title: Double negative

text: Then what happens is that the verb "to doubt" becomes intensified, which indeed deduces that the sentence is indeed false since nothing was resolved to a positive. The same applies to the third example, where the adverb 'more' merges with the prefix "no-" to become a negative word, which when combined with the sentence's former negative only acts as an intensifier to the verb "hungry". Where people think that the sentence "I'm not hungry no more" resolves to a positive is where the latter negative "no" becomes an adjective which only describes its suffix counterpart "more" which effectively becomes a noun, instead of an adverb. This is a valid argument since adjectives do indeed describe the nature of a noun; yet some fail to take into account that the phrase "no more" is only an adverb and simply serves as an intensifier. Another argument used to support the position double negatives aren't acceptable is a mathematical analogy: negating a negative number results in a positive one; e.g., ; therefore, it is argued, "I did not go nowhere" resolves to "I went somewhere".


title: Double negative

text: Other forms of double negatives, which are popular to this day and do strictly enhance the negative rather than destroying it, are described thus:


title: Double negative

text: Philosophies aside, this form of double negative is still in use whereby the use of 'nor' enhances the negative clause by emphasizing what isn't to be. Opponents of double negatives would have preferred "I'm not entirely familiar with Nihilism or Existentialism"; however this renders the sentence somewhat empty of the negative clause being advanced in the sentence. This form of double negative along with others described are standard ways of intensifying as well as enhancing a negative. The use of 'nor' to emphasise the negative clause is still popular today, and has been popular in the past through the works of Shakespeare and Milton:


title: Double negative

text: Up to the 18th century, double negatives were used to emphasize negation. "Prescriptive grammarians" recorded and codified a shift away from the double negative in the 1700s. Double negatives continue to be spoken by those of Vernacular English, such as those of Appalachian English and African American Vernacular English. To such speakers, they view double negatives as emphasizing the negative rather than cancelling out the negatives. Researchers have studied African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and trace its origins back to colonial English. This shows that double negatives were present in colonial English, and thus presumably English as a whole, and were acceptable at that time. English after the 18th century was changed to become more logical and double negatives became seen as canceling each other as in mathematics. The use of double negatives became associated with being uneducated and illogical.


title: Double negative

text: In his "Essay towards a practical English Grammar" of 1711, James Greenwood first recorded the rule: "Two Negatives, or two Adverbs of Denying do in English affirm". Robert Lowth stated in his grammar textbook "A Short Introduction to English Grammar" (1762) that "two negatives in English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an affirmative". Grammarians have assumed that Latin was the model for Lowth and other early grammarians in prescribing against negative concord, as Latin does not feature it. Data indicates, however, that negative concord had already fallen into disuse in Standard English by the time of Lowth's grammar, and no evidence exists that the loss was driven by prescriptivism, which was well established by the time it appeared.


title: Double negative

text: Double negatives have been employed in various films and television shows. In the film "Mary Poppins" (1964), the chimney sweep Bert employs a double negative when he says, "If you don't wanna go nowhere..." Another is used by the bandits in the "Stinking Badges" scene of John Huston's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948): "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges!."


title: Double negative

text: "The Simpsons" episode "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" (1999) features Bart writing "I won't not use no double negatives" (pictured) as part of the opening sequence chalkboard gag. More recently, the British television show "EastEnders" has received some publicity over the Estuary accent of character Dot Branning, who speaks with double and triple negatives ("I ain't never heard of no licence.").. In the Harry Enfield sketch "Mr Cholmondley-Warner's Guide to the Working-Class", a stereotypical Cockney employs a septuple-negative: "Inside toilet? I ain't never not heard of one of them nor I ain't nor nothing."


title: Double negative

text: In music, double negatives can be employed to similar effect (as in Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall", in which schoolchildren chant "We don't need no education / We don't need no thought control") or used to establish a frank and informal tone (as in The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"). Other examples include Ain't Nobody (Chaka Khan), Ain't No Sunshine (Bill Withers), and Ain't No Mountain High Enough (Marvin Gaye)


title: Double negative

text: Double negation is uncommon in other West Germanic languages. A notable exception is Afrikaans in which it is mandatory (for example, "He cannot speak Afrikaans" becomes "Hy kan nie Afrikaans praat nie", "He cannot Afrikaans speak not"). Dialectal Dutch, French and San have been suggested as possible origins for this trait. Its proper use follows a set of fairly complex rules as in these examples provided by Bruce Donaldson:


title: Double negative

text: Another point of view is that the construction is not really an example of a "double negative" but simply a grammatical template for negation. The second cannot be understood as a noun or adverb (unlike in French, for example), and it cannot be substituted by any part of speech other than itself with the sentence remaining grammatical. The grammatical particle has no independent meaning and happens to be spelled and pronounced the same as the embedded , meaning "not", by a historical accident.


title: Double negative

text: The second is used if and only if the sentence or phrase does not already end with either or another negating adverb.


title: Double negative

text: Double negation is still found in the Low Franconian dialects of west Flanders (e.g., , "I do not want to do that") and in some villages in the central Netherlands such as Garderen, but it takes a different form than that found in Afrikaans. Belgian Dutch dialects, however, still have some widely-used expressions like ("never not") for "never".


title: Double negative

text: Like some dialects of English, Bavarian has both single and double negation, with the latter denoting special emphasis. For example, the Bavarian ("This have I yet never not heard") can be compared to the Standard German "". The German emphatic "" (roughly "never ever") corresponds to Bavarian "" or even "" in the Standard German pronunciation.


title: Double negative

text: Another exception is Yiddish for which Slavic influence causes the double (and sometimes even triple) negative to be quite common.


title: Double negative

text: In Latin a second negative word appearing along with turns the meaning into a positive one: means "any", means "no", () means "some". In the same way, means "ever", means "never", () means "sometimes". In many Romance languages a second term indicating a negative is required.


title: Double negative

text: In French, the usual way to express simple negation is to employ two words, e.g. " [verb] ", " [verb] ", or " [verb] ", as in the sentences , , and . The second term was originally an emphatic; , for example, derives from the Latin , meaning "step", so that French and Catalan originally meant "I will not walk a single step." This initial usage spread so thoroughly that it became a necessary element of any negation in the modern French language to such a degree that is generally dropped entirely, as in . In Northern Catalan, may be omitted in colloquial language, and Occitan, which uses only as a short answer to questions. In Venetian, the double negation can likewise lose the first particle and rely only on the second: ("I eat not") and ("I come not"). These exemplify Jespersen's cycle.


title: Double negative

text: , , and (never, nothing, no one, nowhere) can be mixed with each other, and/or with (not anymore/not again) in French, e.g. to form sentences like (I didn't say anything to anyone) or even (He never says anything to anyone anymore).


title: Double negative

text: The Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian languages usually employ doubled negative correlatives. Portuguese , Spanish , Romanian and Italian (literally, "I do not see nothing") are used to express "I do not see anything". In Italian, a second following negative particle turns the phrase into a positive one, but with a slightly different meaning. For instance, while both ("I want to eat") and ("I don't want not to eat") mean "I want to eat", the latter phrase more precisely means "I'd prefer to eat".


title: Double negative

text: Other Romance languages employ double negatives less regularly. In Asturian, an extra negative particle is used with negative adverbs: ("I had not never seen him") means "I have never seen him" and ("I neither do not like it") means "I do not like it either". Standard Catalan and Galician also used to possess a tendency to double "no" with other negatives, so or , respectively meant "I have not seen her either". This practice is dying out.


title: Double negative

text: In spoken Welsh, the word (not) often occurs with a prefixed or mutated verb form that is negative in meaning: (word-for-word, "Not-is she not here") expresses "She is not here" and (word-for-word, "Not-will-get Aled not go") expresses "Aled is not allowed to go".


title: Double negative

text: Negative correlatives can also occur with already negative verb forms. In literary Welsh, the mutated verb form is caused by an initial negative particle, ' or '. The particle is usually omitted in speech but the mutation remains: (word-for-word, "[Not] not-knew nobody") means "Nobody knew" and (word-for-word, "[Not] not-will-get Aled lots of money") means "Aled will not get much money". This is not usually regarded as three negative markers, however, because the negative mutation is really just an effect of the initial particle on the following word.


title: Double negative

text: Doubled negatives are perfectly correct in Ancient Greek. With few exceptions, a simple negative (οὐ or μή) following another negative (for example, , "no one") results in an affirmation: ("No one was not suffering") means more simply "Everyone was suffering". Meanwhile, a compound negative following a negative strengthens the negation: ("Do not permit no one to raise an uproar") means "Let not a single one among them raise an uproar".


title: Double negative

text: Those constructions apply only when the negatives all refer to the same word or expression. Otherwise, the negatives simply work independently of one another: means "It was not on account of their not throwing that they did not hit him", and one should not blame them for not trying.


title: Double negative

text: In Modern Greek, a double negative can express either an affirmation or a negation, depending on the word combination. When expressing negation, it usually carries an emphasis with it. Native speakers can usually understand the sentence meaning from the voice tone and the context.


title: Double negative

text: A combination of and has an affirmative meaning: "" translates "Without that meaning that we can't find it." i.e. We can find it.


title: Double negative

text: A combination of and also has an affirmative meaning: "" translates "Doesn't mean that we can't find it." i.e. We can find it.


title: Double negative

text: In Slavic languages, multiple negatives affirm each other. Indeed, if a sentence contains a negated verb, any indefinite pronouns or adverbs must be used in their negative forms. For example, in the Serbo-Croatian, ("Nobody never did not do nothing nowhere") means "Nobody has ever done anything, anywhere", and ("Never I did not go there") means "I have never been there". In Czech, it is ("I have not seen never no-one nowhere"). In Bulgarian, it is: [], lit. "I have not seen never no-one nowhere", or ("), lit. "I don't know nothing". In Russian, "I know nothing" is [], lit. "I don't know nothing".


title: Double negative

text: Negating the verb without negating the pronoun (or vice versa), while syntactically correct, may result in a very unusual meaning or make no sense at all. Saying "I saw nobody" in Polish () instead of the more usual "I did not see nobody" () might mean "I saw an instance of nobody" or "I saw Mr Nobody" but it would not have its plain English meaning. Likewise, in Slovenian, saying "I do not know anyone" () in place of "I do not know no one" () has the connotation "I do not know just "anyone": I know someone important or special."


title: Double negative

text: In Czech, like in many other languages, a standard double negative is used in sentences with a negative pronoun or negative conjunction, where the verb is also negated ( "nobody came", literally "nobody didn't come"). However, this doubleness is also transferred to forms where the verbal copula is released and the negation is joined to the nominal form, and such a phrase can be ambiguous: ("nobody unscathed") can mean both "nobody healthy" and "all healthy". Similarly, ("nobody absent") or ("three tasks were planned, none uncompleted"). The sentence, ("all don't were there") means not "all absented" but "there were not all" (= "at least one of them absenteed"). If all absented, it should be said ("nobody weren't there"). However, in many cases, a double, triple quadruple negative can really work in such a way that each negative cancels out the next negative, and such a sentence may be a catch and may be incomprehensible to a less attentive or less intelligent addressee. E.g. the sentence, ("I can't never not indulge in inaction") contains 4 negations and it is very confusing which of them create a "double negative" and which of them eliminated from each other. Such confusing sentences can then diplomatically soften or blur rejection or unpleasant information or even agreement, but at the expense of intelligibility: ("it can't be not seen"), ("I'm not dissatisfied"), ("it/he is not uninteresting"), ("I can't disagree").


title: Double negative

text: As with most synthetic "satem" languages double negative is mandatory in Latvian and Lithuanian. Furthermore, all verbs and indefinite pronouns in a given statement must be negated, so it could be said that multiple negative is mandatory in Latvian.


title: Double negative

text: For instance, a statement "I have not ever owed anything to anyone" would be rendered as . The only alternative would be using a negating subordinate clause and subjunctive in the main clause, which could be approximated in English as "there has not ever been an instance that I would have owed anything to anyone" (), where negative pronouns () are replaced by indefinite pronouns () more in line with the English "ever, any" indefinite pronoun structures.


title: Double negative

text: Double or multiple negatives are grammatically required in Hungarian with negative pronouns: (word for word: "[doesn't-exists] [nothing-of-mine]", and translates literally as "I do not have nothing") means "I do not have anything". Negative pronouns are constructed by means of adding the prefixes "se-," "sem-," and "sen-" to interrogative pronouns.


title: Double negative

text: Something superficially resembling double negation is required also in Finnish, which uses the auxiliary verb to express negation. Negative pronouns are constructed by adding one of the suffixes "-an," "-än," "-kaan," or "-kään" to interrogative pronouns: means "No one called me". These suffixes are, however, never used alone, but always in connection with . This phenomenon is commonplace in Finnish, where many words have alternatives that are required in negative expressions, for example for ("even"), as in meaning "even so much", and meaning "not even so much".


title: Double negative

text: Negative verb forms are grammatically required in Turkish phrases with negative pronouns or adverbs that impart a negative meaning on the whole phrase. For example, (literally, word for word, "Not-one thing-of-mine exists-not") means "I don't have anything". Likewise, (literally, "Never satisfied not-I-am") means "I'm never satisfied".


title: Double negative

text: Japanese employs litotes to phrase ideas in a more indirect and polite manner. Thus, one can indicate necessity by emphasizing that not doing something would not be proper. For instance, (', "must", more literally "if not done, [can] not be") means "not doing [it] wouldn't be proper". (', also "must", "if not done, can not go') similarly means "not doing [it] can't go forward".


title: Double negative

text: Of course, indirectness can also be employed to put an edge on one's rudeness as well. Whilst "He has studied Japanese, so he should be able to write kanji" can be phrased (""), there is a harsher idea in it: "As he's studied Japanese, the reasoning that he can't write Kanji doesn't exist".


title: Double negative

text: Mandarin Chinese and most Chinese languages also employ litotes in a likewise manner. One common construction is "" (Pinyin: ', "mustn't not" or "shalln't not"), which is used to express (or feign) a necessity more regretful and convenable than that expressed by "" (', "must"). Compared with "" (', "I must go"), "" (', "I mustn't not go") emphasizes that the situation is out of the speaker's hands and that the speaker has no choice in the matter: "Unfortunately, I have got to go". Similarly, "" (') or idiomatically "无人不知" ( , "There is no one who does not know") is a more emphatic way to express "Every single one knows".


title: Double negative

text: A double negative almost always resolves to a positive meaning and even more so in colloquial speech where the speaker particularly stresses the first negative word. Meanwhile, a triple negative resolves to a negative meaning, which bares a stronger negativity than a single negative. For example, "" (', "I do not think there is no one who does not know") ambiguously means either "I don't think everyone knows" or "I think someone does not know". A quadruple negative further resolves to a positive meaning embedded with stronger affirmation than a double negative; for example, "" (', "It is not the case that I do not know that no one doesn't like him") means "I do know that everyone likes him". However, more than triple negatives are frequently perceived as obscure and rarely encountered.


title: Double negative

text: Many languages, including all living Germanic languages, French, Welsh and some Berber and Arabic dialects, have gone through a process known as Jespersen's cycle, where an original negative particle is replaced by another, passing through an intermediate stage employing two particles (e.g. Old French → Modern Standard French → Modern Colloquial French "I don't say").


title: Double negative

text: In many cases, the original sense of the new negative particle is not negative "per se" (thus in French "step", originally "not a step" = "not a bit"). However, in Germanic languages such as English and German, the intermediate stage was a case of double negation, as the current negatives "not" and in these languages originally meant "nothing": e.g. Old English "I didn't see" » Middle English , lit. "I didn't see nothing" » Early Modern English "I saw not".


title: Double negative

text: A similar development to a circumfix from double negation can be seen in non-Indo-European languages, too: for example, in Maltese, "he ate" is negated as "he did not eat", where the verb is preceded by a negative particle - "not" and followed by the particle "-x", which was originally a shortened form of "nothing" - thus, "he didn't eat nothing".


title: Silly Love Songs

text: "Silly Love Songs" is a song by the British–American rock band Wings that was written by Paul and Linda McCartney. The song first appeared in March 1976 on the album "Wings at the Speed of Sound," then it was released as a single backed with "Cook of the House" on 1 April in the US, and 30 April in the UK. The song, which features disco overtones, was written in response to music critics accusing McCartney of predominantly writing "silly love songs" and "sentimental slush".


title: Silly Love Songs

text: The song was McCartney's 27th number one as a songwriter; the all-time record for the most number one hits achieved by a songwriter. With this song, McCartney became the first person to have a year-end No. 1 song as a member of two distinct acts. McCartney previously hit No. 1 in the year-end ""Billboard"" chart as a member of the Beatles with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in 1964 and "Hey Jude" in 1968.


title: Silly Love Songs

text: "Silly Love Songs" has since appeared on multiple McCartney greatest hits compilations, including "Wings Greatest" and "All the Best!" The song has also appeared on the "Hits" section of the compilation album "". Despite its popularity, McCartney has not performed the song live since the dissolution of Wings.


title: Silly Love Songs

text: "Silly Love Songs" was written as a rebuttal to music critics who had criticized McCartney for writing lightweight love songs. Author Tim Riley suggests that in the song, McCartney is inviting "his audience to have a laugh on him," as Elvis Presley had sometimes done.


title: Silly Love Songs

text: The song includes a build-up of multiple vocal parts sung in counterpoint, similar to the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", a song that McCartney cited as his favourite of all time. McCartney allowed the horn section to create their own parts for the song.


title: Silly Love Songs

text: "Silly Love Songs" was released in the US on 1 April 1976 and spent five non-consecutive weeks at number 1 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. The song was the number 1 pop song in Billboard's Year-End Charts of 1976; it was also the group's second of three number ones on the Easy Listening chart. The single was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of over one million copies. "Billboard" listed "Silly Love Songs" as Paul McCartney's all-time biggest Hot 100 single.


title: Silly Love Songs

text: The single was released in the UK on 30 April 1976 and reached number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. The song reached No. 1 upon the Irish Singles Chart on 27 May.


title: Silly Love Songs

text: Upon release, "Silly Love Songs" generally received positive reviews from music critics, despite a common criticism of the song lacking substance. "AllMusic"'s Stephen Thomas Erlewine described the song, as well as its follow-up single, "Let 'Em In", as "so lightweight that their lack of substance seems nearly defiant". Music critic Robert Christgau called the two tracks "charming if lightweight singles", while "Rolling Stone" critic Stephen Holden said "Silly Love Songs" was "a clever retort whose point is well taken". "Cash Box" said that "the production is slick and the arrangement filled with drive" and that McCartney's "voice is as good as ever". John Bergstrom of "PopMatters" called the song "an exemplary piece of mid-‘70s pop production and a pure pleasure".


title: Silly Love Songs

text: In 2008, "Silly Love Songs" was listed at No. 31 on "Billboard's Greatest Songs of All Time", commemorating the 50th anniversary of the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart.


title: Silly Love Songs

text: In 1976, Wings recorded "Silly Love Songs" live for their triple live album "Wings Over America". In 1984, three years after the dissolution of Wings, Paul McCartney re-recorded "Silly Love Songs" for the soundtrack to the motion picture "Give My Regards to Broad Street".


title: Silly Love Songs

text: In 1999, New Zealand music group group Ardijah released an R&B version of "Silly Love Songs". Their cover debuted at number 22 on New Zealand's RIANZ Singles Chart on 17 January 1999, rising to number nine the following week. It then moved up to number three, where it stayed for two weeks, and reached number one on 14 February, becoming the band's highest-charting single in their home country as well as their first top-10 hit since "Watchin' U" in 1988. "Silly Love Songs" logged 17 weeks on the New Zealand chart in total. Despite the song's success, it did not appear on New Zealand's year-end chart for 1999, nor did it receive any sales certifications.


title: Gunmetal

text: Gun metal, also known as red brass in the United States, is a type of bronze; an alloy of copper, tin and zinc. Proportions vary but 88% copper, 8–10% tin, and 2–4% zinc is an approximation. Originally used chiefly for making guns, it has largely been replaced by steel for that purpose. Gunmetal, which casts and machines well and is resistant to corrosion from steam and salt water, is used to make steam and hydraulic castings, valves, gears, statues and various small objects, such as buttons. It has a tensile strength of to , a specific gravity of 8.7, a Brinell hardness of 65 to 74, and a melting point of around 1,000 degrees Celsius.


title: Gunmetal

text: Gunmetal can also mean steel treated to simulate gunmetal bronze. Bushings made of this metal are used in machinery.


title: Gunmetal

text: Gun money, Irish late 17th-century emergency coins, contain gunmetal, as worn and scrapped guns were used to make them; but also many other metals, in particular brass and bronze, as people donated pots and pans and other metal objects.


title: Gunmetal

text: External doors and windows of offshore rock lighthouses are often made of gunmetal due to its corrosion resistant properties.


title: Tom Springfield

text: Tom Springfield (born Dionysius Patrick O'Brien, 2 July 1934 – 27 July 2022) was an English musician, songwriter and record producer who was prominent in the 1960s folk and pop music scene. He was the older brother of singer Dusty Springfield, with whom he performed in the Springfields. He wrote several hit songs for the Springfields ("Island of Dreams", "Say I Won't Be There") and later for the Seekers ("I'll Never Find Another You", "A World of Our Own", "The Carnival Is Over", "Georgy Girl"), whose records he also produced.


title: Tom Springfield

text: Known in early life as Dion O'Brien, he was born in Hampstead, London, on 2 July 1934, the first child of Gerard O'Brien and his wife Kay ( Ryle), originally from County Kerry. He attended the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe from 1944 to 1950.


title: Tom Springfield

text: Springfield (O'Brien) joined the army for his National Service (1952–54), and was assigned to the Joint Services School for Linguists in Coulsdon, Surrey. The school was known as "the Russian course", and its purpose was to train conscripts in intelligence techniques. The course provided exposure to the Russian language by studying Russian literature, films, and also songs. These were taken from a selection known as the "Samovar Song Book", which Springfield and the rest of the "Coulsdon choir" sang together (in Russian). One of these songs was a Russian folksong from 1883 called "Stenka Razin"; twelve years later Springfield used its melody as the basis of his hit song "The Carnival is Over". Springfield was a talented pianist, and occasionally played jazz in the NAAFI with Tony Cash (later a BBC TV producer) on clarinet, and Malcolm Brown on guitar.


title: Tom Springfield

text: After Coulsdon, Springfield was assigned to the Intelligence Corps depot in Maresfield, Sussex (1954). While there he joined up with two other musicians to form a guitar trio playing Latin American songs, with Tom singing in Spanish and Portuguese. They recorded two songs at a small studio in Brighton; one was "El Cangaceiro" ("The Bandit" – from the 1953 Brazilian movie "O Cangaceiro") and the other was written by Tom and called "Magdelena".


title: Tom Springfield

text: Springfield was a founder member of vocal group the Pedini Brothers, active from 1952 to 1955. They mainly sang Latin American, plus Russian songs adapted by Tom from his course material. Colleague Nick Bowyer wrote: "Tom was extremely proficient on both piano and guitar, and played both by ear. [He] also played ragtime piano solos on gigs. We were together from 1952 until 1955, but somewhat spasmodically because of National Service."


title: Tom Springfield

text: After leaving the military, he worked in banking for a short period, before pursuing his musical career in earnest.


title: Tom Springfield

text: In the late fifties O'Brien formed a duo, "The Kensington Squares", with folk musician Tim Feild, whom he had met while playing clubs in Belgravia, London. His younger sister, Mary O'Brien, was at the time performing as one of the Lana Sisters, and when that group folded in 1960, he invited her to join him and Tim to form a new folk-pop vocal trio, the Springfields. O'Brien adopted the stage name Tom Springfield while Mary became Dusty Springfield (Dusty was a nickname given to her when she had played football in the street with the local boys). O'Brien, now Springfield, sang and played guitar. Mike Hurst replaced Feild in 1962.


title: Tom Springfield

text: Five of the group's singles were UK Top 40 hits between 1961 and 1963, and two of them reached No. 5 in the charts. These were "Island of Dreams", written and composed by Springfield, and "Say I Won't Be There", the melody of which was adapted by him from the traditional French song "Au clair de la lune" to accompany his new lyrics. The group was also successful in the US, particularly with their version of "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" which reached No. 20 on "Billboard"'s Hot 100. This was the first single by a British group to reach the top 20 of the Hot 100. "Island of Dreams" was later covered by Mick Thomas, Johnny Tillotson, Mary Hopkin, Geraint Watkins with Martin Belmont, and by the Seekers.


title: Tom Springfield

text: After the Springfields broke up in 1963 when Dusty began her solo career, Springfield became a record producer and songwriter for the Australian folk-pop group the Seekers. He wrote many of their major hits including their first UK number one, "I'll Never Find Another You", followed by "A World of Our Own", and the million-selling "The Carnival Is Over", the melody of which Springfield adapted from the Russian song "Stenka Razin", though he wrote entirely new lyrics. Other hits included "Walk With Me", and "Georgy Girl", co-written with Jim Dale, who supplied the lyrics. This was the Seekers' most successful release in the US, reaching number two on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and number one on the Cashbox charts; it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song of 1966, and for the equivalent Golden Globe Award the same year. Springfield and Diane Lampert co-wrote "The Olive Tree", recorded in 1967 as a solo single by The Seekers lead singer, Judith Durham whilst still performing with the group.


title: Tom Springfield

text: Apart from his work with the Seekers, he also co-wrote (with Clive Westlake) Frank Ifield's 1964 hit "Summer Is Over", and his sister Dusty's 1964 UK Top Ten hit "Losing You". Other hit compositions include "Adios Amour (Goodbye My Love)", which was recorded by José Feliciano and the Casuals; "Promises", co-written with Norman Newell and a UK hit for Ken Dodd; and "Just Loving You", which became a 1967 top ten hit for Anita Harris.


title: Tom Springfield

text: He composed the theme to the popular BBC TV series "The Troubleshooters", and the theme to the comedy series "George and the Dragon". He also released two solo albums in the late 1960s, "Sun Songs" (1968) and "Love's Philosophy" (1969); these were re-released on CD in 2005.


title: Tom Springfield

text: Mike Hurst reflected later on how little he knew of Tom and Dusty's private lives while he was performing with them in the sixties: "I never felt I knew them well, there was always a distance...I had no idea back then that Tom and Dusty were both gay. They were naïve times...I just wasn't really aware of such things." After a 1970 duet single with his sister Dusty, "Morning Please Don't Come", Springfield essentially retired from the music industry as both a writer and performer. He formally changed his name by deed poll from Dionysius Patrick O'Brien to Tom Springfield in 1977.


title: Tom Springfield

text: He jealously guarded his privacy. The only public sighting of him in later years came in 1999 on his sister’s death, when he took her ashes to Ireland and scattered them over the Cliffs of Moher. He lived in the United States for a period, and resided in Chelsea, London, up until his death on 27 July 2022, at the age of 88. He had disliked being in the public eye, and his death was not reported for several weeks. Former Springfields member Mike Hurst described him as "a recluse, a bohemian in the true sense – he led his life in a solitary way doing what he wanted to do."


title: Orelsan

text: Aurélien Cotentin (; born 1 August 1982), better known by his stage name Orelsan, sometimes stylized as OrelSan (), is a French rapper, songwriter, record producer, actor and film director. He has released four studio albums: his debut "Perdu d'avance" on 16 February 2009, his second album "Le chant des sirènes" on 26 September 2011, his third album "La fête est finie" on 20 October 2017 and his fourth album " Civilisation " on 19 November 2021. He is also one half of the French hip hop duo Casseurs Flowters, along with Gringe, with whom he has released two studio albums: "Orelsan et Gringe sont les Casseurs Flowters" in 2013, and the original soundtrack for their 2015 film "Comment c'est loin".


title: Orelsan

text: Orelsan's artistry and rapping technique has drawn him comparisons to American rap legend Eminem on several occasions, primarily because both are prominent white rappers and both are known for their ability to switch between or combine violent and comical rapping techniques.


title: Orelsan

text: Aurélien Cotentin was born on 1 August 1982 in Alençon in Lower Normandy, where he was raised by his father, a middle school principal, and his mother, a teacher. He initially listened to rock music and was also a fan of manga and comics. While practicing basketball, he picked up the love of rap through his basketball friends. He graduated with a French baccalauréat in Economic and Social Sciences before moving to Caen where he studied at l'École de Management de Normandie, graduating in 2004. While in college, he made friends with record producer Skread, who had worked with Diam's, Booba, Rohff and Nessbeal. He also collaborated with Gringe in his initial works and formed the duo Casseurs Flowters with him in 2004.


title: Orelsan

text: Orelsan spent one year at the University of Tampa in Florida, where he had the inspiration of writing the song "50 pour cent". In 2002, he issued a mixtape and was invited to contribute in various compilations. Returning to France and working the night shifts in a hotel gave him the opportunity to write more.


title: Orelsan

text: In 2004, Orelsan formed the hip hop duo Casseurs Flowters with his colleague Gringe. With help from French record producer Skread, they released their first mixtape "Fantasy: Episode 1" in 2004 with 11 tracks. Afterwards, the two decided to focus on building their solo careers.


title: Orelsan

text: In August 2006, Orelsan released his first clip on YouTube, called "Ramen", followed by a second one in 2007, called "Saint-Valentin", a sarcastic parody on Valentine's Day that attracted great following prompting him to release more of his work online through YouTube and Myspace.


title: Orelsan

text: In 2008, the record label 3 Bureau noticed his work and offered him an opportunity to produce an album in collaboration with 7th Magnitude, a record label founded by Skread and his colleague Ablaye. In the summer of 2008, he promoted the release of "Changement", his first single released on 13 October 2008, and its music video through the TF1 Video and Nolife TV channels. The video was Orelsan's first professionally prepared clip.


title: Orelsan

text: On 16 February 2009, Orelsan released his debut album "Perdu d'avance", a provocative album produced by Skread, that included 14 tracks. With "Changement" as its lead single, it included tracks such as the title track "Perdu d'avance", "50 pour cent", "Soirée ratée", "Différent" and "No-life", with music video releases for all. "Entre bien et mal" featured his Casseurs Flowters colleague Gringe and "La peur de l'échec" featured Guns N' Roses guitarist Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal. At the end of 2009, Orelsan was nominated for the Prix Constantin award, and won the MTV Europe Music Award for Best French Act, pipping highly favoured David Guetta to the prize.


title: Orelsan

text: In 2010, Orelsan also collaborated with The Toxic Avenger on the extended play "N'importe comment", releasing three music videos, a single and a maxi single containing remixes, all on the Roy Music label.


title: Orelsan

text: On 26 June 2010, Orelsan appeared on Skyrock's "Planète Rap", joining Jena Lee on the song "Je rêve en enfer" from her album "Ma référence" with Orelsan adding his punchlines in a version known as "Je rêve en enfer (Reste en enfer)". Also in 2010, Orelsan collaborated with Nessbeal in "Ma grosse" and was part of the "Diversidad" project, joining a great number of rappers from various European countries. His work appeared in the collective album of Diversidad called "Diversidad – The Experience Album".


title: Orelsan

text: In September 2010, during an interview with "Canal Street", Orelsan announced that he was working on his new album that would come out in 2011.


title: Orelsan

text: On 30 May 2011, Orelsan released "RaelSan", a pre-release and lead single for his upcoming second album. Its second single, "Double vie", was made available through YouTube and Skyrock on 9 June. "Plus rien ne m'étonne" followed on 25 July, and finally "Suicide social" was released on 15 September.


title: Orelsan

text: The album "Le chant des sirènes" was released on 26 September 2011 with 16 tracks including popular tracks such as the title track "Le chant des sirènes", "Mauvaise idée" and "Finir mal". A fifth single, "La terre est ronde", was released from the album on 24 December, and a sixth single, "Ils sont cools" featuring Gringe, was released on 22 June 2012. Receiving generally positive reviews from music critics, the album was certified gold only one month after release in France, with over 50,000 copies sold, and was certified platinum in 2012 with over 100,000 copies sold. The album peaked at number 3 on the French (SNEP) Albums Chart, at number 9 on the Belgian (Wallonia) Ultratop Albums Chart, and at number 32 on the Swiss (Hitparade) Albums Chart.


title: Orelsan

text: On 3 March 2012, Orelsan won two awards in Victoires de la Musique, one in the category "Urban Album of the Year" for "Le chant des sirènes", and for "Group or Artist Popular Revelation of the Year" chosen by the public.


title: Orelsan

text: In 2013, Orelsan's recognition continued growing further, as he was nominated for the Victoires de la Musique award for Male Artist of the Year, while he was given the Prix de la Création Musicale award for Songwriter of the Year. He was also nominated for the NRJ Music Award for French Revelation of the Year, and at the 2013 Trace Urban Music Awards, he was nominated for the Male Artist of the Year and Best Live Performance awards, while "La terre est ronde" was nominated for Best Song and "Ils sont cools" featuring Gringe nominated for Best Music Video.


title: Orelsan

text: Following the success of "Le chant des sirènes", Orelsan released his first collaborative single as Casseurs Flowters with Gringe, "Bloqué", on 3 July 2013 as a pre-release for their upcoming debut studio album. "Orelsan et Gringe sont les Casseurs Flowters" was released on 15 November 2013 to generally positive reviews, and includes tracks such as "Regarde comme il fait beau (dehors)", "La mort du disque", "Dans la place pour être" and "Fais les backs", which all charted in France despite not being released as singles. The album was then certified gold in France by the UPFI in 2014, having sold over 50,000 copies.


title: Orelsan

text: On 21 March 2015, Orelsan posted a photo of a script with the working title "Orel et Gringe" ("Orel and Gringe") on his Instagram page. On 4 May, he posted another photo, this time of himself with Gringe in the film, confirming that shooting for the film was complete and that its title would be "Comment c'est loin".


title: Orelsan

text: On 29 October 2015 Orelsan and Gringe released "À l'heure où je me couche" as a single from the film's original soundtrack, which was confirmed to be released on the same day as the film. Both were released on 9 December and, like "Orelsan et Gringe sont les Casseurs Flowters", received generally positive reviews from critics. Two more songs from the album, "Inachevés" and "Si facile", also charted in France despite not being released as singles. The album was certified platinum in France in January 2017.


title: Orelsan

text: In April 2017, Orelsan announced that he and Gringe were working on their third and debut solo studio albums respectively, but did not reveal any release dates. On 20 September 2017 Orelsan released the first single from his third solo album, entitled "Basique", along with its music video in which the album's release date was revealed to be 20 October 2017. On 22 September 2017 Orelsan revealed the name of the album, "La fête est finie", along with its cover art. On 20 October "La fête est finie" was released, to huge critical and commercial success: the album was certified gold by the SNEP within three days, and platinum within a week. "La fête est finie" was nominated for IMPALA's European Album of the Year Award.


title: Orelsan

text: "Civilisation" is his fourth studio album, released on 19 November 2021 through 7th Magnitude, 3e Bureau and Wagram. The album was largely produced by long-time collaborator Skread and features guest appearances by Gringe and The Neptunes. It marks his first album release in over four years. Most notable solos include "L'odeur de l'essence", "Jour meilleur" and "La Quête" .


title: Orelsan

text: The album made a record-breaking debut on the French Albums Chart, moving more units than any other album in 2021. The album topped at 1st on French and Belgian (Wallonia) charts, as well as 2nd on Swiss charts at its best week. It was certified 3× Platinum in France.


title: Orelsan

text: In 2009, controversy erupted involving some of Orelsan's work that included violent and misogynist lyrics, particularly in "Saint-Valentin" and "Sale pute" (the latter is French for "Dirty whore"). Neither song appeared on his debut album "Perdu d'avance", but were made available online. Many blog campaigns followed, demanding that he be banned from appearing at a scheduled gig at the Printemps de Bourges festival. The campaign took a political turn with both the French Communist Party (PCF) and the French Socialist Party (PS) supporting the campaign. The Socialist Party claimed in a communiqué that the song included "a scandalous, odious text that incited violence directly". It also supported the campaign to remove Orelsan from Printemps de Bourges. French Secretary of State for Solidarity Valérie Létard considered "Sale pute" sexist and violent and demanded that websites remove the video from their sites. She also offered help to groupings that wanted to file a lawsuit based on Article 24 of the law on freedom of the press, that forbids incitement to commit crimes.


title: Orelsan

text: Orelsan was taken aback by the controversy, mentioning that the song existed for 2 years explaining in an interview with "Planète Rap Mag": "In this song, I try to show how an impulsive drive can turn someone into a monster. I shot a clip where I am wearing a suit and tie and am drinking alcohol, to show that this is a fiction. In any case, I do apologize for the violence. The attitude of this character disgusts me, but I feel I am artistically representing the incident as hatred exactly as a film like "A Clockwork Orange" does. [...] In the storyline, I have actually been deceived by my girlfriend, and I wanted to describe the impulse of rage that you can have in such times. This is not a misogynist text on the contrary." He added: "I admit that these lyrics [can] shock" and he apologized about it mentioning that he had not performed the song live for several months and is not available on his album "Perdu d'avance". He added: "[However] whatever I said, I will always be less violent than the series broadcast on TF1, where a guy gets hit every five minutes for no reason."


title: Orelsan

text: The Printemps de Bourges organisers insisted on keeping Orelsan on the show scheduled for 25 April 2009, saying in a communique: "As outrageous as are the lyrics of this song, we have hired Orelsan as a young artist for an artistic performance noting that his album does not include this [particular] song. For this reason, we do not remove [the date for] Orelsan's performance as we are fulfilling our artistic choices. This French language hip hop album presents good texts that seem a perfect reflection of a 20-year-old French generation, a bit lost and disillusioned." Despite explanations, François Bonneau, the President of the Regional Council of the Centre, threatened financial reprisals against the festival if it didn't reconsider its decision. It also deducted a proportional part of its subvention to the festival. Orelsan did eventually appear in the festival despite the campaign.


title: Orelsan

text: The Printemps de Bourges controversy had repercussions elsewhere. When Les Francofolies de La Rochelle festival decided to ban Orelsan from performing, he protested the intervention, citing censorship on artistic works. The singer Cali protested to the organizers including Jean-Louis Foulquier, who had in turn accused Ségolène Royal of threats to stop the financial support.


title: Orelsan

text: Frédéric Lefebvre, the spokesman for Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) said that the matter was blown out of proportion declaring that he supported the young artist's freedom of expression and denounced attempts of censorship by Ségolène Royal against him. Royal denied any "chantage" or threats, expressing her satisfaction that the organizers had decided to cancel Orelsan's gig. On 14 July 2009, French Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand made a declaration of support for the rapper for freedom of expression, judging the whole controversy ridiculous. Many artists also came to Orelsan's support. Many French radio stations have censored at times Orelsan's songs due to protests from feminists and others, and the media have dubbed him the "Eminem of French rap".


title: Orelsan

text: Orelsan explained the lyrics of "Sale pute" to AFP as the expression of these mixed feelings between love and hatred, and eventually dropped the song from his repertoire.


title: Orelsan

text: The gay French magazine "Têtu" has publicly questioned some of Orelsan's lyrics as being homophobic. In June 2012, at the Sakifo Festival in Réunion, the regional council of the island suppressed its subvention of €150,000 or one tenth of the budget of the festival. The arrival of Orelsan was questioned, but finally the organisers went on with it, but took to pay back 1 euro for every ticket sold for the date of the show to associations that protested. The song that caused the most controversy was "Saint-Valentin".


title: Orelsan

text: On 31 May 2013, Orelsan was given a suspended fine of €1,000 for insult and incitement of violence against women by the Correctional Tribunal of Paris. On 14 May 2014, the Court of Appeal of Paris closed the case by putting an end to lawsuits and an original complaint filed against Orelsan, finding that action taken against him by five feminist associations was prescribed.


title: 2 Cool 4 Skool

text: 2 Cool 4 Skool is the debut single album released by South Korean boy band BTS on June 12, 2013 through Big Hit Entertainment and distributed by Loen. The album was supported by the singles "No More Dream" and "We Are Bulletproof Pt.2". Commercially, it peaked at number five on the Gaon Album Chart in South Korea, and at number ten on "Billboard"s World Albums Chart in the United States. The album has sold over 430,000 copies as of January 2022.


title: 2 Cool 4 Skool

text: Prior to BTS' debut, Big Hit Entertainment ran a blog for the group where the members shared mixtapes, diary entries, video logs, and various other content with their fans. The label announced a temporary closure of the blog on May 20, 2013, in preparation for the group's debut. BTS' official website was launched that same day and featured a countdown timer on the homepage—counting down to May 27 (KST)—with the group's official logo revealed for the first time. On May 26 (May 27 at 8AM KST), a 30-second long debut trailer was posted on the website and uploaded to Big Hit's official YouTube channel as well. The clip featured a hip-hop beat with Scratching and a "well-crafted rap hook" that accompanied typography graphics containing hints about the group's composition, the songs that would be on their first album, and the musical direction BTS would pursue. The timer on the website changed and began counting down to June 3. On June 3, the release date for the album and its as-yet-unnamed lead single, as well as the start date for promotional activities was announced as June 12. Teaser photos of the individual members were published on the group's website beginning that same day and continued sequentially until June 5. Big Hit revealed the tracklist for the album on their official Twitter account. They also released the design and details of the physical album which included with a photobook and postcard. The first teaser, revealing that "No More Dream" would be their title track. Additional concept photos for the album were released via their official Facebook page the following week.


title: 2 Cool 4 Skool

text: The music video for "No More Dream" was released on June 12, 2013 ahead of BTS debut showcase. "No More Dream" dance version was later released on June 16, 2013 in the middle of the group's promotion on music programs. The music video for "We Are Bulletproof Pt.2" was then released on July 16, 2013 for the group's further follow-up promotions. All the dance was choreographed by Son Sungdeuk while both "No More Dream" and "We Are Bulletproof Pt.2" music videos were directed by Zanybros.


title: 2 Cool 4 Skool

text: The lyrics of the album primarily reflected on the misunderstanding and prejudice towards them, criticism of the society that diminishes their dreams, and their anxiety and determination towards their future. During the production of the album, Suga and RM rewrote the lyrics of "No More Dream" more than 20 times.


title: 2 Cool 4 Skool

text: The group held a press conference and debut showcase on June 12, 2013, performing "No More Dream" and "We Are Bulletproof Pt.2", marked their unofficial debut stage in South Korea music industry. BTS later made a successful debut stage on June 13 on Mnet's "M Countdown" marked the start of their promotion of the album on various South Korea music programs. Much later in 2015, BTS held a special concert in support of the album. was held for two days at Olympic Hall starting from March 28, 2015 with BTS performing songs from "2 Cool 4 Skool" & "O!RUL8,2?" albums.


title: 2 Cool 4 Skool

text: "2 Cool 4 Skool" sold 760 copies in its release week, and debuted at number 19 on the Week 25 issue of the Gaon Album Chart for the period dated June 9–15, 2013. The album went on to sell a cumulative 4,986 copies in the weeks following and debuted at number 17 on the monthly Album Chart for June. Six weeks later, it peaked at number five on the Week 31 chart issue for the period dated July 21–27, during "We Are Bulletproof Pt.2" promotions, and subsequently rose to a new peak on the monthly chart for July at number 10, with a further 13,598 copies sold. The album sold a modest 24,441 copies in total and earned a placement on Gaon's year-end album chart for 2013 at number 65. In April 2020, the album made its debut on the "Billboard" World Albums Chart—fans purchased the album as part of an in-fandom April Fools' Day joke that anticipated "the 'debut' of a 'new' boy band called BTS coming on April 1"—at number 12, with 1,000 equivalent album units sold during the week ending April 2. According to "Billboard", "2 Cool 4 Skool" had earned 68,000 units in the United States as of April 11.


title: 2 Cool 4 Skool

text: The album's lead single "No More Dream" also debuted on the Week 25 issues (for the same period as above) of Gaon's Digital and Download charts at numbers 124 and 84 respectively, with 23,237 sales. In the US, it debuted at number 14 on the "Billboard" World Digital Song Sales chart issue dated June 29, 2013, and spent three consecutive weeks on the ranking. In 2020, the single also reentered the chart, on the issue dated April 11, at a new peak of number two, with an additional 1,000 copies sold— its best single sales week on the ranking—and became the best-selling K-pop song in the US that week. According to "Billboard", "No More Dream" had sold a total of 45,000 copies in the country up to that point.


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: Arliss (rendered in its logo as Arli$$) is an American cult-classic dark comedy series, created by and starring Robert Wuhl (who was also the series' showrunner), about the glitzy, big-money world of professional sports, with Wuhl playing the eternally optimistic and endlessly resourceful L.A. sports agent Arliss Michaels, whose Achilles' heel is his inability to say "no" to clients and employees. "Arliss" ran for seven seasons and 80 episodes on HBO, from August 10, 1996, to September 8, 2002. After almost two decades of being off-air, the entire catalog of "Arliss" episodes returned to HBO Max in a streaming format in September 2018.


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: "The New York Times" called the show "One of the freshest shows to come along in a while." It was well-known for taking on very controversial (at the time) topics, including domestic abuse, steroid use, Alzheimer’s disease, gay and transgender athletes, alcoholism, and unwanted athlete pregnancies.


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: The idea behind "Arliss" was to show the hype, greed, and hypocrisy of powerful sports agents like Arliss Michaels, and what really happens "behind the scenes" in professional sports. In a 2018 interview with the "Hollywood Reporter", Wuhl said the idea for "Arliss" was based on the book "" by Donald Trump and journalist Tony Schwartz:


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: I had read "The Art of the Deal" and I thought, "This is total, 100 percent bullshit. He's saying stuff that I don't believe a fuckin' word of it. He's telling you what happened, but I want to see what really happened." We can use this, as Arliss the sports agent, telling you what happens and then prove he's full of shit and show what really happened.


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: Over 400 celebrities had cameo appearances on "Arliss", including Al Michaels, John Elway, Derek Jeter, Dan Marino, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal, Bob Costas, Jimmy Johnson, Picabo Street, Katarina Witt, and Barry Bonds.


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: In July 1999, Robert Wuhl appeared, in character as Arliss, on WCW "Monday Nitro" as a guest announcer, alongside Scott Hudson and Bobby Heenan. He said that his HBO series has featured WCW wrestlers as guest stars, but the Big Three networks were "scared" of doing the same. Arliss said he was scouting Dennis Rodman, who was doing his third stint with the company. Wuhl's appearance was a cross-promotion for HBO, as both it and WCW were owned by Time Warner. In the "Arliss" episode "To Thy Own Self Be True", WCW creative head Eric Bischoff guest-starred along with wrestlers Lex Luger, Randy Savage, and Gorgeous George.


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: In "The Simpsons" season 13 episode "Half-Decent Proposal", Marge is watching "Nookie in New York" with Patty and Selma, when an announcer states, "Coming up next on BHO ["sic"], it's "Arliss"!"; Patty and Selma scream and quickly reach for the remote control.


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: During the October 12, 2002, episode of "Saturday Night Live", guest host Sarah Michelle Gellar delivered the following monologue in a fake television commercial sketch:


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: In the "30 Rock" seventh season premiere, "The Beginning of the End", Kenneth says, in response to Tracy Jordan's marriage having lasted for over 20 years, "That's half as long as it felt "Arliss" was on TV!"


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: Former UCB New York stage show "The George Lucas Talk Show" organized a 7-week-long charity marathon of "Arliss" episodes during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The hosts watched all seven seasons of the show and interviewed many of the show's writers, producers, and cast, including Wuhl. The livestreams raised over $20,000 for the New York City FoodBank.


title: Arliss (TV series)

text: "Arliss" has a 72/100 rating on Metacritic, and 62% on Rotten Tomatoes. The popular show, which ran for seven seasons, has been cited as a "blueprint" for future HBO shows such as "Ballers" and "Entourage", and as an example of how premium cable networks manage their programming. "Arliss" was cited by a number of HBO subscribers as the sole reason that they paid for the network, and as a result, its fan base was able to keep the show on the air for a lengthy run. The show frequently used obscure sports references, and "Entertainment Weekly" repeatedly referred to it as one of the worst shows on television; sportswriter Bill Simmons (who would eventually work for HBO itself under his digital banner "The Ringer") used "Arliss" as an example of what he saw as a lack of quality fictional shows about sports.


title: Self-sovereign identity

text: Self-sovereign identity (SSI) is an approach to digital identity that gives individuals control over the information they use to prove who they are to websites, services, and applications across the web. Without SSI, individuals with persistent accounts (identities) across the internet must rely on a number of large identity providers, such as Facebook (Facebook Connect) and Google (Google Sign-In), that have control of the information associated with their identity. If a user chooses not to use a large identity provider, then they have to create new accounts with each service provider, which fragments their web experiences. Self-sovereign identity offers a way to avoid these two undesirable alternatives. In a self-sovereign identity system, the user accesses services in a streamlined and secure manner, while maintaining control over the information associated with their identity.


title: Self-sovereign identity

text: The TCP/IP protocol provides identifiers for machines, but not for the people and organisations operating the machines. This makes the network-level identifiers on the internet hard to trust and rely on for information and communication for a number of reasons: 1) hackers can easily change a computer’s hardware or IP address, 2) services provide identifiers for the user, not the network. The absence of reliable identifiers is one of the primary sources of cybercrime, fraud, and threats to privacy on the internet.


title: Self-sovereign identity

text: With the advent of blockchain technology, a new model for decentralized identity emerged in 2015. The FIDO Alliance proposed an identity model that was no longer account-based, but identified people through direct, private, peer-to-peer connections secured by public/private key cryptography. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) summarises all components of the decentralized identity model: digital wallets, digital credentials, and digital connections.


title: Self-sovereign identity

text: SSI addresses the difficulty of establishing trust in an interaction. In order to be trusted, one party in an interaction will present credentials to the other parties, and those relying parties can verify that the credentials came from an issuer that they trust. In this way, the verifier's trust in the issuer is transferred to the credential holder. This basic structure of SSI with three participants is sometimes called "the trust triangle".


title: Self-sovereign identity

text: It is generally recognized that for an identity system to be self-sovereign, users control the verifiable credentials that they hold and their consent is required to use those credentials. This reduces the unintended sharing of users' personal data. This is contrasted with the centralized identity paradigm where identity is provided by some outside entity.


title: Self-sovereign identity

text: In an SSI system, holders generate and control unique identifiers called decentralized identifiers. Most SSI systems are decentralized, where the credentials are managed using crypto wallets and verified using public-key cryptography anchored on a distributed ledger. The credentials may contain data from an issuer's database, a social media account, a history of transactions on an e-commerce site, or attestation from friends or colleagues.


title: Self-sovereign identity

text: The European Union is exploring decentralized digital identity through a number of initiatives including the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Application (INATBA) , the EU Blockchain Observatory & Forum and the European SSI Framework. The EU recently created an eIDAS compatible European Self-Sovereign Identity Framework (ESSIF). The ESSIF makes use of decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI).


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Cooperation between China and Germany was instrumental in modernizing the industry and the armed forces of the Republic of China between 1912 and 1941.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: At the time, China was fraught with factional warlordism and foreign incursions. The Northern Expedition (1928) nominally unified China under Kuomintang (KMT) control, but Imperial Japan loomed as the greatest foreign threat. The Chinese urgency for modernising its military and national defence industry, coupled with Germany's need for a stable supply of raw materials, put China and the German Weimar Republic on the road to close relations from the late 1920s onwards. That continued for a time following the rise of the Nazis in Germany. However, intense cooperation lasted only until the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. The German cooperation nevertheless had a profound effect on the modernisation of China and its ability to resist the Japanese during the war.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: The earliest Sino-German trade occurred overland through Siberia, and was subject to transit taxes by the Russian government. In order to make trading more profitable, Prussia decided to take the sea route, and the first German merchant ships arrived in Qing China, as part of the Royal Prussian Asian Trading Company of Emden in the 1750s. In 1861, after China's defeat in the Second Opium War, the Treaty of Tientsin was signed, which opened formal commercial relations between various European states, including Prussia, with China.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: In the late 19th century, trade with China was dominated by the British operating from Canton at first and later at Shanghai and Hong Kong. German chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought to establish a foothold in China to offset the British dominance. In 1885, he obtained a steamship subsidy bill, thereby setting up direct service to China. The same year, he sent the first German banking and industrial survey group to evaluate investment possibilities, which led to the establishment of the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank in 1890. Those German efforts were second to Britain in trading and shipping in China by 1896.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Due to a perception the Germans were only interested in trade, the Qing government looked to them as a partner to help China's modernization effort. In the 1880s, the German shipyard AG Vulcan Stettin built two of the most modern and powerful warships of its day (the pre-dreadnought battleships "Zhenyuan" and "Dingyuan") for the Chinese Beiyang Fleet.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: After China's first modernization efforts looked to be a failure after its crushing defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Chinese General Yuan Shi-kai requested German help in creating the Self-Strengthening Army () and the Newly-Created Army (新建陸軍; Xīnjìan Lùjūn). German assistance concerned military, industrial, and technical matters. For example, in the late 1880s, the Chinese government signed a contract with the German company Krupp to build a series of fortifications around Port Arthur.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Germany's relatively benign China policy, as shaped by Bismarck changed, gradually withered away under later German chancellors during the reign of Wilhelm II. After German naval forces were sent in response to attacks on missionaries in Shandong Province, Germany negotiated at the a 99-year leasehold for Kiautschou Bay in March 1898 and began to develop the region. The period of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 proved the low point in Sino-German relations and witnessed the assassination of the German minister to China, Baron Clemens von Ketteler and other foreign nationals. During and after the campaign to defeat the Boxers, troops from all participating states engaged in plundering and looting and other excesses, but the Germans were the worst. The tiny contingent of troops then in North China wanted to exact retribution for the murder of the diplomat. On 27 July 1900, Wilhelm II spoke during departure ceremonies for the German contribution to the international relief force. He made an impromptu but intemperate reference to the "Hun invaders" of Continental Europe, which was later resurrected by Allied propagandists to attack Germany during World War I and World War II.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: In the decade before World War I, Sino-German relations became less engaged. One reason was the political isolation of Germany, as was evident by the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the 1907 Triple Entente. Germany proposed a German-Chinese-American entente in 1907, but the proposal never came to fruition. In 1912, Germany granted a six million German Goldmark loan to the new Chinese Republican Government. When World War I broke out in Europe, Germany offered to return Kiautschou Bay to China in an attempt to keep its colony from falling into Allied hands. However, the Japanese pre-empted that move and entered the war on the side of the Triple Entente, invading Kiautschou during the Siege of Tsingtao. As the war progressed, Germany had no active role or initiative in conducting any purposeful actions in East Asia, as it was preoccupied with the war in Europe.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: On 14 August 1917, China declared war on Germany and recovered the German concessions in Hankow and Tientsin. As a reward for joining the Allies, China was promised the return of other German spheres of influence following the defeat of Germany. However, at the Paris Peace Conference, Japan's claims trumped prior promises to China, and the Treaty of Versailles assigned the modern, up-to-date city of Tsingtao and the Kiautschou Bay region to Japan. The subsequent recognition of that Allied betrayal sparked the nationalistic May Fourth Movement, which is regarded as a significant event in modern Chinese history. As a result, the Beiyang government refused to sign the treaty.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: World War I dealt a severe blow to Sino-German relations. Long-established trade connections had been destroyed and financial structures and markets wrecked; of the almost 300 German firms conducting business in China in 1913, only two remained in 1919.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the German Army ("Reichswehr") was restricted to 100,000 men, and its military industrial production was greatly reduced. However, the treaty could not diminish Germany's place as a world leader in military innovation, and German industry retained the machinery and technology to produce military hardware. Therefore, to circumvent the treaty's restrictions, industrial firms formed partnerships with foreign nations, such as the Soviet Union and Argentina, to produce weapons and sell them legally.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: As the Chinese government did not sign the Treaty of Versailles, a separate peace treaty was concluded in 1921.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: After the death of Yuan Shi-kai, the Beiyang government collapsed, and the country fell into civil war, with various Chinese warlords vying for supremacy. German arms producers began looking to re-establish commercial links with China to tap into its vast market for weapons and military assistance.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: The Kuomintang government also sought German assistance, and the German-educated Chu Chia-hua (朱家驊; Zhū Jiāhuá) arranged almost all Sino-German contact from 1926 to 1944. There were several reasons other than Germany's technological expertise that made it the top candidate in Chinese foreign relations. Firstly, Germany had no more interest on having colonies in China after World War I. Second, unlike the Soviet Union, which helped with Kuomintang reorganization and opened party membership to communists, Germany had no political interest in China that could lead to confrontations with the central government. Moreover, Chiang Kai-shek saw German unification as something that China could learn and emulate. Thus, Germany was seen as a primary force in the "international development" of China.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: In 1926, Chu Chia-hua invited Max Bauer to survey investment possibilities in China, and the next year, Bauer arrived in Guangzhou and was offered a post as Chiang Kai-shek's advisor. Soon, he managed to recruit 46 other German officers to advise and train Nationalist forces while he devised the strategy that allowed the Nationalists to win their 1929 campaigns against the warlords. In 1928, Bauer returned to Germany to recruit a permanent advisory mission for China industrialization efforts. However, Bauer was not entirely successful, as many firms hesitated because of China's political instability and because of Bauer being "persona non grata" for his participation in the 1920 Kapp Putsch. In addition, Germany was still constrained by the Treaty of Versailles, which made direct military investment impossible. After he returned to China, Bauer contracted smallpox, died, and was buried in Shanghai. Bauer provided the foundation for later Sino-German cooperation. He argued for the reduction of the Chinese army to produce a small but elite force and supported opening up the Chinese market to spur German production and exports.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Sino-German trade slowed between 1930 and 1932 because of the Great Depression; Chinese progress towards industrialization was further hampered by conflicting interests between various Chinese reconstruction agencies, German industries, German import-export houses and the German army. Events did not pick up speed until the 1931 Mukden Incident, which showed the need for a concrete military and industrial policy aimed at resisting Japanese encroachment. In essence, it spurred the creation of a centrally planned national defence economy. That consolidated Chiang's rule over China and hastened industrialization efforts.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: The 1933 seizure of power by the Nazi Party further accelerated Sino-German cooperation. However, this began to change as the 1930s progressed, as "the Nazi government began leaning noticeably closer to Japan" while "the advisors (and many members of the German army) continued to push for a stronger Sino-German relationship".


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Before the Nazi rise to power, however, German policy in China had been contradictory, as the Foreign Ministry under the Weimar government had urged neutrality and discouraged the Reichswehr from becoming directly involved with the Chinese government. The same feeling was shared by the German import-export houses for fear that direct government ties would exclude them from profiting as the middleman. On the other hand, the new government's policy of "Wehrwirtschaft" (defense economy) called for the complete mobilization of society and the stockpiling of military raw materials, which China could supply in bulk.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: In May 1933, Hans von Seeckt arrived in Shanghai and was offered to oversee economic and military development involving Germany in China. He submitted the "Denkschrift für Marschall Chiang Kai-shek" memorandum, outlining his programme of industrialising and militarising China. He called for a small, mobile, and well-equipped force to replace the massive but undertrained army. In addition, he advocated for the army to be the "foundation of ruling power" and for military power to rest in qualitative superiority derived from qualified officers.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Von Seeckt suggested that the first step toward achieving this framework was the uniform training and consolidation of the Chinese military under Chiang's command and that the entire military system must be subordinated into a centralised hierarchy. Toward that goal, von Seeckt proposed the formation of a "training brigade" to replace the German "eliteheer", which would train other units, with its officer corps selected from strict military placements.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: In addition, with German help, China would have to build up its own defence industry because it could not rely on buying arms from abroad much longer. The first step toward efficient industrialization was the centralization of both the Chinese and the German reconstruction agencies. In January 1934, the "Handelsgesellschaft für industrielle Produkte", or Hapro, was created to unify all German industrial interests in China. Hapro was nominally a private company to avoid opposition from other foreign countries. In August 1934, the Treaty for the Exchange of Chinese Raw Materials and Agricultural Products of German Industrial and Other Products was signed in which China would trade strategically important raw material for German industrial products and development. That barter agreement was to both since China was unable to secure external monetary loans because of the high budget deficit from military expenditures, and Germany could become independent of the international market for raw materials. The agreement further specified that China and Germany were equal partners. Having accomplished that important milestone in Sino-German cooperation, von Seeckt transferred his post to General Alexander von Falkenhausen and returned to Germany in March 1935, where he died the next year.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: H.H. Kung, the finance minister of China, and two other Chinese Kuomintang officials visited Germany in June 1937 and were received by Adolf Hitler. The Chinese delegation met Hans Georg von Mackensen on June 10. During the meeting, Kung said that Japan was not a reliable ally for Germany, as he believed that Germany had not forgotten the Japanese invasion of Tsingtao and the former German colonies in the Pacific Islands during World War I. China was the true anticommunist state, while Japan was only "flaunting". Von Mackensen promised that there would be no problems in Sino-German relations as long as he and von Neurath were in charge of the Foreign Ministry. Kung also met Hjalmar Schacht on the same day, who explained to him that the Anti-Comintern Pact was not a German-Japanese alliance against China. Germany was glad to lend China 100 million Reichsmark (equivalent to million €) and would not do so with the Japanese.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Kung visited Hermann Göring on June 11, who told him he thought Japan was a "Far East Italy", referring to the fact that during World War I Italy had broken its alliance and declared war against Germany, and that Germany would never trust Japan. Kung asked Göring, "Which country will Germany choose as her friend, China or Japan?" Göring said China could be a mighty power and that Germany would take China as friend.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Kung met Hitler on June 13, who told him that Germany had no political or territorial demands in the Far East, Germany was a strong industrial country, China was a huge agricultural country, and Germany's only thought on China is business. Hitler also hoped China and Japan could cooperate and that he could mediate any disputes between these two countries, as he mediated the disputes between Italy and Yugoslavia. Hitler also told Kung that Germany would not invade other countries but was not afraid of foreign invasion. If the Soviet Union dared to invade Germany, one German division could defeat two Soviet corps. The only thing Hitler worried about was Bolshevism in Eastern Europe. Hitler also said that he admired Chiang Kai-Shek because he had built a powerful central government.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Kung met von Blomberg on the afternoon of June 13 and discussed the execution of 1936 HAPRO Agreement. The German Ministry of War agreed to lend China 100 million Reichsmark to purchase German weapons and machines. To repay the loan, China agreed to provide Germany with tungsten and antimony.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Kung left Berlin on June 14 to visit the United States and returned to Berlin on August 10, one month after the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out. He met von Blomberg, Hjalmar Schacht, von Mackensen and Ernst von Weizsäcker and asked them to mediate the war.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: In 1936, China had only about of railways, much less than the that Sun Yat-sen had envisioned. In addition, half of these were in Japanese-controlled Manchuria. The slow progress of modernising China's transport was caused by conflicting foreign interests. Chinese external credits needed approval from British, French, American, and Japanese banks as stated in the 1920 New Four-Power Consortium. In addition, other foreign countries were hesitant to provide funding because of the Great Depression.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: However, a series of Sino-German agreements in 1934–1936 greatly accelerated railway construction in China. Major railways were built between Nanchang, Zhejiang, and Guizhou. The rapid developments could occur because Germany needed efficient transportation to export raw materials, and the railway lines served the Chinese government's need to build an industrial centre south of the Yangtze. In addition, the railways served important military purposes. For example, after the Hangzhou-Guiyang railway was built, military transport could pass through the Yangtze Delta Valley, even after Shanghai and Nanking were lost. Similarly, the Guangzhou-Hankou railway provided transport between the eastern coast and the Wuhan area and would later prove its worth in the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: The most important industrial project from the Sino-German cooperation was the 1936 Three-Year Plan, which was administered by the Chinese government's National Resources Commission and the Hapro corporation. Its purposes were to create an industrial powerhouse that could resist Japan in the short run and create a centre for future Chinese industrial development for the long run. It had several basic components, such as the monopolisation of all operations of tungsten and antimony; the construction of the central steel and machine works in Hubei, Hunan, and Sichuan; and the development of power plants and chemical factories. Cost overrun for the projects was partly assuaged by the fact that the price of tungsten had more than doubled between 1932 and 1936. Germany also extended a 100 million Reichsmark line of credit to the Kuomintang. The Three-Year Plan introduced a class of highly educated technocrats to run the state-owned projects. At the height of the programme, trade with Germany accounted for 17% of China's foreign trade and China was the third largest trading partner with Germany. The Three-Year Plan had many promises, but many of its intended benefits would be undermined by the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Alexander von Falkenhausen was responsible for most of the military training. Von Seeckt's original plans called for a drastic reduction of the military to 60 elite divisions, which would be modeled on the Wehrmacht, but the factions that would be axed remained an open question. As a whole, the officer corps trained by the Whampoa Academy until 1927 had been only marginally better in quality than the warlord armies, but remained loyal to Chiang. Nonetheless, some 80,000 Chinese troops, in eight divisions, were trained and formed the elite of Chiang's army. However, China was not ready to face Japan on equal terms, and Chiang's decision to pit all of his new divisions in the Battle of Shanghai, which Japan won, despite objections from his staff officers and von Falkenhausen, would cost him a third of his best troops. Chiang switched his strategy to preserve strength for the eventual Chinese Civil War.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Von Falkenhausen recommended for Chiang to fight a war of attrition, as Falkenhausen calculated that Japan could not win a long-term war. He suggested for Chiang to hold the Yellow River line and not to attack until later in the war. Also, Chiang should give up a number of provinces in northern China, including Shandong. Falkenhausen also recommended the construction of a number of fortifications at strategically important locations to slow a Japanese advance. Falkenhausen also advised the Chinese to establish a number of guerrilla operations behind Japanese lines.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Von Falkenhausen believed that it was too optimistic to expect the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) to be supported by armor and heavy artillery because the industry lacked the necessary capacity. Thus, he emphasized the creation of a mobile force that relied on small arms and would be adept with infiltration tactics, like those of the German stormtroopers around the end of World War I. German officers were called into China as military advisers, like Lieutenant Colonel Hermann Voigt-Ruscheweyh, who acted as adviser to the Artillery Firing School in Nanking from 1933 to 1938.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: German assistance in the military was not limited to personnel training and reorganisation but also included military hardware. According to von Seeckt, around 80% of China's output of weapons were below par or unsuitable for modern warfare. Therefore, projects were undertaken to modernise existing arsenals. For example, the Hanyang Arsenal was reconstructed in 1935 and 1936 to produce Maxim machine guns, various 82 mm trench mortars, and the Chiang Kai-shek rifle (based on the German Mauser Standardmodell and Karabiner 98k rifles). The Chiang Kai-shek and Hanyang 88 rifles remained as the predominant firearm used by Chinese armies throughout the war. Another factory was established to produce gas masks, but plans for a mustard gas plant were eventually scrapped. In May 1938, several arsenals were built in Hunan to produce 20mm, 37 mm, and 75 mm artilleries. In late 1936, a plant was built near Nanking to manufacture binoculars and sniper rifle sights. Additional arsenals were built or upgraded to manufacture other weapons and ordnance, such as the MG-34, pack guns of different calibres, and even replacement parts for vehicles of the Leichter Panzerspähwagen. Several research institutes were also established under German auspices, such as the Ordnance and Arsenal Office and the Chemical Research Institute, under the direction from IG Farben. Many of those institutes were headed by Chinese engineers who had returned from Germany. In 1935 and 1936, China ordered a total of 315,000 of the M35 Stahlhelm and many Gewehr 88, 98 rifles and the C96 Broomhandle Mauser. China also imported other military hardware, such as a small number of Henschel, Junkers, Heinkel and Messerschmitt aircraft, some of them to be assembled in China, and Rheinmetall and Krupp howitzers, anti-tank, and mountain guns, such as the PaK 37mm, as well as armoured fighting vehicles such as the Panzer I.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: The modernization efforts proved to be useful in the war. Although the Japanese were able to capture the Nationalist capital at Nanking, the process took several months, with far larger losses than either side had anticipated. Despite the defeat, the fact that Chinese troops could challenge Japanese troops boosted Chinese morale. In addition, the cost of the campaign made the Japanese reluctant to go more deeply into the Chinese interior, allowing the Nationalist government to relocate China's political and industrial infrastructure into Sichuan.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War, on July 7, 1937, destroyed much of the progress and promises that had been made. Hitler chose Japan as his ally against the Soviet Union because Japan was militarily capable. In addition, the Sino-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 21, 1937 did not help to change Hitler's mind, despite protest from Chinese lobbies and German investors. However, Hitler agreed to have Hapro finish shipments that had been ordered by China but refused to allow any more orders from Nanking to be taken.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: There were plans of a German-mediated peace between China and Japan, but the fall of Nanking in December 1937 effectively put an end to any mediation that would be acceptable to the Chinese government. Therefore, all hope of a German-mediated truce was lost. In 1938, Germany officially recognised Manchukuo as an independent nation. In April of that year, Göring banned the shipment of war materials to China, and in May, German advisors were recalled to Germany after the Japanese had insisted.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: The shift from a pro-China policy to a pro-Japan damaged German business interests, as Germany had far less economic exchange with Japan. Pro-China sentiment was also apparent in most Germans in China. For example, Germans in Hankow raised more money for the Red Cross than all other Chinese and foreign nationals in the city combined. Military advisors also wished to honour their contracts with Nanking. Von Falkenhausen was finally forced to leave at the end of June 1938 but promised Chiang that he would never reveal his work to aid the Japanese. On the other hand, Nazi Party organs in China proclaimed Japan as the last bulwark against communism in China.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: Germany's relationship with Japan would prove to be less fruitful. Japan seized foreign businesses in North China and Manchukuo, and German interests were treated no better than others. While negotiations were ongoing in mid-1938 to address the economic problems, Hitler signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, effectively nullifying the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936. The Soviet Union agreed to allow Germany to use the Trans-Siberian Railway to transport goods from Manchukuo to Germany. However, quantities remained low, and the lack of established contacts and networks between Soviet, German, and Japanese personnel compounded the problem further. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Germany's economic goals in Asia were conclusively ended.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: China and Germany continued to maintain diplomatic relations in 1941, with elements from both sides wishing to resume cooperating despite the declining German interest in Asia. However, Germany's failure to defeat the United Kingdom steered Hitler away from that move. Germany signed the Tripartite Pact, along with Japan and Italy, at the end of 1940. In July 1941, Hitler officially recognised Wang Jingwei's puppet government in Nanking. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, China formally joined the Allies and declared war on Nazi Germany on December 9, 1941.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: The Sino-German cooperation of the 1930s was perhaps the most ambitious and successful of Sun Yat-sen's ideal "international development" to modernise China. Germany's loss of her territories in China after the First World War, its need for raw materials and its lack of interest in Chinese politics, all advanced the rate and the productiveness of its cooperation with China since both countries were able to cooperate on the basis of equality and economic dependability. China's urgent need for industrial development to fight an eventual showdown with Japan also precipitated that progress. Furthermore, China's admiration of the rapid rise of Germany after its defeat in the First World War and its fascist ideology also prompted some Chinese within the ruling circle to fashion fascism as a quick solution to China's continuing woes of disunity and political confusion.


title: Sino-German cooperation (1926–1941)

text: In summation, although the period of Sino-German cooperation spanned only a short period of time, and much of its success was destroyed in the war with Japan, it had some lasting effect on China's modernisation. After the Kuomintang was defeated during the Chinese Civil War, it relocated to Taiwan. Many government officials of the Republic of China on Taiwan were trained in Germany, such as Chiang's son, Chiang Wei-kuo. Much of Taiwan's rapid postwar industrialization can be attributed to the plans and the goals laid down in the 1936 Three-Year Plan. One example was Taiwan fertilizer plant was built from a former German gun powder reactor accelerated the agricultural needs after the government moved to Taiwan.


title: Sally Carman

text: Sally Carman-Duttine is an English actress. She is known for portraying the roles of Kelly Maguire in the Channel 4 comedy-drama series "Shameless" (2005–2013), and Abi Franklin in the ITV soap opera "Coronation Street" (2017–present).


title: Sally Carman

text: Carman discovered Reiki while filming "Shameless", and subsequently trained at the Oldham Reiki Network. In March 2014 she started as a therapist at Buddah Beauty, a holistic therapy salon in Chorlton.


title: Sally Carman

text: Carman made her major television debut in 2000 when she starred as Bridget Salsabill in British drama "Bomber", though she had previously featured briefly in an episode of "City Central" in 1998. As an actress, she has also starred in "Doctors", "Heartbeat" and "Holby City". She also played the character of Betty Haigh, the wife of John George Haigh, in the television film "A is for Acid".


title: Sally Carman

text: In 2005 she appeared in what would be a recurring role as Kelly Maguire in "Shameless". She became a more prominent character in the 2008 series, and finally a main cast member from 2009 to 2013.


title: Sally Carman

text: In 2011, she played the character Marie in the film "Tyrannosaur", written and directed by Paddy Considine.


title: Sally Carman

text: On 28 January 2013, Carman appeared in "The Shrine" the first episode of the fourth series of "Moving On" as Sarah, one of the main characters.


title: Sally Carman

text: She appeared in the second series of the BBC 1 drama "Prisoners' Wives", starting 14 March 2013, as Kim Haines, the wife of a man falsely accused of child abuse.


title: Sally Carman

text: In September 2014, she played the role of Mrs Casper, the mother of kestrel lover Billy, in "Kes", a stage adaptation of Barry Hines’ book, "A Kestrel for a Knave", at Cast in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.


title: Sally Carman

text: She played DCI Sally Butcher in "River’s Edge" Parts 1 & 2, the final episodes of "Silent Witness" Series 19, in 2016.


title: Sally Carman

text: In October 2017, Carman joined the cast of long-running ITV soap opera, "Coronation Street". She is playing Abi Franklin, the drug-addicted mother of established teenage character, Seb Franklin (Harry Visinoni).


title: Roc Marciano

text: Rahkeim Calief Meyer (born February 11, 1978), better known by his stage name Roc Marciano, is an American rapper, songwriter, and producer.


title: Roc Marciano

text: Roc Marciano joined Busta Rhymes' crew, Flipmode Squad, becoming the sixth member after the departure of Lord Have Mercy. Roc Marciano left in 2001 to form the U.N., a hardcore underground hip hop group consisting of three other MCs (Dino Brave, Laku & Mic Raw) with whom he released an album on Carson Daly's 456 Entertainment in 2004. Roc Marciano appeared in the 2005 Wu-Tang Clan compilation album, "Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture", and in Pete Rock's 2008 album, "NY's Finest", drawing acclaim for such performances. Since 2008, Roc Marciano has been working on his solo career, and to widespread internet acclaim, released his entirely self-produced debut album, "Marcberg" in 2010.


title: Roc Marciano

text: In 2011, Roc Marciano collaborated with Gangrene to release the collaborative EP "Greneberg". His second solo album, "Reloaded", was released in November 2012, which Allmusic described as "Grim and exultant at once, this is low-profile hustling on wax at its finest."


title: Roc Marciano

text: In late 2013, Marciano released a free mixtape, "The Pimpire Strikes Back". The mixtape served as preface to his third studio album, "Marci Beaucoup", that was entirely produced by him and had featured artists such as Action Bronson, Evidence, Ka, Maffew Ragazino, Quelle Chris and many more in each and every song.


title: Roc Marciano

text: On February 21, 2017, Roc Marciano released "Rosebudd's Revenge" via his website RocMarci.com. The album features Ka and Knowledge the Pirate, frequent Roc Marciano collaborators, and production from the Arch Druids, Mushroom Jesus, Modus Op, Knxwledge, and Roc Marciano himself.


title: Roc Marciano

text: On February 27, 2018, Marciano released his fifth studio album "Rosebudd's Revenge 2: The Bitter Dose", via his website RocMarci.com. The album features guest appearances from Knowledge the Pirate and Action Bronson and production from E.L.E.M.N.T., Animoss, Don Cee, and Marciano himself.


title: Roc Marciano

text: Freemusicempire named Roc Marciano as 2018 MVP. Dan-O commented "Our newly crowned FME MVP of 2018 released three albums this year. Each handled with a curators eye; three albums with a total of 36 songs which averages to 12 songs per album. Each one shading his story a different hue, taking a step further in creating a full landscape while maintaining a two fisted approach to punch lines that would have made prized pugilist Rocky Marciano proud."


title: Annihilus

text: Annihilus () is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, primarily as an adversary to the Fantastic Four. The character debuted in "Fantastic Four Annual" #6, which was published in November 1968. Annihilus was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, and was notably featured in the "Annihilation" event.


title: Annihilus

text: Annihilus has at various times been the ruler of the Negative Zone, controlling its inhabitants via his powerful Cosmic Control Rod. He first encountered the Fantastic Four after Reed Richards discovered how to travel to the Negative Zone from Earth. Over the years he clashed with the Fantastic Four on many occasions, often with the group foiling his plans to invade Earth. He is often the partner of Blastaar, who started out as a rival to Annihilus' rule of the Negative Zone before becoming allies.


title: Annihilus

text: Annihilus has appeared in a number of Marvel media, including several Fantastic Four shows, "The Super Hero Squad Show", "", "Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H." and "Ultimate Spider-Man". In 2009, Annihilus was ranked as IGN's 94th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time.


title: Annihilus

text: The character first appears in "Fantastic Four Annual" #6 (1968), and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. He had a recurring role in the series, including issues #108-110, #140-141, #181-183, #251-256, #289-290, and "Fantastic Four Unlimited" #3.


title: Annihilus

text: He played a small role in the Kree-Skrull War issues of "Avengers", #89, 96-97. Other appearances include "The Avengers" #233, "Marvel Team-Up" #2, "Marvel Two-in-One" #75, and "Thor" #404-405, #434-435.


title: Annihilus

text: The character was the main antagonist in "Annihilation", appearing in the prologue, the second issue of the "Silver Surfer" mini-series, and all six issues of the main title. He died in issue six, but has since been reborn. He appeared as an infant in "War of Kings: Ascension" #2.


title: Annihilus

text: Annihilus first encountered the Fantastic Four when they entered the Negative Zone seeking anti-particles needed to treat Sue's cosmic ray-related pregnancy complications. Annihilus's minions captured the heroes, but they escaped, stealing his Control Rod. They returned it after siphoning off the needed anti-particles and returned to Earth.


title: Annihilus

text: Annihilus was challenged by a research scientist, Janus the Nega-Man, who developed a module capable of harnessing antimatter energy within the Negative Zone. Annihilus defeated Janus, forcing the Nega-Man to lead him to Earth, but Janus was instead seemingly killed in the exploding atmosphere where matter meets antimatter. Annihilus nearly crossed over to Earth through one of Mister Fantastic's portals, but was driven back by the Avengers. Annihilus battled the Frightful Four, and once again attempted to escape the Negative Zone, but was foiled by Spider-Man and the Human Torch.