and others have not."


title: The Imitation Game

text: Despite earlier reservations, Turing's niece Inagh Payne told Allan Beswick of BBC Radio Manchester that the film "really did honour my uncle" after she watched the film at the London Film Festival in October 2014. In the same interview, Turing's nephew Dermot Turing stated that Cumberbatch is "perfect casting. I couldn't think of anyone better." James Turing, a great-nephew of the code-breaker, said Cumberbatch "knows things that I never knew before. The amount of knowledge he has about Alan is amazing."


title: The Imitation Game

text: "The Imitation Game" was nominated for, and received, numerous awards, with Cumberbatch's portrayal of Turing particularly praised. The film and its cast and crew were also honoured by Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT civil rights advocacy group and political lobbying organisation in the United States. "We are proud to honor the stars and filmmakers of "The Imitation Game" for bringing the captivating yet tragic story of Alan Turing to the big screen", HRC president Chad Griffin said in a statement.


title: The Imitation Game

text: In January 2015, Cumberbatch, comedian-actor Stephen Fry, producer Harvey Weinstein, and Turing's great-niece Rachel Barnes launched a campaign to pardon the 49,000 gay men convicted under the same law that led to Turing's chemical castration. An open letter published in "The Guardian" urged the British government and the Royal family, particularly Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, to aid the campaign.


title: The Imitation Game

text: The Human Rights Campaign's Chad Griffin also offered his endorsement, saying: "Over 49,000 other gay men and women were persecuted in England under the same law. Turing was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013. The others were not. Honor this movie. Honor this man. And honor the movement to bring justice to the other 49,000." Aiding the cause were campaigner Peter Tatchell, "Attitude" magazine, and other high-profile figures in the gay community.


title: The Imitation Game

text: In February 2015, Matt Damon, Michael Douglas, Jessica Alba, Bryan Cranston, and Anna Wintour among others joined the petition at Pardon49k.org demanding pardons for victims of anti-gay laws. Historians, including Justin Bengry of Birkbeck University of London and Matt Houlbrook of the University of Birmingham, argued that such a pardon would be "bad history" despite its political appeal, because of the broad variety of cases in which the historical laws were applied (including cases of rape) and the distortion of history resulting from an attempt to clean up the wrongdoings of the past "post facto". Bengry also cites the existing ability of those convicted under repealed anti-homosexuality laws to have their convictions declared spent.


title: The Imitation Game

text: This petition eventually resulted in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, informally known as the Alan Turing law, which serves as an amnesty law to pardon men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts, and which was implemented on January 31, 2017. As the law and the disregard process applies only to England and Wales, groups in Northern Ireland and Scotland have campaigned for equivalent laws in their jurisdictions.


title: The Imitation Game

text: During production, there was criticism regarding the film's purported downplaying of Turing's homosexuality, particularly condemning the portrayal of his relationship with close friend and one-time fiancée Joan Clarke. Hodges, author of the book upon which the film was based, described the script as having "built up the relationship with Joan much more than it actually was". Turing's niece Payne thought that Knightley was inappropriately cast, as she described the real Clarke as "rather plain", and said: "I think they might be trying to romanticize it. It makes me a bit mad. You want the film to show it as it was, not a lot of nonsense."


title: The Imitation Game

text: Speaking to "Empire", director Tyldum expressed his decision to take on the project: "It is such a complex story. It was the gay rights element, but also how his (Turing's) ideas were kept secret and how incredibly important his work was during the war, that he was never given credit for it". In an interview for "GQ UK", Matthew Goode, who plays fellow cryptographer Hugh Alexander in the film, stated that the script focuses on "Turing's life and how as a nation we celebrated him as being a hero by chemically castrating him because he was gay". The producers of the film stated: "There is not – and never has been – a version of our script where Alan Turing is anything other than homosexual, nor have we included fictitious sex scenes."


title: The Imitation Game

text: In a January 2015 interview with "The Huffington Post", its screenwriter Graham Moore said in response to complaints about the film's historical accuracy:


title: The Imitation Game

text: When you use the language of "fact checking" to talk about a film, I think you're sort of fundamentally misunderstanding how art works. You don't fact check Monet's "Water Lilies". That's not what water lilies look like, that's what the sensation of experiencing water lilies feel like. That's the goal of the piece.


title: The Imitation Game

text: A lot of historical films sometimes feel like people reading a Wikipedia page to you onscreen, like just reciting "and then he did that, and then he did that, and then he did this other thing" – it's like a "Greatest Hits" compilation. We wanted the movie to be emotional and passionate. Our goal was to give you "What does Alan Turing feel like?" What does his story feel like? What'd it feel like to be Alan Turing? Can we create the experience of sort of "Alan Turing-ness" for an audience based on his life?


title: The Imitation Game

text: For the most part, Hodges has not commented on the historical accuracy of the film, alluding to contractual obligations involving the film rights to his biography.


title: The Imitation Game

text: Several events depicted in the film did not happen in real life. The visual blog "Information is Beautiful" deduced that, while taking creative licence into account, the film was just 42.3% accurate when compared to real-life events, summarizing that "shoe-horning the incredible complexity of the Enigma machine and cryptography in general was never going to be easy. But this film just rips the historical records to shreds".


title: Power (TV series)

text: Power is an American crime drama television series created and produced by Courtney A. Kemp in collaboration with Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. It aired on the Starz network from June 7, 2014, to February 9, 2020.


title: Power (TV series)

text: Upon release, "Power" gained positive reviews and it is one of Starz's most highly rated shows and one of cable's most watched shows. Prior to the premiere of the fifth season, Starz renewed the show for a sixth and final season, which premiered on August 25, 2019.


title: Power (TV series)

text: "Power" tells the story of James St. Patrick (Omari Hardwick), an intelligent, smooth, yet, ruthless drug dealer who goes by the alias of "Ghost." He wishes to leave the criminal world to pursue legitimate business interests as a nightclub owner. St. Patrick aims to balance those two lives, while also avoiding police capture, trying to navigate his crumbling marriage and manage shifting economic alliances.


title: Power (TV series)

text: The show also features James' family, which consists of his wife Tasha (Naturi Naughton), twins Tariq (Michael Rainey Jr.) and Raina and baby Yasmine. "Power" also follows James' criminal partner and best friend Tommy Egan (Joseph Sikora), love interest and criminal prosecutor Angela Valdes (Lela Loren), friend-turned-rival Kanan Stark (50 Cent), protege and rival Andre Coleman (Rotimi Akinosho), and Angela's colleague, Cooper Saxe (Shane Johnson). Defense attorney Joe Proctor (Jerry Ferrara), district attorney John Mak (Sung Kang), and politician Rashad Tate (Larenz Tate) also appear in the show's later seasons.


title: Power (TV series)

text: In Australia, all episodes are available to stream after their US airing on Stan. The show is available weekly after its US airing on Netflix in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In Scandinavia and Finland, all episodes are available to stream on HBO Nordic.


title: Power (TV series)

text: Season 1 of "Power" received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Metacritic gives the season a score of 57 out of 100, based on 15 reviews, indicating a mixed reaction to the series. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the season a score of 44%, based on 18 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The site's consensus states, ""Power" suffers from excessive plotting and the use of overly familiar by-the-numbers story elements."


title: Power (TV series)

text: Tim Goodman of "The Hollywood Reporter" observed in his review, ""Power" seemingly wants to be a show that tells a big, complicated, meaningful story about, well, the perils and problems of power and how one man deals with them." The New York "Daily News" staff writes in their review, ""Power" hits on all cylinders as it returns for its second season. Throw a couple of great women into Ghost's life—his wife, Tasha (Naturi Naughton), and his recently resurfaced lifelong flame Angela (Lela Loren)—and you have drama that's hard not to keep watching." Critic Brian Lowry of" Variety" states in his review, "The three previewed episodes of the show, created by "The Good Wife" alumna Courtney A. Kemp, move briskly enough, but they're still only moderately compelling. And while 50 Cent's participation provides some promotional heft (he has a cameo in a later episode), the allure of such behind-the-scenes marquee names is usually limited. Mostly, this is undemanding escapism with all the requisite pay-TV trappings, along the lines of what Cinemax is offering in episodic form. While that might be a formula to keep Ghost visible for some time to come, creatively speaking, it leaves "Power" a touch low on juice.


title: Power (TV series)

text: Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the season a score of 100%, based on 9 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. Review aggregator Metacritic gives the season a score of 75 out of 100, based on 4 reviews, indicating a generally favorable reaction to the series.


title: Power (TV series)

text: Rotten Tomatoes gives the season a score of 78%, based on 9 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10.


title: Power (TV series)

text: Rotten Tomatoes gives the season a score of 100%, based on 6 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10.


title: Power (TV series)

text: With the conclusion of the original series, it was announced that Starz had planned four upcoming spin-offs in the same universe as "Power". These begin with "Power Book II: Ghost", which, following shortly after the events of the original series, focuses on Ghost's son Tariq navigating his new criminal life and intending to shed his father's legacy while dealing with mounting pressure to protect his family, including his mother Tasha. The series co-stars Mary J. Blige and Method Man. The other spin-offs include: "Power Book III: Raising Kanan", a prequel into the life of Kanan Stark (50 Cent); "Power Book IV: Force," which follows Tommy Egan (Joseph Sikora) to Los Angeles, California and ending up in the city of Chicago; and "Power Book V: Influence," a sequel set in the political world centring on Councilman Tate's (Larenz Tate) ruthless rise to power. The development of "Power Book V: Influence" was cancelled in August 2022 and the series would not be moving forward.


title: Power (TV series)

text: "" premiered on September 6, 2020, and has aired two seasons. In December 2021, the series was renewed for a third season which is set to premiere on March 17, 2023.


title: Power (TV series)

text: "" premiered on July 18, 2021, and has aired two seasons. In August 2022, the series was renewed for a third season.


title: Power (TV series)

text: "" premiered its first season on February 6, 2022. In March 2022, the series was renewed for a second season.


title: Holland Taylor

text: Holland Virginia Taylor (born January 14, 1943) is an American actress. She won the 1999 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role as Judge Roberta Kittleson on ABC's "The Practice" (1998–2003). For her portrayal of Evelyn Harper on the CBS comedy "Two and a Half Men" (2003–15), she received a total of four Primetime Emmy Award nominations.


title: Holland Taylor

text: Taylor's other notable television credits include starring roles on the sitcoms "Bosom Buddies" (1980–82), "The Powers That Be" (1992–93) and "The Naked Truth" (1995–98). She also appeared as Jill Ollinger on the soap opera "All My Children" (1981–83), as Peggy Peabody on "The L Word" (2004–08), and as Ida Silver on "Mr. Mercedes" (2017–19). In 2020, she received critical praise and her eighth Primetime Emmy Award nomination for portraying Ellen Kincaid in the Netflix miniseries "Hollywood".


title: Holland Taylor

text: Taylor's feature film credits include "Romancing the Stone" (1984) and its sequel (1985), "Alice" (1990), "To Die For" (1995), "One Fine Day" (1996), "George of the Jungle" (1997), "The Truman Show" (1998), "Happy Accidents" (2000), "Keeping the Faith" (2000), "Legally Blonde" (2001), "The Wedding Date" (2005), "Baby Mama" (2008), "Gloria Bell" (2018), "Bill & Ted Face the Music" (2020), and "The Stand In" (2020).


title: Holland Taylor

text: Taylor wrote and starred in the one-woman play, "Ann" (Broadway, 2013), based on the life and work of Ann Richards. For this she received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress. In 2022 she returned to the role for its long-anticipated West Coast premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse, the state theater of California.


title: Holland Taylor

text: Taylor was born in 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Virginia (née Davis), a painter, and C. Tracy Taylor, an attorney. She is the youngest of three daughters in the family; her sisters are Patricia and Pamela, and through Pamela, she is an aunt of director Brad Anderson. She attended high school at Westtown School, a Quaker boarding school in West Chester, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1960. She majored in Theatre at Bennington College, graduating in 1964, before moving to New York City to become an actress.


title: Holland Taylor

text: Taylor began in the theater. Throughout the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, she appeared in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway productions, including starring roles in Simon Gray's "Butley" and A. R. Gurney's "The Cocktail Hour;" for the latter, she was nominated for a Drama Desk award. In 1983, Taylor appeared in "Breakfast with Les and Bess", which prompted the "New York" magazine theatre critic John Simon to sing, "...Miss Taylor is one of the few utterly graceful, attractive, elegant and technically accomplished actresses in our theatre...seeing her may turn you, like me, into a Taylor freak..."


title: Holland Taylor

text: Taylor took the role of Denise Cavanaugh on the soap opera "The Edge of Night", who killed herself just to frame her husband. Then encouraged by her acting coach, Stella Adler, Taylor took a role that would make her well known: Tom Hanks' sexy, demanding boss in the 1980s sitcom "Bosom Buddies".


title: Holland Taylor

text: She proved herself to be equally adept at both comedy and drama. In 1985, she co-starred with Lisa Eilbacher in the ABC detective series "Me and Mom". Two years later, she played opposite Alan Arkin in the short-lived ABC sitcom "Harry", in which she received "starring" billing. In 1990, Taylor reunited with former "Bosom Buddies" executive producers Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett for a role on their ABC sitcom "Going Places", playing grand dame television producer Dawn St. Claire for the show's first 13 episodes. From 1992 to 1993, she starred in Norman Lear's "The Powers That Be" with John Forsythe and David Hyde Pierce, playing the wife of Forsythe's character, a U.S. senator.


title: Holland Taylor

text: In early 1994, she joined the cast of "" as Dean Susan McMann, just episodes before its cancellation. Following this was her role as high-powered newspaper editor Camilla Dane on the ABC/NBC sitcom "The Naked Truth"; Taylor was one of the few cast members to last through the show's entire run through 1998, despite several retoolings.


title: Holland Taylor

text: She played the part of Judge Roberta Kittleson on "The Practice". Originally intended to be a one-time appearance, the role lasted from 1998 to 2003. She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 1999; in her acceptance speech, she is remembered for claiming the statue and exclaiming, "Overnight!" Taylor thanked David E. Kelley, "The Practice"'s producer/writer and creator, for "giving me a chariot to ride up here on: A woman who puts a flag on the moon for women over 40—who can think, who can work, who are successes, who can cook, and who can COOK!" She was nominated in the same category for the same role the following year.


title: Holland Taylor

text: Taylor was also nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her recurring role on AMC's "The Lot", and has been nominated for Emmys five times since 2003: four for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role on the TV series "Two and a Half Men", playing Evelyn Harper, the snobbish, overbearing mother of Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer's characters, and one for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her role as Ellen Kincaid, a studio executive and mentor for aspiring actors, in the miniseries "Hollywood." Taylor's television movie and series guest roles have been extensive and include appearances on "ER" and "Veronica's Closet", and recurring roles on "Ally McBeal" and "Monk", and as billionaire Peggy Peabody on "The L Word".


title: Holland Taylor

text: Taylor's movie roles have included Reese Witherspoon's character's tough Harvard law professor in the 2001 comedy "Legally Blonde", Tina Fey's character's mother in "Baby Mama", "The Truman Show", "Happy Accidents", "Next Stop Wonderland", "George of the Jungle", "The Wedding Date", "How to Make an American Quilt", "Romancing the Stone", "D.E.B.S.", "Cop and a Half", and "One Fine Day."


title: Holland Taylor

text: Taylor's animated roles include that of Prudence, the castle's majordomo and love interest of the Grand Duke, in Disney's "Cinderella II" and "". She also played a role in the animated show "American Dad!" as Francine's biological mother.


title: Holland Taylor

text: Taylor began researching, writing, and producing a one-woman play about the late Texas Governor Ann Richards in 2009. The two-act play, originally titled "Money, Marbles, and Chalk", starring Taylor as Richards, was first workshopped in May 2010 at The Grand 1894 Opera House in Galveston, Texas. It was later retitled "Ann: An Affectionate Portrait of Ann Richards" and opened in Chicago November 16, 2011, where it was billed as a "pre-Broadway" engagement. It played at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., from December 17, 2011, through January 15, 2012. The show next opened on Broadway at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre on March 7, 2013. For this role, Taylor was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play. PBS "Great Performances" broadcast the premiere of the play, now titled simply "Ann", on June 19, 2020. It had been recorded at the Zach Theater in Austin, Texas, following its national tour and Broadway run.