title: Prison sexuality

text: While most prisons exclusively house inmates of either gender, there are some facilities that house both men and women. Within such institutions there are cases where inmates engage in heterosexual sex with prisoners of the opposite gender. Additionally, there have even been instances in which married couples are held in the same location. However such sexual encounters are not very common and can be difficult for the inmates to arrange with each other as a result of the men and women being separated from each other and the fact that the prisoners are closely monitored by the prison officers.


title: Prison sexuality

text: This specific kind of interaction between inmates is gaining more attention, due to the benefits it seems to provide for inmates. For instance, inmates in these relationships experience a lower level of romantic loneliness, a higher level of sexual satisfaction, as well as increased quality of life compared to inmates with a spouse/romantic partner outside of the jail or inmates with no partner whatsoever. This suggests that inmates in the same prison will benefit from developing relationships with other inmates. In the rare instances where inmates are permitted contact with incarcerated members of the opposite sex, intimate relationships are shown to be beneficial for the inmates’ interpersonal and psychological state.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Around the world many prisons offer conjugal visits to the partners of inmates, in which prisoners are permitted to spend time in private rooms, with their partners in a prison-facilitated environment like private apartment-style rooms within the prison itself or the inmates are taken to meet their spouses in secure locations such as trailers or cabins. During conjugal visits the inmate and their partners may even be provided with supplies such as soap, towels, bed linens, condoms, lubricant, and even G-rated (in the United States) DVDs. Conjugal visits are restricted to only inmates with good behavior, and in some jurisdictions this is only permitted for married couples, while others allow domestic partners.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Inmates might also engage in heterosexual relationships during work release programs, in which a prisoner is sufficiently monitored by a supervisor or trusted enough to temporarily leave the prison to work at a place of employment before returning to the prison. During the working shift, inmates have taken advantage of the temporary freedom to engage in sex with either their work release supervisor, a co-worker from their place of employment, or anyone else they can manage to contact. However such relations are not allowed and thus any inmate caught engaging in such activity may face punishments such as being excluded from the work release programs.


title: Prison sexuality

text: In prisons with high enough levels of corruption, inmates with considerable amounts of wealth and influence, such as crime bosses and/or drug lords, have been known to use their money to bribe the prison staff, so as to allow outsiders, such as prostitutes or even intimate partners, to enter into the prisons for sexual activity with the inmates. However prison staff that engage in such misconduct risk being temporarily suspended or fired if their corruption is exposed, along with possible prosecution.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Relations also occur between correctional staff and inmates. Due to the power dynamic of staff over the inmates, tight quarters and restriction of sexual relations, prisoners are in a vulnerable position toward staff members. Personnel of the staff include: security staff, teachers, case managers, counselors, medical workers, work release supervisors, contractors and religious workers; additionally there have also been cases of inmates having relations with lawyers visiting clients in the prison. At times there are even cases of women becoming pregnant as a result of sexual relations between inmates and staff. Although not allowed, many times this would be the only opportunity for inmates to engage in heterosexual relations. In some jurisdictions, sexual relations by prison staff with inmates are illegal regardless of consent.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Additionally prison inmates with contraband such as mobile web have been known to use their smartphones and/or tablet computers to either watch pornography or to engage in sexting, phone sex or cybersex with people outside of the prisons.


title: Prison sexuality

text: A government report in the UK in 2014 found that female prisoners in England and Wales have been coerced into sex with staff in exchange for alcohol and cigarettes. Some sexbot manufacturers have argued that introducing sexbots into prisons will have the positive effect of reducing prison rapes and reducing sexual tension.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Prison is a community sexologically characterized by overt masturbation and by homosexual couplings that may be consensual, coercive or assaultive (rape). Prison rape is defined differently from state to state but is understood to be non-consensual or unwanted sexual contact between individuals. Prison rape can be between inmates or inmates and staff of the prison. This is a form of sexuality because these individuals use their capacity for sexual feelings to intimidate or control their victims which causes sociological properties of the prison to change.


title: Prison sexuality

text: According to research done in 1980, prisoners have two overarching reasons to rape a victim. One is to satisfy their overt sexual- and need-based desires that self-pleasure cannot. The second is to use the assault as a sort of intimidation factor to grant the rapist power in a place where these actions generally go unpunished. In prison, the term "booty bandit" is used to describe an inmate who would rape another (in the case of males). There seems to be no correlation shown that men who are abusive to their partners outside of prison are more likely to be rapists in prisons. Such men are not known to have a history of sexual assault before prison.


title: Prison sexuality

text: According to the 2001 Human Rights Watch report "", sexual slavery is frequently posed as a consensual sexual relationship inside prisons. Rape victims are often intimidated into feigning consent to sexual activity, to the point of becoming "slaves" and the figurative property of their rapists. The potential for rape activity has been seen to be more prevalent across race lines. HRW also stated that many studies report the prevalence of rape perpetrated by black prisoners against Caucasian prisoners.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Prospective slaveholders will sometimes use intimidating innuendo, as opposed to overt threats of violence, which the prospective slave unwillingly accepts, thereby disguising the coercive nature of the sexual activity from even the enslaver. Victims might not even see themselves as being coerced if the abuse is negotiated as repayment for a debt. The trauma of the sexual violations often affects men as it threatens their sense of masculinity, gender identity and sexual orientation. The HRW report contains an account in which an inmate is feeling this way. It concludes that in prison, consent is inherently illusory.


title: Prison sexuality

text: In 2003, for the first time ever, the United States government moved to protect prisoners from sexual violence. With pressure from human rights groups, the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) to protect prisoners from sexual violence.


title: Prison sexuality

text: The printed news media in the historical era emphasized the issue of prison rape by establishing a social problem and blaming the U.S. correction system. According to major newspapers, the U.S. correction system not only involved the correctional personnel but the inmates who engaged in homosexual behavior. Later in the contemporary era, print news media shifted the United States' focus on prison rape from a framed-problem perspective to a political rights and civil rights issue within the U.S. correction system.


title: Prison sexuality

text: The issue of prison rape gained national attention in the press, thus creating an open door for new perspectives on how to understand and eliminate the issue. News media contributed to the U.S. government's initiative to intervene in the matter.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Studies conducted by Cindy Struckman-Johnson conclude that 22 percent of male inmates have either been coerced or persuaded into sexual acts in prison. Sexual assault in prison is not exclusive to male prisons. Female prisoners experience sexual assault in a different way. By 1998, there were over 138,000 women in the prison system. While this is the case, the majority of prison guards are male. There is evidence that women prisoners are coerced into sex by prison staff in exchange for "drugs, favors, and promises of more lenient treatment." Female inmates also report that guards and staff watch them shower and undress, as well improperly touch them during pat-downs.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Members of the LGBTQ+ community are incarcerated at higher rates than heterosexual people in America. There is a significant demographic of LGBTQ+ individuals within the criminal justice system. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, a branch of the Department of Justice, reports that gay and lesbian men and women are ten times more likely to be sexually assaulted in prison by another inmate. Additionally, they are 2.6 times more likely than heterosexual inmates to be sexually assaulted by prison staff.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Transgender inmates in particular face tougher discrimination than any other prison demographic. Not only are they required to be imprisoned with other members of their designated biological sex, but the lack of facilities for transgender inmates is discriminatory in nature. The concept of differentiating the sexes in prisons is called sex segregation. The separate men's and women's prisons bring forward issues for transgender and intersex people who are incarcerated.


title: Prison sexuality

text: While it is known that discrimination exists against transgender and intersex prisoners, there is little data on the issue thus far. This is due to the fact that jails and prisons are segregated by binary sex. There are studies that demonstrate that compared to the United Kingdom, transgender inmates in the United States are much less likely to be housed with other members of the gender they identify with.


title: Prison sexuality

text: The treatment of transgender inmates also varies across different jurisdictions in the United States. The most inclusive states allow for inmates to be segregated based on their gender identity on their Department of Motor Vehicle identification card. Others states such as Tennessee have restrictive laws against gender identification in prisons. The state of Tennessee only allows inmates to be housed based on their biological sex on their birth certificate, which in this state cannot be changed.


title: Prison sexuality

text: The lack of autonomy for transgender people in prison to decide where they should be housed is discriminatory and dangerous in nature. It leads to more sexual assaults from other prisoners and prison personnel. A study conducted in California concluded that transgender people in prison are 13 times more likely to be a victim of sexual assault.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Even though the state law prohibits all sex acts, sex still takes place in prison whether widely consensual or violently coerced. Health advocates believe that condoms should be available for everyone to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections and since sex is going to happen in the prisons, it should be safe. Organizations like the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Program On HIV/AIDS truly believe that condoms should be available to prisoners and have been insistent on it for more than a decade. Despite their attempts to provide condoms some places still do not provide them. Conversations in the United States can be filled with judgments as to what prisoners do not deserve, condoms being part of this. While the conversations take place the infection rates of HIV and other STIs continue to rise severely affecting both the inmates and the community.


title: Prison sexuality

text: As of September 2013, condoms are available inside prisons in Canada, most of the European Union, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and the US state of Vermont. In September 2014, a law was passed in California when Governor Jerry Brown signed the Assembly Bill 966 also known as the Prisoner Protections for Family and Community Health Act to require the state to hand out condoms and make them available to inmates in 34 of its prison facilities. This bill protects the prisoner's health as well while being cost effective. For the state, condom distribution is a low cost method to prevent the transmission of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases since individual HIV treatments are costly.


title: Prison sexuality

text: As of 12 September 2016, a California bill passed stating that birth control and hygiene products are allowed for women inmates to use if they are prescribed by their physician. All forms of birth control approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will be made available to all inmates capable of becoming pregnant.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Multiple factors contribute to the debate over providing condoms to prisoners, one is that of political standings. In the U.S in particular, prison officials believe that providing condoms amounts to condoning sex, which in some places is illegal. In 1999 some penal systems participated in condom distribution including San Francisco, Washington D.C, and New York City. Without condoms, some prisoners are forced to improvise, such as using foam to prevent transmission of HIV.


title: Prison sexuality

text: The amount of STIs in prisons is 8-10 times higher than the general population among both males and females.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Many of these incarcerated individuals with drug-related crime have participated in unsafe injection or have sexual risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted or infectious diseases. Even though correctional administrators deny it, sexual activity and drug use take place in prisons. HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections are transmitted by unprotected sex and sharing contaminated drug injection equipment in these correctional facilities. Many prisoners are infected while incarcerated which can affect their personal health, spread infectious diseases to other inmates, and eventually their sexual partner in the community. Because the rate of STIs is much higher in prison, some prisons provide voluntary HIV testing and counseling to educate and reduce HIV risk behavior. Some prisoners refuse to voluntarily get tested for HIV because they fear their results will not remain confidential among the staff and that they will be discriminated against.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Health is a priority for many prisons, especially when prisoners return to their communities once their sentence is complete.


title: Prison sexuality

text: Some explanations for prison sexuality include the social constructionist theory by Groth. He implies that sexuality is not only an "inherent part" of a person but also that it may be a "construct of that person's society". Additionally, he mentions that you cannot classify the prisoner's sexuality as heterosexual or homosexual during their prison time because it could not be accurate; their sexuality is on hold meanwhile because they act rather on personal needs than interpersonal needs. This, however does not fully conclude that this is the sole reason for prison relationships because they also feel the genuine connection that can turn into a serious relationship.


title: Prison sexuality

text: A similar perspective was penned by Donald Clemmer, who in 1940 theorized that inmates engaged in homosexual behavior partly as they "were deprived of a heteronormative sexual identity". As sexuality has been historically separated into heterosexual or homosexual categories, this deprivation model of an inmate satisfying their needs at the cost of changing from heterosexual to homosexual fits with the social constructionist theory.


title: Prison sexuality

text: In 1958, Gresham Sykes created the deprivation model. In this model, heterosexual inmates struggle with deprivation and create a prison subculture. Inmates are deprived of their sexual needs and desire some activity, resort to masturbation, consensual or coerced sex.


title: Prison sexuality

text: John Irwin and Donald Cressey created the importation model in 1962. With this model, inmates create a unique prison culture based on values from the outside. The social constructionist model is made up of social situations and values.


title: Sanssouci

text: Sanssouci () is a historical building in Potsdam, near Berlin. Built by Prussian King Frederick the Great as his summer palace, it is often counted among the German rivals of Versailles. While Sanssouci is in the more intimate Rococo style and is far smaller than its French Baroque counterpart, it, too, is notable for the numerous temples and follies in the surrounding park. The palace was designed and built by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff between 1745 and 1747 to meet Frederick's need for a private residence where he could escape the pomp and ceremony of the royal court. The palace's name is a French phrase ("sans souci") that translates as "without concerns", meaning "without worries" or "carefree", emphasising that the palace was meant as a place of relaxation, rather than a seat of power.


title: Sanssouci

text: Sanssouci is little more than a large, single-story villa—more like the Château de Marly than Versailles. Containing just ten principal rooms, it was built on the brow of a terraced hill at the centre of the park. The influence of King Frederick's personal taste in the design and decoration of the palace was so great that its style is characterised as "Frederician Rococo", and his feelings for the palace were so strong that he conceived it as "a place that would die with him". Because of a disagreement about the site of the palace in the park, Knobelsdorff was fired in 1746. Jan Bouman, a Dutch architect, finished the project.


title: Sanssouci

text: During the 19th century, the palace became a residence of Frederick William IV. He employed the architect Ludwig Persius to restore and enlarge the palace, while Ferdinand von Arnim was charged with improving the grounds and thus the view from the palace. The town of Potsdam, with its palaces, was a favourite place of residence for the German imperial family until the fall of the Hohenzollern dynasty in 1918.


title: Sanssouci

text: After World War II, the palace became a tourist attraction in East Germany. Following German reunification in 1990, Frederick's body was returned to the palace and buried in a new tomb overlooking the gardens he had created. Sanssouci and its extensive gardens became a World Heritage Site in 1990 under the protection of UNESCO; in 1995, the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg was established to care for Sanssouci and the other former imperial palaces in and around Berlin. These palaces are now visited by more than two million people each year from all over the world.


title: Sanssouci

text: The location and layout of Sanssouci above a vineyard reflected the pre-Romantic ideal of harmony between man and nature, in a landscape ordered by human touch. Winemaking, however, was to take second place to the design of the palace and pleasure gardens. The hill on which Frederick created his terrace vineyard was to become the focal point of his demesne, crowned by the new, but small, palace—""mein Weinberghäuschen"" ("my little vineyard house"), as Frederick called it. With its extensive views of the countryside in the midst of nature, Frederick wanted to reside there "sans souci" ("without a care") and to follow his personal and artistic interests. Hence, the palace was intended for the use of Frederick and his private guests—his sketch ("illustration") indicated the balanced suites "pour les etrangers" and "pour le roy"— only during the summer months, from the end of April to the beginning of October.


title: Sanssouci

text: Twenty years following his creation of Sanssouci, Frederick built the New Palace ("Neues Palais") in the western part of the park. This far larger palace was in direct contrast to the relaxed ethos behind Sanssouci, and displayed Frederick's power and strength to the world, in the Baroque style. The design of the New Palace was intended to demonstrate that Prussia's capabilities were undiminished despite its near defeat in the Seven Years' War. Frederick made no secret of his intention, even referring to the new construction as his ""fanfaronnade"" ("showing off").


title: Sanssouci

text: This concept of a grand palace designed to impress has led to the comparison of the palaces of Potsdam to Versailles, with Sanssouci being thrust into the role of one of the Trianons. This analogy, though easy to understand, ignores the original merits of the concept behind Sanssouci, the palace for which the whole park and setting were created. Unlike the Trianons, Sanssouci was not an afterthought to escape the larger palace, for the simple reason that the larger palace did not exist at the time of Sanssouci's conception; and once it did, Frederick almost never stayed in the New Palace except on rare occasions when entertaining diplomats he wished to impress. It is true, however, that Sanssouci was intended to be a private place of retreat rather than display of power, strength and architectural merit. Unlike the Trianons, Sanssouci was designed to be a whole unto itself.


title: Sanssouci

text: Sanssouci is small, with the principal block (or "corps de logis") being a narrow single-storey enfilade of just ten rooms, including a service passage and staff rooms behind them. Frederick's amateur sketch of 1745 ("illustrated above") demonstrates that his architect, Knobelsdorff, was more a draughtsman at Sanssouci than complete architect. Frederick appears to have accepted no suggestions for alteration to his plans, refusing Knobelsdorff's idea that the palace should have a semi-basement storey, which would not only have provided service areas closer at hand, but would have put the principal rooms on a raised piano nobile. This would have given the palace not only a more commanding presence, but also would have prevented the problems of dampness to which it has always been prone. However, Frederick wanted an intimate palace for living: for example, rather than scaling a large number of steps, he wanted to enter the palace immediately from the garden. He insisted on a building on the ground level, of which the pedestal was the hill: in short, this was to be a private pleasure house. His recurring theme and requirement was for a house with close connections between its style and free nature. The principal rooms, lit by tall slender windows, face south over the vineyard gardens; the north façade is the entrance front, where a semicircular cour d'honneur was created by two segmented Corinthian colonnades.


title: Sanssouci

text: In the park, east of the palace, is the Sanssouci Picture Gallery, built from 1755 to 1764 under the supervision of the architect Johann Gottfried Büring. It stands on the site of a former greenhouse, where Frederick raised tropical fruit. The Picture Gallery is the oldest extant museum built for a ruler in Germany. Like the palace itself, it is a long, low building, dominated by a central domed bow of three bays.


title: Sanssouci

text: To the west is the New Chambers, built between 1771 and 1775 as accommodation for guests and with rooms to entertain them. The building mirrors the Picture Gallery externally, thus adding to the symmetry of the Sanssouci ensemble.


title: Sanssouci

text: Following the death of Frederick a new era began, a visible sign of which was the change in architectural styles. Neo-Classicism, popular elsewhere in Europe but ignored by Frederick, now found its way to Potsdam and Berlin during the reign of the new king Frederick William II. He ordered the construction of a new palace in the new more fashionable style, and stayed at Sanssouci only occasionally.


title: Sanssouci

text: The reception and bedrooms were renovated and completely altered immediately after Frederick's death. Frederick William von Erdmannsdorff received the commission for the refurbishment. While Frederick had been constructing the New Palace in the Baroque style between 1763 and 1769, Erdmannsdorff, an advocate of the new neo-classical style, had created Schloss Wörlitz in Wörlitz Park, the first neo-classical palace in Germany. As a result of his influence, Sanssouci became the first of the palaces in Potsdam and Berlin to be remodelled with a neo-classical interior. In 1797, Frederick William II was succeeded by Frederick William III; he visited Sanssouci even less frequently than did his father, preferring to spend the summer months in Paretz Palace or on the Pfaueninsel in Berlin.


title: Sanssouci

text: It was no coincidence that Frederick selected the Rococo style of architecture for Sanssouci. The light, almost whimsical style then in vogue exactly suited the light-hearted uses for which he required this retreat. The Rococo style of art emerged in France in the early 18th century as a continuation of the Baroque style, but in contrast with the heavier themes and darker colours of the Baroque, the Rococo was characterised by an opulence, grace, playfulness, and lightness. Rococo motifs focused on the carefree aristocratic life and on light-hearted romance, rather than on heroic battles and religious figures. They also revolve around natural and exterior settings; this again suited Frederick's ideal of nature and design being in complete harmony. The palace was completed much as Frederick had envisaged in his preliminary sketches ("see illustration above").


title: Sanssouci

text: The palace has a single-storey principal block with two flanking side wings. The building occupies almost the entire upper terrace. The potential monotony of the façade is broken by a central bow, its dome rising above the hipped roof, with the name of the palace—remarkably, written with a comma and a full stop, viz. Sans, Souci.— on it in gilded bronze letters. The secondary side wings on the garden front are screened by two symmetrical rows of trees each terminating in free-standing trellised gazebos, richly decorated with gilded ornaments.


title: Sanssouci

text: The garden front of the palace is decorated by carved atlantes and caryatids; grouped in pairs between the windows, these appear to support the balustrade above. Executed in sandstone, these figures of both sexes represent Bacchants, the companions of the wine god Bacchus, and originate from the workshop of the sculptor Friedrich Christian Glume. The same workshop created the vases on the balustrade, and the groups of cherubs above the windows of the dome.


title: Sanssouci

text: By contrast, the north entrance façade is more restrained. Segmented colonnades of 88 Corinthian columns—two deep—curve outwards from the palace building to enclose the semicircular "cour d'honneur". As on the south side, a balustrade with sandstone vases decorates the roof of the main "corps de logis".


title: Sanssouci

text: Flanking the "corps de logis" are two secondary wings, providing the large service accommodation and domestic offices necessary to serve an 18th-century monarch, even when in retreat from the world. In Frederick's time, these single-storey wings were covered with foliage to screen their mundane purpose. The eastern wing housed the secretaries', gardeners' and servants' rooms, while the west wing held the palace kitchen, stables and a "remise" (coach house).


title: Sanssouci

text: Frederick regularly occupied the palace each summer throughout his lifetime, but after his death in 1786 it remained mostly unoccupied and neglected until the mid-19th century. In 1840, 100 years after Frederick's accession to the throne, his great-grandnephew Frederick William IV and his wife moved into the guest rooms. The royal couple retained the existing furniture and replaced missing pieces with furniture from Frederick's time. The room in which Frederick had died was intended to be restored to its original state, but this plan was never executed because of a lack of authentic documents and plans. However, the armchair in which Frederick had died was returned to the palace in 1843.


title: Sanssouci

text: Frederick William IV, a draftsman interested in both architecture and landscape gardening, transformed the palace from the retreat of his reclusive great uncle into a fully functioning and fashionable country house. The small service wings were enlarged between 1840 and 1842. This was necessary because, while Frederick philosophised and played music at Sanssouci, he liked to live modestly without splendour. As he aged, his modesty developed into miserliness. He would not permit repairs to the outer façade and allowed them in the rooms only with great reluctance. This was ascribed to his wish that Sanssouci should only last his lifetime.


title: Sanssouci

text: The additions included a mezzanine floor to both wings. The kitchen was moved into the east wing. Frederick the Great's small wine cellar was enlarged to provide ample store rooms for the enlarged household, while the new upper floor provided staff bedrooms.


title: Sanssouci

text: The west wing became known as "The Ladies' Wing", providing accommodation for ladies-in-waiting and guests. This was a common arrangement in mid-19th-century households, which often had a corresponding "Bachelor's Wing" for unmarried male guests and members of the household. The rooms were decorated with intricate boiseries, panelling and tapestries. This new accommodation for ladies was vital: entertaining at Sanssouci was minimal during the reign of Frederick the Great, and it is known that women were never entertained there, so there were no facilities for them. Frederick had married Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Bevern in 1733, but separated from his wife after his accession to the throne in 1740. The Queen resided alone at Schönhausen Palace in Berlin after the separation, and Frederick preferred Sanssouci to be ""sans femmes"" (without women).


title: Sanssouci

text: In the Baroque tradition, the principal rooms (including the bedrooms and toilets) are all on the piano nobile, which at Sanssouci was the ground floor by Frederick's choice. While the secondary wings have upper floors, the "corps de logis" occupied by the King occupies the full height of the structure. Comfort was also a priority in the layout of the rooms. The palace expresses contemporary French architectural theory in its "apartement double" ideals of courtly comfort, comprising two rows of rooms, one behind the other. The main rooms face the garden, looking southwards, while the servant's quarters in the row behind are on the north side of the building. An "apartement double" thus consists of a main room and a servant's chamber. Doors connect the apartments with each other. They are arranged as an "enfilade", so that the entire indoor length of the palace can be assessed at a glance.


title: Sanssouci

text: Frederick sketched his requirements for decoration and layout, and these sketches were interpreted by artists such as Johann August Nahl, the Hoppenhaupt brothers, the Spindler brothers and Johann Melchior Kambly, who all not only created works of art, but decorated the rooms in the Rococo style. While Frederick cared little about etiquette and fashion, he also wanted to be surrounded by beautiful objects and works of art. He arranged his private apartments according to his personal taste and needs, often ignoring the current trends and fashions. These "self-compositions" in Rococo art led to the term "Frederician Rococo".


title: Sanssouci

text: The principal entrance area, consisting of two halls, the "Entrance Hall" and the "Marble Hall", is at the centre, thus providing common rooms for the assembly of guests and the court, while the principal rooms flanking the Marble Hall become progressively more intimate and private, in the tradition of the Baroque concept of state rooms. Thus, the Marble Hall was the principal reception room beneath the central dome. Five guest rooms adjoined the Marble Hall to the west, while the King's apartments lay to the east - an audience room, music room, study, bedroom, library, and a long gallery on the north side.


title: Sanssouci

text: The palace is generally entered through the Entrance Hall, where the restrained form of the classical external colonnade was continued into the interior. The walls of the rectangular room were subdivided by ten pairs of Corinthian columns made of white stucco marble with gilded capitals. Three overdoor reliefs with themes from the myth of Bacchus reflected the vineyard theme created outside. Georg Franz Ebenhech was responsible for gilded stucco works. The strict classical elegance was relieved by a painted ceiling executed by the Swedish painter Johann Harper, depicting the goddess Flora with her acolytes, throwing flowers down from the sky.


title: Sanssouci

text: The white-and-gold oval Marmorsaal ("Marble Hall"), as the principal reception room, was the setting for celebrations in the palace, its dome crowned by a cupola. White Carrara marble was used for the paired columns, above which stucco putti dangle their feet from the cornice. The dome is white with gilded ornament, and the floor is of Italian marble intarsia inlaid in compartments radiating from a central trelliswork oval. Three arch-headed windows face the garden; opposite them, in two niches flanking the doorway, figures of Venus Urania, the goddess of free nature and life, and Apollo, the god of the arts, by the French sculptor François Gaspard Adam, established the iconography of Sanssouci as a place where art was joined with nature.


title: Sanssouci

text: The adjoining room served as both an audience room and the Dining Room. It is decorated with paintings by French 18th-century artists, including Jean-Baptiste Pater, Jean François de Troy, Pierre-Jacques Cazes, Louis Silvestre, and Antoine Watteau. However, here, as in the majority of the rooms, the carved putti, flowers and books on the overdoor reliefs were the work of Glume, and the ceiling paintings emphasise the rococo spirit of the palace. This exuberant form of ornamentation of rococo, Rocaille, was used in abundance on the walls and ceiling in the music room. Much of the work was by the sculptor and decorator Johann Michael Hoppenhaupt (the elder). A 1746 fortepiano by Gottfried Silbermann which once belonged to Frederick the Great remains as a nostalgic reminder of the room's original purpose.


title: Sanssouci

text: The King's study and bedroom, remodelled after Frederick's death by Frederick William von Erdmannsdorff in 1786, is now in direct contrast to the rococo rooms. Here, the clean and plain lines of classicism now rule. However, Frederick's desk and the armchair in which he died were returned to the room in the middle of the 19th century. Portraits and once missing pieces of furniture from Frederick's time have also since been replaced.


title: Sanssouci

text: The circular library deviated from the spatial structure of French palace architecture. The room is almost hidden, accessed through a narrow passageway from the bedroom, underlining its private character. Cedarwood was used to panel the walls and for the alcoved bookcases. The harmonious shades of brown augmented with rich gold-coloured Rocaille ornaments were intended to create a peaceful mood.


title: Sanssouci

text: The bookcases contained approximately 2,100 volumes of Greek and Roman writings and historiographies and also a collection of French literature of the 17th and 18th centuries with a heavy emphasis on the works of Voltaire. The books were bound in brown or red goat leather and richly gilded.


title: Sanssouci

text: The north facing gallery overlooked the forecourt. Here, again, Frederick deviated from French room design, which would have placed service rooms in this location. Recessed into the inner wall of this long room were niches containing marble sculptures of Greco-Roman deities. Five windows alternating with pier glasses on the outer wall reflect the paintings by Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Pater and Antoine Watteau hung between the niches opposite.


title: Sanssouci

text: To the west were the guest rooms in which were lodged those friends of the King considered intimate enough to be invited to this most private of his palaces. Two of Frederick's visitors were sufficiently distinguished and frequent that the rooms they occupied were named after them. The Rothenburg room is named after the Count of Rothenburg, who inhabited his circular room until his death in 1751. This room balances the palace architecturally with the library. The Voltaire Room was frequently occupied by the philosopher during his stay in Potsdam between 1750 and 1753. The Voltaire Room was remarkable for its decoration, which gave it the alternative name of the "Flower Room". On a yellow lacquered wall panel were superimposed, colourful, richly adorned wood carvings. Apes, parrots, cranes, storks, fruits, flowers, garlands gave the room a cheerful and natural character. designed the room between 1752 and 1753 from sketches made by Frederick.


title: Sanssouci

text: The panoramic vista of the garden of Sanssouci is the result of Frederick the Great's decision to create a terraced vineyard on the south slope of the hills of Bornstedt. The area had previously been wooded but the trees were felled during the reign of the "soldier-king" Frederick William I to allow the city of Potsdam to expand.


title: Sanssouci

text: On 10 August 1744, Frederick ordered the bare hillside to be transformed into terraced vineyards. Three wide terraces were created, with convex centres to maximise the sun light ("see plan"). On the partitions of the supporting walls, the brickwork is pierced by 168 glazed niches. Trellised vines from Portugal, Italy, France, and also from nearby Neuruppin, were planted against the brickwork, while figs grew in the niches. The individual parts of the terrace were further divided by strips of lawn, on which were planted yew trees. Low box hedging surrounded trellised fruit, making a circular ornamental parterre. In the middle of this "wheel", 120 steps (now 132) led downward further dividing the terraces into six.


title: Sanssouci

text: Below the hill, a Baroque ornamental garden, modelled on the parterre at Versailles, was constructed in 1745. The Great Fountain was built at the centre of this garden in 1748. Frederick never saw the fountain playing because the engineers employed in the construction had little understanding of the hydraulics involved. From 1750, marble statues were placed around the basin of the fountain. This again was a feature copied from Versailles: figures of Venus, Mercury, Apollo, Diana, Juno, Jupiter, Mars and Minerva, as well as allegorical portrayals of the four elements Fire, Water, Air and Earth. Venus and Mercury, the works of the sculptor Jean Baptiste Pigalle, and two groups of hunters, allegories of the elements (wind and water) by Lambert Sigisbert Adam, were presented by Versailles's owner, the French King Louis XV. The remaining figures came from the workshop of François Gaspard Adam, a renowned sculptor in Berlin. By 1764, the French Rondel, as it came to be known, was completed.


title: Sanssouci

text: Nearby was a kitchen garden, which Frederick William I had laid out sometime prior to 1715. The Soldier King jokingly gave this simple garden the name "My Marly", in reference to the very similar garden at the summer residence of the Louis XIV in Marly-le-Roi.


title: Sanssouci

text: In his plans for the grounds, Frederick attached great importance on the combination of both an ornamental and a practical garden, thus demonstrating his belief that art and nature should be united.


title: Sanssouci

text: Following the terracing of the vineyard and the completion of the palace, Frederick turned his attention to the landscaping of the greater vicinity of the palace and thus began the creation of Sanssouci Park. In his organisation of the park, Frederick continued what he had begun in Neuruppin and Rheinsberg. A straight main avenue was laid out, ultimately 2.5 km long, beginning in the east at the 1748 obelisk and extended over the years to the New Palace, which marks its western end.


title: Sanssouci

text: Continuing the horticultural theme of the terraced gardens, 3,000 fruit trees were planted in the park, and greenhouses and nurseries laid out, producing oranges, melons, peaches and bananas. Statuary and obelisks were also erected, with representations of the goddesses Flora and Pomona. Frederick had several temples and follies erected in the same rococo style as the palace itself. Some were small houses which compensated for the lack of reception rooms in the palace itself.


title: Sanssouci

text: Frederick invested heavily in a vain attempt to introduce a fountain system in Sanssouci Park, attempting to emulate the other great Baroque gardens of Europe. Hydraulics at this stage were still in their infancy, and despite the building of pumping houses and reservoirs, the fountains at Sanssouci remained silent and still for the next 100 years. The invention of steam power solved the problems a century later, and thus the reservoir finally fulfilled its purpose. From around 1842, the Prussian Royal family were finally able to marvel at such features as the Great Fountain below the vineyard terraces, shooting jets of water to a height of 38 metres. The pumping station itself became another garden pavilion, disguised as a Turkish mosque, with its chimney becoming a minaret.


title: Sanssouci

text: The park was expanded under Frederick William III, and later under his son Frederick William IV. The architects Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Ludwig Persius built Charlottenhof Palace in the park on the site of a former farm house, and Peter Joseph Lenné was commissioned with the garden design. Broad meadows created visual avenues between Charlottenhof, the Roman Baths and the New Palace, and incorporated the follies such as the Temple of Friendship of Frederick the Great.


title: Sanssouci

text: After the First World War, and despite the end of the German monarchy, the palace remained in the possession of the Hohenzollern dynasty. It eventually came under the protection of the Prussian "Verwaltung der Staatlichen Schlösser und Gärten" (Administration of National Palaces and Gardens) on 1 April 1927.


title: Sanssouci

text: When air raids on Berlin began in the Second World War, the most notable works of art of the former imperial palaces were transferred for safety to Rheinsberg (Brandenburg) and Bernterode (near Worbis, Thuringia). The structure of the palace remained unscathed despite fierce fighting in the vicinity in 1945, but the ancient windmill, retained in the park by Frederick to add rustic charm, was destroyed.


title: Sanssouci

text: Following the end of the war, most of the items that had been moved to Rheinsberg were transferred as bounty to the Soviet Union; only a small fraction were returned to the palace in 1958. The artistic pieces from Bernterode found by American soldiers were first shipped to Wiesbaden to the "Central Art Collecting Point" and in 1957 went to Charlottenburg palace in West Berlin.


title: Sanssouci

text: Compared to many similar buildings, the palace fared well during almost 50 years under Communist jurisdiction in East Germany. The Church of St. Saviour in Sacrow and the centre of Potsdam were neglected, and some of the historic centre of Potsdam was demolished. The City Palace, Potsdam, containing architectural work by Knobelsdorff was demolished in 1960, but Sanssouci survived unscathed and the East German government endeavoured to have Sanssouci placed on the list of World Heritage Sites. This was achieved in 1990 with the following citation:


title: Sanssouci

text: The palace and park of Sanssouci, often described as the "Prussian Versailles", are a synthesis of the artistic movements of the 18th century in the cities and courts of Europe. That ensemble is a unique example of the architectural creations and landscape design against the backdrop of the intellectual background of monarchic ideas of the state.


title: Sanssouci

text: In 1991, following German reunification, Frederick's casket was interred in the terrace of the vineyard of Sanssouci – in the still existing crypt he had built there – after dark, without pomp, in accordance with his will.


title: Sanssouci

text: The library of Frederick was returned in 1992 to its former home at Sanssouci. Thirty-six oil paintings followed between 1993 and 1995. In 1995, the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens in Berlin-Brandenburg was formed. The organisation's job is to administer and care for Sanssouci and the other former royal palaces in Berlin and Brandenburg.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The economy of Afghanistan is listed as 103rd in the world in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) based on purchasing power parity (PPP). With a population of nearly 40 million people, Afghanistan's GDP (PPP) stands at around $77 billion with an exchange rate of $20 billion (2020), and the GDP (PPP) per capita is about $2,000. Its total external debt is 1.4 billion as of 2022. The Afghan economy continues to improve due to the influx of expats, improvement of national infrastructure, establishment of more trade routes with neighboring and regional countries, and expansion of the nation's agriculture and mining sectors.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The billions of dollars in assistance that came from expats and the international community saw this increase when there was more political reliability after NATO became involved in Afghanistan. It currently imports around $5 billion worth of goods and exports over $1.8 billion worth of legal products, mainly fresh and dried fruits. It is predicted that the nation's annual export will reach $2 billion in the coming year.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Despite holding over one trillion dollars in proven untapped mineral deposits, Afghanistan remains one of the least developed countries in the world. Its unemployment rate is over 23% and about half of its population lives below the poverty line. The main factor behind all of this has been the continues war in Afghanistan, which not only deters major foreign investors and aid deliveries but also affects the health of the entire population. Afghanistan has long sought foreign investment in order to improve its economy. To further deteriorate the Afghan economy, the Biden administration in the United States has frozen Afghanistan's $9.5 billion assets.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The national currency of Afghanistan is the afghani (AFN), which has an exchange rate of around 88 afghanis to 1 US dollar. The central bank of Afghanistan is Da Afghanistan Bank. A number of local banks operate in the country, including the Afghanistan International Bank, Azizi Bank, New Kabul Bank and Pashtany Bank. The use of foreign currencies is officially banned. The use of cryptocurrency is also banned by the government.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: When Afghanistan was ruled by Emir Abdur Rahman Khan (1880–1901) and his son Habibullah Khan (1901–1919), a great deal of commerce was controlled by the government. These monarchs were eager to develop the stature of government and the country's military capability, and so attempted to raise money by the imposition of state monopolies on the sale of commodities and high taxes. This slowed the long-term development of Afghanistan during that period. Western technologies and manufacturing methods were introduced at the command of the Afghan ruler, but in general only according to the logistical requirements of the growing army. An emphasis was placed on the manufacture of weapons and other military material. This process was in the hands of a small number of foreign experts invited to Kabul by the Afghan kings. Otherwise, it was not possible for non-Afghans, particularly westerners, to set up large-scale enterprises in Afghanistan during that period.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The first prominent plan to develop Afghanistan's economy in modern times was the Helmand Valley Authority project of 1952, modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States, which was expected to be of primary economic importance. Glenn Foster, an American contractor working in Afghanistan in the 1950s, stated this about the Afghan people:


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan began facing severe economic hardships during the 1979 Soviet invasion and ensuing civil war destroyed much of the country's limited infrastructure, and disrupted normal patterns of economic activity. Eventually, Afghanistan went from a traditional economy to a centrally planned economy up until 2002 when it was replaced by a free market economy. Gross domestic product has fallen substantially since the 1980s due to disruption of trade and transport as well as loss of labor and capital. Continuing internal strife severely hampered domestic efforts to rebuild the nation or provide ways for the international community to help.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: According to the International Monetary Fund, the Afghan economy grew 20% in the fiscal year ending in March 2004, after expanding 30% in the previous 12 months. The growth was mainly attributed to international aid and to the end of droughts. Billions of dollars in international aid had entered Afghanistan from 2002 to 2021 but most of it was military aid. A GDP of $4 billion in fiscal year 2003 was recalculated by the IMF to $6.1 billion, after adding proceeds from opium production. Mean graduate pay was $0.56 per man-hour in 2010. The country expects to be self sufficient in wheat, rice, poultry and dairy production by 2026.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The recent reestablishment of the Taliban government led to temporary suspension of international development aid to Afghanistan. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund also halted payments during that period. In this regard, Taliban's spiritual leader Hibatullah Akhundzada stated, "The economy of a country is built when its people work together and do not rely on foreign aid[.]" The Biden administration froze about $9 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, which was intended to block the Taliban from accessing the money. The recent floods, earthquake and famine have created further adverse economic situation for many Afghans across the country.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Agriculture remains Afghanistan’s most important source of employment: 60-80 percent of Afghanistan’s population works in this sector, although it accounts for less than a third of GDP due to insufficient irrigation, drought, lack of market access, and other structural impediments. Most Afghan farmers are primarily subsistence farmers.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan currently produces roughly 1.5 million tons of fresh fruits annually, which could be increased significantly. It is known for producing some of the finest fruits, especially pomegranates and grapes as well as sweet melons and mulberries. Other fruits grown in the country are apples, apricots, cherries, figs, oranges, peaches, pears, and strawberries. The number of farms are steadily increasing. The use of greenhouse is also expanding throughout the country.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The northern and western Afghan provinces are long known for pistachio cultivation. In recent years, farmers in the southern provinces have also begun cultivating pistachios. Provinces in the east of the country are famous for pine nuts. The northern and central provinces are also famous for almonds and walnuts. The Bamyan Province in central Afghanistan is known for growing superior quality potatoes, which produced 370,000 tons in 2020. Nangarhar and Kunar provinces are known for lemons, oranges, olives, peanuts and dates. Cultivation of these products have spread to other provinces of the country. In recent years some locals have test-planted a small number of banana trees in the provinces of Helmand and Balkh.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Wheat and cereal production is Afghanistan's traditional agricultural mainstay. The nation is nearing self-sufficiency in grain production. It requires an additional 1 to 3 million tons of wheat to become self-sufficient, which is predicted to be accomplished in the near future.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Livestock in Afghanistan mainly include cattle, sheep, and goats. Poultry farming is widespread in the warmer parts of the country.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Arable land in Afghanistan was reported to be over 7.5 million hectares. Wheat production had stood at about 5 million tonnes in 2015, nurseries held 119,000 hectares of land, and grape production is at 615,000 tonnes. It was reported in 2012 that almond production has jumped to 56,000 tons and cotton to 45,000 tonnes. About of land in Afghanistan is used to cultivate saffron, which is increasing annually.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: According to a 2010 report, only about 2.1% (or 1,350,000 ha) of Afghanistan is forested. Some steps have been taken in recent years in planting trees in the urban areas across Afghanistan. Even the Taliban spiritual leader has recently called for planting more trees. Felling has been made illegal nationally.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan is landlocked with its citizens having no direct access to an ocean. The country has a number of reservoirs, lakes, ponds, rivers and streams, which make it a suitable climate for fish farming. Historically, fish constituted a smaller part of the Afghan diet because of the unavailability of modern fish farms. Fishing only took place in the lakes and rivers, particularly in the Amu, Helmand and Kabul rivers. Consumption of fish has increased sharply due to the establishment of many fish farms. There are over 2,600 of them in the country. The largest ones are at the national reservoirs, which supply fish eggs to smaller fish farms.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan's geographical location makes it economically secured. The Lapis Lazuli corridor connects Afghanistan with Turkmenistan and ultimately ends somewhere in Europe. Other such trade routes connect Afghanistan with neighboring Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The country also has direct trade with China and India via air corridor. It has four international airports, which include: Kabul International Airport in the capital city; Mazar-e Sharif International Airport in the north of the country; Herat International Airport in the west; and the Ahmad Shah Baba International Airport in Kandahar. It also has over a dozen domestic airports all across the country. Ariana Afghan Airlines and Kam Air are currently the only airlines of Afghanistan. Its national rail network is slowly expanding to connect Central Asia with Pakistan and Iran. In addition to Central Asia, imported goods also come in trains from Iran.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The Afghanistan–Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA) allows Afghan and Pakistani cargo trucks to transit goods within both nations. This revised US-sponsored APTTA agreement also allows Afghan trucks to transport exports to India via Pakistan up to the Wagah crossing point. There are at least a dozen official border crossing points all around Afghanistan. They include Abu Nasar Port in Farah Province, Angur Ada in Paktika Province, Aqina in Faryab Province, Dand-aw-Patan in Paktia Province, Ghulam Khan in Khost Province, Hairatan in Balkh Province, Islam Qala in Herat Province, Sher Khan Bandar in Kunduz Province, Torghundi in Herat Province, Torkham in Nangarhar Province, Spin Boldak in Kandahar Province, Wakhjir in Wakhan, and Zaranj in Nimruz Province. The country also has legal access to two major seaports in Pakistan, the Gwadar Port in Balochistan and the Port Qasim in Sindh. Afghanistan also has legal access to two major seaports in Iran, which include the Bandar Abbas and the Chabahar Port in the south of the country.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan is endowed with a wealth of natural resources, which include (among other things) extensive deposits of natural gas, petroleum, coal, marble, gold, copper, chromite, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, iron ore, salt, precious and semi-precious stones, and many rare earth elements. In 2006, a U.S. Geological Survey estimated that Afghanistan has as much as of natural gas, of oil and condensate reserves. According to a 2007 assessment, Afghanistan has significant amounts of undiscovered non-fuel mineral resources. Geologists also found indications of abundant deposits of colored stones and gemstones, including emerald, ruby, sapphire, garnet, lapis lazuli, kunzite, spinel, tourmaline and peridot.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: It is widely claimed that Afghanistan has at least $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits. A memo from the Pentagon stated that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium". Some believe that the untapped minerals are worth up to $3 trillion. The Khanashin carbonatites in the Helmand Province of the country have an estimated 1 million metric tonnes of rare earth elements.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan currently has a copper mining deal with China Metallurgical Group Corporation, which involves the investment of $2.8 billion by China and an annual income of about $400 million to the Afghan government. The country's Ainak copper mine, located in Logar Province, is one of the biggest in the world. It is estimated to hold at least 11 million tonnes or US$33 billion worth of copper.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The previous government has signed a 30-year contract with investment group Centar and its operating company, Afghan Gold and Minerals Co., to explore and develop a copper mining operation in Balkhab District in Sar-e Pol Province, including a gold mining operation in Badakhshan Province. The copper contract involved a $56 million investment and the gold contract a $22 million investment.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The country's other recently announced treasure is the Hajigak iron ore mine, located west of Kabul and is believed to hold an estimated 1.8 billion to 2 billion metric tons of the mineral used to make steel. AFISCO, an Indian consortium of seven companies, led by the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), and Canada's Kilo Goldmines Ltd are expected to jointly invest $14.6 billion in developing the Hajigak iron mine. The country also has a number of coal mines.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan's important resource in the past has been natural gas, which was first tapped in 1967. During the 1980s, gas sales accounted for $300 million a year in export revenues (56% of the total). About 90% of these exports went to the Soviet Union to pay for imports and debts. However, during the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, the natural gas fields were capped to prevent sabotage by criminals. Gas production has dropped from a high of per day in the 1980s to a low of about in 2001. Production of natural gas was restored during the Karzai administration in 2010.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: In December 2011, Afghanistan signed an oil exploration contract with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for the development of three oil fields along the Amu Darya river. CNPC began Afghan oil production in late October 2012, with extracting of oil annually. It was reported in August 2022 that Russia may soon enter into trade deals with Afghanistan.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan embarked on a modest economic development program in the 1930s. The government founded banks; introduced paper money; established a university; expanded primary, secondary, and technical schools; and sent students abroad for education. In 1952 it created the Helmand Valley Authority to manage the economic development of the Helmand and Arghandab valleys through irrigation and land development, a scheme which remains one of the country's most important capital resources.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: In 1956, the government promulgated the first in a long series of ambitious development plans. By the late 1970s, these had achieved only mixed results due to flaws in the planning process as well as inadequate funding and a shortage of the skilled managers and technicians needed for implementation.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Da Afghanistan Bank serves as the central bank of the nation. The "afghani" (AFN) is the national currency, which has an exchange rate of around 88 afghanis to 1 US dollar. There are over a dozen different banks operating in the country, including Afghanistan International Bank, Kabul Bank, Azizi Bank, Pashtany Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and First Micro Finance Bank. Cash is still widely used for most transactions. A new law on private investment provides three to seven-year tax holidays to eligible companies and a four-year exemption from exports tariffs and duties. Improvements to the business-enabling environment have resulted in more than $1.5 billion in telecom investment and created more than 100,000 jobs since 2003.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan is a member of World Trade Organization, SAARC, ECO, OIC, and has an observer status in the SCO. It seeks to complete the so-called "New Silk Road" trade project, which is aimed to connecting South Asia with Central Asia and the Middle East. This way Afghanistan will be able to collect large fees from trade passing through the country, including from the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline. Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul has stated that the "goal is to achieve an Afghan economy whose growth is based on trade, private enterprise and investment". Experts believe that this will revolutionize the economy of the region.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Some of the ongoing national mega projects include the Qosh Tepa Canal project in the north of the country and the New Kabul City. Other smaller projects include the Aino Mena in Kandahar and the Ghazi Amanullah Khan Town east of Jalalabad. Similar development projects are also found in Herat in the west, Mazar-e-Sharif in the north and in other cities.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: There are as much as 5,000 factories in Afghanistan. Most of them are locally owned and operated. They produce construction materials, furniture, household items, apparel, food, beverages, etc. The country imports roughly $500 million of textile goods from other countries. Afghan handwoven rugs are one of the most popular products for exportation. Other products include hand crafted antique replicas as well as leather and furs. Afghanistan is the third largest exporter of cashmere.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: After the Taliban returned to power, the country suffered from a major liquidity crisis and lack of banknotes. Because outside donors have severely cut funding to support Afghanistan's health, education, and other essential sectors, many Afghans lost their incomes. Under the assessment system of the World Food Programme (WFP), almost 20 million people suffered either level-3 “crisis” or level-4 “emergency” levels of food insecurity. The crisis’ impact on women and girls was especially severe. Officials under the new Islamic Emirate continue to provide communication services to areas that lacked them. The government collected 61 billion afghanis in tariffs between March and September 2022.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Tourism in Afghanistan was at its peak in 1977. Many tourists from around the world came to visit Afghanistan, including from as far away as Europe and North America. All of that ended with the start of the April 1978 Saur Revolution. However, it is again gradually increasing despite having reputation as one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Each year about 20,000 foreign tourists visit Afghanistan. Tourists are advised to avoid areas where armed criminals are known to operate.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The city of Kabul has many guest houses and hotels, which include the Serena Hotel, the Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul, and the Safi Landmark Hotel. Small number of guest houses and hotels are also available in other cities such Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad, Bamyan, Fayezabad, etc. There are bus terminals with mosques, Afghan style restaurants and small shops in the major cities.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: The following table shows the main economic indicators in 2002–2020 (with IMF staff estimates in 2021–2026). Inflation below 5% is in green. The annual unemployment rate is extracted from the World Bank, although the International Monetary Fund find them unreliable.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Agriculture - products: wheat, milk, grapes, vegetables, potatoes, watermelons, melons, rice, onions, apples


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Industries: small-scale production of bricks, textiles, soap, furniture, shoes, fertilizer, apparel, food-products, non-alcoholic beverages, mineral water, cement; handwoven carpets; natural gas, coal, copper


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Exports - commodities: gold, grapes, opium, fruits and nuts, insect resins, cotton, handwoven carpets, soapstone, scrap metal (2019)


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Imports - commodities: wheat flours, broadcasting equipment, refined petroleum, rolled tobacco, aircraft parts, synthetic fabrics (2019)


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Imports - partners: United Arab Emirates 23%, Pakistan 17%, India 13%, China 9%, United States 9%, Uzbekistan 7%, Kazakhstan 6% (2019)


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Energy in Afghanistan is provided by hydropower followed by fossil fuel and solar power. According to Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS), approximately 35% of Afghanistan's population has access to electricity. This covers the major cities in the country. Many rural areas do not have access to 24-hour electricity but this should change after the major CASA-1000 project is completed.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Afghanistan currently generates over 600 megawatts (MW) of electricity from its several hydroelectric plants as well as using fossil fuel and solar panels. Over 670 MW more is imported from neighboring Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.


title: Economy of Afghanistan

text: Due to the large influx of expats from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, Afghanistan may require as much as 7,000 MW of electricity in the coming years. The Afghan National Development Strategy has identified renewable energy alternatives, such as wind and solar energy, as a high value power source to develop. As a result, a number of solar and wind farms have been established, with more currently under development.


title: Terry Gordy

text: Terry Ray Gordy Sr. (April 23, 1961 – July 16, 2001) was an American professional wrestler. Gordy appeared in the United States with promotions such as Mid-South Wrestling, Georgia Championship Wrestling, World Class Championship Wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions/World Championship Wrestling and the Universal Wrestling Federation as a member of The Fabulous Freebirds. He also appeared in Japan with All Japan Pro Wrestling as one-half of The Miracle Violence Connection.


title: Terry Gordy

text: Gordy held many championships throughout the course of his career, including the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship, AJPW World Tag Team Championship, WCW World Tag Team Championship, NWA World Tag Team Championship, UWF Heavyweight Championship and SMW Heavyweight Championship. He has been posthumously inducted into the Wrestling Observer, Professional Wrestling, and WWE Hall of Fame.


title: Terry Gordy

text: Gordy was a standout high school football and baseball player at Rossville High School, but dropped out of high school following his freshman year. Trained by Archie Gouldie, he started wrestling at the age of 13 in 1974 as Terry Mecca for the International Wrestling Association. In early 1979, he began wrestling under his real name and formed The Fabulous Freebirds with Michael Hayes, with Buddy Roberts later added to the group. Gordy and Hayes had met while training in Mississippi the year prior. In 1980, the Freebirds moved to Georgia Championship Wrestling, where they won the territory’s tag team championship. The Fabulous Freebirds had feuds while there, including those against Tommy Rich, Junkyard Dog, Kevin Sullivan, Austin Idol, and Ted DiBiase, and became one of the first acts to use entrance music. One match on the Saturday night WTBS Georgia Championship Wrestling show saw the Freebirds take on the Junkyard Dog and Ted DiBiase, where towards the end of the match, Gordy gave DiBiase 4 consecutive piledrivers, which led to DiBiase being taken away in an ambulance. In 1981, the Freebirds split up when Buddy Roberts left the area. Michael and Terry then had a falling out, which led to a feud against each other. Terry and Michael eventually put their differences aside, and reformed the Freebirds as a duo in 1982 when they feuded with Ole Anderson and Stan Hansen.


title: Terry Gordy

text: In 1982, the Freebirds went to World Class Championship Wrestling and had a feud with the Von Erichs (David, Kevin, Kerry and Mike), which kicked off when Gordy slammed the cage door on Kerry during his cage match on March 15 at WCCW Star Wars against Ric Flair, where Michael Hayes served as the special guest referee, inciting a riot among fans attending. They traded the six man title back and forth a few times over the years. Gordy was also at one time one half of the WCCW American Tag Team Champions. While in WCCW, Killer Khan taught Gordy how to perform the Oriental Spike, which he dubbed the Asiatic Spike.


title: Terry Gordy

text: Gordy teamed with Stan Hansen beginning in 1983 in All Japan Pro Wrestling. Gordy later teamed with Steve Williams as The Miracle Violence Connection. During his time there, he also held the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship on two occasions.


title: Terry Gordy

text: The Freebirds spent a brief time in the World Wrestling Federation in 1984, but were fired after missing a show and showing up late and drunk.


title: Terry Gordy

text: In 1986, when the Freebirds were in Universal Wrestling Federation, the former Mid South Wrestling, Gordy became the first person to win the UWF Heavyweight Championship and held it for six months, before losing it via forfeit to The One Man Gang, after an angle the same night in which Gordy was injured in an auto accident by "Dr. Death" Steve Williams, whom he feuded with. During this time, Gordy and the Freebirds had an ongoing feud with Hacksaw Jim Duggan, in which Duggan and Gordy squared off, usually ending in a disqualification because of outside interference.


title: Terry Gordy

text: The Freebirds spent some time in the National Wrestling Alliance's Jim Crockett Promotions where they split to feud briefly, but later reunited. In 1989, Gordy helped Hayes to reform the Freebirds, with Jimmy Garvin, in the NWA, which became World Championship Wrestling in 1991. Later, he and Steve Williams defeated the Steiners to become World Tag Team Champions.


title: Terry Gordy

text: Gordy and Williams returned to World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 1992 and won the WCW World Tag Team titles. At that point, they were considered the most dominant team in wrestling, making $10,000 to $15,000 a week. They also won the NWA World Tag Team titles in a tournament at the Great American Bash card in Albany, Georgia, one week later, and unified the titles. Their feud with Rick and Scott Steiner in Japan was hyped as a feud between the best foreign teams of the two top Japanese promotions (the Steiners were competing for rival New Japan Pro-Wrestling at the time). Despite advances by New Japan, Gordy and Williams, out of loyalty to the AJPW founder and promoter, Giant Baba, refused to compete for the promotion (which had business ties with WCW at the time), leading to Gordy's departure from WCW before Halloween Havoc and Williams' departure after Starrcade.


title: Terry Gordy

text: On August 18, 1993, while traveling from the United States to Japan for a tour, Gordy took an overdose (from which he almost died of three years earlier) of pain medication and slipped into a five-day coma, ultimately suffering permanent brain damage. As a result, he had to relearn how to talk, walk, and wrestle. He returned to action later that year, but never received a shot at the Triple Crown again or possessed the skills he once had. In 1994, Gordy had a small reunion with Hayes and Garvin as the Freebirds in the Global Wrestling Federation where he and Garvin won the GWF Tag Team Titles.


title: Terry Gordy

text: After World Class folded in 1989, Gordy wrestled in various promotions. He started working for United States Wrestling Association (USWA). In 1991, he worked for Universal Wrestling Federation where he feuded with Don Muraco. In 1994, he reunited with The Freebirds (Michael Hayes and Jimmy Garvin) for Global Wrestling Federation in Texas where they feuded with Bill Irwin, Black Bart and Moadib. Gordy returned to USWA in 1995, where he teamed with Tracy Smothers.


title: Terry Gordy

text: In 1995, Gordy worked for Smokey Mountain Wrestling, teaming with Tommy Rich as the Militia. Gordy won the SMW Heavyweight Championship by defeating Brad Armstrong when he teamed with Thrasher to defeat Armstrong and the Wolfman on October 27. A month later, he dropped the title back to Armstrong in a Country whipping match.


title: Terry Gordy

text: In 1996, Gordy appeared in Extreme Championship Wrestling to challenge Raven for the ECW World Heavyweight title, as the "internationally recognized #1 contender". He had been working for the International Wrestling Association of Japan promotion, wrestling deathmatches. He lost, but went on to team up with Tommy Dreamer and later to reunite with "Dr. Death" Steve Williams to wrestle The Eliminators. He also wrestled Bam Bam Bigelow at Ultimate Jeopardy in what was billed as the second ever "Battle Of The Bam Bams" (The first happened on a Windy City Wrestling show), which he lost due to outside interference from The Eliminators.


title: Terry Gordy

text: Gordy had a brief run in the WWF as The Executioner in 1996 and 1997, where he teamed up with Mankind, both managed by Paul Bearer, and feuded with The Undertaker. The Executioner came to the ring under a mask and carrying an axe as Bearer's "hired assassin". He made his TV debut at the In Your House pay-per-view "" on October 20, 1996, where he interfered in The Undertaker's Buried Alive match with Mankind, hitting Undertaker with a shovel and burying him with the help of Mankind and several other wrestlers. However, at "" on December 15, The Undertaker defeated The Executioner in an Armageddon Rules match, and Gordy left the promotion shortly afterwards.


title: Terry Gordy

text: On an episode of "Something to Wrestle With", Bruce Prichard claimed that the Executioner gimmick was given to Gordy because McMahon had doubts that Gordy could still compete effectively and the use of a mask was intended to protect Gordy so that if that were the case, Gordy's legacy would not be tainted. Had Gordy been able to compete at a high level then there would have been the opportunity later for Gordy to unmask. It was mentioned that the hiring was mostly done as a favor for Michael Hayes.


title: Terry Gordy

text: After leaving the WWF and Japan, Gordy worked in the independent circuit. On February 21, 1998, Gordy teamed with Dan Severn in a losing effort to Doug Gilbert and Dutch Mantel at the Eddie Gilbert Memorial Show for IWA Mid-South. Gordy would reunite with Hayes as they fought Glen Kulka and JR Smooth to a no contest for Power Pro Wrestling on May 28, 1999. He wrestled his last match returning to IWA Japan on February 4, 2001 with Shoichi Ichimiya, Tomohiro Ishii, Yukihide Ueno, and Yuji Kito, defeating Doug Gilbert, TJ Shinjuku, Ultra Sebun, Takashi Uwano and Keizo Mastuda.


title: Terry Gordy

text: Gordy had two daughters and a son, Ray Gordy, who wrestled for WWE as "Jesse" and "Slam Master J" before being released in 2010. His nephew is Richard Aslinger, who competed for All Japan Pro Wrestling as Richard Slinger. His daughter Miranda currently wrestles on the independent circuit and has also competed in Japan. He was known for his "high octane, southern lifestyle" outside of the ring.


title: Terry Gordy

text: Gordy was found dead by his girlfriend at his home in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee on July 16, 2001, after suffering a heart attack caused by a blood clot. He was 40 years old.


title: Terry Gordy

text: Following his death, the Terry Gordy Memorial Show was held in his honor on August 11 in Birmingham, Alabama. Various wrestlers including Fabulous Freebirds cohort Michael Hayes and former tag team partner Stan Hansen praised Gordy for being one of the best workers they ever worked with. In 2014, he was posthumously inducted into the Southern Wrestling Hall of Fame. A year later, he was also posthumously inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum. On April 2, 2016, Gordy was posthumously inducted by his son into the WWE Hall of Fame as part of The Fabulous Freebirds.


The 2000 United States presidential election in Florida took place on November 7, 2000, as part of the nationwide presidential election. Florida, a swing state, had a major recount dispute that took center stage in the election. The outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election was not known for more than a month after balloting because of the extended process of counting and recounting Florida's presidential ballots. State results tallied on election night gave 246 electoral votes to Republican nominee Texas Governor George W. Bush and 255 to Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore, with New Mexico (5), Oregon (7), and Florida (25) too close to call that evening. Gore won New Mexico and Oregon over the following few days; but the result in Florida was to be decisive, regardless of how those two states had voted.


title: 2000 United States presidential election in Florida

text: After an intense recount process and the United States Supreme Court's decision in "Bush v. Gore", Bush won Florida’s electoral votes by a margin of only 537 votes out of almost six million cast (0.009%) and, as a result, became the president-elect. The process was extremely divisive and led to calls for electoral reform in Florida. Bush became the first Republican to win the White House without carrying Palm Beach County since the county's founding in 1909. If Gore had won the recount, then he would have won the election with a total of 291 electoral votes, and Bush would have lost with 246 electoral votes.


text: The final official Florida count gave the victory to Bush by 537 votes, making it by percentage not only the tightest race of the campaign (New Mexico was decided by 366 votes but has a much smaller population, representing a 0.061% margin), but also the closest in any United States presidential election ever. , this is the last election in which the Democratic candidate won Pasco County or Hernando County. It was also the first time the Democratic candidate won Orange County since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.


text: Election fairness was a major problem known to Floridians in the 1990s; for example, the 1997 Miami mayoral election was tainted by scandal. According to "The Palm Beach Post", "State lawmakers decided to weed out felons and other ineligible voters in 1998 after a Miami mayoral election was overturned because votes had been cast by the convicted and the dead."


text: This initiative occurred without sufficient protection of voting rights. In particular, from summer 1999 to spring 2000, Florida's voter list was subject to an unusually high number of problems. "The state’s highest officials responsible for ensuring efficiency, uniformity, and fairness in the election failed to fulfill their responsibilities." The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that an "overall lack of leadership in protecting voting rights was largely responsible for the broad array of problems in Florida during the 2000 election."


text: The 2001 book "Stupid White Men" and other books described allegations of efforts to deny black citizens in Florida the right to vote. As a result of the state's contract with Database Technologies, "173,000 registered voters in Florida were permanently wiped off the voter rolls." Even an elections supervisor in Madison County was barred from voting; she and others "tried to get the state to rectify the problem, but their pleas fell on deaf ears."


text: Initially, Florida had been considered fertile territory for Republicans. It was governed by Jeb Bush, a staunch conservative and George W. Bush's brother. Nonetheless, Republicans put significant advertising resources into the state, and later polls indicated that the state was very much in play as late as September 2000. Some late momentum for Gore and his Jewish running mate Joe Lieberman may have come from southern Florida's significant Jewish population. Voters from reliably Democratic states in the Northeast had also been migrating to Florida since the 1950s. The state's electorate was becoming more diverse in general, with growing Asian and Hispanic immigrant populations.


text: Meanwhile, there was a heavy backlash in the Cuban-American population against Democrats during the Elian Gonzalez dispute, during which Janet Reno, President Bill Clinton’s Attorney General, ordered the six-year-old Cuban refugee to be returned to Cuba. The Democrats’ share of the Cuban-American vote dropped dramatically after 1996.


text: In late October, one poll found that Gore was leading Bush and third parties by 44–42–4 among registered voters and 46–42–4 among likely voters, but that poll had a margin of error of four percentage points, making the race too close to call.


text: On election day itself, the extent of the mix-ups in the electoral rolls was such that "in a number of precincts in Florida's inner cities, the polling locations were heavily fortified with police."


text: The Florida election was closely scrutinized after Election Day. Due to the narrow margin of the original vote count, Florida Election Code 102.141 mandated a statewide machine recount, which began the day after the election. It was ostensibly completed on November 10 in the 66 Florida counties that used vote-counting machines and reduced Bush's lead to 327 votes. According to legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, later analysis showed that a total of 18 counties—accounting for a quarter of all votes cast in Florida—did not carry out the legally mandated machine recount, but "No one from the Gore campaign ever challenged this view" that the machine recount had been completed. Once the closeness of the election in Florida was clear, both the Bush and Gore campaigns organized themselves for the ensuing legal process. On November 9, the Bush campaign announced they had hired George H. W. Bush's former Secretary of State James Baker and Republican political consultant Roger Stone to oversee their legal team, and the Gore campaign hired Bill Clinton's former Secretary of State Warren Christopher.


text: Florida was the second of the 50 states (after Louisiana) to report its official results to the federal government (in a Certificate of Ascertainment submitted to the National Archivist, the manner prescribed for presidential elections).


text: Technically, the voters of Florida cast their ballots for electors, representatives to the Electoral College. In 2000, Florida was allocated 25 electors because it had 23 congressional districts and 2 senators. All candidates who appear on the ballot or qualify to receive write-in votes must submit a list of 25 electors who pledge to vote for their candidate and his or her running mate. Whoever wins the most votes in the state is awarded all 25 electoral votes. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector.


text: The electors of each state and the District of Columbia met on December 18, 2000, to cast their votes for president and vice president. The Electoral College itself never meets as one body. Instead, the electors from each state and the District of Columbia met in their respective capitols.


text: The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. All were pledged to and voted for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney:


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Alien hand syndrome (AHS) or Dr. Strangelove syndrome is a category of conditions in which a person experiences their limbs acting seemingly on their own, without conscious control over the actions. There are a variety of clinical conditions that fall under this category, which most commonly affects the left hand. There are many similar terms for the various forms of the condition, but they are often used inappropriately. The affected person may sometimes reach for objects and manipulate them without wanting to do so, even to the point of having to use the controllable hand to restrain the alien hand. Under normal circumstances however, given that intent and action can be assumed to be deeply mutually entangled, the occurrence of alien hand syndrome can be usefully conceptualized as a phenomenon reflecting a functional "disentanglement" between thought and action.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Alien hand syndrome is best documented in cases where a person has had the two hemispheres of their brain surgically separated, a procedure sometimes used to relieve the symptoms of extreme cases of epilepsy and epileptic psychosis, e.g., temporal lobe epilepsy. It also occurs in some cases after brain surgery, stroke, infection, tumor, aneurysm, migraine and specific degenerative brain conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, corticobasal degeneration and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Other areas of the brain that are associated with alien hand syndrome are the frontal, occipital, and parietal lobes.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: "Alien behavior" can be distinguished from reflexive behavior in that the former is flexibly purposive while the latter is obligatory. Sometimes the affected person will not be aware of what the alien hand is doing until it is brought to his or her attention, or until the hand does something that draws their attention to its behavior. There is a clear distinction between the behaviors of the two hands in which the affected hand is viewed as "wayward" and sometimes "disobedient" and generally out of the realm of their own voluntary control, while the unaffected hand is under normal volitional control. At times, particularly in patients who have sustained damage to the corpus callosum that connects the two cerebral hemispheres (see also split-brain), the hands appear to be acting in opposition to each other.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: A related syndrome described by the French neurologist François Lhermitte involves the release through disinhibition of a tendency to compulsively utilize objects that present themselves in the surrounding environment around the patient. The behavior of the patient is, in a sense, obligatorily linked to the "affordances" (using terminology introduced by the American ecological psychologist, James J. Gibson) presented by objects that are located within the immediate peri-personal environment.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: This condition is known as utilization behavior. It is most often associated with extensive bilateral frontal lobe damage and might actually be thought of as "bilateral" alien hand syndrome in which the patient is compulsively directed by external environmental contingencies (such as the presence of a hairbrush on the table in front of them elicits the act of brushing the hair) and has no capacity to "hold back" and inhibit pre-potent motor programs that are obligatorily linked to the presence of specific external objects in the peri-personal space of the patient. When the frontal lobe damage is bilateral and generally more extensive, the patient completely loses the ability to act in a self-directed manner and becomes totally dependent upon the surrounding environmental indicators to guide their behavior in a general social context, a condition referred to as "environmental dependency syndrome".


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: In order to deal with the alien hand, some patients engage in personification of the affected hand. Usually these names are negative in nature, from mild such as "cheeky" to malicious "monster from the moon". For example, Rachelle Doody and Jankovic described a patient who named her alien hand "baby Joseph". When the hand engaged in playful, troublesome activities such as pinching her nipples (akin to biting while nursing), she would experience amusement and would instruct baby Joseph to "stop being naughty". Furthermore, Bogen suggested that certain personality characteristics, such as a flamboyant personality, contribute to frequent personification of the affected hand.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Neuroimaging and pathological research shows that the frontal lobe (in the frontal variant) and corpus callosum (in the callosal variant) are the most common anatomical lesions responsible for the alien hand syndrome. These areas are closely linked in terms of motor planning and its final pathways.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: The callosal variant includes advanced willed motor acts by the non-dominant hand, where patients frequently exhibit "intermanual conflict" in which one hand acts at cross-purposes with the other "good hand". For example, one patient was observed putting a cigarette into her mouth with her intact, "controlled" hand (her right, dominant hand), following which her left hand rose, grasped the cigarette, pulled it out of her mouth, and toss it away before it could be lit by the right hand. The patient then surmised that "I guess 'he' doesn't want me to smoke that cigarette." Another patient was observed to be buttoning up her blouse with her controlled dominant hand while the alien non-dominant hand, at the same time, was unbuttoning her blouse. The frontal variant most often affects the dominant hand, but can affect either hand depending on the lateralization of the damage to medial frontal cortex, and includes grasp reflex, impulsive groping toward objects or/and tonic grasping (in other words, difficulty in releasing grip).


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: In most cases, classic alien-hand signs derive from damage to the medial frontal cortex, accompanying damage to the corpus callosum. In these patients, the main cause of damage is unilateral or bilateral infarction of cortex in the territory supplied by the anterior cerebral artery or associated arteries. Oxygenated blood is supplied by the anterior cerebral artery to most medial portions of the frontal lobes and to the anterior two-thirds of the corpus callosum, and infarction may consequently result in damage to multiple adjacent locations in the brain in the supplied territory. As the medial frontal lobe damage is often linked to lesions of the corpus callosum, frontal variant cases may also present with callosal form signs. Cases of damage restricted to the callosum however, tend not to show frontal alien-hand signs.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: The common emerging factor in alien hand syndrome is that the primary motor cortex controlling hand movement is isolated from premotor cortex influences but remains generally intact in its ability to execute movements of the hand.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: A 2009 fMRI study looking at the temporal sequence of activation of components of a cortical network associated with voluntary movement in normal individuals demonstrated "an anterior-to-posterior temporal gradient of activity from supplemental motor area through premotor and motor cortices to the posterior parietal cortex". Therefore, with normal voluntary movement, the emergent sense of agency appears to be associated with an orderly sequence of activation that develops initially in the anteromedial frontal cortex in the vicinity of the supplementary motor complex on the medial surface of the frontal aspect of the hemisphere (including the supplementary motor area) "prior" to activation of the primary motor cortex in the pre-central gyrus on the lateral aspect of the hemisphere, when the hand movement is being generated. Activation of the primary motor cortex, presumed to be directly involved in the execution of the action via projections into the corticospinal component of the pyramidal tracts, is then followed by activation of the posterior parietal cortex, possibly related to the receipt of recurrent or "re-afferent" somatosensory feedback generated from the periphery by the movement which would normally interact with the efference copy transmitted from primary motor cortex to permit the movement to be recognized as self-generated rather than imposed by an external force. That is, the efference copy allows the recurrent afferent somatosensory flow from the periphery associated with the self-generated movement to be recognized as "re-afference" as distinct from "ex-afference". Failure of this mechanism may lead to a failure to distinguish between self-generated and externally generated movement of the limb. This anomalous situation in which re-afference from a self-generated movement is mistakenly registered as ex-afference due to a failure to generate and successfully transmit an efference copy to sensory cortex, could readily lead to the interpretation that what is in actuality a self-generated movement has been produced by an external force as a result of the failure to develop a sense of agency in association with emergence of the self-generated movement (see below for a more detailed discussion).


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: A 2007 fMRI study examining the difference in functional brain activation patterns associated with alien as compared to non-alien "volitional" movement in a patient with alien hand syndrome found that alien movement involved anomalous "isolated" activation of the primary motor cortex in the damaged hemisphere contralateral to the alien hand, while non-alien movement involved the normal process of activation described in the preceding paragraph in which primary motor cortex in the intact hemisphere activates in concert with frontal premotor cortex and posterior parietal cortex presumably involved in a normal cortical network generating premotor influences on the primary motor cortex along with immediate post-motor re-afferent activation of the posterior parietal cortex.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Combining these two fMRI studies, one could hypothesize that the alien behavior that is unaccompanied by a sense of agency emerges due to autonomous activity in the primary motor cortex acting independently of premotor cortex pre-activating influences that would normally be associated with the emergence of a sense of agency linked to the execution of the action.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: As noted above, these ideas can also be linked to the concept of efference copy and "re-afference", where efference copy is a signal postulated to be directed from premotor cortex (activated normally in the process associated with emergence of an internally generated movement) over to somatosensory cortex of the parietal region, in advance of the arrival of the "re-afferent" input generated from the moving limb, that is, the afferent return from the moving limb associated with the self-generated movement produced. It is generally thought that a movement is recognized as internally generated when the efference copy signal effectively "cancels out" the re-afference. The afferent return from the limb is effectively correlated with the efference copy signal so that the re-afference can be recognized as such and distinguished from "ex-afference", which would be afferent return from the limb produced by an externally imposed force. When the efference copy is no longer normally generated, then the afferent return from the limb associated with the self-generated movement is mis-perceived as externally produced "ex-afference" since it is no longer correlated with or canceled out by the efference copy. As a result, the development of the sense that a movement is not internally generated even though it actually is (i.e. the failure of the sense of agency to emerge in conjunction with the movement), could indicate a failure of the generation of the efference copy signal associated with the normal premotor process through which the movement is prepared for execution.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: Since there is no disturbance of the sense of ownership of the limb in this situation, and there is no apparent physical explanation for how the owned limb could be moving in a purposive manner without an associated sense of agency, a cognitive dissonance is created which may be resolved through the assumption that the goal-directed limb movement is being directed by an "alien" unidentifiable external force with the capacity for directing goal-directed actions of one's own limb.


title: Alien hand syndrome

text: It is theorized that alien hand syndrome results when disconnection occurs between different parts of the brain that are engaged in different aspects of the control of bodily movement. As a result, different regions of the brain are able to command bodily movements, but cannot generate a conscious feeling of self-control over these movements. As a result, the sense of agency that is normally associated with voluntary movement is impaired or lost. There is a dissociation between the process associated with the actual execution of the physical movements of the limb and the process that produces an internal sense of voluntary control over the movements, with this latter process thus normally creating the internal conscious sensation that the movements are being internally initiated, controlled and produced by an active self.