title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The meridians (, ) are believed to be channels running from the zàng-fǔ in the interior (, ) of the body to the limbs and joints ("the surface" [, ]), transporting qi and xuĕ. TCM identifies 12 "regular" and 8 "extraordinary" meridians; the Chinese terms being (, lit. "the Twelve Vessels") and () respectively. There's also a number of less customary channels branching from the "regular" meridians.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: "Fuke "() is the Chinese term for women's medicine (known as gynecology and obstetrics in modern medicine). However, there are few or no ancient works on it except for Fu Qing-zhu's "Fu Qing Zhu Nu Ke" (Fu Qing-zhu's "Gynecology"). In traditional China, as in many other cultures, the health and medicine of female bodies was less understood than that of male bodies. Women's bodies were often secondary to male bodies, since women were thought of as the weaker, sicklier sex.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: In clinical encounters, women and men were treated differently. Diagnosing women was not as simple as diagnosing men. First, when a woman fell ill, an appropriate adult man was to call the doctor and remain present during the examination, for the woman could not be left alone with the doctor. The physician would discuss the female's problems and diagnosis only through the male. However, in certain cases, when a woman dealt with complications of pregnancy or birth, older women assumed the role of the formal authority. Men in these situations would not have much power to interfere. Second, women were often silent about their issues with doctors due to the societal expectation of female modesty when a male figure was in the room. Third, patriarchal society also caused doctors to call women and children patients "the anonymous category of family members ("Jia Ren") or household ("Ju Jia")" in their journals. This anonymity and lack of conversation between the doctor and woman patient led to the inquiry diagnosis of the Four Diagnostic Methods being the most challenging. Doctors used a medical doll known as a Doctor's lady, on which female patients could indicate the location of their symptoms.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Cheng Maoxian (b. 1581), who practiced medicine in Yangzhou, described the difficulties doctors had with the norm of female modesty. One of his case studies was that of Fan Jisuo's teenage daughter, who could not be diagnosed because she was unwilling to speak about her symptoms, since the illness involved discharge from her intimate areas. As Cheng describes, there were four standard methods of diagnosis – looking, asking, listening and smelling and touching (for pulse-taking). To maintain some form of modesty, women would often stay hidden behind curtains and screens. The doctor was allowed to touch enough of her body to complete his examination, often just the pulse taking. This would lead to situations where the symptoms and the doctor's diagnosis did not agree and the doctor would have to ask to view more of the patient.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: These social and cultural beliefs were often barriers to learning more about female health, with women themselves often being the most formidable barrier. Women were often uncomfortable talking about their illnesses, especially in front of the male chaperones that attended medical examinations. Women would choose to omit certain symptoms as a means of upholding their chastity and honor. One such example is the case in which a teenage girl was unable to be diagnosed because she failed to mention her symptom of vaginal discharge. Silence was their way of maintaining control in these situations, but it often came at the expense of their health and the advancement of female health and medicine. This silence and control were most obviously seen when the health problem was related to the core of Ming "fuke", or the sexual body. It was often in these diagnostic settings that women would choose silence. In addition, there would be a conflict between patient and doctor on the probability of her diagnosis. For example, a woman who thought herself to be past the point of child-bearing age, might not believe a doctor who diagnoses her as pregnant. This only resulted in more conflict.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Yin and yang were critical to the understanding of women's bodies, but understood only in conjunction with male bodies. Yin and yang ruled the body, the body being a microcosm of the universe and the earth. In addition, gender in the body was understood as homologous, the two genders operating in synchronization. Gender was presumed to influence the movement of energy and a well-trained physician would be expected to read the pulse and be able to identify two dozen or more energy flows. Yin and yang concepts were applied to the feminine and masculine aspects of all bodies, implying that the differences between men and women begin at the level of this energy flow. According to "Bequeathed Writings of Master Chu" the male's yang pulse movement follows an ascending path in "compliance [with cosmic direction] so that the cycle of circulation in the body and the Vital Gate are felt...The female's yin pulse movement follows a defending path against the direction of cosmic influences, so that the nadir and the Gate of Life are felt at the inch position of the left hand". In sum, classical medicine marked yin and yang as high and low on bodies which in turn would be labeled normal or abnormal and gendered either male or female.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Bodily functions could be categorized through systems, not organs. In many drawings and diagrams, the twelve channels and their visceral systems were organized by yin and yang, an organization that was identical in female and male bodies. Female and male bodies were no different on the plane of yin and yang. Their gendered differences were not acknowledged in diagrams of the human body. Medical texts such as the "Yuzuan yizong jinjian" were filled with illustrations of male bodies or androgynous bodies that did not display gendered characteristics.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: As in other cultures, fertility and menstruation dominate female health concerns. Since male and female bodies were governed by the same forces, traditional Chinese medicine did not recognize the womb as the place of reproduction. The abdominal cavity presented pathologies that were similar in both men and women, which included tumors, growths, hernias, and swellings of the genitals. The "master system," as Charlotte Furth calls it, is the kidney visceral system, which governed reproductive functions. Therefore, it was not the anatomical structures that allowed for pregnancy, but the difference in processes that allowed for the condition of pregnancy to occur.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Traditional Chinese medicine's dealings with pregnancy are documented from at least the seventeenth century. According to Charlotte Furth, "a pregnancy (in the seventeenth century) as a known bodily experience emerged [...] out of the liminality of menstrual irregularity, as uneasy digestion, and a sense of fullness". These symptoms were common among other illness as well, so the diagnosis of pregnancy often came late in the term. The "Canon of the Pulse", which described the use of pulse in diagnosis, stated that pregnancy was "a condition marked by symptoms of the disorder in one whose pulse is normal" or "where the pulse and symptoms do not agree". Women were often silent about suspected pregnancy, which led to many men not knowing that their wife or daughter was pregnant until complications arrived. Complications through the misdiagnosis and the woman's reluctance to speak often led to medically induced abortions. Cheng, Furth wrote, "was unapologetic about endangering a fetus when pregnancy risked a mother's well being". The method of abortion was the ingestion of certain herbs and foods. Disappointment at the loss of the fetus often led to family discord.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: If the baby and mother survived the term of the pregnancy, childbirth was then the next step. The tools provided for birth were: towels to catch the blood, a container for the placenta, a pregnancy sash to support the belly, and an infant swaddling wrap. With these tools, the baby was born, cleaned, and swaddled; however, the mother was then immediately the focus of the doctor to replenish her "qi." In his writings, Cheng places a large amount of emphasis on the Four Diagnostic methods to deal with postpartum issues and instructs all physicians to "not neglect any [of the four methods]". The process of birthing was thought to deplete a woman's blood level and "qi" so the most common treatments for postpartum were food (commonly garlic and ginseng), medicine, and rest. This process was followed up by a month check-in with the physician, a practice known as "zuo yuezi".


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Infertility, not very well understood, posed serious social and cultural repercussions. The seventh-century scholar Sun Simiao is often quoted: "those who have prescriptions for women's distinctiveness take their differences of pregnancy, childbirth and [internal] bursting injuries as their basis." Even in contemporary "fu ke" placing emphasis on reproductive functions, rather than the entire health of the woman, suggests that the main function of "fu ke" is to produce children.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Once again, the kidney visceral system governs the "source "Qi"", which governs the reproductive systems in both sexes. This source "Qi" was thought to "be slowly depleted through sexual activity, menstruation and childbirth." It was also understood that the depletion of source Qi could result from the movement of an external pathology that moved through the outer visceral systems before causing more permanent damage to the home of source Qi, the kidney system. In addition, the view that only very serious ailments ended in the damage of this system means that those who had trouble with their reproductive systems or fertility were seriously ill.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: According to traditional Chinese medical texts, infertility can be summarized into different syndrome types. These were spleen and kidney depletion (yang depletion), liver and kidney depletion (yin depletion), blood depletion, phlegm damp, liver oppression, and damp heat. This is important because, while most other issues were complex in Chinese medical physiology, women's fertility issues were simple. Most syndrome types revolved around menstruation, or lack thereof. The patient was entrusted with recording not only the frequency, but also the "volume, color, consistency, and odor of menstrual flow." This placed responsibility of symptom recording on the patient, and was compounded by the earlier discussed issue of female chastity and honor. This meant that diagnosing female infertility was difficult, because the only symptoms that were recorded and monitored by the physician were the pulse and color of the tongue.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: In general, disease is perceived as a disharmony (or imbalance) in the functions or interactions of yin, yang, qi, xuĕ, zàng-fǔ, meridians etc. and/or of the interaction between the human body and the environment. Therapy is based on which "pattern of disharmony" can be identified. Thus, "pattern discrimination" is the most important step in TCM diagnosis. It is also known to be the most difficult aspect of practicing TCM.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: To determine which pattern is at hand, practitioners will examine things like the color and shape of the tongue, the relative strength of pulse-points, the smell of the breath, the quality of breathing or the sound of the voice. For example, depending on tongue and pulse conditions, a TCM practitioner might diagnose bleeding from the mouth and nose as: "Liver fire rushes upwards and scorches the Lung, injuring the blood vessels and giving rise to reckless pouring of blood from the mouth and nose." He might then go on to prescribe treatments designed to clear heat or supplement the Lung.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: In TCM, a disease has two aspects: "bìng" and "zhèng". The former is often translated as "disease entity", "disease category", "illness", or simply "diagnosis". The latter, and more important one, is usually translated as "pattern" (or sometimes also as "syndrome"). For example, the disease entity of a common cold might present with a pattern of wind-cold in one person, and with the pattern of wind-heat in another.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: From a scientific point of view, most of the disease entities () listed by TCM constitute symptoms. Examples include headache, cough, abdominal pain, constipation etc.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Since therapy will not be chosen according to the disease entity but according to the pattern, two people with the same disease entity but different patterns will receive different therapy. Vice versa, people with similar patterns might receive similar therapy even if their disease entities are different. This is called "yì bìng tóng zhì, tóng bìng yì zhì" ().


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: In TCM, "pattern" () refers to a "pattern of disharmony" or "functional disturbance" within the functional entities of which the TCM model of the body is composed. There are disharmony patterns of qi, xuě, the body fluids, the zàng-fǔ, and the meridians. They are ultimately defined by their symptoms and signs (i.e., for example, pulse and tongue findings).


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: In clinical practice, the identified pattern usually involves a combination of affected entities (compare with typical examples of patterns). The concrete pattern identified should account for "all" the symptoms a person has.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The Six Excesses (, sometimes also translated as "Pathogenic Factors", or "Six Pernicious Influences"; with the alternative term of , – "Six Evils" or "Six Devils") are allegorical terms used to describe disharmony patterns displaying certain typical symptoms. These symptoms resemble the effects of six climatic factors. In the allegory, these symptoms can occur because one or more of those climatic factors (called , "the six qi") were able to invade the body surface and to proceed to the interior. This is sometimes used to draw causal relationships (i.e., prior exposure to wind/cold/etc. is identified as the cause of a disease), while other authors explicitly deny a direct cause-effect relationship between weather conditions and disease, pointing out that the Six Excesses are primarily descriptions of a certain combination of symptoms translated into a pattern of disharmony. It is undisputed, though, that the Six Excesses can manifest inside the body without an external cause. In this case, they might be denoted "internal", e.g., "internal wind" or "internal fire (or heat)".


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Six-Excesses-patterns can consist of only one or a combination of Excesses (e.g., wind-cold, wind-damp-heat). They can also transform from one into another.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: For each of the functional entities (qi, xuĕ, zàng-fǔ, meridians etc.), typical disharmony patterns are recognized; for example: qi vacuity and qi stagnation in the case of qi; blood vacuity, blood stasis, and blood heat in the case of xuĕ; Spleen qi vacuity, Spleen yang vacuity, Spleen qi vacuity with down-bearing qi, Spleen qi vacuity with lack of blood containment, cold-damp invasion of the Spleen, damp-heat invasion of Spleen and Stomach in case of the Spleen zàng; wind/cold/damp invasion in the case of the meridians.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: TCM gives detailed prescriptions of these patterns regarding their typical symptoms, mostly including characteristic tongue and/or pulse findings. For example:


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The process of determining which actual pattern is on hand is called (, usually translated as "pattern diagnosis", "pattern identification" or "pattern discrimination"). Generally, the first and most important step in pattern diagnosis is an evaluation of the present signs and symptoms on the basis of the "Eight Principles" (). These eight principles refer to four pairs of fundamental qualities of a disease: exterior/interior, heat/cold, vacuity/repletion, and yin/yang. Out of these, heat/cold and vacuity/repletion have the biggest clinical importance. The yin/yang quality, on the other side, has the smallest importance and is somewhat seen aside from the other three pairs, since it merely presents a general and vague conclusion regarding what other qualities are found. In detail, the Eight Principles refer to the following:


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: After the fundamental nature of a disease in terms of the Eight Principles is determined, the investigation focuses on more specific aspects. By evaluating the present signs and symptoms against the background of typical disharmony patterns of the various entities, evidence is collected whether or how specific entities are affected. This evaluation can be done


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: There are also three special pattern diagnosis systems used in case of febrile and infectious diseases only ("Six Channel system" or "six division pattern" []; "Wei Qi Ying Xue system" or "four division pattern" []; "San Jiao system" or "three burners pattern" []).


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Although TCM and its concept of disease do not strongly differentiate between cause and effect, pattern discrimination can include considerations regarding the disease cause; this is called (, "disease-cause pattern discrimination").


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: In TCM, there are five major diagnostic methods: inspection, auscultation, olfaction, inquiry, and palpation. These are grouped into what is known as the "Four pillars" of diagnosis, which are Inspection, Auscultation/ Olfaction, Inquiry, and Palpation ().


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Examination of the tongue and the pulse are among the principal diagnostic methods in TCM. Details of the tongue, including shape, size, color, texture, cracks, teeth marks, as well as tongue coating are all considered as part of tongue diagnosis. Various regions of the tongue's surface are believed to correspond to the zàng-fŭ organs. For example, redness on the tip of the tongue might indicate heat in the Heart, while redness on the sides of the tongue might indicate heat in the Liver.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Pulse palpation involves measuring the pulse both at a superficial and at a deep level at three different locations on the radial artery ("Cun, Guan, Chi", located two fingerbreadths from the wrist crease, one fingerbreadth from the wrist crease, and right at the wrist crease, respectively, usually palpated with the index, middle and ring finger) of each arm, for a total of twelve pulses, all of which are thought to correspond with certain zàng-fŭ. The pulse is examined for several characteristics including rhythm, strength and volume, and described with qualities like "floating, slippery, bolstering-like, feeble, thready and quick"; each of these qualities indicates certain disease patterns. Learning TCM pulse diagnosis can take several years.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The term "herbal medicine" is somewhat misleading in that, while plant elements are by far the most commonly used substances in TCM, other, non-botanic substances are used as well: animal, human, and mineral products are also used. Thus, the term "medicinal" (instead of herb) may be used, although there is no scientific evidence that any of these compounds have medicinal effects.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: There are roughly 13,000 compounds used in China and over 100,000 TCM recipes recorded in the ancient literature. Plant elements and extracts are by far the most common elements used. In the classic "Handbook of Traditional Drugs" from 1941, 517 drugs were listed – out of these, 45 were animal parts, and 30 were minerals.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Some animal parts used can be considered rather strange such as cow gallstones, hornet nests, leeches, and scorpion. Other examples of animal parts include horn of the antelope or buffalo, deer antlers, testicles and penis bone of the dog, and snake bile. Some TCM textbooks still recommend preparations containing animal tissues, but there has been little research to justify the claimed clinical efficacy of many TCM animal products.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Some compounds can include the parts of endangered species, including tiger bones and rhinoceros horn


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: which is used for many ailments (though not as an aphrodisiac as is commonly misunderstood in the West).


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The black market in rhinoceros horns (driven not just by TCM but also unrelated status-seeking) has reduced the world's rhino population by more than 90 percent over the past 40 years.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Concerns have also arisen over the use of pangolin scales, turtle plastron, seahorses, and the gill plates of mobula and manta rays.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Poachers hunt restricted or endangered species to supply the black market with TCM products. There is no scientific evidence of efficacy for tiger medicines. Concern over China considering to legalize the trade in tiger parts prompted the 171-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to endorse a decision opposing the resurgence of trade in tigers. Fewer than 30,000 saiga antelopes remain, which are exported to China for use in traditional fever therapies. Organized gangs illegally export the horn of the antelopes to China. The pressures on seahorses ("Hippocampus" spp.) used in traditional medicine is enormous; tens of millions of animals are unsustainably caught annually. Many species of syngnathid are currently part of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species or national equivalents.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Since TCM recognizes bear bile as a treatment compound, more than 12,000 asiatic black bears are held in bear farms. The bile is extracted through a permanent hole in the abdomen leading to the gall bladder, which can cause severe pain. This can lead to bears trying to kill themselves. As of 2012, approximately 10,000 bears are farmed in China for their bile. This practice has spurred public outcry across the country. The bile is collected from live bears via a surgical procedure. As of March 2020 bear bile as ingredient of "Tan Re Qing" injection remains on the list of remedies recommended for treatment of "severe cases" of COVID-19 by National Health Commission of China and the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The deer penis is believed to have therapeutic benefits according to traditional Chinese medicine. Tiger parts from poached animals include tiger penis, believed to improve virility, and tiger eyes. The illegal trade for tiger parts in China has driven the species to near-extinction because of its popularity in traditional medicine. Laws protecting even critically endangered species such as the Sumatran tiger fail to stop the display and sale of these items in open markets. Shark fin soup is traditionally regarded in Chinese medicine as beneficial for health in East Asia, and its status as an elite dish has led to huge demand with the increase of affluence in China, devastating shark populations. The shark fins have been a part of traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. Shark finning is banned in many countries, but the trade is thriving in Hong Kong and China, where the fins are part of shark fin soup, a dish considered a delicacy, and used in some types of traditional Chinese medicine.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The tortoise (freshwater turtle, "guiban") and turtle (Chinese softshell turtle, "biejia") species used in traditional Chinese medicine are raised on farms, while restrictions are made on the accumulation and export of other endangered species. However, issues concerning the overexploitation of Asian turtles in China have not been completely solved. Australian scientists have developed methods to identify medicines containing DNA traces of endangered species. Finally, although not an endangered species, sharp rises in exports of donkeys and donkey hide from Africa to China to make the traditional remedy "ejiao" have prompted export restrictions by some African countries.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Traditional Chinese medicine also includes some human parts: the classic Materia medica (Bencao Gangmu) describes (also criticizes) the use of 35 human body parts and excreta in medicines, including bones, fingernail, hairs, dandruff, earwax, impurities on the teeth, feces, urine, sweat, organs, but most are no longer in use.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Human placenta has been used an ingredient in certain traditional Chinese medicines, including using dried human placenta, known as "Ziheche", to treat infertility, impotence and other conditions. The consumption of the human placenta is a potential source of infection.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: there were not enough good-quality trials of herbal therapies to allow their effectiveness to be determined. A high percentage of relevant studies on traditional Chinese medicine are in Chinese databases. Fifty percent of systematic reviews on TCM did not search Chinese databases, which could lead to a bias in the results. Many systematic reviews of TCM interventions published in Chinese journals are incomplete, some contained errors or were misleading. The herbs recommended by traditional Chinese practitioners in the US are unregulated.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: With an eye to the enormous Chinese market, pharmaceutical companies have explored creating new drugs from traditional remedies. The journal "Nature" commented that "claims made on behalf of an uncharted body of knowledge should be treated with the customary skepticism that is the bedrock of both science and medicine."


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: There had been success in the 1970s, however, with the development of the antimalarial drug artemisinin, which is a processed extract of "Artemisia annua", a herb traditionally used as a fever treatment. "Artemisia annua" has been used by Chinese herbalists in traditional Chinese medicines for 2,000 years. In 1596, Li Shizhen recommended tea made from qinghao specifically to treat malaria symptoms in his "Compendium of Materia Medica". Researcher Tu Youyou discovered that a low-temperature extraction process could isolate an effective antimalarial substance from the plant. Tu says she was influenced by a traditional Chinese herbal medicine source, "The Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergency Treatments", written in 340 by Ge Hong, which states that this herb should be steeped in cold water. The extracted substance, once subject to detoxification and purification processes, is a usable antimalarial drug – a 2012 review found that artemisinin-based remedies were the most effective drugs for the treatment of malaria. For her work on malaria, Tu received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Despite global efforts in combating malaria, it remains a large burden for the population. Although WHO recommends artemisinin-based remedies for treating uncomplicated malaria, but resistance to the drug can no longer be ignored.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Also in the 1970s Chinese researcher Zhang TingDong and colleagues investigated the potential use of the traditionally used substance arsenic trioxide to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). Building on his work, research both in China and the West eventually led to the development of the drug Trisenox, which was approved for leukemia treatment by the FDA in 2000.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Huperzine A, an extract from the herb, "Huperzia serrata", is under preliminary research as a possible therapeutic for Alzheimer's disease, but poor methodological quality of the research restricts conclusions about its effectiveness.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Ephedrine in its natural form, known as "má huáng" () in TCM, has been documented in China since the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) as an antiasthmatic and stimulant. In 1885, the chemical synthesis of ephedrine was first accomplished by Japanese organic chemist Nagai Nagayoshi based on his research on Japanese and Chinese traditional herbal medicines


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: From the earliest records regarding the use of compounds to today, the toxicity of certain substances has been described in all Chinese materiae medicae. Since TCM has become more popular in the Western world, there are increasing concerns about the potential toxicity of many traditional Chinese plants, animal parts and minerals. Traditional Chinese herbal remedies are conveniently available from grocery stores in most Chinese neighborhoods; some of these items may contain toxic ingredients, are imported into the U.S. illegally, and are associated with claims of therapeutic benefit without evidence. For most compounds, efficacy and toxicity testing are based on traditional knowledge rather than laboratory analysis. The toxicity in some cases could be confirmed by modern research (i.e., in scorpion); in some cases it could not (i.e., in "Curculigo"). Traditional herbal medicines can contain extremely toxic chemicals and heavy metals, and naturally occurring toxins, which can cause illness, exacerbate pre-existing poor health or result in death. Botanical misidentification of plants can cause toxic reactions in humans. The description of some plants used in TCM has changed, leading to unintended poisoning by using the wrong plants. A concern is also contaminated herbal medicines with microorganisms and fungal toxins, including aflatoxin. Traditional herbal medicines are sometimes contaminated with toxic heavy metals, including lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium, which inflict serious health risks to consumers. Also, adulteration of some herbal medicine preparations with conventional drugs which may cause serious adverse effects, such as corticosteroids, phenylbutazone, phenytoin, and glibenclamide, has been reported.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Substances known to be potentially dangerous include "Aconitum", secretions from the Asiatic toad, powdered centipede, the Chinese beetle ("Mylabris phalerata"), certain fungi, "Aristolochia", arsenic sulfide (realgar), mercury sulfide, and cinnabar. Asbestos ore (Actinolite, Yang Qi Shi, 阳起石) is used to treat impotence in TCM. Due to galena's (litharge, lead(II) oxide) high lead content, it is known to be toxic. Lead, mercury, arsenic, copper, cadmium, and thallium have been detected in TCM products sold in the U.S. and China.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: To avoid its toxic adverse effects "Xanthium sibiricum" must be processed. Hepatotoxicity has been reported with products containing "Reynoutria multiflora" (synonym "Polygonum multiflorum"), glycyrrhizin, "Senecio" and "Symphytum". The herbs indicated as being hepatotoxic included "Dictamnus dasycarpus", "Astragalus membranaceous", and "Paeonia lactiflora". Contrary to popular belief, "Ganoderma lucidum" mushroom extract, as an adjuvant for cancer immunotherapy, appears to have the potential for toxicity. A 2013 review suggested that although the antimalarial herb "Artemisia annua" may not cause hepatotoxicity, haematotoxicity, or hyperlipidemia, it should be used cautiously during pregnancy due to a potential risk of embryotoxicity at a high dose.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: However, many adverse reactions are due to misuse or abuse of Chinese medicine. For example, the misuse of the dietary supplement "Ephedra" (containing ephedrine) can lead to adverse events including gastrointestinal problems as well as sudden death from cardiomyopathy. Products adulterated with pharmaceuticals for weight loss or erectile dysfunction are one of the main concerns. Chinese herbal medicine has been a major cause of acute liver failure in China.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The harvesting of Guano from bat caves ("Ye Ming Sha") brings workers into close contact with these animals, increasing the risk of zoonosis. The Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of SARS-like coronaviruses in samples of bat droppings.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Acupuncture is the insertion of needles into superficial structures of the body (skin, subcutaneous tissue, muscles) – usually at acupuncture points (acupoints) – and their subsequent manipulation; this aims at influencing the flow of qi. According to TCM it relieves pain and treats (and prevents) various diseases. The US FDA classifies single-use acupuncture needles as Class II medical devices, under CFR 21.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Acupuncture is often accompanied by moxibustion – the Chinese characters for acupuncture () literally meaning "acupuncture-moxibustion" – which involves burning mugwort on or near the skin at an acupuncture point. According to the American Cancer Society, "available scientific evidence does not support claims that moxibustion is effective in preventing or treating cancer or any other disease".


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: In electroacupuncture, an electric current is applied to the needles once they are inserted, to further stimulate the respective acupuncture points.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: A recent historian of Chinese medicine remarked that it is "nicely ironic that the specialty of acupuncture -- arguably the most questionable part of their medical heritage for most Chinese at the start of the twentieth century -- has become the most marketable aspect of Chinese medicine." She found that acupuncture as we know it today has hardly been in existence for sixty years. Moreover, the fine, filiform needle we think of as the acupuncture needle today was not widely used a century ago. Present day acupuncture was developed in the 1930s and put into wide practice only as late as the 1960s.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: A 2013 editorial in the American journal "Anesthesia and Analgesia" stated that acupuncture studies produced inconsistent results, (i.e. acupuncture relieved pain in some conditions but had no effect in other very similar conditions) which suggests the presence of false positive results. These may be caused by factors like biased study design, poor blinding, and the classification of electrified needles (a type of TENS) as a form of acupuncture. The inability to find consistent results despite more than 3,000 studies, the editorial continued, suggests that the treatment seems to be a placebo effect and the existing equivocal positive results are the type of noise one expects to see after a large number of studies are performed on an inert therapy. The editorial concluded that the best controlled studies showed a clear pattern, in which the outcome does not rely upon needle location or even needle insertion, and since "these variables are those that define acupuncture, the only sensible conclusion is that acupuncture does not work."


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: According to the US NIH National Cancer Institute, a review of 17,922 patients reported that real acupuncture relieved muscle and joint pain, caused by aromatase inhibitors, much better than sham acupuncture. Regarding cancer patients, The review hypothesized that acupuncture may cause physical responses in nerve cells, the pituitary gland, and the brain – releasing proteins, hormones, and chemicals that are proposed to affect blood pressure, body temperature, immune activity, and endorphin release.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: A 2012 meta-analysis concluded that the mechanisms of acupuncture "are clinically relevant, but that an important part of these total effects is not due to issues considered to be crucial by most acupuncturists, such as the correct location of points and depth of needling ... [but is] ... associated with more potent placebo or context effects". Commenting on this meta-analysis, both Edzard Ernst and David Colquhoun said the results were of negligible clinical significance.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: A 2011 overview of Cochrane reviews found evidence that suggests acupuncture is effective for some but not all kinds of pain. A 2010 systematic review found that there is evidence "that acupuncture provides a short-term clinically relevant effect when compared with a waiting list control or when acupuncture is added to another intervention" in the treatment of chronic low back pain. Two review articles discussing the effectiveness of acupuncture, from 2008 and 2009, have concluded that there is not enough evidence to conclude that it is effective beyond the placebo effect.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Acupuncture is generally safe when administered using Clean Needle Technique (CNT). Although serious adverse effects are rare, acupuncture is not without risk. Severe adverse effects, including very rarely death (5 case reports), have been reported.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Tui na () is a form of massage, based on the assumptions of TCM, from which shiatsu is thought to have evolved. Techniques employed may include thumb presses, rubbing, percussion, and assisted stretching.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Qìgōng () is a TCM system of exercise and meditation that combines regulated breathing, slow movement, and focused awareness, purportedly to cultivate and balance qi. One branch of qigong is qigong massage, in which the practitioner combines massage techniques with awareness of the acupuncture channels and points.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Qi is air, breath, energy, or primordial life source that is neither matter or spirit. While Gong is a skillful movement, work, or exercise of the qi.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Cupping () is a type of Chinese massage, consisting of placing several glass "cups" (open spheres) on the body. A match is lit and placed inside the cup and then removed before placing the cup against the skin. As the air in the cup is heated, it expands, and after placing in the skin, cools, creating lower pressure inside the cup that allows the cup to stick to the skin via suction. When combined with massage oil, the cups can be slid around the back, offering "reverse-pressure massage".


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Gua sha () is abrading the skin with pieces of smooth jade, bone, animal tusks or horns or smooth stones; until red spots then bruising cover the area to which it is done. It is believed that this treatment is for almost any ailment. The red spots and bruising take three to ten days to heal, there is often some soreness in the area that has been treated.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Diē-dá () or Dit Da, is a traditional Chinese bone-setting technique, usually practiced by martial artists who know aspects of Chinese medicine that apply to the treatment of trauma and injuries such as bone fractures, sprains, and bruises. Some of these specialists may also use or recommend other disciplines of Chinese medical therapies if serious injury is involved. Such practice of bone-setting () is not common in the West.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The concepts "yin" and "yang" are associated with different classes of foods, and tradition considers it important to consume them in a balanced fashion.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: From 1 July 2012 Chinese medicine practitioners must be registered under the national registration and accreditation scheme with the Chinese Medicine Board of Australia and meet the Board's Registration Standards, to practice in Australia.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: TCM is regulated in five provinces in Canada: Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, and Newfoundland & Labrador.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The People's Republic of China has supported TCM since its founding in 1949 The National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine was created in 1949, which then absorbed existing TCM management in 1986 with major changes in 1998.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: China's National People's Congress Standing Committee passed the country's first law on TCM in 2016, which came into effect on 1 July 2017. The new law standardized TCM certifications by requiring TCM practitioners to (i) pass exams administered by provincial-level TCM authorities, and (ii) obtain recommendations from two certified practitioners. TCM products and services can be advertised only with approval from the local TCM authority.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: During British rule, Chinese medicine practitioners in Hong Kong were not recognized as "medical doctors", which means they could not issue prescription drugs, give injections, etc. However, TCM practitioners could register and operate TCM as "herbalists". The Chinese Medicine Council of Hong Kong was established in 1999. It regulates the compounds and professional standards for TCM practitioners. All TCM practitioners in Hong Kong are required to register with the council. The eligibility for registration includes a recognised 5-year university degree of TCM, a 30-week minimum supervised clinical internship, and passing the licensing exam.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The Portuguese Macau government seldom interfered in the affairs of Chinese society, including with regard to regulations on the practice of TCM. There were a few TCM pharmacies in Macau during the colonial period. In 1994, the Portuguese Macau government published Decree-Law no. 53/94/M that officially started to regulate the TCM market. After the sovereign handover, the Macau S.A.R. government also published regulations on the practice of TCM. In 2000, Macau University of Science and Technology and Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine established the Macau College of Traditional Chinese Medicine to offer a degree course in Chinese medicine.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: In Macau, the legitimacy of Chinese medicine is not built upon "miracle making". Instead, it is achieved through a celebration of cultural tradition rejuvenated with discourses of nationalism and modernity, and through the mutual constructions of medical references between doctors and patients.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: In 2022, a new law regulating TCM, Law no. 11/2021, came into effect. The same law also repealed Decree-Law no. 53/94/M.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: All traditional medicines, including TCM, are regulated by Indonesian Minister of Health Regulation of 2013 on traditional medicine. Traditional medicine license ("Surat Izin Pengobatan Tradisional" – SIPT) is granted to the practitioners whose methods are recognized as safe and may benefit health. The TCM clinics are registered but there is no explicit regulation for it. The only TCM method which is accepted by medical logic and is empirically proofed is acupuncture. The acupuncturists can get SIPT and participate in health care facilities.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The Traditional and Complementary Medicine Bill was passed by parliament in 2012 establishing the Traditional and Complementary Medicine Council to register and regulate traditional and complementary medicine practitioners, including TCM practitioners as well as other traditional and complementary medicine practitioners such as those in traditional Malay medicine and traditional Indian medicine.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: There are no specific regulations in the Netherlands on TCM; TCM is neither prohibited nor recognised by the government of the Netherlands. Chinese herbs as well as Chinese herbal products that are used in TCM are classified as foods and food supplements, and these Chinese herbs can be imported into the Netherlands as well as marketed as such without any type registration or notification to the government.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Despite its status, some private health insurance companies reimburse a certain amount of annual costs for acupuncture treatments, this depends on one's insurance policy, as not all insurance policies cover it, and if the acupuncture practitioner is or is not a member of one of the professional organisations that are recognised by private health insurance companies. The recognized professional organizations include the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Acupunctuur (NVA), Nederlandse Artsen Acupunctuur Vereniging (NAAV), ZHONG, (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Traditionele Chinese Geneeskunde), Nederlandse Beroepsvereniging Chinese Geneeswijzen Yi (NBCG Yi), and Wetenschappelijke Artsen Vereniging voor Acupunctuur in Nederland (WAVAN).


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: Although there are no regulatory standards for the practice of TCM in New Zealand, in the year 1990, acupuncture was included in the Governmental Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) Act. This inclusion granted qualified and professionally registered acupuncturists to provide subsidised care and treatment to citizens, residents, and temporary visitors for work or sports related injuries that occurred within and upon the land of New Zealand. The two bodies for the regulation of acupuncture and attainment of ACC treatment provider status in New Zealand are Acupuncture NZ and The New Zealand Acupuncture Standards Authority.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: The TCM Practitioners Act was passed by Parliament in 2000 and the TCM Practitioners Board was established in 2001 as a statutory board under the Ministry of Health, to register and regulate TCM practitioners. The requirements for registration include possession of a diploma or degree from a TCM educational institution/university on a gazetted list, either structured TCM clinical training at an approved local TCM educational institution or foreign TCM registration together with supervised TCM clinical attachment/practice at an approved local TCM clinic, and upon meeting these requirements, passing the Singapore TCM Physicians Registration Examination (STRE) conducted by the TCM Practitioners Board.


title: Traditional Chinese medicine

text: As of July 2012, only six states lack legislation to regulate the professional practice of TCM: Alabama, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. In 1976, California established an Acupuncture Board and became the first state licensing professional acupuncturists


title: Notes from Underground

text: Notes from Underground ( Russian: ; Russian: ; also translated as Notes from the Underground or Letters from the Underworld) is a novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the journal "Epoch" in 1864. It is a first-person narrative in the form of a "confession": the work was originally announced by Dostoevsky in "Epoch" under the title "A Confession".


title: Notes from Underground

text: The novella presents itself as an excerpt from the memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man), who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. Although the first part of the novella has the form of a monologue, the narrator's form of address to his reader is acutely "dialogized". According to Mikhail Bakhtin, in the Underground Man's confession "there is literally not a single monologically firm, undissociated word". The Underground Man's every word anticipates the words of an other, with whom he enters into an obsessive internal polemic.


title: Notes from Underground

text: The Underground Man attacks contemporary Russian philosophy, especially Nikolay Chernyshevsky's "What Is to Be Done?" More generally, the work can be viewed as an attack on and rebellion against "determinism": the idea that everything, including the human personality and will, can be reduced to the laws of nature, science and mathematics.


title: Notes from Underground

text: The novella is divided into two parts. The title of the first part—"Underground"—is itself given a footnoted introduction by Dostoevsky in which the character of the 'author' of the Notes and the nature of the 'excerpts' are discussed.


title: Notes from Underground

text: The narrator observes that utopian society removes suffering and pain, but man desires both things and needs them in order to be happy. He argues that removing pain and suffering in society takes away a man's freedom. He says that the cruelty of society makes human beings moan about pain only to spread their suffering to others.


title: Notes from Underground

text: Unlike most people, who typically act out of revenge because they believe justice is the end, the Underground Man is conscious of his problems and feels the desire for revenge, but he does not find it virtuous; the incongruity leads to spite towards the act itself with its concomitant circumstances. He feels that others like him exist, but he continuously concentrates on his spitefulness instead of on actions that would help him avoid the problems that torment him. The main issue for the Underground Man is that he has reached a point of ennui and inactivity. He even admits that he would rather be inactive out of laziness.


title: Notes from Underground

text: The first part also gives a harsh criticism of determinism, as well as of intellectual attempts at dictating human action and behavior by logic, which the Underground Man discusses in terms of the simple math problem: "two times two makes four" (cf. necessitarianism). He argues that despite humanity's attempt to create a utopia where everyone lives in harmony (symbolized by The Crystal Palace in Nikolai Chernyshevsky's "What Is to Be Done?"), one cannot avoid the simple fact that anyone, at any time, can decide to act in a way that might not be considered to be in their own self-interest; some will do so simply to validate their existence and to protest and confirm that they exist as individuals. The Underground Man ridicules the type of enlightened self-interest that Chernyshevsky proposes as the foundation of Utopian society. The idea of cultural and legislative systems relying on this rational egoism is what the protagonist despises. The Underground Man embraces this ideal in praxis, and seems to blame it for his current state of unhappiness.


title: Notes from Underground

text: The title of Part 2 is an allusion to the critic Pavel Annenkov's observation that "damp showers and wet snow" were indispensable to writers of the Natural School in Petersburg. Following the title there is an epigraph containing the opening lines from Nekrasov's poem "When from the darkness of delusion..." about a woman driven to prostitution by poverty. The quotation is interrupted by an ellipsis and the words "Etc., etc., etc."


title: Notes from Underground

text: Part 2 consists of ten sections covering some events from the narrator's life. While he continues in his self-conscious, polemical style, the themes of his confession are now developed anecdotally.


title: Notes from Underground

text: The first section tells of the Underground Man's obsession with an officer who once insulted him in a pub. This officer frequently passes him by on the street, seemingly without noticing his existence. He sees the officer on the street and thinks of ways to take revenge, eventually borrowing money to buy an expensive overcoat and intentionally bumping into the officer to assert his equality. To the Underground Man's surprise, however, the officer does not seem to notice that it even happened.


title: Notes from Underground

text: Sections II to V focus on a going-away dinner party with some old school friends to bid farewell to one of these friends—Zverkov—who is being transferred out of the city. The Underground Man hated them when he was younger, but after a random visit to Simonov's, he decides to meet them at the appointed location. They fail to tell him that the time has been changed to six instead of five, so he arrives early. He gets into an argument with the four of them after a short time, declaring to all his hatred of society and using them as the symbol of it. At the end, they go off without him to a secret brothel, and, in his rage, the underground man follows them there to confront Zverkov once and for all, regardless if he is beaten or not. He arrives at the brothel to find Zverkov and the others already retired with prostitutes to other rooms. He then encounters Liza, a young prostitute.


title: Notes from Underground

text: The remaining sections deal with his encounter with Liza and its repercussions. The story cuts to Liza and the Underground Man lying silently in the dark together. The Underground Man confronts Liza with an image of her future, by which she is unmoved at first, but after challenging her individual utopian dreams (similar to his ridicule of the Crystal Palace in Part 1), she eventually realizes the plight of her position and how she will slowly become useless and will descend more and more, until she is no longer wanted by anyone. The thought of dying such a terribly disgraceful death brings her to realize her position, and she then finds herself enthralled by the Underground Man's seemingly poignant grasp of the destructive nature of society. He gives her his address and leaves.


title: Notes from Underground

text: He is subsequently overcome by the fear of her actually arriving at his dilapidated apartment after appearing such a "hero" to her and, in the middle of an argument with his servant, she arrives. He then curses her and takes back everything he said to her, saying he was, in fact, laughing at her and reiterates the truth of her miserable position. Near the end of his painful rage he wells up in tears after saying that he was only seeking to have power over her and a desire to humiliate her. He begins to criticize himself and states that he is in fact horrified by his own poverty and embarrassed by his situation. Liza realizes how pitiful he is and tenderly embraces him. The Underground Man cries out "They—they won't let me—I—I can't be good!"


title: Notes from Underground

text: After all this, he still acts terribly toward her, and, before she leaves, he stuffs a five ruble note into her hand, which she throws onto the table (it is implied that the Underground Man had sex with Liza and that the note is payment). He tries to catch her as she goes out to the street, but he cannot find her and never hears from her again. He tries to stop the pain in his heart by "fantasizing."And isn't it better, won't it be better?… Insult—after all, it's a purification; it's the most caustic, painful consciousness! Only tomorrow I would have defiled her soul and wearied her heart. But now the insult will never ever die within her, and however repulsive the filth that awaits her, the insult will elevate her, it will cleanse her…He recalls this moment as making him unhappy whenever he thinks of it, yet again proving the fact from the first section that his spite for society and his inability to act makes him no better than those he supposedly despises.


title: Notes from Underground

text: The concluding sentences recall some of the themes explored in the first part, and he tells the reader directly, "I have merely carried to an extreme in my life what you have not dared to carry even halfway.”


title: Notes from Underground

text: At the end of Part 2, a further editorial note is added by Dostoevsky, indicating that the 'author' couldn't help himself and kept writing, but that "it seems to us that we might as well stop here".


title: Notes from Underground

text: The narration by the Underground Man is laden with ideological allusions and complex conversations regarding the political climate of the period. Using his fiction as a weapon of ideological discourse, Dostoevsky challenges the ideologies of his time, mainly nihilism and rational egoism.


title: Notes from Underground

text: In Part 2, the rant that the Underground Man directs at Liza as they sit in the dark, and her response to it, is an example of such discourse. Liza believes she can survive and rise up through the ranks of her brothel as a means of achieving her dreams of functioning successfully in society. However, as the Underground Man points out in his rant, such dreams are based on a utopian trust of not only the societal systems in place, but also humanity's ability to avoid corruption and irrationality in general. The points made in Part 1 about the Underground Man's pleasure in being rude and refusing to seek medical help are his examples of how idealised rationality is inherently flawed for not accounting for the darker and more irrational side of humanity.


title: Notes from Underground

text: The Stone Wall is one of the symbols in the novella and represents all the barriers of the laws of nature that stand against man and his freedom. Put simply, the rule that "two plus two equals four" angers the Underground Man because he wants the freedom to say "two plus two equals five", but that Stone Wall of nature's laws stands in front of him and his free will.


title: Notes from Underground

text: In the 1860s, Russia was beginning to absorb the ideas and culture of Western Europe at an accelerated pace, nurturing an unstable local climate. There was especially a growth in revolutionary activity accompanying a general restructuring of tsardom where liberal reforms, enacted by an unwieldy autocracy, only induced a greater sense of tension in both politics and civil society. Many of Russia's intellectuals were engaged in a debate with the Westernizers on one hand, and the Slavophiles on the other, concerned with favoring importation of Western reforms or promoting pan-Slavic traditions to address Russia's particular social reality. Although Tsar Alexander emancipated the serfs in 1861, Russia was still very much a post-medieval, traditional peasant society.


title: Notes from Underground

text: When "Notes from Underground" was written, there was an intellectual ferment on discussions regarding religious philosophy and various 'enlightened' utopian ideas. The work is a challenge to, and a method of understanding, the larger implications of the ideological drive toward a utopian society. Utopianism largely pertains to a society's collective dream, but what troubles the Underground Man is this very idea of collectivism. The point the Underground Man makes is that individuals will ultimately always rebel against a collectively imposed idea of paradise; a utopian image such as The Crystal Palace will always fail because of the underlying irrationality of humanity.


title: Notes from Underground

text: Although the novella is written in first-person narrative, the "I" is never really discovered. The syntax can at times seem "multi-layered;" the subject and the verb are often at the very beginning of the sentence before the object goes into the depths of the narrator's thoughts. The narrator repeats many of his concepts.


title: Notes from Underground

text: In chapter 11, the narrator refers to his inferiority to everyone around him and describes listening to people as like "listening through a crack under the floor." The word "underground" actually comes from a bad translation into English. A better translation would be a crawl space: a space under the floor that is not big enough for a human, but where rodents and bugs live. According to Russian folklore, it is also a place where evil spirits live.


title: Notes from Underground

text: The challenge posed by the Underground Man towards the idea of an "enlightened" society laid the groundwork for later writing. The work has been described as "probably the most important single source of the modern dystopia."


title: Notes from Underground

text: "Notes from Underground" has had an impact on various authors and works in the fields of philosophy, literature, and film, including:


title: Notes from Underground

text: Since "Notes from Underground" was first published in Russian, there have been a number of translations into English over the years, including:


International recognition of the State of Palestine has been the objective of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence formally established the "de jure" sovereign state on 15 November 1988 in Algiers, Algeria, at an extraordinary session in-exile of the Palestinian National Council. The declaration was promptly acknowledged by a range of countries, and by the end of the year, the proclaimed Palestinian state was recognized by over 78 countries. of the United Nations (UN) member states and two non-member states have recognized it (Israel is recognized by 165). Palestine also has been a non-member observer state of the UN General Assembly since the passing of United Nations General Assembly resolution 67/19 in November 2012.


title: International recognition of the State of Palestine

text: As part of an attempt to resolve the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the PLO in 1993 and 1995 established the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) as a self-governing interim administration in Areas A and B of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. After the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005, the PNA held elections in 2006, in which Hamas won a governing majority of seats (74 of 132 seats). Following the Battle of Gaza in 2007, the PNA effectively split in two, with Hamas assuming control of the Gaza Strip and Fatah retaining control over Areas A and B of the West Bank; the Fatah–Hamas conflict is ongoing .


text: Among the G20, nine countries (Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey) have recognized Palestine as a state while ten countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States) have not. Although these countries generally support some form of two-state solution to the conflict, they take the position that their recognition of a Palestinian state is conditioned to direct negotiations between Israel and the PNA.


text: On 22 November 1974, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3236 recognised the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence and sovereignty in Palestine. It also recognised the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and accorded it observer status in the United Nations. The designation "Palestine" for the PLO was adopted by the United Nations in 1988 in acknowledgment of the Palestinian declaration of independence, but the proclaimed state still has no formal status within the system.


text: Shortly after the 1988 declaration, the State of Palestine was recognised by many developing states in Africa and Asia, and from communist and non-aligned states. At the time, however, the United States was using its Foreign Assistance Act and other measures to discourage other countries and international organisations from extending recognition. Although these measures were successful in many cases, the Arab League and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) immediately published statements of recognition of, support for, and solidarity with Palestine, which was accepted as a member state in both forums.


text: In February 1989 at the United Nations Security Council, the PLO representative acknowledged that 94 states had recognised the new Palestinian state. It subsequently attempted to gain membership as a state in several agencies connected to the United Nations, but its efforts were thwarted by U.S. threats to withhold funding from any organisation that admitted Palestine. For example, in April of the same year, the PLO applied for membership as a state in the World Health Organization, an application that failed to produce a result after the U.S. informed the organisation that it would withdraw funding if Palestine were admitted. In May, a group of OIC members submitted to UNESCO an application for membership on behalf of Palestine, and listed a total of 91 states that had recognised the State of Palestine.


text: In June 1989, the PLO submitted to the government of Switzerland letters of accession to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. However, Switzerland, as the depositary state, determined that because the question of Palestinian statehood had not been settled within the international community, it was therefore incapable of determining whether the letter constituted a valid instrument of accession.Due to the [uncertainty] within the international community as to the existence or the non-existence of a State of Palestine and as long as the issue has not been settled in an appropriate framework, the Swiss Government, in its capacity as depositary of the Geneva Conventions and their additional Protocols, is not in a position to decide whether this communication can be considered as an instrument of accession in the sense of the relevant provisions of the Conventions and their additional Protocols.


text: Consequently, in November 1989, the Arab League proposed a General Assembly resolution to formally recognise the PLO as the government of an independent Palestinian state. The draft, however, was abandoned when the U.S. again threatened to cut off its financing for the United Nations should the vote go ahead. The Arab states agreed not to press the resolution, but demanded that the U.S. promise not to threaten the United Nations with financial sanctions again.


text: Many of the early statements of recognition of the State of Palestine were termed ambiguously. In addition, hesitation from others did not necessarily mean that these nations did not regard Palestine as a state. This has seemingly resulted in confusion regarding the number of states that have officially recognized the state declared in 1988. Numbers reported in the past are often conflicting, with figures as high as 130 being seen frequently. In July 2011, in an interview with "Haaretz", Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour claimed that 122 states had so far extended formal recognition. At the end of the month, the PLO published a paper on why the world's governments should recognize the State of Palestine and listed the 122 countries that had already done so. By the end of September the same year, Mansour claimed the figure had reached 139.


text: Between the end of the Six-Day War and the Oslo Accords, no Israeli government proposed a Palestinian state. During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government of 1996–1999, he accused the two previous governments of Rabin and Peres of bringing closer to realisation what he claimed to be the "danger" of a Palestinian state, and stated that his main policy goal was to ensure that the Palestinian Authority did not evolve beyond an autonomy.


text: In November 2001, Ariel Sharon was the first Israeli Prime Minister to proclaim that a Palestinian state was the solution to the conflict and the goal of his administration. The government headed by Ehud Olmert repeated the same objective. Following the inauguration of the present Netanyahu government in 2009, the government again claimed that a Palestinian state posed a danger for Israel. The government position changed, however, following pressure from the Obama administration, and on 14 June 2009, Netanyahu for the first time made a speech in which he supported the notion of a demilitarized and territorially reduced Palestinian state. This position met some criticism for its lack of commitment on the territories to be ceded to the Palestinian state in the future.


text: The Israeli government has accepted in general the idea that a Palestinian state is to be established, but has refused to accept the 1967 borders. Israeli military experts have argued that the 1967 borders are strategically indefensible. It also opposes the Palestinian plan of approaching the UN General Assembly on the matter of statehood, as it claims it does not honor the Oslo Accords agreement in which both sides agreed not to pursue unilateral moves.


text: After a two-year impasse in negotiations with Israel, the Palestinian Authority began a diplomatic campaign to gain recognition for the State of Palestine on the borders prior to the Six-Day War, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The efforts, which began in late 2009, gained widespread attention in September 2011, when President Mahmoud Abbas submitted an application to the United Nations to accept Palestine as a member state. This would have constituted collective recognition of the State of Palestine, which would have allowed its government to pursue legal claims against other states in international courts.


text: In order for a state to gain membership in the General Assembly, its application must have the support of two-thirds of member states with a prior recommendation for admission from the Security Council. This requires the absence of a veto from any of the Security Council's five permanent members. At the prospect of a veto from the United States, Palestinian leaders signalled that they might opt instead for a more limited upgrade to "non-member state" status, which requires only a simple majority in the General Assembly but provides the Palestinians with the recognition they desired.


text: The campaign, dubbed "Palestine 194", was supported by the Arab League in May, and was officially confirmed by the PLO on 26 June. The decision was labelled by the Israeli government as a unilateral step, while the Palestinian government countered that it was essential to overcoming the current impasse. Several other countries—such as Germany and Canada—also denounced the decision and called for a prompt return to negotiations. However, many others—such as Norway and Russia—endorsed the plan, as did Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who stated: "UN members are entitled whether to vote for or against the Palestinian statehood recognition at the UN."


text: Diplomatic efforts to gain support for the bid gained momentum following a succession of endorsements from South America in early 2011. High-level delegations led by Yasser Abed Rabbo, Riyad al-Maliki, Saeb Erekat, Nabil Shaath and Riyad Mansour paid visits to many states. Palestinian ambassadors, assisted by those of other Arab states, were charged with enlisting the support of the governments to which they were accredited. During the lead-up to the vote, Russia, China, and Spain publicly pledged their support for the Palestinian bid, as did inter-governmental organisations such as the African Union, and the Non-Aligned Movement.


text: Israel took steps to counter the initiative, and Germany, Italy, Canada and the U.S. announced publicly that they would vote against the resolution. Israeli and U.S. diplomats began a campaign pressuring many countries to oppose or abstain from the vote. However, because of the "automatic majority" enjoyed by the Palestinians in the General Assembly, the Netanyahu administration stated that it did not expect to prevent a resolution from passing should it go ahead. In August, "Haaretz" quoted the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, as stating that Israel would be unable to block a resolution at the General Assembly by September. "The maximum that we can hope to gain is for a group of states who will abstain or be absent during the vote", wrote Prosor. "Only a few countries will vote against the Palestinian initiative."


text: Instead, the Israeli government focused on obtaining a "moral majority" of major democratic powers, in an attempt to diminish the weight of the vote. Considerable weight was placed on the position of the European Union, which had not yet been announced. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton stated that it was likely to depend on the wording of the resolution. At the end of August, Israel's defence minister Ehud Barak said that "it is very important that all the players come up with a text that will emphasize the quick return to negotiations, without an effort to impose pre-conditions on the sides."


text: Efforts from both Israel and the U.S. also focused on pressuring the Palestinian leadership to abandon its plans and return to negotiations. In the U.S., Congress passed a bill denouncing the initiative and calling on the Obama administration to veto any resolution that would recognize a Palestinian state declared outside of an agreement negotiated by the two parties. A similar bill was passed in the Senate, which also threatened a withdrawal of aid to the West Bank. In late August, another congressional bill was introduced which proposes to block U.S. government funding for United Nations entities that support Palestinian membership in the UN. Several top U.S. officials, including ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and consul-general in Jerusalem Daniel Rubinstein, made similar threats. In the same month, it was reported that the Israeli Ministry of Finance was withholding its monthly payments to the PNA. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned that if Palestine took unilateral action, Israel would consider the Oslo Accords null and void, and would break off relations with the PA.


text: On 11 July 2011, the Quartet met to discuss a return to negotiations, but the meeting produced no result. President Mahmoud Abbas claimed that he would suspend the bid and return to negotiations if the Israelis agreed to the 1967 borders and ceased the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.


text: The PNA's campaign saw an increasing level of support in grass-roots activism. Avaaz began an online petition urging all United Nations members to endorse the bid to admit Palestine; it reportedly attained 500,000 e-signatures in its first four days. OneVoice Palestine launched a domestic campaign in partnership with local news agencies, with the aim of getting the involvement and support of Palestinian citizens. Overseas, campaigns were launched in several nations, calling on their governments to vote "yes" in the resolution. On 7 September, a group of Palestinian activists under the banner "Palestine: State No. 194" staged a demonstration outside the United Nations' office in Ramallah. During the demonstration, they submitted to the office a letter addressed to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, urging him to "exert all possible efforts toward the achievement of the Palestinian people's just demands". The following day, Ban told reporters: "I support ... the statehood of Palestinians; an independent, sovereign state of Palestine. It has been long overdue", but he also stated that "recognition of a state is something to be determined by the member states."


text: Other United Nations organs had previously expressed readiness to see a Palestinian state. In April 2011, the UN's co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process issued a report on the Palestinian Authority's state-building progress, describing "aspects of its administration as sufficient for an independent state". It echoed a similar assessment published the week prior by the International Monetary Fund. The World Bank released a report in September 2010 that found the Palestinian Authority "well-positioned to establish a state" at any point in the near future. However, the report highlighted that, unless private-sector growth in the Palestinian economy was stimulated, a Palestinian state would remain donor dependent.


text: During September 2012, Palestine decided to pursue an upgrade in status from "observer entity" to "non-member observer state". On 27 November of the same year, it was announced that the appeal had been made officially and would be put to a vote in the General Assembly on 29 November, where the status upgrade was expected to be supported by a majority of states. In addition to granting Palestine "non-member observer state status", the draft resolution "expresses the hope that the Security Council will consider favorably the application submitted on 23 September 2011 by the State of Palestine for admission to full membership in the United Nations, endorses the two state solution based on the pre-1967 borders, and stresses the need for an immediate resumption of negotiations between the two parties."


text: On 29 November 2012, in a 138–9 vote (with 41 abstaining) General Assembly resolution 67/19 passed, upgrading Palestine to "non-member observer state" status in the United Nations. The new status equated Palestine's with that of the Holy See. The change in status was described by "The Independent" as ""de facto" recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine". Voting "no" were Israel, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Panama and the United States.


text: The vote was an important benchmark for the partially recognized State of Palestine and its citizens, while it was a diplomatic setback for Israel and the United States. Status as an observer state in the UN allows the State of Palestine to join treaties and specialized UN agencies, the Law of the Seas treaty, and the International Criminal Court. It permits Palestine to pursue legal rights over its territorial waters and air space as a sovereign state recognized by the UN, and allows the Palestinian people the right to sue for sovereignty over their territory in the International Court of Justice and to bring "crimes against humanity" and war-crimes charges, including that of unlawfully occupying the territory of State of Palestine, against Israel in the International Criminal Court.


text: The UN has, after the resolution was passed, permitted Palestine to title its representative office to the UN as "The Permanent Observer Mission of the State of Palestine to the United Nations", seen by many as a reflection of the UN's de facto position of recognizing the State of Palestine's sovereignty under international law, and Palestine started to re-title its name accordingly on postal stamps, official documents and passports. The Palestinian authorities also instructed its diplomats to officially represent the "State of Palestine", as opposed to the "Palestine National Authority". Additionally, on 17 December 2012, UN Chief of Protocol Yeocheol Yoon decided that "the designation of "State of Palestine" shall be used by the Secretariat in all official United Nations documents", recognizing the "State of Palestine" as the official name of the Palestinian nation.


text: On 26 September 2013 at the United Nations, Mahmoud Abbas was given the right to sit in the General Assembly's beige chair which is reserved for heads of state waiting to take the podium and address the General Assembly.


text: Of the member states of the United Nations, . The list below is based on the list maintained by the Palestine Liberation Organization during the campaign for United Nations recognition in 2011, and maintained by the Permanent Observer Mission to the UN.


text: Some states, marked with an asterisk (*) below, expressly recognized the State of Palestine on the borders of 4 June 1967 (i.e., the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem), which constituted Arab territory prior to the Six-Day War.


text: The State of Palestine is a party to several multilateral treaties, registered with five depositaries: the United Kingdom, UNESCO, United Nations, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The ratification of the UNESCO conventions took place in 2011/2012 and followed Palestine becoming a member of UNESCO, while the ratification of the other conventions were performed in 2014 while negotiations with Israel were in an impasse.


text: In an objection of 16 May 2014, Israel informed the Secretary General of the United Nations that it did not consider that 'Palestine' (single quotation marks in original) met the definition of statehood and that its requested accession to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment as being "without legal validity and without effect upon Israel's treaty relations under the Convention". The United States and Canada lodged similar objections.


text: Palestine participated in the negotiation of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and voted in favour of its adoption on 7 July 2017.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Waheeda Rehman (born 3 February 1938) is an Indian actress and dancer. Regarded as one of Hindi cinema's finest actresses, Rehman's accolades include a National Film Award and three Filmfare Awards. Rehman was honoured with the Padma Shri by Government of India in 1972, later receiving the Padma Bhushan in 2011. She has received significant media coverage across her film career.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Rehman made her acting debut with the Telugu film "Rojulu Marayi" (1955), and rose to prominence with her collaborations with filmmaker Guru Dutt: the romantic dramas "Pyaasa" (1957) and "Kaagaz Ke Phool" (1959), the Muslim social film "Chaudhvin Ka Chand" (1960) and the romantic drama "Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam" (1962). Rehman had her breakthrough with the romantic drama "Guide" (1965), for which she received widespread critical acclaim and received the Filmfare Award for Best Actress. She won the award again for her performance in the romantic thriller "Neel Kamal" (1968), and additionally earned nominations for her roles in the comedy "Ram Aur Shyam" (1967) and the drama "Khamoshi" (1970).


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: For portraying a clans woman in the crime drama "Reshma Aur Shera" (1971), she won the National Film Award for Best Actress. From the early 1970s, Rehman has worked primarily in supporting roles, appearing in the romance "Phagun" (1973), the musical romantic dramas "Kabhi Kabhie" (1976), "Chandni" (1989) and "Lamhe" (1991). In 1994, she was honoured with the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award, and she has since worked sporadically in film.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Apart from her acting career, Rehman is a philanthropist. She is an advocate for education and is an ambassador for Rang De, an organisation combating poverty in India.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Waheeda Rehman was born on 3 February 1938 to a Deccani Muslim family in Chengalpet of present-day Tamil Nadu, India. It is a common misconception that Rehman was born in Hyderabad instead of Tamil Nadu. Her father was Mohammed Abdur Rehman and her mother was Mumtaz Begum, and she was the youngest out of 4 daughters. As a child, she and her sisters were trained Bharatanatyam in Chennai. She studied in St. Joseph's Convent in Visakhapatnam when her father was posted there in the then-Madras Presidency. Her father, who worked as a district commissioner, died in 1951 while she was in her early teens.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Rehman's dream was to become a doctor, but due to her family's circumstances emotionally and financially, alongside her mother's illness, she abandoned her goal. In order to help her family, she accepted movie offers that stemmed from her dancing abilities. Rehman's first performance on stage as a dancer in earlier days was at Brahmapur's "Ganjam Kala Parishad" organised by her uncle Dr. Ferose Ali who was a famous doctor and social activist in Brahmapur.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Rehman made her film debut with the 1955 Telugu films "Rojulu Maraayi" and "Jayasimha". For the former, she appeared as a dancer in the song "Eruvaka Saagaro". In the year following, Rehman made a cameo in the Tamil film "Alibabavum 40 Thirudargalum" (1956). Based on the folktale "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", it is the first Tamil film to be colourised. In the mid-1950s, Rehman established a working relationship with Dev Anand. They had a number of successful films to their credit which include "Solva Saal" (1958); Suresh Kohli of "The Hindu" writes on her performance in "Solva Saal", "Though barely 20 then and only in her fourth Hindi release, Rehman demonstrates her class: both in serious scenes demanding intensity and through sparkling, mischievous eye movements during lighter moments."


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Rehman's performances caught the eye of Hindi filmmaker Guru Dutt, whom Rehman considered her mentor. Dutt brought her to Bombay (current-day Mumbai) and cast her as Kamini in the crime thriller "C.I.D." (1956). Because of actresses such as Madhubala, Nargis and Meena Kumari, Rehman was asked to use a stage name, reasoning that her name should be "something sexy" however she refused to do, and kept her birth name. Dutt would next cast her in her first lead role in the drama "Pyaasa" (1957), where she portrayed a prostitute; the film was a commercial success, and it has been regarded by critics as one of the greatest films ever made. Continued collaborations with Dutt include the noir film "12 O'Clock" (1958) and the romantic drama "Kaagaz Ke Phool" (1959), both of which earned her critical praise. Rehman and Dutt's last collaboration was the romantic drama "Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam" (1962), which starred Dutt, Meena Kumari, and Rehman herself in a supporting role. The film was a major success, being lauded by both Indian and international critics. This earned Rehman her first Filmfare nomination in the category of Best Supporting Actress, meanwhile the film itself received nominations for the Golden Bear at the 13th Berlin International Film Festival and won the Filmfare Award for Best Film. Dutt broke his collaboration with Rehman due to personal struggles, later dying in 1964.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: The actress next ventured into Bengali film-making with Satyajit Ray's film "Abhijan" (1962). Following this, she played a murder suspect in "Baat Ek Raat Ki" (1962), a girl embroiled in a sibling feud in "Rakhi" (1962) and an infertile woman in "Ek Dil Sau Afsane" (1963). As a leading lady, she was cast opposite of many familiar faces of Hindi Cinema; notably, this includes Sunil Dutt in "Mujhe Jeene Do" (1962), Nirupa Roy in "Kaun Apna Kaun Paraya" (1963) and Biswajit in the horror film "Kohraa" (1964), the drama "Majboor" (1964), and the psychological-thriller "Bees Saal Baad" (1962)—the latter becoming the highest-grossing Hindi film of 1962. At the end of 1964, Rehman became the third-highest paid actress in Hindi films, from 1959 to 1964.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Rehman's peak continued when she was paired with other well-established superstars, namely Dilip Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Raj Kapoor, and Rajesh Khanna. Among her most acclaimed films of late 1960s include "Teesri Kasam" (1966), which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film, "Ram Aur Shyam" (1967), "Neel Kamal" (1968) and "Khamoshi" (1969). The last three films each earned Rehman consecutive nominations for Filmfare Award for Best Actress each, winning for "Neel Kamal". In her highly praised role in "Khamoshi" starring alongside Rajesh Khanna and Dharmendra, she plays a nurse who goes mentally insane after falling in love with one of her patients, and eventually is sent to her own mental institution. Other commercial successes of this period were "Patthar Ke Sanam" (1967) and "Aadmi" (1968). At the end of the 1960s, Rehman ranked a new record amongst herself in becoming the second-paid actress in Hindi films, from 1964 to 1969. She states herself, "For "Solva Saal", my first film as a freelancer, I received ₹30,000. The highest I ever earned in my career was Rs. 7 lakh for a film."


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Vijay Anand's magnum opus, the 1965 romantic drama "Guide" was an adaptation of the same book written by R. K. Narayan, published in 1958. Rehman starred as Rosie, a rebellious, strong-willed wife of an unfaithful archaeologist. She stated that the role proved difficult for her, particularly because it broke several film stereotypes at the time. "Guide" was a major commercial success, emerging as the fifth-highest grossing Hindi film of 1965, and it opened to widespread critical acclaim, with Rehman's performance receiving particular praise. Trisha Gupta of "Hindustan Times" writing, "Rosie was triply unusual: a woman who walks out of an unhappy marriage, begins a romantic relationship with a man who isn’t her husband, and simultaneously embarks on a successful career as a dancer. She would be an unusual Hindi film heroine even today..." and ranked her performance amongst Hindi cinemas's best. For her performance, Rehman won the Filmfare Award for Best Actress, and "Guide" went on to win the National Film Award for Best Feature Film. It became India's official entry to the Oscars, though it did not get nominated. It is now considered a cult classic, and is considered Rehman's signature film performance. For headlining the film "Reshma Aur Shera" (1971), Rehman won the National Film Award for Best Actress, which is India's equivalent to the Academy Award for Best Actress. Rehman began experimenting with roles at this stage of career. She accepted "Reshma Aur Shera" in 1971 which received nominations for the Golden Bear at the 22nd Berlin International Film Festival and garnered her praise from critics, however the film failed at the box office.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Rehman accepted the offer to play a mother to Jaya Bhaduri in "Phagun" (1973). In her new innings from the '70s, her successful films include "Kabhi Kabhie" (1976), "Trishul" (1978), "Jwalamukhi" (1980), "Naseeb" (1981), "Namkeen" (1982), "Dharam Kanta" (1982), "Namak Halaal" (1982), "Coolie" (1983), "Mashaal" (1984), "Chandni" (1989) and "Lamhe" (1991). "Kabhi Kabhie", "Namkeen", "Chandni" and "Lamhe" garnered her nominations for Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress. Film expert Rajesh Subramanian reported that Manmohan Desai had approached Rehman, on behalf of Shammi Kapoor, during the making of "Naseeb". In the song "John Jani Janardhan", Kapoor and Rehman make a grand-entry holding hands. Incidentally, this was the first time the two stars appeared together on screen. After her appearance in "Lamhe" (1991), she announced a sabbatical from the film industry.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Initially, Rehman was supposed to play the role of her frequent co-star Amitabh Bachchan's mother in Karan Johar's ensemble family melodrama "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..." (2001). However, after having shot a few scenes, she dropped out of the film due to her husband's death in November 2000. Subsequently, her role then was then played by Achala Sachdev. In recent years, she has played motherly roles in "Om Jai Jagadish" (2002), "Water" (2005), "15 Park Avenue" (2005), "Rang De Basanti" (2006) and "Delhi 6" (2009), all of which received critical acclaim. In 2011, she was honoured by the Government of India with the Padma Bhushan, and in 2013 with the Cenetary Award for Indian Film Personality for her contribution to Indian Cinema. A biography has been written and published in 2014 about Rehman, entitled "Conversations With Waheeda Rehman", which consist of interviews collected by author and director Nasreen Munni Kabir.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: In April 1974, Rehman married Shashi Rekhi (also known by his screen name Kamaljeet), and both had worked together prior in the film "Shagoon" (1964). She has 2 children: Sohail Rekhi and Kashvi Rekhi, both of them are writers. After her marriage, she lived in a farmhouse in Bangalore but after the death of her husband on 21 November 2000, she moved back to her sea-view bungalow in Bandra, Mumbai, where she currently resides.


title: Waheeda Rehman

text: Rehman is private about her life and seldom speaks about it, as said in an interview at the launch of "Conversations with Waheeda Rehman": "I don’t want to get into it. My private life should remain private. It is nobody’s business. I know we are public figures, so when I fight with my husband, do you want to know about it?"


title: Brothers in Arms (album)

text: Brothers in Arms is the fifth studio album by British rock band Dire Straits, released on 17 May 1985 through Vertigo Records internationally and through Warner Bros. Records in the United States. It spent a total of 14 non-consecutive weeks at number one on the UK Albums Chart (including ten consecutive weeks between 18 January and 22 March 1986), nine weeks at number one on the "Billboard" 200 in the United States and 34 weeks at number one on the Australian Albums Chart. "Brothers in Arms" was the first album certified ten-times platinum in the UK and is the eighth-best-selling album in UK chart history. It is certified nine-times platinum in the United States and is one of the world's best-selling albums, having sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.


title: Brothers in Arms (album)

text: The album won a Grammy Award in 1986 for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical and Best British Album at the 1987 Brit Awards; the 20th Anniversary reissue won another Grammy in 2006 for Best Surround Sound Album. "Q" magazine ranked "Brothers in Arms" number 51 on its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever.


title: Brothers in Arms (album)

text: "Brothers in Arms" was recorded from October 1984 to February 1985 at AIR Studios on the island of Montserrat, a British overseas territory in the Caribbean. The album was produced by songwriter Mark Knopfler and Neil Dorfsman, who had engineered Dire Straits' 1982 album "Love over Gold" and Knopfler's 1983 soundtrack album "Local Hero".


title: Brothers in Arms (album)

text: "Brothers in Arms" was one of the first albums recorded on a Sony 24-track digital tape machine. The decision to move to digital recording came from Knopfler's constant striving for better sound quality. "One of the things that I totally respected about him," Dorfsman observed, "was his interest in technology as a means of improving his music. He was always willing to spend on high-quality equipment."


title: Brothers in Arms (album)

text: Before arriving at Montserrat, Knopfler had written all the songs and rehearsed them with the band. The studio lineup included Knopfler (guitar), John Illsley (bass), Alan Clark (piano, Hammond B-3 organ and synthesisers) and Guy Fletcher, who was new to the band, playing a synth rig that consisted of a huge new Yamaha DX1, a couple of Roland synthesizers and a Synclavier. Guitarist Hal Lindes left the band early on in the sessions, and was replaced in December 1984 by Jack Sonni, a New York-based guitarist and longstanding friend of Knopfler (although Sonni's contribution to the album was minimal). The group's drummer Terry Williams was present at the start of the sessions, before being temporarily replaced.


title: Brothers in Arms (album)

text: The studio itself was small, with a recording space that offered virtually no isolation. "It was a good-sounding studio," Dorfsman later recalled, "but the main room itself was nothing to write home about. The sound of that studio was the desk," referring to the Neve 8078 board. Knopfler and Dorfsman utilised the limited space to best effect, placing the drum kit in the far left corner, facing the control room, miked with Sennheiser MD 421s on the toms, an Electro-Voice RE20 and AKG D12 on the kick drum, a Shure SM57 and AKG C451 with a 20 dB pad on the snare, 451s for overheads and the hi-hat, and Neumann U87s set back a little to capture "some kind of ambience". They placed the piano in a tight booth in the far right corner of the studio, miked with AKG C414s. The Hammond B3 was placed nearby, with its Leslie speaker crammed into an airlock next to the control room. Illsley's bass amplifier was recorded inside a small vocal booth with a Neumann FET 47 and a DI unit. Knopfler's amplifiers were miked with 57s, 451s, and Neumann U67s. Fletcher's synths were placed in the control room.


title: Brothers in Arms (album)

text: During the recording of "Money for Nothing", the signature sound of Knopfler's guitar may have been enhanced by a "happy accident" of microphone placement. Knopfler was using his Gibson Les Paul going through a Laney amplifier. While setting up the guitar amplifier microphones in an effort to get the "ZZ Top sound" that Knopfler sought, guitar tech Ron Eve, who was in the control room, heard the "amazing" sound before Dorfsman was finished arranging the mics. "One mic was pointing down at the floor," Dorfsman remembered, "another was not quite on the speaker, another was somewhere else, and it wasn't how I would want to set things up—it was probably just left from the night before, when I'd been preparing things for the next day and had not really finished the setup." What they heard was exactly what ended up on the record; no additional processing or effects were used during the mix.


title: Brothers in Arms (album)

text: According to a "Sound on Sound" magazine interview with Neil Dorfsman, during the first month of the recording sessions the performance of Terry Williams was considered to be unsuitable for the desired sound of the album. Williams was not fired from the band, but he was released from the recording sessions and temporarily replaced by jazz session drummer Omar Hakim, who re-recorded all the album's drum parts during a two-day stay before leaving for other commitments. Both Hakim and Williams are credited on the album, although Williams' only contribution was the improvised crescendo at the beginning of "Money for Nothing". The remaining tracks all featured Omar Hakim as drummer. In another interview Dorfsman said that Williams' fills and tom-toms were also used in the rest of the song. Dorfsman and Knopfler made the decision to erase Williams' contributions and replace them with those of Hakim; however, all the music videos that were released from the album featured Williams.


title: Brothers in Arms (album)

text: Although Andy Kanavan was briefly recruited as Dire Straits' new drummer, Terry Williams rejoined the band for the promotional concert world tour.