title: Backpage

text: Similar to Craigslist, Backpage let users post ads to categories such as personals, automotive, rentals, jobs and adult services. It soon became the second largest online classified site in the United States.


title: Backpage

text: Craigslist closed its "Adult Services" section in 2010 in response to pressure from state attorneys general and other critics claiming the section facilitated prostitution. Much of Craigslist's share of the adult ad market migrated to other sites, with Backpage being the main beneficiary.


title: Backpage

text: Craigslist's former critics focused on Backpage, which resisted moves to censor the site until January 2017; Backpage closed their adult section prior to a Congressional hearing.


title: Backpage

text: On April 6, 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the seizure and takedown of Backpage, part of a 93-count indictment of seven former owners and executives, charging them with facilitating prostitution under the U.S. Travel Act, as well as money laundering and conspiracy.


title: Backpage

text: In July 2018, a superseding indictment increased the number of counts to 100. In August 2018, one defendant accepted a plea deal. The remaining six defendants pled not guilty to all charges, and a trial by jurors began on September 1, 2021.


title: Backpage

text: On September 14, 2021, federal Judge Susan Brnovich declared a mistrial in the case, saying the prosecution and their witnesses made excessive references to child sex trafficking in a case where the defendants are not charged with that crime. This "is something I can't overlook and will not overlook," she said, setting a status hearing for October 5. At that hearing, Brnovich scheduled a new trial for Feb. 22, 2022.


title: Backpage

text: Brnovich recused herself for unknown reasons on October 29, 2021, and federal Judge Diane Humetewa was chosen by lot to replace her. (Humetewa is the fourth judge to be assigned the case so far.) "Reason" magazine reports that a new trial has been delayed as the defense appeals Humetewa's denial of a motion to dismiss the case for good.


title: Backpage

text: On Sept. 21, 2022 a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the defendants' request that the court reverse Humetewa and dismiss the case because a new trial would violate the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on Double Jeopardy. The panel wrote that "the government’s misconduct" during the trial "was not so egregious as to compel a finding" that prosecutors intended to provoke a mistrial, the legal standard for dismissal in this instance. A new trial reportedly could take place in 2023.


title: Backpage

text: As of April 6, 2018 the website states that Backpage and its affiliates has been seized by the FBI and a handful of other government agencies are listed as participating in and supporting the enforcement action.


title: Backpage

text: Craigslist's founder, Craig Newmark, started Craigslist as a free e-mail distribution list in 1995, featuring events and other listings in the San Francisco area. Newmark registered "craigslist.org," taking the site live in 1996. In 2000, the company expanded outside of San Francisco, and by 2009, it served over 700 cities in 70 countries.


title: Backpage

text: Non-commercial users post free ads in most categories on Craigslist. 2006, then-"San Francisco Bay Guardian" executive editor Tim Redmond wrote Craigslist "pretty-much wiped-out traditional daily newspaper classified ads" in 115 U.S. markets. A 2009 Pew Research Center study found 2000-08, newspapers lost almost half their classified ad sales to Craigslist and similar sites.


title: Backpage

text: Based in Phoenix, Ariz., the New Times chain of alt-weeklies started in 1970, with the founding of what became the "Phoenix New Times" as a response to the Vietnam War and the murders at Kent State. Under the leadership of executive editor Michael Lacey and publisher Jim Larkin, the company expanded to several other cities, eventually merging with New York's "Village Voice" and other papers to become Village Voice Media in 2005. The new company boasted 17 alt-weeklies coast-to-coast.


title: Backpage

text: As with other outlets in the alternative press, New Times' papers were free, relying on advertising, especially classified advertising to earn money. To counter Craigslist's influence on a vital revenue stream, Lacey and Larkin in 2004 founded Backpage.com, which "WIRED" magazine described as "a bare-bones inter-face wrapped in Facebooky blue, similar to Craigslist in form and function."


title: Backpage

text: The site's name was a nod to the classified ads in the back section of every New Times paper, "culminating in a premium-priced ad showcase on the paper's back page." The idea for Backpage.com came from New Times salesman Carl Ferrer; Larkin put him in charge of the new venture.


title: Backpage

text: Backpage helped sustain first New Times', then Village Voice Media's papers, and expanded to become the second-largest online classifieds site next to Craigslist. Lacey and Larkin sold Village Voice Media to company executives in 2012. The pair sold Backpage to Ferrer in 2015.


title: Backpage

text: Craigslist and Backpage had listings for a variety of goods and services, such as real estate, yard sales, personals, work wanted and jobs offered, and adult-themed advertising.


title: Backpage

text: "Like Craigslist, Backpage was divided into categories for different types of posts, most of which had nothing to do with sex work. But the 'adult' wing of the site, sub-divided into sections for strippers, 'phones and websites,' 'dom and fetish,' 'male escorts,' 'escorts,' and more, garnered the most attention."


title: Backpage

text: For Craigslist and Backpage, their adult sections would prove to be public relations nightmares, with state attorneys general and activists condemning them as havens for ads for prostitution and more. Reporters and academics noted similar adult advertising is a staple of alt-weeklies for many years, and could be found in other print outlets, such as the Yellow Pages and even some dailies.


title: Backpage

text: By 2006, Craigslist's nearly-all-free business model dominated the classified ad market. For years, adult listings under Craigslist's "erotic services" section were free. That changed as the company faced calls from state attorneys general and other groups to restrict or do away with all adult ads on the site.


title: Backpage

text: Craigslist's critics often conflated consensual adult prostitution with the far more serious crimes of coerced adult prostitution and child prostitution. The latter two are regarded as forms of "sex trafficking" under federal law, though sex trafficking involving children is sometimes called "child sex trafficking."


title: Backpage

text: For example, in 2007, Atlanta's mayor slammed Craigslist for allowing itself to be used "as a means of promoting and enabling child prostitution," asking the site remove "all" ads for sexual services, not just those suspected of involving child sex trafficking.


title: Backpage

text: In March 2008, Connecticut's then-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to Craigslist demanding that the site remove its adult ads, which the AG alleged were promoting prostitution. Blumenthal threatened possible legal action, stating that a "Connecticut woman" had recently been arrested for prostitution after advertising sexual services on Craigslist.


title: Backpage

text: "Techdirt" editor Mike Masnick observed that Craigslist was unfairly being blamed for posts by third parties, writing that Craigslist is "the tool provider, not the content provider," and that it was not liable for third-party content under Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act.


title: Backpage

text: In November 2008, Craigslist entered into an agreement with Blumenthal and Attorneys General from 39 other states, agreeing to charge customers $5-$10 to post adult ads. Craigslist also agreed to require a working phone number, and that payments be made by credit card, making the ads traceable.


title: Backpage

text: The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a government-funded nonprofit established as an information clearinghouse on missing and exploited kids, joined the Craigslist-Blumenthal agreement. NCMEC President Ernie Allen claimed that the sex traffickers of children "no longer parade them on the streets of America's cities," but now, "market them via the Internet."


title: Backpage

text: Still, the pressure on Craigslist continued. In March 2009, Cook County, Illinois Sheriff Tom Dart sued Craigslist in federal court, claiming that Craigslist's erotic services section was a "public nuisance", referring to it as "the single largest source of prostitution in America".


title: Backpage

text: In May 2009, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster threatened Craigslist with a possible criminal investigation over the ads, and Illinois AG Lisa Madigan said that the "walls were closing in" for Craigslist, labeling it "an Internet brothel." Later that month, Craigslist announced that it was replacing its "erotic services" section with a new, heavily-monitored "adult" section.


title: Backpage

text: Articles about Craigslist's transition to its new "adult" section often mentioned Philip Markoff, an alleged armed robber and murderer dubbed "the Craigslist killer" because police said he targeted his victims through the site's erotic services section. (Years later, in 2016, one industry watchdog claimed that ads posted to Craigslist by its users were linked to more than 100 murders.)


title: Backpage

text: On October 20, 2009, Craigslist scored a legal win in "Dart v. Craigslist, Inc.", with federal Judge John F. Grady denying Dart's attempt to censor the site. Grady rejected the notion that the listings in Craigslist's adult category were obviously illegal, noting that a striptease artist advertising on the site was "not prostitution."


title: Backpage

text: Craigslist had argued that it cooperated with law enforcement, including Dart, and that direct sex-for-money ads were banned by its terms of use. Craigslist further argued that it was shielded by Section 230.


title: Backpage

text: Judge Grady agreed that Section 230 protected the site from liability, writing that, under the law, "Intermediaries are not culpable for 'aiding and abetting' their customers who misuse their services to commit unlawful acts."


title: Backpage

text: Despite the ruling, Blumenthal continued his campaign against the classified ads giant, penning a letter to Craigslist joined by 17 other attorneys general. The AGs called on the site to rid itself of all adult ads, though the AGs recognized that Craigslist "may lose considerable revenue" as a result.


title: Backpage

text: Masnick and other commentators defended Craigslist, observing that the site was making money off the ads because Blumenthal and other state AGs asked Craigslist to charge a fee for them.


title: Backpage

text: In September 2010, Craigslist shut down its adult section, initially leaving only a notice that read "Censored" in place of the adult listings. It later took down the "Censored" notice, and confirmed the demise of the section. "The New York Times" observed that "advocacy groups and attorneys general" went after Craigslist in part because the site was "widely known," but the coalition would now set their sights on other targets.


title: Backpage

text: One year later, in an interview with "The Guardian", Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster admitted that the decision to nix the ads troubled him.


title: Backpage

text: "For a long time we tried to do what, in our minds, was the principled thing. We ended up doing the pragmatic thing," he said.


title: Backpage

text: After Craigslist ended the adult section, some adult listings almost immediately migrated to the site's "personals" section. They scattered to other sites as well, but Backpage, already number two in the classified ads market, benefitted the most. Many of the same controversies regarding content moderation and adult advertising that plagued Craigslist would affect Backpage as well.


title: Backpage

text: In an internal email after Craigslist's takedown of its adult category, CEO Ferrer acknowledged the coming challenge.


title: Backpage

text: "It is an opportunity for us. Also a time when we need to make sure our content is not illegal," he wrote.


title: Backpage

text: In September 2010, a Missouri girl sued Village Voice Media, claiming that she'd been trafficked at age 14 via ads placed on the site, and that Backpage had been negligent. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, based on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.


title: Backpage

text: A month after the suit was filed, Backpage hired former federal prosecutor and NCMEC board member Hemanshu Nigam to come up with a strategic plan to combat the misuse of the site for trafficking. Nigam and Backpage consulted with anti-trafficking organizations about measures to take, such as preventing the use of suggestive terms such as "Lolita," "incest" and "new in town." According to "WIRED", Backpage had implemented most of these new protocols by January 2011.


title: Backpage

text: VVM's news coverage cast a skeptical eye on the issue of sex trafficking, accusing the media and anti-trafficking organizations of wrongly conflating sex trafficking with consensual sex work, sometimes referred to as prostitution. In a series of investigative pieces beginning in early 2011, VVM criticized and debunked many misleading statistics and assertions regarding sex trafficking. In a March 23, 2011 piece, reporter Nick Pinto questioned the methodology of a study by the Women's Funding Network claiming that the number of girls being trafficked had risen "exponentially" in three states, calling it "junk science."


title: Backpage

text: Similarly, the series, which ran in several VVM papers, debunked the much-criticized urban legend that the Super Bowl brings with it a spike in sex trafficking to the game's host city.


title: Backpage

text: And the series looked into the often repeated claim that 100,000 to 300,000 children were "at risk" of commercial sexual exploitation in the U.S. VVM's reporters found the figure to be based on the faulty assumptions a flawed study, which one expert saying the study "has no scientific credibility to it." That factoid would go on to be debunked by several other outlets, including "The Washington Post".


title: Backpage

text: In April 2011, Hollywood celebrity couple Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher's "Demi and Ashton Foundation" launched a media campaign titled, "Real Men Don't Buy Girls," featuring videos with celebrities such as Sean Penn, Justin Timberlake, and Kutcher himself, among others. Moore and Kutcher promoted the campaign on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight," repeating the flawed 100,000 to 300,000 statistic and seemingly conflating prostitution with sex trafficking.


title: Backpage

text: VVM took on the campaign and the flawed statistic in a cover story entitled, "Real Men Get Their Facts Straight," criticizing the videos' "frat boy humor" and exposing the issues with the underlying 100,000 to 300,000 statistic. Kutcher responded with a late night tweet storm, blasting VVM, writing that, "news outlets that who have financial interest in trafficking may have interest in applying bias to facts to secure their revenue." VVM replied with tweets stating that "mythical sex slave numbers matter: activists use them to target legal adult freedoms."


title: Backpage

text: Outrage directed at VVM was building. In October 2011, in a full page ad in "The New York Times", 36 religious demanded that VVM and Backpage remove the latter's adult classifieds section, citing reports of adult ads connected to underage prostitution, stating, "Even if one minor is sold for sex, it is one too many."


title: Backpage

text: In a response to the ad, VVM asserted that it had "extensive working relationships with law enforcement from FBI to the local police", and claiming it had "spent millions of dollars and dedicated countless resources to protecting children from those who would misuse an adult site".


title: Backpage

text: According to both "Reason" and "WIRED", the cooperation between law enforcement and Backpage was genuine, with Backpage receiving praise from various police agencies for its help in finding trafficked persons and convicting their exploiters. In May 2011, the FBI awarded a certificate of recognition to Ferrer, then VP of Backpage, "for your outstanding cooperation and assistance in connection with an investigation of great importance."


title: Backpage

text: In November 2011, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women organized a demonstration outside of "The Village Voice"s offices in New York City, with 50 persons chanting slogans and waving signs in protest against "Backpage.com's facilitation of sex trafficking."


title: Backpage

text: Increasingly, Backpage critics and law enforcement accused Backpage of being a hub for sex trafficking of both adults and minors despite claims by the website that it sought to block ads suspected of child sex trafficking or prostitution and reported hundreds per month to the NCMEC, which in turn notified law enforcement.


title: Backpage

text: Backpage supporters claimed that by providing prompt and detailed information about suspicious postings to law enforcement, including phone numbers, credit card numbers and IP addresses, the website helped protect minors from trafficking. They contended that shutting down Backpage would drive traffickers to other places on the internet that would be less forthcoming about crucial information for law enforcement.


title: Backpage

text: Numerous writers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) legal experts and law enforcement officials including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive, and the Cato Institute, argued that freedom of speech and potentially the internet itself would be threatened if adult-themed ads were prohibited on Backpage. These groups cited both the First Amendment as well as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which holds that service providers were not liable for content produced by third parties.


title: Backpage

text: In 2012, at the behest of a number of NGO's including Fair Girls and NCMEC, Fitzgibbon Media (at the time, a well-known progressive/liberal public relations agency) created a multimedia campaign to garner support for the anti-Backpage position. They enlisted support from musicians, politicians, journalists, media companies and retailers.


title: Backpage

text: The Fitzgibbon campaign created a greater public dialogue, both pro and con, regarding Backpage. Some companies including H&M, IKEA, and Barnes & Noble canceled ads for publications owned by Village Voice Media. Over 230,000 people including 600 religious leaders, 51 attorneys general, 19 U.S. senators, over 50 non-governmental associations, musician Alicia Keys, and members of R.E.M., The Roots, and Alabama Shakes petitioned the website to remove sexual content.


title: Backpage

text: "New York Times" columnist Nicholas Kristof authored a number of columns criticizing Backpage, to which Backpage publicly responded. In a March 17, 2012 column, "Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods," Kristof told the story of a young woman whose "street name" was Alissa. Kristof wrote that pimps had coerced Alissa into a life of prostitution and posted ads for her on Backpage while she was underage. He also urged mainstream advertisers to boycott Village Voice Media and linked to a Change.org petition asking VVM to stop allowing its users to post adult ads on Backpage.


title: Backpage

text: In response to the article, the "Village Voice" criticized Kristof's reporting, noting that Backpage had not existed in the cities where Alissa had been prostituted at the time she was underage. The unsigned "Voice" article also contended that Backpage dedicated "hundreds of staff to screen adult classifieds in order to keep juveniles off the site and to work proactively with law enforcement in their efforts to locate victims".


title: Backpage

text: In 2012, Village Voice Media separated its newspaper company, which then consisted of 13 weekly alternative newspapers and their affiliated web properties, from Backpage, leaving Backpage in control of shareholders Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin.


title: Backpage

text: In interviews with Phoenix media, Lacey explained that the controversies over Backpage had become "a distraction" for the editors of VVM's papers and that Backpage had come to monopolize his and Larkin's time.


title: Backpage

text: Executives for the spinoff holding company, called Voice Media Group (VMG) and based in Denver, raised "some money from private investors" in order to purchase the newspapers; the executives who formed the new company were lower-ranked than Lacey and Larkin. In December 2014, Village Voice Media sold Backpage to a Dutch holding company. Carl Ferrer, the founder of Backpage, remained as CEO of the company. Michael Hardy of the "Texas Observer" stated that since Lacey and Larkin remained at Backpage, "it would be more accurate to say that Backpage spun off Village Voice Media."


title: Backpage

text: Beginning in 2011 a number of legal challenges were brought in attempts to eliminate the adult section of Backpage or shut down the website entirely. Backpage successfully argued that the First Amendment protections of free speech would be compromised by any restriction on postings by individuals on the Backpage website.


title: Backpage

text: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) served as an additional cornerstone in the defense. Section 230 says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This portion of the CDA was drafted to protect ISPs and other interactive service providers on the Internet from liability for content originating from third parties. The enactment of this portion of the CDA overturned the decision in "Stratton Oakmont, Inc. v. Prodigy Services Co." in which Prodigy was deemed by the court to be a publisher and therefore liable for content posted on its site. Many observers have credited the passage of section 230 of the CDA as the spark that ignited the explosive growth of the internet. The protection afforded to website owners under section 230 was upheld in numerous court cases subsequent to the passage of the legislation in 1996 including "Doe v. MySpace Inc.", 528 F.3d 413 (5th Cir. 2008) and "Dart v. Craigslist, Inc"., 665 F. Supp. 2d 961 (N.D. Ill. October 20, 2009).


title: Backpage

text: Plaintiff M.A., a 14-year-old runaway, was a victim of sex trafficking by one Latasha Jewell McFarland, who later pleaded guilty to taking nude photos of M.A. and posting them to Backpage in ads offering M.A. for commercial sex. M.A. sued Backpage, arguing Backpage was liable because Backpage had created an "adult" category on the site and was aware that other minors had been trafficked through ads in that category. In 2011, the court ruled that CDA Section 230 still applied and "even if Backpage knows that third parties are posting illegal content, 'the service providers' failure to intervene is immunized'".


title: Backpage

text: In 2012, Washington state passed SB 6251, which made it a felony to either directly or indirectly publish or cause to be published "any advertisement for a commercial sex act…that includes the depiction of a minor". Ignorance of the age of the minor depicted in the ad was no defense. Backpage, joined by the Internet Archive, sued in federal court to stop the law from going into effect. The court barred enforcement, finding the statute precluded by federal law, specifically, CDA Section 230. It also ruled that SB 6251 likely violated the First Amendment, as the state could not assume that all ads in an "adult" section were for prostitution without trampling free speech rights.


title: Backpage

text: Here, a federal judge enjoined a Tennessee law passed in 2012, SB 2371, which was a broader version of the Washington state statute. SB 2371 made it a felony to "sell or offer to sell" an ad that "would appear to a reasonable person" to be for a commercial sex act with a minor. As in "McKenna", the court found that the law was both precluded by CDA 230 and likely in violation of the First Amendment and the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The court also ruled that the law's definition of "commercial sex act" was so broad as to potentially include legal adult services, such as phone sex. "[W]hen freedom of speech hangs in the balance – the state may not use a butcher knife on a problem that requires a scalpel to fix," the court noted.


title: Backpage

text: This August 2013 ruling was the third strike against state laws attempting to legislate Backpage out of existence. In this case, New Jersey enacted a statute, referred to by the court as 12(b)1, which largely echoed the language of the Washington state and Tennessee laws. Again, a federal judge enjoined the law, finding it preempted by CDA Section 230, and in violation of the First Amendment and the Commerce Clause. The act is "hopelessly vague and overbroad" and "impermissibly chills protected speech," the judge wrote, ridiculing NJ's Attorney General for ignoring the statute's plain language in his defense of it. The Internet Archive also joined in this suit.


title: Backpage

text: Following his loss in "Dart v. Craigslist," Cook County, Illinois Sheriff Tom Dart turned his attention to Backpage, and more specifically, two of Backpage's payment processors, MasterCard and Visa. In June 2015, Dart wrote a letter to both companies, requesting that they "cease and desist" allowing their cards to purchase "any" ads on Backpage, even non-adult ones, suggesting that they could be in violation of federal law due to human trafficking via ads on the site. MC and Visa complied. Backpage then sued Dart in federal court, arguing he had used the power of his office to violate Backpage's First Amendment rights. The district court ruled in Dart's favor, but in November 2015, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court in an opinion written by Judge Richard Posner.


title: Backpage

text: Posner noted that Dart would only be in the right if there had been ""no" constitutional protected speech in the ads on Backpage's website". As a result, Posner found Dart's letter to be a First Amendment violation. Posner pointed out that Dart's claim that "everything in the adult section of Backpage's website is criminal, violent, or exploitive," was inaccurate.


title: Backpage

text: "Fetishism? Phone sex? Performances by striptease artists? (Vulgar is not violent.) One ad in the category ‘dom & fetish' is for the services of a ‘professional dominatrix'—a woman who is paid to whip or otherwise humiliate a customer in order to arouse him sexually . . . It's not obvious that such conduct endangers women or children or violates any laws, including laws against prostitution."


title: Backpage

text: Posner ordered the lower court to enjoin Dart from taking any actions against payment processors for Backpage. Backpage's win was pyrrhic, however. MC and Visa continued to disallow the use of its cards on the site.


title: Backpage

text: Three anonymous Jane Does who were sex trafficked as minors sued Backpage in 2014 in federal court, arguing that their traffickers used Backpage to post ads selling them for sex. They were raped numerous times while underage and accuse Backpage of facilitating sex trafficking due to its business and editorial practices, as well as the design of the website itself. The district court ruled against the plaintiffs, who then appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. In an opinion written by Judge Bruce M. Seyla, the appeals court ruled that the actions by Backpage were "traditional publisher functions" regarding third-party content, and therefore were shielded by CDA Section 230. Stearns conceded that the Does' suffering evoked "outrage," but that the "remedy is through legislation not litigation". The appellants sought certiorari by the U.S. Supreme Court and were denied. The case became the basis for the 2017 documentary, "I Am Jane Doe".


title: Backpage

text: In June 2017, the three Jane Does re-filed their complaint in federal court using information taken from the U.S. Senate's investigation into Backpage, which concluded Backpage had facilitated sex trafficking. The complaint alleged that Backpage substantially changed the ads connected to the three Jane Does, thereby losing its Section 230 protection. The court agreed that in the case of one ad involving Jane Doe 3, an edit occurred suggesting that she was an adult. Backpage counsel argued that the ad's poster actually made the change, but the court said this was a fact to be determined at trial and allowed Jane Doe 3's case to continue. In the case of Jane Does 1 and 2, the court said there was no evidence that Backpage substantially contributed to the ads, so Backpage would have Section 230 immunity against those claims. In August 2018, the court stayed proceedings in the case pending the conclusion of the criminal case in Arizona.


title: Backpage

text: In 2015, Congress passed the Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation Act (SAVE ACT), a vaguely worded law that forbade advertising that involved underage or coerced prostitution, i.e., sex trafficking. The law supposedly took aim at adult ads on Backpage, but civil liberties groups argued that the law was too broad and would have a chilling effect on speech. Backpage sued then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to preclude the law's enforcement, arguing that despite its best efforts to keep illegal ads off its site, the wording of the law raised the bar for prosecution from a "knowing" standard to one of "reckless disregard," and therefore violated the First Amendment.


title: Backpage

text: In October 2016, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the law did not criminalize protected speech, and that because Backpage took steps to avoid having illegal content on its site, it arguably was not in imminent danger of prosecution. But Backpage's suit won a significant clarification from the court, which interpreted the law as requiring a "knowing" mens rea standard for a conviction, which is a higher standard than "reckless disregard". Wrote the court: "...while it might be true that some Congressional members had Backpage.com in mind when enacting the SAVE ACT, the statute is 'aimed' at individuals who knowingly advertise or benefit from advertising sex trafficking."


title: Backpage

text: On October 6, 2016, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and California Attorney General Kamala Harris announced that Texas authorities had raided the Dallas headquarters of Backpage.com and arrested CEO Carl Ferrer at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston on felony charges of pimping, pimping a minor, and conspiracy to commit pimping. In a press release, Harris denounced Backpage as "the world's largest online brothel". The California arrest warrant alleged that 99% of Backpage's revenue was directly attributable to prostitution-related ads and that many of the ads involved victims of sex trafficking, including children under the age of 18. The State of Texas was also considering a money laundering charge pending its investigation. Arrest warrants were issued against former Backpage owners and founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin. Lacey and Larkin were charged with conspiracy to commit pimping.


title: Backpage

text: Backpage general counsel Liz McDougall dismissed the raid as an "election year stunt", which wasn't "a good-faith action by law enforcement". McDougall said that the company would "take all steps necessary to end this frivolous prosecution and will pursue its full remedies under federal law against the state actors who chose to ignore the law, as it has done successfully in other cases." Backpage accused California attorney general Kamala Harris, who was running for the U.S. Senate at the time, of an illegal prosecution.


title: Backpage

text: Harris's office fought against releasing the men on bail, and the three prisoners appeared together in court, confined to a cage inside a Sacramento courtroom, wearing orange jumpsuits. They were released on October 13, 2016, with bail set at $500,000 for Ferrer, and $250,000 each for Lacey and Larkin. All three pleaded not guilty.


title: Backpage

text: Writing for the magazine Pacific Standard, reporter Melissa Gira Grant observed that news outlets repeatedly referred to the three men as being charged with "sex trafficking," though the charges were actually related to prostitution.


title: Backpage

text: "None are accused with forcing anyone into prostitution," she wrote. "None are even accused of having had any physical contact with anyone in the sex trade. What the complaint claims the men did was earn money from a website where users could place advertisements for what Backpage categorized as 'adult' services."


title: Backpage

text: On October 17, 2016, attorneys for Ferrer, Larkin and Lacey sent a letter to Harris asking that all charges against their clients be dropped. Harris refused. The letter accused Harris of acting in bad faith, since she had signed a letter to Congress in 2013, along with 48 other state attorneys general, telling Congress that Section 230 of the CDA "prevents State and local law enforcement agencies from prosecuting" companies such as Backpage, and asking that Congress change the law.


title: Backpage

text: On November 17, 2016, Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman issued a tentative ruling on a motion to dismiss the charges, indicating that he would likely do so. He ruled that the many of Backpage's decisions regarding third-party content were "all traditional publishing decisions", which are "generally immunized under" Section 230. He wrote, "In short, any victimization resulted from the third party's placement of the ad, not because Backpage [profited] from the ad placement."


title: Backpage

text: On December 9, 2016, Bowman issued his final ruling, dismissing all the charges in the complaint, stating that: "...Congress has precluded liability for online publishers for the action of publishing third party speech and thus provided for both a foreclosure from prosecution and an affirmative defense at trial. Congress has spoken on this matter and it is for Congress, not this Court, to revisit."


title: Backpage

text: On December 23, 2016, the state of California filed new charges against Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer and former Backpage owners Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin accusing them of pimping and money laundering. Lawyers for Backpage responded that the new charges rehashed the earlier case, which had been dismissed. The filing of new charges came just a few weeks before Harris was to be sworn in as U.S. Senator from California.


title: Backpage

text: Superior Court Judge Lawrence Brown dismissed the new pimping charges on August 23, 2017, writing that the state's "attempt to assign criminal liability to defendants who offered an online forum on which other people posted advertisements that led to prostitution . . . confuse moral obligations with legal ones and have been rejected in other jurisdictions".


title: Backpage

text: Brown allowed most of the money-laundering counts to stand. The state alleges that Backpage illegally set up separate accounts to accept payments for ads from credit card companies that refused to do business with them after Sheriff Dart threatened them. Brown warned that prosecutors would be obliged to "show that the profits came solely from that underlying criminal activity."


title: Backpage

text: As part of his plea deal with the federal government, Ferrer pled guilty to one conspiracy count and three counts of money-laundering in California state court, as well as to charges in Texas and in federal court. The California case against Lacey and Larkin for money laundering remains on hold pending the outcome of the federal trial. Ferrer has promised to testify against Lacey and Larkin in return for leniency.


title: Backpage

text: Since April 2015, the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations ("PSI") had been investigating Backpage.com as part of an overall investigation of human trafficking. After a voluntary, day-long briefing and interview provided by the company's General Counsel, PSI followed up with a subpoena to Backpage.com demanding over 40 categories of documents, covering 120 subjects, regarding Backpage's business practices. Much of the subpoena targeted Backpage's editorial functions as an online intermediary.


title: Backpage

text: Over the ensuing months, Backpage raised and PSI rejected numerous objections to the subpoena, including that the subpoena was impermissibly burdensome both in the volume of documents PSI demanded and in its intrusion into constitutionally-protected editorial discretion. PSI subsequently issued a shorter document subpoena with only eight requests but broader in scope and also targeting Backpage.com's editorial functions. Backpage.com continued to object on First Amendment and other grounds.


title: Backpage

text: PSI applied in March 2016 for a federal court order to enforce three of the eight categories of documents in the subpoena. In August 2016, the U.S. District Court in D.C. granted PSI's application and ordered Backpage to produce documents responsive to the three requests.


title: Backpage

text: Backpage immediately filed an appeal and sought a stay, which the district court denied, then filed emergency stay petitions with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Each appellate court issued temporary stays to consider whether to grant a stay pending appeal, but eventually denied the emergency stay requests. However, the D.C. Circuit agreed to expedite the appeal, and one of its judges who considered the emergency stay said he would have granted it. Backpage has continued to pursue its appeal despite producing thousands of documents to PSI pursuant to the District Court order. PSI scheduled a Subcommittee hearing regarding Backpage.com for January 10, 2017.


title: Backpage

text: On January 9, 2017, prior to its scheduled hearings on Backpage the next day, the PSI released a report, denouncing what it referred to as Backpage's "knowing facilitation of online sex trafficking".


title: Backpage

text: That same day, Backpage removed its adult category from all of its sites in the United States. In its place, the site posted a banner that read, "CENSORED," stating that "the government has unconstitutionally censored this content". Backpage said it took the action due to the government's harassment and extra-legal tactics, which made it too costly for Backpage to continue hosting adult ads.


title: Backpage

text: Subcommittee chair Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican, and ranking Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill, issued statement denying that Backpage's move was in response to censorship, saying the site's shutdown of its adult ad section was a "validation of our findings".


title: Backpage

text: The Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in, stating that the site was succumbing to "years of government pressure"; as a result, both the First Amendment and CDA Section 230 were imperiled. Lois Lee, founder of the anti-trafficking organization, Children of the Night, bemoaned the loss of Backpage as an investigative tool, saying that child prostitution "existed long before Backpage or the Internet" and that Backpage is "not the cause or even a cause". Rather, the site "was an opportunity to better attack the problem".


title: Backpage

text: NCMEC applauded the takedown in a statement, saying it was "gratified to know that as a result of the recent decision, a child is now less likely to be sold for sex on Backpage".


title: Backpage

text: Lacey and Larkin sold the site to Ferrer in 2015. The PSI subpoenaed all three, along with two current Backpage execs, to be present at the Jan. 10 hearing. In response to attempted questioning from senators on the subcommittee, each witness declined to answer, "based on the rights provided by the Fifth and First Amendments" to the Constitution.


title: Backpage

text: Portman claimed that the subcommittee's investigators discovered that Backpage had created a "filter" to delete "hundreds of words indicative of sex trafficking or prostitution before publication"—words such as "Lolita," "teen," "young" and so forth, ostensibly to hide questionable ads from law enforcement.


title: Backpage

text: "Techdirt" editor Mike Masnick later wrote that such moderation was actually encouraged by Section 230's safe harbor, stating that one could "quite clearly see this as Backpage letting users know that it is not a place that should be used for sex trafficking, because it clearly alerts them to things that they don't want on the site." Masnick also noted that the same day as the hearing, Backpage had won another legal battle when the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a lower court's dismissal of "Jane Doe, et al. v. Backpage.com."


title: Backpage

text: In a piece on the hearing, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, a senior editor at "Reason" magazine, wrote that the terms in question did not necessarily indicate sex trafficking, since, for example, "teen" could apply to 18 and 19-year-olds, who were "both 'teens' "and", legally, adults". She also quotes NCMEC as stating that "It is virtually impossible to determine how old the young women in these ads are without an in-depth criminal investigation".


title: Backpage

text: But Portman, McCaskill and others saw these moderation practices as nefarious. In his concluding remarks, Portman stated that Backpage deliberately sanitized [these ads] to conceal evidence of prostitution, to conceal evidence of child trafficking", and as a result had "broken the law". Portman said that he and McCaskill would promptly consider whether to refer this matter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) . . . for further investigation."


title: Backpage

text: By April 2017, the "Arizona Republic" was reporting that a federal grand jury had been impaneled in Phoenix and was considering possible indictments of Lacey and Larkin.


title: Backpage

text: In late March 2018 and early April 2018, courts in Massachusetts and Florida ruled that Backpage's moderation practices may have fallen outside the immunity from civil suits granted by Section 230. The latter ruling argued that because Backpage "materially contributed to the content of the advertisement" by censoring specific keywords, it became a publisher of content and thus no longer protected.


title: Backpage

text: Backpage's adult services sections became the subject of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Postal Inspection Service, the United States Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigator Division, with analytical assistance from the Joint Regional Intelligence Center over accusations that the website knowingly allowed and encouraged users to post ads related to prostitution and human trafficking, particularly involving minors, and took steps to intentionally obfuscate these activities.


title: Backpage

text: On April 6, 2018, Backpage was seized by the FBI and other federal agencies, and Michael Lacey's home was raided by authorities. Lacey was arrested at gunpoint that day at his home in Paradise Valley; Larkin was arrested at an airport in Phoenix before exiting the plane, having returned from a trip overseas. Lacey was charged with money laundering and violations of the Travel Act.


title: Backpage

text: On April 9, 2018, the US Department of Justice's indictment against Backpage was unsealed. The 93 counts included "conspiracy to facilitate prostitution using a facility in interstate or foreign commerce, facilitating prostitution using a facility in interstate or foreign commerce, conspiracy to commit money laundering, concealment money laundering, international promotional money laundering, and transactional money laundering." According to prosecutors, the seven people charged in the indictment are: Michael Lacey of Paradise Valley, Arizona; James Larkin of Paradise Valley, Arizona; Scott Spear of Scottsdale, Arizona; John E. "Jed" Brunst of Phoenix, Arizona; Daniel Hyer of Dallas, Texas; Andrew Padilla of Plano, Texas; and Jaala Joye Vaught of Addison, Texas.


title: Backpage

text: Its CEO, Carl Ferrer, pleaded guilty to charges of facilitating prostitution and money laundering, acknowledging that "the great majority" of the adult advertisements on Backpage were actually advertisements for prostitution. As part of his plea agreement Ferrer agreed to shut down the site and give its data to law enforcement. He agreed to testify against other alleged co-conspirators, such as but not limited to founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin. Backpage also pleaded guilty to human trafficking.


title: Backpage

text: In July 2018, the grand jury in Phoenix issued a superseding indictment, increasing the total number of charges to 100, though the nature of the charges remained the same. The new indictment focused on 50 distinct adult ads culled from the millions of adult and non-adult ads that ran on the site daily, and the indictment used the fact that Backpage had worked with law enforcement to show that Backpage's executives were aware of illegal content on the site.


title: Backpage

text: In August 2018, Backpage sales Dan Hyer pleaded guilty to conspiracy to facilitate prostitution, all other charges against him were dropped; the remaining six defendants pled not guilty to all charges.


title: Backpage

text: The jury trial began in federal court in Phoenix, Arizona on September 1, 2021. In his opening statement, federal prosecutor Reginald Jones claimed that the site's owners and operators were aware that Backpage was being used for illegal activity, specifically prostitution, "but they didn't shut down the website." Defense attorneys countered that the adult services ads posted to Backpage were controversial, but still protected by the First Amendment.


title: Backpage

text: Prosecutors called four witnesses during the eight days of trial: Special Agent Brian Fichtner of the California Office of the Attorney General; Sharon Cooper, a physician who works with trafficking victims; Jessika Svendgard; and Svendgard's mother Nacole Svendgard.


title: Backpage

text: According to "The Arizona Republic", Jessika Svendgard testified that she had been lured into a 105-day stint as a prostitute at age 15, where she would be "raped for money." She said both she and her trafficker advertised on Backpage, indicating falsely that she was 18 at the time. Under cross-examination, she indicated that she had never "met, spoken to, or communicated in writing" with any of the six defendants. Her struggle in suing Backpage and obtaining a settlement in Washington state was depicted in the 2017 anti-Backpage documentary, "I Am Jane Doe."


title: Backpage

text: Special Agent Brian Fichtner testified about his investigation into Backpage on behalf of the California Attorney General's Office under then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, which led to the arrests on pimping charges of Lacey, Larkin and Ferrer in 2016. (Though the pimping charges were twice dismissed, state money laundering charges against the defendants survived.) According to "Reason" magazine, the prosecution called Fichtner "to present Backpage ads that he and federal prosecutors deemed to be clear evidence of illegal sex work," but Fichtner conceded that "none of the ads alone would be enough to justify a prostitution arrest."


title: Backpage

text: Sharon Cooper described her work with sex trafficking victims and "casually mentioned child victims" of sex trafficking "throughout her testimony," as reported by "The Arizona Republic."


title: Backpage

text: On September 14, 2021, federal Judge Susan Brnovich declared a mistrial in the case, saying that prosecution had abused the leeway she had given it by making constant references to child sex trafficking rather than focusing on the crimes the defendants are charged with: facilitating prostitution.


title: Backpage

text: "The government, as prosecutors, are held to a higher standard," Brnovich said. "Their goal is not to win at any costs, but their goal is to win by the rules."


title: Backpage

text: The trial had been expected to last two to three months. Brnovich granted the defense motion for mistrial on day eight.


title: Backpage

text: Brnovich recused herself for unknown reasons on October 29, 2021, and federal Judge Diane Humetewa was chosen by lot to replace her. (Humetewa is the fourth judge to be assigned the case so far.) A new trial has been delayed as the defense appeals Humetewa's denial of a motion to dismiss the case for good.


title: Backpage

text: On September 2, 2022, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the defense's appeal of Humetewa's ruling. Defendants argued that the case should be dismissed because a new trial would violate the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on Double Jeopardy. Though the defendants had moved for the mistrial, their attorneys argued that the prosecution "goaded" them into doing so by engaging in intentional misconduct; specifically, by focusing too much on the subject of child-sex trafficking.


title: Backpage

text: On September 21, 2022, the appeals panel ruled against the defendants, upholding Humetewa's ruling and finding that the prosecution "had no reason to sabotage its own trial." The decision reportedly made it likely that Lacey, Larkin, et al. would face a retrial sometimes in 2023.


title: Backpage

text: Backpage was launched in 2004 by New Times Media (later to be known as Village Voice Media), a publisher of 11 alternative newsweeklies, as a free classified advertising website.


title: Backpage

text: The site included the various categories found in newspaper classified sections including those that were unique to and part of the First Amendment-driven traditions of most alternative weeklies. These included personals (including adult-oriented personal ads), adult services, musicians and "New Age" services.


title: Backpage

text: Until January 9, 2017, Backpage contained an adult section containing different subcategories of various sex work. The company suspended its adult listings following accusations by a United States Senate subcommittee of being directly involved with sex-trafficking and the sexual exploitation of minors. However, many escorts and erotic masseuses admit to moving their ads to the "massage" and "women seeking men" listings. Prostitution is illegal throughout the United States, except for some counties in Nevada.


title: Backpage

text: Kristen DiAngelo, executive director of the Sex Workers Outreach Project of Sacramento, criticized the shutdown, asking how many sex workers across the United States no longer had a way to support themselves. Backpage allowed for sex workers using the site to post bad date lists, screen clients, and communicate with other sex workers to ensure a safer experience. Activists argued that the move would force some of the site's users to work on the street.


title: Backpage

text: In 2015 Backpage lost all credit card processing agreements as banks came under pressure from law enforcement, leaving Bitcoin as the remaining option for paid ads.


title: Backpage

text: SESTA/FOSTA was passed into law in 2018, making it illegal to promote or facilitate prostitution. The new law also created an exception to CDA Section 230, removing an interactive computer service's immunity from civil and criminal state laws regarding sex trafficking. The law's proponents claimed that it was needed to crackdown on Backpage, which they accused of facilitating sex trafficking through its adult section. Yet, the defendants in the Backpage case were not charged under SESTA/FOSTA, but under the U.S. Travel Act and money laundering statutes. Their arrests were on April 6, 2018. Trump signed SESTA/FOSTA into law on April 11, 2018.


title: Backpage

text: U.S. Department of Justice memos from 2012 and 2013, obtained by "Reason" and published in August 2019, revealed that Backpage actively fought against child prostitution on the website. "Reason" reports that federal prosecutors accidentally sent the memos to defense lawyers in the Backpage case sometime in 2018 as part of discovery, but the memos were placed under seal and cannot be used at trial.


title: Backpage

text: Attorneys at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington wrote both memos, assessing the possibilities of a successful prosecution of Backpage. The 2012 memo paraphrased an FBI agent with the Innocence Lost Task Force stating that "unlike virtually every other website that is used for prostitution and sex trafficking, Backpage is remarkably responsive to law enforcement requests and often takes proactive steps to assist in investigations".


title: Backpage

text: According to the 2012 memo, Backpage employees testified in criminal cases, answered subpoenas within 24 hours (sometimes within the hour), and sometimes gave law enforcement information without a subpoena in "exigent circumstances", such as a missing child. Law enforcement was able to "contact Backpage and obtain immediate removal of certain posts" suspected of involving juveniles. Backpage's age-verification protocol was imperfect but standard in the industry. And Backpage reported ads suspected of involving child sex trafficking to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The memo concludes that "any prosecution of Backpage would likely have to overcome Backpage's efforts to actively cooperate with law enforcement".


title: Backpage

text: The 2013 memo was also skeptical of a successful prosecution, stating, "[W]e have yet to uncover compelling evidence of criminal intent or a pattern of reckless conduct regarding minors." It described how Backpage's moderation changed over time, and paraphrased NCMEC's then-president and CEO, Ernie Allen as saying he believed Backpage wanted child sex trafficking off its site, but that "the use of the Internet to market commercial sex was so fluid that any system of moderation and reporting was destined to fail". The memo suggests that the government may want to consider going after Backpage using money laundering statutes.


title: Backpage

text: Published in January 2020, a survey of sex workers by the sex-worker-rights group Hacking/Hustling indicated that sex workers suffered in the wake of SESTA/FOSTA's passage and the federal government's seizure of Backpage. According to "The Daily Beast," the survey found that "33.8 percent of respondents reported an increase in violence from clients after the law was signed, and 72.5 percent reported they were facing increased financial insecurity", and sex-worker rights advocates "related stories of sex workers who were thrust into the arms of pimps in order to find work, or back into abusive relationships for want of somewhere to stay."


title: Backpage

text: In June 2021, the U.S. Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) released a report, stating that SESTA/FOSTA had only been used once by the DOJ since it was passed in 2018. Both SESTA/FOSTA and the takedown of Backpage using other statutes had caused the adult online ad market to fragment and scatter to sites hosted in other countries.


title: Backpage

text: The GAO report concludes that the seizure of Backpage has had an adverse effect on federal law enforcement's ability to investigate sex trafficking cases. It reads:


title: Backpage

text: ... gathering evidence to bring cases against users of online platforms has also become more difficult. According to a 2019 FBI document, the FBI's ability to identify and locate sex trafficking victims and perpetrators was significantly decreased following the takedown of backpage.com. According to FBI officials, this is largely because law enforcement was familiar with backpage.com, and backpage.com was generally responsive to legal requests for information. In contrast, officials said, law enforcement may be less familiar with platforms located overseas. Further, obtaining evidence from entities overseas may be more cumbersome and time-intensive, as those who control such platforms may not voluntarily respond to legal process, and mutual legal assistance requests may take months, if not years, according to DOJ officials. Despite these investigative challenges, DOJ officials said they are committed to holding accountable those who control online platforms that promote sex trafficking.


title: Backpage

text: On April 9, 2018, the US Department of Justice's indictment against Backpage was unsealed. It contains details about 17 alleged victims who range from minors as young as 14 years old to adults, who were allegedly trafficked on the site while Backpage was knowingly facilitating prostitution. One 15-year-old is alleged to have been forced to do in-calls at hotels. A second teenager was allegedly told to "perform sexual acts at gunpoint and choked" until she had seizures, before being gang raped. A third victim, advertised under the pseudonym "Nadia", was stabbed to death, while a fourth victim was murdered in 2015, and her corpse deliberately burned.


title: Backpage

text: The lawyer for Backpage operations manager Andrew Padilla stated that his client was "not legally responsible for any actions of third parties under U.S. law. He is no more responsible than the owner of a community billboard when someone places an ad on it".


title: Backpage

text: In October 2018, a Texas woman sued Backpage and Facebook, claiming she had been sex trafficked on Backpage by a man who lured her into prostitution by posing as her friend on the social media network.


title: Backpage

text: On April 15, 2019, a Wisconsin man was convicted on federal sex trafficking charges over victims who he brought across state lines, forced into prostitution and advertised on Backpage.


title: Backpage

text: On April 29, 2019, a Florida former middle school teacher was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for buying sex with a 14-year-old girl who was advertised on Backpage.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: Draco is a constellation in the far northern sky. Its name is Latin for dragon. It was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations today. The north pole of the ecliptic is in Draco. Draco is circumpolar from northern latitudes. There it is never setting and therefore can be seen all year.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: Thuban (α Draconis) was the northern pole star from 3942 BC, when it moved farther north than Theta Boötis, until 1793 BC. The Egyptian Pyramids were designed to have one side facing north, with an entrance passage geometrically aligned so that Thuban would be visible at night. Due to the effects of precession, it will again be the pole star around the year AD 21000. It is a blue-white giant star of magnitude 3.7, 309 light-years from Earth. The traditional name of Alpha Draconis, Thuban, means "head of the serpent".


title: Draco (constellation)

text: There are three stars under magnitude 3 in Draco. The brighter of the three, and the brightest star in Draco, is Gamma Draconis, traditionally called Etamin or Eltanin. It is an orange giant star of magnitude 2.2, 148 light-years from Earth. The aberration of starlight was discovered in 1728 when James Bradley observed Gamma Draconis. Nearby Beta Draconis, traditionally called Rastaban, is a yellow giant star of magnitude 2.8, 362 light-years from Earth. Its name shares a meaning with Thuban, "head of the serpent". Draco also features several interacting galaxies and galaxy clusters. One such massive cluster is Abell 2218, located at a distance of 3 billion light-years (redshift 0.171).


title: Draco (constellation)

text: Draco is home to several double stars and binary stars. Eta Draconis (the proper name is Athebyne) is a double star with a yellow-hued primary of magnitude 2.8 and a white-hued secondary of magnitude 8.2 located south of the primary. The two are separated by 4.8 arcseconds. Mu Draconis, traditionally called Alrakis, is a binary star with two white components. Magnitude 5.6 and 5.7, the two components orbit each other every 670 years. The Alrakis system is 88 light-years from Earth. Nu Draconis is a similar binary star with two white components, 100 light-years from Earth. Both components are of magnitude 4.9 and can be distinguished in a small amateur telescope or a pair of binoculars. Omicron Draconis is a double star divisible in small telescopes. The primary is an orange giant of magnitude 4.6, 322 light-years from Earth. The secondary is of magnitude 7.8. Psi Draconis (the proper name is Dziban) is a binary star divisible in binoculars and small amateur telescopes, 72 light-years from Earth. The primary is a yellow-white star of magnitude 4.6 and the secondary is a yellow star of magnitude 5.8. 16 Draconis and 17 Draconis are part of a triple star 400 light-years from Earth, divisible in medium-sized amateur telescopes. The primary, a blue-white star of magnitude 5.1, is itself a binary with components of magnitude 5.4 and 6.5. The secondary is of magnitude 5.5 and the system is 400 light-years away. 20 Draconis is a binary star with a white-hued primary of magnitude 7.1 and a yellow-hued secondary of magnitude 7.3 located east-northeast of the primary. The two are separated by 1.2 arcseconds at their maximum and have an orbital period of 420 years. As of 2012, the two components are approaching their maximum separation. 39 Draconis is a triple star 188 light-years from Earth, divisible in small amateur telescopes. The primary is a blue star of magnitude 5.0, the secondary is a yellow star of magnitude 7.4, and the tertiary is a star of magnitude 8.0; the tertiary appears to be a close companion to the primary. 40 Draconis and 41 Draconis are a binary star divisible in small telescopes. The two orange dwarf stars are 170 light-years from Earth and are of magnitude 5.7 and 6.1.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: R Draconis is a red Mira-type variable star with a period of about 8 months. Its average minimum magnitude is approximately 12.4, and its average maximum magnitude is approximately 7.6. It was discovered to be a variable star by Hans Geelmuyden in 1876.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: The constellation contains the star recently named Kepler-10, which has been confirmed to be orbited by Kepler-10b, the smallest rocky Earth-sized planet yet detected outside of the Solar System.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: One of deep-sky objects in Draco is the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), a planetary nebula approximately 3,000 light-years away that was discovered by English astronomer William Herschel in 1786. It is 9th magnitude and was named for its appearance in the Hubble Space Telescope, though it appears as a fuzzy blue-green disk in an amateur telescope. NGC 6543 has a very complex shape due to gravitational interactions between the components of the multiple star at its center, the progenitor of the nebula approximately 1,000 years ago. It is located 9.6 arcminutes away from the north ecliptic pole to the west-northwest. It is also related to IC 4677, a nebula that appears as a bar 1.8 arcminutes to the west of the Cat's Eye nebula. In long-term exposures, IC 4677 appears as a portion of a ring surrounding the planetary nebula.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: There are several faint galaxies in Draco, one of which is the lenticular galaxy NGC 5866 (sometimes considered to be Messier Object 102) that bears its name to a small group that also includes the spiral galaxies NGC 5879 and NGC 5907. Another is the Draco Dwarf Galaxy, one of the least luminous galaxies with an absolute magnitude of −8.6 and a diameter of only about 3,500 light years, discovered by Albert G. Wilson of Lowell Observatory in 1954. Another dwarf galaxy found in this constellation is PGC 39058.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: Draco also features several interacting galaxies and galaxy clusters. One such massive cluster is Abell 2218, located at a distance of 3 billion light-years (redshift 0.171). It acts as a gravitational lens for even more distant background galaxies, allowing astronomers to study those galaxies as well as Abell 2218 itself; more specifically, the lensing effect allows astronomers to confirm the cluster's mass as determined by x-ray emissions. One of the most well-known interacting galaxies is Arp 188, also called the "Tadpole Galaxy". Named for its appearance, which features a "tail" of stars 280,000 light-years long, the Tadpole Galaxy is at a distance of 420 million light-years (redshift 0.0314). The tail of stars drawn off the Tadpole Galaxy appears blue because the gravitational interaction disturbed clouds of gas and sparked star formation.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: Q1634+706 is a quasar that holds the distinction of being the most distant object usually visible in an amateur telescope. At magnitude 14.4, it appears star-like, though it is at a distance of 12.9 billion light-years. The light of Q1634+706 has taken 8.6 billion years to reach Earth, a discrepancy attributable to the expansion of the universe.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: The Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall, possibly the largest known structure in the universe, covers a part of the southern region of Draco.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: "Draco" (also known as ) is one of the 48 constellations listed in Ptolemy's "Almagest" (2nd century), adopted from the list by Eudoxus of Cnidus (4th century BC).


title: Draco (constellation)

text: Draco was identified with several different dragons in Greek mythology. Gaius Julius Hyginus in "De Astronomica" reports that it was one of the Gigantes, who battled the Olympian gods for ten years in the Gigantomachy, before the goddess Athena killed it and tossed into the sky upon his defeat. As Athena threw the dragon, it became twisted on itself and froze at the cold north celestial pole before it could right itself. Aelius Aristides names him Aster or Asterius ('star' or 'starry') and says that Athens' Great Panathenaea festival celebrated Athena's victory over him. The festival coincided with the culmination of the constellation's head as seen from the Athenian Acropolis.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: The "Catasterismi" attributed to Eratosthenes identify Draco as Ladon, the dragon who guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides. When Heracles was tasked with stealing the golden apples during his twelve labors, he killed Ladon and Hera transformed Ladon into a constellation. In the sky, Hercules is depicted with one foot on the head of Draco. Sometimes, Draco is represented as the monstrous son of Gaia, Typhon.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: Traditional Arabic astronomy does not depict a dragon in modern-day Draco, which is called the Mother Camels. Instead, two hyenas, represented by Eta Draconis and Zeta Draconis are seen attacking a baby camel (a dim star near Beta Draconis), which is protected by four female camels, represented by Beta Draconis, Gamma Draconis, Nu Draconis, and Xi Draconis. The nomads who own the camels are camped nearby, represented by a cooking tripod composed of Upsilon, Tau, and Sigma Draconis. However Arabic astronomers also knew of the Greek interpretation of the constellation, referring to it in Arabic as "At-Tinnin" (, 'the dragon'), which is the source of the formal name of Gamma Draconis, Eltanin, from "raʾs al-tinnīn" ('the head of the dragon').


title: Draco (constellation)

text: The February Eta Draconids is a meteor shower that was discovered on February 4, 2011. Observers noted six meteors with a common radiant in a short period. Its parent is a previously unknown long-period comet.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: The main character in the 1996 film "Dragonheart" gets his name from this constellation. The film also reveals that Draco is actually a dragon heaven, where dragons go when their time in this world is complete, if they have upheld the oath of an ancient dragon to guard mankind, with dragons otherwise fading into nothing upon their deaths. At the conclusion of the film, Draco, the last dragon, ascends into the constellation after he sacrifices himself to destroy an evil king that he had saved years ago. This is further elaborated on in the sequel and prequel films that follow.


title: Draco (constellation)

text: The Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense chess opening was also named after the constellation by Russian chess master Fyodor Dus-Chotimirsky.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Dream Girl is an Indian 2019 Hindi-language comedy film directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa in his directorial debut and produced by Ekta Kapoor. The film focuses on a cross-gender actor (played by Ayushmann Khurrana) whose female voice impersonation begets attention from others, and talks about depression and loneliness. It also stars Nushrat Bharucha, Annu Kapoor, Manjot Singh, Vijay Raaz and Abhishek Banerjee.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Initially supposed to be titled "Googly", it was renamed "Dream Girl". The film was released on 13 September 2019 to a surprise blockbuster response and entered the 100 Crore Club. It was a critical and commercial blockbuster, grossing around 148 crore net in India and over worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing Hindi films of 2019.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: In August 2022, a spiritual sequel titled "Dream Girl 2" entered production, set for release in June 2023. It stars an ensemble cast of Ayushmann Khurrana, Ananya Panday, Annu Kapoor, Paresh Rawal, Asrani, Rajpal Yadav, Vijay Raaz, Manjot Singh, Abhishek Banerjee and Seema Pahwa.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Karamveer "Karam" Singh (Ayushmann Khurrana) is good at impersonating the female voice from a very young age and hence keeps getting female lead roles in plays (Sita in Ramayan and Radha in Krishnaleela) since his childhood. Although he protests every time that would settle for a much smaller but male character, he is currently unemployed and performs these roles because they pay well. His friend Smiley (Manjot Singh) runs a liquor shop and supports him in every one of his endeavors. His father, Jagjeet Singh (Annu Kapoor) runs a shop dealing in funeral items and is sunk deep into loans he owes to various banks. Due to low turnover, he is unable to pay back the EMI's.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: While returning from an unsuccessful interview for a job, Karam sees an ad that promises Rs. 70,000/month salary. He reaches the given address, but the employer Mauji 'W Ji' (Rajesh Sharma) rejects him outright without inquiring about his qualifications. Karamveer pleads, and finally, Mauji relents and shows him his call center where only ladies work. The call center is entertaining fantasies of people who call them, mostly men who don't have a partner in life. Karamveer is shocked but quickly regains his composure, and answers a call in a female voice for Ms. Pooja (who works at the call center), but is frequently on leave. Mauji is impressed with his skill and immediately hires him and gives him Rs. 25,000 as advance payment. Karamveer tells his father that he has got a job at an MNC and hands him the advance payment he received. His father is happy to receive this news, while Karam celebrates with his friend Smiley. Later at the job, he garners a good fan base because of his sweet voice and sharp presence of mind.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: He comes across Mahi (Nushrat Bharucha) at his customer's home where he went to deliver products asked from his father's shop. He is smitten by her beauty and catches her attention with some witty lines. Later they come across each other while waiting in a queue, and Karam impresses her with his funny personality. Soon love blossoms between the two and they get engaged.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: At his job, Karam comes across a few people who call him regularly: Toto, a spoilt brat; Rajpal, a policeman by profession who writes couplets; Roma, editor of a magazine; Karam's father Jagjeet and Mahi's brother, Mahinder. Karam, initially unknown of their real identities, eventually, comes across them in his life and is surprised to know their identities. Eventually, everyone becomes obsessed with Pooja, impersonated by Karam, because of her sweet voice and friendly nature. They fall in love with Pooja and everyone wants to marry her.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Karam, frustrated with such unsolicited requests, wants to quit. His employer, Mauji rejects his resignation and blackmails him that he would expose his identity to his neighborhood, which might jeopardize his marriage. Karam decides to tell everything to Mahi but fizzles out when he realizes her brother Mahinder is also a fan of Pooja. He figures out that if he talks to his callers rudely, they would get along with their realities and stop calling him. This move backfires as everyone becomes more obsessed with Pooja, Toto attempts to commit suicide, and Rajpal threatens to abandon his wife.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Karamveer starts threatening these people to stay away from Pooja or otherwise face the consequences in an attempt to stop them from marrying Pooja.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: In one such event, Karamveer as Pooja tells Roma that she is in love with her boyfriend Anurag. Roma insists upon meeting Anurag to see if he is a good guy. Karamveer meets Roma at a mall posing as Anurag. After the meeting, he comes across Mahinder, shopping at the mall who overhears Roma and Karam and tells it to Mahi, also present at the mall. Roma, already sceptical of Karamveer alias Anurag's character, tells Mahi that Karam is engaged to Pooja when Mahi reveals that she is Karam's fiancé, and his duplicity is exposed. Mahi, heartbroken, leaves the mall when Karamveer is unable to explain the situation to her. Confusion breaks out in the mall and Pooja's identity remains tumultuous.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Karam chases Mahi and takes her to his office and explains everything. Mauji misbehaves with Mahi and she slaps him in front of his staff. Karamveer defends Mahi and leaves the office, further enraging Mauji. Mahi reconciles with Karamveer.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Later, she attends the play where Karam is playing the role of Radha. At the end of the play, Rajpal arrives with Mauji who claims that Karam has killed Pooja. Karam recites one of Rajpal's couplet. Rajpal is taken aback since he shared the couplet with Pooja and nobody else.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Karam reveals that he has been impersonating Pooja all this time. This is followed by an emotional speech by Karam on growing loneliness amongst people. Roma comes with the real Pooja and exposes Mauji who is arrested by Rajpal.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Toto, Mahinder, Jagjeet, and Roma learn that Karam has been impersonating Pooja all along. Finally, Mahi agrees to marry Karam.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: In November 2018, Ayushman Khurrana announced "Dream Girl" to be written and directed by Raaj Shaandilyaa and produced by Ekta Kapoor, Shobha Kapoor and Aashish Singh. Nushrratt Bharuccha was cast opposite him. The lead character will have three accents in the film. Ahmed Khan is choreographing the dances with Khurrana in sari.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Principal photography began in December 2018. Bharucha completed her part of filming in January 2019 in Mumbai.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: The film was released theatrically on 13 September 2019. ZEE5 acquired digital rights and launched it online on 21 November 2019.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: "Dream Girl" received mixed response from critics, who criticised the "empty" and "jumbled-up" writing as well as the "tasteless" and "stale" humour, but praised the performances of the supporting cast. The film holds an approval rating of based on reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of .


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Charu Thakur of "India Today" gave the film three stars out of five, noted that "Dream Girl" was an out-and-out comedy with witty one-liners and jokes, which made it a long comic skit sans a storyline. She concurred with Taran in praising performance of Khurrana and Kapoor. Criticising director for losing subject of the film she concluded, "However, his [Shaandilyaa's] hesitation to delve deeper into the subject makes it score less on the report card. If you are looking for a light-hearted comedy this weekend, [this film] should definitely be on your list."


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: Shubhra Gupta of "The Indian Express" gave two stars out of five and felt the film was had many good ideas but those were not executed, stating, "... these ideas remain half-baked, being mouthed strictly as meaningless dialogue for either laughs or claps". Praising Khurana for his performance, she concluded, "You stay watching Dream Girl for Khurrana. He plays Karam/Pooja with grace and conviction, and makes this thing sing." Priyanka Sinha Jha of News18, praising Khurrana and ensemble of Manjot Singh, Vijay Raaz, Annu Kapoor, Abhishek Banerjee, Nushrat Bharucha, Rajesh Sharma, Nidhi Bisht and Raj Bhansali for their performances, rates the film with three and half stars out of five. Agreeing with Gupta, she noted that the second half did suffer from lack of ingenuity. Praising writer-director Raaj Shaandilyaa for 'keeping the screenplay pithy, the dialogues glib and story on the tracks, she opined, ""Dream Girl" will surely entertain the film going audiences while sparking off an important conversation on gender constructs in Indian cinema." Writing for Film Companion, Baradwaj Rangan said "These are one-joke characters, and this is a one-joke movie. Very quickly, a sense of staleness sets in."


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: "Dream Girl" has the opening day collection of 10.05 crore, and second day collection of 16.42 crore, whereas the third day collection was 18.10 crore, taking its total opening weekend collection to 44.57 crore in India. On the fourth day the film crossed 50 crore and became Khurrana's fastest film to cross 50 crore until his next release, Bala. The film has become the eleventh highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2019.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: , with a gross of 169.36 crore in India and 31.44 crore overseas, the film has grossed 200.80 crore worldwide.


title: Dream Girl (2019 film)

text: The music of the film is composed by [[Meet Bros]] while lyrics are by [[Kumaar]] and [[Shabbir Ahmed (lyricist)|Shabbir Ahmed]]. The song "Dhagala Lagali" was removed due to a copyright issue. All soundtracks listed below have their lyrics credited solely to Kumaar unless noted otherwise:


title: Fordyce spots

text: Fordyce spots (also termed Fordyce granules) are visible sebaceous glands that are present in most individuals. They appear on the genitals and/or on the face and in the mouth. They appear as small, painless, raised, pale, red or white spots or bumps 1 to 3 mm in diameter that may appear on the scrotum, shaft of the penis or on the labia, as well as the inner surface (retromolar mucosa) and vermilion border of the lips of the face. They are not associated with any disease or illness, nor are they infectious but rather they represent a natural occurrence on the body. No treatment is therefore required. Persons with this condition sometimes consult a dermatologist because they are worried they may have a sexually transmitted disease (especially genital warts) or some form of cancer.


title: Fordyce spots

text: On the shaft of the penis, Fordyce spots are more visible when the skin is stretched, and may only be noticeable during an erection. The spots can also appear on the skin of the scrotum.


title: Fordyce spots

text: Oral Fordyce granules appear as rice-like granules, white or yellow-white in color. They are painless papules (small bumps), about 1–3 mm in greatest dimension. The most common site is along the line between the vermilion border and the oral mucosa of the upper lip, or on the buccal mucosa (inside the cheeks) in the commissural region, often bilaterally. They may also occur on the mandibular retromolar pad and tonsillar areas, but any oral surface may be involved. There is no surrounding mucosal change. Some patients will have hundreds of granules while most have only one or two.


title: Fordyce spots

text: Occasionally, several adjacent glands will coalesce into a larger cauliflower-like cluster similar to sebaceous hyperplasia of the skin. In such an instance, it may be difficult to determine whether or not to diagnose the lesion as sebaceous hyperplasia or sebaceous adenoma. The distinction may be moot because both entities have the same treatment, although the adenoma has a greater growth potential. Sebaceous carcinoma of the oral cavity has been reported, presumably arising from Fordyce granules or hyperplastic foci of sebaceous glands.


title: Fordyce spots

text: They appear to be more obvious in people with oily skin types, with some rheumatic disorders, and in hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer. In the latter, the most common site for Fordyce spots is the lower gingiva (gums) and vestibular mucosa.


title: Fordyce spots

text: Large numbers of lobules coalescing into a definitely elevated mass may be called benign sebaceous hyperplasia, and occasional small keratin-filled pseudocysts may be seen and must be differentiated from epidermoid cyst or dermoid cyst with sebaceous adnexa. The pathologist must be careful to differentiate such lesions from salivary neoplasms with sebaceous cells, such as sebaceous lymphadenoma and sebaceous carcinoma.


title: Fordyce spots

text: Oral Fordyce granules are usually not biopsied because they are readily diagnosed clinically, but they are often seen as incidental findings of mucosal biopsies of the buccal, labial and retromolar mucosa. The granules are similar to normal sebaceous glands of the skin but lack hair follicles and almost always lack a ductal communication with the surface. The glands are located just beneath the overlying epithelium and often produce a local elevation of the epithelium. Individual sebaceous cells are large, with central dark nuclei and abundant foamy cytoplasm.


title: Fordyce spots

text: Sebaceous glands are normal structures of the skin but may also be found ectopically in the mouth, where they are referred to as "oral Fordyce granules" or ectopic sebaceous glands.


title: Fordyce spots

text: Fordyce spots are completely benign and require no treatment. They occur in 70 to 80 percent of adults. Often their presence is considered normal anatomic variance rather than a true medical condition.


title: Fordyce spots

text: This variation of normal anatomy is seen in the majority of adults. It is estimated about 80% of people have oral Fordyce spots, but seldom are granules found in large numbers. They are not usually visible in children, and tend to appear at about age 3, then increasing during puberty and become more obvious in later adulthood. They are more prominent in males.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The Greater Germanic Reich (), fully styled the Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation (), was the official state name of the political entity that Nazi Germany tried to establish in Europe during World War II. The territorial claims for the Greater Germanic Reich fluctuated over time. As early as the autumn of 1933, Hitler envisioned annexing such territories as Bohemia, Western Poland and Austria to Germany and creation of satellite or puppet states without economies or policies of their own.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: This pan-Germanic Empire was expected to assimilate practically all of Germanic Europe into an enormously expanded Reich. Territorially speaking, this encompassed the already-enlarged German Reich itself (consisting of pre-1938 Germany proper, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Czech Silesia, Alsace-Lorraine, Eupen-Malmedy, Memel, Lower Styria, Upper Carniola, Southern Carinthia, Danzig, and Poland), the Netherlands, the Flemish part of Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and at least the German-speaking parts of Switzerland.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The most notable exception was the United Kingdom, which was not projected as having to be reduced to a German province but to instead become an allied seafaring partner of the Germans. Another exception was German-populated territory in South Tyrol that was part of allied Italy. Aside from Germanic Europe, the Reich's western frontiers with France were to be reverted to those of the earlier Holy Roman Empire, which would have meant the complete annexation of all of Wallonia, French Switzerland and large areas of northern and eastern France. Additionally, the policy of "Lebensraum" planned mass expansion of Germany eastwards to the Ural Mountains (seizing territory from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the Soviet Union in the process). Hitler planned for the "surplus" Russian population living west of the Urals to be deported to the east of the Urals.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Nazi racial ideology regarded the Germanic peoples of Europe as belonging to a racially superior Nordic subset of the larger Aryan race, who were regarded as the only true culture-bearers of civilized society. These peoples were viewed as either "true Germanic peoples" that had "lost their sense of racial pride", or as close racial relatives of the Germans. German Chancellor Adolf Hitler also believed that the Ancient Greeks and Romans were the racial ancestors of the Germans, and the first torchbearers of "NordicGreek" art and culture. He particularly expressed his admiration for Ancient Sparta, declaring it to have been the purest racial state:


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Furthermore, Hitler's concept of "Germanic" did not simply refer to an ethnic, cultural, or linguistic group, but also to a distinctly biological one, the superior "Germanic blood" that he wanted to salvage from the control of the enemies of the Aryan race. He stated that Germany possessed more of these "Germanic elements" than any other country in the world, which he estimated as "four fifths of our people".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: According to the Nazis, in addition to the Germanic peoples, individuals of seemingly non-Germanic nationality such as French, Polish, Walloon, Czech and so on might actually possess valuable Germanic blood, especially if they were of aristocratic or peasant stock. In order to "recover" these "missing" Germanic elements, they had to be made conscious of their Germanic ancestry through the process of Germanization (the term used by the Nazis for this process was "Umvolkung", "restoration to the race"). If the "recovery" was impossible, these individuals had to be destroyed to deny the enemy of using their superior blood against the Aryan race. An example of this type of Nazi Germanization is the kidnapping of "racially valuable" Eastern European children. Curiously, those chosen for Germanization who rejected the Nazis were viewed as being racially more suitable than those who went along without objections, as according to Himmler "it was in the nature of German blood to resist".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: On the very first page of "Mein Kampf", Hitler openly declared his belief that "common blood belongs in a common Reich", elucidating the notion that the innate quality of race (as the Nazi movement perceived it) should hold precedence over "artificial" concepts such as national identity (including regional German identities such as Prussian and Bavarian) as the deciding factor for which people were "worthy" of being assimilated into a Greater German racial state ("Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer"). Part of the strategic methods which Hitler chose to ensure the present and future supremacy of the Aryan race (which was, according to Hitler, "gradually approaching extinction") was to do away with what he described as the "small state rubbish" ("Kleinstaatengerümpel", compare "Kleinstaaterei") in Europe in order to unite all these Nordic countries into one unified racial community. From 1921 onward he advocated the creation of a "Germanic Reich of the German Nation".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The chosen name for the projected empire was a deliberate reference to the Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation) that existed in medieval times, known as the "First Reich" in Nazi historiography. Different aspects of the legacy of this medieval empire in German history were both celebrated and derided by the government of Nazi Germany. Hitler admired the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne for his "cultural creativity", his powers of organization, and his renunciation of the rights of the individual. He criticized the Holy Roman Emperors however for not pursuing an "Ostpolitik" (Eastern Policy) resembling his own, while being politically focused exclusively on the south. After the "Anschluss", Hitler ordered the old imperial regalia (the Imperial Crown, Imperial Sword, the Holy Lance and other items) residing in Vienna to be transferred to Nuremberg, where they were kept between 1424 and 1796. Nuremberg, in addition to being the former unofficial capital of the Holy Roman Empire, was also the place of the Nuremberg rallies. The transfer of the regalia was thus done to both legitimize Hitler's Germany as the successor of the "Old Reich", but also weaken Vienna, the former imperial residence.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: After the 1939 German occupation of Bohemia, Hitler declared that the Holy Roman Empire had been "resurrected", although he secretly maintained his own empire to be better than the old "Roman" one. Unlike the "uncomfortably internationalist Catholic empire of Barbarossa", the Germanic Reich of the German Nation would be racist and nationalist. Rather than a return to the values of the Middle Ages, its establishment was to be "a push forward to a new golden age, in which the best aspects of the past would be combined with modern racist and nationalist thinking".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The historical borders of the Holy Empire were also used as grounds for territorial revisionism by the NSDAP, laying claim to modern territories and states that were once part of it. Even before the war, Hitler had dreamed of reversing the Peace of Westphalia, which had given the territories of the Empire almost complete sovereignty. On November 17, 1939, Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that the "total liquidation" of this historic treaty was the "great goal" of the Nazi regime, and that since it had been signed in Münster, it would also be officially repealed in the same city.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Despite intending to grant the other "Germanics" of Europe a racially superior status alongside the Germans themselves in an anticipated post-war racio-political order, the Nazis did not however consider granting the subject populations of these countries any national rights of their own. The other Germanic countries were seen as mere extensions of Germany rather than individual units in any way, and the Germans were unequivocally intended to remain the empire's "most powerful source of strength, from both an ideological as well as military standpoint". Even Heinrich Himmler, who among the senior Nazis most staunchly supported the concept, could not shake off the idea of a hierarchical distinction between German "Volk" and Germanic "Völker". The SS's official newspaper, "Das Schwarze Korps", never succeeded in reconciling the contradiction between Germanic 'brotherhood' and German superiority. Members of Nazi-type parties in Germanic countries were also forbidden to attend public meetings of the Nazi Party when they visited Germany. After the Battle of Stalingrad this ban was lifted, but only if the attendees made prior notice of their arrival so that the events' speakers could be warned in advance not to make disparaging remarks about their country of origin.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Although Hitler himself and Himmler's SS advocated for a pan-Germanic Empire, the objective was not universally held in the Nazi regime. Goebbels and the Reich Foreign Ministry under Joachim von Ribbentrop inclined more towards an idea of a continental bloc under German rule, as represented by the Anti-Comintern Pact, Ribbentrop's "European Confederation" project and the earlier "Mitteleuropa" concept.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: There were also disagreements within the NSDAP leadership on the spiritual implications of cultivating a 'Germanic history' in their ideological program. Hitler was highly critical of Himmler's esoteric völkisch interpretation of the 'Germanic mission'. When Himmler denounced Charlemagne in a speech as "the butcher of the Saxons", Hitler stated that this was not a 'historical crime' but in fact a good thing, for the subjugation of Widukind had brought Western culture into what eventually became Germany, however he criticised the religious policies that came with it, claiming that even Islam would have been better than Christianity due to its meekness. He also disapproved of the archaeological projects which Himmler organized through his Ahnenerbe organization, such as excavations of pre-historic Germanic sites: "Why do we call the whole world's attention to the fact that we have no past?, in reference to Germany's lack of urban civilisation historically.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: In an attempt to eventually supplant Christianity with a religion more amenable to Nazi racial theories, Himmler, together with Alfred Rosenberg, sought to replace it with Germanic paganism (the indigenous traditional religion or "Volksreligion" of the Germanic peoples), of which the Japanese Shinto was seen as an almost perfect East Asian counterpart. For this purpose they had ordered the construction of sites for the worship of Germanic cults in order to exchange Christian rituals for Germanic consecration ceremonies, which included different marriage and burial rites. In Heinrich Heims' "Adolf Hitler, Monologe im FHQ 1941-1944" (several editions, here Orbis Verlag, 2000), Hitler is quoted as having said on 14 October 1941: "It seems to be inexpressibly stupid to allow a revival of the cult of Odin/Wotan. Our old mythology of the gods was defunct, and incapable of revival, when Christianity came...the whole world of antiquity either followed philosophical systems on the one hand, or worshipped the gods. But in modern times it is undesirable that all humanity should make such a fool of itself." This was in reference to bringing Germans back to idol worship in what Hitler saw as an era of science that would reject it.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The goal was first proclaimed publicly in the 1937 Nuremberg Rallies. Hitler's last speech at this event ended with the words "The German nation has after all acquired its Germanic Reich", which elicited speculation in political circles of a 'new era' in Germany's foreign policy. Several days before the event Hitler took Albert Speer aside when both were on their way to the former's Munich apartment with an entourage, and declared to him that "We will create a great empire. All the Germanic peoples will be included in it. It will begin in Norway and extend to northern Italy. I myself must carry this out. If only I keep my health!" On April 9, 1940, as Germany invaded Denmark and Norway in Operation Weserübung, Hitler announced the establishment of the Germanic Reich: "Just as the Bismarck Empire arose from the year 1866, so too will the Greater Germanic Empire arise from this day."


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The establishment of the empire was to follow the model of the Austrian "Anschluss" of 1938, just carried out on a greater scale. Goebbels emphasized in April 1940 that the annexed Germanic countries would have to undergo a similar "national revolution" as Germany herself did after the "Machtergreifung", with an enforced rapid social and political "co-ordination" in accordance with Nazi principles and ideology ("Gleichschaltung").


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The ultimate goal of the "Gleichschaltung" policy pursued in these parts of occupied Europe was to destroy the very concepts of individual states and nationalities, just as the concept of a separate Austrian state and national identity was repressed after the "Anschluss" through the establishment of new state and party districts. The new empire was to no longer be a nation-state of the type that had emerged in the 19th century, but instead a "racially pure community". It is for this reason that the German occupiers had no interest in transferring real power to the various far-right nationalist movements present in the occupied countries (such as Nasjonal Samling, the NSB, etc.) except for temporary reasons of "Realpolitik", and instead actively supported radical collaborators who favored pan-Germanic unity (i.e. total integration to Germany) over provincial nationalism (for example DeVlag). Unlike Austria and the Sudetenland however, the process was to take considerably longer. Eventually these nationalities were to be merged with the Germans into a single ruling race, but Hitler stated that this prospect lay "a hundred or so years" in the future. During this interim period it was intended that the 'New Europe' would be run by Germans alone. According to Speer, while Himmler intended to eventually Germanize these peoples completely, Hitler intended not to "infringe on their individuality" (that is, their native languages), so that in the future they would "add to the diversity and dynamism" of his empire. The German language would be its lingua franca however, likening it to the status of English in the British Commonwealth.