title: Elagabalus

text: Next, according to Herodian, Elagabalus and his entourage spent the winter of 218–219 in Bithynia at Nicomedia, and then traveled through Thrace and Moesia to Italy in the first half of 219, the year of Elagabalus's second consulship. Herodian says that Elagabalus had a painting of himself sent ahead to Rome to be hung over a statue of the goddess Victoria in the Senate House so people would not be surprised by his Eastern garb, but it is unclear if such a painting actually existed, and Dio does not mention it. If the painting was indeed hung over Victoria, it put senators in the position of seeming to make offerings to Elagabalus when they made offerings to Victoria.


title: Elagabalus

text: On his way to Rome, Elagabalus and his allies executed several prominent supporters of Macrinus, such as Syrian governor Fabius Agrippinus and former Thracian governor C. Claudius Attalus Paterculianus. Arriving at the imperial capital in August or September 219, Elagabalus staged an "adventus", a ceremonial entrance to the city. In Rome, his offer of amnesty for the Roman upper class was largely honored, though the jurist Ulpian was exiled. Elagabalus made Comazon praetorian prefect, and later consul (220) and prefect of the city (three times, 220–222), which Dio regarded as a violation of Roman norms. Elagabalus himself held a consulship for the third year in a row in 220. Herodian and the "Augustan History" say that Elagabalus alienated many by giving powerful positions to other allies.


title: Elagabalus

text: Dio states that Elagabalus wanted to marry a charioteer named Hierocles and to declare him "caesar", just as (Dio says) he had previously wanted to marry Gannys and name him "caesar". The athlete Aurelius Zoticus is said by Dio to have been Elagabalus's lover and "cubicularius" (a non-administrative role), while the "Augustan History" says Zoticus was a husband to Elagabalus and held greater political influence.


title: Elagabalus

text: Elagabalus's relationships to his mother Julia Soaemias and grandmother Julia Maesa were strong at first; they were influential supporters from the beginning, and Macrinus declared war on them as well as Elagabalus. Accordingly, they became the first women allowed into the Senate, and both received senatorial titles: Soaemias the established title of "Clarissima," and Maesa the more unorthodox "Mater Castrorum et Senatus" ("Mother of the army camp and of the Senate"). They exercised influence over the young emperor throughout his reign, and are found on many coins and inscriptions, a rare honor for Roman women.


title: Elagabalus

text: Under Elagabalus, the gradual devaluation of Roman "aurei" and "denarii" continued (with the silver purity of the "denarius" dropping from 58% to 46.5%), though "antoniniani" had a higher metal content than under Caracalla.


title: Elagabalus

text: Since the reign of Septimius Severus, sun worship had increased throughout the Empire. At the end of 220, Elagabalus instated Elagabal as the chief deity of the Roman pantheon, possibly on the date of the winter solstice. In his official titulature, Elagabalus was then entitled in . That a foreign god should be honored above Jupiter, with Elagabalus himself as chief priest, shocked many Romans.


title: Elagabalus

text: As a token of respect for Roman religion, however, Elagabalus joined either Astarte, Minerva, Urania, or some combination of the three to Elagabal as consort. A union between Elagabal and a traditional goddess would have served to strengthen ties between the new religion and the imperial cult. There may have been an effort to introduce Elagabal, Urania, and Athena as the new Capitoline Triad of Rome—replacing Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.


title: Elagabalus

text: He aroused further discontent when he married the Vestal Virgin Aquilia Severa, Vesta's high priestess, claiming the marriage would produce "godlike children". This was a flagrant breach of Roman law and tradition, which held that any Vestal found to have engaged in sexual intercourse was to be buried alive.


title: Elagabalus

text: A lavish temple called the Elagabalium was built on the east face of the Palatine Hill to house Elagabal, who was represented by a black conical meteorite from Emesa. This was a "baetylus". Herodian wrote "this stone is worshipped as though it were sent from heaven; on it there are some small projecting pieces and markings that are pointed out, which the people would like to believe are a rough picture of the sun, because this is how they see them".


title: Elagabalus

text: Dio writes that in order to increase his piety as high priest of Elagabal atop a new Roman pantheon, Elagabalus had himself circumcised and swore to abstain from swine. He forced senators to watch while he danced circling the altar of Elagabal to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals. Each summer solstice he held a festival dedicated to the god, which became popular with the masses because of the free food distributed on these occasions. During this festival, Elagabalus placed the black stone on a chariot adorned with gold and jewels, which he paraded through the city:


title: Elagabalus

text: The most sacred relics from the Roman religion were transferred from their respective shrines to the Elagabalium, including the emblem of the Great Mother, the fire of Vesta, the Shields of the Salii, and the Palladium, so that no other god could be worshipped except in association with Elagabal. Although his native cult was widely ridiculed by contemporaries, sun-worship was popular among the soldiers and would be promoted by several later emperors.


title: Elagabalus

text: The question of Elagabalus's sexual orientation and gender identity is confused, owing to salacious and unreliable sources. Cassius Dio states that Elagabalus was married five times (twice to the same woman). His first wife was Julia Cornelia Paula, whom he married prior to 29 August 219; between then and 28 August 220, he divorced Paula, took the Vestal Virgin Julia Aquilia Severa as his second wife, divorced her, and took a third wife, who Herodian says was Annia Aurelia Faustina, a descendant of Marcus Aurelius and the widow of a man Elagabalus had recently had executed, Pomponius Bassus. In the last year of his reign, Elagabalus divorced Annia Faustina and remarried Aquilia Severa.


title: Elagabalus

text: Dio states that another "husband of this woman [Elagabalus] was Hierocles", an ex-slave and chariot driver from Caria. The "Augustan History" claims that Elagabalus also married a man named Zoticus, an athlete from Smyrna, while Dio says only that Zoticus was his cubicularius. Dio says that Elagabalus prostituted himself in taverns and brothels.


title: Elagabalus

text: Dio says Elagabalus delighted in being called Hierocles's mistress, wife, and queen. The emperor reportedly wore makeup and wigs, preferred to be called a lady and not a lord, and supposedly offered vast sums to any physician who could provide him with a vagina. For this reason, the emperor is seen by some writers as an early transgender figure and one of the first on record as seeking sex reassignment surgery.


title: Elagabalus

text: Elagabalus stoked the animus of Roman elites and the Praetorian Guard through his perceptibly foreign conduct and his religious provocations. When Elagabalus's grandmother Julia Maesa perceived that popular support for the emperor was waning, she decided that he and his mother, who had encouraged his religious practices, had to be replaced. As alternatives, she turned to her other daughter, Julia Avita Mamaea, and her daughter's son, the fifteen-year-old Severus Alexander.


title: Elagabalus

text: Prevailing on Elagabalus, she arranged that he appoint his cousin Alexander as his heir and that the boy be given the title of "caesar". Alexander was elevated to "caesar" in June 221, possibly on 26 June. Elagabalus and Alexander were each named "consul designatus" for the following year, probably on 1 July. Elagabalus took up his fourth consulship for the year of 222. Alexander shared the consulship with the emperor that year. However, Elagabalus reconsidered this arrangement when he began to suspect that the Praetorian Guard preferred his cousin to himself.


title: Elagabalus

text: Elagabalus ordered various attempts on Alexander's life, after failing to obtain approval from the Senate for stripping Alexander of his shared title. According to Dio, Elagabalus invented the rumor that Alexander was near death, in order to see how the Praetorians would react. A riot ensued, and the Guard demanded to see Elagabalus and Alexander in the Praetorian camp.


title: Elagabalus

text: The emperor complied and on 11 or 12 March 222 he publicly presented his cousin along with his own mother, Julia Soaemias. On their arrival the soldiers started cheering Alexander while ignoring Elagabalus, who ordered the summary arrest and execution of anyone who had taken part in this display of insubordination. In response, members of the Praetorian Guard attacked Elagabalus and his mother:


title: Elagabalus

text: Following his assassination, many associates of Elagabalus were killed or deposed. His lover Hierocles was executed. His religious edicts were reversed and the stone of Elagabal was sent back to Emesa. Women were again barred from attending meetings of the Senate. The practice of "damnatio memoriae"—erasing from the public record a disgraced personage formerly of note—was systematically applied in his case. Several images, including an over-life-size statue of him as Hercules now in Naples, were re-carved with the face of Alexander Severus.


title: Elagabalus

text: The historian Cassius Dio, who lived from the second half of the second century until sometime after 229, wrote a contemporary account of Elagabalus. Born into a patrician family, Dio spent the greater part of his life in public service. He was a senator under emperor Commodus and governor of Smyrna after the death of Septimius Severus, and then he served as suffect consul around 205, and as proconsul in Africa and Pannonia.


title: Elagabalus

text: Dio's "Roman History" spans nearly a millennium, from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy until the year 229. His contemporaneous account of Elagabalus's reign is generally considered more reliable than the "Augustan History" or other accounts for this general time period, though by his own admission Dio spent the greater part of the relevant period outside of Rome and had to rely on second-hand information.


title: Elagabalus

text: Furthermore, the political climate in the aftermath of Elagabalus's reign, as well as Dio's own position within the government of Severus Alexander, who held him in high esteem and made him consul again, likely influenced the truth of this part of his history for the worse. Dio regularly refers to Elagabalus as Sardanapalus, partly to distinguish him from his divine namesake, but chiefly to do his part in maintaining the "damnatio memoriae" and to associate him with another autocrat notorious for a dissolute life.


title: Elagabalus

text: Historian Clare Rowan calls Dio's account a mixture of reliable information and "literary exaggeration", noting that Elagabalus's marriages and time as consul are confirmed by numismatic and epigraphic records. In other instances, Dio's account is inaccurate, as when he says Elagabalus appointed entirely unqualified officials and that Comazon had no military experience before being named to head the Praetorian Guard, when in fact Comazon had commanded the Third Legion. Dio also gives different accounts in different places of when and by whom Diadumenian (whose forces Elagabalus fought) was given imperial names and titles.


title: Elagabalus

text: Another contemporary of Elagabalus was Herodian, a minor Roman civil servant who lived from until 240. His work, "History of the Roman Empire since Marcus Aurelius", commonly abbreviated as "Roman History", is an eyewitness account of the reign of Commodus until the beginning of the reign of Gordian III. His work largely overlaps with Dio's own "Roman History", and the texts, written independently of each other, agree more often than not about Elagabalus and his short but eventful reign.


title: Elagabalus

text: Arrizabalaga writes that Herodian is in most ways "less detailed and punctilious than Dio", and he is deemed less reliable by many modern scholars, though Rowan considers his account of Elagabalus's reign more reliable than Dio's and Herodian's lack of literary and scholarly pretensions are considered to make him less biased than senatorial historians. He is considered an important source for the religious reforms which took place during the reign of Elagabalus, which have been confirmed by numismatic and archaeological evidence.


title: Elagabalus

text: The source of many stories of Elagabalus's depravity is the "Augustan History" ("Historia Augusta"), which includes controversial claims. It is most likely that the "Historia Augusta" was written towards the end of the fourth century, during the reign of emperor Theodosius I. The account of Elagabalus in the "Augustan History" is of uncertain historical merit. Sections 13 to 17, relating to the fall of Elagabalus, are less controversial among historians. The author of the most scandalous stories in the "Augustan History" concedes that "both these matters and some others which pass belief were, I think, invented by people who wanted to depreciate Heliogabalus to win favour with Alexander".


title: Elagabalus

text: For readers of the modern age, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) further cemented the scandalous reputation of Elagabalus. Gibbon not only accepted and expressed outrage at the allegations of the ancient historians, but he might have added some details of his own; for example, he is the first historian known to claim that Gannys was a eunuch. Gibbon wrote:


title: Elagabalus

text: The 20th-century anthropologist James George Frazer (author of "The Golden Bough") took seriously the monotheistic aspirations of the emperor, but also ridiculed him: "The dainty priest of the Sun [was] the most abandoned reprobate who ever sat upon a throne ... It was the intention of this eminently religious but crack-brained despot to supersede the worship of all the gods, not only at Rome but throughout the world, by the single worship of Elagabalus or the Sun."


title: Elagabalus

text: The first book-length biography was "The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus" (1911) by J. Stuart Hay, "a serious and systematic study" more sympathetic than that of previous historians, which nonetheless stressed the exoticism of Elagabalus, calling his reign one of "enormous wealth and excessive prodigality, luxury and aestheticism, carried to their ultimate extreme, and sensuality in all the refinements of its Eastern habit".


title: Elagabalus

text: Some recent historians paint a more favourable picture of the emperor's rule. Martijn Icks, in "Images of Elagabalus" (2008; republished as "The Crimes of Elagabalus" in 2011 and 2012), doubts the reliability of the ancient sources and argues that it was the emperor's unorthodox religious policies that alienated the power elite of Rome, to the point that his grandmother saw fit to eliminate him and replace him with his cousin. He described ancient stories pertaining to the emperor as “part of a long tradition of ‘character assassination’ in ancient historiography and biography.”


title: Elagabalus

text: Leonardo de Arrizabalaga y Prado, in "The Emperor Elagabalus: Fact or Fiction?" (2008), is also critical of the ancient historians and speculates that neither religion nor sexuality played a role in the fall of the young emperor. He was simply the loser in a power struggle within the imperial family; the loyalty of the Praetorian Guards was up for sale, and Julia Maesa had the resources to outmaneuver and outbribe her grandson. In this version of events, once Elagabalus, his mother, and his immediate circle had been murdered, a campaign of character assassination began, resulting in a grotesque caricature that has persisted to the present day.


title: Elagabalus

text: Warwick Ball, in his book "Rome in the East", writes a very apologetic account of the emperor, arguing that the wild descriptions of his religious rites were exaggerated and should be dismissed as propaganda, similar to how pagan descriptions of Christian rites (involving cannibalism and unspeakable orgies) have since been dismissed. Ball describes the emperor's ritual processions (marriage of the gods) as sound political and religious policy; that syncretism of eastern and western deities deserves praise rather than the ridicule he received. Ultimately, he paints Elagabalus as a child forced to become emperor by his scheming grandmother, and who rightfully, as high-priest of a cult, continued his rituals even after becoming emperor, which he viewed as a secondary occupation. Finally, Ball asserts Elagabalus's eventual victory in the sense that his deity would be welcomed by Rome in its Sol Invictus form, brought back from Emesa by Aurelian 50 years later. Ball claims that Sol Invictus came to influence the monotheist Christian beliefs of Constantine, being grafted into Christianity till this day.


title: Elagabalus

text: Despite the attempted "damnatio memoriae", stories about Elagabalus survived and figured in many works of art and literature. In Spanish, his name became a word for "glutton", "heliogábalo". Due to the ancient stories about him, he often appears in literature and other creative media as a decadent figure (becoming something of an anti-hero in the Decadent movement of the late 19th century, and inspiring many famous works of art, especially by Decadents) and the epitome of a young, amoral aesthete. The most notable of these works include:


title: Wonder of the Seas

text: Wonder of the Seas is the flagship of Royal Caribbean International. She was completed in 2022 in the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard in Saint-Nazaire, France, the fifth in Royal Caribbean's of cruise ships. At , she is the largest cruise ship in the world by gross tonnage, surpassing her sister ship , also owned by Royal Caribbean International.


title: Wonder of the Seas

text: "Wonder of the Seas" measures in length and has a gross tonnage of 236,857 across 18 decks. This ship accommodates 5,734 passengers at double occupancy, & up to a maximum capacity of 6,988 passengers, as well as a 2,300 crew. There are 16 decks for guest use, 20 restaurants, 4 pools and 2,867 cabins.


title: Wonder of the Seas

text: Facilities include a children's water park, a children's playground, a full-size basketball court, an ice-skating rink, a surf simulator, a zip line that is 10 decks high, a 1400-seat theater, an outdoor aquatic theater with high platforms, and two rock-climbing walls.


title: Wonder of the Seas

text: As with all "Oasis"-class ships, one of the special features on board is the Central Park, which consists of over 10,000 real plants.


title: Wonder of the Seas

text: "Wonder of the Seas" is powered by six marine-diesel sets: two 16-cylinder Wärtsilä 16V46D common rail engines and four 12-cylinder Wärtsilä 12V46D engines.


title: Wonder of the Seas

text: For propulsion, "Wonder of the Seas" uses three 20,000 kilowatt azipod main engines, which are electric thrusters. These engines are mounted under the stern of the ship and they each drive 20 foot wide rotatable propellers. In addition to the three electric thrusters, there are four bow thrusters used for docking, each with 5,500 kilowatts of power or 7,380 horsepower.


title: Wonder of the Seas

text: On 25 May 2016, Royal Caribbean Group signed a memorandum of understanding with STX France (now Chantiers de l'Atlantique) for a fifth "Oasis"-class ship for delivery in the spring of 2021. The first steel for the new ship was cut at the Saint-Nazaire shipyard in April 2019, and the vessel's keel was laid on 9 May 2019.


title: Wonder of the Seas

text: In August 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Royal Caribbean announced that delivery of the ship would be delayed until 2022.


title: Wonder of the Seas

text: In April 2021 Royal Caribbean opened bookings aboard "Wonder of the Seas" for an inaugural 2022 season sailing in Asia from ports in Shanghai and Hong Kong. However, in September of that year, Royal Caribbean announced that the ship would instead debut at Port Everglades, sailing Caribbean cruises, before moving to the Mediterranean in the summer, sailing out of Barcelona and Rome. In November 2021 the ship's livery was modified to resemble that of "Odyssey of the Seas", with her name moved rearward and repainted in larger print. The following month, Royal Caribbean announced that the ship would homeport at Port Canaveral in Florida starting in November 2022.


title: Wonder of the Seas

text: On 29 October 2021 Royal Caribbean accepted the ship for "technical delivery", and the following week she sailed under her own power from Saint-Nazaire to a "Chantier Naval de Marseille" drydock in Marseille-Fos Port for finishing work. On 27 January 2022 the ship was handed over to Royal Caribbean. She arrived in North America in February 2022, and commenced her maiden voyage on 4 March 2022 out of Port Everglades.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: The Reader is a 2008 romantic drama film directed by Stephen Daldry and written by David Hare, based on the 1995 German novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink. It stars Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, and David Kross. It was the last film for producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, both of whom died prior to its release. Production began in Germany in September 2007, and the film opened in limited release on December 10, 2008.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: The film tells the story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a 15-year-old in 1958, has a sexual relationship with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz. She disappears only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp. Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past – a secret which, if revealed, could help her at the trial. Some historians criticised the film for making Schmitz an object of the audience's sympathy and accused the filmmakers of Holocaust revisionism.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Although it received mixed reviews, Winslet and Kross, who plays the young Michael, received acclaim for their performances; Winslet won a number of awards for her role, including the Academy Award for Best Actress. The film was nominated for several other major awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: In 1995 Berlin, Michael Berg watches a train pass, flashing back to a tram ride from 1958. Michael, 15, feels sick, getting off the tram to walk in the rain. Vomiting beside an apartment building, tram conductor Hanna Schmitz, 36, finds him, cleans him up and helps him home. Michael is diagnosed with scarlet fever.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Michael visits Hanna with flowers once he is better, and they proceed to have a summer affair. She asks him to read to her from his school books. On a bicycle trip, they visit a church with a choir and Hanna is emotional. Toward the end of summer, Hanna is promoted to the tram's head offices, they argue, she sends him away, packs her things and leaves. When Michael finds her apartment vacant he is devastated.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: In 1966, a Heidelberg University Law School student, Michael observes a trial (similar to the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials) of several former SS guards accused of letting 300 Jewish women and children perish in a burning church during the death march near Kraków, Poland. Michael is horrified to see that Hanna is one of the defendants. Ilana Mather and her mother Rose give the key evidence. Ilana testifies that Hanna had women from the camp read to her in the evenings. Rose testifies that when the church caught fire from a bombing raid, as the guards locked the doors, all but her and Ilana died.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Hanna, unlike her co-defendants, admits that Auschwitz was an extermination camp and that she and the others chose 10 women for each month's "Selektion". When questioned on the church fire, no one explained why they had not unlocked the doors. The guards' report said they did not know about it until morning. Hanna admitted it was a lie, they had not opened the doors so the prisoners could not escape.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Hanna's co-defendants then all lie that she was in charge, and that she wrote the report. Hanna denies this, insisting that all the guards present agreed on the contents of the report. The lead judge asks for a handwriting sample, ashamed, she avoids this test by testifying she wrote the report. Watching the trial from the public gallery, Michael realizes Hanna's secret: she is illiterate, and so she could not have read or written it.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: When Michael tells his law professor, he tells him his moral obligation is to inform the court. The professor is frustrated with him for not having spoken to Hanna, so he tries to visit her in prison, but cannot face her and leaves her waiting. She gets a life sentence for 300 murder cases, while the other defendants are sentenced to four years and three months each for aiding and abetting. Michael weeps from the gallery.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Years later, Michael puts the books he had read to Hanna on tape. She borrows the books from the prison library, teaching herself to read and write using Michael's voice. She writes to Michael, gradually with more and more literacy, but he never responds.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: In 1988, a prison official contacts Michael, requesting his help with Hanna's transition into society following her release. Initially refusing, he later visits to say he has found her a place and a job. Pleased to see him, she tries to reconnect, but Michael is distant. He asks if she thinks about the past and Hanna asks if he means their past. When he says he means the war. She says what she feels and thinks does not matter as, "The dead are still dead." Both are left upset.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Michael arrives at the prison with flowers on Hanna's release day, but is told she has hanged herself. She left a crude will, gifting a tea tin with cash and the money in her bank account to Ilana.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Michael finds Ilana in New York City, admitting his connection to Hanna and its long-lasting impact. Telling her about Hanna's illiteracy, she tells him to seek catharsis elsewhere. Michael tells her what she left her, showing her the tea tin, but Ilana refuses the money. He suggests it be donated to a Jewish literacy organization in Hanna's name, and Ilana agrees he should do it if he wishes. She keeps the tin, as it is like one she once had.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: The film ends in 1995 with Michael driving his daughter Julia to Hanna's grave, telling her their story.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: In April 1998 Miramax Films acquired the rights to the novel "The Reader", and principal photography began in September 2007 immediately after Stephen Daldry was signed to direct the film adaptation and Fiennes was cast in a lead role. Winslet was originally cast as Hanna, but scheduling difficulties with "Revolutionary Road" led her to leave the film and Nicole Kidman was cast as her replacement. In January 2008, Kidman left the project, citing her recent pregnancy as the primary reason. She had not filmed any scenes yet, so the studio was able to recast Winslet without affecting the production schedule.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Filming took place in Berlin, Görlitz, on the Kirnitzschtal tramway near Bad Schandau, and finished in the MMC Studios Köln in Cologne on July 14. Filmmakers received $718,752 from Germany's Federal Film Board. Overall, the studio received $4.1 million from Germany's regional and federal subsidiaries.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Schlink insisted the film be shot in English rather than German, as it posed questions about living in a post-genocide society that went beyond mid-century Germany. Daldry and Hare toured locations from the novel with Schlink, viewed documentaries about that period in German history, and read books and articles about women who had served as SS guards in the camps. Hare, who rejected using a voiceover narration to render the long internal monologues in the novel, also changed the ending so that Michael starts to tell the story of Hanna and him to his daughter. "It's about literature as a powerful means of communication, and at other times as a substitute for communication", he explained. The filming of sex scenes with Kross and Winslet were delayed until Kross turned 18.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: The primary cast, all of whom were German besides Fiennes, Olin, and Winslet, decided to emulate Kross's accent since he had just learned English for the film. Chris Menges replaced Roger Deakins as cinematographer. One of the film's producers, Scott Rudin, left the production over a dispute about the rushed editing process to ensure a 2008 release date and had his name removed from the credit list. Rudin differed with Harvey Weinstein "because he didn't want to campaign for an Oscar along with "Doubt" and "Revolutionary Road", which also stars Winslet." Winslet won the Best Actress Academy Award for "The Reader". Marc Caro wrote, "Because Winslet couldn't get Best Actress nominations for both movies, the Weinstein Co. shifted her to supporting actress for "The Reader" as a courtesy..." but that it is "...up to [the voters] to place the name in the category that they think is appropriate to the performance", resulting in her receiving more Best Actress nomination votes for this film than the Best Actress submission of her "Revolutionary Road" performance. Winslet's head-to-head performances also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for "Revolutionary Road" and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for "The Reader".


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: "Entertainment Weekly" reported that to "age Hanna from cool seductress to imprisoned war criminal, Winslet endured seven and a half hours of makeup and prosthetic prep each day."


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Lisa Schwarzbaum of "Entertainment Weekly" writes that "Ralph Fiennes has perhaps the toughest job, playing the morose adult Michael – a version, we can assume, of the author. Fiennes masters the default demeanor of someone perpetually pained."


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: On December 10, 2008 "The Reader" had a limited release at 8 theaters and grossed $168,051 at the domestic box office in its opening weekend. The film had its wide release on January 30, 2009 and grossed $2,380,376 at the domestic box office. The film's widest release was at 1,203 theaters on February 27, 2009, the weekend after the Oscar win for Kate Winslet.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: In total, the film has grossed $34,194,407 at the domestic box office and $108,901,967 worldwide. The film was released on DVD in the U.S. on April 14, 2009 and April 28 on Blu-ray. Both versions were released in the UK on May 25, 2009. In Germany two DVD versions (single disc and 2-disc special edition) and Blu-ray were released on September 4, 2009.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 204 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's consensus states, "Despite Kate Winslet's superb portrayal, "The Reader" suggests an emotionally distant, Oscar-baiting historical drama." At Metacritic the film was assigned a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Ann Hornaday of "The Washington Post" wrote, "This engrossing, graceful adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's semi-autobiographical novel has been adapted by screenwriter David Hare and director Stephen Daldry with equal parts simplicity and nuance, restraint and emotion. At the center of a skein of vexing ethical questions, Winslet delivers a tough, bravura performance as a woman whose past coincides with Germany's most cataclysmic and hauntingly unresolved era."


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Manohla Dargis of "The New York Times" wrote, "You have to wonder who, exactly, wants or perhaps needs to see another movie about the Holocaust that embalms its horrors with artfully spilled tears and asks us to pity a death-camp guard. You could argue that the film isn’t really about the Holocaust, but about the generation that grew up in its shadow, which is what the book insists. But the film is neither about the Holocaust nor about those Germans who grappled with its legacy: it's about making the audience feel good about a historical catastrophe that grows fainter with each new tasteful interpolation."


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Patrick Goldstein wrote in the "Los Angeles Times", "The picture's biggest problem is that it simply doesn't capture the chilling intensity of its source material," and noted there was a "largely lackluster early reaction" to the film by most film critics. Most felt that while the novel portrayed Hanna's illiteracy as a metaphor for generational illiteracy about the Holocaust, the film failed to convey those thematic overtones.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Ron Rosenbaum was critical of the film's fixation on Hanna's illiteracy, saying, "so much is made of the deep, deep exculpatory shame of illiteracy – despite the fact that burning 300 people to death doesn't require reading skills – that some worshipful accounts of the novel (by those who buy into its ludicrous premise, perhaps because it's been declared "classic" and "profound") actually seem to affirm that illiteracy is something more to be ashamed of than participating in mass murder ... Lack of reading skills is "more" disgraceful than listening in bovine silence to the screams of 300 people as they are burned to death behind the locked doors of a church you're guarding to prevent them from escaping the flames. Which is what Hanna did, although, of course, it's not shown in the film."


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Kirk Honeycutt's review in "The Hollywood Reporter" was more generous, concluding the picture was a "well-told coming-of-age yarn" but "disturbing" for raising critical questions about complicity in the Holocaust. He praised Winslet and Kross for providing "gutsy, intense performances", noted that Olin and Ganz turn in "memorable appearances", and noted that the cinematographers, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins, lent the film a "fine professional polish". Colm Andrew of the "Manx Independent" also rated the film highly and observed it had "countless opportunities to become overly sentimental or dramatic and resists every one of them, resulting in a film which by its conclusion, has you not knowing which quality to praise the most".


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: At "The Huffington Post", Thelma Adams found the relationship between Hanna and Michael, which she termed abusive, more disturbing than any of the historical questions in the movie: "Michael is a victim of abuse, and his abuser just happened to have been a luscious retired Auschwitz guard. You can call their tryst and its consequences a metaphor of two generations of Germans passing guilt from one to the next, but that doesn't explain why filmmakers Daldry and Hare luxuriated in the sex scenes – and why it's so tastefully done audiences won't see it for the child pornography it is."


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: When asked to respond, Hare called it "the most ridiculous thing ... We went to great lengths to make sure that that's exactly what it didn't turn into. The book is much more erotic." Daldry added, "He's a young man who falls in love with an older woman who is complicated, difficult and controlling. That's the story."


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008. Rex Reed of "The New York Observer" named it the second best film of 2008. Stephen Farber of "The Hollywood Reporter" named it the fourth best film of 2008, Tasha Robinson of "The A.V. Club" named it the eighth best film of 2008, and Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" placed it on his unranked top 20 list.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Special praise went to Winslet's acting; she then swept the main prizes in the 2008/2009 award season, including the Golden Globe, the Critic's Choice Award, the Screen Actor's Guild Award, the BAFTA, and the Academy Award for Best Actress.


title: The Reader (2008 film)

text: Several writers noted that her success seemed to have made real her appearance in the BBC comedy "Extras", in which she played a fictionalized version of herself desperate to win an Academy Award. In the episode, Winslet decided to increase her chance of winning an Oscar by starring in a film about the Holocaust, noting that such films were often awarded Oscars. However, in the fictional film, Winslet played a nun sheltering children from the Holocaust rather than one of its perpetrators. Winslet commented that the similarity "would be funny", but the connection didn't occur to her until "midway through shooting the film...this was never a Holocaust movie to me. That's part of the story and provides something of a backdrop, and sets the scene. But to me it was always an extraordinarily unconventional love story."


title: Black pepper

text: Black pepper ("Piper nigrum") is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, known as a peppercorn, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit is a drupe (stonefruit) which is about in diameter (fresh and fully mature), dark red, and contains a stone which encloses a single pepper seed. Peppercorns and the ground pepper derived from them may be described simply as "pepper", or more precisely as "black pepper" (cooked and dried unripe fruit), "green pepper" (dried unripe fruit), or "white pepper" (ripe fruit seeds).


title: Black pepper

text: Black pepper is native to the Malabar Coast of India, and the Malabar pepper is extensively cultivated there and in other tropical regions.


title: Black pepper

text: Ground, dried, and cooked peppercorns have been used since antiquity, both for flavour and as a traditional medicine. Black pepper is the world's most traded spice, and is one of the most common spices added to cuisines around the world. Its spiciness is due to the chemical compound piperine, which is a different kind of spicy from the capsaicin characteristic of chili peppers. It is ubiquitous in the Western world as a seasoning, and is often paired with salt and available on dining tables in shakers or mills.


title: Black pepper

text: The word "pepper" derives from Old English "pipor", Latin "piper", and Sanskrit "pippali" for "long pepper". In the 16th century, people began using "pepper" to also mean the unrelated New World chili pepper (genus "Capsicum").


title: Black pepper

text: Processed peppercorns come in a variety of colours, any one of which may be used in food preparation, especially common peppercorn sauce.


title: Black pepper

text: Black pepper is produced from the still-green, unripe drupe of the pepper plant. The drupes are cooked briefly in hot water, both to clean them and to prepare them for drying. The heat ruptures cell walls in the pepper, speeding the work of browning enzymes during drying. The drupes dry in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the pepper skin around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, wrinkled black layer. Once dry, the spice is called black peppercorn. On some estates, the berries are separated from the stem by hand and then sun-dried without boiling.


title: Black pepper

text: After the peppercorns are dried, pepper spirit and oil can be extracted from the berries by crushing them. Pepper spirit is used in many medicinal and beauty products. Pepper oil is also used as an ayurvedic massage oil and in certain beauty and herbal treatments.


title: Black pepper

text: White pepper consists solely of the seed of the ripe fruit of the pepper plant, with the thin darker-coloured skin (flesh) of the fruit removed. This is usually accomplished by a process known as retting, where fully ripe red pepper berries are soaked in water for about a week so the flesh of the peppercorn softens and decomposes; rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the naked seed is dried. Sometimes the outer layer is removed from the seed through other mechanical, chemical, or biological methods.


title: Black pepper

text: Ground white pepper is commonly used in Chinese, Thai, and Portuguese cuisines. It finds occasional use in other cuisines in salads, light-coloured sauces, and mashed potatoes as a substitute for black pepper, because black pepper would visibly stand out. However, white pepper lacks certain compounds present in the outer layer of the drupe, resulting in a different overall flavour.


title: Black pepper

text: Green pepper, like black pepper, is made from unripe drupes. Dried green peppercorns are treated in a way that retains the green colour, such as with sulfur dioxide, canning, or freeze-drying. Pickled peppercorns, also green, are unripe drupes preserved in brine or vinegar.


title: Black pepper

text: Fresh, unpreserved green pepper drupes are used in some cuisines like Thai cuisine and Tamil cuisine. Their flavour has been described as "spicy and fresh", with a "bright aroma." They decay quickly if not dried or preserved, making them unsuitable for international shipping.


title: Black pepper

text: Red peppercorns usually consist of ripe peppercorn drupes preserved in brine and vinegar. Ripe red peppercorns can also be dried using the same colour-preserving techniques used to produce green pepper.


title: Black pepper

text: Pink peppercorns are the fruits of the Peruvian pepper tree, "Schinus molle", or its relative, the Brazilian pepper tree, "Schinus terebinthifolius", plants from a different family (Anacardiaceae). As they are members of the cashew family, they may cause allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, for persons with a tree nut allergy.


title: Black pepper

text: The bark of "Drimys winteri" ("canelo" or "winter's bark") is used as a substitute for pepper in cold and temperate regions of Chile and Argentina, where it is easily found and readily available. In New Zealand, the seeds of kawakawa ("Piper excelsum"), a relative of black pepper, are sometimes used as pepper; the leaves of "Pseudowintera colorata" ("mountain horopito") are another replacement for pepper. Several plants in the United States are also used as pepper substitutes, such as field pepperwort, least pepperwort, shepherd's purse, horseradish, and field pennycress.


title: Black pepper

text: The pepper plant is a perennial woody vine growing up to in height on supporting trees, poles, or trellises. It is a spreading vine, rooting readily where trailing stems touch the ground. The leaves are alternate, entire, long and across. The flowers are small, produced on pendulous spikes long at the leaf nodes, the spikes lengthening up to as the fruit matures.


title: Black pepper

text: Pepper can be grown in soil that is neither too dry nor susceptible to flooding, moist, well-drained, and rich in organic matter (the vines do not do well over an altitude of above sea level). The plants are propagated by cuttings about long, tied up to neighbouring trees or climbing frames at distances of about apart; trees with rough bark are favoured over those with smooth bark, as the pepper plants climb rough bark more readily. Competing plants are cleared away, leaving only sufficient trees to provide shade and permit free ventilation. The roots are covered in leaf mulch and manure, and the shoots are trimmed twice a year. On dry soils, the young plants require watering every other day during the dry season for the first three years. The plants bear fruit from the fourth or fifth year, and then typically for seven years. The cuttings are usually cultivars, selected both for yield and quality of fruit.


title: Black pepper

text: A single stem bears 20 to 30 fruiting spikes. The harvest begins as soon as one or two fruits at the base of the spikes begin to turn red, and before the fruit is fully mature, and still hard; if allowed to ripen completely, the fruits lose pungency, and ultimately fall off and are lost. The spikes are collected and spread out to dry in the sun, then the peppercorns are stripped off the spikes.


title: Black pepper

text: Black pepper is native either to Southeast Asia or South Asia. Within the genus "Piper", it is most closely related to other Asian species such as "P. caninum".


title: Black pepper

text: Wild pepper grows in the Western Ghats region of India. Into the 19th century, the forests contained expansive wild pepper vines, as recorded by the Scottish physician Francis Buchanan (also a botanist and geographer) in his book "A journey from Madras through the countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar" (Volume III). However, deforestation resulted in wild pepper growing in more limited forest patches from Goa to Kerala, with the wild source gradually decreasing as the quality and yield of the cultivated variety improved. No successful grafting of commercial pepper on wild pepper has been achieved to date.


title: Black pepper

text: In 2020, Vietnam was the world's largest producer and exporter of black peppercorns, producing 270,192 tonnes or 36% of the world total (table). Other major producers were Brazil, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, China, and Malaysia. Global pepper production varies annually according to crop management, disease, and weather. Peppercorns are among the most widely traded spice in the world, accounting for 20% of all spice imports.


title: Black pepper

text: Black pepper is native to South Asia and Southeast Asia, and has been known to Indian cooking since at least 2000 BCE. J. Innes Miller notes that while pepper was grown in southern Thailand and in Malaysia, its most important source was India, particularly the Malabar Coast, in what is now the state of Kerala. The lost ancient port city of Muziris in Kerala, famous for exporting black pepper and various other spices, gets mentioned in a number of classical historical sources for its trade with Roman Empire, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Levant, and Yemen. Peppercorns were a much-prized trade good, often referred to as "black gold" and used as a form of commodity money. The legacy of this trade remains in some Western legal systems that recognize the term "peppercorn rent" as a token payment for something that is, essentially, a gift.


title: Black pepper

text: The ancient history of black pepper is often interlinked with (and confused with) that of long pepper, the dried fruit of closely related "Piper longum". The Romans knew of both and often referred to either as just "piper". In fact, the popularity of long pepper did not entirely decline until the discovery of the New World and of chili peppers. Chili peppers—some of which, when dried, are similar in shape and taste to long pepper—were easier to grow in a variety of locations more convenient to Europe. Before the 16th century, pepper was being grown in Java, Sunda, Sumatra, Madagascar, Malaysia, and everywhere in Southeast Asia. These areas traded mainly with China, or used the pepper locally. Ports in the Malabar area also served as a stop-off point for much of the trade in other spices from farther east in the Indian Ocean.


title: Black pepper

text: Black peppercorns were found stuffed in the nostrils of Ramesses II, placed there as part of the mummification rituals shortly after his death in 1213 BCE. Little else is known about the use of pepper in ancient Egypt and how it reached the Nile from the Malabar Coast of South Asia.


title: Black pepper

text: Pepper (both long and black) was known in Greece at least as early as the fourth century BCE, though it was probably an uncommon and expensive item that only the very rich could afford.


title: Black pepper

text: By the time of the early Roman Empire, especially after Rome's conquest of Egypt in 30 BCE, open-ocean crossing of the Arabian Sea direct to Chera dynasty southern India's Malabar Coast was near routine. Details of this trading across the Indian Ocean have been passed down in the "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea". According to the Greek geographer Strabo, the early empire sent a fleet of around 120 ships on an annual trip to India and back. The fleet timed its travel across the Arabian Sea to take advantage of the predictable monsoon winds. Returning from India, the ships travelled up the Red Sea, from where the cargo was carried overland or via the Nile-Red Sea canal to the Nile River, barged to Alexandria, and shipped from there to Italy and Rome. The rough geographical outlines of this same trade route would dominate the pepper trade into Europe for a millennium and a half to come.


title: Black pepper

text: With ships sailing directly to the Malabar coast, Malabar black pepper was now travelling a shorter trade route than long pepper, and the prices reflected it. Pliny the Elder's "Natural History" tells us the prices in Rome around 77 CE: "Long pepper ... is 15 denarii per pound, while that of white pepper is seven, and of black, four." Pliny also complains, "There is no year in which India does not drain the Roman Empire of 50 million sesterces", and further moralizes on pepper:


title: Black pepper

text: He does not state whether the 50 million was the actual amount of money which found its way to India or the total retail cost of the items in Rome, and, elsewhere, he cites a figure of 100 million sesterces.


title: Black pepper

text: Black pepper was a well-known and widespread, if expensive, seasoning in the Roman Empire. Apicius' "De re coquinaria", a third-century cookbook probably based at least partly on one from the first century CE, includes pepper in a majority of its recipes. Edward Gibbon wrote, in "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", that pepper was "a favorite ingredient of the most expensive Roman cookery".


title: Black pepper

text: Pepper was so valuable that it was often used as collateral or even currency. The taste for pepper (or the appreciation of its monetary value) was passed on to those who would see Rome fall. Alaric, king of the Visigoths, included 3,000 pounds of pepper as part of the ransom he demanded from Rome when he besieged the city in the fifth century. After the fall of Rome, others took over the middle legs of the spice trade, first the Persians and then the Arabs; Innes Miller cites the account of Cosmas Indicopleustes, who travelled east to India, as proof that "pepper was still being exported from India in the sixth century". By the end of the Early Middle Ages, the central portions of the spice trade were firmly under Islamic control. Once into the Mediterranean, the trade was largely monopolized by Italian powers, especially Venice and Genoa. The rise of these city-states was funded in large part by the spice trade.


title: Black pepper

text: A riddle authored by Saint Aldhelm, a seventh-century Bishop of Sherborne, sheds some light on black pepper's role in England at that time:


title: Black pepper

text: It is commonly believed that during the Middle Ages, pepper was often used to conceal the taste of partially rotten meat. No evidence supports this claim, and historians view it as highly unlikely; in the Middle Ages, pepper was a luxury item, affordable only to the wealthy, who certainly had unspoiled meat available, as well. In addition, people of the time certainly knew that eating spoiled food would make them sick. Similarly, the belief that pepper was widely used as a preservative is questionable; it is true that piperine, the compound that gives pepper its spiciness, has some antimicrobial properties, but at the concentrations present when pepper is used as a spice, the effect is small. Salt is a much more effective preservative, and salt-cured meats were common fare, especially in winter. However, pepper and other spices certainly played a role in improving the taste of long-preserved meats.


title: Black pepper

text: Its exorbitant price during the Middle Ages – and the monopoly on the trade held by Italy – was one of the inducements that led the Portuguese to seek a sea route to India. In 1498, Vasco da Gama became the first person to reach India by sailing around Africa (see Age of Discovery); asked by Arabs in Calicut (who spoke Spanish and Italian) why they had come, his representative replied, "we seek Christians and spices". Though this first trip to India by way of the southern tip of Africa was only a modest success, the Portuguese quickly returned in greater numbers and eventually gained much greater control of trade on the Arabian Sea. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas with the Spanish granted Portugal exclusive rights to the half of the world where black pepper originated.


title: Black pepper

text: However, the Portuguese proved unable to monopolize the spice trade. Older Arab and Venetian trade networks successfully imported enormous quantities of spices, and pepper once again flowed through Alexandria and Italy, as well as around Africa. In the 17th century, the Portuguese lost almost all of their valuable Indian Ocean trade to the Dutch and the English, who, taking advantage of the Spanish rule over Portugal during the Iberian Union (1580–1640), occupied by force almost all Portuguese interests in the area. The pepper ports of Malabar began to trade increasingly with the Dutch in the period 1661–1663.


title: Black pepper

text: As pepper supplies into Europe increased, the price of pepper declined (though the total value of the import trade generally did not). Pepper, which in the early Middle Ages had been an item exclusively for the rich, started to become more of an everyday seasoning among those of more average means. Today, pepper accounts for one-fifth of the world's spice trade.


title: Black pepper

text: It is possible that black pepper was known in China in the second century BCE, if poetic reports regarding an explorer named Tang Meng (唐蒙) are correct. Sent by Emperor Wu to what is now south-west China, Tang Meng is said to have come across something called "jujiang" or "sauce-betel". He was told it came from the markets of Shu, an area in what is now the Sichuan province. The traditional view among historians is that "sauce-betel" is a sauce made from betel leaves, but arguments have been made that it actually refers to pepper, either long or black.


title: Black pepper

text: In the third century CE, black pepper made its first definite appearance in Chinese texts, as "hujiao" or "foreign pepper". It does not appear to have been widely known at the time, failing to appear in a fourth-century work describing a wide variety of spices from beyond China's southern border, including long pepper. By the 12th century, however, black pepper had become a popular ingredient in the cuisine of the wealthy and powerful, sometimes taking the place of China's native Sichuan pepper (the tongue-numbing dried fruit of an unrelated plant).


title: Black pepper

text: Marco Polo testifies to pepper's popularity in 13th-century China, when he relates what he is told of its consumption in the city of Kinsay (Hangzhou): "... Messer Marco heard it stated by one of the Great Kaan's officers of customs that the quantity of pepper introduced daily for consumption into the city of Kinsay amounted to 43 loads, each load being equal to 223 lbs."


title: Black pepper

text: During the course of the Ming treasure voyages in the early 15th century, Admiral Zheng He and his expeditionary fleets returned with such a large amount of black pepper that the once-costly luxury became a common commodity.


title: Black pepper

text: Like many eastern spices, pepper was historically both a seasoning and a traditional medicine. Pepper appears in the Buddhist Samaññaphala Sutta, chapter five, as one of the few medicines a monk is allowed to carry. Long pepper, being stronger, was often the preferred medication, but both were used. Black pepper (or perhaps long pepper) was believed to cure several illnesses, such as constipation, insomnia, oral abscesses, sunburn, and toothaches, among others. Various sources from the fifth century onward recommended pepper to treat eye problems, often by applying salves or poultices made with pepper directly to the eye. Though current medical research has yet to confirm any treatment benefit to humans, several benefits have been shown in animal modeling experiments.


title: Black pepper

text: Pepper contains phytochemicals, including amides, piperidines, pyrrolidines, and trace amounts of safrole, which may be carcinogenic in laboratory rodents.


title: Black pepper

text: Piperine is under study for its potential to increase absorption of selenium, vitamin B, beta-carotene, and curcumin, as well as other compounds.


title: Black pepper

text: Pepper is known to cause sneezing. Some sources say that piperine, a substance present in black pepper, irritates the nostrils, causing the sneezing. Few, if any, controlled studies have been carried out to answer the question.


title: Black pepper

text: Piperine is also under study for a variety of possible physiological effects, although this work is preliminary and mechanisms of activity for piperine in the human body remain unknown.


title: Black pepper

text: One tablespoon (6 grams) of ground black pepper contains moderate amounts of vitamin K (13% of the daily value or DV), iron (10% DV), and manganese (18% DV), with trace amounts of other essential nutrients, protein, and dietary fibre.


title: Black pepper

text: Pepper gets its spicy heat mostly from piperine derived from both the outer fruit and the seed. Black pepper contains between 4.6 and 9.7% piperine by mass, and white pepper slightly more than that. Refined piperine, by weight, is about one percent as hot as the capsaicin found in chili peppers. The outer fruit layer, left on black pepper, also contains aroma-contributing terpenes, including germacrene (11%), limonene (10%), pinene (10%), alpha-phellandrene (9%), and beta-caryophyllene (7%), which give citrusy, woody, and floral notes. These scents are mostly missing in white pepper, as the fermentation and other processing removes the fruit layer (which also contains some of the spicy piperine). Other flavours also commonly develop in this process, some of which are described as off-flavours when in excess: Primarily 3-methylindole (pig manure-like), 4-methylphenol (horse manure), 3-methylphenol (phenolic), and butyric acid (cheese). The aroma of pepper is attributed to rotundone (3,4,5,6,7,8-Hexahydro-3α,8α-dimethyl-5α-(1-methylethenyl)azulene-1(2H)-one), a sesquiterpene originally discovered in the tubers of "Cyperus rotundus", which can be detected in concentrations of 0.4 nanograms/l in water and in wine: rotundone is also present in marjoram, oregano, rosemary, basil, thyme, and geranium, as well as in some Shiraz wines.


title: Black pepper

text: Pepper loses flavour and aroma through evaporation, so airtight storage helps preserve its spiciness longer. Pepper can also lose flavour when exposed to light, which can transform piperine into nearly tasteless isochavicine. Once ground, pepper's aromatics can evaporate quickly; most culinary sources recommend grinding whole peppercorns immediately before use for this reason. Handheld pepper mills or grinders, which mechanically grind or crush whole peppercorns, are used for this as an alternative to pepper shakers that dispense ground pepper. Spice mills such as pepper mills were found in European kitchens as early as the 14th century, but the mortar and pestle used earlier for crushing pepper have remained a popular method for centuries, as well.


title: Black pepper

text: Enhancing the flavour profile of peppercorns (including piperine and essential oils), prior to processing, has been attempted through the postharvest application of ultraviolet-C light (UV-C).


title: BrahMos

text: The BrahMos (also designated as PJ-10) is a medium-range stealth ramjet supersonic cruise missile that can be launched from submarine, ships, airplanes or land, notably being the fastest supersonic cruise missile in the world at the time of introducing. It is a joint-venture between the Indian Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Russian Federation's NPO Mashinostroyeniya, who together have formed BrahMos Aerospace. It is based on the Russian P-800 Oniks supersonic anti-ship cruise missile. The name BrahMos is a portmanteau formed from the names of two rivers, the Brahmaputra of India and the Moskva of Russia.


title: BrahMos

text: It is claimed to be the world's fastest Anti-Ship Cruise Missile currently in operation. The Land-launched and Ship-launched versions are already in service. An Air-launched variant of BrahMos appeared in 2012 and entered service in 2019. A hypersonic version of the missile, BrahMos-II, is also presently under development with a speed of Mach 7–8 to boost aerial fast strike capability. It was expected to be ready for testing by 2024.


title: BrahMos

text: Its propulsion is based on the Russian missile, and missile guidance has been developed by BrahMos Aerospace. The missile is expected to reach a total order of US$13 billion.


title: BrahMos

text: In 2016, as India became a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), India and Russia are now planning to jointly develop a new generation of Brahmos missiles with 800 km range and an ability to hit protected targets with pinpoint accuracy. Plans are to eventually upgrade all missiles to a range of 1500 km.


title: BrahMos

text: The BrahMos has been developed as a joint venture between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) of India and the Federal State Unitary Enterprise NPO Mashinostroyenia (NPOM) of Russia as BrahMos Aerospace via an inter-government agreement. The company was established on 12 February 1998 with an authorised share capital of . India holds 50.5% share of the joint venture and its initial financial contribution was , while Russia holds 49.5% share with an initial contribution of .


title: BrahMos

text: Since late 2004, the missile has undergone several tests from a variety of platforms, including a land based test from the Pokhran range in the desert, in which the evasive 'S' maneuver at Mach 2.8 was demonstrated for the Indian Army and a launch in which the land attack capability from sea was demonstrated.


title: BrahMos

text: Keltec (now known as BrahMos Aerospace Trivandrum Ltd or BATL), an Indian state-owned firm, was acquired by BrahMos Corporation in 2008. Approximately will be invested in the facility to make BrahMos components and integrate the missile systems. This was necessitated by the increased order book of the missile system, with orders having been placed by both the Indian Army and Navy. Initially, Russia supplied 65% of the BrahMos' components, including its ramjet engine and radar seeker. Currently 65% of the missile is manufactured in India and there are plans to increase this to 85% by replacing the components with an Indian made seeker and booster.


title: BrahMos

text: BrahMos was first test-fired on 12 June 2001 from the Integrated Test Range (ITR), Chandipur in a vertical launch configuration. On 14 June 2004, another test was conducted at ITR and BrahMos was fired from a mobile launcher. On 5 March 2008, the land attack version of the missile was fired from the destroyer and the missile hit and destroyed the right target among a group of targets. The vertical launch of BrahMos was conducted on 18 December 2008 from INS "Ranvir". The BrahMos I Block-I for the army was successfully tested with new capabilities in the deserts of Rajasthan, at a test range near Pokharan in December 2004 and March 2007.


title: BrahMos

text: During a user trial on 20 January 2009, BrahMos was tested with a new navigation system but it failed to hit the target. BrahMos Aerospace Corporation's director Dr A. Sivathanu Pillai said, ""The missile performance was absolutely normal until the last phase, but the missile missed the target, though it maintained the direction."" and that "The problem was in the software, not hardware". The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) said that there were "small hitches" in the last stage of the test firing due to delay in input of satellite navigation input to the Inertial Navigation System, the missile travelled for 112 seconds instead of the slated 84 seconds and fell 7 km away from the target. According to BrahMos Corporation, another test of the new missile was to be conducted within one month, but it was eventually conducted on 4 March 2009 and was deemed successful. BrahMos was test-fired again on 29 March 2009. For the test, the missile had to identify a building among a cluster of buildings in an urban environment. BrahMos successfully hit the intended target in two and a half minutes of launch. According to official sources, ""The new seeker is unique and would help us to hit our targets, which are insignificant in terms of size, in a cluster of large buildings. India is now the only nation in the world with this advanced technology"". After the third test, Lt Gen Noble Thamburaj, said that the Indian Army wanted the BrahMos to achieve high standards of accuracy and congratulated the scientists on behalf of the Indian Army. The Indian Army confirmed that the test was successful and the army is satisfied with the missile. This marking the completion of the development phase of BrahMos Block-II, and it was ready for induction.


title: BrahMos

text: The 5 September 2010 test of BrahMos created a world record for being the first cruise missile to be tested at supersonic speeds in a steep-dive mode. The missile was test-fired from the integrated test range launching complex-3 (LC-3) at Chandipur around 11.35 am. With this launch, the Indian army's requirement for land attacks with Block-II advanced seeker software with target discriminating capabilities was met. BrahMos became the only supersonic cruise missile possessing advanced capability of selection of a particular land target amongst a group of targets, providing an edge to the user with precise hit.


title: BrahMos

text: Block III has advanced guidance and upgraded software, incorporating high manoeuvres at multiple points and steep dive from high altitude. It will be deployed in Arunachal Pradesh. It can engage ground targets from an altitude as low as 10 metres for surgical strikes without any collateral damage. It is capable of being launched from multiple platforms like submarines, ships, aircraft and land based Mobile Autonomous Launchers (MAL). On 12 August 2011, it was test-fired by ground forces and met all mission parameters.


title: BrahMos

text: The new navigation system uses an Indian chip called G3OM (GPS, GLONASS, GAGAN on a Module). The system weighs around 17 grams, and gives accuracy below five metres using Indian, US and Russian navigation satellites. The system can be used in tandem with an Inertial Navigation System (INS) to provide high-accuracy targeting without using any seeker.


title: BrahMos

text: BrahMos was tested with an Indian seeker for the first time on 22 March 2018, and was tested with an India-developed propulsion system, airframe and power supply on 30 September 2019.


title: BrahMos

text: On 30 September 2020, India successfully test-fired an extended range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile. The supersonic cruise missile is capable of hitting targets at more than 400 km range. The test was carried out under "BrahMos project" of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), under which the missile was launched with an indigenous booster. The missile was launched from a land-based facility in Odisha.


title: BrahMos

text: This is the second test-firing of the extended range version of the missile which has an indigenously developed airframe and booster.


title: BrahMos

text: The submarine-launched variant of Brahmos was test fired successfully for the first time from a submerged pontoon near Visakhapatnam at the coast of Bay of Bengal on 20 March 2013. This was the first vertical launch of an Indian supersonic missile from a submerged platform. The missile can be launched from a depth of . In late January 2016, Russia confirmed that future Indian-made submarines would be armed with smaller version of the missile that could fit inside a torpedo tube.


title: BrahMos

text: The BrahMos-A is a modified air-launched variant of the missile with a range of 500 km which can be launched from a Sukhoi Su-30MKI as a standoff weapon. To reduce the missile's weight to 2.55 tons, many modifications were made like using a smaller booster, adding fins for airborne stability after launch, and relocating the connector. It can be released from the height of 500 to 14,000 metres (1,640 to 46,000 ft). After release, the missile free falls for 100–150 metres, then goes into a cruise phase at 14,000 metres and finally the terminal phase at 15 metres. BrahMos Aerospace planned to deliver the missile to the IAF in 2015, where it is expected to arm at least three squadrons. A Su-30MKI is able to only carry one BrahMos missile.


title: BrahMos

text: The missile was also planned to arm the Indian Navy's Ilyushin Il-38 and Tupolev Tu-142 maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft with 6 missiles per aircraft, but this could not be made possible due to insufficient ground clearance of the IL-38, high cost of modifying the Tu-142 and the questionable benefits of modifying an ageing fleet.


title: BrahMos

text: The air-launched version for the Indian Air Force was ready for testing in 2008. An expert committee from the DRDO and the Indian Air Force (IAF) had ruled out any structural modifications to the Su-30MKI to carry the missile. On 22 October 2008, A. Sivathanu Pillai, Chief Controller, R&D, DRDO and CEO and managing director of BrahMos Aerospace, announced that trials and tests were to be carried out by 2011, and the IAF would get its own version of BrahMos by 2012.


title: BrahMos

text: On 10 January 2009, it was reported that two Indian Air Force Su-30MKI fighter jets were sent to Russia for a retrofit program that would enable them to launch the missile. On 8 August 2009, Alexander Leonov, Director of the Russian Machine Building Research and Production Centre, said "we are ready for test launches." He also said that a new takeoff engine for the launching of the missile in air and at extremely high altitudes had been developed, and the initial test firing of the missile would be undertaken from the Su-30 MKI but did not specify the dates. On 26 February 2012, A. Sivathanu Pillai said that the air-launched version of BrahMos is being developed and will be tested by the end of 2012. This version of the BrahMos missile will use air-breathing scramjet propulsion technology and would be more fuel-efficient than a traditional rocket-powered missile.


title: BrahMos

text: The purchase of over 200 air-launched BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles for the IAF was cleared by Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) on 19 October 2012, at the cost of . This would include funds for the integration and testing of the BrahMos on Su-30MKI of the IAF. As per this plan, the first test of the air-launched version of the missile was to be conducted by December 2012. Two Su-30MKI of the IAF would be modified by the HAL at its Nashik facility where they will also be integrated with the missile's aerial launcher.


title: BrahMos

text: A demonstration flight was carried out at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Nashik on 25 June 2016 as a modified Su-30MKI carrying BrahMos-A underwent a successful trial flight, the first time a heavyweight supersonic cruise missile had been integrated on a long-range fighter aircraft; the project to adapt the weapon for air launch was approved in 2011, but was bogged down with technology transfer and intellectual property rights concerns. To carry the missile, the Su-30MKI undercarriage had to be strengthened, which also required new hard points and structural modifications. The cost of adapting the BrahMos for air launch was "phenomenal," but efforts to downsize the missile were abandoned after an attempt to reduce the size of the ramjet. On 22 November 2017, the missile was successfully test fired for the first time from a Sukhoi-30MKI against a sea-based target in the Bay of Bengal. This made the Indian Air Force the first in the world to have successfully tested such a type of air launched trisonic-class missile on a sea-based target. After the IAF successfully tested Brahmos from a Su-30MKI against a sea-based target, it declared on 17 December 2019 that the integration of BrahMos-A on Su-30 MKI is completed.


title: BrahMos

text: 50 IAF SU-30MKI will be modified to carry the BrahMos-A missile, these modified Su-30MKIs will have electronic circuits capable of withstanding nuclear electromagnetic pulse. According to the CEO of BrahMos Aerospace, Sudhir Kumar Mishra, Brahmos-A can reach targets thousands of kilometres away considering the range of launch aircraft. On 20 January 2020, the IAF commissioned its first squadron of Su-30MKI fighters equipped with the BrahMos-A missile. IAF plans to procure 200 BrahMos-A missiles.


title: BrahMos

text: IAF test fired BrahMos-A from Su-30MKI on 8 December 2021 and is now ready to enter mass production. The test validated the structural integrity and functional performance. Major airframe assemblies such as non-metallic air frame sections comprising Ramjet fuel tank and pneumatic fuel supply system which form the integral part of the Ramjet Engine are now locally developed.


title: BrahMos

text: In 2016, India became a member of the MTCR. India and Russia are now planning to jointly develop a new generation of Brahmos missiles with 1500 km-plus range and an ability to hit protected targets with pinpoint accuracy. On 24 November 2020, DRDO successfully test fired upgraded 800 km BrahMos variant. This upgrade will also be applied to all existing BrahMos missiles.


title: BrahMos

text: BrahMos-II is a hypersonic cruise missile currently under development and is estimated to have a range of 600 km. With a speed of Mach 8, it will have double the speed of the current BrahMos missile, and it will be the fastest hypersonic missile in the world. Development could take 7–8 years to complete.


title: BrahMos

text: BrahMos-NG (Next Generation) is a mini version based on the existing BrahMos system. It will have same 290 km range and Mach 3.5 speed but it will weigh around 1.5 tons, with a length of 6 metres and a diameter of 50 cm, making BrahMos-NG 50 percent lighter and three metres shorter than its predecessor. The system is expected to be inducted on the year 2024. BrahMos-NG will have lesser RCS (radar cross section) compared to its predecessor, making it harder for air defense systems to locate and engage the target. BrahMos-NG will have Land, Air, Ship-borne and Submarine tube-launched variants. The first test flight is expected to take place in 2022–24. Initially Brahmos-NG was referred to as Brahmos-M. Additionally, the BrahMos-NG will have an AESA radar rather than the mechanically scanned one on the BrahMos.


title: BrahMos

text: The missile will arm the Sukhoi Su-30MKI, Mikoyan MiG-29K, HAL Tejas and future inductions such as the Dassault Rafale, and HAL MWF. Submarine launched variant will be capable of being fired from the new P75I class of submarines. A model of the new variant was showcased on 20 February 2013, at the 15th anniversary celebrations of BrahMos Corporations. The Sukhoi SU-30MKI would carry three missiles while other combat aircraft would carry one each.


title: BrahMos

text: BrahMos Aerospace is planning to manufacture BrahMos-NG in Uttar Pradesh. The Indian Air Force already confirmed a requirement of 400 missile that will cost around ₹8,000 crore and be delivered within 5 years of time period. The missile is likely to be ready in late 2022.


title: BrahMos

text: The former President of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam asked BrahMos Aerospace to develop an advanced version of the BrahMos cruise missile to maintain India's lead in the field. He stated that a hypersonic version of BrahMos would be needed that could deliver its payload and return to base.


title: BrahMos

text: BrahMos claims it has the capability of attacking surface targets by flying as low as five metres in altitude and the maximum altitude it can fly is 15,000 metres. It has a diameter of 70 cm and a wingspan of 1.7 m. It can gain a speed of Mach 3.5, and has a maximum range of 650 km. The ship-launched and land-based missiles can carry a 200 kg warhead, whereas the aircraft-launched variant (BrahMos A) can carry a 300 kg warhead. It has a two-stage propulsion system, with a solid-propellant rocket for initial acceleration and a liquid-fuelled ramjet responsible for sustained supersonic cruise. Air-breathing ramjet propulsion is much more fuel-efficient than rocket propulsion, giving the BrahMos a longer range than a pure rocket-powered missile would achieve.


title: BrahMos

text: The high speed of the BrahMos likely gives it better target-penetration characteristics than lighter subsonic cruise-missiles, such as Tomahawk. Being twice as heavy and almost four times as fast as Tomahawk, the BrahMos has more than 32 times the on-cruise kinetic energy of a Tomahawk missile, although it carries only 3/5 the payload and a fraction of the range, which suggests that the missile was designed with a different tactical role. Its Mach 2.8 speed means that it cannot be intercepted by some existing missile defence systems and its precision makes it lethal to water targets.


title: BrahMos

text: Although BrahMos was primarily an anti-ship missile, the BrahMos Block III can also engage land-based targets. It can be launched either in a vertical or inclined position and is capable of covering targets over a 360-degree horizon. The BrahMos missile has an identical configuration for land, sea, and sub-sea platforms. The air-launched version has a smaller booster and additional tail fins for added stability during launch. The BrahMos has currently been configured for aerial deployment with the Su-30MKI as its carrier. On 5 September 2010 BrahMos created a record for the first supersonic steep dive. The BrahMos missile also utilises a ""fire-and-forget"" system, requiring no additional input from the operator once the missile has been launched.


title: BrahMos

text: India and Russia intend to make 2,000 BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles over the next ten years through their joint venture company, and nearly 50% of them are expected to be exported to friendly countries. The Brahmos headquarters complex is located at New Delhi and consists of a design centre and aerospace knowledge centre. The integration complex is located at Hyderabad and a production centre is located at Thiruvananthapuram. Another assembly line is being established at Pilani.


title: BrahMos

text: The Brahmos Block was inducted into the army on 21 June 2007. The Brahmos has been inducted in three regiments of the Indian Army. The army has raised one regiment (numbered 861) of the Mark I and two missile regiments of the BrahMos Mark II, numbered 881 and 1889. The first regiment with five mobile launcher cost $83 million to set up. Each of the two new regiments would have between four and six batteries of three to four Mobile Autonomous Launchers (72 missiles per regiment) that can be connected to a mobile command post. All these regiments will be part of the army's existing 40th and 41st Artillery Divisions. Two more regiments were inducted in 2018. The known operational BrahMos regiments are:


title: BrahMos

text: India has deployed Brahmos along with long range cruise missile Nirbhay and Akash surface to air missile to deter Chinese aggression along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh.


title: BrahMos

text: In 2021 March, the Department of National Defense (DND) signed an arms agreement with India to potentially acquire Indian weapons, including the BrahMos missile.


title: BrahMos

text: In 2017, the Shore-based Antiship Missile System Acquisition Project for the maritime force was first conceptualized, while in 2020 the Office of the President approved its inclusion in the Horizon 2 Priority Projects.


title: BrahMos

text: In 2021 December 27, two special allotment release orders (SARO) — worth Php 1.3 billion (₹190 crore) and Php 1.535 billion (₹224 crore) — were issued by the Department of Budget Management (DBM) for the Shore-Based Anti-Ship Missile System Acquisition Project of the Philippine Navy. The SARO allows the DND to finalise contracts for military projects.


title: BrahMos

text: In 2021 December 31, Brahmos Aerospace Pvt Ltd's representatives received the Notice of Award (NOA) for the project worth US$374,962,800. A contract signed on 28 January 2022. It includes at least 3 batteries as part of the agreement. A battery will have at least 3 mobile firing units, plus attached command and control, radar, and support vehicles and units. Each mobile firing unit has 3 ready-to-fire BrahMos anti-ship supersonic missiles, with the export variant having a maximum range of around 290 kilometers.


title: BrahMos

text: The batteries will be operated by the Shore-Based Anti-Ship Missile (SBASM) Battalion of the Philippine Marine Corps' Coastal Defense Regiment.


title: BrahMos

text: In September 2016, it was revealed that the Russian Defense Ministry is interested in purchasing the air-launched BrahMos to arm their Su-30SM fighters. So far, Russia has not purchased the missile system for the Russian Air Force.


title: BrahMos

text: The Brahmos could be fitted to only few, if any, of the new ships of the Russian Navy. The updated "Gorshkov"-class frigates which are the latest type of frigate being built could possibly accommodate the missile. No Brahmos missile has been bought and inducted by the navy.


title: BrahMos

text: In 2019 October, the Philippine Army was reported to be in discussion with India for a possible BrahMos missile sale for at least 2 batteries to be acquired under the Land Based Missile System Acquisition (LBMS) Project.These systems are planned to be operated by the 1st Land Based Missile System Battery of the Army Artillery Regiment, which was activated in 2019 October also.


title: BrahMos

text: In 2022 January 21, the Philippine Army announced plans to purchase two of BrahMos medium-range missile defense systems within the 3rd horizon of the Revised Armed Forces of the Philippines Modernization Program (R-AFPMP) scheduled at the start of 2023 to the end of 2027.


title: BrahMos

text: BrahMos Aerospace has said that several Southeast Asian and Latin American countries have expressed interest in the system, with particular interest in naval and coastal defense versions, and that a "definite list of countries" exists. These countries are Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Indonesia, Egypt, Malaysia, Oman, South Africa, Venezuela, and Vietnam. In the case of Malaysia, they are considering the purchase of the missile for use on its "Kedah" class warships and fighter jets. The intergovernmental agreement between India and Russia to develop the BrahMos stipulates that both countries would have to approve an export sale.


title: BrahMos

text: One of the major issues regarding sales of the missile is that the nations looking to buy may have stressful relations with allies and trading partners of Russia. China is one of the main nations that has objections about its neighbours getting these missiles for their navies. It views the selling of these missiles as an act of belligerence and interference in the disputed territories like the South China Sea.


title: Xenophobia

text: Xenophobia () is the fear or hatred of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an ingroup and an outgroup and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a desire to eliminate their presence, and fear of losing national, ethnic, or racial identity.


title: Xenophobia

text: A 1997 review article on xenophobia holds that it is "an element of a political struggle about who has the right to be cared for by the state and society: a fight for the collective good of the modern state."


title: Xenophobia

text: According to Italian sociologist Guido Bolaffi, xenophobia can also be exhibited as an ""uncritical exaltation of another culture"" which is ascribed ""an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality"".


title: Xenophobia

text: An early example of xenophobic sentiment in Western culture is the Ancient Greek denigration of foreigners as "barbarians", the belief that the Greek people and culture were superior to all other peoples and cultures, and the subsequent conclusion that barbarians were naturally meant to be enslaved.


title: Xenophobia

text: Ancient Romans also held notions of superiority over other peoples. such as in a speech attributed to Manius Acilius:


title: Xenophobia

text: Black Africans were considered especially exotic, and perhaps they were considered threateningly alien, so they are seldom if ever mentioned in Roman literature without some negative connotations. The historian Appian claims that the military commander Marcus Junius Brutus, before the battle of Philippi in 42BC, met an 'Ethiopian' outside the gates of his camp: his soldiers instantly hacked the man to pieces, taking his appearance for a bad omen—to the superstitious Roman, black was the colour of death."


title: Xenophobia

text: The COVID-19 pandemic, which was first reported in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, China, in December 2019, has led to an increase in acts and displays of Sinophobia, as well as prejudice, xenophobia, discrimination, violence, and racism against people of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent and appearance around the world. With the spread of the pandemic and the formation of COVID-19 hotspots, such as those in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, discrimination against people from these hotspots has been reported.


title: Xenophobia

text: Despite the majority of the country's population being of mixed (Pardo), African, or indigenous heritage, depictions of non-European Brazilians on the programming of most national television networks is scarce and typically relegated for musicians/their shows. In the case of telenovelas, Brazilians of darker skin tone are typically depicted as housekeepers or in positions of lower socioeconomic standing.


title: Xenophobia

text: Muslim and Sikh Canadians have faced racism and discrimination in recent years, especially since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the spillover effect of the United States' War on Terror. An increase in hate crimes targeting Ontario Muslims was reported after ISIS took responsibility for the November 2015 Paris attacks.


title: Xenophobia

text: A 2016 survey from The Environics Institute, which was a follow-up to a study conducted 10 years prior, found that there may be discriminating attitudes that may be a residual of the effects of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States. A poll in 2009 by "Maclean's" revealed that only 28% of Canadians view Islam favourably, and only 30% viewed the Sikh religion favourably. 45% of respondents believed Islam encourages violence. In Quebec in particular, only 17% of respondents had a favourable view of Islam.


title: Xenophobia

text: According to the UNHCR, by June 2019, 1.3 million of the 4 million Venezuelan refugees were in Colombia. Because of their urgent situation, many migrants from Venezuela crossed the border illegally, indicating they had few opportunities to gain "access to legal and other rights or basic services and are exposed to exploitation, abuse, manipulation and a wide range of other protection risks, including racism, discrimination and xenophobia". Since the start of the migrant crisis, media outlets and state officials have raised concerns about increasing discrimination against migrants in the country, especially xenophobia and violence against the migrants.


title: Xenophobia

text: Racism in Mexico has a long history. Historically, Mexicans with light skin tones had absolute control over dark skinned Amerindians due to the structure of the Spanish colonial caste system. When a Mexican of a darker-skinned tone marries one of a lighter skinned-tone, it is common for them say that they are " 'making the race better' ("mejorando la raza")". This can be interpreted as a self-attack on their ethnicity. Despite improving economic and social conditions of indigenous Mexicans, discrimination against them continues to this day and there are few laws to protect indigenous Mexicans from discrimination. Violent attacks against indigenous Mexicans are moderately common and many times go unpunished.


title: Xenophobia

text: On 15 March 1911 a band of Maderista soldiers entered Torreón, Mexico, and massacred 303 Chinese and five Japanese. Historian Larissa Schwartz argues that Kang Youwei had successfully organized the prosperous Chinese businessmen there, making them a visible target for class antagonism made extreme by xenophobia.


title: Xenophobia

text: The Chinese were easy to identify in northern cities and were frequent targets especially in Sonora in the 1930s. Systematic persecution resulted from economic, political, and psychological fears of the Chinese, and the government showed little interest in protecting them.


title: Xenophobia

text: Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp argues that the Porfiriato, 1876–1910 promoted immigration from the Middle East. However the revolution of 1910–20 saw a surge in xenophobia and nationalism based on "mestizaje." The community divided into the economically prosperous Lebanese Mexicans who took pride in a distinct Lebanese-Mexican identity, while the downscale remainder often merged into the mestizo community.


title: Xenophobia

text: Racism against indigenous people has been a current problem in Mexico. Domestic workers, many of whom are indigenous women who have moved from rural villages to cities, often face discrimination including verbal, physical or sexual abuse.


title: Xenophobia

text: Peter Szok argues that when the United States brought in large numbers of laborers from the Caribbean—called "Afro-Panamanians"—to build the Panama Canal (1905–1914), xenophobia emerged. The local elite in Panama felt its culture was threatened: they cried out, "La Patria es el Recuerdo." ("The Homeland is the Memory") and developed a Hispanophile elitist identity through an artistic literary movement known as "Hispanismo." Another result was the election of the "overtly nationalist and anti-imperialist" Arnulfo Arias as president in 1940.


title: Xenophobia

text: In Venezuela, like other South American countries, economic inequality often breaks along ethnic and racial lines. A 2013 Swedish academic study stated that Venezuela was the most racist country in the Americas, followed by the Dominican Republic.


title: Xenophobia

text: A network of more than 300 US-based civil rights and human rights organizations stated in a 2010 report that "Discrimination permeates all aspects of life in the United States, and it extends to all communities of color." Discrimination against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities is widely acknowledged, especially in the case of Indians, Muslims, Sikhs as well as other ethnic groups.


title: Xenophobia

text: Members of every major American ethnic and religious minority group have perceived discrimination in their dealings with members of other minority racial and religious groups. Philosopher Cornel West has stated that "racism is an integral element within the very fabric of American culture and society. It is embedded in the country's first collective definition, enunciated in its subsequent laws, and imbued in its dominant way of life."


title: Xenophobia

text: A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center suggested that 76% of black and Asian respondents had experienced some form of discrimination, at least from time to time. Studies from "PNAS" and "Nature" have found that during traffic stops, officers spoke to black men in a less respectful tone than they did to white men and that black drivers are more likely to be pulled over and searched by police than white drivers. Black people are also reportedly overrepresented as criminals in the media. In 2020 the COVID-19 epidemic was often blamed on China, leading to attacks on Chinese Americans. This represents a continuation of xenophobic attacks on Chinese Americans for 150 years.


title: Xenophobia

text: In 2008, a Pew Research Center survey found that negative views concerning Jews were most common in the three predominantly Arab nations which were polled, with 97% of Lebanese having an unfavorable opinion of Jews, 95% of Egyptians and 96% of Jordanians.


title: Xenophobia

text: In 1991–92, Bhutan is said to have deported between 10,000 and 100,000 ethnic Nepalis (Lhotshampa). The actual number of refugees who were initially deported is debated by both sides. In March 2008, this population began a multiyear resettlement in third countries including the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia. At present, the United States is working towards resettling more than 60,000 of these refugees in the US in accordance with its third country settlement program.


title: Xenophobia

text: The Boxer Rebellion was a violent anti-foreign, anti-Christian, and anti-imperialist uprising which occurred in China between 1899 and 1901. It was led by a new group, the "Militia United in Righteousness', the group was popularly known as the "Boxers" because many of its members had practiced Chinese martial arts, at the time, these martial arts were popularly referred to as Chinese Boxing. After China's defeat in war by Japan in 1895, villagers in North China feared the expansion of foreign spheres of influence and resented the extension of privileges to Christian missionaries. In a severe drought, Boxer violence spread across Shandong and the North China Plain, destroying foreign property, attacking or murdering Christian missionaries and Chinese Christians. In June 1900, Boxer fighters, convinced that they were invulnerable to foreign weapons, converged on Beijing, and their slogan was "Support the Qing government and exterminate the foreigners." Diplomats, missionaries, soldiers and some Chinese Christians took refuge in the diplomatic Legation Quarter. They were besieged for 55 days by the Imperial Army of the Chinese government and the Boxers. George Makari says that the Boxers, "promoted a violent hatred of all those from other lands and made no effort to distinguish the beneficent from the rapacious ones... They were unabashedly xenophobic." The Boxers were overthrown by an Eight Nation Alliance of American, Austro-Hungarian, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Russian troops—20,000 in all—that invaded China to lift the siege in August 1900. The allies imposed the Boxer Protocol in 1901, with a massive annual cash indemnity to be paid by the Chinese government. The episode generated worldwide attention and denunciation of xenophobia.


title: Xenophobia

text: Historian Mary C. Wright has argued that the combination of Chinese nationalism and xenophobia had a major impact on the Chinese worldview in the first half of the 20th century. Examining the bitterness and hatred which existed towards Americans and Europeans in the decades before the Communist takeover in 1949, she argues:The crude fear of the white peril that the last imperial dynasty had been able to exploit in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 had been submerged but not overcome, and expanding special privileges of foreigners were irritants in increasingly wide spheres of Chinese life. These fears and irritations provided a mass sounding board for what otherwise might have been rather arid denunciations of imperialists. It is well to remember that both Nationalists and Communists have struck this note.


title: Xenophobia

text: In China, xenophobia against non-Chinese residents has been inflamed by the COVID-19 pandemic in mainland China, with foreigners being described as "foreign garbage" and targeted for "disposal". Some black people in China were evicted from their homes by police and told to leave China within 24 hours, due to disinformation that they and other foreigners were spreading the virus. Expressions of Chinese xenophobia and discriminatory practices, such as the exclusion of black customers from restaurants, were criticized by foreign governments and members of the diplomatic corps.


title: Xenophobia

text: Black people in Hong Kong have experienced negative comments and instances of discrimination in the job market and on public transport. Expats and South Asian minorities have faced increased xenophobia during the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Xenophobia

text: Since 2017, China has come under intense international criticism for its treatment of one million Muslims (the majority of them are Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic minority mostly in Xinjiang) who are being held in secret detention camps without any legal process. Critics of the policy have described it as the Sinicization of Xinjiang and they have also called it an ethnocide or a cultural genocide.


title: Xenophobia

text: A number of discriminatory laws against Chinese Indonesians were enacted by the government of Indonesia. In 1959, President Sukarno approved PP 10/1959 that forced Chinese Indonesians to close their businesses in rural areas and relocate into urban areas. Moreover, political pressures in the 1970s and 1980s restricted the role of the Chinese Indonesian in politics, academics, and the military. As a result, they were thereafter constrained professionally to becoming entrepreneurs and professional managers in trade, manufacturing, and banking. In 1998, Indonesia riots over higher food prices and rumors of hoarding by merchants and shopkeepers often degenerated into anti-Chinese attacks.


title: Xenophobia

text: Native Papuans in the country have faced racism, and several reports have accused Indonesia of committing a "slow-motion genocide" in West Papua. Hostility towards the LGBT community has been recently reported, especially in Aceh.