title: Come and See

text: Rubezh takes Flyora and two other men to find food at a nearby warehouse, only to find it being guarded by German troops. During their retreat, the group unknowingly wanders through a minefield resulting in the deaths of the two companions. That evening Rubezh and Flyora sneak up to an occupied village and manage to steal a cow from a collaborating farmer. As they escape across an open field, Rubezh and the cow are shot and killed by a German machine gun. The next morning, Flyora attempts to steal a horse and cart but the owner catches him and instead of doing him harm, he helps hide Flyora's identity when SS troops approach.


title: Come and See

text: Flyora is taken to the village of Perekhody, where they hurriedly discuss a fake identity for him, while the SS unit, accompanied by collaborators from the Russian Liberation Army and Schutzmannschaft Batallion 118, surround and occupy the village. Flyora tries to warn the townsfolk as they are being herded to their deaths, but is forced to join them inside a wooden church. Flyora and a young woman are allowed to escape the church, but the latter is dragged by her hair across the ground and into a truck to be gang raped. Flyora is forced to watch as several Molotov cocktails and grenades are thrown onto and within the church before it is further set ablaze with a flamethrower as other soldiers shoot into the building. A German officer points a gun to Flyora's head to pose for a picture before leaving him to slump to the ground as the soldiers leave.


title: Come and See

text: Flyora later wanders out of the scorched village in the direction of the Germans, where he discovers they had been ambushed by the partisans. After recovering his jacket and rifle, Flyora comes across the girl in a fugue state, her legs and face covered in blood after having been gang-raped and brutalized by the soldiers. Flyora returns to the village and finds that his fellow partisans have captured eleven of the Germans and their collaborators, including the commander, an "SS-Sturmbannführer". While some of the captured men including the commander and main collaborator plead for their lives and deflect blame, a young fanatical officer, an "Obersturmführer", is unapologetic and vows they will carry out their genocidal mission.


title: Come and See

text: Kosach makes the collaborator douse the Germans with a can of petrol brought there by Flyora, but the disgusted crowd shoots them all before they can be set on fire. As the partisans leave, Flyora notices a framed portrait of Adolf Hitler in a puddle and proceeds to shoot it numerous times. As he does so, a montage of clips from Hitler's life play in reverse, but when Hitler is shown as a baby on his mother's lap, Flyora stops shooting and cries. A title card informs: "628 Belorussian villages were destroyed, along with all their inhabitants." Flyora rushes to rejoin his comrades, and they march through the birch woods as snow blankets the ground.


title: Come and See

text: Klimov co-wrote the screenplay with Ales Adamovich, who fought with the Belarusian partisans as a teenager. According to the director's recollections, work on the film began in 1977:


title: Come and See

text: For eight years, filming could not begin because the State Committee for Cinematography (Goskino) would not accept the screenplay, considering it too realistic, calling it propaganda for the "aesthetics of dirtiness" and "naturalism". Alongside this, the death of his wife Larisa Shepitko, also a filmmaker, in 1979 forced him to first complete the work she began on what was to be her next film, "Farewell"; it would finally be released in 1983. Eventually in 1984, Klimov was able to start filming without having compromised to any censorship at all. The only change became the name of the film itself, which was changed to "Come and See" from the original title, "Kill Hitler" (Elem Klimov also says this in the 2006 UK DVD release).


title: Come and See

text: The film was shot in chronological order over a period of nine months. Aleksei Kravchenko said that he underwent "the most debilitating fatigue and hunger. I kept a most severe diet, and after the filming was over I returned to school not only thin, but grey-haired." Contrary to what some rumors suggest, though, Kravchenko's hair did not turn permanently grey. In fact, a special Silber Interference Grease-Paint, alongside a thin layer of actual silver, was used to dye his hair. This made it difficult to get his hair back to normal, so Kravchenko had to live with his hair like this for some time after shooting the film.


title: Come and See

text: To prepare the 14-year-old Kravchenko for the role, Klimov called a hypnotist. "[Kravchenko's acting] could have had a very sad ending. He could have landed in an insane asylum," Klimov said. "I realized I had to inject him with content which he did not possess," "This is an age when a boy does not know what true hatred is, what true love is." In the end, Mr. Kravchenko was able to concentrate so intensely that it seemed as if he had hypnotized himself for the role" with some autogenic training.


title: Come and See

text: To create the maximum sense of immediacy, realism, hyperrealism, and surrealism operate in equal measure, Klimov and his cameraman Aleksei Rodionov employed naturalistic colors, widescreen and lots of Steadicam shots; the film is full of extreme close-ups of faces, does not flinch from the unpleasant details of burnt flesh and bloodied corpses, and the guns were often loaded with live ammunition as opposed to blanks. Aleksei Kravchenko mentioned in interviews that bullets sometimes passed just 4 inches (10 centimeters) above his head (such as in the cow scene). Very little protection was provided on the set. When the dive bombs were detonated the camera crew only had a concrete slab 1.5 meters tall and 5 meters wide to protect them. At the same time the "mise-en-scène" is fragmentary and disjointed: there are discontinuities between shots as characters appear in close up and then disappear off camera. Klimov employs a range of techniques that draws attention to the camera. The extreme close-ups of actors staring into the camera is a recurring motif. Elsewhere, the moment of revelation is marked by a disorienting zoom-in/dolly-out shot.


title: Come and See

text: The film was filmed on Soviet DS-5m and LN-8. Klimov was concerned audience members may believe the airplane was a toy instead of a real one. To prevent this Rodionov filmed the scenes at 90 frames per second using accelerated filming.


title: Come and See

text: In one of the books the film is based on ("Khatyn"), Flyora grows up to be a university teacher and have a son with Glasha.


title: Come and See

text: The original soundtrack is rhythmically amorphous music composed by Oleg Yanchenko. At a few key points in the film classical music from mainly German or Austrian composers are used, such as "The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss II. The Soviet marching song "The Sacred War" and Russian folk song "Korobeiniki" (Vadim Kozin) () are played in the movie once. During the scene where Glasha dances, the background music is some fragments of Mary Dixon's song from Grigori Aleksandrov's 1936 film "Circus". At the end, during the photographic montage, music by Richard Wagner is used, most notably the "Ride of the Valkyries" from "Die Walküre".


title: Come and See

text: At the end of the film, the partisans walk through a winter woodland to the sound of Mozart's "Lacrimosa" before the camera tilts towards the sky and the ending credits appear. Film critic Roger Ebert commented on this scene as follows:


title: Come and See

text: The original Belarusian and Russian title of the film derives from Chapter 6 of the Book of Revelation, where in the first, third, fifth, and seventh verse is written "Ідзі і глядзі" (English: , Greek: , "Erchou kai ide") in Belarusian (and "Иди и смотри" in Russian) as an invitation to look upon the destruction caused by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. have been cited as being particularly relevant to the film:


title: Come and See

text: And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, "Come and see!" And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.


title: Come and See

text: "Come and See" had its world premiere in the competition program at the 14th Moscow International Film Festival It was theatrically released on 17 October 1985, drawing 28.9 million viewers and ranking sixth at the box office of 1986.


title: Come and See

text: In 2017, the film received an official restoration overseen by Karen Shakhnazarov. It won the Venice Classics Award for "Best Restored Film", and was also shown in several European independent cinemas again.


title: Come and See

text: In 2001 the film was released on DVD in the United States by Kino Lorber. This release is currently out-of-print. The film became available on FilmStruck, the streaming service for the Criterion Collection from its opening on 1 November 2016 to its closing on 29 November 2018, and from November 2019 on the new Criterion Channel service. On 18 December 2019, Janus Films released a trailer for a 2k-restoration that premiered at the Film Forum in New York City on 21 February 2020 with a theatrical run and then a home media release through Criterion was released on 30 June 2020.


title: Come and See

text: "Come and See" grossed $71,909 in the United States and Canada, and $20.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of nearly $21 million, plus over $1.2 million with home video sales.


title: Come and See

text: Initial reception was positive. Walter Goodman wrote for "The New York Times" that "The history is harrowing and the presentation is graphic ... Powerful material, powerfully rendered ...", and dismissed the ending as "a dose of instant inspirationalism," but conceded to Klimov's "unquestionable talent." Rita Kempley, of "The Washington Post", wrote that "directing with an angry eloquence, [Klimov] taps into that hallucinatory nether world of blood and mud and escalating madness that Francis Ford Coppola found in "Apocalypse Now." And though he draws a surprisingly vivid performance from his inexperienced teen lead, Klimov's prowess is his visual poetry, muscular and animistic, like compatriot Andrei Konchalovsky's in his epic "Siberiade"." Mark Le Fanu wrote in "Sight & Sound" that "Come and See" is a "powerful war film ... The director has elicited an excellent performance from his central actor Kravchenko".


title: Come and See

text: According to Klimov, the film was so shocking for audiences, however, that ambulances were sometimes called in to take away particularly impressionable viewers, both in the Soviet Union and abroad. During one of the after-the-film discussions, an elderly German man stood up and said: "I was a soldier of the Wehrmacht; moreover, an officer of the Wehrmacht. I traveled through all of Poland and Belarus, finally reaching Ukraine. I will testify: everything that is told in this film is the truth. And the most frightening and shameful thing for me is that this film will be seen by my children and grandchildren".


title: Come and See

text: The film has since been widely acclaimed in the 21st century. In 2001 Daneet Steffens of "Entertainment Weekly" wrote that "Klimov alternates the horrors of war with occasional fairy tale-like images; together they imbue the film with an unapologetically disturbing quality that persists long after the credits roll."


title: Come and See

text: In 2001, J. Hoberman of "The Village Voice" reviewed "Come and See", writing the following: "Directed for baroque intensity, "Come and See" is a robust art film with aspirations to the visionary – not so much graphic as leisurely literal-minded in its representation of mass murder. (The movie has been compared both to "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan", and it would not be surprising to learn that Steven Spielberg had screened it before making either of these.) The film's central atrocity is a barbaric circus of blaring music and barking dogs in which a squadron of drunken German soldiers round up and parade the peasants to their fiery doom ... The bit of actual death-camp corpse footage that Klimov uses is doubly disturbing in that it retrospectively diminishes the care with which he orchestrates the town's destruction. For the most part, he prefers to show the Gorgon as reflected in Perseus's shield. There are few images more indelible than the sight of young Aleksei Kravchenko's fear-petrified expression." In the same publication in 2009, Elliott Stein described "Come and See" as "a startling mixture of lyrical poeticism and expressionist nightmare."


title: Come and See

text: In 2002, Scott Tobias of "The A.V. Club" wrote that Klimov's "impressions are unforgettable: the screaming cacophony of a bombing run broken up by the faint sound of a Mozart fugue, a dark, arid field suddenly lit up by eerily beautiful orange flares, German troops appearing like ghosts out of the heavy morning fog. A product of the glasnost era, "Come and See" is far from a patriotic memorial of Russia's hard-won victory. Instead, it's a chilling reminder of that victory's terrible costs." British magazine "The Word" wrote that ""Come and See" is widely regarded as the finest war film ever made, though possibly not by "Great Escape" fans." Tim Lott wrote in 2009 that the film "makes "Apocalypse Now" look lightweight".


title: Come and See

text: In 2006, Geoffrey Macnab of "Sight & Sound" wrote: "Klimov's astonishing war movie combines intense lyricism with the kind of violent bloodletting that would make even Sam Peckinpah pause".


title: Come and See

text: On 16 June 2010, Roger Ebert posted a review of "Come and See" as part of his "Great Movies" series, describing it as "one of the most devastating films ever about anything, and in it, the survivors must envy the dead ... The film depicts brutality and is occasionally very realistic, but there's an overlay of muted nightmarish exaggeration ... I must not describe the famous sequence at the end. It must unfold as a surprise for you. It pretends to roll back history. You will see how. It is unutterably depressing, because history can never undo itself, and is with us forever."


title: Come and See

text: "Come and See" appears on many lists of films considered the best. In 2008, "Come and See" was placed at number 60 on "Empire" magazine's "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time" in 2008. It also made Channel 4's list of 50 Films to See Before You Die and was ranked number 24 in "Empire" magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010. Phil de Semlyen of "Empire" has described the work as "Elim Klimov’s seriously influential, deeply unsettling Belarusian opus. No film – not "Apocalypse Now", not "Full Metal Jacket" – spells out the dehumanizing impact of conflict more vividly, or ferociously ... An impressionist masterpiece and possibly the worst date movie ever." It ranked 154 among critics, and 30 among directors, in the 2012 "Sight & Sound" polls of the greatest films ever made. The film is generally considered one of the greatest anti-war movies ever made, and one with the most historically accurate depictions of the crimes on the Eastern Front.


title: Come and See

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97%, based on 37 reviews, and an average rating of 8.50/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "As effectively anti-war as movies can be, "Come and See" is a harrowing odyssey through the worst that humanity is capable of, directed with bravura intensity by Elem Klimov."


title: Come and See

text: Klimov did not make any more films after "Come and See", leading some critics to speculate as to why. In 2001, Klimov said, "I lost interest in making films ... Everything that was possible I felt I had already done."


title: Come and See

text: "Come and See" was selected as the Soviet entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 58th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda Romualdez Marcos (; born Imelda Remedios Visitacion Trinidad Romualdez; July 2, 1929) is a Filipino politician who served as the First Lady of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986, wielding significant political power during the dictatorship of her husband, 10th president Ferdinand Marcos. She is the mother of current president Bongbong Marcos.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: During her husband's 21-year rule, Imelda Marcos ordered the construction of many grandiose architectural projects, using public funds and "in impossibly short order" – a propaganda practice, which eventually came to be known as her "edifice complex". She and her husband stole billions of pesos from the Filipino people, amassing a personal fortune estimated to have been worth to by the time they were deposed in 1986; by 2018, about $3.6 billion of this had been recovered by the Philippine government, either through compromise deals or sequestration cases.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Marcos and her family gained notoriety for living a lavish lifestyle during a period of economic crisis and civil unrest in the country. She spent much of her time abroad on state visits, extravagant parties, and shopping sprees, and spent much of the State's money on her personal art, jewelry and shoe collections – amassing 3,000 pairs of shoes. The subject of dozens of court cases around the world, she was eventually convicted of corruption charges in 2018 for her activities during her term as governor of Metro Manila; the case is under appeal. She and her husband hold the Guinness World Record for the "Greatest Robbery of a Government".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The People Power Revolution in February 1986 unseated the Marcoses and forced the family into exile in Hawaii. In 1991, President Corazon Aquino allowed the Marcos family to return to the Philippines to face various charges after the 1989 death of Ferdinand. Imelda Marcos was elected four times to the House of Representatives of the Philippines, and ran twice for the presidency of the Philippines but failed to garner enough votes.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda Remedios Visitación Romuáldez was born at dawn in San Miguel, Manila, on July 2, 1929. Her parents were Vicente Orestes Romuáldez, a lawyer, and his second wife, Remedios Trinidad. Imelda is the sixth of Vicente's eleven children, and Remedios' firstborn.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Born into the Romualdez political dynasty from the province of Leyte, Imelda grew up in a wealthy clan of devout Catholics. She was baptized in the nearby San Miguel Church on the day after her birth.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Notable members of Imelda's family include the clan matriarch "Doña" Trinidad Lopez de Romualdez; her uncle Norberto Romualdez, who was a Supreme Court Associate Justice; and her younger brother Benjamin "Kokoy" Romualdez, who served as Governor of Leyte and later as an ambassador under the regime of Imelda's husband, Ferdinand Marcos.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: At the time of her birth, the Romualdezes were wealthy. Around 1932, the financial conditions of Imelda's family began to decline.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda's parents were separated for a time, during which Remedios worked for the nuns at the Asilo de San Vicente de Paul. Vicente and Remedios eventually reconciled but to avoid further conflict, she and her children, including Imelda, moved to their house's garage. In 1937, after Conchita's birth, Remedios's health began to fail and she died on April 7, 1938 due to double pneumonia. In her ten years of marriage, Remedios had six children – Imelda, Benjamin, Alita, Alfredo, Armando and Conchita.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In the same year, 1938, Imelda's father gave up Manila due to his declining fortunes in his law practice and returned to Tacloban, where he could support his family with a simpler lifestyle. She grew up learning the Waray language, and then learned the Tagalog language and eventually English.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda finished grade one in the nearby College of the Holy Spirit Manila, where her older half-sisters also studied.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: She continued her early studies at Holy Infant Academy, a convent school run by Order of Saint Benedict. The old wooden structure of the school still stands today four blocks away from the Romualdez house. At school, Imelda had to face her family's humiliating poverty, and she was frequently among the students who had to apologize for late payments.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1942, the Romualdezes returned to Tacloban, and around that time, Imelda's father refused to let her go back to school. When the Americans returned in 1944, she was eager to resume her studies at Leyte Progressive High School. She finished her first year at the provincial high school where she was also chosen Miss I-A; then in her second year, she moved to Holy Infant and stayed there until she graduated.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda continued her higher studies at Holy Infant Academy from 1938 to 1948, the year she graduated from high school. As a student, her scholastic record shows that she had a general average of 80 percent throughout her primary and high school.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda ran for President of the student council at St. Paul's College (now named Divine Word University) in 1951, three years before her marriage to Marcos. At that time, she was about to graduate with a degree in Education. She was put up as candidate for the Department of Education, which had an enrollment of 800 students. Even during the nomination, her victory was already a foregone conclusion, but the school authorities insisted that another candidate be put up to make the elections a democratic procedure. That was how the College of Law, with 200 students, put up Francisco Pedrosa.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: While an undergraduate student, Marcos taught at a local Chinese high school before graduating in 1952. She had won a scholarship to study music at the Philippine Women's University under Adoración Reyes, a close friend of the family. She briefly held a job at a music store but left this for a better one at the Central Bank. After a few lessons, Adoración was convinced that Imelda had talent and persuaded her to enroll at the College of Music and Fine Arts at PWU, under a special arrangement that put her on register while Adoración continued to give her free lessons.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda returned to Manila in 1952 under the rule of President Elpidio Quirino and stayed in the house of her relative, House of Representatives of the Philippines Speaker "Pro tempore" Daniel Romuáldez, who had three adopted children. Imelda's status in the Romuáldez household during this time has been described as "higher than servants and lower than family members as a poor relative". Imelda found work as a salesgirl in a store called P.E. Domingo, which infuriated her father when he learnt of during one of his visits, perceiving it as ill treatment of Imelda.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: To calm the indignation of Vicente Romuáldez, Eduardo and Daniel exercised their political and economic influence to find work for Imelda in the Central Bank where she worked under Braulio Hipuna, the Chief Clerk of the Intelligence Division.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: During this time her cousin Loreto Ramos introduced her to Adoración Reyes, a teacher from the College of Music and Fine Arts of Philippine Women's University (PWU), who gave her vocal lessons and a chance to get a PWU scholarship. She later sang three songs at a performance with her cousin Loreto at Holy Ghost College (now named College of the Holy Spirit Manila).


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda also joined the 1953 Miss Manila beauty pageant. The results became controversial, resulting in both Imelda and Miss Norma Jiménez being declared Manila's candidate to the larger Miss Philippines pageant. Both of them eventually lost to Miss Cristina Galang.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos met on April 6, 1954, during a budget hearing at the Philippine Congress. Ferdinand was part of the opposition team who led the argument against the budget, while Imelda was there to visit her cousin Daniel, who was the Speaker of the House. During a recess, Imelda caught Ferdinand's eye, and he asked his journalist friend Jose Guevara of "The Manila Times" to introduce him to Imelda. At that time, Ferdinand already knew of Imelda. Imelda, on the other hand, knew very little of Ferdinand Marcos. After comparing heights and confirming that he was at least an inch taller than her, Ferdinand sought the help of Guevara to pursue Imelda in marriage. This whirlwind courtship lasted only eleven days.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: During Holy Week of that year, Ferdinand visited Imelda's house, and when Imelda claimed that she planned to spend the holidays in Baguio, Ferdinand and Guevara offered her a ride up to Daniel's family mansion where she planned to stay, while the two booked a room in nearby Pines. For the remainder of that Holy Week, Ferdinand showered Imelda with flowers and gifts and visited her daily, prodding her to sign the marriage license that sealed the agreement. On April 16, 1954, Good Friday, after having been jokingly asked by Guevara if she wanted to be "the First Lady of the Land someday", Imelda finally agreed to sign it. On April 17, 1954, Ferdinand and Imelda were secretly married by a reluctant Francisco Chanco, a judge befriended by Ferdinand who lived in the area. The church wedding followed only after receiving the blessing of Vicente Orestes, Imelda's father, which Ferdinand asked via telegram on Easter Sunday. Their wedding was held on May 1, 1954, at the San Miguel Pro-Cathedral in Manila where Imelda was christened.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The marriage meant that Ferdinand's common-law wife, Carmen Ortega of La Union's Ortega political clan, with whom he had already sired three children, had to be quietly taken out of the public eye.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: It was during the 1965 campaign that Imelda became influential as a political figure at the national level, supporting her husband’s political tactics through her charismatic appeal and youth. Crowds of working class Filipinos came out in droves to Marcos campaigns because they wanted to see the "beautiful wife of Marcos".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Campaign strategists incorporated Imelda’s public appeal into the overall tone of the Marcos-led Nacionalista campaign, asking Imelda to always appear at her best in public at all times regardless of the type of audience and encouraging her to wear her signature ternos as an integral part of their image strategy.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Marcos heavily relied on Imelda, eventually telling the press at one point that it was Imelda who had delivered the one million vote margin he needed to win the election.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: It was in this period that Imelda described herself – a neophyte transitioning into a true political partner to her husband – as "a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon". This led one foreign journalist to call her "the iron butterfly".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda had assumed a managerial position in her husband's campaign early on, when Marcos faced his first challenge of the campaign, which was to win the presidential candidacy for the Nacionalista Party. She enthusiastically ran a detailed campaign, befriending the 1,347 delegates of the Nacionalista Party Convention until Ferdinand Marcos won the party’s presidential nomination on November 21, 1964, for the Nacionalista Party.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: McCoy recounts that it was supposedly also Imelda who convinced Fernando Lopez to accept the vice-presidential nomination alongside Marcos. She met Lopez personally, appealing to him by recounting the many struggles she and Ferdinand faced during the campaign. Lopez refused to give in multiple times, until Imelda cried in front of him. When he relented, Imelda proceeded to hand a document to sign, stating that he had accepted the nomination as the Nacionalista vice-presidential candidate.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: During the presidential election itself, she delivered votes from the southern province of Leyte and Manila. She was especially popular with the poor. Imelda also used her voice to appeal to voters, singing during campaigns. Her songs were usually varieties of local folk songs.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda began Ferdinand Marcos's first term doing the duties traditionally expected of a First Lady, mostly social events and public appearances. Imelda became a power broker. Receptions at her offices in the Malacañang "Music Room" were sought after by cabinet members, heads of financing institutions, and business leaders who felt that she had Ferdinand's ear.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: A year later in March 1966, Marcos established the Cultural Center of the Philippines through Executive Order No. 60 and arranged for Imelda to be elected chairman of the board in a bid to change the perception that she was just another "politician's wife".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Ferdinand Marcos was elected as the 10th president of the Philippines on November 9, 1965. When he was inaugurated on December 30, 1965, Imelda officially became the First Lady.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The Romualdez clan had been torn apart by the presidential campaign. To fix this, Imelda allegedly sent out invitations to family members, some of whom supported the opposing party, and told them they were all welcome at their house on Ortega Street, San Juan, Metro Manila.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Ferdinand and Imelda held mass in the courtyard of their house on Ortega Street before proceeding to Luneta Park for the inauguration ceremonies.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In the first three years of being First Lady, she spent for the beautification of the Paco Park and for the beautification of Fort Santiago.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In May 1966, Imelda pushed a twelve million peso plan to pool together the social welfare efforts of several dozen social welfare groups. The plan involved the construction of welfare villages and the reorientation of personnel to staff them. The cornerstone for first village, the Reception and Study Center in Quezon City was laid in 1966, and several more were built from then until 1968: Marilla Hills in Alabang, the Children's Orphanage in Pasay, the Molave Village in Tanay, Rizal, a Home for the Aged in Quezon City, and the Philippine Village at the Manila International Airport.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In mid-1967, Imelda started the "Share for Progress" Seed Dispersal Program a project that suggested making vegetable gardens out of idle lots all over the country. By 1968, 309,392 kits containing seeds had been distributed in over 1500 towns.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The "Blue Ladies", a group initially composed of wives of political men in the Nacionalista Party, had played a critical role during Marcos's 1965 campaign. They contributed funds and provided publicity, giving the campaign a personal touch by visiting factories and farms to shake hands and have small conversations with the voters, making door-to-door appeals in the slum areas. That year they also introduced to politics the purchase of radio and television time, to campaign for Marcos, through the use of little speeches for the voters. This was affordable because the Blue Ladies were mostly prominent matrons and/or beautiful youthful girls married to men of means.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Upon becoming First Lady, Imelda often asked members of the Blue Ladies to accompany her on her trips out of the country. One of her most famous socialite friends was Cristina Ford.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda's Blue Ladies—specifically Maria Luisa, a daughter of the rich Madrigal family and the wife of Daniel Vazquez—contributed to the fashion spending of Imelda. In 1968, Maria Luisa accompanied Imelda on an overseas trip, during which Imelda and daughter Imee spent $3.3 million. At this time Vazquez and Maria Luisa opened a Citibank account. In November 1968, the couple added "Fernanda Vazquez" as a joint holder of the bank account. An allegation that Imelda and Fernanda Vazquez are one and the same is validated by the notations for the bank account had Imelda Marcos's handwriting.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: On July 4, 1966, the First Lady also invited the Beatles to perform at a private event in the Palace but the invitation was declined. An order to lock down the Manila International Airport was enacted as a result of the rejection. This resulted in mobs trying to storm the band's hotel rooms and prevent them from leaving the country. There were also reports that a tax assessment was issued to their manager.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The Dovie Beams scandal, which began as rumors in the late 60s, eventually led to a significant change in Imelda's public role. President Marcos had met the American actress after she arrived in Manila in 1968 to play the female lead in "Maharlika," a propaganda film portraying Ferdinand's supposed exploits during World War II. According to Beams, the two had an affair and she was moved into one of Ferdinand's safe houses, where she recorded their sexual encounters with Ferdinand's full consent. These tapes were later played in a press conference, causing great humiliation for Imelda.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Members of the Marcos Cabinet such as Cesar Virata and Gerardo Sicat recount that Imelda used the humiliation of the Dovie Beams affair as leverage to begin developing an independent political agenda which gave her more and more political power. Initially, this meant that Imelda had free rein on her projects while her husband prepared for the Ferdinand Marcos presidential campaign, 1969, but as Marcos's health declined, it involved her being put in increasingly powerful positions, including those of Minister of Human Settlements and of Governor of Metro Manila.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In July 1974, the annual Ms. Universe pageant was held in Manila, to which then First Lady Imelda Marcos allegedly spent () for the renovation of all public and private infrastructures throughout Manila, and the other cities in which the Ms. Universe pageant participants were subsequently toured.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Since the President hardly left the Malacañang Palace, Ferdinand increasingly sent his wife on official visits to other countries as a de facto vice president.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: When the Marcoses went to the United States in September 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson offered Imelda the Philippine war damage claims totaling . President Johnson agreed to have be used as funds for the Cultural Center, one of Imelda's projects.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: For the inauguration of the CCP, a gala opening of the Golden Salakot, a pageant-drama of a story about the prehistory of the Philippines, occurred on September 8, 1969. US President Richard Nixon was invited but instead California Governor (and future President) Ronald Reagan, along with his wife, flew to the country on Air Force One for the event. There were accounts that the First Lady attempted to bring other celebrities by getting them tickets to ride Air Force One but she was denied this luxury by President Nixon. Accounts have also mentioned that this trip by the then-Governor Reagan and his wife led to the closeness of the Reagans and Marcoses.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1971, Imelda attended Iran's 2,500 year celebration of the Persian Empire of the founding of the Persian Empire. This trip, according to palace insiders, provided her with a social introduction to some of the world's wealthiest people.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: On May 19, 1972, the Constitutional Convention delegate for Leyte's first district, Eduardo Quintero, accused Imelda and thirteen others of bribing some of the convention members to vote against provisions which would have prevented Marcos from retaining power beyond the two four-year terms allowed him by the previous constitution.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In the stress following the accusations and media circus, Imelda claimed to have suffered a miscarriage. Later, this was revealed to be a hoax to avoid Quintero's charges. According to Ellison, this was "an eloquent example of the lengths to which Imelda would go to support [Ferdinand] and her ambition".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In Ferdinand's diary preceding May, he wrote that he and Imelda were planning to wager all their power and wealth "on a single throw of the dice of fate for the sake of the people and the Republic".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: On the eve of September 5, 1972, tourism minister Manuel Elizalde called each member of Manila's foreign press corps to a party. Imelda arrived at the party, allegedly rambling about democracy and how only the Americans could afford it. On that same day, Martial Law was announced. Ferdinand stated the purpose of the Martial Law was to create a "New Society" with reformed institutions, no inequalities, corruption, or crime. Imelda called it "martial law with a smile". Days after the announcement, a warrant of arrest was issued for Amelita Cruz, author of the "you-know-who" columns on Imelda. Cruz was told that the orders "came directly from the music room", Imelda's palace study.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: During this time period, she orchestrated public events using national funds to bolster her and her husband's image. She secured the Miss Universe 1974 pageant in Manila, which required the construction of the Folk Arts Theater in less than three months. She organized the "Kasaysayan ng Lahi", a festival showcasing Philippine history. She also initiated social programs, such as the Green Revolution, which was intended to address hunger by encouraging the people to plant produce in household gardens, and created a national family-planning program. In 1972, she took control of the distribution of a bread ration called Nutribun, which actually came from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). An assassination attempt against Imelda Marcos occurred on December 7, 1972, when an assailant tried to stab her with a bolo knife but was shot by the police.The motive appeared to have been her role in her husband's presidency but human rights dissidents believed it was staged by the government.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1972, Imelda Marcos initiated the first of many trips to the Soviet Union; it was dubbed as "cultural missions" but eventually led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Philippines.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1975, after the assassination of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, Marcos wanted to extend the official condolences. Women were not welcome in the Saudi court, but Imelda, through her connection to the surgeon who previously performed a heart surgery on the new king, managed to be the first woman guest to be honored.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1978, she was also appointed as Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary, allowing her to tour the United States, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Cuba. Throughout her travels, she became friends with Richard Nixon, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, and Joseph Tito. She traveled to Iraq to secure oil and to Libya for a peace treaty with the Moro National Liberation Front.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1975, Ferdinand Marcos issued Presidential Decree 824, establishing the Metro Manila Commission (MMC), the central government of Metro Manila, and named Imelda to head it, making her Governor of Metro Manila from that point until the Marcoses were deposed in 1986.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Ferdinand Marcos appointed Imelda to the position of Minister of Human Settlements in 1976—a post which she held until the EDSA Revolution of February 1986, and which allowed her to construct the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Philippine Heart Center, the Lung Center of the Philippines, the Philippine International Convention Center, the Coconut Palace, the Manila Film Center, and the Calauit Safari Park.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1978, the administration Kilusang Bagong Lipunan party fielded Imelda as a candidate in the Philippine parliamentary elections of 1978. Because most of the opposition candidates were either in jail or had limited mobility as a result of Martial Law, Imelda Marcos easily won a seat as a member of the Interim Batasang Pambansa (National Congress) representing Region IV (Metro Manila).


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1980, after learning former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. had a life-threatening heart ailment, Imelda convinced her husband to allow Aquino leave for the United States for medical treatment. This was arranged after a secret hospital visit by Imelda. Aquino supposedly agreed to her conditions that he return to the Philippines and not speak out against the Marcos regime in the US. Having made a quick recovery, Aquino decided to remain in the US, saying, "a pact with the devil is no pact at all".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Six months after martial law was lifted on January 17, 1981, Ferdinand Marcos was re-elected as president. While her husband began to suffer from lupus erythematosus, Imelda effectively ruled in his place.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda claimed that during her last meeting with Aquino on May 21, 1983, in New York, she "begged him for 3½ hours to postpone his return to the Philippines until it was safe for him to come". Aquino returned to the Philippines on August 21, 1983, and was assassinated at the Manila International Airport upon his arrival. Feeling that he was pressured into causing an investigation of the assassination, Ferdinand created the Agrava Commission, a fact-finding committee, to investigate the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Aquino Jr., ultimately finding the military guilty.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: On February 7, 1986, snap elections were held between Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino, the widow of Benigno Aquino Jr. Despite Ferdinand Marcos claiming to have won the election, allegations of vote rigging led to mass protests, later known as the People Power Revolution.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: On February 25, Ferdinand Marcos, with his wife Imelda by his side, held the inauguration at Malacañang Palace. The couple later emerged on the Palace balcony in front of a loyalist crowd and Imelda sang a song for the crowd.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Later that day, Ferdinand Marcos finally agreed to step down and was given safe passage for him and his entire family to flee to Hawaii, United States.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: At midnight, February 26, 1986, the Marcos family fled the country to Hawaii with a party of about 80 individuals – the extended Marcos family and a number of close associates. Their arrival was controversial, and soon led to Hawaii residents calling on the government to force the Marcoses to leave.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The US Government initially hosted the exiles at Hickam Air Force Base. Ferdinand and Imelda moved into a pair of residences in Makiki Heights, Honolulu, a month later.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Ferdinand Marcos eventually died in exile in September 1989. His son Bongbong Marcos was the only family member present at his deathbed.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: After Imelda left Malacañang Palace, press reports worldwide took note of her lavish wardrobe, said to include 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 888 handbags, and 3,000 pairs of shoes. Some news reports estimated that there were up to 7,500 pairs, but "Time" magazine reported that the final tally was 1,060. The US government documented that the Marcos family entered the United States with millions of dollars in cash, stocks, jewelry, and gold kilobars inscribed "To my husband on our 24th anniversary".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: On November 4, 1991, Imelda and her children were allowed to return to the Philippines by President Corazon Aquino after living in exile in Hawaii for more than five years to face charges of tax fraud and corruption. After her return from exile, Imelda returned to politics.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1992, Imelda ran for president in the 1992 Philippine presidential election, finishing 5th out of 7 candidates.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: She was elected as a congresswoman of Leyte during the 1995 Philippine general election, representing the first district, despite facing a disqualification lawsuit in which the Supreme Court ruled in her favor.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: She sought the presidency again in the 1998 Philippine presidential election, but later withdrew to support the eventual winner Joseph Estrada while she finished 9th among 11 candidates. She considered running for mayor of Manila in the 2001 Philippine general election but did not push through with it.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In November 2006, Marcos started her own business, a fashion label "Imelda Collection" including jewelry, clothing and shoes with the help of her daughter Imee Marcos.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda ran for the second district of Ilocos Norte in the 2010 Philippine House of Representatives elections to replace her son, Ferdinand Jr., who ran for senator under the Nacionalista Party. During her term, she held the position of Millennium Development Goals committee chair in the Lower House.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In October 2018, Marcos filed her certificate of candidacy to run for governor of Ilocos Norte in the 2019 Philippine general election to replace her daughter, Imee, who ran for senator. However, following her conviction of graft, she withdrew from the race a month later and was substituted by her grandson Matthew Manotoc, who was initially her running mate for vice governor and the eventual winner.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda Marcos has been involved in court cases against her in the Philippines and abroad. Some of these, such as her corruption charges in the Philippines, are criminal cases. Others, such as the rulings of the Swiss Federal Court on her bank accounts, are either civil or forfeiture cases.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In October 1988, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, together with eight associates (including Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian businessman and weapons smuggler believed to have been involved with her husband's regime), were indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, fraud and obstruction of justice. She pleaded not guilty to federal charges that she used $103 million in stolen government funds to buy Manhattan real estate and art. Tobacco heiress Doris Duke posted $5 million bail for the former First Lady. The Marcos couple's defense team was led by criminal defense attorney Gerry Spence. Actor George Hamilton, an unindicted co-conspirator, testified at trial under a grant of immunity, acknowledging that he had received a $5.5-million loan from Marcos's associate. In July 1990, following a three-month trial, she was acquitted of all charges, after Imelda had successfully characterized herself as “a poor widow who knew nothing about her husband’s activities.”


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1990, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland ruled that funds in the Marcoses' Swiss bank accounts were of "criminal provenance". This cleared the way for the transfer of assets worth around $356 million back to the Philippines. These assets were previously frozen by Swiss courts in 1986 shortly after the People Power Revolution. The decision eventually led to reforms in 1998 that made it more difficult for dictators and criminals to keep their money in the Swiss banking system.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In February 1995, the United States District Court in Hawaii ruled against the Marcoses, awarding $1.96 billion to 9,539 victims of human rights violations during the Marcos dictatorship. This decision was upheld by US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996. The ruling has yet to be enforced in the Philippines due to jurisdiction issues.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Upon the Marcos family's return to the Philippines in the early 1990s, 28 criminal cases were filed against Mrs. Marcos by the Philippines' Office of the Ombudsman from 1991 to 1995.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1993, Marcos was convicted on a graft case. This was overturned by the Appellate Court in 2008, and the reversal was upheld by the Philippine Supreme Court in 2018 because of technical issues with the evidence.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In March 2008, a judge in Manila acquitted her of 32 counts of illegal transfers of funds to Swiss bank accounts between 1968 and 1976, determining that the government had failed to prove its case.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 2011, the Sandiganbayan Fifth Division ordered her to return in government funds taken by her and her husband from the National Food Authority. On November 9, 2018, the Sandiganbayan convicted Marcos on seven counts of graft and corruption, which disqualified Marcos from holding any public office.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In October 2015, Imelda Marcos still faced 10 criminal charges of graft and 25 civil cases in the Philippines.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1991, Marcos was indicted on ten corruption charges in the Philippines' anti-graft court, the Sandiganbayan.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Twenty-seven years later, on November 9, 2018, she was convicted on seven counts of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, for funneling roughly to various Swiss foundations while she was still serving as governor of Metro Manila in the 1970s. That same day, the court announced her acquittal on the three remaining counts, but since she failed to appear, the court also ordered the forfeiture of the earlier bond that she had posted in 1991.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: She was sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to eleven years for each count – totalling a minimum of 42 years and 7 months, and a maximum of 77 years. The Sandiganbayan also disqualified Marcos, a representative for the first district of Ilocos Norte and a candidate for governor of the same province, from holding any public office. The sanction will not go into immediate effect, pending appeal by her, but she nonetheless withdrew her candidacy for the governorship.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: On November 12, 2018, Marcos's attorney filed a "Motion for Leave of Court to Avail of Post-Conviction Remedies", which included a provision for bail. The court granted bail due to her "ill health", but reserved ruling on the balance of the requests until November 28. Marcos posted bail on November 16, 2018, a week after her conviction. She intends to appeal her conviction. The normal form of appeal is a motion for reconsideration to the Sandiganbayan; she further requested a direct appeal to the Philippine Supreme Court, which was originally denied as premature, then granted on November 28.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The Philippine Supreme Court considers the unexplained wealth of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos to be "ill-gotten" based on the definitions set forth in Republic Act 1379, which was passed in 1955. The Supreme Court's interpretation of R.A. 1379 says that property acquired by a public officer or employee which is "manifestly out of proportion to his salary as such public officer and to his other lawful income" is "presumed prima facie to have been unlawfully acquired". The bulk of the assets of the Marcoses, including the Marcos jewels, were treated as unlawful in a 2012 decision which specified that "according to the Official Report of the Minister of Budget, the total salaries of former President Marcos as President from 1966 to 1976 was ₱60,000 a year and from 1977 to 1985, ₱100,000 a year; while that of the former First Lady, Imelda R. Marcos, as Minister of Human Settlements from June 1976 to February 22–25, 1986 was ₱75,000 a year" – about $304,372.43.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Estimates of this ill-gotten wealth vary, with sources estimating a figure of about to for wealth acquired in the last years of the Marcos administration. "The Daily Telegraph" estimates her current net worth at a more modest $22M (the amount declared by Imelda Marcos in 2012), but states that it is likely that she and her husband stole billions of pesos while in power, and that the amount they stole could have paid off the entirety of the Philippine foreign debt.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In a 1985 report to the United States Congress House Committee on Foreign Affairs, US Ambassador to the Philippines Stephen Bosworth estimated that the Marcoses had stolen an accumulated wealth of "in recent years", in the context of the rapid decline of the Philppine economy in the early 1980s. The same figure was cited by the Philippines' Office of the Solicitor General soon after Marcos was deposed by the EDSA Revolution in 1986. Bosworth's source, Dr. Bernardo Villegas of the Philippine think tank the Center for Research and Communication (CRC), noted that the figure ultimately cited by Bosworth was a conservative estimate, and that the amount probably came closer to $13 billion.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The PCGG's first chairperson, Jovito Salonga, later said that he estimated the figure to be to , based on the documentary trail left behind by the Marcoses in 1986. Internationally, Salonga's estimate has become the popularly cited estimate of the Marcoses' unexplained wealth. Dr. Jesus Estanislao, another noted economist from the CRC, said this figure reflected amounts taken out of the country in the years immediately prior to the ouster of the Marcos administration, and that there was no way to accurately estimate the wealth acquired by the Marcoses since the 1950s. He suggested that the figure could be as much as $30 billion.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Aside from the Marcoses' amassed wealth, Imelda Marcos was famous for spending it, with some accounts calling her "the ultimate personification of conspicuous consumption". On one occasion, Imelda spent $2,000 on chewing gum at the San Francisco International Airport and, on another, forced a plane to do a U-turn mid-air because she had forgotten to buy cheese in Rome. A portion of her famous shoe collection is now kept in the National Museum of the Philippines, while another is displayed in a shoe museum in Marikina. Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) damaged her ancestral home in Tacloban, which also serves as a museum, although she still retains homes in Ilocos Norte and Makati, where she resides.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Some of this wealth has been recovered as the result of various court cases – and have either been returned to the Philippine government, or awarded as reparations to the victims of human rights abuses under Marcos's presidency. Some of it has also been recovered by the Philippine government through settlements and compromise deals, either with Imelda or cronies who say that certain properties had been entrusted to them by the Marcoses. Some of the recovery cases have been dismissed by the courts for reasons such as improper case filing procedures and technical issues with documentary evidence. An amount of unidentified proportions has yet to be recovered, as the full extent of the family's wealth remains unknown.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In March 1968, Ferdinand and Imelda opened four accounts, under the names of William Saunders and Jane Ryan, with Credit Suisse in Zurich,—Marcos using the alias "William Saunders" and Imelda using the alias "Jane Ryan". These were later moved into other accounts under various dummy foundations, but when relevant records were discovered by the new Philippine government after the 1986 EDSA revolution, the Swiss Federal council froze them. On December 21, 1990, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court ruled that these accounts could be turned over to the Philippine government, on the condition that there be a concurring "final and absolute judgment" by a Philippine court. In 1997, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court established the funds to have been "of criminal provenance" and permitted their transfer to an escrow account in Manila, pending a ruling from a Philippine court which came in the form a confiscation ruling by the Philippine Supreme court on July 15, 2003. Switzerland finally released a total of $683 million in Marcos funds to the Philippines Treasury in 2004.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Throughout the 1980s, Imelda Marcos bought four prominent buildings in Manhattan. These were the Crown Building at the corner of 57th and Fifth; 40 Wall Street, later renamed the Trump building; the Herald Center; and the building at 200 Madison Avenue. She declined to buy the Empire State Building because she felt it was "too ostentatious".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: On January 13, 2014, three collections of Imelda Marcos's jewelry: the Malacanang collection, the Roumeliotes collection, and the Hawaii collection; along with paintings by Claude Monet were seized by the Philippine government. In 2015, a rare pink diamond worth $5 million was discovered in her jewelry collection. The value of the three collections was appraised to be at about $21 million on February 16, 2016, when the government of the Philippines announced their intention to auction them off. They had not been sold as of April 17, 2020.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Her property also used to include a 175-piece art collection, which included works by Michelangelo, Botticelli, Canaletto, Raphael, as well as Monet's "L'Église et La Seine à Vétheuil" (1881), Alfred Sisley's "Langland Bay" (1887), and Albert Marquet's "Le Cyprès de Djenan Sidi Said" (1946). On October 17, 2013, the attempted sale of two Claude Monet paintings, "L'Eglise de Vetheuil" and "Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas", became the subject of a legal case in New York against Vilma Bautista, a one-time aide to Imelda Marcos. Bautista was sentenced in 2014 to 2–6 years in prison for attempting to sell "valuable masterpieces that belonged to her country".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: All told, about P170 billion worth of the Marcos wealth had been recovered by the PCGG by 2018 from the Marcoses – about $3.6 billion out of their $5 billion to 10 billion estimated ill-gotten wealth.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 2012, Imelda Marcos declared her net worth to be and was likewise listed as the second-richest Filipino politician behind boxer and politician Manny Pacquiao. She has claimed without evidence that her fortune came from Ferdinand Marcos's discovery of Yamashita's gold, a semi-mythical treasure trove that is widely believed in the Philippines to be part of the Japanese loot in World War II.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: But Marcos has also said in interviews that "If you know how rich you are, you are not rich. But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That's how rich we are."


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The amount the Marcoses were estimated to have plundered from the Philippines is so large that it has been the subject of world records. Imelda Marcos, together with her husband Ferdinand (who is considered by many to be one of the greatest plunderers in history according to the "Washington Post"), were jointly credited in 1989 by "Guinness World Records" with the largest-ever theft from a government: an estimated 5 billion to 10 billion dollars salted away. She is quoted as having stated: "We practically own everything in the Philippines, from electricity, telecommunications, airlines, banking, beer and tobacco, newspaper publishing, television stations, shipping, oil and mining, hotels and beach resorts, down to coconut milling, small farms, real estate and insurance." In 2009, Imelda Marcos was listed by "Newsweek" as being one of the "greediest people of all time". To this, Marcos replied: "I plead guilty. For me, greedy is giving. I was first lady for 20 years, you have to be greedy first to give to all. It is natural. The only things we keep in life are those we give away."


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The term "edifice complex" has been applied to Imelda and her penchant for grandiose public buildings, often constructed in impossibly short order. Imelda's building projects were often of the Brutalist architectural style characterized by fortress-like, massive shapes intended to effect a sense of grandiosity.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In 1966, Ferdinand Marcos issued Executive Order No. 60, establishing the Cultural Center of the Philippines and appointing its board of directors. The board elected Imelda as their chairperson, giving her the legal mandate to negotiate and manage funds for the center.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Complex is considered the premier symbol of Imelda's edifice complex. It was designed by Architect Leandro Locsin, and was built on a reclaimed land along Roxas Boulevard in Manila and covered an area of about . Ninety thousand pesos was granted by the Philippine-American Culture Foundation for its construction and was aided with funds from the Cultural Development Fund and the Special Fund for Education. Upon completion, it amounted to —a 50 000% increase from the original budget. Although it is notable that prices of the construction materials such as cement, steel, and tiles increased by 30% to 40% within this time frame, the escalation in the increase of the expenditures are highly questionable. Imelda called the CCP Complex the "sanctuary of the Filipino soul," as it became the locus of all state-initiated cultural productions.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Another construction project linked with Imelda during her husband's first term as President is the San Juanico Bridge, which links the island of Samar to Imelda's home province, Leyte. Although it wasn't initiated by Imelda herself, it was promoted by the administration as Ferdinand Marcos's gift to his wife. It was funded with foreign loans of (about ), from Japan's Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency (OTCA), the predecessor of today's Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Upon its completion on July 2, 1973, Imelda's birthday, economists and public works engineers quickly tagged it as a white elephant which was ""constructed several decades too soon,"" because its average daily traffic (ADT) was too low to justify the cost of its construction.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The late 1980s, the revelation that Imelda Marcos had "amassed a huge collection of art, jewellery, property and – most famously – at least 1,000 pairs of shoes", had turned her into a household name, frequently compared to Marie Antoinette of France, except "with shoes".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: It also refers to people who have "the Imelda Marcos syndrome" – tending to be extravagant and not being afraid to flaunt it, or to describe a lifestyle of "ostentatious extravagance".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: It has also come to be used in International English, with dictionary writer and "Atlantic" columnist Anne Soukhanov expounding on the "ostentatious extravagance" etymology. In popular international media, the "Sydney Morning Herald"'s Jackie Dent said it simply "means to be ... well, like Imelda".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The coining of term is often attributed to Imelda Marcos describing, although it was used by "People" Magazine's Carlos Lopez as early as April 1986, when he said:


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Marcos influenced fashion in the Philippines, although her role as a patroness of the arts and fashion is still controversial. For instance, she actively promoted the "terno", which also became her sartorial symbol, through projects such as "Bagong Anyo" and exhibitions abroad such as the Philippine contribution to the Expo '75 in Okinawa Japan.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Imelda made a conscious effort to portray herself as a patron of the arts, including those who specialize in Filipino haute couture such as Pitoy Moreno and Inno Sotto.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In a section of the 2003 Ramona Diaz film named after her, Imelda says that she maintains her extravagant clothing because it "inspired the poor to dress better".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In August 2019, writer/director Lauren Greenfield debuted her documentary film "The Kingmaker" at the 76th Venice Film Festival, after which it premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the London Film Festival, the first documentary to ever debut at all four festivals in the same year. The documentary features the political career of Imelda Marcos with a focus on the Marcos family's efforts to rehabilitate the family's image and to return to political power – including her plans to see her son Bongbong become Vice President of the Philippines. It has a 97% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes and a 76/100 from Metacritic.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In the late 90s, Imelda Marcos agreed to be the subject of a television documentary episode for PBS's Independent Lens, simply titled "Imelda", by Ramona S. Diaz. Released in 2003, the film documents her marriage to future President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, her rule under the dictatorship, her exile in Hawaii and her eventual return to the Philippines. "Imelda" had its world premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and its North American premiere in the documentary competition of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Excellence in Cinematography Award Documentary. The film was also screened at the Maryland Film Festival in Baltimore. It has a 94% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes and a 69/100 from Metacritic. Imelda obtained a temporary injunction that prevented the film from being shown in the Philippines for a brief time. When the injunction was canceled and the film was released, it earned more than "Spider-Man 2" and was considered a hit.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The villain character "Madame" in the popular Filipino Comic Book series Trese is known for being a visual reference to Marcos, with her coiffed hair, butterfly sleeves, and deep connections to the powerful figures of the Trese universe.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: The second track of Mark Knopfler's 1996 album "Golden Heart" is a sardonic song about her. In 2010, British producer Fatboy Slim and musician David Byrne released a concept album about her life called "Here Lies Love", which later became a rock musical of the same name.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In Manila, local performance artist Carlos Celdran became known for his "Living La Vida Imelda" walking tour, which was also performed in Dubai in 2012. Filipino-American drag artist Manila Luzon impersonated Mrs. Marcos in the "Snatch Game" challenge in the third season of "RuPaul's Drag Race," deriving humor from the First Lady's renowned obsession with shoes. Hawaiian comedian Frank De Lima has impersonated her on various occasions.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: Actress Dimples Romana portrayed Marcos in the "Maalaala Mo Kaya" episode entitled "Makinilya", the second of the two-part "The Ninoy & Cory Aquino Story" aired on ABS-CBN in 2010. Actress Ruffa Gutierrez also portrayed her in the 2022 film "Maid in Malacañang".


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In an episode of "Saturday Night Live" (aired October 8, 1988), she was portrayed by comedienne Nora Dunn during the segment "Weekend Update"


title: Imelda Marcos

text: In the show, "On the Television". She was portrayed by Karen Maruyama on the segment called "Our Maid Imelda", the former first lady was depicted as a maid for the two Beverly Hills-based couple in Hawaii after her fall from grace.


title: Imelda Marcos

text: She is frequently mentioned in the following Netflix shows like "Russian Doll" (episode: Coney Island Baby), "The Crown" (episode: Fairytale) and "Dynasty" (episode: A Litte Father-Daughter Chat).


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: Jeffrey Wright (born December 7, 1965) is an American actor. He is well known for his role as Belize in the Broadway production of "Angels in America", for which he would win a Tony Award, and its HBO miniseries adaptation, for which he would win an Emmy and Golden Globe.


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: He has also starred as Jean-Michel Basquiat in "Basquiat;" Felix Leiter in the "James Bond" films "Casino Royale", "Quantum of Solace" and "No Time to Die;" Valentin Narcisse in the HBO series "Boardwalk Empire;" Beetee Latier in "The Hunger Games" films; Isaac Dixon in the video game "The Last Of Us Part II;" and the Watcher in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) animated series "What If...?" Since 2016, he has starred as Bernard Lowe in the HBO series "Westworld". He portrayed James Gordon in the superhero film "The Batman" (2022) by Matt Reeves.


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: Wright was born on December 7, 1965 in Washington, D.C., the son of Barbara Evon (Whiting), a customs lawyer, and James Charles Wright, Jr., who died when he was a child. He graduated from St. Albans School and attended Amherst College, receiving a bachelor's degree in political science, planning to attend law school, but chose instead to study acting. After attending the MFA acting program at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts for two months in 1988, he left to appear in "Les Blancs" at Arena Stage before transferring with it to the Huntington Theatre Company and deciding to be an actor full-time.


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: Wright began appearing off-Broadway in New York City and Washington DC. In 1990 he appeared in his first major film as an attorney in "Presumed Innocent", starring Harrison Ford. In 1991, he joined John Houseman's national touring repertory company The Acting Company in productions of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and Athol Fugard's "Blood Knot". In 1993 and 1994, he appeared as Norman "Belize" Arriaga in Tony Kushner's award-winning play "Angels in America". His portrayal of a gay nurse forced to take care of Roy Cohn as he dies of AIDS won him the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: In 1996, Wright portrayed painter Jean-Michel Basquiat in the film "Basquiat", to critical acclaim. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, he appeared in leading and supporting roles in such films as "Celebrity" (1998), "Ride with the Devil" (1999), "Shaft" (2000), and "Boycott" (2001), where he gave an AFI Award-winning performance as Martin Luther King Jr. In 2003, he reprised his role as Norman "Belize" Arriaga in HBO's award-winning adaptation of "Angels in America," garnering him an Emmy award and a Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries. In 2004, he appeared in Jonathan Demme's remake of "The Manchurian Candidate". In February 2005, he returned to HBO Films in "Lackawanna Blues," and guest-starred on "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" and "".


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: In 2005, he played Washington attorney Bennett Holiday in "Syriana" and Bill Murray's eccentric Ethiopian neighbor Winston in "Broken Flowers," starred in the play "This Is How It Goes," and appeared as one of the tenants in "Lady in the Water". In 2006, he appeared as Felix Leiter in the James Bond movie "Casino Royale". He reprised the role in "Quantum of Solace" and "No Time to Die".


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: In 2007, Wright starred in the alien invasion suspense thriller "The Invasion". In 2008, he portrayed Colin Powell in "W." He portrayed Muddy Waters in "Cadillac Records", a biopic, loosely based on the rise and fall of Chess Records. In 2010, Wright played Jacques Cornet in the world premiere run of "A Free Man of Color" at the Vivian Beaumont Theater of the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in New York City.


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: Wright plays Beetee in "The Hunger Games" film series, starting with "", released in November 2013. He also landed the role of Dr. Valentin Narcisse in season 4 of "Boardwalk Empire", starting in the fall of 2013. Wright was nominated for three Emmys for his performance as Bernard Lowe in HBO's "Westworld".


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: In 2018, Wright produced the HBO documentary "We Are Not Done Yet," which gives voice to war veterans who, through a USO-sponsored arts workshop at Walter Reed National Military Hospital, discover the power and healing of shared experience to unite and find resilience in the face of post-traumatic stress. That same year, Wright starred in HBO's "O.G.," a film about a man confronting his past crime and preparing to leave prison after decades behind bars. The film was directed by Madeleine Sackler, and was uniquely filmed entirely in Pendleton Correctional Facility near Indianapolis, Indiana. The film was not only shot in a working prison, many prisoners and staff were recruited as actors for the film, including Wright's co-star, Theotus Carter, who plays Beecher, a younger prisoner that Louis, (Wright's character) takes under his wing, which threatens Louis' release date. During shooting Wright was sometimes mistaken for a prisoner by other real prisoners and guards. The film debuted on HBO on February 25, 2019. Nick Paumgarten of "The" "New Yorker" said, "The performances are exceptionally strong, both by the free-to-leave professional actors (especially Jeffrey Wright, who plays Louis, the 'O.G.' of the title, an older inmate on the verge of release) and by the incarcerated neophytes." Ben Kenigsberg of the "New York Times" said, "Jeffrey Wright gives a rich, imposing performance as the former 'mayor' of Pendleton Correctional Facility."


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: Wright starred in the video game "The Last of Us Part II" as Isaac, the leader of the Washington Liberation Front. The game was released on June 19, 2020.


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: In 2021, Wright portrayed food writer Roebuck Wright in the film "The French Dispatch" by Wes Anderson.


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: Wright voices the Watcher in the Disney+ animated series "What If...?", which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: Wright is chairman and co-founder of Taia, LLC and Taia Peace Foundation and Vice Chairman of Taia Lion Resources, Inc, a gold-exploration company looking to create a conflict-free gold mining operation in Sierra Leone.


title: Jeffrey Wright

text: Wright married actress Carmen Ejogo in August 2000. They have a son named Elijah and a daughter named Juno and lived in Brooklyn, New York. They have since divorced.


title: Natural disaster

text: A natural disaster is "the negative impact following an actual occurrence of natural hazard in the event that it significantly harms a community". A natural disaster can cause loss of life or damage property, and typically leaves some economic damage in its wake. The severity of the damage depends on the affected population's resilience and on the infrastructure available. Examples of natural hazards include: avalanche, coastal flooding, cold wave, drought, earthquake, hail, heat wave, hurricane (tropical cyclone), ice storm, landslide, lightning, riverine flooding, strong wind, tornado, typhoon, tsunami, volcanic activity, wildfire, winter weather.


title: Natural disaster

text: In modern times, the divide between natural, man-made and man-accelerated disasters is quite difficult to draw. Human choices and activities like architecture, fire, resource management or even climate change potentially play a role in causing "natural disasters". In fact, the term "natural disaster" has been called a misnomer already in 1976. A disaster is a result of a natural or man-made hazard impacting a vulnerable community. It is the combination of the hazard along with exposure of a vulnerable society that results in a disaster.


title: Natural disaster

text: Natural disasters can be aggravated by inadequate building norms, marginalization of people, inequities, overexploitation of resources, extreme urban sprawl and climate change. The rapid growth of the world's population and its increased concentration often in hazardous environments has escalated both the frequency and severity of disasters. With the tropical climate and unstable landforms, coupled with deforestation, unplanned growth proliferation, non-engineered constructions make the disaster-prone areas more vulnerable. Developing countries suffer more or less chronically from natural disasters due to ineffective communication combined with insufficient budgetary allocation for disaster prevention and management.


title: Natural disaster

text: An adverse event will not rise to the level of a disaster if it occurs in an area without vulnerable population. In a vulnerable area, however, such as Nepal during the 2015 earthquake, an adverse event can have disastrous consequences and leave lasting damage, which can take years to repair. The disastrous consequences also affect the mental health of affected communities, often leading to post-traumatic symptoms. These increased emotional experiences can be supported through collective processing, leading to resilience and increased community engagement.


title: Natural disaster

text: The term "natural disaster" has been called a misnomer already in 1976. Many disasters result from the combination of natural hazards and social and human vulnerability, often involving development activities that ignore or fail to reduce the disaster risks. Nature alone is blamed for disasters even when disasters result from failures in development such as inadequate building norms, marginalization of people, inequities, overexploitation of resources, extreme urban sprawl and climate change. The implications of defining disasters as solely natural events are serious when it comes to understanding the causes of a disaster and the distribution of political and financial responsibility in disaster risk reduction, disaster management, compensation, insurance and disaster prevention.


title: Natural disaster

text: There are 18 natural hazards included in the National Risk Index of FEMA: avalanche, coastal flooding, cold wave, drought, earthquake, hail, heat wave, hurricane (tropical cyclone), ice storm, landslide, lightning, riverine flooding, strong wind, tornado, tsunami, volcanic activity, wildfire, winter weather. In addition there are also tornados and dust storms. Several of these have a higher risk of occurring now due to the effects of climate change.


title: Natural disaster

text: Between 1995 and 2015, according to the UN's disaster-monitoring system, the greatest number of natural disasters occurred in America, China and India.


title: Natural disaster

text: In 2012, there were 905 natural disasters worldwide, 93% of which were weather-related disasters. Overall costs were US$170 billion and insured losses $70 billion. 2012 was a moderate year. 45% were meteorological (storms), 36% were hydrological (floods), 12% were climatological (heat waves, cold waves, droughts, wildfires) and 7% were geophysical events (earthquakes and volcanic eruptions). Between 1980 and 2011 geophysical events accounted for 14% of all natural catastrophes.


title: Natural disaster

text: According to 2019 WHO report countries with the highest share of disability-adjusted life years (DALY) lost due to natural disasters are Bahamas, Haiti, Zimbabwe and Armenia (probably mainly due to Spitak Earthquake).


title: Natural disaster

text: According to the UN, Asia-Pacific is the world's most disaster prone region. According to ReliefWeb, a person in Asia-Pacific is five times more likely to be hit by a natural disaster than someone living in other regions.


title: Natural disaster

text: A natural disaster may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage.


title: Natural disaster

text: Various phenomena like earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, tsunamis, cyclones, wildfires, and pandemics are all natural hazards that kill thousands of people and destroy billions of dollars of habitat and property each year. However, the rapid growth of the world's population and its increased concentration often in hazardous environments has escalated both the frequency and severity of disasters. With the tropical climate and unstable landforms, coupled with deforestation, unplanned growth proliferation, non-engineered constructions make the disaster-prone areas more vulnerable. Developing countries suffer more or less chronically from natural disasters due to ineffective communication combined with insufficient budgetary allocation for disaster prevention and management.


title: Natural disaster

text: During emergencies such as natural disasters and armed conflicts more waste may be produced, while waste management is given low priority compared with other services. Existing waste management services and infrastructures can be disrupted, leaving communities with unmanaged waste and increased littering. Under these circumstances human health and the environment are often negatively impacted.


title: Natural disaster

text: Natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes) have the potential to generate a significant amount of waste within a short period. Waste management systems can be out of action or curtailed, often requiring considerable time and funding to restore. For example, the tsunami in Japan in 2011 produced huge amounts of debris: estimates of 5 million tonnes of waste were reported by the Japanese Ministry of the Environment. Some of this waste, mostly plastic and styrofoam washed up on the coasts of Canada and the United States in late 2011. Along the west coast of the United States, this increased the amount of litter by a factor of 10 and may have transported alien species. Storms are also important generators of plastic litter. A study by Lo et al. (2020) reported a 100% increase in the amount of microplastics on beaches surveyed following a typhoon in Hong Kong in 2018.


title: Natural disaster

text: A significant amount of plastic waste can be produced during disaster relief operations. Following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the generation of waste from relief operations was referred to as a “second disaster”. The United States military reported that millions of water bottles and styrofoam food packages were distributed although there was no operational waste management system. Over 700,000 plastic tarpaulins and 100,000 tents were required for emergency shelters. The increase in plastic waste, combined with poor disposal practices, resulted in open drainage channels being blocked, increasing the risk of disease.


title: Natural disaster

text: Conflicts can result in large-scale displacement of communities. People living under these conditions are often provided with minimal waste management facilities. Burn pits are widely used to dispose of mixed wastes, including plastics. Air pollution can lead to respiratory and other illnesses. For example, Sahrawi refugees have been living in five camps near Tindouf, Algeria for nearly 45 years. As waste collection services are underfunded and there is no recycling facility, plastics have flooded the camps’ streets and surroundings. In contrast, the Azraq camp in Jordan for refugees from Syria has waste management services; of 20.7 tonnes of waste produced per day, 15% is recyclable.


title: Natural disaster

text: Because of the social, political and cultural context of many places throughout the world, women are often disproportionately affected by disaster. In the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, more women died than men, partly due to the fact that fewer women knew how to swim. During and after a natural disaster, women are at increased risk of being affected by gender based violence and are increasingly vulnerable to sexual violence. Disrupted police enforcement, lax regulations, and displacement all contribute to increased risk of gender based violence and sexual assault. Women who have been affected by sexual violence are at a significantly increased risk of sexually transmitted infections, unique physical injuries and long term psychological consequences. All of these long-term health outcomes can prevent successful reintegration into society after the disaster recovery period.


title: Natural disaster

text: In addition to LGBT people and immigrants, women are also disproportionately victimised by religion-based scapegoating for natural disasters: fanatical religious leaders or adherents may claim that a god or gods are angry with women's independent, freethinking behaviour, such as dressing 'immodestly', having sex or abortions. For example, Hindutva party Hindu Makkal Katchi and others blamed women's struggle for the right to enter the Sabarimala temple for the August 2018 Kerala floods, purportedly inflicted by the angry god Ayyappan. In response to Iranian Islamic cleric Kazem Seddiqi's accusation of women dressing immodestly and spreading promiscuity being the cause of earthquakes, American student Jennifer McCreight organised the Boobquake event on 26 April 2010: she encouraged women around the world to participate in dressing immodestly all at the same time while performing regular seismographic checks to prove that such behaviour in women causes no significant increase in earthquake activity.


title: Natural disaster

text: During and after natural disasters, routine health behaviors become interrupted. In addition, health care systems may have broken down as a result of the disaster, further reducing access to contraceptives. Unprotected intercourse during this time can lead to increased rates of childbirth, unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Methods used to prevent STIs (such as condom use) are often forgotten or not accessible during times surrounding a disaster. Lack of health care infrastructure and medical shortages hinder the ability to treat individuals once they acquire an STI. In addition, health efforts to prevent, monitor or treat HIV/AIDS are often disrupted, leading to increased rates of HIV complications and increased transmission of the virus through the population.


title: Natural disaster

text: Pregnant women are one of the groups disproportionately affected by natural disasters. Inadequate nutrition, little access to clean water, lack of health-care services and psychological stress in the aftermath of the disaster can lead to a significant increase in maternal morbidity and mortality. Furthermore, shortage of healthcare resources during this time can convert even routine obstetric complications into emergencies. During and after a disaster, women's prenatal, peri-natal and postpartum care can become disrupted. Among women affected by natural disaster, there are significantly higher rates of low birth weight infants, preterm infants and infants with low head circumference.


title: Natural disaster

text: Disasters stress government capacity, as the government tries to conduct routine as well as emergency operations. Some theorists of voting behavior propose that citizens update information about government effectiveness based on their response to disasters, which affects their vote choice in the next election. Indeed, some evidence, based on data from the USA, reveals that incumbent parties can lose votes if citizens perceives them as responsible for a poor disaster response or gain votes based on perceptions of well-executed relief work. The latter study also finds, however, that voters do not reward incumbent parties for disaster preparedness, which may end up affecting government incentives to invest in such preparedness. Other evidence, however, also based on the USA, finds that citizens can simply backlash and blame the incumbent for hardship following a natural disaster, causing the incumbent party to lose votes. One study in India finds that incumbent parties extend more relief following disasters in areas where there is higher newspaper coverage, electoral turnout, and literacy --- the authors reason that these results indicate that incumbent parties are more responsive with relief to areas with more politically-informed citizens who would be more likely to punish them for poor relief efforts.


title: Natural disaster

text: Violent conflicts within states can exacerbate the impact of natural disasters by weakening the ability of states, communities and individuals to provide disaster relief. Natural disasters can also worsen ongoing conflicts within states by weakening the capacity of states to fight rebels.


title: Natural disaster

text: In Chinese and Japanese history, it has been routine for era names or capital cities and palaces of emperors to be changed after a major natural disaster, chiefly for political reasons such as association with hardships by the populace and fear of upheaval (i.e. in East Asian government chronicles, such fears were recorded in a low profile way as an unlucky name or place requiring change).


title: Natural disaster

text: In 2000, the United Nations launched the International Early Warning Programme to address the underlying causes of vulnerability and to build disaster-resilient communities by promoting increased awareness of the importance of disaster risk reduction as an integral component of sustainable development, with the goal of reducing human, economic and environmental losses due to hazards of all kinds.


title: Natural disaster

text: The International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) is an international day that encourages every citizen and government to take part in building more disaster-resilient communities and nations. The United Nations General Assembly designated October 13 as the International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction as part of its proclamation of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. In 2009, the UN General Assembly decided to designate October 13 as the official date for this day, and also changed the name to International Day for Disaster Reduction.


title: Natural disaster

text: The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs was formed by General Assembly Resolution 44/182.


title: Natural disaster

text: Under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, "States Parties shall take, in accordance with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in situations of risk, including situations of armed conflict, humanitarian emergencies and the occurrence of natural disasters." The 1998 UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and 2009 Kampala Convention also protect people displaced due to natural disasters.


title: Natural disaster

text: A landslide is described as an outward and downward slope movement of an abundance of slope-forming materials including rock, soil, artificial fill, or a combination of these.


title: Natural disaster

text: During World War I, an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 soldiers died as a result of avalanches during the mountain campaign in the Alps at the Austrian-Italian front. Many of the avalanches were triggered by artillery fire.


title: Natural disaster

text: An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. At the Earth's surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by vibration, shaking, and sometimes displacement of the ground. Earthquakes are caused by slippage within geological faults. The underground point of origin of the earthquake is called the seismic focus. The point directly above the focus on the surface is called the epicenter. Earthquakes by themselves rarely kill people or wildlife — it is usually the secondary events that they trigger, such as building collapse, fires, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, that cause death. Many of these can possibly be avoided by better construction, safety systems, early warning and planning.


title: Natural disaster

text: When natural erosion, human mining or underground excavation makes the ground too weak to support the structures built on it, the ground can collapse and produce a sinkhole. For example, the 2010 Guatemala City sinkhole, which killed fifteen people, was caused when heavy rain from Tropical Storm Agatha, diverted by leaking pipes into a pumice bedrock, led to the sudden collapse of the ground beneath a factory building.


title: Natural disaster

text: Volcanoes can cause widespread destruction and consequent disaster in several ways. One hazard is the volcanic eruption itself, with the force of the explosion and falling rocks able to cause harm. Lava may also be released during the eruption of a volcano; as it leaves the volcano, it can destroy buildings, plants and animals due to its extreme heat. In addition, volcanic ash may form a cloud (generally after cooling) and settle thickly in nearby locations. When mixed with water, this forms a concrete-like material. In sufficient quantities, ash may cause roofs to collapse under its weight. Even small quantities will harm humans if inhaled — it has the consistency of ground glass and therefore causes laceration to the throat and lungs. Volcanic ash can also cause abrasion damage to moving machinery such as engines. The main killer of humans in the immediate surroundings of a volcanic eruption is pyroclastic flows, consisting of a cloud of hot ash which builds up in the air above the volcano and rushes down the slopes when the eruption no longer supports the lifting of the gases. It is believed that Pompeii was destroyed by a pyroclastic flow. A lahar is a volcanic mudflow or landslide. The 1953 Tangiwai disaster was caused by a lahar, as was the 1985 Armero tragedy in which the town of Armero was buried and an estimated 23,000 people were killed.


title: Natural disaster

text: Volcanoes rated at 8 (the highest level) on the Volcanic Explosivity Index are known as supervolcanoes. According to the Toba catastrophe theory, 75,000 to 80,000 years ago, a supervolcanic eruption at what is now Lake Toba in Sumatra reduced the human population to 10,000 or even 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution, and killed three-quarters of all plant life in the northern hemisphere. However, there is considerable debate regarding the veracity of this theory. The main danger from a supervolcano is the immense cloud of ash, which has a disastrous global effect on climate and temperature for many years.


title: Natural disaster

text: A hydrological disaster is a violent, sudden and destructive change either in the quality of Earth's water or in the distribution or movement of water on land below the surface or in the atmosphere.


title: Natural disaster

text: A flood is an overflow of water that 'submerges' land. The EU Floods Directive defines a flood as a temporary covering of land that is usually dry with water. In the sense of 'flowing water', the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tides. Flooding may result from the volume of a body of water, such as a river or lake, becoming higher than usual, causing some of the water to escape its usual boundaries. While the size of a lake or other body of water will vary with seasonal changes in precipitation and snow melt, a flood is not considered significant unless the water covers land used by humans, such as a village, city or other inhabited area, roads or expanses of farmland.


title: Natural disaster

text: A tsunami (plural: tsunamis or tsunami; from Japanese: 津波, lit. "harbour wave"; English pronunciation: /tsuːˈnɑːmi/), also known as a seismic sea wave or tidal wave, is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Tsunamis can be caused by undersea earthquakes such as the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, or by landslides such as the one in 1958 at Lituya Bay, Alaska, or by volcanic eruptions such as the ancient eruption of Santorini. On March 11, 2011, a tsunami occurred near Fukushima, Japan and spread through the Pacific Ocean.


title: Natural disaster

text: A limnic eruption, also known as a lake overturn, occurs when a gas, usually CO, suddenly erupts from deep lake water, posing the threat of suffocating wildlife, livestock and humans. Such an eruption may also cause tsunamis in the lake as the rising gas displaces water. Scientists believe that landslides, explosions or volcanic activity can trigger such an eruption. To date, only two limnic eruptions have been observed and recorded. In 1984, in Cameroon, a limnic eruption in Lake Monoun caused the deaths of 37 nearby residents; at nearby Lake Nyos in 1986, a much larger eruption killed between 1,700 and 1,800 people by asphyxiation.


title: Natural disaster

text: A heat wave is a period of unusually and excessively hot weather. The worst heat wave in recent history was the European Heat Wave of 2003. A summer heat wave in Victoria, Australia, created conditions which fuelled the massive bushfires in 2009. Melbourne experienced three days in a row of temperatures exceeding 40 °C (104 °F), with some regional areas sweltering through much higher temperatures. The bushfires, collectively known as "Black Saturday", were partly the act of arsonists. The 2010 Northern Hemisphere summer resulted in severe heat waves which killed over 2,000 people. The heat caused hundreds of wildfires which led to widespread air pollution and burned thousands of square kilometers of forest.


title: Natural disaster

text: Drought is the unusual dryness of soil caused by levels of rainfall significantly below average over a prolonged period. Hot and dry winds, shortage of water, high temperatures and consequent evaporation of moisture from the ground can also contribute to conditions of drought. Droughts result in crop failure and shortages of water.


title: Natural disaster

text: Well-known historical droughts include the 1997–2009 Millennium Drought in Australia which led to a water supply crisis across much of the country. As a result, many desalination plants were built for the first time (see list). In 2011, the State of Texas lived under a drought emergency declaration for the entire calendar year and suffered severe economic losses. The drought caused the Bastrop fires.


title: Natural disaster

text: Wildfires are large fires which often start in wildland areas. Common causes include lightning and drought but wildfires may also be started by human negligence or arson. They can spread to populated areas and thus be a threat to humans and property, as well as wildlife. Notable wildfires include the 1871 Peshtigo Fire in the United States, which killed at least 1700 people, and the 2009 Victorian bushfires in Australia.