title: Authorization hold

text: Other businesses that may settle transactions for different amounts than those originally authorized include hotels and car rental agencies. The final cost of these transactions can be extremely unpredictable from unforeseen extras such as room service charges, refuelling charges, or longer stays. Those companies typically place a hold on the customer's credit card at the beginning of the transaction for the estimated total, plus a percentage or a fixed cash amount (such as the estimated rental charges, plus 15% or $250). The establishments usually do not settle the transactions until after the customer has checked out or returned the rental car. Some hotels and car rental agencies do not accept Visa or MasterCard-branded debit cards, as the authorization holds can expire before the transaction is settled. Additionally, some agencies use the requirement of a credit card as a tool to screen high-risk customers, as credit cards usually require a good credit history, and all that is needed for a debit card is a checking account.


title: Authorization hold

text: Another example of a transaction that may settle for an amount different from the amount authorized is a transaction incurred in a currency different from the currency in which the card is denominated. The final, settled, transaction amount will be based on the exchange rate in effect on the settlement date. Since that rate is generally not known at the time of authorization, the banks will use an estimated amount based on the exchange rate at the time of authorization.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont, Baron Lamont of Lerwick, (born 8 May 1942) is a British politician and former Conservative MP for Kingston-upon-Thames. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1990 until 1993. He was created a life peer in 1998. Lamont was a supporter of the Eurosceptic organisation Leave Means Leave.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Lamont was born in Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands, where his father was the islands' surgeon. He was educated at Loretto School, Musselburgh, Scotland, and read economics at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association and President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1964.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Before entering Parliament he worked for N M Rothschild & Sons, the investment bank, and became director of Rothschild Asset Management.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Lamont currently, in addition to his role as a working peer, is a director of and a consultant to various companies in the financial sector. He is a director of the hedge fund company RAB Capital, Balli Group plc (commodities trading house), and he is an advisor to Rotch Property Group. He is also a director of a number of investment funds. In December 2008 he joined the board of Phorm, an online behavioural advertising company, and he is a non-executive director of Balli Group PLC and the Honorary President of the British Romanian Chamber of Commerce, and Chairman of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Lamont stood as a candidate for Member of Parliament in the June 1970 general election for Kingston upon Hull East. He was defeated by John Prescott, who went on to become Tony Blair's Deputy Prime Minister. Two years later, on 4 May 1972, Lamont won a by-election to become MP for Kingston-upon-Thames.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Lamont served in successive governments under Margaret Thatcher and John Major for a total of 14 years, in the Departments of Energy, Industry, Defence and the Treasury. In 1986, he moved to the Treasury, first as Financial Secretary to the Treasury, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury (succeeding John Major in the latter job on Major's promotion to Foreign Secretary in July 1989) under Chancellor Nigel Lawson, whom he tried unsuccessfully to persuade not to resign from the government on the morning of 26 October 1989 – Lawson resigned that evening. Lamont remained as Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Major's Chancellorship. In this position he acquiesced in Major's decision to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) at a central parity of 2.95 Deutschmarks to the Pound, although neither he or any other Cabinet ministers were involved or informed about the decision before it had been made.


title: Norman Lamont

text: The decision to join the ERM was announced on Friday 5 October 1990, the last trading day before the week of the Conservative party conference. Shortly afterwards he successfully managed Major's election campaign to succeed Margaret Thatcher as party leader and Prime Minister. In her memoirs, Thatcher listed Lamont along with six other Cabinet ministers as a potential successor to her.


title: Norman Lamont

text: During the leadership election, Lamont clashed angrily in private with Lawson who preferred Michael Heseltine as Thatcher's successor, phoning Lawson up to remind him of his caustic remarks made about Heseltine's economic policies. Lamont eventually slammed the phone down on Lawson in temper, though he later wrote to Lawson to offer an apology.


title: Norman Lamont

text: On 16 May 1991, Lamont stated in parliament that "Rising unemployment and the recession have been the price that we have had to pay to get inflation down. That price is well worth paying." The remark is regularly, but not always approvingly, recalled by commentators and other politicians. Seven months before Lamont made the statement, inflation (as measured by the annual change in the Retail Price Index) reached 10.9%. In May 1991, inflation fell to 6.4%. A year after the Major government was reelected in the 1992 general election, winning the most votes of any political party in British electoral history, inflation fell to 4.3%, falling to 1.3% a year later. However the economy continued to contract until the third quarter of 1991. After economic growth resumed, the economy grew rapidly and by the third quarter of 1993, GDP was greater than the pre-recession peak in the second quarter of 1990.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Lamont replaced Major as Chancellor in Major's new Cabinet, thereby inheriting Major's exchange rate policy. In his memoirs, Lamont recalls a senior Treasury civil servant answering his question on why Britain had joined the ERM as replying, "It's politics," to which Lamont replied, "I don't think I would have given up the flexibility of the exchange rate." In public, Lamont justified the decision to join the ERM in terms of the government's counter-inflation strategy. In the House of Commons debate shortly after the pound joined the ERM, he argued that under a regime of floating exchange rates, the consequences of depreciating the currency had been short lived in terms of output and competitiveness, "but have been lasting in terms of inflation. That is one of the reasons why the Government concluded that it would be right to join the ERM."


title: Norman Lamont

text: By the time Lamont was appointed Chancellor, the Conservative government's principal economic objective was to regain control of inflation. The Thatcher government had been elected in 1979 on a manifesto that had listed restoration of sound money as its first priority. Having peaked at 21.9% in 1980, inflation (as measured by the 12-month increase in the Retail Prices Index) fell to 3.3% at the beginning of 1988. However controlling inflation through the targeting of the growth of the domestic money supply, as proposed in that manifesto, turned out to be more problematic than its authors had envisaged and during his time as Chancellor, Lawson had increasingly been drawn instead to targeting the exchange rate to provide an external monetary anchor. From its low point in February 1988, inflation rose with apparent inexorability: of the 31 months until it peaked at 10.9% in October 1990, there were only four months when inflation fell. In response, interest rates were progressively increased, doubling from 7.4% in June 1988 to 15% in October 1988, being cut by one point to 14% when the pound entered the ERM, the level of interest rates Lamont inherited as chancellor. As a result, the economy began to slow, contracting by 1.1% in the third quarter of 1990 and shrinking a further 0.7% in the final quarter of the year. Thus Lamont's period as Chancellor started with inflation at its highest level since 1982 and the economy in recession.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Asked at his first appearance as chancellor at the Treasury Select Committee whether he agreed with his predecessor's view on the depth and duration of the recession and not wishing to contradict Major, Lamont replied that "there are reasons why one could believe that it will be relatively short-lived and relatively shallow." In October 1991, based on CBI and Institute of Directors business surveys, he said "what we are seeing is the return of that vital ingredient – confidence. The Green shoots of economic spring are appearing once again." The comment was widely criticised as premature. However, Gavyn Davies, then chief economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a newspaper article at the time of Lamont's removal from the Treasury that the "Green shoots" speech had turned out to be "remarkably prescient. From that moment onwards, output stopped declining, and within a few months, it started to rise. Estimates of Gross Domestic Product show the trough of the recession occurring in the fourth quarter of 1991, with sustained growth resuming in the third quarter of 1992, when GDP grew 0.4% compared to the second quarter.


title: Norman Lamont

text: On succeeding Thatcher, the Major government had to decide its position on the negotiations on European Economic and monetary union (EMU) which would lead to the Maastricht Treaty. It had been Thatcher's opposition to EMU which triggered the end of her premiership. Like Thatcher, Lamont was a long-standing opponent of EMU and the European single currency. In his memoirs, Lamont wrote that he was "horrified" when Ted Heath in 1972 announced Britain that it was accepting the Werner Plan for monetary union. Newly appointed as Chancellor, Lamont therefore supported Major's idea of Britain negotiating an opt-out from the single currency. Negotiations on the economic aspects of the proposed treaty began in earnest at the end of 1990 with monthly meetings of European finance ministers. At an Intergovernmental Conference held in Rome on 15 December 1990, Lamont declared, "I remain unconvinced that the potential benefits of a single currency are as great as its supporters allege."


title: Norman Lamont

text: In a minute to the Cabinet's Defence and Overseas Policy committee the following month, Lamont set out his three objectives for the negotiations: first, to ensure that Britain did not have to join the single currency; second, to ensure the opt-out was legally water-tight; and third, to ensure that during the period in the run-up to the single currency, there should be no binding obligations on Britain. In meeting the third of these, Lamont had to overcome the resistance of the prime minister and the foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, who told Lamont: "I can't see what you are so worked up about. We are in the ERM. What difference does it make if it is in the Treaty?" Lamont decided to ignore their objections. At the next negotiating meeting on the treaty, he told his fellow European finance ministers that Britain would not accept membership of the ERM as a treaty obligation. As a result, the meeting agreed to remove it.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Lamont decided that the best way of securing the first two of his negotiating objectives was for Britain to draw up a protocol listing those parts of the treaty from which Britain would be exempted. When Wim Kok, the Dutch finance minister chairing the finance ministers' negotiations at Maastricht, decided that the meeting should review the British opt-out line-by-line, Lamont said the text was not negotiable. After Kok persevered, Lamont walked out of the meeting. In his absence, the protocol was endorsed without amendment.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Within the constraints of the ERM, sterling interest rates were cut seven times in 1991, falling from 14% to 10.5% in September, with inflation halving from 9.0% to 4.5% over the course of the year, leaving real interest rates just 0.5% lower. The scope for swifter cuts in interest rates was squeezed by an event that few had anticipated when Britain joined the ERM: based on OECD indices of consumer prices, inflation in Germany, which had been 2.7% in 1990, rose to 5.1% in 1992, whilst in Britain inflation fell from 7.0% to 4.3%. In response, the Bundesbank increased its discount rate from 6.0% in 1990 to 8.75% in July 1992, creating the conditions for the turbulence the ERM was to experience later that autumn.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Despite the Conservatives' surprise victory in the April 1992 general election, for these reasons, the ERM policy proved increasingly unsustainable and collapsed on Black Wednesday, when Lamont was forced to withdraw the pound from the ERM despite assuring the public that he would not do so just a week earlier. He faced fierce criticism at the time for his apparent insouciance in the face of the collapse of the stated central plank of his economic policy. Later that month, at a press conference in the garden of the British embassy in Washington, DC in response to a question as to why he appeared so cheerful, Lamont commented that it was a beautiful morning, adding, "My wife said she heard me singing in the bath this morning," a response which led to the story that he was singing in the bath with happiness at leaving the ERM. After Major left office and published his memoirs, Lamont publicly denied Major's version of events, claiming that Major had effectively opted out of his responsibilities and left Lamont to carry the can for that day's actions. On the evening of Black Wednesday and for days after, Major contemplated resigning, drafting a statement to that effect, but wrote Lamont a note instructing him not to resign.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Major's verdict on the ERM was that it was the medicine that cured Britain of inflation; "it hurt but it worked." Speaking a few days after Black Wednesday, the Governor of the Bank of England, Robin Leigh-Pemberton, argued that "the decision to join the ERM two years ago in the circumstances; that, having joined, we were right to endeavour to stick it out; and that, in the circumstances which evolved, we were right to withdraw." Lamont's view expressed in his memoirs was more nuanced: without the discipline of the ERM, the Major government would have given up on the fight against inflation before Black Wednesday; ERM membership delivered a sharp break in Britain's inflation performance; the judgment of the markets that the higher rates needed to maintain Britain's membership was undoubtedly correct; "the ERM was a tool that broke in my hands when it had accomplished all that it could usefully do." Sir Alan Budd, the Treasury's Chief Economic Adviser during the period and later appointed by Gordon Brown to the Monetary Policy Committee, in an economic assessment of Britain's membership of the ERM, has written, "although it was certainly a political disaster, the case can be made that it was an economic triumph and marked the turning point in our macro-economic performance."


title: Norman Lamont

text: During the autumn of 1992 Lamont became a press target in a string of largely fabricated stories: that he had not paid his hotel bill for "champagne and large breakfasts" from the Conservative Party Conference (in fact his bill had been forwarded on for settlement); that he was in arrears on his personal Visa credit card bill (true); that in June 1991 he had used taxpayers' money to handle the fall-out from press stories concerning a sex therapist, who was using a flat he owned (the Treasury contributed £4,700 of the £23,000 bill which had been formally approved by the Head of the Civil Service and the Prime Minister; there was never any suggestion that he had ever met her); and that he had called at a newsagent in a seedy area of Paddington late at night to purchase champagne and cheap "Raffles" cigarettes. The last story turned out to have been entirely invented.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Following Britain's exit from the ERM, Lamont had two major tasks: to replace the ERM with a new framework for monetary policy, and to address the sharp increase in government borrowing caused by the recession and the rapid fall in inflation. In a letter to the Chairman of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee in October 1992, Lamont set out a new basis for the conduct of monetary policy centred on inflation targeting. He set a target range for inflation excluding mortgage interest rate payments of 1–4%, falling into the lower part of the range by the end of the Parliament. In assessing progress toward meeting the inflation target, there was a target for the growth of narrow money (M0) and monitoring ranges for the growth of broad money (M4). Decisions on interest rates would also take account of house and asset price inflation and the exchange rate. Transparency and market credibility would be enhanced by publication of a monthly monetary assessment and the Bank of England was asked to produce a quarterly inflation report. These innovations marked a decisive break with the past and a necessary step toward central bank independence. Inflation targeting was the basis on which the Bank of England was made independent by the Blair government in 1997, the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee being made accountable for achieving the government's inflation target.


title: Norman Lamont

text: The new framework enabled interest rates to be cut from the 10% that they had been within the ERM to 6% by January 1993. Inflation continued to fall. In June 1993, the first month after Lamont had left the Treasury, Britain recorded its lowest monthly rate of inflation since February 1964. According to Alan Budd, the Treasury's Chief Economic Adviser during the period, the important step of central bank independence could only have been successful once monetary stability had been achieved; "In 1997 the Bank of England was not asked to succeed where politicians had failed; it was asked to maintain the rate of inflation, namely 2.5%, that it inherited." In Budd's view, the essential elements of the new framework and its success in achieving low and stable inflation were the establishment of an inflation target and the institution of monthly meetings with the governor of the Bank of England to discuss interest rates. The new framework, according to Budd, "worked extraordinarily well." "Credit must be given to those, principally Norman Lamont, who designed and implemented it."


title: Norman Lamont

text: Lamont's second task was to reduce government borrowing, which was rising sharply because of the twofold impact of the ERM on the public finances. The loss of output had reduced tax revenues and increased public spending as unemployment rose. The sharp falls in inflation further reduced tax revenues compared to previous forecasts at the same time as increasing public spending after inflation, because public spending is planned in cash terms which becomes worth more in real terms if inflation falls. The March 1993 budget forecast a Public Sector Borrowing Requirement for 1993-94 of £50bn, equivalent to 8% of GDP. In terms of the Public Sector Net Cash Requirement, the definition currently in use to measure the UK government deficit, the actual deficit for 1993–94 of 6.9% was the highest since 1975–76 at 9.2% but just over half the 13.3% deficit projected for 2009–10 in the April 2009 budget.


title: Norman Lamont

text: To reduce government borrowing, the March 1993 budget announced a rising wedge of tax increases – £0.5bn in the first year, £6.7bn in the second, rising to £10.3bn in the third, the aim being to give markets confidence that government borrowing was under control without damaging the recovery. Although the budget provoked a fierce reaction in some parts of the press, its reputation improved with the passage of time. After the 2009 budget, the "Sunday Times" editorialised that Lamont's budget had been so badly received that he was out of his job within two months, "but it fixed the public finances and set up the prosperity of the 1990s and beyond" and Derek Scott, Tony Blair's economic adviser from 1997 to 2003, wrote that Lamont was "rightly praised" for putting in place the post-ERM framework, that stage of Lamont's career being "due for rerating since, in addition to designing a proper framework for monetary policy (later consolidated by Bank of England independence in 1997), he also took most of the tough decisions on spending and tax to put the public finances on the road to recovery." Sir Alan Walters, whose opposition to the ERM as Mrs Thatcher's economic adviser triggered Nigel Lawson's resignation as chancellor, wrote on the buoyant state of the British economy in 2001 that "all the difficult and correct decisions that produced this happy state of affairs were taken and implemented by Norman Lamont, who thus showed himself, in his Mark 2 post ERM version, to be not only the most effective but also the bravest Chancellor since the War."


title: Norman Lamont

text: During the Newbury by-election in May 1993, Lamont was asked at a press conference whether he most regretted claiming to see "the green shoots of recovery" or "singing in his bath". He replied by quoting the Edith Piaf song "Je ne regrette rien", a dry response which raised a laugh at the press conference but which played poorly when quoted later on the television that evening and afterwards. When called to defend him on "Newsnight" his friend the former Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt caused further merriment by claiming that Lamont could do an excellent impersonation of a Scops-owl (whose cry, Lamont later explained, "sounds like a tennis ball emitter").


title: Norman Lamont

text: Three weeks after the government's massive loss in the by-election, on 27 May 1993, Lamont was sacked (technically resigning from the government because he declined a demotion to become Secretary of State for the Environment), throwing (by his own account) Major's letter of regret at his departure unopened into the wastepaper basket, and giving a resignation speech in the House of Commons on 9 June, that made clear his feeling that he had been unfairly treated, saying that the government "gives the impression of being in office but not in power"; the then Party Chairman Norman Fowler dismissed the speech as "dud, nasty, ludicrous and silly". Major and Lamont agree that Lamont had offered his resignation immediately after Black Wednesday and that Major pressed him to remain in office. Lamont came to the view that Major had sought his survival in office as a firebreak against the criticism of the ERM policy rebounding on himself.


title: Norman Lamont

text: In the following years Lamont became a fierce critic of the Major government. He is now regarded as a staunch euro-sceptic. In March 1995 he voted with the Labour party in a vote on Europe, and later that year he authored "Sovereign Britain" in which he envisaged Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, and was talked of as a potential leadership challenger to John Major; in the event it was John Redwood who challenged for the leadership. Lamont supported Redwood's campaign, which was managed by David Evans MP. He is the current vice president of the euro-sceptic Bruges Group.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Despite departing under a cloud, Lamont defends his budget record to this day. The 1991 budget, in which he seized the opportunity presented by Thatcher's resignation to restrict mortgage interest tax relief to the basic rate of income tax and also cut the rate of corporation tax by two percentage points, was greeted by positive coverage in "The Economist" which dubbed him a "Nimble Novice". In the 1992 budget his proposal to advance to a 20% basic rate of income tax through a combination of a narrow initial band, a cut in tax on deposit interest and curtailment of tax allowances was hailed as an elegant way of combining populism with progressivism, though events were later to lend support to Nigel Lawson's view that this approach was strategically inept. His final budget in 1993 was more sympathetically received by financial specialists than John Major's 1990 budget or Kenneth Clarke's budget of November 1993. Lamont attributes the large public sector borrowing requirement (i.e. fiscal deficit) of these years to the depth of the recession triggered by his inability to cut interest rates sooner within the ERM.


title: Norman Lamont

text: The day after his dismissal from the Treasury, Sir Samuel Brittan wrote in the "Financial Times" that history was likely to record him as one of the better Chancellors, citing his structural reforms of taxation, his determination to give priority to securing and maintaining low inflation and the delayed tax increases in his final budget. "He leaves behind an economy with a faster growth rate than that of any other of the main G7 countries and an underlying rate of inflation lower than in most." According to Ruth Lea, writing 12 years later on the factors behind the subsequent performance of the British economy, Lamont had introduced path-breaking macro-economic reforms including inflation targeting and the first steps towards an independent Bank of England and had begun a programme of fiscal consolidation, which transformed the public finances. "These macro economic reforms, along with the Thatcher economic reforms of the 1980s, effectively transformed the British economy."


title: Norman Lamont

text: In the period after his resignation, Lamont became the first leading politician to raise the prospect of Britain withdrawing from the European Union. Shortly before the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, the journalist Matthew d'Ancona wrote that someone must have dared to make the initial leap to retrieve the "frozen thesis" from its glacial prison. "In the case of Brexit, it was Norman Lamont, the former chancellor of the exchequer, who dragged the idea back from the snowy wastes."


title: Norman Lamont

text: At a private meeting of the Conservative Philosophy Group in 1994, he argued that withdrawal from the European Union was an option that should be restored to the range of serious possibilities, d'Ancona, who attended the meeting, wrote. Later that year at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, Lamont addressed a fringe meeting of the Selsdon Group. "When we come to examine the advantages of our membership today of the European Union they are remarkably elusive. As a former Chancellor, I can only say that I cannot pinpoint a single concrete advantage that unambiguously comes to this country because of our membership of the European Union," Lamont told the group. He rejected the argument made by Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, who had claimed that the debate in Europe was turning Britain's way. "We deceive the British people and we deceive ourselves if we claim that we are winning the argument in Europe ... There is not a shred of evidence at Maastricht or since then that anyone accepts our view of Europe."


title: Norman Lamont

text: Lamont implicitly challenged the view expressed by John Major, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: "It has recently been said that the option of leaving the Community was 'unthinkable.' I believe that this attitude is rather simplistic." He stopped short of arguing Britain should unilaterally withdraw from the European Union "today," but warned: "the issue may well return to the political agenda." Instead, he outlined an alternative to membership of a federal EU. "This means looking at all the options ranging from membership of an outer tier to participating solely in the European Economic Area. One day it may mean contemplating withdrawal."


title: Norman Lamont

text: In boundary changes enacted for the 1997 general election Lamont's constituency of Kingston upon Thames was split up. The northern parts were merged with Richmond and Barnes to form Richmond Park, and the southern parts merged with the larger Surbiton to form Kingston and Surbiton. Lamont lost the contest for the candidacy for the new seat to the incumbent Surbiton MP Richard Tracey. He then embarked on a high-profile search for a new constituency and was eventually adopted as the Conservative candidate for the new seat of Harrogate and Knaresborough in Yorkshire. The move was seen as an attempt to parachute in an outsider, with Lamont seeming like an opportunist next to the Liberal Democrat candidate, Phil Willis, a local teacher and long-time local politician. When the general election came, his unpopularity, and that of the Conservatives in general, led a massive tactical voting campaign in the constituency and the Liberal Democrats won the seat. He was not recommended for a peerage in John Major's resignation honours, but the following year William Hague recommended him, and Lamont was made a life peer as Baron Lamont of Lerwick, of Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, on 24 July 1998.


title: Norman Lamont

text: In 1998 the former military dictator of Chile, General Augusto Pinochet visited Britain to obtain medical treatment. This prompted a debate about whether he should be arrested and put on trial over his human rights record. Lamont joined with Margaret Thatcher in defending Pinochet, calling him a "good and brave and honourable soldier". His stance was highly criticised.


title: Norman Lamont

text: He attempted to be selected as a candidate for the 1999 European Parliament election, but was unsuccessful.


title: Norman Lamont

text: In February 2005, it was reported in "The Times" that Lamont and John Major had held up the release of papers concerning Black Wednesday under the Freedom of Information Act. The two wrote to the paper to deny the reports. Later it emerged that the source of the story had been Damian McBride, then a Treasury civil servant who as a result of this became a special adviser to the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown who in 2009 resigned from a similar position in Number 10 Downing Street following publication of emails indicating a plan to smear leading Conservative politicians.


title: Norman Lamont

text: In October 2006, he complained that the new party leader David Cameron (Lamont's political adviser around the time of Black Wednesday) lacked policies. In late 2008, Cameron asked Lamont, together with fellow former chancellors Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson and Kenneth Clarke, to provide him with strategic political and economic advice as Britain's banking and fiscal position worsened.


title: Norman Lamont

text: In June 2007, Lamont became Honorary Patron of the Oxford University History Society, one of the university's largest societies, and he was, from 1996 to 2008, chairman of Le Cercle, a secret anti-Communist group which meets bi-annually in Washington, DC. In 2008, he became the President of the Economic Research Council, Britain's oldest economics-based think tank.


title: Norman Lamont

text: In February 2015, Lamont resigned as a director of Phorm Corporation Limited, an internet personalisation technology company.


title: Norman Lamont

text: Yanis Varoufakis maintained that Lamont provided him with "counsel", "advice" and was "a pillar of strength" while he unsuccessfully negotiated Debt relief with the Troika during his six months as Greek Finance Minister in 2015.


title: Comicsgate

text: Comicsgate is a right-wing campaign in opposition to diversity and progressivism in the North American superhero comic book industry. Its proponents target the creators hired, the characters depicted, and the stories told, and maintain that these elements have led to a decline in both quality and sales. The name is derived from Gamergate, a similar movement related to video games. Its members present it as a consumer protest, primarily advocating their views on social media; some have produced books intended to reflect the group's values. It is part of the alt-right movement, and has been described by commentators as a harassment campaign which "targets women, people of color, and LGBT folk in the comic book industry". Threats of violence and the vandalism of one store were attributed to the campaign.


title: Comicsgate

text: While Comicsgate has no official hierarchy, commentator Richard C. Meyer (posting under the banner "Diversity & Comics") and former DC illustrator Ethan Van Sciver have been prominent advocates for the campaign.


title: Comicsgate

text: Members of the movement object to diversification of comics, especially the increasing inclusion of women as writers and characters. The storylines objected to include those such as the "All New, All Different" campaign undertaken by Marvel Comics in the later 2010s, in which various white male characters that had traditionally had the superhero identities of Wolverine, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, and Spider-Man were temporarily replaced by female and/or racial-minority characters. Comicsgate adherents have also complained about stories dealing with current social issues, and the depiction of women with less sexualized figures.


title: Comicsgate

text: They argue that the increasing diversity of comics, both among creators and in terms of characters, has led to declining quality and sales. While it is true that comic sales declined in the late 2010s, this decline was across the board and not limited to, or worse for, the diverse comics that Comicsgate targets. Tricia Ennis, writing for SyFy Wire, stated that some such comics, in fact, had been notably successful, such as the Kamala Khan version of "Ms. Marvel", "Unbeatable Squirrel Girl", and the Carol Danvers version of "Captain Marvel".


title: Comicsgate

text: In 2016, female superhero Mockingbird was depicted on a comic book cover wearing a t-shirt that read "Ask Me About My Feminist Agenda". This was followed by harassment on Twitter of series writer Chelsea Cain, including a posted illustration of Mockingbird depicted apparently dead after a brutal attack with her costume torn off, with the t-shirt phrase as a caption.


title: Comicsgate

text: A July 2017 social media post by Marvel Comics assistant editor Heather Antos, featuring several young female coworkers getting milkshakes in memory of company veteran Flo Steinberg, drew attention from members of the movement. Antos was described by them as a "diversity hire", "an unqualified bimbo", and "the 'false rape charge' type", and the group in general as "fake geek girls", "tumblr-virtue signalers", and "the creepiest collection of stereotypical SJWs anyone could possibly imagine". Antos reported receiving rape threats and being doxxed, and—with her friends and coworkers—being the target of a prolonged campaign of online harassment.


title: Comicsgate

text: Richard C. Meyer has made the campaign a common subject on his YouTube channel and Twitter account, in which he identifies professionals whose work or personal activities he sees as detrimental to the comics industry. He took credit for the firing of writer Aubrey Sitterson from the IDW comic "G.I. Joe: Scarlett's Strike Force" after Sitterson criticized on social media what he saw as "performative grief" about the September 11 attacks. In a 2017 video titled "The Dark Roast", Meyer referred to a female Marvel Comics editor as a "cum dumpster", accused various female professionals of "sucking their way into the industry", and described a transgender female writer as a "man in a wig". Meyer participated in the backlash against the character designs of Netflix adaptation "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power"; he called showrunner ND Stevenson a "boyish lesbian" and accused him of re-imagining the title character as himself, describing it as "utter selfishness and egotism".


title: Comicsgate

text: Members of Comicsgate have responded to professionals criticizing the movement by circulating blacklists of such creators to boycott, including one which categorized individuals as members of the "Pravda Press", "SJW vipers", and other derogatory labels. Among those placed on such lists and criticized for their views have been Larry Hama, Mark Waid, Alex de Campi, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Colorist Moose Baumann recounted that he received threats of violence after stepping away from Van Sciver's creator-owned book "Cyberfrog". Media critic Kaylyn Saucedo, artist Tim Doyle, comic writer Kwanza Osajyefo, and cosplayer/comic writer Renfamous have all recounted being the target of harassment and doxxing.


title: Comicsgate

text: A few creators involved with Comicsgate have profited from the controversy it has produced, as with Meyer's "No Enemy But Peace".


title: Comicsgate

text: Alt-right activist Vox Day wrote and published the series "Alt-Hero" and hired Chuck Dixon to write for him. Although Van Sciver has had Vox Day as a guest on his YouTube channel, both he and Meyer have since disavowed any association with him.


title: Comicsgate

text: In early 2018, Meyer announced that his crowdfunded comic book "Jawbreakers: Lost Souls", a collaboration with freelance artist Jon Malin, would be published by Antarctic Press. Upon learning that some store owners had discussed their decisions not to stock it, he encouraged his followers to publicly post and circulate their names, locations, and employee information. He accused Edmonton, Alberta store Variant Edition of "bullying and intimidating their own customers" after the female co-owner tweeted that they would not stock the publication. The store was subsequently vandalized and robbed. Dublin, Ireland, store "Big Bang Comics", which was not stocking the book, received threats of violence on social media.


title: Comicsgate

text: On May 13, Antarctic Press announced that they were ending their relationship with Meyer, citing his behavior. Meyer accused Mark Waid of pressuring Antarctic not to publish the book. Both Antarctic and Waid issued statements denying that any threats or bullying had taken place. In October 2018, Meyer sued Waid for "tortious interference with contract and defamation". In a motion to dismiss, Waid's attorney Mark Zaid asserted that Meyer's own public attacks against industry professionals were responsible, pointing to comments on Twitter calling writer Ta-Nehisi Coates "a race hustler", accusing a number of female professionals of being hired solely based on gender, and referring to trans and non-binary DC writers as "a modern day carnival". In December 2020, Meyer and Waid released a joint statement that Meyer had decided to voluntarily dismiss the case.


title: Comicsgate

text: Although many comics professionals have chosen to ignore Comicsgate to avoid giving it publicity, it has been met with widespread criticism from readers, comics creators, and industry journalists.


title: Comicsgate

text: In mid 2018, Marsha Cooke, widow of writer-artist Darwyn Cooke, denied a claim by Comicsgate participants that her husband would have supported the campaign. After she became the subject of online attacks on Twitter for this, industry veterans including Bill Sienkiewicz, Van Jenson, Tony Bedard, Jeff Lemire, and Magdalene Visaggio wrote rebukes to the movement. In a social media post, writer Scott Snyder, who teaches writing in college and DC Comics' talent development program, said the movement launched "cruel, personal attacks" on his students that "were (and still are) especially repugnant for their sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia". After Comicsgate participants claimed that writer Donny Cates supported them, he publicly denounced the movement, saying, "[N]o one is going to use my art to promote something that has attacked my friends."


title: Comicsgate

text: Writer Tom Taylor posted a brief message on social media rejecting the tenets of Comicsgate, stating "I believe comics are for everyone. There is no excuse for harassment. There is no place for homophobia, transphobia, racism or misogyny in comics criticism." The social media post was retweeted by creators including Kelly Thompson, Tim Seeley, Margaret Stohl, Jason Latour, Greg Pak, Fabian Nicieza, Benjamin Percy, and Jeff Lemire. In an unsigned editorial, "Paste" magazine took issue with the phrasing of Taylor's statement, arguing that Comicsgate's activities should not be equated with critical commentary.


title: Comicsgate

text: Greg Hatcher, former administrator of the Comic Book Resources forums, compared the movement to the harassment that drove actresses Kelly Marie Tran and Millie Bobby Brown from social media, and noted that comic creators in earlier decades such as Jack Kirby and Stan Lee had also faced fan backlash for including political themes in comic books.


title: Comicsgate

text: Van Sciver has faced backlash from other comic professionals for joking about suicide by Democrats, comments on Reddit about a "queer globalist mess", and hosting alt-right leader Vox Day in an episode on his YouTube channel. Van Sciver was also criticized for announcing a collaboration with cartoonist Dave Sim, who was known to have had a relationship with a 14-year-old girl. Van Sciver defended Sim until he learned more detail about Sim's activities with her, leading him to cancel the project.


title: Concha (bread)

text: Concha (plural conchas, meaning "shell" in Spanish) is a traditional Mexican sweet bread roll ("pan dulce"). Conchas get their name from their round shape and their striped, seashell-like appearance. A concha consists of two parts, a sweetened bread roll, and a crunchy topping (composed of flour, butter, and sugar).


title: Concha (bread)

text: Their distinctive pattern is made by pressing a bread stamp (cf. Butter stamp) over the topping while the dough is proofing. Although the roll and topping are usually the same flavor, the top layer may have different flavorings or colors (strawberry, coffee, chocolate, etc.). Conchas are popular in bakeries in Mexico and throughout the United States. They are usually eaten with coffee at breakfast or as an afternoon snack at "merienda".


title: Concha (bread)

text: Conchas rose in popularity with attention from chefs; some added fillings and some spices. Conchas became so popular that a "concha bun burger" won the James Beard Foundation's Blended Burger Project in 2016.


title: Martin Eden

text: Martin Eden is a 1909 novel by American author Jack London about a young proletarian autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in "The Pacific Monthly" magazine from September 1908 to September 1909 and then published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909.


title: Martin Eden

text: Eden represents writers' frustration with publishers. The central theme of Eden's developing artistic sensibilities places the novel in the tradition of the "Künstlerroman", which narrates an artist's formation and development.


title: Martin Eden

text: Eden differs from London in rejecting socialism, attacking it as "slave morality" and relying on Nietzschean individualism. Nevertheless, in the copy of the novel which he inscribed for Upton Sinclair, London wrote, "One of my motifs, in this book, was an attack on individualism (in the person of the hero). I must have bungled it, for not a single reviewer has discovered it."


title: Martin Eden

text: Living in Oakland at the beginning of the 20th century, Martin Eden struggles to rise above his destitute, proletarian circumstances through an intense and passionate pursuit of self-education, hoping to achieve a place among the literary elite. His principal motivation is his love for Ruth Morse. Because Eden is a rough, uneducated sailor from a working-class background and the Morses are a bourgeois family, a union between them would be impossible unless and until he reached their level of wealth and refinement.


title: Martin Eden

text: Over a period of two years, Eden promises Ruth that success will come, but just before it does, Ruth loses her patience and rejects him in a letter, saying, "if only you had settled down ... and attempted to make something of yourself". By the time Eden attains the favor of the publishers and the bourgeoisie who had shunned him, he has already developed a grudge against them and become jaded by toil and unrequited love. Instead of enjoying his success, he retreats into a quiet indifference, interrupted only to rail mentally against the gentility of bourgeois society or to donate his new wealth to working-class friends and family. He feels that people do not value him for himself or for his work but only for his fame.


title: Martin Eden

text: A former sailor from a working-class background, who falls in love with the young, bourgeois Ruth and educates himself to become a writer, aiming to win her hand in marriage.


title: Martin Eden

text: The young, bourgeois university student who captivates Eden while tutoring him in English. Though initially both attracted and repelled by his working-class background, she eventually realizes she loves him. They become engaged, with the condition that they cannot marry until her parents approve of his financial and social status.


title: Martin Eden

text: A cannery worker rejected by Eden, who is already in love with Ruth. Initially, while Eden strives for education and culture, Lizzie's rough hands make her seem inferior to Ruth in his eyes. Despite this, Lizzie remains devoted to him. He feels an attachment to her because she has always loved him for who he is, and not for fame or money, as Ruth does.


title: Martin Eden

text: Eden's boss at the laundry, who wins Eden over with his cheeriness and capacity for work, but, like Eden, suffers from overwork. He quits the laundry and tries to convince Eden to adopt a hobo lifestyle. Toward the end of the book, Eden meets him again, and offers him a laundry. Joe, who likes the hobo life, except for the lack of girls, eventually accepts the offer and promises to treat the employees fairly.


title: Martin Eden

text: A sickly writer who encourages Eden to give up writing and return to the sea before city life swallows him up. Brissenden is a committed socialist and introduces Eden to a group of amateur philosophers he calls the "real dirt". His final work, "Ephemera", causes a literary sensation when Eden breaks his word and publishes it upon Brissenden's death.


title: Martin Eden

text: Social class, seen from Eden's point of view, is a very important theme in the novel. Eden is a sailor from a working-class background who feels uncomfortable but inspired when he meets the bourgeois Morse family. As he improves himself, he finds himself increasingly distanced from his working-class background and surroundings, becoming repelled by Lizzie's hands. Eventually, when Eden finds that his education has far surpassed that of the bourgeoisie he looked up to, he feels more isolated than ever. Paul Berman comments that Eden cannot reconcile his "civilized and clean" self with the "fistfighting barbarian" of the past, and that this inability causes his descent into a delirious ambivalence.


title: Martin Eden

text: London conjures up a series of allusions to the workings of machinery. It is machines that make Lizzie's hands rough. To Eden, the magazine editors operate a machine that sends out seemingly endless rejection slips. When Eden works in a laundry, he works with machines but feels himself to be a cog in a larger machine. Eden's Blickensdorfer typewriter gradually becomes an extension of his body. When he finally achieves literary success, Eden sets up his friends with machinery of their own, and Lizzie tells him, "Something's wrong with your think-machine."


title: Martin Eden

text: Although London was a socialist, he invested Eden with strong individualism. Eden comes from a working-class background but he seeks self-improvement rather than improvement for his class as a whole. Quoting Nietzsche and Herbert Spencer, he rejects the "slave morality" of socialism, even at socialist meetings. London stresses that it is this individualism that leads to Eden's suicide. He described the novel as a parable of a man who had to die "not because of his lack of faith in God, but because of his lack of faith in men".


title: Martin Eden

text: When London wrote "Martin Eden" at age 33, he had already achieved international acclaim with "The Call of the Wild", "The Sea-Wolf" and "White Fang". Despite the acclaim, he quickly became disillusioned with his fame and set sail through the South Pacific on a self-designed ketch, the "Snark". On the grueling two-year voyage, as he struggled with tiredness and bowel diseases, he wrote "Martin Eden", filling its pages with his frustrations, adolescent gangfights and struggles for artistic recognition.


title: Martin Eden

text: London borrowed the name "Martin Eden" from a working-class man, Mårten Edin, born in Ådalen (at Båtsmanstorpet in Västgranvåg, Sollefteå), Sweden, but the character has more in common with London than with Edin. Ruth Morse was modeled on Mabel Applegarth, the first love of London's life.


title: Martin Eden

text: Brissenden is modeled on London's friend and muse George Sterling. Brissenden's posthumously successful poem "Ephemera" is based on Sterling's "A Wine of Wizardry".


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: Job for a Cowboy is an American death metal band from Glendale, Arizona. Formed in 2003, the band's debut album "Genesis" was released in 2007, peaking at No. 54 on the US "Billboard" 200 and selling 13,000 copies in its first week of release. The second album, 2009's "Ruination", sold 10,600 copies in the United States in its first week to debut at position No. 42 on the "Billboard" 200 chart. The band comprises vocalist Jonny Davy, guitarists Tony Sannicandro and Al Glassman and bassist Nick Schendzielos. Davy is the only remaining founding member.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: The band has played in international music festivals, including Sounds of the Underground, Download Festival, Mayhem Festival, Summer Slaughter, Graspop Metal Meeting, and Wacken Open Air.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: Job for a Cowboy was founded in Glendale, Arizona, during December 2003 by vocalist Jonny Davy, guitarists Ravi Bhadriraju and Andrew Arcurio, bassist Chad Staples, and drummer Andy Rysdam when the band members were no older than 15 and 16. In 2004, they created a MySpace profile, posted songs online, and immediately began to connect with several worldwide fans. Later that year, Staples and Rysdam left Job for a Cowboy and were replaced by Brent Riggs and Elliott Sellers, respectively, as bassist and drummer. Traffic to the band's MySpace profile increased exponentially in late 2005 when the band released their first EP, "Doom". The EP attracted the attention of Arizona independent label King of the Monsters, who distributed the disc after an initial self-released pressing by the band. The EP release helped the band win the award for Best Metal Band at the Third Annual Arizona Ska Punk Awards Ceremony in Phoenix, Arizona.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: Job for a Cowboy extensively promoted their EP, including three performances on the Sounds of the Underground tour. By the end of the year, the band obtained professional management and signed a deal with Metal Blade Records, who reissued "Doom" with a bonus track. During the same year, 2006, Arcurio left the band and Bobby Thompson joined the group. While Job for a Cowboy was writing material for their first full-length album, Sellers announced that he was leaving the band to go back to school immediately after recording the album. In search of a permanent drummer, the band then posted a bulletin on Blabbermouth.net, which was seen by Jon "The Charn" Rice. He made a video of himself, posted it on YouTube, and sent the link to the band. Soon after, Rice joined the band.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: In March 2007, Job for a Cowboy completed their debut full-length album, "Genesis". It was recorded at Blue Light Audio Media in Phoenix, Arizona, with producer Cory Spotts. It was mixed by Sabbat guitarist Andy Sneap. Released on May 15, the album peaked at No. 54 on the "Billboard" 200 and sold nearly 13,000 copies in its first week, which made "Genesis" the highest-charting heavy metal debut since Slipknot's 1999 debut album. The album received generally positive reviews, with "Kerrang!" magazine saying, "an album that quite literally obliterates everyone else currently residing within the death and grind scenes" and "one of the year's most essential metal purchases."


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: In June 2007, the band performed at the Download Festival in Donington Park, England. The group also played at the Sounds of the Underground festival along with Amon Amarth, Chimaira, Gwar, and Shadows Fall. In October, Job for a Cowboy co-headlined the 2007 Radio Rebellion Tour, teaming up with Behemoth, Gojira, and Beneath the Massacre. The band featured on the 2008 Gigantour with headliners Megadeth, Children of Bodom, In Flames, and High on Fire. In addition, they confirmed for a number of festivals during 2008, including Wacken Open Air in Germany and a second appearance at England's Download Festival. Job for a Cowboy embarked on a U.S. headlining tour in November and December 2008 with supporting acts Hate Eternal and All Shall Perish. In 2008, Job for a Cowboy once again won the award for Best Metal Band at The Arizona Ska Punk Awards, and took home the award again the next year at the 2009 Awards Ceremony.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: In late 2008, guitarist Ravi Bhadriraju left Job for a Cowboy to return to school because he wanted to pursue a more rewarding career in the medical field. He was replaced with former Despised Icon guitarist Al Glassman.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: On May 1, 2009, the band announced that they had completed recording their second studio album, "Ruination", at AudioHammer studios in Sanford, Florida, with producer Jason Suecof. The album marks the debut of guitarist Al Glassman and drummer Jon "the Charn" Rice, who had actually been with the band since the tour for "Genesis". "Ruination" was then released on July 7, 2009, worldwide through Metal Blade Records. The album sold around 10,600 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 42 on the "Billboard" 200 chart. Job for a Cowboy participated in the second Mayhem Festival, playing on the Hot Topic stage along with bands such as Cannibal Corpse and Whitechapel.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: At the beginning of 2011, the band started work on an EP which was recorded in February at the Audiohammer Studios in Sanford, Florida, with producer Jason Suecof. Just before the recording process began, bassist Brent Riggs and guitarist Bobby Thompson departed from the band and were replaced by Nick Schendzielos of Cephalic Carnage and Tony Sannicandro, respectively. On April 13, 2011, a video appeared on the internet of drummer Jon Rice performing a new song in the studio. Job for a Cowboy issued their new EP on June 7, 2011, entitled "Gloom", which was only made available for purchase through mail order and digital download.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: Job for a Cowboy entered Audio Hammer Studios in September 2011 to record their next effort. The group worked with the production team of Jason Suecof, Eyal Levi of Dååth, and Ronn Miller on the project.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: On February 21, 2012, Job for a Cowboy released their first single from their new album "Demonocracy", titled "Nourishment Through Bloodshed." It was released via Metal Blade Records' YouTube channel.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: On March 20, Job for a Cowboy premiered the song "Black Discharge," and, on April 2, the song "Imperium Wolves." "Demonocracy" was released on April 10, 2012, and had first-week sales reaching 4,900, which charted at 87 on the "Billboard" 200. That summer they were a part of the Summer Slaughter tour with acts such as Cannibal Corpse, Between the Buried and Me, and The Faceless.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: On October 21, 2013, the band announced they were recording their fourth full-length album. The band's drummer, Jon "The Charn" Rice, announced eight days after the album announcement that he was departing the band. It was announced on February 5, 2014, that he had joined hard rock band Scorpion Child.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: On September 23, 2014, the band announced their upcoming album "Sun Eater", which released on November 11 via Metal Blade. The band also released their first single from the album titled "Sun of Nihility." The second single released off of "Sun Eater" was the song "Eating the Visions of God."


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: On January 22, 2016, it was announced that drummer Jon "The Charn" Rice had rejoined the band for a one-off show. Whether he has rejoined on a permanent basis has not been confirmed.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: During a 2016 Interview at NAMM Show, bassist Nick Schendzielos revealed that the band was writing new music and had four new songs at the time. He went on to say that they hope to release new music in late 2017 that would follow the musical direction of "Sun Eater".


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: In 2019, frontman Jonny Davy, and guitarists Alan Glassman and Tony Sannicandro formed a new group called Serpent of Gnosis, alongside The Black Dahlia Murder bassist Max Lavelle and Deeds of Flesh drummer Darren Cesca.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: In August 2019, it was published that Job for a Cowboy may be "plotting a legit comeback with new music (an EP) and possibly some shows" according to "sources close to the band." In May 2020, Job for a Cowboy alluded to a reunion on Twitter with a clip from the 1995 film "Mortal Kombat", shortly after which producer Jason Suecof, who has mixed and engineered three of the group's full-length albums proclaimed “[vocalist] Jonny Davy just sang me the whole new album”. In June 2020, Suecof confirmed that the band will be recording new music, although production had been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2020, the band revealed that Navene Koperweis would be the session drummer on the band's upcoming album.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: Job for a Cowboy originally started as a deathcore group, but they changed their style to death metal with the release of their first full-length album "Genesis." The band has also been described as technical death metal. Job for a Cowboy has been described by "The New York Times" as "an Arizona band with a guttural, brute-force sound descended (indirectly) from hardcore punk" and "straightforwardly brutal act" by "Rolling Stone" magazine.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: On the band's fourth full-length "Sun Eater", Job for a Cowboy started experimenting with a more progressive writing structure and style. The album, which was called "progressive death metal", was praised for its stylistic innovation in contrast to the band's previous albums.


title: Job for a Cowboy

text: Job for a Cowboy's influences include Nile, Mastodon, Decapitated, Hate Eternal, Cattle Decapitation, Psycroptic, and Misery Index.


title: M. G. Sreekumar

text: Malabar Gopalan Sreekumar (born 25 May 1957), better known as M.G. Sreekumar is an Indian playback singer, composer, music producer, television presenter and film producer, who works predominantly in Malayalam cinema. He has sung more than 2000 songs in various Indian languages including Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and Sanskrit. He owns a music company named KMG Musics and the Saregama School of Music in Thiruvananthapuram. Sreekumar has won several awards, including two National Film Awards, three Kerala State Film Awards and 5 Filmfare Awards South. He was also honoured with the Harivarasanam Award by the Government of Kerala in 2016. His career as a singer spans over 44 years.


title: M. G. Sreekumar

text: Sreekumar made his debut in the Malayalam movie "Coolie" (1983) Directed by Ashok Kumar. The Malayalam movie "Chithram" (1988) directed by Priyadarshan, starring Mohanlal, was the first where Sreekumar sang all the songs. He has sung more than 35,000 songs for films in Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and Telugu.


title: M. G. Sreekumar

text: He worked as music director in Malayalam films such as "Chathurangam" (2002) and "Thandavam" (2002), Priyadarshan's "Kanchivaram" (2008), Mohanlal's "Alexander the Great" and "Oru Naal Varum."


title: M. G. Sreekumar

text: He anchored a TV show named "SaReGaMa" on Asianet and was a judge for the reality show "Idea Star Singer". Now he is a judge in Top Singer on Flowers TV.


title: M. G. Sreekumar

text: His appointment as chairman of Kerala Sangeeta Nataka Akademi by the LDF government of Kerala sparked controversy due to his close relations with its political rival BJP.


title: M. G. Sreekumar

text: Sreekumar was born on May 25, 1957 at Haripad, in Alappuzha district, Kerala as the younger son of music composer and harmonist Malabar Gopalan Nair and Harikatha exponent Kamalakshi Amma. He is the younger brother of popular music director M. G. Radhakrishnan and popular Carnatic musician Dr. K. Omanakkutty, who were both much elder to him. Sreekumar and Lekha, his future wife, first saw each other in 1988 at Thycaud Dharma Sastha Temple, Thiruvananthapuram, but they met each other only few days later after a concert. Gradually, they developed friendship and later began living together. Sreekumar and Lekha married on 14 January 2000 at the Mookambika Temple, Kollur.


title: M. G. Sreekumar

text: Beside films, Sreekumar has composed many devotional albums. Majority of his songs are written by Rajeev Alunkal and Gireesh Puthenchery.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: The fifth season of "One Tree Hill", an American television series, began on January 8, 2008 with a two-hour episode. This is the second season to air on The CW television network. Season five is set four years into the future from the season 4 finale, and after the main characters have graduated from college.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: Production for this season of "One Tree Hill", along with production for all other American scripted television shows, was caught in the middle of a contract dispute between the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), Writers Guild of America, west (WGAw) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The dispute led to a strike by the writers, which has caused a lack in episodes being produced. The season was to conclude in June 2008, after twenty-two episodes, but the season had been shortened to twelve episodes due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. With the strike resolved, the CW announced that six more episodes would be produced bringing the episode count to eighteen. The ratings in Season 5 took a dive by averaging 2.8 million viewers weekly.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: Nearly 5 years have passed, and Tree Hill has been through some major changes. Karen has closed the cafe, and is travelling the world with her daughter, Lily and boyfriend, Andy. Some of them achieved the goals they set for themselves back in high school: Lucas published his novel, and is now famous, Brooke became a famous fashion designer, and Haley became the teacher she always wanted to be. While others weren't so lucky, Peyton crashed and burned in Los Angeles, and Nathan saw his dream of pro basketball greatness vanish in an instant. To top the icing on the cake, Dan has been freed from prison and is seeking forgiveness.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: On May 17, 2007, The CW announced that the show would return for a fifth season as a mid-season replacement. The show was dramatically retooled and set four years into the future - after the characters have already graduated from college. Until the show's return to the schedule, the network planned to post diaries online to fill in the intervening years in the characters' lives. The fifth season began shooting on July 30, 2007 and premiered January 8, 2008. Dawn Ostroff confirmed on July 20, 2007 that "One Tree Hill" had a 22-episode order.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: Hilarie Burton confirmed on "TRL" that the show's fifth season would focus on their lives after college, citing the reason for this as "We've seen the high school dramas not do so well while they're in college, and another thing, we've done everything that everyone does in college". She said this will "enable them to do flashbacks and a lot of cool stuff with the characters".


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: On November 5, 2007, a strike began between the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), Writers Guild of America, west (WGAw) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The strike was speculated to force television shows to end their seasons early, because there would be no future scripts until a settlement was reached. Due to the writer's strike, only twelve out of the twenty-two episodes ordered were thought to be produced. With the end in sight, Mark Schwahn stated, "Although we have six new episodes left, no one is more excited about the end of the strike than we are at One Tree Hill." On the February 5, 2008 episode, "One Tree Hill"'s ratings were second only to "Smallville" for scripted dramas at the CW. Schwahn went on to say that "we'd love the opportunity to continue season five, and if the WGA's new contract is ratified, hopefully we'll be able to do just that. If not, we'll see you for season six." On February 15, the CW announced that six additional episodes would be produced to wrap up the season due to the conclusion of the strike.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: For season five, Jackson Brundage was cast as James Scott, the child of Nathan and Haley Scott. Barry Corbin reprised his role as Whitey Durham for a flashback sequence. Danneel Harris returned, as a recurring not main cast member, to portray Rachel Gatina, who is now a drug addict. Moira Kelly also returned as Lucas' mother Karen Roe. Barbara Alyn Woods reprised her role of Deb Lee in the fourteenth episode, appearing in a total of four episodes.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: Cullen Moss and Vaughn Wilson returned as Junk Moretti and Fergie Thompson, living with Mouth and Skills. Stephen Colletti reprised his guest role as Chase Adams, as did Kieren Hutchison as Andy Hargrove. Shawn Shepard returned to portray Tree Hill High's principal, Principal Turner, where Haley, Lucas and Skills now work. Brett Claywell returned as Tim Smith, working as a pizza boy. Bevin Prince also returned as Bevin Mirskey, married to Tim Smith, with whom she has a son, Nathan Smith.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: Newcomer Michaela McManus was added to the cast for a multi-episode arc as Lindsey Strauss, a "tough but kind" New York editor assigned to work on Lucas' novel. Daphne Zuniga guest starred as a "glamorous and intimidating" business exec who works with Brooke, later revealed to be her mother. Torrey DeVitto has signed on to play the nanny of Nathan and Haley's son in a multi-episode arc. Robbie Jones joined the cast as Quentin Fields, a difficult student and member of the "Ravens". Kelly Collins Lintz became a guest as Mouth's boss Alice. Lisa Goldstein was cast as Brooke's assistant as Millicent Huxtable. Kevin Federline appears in a multi-episode arc this season playing Jason, as well as singer/songwriter Kate Voegele who portrays Mia. Joe Manganiello has also been added as Owen, a bar tender at "Tric". Mary Kate Englehardt returned to play the role of Lily Roe Scott.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: On November 6, 2007, The CW posted the first "One Tree Hill" online diary, a series of six segments to be released before the start of the new season. "One Tree Hill Fast Forward" allows fans of the show to catch a glimpse of the lives of the six main characters at the beginning of the fifth season. The first "Fast Forward" diary features Sophia Bush's character, Brooke Davis. The second diary, posted on November 13, featured Chad Michael Murray's character, Lucas Scott. The third diary, posted on November 20, featured Hilarie Burton's character, Peyton Sawyer. The fourth diary, posted on November 27, featured Lee Norris's character, Mouth McFadden.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: The fifth diary, posted on December 4 featured the Scott family, consisting of Bethany Joy Galeotti's character, Haley James Scott and James Lafferty's character, Nathan Scott. The sixth and last diary, posted on December 11, featured all the new faces of the show, commented by Mark Schwahn, Joe Davola, the six main teens and the above listed new faces (minus Jamie).


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: The season opening to 3.36 million viewers and a 1.5 adults 18-49 rating. Episode two aired back-to-back with the season premiere and achieved season highs in viewers (3.57 m) and adults 18-49 (1.6). The season finale matched season highs in adults 18-49 with a 1.6 rating.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: The season averaged 3.33 million viewers and a 1.2 Adults 18-49 rating in its original Tuesday 9/8C. After its move to Mondays at 9/8c, it averaged 2.78 million viewers and a 1.0 rating.


title: One Tree Hill (season 5)

text: The DVD release of season five was released after the season has completed broadcast on television. It has been released in Region 1. As well as every episode from the season, the DVD release features bonus material such as audio commentaries on some episodes from the creator and cast, deleted scenes, gag reels and behind-the-scenes featurettes.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: He competed mainly in the Spanish lower leagues in his early years, only appearing in 26 La Liga games over the course of two seasons with Recreativo and Albacete, after starting out at Osasuna. Most of his professional career was spent with Arsenal, for whom he signed in 2004, going on to play 175 official matches and winning the 2005 FA Cup. He also had a short loan spell at West Ham United.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: In 2012, after his contract expired, Almunia joined Watford and played there for two years, following which he retired on medical advice.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Born in Pamplona, Navarre, Almunia started his senior career with CA Osasuna's reserves in 1995, going on to spend four seasons with the team in Segunda División B. Subsequently, he stayed in the same level, where he represented FC Cartagonova and CE Sabadell FC.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: In the summer of 2001, Almunia first reached La Liga, after signing with RC Celta de Vigo. He never represented the club officially, however, being loaned to SD Eibar (where he won the Ricardo Zamora Trophy in Segunda División for the 2001–02 campaign), Recreativo de Huelva and Albacete Balompié, the last two in the top flight.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Playing understudy to José Antonio Luque and César at "Recre", Almunia's debut in the Spanish top flight came on 17 November 2002, following a red card to the latter in a 0–3 away loss against Deportivo Alavés. It was one of only two league appearances during the season, as the Andalusians suffered relegation after ranking 18th.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: At Albacete Balompié, Almunia started as backup to Carlos Roa. However, after the Argentine came down with illness he became first-choice, going on to help his team easily escape relegation through a 14th-place finish; his first league appearance was on 9 November 2003, in a 1–0 home defeat to Málaga CF as Roa was suspended.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Almunia joined Arsenal on 14 July 2004 for an undisclosed sum, to provide backup to Jens Lehmann. He made his debut for his new team on 27 October in a 2–1 win at Manchester City for the season's League Cup, and his maiden Premier League appearance came on 4 December against Birmingham City; the highlight of his first year came in the fifth round of the FA Cup, a replay at Sheffield United: with the game finishing 0–0 after extra time and heading to penalties, he saved Alan Quinn and Jon Harley's attempts to book his team a place in the quarter-finals, and was an unused substitute in the final win over Manchester United.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: In the 2005–06 campaign, Almunia continued as second-choice to Lehmann, but found himself thrust into the spotlight when he replaced Robert Pires in the 20th minute of the final of the UEFA Champions League against FC Barcelona, as the German was sent off. He performed well for the most part, only conceding both goals in the 1–2 loss late in the game.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: 2006–07 brought Almunia 14 appearances in all competitions. This included the League Cup final, lost to Chelsea. He and Lehmann were by all accounts rivals off the pitch as well. In an interview with German television in October 2007, speaking about manager Arsène Wenger's decision to drop him in favour of the Spaniard, Lehmann said: "It’s possible that some day I’ll feel like talking about the whole issue. But at the moment I’m just swallowing it all as part of the humiliation. But I think – and this is aimed at my dear manager – one shouldn’t humiliate players for too long. I won’t just fade away quietly. Almunia has not yet showed he can win matches for us. I’ve experienced this before and know what the others are expecting from the goalkeeper". Five months later, Almunia responded: "I treat people the way I would like to be treated myself. To have someone here who hates me is just amazing. Every morning I wake up I know it is going to be the same. But I don’t care any more. I come into training and work with Łukasz Fabiański and Vito Mannone. They are better than him anyway".


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Almunia finally won the battle for first-choice duties in the 2007–08 season. Highlights included saving a penalty from Robbie Keane to help Arsenal beat Tottenham Hotspur 2–1. He was given the number one shirt after Lehmann left for VfB Stuttgart at the beginning of the 2008–09 campaign, and he saved another important penalty on 21 March 2009, this time from Newcastle United's Obafemi Martins in a 3–1 victory. In June 2008 he signed a new four-year contract with the English club, but his subsequent performances were highly inconsistent, with brilliant displays in the Champions League semi-final first leg against Manchester United and the 2010 Champions League quarter-finals against Barcelona, and poorly received ones which resulted in rumours arising that he would be sold.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Despite the speculation, Almunia started 2010–11 as first-choice. However, on 25 September against West Bromwich Albion, he conceded a penalty (which he saved), let a weak shot slip through the near post and was caught out of position in the opposition's third goal; he lost his place through injury and, upon his return, found himself third-choice behind the Polish duo of Fabiański and Wojciech Szczęsny.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Almunia made a return to the team on 30 January 2011 against Huddersfield Town in the FA Cup, and went on to play both games in the next round against Leyton Orient. On 8 March, he came on as a 19th-minute substitute for the injured Szczęsny against Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League last-16 stage, and made a series of saves as Arsenal lost 3–1 at the Camp Nou to exit the tournament, 4–3 on aggregate; he was voted man of the match by fans on the club's official website.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: With Szczęsny (dislocated finger), Fabianski (shoulder) and Mannone all out with injury, Almunia again became Arsenal's first-choice. On 19 March, during a 2–2 draw at West Bromwich, he was caught out of position along with Sébastien Squillaci, gifting the home team their second goal; already with Lehmann back in the club as an emergency signing, he injured his knee during warm-up of the fixture against Blackpool, and did not appear in any more matches for the rest of the season.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: On 30 September 2011, Almunia signed an initial one-month emergency loan deal with Championship club West Ham United after Robert Green was ruled out for six weeks with a knee cartilage injury. He made his debut for the Hammers on 1 October in a 2–2 away draw against Crystal Palace but, at the end of October and with Green's return to fitness, he returned to Arsenal.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: On 22 May 2012, Arsenal announced that Almunia and six other players would be released from their contracts as of 30 June.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: In July 2012, aged 35, Almunia signed a one-year contract with Championship's Watford, replacing Scott Loach who had moved to Ipswich Town. He played his first game on 11 August in a League Cup tie at home to Wycombe Wanderers, and kept a clean sheet.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Having appeared in all thirty four of Watford's league games, Almunia injured his hamstring against Derby County on 23 February 2013. He missed the next six contests as youngster Jonathan Bond deputised in his absence, returning in a 0–0 home draw against Cardiff City on 6 April 2013.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: On 12 May 2013, in the play-off semi-final second leg at home to Leicester City, Almunia made a double save from Anthony Knockaert's penalty in injury time, with Watford leading 2–1 but still level on aggregate. Watford counter-attacked from the resulting saves and Troy Deeney's goal to put his team in the decisive match against Crystal Palace, where a Kevin Phillips penalty in extra time resulted in a 0–1 loss.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Watford announced that Almunia had signed a new twelve-month deal on 5 July 2013, to keep him at the club for one further season. Manager Gianfranco Zola commented: "His experience and influence are so important for us and the impact he had at Watford last season was magnificent." He left in June of the following year, as his link expired.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Almunia retired on 28 August 2014 on medical advice, after a rare heart condition was picked up during a medical with Serie A side Cagliari Calcio. In 2016, he was appointed to the role of goalkeeping coach at UAE Pro League club Al Jazira Club.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Almunia did not represent Spain at any level. He stated on more than one occasion his desire to play for England, only provided that he did not receive a call-up from his nation of birth first.


title: Manuel Almunia

text: Almunia, whose brother served in the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations in Kosovo, has an interest in the Second World War and regularly visited sites associated with the conflict before European games with Arsenal.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (, enacted March 2, 1807) is a United States federal law that provided that no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States. It took effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: This legislation was promoted by President Thomas Jefferson, who called for its enactment in his 1806 State of the Union Address. He and others had promoted the idea since the 1770s. It reflected the force of the general trend toward abolishing the international slave trade which Virginia, followed by all the other states, had prohibited or restricted since then. South Carolina, however, had reopened its trade. Congress first regulated against the trade in the Slave Trade Act of 1794. The 1794 Act ended the legality of American ships participating in the trade. The 1807 law did not change that—it made all importation from abroad, even on foreign ships, a federal crime.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: The domestic slave trade within the U.S. was not affected by the 1807 law. Indeed, with the legal supply of imported slaves terminated, the domestic trade increased in importance. In addition, some smuggling of slaves persisted.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: The Act affected only the import or export of slaves, and did not affect the internal trade in states or between states. During the American Revolution all thirteen colonies prohibited their involvement in the international slave trade (some also abolished slavery, internally), but three states later enacted legislation legalizing the international again. protected a state's involvement in the Atlantic slave trade for twenty years from federal prohibition. Article 5 said this clause could not be affected by constitutional amendment. Only starting January 1, 1808, could there be a federal law to abolish the international slave trade in all states, although individual states could and did ban it at any time.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: By 1775, Africans both free and enslaved made up 20% of the population in the Thirteen Colonies, which made them the second largest ethnic group after English Americans. In 1774, the influential, revolutionary Fairfax Resolves, called for an end to the "wicked, cruel, and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade. During the Revolutionary War, the United Colonies all pledged to ban their involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. This was done for a variety of economic, political, and moral reasons depending on the colony. After the American victory in 1783, South Carolina reopened its involvement in the slave trade until prohibiting it again in 1787, but then reopened it in 1803; while North Carolina allowed the trade beginning after the Treaty of Paris until abolishing its involvement in slave trading in 1794; and Georgia allowed the slave trade between 1783, until it closed its international trade in 1798. By 1807, only South Carolina allowed the Atlantic slave trade.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: On March 22, 1794, Congress passed the Slave Trade Act of 1794, which prohibited making, loading, outfitting, equipping, or dispatching of any ship to be used in the trade of slaves, essentially limiting the trade to foreign ships. On August 5, 1797, John Brown of Providence, Rhode Island, became the first American to be tried in federal court under the 1794 law. Brown was convicted and was forced to forfeit his ship . In the 1798 act creating the Mississippi Territory, Congress allowed slaves to be transferred from the rest of the United States to Mississippi Territory, and exempted the territory from the part of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance that abolished slavery in the Northwest Territory (modern-day Midwest) after 1800. However, the same act also abolished the importation of slaves to the Mississippi Territory from "foreign parts" (foreign nations). The penalty for illegally importing slaves from abroad to the territory was a fine of $300. In the Slave Trade Act of 1800, Congress outlawed U.S. citizens' investment in the trade, and the employment of U.S. citizens on ships involved in the trade.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: On March 3, 1805, Joseph Bradley Varnum submitted a Massachusetts Proposition to amend the Constitution and Abolish the Slave Trade. This proposition was tabled until 1807.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: On December 2, 1806, in his annual message to Congress, widely reprinted in most newspapers, President Thomas Jefferson denounced the "violations of human rights." He said:


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: Under Varnum's leadership legislation moved through Congress and passed both houses on March 2, 1807. The House and Senate agreed on a bill, approved on March 2, 1807, called "An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eight." The measure also regulated the coastwise slave trade. President Thomas Jefferson signed the bill into law on March 2, 1807. Many in Congress believed the act would doom slavery in the South, but they were mistaken.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: The role of the Navy was expanded to include patrols off the coasts of Cuba and South America. The effective date of the Act, January 1, 1808, was celebrated by Peter Williams, Jr., in "An Oration on the Abolition of the Slave Trade" delivered in New York City.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: While there are no exact figures known, historians estimate that up to 50,000 slaves were illegally imported into the United States after 1808, mostly through Spanish Florida and Texas, before those states were admitted to the Union. However, South Carolina Governor Henry Middleton estimated in 1819 that 13,000 smuggled African slaves arrived every year.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: The act outlawing the slave trade in 1808 furnished another source of demand for fast vessels, and for another half century ships continued to be fitted out and financed in this trade by many a respectable citizen in the majority of American ports. Newspapers of the fifties contain occasional references to the number of ships sailing from the various cities in this traffic. One account stated that as late as 1859 there were seven slavers regularly fitted out in New York, and many more in all the larger ports.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: In 1820, slave-trading became a capital offense with an amendment to the 1819 Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy. A total of 74 cases of slaving were brought in the United States between 1837 and 1860, "but few captains had been convicted, and those had received trifling sentences, which they had usually been able to avoid". Nathaniel Gordon, who was hanged in 1862, was the only person to be executed for illegal slave-trading in the United States.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: In addition, after the 1808 abolition of the slave trade to the United States, many Americans continued to engage in the slave trade by transporting Africans to Cuba. From 1808 to 1860, almost one-third of all slave ships were either owned by American merchants, or were built and outfitted in American ports. It is possible that U.S. citizens "may have transported twice as many Africans to other countries such as Cuba and Brazil as they did to their own ports".


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: The US Navy was slow to institute anti-slaving patrols off the slave ports of Africa—it was not until the 1820 legislation that authority was given to the president to use naval vessels for this task. Even then, enforcement activity was sporadic and largely ineffective. The US position meant that many slave ships from other countries falsely flew the American flag to avoid being seized by British anti-slaving patrols. The first US warship sent to the African coast to intercept US vessels operating in the illegal trade was the USS "Cyane". A total of 5 US Navy ships were on station there in 1820 and 1821, arresting 11 American slavers. No further US anti-slaver patrols were carried out until 1842, and then with limited effectiveness due to political pressure from the slave-owning states. The Atlantic slave trade was not ended until the American Civil War, when American built and managed ships were prevented from operating.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: In the South, the Fire-Eaters—antebellum pro-slavery extremists—proposed repealing the act and once more legalizing the international slave trade in the United States. Historian Erskine Clarke writes that this call "was a shameless expression of their contempt for any antislavery sentiment and a part of their stratagem to divide the nation and create a slaveholding confederacy. Among other things, the Fire-Eaters hoped that a reopened international slave trade would incense the North, and that Northern outrage would cause white Southerns to unite and move toward secession."


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: In addition to whipping up sectional tensions, Fire-Eaters advocated the reopening of the slave trade in order to drive down the price of slaves; to balance the millions of European immigrants who had settled in the North and maintain Southern representation in Congress; and assert the morality of slavery: "Slave trading had to be made right, otherwise slavery was imperiled." Fire-Eaters essentially desired to "legitimize the slave trade in order to make the point that both slavery and the African slave trade were morally acceptable practices"—a view intended to be precisely opposite that of the abolitionists, who affirmed the immorality of both slavery and the slave trade. The view alarmed even pro-slavery figures, such as former President John Tyler, who in retirement wrote a widely republished letter condemning the Fire-Eaters' call to abrogate article 8 of the Webster–Ashburton Treaty (which barred the slave trade). Tyler noted that the South had voted to ratify the treaty.


title: Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves

text: Slavery and the cotton economy boomed during the 1850s, and cotton prices were resurgent after a decline in the 1840s. This in turn drove up the price of slaves, which led to further pressure to re-open the slave trade to meet demand or bring prices down. Not all Southerners felt this way however, as the high price of slaves benefitted slave owners and slave merchants. But the general sentiment called for a re-opening of the trade, as a logical extension of the support of slavery. Southerners reasoned that if slavery was good, then putting more people into slavery must also be good, and that if trading slaves in the South was okay, then trading them from Africa must also be okay. Conventions of Southern planters repeatedly called for the trade to re-open. This of course was a non-starter in Congress. There were also attempts from state legislatures to allow the importation of "apprentices" from Africa, but without success. When trying to repeal the slave act failed, some turned to simply ignoring it. Notable cases during the 1850s included slaves smuggled aboard the "Wanderer" and the "Clotilda".


title: Christianity in Iran

text: Christianity in Iran dates back to the early years of the religion during the time of Jesus, predating Islam. The Christian faith has always comprised a minority in Iran under its previous state religions; initially Zoroastrianism in historical Persia, followed by Sunni Islam in the Middle Ages after the Arab conquest, and Shia Islam since the Safavid conversion of the 15th century; although it had a much larger representation in the past than it does today. Iranian Christians have played a significant part in the historical Christian mission: currently, there are at least 6000 churches and 380,000–1,500,000 Christians in Iran.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: A number of Christian denominations are represented in Iran. Many members of the larger and older churches belong to minority ethnic groups, with the Armenians and Assyrians having their own distinctive culture and language. The members of the newer and smaller churches are drawn both from the traditionally Christian ethnic minorities and converts from a non-Christian background.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: According to Operation World, there are between 7,000 and 15,000 members and adherents of the various Protestant, Evangelical, and other minority Christian denominations in Iran, though these numbers are particularly difficult to verify under the current political circumstances.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: The International Religious Freedom Report 2004 by the U.S. State Department quotes a somewhat higher total number of 300,000 Christians in Iran, and states that the majority of these Christians are ethnic Armenians followed by ethnic Assyrians.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: The "Country Information and Guidance: Christians and Christian Converts, Iran" report published in December 2014 by the U.K. Home Office states that there are 370,000 Christians in Iran.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: According to the "Acts of the Apostles" there were Persians, Parthians and Medes among the first new Christian converts at Pentecost. Since then there has been a continuous presence of Christians in Iran.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: During the apostolic age Christianity began to establish itself throughout the Mediterranean. However, a quite different Semitic Christian culture developed on the eastern borders of the Roman Empire and in Persia. Syriac Christianity owed much to preexistent Jewish communities and to the Aramaic language. This language had been spoken by Jesus, and, in various modern Eastern Aramaic forms is still spoken by the ethnic Assyrian Christians in Iran, northeast Syria, southeast Turkey and Iraq today (see Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, and Senaya language).


title: Christianity in Iran

text: From Persian-ruled Assyria (Assuristan), missionary activity spread Eastern-Rite Syriac Christianity throughout Assyria and Mesopotamia, and from there into Persia, Asia Minor, Syria, the Caucasus and Central Asia, establishing the Saint Thomas Christians of India and erecting the Nestorian Stele and the Daqin Pagoda in China.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: Early Christian communities straddling the Roman-Persian border found themselves in the midst of civil strife. In 313, when Constantine I proclaimed Christianity a tolerated religion in the Roman Empire, the Sassanid rulers of Persia adopted a policy of persecution against Christians, including the double-tax of Shapur II in the 340s. The Sassanids feared the Christians as a subversive and possibly disloyal minority. In the early-5th century official persecution increased once more. However, from the reign of Hormizd III (457–459) serious persecutions grew less frequent and the Persian church began to achieve a recognized status. Through the Battle of Avarayr (451) and the resultant treaty of 484, for example, the Persian Empire's numerous Armenian subjects gained the official right to profess Eastern Christianity freely. Political pressure within Persia and cultural differences with western Christianity were mostly to blame for the Nestorian schism, in the course of which the Roman Empire church hierarchy labelled the Church of the East heretical. The bishop of Ctesiphon (the capital of the Sassanid Empire) acquired the title first of catholicos, and then patriarch, completely independent of any Roman/Byzantine hierarchy.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: Some regard Persia as – briefly – officially Christian. Khosrau I, Shahanshah from 531 to 579, married a Christian wife, and his son Nushizad was also a Christian. When the king was taken ill at Edessa a report reached Persia that he was dead, and at once Nushizad seized the crown and made the kingdom Christian ( 550). Very soon the rumour proved false, but persons who appear to have been in the pay of Justinian persuaded Nushizad to endeavour to maintain his position. The actions of his son deeply distressed Khosrau; he had to take prompt measures, and sent the commander, Ram Berzin, against the rebels. In the battle which followed Nushizad was mortally wounded and carried off the field. In his tent he was attended by a Christian bishop, probably Mar Aba I, the Patriarch of the Church of the East from 540 to 552. To this bishop Nushizad confessed his sincere repentance for having taken up arms against his father, an act which, he was convinced, could never win the approval of Heaven. Having professed himself a Christian he died, and the rebellion was quickly put down.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: Many old churches remain in Iran from the early days of Christianity. Some historians regard the Assyrian Church of Mart Maryam (St. Mary) in northwestern Iran, for example, as the second-oldest church in Christendom after the Church of Bethlehem in the West Bank. A Chinese princess, who contributed to its reconstruction in 642 AD, has her name engraved on a stone on the church wall. The famous Italian traveller Marco Polo also described the church following his visit.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: The Arab Islamic conquest of Persia, in the 7th century, originally benefited Christians as they were a protected minority under Islam. However, from about the 10th century religious tension led to persecution once more. The influence of European Christians placed Near Eastern Christians in peril during the Crusades. From the mid-13th century, Mongol rule was a relief to Persian Christians until the Ilkhanate adopted Islam at the turn of the 14th century. The Christian population gradually declined to a small minority. Christians disengaged from mainstream society and withdrew into ethnic ghettos (mostly Assyrian- Aramaic- and Armenian-speaking). Persecution against Christians revived in the 14th century; when the Muslim warlord of Turco-Mongol descent Timur (Tamerlane) conquered Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Asia Minor, he ordered large-scale massacres of Christians in Mesopotamia, Persia, Asia Minor and Syria. Most of the victims were indigenous Assyrians and Armenians, members of the Assyrian Church of the East and of Orthodox Churches.


title: Christianity in Iran

text: In 1445 a part of the Assyrian Aramaic-speaking Church of the East entered into communion with the Catholic Church (mostly in the Ottoman Empire, but also in Persia). This group had a faltering start but has existed as a separate church since Pope Julius III consecrated Yohannan Sulaqa as "Chaldean Patriarch of Babylon" in 1553. Most Assyrian Catholics in Iran today are members of the Chaldean Catholic Church. The Aramaic-speaking community that remains independent is the Assyrian Church of the East. Both churches now have much smaller memberships in Iran than the Armenian Apostolic Church.