text: Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in Radensk (approximately southeast of Kherson City) and unspecified Russian positions in Nova Kakhovka. Ukraine continued to strike Russian targets and approach towards Kherson over the next week.


title: 2022 Ukrainian southern counteroffensive

text: According to a 24 July statement by Kherson Region official Serhiy Khlan, Ukrainian attacks damaging Antonivka Road Bridge and another key bridge, and attacks on Russian ammunition stores and command posts, were preparatory actions for the offensive. A day earlier, Khlan stated that Ukrainian forces had retaken several villages in Kherson Oblast, but that the Ukrainian authorities requested civilians not to publish information on the progress of the campaign prior to official statements. On 26 July, Antonivka Road Bridge was hit again by a Ukrainian HIMARS missile strike. The bridge remained structurally intact while the bridge's roadway surface was damaged.


text: On 27 July 2022, Ukrainian forces stated that they had retaken control of the villages of Lozove and Andriivka, both on the eastern side of the Inhulets river, in Beryslav Raion in Kherson Oblast. In the next months, Ukrainian forces launched a series of limited ground attacks as well as several air and rocket attacks on Russian targets in southern Ukraine. On 9 August, explosions heavily damaged the Russian airbase at Novofedorivka, Crimea. An anonymous Western official stated that the explosions, possibly caused by a Ukrainian attack, had "put more than half of [the Russian] Black Sea fleet's naval aviation combat jets out of use."


text: Though these Ukrainian attacks were met with some success, they did not cripple Russian defenses in the south or achieve a breakthrough. On 10 August, an unnamed Ukrainian military official told "Politico" that the counteroffensive had begun in earnest on 9 August. However, Al Jazeera argued that both sides had seemingly fought each other to a standstill, with a major Ukrainian offensive not materializing.


text: On 20 August, Russian forces launched a minor offensive in southern Ukraine, with Ukrainian sources admitting that Russian forces had advanced and made gains in the towns of Blahodatne and Vasylky in Mykolaiv Oblast. On August 22, Russian forces achieved some success east of the city of Mykolaiv and in northwestern Kherson Oblast, driving Ukrainian forces 36 km from the front line to the north and 28 km deep into the territory of Mykolaiv Oblast with two objectives, to force a westward direction towards the city Mykolaiv or in a northerly direction towards the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with the intention of capturing the city of Kryvyi Rih, which hosts a strong Ukrainian troop concentration, and from where a counter-offensive on Kherson, Melitopol, Enerhodar, Berdyansk and Crimea is planned. On the same day, Russian forces took control of Blahodatne (referred to by the Russian Ministry of Defense as Komsomolsky) about 45 km east of the town of Mykolaiv and a 12 square kilometer zone of control.


text: On August 23, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Russian forces had advanced northwest of Aleksandrovka, approximately 38 km west of the city of Kherson, and had reached the administrative border of Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast. Ukrainian troops retaliated with artillery strikes on the site of the Russian 247th Airborne Regiment of the 7th Guards Air Assault Division and the ammunition depot in Chornobaivka. The same day, Russian forces continued air and artillery strikes on Dnipropetrovsk, Kryvyi Rih, and Mykolaiv with Uragan rockets.


text: From 24 to 25 August, the Russian forces continued their attacks but made no further progress. On 27 August, Russian and Ukrainian forces clashed at Potomkyne in northwestern Kherson Oblast; both sides claimed that they had repelled an attack. Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continued to conduct air strikes in the area, with Ukraine's Southern Operational Command claiming successful hits on three river crossings (Antonivka and Darivka bridges, and the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant) and two Russian battalion tactical groups.


text: The Institute for the Study of War has credited the Ukrainian southern offensive with allowing the Kharkiv offensive to be so successful. Writing: “Kyiv's long discussion and then an announcement of a counter-offensive operation aimed at Kherson Oblast drew substantial Russian troops away from the sectors on which Ukrainian forces have conducted decisive attacks in the past several days,”


text: On 29 August, Zelenskyy announced the start of a full-scale counteroffensive to retake Russian-occupied territory in the south, a claim that was corroborated by the Ukrainian parliament as well as Operational Command South.


text: At the start of the operation, the Ukrainian operational group "Kakhovka" and some Ukrainian officials claimed that their forces had broken through defensive lines manned by the 109th DPR Regiment and Russian paratroopers. The 109th DPR Regiment was a conscript unit which was known to serve on garrison duty in the Kherson area. Ukrainian officials also claimed that they had hit and destroyed a large Russian base in the area amid a general increase of Ukrainian air and artillery bombardments of Russian positions. The authorities in occupied Kherson called these claims "fake" and "an illusion", but also announced a workplace evacuation from Nova Kakhova following Ukrainian missile strikes. Locals reported heavy fighting across the Kherson frontline, while electrical networks temporarily failed and evacuations of civilians took place. An "NPR" journalist in the area confirmed the increased intensity of combat and that more Ukrainian forces were moving to the frontline. The Ukrainian government and military largely refused to talk about territorial changes on the offensive's first day, though anonymous Ukrainian officials, Western journalists and a number of Russian milbloggers reported that Ukrainian troops had captured several settlements north and northwest of Kherson, at a bridgehead across the Inhulets River, as well as south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border. Among these were the villages of Sukhyi Stavok, , Arkhanhelske, and Pravdyne. The Ukrainians also attacked Russian pontoon ferries on the Dnipro River.


text: By 30 August, Russia was beginning to direct large numbers of troops and equipment to the Kherson frontline to counter the Ukrainian offensive. Meanwhile, Ukraine intensified its attacks on Russian concentration points, ammunition depots, bridges and other targets. In Kherson city, there were reports of fighting between Ukrainian partisans and pro-Russian security forces. Russian milbloggers claimed that battles were ongoing at , Soldatske and Snihurivka, Ukraine had retaken Ternovi Pody, but been repelled at Pravdyne and Oleksandrivka. According to Pantelis Boubouras, Greece's honorary consul in Kherson, the Ukrainians had relatively easily broken the Russian first line of defense near Kherson city, but had encountered much stiffer resistance at the Russian second line of defense in the area. By 31 August, this second line was the main focus of combat, with Boubouras stating that local sources had informed that both sides were suffering heavy losses. However, a Russian milblogger reported that Ukrainians were making progress toward Vysokopillia further north, though the overall situation at the northern frontline remained unclear. Milbloggers also claimed that the Russians had been able to stabilize the frontline at Oleksandrivka as well as Blahodatne, but had failed when attempting to retake Myrne. Ukrainian advances were also reported at Ternovi Pody and Lyubomyrivka. Later that day, Ukrainian sources claimed that four small villages had already been retaken, though Ukrainian soldiers also stated their opinion that this operation was not a large counteroffensive but rather a localized operation. Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Oleksiy Arestovych cautioned that the offensive was going to be a "slow operation to grind the enemy", not a quick and massive campaign.


text: From 1 to 2 September, Russian milbloggers reported further Ukrainian advances, but also a series of successful Russian counter-attacks. Many villages were reportedly contested. On 2 September, a day of mourning was declared by Ukrainian authorities in Zaporitzhya, after the heavy losses suffered by the native 128th Mountain Assault Brigade during the opening days of the offensive. On 3 September, the British Ministry of Defence said that Ukrainian forces had made three main lines of attack in Kherson Oblast, and had a military advantage of tactical surprise as a result of Russian commanders' mistakes and Russian logistical problems. Ukrainian forces destroyed Russian pontoon bridges. There was gunfire near the centre of Kherson city. On the same day, Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian troops had captured Blahodativka village and withdrawn from a few positions near Sukhyi Stavok.


text: On 4 September, president Zelenskyy announced the liberation of two villages in Kherson Oblast and one in Donetsk Oblast. Ukrainian authorities released a photo showing the raising of the Ukrainian flag in Vysokopillia by Ukrainian forces. On 6 September, Ukraine started a second offensive in the Kharkiv area, where it achieved a rapid breakthrough. Meanwhile, Ukrainian attacks also continued along the southern frontline, though reports about territorial changes were largely unverifiable.


text: On 12 September, President Zelenskyy said that Ukrainian forces have retaken a total of 6,000 sq km from Russia, in the both the south and the east. The BBC stated that it could not verify these claims.


text: On 13 September, that Russian forces had withdrawn from Kyselivka, a settlement 15 km from Kherson. On the same day, the Russia-backed deputy head of the Kherson Region posted a video from the outskirts of the settlement in which he claimed that Ukrainian troops have not been able to enter it. The mayor of Melitopol reported that Russian forces were abandoning the city and were moving to Russian-held Crimea. Ukraine also claimed to have retaken Oleksandrivka on 13 September. A local official claimed that Ukraine has retaken Kyselivka, but this was unable to be confirmed by September 14. In order to slow down the Ukrainian advance, Russian forces blew up a dam at the Inhulets river, flooding parts of the frontline.


text: By 24 September, U.S. officials assessed that the Russian situation at the Kherson frontline was deteriorating, with the local troops suffering from poor morale and largely cut off from supply lines due to the loss of bridges across the Dnipro River. Russian military commanders had reportedly requested to retreat to more defensible positions, but President Putin had intervened and forbidden any retreat which would give up Kherson city.


text: On 2 October, just two days after Russia's annexation of Kherson along with the Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and a day after Ukrainian forces recaptured the strategic Lyman railway junction in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian forces started the counteroffensive along the line from Arkhanhelske to Osokorivka in the Kherson region south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk border. They moved south along the west bank of the Dnieper and retook Zolota Balka as well as Mikhailivka and advanced further south to the next target, Dudchany. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukrainian forces liberated Myrolyubivka (23 km northwest of Kherson City) and Arkhanhelske on the Inhulets River south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border. The installed Russian head of the Kherson region, Volodymyr Saldo, said that "in that region there was a breakthrough" and called the situation "tense".


text: By 3 October, the Russian army was being enveloped in Northern Kherson, with Ukrainian troops trying to reach Beryslav. Ukrainian forces continued to advance south in the direction of Nova Kakhovka, and geolocated footage showed that they liberated Mykhailivka, Havrylivka, and Novooleksandrivka along the T0403. Social media footage and Russian milblogger discourse also indicated that Ukrainian forces made advances west of the T0403 highway, liberating Khreschenivka on 1 October. Russian sources also reported that Ukrainian forces liberated settlements on the Lyubomyrivka-Bilaivka-Novoolesandrivka line. The offensive continued southwards with towns of Davydiv Brid, Velyka Oleksandrivka and Dudchany reported as liberated 4 October. On 5 October, the pro-Russian deputy head of the Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, stated that Russian forces were "regrouping" in order to "strike back" at Ukrainian troops; he added that the Ukrainian advance had been "halted" and therefore it was "not possible" for the AFU to break through to the city of Kherson. The same day, Russian officers were reported as withdrawing from Snihurivka while some troops remained. The Ukrainian side was seeking confirmation.


text: By 4 October, as confirmed by Institute for the Study of War (ISW), several Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces captured Davydiv Brid, Mala Oleksandrivka, Velyka Oleksandrivka, Novodmytrivka, Starosiliya, Novomykhailivka, Dudchany on the shore of the Kakhovka Reservoir, Chereshneve, Novovoskresenske, Maiske, Petropavlivka, Trinofivka, Novavasilievka, Chervone, Novohryhorivka, Nova Kamyanka, Pyatykhatky, Sablukivka, and Kachkarivka after Russian forces abandoned them to avoid encirclement on 4 October. A total area of 2,400 square kilometers in the south of Ukraine had been liberated since the beginning of the war. Ukrainian forces reached the village of Novopetrivka. Novovasylivka, Novohryhorivka, Nova Kamyanka, Tryfonivka and Chervone in the Beryslav Raion were officially under the control of Ukrainian forces as late as 12 October.


text: On 13 October, the Russian government announced evacuation of the civilian population in the city of Kherson, after a request by the Russia-installed head of Kherson Oblast Volodymyr Saldo.


text: On 15 October, a major Ukrainian counteroffensive resumed on the northern Kherson front in the direction of Dudchany, Mylove and Sukhanovi. On 18 October, General Sergei Surovikin, the new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, said in Russian TV that the defence of Kherson was "not easy" and that “The enemy continually attempts to attack the positions of Russian troops.” Michael Clarke projected that the Ukrainians were engaged in a Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) operation over Kherson Oblast.


text: On 22 October Russian occupation authorities urged residents in the city of Kherson to "leave immediately" citing what they called the tense military situation. That same day, unconfirmed reports emerged of Mylove being captured by Ukraine.


text: In late October 2022, Ramzan Kadyrov acknowledged the deaths of 23 Kadyrovites and the injury of 58 others in a rare announcement acknowledging casualties. He announced that they had been killed in Kherson by Ukrainian artillery attacks in the region. In late October, Ukrainian Chief of Intelligence Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov said that at least 40,000 Russian forces were present on Kherson including Naval Infantry, Special forces and VDV Airborne troops.


text: On 9 November, Ukrainian forces were close to entering Snihurivka; Russia announced the withdrawal of its troops from Kherson and the right bank of the Dnieper.


text: On 10 November, a video emerged appearing to show the Ukrainian flag flying in Snihurivka. Ukrainian forces had also regained control of the village of Kyselivka, fifteen kilometers northwest of Kherson. On the same day, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi stated that Ukrainian forces have taken back 41 settlements in the Kherson direction since 1 October.


text: On 11 November, Ukrainian troops entered the city of Kherson. The troops were met by crowds chanting ""Slava Ukraini!"" and "ZSU!" ("Zbroini syly Ukrainy", Armed Forces of Ukraine).


text: On 12 November, a video allegedly showed Ukrainian special forces crossing the Dnieper–Bug estuary in speedboats and attacking Russian forces stationed on the Kinburn Peninsula. On the same day, the Russian occupation authorities announced that they were preparing to leave the town of Nova Kakhovka, located on the east bank of the Dnieper River. The following day, Russian media reported that 20 Ukrainian "saboteurs" from the country's armed forces and four vessels had been destroyed in an attempt to land in Pokrovske on the Kinburn Peninsula.


text: On 13 November, the administration of the Kherson Oblast called on Kherson residents and residents of other recently liberated areas on the right bank of the Dniepr to evacuate to safer parts of the country due to fears that Russian forces could "begin fighting against the civilian population". During Zelenskyy's speech in Kherson on 14 November, the NOS described the situation on the ground as "a sort of unspoken ceasefire", and that "both belligerents had taken a kind of break and were not extensively shooting at each other." Russian forces were still close by on the eastern river bank, and Kherson city continued to face medicine shortages, and heavily damaged communications, water supply, heating and electricity networks.


text: According to Ukraine’s Operational Command South, on 15 November Ukrainian rocket and artillery units attacked Russian positions on the left bank of the Dnipro River and in the area of the Kinburn Spit.


text: Throughout the course of Ukraine's counteroffensive, they had liberated the island of Ostriv Velykyi Potomkin in November. On 9 December, some Ukrainian officials, such as presidential advisor Oleksii Arestovych and Lieutenant Colonel Konstiantyn Mashovets, as well as some unofficial Russian sources, claimed that Russian forces, specifically the 80th Arctic Motor Rifle Brigade, 25th Spetsnaz Regiment, and 4th BARS Special Combat Army Reserve, had re-occupied the island following a successful amphibious operation. However, this was contested by , advisor to the governor of Kherson, who stated that Russia did not have any presence on the island. Contradicting Khlan, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces claimed on 15 December that Russia had begun forcibly deporting civilians from Ostriv Velykyi Potomkin, indicating that Russian forces controlled the island.


text: On 10 September 2022, Taras Berezovets stated that the southern counteroffensive had been part of a "disinformation campaign" to distract Russia from the real counteroffensive being prepared in the Kharkiv oblast. The Institute for the Study of War analyzed that Russian forces began moving equipment from the eastern frontlines to those in the south in order to prepare for the impending counteroffensive. Thus, Russian frontlines in Kharkiv oblast were left relatively unprotected to Ukrainian advances.


text: On 24 September 2022, "The New York Times" reported that Ukrainian commanders and servicemen acknowledged suffering heavy losses during the Kherson offensive, mostly caused by lack of ammunition, strong Russian defenses and the role of Russian artillery.


text: Following the liberation of Kherson, the Institute for the Study of War argued that "Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson City is igniting an ideological fracture between pro-war figures and Russian President Vladimir Putin, eroding confidence in Putin’s commitment and ability to deliver his war promises", noting criticism toward the Russian government from nationalist figures such as Aleksandr Dugin, Igor "Strelkov" Girkin and the Wagner Group; the ISW also noted how "Russian military leadership is trying and largely failing to integrate combat forces drawn from many different organizations and of many different types and levels of skill and equipment into a more cohesive fighting force in Ukraine", especially noting the lack of organization of military forces coming from Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Michael Grant Ignatieff (; born May 12, 1947) is a Canadian author, academic and former politician who served as the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Toronto. Most recently, he was rector and President of Central European University; he held this position from 2016 until July 2021.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: While living in the United Kingdom from 1978 to 2000, Ignatieff became well known as a television and radio broadcaster and as an editorial columnist for "The Observer". His documentary series "Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism" aired on BBC in 1993, and won a Canadian Gemini Award. His book of the same name, based on the series, won the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues and the University of Toronto's Lionel Gelber Prize. His memoir, "The Russian Album", won Canada's Governor General's Literary Award and the British Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize in 1988. His novel, "Scar Tissue", was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1994. In 2000, he delivered the Massey Lectures, entitled "The Rights Revolution," which was released in print later that year.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In the 2006 federal election, Ignatieff was elected to the House of Commons as the member of Parliament (MP) for Etobicoke—Lakeshore. The same year, he ran for the leadership of the Liberal Party, ultimately losing to Stéphane Dion. He served as the party's deputy leader under Dion. After Dion's resignation in the wake of the 2008 election, Ignatieff served as interim leader from December 2008 until he was elected leader at the party's May 2009 convention. In the 2011 federal election, Ignatieff lost his own seat in the Liberal Party's worst showing in its history. Winning only 34 seats, the party placed a distant third behind the Conservatives and NDP, and thus lost its position as the Official Opposition. On May 3, 2011, Ignatieff announced that he would resign as leader of the Liberal Party, pending the selection of an interim leader, which became effective May 25, 2011.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Following his electoral defeat, Ignatieff taught at the University of Toronto. In 2013, he returned to Harvard Kennedy School part-time, splitting his time between Harvard and Toronto. On July 1, 2014, he returned to Harvard full-time. In 2016, he left Harvard to become president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest; he resigned from this position in July 2021. He continues to publish articles and essays on international affairs as well as Canadian politics.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff was born on May 12, 1947, in Toronto, the elder son of Russian-born Canadian Rhodes Scholar and diplomat George Ignatieff, and his Canadian-born wife, Jessie Alison (née Grant). Ignatieff's family moved abroad frequently in his early childhood as his father rose in the diplomatic ranks.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: At the age of 11, Ignatieff was sent back to Toronto to attend Upper Canada College as a boarder in 1959. At UCC, he was elected a school prefect as head of Wedd's House, was the captain of the varsity soccer team, and served as editor-in-chief of the school's yearbook. As well, Ignatieff volunteered for the Liberal Party during the 1965 federal election by canvassing the York South riding. He resumed his work for the Liberal Party in 1968, as a national youth organizer and delegate for Pierre Trudeau's leadership campaign.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: After high school, Ignatieff studied history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College (B.A., 1969). There, he met fellow student Bob Rae, from University College, who was a debating opponent and fourth-year roommate. After completing his undergraduate degree, Ignatieff took up his studies at the University of Oxford, where he studied under, and was influenced by, the liberal philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin, whom he would later write about. While an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, he was a part-time reporter for "The Globe and Mail" in 1964–65. In 1976, Ignatieff completed his Ph.D. in history at Harvard University. He was granted a Cambridge M.A. by incorporation in 1978 on taking up a fellowship at King's College there.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff's paternal grandfather was Count Pavel Ignatieff, the Russian minister of education during the First World War and son of Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, an important Russian statesman and diplomat. His mother's grandfathers were George Monro Grant and Sir George Robert Parkin, and her younger brother was the Canadian Conservative political philosopher George Grant (1918–1988), author of "Lament for a Nation". His great-aunt Alice Parkin Massey was the wife of Canada's first native-born Governor General, Vincent Massey. He is also a descendant of William Lawson, the first president of the Bank of Nova Scotia.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff is married to Hungarian-born Zsuzsanna M. Zsohar and has two children, Theo and Sophie, from his first marriage to Londoner Susan Barrowclough. He also has a younger brother, Andrew, a community worker who assisted with Ignatieff's campaign.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Although he says he is not a church guy, Ignatieff was raised Russian Orthodox and occasionally attends services with family. He describes himself as neither an atheist nor a "believer".


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff was an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia from 1976 to 1978. In 1978 he moved to the United Kingdom, where he held a senior research fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, until 1984. He then left Cambridge for London, where he began to focus on his career as a writer and journalist. His book "The Russian Album" documented a history of his family's experiences in nineteenth-century Russia (and subsequent exile), and won the 1987 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction and the British Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize in Canada.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: During this time, he travelled extensively. He also continued to lecture at universities in Europe and North America, and held teaching posts at Oxford, the University of London, the London School of Economics, the University of California and in France. While living in Britain, Ignatieff became well known as a broadcaster on radio and television. His best-known television work has been "Voices" on Channel 4, the BBC 2 discussion programme "Thinking Aloud" and BBC 2's arts programme, "The Late Show". He was also an editorial columnist for "The Observer" from 1990 to 1993.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: His documentary series "Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism" aired on BBC in 1993, winning a Canadian Gemini Award. He later adapted this series into a book, "Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism", detailing the dangers of ethnic nationalism in the post-Cold War period. This book won the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues and the University of Toronto's Lionel Gelber Prize. Ignatieff also wrote the novel, "Scar Tissue", which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1994.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In 1998, he was on the first panel of the long-running BBC Radio discussion series "In Our Time". Around this time, his 1998 biography of Isaiah Berlin was shortlisted for both the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Non-Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In 2000, Ignatieff accepted a position as the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. Ignatieff's influence on policy continued to grow, helping to prepare the report "The Responsibility to Protect" for the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. This report examined the role of international involvement in Kosovo and Rwanda, and advocated a framework for 'humanitarian' intervention in future humanitarian crises. He delivered the Massey Lectures in 2000, entitled "The Rights Revolution," which was released in print later that year. He would eventually become a participant and panel leader at the World Economic Forum in Geneva.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: 2001 marked the September 11 attacks in the United States, renewing academic interest in issues of foreign policy and nation building. Ignatieff's text on Western interventionist policies and nation building, "Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond," won the Orwell Prize for political non-fiction in 2001. As a journalist, Ignatieff observed that the United States had established "an empire lite, a global hegemony whose grace notes are free markets, human rights and democracy, enforced by the most awesome military power the world has ever known." This became the subject of his 2003 book "Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan", which argued that America had a responsibility to create a "humanitarian empire" through nation-building and, if necessary, military force. This would become a frequent topic in his lectures. At the Amnesty 2005 Lecture in Dublin, he offered evidence to show that "we wouldn't have international human rights without the leadership of the United States".


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff's interventionist approach led him to support the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. According to Ignatieff, the United States had a duty to expend itself unseating Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the interests of international security and human rights. Ignatieff initially accepted the argument of George W. Bush administration that containment through sanctions and threats would not prevent Hussein from selling weapons of mass destruction to international terrorists. Ignatieff wrongly believed that those weapons were still being developed in Iraq.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In 2004, he published "," a philosophical work analyzing human rights in the post-9/11 world. Ignatieff argued that there may be circumstances where indefinite detention or coercive interrogations may need to be used on terror suspects to combat terrorism. Democratic institutions would need to evolve to protect human rights, finding a way to keep these necessary evils from offending democracy as much as the evils they are meant to prevent. The book attracted considerable attention. It was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize, but also earned him some criticism. In 2005, he was criticized by his peers on the editorial board for the "Index on Censorship", where human rights advocate Conor Gearty said Ignatieff fell into a category of "hand-wringing, apologetic apologists for human-rights abuses". Ignatieff responded by resigning from the editorial board for the "Index", and has maintained that he supports a complete ban on torture.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: By 2005, Ignatieff's writings on human rights and foreign affairs earned him the 37th rank on a list of most influential public intellectuals prepared by "Prospect" and "Foreign Policy" magazines.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Around 2005, Ignatieff became more frequently mentioned as a possible Liberal candidate for the next federal election, and rumours swirled about the beginnings of a political career. At this time, he left Harvard to become the Chancellor Jackman Professor in Human Rights Policy at the University of Toronto and a senior fellow of the university's Munk Centre for International Studies.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: He continued to write about the subject of Iraq, reiterating his support, if not the method in which it was conducted.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: According to Ignatieff, "what Saddam Hussein had done to the Kurds and the Shia" in Iraq was sufficient justification for the invasion. His support for the war began to wane as time passed; he said: "I supported an administration whose intentions I didn't trust, believing that the consequences would repay the gamble. Now I realize that intentions do shape consequences." He eventually recanted his support for the war entirely. In a 2007 "New York Times Magazine" article, he wrote: "The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgment of a president, but it has also condemned the judgment of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion." Ignatieff partly interpreted what he now saw as his particular errors of judgment, by presenting them as typical of academics and intellectuals in general, whom he characterized as "generalizing and interpreting particular facts as instances of some big idea". In politics, by contrast, "Specifics matter more than generalities". Samuel Moyn, Harvard University historian of human rights and humanitarian intervention, asserts that Ignatieff is among those whose who "soiled their reputations" through their defence of the Iraq war, and labelled his later public apology "embarrassingly vacuous."


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In mid-2011, following his electoral defeat, Ignatieff became a senior resident with the University of Toronto's Massey College, where he taught courses in law and political science for the Munk School of Global Affairs, the School of Public Policy and Governance, and the Faculty of Law. In January 2013, Ignatieff rejoined the Harvard Kennedy School and divided his time between Toronto and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The next year, Ignatieff returned to Harvard full-time, and left the University of Toronto, to become Edward R. Murrow Chair of Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School effective July 1, 2014.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On May 5, 2016, it was announced that Michael Ignatieff would succeed John Shattuck to become the fifth president and rector of the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary. On September 1, he was appointed the rector with the term ending on August 31, 2021. Ignatieff oversaw a tumultuous period in the university's history, during which it accused the Hungarian government of challenging its legal right to continue to operate in Hungary. The position of Ignatieff and CEU was that the intervention from the Hungarian government was part of a wider vendetta on the part of prime minister Viktor Orbán against wealthy financier George Soros, the university's chief benefactor. Ignatieff's personal position was that the strain between the Hungarian government and CEU is part of a wider tension in Europe between democratic ideals and authoritarian tendencies within the European conservative right. In 2019, Ignatieff was awarded the Dan David Prize for his contribution to defending democracy. On July 31, 2021, Michael Ignatieff stepped down as rector of CEU to be replaced by Shalini Randeria and announced he would step back into the classroom as a professor of history at CEU in January, 2022.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff is a historian, a fiction writer and public intellectual who has written several books on international relations and nation building. He has written seventeen books, and has been described by the British Arts Council as "an extraordinarily versatile writer", in both the style and the subjects he writes about. He has contributed articles to publications including "The Globe and Mail", "The New Republic", and "The New York Times Magazine". "Maclean's" named him among the "Top 10 Canadian Who's Who" in 1997 and one of the "50 Most Influential Canadians Shaping Society" in 2002. In 2003, "Maclean's" named him Canada's "Sexiest Cerebral Man".


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: His fictional works, "Asya", "Scar Tissue", and "Charlie Johnson in the Flames" cover, respectively, the life and travels of a Russian girl, the disintegration of one's mother due to neurological disease, and the haunting memories of a journalist in Kosovo. The works are to some extent autobiographical; for instance, Ignatieff travelled to the Balkans and Kurdistan while working as a journalist, witnessing first hand the consequences of modern ethnic warfare.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: A historian by training, he wrote "A Just Measure of Pain", a history of prisons during the Industrial Revolution. His biography of Isaiah Berlin reveals the strong impression the celebrated philosopher made on Ignatieff. Philosophical writings by Ignatieff include "The Needs of Strangers" and "The Rights Revolution". The latter work explores social welfare and community, and shows Berlin's influence on Ignatieff. These tie closely to Ignatieff's political writings on national self-determination and the imperatives of democratic self-government. Ignatieff has also written extensively on international affairs. His historical memoir, "The Russian Album", traces his family's life in Russia and their troubles and subsequent emigration as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In "The Rights Revolution", Ignatieff identifies three aspects of Canada's approach to human rights that give the country its distinctive culture: 1) On moral issues, Canadian law is secular and liberal, approximating European standards more closely than American ones; 2) Canadian political culture is social democratic, and Canadians take it for granted that citizens have the right to free health care and public assistance; 3) Canadians place a particular emphasis on group rights, expressed in Quebec's language laws and in treaty agreements that recognize collective aboriginal rights. "Apart from New Zealand, no other country has given such recognition to the idea of group rights", he writes.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff states that despite its admirable commitment to equality and group rights, Canadian society still places an unjust burden on women and gays and lesbians, and he says it is still difficult for newcomers of non-British or French descent to form an enduring sense of citizenship. He attributes this to the "patch-work quilt of distinctive societies", emphasizing that civic bonds will only be easier when the understanding of Canada as a multinational community is more widely shared.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff has written extensively on international development, peacekeeping and the international responsibilities of Western nations. "Blood and Belonging", a 1993 work, explores the duality of nationalism, from Yugoslavia to Northern Ireland. It is the first of a trilogy of books that explore modern conflicts. "The Warrior's Honour", published in 1998, deals with ethnically motivated conflicts, including the conflicts in Afghanistan and Rwanda. The final book, "Virtual War", describes the problems of modern peacekeeping, with special reference to the NATO presence in Kosovo.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: His 2003 book "Empire Lite" attracted considerable attention for suggesting that America, the world's last remaining superpower, should create a "humanitarian empire". This book continued his criticism of the limited-risk approach practiced by NATO in conflicts like the Kosovo War and the Rwandan genocide. Ignatieff became an advocate for more active involvement and larger scale deployment of land forces by Western nations in future conflicts in the developing world. Ignatieff was originally a prominent supporter of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. However, Ignatieff attempts to distinguish the empire lite approach from neo-conservativism because the motives of the foreign engagement he advocates are essentially altruistic rather than self-serving.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff's 2004 book "", argued that Western democracies may have to resort to "lesser evils" like indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, assassinations, and pre-emptive wars in order to combat the greater evil of terrorism. He states that as a result, societies should strengthen their democratic institutions to keep these necessary evils from becoming as offensive to freedom and democracy as the threats they are meant to prevent. The 'Lesser Evil' approach has been criticized by some prominent human rights advocates, like Conor Gearty, for incorporating a problematic form of moral language that can be used to legitimize forms of torture.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: But other human rights advocates, like Human Rights Watch's Kenneth Roth, have defended Ignatieff, saying his work "cannot fairly be equated with support for torture or 'torture lite'."


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In the context of this "lesser evil" analysis, Ignatieff has discussed whether or not liberal democracies should employ coercive interrogation and torture. Ignatieff has adamantly maintained that he supports a complete ban on torture.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: His definition of torture, according to his 2004 Op-ed in "The New York Times", does not include "forms of sleep deprivation that do not result in lasting harm to mental or physical health, together with disinformation and disorientation (like keeping prisoners in hoods)."


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In 2004, three Liberal organizers, former Liberal candidate Alfred Apps, Ian Davey (son of Senator Keith Davey) and lawyer Daniel Brock, travelled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to convince Ignatieff to move back to Canada and run for the House of Commons of Canada, and to consider a possible bid for the Liberal leadership should Paul Martin retire. Rocco Rossi, who was at that time a key Liberal Party organizer, had previously mentioned to Davey that Davey's father had said that Ignatieff had "the makings of a prime minister". In January 2005, as a result of the efforts of Apps, Brock and Davey, press speculation that Ignatieff could be a star candidate for the Liberals in the next election, and possibly a candidate to eventually succeed Prime Minister Paul Martin, the leader of the governing Liberal Party of Canada.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: After months of rumours and several denials, Ignatieff confirmed in November 2005 that he would run for a seat in the House of Commons in the winter 2006 election. It was announced that Ignatieff would seek the Liberal nomination in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke—Lakeshore.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Some Ukrainian-Canadian members of the riding association objected to the nomination, citing a perceived anti-Ukrainian sentiment in "Blood and Belonging", where Ignatieff said: "I have reasons to take the Ukraine seriously indeed. But, to be honest, I'm having trouble. Ukrainian independence conjures up images of peasants in embroidered shirts, the nasal whine of ethnic instruments, phony Cossacks in cloaks and boots..."


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Critics also questioned his commitment to Canada, pointing out that Ignatieff had lived outside of Canada for more than 30 years and had referred to himself as an American many times. When asked about it by Peter Newman in a "Maclean's" interview published on April 6, 2006, Ignatieff said: "Sometimes you want to increase your influence over your audience by appropriating their voice, but it was a mistake. Every single one of the students from 85 countries who took my courses at Harvard knew one thing about me: I was that funny Canadian."


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Two other candidates filed for the nomination but were disqualified (one, because he was not a member of the party and the second because he had failed to resign from his position on the riding association executive). Ignatieff went on to defeat the Conservative candidate by a margin of roughly 5,000 votes to win the seat.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: After the Liberal government was defeated in the January 2006 federal election, Paul Martin resigned the party leadership in March that same year. On April 7, 2006, Ignatieff announced his candidacy in the upcoming Liberal leadership race, joining several others who had already declared their candidacy.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff received several high-profile endorsements of his candidacy. His campaign was headed by Senator David Smith, who had been a Chrétien organizer, along with Ian Davey, Daniel Brock, Alfred Apps and Paul Lalonde, a Toronto lawyer and son of Marc Lalonde.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: An impressive team of policy advisors was assembled, led by Toronto lawyer Brad Davis, and including Brock, fellow lawyers Mark Sakamoto, Sachin Aggarwal, Jason Rosychuck, Jon Penney, Nigel Marshman, Alex Mazer, Will Amos, and Alix Dostal, former Ignatieff student Jeff Anders, banker Clint Davis, economists Blair Stransky, Leslie Church and Ellis Westwood, and Liberal operatives Alexis Levine, Marc Gendron, Mike Pal, Julie Dzerowicz, Patrice Ryan, Taylor Owen and Jamie Macdonald.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Following the selection of delegates in the party's "Super Weekend" exercise on the last weekend of September, Ignatieff gained more support from delegates than other candidates with 30% voting for him.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In August 2006, Ignatieff said he was "not losing any sleep" over dozens of civilian deaths caused by Israel's attack on Qana during its military actions in Lebanon.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff recanted those words the following week. Then, on October 11, 2006, Ignatieff described the Qana attack as a war crime (committed by Israel). Susan Kadis, who had been Ignatieff's campaign co-chair, withdrew her support following the comment. Other Liberal leadership candidates have also criticized Ignatieff's comments.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ariela Cotler, a Jewish community leader and the wife of prominent Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, left the party following Ignatieff's comments.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff later qualified his statement, saying "Whether war crimes were committed in the attack on Qana is for international bodies to determine. That doesn't change the fact that Qana was a terrible tragedy."


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On October 14, Ignatieff announced that he would visit Israel, to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and "learn first-hand their view of the situation". He noted that Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel's own B'Tselem have stated that war crimes were committed in Qana, describing the suggestion as "a serious matter precisely because Israel has a record of compliance, concern and respect for the laws of war and human rights".


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff added that he would not meet with Palestinian leaders who did not recognize Israel. However, the Jewish organization sponsoring the trip subsequently cancelled it, because of too much media attention.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: At the leadership convention in Montreal, taking place at Palais des Congrès, Ignatieff entered as the apparent front-runner, having won more delegates to the convention than any other contender. However, polls consistently showed he had weak second-ballot support, and those delegates not already tied to him would be unlikely to support him later.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On December 1, 2006, Ignatieff led the leadership candidates on the first ballot, garnering 29% support. The subsequent ballots were cast the following day, and Ignatieff managed a small increase, to 31% on the second ballot, good enough to maintain his lead over Bob Rae, who had attracted 24% support, and Stéphane Dion, who garnered 20%. However, due to massive movement towards Dion by delegates who supported Gerard Kennedy, Ignatieff dropped to second on the third ballot. Shortly before voting for the third ballot was completed, with the realization that there was a Dion–Kennedy pact, Ignatieff campaign co-chair Denis Coderre made an appeal to Rae to join forces and prevent Dion from winning the Liberal Party leadership (on the basis that Stephane Dion's ardent federalism would alienate Quebecers), but Rae turned down the offer and opted to release his delegates.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: With the help of the Kennedy delegates, Dion jumped up to 37% support on the third ballot, in contrast to Ignatieff's 34% and Rae's 29%. Rae was eliminated and the bulk of his delegates opted to vote for Dion rather than Ignatieff. In the fourth and final round of voting, Ignatieff took 2084 votes and lost the contest to Dion, who won with 2,521 votes.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff confirmed that he would run as the Liberal MP for Etobicoke—Lakeshore in the next federal election.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On December 18, 2006, new Liberal leader Stéphane Dion named Ignatieff his deputy leader, in line with Dion's plan to give high-ranking positions to each of his former leadership rivals.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: During three by-elections held on September 18, 2007, the "Halifax Chronicle-Herald" reported that unidentified Dion supporters were accusing Ignatieff's supporters of undermining by-election efforts, with the goal of showing that Dion could not hold on to the party's Quebec base.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Susan Delacourt of the "Toronto Star" described this as a recurring issue in the party with the leadership runner-up. "The National Post" referred to the affair as, "Discreet signs of a mutiny."


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Although Ignatieff called Dion to deny the allegations, "The Globe and Mail" cited the NDP's widening lead after the article's release, suggested that the report had a negative impact on the Liberals' morale. The Liberals were defeated in their former stronghold of Outremont. Since then, Ignatieff has urged the Liberals to put aside their differences, saying "united we win, divided we lose".


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Dion announced that he would schedule his departure as Liberal leader for the next party convention, after the Liberals lost seats and support in the 2008 federal election. Ignatieff held a news conference on November 13, 2008, to once again announce his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: When the Liberals reached an accord with the other opposition parties to form a coalition and defeat the government, Ignatieff reluctantly endorsed it. He was reportedly uncomfortable with a coalition with the NDP and support from the Bloc Québécois, and has been described as one of the last Liberals to sign on.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: After the announcement to prorogue Parliament, delaying the non-confidence motion until January 2009, Dion announced his intention to stay on as leader until the party selected a new one.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Leadership contender Dominic LeBlanc dropped out and threw his support behind Ignatieff. On December 9, the other remaining opponent for the Liberal Party leadership, Bob Rae, withdrew from the race, leaving Ignatieff as the presumptive winner.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On December 10, he was formally declared the interim leader in a caucus meeting, and his position was ratified at the May 2009 convention.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On February 19, 2009, during U.S. President Barack Obama's election visit to Ottawa to meet Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which was the President's first foreign trip since taking office, Obama also met with Ignatieff as per parliamentary protocol where the leader of the opposition meets foreign dignitaries. Their discussion included climate change, Afghanistan and human rights.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On May 2, 2009, Ignatieff was officially endorsed as the leader of the Liberal Party by 97% of delegates at the party convention in Vancouver, British Columbia.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On August 31, 2009, Ignatieff announced that the Liberal Party would withdraw support for the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. However, the NDP under Jack Layton abstained and the Conservatives survived the confidence motion.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: Ignatieff's attempt to force a September 2009 election was reported as a miscalculation, as polls showed that most Canadians did not want another election. Ignatieff's popularity as well as that of the Liberals dropped off considerably immediately afterwards.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On March 25, 2011, Ignatieff introduced a motion of non-confidence against the Harper government to attempt to force a May 2011 federal election after the government was found to be in contempt of Parliament, the first such occurrence in Commonwealth history. The House of Commons passed the motion by 156–145.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: The Liberals had considerable momentum when the writ was dropped, and Ignatieff successfully squeezed NDP leader Jack Layton out of media attention, by issuing challenges to Harper for one-on-one debates. In the first couple weeks of the campaign, Ignatieff kept his party in second place in the polls, and his personal ratings exceeded that of Layton for the first time. However opponents frequently criticized Ignatieff's perceived political opportunism, particularly during the leaders debates when Layton criticized Ignatieff for having a poor attendance record for Commons votes saying "You know, most Canadians, if they don't show up for work, they don't get a promotion". Ignatieff failed to defend himself against these charges, and the debates were said to be a turning point for his party's campaign. Ignatieff was also subject to scathing attack ads by the Conservative Party, slamming him as "Just visiting" Canada for the sake of political advancement. Near the end of the campaign, a late surge in support for Layton and the NDP relegated Ignatieff and the Liberals to third in the polls.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On May 2, 2011, Ignatieff's Liberals lost 43 seats only winning 34 and thus slipped to third party status behind the NDP and the Conservatives, who gained a majority in Parliament. It was the worst result in the history of the Liberal Party, the worst result in Canadian history for an incumbent Official Opposition party, and the first time since Confederation the Liberals failed to finish first or second. Ignatieff was defeated by Conservative challenger Bernard Trottier, being the first incumbent Leader of the Official Opposition to lose his own seat since Charles Tupper's defeat in Cape Breton in 1900, as well as the first sitting Liberal leader since Mackenzie King lost his riding in the 1945 election. Reports suggested that Ignatieff had initially promised to move into a home inside his riding, but instead he resided in the downtown Toronto neighbourhood of Yorkville, which rankled Etobicoke–Lakeshore residents and reinforced perceptions of Ignatieff's political opportunism.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On May 3, 2011, Ignatieff announced that he would be resigning as leader of the party pending the appointment of an interim leader; his resignation went into effect on May 25 when Bob Rae was appointed as Ignatieff's interim replacement.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In 2013 Ignatieff published a book about his political career called "Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics". The British reviewer David Runciman commented in a book review, "for a clear-eyed, sharply observed, mordant but ultimately hopeful account of contemporary politics this memoir is hard to beat. After his defeat, a friend tries to comfort him by telling him that at least he'll get a book out of it. Ignatieff reacts with understandable fury. He didn't go into politics and through all that followed just to write a book. Still, it's some book."


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In October 2006, Ignatieff indicated that he personally would not support ballistic missile defence nor the weaponization of space. He referred to the likelihood of America developing a Missile Defense System in his book "Virtual War", but did not voice support for Canadian participation in such a scheme.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: On June 3, 2008, and on March 30, 2009, Ignatieff voted in support of "non-binding" motions in the House of Commons calling on the government to "allow conscientious objectors ... to a war not sanctioned by the United Nations ... [(including Iraq war resisters)] ... to ... remain in Canada ... ." However, on September 29, 2010, when those motions were proposed as a "binding" private member's bill from Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy, CTV News reported that Ignatieff "walked out during the vote." The bill then failed to pass this second reading vote by seven votes.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: During his time in Parliament, Ignatieff was one of the few opposition members supporting the minority Conservative government's commitment to Canadian military activity in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Stephen Harper called a vote in the House of Commons for May 17, 2006, on extending the Canadian Forces current deployment in Afghanistan until February 2009. During the debate, Ignatieff expressed his "unequivocal support for the troops in Afghanistan, for the mission, and also for the renewal of the mission." He argued that the Afghanistan mission tests the success of Canada's shift from "the peacekeeping paradigm to the peace-enforcement paradigm," the latter combining "military, reconstruction and humanitarian efforts together." The opposition Liberal caucus of 102 MPs was divided, with 24 MPs supporting the extension, 66 voting against, and 12 abstentions. Among Liberal leadership candidates, Ignatieff and Scott Brison voted for the extension. Ignatieff led the largest Liberal contingent of votes in favour, with at least five of his caucus supporters voting along with him to extend the mission.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: The vote was 149–145 for extending the military deployment. Following the vote, Harper shook Ignatieff's hand. In a subsequent campaign appearance, Ignatieff reiterated his view of the mission in Afghanistan. He stated: "the thing that Canadians have to understand about Afghanistan is that we are well past the era of Pearsonian peacekeeping."


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: In the 2006 Liberal leadership race, Ignatieff advocated for measures to address climate change, including a carbon tax. During the 2008 federal election Dion's key policy plank was his Green Shift plan, a revenue neutral carbon tax which would put a price on greenhouse gas emissions while reducing income taxes. The Green Shift had been heavily criticized by the Conservatives and it was believed to have been a significant factor in the party's poor showing in the election. Following the election Ignatieff announced he would not campaign on Dion's Green Shift. In a speech to the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce in February 2009, he said; "You can't win elections if you're adding to the input costs of a farmer putting diesel into his tractor, or you're adding to the input costs of a fisherman putting diesel into his fishing boat, or a trucker transporting goods". He went onto say that; "You've got to work with the grain of Canadians and not against them. I think we learned a lesson in the last election." In November 2009, he announced that a Liberal government would implement an industrial cap-and-trade system to combat climate change.


title: Michael Ignatieff

text: During the spring 2011 federal election, Ignatieff clearly ruled out the formation of a coalition government with the NDP and Bloc parties. Contrary to the suggestion from the Conservative party that he was planning to form a government with the other opposition parties, Ignatieff issued a statement on March 26, 2011, stating that "[t]he party that wins the most seats on election day will form the government".


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Paul Karl Feyerabend (; January 13, 1924 – February 11, 1994) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades (1958–1989). At various points in his life, he lived in England, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, and finally Switzerland. His major works include "Against Method" (1975), "Science in a Free Society" (1978) and "Farewell to Reason" (1987). Feyerabend became famous for his purportedly anarchistic view of science and his rejection of the existence of universal methodological rules. He was an influential figure in the sociology of scientific knowledge. Asteroid (22356) Feyerabend is named in his honour.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Feyerabend was born in 1924 in Vienna, where he attended primary and high school. In this period he got into the habit of frequent reading, developed an interest in theatre, and started singing lessons. After graduating from high school in April 1942 he was drafted into the German Arbeitsdienst. After basic training in Pirmasens, Germany, he was assigned to a unit in Quelern en Bas, near Brest (France). Feyerabend described the work he did during that period as monotonous: "we moved around in the countryside, dug ditches, and filled them up again." After a short leave he volunteered for officer school. In his autobiography he writes that he hoped the war would be over by the time he had finished his education as an officer. This turned out not to be the case. From December 1943 on, he served as an officer on the northern part of the Eastern Front, was decorated with an Iron cross, and attained the rank of lieutenant. When the German army started its retreat from the advancing Red Army, Feyerabend was hit by three bullets while directing traffic. One hit him in the spine. As a consequence he needed to walk with a stick for the rest of his life and frequently experienced severe pain. He spent the rest of the war recovering from his wounds.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: When the war was over, Feyerabend first got a temporary job in Apolda, where he wrote plays. He was influenced by the Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht, who invited him to be his assistant at the East Berlin State Opera, but Feyerabend turned down the offer. He took classes at the Weimar Academy, and returned to Vienna to study history and sociology at the University of Vienna. He became dissatisfied, however, and soon transferred to physics, where he met Felix Ehrenhaft, a physicist whose experiments influenced his later views on the nature of science. Feyerabend changed his course of studies to philosophy. In 1951 he earned his doctorate from the University of Vienna with a thesis on observational statements ("Zur Theorie der Basissätze") under Victor Kraft's supervision.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: In his autobiography, he described his philosophical views during this time as "staunchly empiricist". In 1948 he visited the first European Forum Alpbach. There Feyerabend first met Karl Popper, who had "positive" (early Popper) and "negative" (later Popper) effects on him. In 1949 he was a founding member of the Kraft Circle. In 1951, Feyerabend was granted a British Council scholarship to study under Wittgenstein, but Wittgenstein died before Feyerabend moved to England. Feyerabend then chose Popper as his supervisor instead, and went to study at the London School of Economics in 1952. In his autobiography, Feyerabend explains that during this time, he was influenced by Popper: "I had fallen for [Popper's ideas]". After that, Feyerabend returned to Vienna and was involved in various projects; a translation of Popper's "Open Society and its Enemies", hunting down manuscripts Popper had left in Vienna, a report on the development of the humanities in Austria, and several articles for an encyclopedia.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: In 1955, Feyerabend received his first academic appointment at the University of Bristol, where he lectured on the philosophy of science. Later in his life he worked as a professor (or equivalent) at Berkeley, Auckland, Kassel, Sussex, Yale, London, Berlin and ETH Zurich. During this time, he developed a critical view of science; he later described his own position as 'anarchistic' or 'dadaistic' to illustrate his rejection of the dogmatic use of rules, a position incompatible with the contemporary rationalistic culture in the philosophy of science. At the London School of Economics, Feyerabend met a colleague of Popper, Imre Lakatos, with whom he planned to write a dialogue volume in which Lakatos would defend a rationalist view of science and Feyerabend would attack it. This planned joint publication was put to an end by Lakatos's sudden death in 1974. "Against Method" became a famous criticism of current philosophical views of science and provoked many reactions. In his autobiography, he reveals that he suffered from depression:


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Feyerabend moved to the University of California, Berkeley in California in 1958 and became a U.S. citizen. Following (visiting) professorships (or their equivalent) at University College London, Berlin, and Yale, he taught at the University of Auckland, New Zealand in 1972 and 1974, always returning to California. He later enjoyed alternating between posts at ETH Zurich and Berkeley through the 1980s but left Berkeley for good in October 1989, first to Italy, then finally to Zurich. After his retirement in 1991, Feyerabend continued to publish papers and worked on his autobiography. After a short period of suffering from a brain tumor, he died in 1994 at the Genolier Clinic, overlooking Lake Geneva, Switzerland.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: In "Against Method" and "Science in a Free Society" Feyerabend defended the idea that there are no methodological rules which are always used by scientists. Feyerabend objected to method, because he believed that any single prescriptive scientific method would limit the activities of scientists, and hence restrict scientific progress. In his view, science would benefit most from a "dose" of theoretical anarchism. He also thought that theoretical anarchism was desirable because it was more "humanitarian" than other systems of organization, by not imposing rigid rules on scientists.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Feyerabend's position was seen as radical in the philosophy of science, because it implies that philosophy can neither succeed in providing a general description of science, nor in devising a method for differentiating products of science from non-scientific entities like myths. (Feyerabend's position also implies that philosophical guidelines should be ignored by scientists, if they are to aim for progress.)


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: To support his position that methodological rules generally do not contribute to scientific success, Feyerabend analyzed counterexamples to the claim that (good) science operates according to a certain fixed method. Starting from episodes in science that are generally regarded as indisputable instances of progress (e.g. the Copernican revolution), he argued that these episodes violated all common prescriptive rules of science. Moreover, he claimed that applying such rules in these historical situations would actually have prevented scientific revolution.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Feyerabend attacks is the "consistency criterion" as a way of evaluating scientific theories. He argues that insisting new theories be consistent with old ones gives old ideas unreasonable advantage. He makes a logical point: simply being compatible with a defunct older theory does not necessarily increase the validity or truth of a new theory over alternatives with comparable coverage. According to Feyerabend, new theories that are compatible with tradition may be more more appealing to scientists in virtue of their familiarity, since they enable scientists to maintain cherished prejudices. In short, preferencing new theories that accord with older traditions over others that don't (ceteris paribus) is an aesthetic choice, rather than a rational one. Hence, such theories can be said to have "an unfair advantage".


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Feyerabend also criticized falsificationism, arguing that no interesting theory is ever consistent with "all" the relevant facts. This would rule out using a naïve falsificationist rule which says that scientific theories should be rejected if they do not agree with known facts. Among others, Feyerabend uses an intentionally provocative description of "renormalization" in quantum mechanics: "This procedure consists in crossing out the results of certain calculations and replacing them by a description of what is actually observed. Thus one admits, implicitly, that the theory is in trouble while formulating it in a manner suggesting that a new principle has been discovered" While quantum theorists were working on models that did not run into this problem, Feyerabend advocated that scientists should use ad hoc methods such as renormalization. Indeed that such methods are essential to the progress of science for example because "progress in science is uneven". For instance, in the time of Galileo, optical theory could not account for phenomena that were observed by means of telescopes. So, astronomers who used telescopic observation had to use ad hoc rules until they could justify their assumptions by means of "optical theory".


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Feyerabend also criticized any guideline that aimed to judge the quality of scientific theories by comparing them to known facts. He thought that previous theory might influence natural interpretations of observed phenomena. Scientists necessarily make implicit assumptions when comparing scientific theories to facts that they observe. Such assumptions need to be changed in order to make the new theory compatible with observations. The main example of the influence of natural interpretations that Feyerabend provided was the "tower argument" presented as an objection to the theory of a moving earth. Aristotelians assumed that the fact that a stone which is dropped from a tower lands directly beneath it shows that the earth is stationary. They thought that, if the earth moved while the stone was falling, the stone would have been "left behind". Objects would fall diagonally instead of vertically. Since this does not happen, Aristotelians thought that it was evident that the earth did not move. If one uses ancient theories of impulse and relative motion, the Copernican theory indeed appears to be falsified by the fact that objects fall vertically on earth. This observation required a new interpretation to make it compatible with Copernican theory. Galileo was able to make such a change about the nature of impulse and relative motion. Before such theories were articulated, Galileo had to make use of ad hoc methods and proceed counterinductively. So, "ad hoc" hypotheses actually have a positive function: they temporarily make a new theory compatible with facts until the theory to be defended can be supported by other theories.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Together these remarks sanction the introduction of theories that are inconsistent with well-established facts. Furthermore, a pluralistic methodology that involves making comparisons between any theories at all forces defendants to improve the articulation of each theory. In this way, scientific pluralism improves the critical power of science. Pope Benedict XVI cited Feyerabend to this effect.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: According to Feyerabend, new theories came to be accepted not because they accorded with scientific method, but because their supporters made use of any trick – rational, rhetorical or ribald – in order to advance their cause. Without a fixed ideology, or the introduction of religious tendencies, the only approach which does not inhibit progress (using whichever definition one sees fit) is "anything goes": "anything goes" is not a 'principle' I hold... but the terrified exclamation of a rationalist who takes a closer look at history." (Feyerabend, 1975).


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Feyerabend considered the possibility of incommensurability, but he was hesitant in his application of the concept. He wrote that "it is hardly ever possible to give an explicit definition of [incommensurability]" , because it involves covert classifications and major conceptual changes. He also was critical of attempts to capture incommensurability in a logical framework, since he thought of incommensurability as a phenomenon outside the domain of logic. In the second appendix of "Against Method" (p. 114), Feyerabend states, "I never said... that "any two" rival theories are incommensurable... What I "did" say was that "certain" rival theories, so-called 'universal' theories, or 'non-instantial' theories, "if interpreted in a certain way", could not be compared easily." Incommensurability did not concern Feyerabend greatly, because he believed that even when theories "are" commensurable (i.e. can be compared), the outcome of the comparison should not necessarily rule out either theory. To rephrase: when theories are incommensurable, they cannot rule each other out, and when theories are commensurable, they cannot rule each other out. Assessments of (in)commensurability, therefore, don't have much effect in Feyerabend's system, and can be more or less passed over in silence.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: In "Against Method" Feyerabend claimed that Imre Lakatos's philosophy of research programmes is actually "anarchism in disguise", because it does not issue orders to scientists. Feyerabend playfully dedicated "Against Method" to "Imre Lakatos: Friend, and fellow-anarchist". One interpretation is that Lakatos's philosophy of mathematics and science was based on creative transformations of Hegelian historiographic ideas, many associated with Lakatos's teacher in Hungary Georg Lukács. Feyerabend's debate with Lakatos on scientific method recapitulates the debate of Lukács and (Feyerabend's would-be mentor) Brecht, over aesthetics several decades earlier.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: While Feyerabend described himself as an "epistemological anarchist", he explicitly disavowed being a "political anarchist". Some anarchist-leaning critics of science have agreed with this distinction, while others have argued that political anarchism is tacitly embedded in Feyerabend's philosophy of science.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Feyerabend was critical of the lack of knowledge of philosophy shown by the generation of physicists that emerged after World War II:The withdrawal of philosophy into a "professional" shell of its own has had disastrous consequences. The younger generation of physicists, the Feynmans, the Schwingers, etc., may be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors, than Bohr, Einstein, Schrödinger, Boltzmann, Mach and so on. But they are uncivilized savages, they lack in philosophical depth – and this is the fault of the very same idea of professionalism which you [i.e.Wallace Matson] are now defending.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: On the other hand, Feyerabend was himself heavily criticized for his misrepresentation of the practices, methods and goals of some of the above-mentioned scientists, especially Mach and Einstein.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Feyerabend described science as being essentially anarchistic, obsessed with its own mythology, and as making claims to truth well beyond its actual capacity. He was especially indignant about the condescending attitudes of many scientists towards alternative traditions. For example, he thought that negative opinions about astrology and the effectivity of rain dances were not justified by scientific research, and dismissed the predominantly negative attitudes of scientists towards such phenomena as elitist or racist. In his opinion, science has become a repressing ideology, even though it arguably started as a liberating movement. Feyerabend thought that a pluralistic society should be protected from being influenced too much by science, just as it is protected from other ideologies.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Starting from the argument that a historical universal scientific method does not exist, Feyerabend argues that science does not deserve its privileged status in western society. Since scientific points of view do not arise from using a universal method which guarantees high quality conclusions, he thought that there is no justification for valuing scientific claims over claims by other ideologies like religions. Feyerabend also argued that scientific accomplishments such as the moon landings are no compelling reason to give science a special status. In his opinion, it is not fair to use scientific assumptions about which problems are worth solving in order to judge the merit of other ideologies. Additionally, success by scientists has traditionally involved non-scientific elements, such as inspiration from mythical or religious sources.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Based on these arguments, Feyerabend defended the idea that science should be separated from the state in the same way that religion and state are separated in a modern secular society. He envisioned a "free society" in which "all traditions have equal rights and equal access to the centres of power". For example, parents should be able to determine the ideological context of their children's education, instead of having limited options because of scientific standards. According to Feyerabend, science should also be subjected to democratic control: not only should the subjects that are investigated by scientists be determined by popular election, scientific assumptions and conclusions should also be supervised by committees of lay people. He thought that citizens should use their own principles when making decisions about these matters. He rejected the view that science is especially "rational" on the grounds that there is no single common "rational" ingredient that unites all the sciences but excludes other modes of thought.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Along with a number of mid-20th century philosophers (most notably, Wilfrid Sellars, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Richard Rorty), Feyerabend was influential in the development of eliminative materialism, a radical position in the philosophy of mind that holds that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind (what materialist monists call "folk psychology") is false. It is succinctly described by a modern proponent, Paul Churchland, as follows:


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: In three short papers published in the early sixties, Feyerabend sought to defend materialism against the supposition that the mind cannot be a physical thing. Feyerabend suggested that our commonsense understanding of the mind was incommensurable with the (materialistic) scientific view, but that nevertheless we ought to prefer the materialistic one on general methodological grounds.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: This view of the mind/body problem is widely considered one of Feyerabend's most important legacies. Even though Feyerabend himself seems to have given it up in the late 1970s, it was taken up by Richard Rorty and, more recently, by Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland. In fact, as Keeley observes, "PMC [Paul Churchland] has spent much of his career carrying the Feyerabend mantle forward" (p. 13).


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Some of Feyerabend's work concerns the way in which people's perception of reality is influenced by various rules. In his last book, unfinished when he died, he talks of how our sense of reality is shaped and limited. "Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being" bemoans the propensity we have of institutionalizing these limitations.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: The last philosophy book that Feyerabend finished is "The Tyranny of Science" (written 1993, published May 13, 2011). In it Feyerabend challenges what he sees in his view as some modern myths about science, e.g., he believes that the statement 'science is successful' is a myth. He argues that some very basic assumptions about science are simply false and that substantial parts of scientific ideology were created on the basis of superficial generalizations that led to absurd misconceptions about the nature of human life. He claims that far from solving the pressing problems of our age, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities at the cost of confronting the real particulars that make life meaningful.


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: The book "On the Warrior's Path" quotes Feyerabend, highlighting the similarities between his epistemology and Bruce Lee's worldview. In a 2015 retrospective on Thomas Kuhn's theory of paradigm shifts in social science, the philosopher Martin Cohen cites several of Feyerabend's skeptical positions on conventional claims at scientific knowledge and agrees with Feyerabend that Thomas Kuhn himself had only a very hazy idea of what this notion of paradigm shifts might mean, and that Kuhn essentially retreated from the more radical implications of his theory, which were that scientific facts are never really more than opinions, whose popularity is transitory and far from conclusive. Cohen says that although in their lifetimes, Kuhn and Feyerabend made up two viciously opposed sects, they agreed that science consists of long periods of settled agreement (so-called 'normal science') punctuated by radical, conceptual upheaval (so-called paradigm shifts).


title: Paul Feyerabend

text: Feyerabend's concept of "incommensurability" was influential in the radical critical approach of Donald Ault in his extensive critical assessment of William Blake's work, especially in "Narrative Unbound: Re-Visioning William Blake's" The Four Zoas.


title: Textile industry in India

text: The textile industry in India traditionally, after agriculture, is the only industry that has generated huge employment for both skilled and unskilled labour.


title: Textile industry in India

text: The textile industry continues to be the second-largest employment generating sector in India. It offers direct employment to over 35 million people in the country. India is the world's second largest exporter of textiles and clothing, and in the fiscal year 2022, the exports stood at US$ 44.4 billion. According to the Ministry of Textiles, the share of textiles in total exports during April–July 2010 was 11.04%. During 2009–2010, the Indian textile industry was pegged at 55 billion, 64% of which services domestic demand. In 2010, there were 2,500 textile weaving factories and 4,135 textile finishing factories in all of India. According to AT Kearney’s ‘Retail Apparel Index’, India was ranked as the fourth most promising market for apparel retailers in 2009.


title: Textile industry in India

text: India is the second largest producer of fibre. The country is the world's largest producer of cotton and jute. India is also the world's second largest producer of silk. Other fibres produced in India include wool, and man-made fibres. 100% FDI is allowed via automatic route in textile sector. Rieter, Trutzschler, Saurer, Soktas, Zambiati, Bilsar, Monti, CMT, E-land, Nisshinbo, Marks & Spencer, Zara, Promod, Benetton, and Levi’s are some of the foreign textile companies invested or working in India. Between January and July 2021, India exported textile products worth Rs 1.77 lakh crore, which is 52.6% more than the same period last year.


title: Textile industry in India

text: The archaeological surveys and studies have indicated that the people of Harrapan civilization were familiar with weaving and the spinning of cotton for as long as four thousand years ago. Reference to weaving and spinning materials is found in the Vedic Literature. There was textile trade in India during the early centuries. Cotton fragments from Gujarat have been found in tombs was in Egypt, indicating the existence of export of Indian textiles to Egypt during the medieval era.


title: Textile industry in India

text: Large quantities of north Indian silks were traded through the Silk Road in China to the western countries. The Indian silks were often bartered for spices. During the late 17th and 18th century there were large exports of Indian cotton to the western countries to meet the need of the European industries during industrial revolution, apart from the domestic requirement at the Indian Ordnance Factories.


title: Textile industry in India

text: Up until the 18th century, Mughal Empire was the most important center of manufacturing in international trade. Up until 1750, India produced about 25% of the world's industrial output. The largest manufacturing industry in Mughal Empire (16th to 18th centuries) was textile manufacturing, particularly cotton textile manufacturing, which included the production of piece goods, calicos, and muslins, available unbleached and in a variety of colours. The cotton textile industry was responsible for a large part of the empire's international trade. Bengal had a 25% share of the global textile trade in the early 18th century. Bengal cotton textiles were the most important manufactured goods in world trade in the 18th century, consumed across the world from the Americas to Japan. The most important center of cotton production was the Bengal Subah province, particularly around its capital city of Dhaka. As Karl Marx noted in 1853, the textile industry was a major component of economic income in the pre-colonial Indian economy, writing that "The hand-loom and the spinning-wheel, producing their regular myriads of spinners and weavers, were the pivots of the structure of that society".


title: Textile industry in India

text: Bengal accounted for more than 50% of textiles and around 80% of silks imported by the Dutch from Asia and marketed it to the world, Bengali silk and cotton textiles were exported in large quantities to Europe, Asia, and Japan, and Bengali muslin textiles from Dhaka were sold in Central Asia, where they were known as "daka" textiles. Indian textiles dominated the Indian Ocean trade for centuries, were sold in the Atlantic Ocean trade, and had a 38% share of the West African trade in the early 18th century, while Bengal calicos were major force in Europe, and Bengal textiles accounted for 30% of total British trade with Southern Europe in the early 18th century.


title: Textile industry in India

text: In early modern Europe, there was significant demand for textiles from the Mughal Empire, including cotton textiles and silk products. European fashion, for example, became increasingly dependent on textiles and silks imported from The Mughal Empire. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, The Mughal Empire accounted for 95% of British imports from Asia, conducted through the auspices of the East India Company (EIC). After the abolition of slavery in British Empire, manufactures in Britain started to look for alternative sources of cheap cotton, eventually settling on the East India Company's possession in India. The EIC convinced many farmers to switch from subsistence farming to producing and exporting huge amounts of cotton, after a long period of government protectionism imposed over the British textile industry. Eventually, through the technical and marketing advances made possible by colonisation, the traditional method of artisan textile production declined significantly, and replaced with large scale factory production.


title: Textile industry in India

text: In the early years, the cotton textile industry was concentrated in the cotton growing belt of Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Availability of raw materials, market, transport, labour, moist climate and other factors contributed to localisation. In the early twentieth century, this industry played a huge role in Bombay's economy but soon declined after independence. While spinning continues to be centralised in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, weaving is highly decentralised. As of 30 November 2011, there are 1,946 cotton textile mills in India, of which about 80% are in the private sector and the rest in the public and cooperative sector. Apart from these, there are several thousand small factories with three to ten looms.there is a committee established in India under 'textile committee act 1963'. this commmitte sets the quality standards for textiles manufactured for sale in the internal market as well as for export.


title: Textile industry in India

text: India exports yarn to Japan, United States, United Kingdom, Russia, France, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka and other countries. India has the second-largest installed capacity of spindles in the world, with 43.13 million spindles (30 March 2011) after China. Although India has a large share in world trade of cotton yarn, its trade in garments is only 4% of the world's total.


title: Textile industry in India

text: India has the largest cotton acreage, with 12,4 million hectares under cultivation, which accounts for around 36 percent of the global total of 34,1 million hectares.


title: Textile industry in India

text: India is the largest producer of raw jute and jute goods and the third largest exporter after Bangladesh. There were about 80 jute mills in India in 2010–11, most of which are located in West Bengal , mainly along the banks of the Hooghly River, in a narrow belt (98 km long and 3 km wide).


title: Textile industry in India

text: In 2010-2011 the jute industry was supporting 0.37 million workers directly and another 400,000 small and marginal farmers who were engaged in the cultivation of jute.


title: Textile industry in India

text: Challenges faced by the industry include stiff competition in the international market from synthetic substitutes and from other countries such as Bangladesh , Brazil , Philippines , Egypt and Thailand. However, the internal demand has been on the rise due to Government policy of mandatory use of jute packaging. To stimulate demand, the products need to be diversified. In 2005, the National Jute Policy was formulated with the objective of improving quality, increasing productivity and enhancing the yield of the crop.


title: Textile industry in India

text: In 2000, the Government of India passed the National Textile Policy. The major functions of the Ministry of Textiles are formulating policy and coordination of man-made fiber, cotton, jute, silk, wool industries, decentralization of power loom sector, promotion of exports, planning & economic analysis, finance and promoting use of information technology. The Ministry of Textiles is currently led by Piyush Goyal. Darshanaben Jardosh is currently Minister of State . The advisory boards for the ministry include All India Handlooms Board, All India Handicrafts Board, All India Power looms Board, Advisory Committee under Handlooms Reservation of Articles for Production and Co-ordination Council of Textiles Research Association. There are several public sector units and textile research associations across the country.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: The Birthday Massacre (abbreviated TBM) is a Canadian rock band, formed in 1999 in London, Ontario, and currently based in Toronto, Ontario. The current lineup consists of lead vocalist Sara 'Chibi' Taylor, rhythm guitarist Michael Rainbow, lead guitarist Michael Falcore, keyboardist Owen Mackinder, drummer Philip Elliott, and bassist Brett Carruthers.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: When the band formed in 1999, they were known as 'Imagica'. This name was inspired by the 1991 fantasy novel "Imajica" by Clive Barker. In 2002, they changed the name to The Birthday Massacre after one of their earlier songs in order to avoid confusion with another group. The song "The Birthday Massacre" was then renamed "Happy Birthday". According to their vocalist Chibi: "it kind of works well for the music that we're making. Sort of contrasty, you know? Birthday, and massacre. Light, and dark. Cute, and evil".


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: The band has released nine studio albums: "Nothing and Nowhere" (2002), "Violet" (2005), "Walking with Strangers" (2007), "Pins and Needles" (2010), "Hide and Seek" (2012), "Superstition" (2014), "Under Your Spell" (2017), "Diamonds" (2020), and "Fascination" (2022).


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: They also issued the DVD "Blue" (2005), the live album/DVD "Show and Tell" (2009), the demo album "Imagica", and the EPs "Violet" (2004), "Looking Glass" (2008), and "Imaginary Monsters" (2011).


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: The group originated in London, Ontario, under the name 'Imagica', with members using pseudonyms and nicknames instead of their birth names; the members called themselves Chibi, Owen, and Dan Gilman, respectively. The group's original lineup formed when Michael Rainbow met Sara 'Chibi' Taylor at Fanshawe College, who was studying in the same fine-arts program. Rainbow recruited childhood friend Michael Falcore to join on guitar; they had already been recording music together in high school. Aslan, who was also attending the same college, became roommates with Rainbow and joined on bass. In mid 2000, Dank, a long-time friend of Chibi's, joined to play live keyboards but left the group shortly before they relocated to Toronto.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: After months of rehearsals and writing songs, they played their first gig on October 28, 2000, at Diversity night club in London. The band released a seven-song limited-edition demo CD at the show which had been recorded on a four-track cassette recorder during a time when the group was recording cover songs for fun. There were 40 hand-numbered copies of the demo which included the first recorded version of the song "The Birthday Massacre" (later renamed "Happy Birthday").


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: During this time, the band also met Rhim, Owen and Brett Carruthers who all attended the same college. In October 2006, Terry McManus, Professor of Music Business and Entertainment Law at Fanshawe College, joined as the band's personal manager.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: The band has always described itself as an audio-visual project. In a 2009 interview, when asked about why they had started the band, Rainbow stated: "I think more than just being a band, it's a way to sort of incorporate, not just music, but other things. So I think more so than just music, the idea of having a band, and being able to perform, and being able to do artwork, to do music... all these different avenues." Neither Rainbow, Chibi nor Michael Falcore had been in any previous bands and said that the group formed naturally as a result of spending time together as friends.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: In 2001, the band relocated to Toronto, and began recording a new album which they announced would be available in another limited edition of 500 to 1,000.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: Shortly before releasing the CD, the band changed their name from 'Imagica' to 'The Birthday Massacre' in order to avoid confusion with a California death metal band with the same name. The band chose the name because people were already familiar with the song of the same title.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: In July 2002, the Birthday Massacre independently released a limited-edition CD entitled "Nothing and Nowhere". In 2003, Adm joined the band on live keyboards and O.E left to focus on his own band, Tepid Lust (later to become Isle of Dogs).


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: The band began playing more live shows in London, Toronto, Oshawa and Montreal. Rhim was drumming for the band during these years, rotating between playing for fellow London band Aphasia but, on February 9, 2005, posted on his LiveJournal that he was a permanent member of The Birthday Massacre and that the band has his "110% unwavering, full-throttle, metronomic fabulousness... now 24-7."


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: 2003 also saw the creation of the band's Flash website NothingAndNowhere.com., designed by Aslan and the band which included unreleased music and hidden objects throughout the site.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: While studying fine arts, the group learned about color theory and chose the color violet to represent the band's themes. Rainbow said in an early interview: "Violet is the color of the tragic comedy. We associate it with fantasy and melancholy. These themes make up much of the band's lyrical inspiration. The color also mirrors our sound dynamic. Our music mixes contrasting elements. In turn, violet is the sum of two contrasting colors: Red and Blue." The band established their signature sound and visuals during this time, and when they signed to their labels, retained complete artistic freedom.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: On July 20, 2004, the Birthday Massacre independently released the EP, "Violet", and at the end of the year, re-released "Nothing and Nowhere" with new sleeve artwork. In the fall of 2004, Kai Schmidt, former member of electronic group Funker Vogt, signed the band to his label, Repo Records, in Germany. They released a remastered and expanded LP version of "Violet" in Europe, including updated album art in a Digipak case. Adm left the band shortly before it was signed to Repo and can be seen in the original group photo on the nine-song EP but is absent in the Digipak and LP versions. In 2004, Brett Carruthers briefly joined the band on live keyboards. 2004 saw the band touring outside of Canada for the first time, playing New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland and performing with American bands 51 Peg, Deadstar Assembly, Celldweller and Crossbreed.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: In 2005, the band signed to Metropolis Records and re-released "Violet". In August, the band began a series of international tours with took them to Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Spain and the UK. Also in August, the band released a DVD with the video for "Blue" by Dan Ouellette. Owen joined on keyboards, first assuming the name Waffles, then O-en, then finally using his given name. Owen joined just after the "Blue" filming was completed and therefore missed making an appearance in the video. On New Year's Eve the band performed in Los Angeles, California, at Bar Sinister.


title: The Birthday Massacre

text: In early 2006, the Birthday Massacre toured North America, playing across Canada, the United States and Mexico on their 'Broken Minds' tour, sharing the stage with KMFDM, Schoolyard Heroes, Suicide City and the Start. They toured Europe again with bands Das Ich, Jesus on Extasy and Dope Stars Inc; playing in France, Italy, and at Poland's Castle Party 2006. Through its European debut, "Violet" ranked high in the alternative charts. The band made it onto the front pages of magazines, and performed at some of Germany's largest music festivals, including the annual Highfield and M'era Luna summer festivals. Also in 2006, the band recorded a remix of the song "Straight to Video" by Mindless Self Indulgence. Later in 2008, the band would record a second remix, this time of the song "Never Wanted to Dance" with the addition of Chibi's vocals.