title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: On December 30, Russians brought 6 mortars from Mecingirt and started hitting Turkish positions with them. Colonel Bukretov couldn't take Turks in the village prisoner due to strong resistance of Turks and fires of other Turkish troops from hills to the north of the Upper Sarikamish for 3 days. Fire of mortars drove back Turkish troops in hills to north of the Upper Sarikamish. Russians placed the demolition mold they brought from Castle of Kars on the roof of the nearest hut and blew up this hut. All of the Turkish soldiers in the hut were killed. The Turkish soldiers who saw this explosion in the other hut surrendered. While the Russians give the number of surrendered soldiers as 300, the Turkish side says this number as 20. Since the number of prisoners taken from the Turks until January 2 was 3,000, it appears that the Russian sources exaggerated the amount of prisoners they took. The Russians, who claimed to take 300-400 soldiers every day from the XI Corps alone, should have taken more than 3000 prisoners from the 11th Corps alone on January 2.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: Attack of the 32nd Division and the 82nd Regiment, which lasted for 4 days, was able to be repelled by 5 Turkestan battalions with 6 battalions of reinforcements. 32nd Division and 82nd Regiment, which started the attack with 7000 soldiers, decreased to 500 soldiers on 30 December due to snowstorm and desertion of soldiers. Number of IX Corps in Sarıkamish had decreased to 1000 soldiers. Number of X Corps was also around 2000. Therefore, commander of IX Corps, Ali İhsan Pasha, wrote to Enver Pasha in his report that we should abandon offensive and IX Corps could reach 10,000 after 10 days of recovery. Two days later, Hafız Hakkı Pasha also informed Enver Pasha that X Corps could reach 10,000 soldiers by gathering fugitives.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: While a withdrawal order was expected on 31 December, Enver Pasha's general attack order for X Corps was met with astonishment. Although X Corps was able to penetrate the enemy's first lines in this attack, the last attack towards Sarıkamish, which was withdrawn due to heavy machine gun fire and counter-attacks from the rear lines, also ended in failure.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: On January 1, IX Corps, which consisted of 900 soldiers, most of whom were wounded and with their hands and feet frozen, was reduced by half due to the Russian attacks against both the 28th Division defending Bardız Pass and the 29th and 17th Divisions. The 17th Division machine gun company were engaged until all its soldiers were killed and its machine guns was taken back by a squad of soldiers sent from the rear.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: For a few days, Enver Pasha had been implying that you should leave IX Corps, which was surrounded by Russians and was likely to be destroyed, at least Ottoman Minister of War should not be captured by Russians. Enver Pasha refused these proposals, saying that he would die with soldiers. At the end, IX Corps chief of staff, whom Enver Pasha trusted a lot, Şerif İlden told Enver Pasha that no success could be expected from IX and X Corps, and that by using XI Corps, which was the last combat power, the IX and X Corps can be saved. Although Enver Paşa ordered the discovery of the roads for the withdrawal, he ordered the troops to wait in their positions. If the withdrawal order had been given now, IX Corps could have been saved.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: Convincing General Bergmann with difficulty, who was still thinking of withdrawing to Kars against Turks on 30 December, Yudenich recommended that Bergmann move to Sarıkamish on 31 December and start an annihilation operation against Turkish forces besieging Sarikamish. General Bergmann lastly took 154th Derbenski Regiment from Yudenich, thus only 19 battalions remained under command of General Yudenich against Turkish XI Corps and 32nd Division. Fortunate for Yudenich, XI Corps and 32nd Division didn't attack against his detachment. Russians concentrated 7 battalions from Kars and 4 battalions of the 2nd Paston Brigade and 14 Cossack cavalry sotni (≈100) from Yudenich's troops to encircle and destroy IX and X Corps, whose total strength had decreased to 3000 soldiers on 31 December.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: On 31 December, arrival of 154th Derbenski regiment brought by Bergmann in person, carried the active fighting strength available to 7000 men.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: Colonel Bukretov took 6 battalions of reinforcements from General Przevalski to his detachment and attacked Bardız Pass, which defended by 28th Division and 86th Regiment. Number of soldiers on Turkish side decreased from 700 on 31 December to 150 soldiers on January 2. After this fierce offensive, in Colonel Bukretov's detachment, only 800 soldiers remained fit for the line out of 6 battalions. On 31 December, after the 32nd Division retreated against Colonel Dovgirt, General Prezavski took 3 Turkestan battalions from Dovgirt. Colonel Maslannikov, who was replaced after Bukretov's resignation, captured the Bardız Pass on January 2 with the reinforcement of these 3 Turkestan battalions. After the capture of the Bardız Pass, IX Corps was completely surrounded by Russians, and after 3 days of Russian offensive, on January 3, the total number of the IX Corps decreased to 104 soldiers and 106 officers.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: On January 2, X Corps' number had decreased to 1000–1200. On January 1–3, X Corps attacked by 7 battalions brought from Kars and Sarıkamish garrison and successfully repelled these attacks.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: Enver Pasha set off for Divik, where the X Corps is located, at dusk on January 2. After inspecting the X Corps, he saw that the situation of the X Corps was not different from that of the IX Corps, and on January 3, the Russian attacks on Divik were stopped with about 100 soldiers gathered as a result of their personal efforts. With order he gave on the evening of January 2, he united IX and X Corps under a single command under the name of the Left Flank Army and appointed Hafız Hakkı Bey as the Commander of the Left Flank Army and promoted to Brigadier General. By choosing path of Allahu Ekber, Hafız Hakkı Bey caused X Corps to be devastated in snowstorm. However, Enver Pasha trusted daring character of Hafız Hakkı Pasha, who was his classmate from War College, and made him the commander of IX and X Corps. Hafız Hakkı Pasha appointed as the 3rd Army Commander by Enver Pasha 5 days later.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: On January 3, Sarikamish was over-crowded by 12.000 sick and wounded Russians and 3.000 Turkish prisoners. After General Bergmann had sent prisoner groups to Kars, he ordered that arrangements be made for the wounded to be transported to Kars immediately by loading them on both transport arms and weight cars. According to this enormous crowd of 15,000 people, Hafız Hakkı Pasha thought that Russians were evacuating Sarikamish. This mistake had caused him to keep his army one more day in mountains north of Sarikamish.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: On January 4, Russians began a general offensive. After putting up a fierce resistance, IX Corps surrendered to Russians with 80 soldiers and 106 officers. At that time, Hafız Hakkı Pasha was in talks with the officers of the IX Corps to inspect IX Corps. He managed to avoid being captured by Russian troops by getting on his horse and escaping to X Corps under a rain of bullets.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: X Corps succeeded in increasing its number highly by assembling deserters. On January 4, X Corps, which was attacked by forces in Sarıkamish addition to General Baratov's detachment, was able to resist Russians even though its right flank was broken, and it did not suffer disaster experienced by the IX Corps. Hafız Hakkı Pasha withdrew X Corps on night of January 4–5, and despite being constantly followed by the Russians, he saved all army's equipment and reached Bardız on January 6. On January 6, 30th and 31st Divisions consisted of 2,500 rifles and 16 cannons.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: Enver Pasha left X Corps on morning of January 4. Army headquarters was attacked by 8-10 Cossack cavalries on the road, and the Cossack cavalry was dispersed by counterfire of the army headquarters. As a result of this fire, Bronsart Pasha, chief of staff of Enver Pasha, was wounded in his arm and a telegraph communications officer was wounded in his foot. Enver Pasha reached Bardız towards noon, which was in the hands of the 32nd Division, towards noon. Enver Pasha ordered the 32nd Division to unite with the XI Corps to attack the Russians in order to relief IX Corps, which he was not aware of its captivity, and retreating 10th Corps. 32nd Division could not attack due to fog on 4 January. Colonel Abdülkerim Bey, the commander of the 32nd Division, declared in his report that his division’ number increased from 500 soldiers to 4300. This shows that the most casualties in the Sarikamish Operation were due to desertions. Abdükerim Bey began his offensive on January 5. On January 6, as a result of the 2-day offensive, number of the 32nd Division was again reduced to 1500 soldiers. Infantry regiment left by X Corps against General Istomin on December 26, before entering Allahu Ekber Mountains, had also reduced to 2000 soldiers. From IX and X Corps, which had a total number of 68.000 soldiers at the beginning, only this force, which did not even reach 10.000, remained.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: In the report he sent to Enver Pasha on 5 January, Galip Pasha, the commander of the XI Corps, requested 2 more days, citing the losses suffered by his Corps. As a result of the insistence of Enver Pasha on January 6, the offensive started and no success could be achieved except for the Russian forces being pushed back a little. Today, Enver Pasha received the report from Hafız Hakkı Pasha that IX Corps was destroyed and remnants of X Corps were gathered in Bardız.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: Şerif İlden, who served as chief of staff of IX Corps in this battles, wrote in his memoirs that battle would most likely be won by Turks if Enver Pasha and Hafız Hakkı Pasha had not caused army to lose 80 percent of its number by giving forced marches orders on 25–26 December. Russians, who stated that they won the battle with great difficulty by fighting every day for 9 days, also confirm Ilden's claim. However, due to these wrong decisions made by Enver and Hafız Hakkı Pasha, this battle resulted in a complete disaster for Turks.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: Enver Pasha, who was afraid that front would collapse with counterattack of the Russians, ordered V Corps of 1st Army, which was in Üsküdar on January 5, to move quickly to Caucasus to reinforce 3rd Army. Liman Von Sanders, who was the commander of the 1st Army at that time, wanted to keep this Corps against a possible British attack on Istanbul and with help of the German Embassy, he managed to prevent V Corps from being sent.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: "Since the last hope of success was ended in this way and Enver Pasha was not allowed to stay away from Istanbul permanently, he left the army with his men on January 9, and İsmail Hakkı Bey [Hafız Hakkı Pasha] appointed to commander of 3rd army, by promoting him to the pasha [brigadier general] ”.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: General Yudenich sent 34 battalions (1st and 2nd Plaston brigades (12 battalions), 3rd Caucasian Rifle Brigade (8 battalions) due to the cessation of the battles and 20th Infantry Division (14 battalions) Muratoff wrote 43 battalions, a typo it seems) sent to Crimea to support European front. After that, they took about 100,000 people from their reserves in a short time and formed an additional 17 battalions, as well as replenishing existing units that were reduced in Winter Campaign. By summer, number of Russian army reached 130.000, 35.000 cavalry and 340 guns. At that time, the Turks had a total of 52,351 soldiers and 131 cannons but in battles in summer, Turks defeated Russians.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: Although X Corps managed to escape from Russian encirclement, 3rd Army, whose number did not exceed 20.000 soldiers (XI Corps had 10.000 rifles on January 8 by receiving 5.000 soldiers reinforcement from Erzurum Garrison), was attacked and followed by Russians on all fronts. Due to scarcity of number and fatigue of soldiers, there were defeats in many parts of front and many prisoners were left. The detachment, which was left on the Oltu-Merdenek road, was attacked by General Kalitin detachment (18 cavalry sotnis and 3 battalions of 3rd Plaston Brigade), which was reinforced by 2 battalions of 263rd Regiment and the Caucasian Cossack Division (Cavalry). and Oltu, which was captured by Turks on 23 December, was recaptured by the Russians 3 weeks later on January 13. X Corps, which was attacked by Russians in the center, retreated from Bardız to Narman, and XI Corps to east of Azap. From January 18, Russian offensive stopped, and until April, calm began on the front.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: Russian losses were up to 30,000: 16,000 killed and wounded and 12,000 sick/injured, mostly due to frostbite.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: Although Hafız Hakkı Pasha and German Lieutenant Colonel Guse, who were commanders during the battles that took place December 22 - January 18, recorded their losses as low (Hafız Hakkı Pasha gives 30,000 deaths, Lieutenant Colonel Guse gives 2 numbers: 11,000 deaths, 3,500 prisoners and 30,000 deaths, 27,000 prisoners), if we look at the total manpower available to the Turkish army before and after the battle, total casualties stand at 109,108. 10,000 soldiers sent from Erzurum as reinforcements should be added to this number of casualties.


title: Battle of Sarikamish

text: It seems that casualties in the winter campaign were due not to deaths in the first days of the battle, but due to an increase in epidemic disease cases that increased in the following days. Hunger and combat fatigue resulting from an inability to provide food due to snow-covered roads further increased the death rate as a result of epidemic. The number of deaths from typhus in the Turkish army was higher than the number of deaths in battle.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The MDA Labor Day Telethon was an annual telethon held on (starting the night before and throughout) Labor Day in the United States to raise money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). The Muscular Dystrophy Association was founded in 1950 with hopes of gaining the American public's interest. The show was hosted by comedian, actor, singer and filmmaker Jerry Lewis from its 1966 inception until 2010. The history of MDA's telethon dates back to the 1950s, when the "Jerry Lewis Thanksgiving Party for MDA" raised funds for the organization's New York City area operations. The telethon was held annually on Labor Day weekend beginning in 1966, and raised $2.45 billion for MDA from its inception through 2009.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The telethon would broadcast for up to 21 hours, starting on the Sunday evening preceding Labor Day and continuing until late Monday afternoon on the holiday itself. MDA called its network of participating stations the "Love Network". The show originated from Las Vegas for 28 of the years it was broadcast. Beginning in 2011 (and coinciding with Lewis' departure) MDA radically reformatted and shortened the telethon's format into that of a benefit concert, shortening the length of the special each successive year. The 2011 edition was seen on the Sunday evening before Labor Day for six hours. This edition was syndicated to approximately 160 television stations throughout the United States on September 4, 2011.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Nigel Lythgoe, Jann Carl, Alison Sweeney and Nancy O'Dell were brought on as co-hosts and shared hosting duties for the 2011 edition. Successive telethons from 2012 to 2014 ran under the new title MDA Show of Strength and further reduced the show's airtime. The 2012 edition aired on Sunday, September 2, 2012; the job of renaming the new show was given to MDA's advertising agency E.B. Lane (now LaneTerralever). Executive creative director Mark Itkowitz came up with the name MDA Show of Strength, and it quickly gained internal approval. The 2012 edition was reduced to three hours as a primetime-only broadcast. The telethon aired at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time, and was seen live in the Eastern and Central time zones. The 2012 edition did not refer to itself as a "telethon."


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The 2013 "Show of Strength" discontinued the long-standing format of being syndicated to individual stations of varying network affiliation and aired on major national network, ABC on Sunday, September 1, 2013, and running two hours. The final edition aired on ABC on August 31, 2014, again as a two-hour special, beginning at 9PM ET/PT. It was announced on May 1, 2015, that the MDA would discontinue the annual event. The MDA would revisit the national telethon concept on October 24, 2020, with a new social media-based telethon, "The MDA Kevin Hart Kids Telethon".


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Jerry Lewis began hosting telethons to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Associations of America (MDAA) in 1952 after a plea from a staff member who worked with Lewis and Dean Martin on "The Colgate Comedy Hour". Lewis had previously taken part in what has been described as the very first telethon, a marathon 1951 broadcast benefiting a cardiac hospital that was organized by Budd Granoff, which featured the Martin and Lewis comedy team, who were his clients at that time.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The MDAA benefit broadcasts first originated from a variety of locations in New York City in 1954, as local telethons seen exclusively on WABD (later WNEW-TV and now WNYW) or WABC-TV, who would donate their broadcast time for the event. Lewis would host several four-hour shows in the New York area and elsewhere to benefit MDAA and promote the battle against muscular dystrophy during the later 1950s and early 1960s. By the mid-1960s, the success of those shows convinced MDAA to stage a telethon to support MDA's New York efforts, with Lewis agreeing to host the big event when approached by the organization.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: According to the MDA's website, on December 28, 1951, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis concluded their popular NBC show with a special appeal to support muscular dystrophy research. MDA's website additionally states that the second national appeal was during its January 4, 1952 network radio program.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: MDA's website lists five early local MDA telethons: Cleveland on March 7, 1952; Atlanta on June 6 and 7, 1952; Washington, D.C. on December 26 and 27, 1952; Grand Rapids, Michigan, on June 27 and 28, 1953; and Madison, Wisconsin on September 12 and 13, 1953. These telethons did not star or feature Jerry Lewis, but were hosted by other stars such as Dick Van Dyke, Robert Alda, Virginia Graham, and Al Hodge in character as Captain Video.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: On June 29 and 30, 1956, Martin and Lewis hosted an MDAA telethon called "The Martin and Lewis Roundup", live from Carnegie Hall. The pair ended their comedy partnership a month later, and Lewis was named national chairman of MDAA later that year. Lewis went on to host Thanksgiving Day telethons in 1957 and 1959.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: By the mid-1960s, organizers of the telethon chose Labor Day weekend to stage their event, as it was the only time frame made available to hold it. Many, however, expected the Labor Day broadcast would fail, as many people would have traveled out of town and/or be away from their television sets during the holiday weekend; even New York City officials were skeptical that it would succeed, which made them reluctant to issue a fund-raising permit to the MDAA, though one would indeed be granted at the urging of Robert Ross, MDAA's then-Executive Director.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The first "MDA Labor Day Telethon" was held the weekend of September 4 and 5, 1966. Broadcast by local independent station WNEW-TV, the event was staged at New York's Americana Hotel, with a stage featuring a talk show-style desk and seating area for Lewis and performers, a performance area for a 19-piece jazz band, phone banks, and a large tote board to keep track of donations received. Proving the doubters wrong, the event was so successful that Lewis had to climb a ladder and paint a seventh digit, a "1," on the six-digit tote board when the final total reached $1,002,114. The show repeated its success in 1967, raising $1,126,846.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Emboldened by positive word of mouth generated from the telethon's success in attracting both donations and celebrity appearances, the event's organizers would seek out a wider audience in 1968 by offering a live broadcast to stations outside the New York City market. Before that, however, approval needed to be gained from the Theater Authority, an organization that represented theatrical-related talent unions whose permission was required before their membership could perform at benefits, such as telethons, without reimbursement. MDAA would gain the Theater Authority's permission and proceed to form a family of stations that would later be billed as "The Love Network." Joining WNEW-TV in that 1968 telecast were:


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Buoyed by the Love Network's reach, the 1968 Labor Day Telethon would generate $1,401,876 in donations. Though the original intent was for the stations to carry the entire 1968 telethon broadcast, breaking only for mandatory station identifications, WHEC-TV chose to break away for a few minutes every hour to show Rochester area volunteers taking donation calls. As a result, WHEC-TV generated more proceeds than the other Love Network stations. With WHEC's move, the "local cutaway" was born: from that point forward, every "Telethon" broadcast granted local stations cutaway time, usually five or ten minutes per hour, to allow local celebrities, volunteers, and sponsors to highlight fundraising efforts and the services MDAA provided at the local level, with the intention of building local goodwill toward MDAA, its local chapters, and the Love Network stations. The cutaways would become an integral part of every MDAA Telethon broadcast during its syndication run, an approach later duplicated by other nationally-syndicated charitable telethons.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: By 1970, the "MDA Labor Day Telethon" was seen nationwide on 64 stations, including the addition of Los Angeles and San Francisco stations to the Love Network roster, making the 1970 event the first telethon seen from coast to coast. Proceeds from the 1970 event totaled $5,093,385. The show continued to gain popularity and major stars through the next two years, helped in part by the Theater Authority permanently lifting its ban on nationwide telethon performances by its members in 1970 (at the MDA's appeal).


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: In 1973, with 150 Love Network stations in tow, the telethon moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, where it originated at the Sahara Hotel. That year, Lewis explained the mission of the MDA with his comment: "God goofed, and it's up to us to correct His mistakes." The 1973 telethon was also when the event broke the $10 million mark for the first time (the final tote being $12,395,973). Co-host Ed McMahon made an on-air prediction that donations would surpass $10 million (one digit more than the seven digits the Solari tote board could accommodate); at the moment it did, he came on stage to tell Lewis, "I have a brush, and I have some paint..." and Lewis repeated his 1966 stunt by painting a "1" on the board, this time punctuating it by wiping the paintbrush up and down the front of his tuxedo in celebration. An additional Solari number flipper would be added the next year, allowing a display of under $100 million.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: In 1976, the Love Network grew to a peak of 213 stations, effectively making it America's fourth major television network, if only for 21 hours. The 1976 telethon was also perhaps the most memorable one in the MDA's history, highlighted by the emotional reunion of Jerry and his former partner, Dean Martin, arranged by frequent telethon guest and mutual friend Frank Sinatra. It was the first time Martin and Lewis were seen together publicly since they separated their act in 1956. The 1976 telethon also was one of the most-watched, drawing more than 85 million viewers, according to the A.C. Nielsen ratings service.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: During the telethon's Las Vegas years in the 1970s and 1980s, the show originated at the Sahara until 1982 when it moved to a bigger space at Caesars Palace. The show continued there until 1989 when it originated from the Cashman Center in Las Vegas – the only time it was broadcast from a Las Vegas-area venue that was not a hotel and the first time it originated from a venue physically located within the city of Las Vegas itself. Lewis always anchored the entire broadcast which ran 21 hours ever since 1973. That said, in 1983 he rested for a few hours offstage, having undergone cardiac-bypass surgery the year before, but he returned to full force in 1984. In 1986, the telethon had a three-way live simulcast during the 8:30 a.m. half-hour, including "Today" on NBC and "Good Morning America" on ABC. In 1990, the telethon originated from the Aquarius Theater in Los Angeles, then returned to Las Vegas and the Sahara Hotel until 1995 when it moved again to Southern California, to CBS Television City for nine years and then in 2005 to Beverly Hills. In 1998, MDA's all-star landmark show became the first to be broadcast on the Internet by RealNetworks on the association's website. During this time, Lewis would get annoyed when local station cut-ins would come back late or when WGN-TV would pre-empt part of the telethon for a Chicago Cubs game.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: After the telethon, the site featured a special highlights reel of the telethon for that year. Lewis still continued to host at least 16 hours of his telethon until 1999 (a year when he would have various medical issues), where he would appear for the first five hours and the last five hours of the telecast, with an extended pre-recorded segment presented during late-night hours, and other celebrities filling in for Lewis and Ed McMahon during the morning hours. Co-hosts have included talk show host Larry King, comedians Norm Crosby, Elayne Boosler, Bob Zany, television personalities Chad Everett, David Hartman, Casey Kasem, Jann Carl, Leeza Gibbons, John Tesh, veteran singers Tony Orlando, Julius LaRosa (who began co-hosting for Lewis from remote locations in 1975), and many others.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The telethon returned to Las Vegas in 2006 at the South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa (which was the "South "Coast"" its first year there), a complex owned by a friend of Lewis, Michael Gaughan, and remained there through the 2011 telethon. In 2007, Lewis caused a stir when he used a gay slur during the 18th hour of the telethon apparently believing his microphone was off. Lewis later apologized. In 2009, the telethon extended its coverage to social media, with followers on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube receiving additional information and behind-the scenes material. Beginning in 2010, viewers could also text their pledges for an automatic $10 donation, aside from texting charges. Through 2010, the national segments of the telethon were not broadcast in high definition, though some stations broadcast their local segments in HD. The 2010 edition was syndicated to approximately 190 Love Network affiliates throughout the United States.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: On October 6, 2010, the MDA announced that the telethon would be trimmed back considerably, to six hours, beginning with the 2011 edition televised on September 4, 2011. This new version of the telethon, broadcast from 6 p.m. to 12 midnight local time on the Sunday preceding Labor Day only, was in response to lagging donations, stations showing only part of the telethon or dropping it altogether, and the less-than-stellar talent in recent telethons – as well as Lewis, whose career as a film star and comedian, was dwindling, was now in his mid-80s and devoting less and less time appearing on-air due to his age and health. The telethon, seen live in the Eastern Time Zone and tape-delayed in the rest of the country, was revamped in order to attract more stations to the Love Network (which had shrunk from its peak of 213 stations in 1976 to 190 in 2010), as well as to attract more top celebrities and talent to the show, resulting in more viewers and donations. The other aspects of the telethon, such as corporate donations, stories from those who relied on the MDA's help, and local segments, remained, though local segments were restricted to two 7- to 8-minute segments every hour. Stars featured in the first short-form version included Lady Antebellum, Martina McBride and Darius Rucker, in pre-taped segments from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, the judges of "American Idol" (Jennifer Lopez, Steven Tyler, and Randy Jackson), Celine Dion, Jon Secada, Tommy Emmanuel, Richie Sambora, Jimmy Webb, Michael Feinstein, Maureen McGovern, Jordin Sparks and Greyson Chance. The 2011 telethon was the first edition to broadcast the national segments in high definition; the broadcast of local segments in HD remained optional for the station.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: On May 16, 2011, it was first announced by the MDA that the 2011 edition of the telethon would be Lewis' last as host, and that he would continue his role as MDA's National Chairman, still appearing at the close of each telethon, to sing his signature closing song, "You'll Never Walk Alone". In a press conference with the Television Critics Association's summer press tour in late July 2011, Lewis denied that he ever said it would be his last telethon, would not elaborate on his role in the current telethon (stating that it was "none of your business"), and announced he would indicate his future plans the day after the telethon broadcast, citing "I will have plenty to say about what I think is important." At the same conference, Lewis criticized the reality television shows his telethon co-hosts were involved in – Lythgoe's "American Idol", which Lewis said featured contestants who were "McDonald's Wipeouts"; and Sweeney's "The Biggest Loser", a series which Lewis claims is about contestants "knocking their brains out trying to see how we beat the fat lady at 375 pounds, and in four months she's going to be 240. Who cares? It's ridiculous."


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The MDA announced on August 3, 2011, that Lewis had "completed his run" as both host and national chairman, effective immediately, and that Lewis would not appear in the 2011 telethon. The wording of the release left it ambiguous whether he had been fired or if he had resigned. The MDA also confirmed that Lythgoe, O'Dell, Sweeney, and Carl, all slated to be co-hosts under Lewis, would share hosting duties; the MDA would leave the position of national chairman unfilled. Numerous celebrities came out in support of Lewis and opposed to his dismissal from the MDA shortly after it was announced; Lewis himself was mostly silent about the issue, saying that the controversy is "very difficult to get into." On August 21, 2011, the "Las Vegas Review-Journal" released a report stating that the MDA reinstated Lewis as host of the telethon; however, Lewis' publicist denied that report. The following day, on August 22, 2011, the "Review-Journal" retracted the report, saying that Lewis had not been invited back to the telethon; the source close to Lewis said that the MDA had "reconciled" with Lewis, not "reinstated" Lewis.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: In addition, admission to the telethon by the general public was severely restricted, due to the cut in the length of the telethon, and the cut in the length of the local segments; in previous years, the telethon used the local segment time to swap audiences. Most of the attending audience members were representatives and invited guests of sponsors and major donors.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Despite Lewis' departure and anything that took place backstage, the 2011 telethon's hosts paid tribute to Lewis with a one-minute montage of clips of him hosting the telethon over the years. During the presentation, the hosts said that Lewis "retired" from his position as host.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Following the telethon, Lythgoe commented that he was sorry that Lewis did not take part, but that the show had to move on to ensure its survival, and added that he was welcome to make an appearance on the telethon anytime, saying that the annual event was "his baby." Lythgoe also said that the orchestra had contingency plans in place in the event Lewis did show up, either live or pre-recorded, to sing his signature song, "You'll Never Walk Alone", but never showed up at the venue. Lewis' publicist Candy Cazau would not comment to the Associated Press about contingency plans, but had said earlier that Lewis did not agree to make any appearances on the show. The song used at the close of the show was "God Bless America", sung by a large children's choir, all the hosts and performers from the show, following renditions of "America the Beautiful", "Strike Up the Band", and "The Stars and Stripes Forever".


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: On February 10, 2012, the MDA announced that the 2012 edition would be cut to three hours (from six hours the previous year), airing during primetime on Sunday, September 2, 2012, still syndicated to the Love Network stations. The 2012 edition, renamed the "MDA Show of Strength" (moving away from its heritage as a telethon), was executive-produced by R. A. Clark, a producer and son of Dick Clark. The show was also seen first-run in the Atlantic, Eastern and Central time zones at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT, with the special tape-delayed in the Western time zones at 8 p.m. PT/7 p.m. MT. The venue segments and hosts varied, depending on the local networks airing it. The majority of the pre-produced performances were taped in Los Angeles and New York City, airing on various broadcast and cable channels in 150 markets around the United States. While there was not a traditional tote board tallying donations from local hosts in their respective cities, the overall event urged national phone, text and website pledges toward funding efforts to find treatments and cures for neuromuscular diseases.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Performers and guest appearance included Brandy, Maryse Ouellet, The Miz, Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan, Tim McGraw, Lou Ferrigno, Eva Simons, Max Adler, Paula Abdul, Khloé Kardashian, Alison Sweeney, Diana DeGarmo and B.o.B, among others. Additional guests appearing in pre-recorded segments from CBS Television City in Hollywood, taped August 7 to August 9, 2012, included OneRepublic, Brandy, The All American Rejects, Hot Chelle Rae, Karmin, will.i.am, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Silhouettes, Carole King, Reagan Imhoff, Pitbull, Gavin DeGraw and Alanis Morissette, among others. Portions with country artists were recorded at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The majority of the program was pre-recorded. "Entertainment Tonight" co-anchor Nancy O'Dell and KKGO (Los Angeles) deejay Shawn Parr introduced the majority of national segments. For the second straight year, the show closed with a different song. Carole King performed her song "You've Got A Friend" with a montage of the featured patients with muscular dystrophy in her background. The local segments were also mainly pre-recorded, and check presentations from companies which sponsored MDA were replaced by public service announcements from those companies, which, in previous years, had often been part of the presentations.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: On June 17, 2013, the MDA announced on Twitter that the "Show of Strength" would air on Sunday, September 1, 2013. For the first time, the show aired nationally on ABC, in effect bringing an end to the Love Network of individual stations (the majority of which were ABC affiliates). The show was cut from three hours to two, airing beginning at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The local segments were discontinued (phone pledges were accepted solely through a national toll-free number, instead of being collected directly by each station for the individual local or regional chapters of the MDA). The 2013 edition was the first to be broadcast with commercial interruption, although breaks consisted primarily of promos for ABC shows and local advertisements on ABC's stations, however many stations carried spots mentioning donations made by corporate entities during the breaks.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The show included appearances by Darius Rucker, Lee Ann Womack, Austin Mahone, Backstreet Boys, Enrique Iglesias, Ryan Seacrest, Paula Abdul, Matthew Morrison, Vintage Trouble, Kenny Loggins and the Blue Sky Riders, Chris Mann, Jessica Sanchez, Jann Carl, Florence Henderson, Bart Conner, Nadia Comăneci, Dr. Richard E. Besser, and Jabbawockeez. Performances were taped in early August at CBS Television City in Los Angeles. The show also featured the 2012 performances from Luke Bryan, Carole King, and Pitbull.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The show's theme song was the instrumental from "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" by Kelly Clarkson. For the third straight year, the show ended with a different number; this time, with a performance of Bill Withers's "Lean On Me", led by Jessica Sanchez and Chris Mann featuring MDA patients and families present at the show's taping.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The 2014 edition aired on Sunday, August 31, on ABC. Taping for the 2014 Show took place during May and June 2014, at the Palladium in Los Angeles and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. It is the earliest time of recording for the telethon in show history.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Performers included Jason Derulo, Fall Out Boy, Rascal Flatts, Jordin Sparks, R5, Bret Michaels, Sara Evans, LeAnn Rimes, Aloe Blacc, Matt Nathanson, and American Authors. Others who appeared were Kesha, Ludacris, Brad Paisley, Laila Ali, Nancy O'Dell, Alyssa Milano, Kevin Frazier, Terry Fator, Victor Ortíz, Dr. Richard E. Besser, Josh Groban, Chip Esten, Tom Bergeron, Chris Powell and Susan Lucci.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: One of the main themes of the show was the organization's partnership with the International Association of Firefighters, who celebrated their 60th anniversary in supporting MDA, mainly through their annual "Fill the Boot" campaign. IAFF General President Harold Schaitberger announced on the show that the IAFF has donated over $561 million to the MDA over the 60 years, including $28 million for this year's show.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: This year's show closed with a tribute to the firefighters, with LeAnn Rimes performing her song "Give".


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: On May 1, 2015, MDA announced that the 2014 "Show of Strength" would be the telethon's last broadcast. In announcing the end of the telethon's 49-year run, MDA President and CEO Steven Derks noted the move was influenced by "the new realities of television viewing and philanthropic giving", noting the viral success of the Ice Bucket Challenge that built awareness and funds to combat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Instead, MDA will focus on "new, creative and organic ways" to raise support for the organization and its mission, including mobile and digital media.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: In 2016, Lewis broke a five-year silence by appearing in an online video endorsing MDA's redesigned web site, declaring that the work MDA started must go on. It would turn out to be his final MDA appearance, as he passed away on August 20, 2017 at the age of 91.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Following the cancellation of the national telethon, some stations continued the tradition producing local telethons, bringing such use in full circle, as the MDA telethon originated as a local program. One of these include former Love Network affiliate KSDK in St. Louis, Missouri, which began broadcasting their own telethon in 2017 under the "MDA Show of Strength" name, following the cancellation of the ABC telethon; KSDK's telethon was produced as a benefit on behalf of the MDA's St. Louis chapter. Unlike the telethons of years past, KSDK's telethon was only 90 minutes in length as of its 2020 edition, which aired Sunday, September 6, 2020 from 10:30 p.m. to 12 midnight CDT.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: On September 9, 2020, MDA's national executives announced plans for a global, multi platform streaming broadcast, titled "The MDA Kevin Hart Kids Telethon". The new two-hour telethon featured comedian Kevin Hart as host of the program. Unlike traditional telethons, which were broadcast via television stations and networks, the "MDA Kids Telethon" was broadcast only through social media platforms. Coinciding with several weeks of charity gaming events entitled "MDA Let’s Play For A Cure", the first telethon was seen October 24, 2020 at 8 p.m. EDT. This was MDA's resumption of a national telethon since its final broadcast edition in 2014, and the first transmitted exclusively online (the last several years of the telethon during the Love Network years were simulcast both on standard television and online, beginning in 1998). The telethon was a dual-charity event, with proceeds going towards both MDA and Hart's own charity, "Help From The Hart", which used their portion of funds raised to "support education, health and social needs programs targeting under-served communities and servicing youth through education scholarships".


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Ed McMahon was Lewis' longtime co-host. McMahon began his involvement with the telethon in 1968 and every year since then participated in some way. Early in 1973, Lewis asked McMahon to be his co-host for the entire show – his right hand man – and so the pair united and never separated. Similar to his regular position as announcer and sidekick of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson", McMahon was Lewis' announcer, voicing the intros and outros of each segment, welcoming corporate and charitable sponsors with their donations, and calling for a roll of a timpani drum for each million dollar mark passed on the tote board (Johnny Carson himself, a longtime friend of Lewis, surprised viewers by opening the 1970 telethon with a "Tonight Show"-style monologue while Lewis stood backstage – a role that Carson repeated in 1971 and 1972, until the telethon moved to Las Vegas). McMahon, borrowing from Carson's prognosticating character "Carnac the Magnificent", also made predictions on what the final total of funds raised would be, and from 1970 though 1979, he was spot on many years, missing by as little as thousands of dollars, considering the final tallies. The practice was abandoned after the 1982 telethon raised $2 million less than the previous year (which Lewis attributed to the severe 1980–1982 recession that had gripped the U.S.). The trend of taking a break during the telethon was started in 1985 by McMahon. Much like his role with Carson, McMahon would co-host only when Lewis was hosting, with his duties as co-host filled in by others when Lewis was away. McMahon died June 23, 2009. The 2009 edition of the telethon paid tribute to McMahon with a special video tribute narrated by Lewis, which played during the first hour of the show. Following the tribute, Lewis introduced McMahon's wife, Pamela, who was in the audience. During the telethon for that year, Jann Carl assumed McMahon's duties during Lewis's hours on-air, while Shawn Parr billboarded the start and end of each segment.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: For most of its run, the telethon ran live for 21 hours, ending at 6:30 p.m. ET on Labor Day Monday. During the 2000s, the telethon would end its national segments shortly before 6 p.m. ET, with any remaining time going to the local stations. In recent years, more "Love Network" stations opted not to show the entire telethon, opting to join the show in progress after the 11 p.m. / 10 p.m. local news, or even on Labor Day morning, after the network morning shows.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: In 2010, the last year of the full-length telethon, the telethon ran live for 20 hours, from 9 p.m. ET to 5:30 p.m. ET, though the actual start and end times varied by station. However, the MDA still considered 21 hours as the official length of the telethon, turning over the final hour, from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. ET to its affiliate stations for local wrap-ups (some stations would elect to end at 6 or 7 p.m. ET instead (or even later), depending on the option of the station).


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: On September 4, 2011, the telethon was shortened to six hours, and broadcast from 6 p.m. to 12 midnight local time in each time zone, with stations in the Eastern and Atlantic Time Zones broadcasting the event live. However, as with the previous format, some stations scheduled the telethon as they saw fit – in the case of Chicago's WGN-TV, the 2011 telethon was scheduled from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. ET (5 p.m. to 12 midnight CT), with the first hour produced locally. In addition, some network affiliates would delay the telethon to start later than 6 p.m., so that their evening newscasts and some of their network shows, such as CBS's "60 Minutes", would be seen as normally scheduled.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The telethon was again shortened in 2012, from six to three hours. Though intended to be aired at 8 p.m. in the Eastern Time Zone, at least one Eastern Time station, WMAZ-TV in Macon, Georgia, broadcast the "Show of Strength" from 9 p.m. to midnight.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Some stations broke from the coverage during the afternoon of Labor Day to show sports, such as CBS' coverage of the US Open, and subsequently beginning in 2007 NBC Sports covering the Deutsche Bank Championship. One such station is WGN-TV, which, from the 1970s to 2012, pre-empted the afternoon segment of the telethon for Chicago Cubs or Chicago White Sox baseball (except for the 1994 telethon, due to the baseball strike). Meanwhile, in Seattle, KING-TV delayed the afternoon segment of the 1984 telethon because of a telecast of an NFL game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Cleveland Browns, in which NBC only aired limited coverage of the game. The game was to have taken place the day before (September 2, 1984), but the Seattle Mariners were scheduled to face the Baltimore Orioles that day.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: In another case, some used a sister station affiliated with either The CW or MyNetworkTV or was an independent station to show the telethon start, and/or air the station's network programming while the telethon station continued to air the telethon; this was the case with CBS affiliate WDJT-TV in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and its independent sister station WMLW-CA, which in 2007 aired the first four hours of the telethon during CBS prime time, then aired U.S. Open coverage on Labor Day to allow WDJT to carry the telethon. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, WPXI carried the telethon, while sending NBC's coverage of the Deutsche Bank Championship golf tournament to independent station WBGN-LP.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: While the 2011 reformat resolved sports conflicts on Labor Day itself by ending before the actual holiday, the telethon was still subject to delays the night before in some areas. On September 4, 2011, right before 6 p.m., the Baltimore Grand Prix was scheduled on ABC, Deutsche Bank Championship golf on NBC, and U.S. Open tennis on CBS. WGN carried a Pirates-Cubs game that was scheduled to end before 5:30 p.m. ET, though it could have run over if extra innings, long innings or rain delays were involved.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: In 2012, the Philadelphia Phillies game against the Atlanta Braves ran late on MyNetworkTV affiliate WPHL-TV in Philadelphia. The show was shown in its entirety immediately after the game ended. The show in Philadelphia started around 8:40 p.m.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: In some markets, no local station carried the telethon for various reasons. In some cases, the MDA would refuse to renew a contract with a station, leaving a market with no Love Network affiliate if another station was not found in time. During the last year of the old telethon format, 2010, one example was KAME-TV in Reno, Nevada, which was dropped by the MDA that year, due to economic conditions and a decrease in pledges. Other notable markets with no Love Network affiliate in 2010 included Dothan, Alabama; Sioux City, Iowa; Yuma, Arizona; Bakersfield, California; Augusta, Georgia; Rockford, Illinois; Tupelo, Mississippi; Lincoln, Nebraska; Greensboro, Greenville and Wilmington, North Carolina; and the Tennessee Tri-Cities.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Viewers in these markets could watch a simulcast of WGN-TV's broadcast of the telethon nationally on its WGN America superstation feed (which included the local telethon segments featuring WGN-TV personalities) or the telethon's broadcast on a television station in a neighboring market, as well as online from MDA's site. In some areas, satellite television and the internet were the only ways to view the telethon, as WGN America is not seen in all areas, and many cable systems carry only stations within their own market.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: All ABC affiliates carried the telethon beginning in 2013. Since the telethon was available in all markets with an ABC affiliate, the number of markets where the broadcast was not available was greatly reduced. The WGN America simulcast was discontinued because WGN-TV, then a CW affiliate, was no longer broadcasting the show. It previously had been pre-empting the later hours of the telethon for Chicago Cubs games.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: While the new telethon format in 2011 was designed to attract new stations and markets into the Love Network fold, the MDA still found itself dropping some stations, resulting in a net shrinkage of the network to just over 150 stations – its smallest size since 1973. In May 2011, the MDA dropped WABI-TV in Bangor, Maine from the Love Network after 30 years, citing potential economic costs resulting from the new format. The move left WGME-TV in Portland as the only Love Network affiliate for the state of Maine, which is not available on Time Warner Cable in most parts of the Bangor market. In addition to Bangor, stations in Mobile, Alabama; Pensacola, Florida; Santa Barbara, California; Panama City, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; Terre Haute, Indiana; Alpena and Traverse City, Michigan; Austin, Minnesota; Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Paducah, Kentucky; Utica, New York; San Angelo, Texas; Bluefield, Clarksburg and Wheeling, West Virginia; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and the entire states of Mississippi, North Dakota, and Vermont were also dropped from the Love Network fold, with no replacement. This is in addition to markets that did not carry the telethon in 2010, in which no stations were added in these areas in 2011.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The new format had also led to the telethon being moved to other stations, due to scheduling conflicts – longtime Love Network station KXAS-TV in Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas, announced that it would no longer carry the telethon, due to the station being an NBC owned-and-operated station, and the fact that the telethon would be pre-empting NBC's Sunday night schedule (which was otherwise in reruns that year). Independent station KTXA picked up the telethon and used personalities from CBS-owned sister station KTVT for local segments.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Other new Love Network affiliate changes included WITI replacing WDJT-TV in Milwaukee (thus returning to the station that had originally aired the event); WNCF replacing WAKA in Montgomery, Alabama; KOCB replacing KWTV-DT in Oklahoma City; KICU-TV replacing sister station KTVU in San Francisco; KZJO replacing sister station KCPQ in Seattle, Washington; KXMN-LP replacing KSKN in Spokane, Washington; WNYF-CD replacing WWNY-TV in Watertown, New York; and KXXV replacing KWTX-TV in Waco, Texas (KBTX-TV in Bryan, however, still carried the telethon until it moved to KRHD-CD in 2013 as a result of the telethon's move to ABC).


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: For the 2012 "Show of Strength", the MDA dropped KODE-TV in Joplin, Missouri from the Love Network in May, stating that the market was too small for the event (KODE-TV would air the 2013 telethon as part of the broadcast's move to a network-televised broadcast on ABC). In nearby Springfield, Missouri, KSPR broadcast the show after years of telethon coverage by KOLR. In addition, KTLA in Los Angeles replaced KCAL-TV. Meanwhile, in Seattle, KCPQ returned to the Love Network fold, replacing sister station KZJO, after that station carried the 2011 telethon.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Through the 1980s, there were also Canadian "Love Network" affiliates, whose telethon presentations there benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Canada (MDC), an organization unrelated to the American MDA, but used Lewis' U.S. telethon for fundraising. The telethon also helped launch a new station – in Winnipeg, CKND-TV's first program on August 31, 1975 was the MDA telethon. The telethon was also the last program for the station that CKND-TV replaced: KCND-TV in Pembina, North Dakota, which simulcast CKND's coverage.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The final Canadian-based local broadcasts of the telethon aired from Ottawa in 2001 on area community television channels. After this, MDC officials cancelled the local broadcasts, claiming the move was done in order to save costs. The Ottawa broadcasts were first hosted by CFRA radio's Ken Grant, who expressed concern that there would be fewer donations due to the loss of local broadcast features. Ottawa's telethon broadcasts were conducted for 31 years, most of which originated from the Skyline Hotel (later known as the Citadel Inn).


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: After the Ottawa edition ended in 2001, no Canadian station or network aired the telethon since then, though it was available on cable and satellite from WGN-TV (through the superstation feed until 2007, then from the station's Chicago area signal thereafter), as well as from border U.S. stations (such as WMYD in Detroit/Windsor). This continued to be the case after the telethon's move to ABC, with the program seen on ABC stations in cities near the Canada–U.S. border that are available over-the-air and on cable and satellite (such as WKBW-TV in Buffalo, New York, KOMO-TV in Seattle and WXYZ-TV in Detroit), the broadcast aired free from simultaneous substitution, as no Canadian station or network carried it.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: As of 2011, Muscular Dystrophy Canada continued to operate pledge call centers during the telethon to collect Canadian donations.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Through 2010, the corporate donation segments of the telethon occasionally mentioned their Canadian donors, and WGN's telethon included a number for Canadians to call to make a pledge, 1-800-567-CURE, which connects to the pledge center in Toronto. In 2010, WGN's telecast also included a texting address for Canadian viewers to text in their pledges to MDC for an automatic $10 donation, aside from texting charges; this coincided with the MDA's launch of their own text-to-pledge service. Most border stations would also show either the local pledge number for the Canadian portion of their viewing area (as WMYD did), or the national Canadian number.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: When the MDA reformatted the telethon in 2011, it no longer allowed its border Love Network affiliates to display any pledge numbers for Canadian viewers. However, the MDC still had a pledge line open, but only on Labour Day itself, with the MDC relying on other ways to get the message out.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: A French-language telethon for MDA Canada was televised in Quebec concurrently with the American show in the late-1980s on the Radio-Québec network (now Télé-Québec); first televised in 1987, this telethon was hosted by entertainer Michel Louvain.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: In Puerto Rico, WKAQ-TV presents their own local telethon for MDA, "Sentimiento Telemaratón", generally broadcast the first or second Sunday after Labor Day, usually from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Atlantic Time. As with the English version, the telethon features local and international celebrities, plus information on the organisation, the diseases and the people that rely on MDA's help. Despite the changes in the English-language version, WKAQ will continue the long-form format of their version of the telethon. While WKAQ does not show the Labor Day telethon, it was considered by the MDA as part of the Love Network.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Telethon tote board pledges for 2004 were down nearly 2%, to $59,398,915 (from $60,505,234 in 2003). Hurricane Frances had struck through most of the Florida peninsula late on September 5, during the telethon, significantly reducing pledges from the southeast United States. As many Florida stations devoted their air-time to coverage of Hurricane Frances, most Love Network stations in Florida cancelled the local segments of the telethon and either aired only parts of the telethon, moved the telethon to a digital subchannel, or did not broadcast the telethon at all. On a Saturday afternoon in early December 2004, some Florida Love Network stations showed a special three-hour telethon, as a way to recoup some of the lost pledges. Telethon pledges were down another 7.5%, to $54,921,586 in 2005 due to significant Hurricane Katrina disaster relief efforts in New Orleans and throughout the region in 2005. That year, Jerry and his guests urged telethon viewers to also give donations to The Salvation Army and the American Red Cross.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The MDA itself donated $1 million to the Salvation Army for hurricane relief efforts. Prior to the hurricane-affected results of 2004 and 2005, the only other time the telethon raised less than the previous year was in 1982 ($28,400,000), during the recession of the early 1980s. One source said, however, that it was due to Jerry sitting out most of the telethon, due to his heart attack earlier (even though the heart attack did not occur until December of that year). However the next year – 1983, the telethon succeeded again in raising more money than its previous year and by 1984 was back to its record breaking pace. In 2006, the final tote board tally was $61,013,855 as five major regional stations knocked out during the previous telecast came back online. It was the first time since 2003 that the telethon raised more money than the previous year. In 2007, the telethon again raised more than any previous year, closing the show with tote board pledges totaling $63,759,478.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: On Labor Day in 2008 (September 1), Hurricane Gustav struck the coast of Louisiana. Some Love Network affiliates in the affected area cancelled the telethon for safety and informational purposes. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, the local telethon segments on WNOL-TV were also postponed, with WGNO, the local producer (as well as WNOL's sister station) urging those wanting to give to do so through "the national telethon". Nationally, Jerry Lewis mentioned Hurricane Gustav and wished those in the affected area, especially his "kids", luck.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Neither he nor his guests made pleas for donations to The Salvation Army, contrary to a press release that said he would, although guest host Tom Bergeron did make a plea for donations to the Salvation Army during his hosting stint on the morning of September 1, as Gustav made landfall. However, with less than 10 minutes remaining in the 2008 telethon, the tote board update reflected an increase from the 2007 total, racking up $65,031,393 in donations, exceeding 2007's tote. Lewis had spoken about his concern at not making his goal of "one dollar more" due to economic conditions and Hurricane Gustav. When the tote board updated to show they'd gotten over 2007's total, he screamed three times, "I got it!" On Labor Day 2009 (September 7, 2009), the telethon only raised $60,481,231 in pledges, more than 2005, but lower than the final 2003 results. Lewis mentioned that the effects of the downfall of the American economy may have played a role in that year's shortfall, but was still amazed by the amount amassed nevertheless. In addition, no hurricanes threatened the United States around Labor Day weekend that year.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The 2010 telethon saw a further reduction by several million dollars. The final tote was $58,919,838. Lewis noted, "I'm heartened by the unique ability of Americans to help others in need, when they themselves are likely struggling financially."


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: "The New York Times" wrote in 1992 that "some people with muscular dystrophy .. are criticizing (Lewis) for what they call his 'pity' approach.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: The Jerry Lewis Telethon had one goal—to raise as much money possible for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and to do this the telethon predominantly featured young children leading to the campaign slogan "Save Jerry’s Kids." In addition to the criticism of the use of disabled people as a fundraising tool, critics argue that focusing the public's attention on medical cures to "normalize" people with disabilities fails to address issues like providing accessible buildings, transportation, employment opportunities and other civil rights for people with disabilities. The picture that was painted with ""Jerry’s Kids"" pulled at the heartstrings of millions of viewers, and in return accomplished the goal of earning as much money as possible. One individual who was previously a ""poster child"" for Lewis explained that since two-thirds of people with MD are adults, yet the telethon solely promoted children, it did not fully represent the real lives of people who lived with MD.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: A group named Jerry's Orphans, formed by former Jerry's Kid Mike Ervin, protested the telethon in 1991 and 1992 and criticized the small percentage of MDA's funding going to supporting people with muscular dystrophy, the use of pity by the telethon, and the lack of disabled representation in the MDA. They made a documentary about this in 2005.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Criticisms against Jerry Lewis himself revolved around Lewis valuing disabled children as "poster children," yet ignoring those same "poster children" as they grow up and need genuine help rather than pity. Lewis' 1990 "If I Had Muscular Dystrophy" essay,


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: published in "Parade", Jerry Lewis imagines himself as an adult with MD. He writes, "I decided after 41 years of battling this curse that cripples children of all ages, that I would put myself into that chair, that steel imprisonment that has long been deemed the dystrophic child's plight." His statement "I realize my life is half, so I must learn to do things halfway. I just have to learn to try to be good at being half a person…" was rejected by some, like Chris Matthews, cofounder of ""Jerry’s Orphans"", who in 1992 rallied a group to protest that year’s telethon in 16 different cities


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Another criticism was that only 30% of the money MDA raises in a year comes from the telethon, which proves that they can feasibly provide help without objectifying the subjects of that help. Former poster child Cindy Jones said "No other symbols of disability play up pity more than charity telethons and their poster children."


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Evan Kemp Jr., an adult with muscular dystrophy, claimed that "By arousing the public's fear of the handicap itself, the telethon makes viewers more afraid of handicapped people. Playing to pity may raise money, but it also raises walls of fear between the public and us." Kemp, a White House official, was accused by an MDA official who has had muscular dystrophy since age 8, of "making a 'vicious attack' on the association and 'misusing the power of his Government office' in attacking the charity."


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Professor Christopher Smit has argued that the MDA Telethon operated as present-day equivalent to the historical American freak shows which ran during the height of their popularity in the United States from 1840 to 1940.


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Smit backpedals, cautioning the importance of delineating differences between freak shows and the motivations of the MDA: "MDA distributes monies among patients in need of new wheelchairs and scientists working to cure MD itself. Put succinctly, the MDA event is charitable, while the traditional freak show is personal-profit oriented."


title: The Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon

text: Longmore, Paul K. (2016). "Telethons: Spectacle, Disability, and the Business of Charity."Oxford: Oxford University Press.


title: Funny Lady

text: Funny Lady is a 1975 American biographical musical comedy-drama film and the sequel to the 1968 film "Funny Girl". The film stars Barbra Streisand, James Caan, Omar Sharif, Roddy McDowall and Ben Vereen.


title: Funny Lady

text: Herbert Ross, who helmed the musical sequences for "Funny Girl", replaces William Wyler and the screenplay written by Jay Presson Allen and Arnold Schulman, based on a story by Schulman, is a highly fictionalized account of the later life and career of comedienne Fanny Brice and her marriage to songwriter and impresario Billy Rose. The primary score was by John Kander and Fred Ebb.


title: Funny Lady

text: Although contractually bound to make one more film for producer Ray Stark (Fanny Brice's one-time son-in-law), Streisand balked at doing the project. She told Stark "that it would take litigation to make her do a sequel." However, Streisand liked the script, which showed Fanny to be "...tougher, more acerbic, more mature...", and she agreed.


title: Funny Lady

text: The first to read for Billy Rose was Robert Blake. Other actors were mentioned, including Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, but ultimately James Caan was chosen. Streisand explained: "It comes down to whom the audience wants me to kiss. Robert Blake, no. James Caan, yes."


title: Funny Lady

text: Stark, unhappy with the scenes shot by original cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, lured an ailing James Wong Howe out of retirement to complete the film. It proved to be his final project, and it earned him an Academy Award nomination.


title: Funny Lady

text: Studio executives forced Ross to trim the film to a manageable 136 minutes before release. Much of Vereen's performance ended up on the cutting room floor, together with a recreation of Brice's "Baby Snooks" radio show and dramatic scenes involving her and her daughter.


title: Funny Lady

text: In addition to Howe, Oscar nominations went to Ray Aghayan and Bob Mackie for Best Costume Design, Kander and Ebb for Best Original Song ("How Lucky Can You Get?"), Peter Matz for Best Scoring of an Original Song Score and/or Adaptation, and the sound team. Streisand, Caan and Vereen all received Golden Globe Award nominations, as did Kander and Ebb and the film itself, but it was shut out of any wins in both competitions.


title: Funny Lady

text: "Funny Lady" opened Wednesday, March 12, 1975 and grossed $2,254,3851 in its first five days from 111 theatres to be number one at the US box office. It went on to gross $40,055,897 at the U.S. and Canadian box office, making it the seventh highest grossing picture of 1975.


title: Funny Lady

text: The film received mixed to negative reviews from critics. It holds a rating of 29% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 14 reviews.


title: Funny Lady

text: Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" wrote, "As long as Miss Streisand as Fanny is singing the blues, or singing anything else, "Funny Lady" is superb entertainment, but the minute she stops the movie turns into a concrete soufflé. It's heavy and tasteless ... Moments meant to be dramatic are embarrassingly bad."


title: Funny Lady

text: Roger Ebert gave the film 1 star out of 4 and called it "a big, messy flop of a movie that's almost cruel in the way it invites our memories of "Funny Girl" and doesn't match them." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" awarded 2.5 stars out of 4 and wrote, "It takes few chances and delivers mostly what you'd expect ... What was missing, for me at least, was a sense of surprise, of unpredictability—the sort of wit or pacing that separates a memorable musical like "Cabaret" from the merely tuneful."


title: Funny Lady

text: Pauline Kael of "The New Yorker" wrote, "Streisand is in beautiful voice, and her singing is terrific—too terrific. It's no longer singing, it's something else—that strident overdramatization that turns a song into a big number. The audience's attention is directed away from the music and onto the star's feat in charging it with false energy. Streisand is out to knock you cold, and you get cold, all right." Kael also criticized the plot as "right out of those terrible forties movies in which couples who break up spend a lifetime thinking about each other, with encounters every five or ten years. And we get a double load of it here, with two graying ex-husbands."


title: Funny Lady

text: Arthur D. Murphy of "Variety" wrote, "Barbra Streisand was outstanding as the younger Fanny Brice in "Funny Girl", and in "Funny Lady" she's even better ... However much of a letdown the plot becomes, there's no denying the superior integration of drama, comedy, show music and personal dramatic music en route."


title: Funny Lady

text: Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote, "Barbra Streisand, like the picture, extends the characterization she launched so dazzlingly in "Funny Girl" ... What I find most impressive and likable about the performance is the softened, bittersweet maturity that Streisand lets us see in Fanny Brice. You sense that Streisand understands the star as well as she understood the impetuous young hopeful. An extraordinary presentation is the power and delight of both movies." Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" called it a "lavish but uninspired" film that "seems to be celebrating stardom for stardom's sake. It's a joyless, mechanical Big Movie Musical."


title: Funny Lady

text: The soundtrack peaked on the "Billboard" Album Chart at number 6 and was certified gold. A majority of the songs were written by Kander and Ebb.


title: Armigerous clan

text: An armigerous clan (from armiger) is a Scottish clan, family or name which is registered with the Court of the Lord Lyon and once had a chief who bore undifferenced arms, but does not have a chief currently recognised as such by Lyon Court. Before 1745 all chiefs had arms; however, not all of these are recorded in the "Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland", which was established in 1672.


title: Armigerous clan

text: In Scottish heraldry, only chiefs or heads of clans, families, or names bear undifferenced arms. A clan is considered a "noble incorporation" because a clan chief is a title of honour in Scotland and the chief confers his or her noble status onto the clan. Because armigerous clans do not have such chiefs, they are not recognised as noble communities and have no legal standing under Scots law.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: The practice of mass surveillance in the United States dates back to wartime monitoring and censorship of international communications from, to, or which passed through the United States. After the First and Second World Wars, mass surveillance continued throughout the Cold War period, via programs such as the Black Chamber and Project SHAMROCK. The formation and growth of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA institutionalized surveillance used to also silence political dissent, as evidenced by COINTELPRO projects which targeted various organizations and individuals. During the Civil Rights Movement era, many individuals put under surveillance orders were first labelled as integrationists, then deemed subversive, and sometimes suspected to be supportive of the communist model of the United States' rival at the time, the Soviet Union. Other targeted individuals and groups included Native American activists, African American and Chicano liberation movement activists, and anti-war protesters.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: The formation of the international UKUSA surveillance agreement of 1946 evolved into the ECHELON collaboration by 1955 of five English-speaking nations, also known as the Five Eyes, and focused on interception of electronic communications, with substantial increases in domestic surveillance capabilities.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Following the September 11th attacks of 2001, domestic and international mass surveillance capabilities grew immensely. Contemporary mass surveillance relies upon annual presidential executive orders declaring a continued State of National Emergency, first signed by George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 and then continued on an annual basis by President Barack Obama. Mass surveillance is also based on several subsequent national security Acts including the USA PATRIOT Act and FISA Amendment Act's PRISM surveillance program. Critics and political dissenters currently describe the effects of these acts, orders, and resulting database network of fusion centers as forming a veritable American police state that simply institutionalized the illegal COINTELPRO tactics used to assassinate dissenters and leaders from the 1950s onwards.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Additional surveillance agencies, such as the DHS and the position of Director of National Intelligence, have exponentially escalated mass surveillance since 2001. A series of media reports in 2013 revealed more recent programs and techniques employed by the US intelligence community. Advances in computer and information technology allow the creation of huge national databases that facilitate mass surveillance in the United States by DHS managed fusion centers, the CIA's Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) program, and the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Mass surveillance databases are also cited as responsible for profiling Latino Americans and contributing to "self-deportation" techniques, or physical deportations by way of the DHS's ICEGang national database.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: After World War I, the US Army and State Department established the Black Chamber, also known as the Cipher Bureau, which began operations in 1919. The Black Chamber was headed by Herbert O. Yardley, who had been a leader in the Army's Military Intelligence program. Regarded as a precursor to the National Security Agency, it conducted peacetime decryption of material including diplomatic communications until 1929.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: In the advent of World War II, the Office of Censorship was established. The wartime agency monitored "communications by mail, cable, radio, or other means of transmission passing between the United States and any foreign country". This included the 350,000 overseas cables and telegrams and 25,000 international telephone calls made each week. "Every letter that crossed international or U.S. territorial borders from December 1941 to August 1945 was subject to being opened and scoured for details."


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: With the end of World War II, Project SHAMROCK was established in 1945. The organization was created to accumulate telegraphic data entering and exiting from the United States. Major communication companies such as Western Union, RCA Global and ITT World Communications actively aided the project, allowing American intelligence officials to gain access to international message traffic. Under the project, and many subsequent programs, no precedent had been established for judicial authorization, and no warrants were issued for surveillance activities. The project was terminated in 1975.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: President Harry S. Truman established the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1952 for the purposes of collecting, processing, and monitoring intelligence data. The existence of NSA was not known to people as the memorandum by President Truman was classified.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: When the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI published stolen FBI documents revealing abuse of intelligence programs in 1971, Senator Frank Church began an investigation into the programs that become known as the Church Committee. The committee sought to investigate intelligence abuses throughout the 1970s. Following a report provided by the committee outlining egregious abuse, in 1976 Congress established the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It would later be joined by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 1978. The institutions worked to limit the power of the agencies, ensuring that surveillance activities remained within the rule of law.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed The Patriot Act to strengthen security and intelligence efforts. The act granted the President broad powers on the war against terror, including the power to bypass the FISA Court for surveillance orders in cases of national security. Additionally, mass surveillance activities were conducted alongside various other surveillance programs under the head of President's Surveillance Program. Under pressure from the public, the warrantless wiretapping program was allegedly ended in January 2007.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Many details about the surveillance activities conducted in the United States were revealed in the disclosure by Edward Snowden in June 2013. Regarded as one of the biggest media leaks in the United States, it presented extensive details about the surveillance programs of the NSA, that involved interception of Internet data and telephonic calls from over a billion users, across various countries.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: 1947: The National Security Act was signed by President Truman, establishing a National Security Council.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: 1949: The Armed Forces Security Agency was established to coordinate signal operations between military branches.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: 1952: The National Security Agency (NSA) was officially established by President Truman by way of a National Security Council Intelligence Directive 9, dated Oct. 24, while the NSA officially came into existence days later on Nov. 4. According to "The New York Times", the NSA was created in "absolute secrecy" by President Truman, whose surveillance-minded administration ordered, only six weeks after President Truman took office, wiretaps on the telephones of Thomas Gardiner Corcoran, a close advisor of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The recorded conversations are currently kept at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, along with other documents considered sensitive (≈233,600 pages).


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Institutional domestic surveillance was founded in 1896 with the National Bureau of Criminal Identification, which evolved by 1908 into the Bureau of Investigation, operated under the authority of the Department of Justice. In 1935, the FBI had grown into an independent agency under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover whose staff, through the use of wire taps, cable taps, mail tampering, garbage filtering and infiltrators, prepared secret FBI Index Lists on more than 10 million people by 1939.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Purported to be chasing 'communists' and other alleged subversives, the FBI used public and private pressure to destroy the lives of those it targeted during McCarthyism, including those lives of the Hollywood 10 with the Hollywood blacklist. The FBI's surveillance and investigation roles expanded in the 1950s while using the collected information to facilitate political assassinations, including the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in 1969. FBI is also directly connected to the bombings, assassinations, and deaths of other people including Malcolm X in 1963, Viola Liuzzo in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash in 1976, and Judi Bari in 1990.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: As the extent of the FBI's domestic surveillance continued to grow, many celebrities were also secretly investigated by the bureau, including:


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: 1967–73: The now-defunct Project MINARET was created to spy on U.S. citizens. At the request of the U.S. Army, those who protested against the Vietnam War were put on the NSA's "watch list".


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: 1975: The Church Committee of the United States Senate was set up to investigate widespread intelligence abuses by the NSA, CIA and FBI. Domestic surveillance, authorized by the highest executive branch of the federal government, spanned from the FDR Administration to the Presidency of Richard Nixon. The following examples were reported by the Church Committee:


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: In response to the committee's findings, the United States Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, which led to the establishment of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was authorized to issue surveillance warrants.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Several decades later in 2013, the presiding judge of the FISA Court, Reggie Walton, told "The Washington Post" that the court only has a limited ability to supervise the government's surveillance, and is therefore "forced" to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided by federal agents.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church stated on NBC's "Meet the Press" without mentioning the name of the NSA about this agency:


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: In 1988 an article titled "Somebody's listening" by Duncan Campbell in the "New Statesman" described the signals-intelligence gathering activities of a program code-named "ECHELON". The program was engaged by English-speaking World War II Allied countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States (collectively known as AUSCANNZUKUS). It was created by the five countries to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and of its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: By the 1990s the ECHELON system could intercept satellite transmissions, public switched telephone network (PSTN) communications (including most Internet traffic), and transmissions carried by microwave. The New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager provided a detailed description of ECHELON in his 1996 book "Secret Power". While some member governments denied the existence of ECHELON, a report by a committee of the European Parliament in 2001 confirmed the program's use and warned Europeans about its reach and effects. The European Parliament stated in its report that the term "ECHELON" occurred in a number of contexts, but that the evidence presented indicated it was a signals-intelligence collection system capable of interception and content-inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data-traffic globally.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: James Bamford further described the capabilities of ECHELON in "Body of Secrets" (2002) about the National Security Agency. Intelligence monitoring of citizens, and their communications, in the area covered by the AUSCANNZUKUS security agreement have, over the years, caused considerable public concern.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: In the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, bulk domestic spying in the United States increased dramatically. The desire to prevent future attacks of this scale led to the passage of the Patriot Act. Later acts include the Protect America Act (which removes the warrant requirement for government surveillance of foreign targets) and the FISA Amendments Act (which relaxed some of the original FISA court requirements).


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: In 2002, "Total Information Awareness" was established by the U.S. government in order to "revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists".


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: In 2005, a report about President Bush's President's Surveillance Program appeared in "The New York Times". According to reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, the actual publication of their report was delayed for a year because "The White House asked "The New York Times" not to publish this article".


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Also in 2005, the existence of STELLARWIND was revealed by Thomas Tamm. In 2006, Mark Klein revealed the existence of Room 641A that he had wired back in 2003. In 2008, Babak Pasdar, a computer security expert, and CEO of Bat Blue publicly revealed the existence of the "Quantico circuit", that he and his team found in 2003. He described it as a back door to the federal government in the systems of an unnamed wireless provider; the company was later independently identified as Verizon.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: The NSA's database of American's phone calls was made public in 2006 by "USA Today" journalist Leslie Cauley in an article titled, "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls." The article cites anonymous sources that described the program's reach on American citizens:


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: ... it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others. The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: The report failed to generate discussion of privacy rights in the media and was not referenced by Greenwald or "The Washington Post" in any of their subsequent reporting.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: In 2009, "The New York Times" cited several anonymous intelligence officials alleging that "the N.S.A. made Americans targets in eavesdropping operations based on insufficient evidence tying them to terrorism" and "the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant".


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: On 15 March 2012, the American magazine "Wired" published an article with the headline "The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)", which was later mentioned by U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson during a congressional hearing. In response to Johnson's inquiry, NSA director Keith B. Alexander testified that these allegations made by "Wired" magazine were untrue:


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: On 6 June 2013, Britain's "The Guardian" newspaper began publishing a series of revelations by an unnamed American whistleblower, revealed several days later to be former CIA and NSA-contracted systems analyst Edward Snowden. Snowden gave a cache of internal documents in support of his claims to two journalists: Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, Greenwald later estimated that the cache contains 15,000 – 20,000 documents, some very large and very detailed, and some very small. This was one of the largest news leaks in the modern history of the United States. In over two months of publications, it became clear that the NSA operates a complex web of spying programs which allow it to intercept internet and telephone conversations from over a billion users from dozens of countries around the world. Specific revelations have been made about China, the European Union, Latin America, Iran and Pakistan, and Australia and New Zealand, however the published documentation reveals that many of the programs indiscriminately collect bulk information directly from central servers and internet backbones, which almost invariably carry and reroute information from distant countries.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Due to this central server and backbone monitoring, many of the programs overlap and interrelate among one another. These programs are often done with the assistance of US entities such as the United States Department of Justice and the FBI, are sanctioned by US laws such as the FISA Amendments Act, and the necessary court orders for them are signed by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In addition to this, many of the NSA's programs are directly aided by national and foreign intelligence services, Britain's GCHQ and Australia's DSD, as well as by large private telecommunications and Internet corporations, such as Verizon, Telstra, Google and Facebook.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: The US government has aggressively sought to dismiss and challenge Fourth Amendment cases raised: "Hepting v. AT&T", "Jewel v. NSA", "Clapper v. Amnesty International", "Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama", and "Center for Constitutional Rights v. Bush". The government has also granted retroactive immunity to ISPs and telecoms participating in domestic surveillance.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: The US district court judge for the District of Columbia, Richard Leon, declared on December 16, 2013 that the mass collection of metadata of Americans' telephone records by the National Security Agency probably violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation – most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics – I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: "Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of showing that their privacy interests outweigh the government's interest in collecting and analysing bulk telephony metadata and therefore the NSA's bulk collection program is indeed an unreasonable search under the fourth amendment," he wrote.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: "The Fourth Amendment typically requires 'a neutral and detached authority be interposed between the police and the public,' and it is offended by 'general warrants' and laws that allow searches to be conducted 'indiscriminately and without regard to their connections with a crime under investigation,'" he wrote. He added:


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion' than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. Indeed I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware 'the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power,' would be aghast.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Leon granted the request for a preliminary injunction that blocks the collection of phone data for two private plaintiffs (Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer, and Charles Strange, father of a cryptologist killed in Afghanistan when his helicopter was shot down in 2011) and ordered the government to destroy any of their records that have been gathered. But the judge stayed action on his ruling pending a government appeal, recognizing in his 68-page opinion the "significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues."


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: On 20 May 2014, U.S. Representative for Republican congressman Mike Rogers introduced Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 with the goal of authorizing appropriations for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government, the Community Management Account, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: Some of its measures cover the limitation on retention. A covered communication (meaning any nonpublic telephone or electronic communication acquired without the consent of a person who is a party to the communication, including communications in electronic storage) shall not be retained in excess of 5 years, unless: (i) the communication has been affirmatively determined, in whole or in part, to constitute foreign intelligence or counterintelligence or is necessary to understand or assess foreign intelligence or counterintelligence; (ii) the communication is reasonably believed to constitute evidence of a crime and is retained by a law enforcement agency; (iii) the communication is enciphered or reasonably believed to have a secret meaning; (iv) all parties to the communication are reasonably believed to be non-United States persons; (v) retention is necessary to protect against an imminent threat to human life, in which case both the nature of the threat and the information to be retained shall be reported to the congressional intelligence committees not later than 30 days after the date such retention is extended under this clause; (vi) retention is necessary for technical assurance or compliance purposes, including a court order or discovery obligation, in which case access to information retained for technical assurance or compliance purposes shall be reported to the congressional intelligence committees on an annual basis; (vii) retention for a period in excess of 5 years is approved by the head of the element of the intelligence community responsible for such retention, based on a determination that retention is necessary to protect the national security of the United States, in which case the head of such element shall provide to the congressional intelligence committees a written certification describing (I) the reasons extended retention is necessary to protect the national security of the United States; (II) the duration for which the head of the element is authorizing retention; (III) the particular information to be retained; and (IV) the measures the element of the intelligence community is taking to protect the privacy interests of United States persons or persons located inside the United States.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: On 10 December 2014, Republican U.S. Representative for member of Congress Justin Amash criticized the act on his Facebook as being "one of the most egregious sections of law I've encountered during my time as a representative" and "It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American".


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: On 11 December 2014, a petition was created on We the People section of the whitehouse.gov website petitioning the Obama administration to veto the law.


title: Mass surveillance in the United States

text: The USA Freedom Act was signed into law on June 2, 2015, the day after certain provisions of the Patriot Act had expired. It mandated an end to bulk collection of phone call metadata by the NSA within 180 days, but allowed continued mandatory retention of metadata by phone companies with access by the government with case-by-case approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.