title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein co-sponsored PIPA on May 12, 2011. She met with representatives of technology companies, including Google and Facebook, in January 2012. A Feinstein spokesperson said she "is doing all she can to ensure that the bill is balanced and protects the intellectual property concerns of the content community without unfairly burdening legitimate businesses such as Internet search engines".


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Following her 2012 vote to extend the Patriot Act and the FISA provisions, and after the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures involving the National Security Agency (NSA), Feinstein promoted and supported measures to continue the information collection programs. Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss also defended the NSA's request to Verizon for all the metadata about phone calls made within the U.S. and from the U.S. to other countries. They said the information gathered by intelligence on the phone communications is used to connect phone lines to terrorists and that it did not contain the content of the phone calls or messages. "Foreign Policy" wrote that she had a "reputation as a staunch defender of NSA practices and [of] the White House's refusal to stand by collection activities targeting foreign leaders".


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: In October 2013, Feinstein criticized the NSA for monitoring telephone calls of foreign leaders friendly to the U.S. In November 2013, she promoted the FISA Improvements Act bill, which included a "backdoor search provision" that allows intelligence agencies to continue certain warrantless searches as long as they are logged and "available for review" to various agencies.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: In June 2013, Feinstein called Edward Snowden a "traitor" after his leaks went public. In October 2013, she said she stood by that.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: While praising the NSA, Feinstein had accused the CIA of snooping and removing files through Congress members' computers, saying, "[t]he CIA did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the internal review or how we obtained it. Instead, the CIA just went and searched the committee's computer." She claimed the "CIA's search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution".


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: After the 2016 FBI–Apple encryption dispute, Feinstein and Richard Burr sponsored a bill that would be likely to criminalize all forms of strong encryption in electronic communication between citizens. The bill would require technology companies to design their encryption so that they can provide law enforcement with user data in an "intelligible format" when required to do so by court order.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: In 2020, Feinstein co sponsored the EARN IT act, which seeks to create a 19-member committee to decide a list of best practices websites must follow to be protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The EARN IT act effectively outlaws end-to-end encryption, depriving the world of secure, private communications tools.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein introduced the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which became law in 1994 and expired in 2004. In January 2013about a month after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootingshe and Representative Carolyn McCarthy proposed a bill that would "ban the sale, transfer, manufacturing or importation of 150 specific firearms including semiautomatic rifles or pistols that can be used with a detachable or fixed ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and have specific military-style features, including pistol grips, grenade launchers or rocket launchers". The bill would have exempted 900 models of guns used for sport and hunting. Feinstein said of the bill, "The common thread in each of these shootings is the gunman used a semi-automatic assault weapon or large-capacity ammunition magazines. Military assault weapons only have one purpose, and in my opinion, it's for the military." The bill failed on a Senate vote of 60 to 40.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein has opposed a number of reforms to cannabis laws at the state and federal level. In 2016 she opposed Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, to legalize recreational cannabis in California. In 1996 she opposed Proposition 215 to legalize the medical use of cannabis in California. In 2015 she was the only Democrat at a Senate hearing to vote against the Rohrabacher–Farr amendment, legislation that limits the enforcement of federal law in states that have legalized medical cannabis. Feinstein cited her belief that cannabis is a gateway drug in voting against the amendment.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: In 2018, Feinstein softened her views on marijuana and cosponsored the STATES Act, legislation that would protect states from federal interference regarding both medical and recreational use. She also supported legislation in 2015 to allow medical cannabis to be recommended to veterans in states where its use is legal.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: In September 2017, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the rescinding of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Feinstein admitted the legality of the program was questionable while citing this as a reason for why a law should be passed. In her opening remarks at a January 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, she said she was concerned the Trump administration's decision to terminate temporary protected status might be racially motivated, based on comments Trump made denigrating African countries, Haiti, and El Salvador.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein announced her support for the Iran nuclear deal framework in July 2015, tweeting that the deal would usher in "unprecedented & intrusive inspections to verify cooperation" on the part of Iran.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: On June 7, 2017, Feinstein and Senator Bernie Sanders issued dual statements urging the Senate to forgo a vote for sanctions on Iran in response to the Tehran attacks that occurred earlier in the day.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: In July 2017, Feinstein voted for the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act that grouped together sanctions against Iran, Russia and North Korea.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: In September 2016in advance of UN Security Council resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territoriesFeinstein signed an AIPAC-sponsored letter urging Obama to veto "one-sided" resolutions against Israel.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein opposed Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, saying, "Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capitalor relocating our embassy to Jerusalemwill spark violence and embolden extremists on both sides of the debate."


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: During a July 2017 appearance on "Face the Nation" after North Korea conducted a second test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, Feinstein said the country had proven itself a danger to the U.S. She also expressed her disappointment with China's lack of response.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Responding to reports that North Korea had achieved successful miniaturization of nuclear warheads, Feinstein issued an August 8, 2017, statement insisting isolation of North Korea had proven ineffective and Trump's rhetoric was not helping resolve potential conflict. She also called for the U.S. to "quickly engage North Korea in a high-level dialogue without any preconditions".


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: In September 2017, after Trump's first speech to the United Nations General Assembly in which he threatened North Korea, Feinstein released a statement disagreeing with his remarks: "Trump's bombastic threat to destroy North Korea and his refusal to present any positive pathways forward on the many global challenges we face are severe disappointments."


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein supports a conciliatory approach between China and Taiwan and fostered increased dialogue between high-level Chinese representatives and U.S. senators during her first term as senator. When asked about her relation with Beijing, Feinstein said, "I sometimes say that in my last life maybe I was Chinese."


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein has criticized Beijing's missile tests near Taiwan and has called for dismantlement of missiles pointed at the island. She promoted stronger business ties between China and Taiwan over confrontation, and suggested that the U.S. patiently "use two-way trade across Taiwan Strait as a platform for more political dialogue and closer ties".


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: She believes that deeper cross-strait economic integration "will one day lead to political integration and will ultimately provide the solution" to the Taiwan issue.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: On July 27, 2018, reports surfaced that a Chinese staff member who worked as Feinstein's personal driver, gofer and liaison to the Asian-American community for 20 years, was caught reporting to China's Ministry of State Security. According to the reports, the FBI contacted Feinstein five years earlier warning her about the employee. The employee was later interviewed by authorities and forced to retire by Feinstein. No criminal charges were filed against them.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein has served on the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence since before 9/11 and her time on the committee has coincided with the Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq and the debates on the torture/"enhanced interrogation" of terrorists and alleged terrorists. On the Senate floor on December 9, 2014, the day parts of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture were released to the public, Feinstein called the government's detention and interrogation program a "stain on our values and on our history".


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: On January 9, 2018, Feinstein caused a stir when, as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she released a transcript of its August 2017 interview with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson about the dossier regarding connections between Trump's campaign and the Russian government. She did this unilaterally after the committee's chairman, Chuck Grassley, refused to release the transcript.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: During the 1980 presidential election, Feinstein served on President Jimmy Carter's steering committee in California and as a Carter delegate to the Democratic National Convention. She was selected to serve as one of the four chairs of the 1980 Democratic National Convention.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein endorsed former Vice President Walter Mondale during the 1984 presidential election. She and Democratic National Committee chairman Charles Manatt signed a contract in 1983, making San Francisco the host of the 1984 Democratic National Convention.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: As a superdelegate in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, Feinstein said she would support Clinton for the nomination. But after Barack Obama became the presumptive nominee, she fully backed his candidacy. Days after Obama amassed enough delegates to win the nomination, Feinstein lent her Washington, D.C., home to Clinton and Obama for a private one-on-one meeting. She did not attend the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver because she had fallen and broken her ankle earlier in the month.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein chaired the United States Congress Joint Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and acted as mistress of ceremonies, introducing each participant at the 2009 presidential inauguration. She is the first woman to have presided over a U.S. presidential inauguration.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Feinstein was one of 16 female Democratic senators to sign an October 20, 2013, letter endorsing Hillary Clinton for president.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: As the 2020 presidential election approached, Feinstein indicated her support for former Vice President Joe Biden. This came as a surprise to many pundits, due to the potential candidacy of fellow California senator Kamala Harris, of whom Feinstein said "I'm a big fan of Sen. Harris, and I work with her. But she's brand-new here, so it takes a little bit of time to get to know somebody."


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: The role of president pro tempore, third in line to the US presidency, traditionally goes to the senior member of the majority party. This senior member is expected to be Feinstein after Patrick Leahy retires on January 3, 2023. But on October 22, 2022, Feinstein said that she would not interested be in the role were it offered to her. She cited her legislative agenda as well as family matters following her husband's death as reasons for declining the role, which will go to Patty Murray instead.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Golden Gate University in San Francisco on June 4, 1977. She was awarded the Legion of Honour by France in 1984. Feinstein received with the Woodrow Wilson Award for public service from the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian Institution on November 3, 2001, in Los Angeles. In 2002, Feinstein won the American Medical Association's Nathan Davis Award for "the Betterment of the Public Health". She was named as one of "The Forward" 50 in 2015.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein has been married three times. She married Jack Berman ( 2002), who was then working in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, in 1956. She and Berman divorced three years later. Their daughter, Katherine Feinstein Mariano ( 1957), was the presiding judge of the San Francisco Superior Court for 12 years, through 2012. In 1962, shortly after beginning her career in politics, Feinstein married her second husband, neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, who died of colon cancer in 1978. Feinstein was then married to investment banker Richard C. Blum from 1980 until his death from cancer in 2022.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: In 2003, Feinstein was ranked the fifth-wealthiest senator, with an estimated net worth of $26 million. Her net worth increased to between $43 and $99 million by 2005. Her 347-page financial-disclosure statement, characterized by the "San Francisco Chronicle" as "nearly the size of a phone book", claims to draw clear lines between her assets and her husband's, with many of her assets in blind trusts.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: Feinstein had an artificial cardiac pacemaker inserted at George Washington University Hospital in January 2017. In the fall of 2020, following Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death and the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, there was concern about Feinstein's ability to continue performing her job. She said there was no cause for concern and that she had no plans to leave the Senate.


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: On April 14, 2022, the "San Francisco Chronicle" spoke to four senators, three former staffers, and a member of congress from California about Feinstein's alleged cognitive decline. In the off-the-record interviews, legislators and others said that Feinstein's memory is rapidly declining and it appears she can no longer fulfill her duties as a senator. They said Feinstein's lapses are not constant and she is sometimes as sharp as she used to be, but there are times when she does not recognize longtime colleagues. In response, Feinstein issued a statement asserting that "I'm still an effective representative for 40 million Californians." She also spoke by phone to members of the "Chronicle" editorial board, saying, "I meet regularly with leaders. I'm not isolated. I see people. My attendance is good. I put in the hours. We represent a huge state. And so I'm rather puzzled by all of this." Colleagues including Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended her; Pelosi called the accusation "unconscionable" and "ridiculous".


title: Dianne Feinstein

text: The 2019 film "The Report", about the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the CIA's use of torture, extensively features Feinstein, portrayed by Annette Bening.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: The 2022 Major League Baseball season (MLB) was originally scheduled to begin on March 31 and end on October 2. The 2021–22 MLB lockout caused the season to be delayed by one week, starting on April 7. The regular season ended on October 5. The start of the season was delayed by a lockout of players, which commenced on December 2, 2021, following the expiration of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the league and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). On March 10, 2022, MLB and the MLBPA reached a deal on a five-year CBA, with Opening Day being held on April 7 (delayed from its originally-planned March 31), and a full 162-game schedule played. Under the new CBA, universal designated hitter was adopted, and the postseason was expanded to 12 teams. In November 2021, the Cleveland Indians announced their new team name, the Cleveland Guardians. The 2022 MLB All-Star Game was held on July 19 and hosted by the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: On December 2, 2021, MLB owners voted unanimously to enact a lockout upon the expiration of the 2016 collective bargaining agreement between the league and the players' union. Issues raised between the league and union involved compensation for young players, as well as limitations on tanking to receive higher selections in the MLB draft.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: The 2021–22 lockout was the first MLB work stoppage since the 1994–95 strike. It instituted a transaction freeze, including the postponement of the major league portion of the Rule 5 draft. It would be the first year since 1920 to not have a major league phase of the Rule 5 draft, though the minor league phase will still go ahead as scheduled.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: On March 10, 2022, almost 100 days after the beginning of the lockout, MLB and the MLBPA reached a deal on a new, five-year CBA. Players began reporting to training camps on March 11, spring training began on March 17, and Opening Day on April 7. The league plans to play a full, 162-game season, and games displaced by the delayed start have been rescheduled.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: Changes in the new CBA include a pre-arbitration bonus pool for eligible young players, increased minimum salaries (increasing from $700,000 to $780,000 over the length of the deal), a draft lottery to determine the top six selections in the draft, the establishment of an international draft, and the establishment of a Joint Competition Committee that, in 2023, will oversee the adoption of future rule changes (including base sizes and pitch clocks among others). The National League began adopting the designated hitter on a permanent basis, after having previously used it on a temporary basis during the shortened 2020 season, while the postseason will be expanded to 12 teams.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: Major League Baseball released its 2022 regular season schedule on August 4, 2021. As has been the case since 2013, all teams play their four division opponents 19 times each for a total of 76 games, play six or seven games against each of the other ten same-league opponents for a total of 66 games, and 20 interleague games. Interleague play will feature AL East vs. NL Central, AL Central vs. NL West, and AL West vs. NL East.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: The MLB at Field of Dreams game returned for a second year, featuring the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds at the purpose built ballpark in Dyersville, Iowa, on August 11. The Cubs won the game 4–2.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: The annual MLB Little League Classic featured the Boston Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles at Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, on August 21. The Orioles won the game 5–3.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: Both Canada and the United States have travel restrictions for individuals who are not vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Each requires incoming travelers who are not citizens to have received a full course of an approved COVID-19 vaccine no later than 14 days before entry into the respective country.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: On April 5, the league announced that all teams may use PitchCom, a wireless system for catchers to request pitches by type and location. PitchCom is intended to reduce the risk of sign stealing and to quicken the pace of play.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: On April 26, the league announced that limiting rosters to 13 pitchers had been delayed until May 30, allowing teams to carry up to 14 pitchers until then. The 13-pitcher limit was later delayed again, becoming effective June 20.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: Players are selected through fan votes (50%) and votes from a panel of experts (50%). The winners will be selected based on merit, with no set number of nominees per position and no distinction between leagues.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: Major League Baseball and Nike announced that an additional seven teams adopted "City Connect" uniforms inspired by the teams' home cities. These teams join the Arizona Diamondbacks, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, Miami Marlins, and the San Francisco Giants who unveiled their City Connect uniforms during the prior season.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: The 2022 season marked the first season of multiple broadcasting deals in Major League Baseball in the United States, most of which run through the 2028 season:


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: For the postseason, ESPN networks held rights to the Wild Card round; due to logistical concerns (especially with the fluctuating placements of teams in the standings during the final games of the regular season), the network employed remote production for the Padres/Mets and Mariners/Blue Jays series. The latter series employed a variant of the "enhanced world feed" model used in the 2020 season, with commentators and other selected staff on-site at Rogers Centre, but using video feeds from the Sportsnet production.


title: 2022 Major League Baseball season

text: Fox Sports held rights to the National League Division Series, Championship Series, and the World Series for the 23rd consecutive season; while TBS held rights to the American League Division Series and Championship Series. Spanish-language broadcasts of all ALDS and ALCS games aired on MLB Network.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: To be hanged, drawn and quartered became a statutory penalty for men convicted of high treason in the Kingdom of England from 1352 under King Edward III (1327–1377), although similar rituals are recorded during the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272). The convicted traitor was fastened to a hurdle, or wooden panel, and drawn by horse to the place of execution, where he was then hanged (almost to the point of death), emasculated, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered (chopped into four pieces). His remains would then often be displayed in prominent places across the country, such as London Bridge, to serve as a warning of the fate of traitors. For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: The same punishment applied to traitors against the King in Ireland from the 15th century onward; William Overy was hanged, drawn and quartered by Lord Lieutenant Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York in 1469, and from the reign of King Henry VII it was made part of statute law. Matthew Lambert was among the most notable Irishmen to suffer this punishment, in 1581 in Wexford.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: The severity of the sentence was measured against the seriousness of the crime. As an attack on the monarch's authority, high treason was considered a deplorable act demanding the most extreme form of punishment. Although some convicts had their sentences modified and suffered a less ignominious end, over a period of several hundred years many men found guilty of high treason were subjected to the law's ultimate sanction. They included many Catholic priests executed during the Elizabethan era, and several of the regicides involved in the 1649 execution of Charles I.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: Although the Act of Parliament defining high treason remains on the United Kingdom's statute books, during a long period of 19th-century legal reform the sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering was changed to drawing, hanging until dead, and posthumous beheading and quartering, before being abolished in England in 1870. The death penalty for treason was abolished in 1998.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: During the High Middle Ages, those in the Kingdom of England found guilty of treason were punished in a variety of ways, often including drawing and hanging. Throughout the 13th century, more severe penalties were recorded, such as disembowelling, burning, beheading, and quartering.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: The 13th-century English chronicler Matthew Paris described how in 1238 "a certain man at arms, a man of some education ("armiger literatus")" attempted to kill King Henry III. His account records in detail how the would-be assassin was executed: "dragged asunder, then beheaded, and his body divided into three parts; each part was then dragged through one of the principal cities of England, and was afterwards hung on a gibbet used for robbers." He was apparently sent by William de Marisco, an outlaw who some years earlier had killed a man under royal protection before fleeing to Lundy Island. De Marisco was captured in 1242 and on Henry's order dragged from Westminster to the Tower of London to be executed. There he was hanged from a gibbet until dead. His corpse was disembowelled, his entrails burned, his body quartered, and the parts distributed to cities across the country.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: The first recorded example of the punishment in its entirety was during Edward I's reign, for the Welsh prince Dafydd ap Gruffydd in 1283 after he turned against the king and proclaimed himself Prince of Wales and Lord of Snowdon. Following the capture of Dafydd ap Gruffydd, Edward proclaimed that the "treacherous lineage" (House of Aberffraw), and princes of that "turbulent nation" (Wales) were now his prisoners. Edward summoned a parliament at Shrewsbury to discuss Dafydd's fate. On 30 September, it was decided Dafydd would be executed for what from that time onward would be termed "high treason".


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: On 3 October, Dafydd was drawn through the streets of Shrewsbury to his place of execution, attached to a horse's tail. There he was hanged alive, for killing English noblemen. Dafydd was then revived and disembowelled, eviscerated and made to watch as his entrails burned before him for "sacrilege in committing his crimes in the week of Christ's passion" (Easter). Finally, Dafydd's body was cut into quarters "for plotting the king's death" and the parts were sent to different parts of his realm; the right arm to York, the left to Bristol, the right leg to Northampton and the left leg to Hereford. The head was bound with iron and set on a spear at the Tower of London.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: In 1305, the Scottish knight Sir William Wallace, a main leader of the First War of Scottish Independence, was punished in a similar manner. He was forced to wear a crown of laurel leaves and was drawn to Smithfield, where he was hanged and beheaded. His entrails were then burned and his corpse quartered, while his head was set on London Bridge and the quarters sent to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Perth.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: These and other executions, such as those of Andrew Harclay, 1st Earl of Carlisle, and Hugh Despenser the Younger, which each occurred during Edward II's reign, happened when acts of treason in England, and their punishments, were not clearly defined in common law. Treason was based on an allegiance to the sovereign from all subjects aged 14 or over, and it remained for the king and his judges to determine whether that allegiance had been broken. Edward III's justices had offered somewhat overzealous interpretations of what activities constituted treason, "calling felonies treasons and afforcing indictments by talk of accroachment of the royal power", prompting parliamentary demands to clarify the law. Edward therefore introduced the Treason Act 1351. It was enacted at a time in English history when a monarch's right to rule was indisputable and was therefore written principally to protect the throne and sovereign. The new law offered a narrower definition of treason than had existed before and split the old feudal offence into two classes. Petty treason referred to the killing of a master (or lord) by his servant, a husband by his wife, or a prelate by his clergyman. Men guilty of petty treason were drawn and hanged, whereas women were burned.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: High treason was the most egregious offence an individual could commit. Attempts to undermine the king's authority were viewed with as much seriousness as if the accused had attacked him personally, which itself would be an assault on his status as sovereign and a direct threat to his right to govern. As this might undermine the state, retribution was considered an absolute necessity and the crime deserving of the ultimate punishment. The practical difference between the two offences was therefore in the consequence of being convicted; rather than being drawn and hanged, men were to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, while for reasons of public decency (their anatomy being considered inappropriate for the sentence), women were instead drawn and burned.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: The Act did not limit the king's authority in defining the scope of treason. It contained a proviso giving English judges discretion to extend that scope whenever required, a process more commonly known as constructive treason. It also applied to subjects overseas in British colonies in the Americas, but the only documented incident of an individual there being hanged, drawn, and quartered was that of Joshua Tefft, an English colonist accused of having fought on the side of the Narragansett during the Great Swamp Fight. He was executed in January 1676. Later sentences resulted either in a pardon or a hanging.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, was executed on 17 May 1521 for the crime of treason. The wording of his sentence has survived and indicates the precision with which the method of execution was described; he was to be "laid on a hurdle and so drawn to the place of execution, and there to be hanged, cut down alive, your members to be cut off and cast in the fire, your bowels burnt before you, your head smitten off, and your body quartered and divided at the King's will, and God have mercy on your soul."


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: The original 1351 Act required only one witness to convict a person of treason, although in 1547 this was increased to two. Suspects were first questioned in private by the Privy Council before they were publicly tried. They were allowed no witnesses or defence counsel, and were generally presumed guilty from the outset. This meant that for centuries anyone accused of treason was at a severe legal disadvantage, a situation that lasted until the late 17th century, when several years of politically motivated treason charges made against Whig politicians prompted the introduction of the Treason Act 1695. This allowed a defendant counsel, witnesses, a copy of the indictment, and a jury, and when not charged with an attempt on the monarch's life, to be prosecuted within three years of the alleged offence.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: Once sentenced, malefactors were usually held in prison for a few days before being taken to the place of execution. During the High Middle Ages this journey may have been made tied directly to the back of a horse, but it subsequently became customary for the victim to be fastened instead to a wicker hurdle, or wooden panel, itself tied to the horse. Historian Frederic William Maitland thought that this was probably to "[secure] for the hangman a yet living body". The use of the word drawn, as in "to draw", has caused a degree of confusion. One of the "Oxford English Dictionary"s definitions of draw is "to draw out the viscera or intestines of; to disembowel (a fowl, etc. before cooking, a traitor or other criminal after hanging)", but this is followed by "in many cases of executions it is uncertain whether this, or [to drag (a criminal) at a horse's tail, or on a hurdle or the like, to the place of execution; formerly a legal punishment of high treason], is meant. The presumption is that where "drawn" is mentioned after "hanged", the sense is as here." Historian Ram Sharan Sharma arrived at the same conclusion: "Where, as in the popular "hung, drawn and quartered" [use] (meaning facetiously, of a person, completely disposed of), "drawn" follows "hanged" or "hung", it is to be referred to as the disembowelling of the traitor." Sharma is not the only historian to support this viewpoint as the phrase, "hanged until dead before being drawn and quartered", occurs in a number of relevant secondary publications. The historian and author Ian Mortimer disagrees. In an essay published on his website, he writes that the separate mention of evisceration is a relatively modern device, and that while it certainly took place on many occasions, the presumption that "drawing" means to disembowel is spurious. Instead, drawing (as a method of transportation) may be mentioned after hanging because it was a supplementary part of the execution.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: Some reports indicate that during Queen Mary I's reign bystanders were vocal in their support: while in transit, convicts sometimes suffered directly at the hands of the crowd. William Wallace was whipped, attacked and had rotten food and waste thrown at him, and the priest Thomas Pilchard was reportedly barely alive by the time he reached the gallows in 1587. Others found themselves admonished by "zealous and godly men"; it became customary for a preacher to follow the condemned, asking them to repent. According to Samuel Clarke, the Puritan clergyman William Perkins (1558–1602) once managed to convince a young man at the gallows that he had been forgiven, enabling the youth to go to his death "with tears of joy in his eyes ... as if he actually saw himself delivered from the hell which he feared before, and heaven opened for receiving his soul."


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: After the king's commission had been read aloud, the crowd was normally asked to move back from the scaffold before being addressed by the convict. While these speeches were mostly an admission of guilt (although few admitted treason), still they were carefully monitored by the sheriff and chaplain, who were occasionally forced to act; in 1588, Catholic priest William Dean's address to the crowd was considered so inappropriate that he was gagged almost to the point of suffocation. Questions on matters of allegiance and politics were sometimes put to the prisoner, as happened to Edmund Gennings in 1591. He was asked by priest hunter Richard Topcliffe to "confess his treason", but when Gennings responded "if to say Mass be treason, I confess to have done it and glory in it", Topcliffe ordered him to be quiet and instructed the hangman to push him off the ladder. Sometimes the witness responsible for the condemned man's execution was also present. A government spy, John Munday, was in 1582 present for the execution of Thomas Ford. Munday supported the sheriff, who had reminded the priest of his confession when he protested his innocence. The sentiments expressed in such speeches may be related to the conditions encountered during imprisonment. Many Jesuit priests suffered badly at the hands of their captors but were frequently the most defiant; conversely, those of a higher station were often the most apologetic. Such contrition may have arisen from the sheer terror felt by those who thought they might be disembowelled rather than simply beheaded as they would normally expect, and any apparent acceptance of their fate may have stemmed from the belief that a serious, but not treasonable act, had been committed. Good behaviour at the gallows may also have been due to a convict's desire for his heirs not to be disinherited.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: The condemned were occasionally forced to watch as other traitors, sometimes their confederates, were executed before them. The priest James Bell was in 1584 made to watch as his companion, John Finch, was "a-quarter-inge." Edward James and Francis Edwardes were made to witness Ralph Crockett's execution in 1588, in an effort to elicit their co-operation and acceptance of Elizabeth I's religious supremacy before they were themselves executed. Normally stripped to the shirt with their arms bound in front of them, prisoners were then hanged for a short period, either from a ladder or cart. On the sheriff's orders the cart would be taken away (or if a ladder, turned), leaving the man suspended in mid-air. The aim was usually to cause strangulation and near-death, although some victims were killed prematurely, the priest John Payne's death in 1582 being hastened by a group of men pulling on his legs. Conversely, some, such as the deeply unpopular William Hacket (d. 1591), were cut down instantly and taken to be disembowelled and normally emasculated—the latter, according to Sir Edward Coke, to "show his issue was disinherited with corruption of blood."


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: A victim still conscious at that point might have seen his entrails burned, before his heart was removed and the body decapitated and quartered (chopped into four pieces). The regicide Major-General Thomas Harrison, after being hanged for several minutes and then cut open in October 1660, was reported to have leaned across and hit his executioner—resulting in the swift removal of his head. His entrails were thrown onto a nearby fire. John Houghton was reported to have prayed while being disembowelled in 1535, and in his final moments to have cried "Good Jesu, what will you do with my heart?" Executioners were often inexperienced and proceedings did not always run smoothly. In 1584, Richard White's executioner removed his bowels piece by piece, through a small hole in his belly, "the which device taking no good success, he mangled his breast with a butcher's axe to the very chine most pitifully." At his execution in January 1606 for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes managed to break his neck by jumping from the gallows.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: No records exist to demonstrate exactly how the corpse was quartered, although an engraving of the quartering of Sir Thomas Armstrong in 1684 shows the executioner making vertical cuts through the spine and removing the legs at the hip. The distribution of Dafydd ap Gruffydd's remains was described by Herbert Maxwell: "the right arm with a ring on the finger in York; the left arm in Bristol; the right leg and hip at Northampton; the left [leg] at Hereford. But the villain's head was bound with iron, lest it should fall to pieces from putrefaction, and set conspicuously upon a long spear-shaft for the mockery of London." After the execution in 1660 of several of the regicides involved in the death of King Charles I eleven years earlier, the diarist John Evelyn remarked: "I saw not their execution, but met their quarters, mangled, and cut, and reeking, as they were brought from the gallows in baskets on the hurdle." Such remains were typically parboiled and displayed as a gruesome reminder of the penalty for high treason, usually wherever the traitor had conspired or found support. Salt and cumin seed would be added during the boiling process: the salt to prevent putrefaction, and the cumin seed to prevent birds pecking at the flesh.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: The head was often displayed on London Bridge, for centuries the route by which many travellers from the south entered the city. Several eminent commentators remarked on the displays. In 1566 Joseph Justus Scaliger wrote that "in London there were many heads on the bridge ... I have seen there, as if they were masts of ships, and at the top of them, quarters of men's corpses." In 1602 the Duke of Pommerania-Stettin emphasised the ominous nature of their presence when he wrote "near the end of the bridge, on the suburb side, were stuck up the heads of thirty gentlemen of high standing who had been beheaded on account of treason and secret practices against the Queen." The practice of using London Bridge in this manner ended following the hanging, drawing, and quartering in 1678 of William Staley, a victim of the fictitious Popish Plot. His quarters were given to his relatives, who promptly arranged a "grand" funeral; this incensed the coroner so much that he ordered the body to be dug up and set upon the city gates. Staley's was the last head to be placed on London Bridge.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: Another victim of the Popish Plot, Oliver Plunkett the Archbishop of Armagh, was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn in July 1681. His executioner was bribed so that Plunkett's body parts were saved from the fire; the head is now displayed at St Peter's Church in Drogheda. Francis Towneley and several other captured Jacobite officers involved in the Jacobite Rising of 1745 were executed, but by then the executioner possessed some discretion as to how much they should suffer and thus they were killed before their bodies were eviscerated. The French spy François Henri de la Motte was hanged in 1781 for almost an hour before his heart was cut out and burned, and the following year David Tyrie was hanged, decapitated, and then quartered at Portsmouth. Pieces of his corpse were fought over by members of the 20,000-strong crowd there, some making trophies of his limbs and fingers. In 1803 Edward Despard and six co-conspirators in the Despard Plot were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Before they were hanged and beheaded at Horsemonger Lane Gaol, they were first placed on sledges attached to horses, and ritually pulled in circuits around the gaol yards. Their execution was attended by an audience of about 20,000. A contemporary report describes the scene after Despard had made his speech:


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: At the burnings of Isabella Condon in 1779 and Phoebe Harris in 1786, the sheriffs present inflated their expenses; in the opinion of Simon Devereaux they were probably dismayed at being forced to attend such spectacles. Harris's fate prompted William Wilberforce to sponsor a bill which if passed would have abolished the practice, but as one of its proposals would have allowed the anatomical dissection of criminals other than murderers, the House of Lords rejected it. The burning in 1789 of Catherine Murphy, a counterfeiter, was impugned in Parliament by Sir Benjamin Hammett. He called it one of "the savage remains of Norman policy". Amidst a growing tide of public disgust at the burning of women, Parliament passed the Treason Act 1790, which for women guilty of treason substituted hanging for burning. It was followed by the Treason Act 1814, introduced by Samuel Romilly, a legal reformer. Influenced by his friend, Jeremy Bentham, Romilly had long argued that punitive laws should serve to reform criminal behaviour and that far from acting as a deterrent, the severity of England's laws was responsible for an increase in crime. When appointed the MP for Queensborough in 1806 he resolved to improve what he described as "Our sanguinary and barbarous penal code, written in blood". He managed to repeal the death penalty for certain thefts and vagrancy, and in 1814 proposed to change the sentence for men guilty of treason to being hanged until dead and the body left at the king's disposal. However, when it was pointed out that this would be a less severe punishment than that given for murder, he agreed that the corpse should also be decapitated, "as a fit punishment and appropriate stigma." This is what happened to Jeremiah Brandreth, leader of a 100-strong contingent of men in the Pentrich rising and one of three men executed in 1817 at Derby Gaol. As with Edward Despard and his confederates the three were drawn to the scaffold on sledges before being hanged for about an hour, and then on the insistence of the Prince Regent were beheaded with an axe. The local miner appointed to the task of beheading them was inexperienced though, and having failed with the first two blows, completed his job with a knife. As he held the first head up and made the customary announcement, the crowd reacted with horror and fled. A different reaction was seen in 1820, when amidst more social unrest five men involved in the Cato Street Conspiracy were hanged and beheaded at Newgate Prison. Although the beheading was performed by a surgeon, following the usual proclamation the crowd was angry enough to force the executioners to find safety behind the prison walls. The plot was the last crime for which the sentence was applied.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: Reformation of England's capital punishment laws continued throughout the 19th century, as politicians such as John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, sought to remove from the statute books many of the capital offences that remained. Robert Peel's drive to ameliorate law enforcement saw petty treason abolished by the Offences against the Person Act 1828, which removed the distinction between crimes formerly considered as petty treason, and murder. The Royal Commission on Capital Punishment 1864–1866 recommended that there be no change to treason law, quoting the "more merciful" Treason Felony Act 1848, which limited the punishment for most treasonous acts to penal servitude. Its report recommended that for "rebellion, assassination or other violence ...we are of opinion that the extreme penalty must remain", although the most recent occasion (and ultimately, the last) on which anyone had been sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered was in November 1839, following the Chartist Newport Rising—and those men sentenced to death were instead transported. The report highlighted the changing public mood toward public executions (brought about in part by the growing prosperity created by the Industrial Revolution). Home Secretary Spencer Horatio Walpole told the commission that executions had "become so demoralizing that, instead of its having a good effect, it has a tendency rather to brutalize the public mind than to deter the criminal class from committing crime". The commission recommended that executions should be performed privately, behind prison walls and away from the public's view, "under such regulations as may be considered necessary to prevent abuse, and to satisfy the public that the law has been complied with." The practice of executing murderers in public was ended two years later by the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868, introduced by Home Secretary Gathorne Hardy, but this did not apply to traitors. An amendment to abolish capital punishment completely, suggested before the bill's third reading, failed by 127 votes to 23.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: Hanging, drawing, and quartering was abolished in England by the Forfeiture Act 1870, Liberal politician Charles Forster's second attempt since 1864 to end the forfeiture of a felon's lands and goods (thereby not making paupers of his family). The Act limited the penalty for treason to hanging alone, although it did not remove the monarch's right under the 1814 Act to replace hanging with beheading. Beheading was abolished in 1973, although it had long been obsolete; the last person on British soil to be beheaded was Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat in 1747. The death penalty for treason was abolished by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, enabling the UK to ratify protocol six of the European Convention on Human Rights in 1999.


title: Hanged, drawn and quartered

text: In some of the places where the American War of Independence developed into a fierce civil war among American factions, there are recorded cases of both sides resorting to hanging, drawing, and quartering – both Loyalists and Patriots finding reasons to construe their opponents as being "traitors" deserving of such a fate.


title: Kurdistan

text: Kurdistan ( ; lit. "land of the Kurds") or Greater Kurdistan is a roughly defined geo-cultural territory in Western Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, languages, and national identity have historically been based. Geographically, Kurdistan roughly encompasses the northwestern Zagros and the eastern Taurus mountain ranges.


title: Kurdistan

text: Kurdistan generally comprises the following four regions: southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan), northwestern Iran (Eastern Kurdistan), and northern Syria (Western Kurdistan). Some definitions also include parts of southern Transcaucasia. Certain Kurdish nationalist organizations seek to create an independent nation state consisting of some or all of these areas with a Kurdish majority, while others campaign for greater autonomy within the existing national boundaries.


title: Kurdistan

text: Historically, the word "Kurdistan" is first attested in 11th century Seljuk chronicles. Many disparate Kurdish dynasties, emirates, principalities, and chiefdoms were established from the 8th to 19th centuries. Administratively, the 20th century saw the establishment of the short-lived areas of the Kurdish state (1918–1919), Kingdom of Kurdistan (1921–1924), Kurdistansky Uyezd i.e. "Red Kurdistan" (1923–1929), Republic of Ararat (1927–1930), and Republic of Mahabad (1946).


title: Kurdistan

text: Iraqi Kurdistan first gained autonomous status in a 1970 agreement with the Iraqi government, and its status was re-confirmed as the autonomous Kurdistan Region within the federal Iraqi republic in 2005. There is also a Kurdistan Province in Iran, but it is not self-ruled. Kurds fighting in the Syrian Civil War were able to take control of large sections of northern Syria and establish self-governing regions in an Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, where they call for autonomy in a federal Syria after the war.


title: Kurdistan

text: Kurdistan means "Land of the Kurds" and was first attested in 11th-century Seljuk chronicles.The exact origins of the name "Kurd" are unclear. The suffix "-stan" (Persian: ـستان, "stân") is Persian for land.


title: Kurdistan

text: "Kurdistan" was also formerly spelled "Curdistan". One of the ancient names of Kurdistan is "Corduene". The 19th-century Kurdistan Eyalet was the first time that the Ottoman Empire used the term 'Kurdistan' to refer to an administrative unit rather than a geographical region.


title: Kurdistan

text: Albeit admitting a thorough delineation is difficult, the "Encyclopaedia of Islam" delineated Kurdistan as following:


title: Kurdistan

text: Various groups, among them the Guti, Hurrians, Mannai (Mannaeans), and Armenians, lived in this region in antiquity. The original Mannaean homeland was situated east and south of the Lake Urmia, roughly centered around modern-day Mahabad. The region came under Persian rule during the reign of Cyrus the Great and Darius I.


title: Kurdistan

text: The Kingdom of Corduene, which emerged from the declining Seleucid Empire, was located to the south and south-east of Lake Van between Persia and Mesopotamia and ruled northern Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia from 189 BC to AD 384 as vassals of the vying Parthian and Roman empires. Corduene became a vassal state of the Roman Republic in 66 BC and remained allied with the Romans until AD 384. After 66 BC, it passed another 5 times between Rome and Persia. Corduene was situated to the east of Tigranocerta, that is, to the east and south of present-day Diyarbakır in south-eastern Turkey.


title: Kurdistan

text: Some historians have correlated a connection between Corduene with the modern names of Kurds and Kurdistan; "T. A. Sinclair" dismissed this identification as false, while a common association is asserted in the "Columbia Encyclopedia".


title: Kurdistan

text: One of the earliest records of the phrase "land of the Kurds" is found in an Assyrian Christian document of late antiquity, describing the stories of Assyrian saints of the Middle East, such as Abdisho. When the Sasanian Marzban asked Mar Abdisho about his place of origin, he replied that according to his parents, they were originally from "Hazza," a village in Assyria. However, they were later driven out of Hazza by pagans, and settled in "Tamanon," which according to Abdisho was in the "land of the Kurds." Tamanon lies just north of the modern Iraq-Turkey border, while Hazza is 12 km southwest of modern Erbil. In another passage in the same document, the region of the Khabur River is also identified as "land of the Kurds". According to Al-Muqaddasi and Yaqut al-Hamawi, Tamanon was located on the south-western or southern slopes of Mount Judi and south of Cizre. Other geographical references to the Kurds in Syriac sources appear in Zuqnin chronicle, writings of Michael the Syrian and Bar Hebraeus. They mention the mountains of Qardu, city of Qardu and country of Qardawaye.


title: Kurdistan

text: In the tenth and eleventh centuries, several Kurdish principalities emerged in the region: in the north the Shaddadids (951–1174) (in east Transcaucasia between the Kur and Araxes rivers) and the Rawadids (955–1221) (centered on Tabriz and which controlled all of Azerbaijan), in the east the Hasanwayhids (959–1015) (in Zagros between Shahrizor and Khuzistan) and the Annazids (990–1116) (centered in Hulwan) and in the west the Marwanids (990–1096) to the south of Diyarbakır and north of Jazira.


title: Kurdistan

text: Kurdistan in the Middle Ages was a collection of semi-independent and independent states called emirates. It was nominally under indirect political or religious influence of Khalifs or Shahs. A comprehensive history of these states and their relationship with their neighbors is given in the text of "Sharafnama", written by Prince Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi in 1597. The emirates included Baban, Soran, Badinan and Garmiyan in the south; Bakran, Bohtan (or Botan) and Badlis in the north, and Mukriyan and Ardalan in the east.


title: Kurdistan

text: The earliest medieval attestation of the toponym "Kurdistan" is found in a 12th-century Armenian historical text by Matteos Urhayeci. He described a battle near Amid and Siverek in 1062 as to have taken place in "Kurdistan". The second record occurs in the prayer from the colophon of an Armenian manuscript of the Gospels, written in 1200.


title: Kurdistan

text: A later use of the term "Kurdistan" is found in Empire of Trebizond documents in 1336 and in "Nuzhat al-Qulub", written by Hamdallah Mustawfi in 1340.


title: Kurdistan

text: According to Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi in his Sharafnama, the boundaries of the Kurdish land begin at the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and stretch on an even line to the end of Malatya and Marash. Evliya Çelebi, who traveled in the region between 1640 and 1655, mentioned that Kurdistan includes Erzurum, Van, Hakkari, Cizre, Imaddiya, Mosul, Shahrizor, Harir, Ardalan, Baghdad, Derne, Derteng, until Basra.


title: Kurdistan

text: In the 16th century, after prolonged wars, Kurdish-inhabited areas were split between the Safavid and Ottoman empires. A major division of Kurdistan occurred in the aftermath of the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, and was formalized in the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab. In a geography textbook of late Ottoman military school by Ahmet Cevad Kurdistan span over the cities Erzurum, Van, Urfa, Sulaymanyah, Kirkuk, Mosul and Diyarbakir among others and was one out of six regions of Ottoman Asia.


title: Kurdistan

text: After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies contrived to split Kurdistan (as detailed in the ultimately unratified Treaty of Sèvres) among several countries, including Kurdistan, Armenia and others. However, the reconquest of these areas by the forces of Kemal Atatürk (and other pressing issues) caused the Allies to accept the renegotiated Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and the borders of the modern Republic of Turkey, leaving the Kurds without a self-ruled region. Other Kurdish areas were assigned to the new British and French mandated states of Iraq and Syria.


title: Kurdistan

text: At the San Francisco Peace Conference of 1945, the Kurdish delegation proposed consideration of territory claimed by the Kurds, which encompassed an area extending from the Mediterranean shores near Adana to the shores of the Persian Gulf near Bushehr, and included the Lur inhabited areas of southern Zagros.


title: Kurdistan

text: The historian Jordi Tejel has identified "Greater Kurdistan" as being one of the "Kurdish myths" that the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS) were involved in promoting to Kurds in Syria.


title: Kurdistan

text: An academic source published by the University of Cambridge has described maps of greater Kurdistan created in the 1940s and forward as: "These maps have become some of the most influential propaganda tools for the Kurdish nationalist discourse. They depict a territorially exaggerated version of the territory of Kurdistan, extending into areas with no majority Kurdish populations. Despite their production with political aims related to specific claims on the demographic and ethnographic structure of the region, and their questionable methodologies, they have become 'Kurdistan in the minds of Kurds' and the boundaries they indicate have been readily accepted."


title: Kurdistan

text: At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the Coalition established a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to provide humanitarian relief to and safeguard the Kurds who would be subjected to Iraqi air attacks. Amid the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from three northern provinces, Kurdistan Region emerged in 1992 as an autonomous entity inside Iraq with its own local government and parliament.


title: Kurdistan

text: A 2010 US report, written before the instability in Syria and Iraq that exists as of 2014, attested that "Kurdistan may exist by 2030". The weakening of the Iraqi state following the 2014 Northern Iraq offensive by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has also presented an opportunity for independence for Iraqi Kurdistan, augmented by Turkey's move towards acceptance of such a state although it opposes moves toward Kurdish autonomy in Turkey and Syria.


title: Kurdistan

text: The incorporation into Turkey of the Kurdish-inhabited regions of eastern Anatolia was opposed by many Kurds, and has resulted in a long-running separatist conflict in which tens of thousands of lives have been lost. The region saw several major Kurdish rebellions, including the Koçgiri rebellion of 1920 under the Ottomans, then successive insurrections under the Turkish state, including the 1924 Sheikh Said rebellion, the Republic of Ararat in 1927, and the 1937 Dersim rebellion. All were forcefully put down by the authorities. The region was declared a closed military area from which foreigners were banned between 1925 and 1965.


title: Kurdistan

text: In an attempt to deny their existence, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as "Mountain Turks" until 1991. The words "Kurds", "Kurdistan", or "Kurdish" were officially banned by the Turkish government. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life. Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, political parties that represented Kurdish interests were banned.


title: Kurdistan

text: In 1983, the Kurdish provinces were included in the a state of emergency region, which was placed under martial law in response to the activities of the militant separatist organization the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). A guerrilla war took place through the 1980s and 1990s in which much of the countryside was evacuated, thousands of Kurdish villages were destroyed by the government, and numerous summary executions were carried out by both sides. Food embargoes were placed on Kurdish villages and towns. Tens of thousands were killed in the violence and hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes.


title: Kurdistan

text: Turkey has historically feared that a Kurdish state in Northern Iraq would encourage and support Kurdish separatists in the adjacent Turkish provinces, and have therefore historically strongly opposed Kurdish independence in Iraq. However, following the chaos in Iraq after the US invasion, Turkey has increasingly worked with the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. The word 'Kurdistan', whether written or spoken, can still lead to detention and prosecution in Turkey. Kurdistan has been characterized as an "international colony" by the scholar Ismail Besikci.


title: Kurdistan

text: The successful 2014 Northern Iraq offensive by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, with the resultant weakening of the ability of the Iraqi state to project power, also presented a "golden opportunity" for the Kurds to increase their independence and possibly declare an independent Kurdish state. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, who took more than 80 Turkish persons captive in Mosul during their offensive, is an enemy of Turkey, making Kurdistan useful for Turkey as a buffer state. On 28 June 2014 Hüseyin Çelik, a spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), made comments to the "Financial Times" indicating Turkey's readiness to accept an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq.


title: Kurdistan

text: Various sources have reported that Al-Nusra has issued a fatwā calling for Kurdish women and children in Syria to be killed, and the fighting in Syria has led tens of thousands of refugees to flee to Iraq's Kurdistan region. As of 2015, Turkey was actively supporting Al-Nusra, but as of January 2017, Turkey's foreign ministry has said that Al-Nusra is a terrorist group and has acted accordingly.


title: Kurdistan

text: The Kurds are a people of Indo-Iranian origin. They speak an Iranian language known as Kurdish, and comprise the majority of the population of the region – however, included therein are Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, Azerbaijani, Jewish, Ossetian, Persian, and Turkish communities. Most inhabitants are Muslim, but adherents to other religions are present as well – including Yarsanism, Yazidism, Alevis, Christians, and in the past, Jews, most of whom emigrated to Israel.


title: Kurdistan

text: According to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", Kurdistan covers about 190,000 km² (or 73,000 square miles), and its chief towns are Diyarbakır (Amed), Bitlis (Bedlîs) and Van (Wan) in Turkey, Erbil (Hewlêr) and Sulaymaniyah in Iraq, and Kermanshah (Kirmanşan), Sanandaj (Sine), Ilam and Mahabad (Mehabad) in Iran. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Kurdistan covers around 190,000 km² (73,000 sq. mi.) in Turkey, 125,000 km² (48,000 sq. mi.) in Iran, 65,000 km² (25,000 sq. mi.) in Iraq, and 12,000 km² (5,000 sq. mi.) in Syria, with a total area of approximately 392,000 km² (151,000 sq. mi.).


title: Kurdistan

text: Iraqi Kurdistan is divided into six governorates, three of which (and parts of others) are under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government. Iranian Kurdistan encompasses Kurdistan Province and the greater parts of West Azerbaijan, Kermanshah, and Īlām provinces. Syrian Kurdistan is located primarily in northern Syria, and covers the province of Al Hasakah and northern Raqqa Governorate, northern Aleppo Governorate and also Jabal al-Akrad (Mountain of the Kurds) region. The major cities in this region are Qamishli (Kurdish: Qamişlo) and Al Hasakah (Kurdish: Hasakah).


title: Kurdistan

text: Turkish Kurdistan encompasses a large area of Eastern Anatolia Region and southeastern Anatolia of Turkey and it is home to an estimated 6 to 8 million Kurds. There are another 9 to 12 million Turkish citizens of Kurdish descent in predominantly Turkish regions of Turkey as the majority of Turkish Kurds no longer live in Southeastern Anatolia.


title: Kurdistan

text: In "A Dictionary of Scripture Geography" (published 1846), John Miles describes Upper and Lower Kurdistan as following:


title: Kurdistan

text: The northern, northwestern and northeastern parts of Kurdistan are referred to as upper Kurdistan, and includes the areas from west of Amed to Lake Urmia.


title: Kurdistan

text: The lowlands of southern Kurdistan are called lower Kurdistan. The main cities in this area are Kirkuk and Arbil.


title: Kurdistan

text: Much of the region is typified by a continental climate – hot in the summer, cold in the winter. Despite this, much of the region is fertile and has historically exported grain and livestock. Precipitation varies between 200 and 400 mm a year in the plains, and between 700 and 3,000 mm a year on the high plateau between mountain chains. The mountainous zone along the borders with Iran and Turkey experiences dry summers, rainy and sometimes snowy winters, and damp springs, while to the south the climate progressively transitions toward semi-arid and desert zones.


title: Kurdistan

text: Kurdistan is one of the most mountainous regions in the world with a cold climate receiving annual precipitation adequate to sustain temperate forests and shrubs. Mountain chains harbor pastures and forested valleys, totaling approximately 16 million hectares (160,000 km²), including firs and countryside is mostly oaks, conifers, platanus, willow, poplar and, to the west of Kurdistan, olive trees.


title: Kurdistan

text: The region north of the mountainous region on the border with Iran and Turkey features meadow grasses and such wild trees as, Abies cilicica, Fagus sylvatica, Quercus calliprinos, Quercus brantii, Quercus infectoria, Quercus ithaburensis, Quercus macranthera, Cupressus sempervirens, Platanus orientalis, Pinus brutia, Juniperus foetidissima, Juniperus excelsa, Juniperus oxycedrus, Prunus cerasus, Salix alba, Fraxinus excelsior, Paliurus spina-christi, Olea europaea, Ficus carica, Populus euphratica, Populus nigra, Crataegus monogyna, Crataegus azarolus, Prunus cerasifera, rose hips, Cercis siliquastrum, pistachio trees, pear and Sorbus graeca. The desert in the south is mostly steppe and would feature xeric plants such as palm trees, tamarix, date palm, fraxinus, poa, white wormwood and chenopodiaceae. The steppe and desert in the south, by contrast, have such species as palm trees and date palm.


title: Kurdistan

text: Animals found in the region include the Syrian brown bear, wild boar, gray wolf, the golden jackal, Indian crested porcupine, the red fox, goitered gazelle, Eurasian otter, striped hyena, Persian fallow deer, long-eared hedgehog, onager, mangar and the Euphrates softshell turtle. Birds include, the hooded crow, common starling, Eurasian magpie, European robin, water pipit, spotted flycatcher, namaqua dove, saker falcon, griffon vulture, little crake and collared pratincole, among others.


title: Kurdistan

text: Mountains are important geographical and symbolic features of Kurdish life, as evidenced by the saying "Kurds have no friends but the mountains." Mountains are regarded as sacred by the Kurds. Included in the region are Mount Judi and Ararat (both prominent in Kurdish folklore), Zagros, Qandil, Shingal, Mount Abdulaziz, Kurd Mountains, Jabal al-Akrad, Shaho, Gabar, Hamrin, and Nisir.


title: Kurdistan

text: Iraqi Kurdistan is a region relatively rich in water, especially for countries in the Middle East region. It is the source for much of the water supply for neighboring countries. It means that political stability and peace in the region are important to the water supply of the region and preventing wars. Many think that for conserving the water "returning to traditional water-conserving cultivation techniques" will be needed, as well as "communal economy"


title: Kurdistan

text: The plateaus and mountains of Kurdistan, which are characterized by heavy rain and snow fall, act as a water reservoir for the Near and Middle East, forming the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as well as other numerous smaller rivers, such as the Little Khabur, Khabur, Tharthar, Ceyhan, Araxes, Kura, Sefidrud, Karkha, and Hezil. Among rivers of historical importance to Kurds are the Murat (Arasān) and Buhtān rivers in Turkey; the Peshkhābur, the Little Zab, the Great Zab, and the Diyala in Iraq; and the Jaghatu (Zarrinarud), the Tātā'u (Siminarud), the Zohāb (Zahāb), and the Gāmāsiyāb in Iran.


title: Kurdistan

text: These rivers, which flow from heights of three to four thousand meters above sea level, are significant both as water sources and for the production of energy. Iraq and Syria dammed many of these rivers and their tributaries. Turkey has an extensive dam system under construction as part of the GAP (Southeast Anatolia Project); though incomplete, the GAP already supplies a significant proportion of Turkey's electrical energy needs. Due to the extraordinary archaeological richness of the region, almost any dam impacts historic sites. With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Turkey is was accused of withholding water from the reservoir Lake Assad in Syria, while filling the Atatürk dam in Turkey.


title: Kurdistan

text: Kurdistan extends to Lake Urmia in Iran on the east. The region includes Lake Van, the largest body of water in Turkey; the only lake in the Middle East with a larger surface is Lake Urmia – though not nearly as deep as Lake Van, which has a much larger volume. Urmia, Van, as well as Zarivar Lake west of Marivan, and Lake Dukan near the city of Sulaymaniyah, are frequented by tourists.


title: Kurdistan

text: Kurdistan Region is estimated to contain around of oil, making it the sixth largest reserve in the world. Extraction of these reserves began in 2007.


title: Kurdistan

text: Al-Hasakah province, also known as Jazira region, has geopolitical importance of oil and is suitable for agricultural lands.


title: Kurdistan

text: In November 2011, Exxon challenged the Iraqi central government's authority with the signing of oil and gas contracts for exploration rights to six parcels of land in Kurdistan, including one contract in the disputed territories, just east of the Kirkuk mega-field. This act caused Baghdad to threaten to revoke Exxon's contract in its southern fields, most notably the West-Qurna Phase 1 project. Exxon responded by announcing its intention to leave the West-Qurna project.


title: Kurdistan

text: As of July 2007, the Kurdish government solicited foreign companies to invest in 40 new oil sites, with the hope of increasing regional oil production over the following five years by a factor of five, to about . Gas and associated gas reserves are in excess of . Notable companies active in Kurdistan include ExxonMobil, Total, Chevron, Talisman Energy, Genel Energy, Hunt Oil, Gulf Keystone Petroleum, and Marathon Oil.


title: Kurdistan

text: Other mineral resources that exist in significant quantities in the region include coal, copper, gold, iron, limestone (which is used to produce cement), marble, and zinc. The world's largest deposit of rock sulfur is located just southwest of Erbil.


title: Kurdistan

text: In July 2012, Turkey and the Kurdistan Region signed an agreement by which Turkey would regularly supply the KRG with refined petroleum products in exchange for crude oil.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The Birth of a Nation, originally called The Clansman, is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play "". Griffith co-wrote the screenplay with Frank E. Woods and produced the film with Harry Aitken.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: "The Birth of a Nation" is a landmark of film history, lauded for its technical virtuosity. It was the first non-serial American 12-reel film ever made. Its plot, part fiction and part history, chronicles the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth and the relationship of two families in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras over the course of several years—the pro-Union (Northern) Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy (Southern) Camerons. It was originally shown in two parts separated by an intermission, and it was the first American-made film to have a musical score for an orchestra. It pioneered closeups and fadeouts, and it includes a carefully staged battle sequence with hundreds of extras (another first) made to look like thousands. It came with a 13-page "Souvenir Program". It was the first motion picture to be screened inside the White House, viewed there by President Woodrow Wilson, his family, and members of his cabinet.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The film was controversial even before its release, and it has remained so ever since; it has been called "the most controversial film ever made in the United States" and "the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history". Lincoln is nevertheless portrayed positively, albeit a friend of the South, atypical of a narrative that promotes the Lost Cause ideology. The film has been denounced for its racist depiction of African Americans. The film portrays its black characters (many of whom are played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive toward white women. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is portrayed as a heroic force, necessary to preserve American values, protect white women, and maintain white supremacy.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Popular among white audiences nationwide, the film's success was both a consequence of and a contributor to racial segregation throughout the U.S. In response to the film's depictions of black people and Civil War history, African Americans across the U.S. organized and protested. In Boston and other localities, black leaders and the NAACP spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to have it banned on the basis that it inflamed racial tensions and could incite violence. Griffith's indignation at efforts to censor or ban the film motivated him to produce "Intolerance" the following year.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In spite of its divisiveness, "The Birth of a Nation" was a huge commercial success across the nation—grossing more than any previous motion picture—and it profoundly influenced both the film industry and American culture. The film has been acknowledged as an inspiration for , which took place only a few months after its release. In 1992, the Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The film consists of two parts of similar length. The first part closes with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, after which there is an intermission. At the New York premiere, Dixon spoke on stage between the parts, reminding the audience that the dramatic version of "The Clansman" appeared in that venue nine years previously. "Mr. Dixon also observed that he would have allowed none but the son of a Confederate soldier to direct the film version of "The Clansman.""


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The film follows two juxtaposed families. One is the Northern Stonemans: abolitionist U.S. Representative Austin Stoneman (based on the Reconstruction-era Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania), his daughter, and two sons. The other is the Southern Camerons: Dr. Cameron, his wife, their three sons and two daughters. Phil, the elder Stoneman son, falls in love with Margaret Cameron, during the brothers' visit to the Cameron estate in South Carolina, representing the Old South. Meanwhile, young Ben Cameron (modeled after Leroy McAfee) idolizes a picture of Elsie Stoneman. When the Civil War arrives, the young men of both families enlist in their respective armies. The younger Stoneman and two of the Cameron brothers are killed in combat. Meanwhile, the Cameron women are rescued by Confederate soldiers who rout a black militia after an attack on the Cameron home. Ben Cameron leads a heroic final charge at the Siege of Petersburg, earning the nickname of "the Little Colonel", but he is also wounded and captured. He is then taken to a Union military hospital in Washington, D.C.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: During his stay at the hospital, he is told that he will be hanged. Also at the hospital, he meets Elsie Stoneman, whose picture he has been carrying; she is working there as a nurse. Elsie takes Cameron's mother, who had traveled to Washington to tend her son, to see Abraham Lincoln, and Mrs. Cameron persuades the President to pardon Ben. When Lincoln is assassinated at Ford's Theatre, his conciliatory postwar policy expires with him. In the wake of the president's death, Austin Stoneman and other Radical Republicans are determined to punish the South, employing harsh measures that Griffith depicts as having been typical of the Reconstruction Era.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Stoneman and his protégé Silas Lynch, a psychopathic mulatto (modeled after Alonzo J. Ransier and Richard Howell Gleaves), head to South Carolina to observe the implementation of Reconstruction policies first hand. During the election, in which Lynch is elected lieutenant governor, blacks are observed stuffing the ballot boxes, while many whites are denied the vote. The newly elected, mostly black members of the South Carolina legislature are shown at their desks displaying racially stereotypical behavior, such as one member taking off his shoes and putting his feet up on his desk, and others drinking liquor and eating fried chicken.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Meanwhile, inspired by observing white children pretending to be ghosts to scare black children, Ben fights back by forming the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, Elsie breaks off her relationship with Ben. Later, Flora Cameron goes off alone into the woods to fetch water and is followed by Gus, a freedman and soldier who is now a captain. He confronts Flora and tells her that he desires to get married. Uninterested, she rejects him, but Gus refuses to accept the rejection. Frightened, she flees into the forest, pursued by Gus. Trapped on a precipice, Flora warns Gus she will jump if he comes any closer. When he does, she leaps to her death. Having run through the forest looking for her, Ben has seen her jump; he holds her as she dies, then carries her body back to the Cameron home. In response, the Klan hunts down Gus, tries him, finds him guilty, and lynches him.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Lynch then orders a crackdown on the Klan after discovering Gus's murder. He also secures the passing of legislation allowing mixed-race marriages. Dr. Cameron is arrested for possessing Ben's Klan regalia, now considered a capital crime. He is rescued by Phil Stoneman and a few of his black servants. Together with Margaret Cameron, they flee. When their wagon breaks down, they make their way through the woods to a small hut that is home to two sympathetic former Union soldiers who agree to hide them. An intertitle states, "The former enemies of North and South are united again in common defense of their Aryan birthright."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Congressman Stoneman leaves to avoid being connected with Lt. Gov. Lynch's crackdown. Elsie, learning of Dr. Cameron's arrest, goes to Lynch to plead for his release. Lynch, who had been lusting after Elsie, tries to force her to marry him, which causes her to faint. Stoneman returns, causing Elsie to be placed in another room. At first Stoneman is happy when Lynch tells him he wants to marry a white woman, but he is then angered when Lynch tells him that it is Stoneman's own daughter that he wishes to marry (against her will). Undercover Klansman spies go to get help when they discover Elsie's plight after she breaks a window and cries out for help. Elsie falls unconscious again and revives while gagged and being bound. The Klan gathered together, with Ben leading them, ride in to gain control of the town. When news about Elsie reaches Ben, he and others go to her rescue. Elsie frees her mouth and screams for help. Lynch is captured. Victorious, the Klansmen celebrate in the streets. Meanwhile, Lynch's militia surrounds and attacks the hut where the Camerons are hiding. The Klansmen, with Ben at their head, race in to save them just in time. The next election day, blacks find a line of mounted and armed Klansmen just outside their homes and are intimidated into not voting.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The film concludes with a double wedding as Margaret Cameron marries Phil Stoneman and Elsie Stoneman marries Ben Cameron. The masses are shown oppressed by a giant warlike figure who gradually fades away. The scene shifts to another group finding peace under the image of Jesus Christ. The penultimate title is: "Dare we dream of a golden day when the bestial War shall rule no more. But instead—the gentle Prince in the Hall of Brotherly Love in the City of Peace."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: There was an uncompleted, now lost, 1911 version, titled "The Clansman". It used Kinemacolor and a new sound process; one reason for this version's failure is the unwillingness of theater owners to purchase the equipment to show it. The director was William F. Haddock, and the producer was George Brennan. Some scenes were filmed on the porches and lawns of Homewood Plantation, in Natchez, Mississippi. One and a half reels were completed.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Kinemacolor received a settlement from the producers of "Birth" when they proved that they had an earlier right to film the work.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The footage was shown to the trade in an attempt to arouse interest. Early movie critic Frank E. Woods attended; Griffith always credited Woods with bringing "The Clansman" to his attention.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: After the failure of the Kinemacolor project, in which Dixon was willing to invest his own money, he began visiting other studios to see if they were interested. In late 1913, Dixon met the film producer Harry Aitken, who was interested in making a film out of "The Clansman"; through Aitken, Dixon met Griffith. Like Dixon, Griffith was a Southerner, a fact that Dixon points out; Griffith's father served as a colonel in the Confederate States Army and, like Dixon, viewed Reconstruction negatively. Griffith believed that a passage from "The Clansman" where Klansmen ride "to the rescue of persecuted white Southerners" could be adapted into a great cinematic sequence. Griffith first announced his intent to adapt Dixon's play to Gish and Walthall after filming "Home, Sweet Home" in 1914.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: "Birth of a Nation" "follows "The Clansman" [the play] nearly scene by scene". While some sources also credit "The Leopard's Spots" as source material, Russell Merritt attributes this to "the original 1915 playbills and program for "Birth" which, eager to flaunt the film's literary pedigree, cited both "The Clansman" and "The Leopard's Spots" as sources." According to Karen Crowe, "[t]here is not a single event, word, character, or circumstance taken from "The Leopard's Spots"... Any likenesses between the film and "The Leopard's Spots" occur because some similar scenes, circumstances, and characters appear in both books."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Griffith agreed to pay Thomas Dixon $10,000 (equivalent to $ in ) for the rights to his play "The Clansman". Since he ran out of money and could afford only $2,500 of the original option, Griffith offered Dixon 25 percent interest in the picture. Dixon reluctantly agreed, and the unprecedented success of the film made him rich. Dixon's proceeds were the largest sum any author had received [up to 2007] for a motion picture story and amounted to several million dollars. The American historian John Hope Franklin suggested that many aspects of the script for "The Birth of a Nation" appeared to reflect Dixon's concerns more than Griffith's, as Dixon had an obsession in his novels of describing in loving detail the lynchings of black men, which did not reflect Griffith's interests.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Griffith began filming on July 4, 1914 and was finished by October 1914. Some filming took place in Big Bear Lake, California. D. W. Griffith took over the Hollywood studio of Kinemacolor. West Point engineers provided technical advice on the American Civil War battle scenes, providing Griffith with the artillery used in the film. Much of the filming was done on the Griffith Ranch in San Fernando Valley, with the Petersburg scenes being shot at what is today Forest Lawn Memorial Park and other scenes being shot in Whittier and Ojai Valley. The film's war scenes were influenced after Robert Underwood Johnson's book "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War", "Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War", "The Soldier in Our Civil War", and Mathew Brady's photography.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Many of the African Americans in the film were portrayed by white actors in blackface. Griffith initially claimed this was deliberate, stating "on careful weighing of every detail concerned, the decision was to have no black blood among the principals; it was only in the legislative scene that Negroes were used, and then only as 'extra people.'" However black extras who had been housed in segregated quarters, including Griffith's acquaintance and frequent collaborator Madame Sul-Te-Wan, can be seen in many other shots of the film.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Griffith's budget started at US$40,000 (equivalent to $ in ) but rose to over $100,000 (equivalent to $ in ).


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: By the time he finished filming, Griffith shot approximately 150,000 feet of footage (or about 36 hours worth of film), which he edited down to 13,000 feet (just over 3 hours). The film was edited after early screenings in reaction to audience reception, and existing prints of the film are missing footage from the standard version of the film. Evidence exists that the film originally included scenes of white slave traders seizing blacks from West Africa and detaining them aboard a slave ship, Southern congressmen in the House of Representatives, Northerners reacting to the results of the 1860 presidential election, the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, a Union League meeting, depictions of martial law in South Carolina, and a battle sequence. In addition, several scenes were cut at the insistence of New York Mayor John Purroy Mitchel due to their highly racist content before its release in New York City, including a female abolitionist activist recoiling from the body odor of a black boy, black men seizing white women on the streets of Piedmont, and deportations of blacks with the title "Lincoln's Solution". It was also long rumored, including by Griffith's biographer Seymour Stern, that the original film included a rape scene between Gus and Flora before her suicide, but in 1974 the cinematographer Karl Brown denied that such a scene had been filmed.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Although "The Birth of a Nation" is commonly regarded as a landmark for its dramatic and visual innovations, its use of music was arguably no less revolutionary. Though film was still silent at the time, it was common practice to distribute musical cue sheets, or less commonly, full scores (usually for organ or piano accompaniment) along with each print of a film.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: For "The Birth of a Nation", composer Joseph Carl Breil created a three-hour-long musical score that combined all three types of music in use at the time: adaptations of existing works by classical composers, new arrangements of well-known melodies, and original composed music. Though it had been specifically composed for the film, Breil's score was not used for the Los Angeles première of the film at Clune's Auditorium; rather, a score compiled by Carli Elinor was performed in its stead, and this score was used exclusively in West Coast showings. Breil's score was not used until the film debuted in New York at the Liberty Theatre but it was the score featured in all showings save those on the West Coast.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Outside of original compositions, Breil adapted classical music for use in the film, including passages from "Der Freischütz" by Carl Maria von Weber, "Leichte Kavallerie" by Franz von Suppé, Symphony No. 6 by Ludwig van Beethoven, and "Ride of the Valkyries" by Richard Wagner, the latter used as a leitmotif during the ride of the KKK. Breil also arranged several traditional and popular tunes that would have been recognizable to audiences at the time, including many Southern melodies; among these songs were "Maryland, My Maryland", "Dixie", "Old Folks at Home", "The Star-Spangled Banner", "America the Beautiful", "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", "Auld Lang Syne", and "Where Did You Get That Hat?". DJ Spooky has called Breil's score, with its mix of Dixieland songs, classical music and "vernacular heartland music" "an early, pivotal accomplishment in remix culture." He has also cited Breil's use of music by Richard Wagner as influential on subsequent Hollywood films, including "Star Wars" (1977) and "Apocalypse Now" (1979).


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In his original compositions for the film, Breil wrote numerous leitmotifs to accompany the appearance of specific characters. The principal love theme that was created for the romance between Elsie Stoneman and Ben Cameron was published as "The Perfect Song" and is regarded as the first marketed "theme song" from a film; it was later used as the theme song for the popular radio and television sitcom "Amos 'n' Andy".


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The first public showing of the film, then called "The Clansman", was on January 1 and 2, 1915, at the Loring Opera House in Riverside, California. The second night, it was sold out and people were turned away. It was shown on February 8, 1915, to an audience of 3,000 persons at Clune's Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The film's backers understood that the film needed a massive publicity campaign if they were to cover the immense cost of producing it. A major part of this campaign was the release of the film in a roadshow theatrical release. This allowed Griffith to charge premium prices for tickets, sell souvenirs, and build excitement around the film before giving it a wide release. For several months, Griffith's team traveled to various cities to show the film for one or two nights before moving on. This strategy was immensely successful.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The title was changed to "The Birth of a Nation" before the March 2 New York opening. However, Dixon copyrighted the title "The Birth of a Nation" in 1905, and it was used in the press as early as January 2, 1915, while it was still referred to as "The Clansman" in October.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: "The Birth of a Nation" was the first movie shown in the White House, in the East Room, on February 18, 1915. (An earlier movie, the Italian "Cabiria" (1914), was shown on the lawn.) It was attended by President Woodrow Wilson, members of his family, and members of his Cabinet. Both Dixon and Griffith were present. As put by Dixon, not an impartial source, "it repeated the triumph of the first showing".


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: There is dispute about Wilson's attitude toward the movie. A newspaper reported that he "received many letters protesting against his alleged action in Indorsing the pictures ", including a letter from Massachusetts Congressman Thomas Chandler Thacher. The showing of the movie had caused "several near-riots". When former Assistant Attorney General William H. Lewis and A. Walters, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, called at the White House "to add their protests", President Wilson's private secretary, Joseph Tumulty, showed them a letter he had written to Thacher on Wilson's behalf. According to the letter, Wilson had been "entirely unaware of the character of the play [movie] before it was presented and has at no time expressed his approbation of it. Its exhibition at the White House was a courtesy extended to an old acquaintance." Dixon, in his autobiography, quotes Wilson as saying, when Dixon proposed showing the movie at the White House, that "I am pleased to be able to do this little thing for you, because a long time ago you took a day out of your busy life to do something for me." What Dixon had done for Wilson was to suggest him for an honorary degree, which Wilson received, from Dixon's "alma mater", Wake Forest College.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Dixon had been a fellow graduate student in history with Wilson at Johns Hopkins University and, in 1913, dedicated his historical novel about Lincoln, "The Southerner", to "our first Southern-born president since Lincoln, my friend and collegemate Woodrow Wilson".


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The evidence that Wilson knew "the character of the play" in advance of seeing it is circumstantial but very strong: "Given Dixon's career and the notoriety attached to the play "The Clansman", it is not unreasonable to assume that Wilson must have had some idea of at least the general tenor of the film." The movie was based on a best-selling novel and was preceded by a stage version (play) which was received with protests in several cities—in some cities it was prohibited—and received a great deal of news coverage. Wilson issued no protest when the "Evening Star", at that time Washington's "newspaper of record", reported in advance of the showing, in language suggesting a press release from Dixon and Griffiths, that Dixon was "a schoolmate of President Wilson and is an intimate friend", and that Wilson's interest in it "is due to the great lesson of peace it teaches". Wilson, and only Wilson, is quoted by name in the movie for his observations on American history, and the title of Wilson's book ("History of the American People") is mentioned as well. The three title cards with quotations from Wilson's book read:


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: "Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes... [Ellipsis in the original.] In the villages the negroes were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority, except its insolences."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: "...The policy of the congressional leaders wrought…a veritable overthrow of civilization in the South...in their determination to 'put the white South under the heel of the black South.'" [Ellipses and underscore in the original.]


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: "The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation...until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the southern country." [Ellipsis in the original.]


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In the same book, Wilson has harsh words about the abyss between the original goals of the Klan and that into which it evolved. Dixon has been accused of misquoting Wilson.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In 1937, a popular magazine reported that Wilson said of the film, "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." Wilson over the years had several times used the metaphor of illuminating history as if by lightning and he may well have said it at the time. The accuracy of his saying it was "terribly true" is disputed by historians; there is no contemporary documentation of the remark. Vachel Lindsay, a popular poet of the time, is known to have referred to the film as "art by lightning flash."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The next day, February 19, 1915, Griffith and Dixon held a showing of the film in the Raleigh Hotel ballroom, which they had hired for the occasion. Early that morning, Dixon called on a North Carolina friend, the white-supremacist Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy. Daniels set up a meeting that morning for Dixon with Edward Douglass White, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Initially Justice White was not interested in seeing the film, but when Dixon told him it was the "true story" of Reconstruction and the Klan's role in "saving the South", White, recalling his youth in Louisiana, jumped to attention and said: "I was a member of the Klan, sir". With White agreeing to see the film, the rest of the Supreme Court followed. In addition to the entire Supreme Court, in the audience were "many members of Congress and members of the diplomatic corps", the Secretary of the Navy, 38 members of the Senate, and about 50 members of the House of Representatives. The audience of 600 "cheered and applauded throughout."


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: In Griffith's words, the showings to the president and the entire Supreme Court conferred an "honor" upon "Birth of a Nation". Dixon and Griffith used this commercially.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: The following day, Griffith and Dixon transported the film to New York City for review by the National Board of Censorship. They presented the film as "endorsed" by the President and the cream of Washington society. The Board approved the film by 15 to 8.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: A warrant to close the theater in which the movie was to open was dismissed after a long-distance call to the White House confirmed that the film had been shown there.


title: The Birth of a Nation

text: Justice White was very angry when advertising for the film stated that he approved it, and he threatened to denounce it publicly.