Pierre-Martial Cibot

Pierre-Martial Cibot (born at Limoges, France, 14 August 1727; died at Beijing, China, 8 August 1780) was a French Jesuit missionary to China.
Life.
He entered the Society of Jesus 7 November 1743, and taught humanities with much success. He was sent to China at his own request 7 March 1758, and arrived at Macao 25 July. He reached Beijing 6 June 1760, joining the Jesuits who were retained at the court of the emperor.
Cibot during his many years in China found time to devote to historical and scientific studies. Modesty prevented him from signing many of his essays. His style was somewhat diffuse, and his writings were valued chiefly for their variety and the information which they contained.
Works.
Many of his notes and observations on the history and literature of the Chinese were published in the "Mémoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences les arts, les moeurs, les usages, etc., des Chinois: par les missionaires de Pékin" (Paris, 1776–89, 16 vols.). These volumes were at the time the chief source of information in Europe regarding China and its people.
Cibot's most lengthy work, his "Essai sur l'antiquité des Chinois", appeared in the first volume of the "Mémoires". In it he claims Yao (2356 B.C.) as the founder of the Chinese Empire. This view was not held, however, by other contemporary writers: in the second volume of the "Mémoires" his colleague, Father Amiot, in his "L'antiquité des Chinois prouvée par les monuments", defended the traditional Chinese chronology.
Cibot also instituted a comparison between the Jews and the Chinese in connection with a commentary on the "Book of Esther" (Mémoires, vols. XIV-XVI). He collected a herbarium and contributed a number of articles on various topics in natural science to the "Mémoires", e.g. "Notices de quelques plantes arbrisseaux de la Chine" (vol. III), "Observations sur les plantes, les fleurs, et les arbres de Chine qu'il est possible et utile de se procurer en France"; "Notice sur le borax"; "Mémoire sur les chevaux" (vol. XI); "Notice sur l'hirondelle, sur le cerf et sur la cigale" (vol. XII), etc.


Marie Louise Mignot

Marie Louise Mignot (1712–1790) was a French literary figure. She was the daughter of Voltaire's sister, Catherine Arouet (1686–1726) and her husband Pierre-François Mignot (d. 1737). After the death of her widowed father in 1737, Voltaire provided her with a dowry and she married army supply officer Nicolas-Charles Denis, giving rise to her married name of Madame Denis. After her husband's premature death in 1744, she was taken in by Voltaire and became his housekeeper, hostess and companion. She also adopted his protégée Reine Philiberte de Varicourt when the latter's marriage to the marquis de Villette foundered on his homosexuality.
She refused to follow Voltaire to the court of Frederick II of Prussia but moved with him to Les Délices in Geneva and then to Ferney, where they lived as a couple (though Voltaire was in love with her, they never married) until Voltaire's death in 1778, on which she inherited the majority of his estate. However, preferring Paris society, she sold off the château to move back to Paris.


Jim Powell (historian)

Jim Powell is Senior Fellow at a libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., with which he has been associated since 1988. He has also done work for the Manhattan Institute, the Institute for Humane Studies, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the National Right to Work Committee and Americans for Free Choice in Medicine.
Powell is an author on the history of liberty. He wrote three books that reported findings about the unintended consequences of major presidential policies. Altogether he has written eight books and is perhaps best known for "FDR's Folly", which has been praised by Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman and James M. Buchanan, Harvard historian David Landes and historian Thomas Fleming. Powell's books have been translated into Japanese.
He has contributed several hundred articles for an unusually broad array of publications. He has given talks internationally as well as at Harvard, Stanford and other universities across the United States.
Biography.
Powell was born in Norfolk, Virginia and grew up on Long Island. His father, Frank Coburn Powell, was a partner in a company that principally manufactured high quality phonograph turntables and cartridges. His mother, Madeline Shields Powell, was a catalog librarian. Both were from Indianapolis. Powell graduated from East Woods School (Oyster Bay, New York) and Millbrook School (Millbrook, New York) before entering the University of Chicago where he earned a B.A. in history. His professors included William H. McNeill ("The Rise of the West"), Donald F. Lach (Asia "in the Making of Europe") and Earl J. Hamilton ("War and Prices in Spain"). As an editor of the student quarterly "New Individualist Review", Powell helped publish articles by future Nobel Laureates F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman and George J. Stigler. Other contributors included Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard and Yale Brozen. Powell worked as a researcher for future Nobel Laureate Ronald H. Coase.
Powell started his career as a direct response advertising copywriter, doing the bulk of his work for financial services companies like J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch and GE Capital. In 1976, he began freelancing for "Barron's", then for other business publications, then publications in the art market and general-interest magazines. Writing for travel magazines took him to Argentina, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, Belgium, Switzerland and Dubai.
Powell is a frequent contributor to Forbes Online. Among topics covered:
Powell's early books were about the art market, commercial real estate and Japanese finance. By the late 1980s, Powell began to author books on liberty.


Murray Sabrin

Murray Sabrin (born December 21, 1946) is a professor of finance in the Anisfield School of Business at Ramapo College and a perennial candidate for public office in New Jersey.
Family, education, and affiliations.
Sabrin was born in Bad Wörishofen, Germany on December 21, 1946. His parents, being of Jewish ancestry, were among the only people in his family to survive the Holocaust. Sabrin has said "during World War Two, my father, a Jewish resistance fighter in Lithuania, fought for his freedom and his life with a gun. I'm alive today because of him." Sabrin arrived in the U.S. with his older brother and parents in August 1949 and became a United States citizen in 1959.
He lives with his wife, Florence, in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Sabrin has a Ph.D. in geography from Rutgers University, an M.A. in social studies education from Lehman College and a B.A. in history, geography and social studies education from Hunter College. He has worked in commercial real estate sales and marketing, personal portfolio management, and economic research.
Sabrin is the former executive director of the Center for Business and Public Policy at Ramapo College, and is the author of "Tax Free 2000: The Rebirth of American Liberty".
Policy advocacy and opinion writing.
Sabrin's articles have appeared in "The Record" (Hackensack, New Jersey), "The Star Ledger", "Trenton Times", and "Asbury Park Press". His essays have also appeared in "Commerce Magazine", "Mid-Atlantic Journal of Business", "Privatization Review", and LewRockwell.com. Sabrin is a contributing columnist for NJBIZ and writes a column on the economy for "START-IT magazine". He is a regular columnist for "NJVoices" and "USADaily".
He is writing a book on politics, the economy and culture titled "Velvet Fascism: How the Political Elites Transformed America".
Political career.
Sabrin was the 1997 Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, and the first third party candidate to receive matching funds and participate in three official debates. He garnered 5% of the vote in the election, and the race went to Christine Todd Whitman. In 2008 Sabrin ran as a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for the United States Senate representing New Jersey, where he faced Republican state Senator Joseph Pennacchio and former Republican Congressman Dick Zimmer. Promoting limited government and noninterventionism, he received endorsements from the Republican Liberty Caucus and U.S. Presidential candidate Ron Paul. He garnered 14% of the vote, behind Zimmer (46%) and Pennacchio (40%). He sought the Republican nomination to the same seat in 2014, but lost to Jeff Bell.
In January 2018, he announced his intention to run for the U.S. Senate again, this time under the New Jersey Libertarian Party.
Political positions.
Abortion.
Sabrin is pro-life. During the 2014 election, he wrote a letter criticizing Senate candidate Brian Goldberg on his pro-choice position.
Foreign policy.
Sabrin is an outspoken supporter of a non-interventionist foreign policy.


Varden (newspaper)

Varden is a local newspaper published in Skien, Norway.
History and profile.
The newspaper was first established with a test issue on 17 December 1874, with Johan Christian Tandberg Castberg as its first editor-in-chief. It has been published daily since 1895, and in the tabloid format since 2001 Its current editor-in-chief is Lars Kise, who took over from Per Valebrokk in 2008.
Originally, "Varden" was owned by individual persons. Harald Kristoffersen, its editor-in-chief and owner from 1901, created the limited company AS Varden in 1918. The corporation Orkla Media, later renamed Edda Media, bought the newspaper in 1994, and still has a 100% ownership. Through the publishing company Varden AS, "Varden" itself has a 100% ownership of the smaller newspapers "Kanalen" (published in Nome), "Kragerø Blad Vestmar" (Kragerø) and "Telen" (Notodden). "Varden" itself has local offices both in Kragerø and Notodden, as well as in Bamble, Porsgrunn, Kviteseid, Bø and Rjukan.
The leading newspaper in Telemark county for many years, "Varden" was surpassed by "Telemark Arbeiderblad" in 1974, only to regain the number one spot in 1988. "Telemark Arbeiderblad" was later renamed "Telemarksavisa", and had a circulation of 22,346.
At the time "Varden" was established, newspapers in Norway had close ties with political parties. "Varden" was special in that it changed political allegiance from Liberal to Conservative, in 1953. The ties between political parties and newspapers no longer exist. Today, the newspaper classifies itself as an "independent" newspaper which works to promote a liberal and democratic society with respect for individual rights, social fairness and free enterprise.
"Varden" had a circulation of 27,341 and 25,859 subscribers.


Alessandro Roncaglia

Alessandro Roncaglia (1947) is an Italian economist. He was professor of economics at the Sapienza University of Rome from 1981 to 2017.
Awards and Honors.
In 2002 the Italian edition of his "The wealth of ideas," later published in an expanded edition in English, has won the Jerome Blanqui Award of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought.
In 2018 appeared "Classical Economics Today: Essays in Honor of Alessandro Roncaglia," edited by Marcella Corsi, J.A. Kregel and Carlo D'Ippoliti.
Bibliography.
Among the publications of Alessandro Roncaglia are:


John F. Carr

John Francis Carr (born December 25, 1944) is an American science fiction editor and writer
Career.
Carr was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and raised in San Diego, California.
He is the author of seven published novels and, along with co-editor Jerry Pournelle, he has edited over twenty theme anthologies and short story collections. He is also an authority on the life and works of H. Beam Piper and his biography "H. Beam Piper: A Biography", was published in 2008. His other works include the space opera "The Ophidian Conspiracy" and several novels (some co-written with Roland J. Green) set in the Paratime universe of H. Beam Piper).
He is also recognized as an editor, having edited numerous collections or series involving Libertarian science fiction and Military science fiction. He is best known for working with Jerry Pournelle. In 2002, Carr and Pournelle were honored with a Prometheus Award for editing "The Survival of Freedom".
Published works.
Essay series.
Carr's Pequod Press released "Fuzzy Ergo Sum" (2011) and "Caveat Fuzzy" (2012) by Wolfgang Diehr. These novels pick up where the original series by H. Beam Piper left off, continuing the story of Little Fuzzy and his fuzzy and human companions.


Democratic Movement (Israel)

The Democratic Movement (, "Tnu'a Demokratit") was a short-lived political party in Israel formed in the aftermath of the spectacular breakup of Dash. Founded in 1978, it lasted only until 1981.
Background.
The party was formed on 14 September 1978 when Dash split into three new parties just sixteen months after having come third in the 1977 elections. Seven MKs, including Dash leader Yigael Yadin, founded the Democratic Movement, seven created Shinui (Change) and one set up Ya'ad.
Unlike Shinui, which pulled out, the new party remained part of Menachem Begin's coalition government, with Yadin as deputy Prime Minister and Shmuel Tamir as Minister of Justice.
However, like its predecessor, the Democratic Movement also broke up. In 1980 four MKs left the party; Mordechai Elgrably left on 5 February to sit as an independent MK (he later helped form the Unity Party), on 8 July Shafik Asaad and Shlomo Eliyahu left to form Ahva (which also split before the next elections), whilst Akiva Nof left on 17 September, also to join Ahva. The party was officially dissolved on 10 March 1981, with its remaining members, Tamir, Yadin and Binyamin Halevi, sitting out the remainder of the Knesset session as independents.


Radical Liberal Party (Paraguay)

The Radical Liberal Party (, PLR) was a political party in Paraguay. It was the largest legal opposition group during the Stroessner regime, but disappeared soon after he was overthrown.
History.
The party was established in 1963 after a split in the Liberal Party. After the Renovation Group faction of the Liberal Party returned to Paraguay to become the "official" opposition to the Stroessner regime, the remainder of the party was renamed the Radical Liberal Party. In 1967 members of the PLR also returned to Paraguay to participate in the Constitutional Assembly elections that year. They won 29 of the 120 seats, overtaking the Liberal Party to become the largest of the opposition groups.
In the 1968 general elections the party won nine of the 30 Senate seats and 16 of the 60 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The 1973 elections saw the party lose one Senate seat, but retain all 16 in the Chamber. The party did not contest the 1977 Constitutional Assembly elections, and after the constitution was amended to allow Stroessner to remain in power indefinitely, a majority of members left the party to establish the Authentic Radical Liberal Party.
The party retained its 16 Chamber seats in the 1978 elections, but was reduced to 13 in 1983. After winning 13 seats again in the 1988 elections, the party saw a huge loss of support after Stroessner was overthrown. In the 1989 elections the party's vote share fell from 7.2% to 1.3% and won just a single seat. It did not contest any further elections.


Benedict Neefs

Dom Benedictus Neefs, (French: Benoit Neefs) OCist. born in 1741 was the 46th abbot of Hemiksem Abbey.
Corneel Neefs was born in Kontich and entered Hemiksem Abbey in 1762, taking the monastic name Benedictus.
Abbot of Hemiksem.
In 1780 he was elected abbot after the death of Abbot Bruyndonckx, and installed after imperial approbation. He sat in the States of Brabant after the death of the abbot of Vlierbeek as a representative of the first estate. His local and economic power reached far beyond the monastery walls, as the territory of the abbey was extensive. He erected multiple buildings and continued to reshape the abbey buildings during his time in office. He commissioned an impressive calvary for the abbey church from the painter Willem Jacob Herreyns.
Neefs was known for his public opposition to the reforms of Emperor Joseph II. Together with Godfried Hermans, abbot of Grimbergen, he firmly protested against the reforms. The two of them became significant leaders of clerical resistance and both participated in processions and consulted with Hendrik Van der Noot. Both abbots financially supported Pro Aris et Focis.
He died in 1790, in his monastery's in Brussels. He was succeeded by Dom Raphaël Seghers who would be the last abbot of Hemiksen. The portrait of Neefs is preserved at Bornem Abbey.


Bertel Flaten

Bertel Flaten (31 January 1900 – 15 January 1963) was a Norwegian politician for the Liberal Party.
He served as a deputy representative to the Norwegian Parliament from Sogn og Fjordane during the terms 1954–1957 and 1958–1961.
References.
<br>


Crowds (anonymity network)

Crowds is a proposed anonymity network for anonymous web browsing. The main idea behind Crowds anonymity protocol is to hide each user's communications by routing them randomly within a group of similar users. Neither the collaborating group members nor the end receiver can therefore be sure where in the group the packet originated. Crowds was designed by Michael K. Reiter and Aviel D. Rubin. It defends against internal attackers and a corrupt receiver, but provides no anonymity against a global attacker or a local eavesdropper (see "Crowds: Anonymity For Web Transactions"). Crowds is vulnerable to the predecessor attack; this was discussed in Reiter and Rubin's paper and further expanded in "The Predecessor Attack: An Analysis of a Threat to Anonymous Communications Systems" by Matthew K. Wright, Micah Adler, And Brian Neil Levine. Crowds introduced the concept of users blending into a crowd of computers.
Definitions.
Crowds uses and defines the following terms:
Basic Design.
Crowds works by making each node seem equally likely to be the initiator of the message. As we said each node joins the network by starting a "jondo" (from "John Doe"), which is a small process that will forward and receive requests from other users. When the jondo is started all nodes in the network are informed of the new node's entrance, and will begin to select him as a forwarder. To actually send a message a node chooses randomly (with uniform probability) from all nodes in the network and forwards the message to them. Upon receiving the message the node flips a biased coin (with probability formula_5) and if it lands heads forwards it to another random node, otherwise it forwards it to the final destination. Each node when forwarding to another node records the predecessor and in this way a tunnel is built, this is used for the communication between the sender and the receiver.
Security analysis.
We consider the question of what information an attacker can learn about the senders and receivers of web transactions, given the mechanisms of Crowds we described.
Local eavesdropper.
Recall that every message forwarded on a path, except for the final request to the end server, is encrypted. Thus, while the eavesdropper is able to view any message emanating from the user's computer, it only views a message submitted to the end server
if the user's jondo ultimately submits the user's request itself.
Since the probability that the user's jondo ultimately submits the request is 1/n where n is the size of the crowd when the path was created. Thus we learn that the probability that the eavesdropper learns the identity of the receiver decreases as a function of crowd size. Moreover, when the user's jondo does not ultimately submit the request, the local eavesdropper sees only the encrypted address of the end server, which we suggest yields receiver anonymity that is (informally) beyond suspicion.
(beyond suspicion - no user is more suspicious than other).
Collaborating jondos.
Consider a set of collaborating corrupted jondos in the crowd. Because each jondo can observe plaintext traffic on a path routed through it, any such traffic, including the address of the end server is exposed to this attacker.
The question we consider here is if the attacker can determine who initiated the path. The goal of the collaborators is to determine the member that initiated the path.
We now analyze how confident the collaborators can be that their immediate predecessor is in fact the path initiator:
Note that H1 => I, but the converse I => H1 is not true, because the
initiating jondo might appear on the path multiple times. There can be a case where path is composed as follow:
Note that the first collaborator on the path is in the third position.
P(I|H1+) - given that a collaborator is on the path, what is the probability that the path initiator is the first collaborator's immediate predecessor?
Definition:
The path initiator has probable innocence if P(I|H1+)<=1\2.
In order to yield probable innocence for the path initiator, certain
conditions must be met in our system.
In particular, let
pf > 1/2 (the probability of forwarding in the system.)
The theorem below gives a sufficient condition on pf, c, and n to ensure
probable innocence for the path initiator.
Theorem:
The path initiator has probable innocence against c collaborators in case
formula_7
Proof:
we want to show that pf > 1/2   if   formula_7
note that:
P(Hi) = formula_9
in order for the first collaborator to be in the ith position on the path, the path must first wander to i-1 noncollaborators each time with probability of
formula_10, each of which chooses to forward the path with probability pf, and then to a collaborator with probability formula_11.
The next two facts follow immediately from this
P(H1+) = formula_12
P(H2+) = formula_13
P(H1) = formula_11
P(I|H1) = formula_15
P(I|H2) = formula_16
Now, P(I) can be captured as
P(I) = P(H1)P(I|H1) + P(H2+)P(IH2+) = formula_17
since I=>H1+
P(I|H1+)= formula_18 = formula_19 = formula_20
so, if formula_7
then P(I|H1+)<=1\2
E.g. if pf=3\4, then probable innocence is guaranteed as long as n >= 3(c + 1).
Static paths.
Dynamic paths tends to decrease the anonymity properties provided by the system against collaborating jondos. The reason is that the probable innocence vanishes if the collaborators are able to link many distinct paths as being initiated by the same jondo. Collaborating jondos might be able to link paths initiated by the same unknown jondo based on related path content or timing of
communication on paths. To prevent this, we made paths static, so the attacker simply does not have multiple paths to link to the same jondo.
Embedded images and timing attacks.
An HTML page can include a URL (e.g., the address of an image) that, when the page is retrieved, causes the user's browser to automatically issue another request. It is the immediate nature of these requests that poses the greatest opportunity for timing attacks by collaborating jondos.
The first collaborating jondo on a path, upon returning a web page on that path containing a URL that will be automatically retrieved, can time the duration until it receives the request for that URL. If the duration is sufficiently short, then this could reveal that the collaborator's immediate predecessor is the initiator of the request.
How to prevent?
When a jondo receives an HTML reply to a request that it either received directly from a user's browser or submitted directly to an end server, it parses the HTML page to identify all URLs that the user's browser will automatically request as a result of receiving this reply. The last jondo on the path requests these URLs and sends them back along the same path on which the original request was received.
The user's jondo, upon receiving requests for these URLs from the user's browser, does not forward these requests on the path, but rather simply waits for the URLs contents to arrive on the path and then feeds them to the browser. In this way, other jondos on the path never see the requests that are generated by the browser, and thus cannot glean timing information from them.
Scale.
The measure of scale that we evaluate is the expected total number of appearances that each jondo makes on all paths at any point in time. For example, if a jondo occupies two positions on one path and one position on another, then it makes a total of three appearances on these paths.
Theorem : In a crowd of size n, the expected total number of appearances that any jondo makes on all paths is
formula_22
Each jondo's expected number of appearances on paths is virtually constant as a function of the size of the crowd. This suggests that crowds should be able to grow quite large.
Attacks.
Crowds provides perfect anonymity against a corrupt receiver (i.e. formula_23 see Degree of anonymity) as all members appear equally likely to have been the initiator. As we showed against collaborating corrupt nodes Crowds provides probable innocence as long as formula_24 (see the paper for the derivation of this), and provides a degree of anonymity formula_25. Against the predecessor attack Crowds succumbs in formula_26; this attack works by a corrupt node retaining the previous hop in the path, as this will be the sender more than any other node over the rounds of rebuilding the network it will become apparent who the initiator is. Reiter and Rubin mention this and recommend "long" (and if possible infinite) time between path reformations (caused when a node in the path leaves the network). Crowds is unable to protect against a global eavesdropper as it cannot use encryption on the links, this is because each node in Crowds is able to communicate with every other node (a fully connected graph), because of this setting up symmetric keys requires formula_27 pairwise keys; this is too large of a number to be feasible. Against a local eavesdropper again Crowds provides no protection as the eavesdropper will see a message coming out of a node that did not enter, and this positively identifies the node as the sender.


Arrest of Dominic Hall and Louis Louaillier

Dominic A. Hall and Louis Louaillier were American political figures who were ordered detained during the War of 1812 under the order of Major General Andrew Jackson in 1815. Hall later put Jackson under investigation and oversaw the trial that led to Jackson being fined.
Background.
Upon entering New Orleans in December 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson declared martial law to establish control of the city to defend it from British forces. It was the first such declaration in United States history.
"Louisiana Courier" article by Louis Louaillier.
On March 3, 1815, Louisiana State Senator Louis Louaillier wrote an anonymous article in the "Louisiana Courier" criticizing Andrew Jackson's declaration of martial law and his refusal to release the militia after the British ceded the field of battle. Two days after the article appeared, Louaillier admitted to writing the article, and Jackson ordered Louaillier's arrest.
U.S. District Court Judge Dominic A. Hall signed a writ of "habeas corpus" on behalf of Louaillier, and Jackson subsequently ordered Hall's arrest as well.
Jackson did not relent his campaign of suppressing dissent until after ordering the arrests of Louaillier, Hall, and John Dick (a lawyer) and after intervention of State Judge Joshua Lewis. Lewis was simultaneously serving under Jackson in the militia, and also signed a separate writ of "habeas corpus" against Jackson, his commanding officer, seeking Judge Hall's release.
Jackson proceeded with a court-martial of Louaillier. Louaillier was later exonerated, but Jackson did not release him from jail. Jackson then released Hall and escorted him beyond the city limits, outside the zone of martial law. Jackson told Hall not to return until the war had officially ended.
Just two days later, Jackson received official word of the Treaty of Ghent and immediately lifted martial law and released all prisoners.
Trial and fine of Andrew Jackson.
Hall later ordered an investigation of Jackson's actions in New Orleans, and Jackson was brought before the court, overseen by Hall, and was subsequently fined $1,000 for contempt of court, which he paid in full. Jackson's fine was later paid back to him by Congress, with interest, in 1844, to around $2,700.


For Ukraine!

For Ukraine! () is a political party in Ukraine, headed by Vyacheslav Kyrylenko. Legally it is the successor of Party of Social Protection.
History.
Party of Social Security.
The Party of Social Security was established on October 9, 1999 as the People's Party of Depositors and Social Security and registered with the Ministry of Justice in May of the next year. It only took part in the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election where it won 0,05% of the votes and no seats.
For Ukraine!
On December 23, 2008 Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, a former chairman of Our Ukraine and he was the frontrunner of Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc during the 2007 Ukrainian parliamentary election, formed the parliamentarian deputy group "For Ukraine" in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament). At the constituent congress of the movement Vyacheslav Kyrylenko was elected its leader on February 21, 2009. In November 2009 Kyrylenko started to cooperate with the Party of Social Protection (registered in May 2000), in order to participate in the 2010 Ukrainian local elections. In November 2009 the Party of Social Protection changed its name to For Ukraine!.
In the 2010 local elections For Ukraine! won representatives in municipalities and 1 seat in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast Council and Volyn Oblast Council and 2 seats in the Sumy Oblast Council (regional parliaments of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Volyn Oblast and Sumy Oblast).
In February 2011 Kyrylenko stated his "For Ukraine" would unify with Front of Changes and Ukraine United to create one single party before the 2012 parliamentary election. In December 2011 Kyrylenko signed an agreement with the head of the party Front of Changes, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, on joint opposition activity and merger of their parties after the election. They competed as a single party under the "umbrella" of "Fatherland", together with Front of Changes and several other parties, during the October 2012 parliamentary elections. During the election this list won 62 seats (25.55% of the votes) under the proportional party-list system and another 39 by winning 39 simple-majority constituencies; a total of 101 seats in Parliament.
When Front of Changes merged into "Fatherland" in June 2013 the party did not merge with them as planned but instead kept its independence.
The party did not participate in the 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election as Kyrylenko and many members have been active in the newly founded People's Front since 2014.


Fort Barton Site

The Fort Barton Site is the site of an historic American Revolutionary War fort, now located in a public park at Lawton and Highland Avenues in Tiverton, Rhode Island. All that remains of the fort are its earthworks, a roughly oblong structure about long and deep. The site was a defensive post overlooking the main ferry crossing between Tiverton and Aquidneck Island, which was under British control at the time of its construction in 1777. The ferry was used as a launching position for American forces during the Battle of Rhode Island in August 1778. The site was named after Lt. Col. William Barton who successfully captured the British General Prescott during a midnight raid on the British headquarters at Prescott Farm in what is now Portsmouth.
Fort Barton was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.


Great North

Great North ("Grande Nord", GN) is a liberal, regionalist, federalist and somewhat separatist political party, based in Northern Italy. The party proposes federalism and liberal economics, aimed at reducing "the size of the state in order to free enterprises, workers and communities, always putting who works and produce first". GN also adheres to the Oxford Manifesto, and the values of the Liberal International.
History.
The party was founded in December 2017, by prominent former members of Lega Nord (LN), including Marco Reguzzoni (leader of The Republicans), Roberto Bernardelli (leader of Padanian Union, Lombard Independence and "Make the North Great Again"), Fabrizio Comencini (leader of Liga Veneta Repubblica, member of Independence We Veneto), Angelo Alessandri (leader of I Change), Giuseppe Leoni, Oreste Rossi, Francesca Martini and Marco Desiderati.
Some of them (Reguzzoni, Alessandri, Leoni, Rossi, Martini and Desiderati) had been loyalists of Umberto Bossi, founder and leader of LN until April 2012, and had left that party in opposition to Roberto Maroni and Matteo Salvini, Bossi's successors; others (Bernardelli and Comencini) had opposed Bossi, and left the LN decades ago.
All of them opposed Salvini's "populist" turn and his "Italian national" strategy. Bossi attended the party's founding convention, but did not join. In the general election of 2018, GN fielded candidates only in a few constituencies and obtained a mere 0.1% of the vote.


Battle of Ballynahinch

The Battle of Ballynahinch was fought outside Ballynahinch, County Down, on 12 June, during the Irish rebellion of 1798 between British forces led by Major-General George Nugent and the local United Irishmen led by Henry Munro (1758–98).
Background.
Munro was a Lisburn linen merchant and Presbyterian United Irishman who had no military experience but had taken over command of the Down organisation following the arrest of the designated leader, Rev. William Steel Dickson on 5 June. Upon hearing of the victory at Saintfield on 9 June, Munro joined the rebel camp there and then moved to Ednavady Hill, Ballynahinch to join the thousands who had gathered in support of the rebellion. The response of the British garrisons was to converge on Ballynahinch from Belfast and Downpatrick in two columns accompanied by several pieces of cannon.
Battle of Ballynahinch.
The battle began on the night of 12 June when two hills to the left and right of Ballynahinch were occupied by the British who pounded the town with their cannon. During a pause when night fell, some rebel officers were said to have pressed Munro for a night attack but he refused on the grounds that it was unchivalrous. As a consequence many disillusioned rebels slipped away during the night.
As dawn broke the battle recommenced with the rebels attacked from two sides and although achieving some initial success, confusion in the rebel army saw the United Irishmen retreat in chaos, pursued by regrouping British forces who quickly took advantage by turning retreat into massacre. Initial reports claimed four hundred rebels were killed, while British losses were around forty. James Thomson (mathematician), the father of the famous scientist William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin was at the battle and published an eyewitness account.
Aftermath.
Munro escaped the field of battle but was betrayed by a farmer who he had paid to conceal him and was hanged in front of his own house in Lisburn on 16 June. Ballynahinch was sacked by the victorious military after the battle with sixty-three houses being burned down. Cavalry scoured the surrounding countryside for rebels, raiding homes and killing indiscriminately, the 22nd Dragoons being guilty of some of the worst atrocities. The most famous victim was Betsy Gray, a young female rebel who, with her two brothers, was slaughtered in the post-battle massacre, ensuring her place in legend to this day.
Following the suppression of the 1798 Rebellion and the passing of the Act of Union, the Presbyterian population in the area of Ballynahinch would subsequently become predominantly Unionist and the Orange Order would have a strong presence there. Nonetheless, historian Guy Beiner has shown that many local family traditions continued to preserve in private memories of their United Irish ancestors' participation in the battle.


Hartwell Tavern

Hartwell Tavern is a historic American Revolutionary War site associated with the revolution's first battle, the 1775 Battle of Lexington and Concord. It is located on Battle Road (formerly the Bay Road) in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and operated as an historic house museum by the National Park Service as part of the Minute Man National Historical Park. It is staffed from Memorial Day (May) weekend to October by park rangers dressed in colonial attire who offer programs daily.
The building is in the saltbox style.
History.
The building, whose main façade faces south, was originally constructed as a home for Ephraim Hartwell (1707–1793) and his newlywed wife, Elizabeth (1714–1808), in 1733. It was given to them by Ephraim's father, Samuel (1666–1744), who lived in a home with his wife, Mary, about 700 feet east along Battle Road. Built in the 1690s, only the central chimney of Samuel and Mary's house still stands, amongst a basic reconstruction of the building. The gifted home stood on 18 acres of land.
The Hartwells raised a family and, in 1756, when they had nine children living in the house, Ephraim applied for a license to run the home as an inn. It was run as such until the 1780s.
When Samuel died in 1744, aged 78, Ephraim inherited his portion of the family farm. By 1749 the farm was one of the most productive in Concord and consisted of 141 acres.
The property was part of Concord until 1754, when the town of Lincoln was incorporated.
Ephraim died in 1793, aged 86. Elizabeth survived her husband by fifteen years; she died in 1808, aged 94.
The house continued to be a residence up until its purchase by the National Park Service in 1967. Over the years that followed, the building was modernized and changed.
In the 1980s, the Park Service restored it to its 1775 appearance, yet kept its 1783 and 1830 additions. The main structure, the foundation, most of the walls and some of the flooring are 1733 originals. It is estimated that about 65% of the original structure remains within the restored building.
Battles of Lexington and Concord.
The Battle of Lexington and Concord took form before dawn on April 19, 1775. Soldiers passed by the tavern on their way to Concord, and again on their way back to Boston. Three of the Hartwells' children — Samuel, John and Isaac — were in the Lincoln minutemen that fought at Old North Bridge and on the battle road. All three later served in the Revolutionary War.
Paul Revere and William Dawes were detained by a British Army patrol nearby during the "Midnight Ride" to Concord of April 18. Samuel Prescott, who was also riding with them, escaped by jumping his horse over a wall and into the woods. Prescott emerged at the Hartwell Tavern, awakened Ephraim and informed him of the pending arrival of the British soldiers. Ephraim sent his black slave, Violet, down the road to alert his parents. Mary then relayed the message to Captain William Smith, commanding officer of the Lincoln minutemen, who lived a little to the west and whose home still stands along Battle Road. The minutemen received the notice in time, and arrived at Old North Bridge before their enemy. Prescott made it to Concord.


Fred Foldvary

Fred Emanuel Foldvary (born May 11, 1946) is a lecturer in economics at San Jose State University, California, and a research fellow at The Independent Institute. He previously taught at Santa Clara University and other colleges. He is also a commentator and senior editor for the online journal "The Progress Report" and an associate editor of the online journal "Econ Journal Watch." He serves on the board of directors for the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.
Work.
In his PhD dissertation (George Mason University, 1992) titled "Public Goods and Private Communities", Foldvary applied the theory of public goods and Industrial organization to refute the concept of market failure, including case studies of several types of private communities. His research interests include ethics, governance, land economics and public finance.
His support of geolibertarianism (a libertarian ideology which embraces the Georgist philosophy of property) and his advocacy of civil liberties and free markets have gained him a place of high visibility in the geolibertarian movement. In 2000, he ran for Congress in California's 9th District as a Libertarian. He received 3.3% of the total vote to finish third among the four candidates on the ballot.
Foldvary has written on topics including ending slavery in chocolate plantations; a green tax shift to protect the environment while enhancing the economy; reforming democracy with small-group voting; and solving territorial conflict with confederations and the payment of rent for occupied land. The three basic themes of Foldvary's writing are the universal ethic, cellular democracy, and public revenue from land rent.
In 1998, he predicted there would be a real estate-related recession in 2008 and a tech bubble collapse in the year 1999 or 2000. In 2007, Foldvary published a booklet entitled "The Depression of 2008". In a 2011 paper, Mason Gaffney, Professor of Economics at UC Riverside, criticized the economic community for excluding and ignoring Foldvary.


Marcelius Haga

Marcelius Haga (29 September 1882 – 2 December 1968) was a Norwegian politician.
Born in Høyland, he graduated from the Stord Teacher's College in 1902. He then worked as a teacher for four years before enrolling at the Norwegian College of Agriculture. He graduated there in 1908, and worked as a research fellow the following year. He then worked as a school teacher and manager as well as farmer the rest of his professional life, including two years at the Teacher's College at Notodden (today a part of Telemark University College).
Settling in Nes, Buskerud, Marcelius Haga served as mayor from 1919 to 1934. From 1928 to 1931 he was also the chairman of Buskerud county council. He also served as a deputy representative for the Liberal Party to the Parliament of Norway from 1937, representing Buskerud county. He had previously headed the Liberal Party ballot in 1930, unsuccessfully.
However, he later joined the fascist party Nasjonal Samling which governed Norway during parts of the German occupation of the country. He was then a Nazi-installed mayor of Nes. As a part of the legal purge in Norway after World War II he was sentenced to loss of civil rights, plus a fine.


Refractory clergy

During the French Revolution, the National Assembly abolished the traditional structure of the Catholic Church in France and reorganized it as an institution within the structure of the new French government. One of the new requirements placed upon all clergy was the necessity of an oath of loyalty to the state before all foreign influences such as the Pope. This created a schism within the French clergy, with those taking the oath known as juring priests, and those refusing the oath known as non-juring or refractory priests.
Background.
In the centuries preceding the French Revolution, the Church had functioned as an autonomous entity within French borders. It controlled roughly 10% of all French land, levied mandatory tithes upon the populace, and collected revenues from its estates, all of which contributed to the Church’s total income which it was not obliged to disclose to the state.
Under the "ancien regime", France was divided into three Estates, and the clergy occupied the First Estate, with the aristocracy comprising the Second Estate, and the commoners the Third Estate. As one of the first two privileged Estates, the Church was exempt from all taxation, although every five years the Assembly of the Clergy met and arranged a "don gratuit" (free gift) to be given to the King on behalf of the Church.
Over the course of the 18th century, France fell into deeper and deeper financial crisis. On multiple occasions, the state attempted to revoke the Church’s tax-free status in order to tap into its significant financial resources, with official declarations calling for formal surveys of the Church’s wealth and subsequent taxations being levied in 1749 and 1780. Both were successfully rebuffed by the Church, whose infrastructure, organization, man-power, and influence were unrivaled in France. Nonetheless, these events show that a desire to check the power and privileges of the Church was gaining momentum before the Revolution erupted.
During the French Revolution.
In an attempt to find a peaceful resolution to mounting popular unrest and calls for reform, King Louis XVI first convened the Assembly of Notables in 1787 and then revived the Estates-General in 1789. During the 1787 Assembly, clerical representatives strongly opposed any reforms directed towards the Church, but by the meeting of the Estates-General, internal divisions began to form. Bishops and other ‘high clergy’ (who were often of noble stock) allied strongly with the Second Estate in the preservation of official privileges. However, many parish priests and other ‘low clergy’ sided with the Third Estate, representing their own class and the class of their flocks.
Things began to change quickly in 1789. On August 4, the newly assembled National Assembly drafted the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen,’ and over the next year completely dismantled French society and rebuilt it from the ground up. Part of this included nationalizing all Church lands and transferring ownership to the state. By June 1790 the Assembly had officially abolished the nobility, and on July 12 passed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
This new legislation dismantled and restructured the Church along the same lines it had the rest of society. Bishoprics were realigned to correspond with the eighty-three departments France had been divided into, while all additional bishoprics were abolished. All clergy were forbidden from recognizing the authority of any Church officials beholden to a foreign power, and this included the Pope, whose position they were allowed to acknowledge, but not his authority. New bishops were forbidden from seeking confirmation from the Pope, but were allowed to write him to inform him of their position and reassert a unity of faith.
The most contentions aspects of the constitution, however, involved how new bishops would be appointed to office and the duties required of them. The Church was now essentially completely incorporated as a branch of government, and bishops were to be elected by popular vote. This was received with outrage by many clergy, as it not only completely up-ended the top-down appointment system of the Church, but would then allow Protestants, Jews, and atheists to directly influence Church matters. What would cause the greatest problems though, was Article XXI of Title II. This required bishops to take an oath before municipal officials asserting their loyalty to the nation of France before all other things, or their office would be declared vacant.
Sentiments between the Church and the Revolution began to sour much faster after this. While reform had been the only stated goal by revolutionaries before, anti-religious rhetoric calling for the abolishment of the Church as a whole began to gain prominence. Fabre d’Eglantine described the Church’s singular purpose as being to “subjugate the human species and enslave it under their dominion.” In October 1790, the National Convention banned priests, monks, nuns, and any who had previously occupied such positions from teaching in schools, and many members of the Convention began calling for a “religion of patriotism” to supplant Catholic Christianity entirely. In November, the oath described in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was drafted, and by the end of the year the Assembly proclaimed executive authority to enforce said oath.
Refractory Clergy.
The oath of loyalty created a massive schism within the clergy. Many lower clergy had supported revolutionary calls for reform, even reform within the Church, but this was beyond the pale. Thousands of priests, monks, and nuns now had to choose between refusing the oath and risking arrest and punishment, or taking the oath and risking their salvation. In March 1791, the Pope forced the issue by issuing a papal bull officially condemning the Revolution's actions towards the Church and leveling excommunication upon any clergy who took the oath.
The clergy was then split into juring priests (those who took the oath) and non-juring or refractory priests (those who refused). Both factions could face persecution, as communities with strong revolutionary sentiments would beat, stone, or even kill non-juring priests, while in more religiously traditional communities juring priests could face similar assaults.
This controversy was the first major issue to divide the popular masses on revolutionary reforms. Never had royalists or other counter-revolutionaries had popular constituencies, but there were many who believed the state had no right to meddle in the affairs of God to this degree and were loyal to their local priests. Also, sectors of France that had long-standing conflict with Protestant communities refused to support anything that threatened Catholic supremacy. Many clergy previously supportive of the Revolution were driven into opposition, and thousands of clergy hid or fled the country entirely.
Impact.
While there were organized efforts to hunt down refractory priests and organized protests of religious ceremonies, many revolutionary leaders began to see all this as detrimental to the movement. Some were vehemently ethically opposed, such as Maximilien Robespierre, who argued that atheism was a dangerous product of aristocratic decadence, and believed that a moral society should at least acknowledge the provenance of a Supreme Being. Others had more practical objections, knowing that deep-seated religious beliefs would not be eliminated quickly, and that mobilizing popular support for the Revolution was of top importance. Dividing and alienating the masses over religious issues was unhelpful.
Throughout all this, Louis XVI was appalled. Louis was a deeply devout man, and while he was required to give public approval to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, he rejected it in private. On Palm Sunday in April 1791, he took communion from a non-juring priest. While friends, advisors, and even his wife had been strongly urging him to flee the country, Louis had resisted these suggestions. The attack on the clergy was potentially the tipping point that eventually led to the King’s doomed flight to Varennes in June 1791.


Minute Man National Historical Park

Minute Man National Historical Park commemorates the opening battle in the American Revolutionary War. It also includes the Wayside, home in turn to three noted American authors. The National Historical Park is under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service and protects in and around the Massachusetts towns of Lexington, Lincoln, and Concord.
Sites.
These sites include:
Park visitor centers are located at the hill overlooking the North Bridge and along Battle Road. The main visitor center, on Route 2A/Battle Road, features a 25-minute multi-media show, "Road to Revolution" that gives a good introduction to the Lexington-Concord events. An eight-minute film at the North Bridge Visitor Center provides a comprehensive account of events leading to the encounter at North Bridge.


League of Social Democrats

The League of Social Democrats (LSD) is a social democratic party in Hong Kong. Chaired by Raphael Wong, it positions itself as the radical wing of the pro-democracy camp and stresses on "street actions" and "parliamentary struggles". It currently holds two seats in the District Councils.
Established in 2006 by a group of pro-grassroots left-leaning activists, the party opposes the perceived moderate and compromising approach of its pro-democratic allies Democratic Party and Civic Party and called for more aggressive tactics to achieve democracy. It often found itself at odds with other pan-democrats due to its confrontational and radical activism in the Legislative Council. The party first participated in the 2008 Legislative Council election and won over the 10 per cent of the popular vote and emerged as the new force with three seats.
In 2010, the League launched the "Five Constituencies Referendum" campaign to pressure the government to implement universal suffrage no later than 2012. The plan was joined by the Civics but rejected by the Democrats. The plan to target the Democratic Party in the following District Council election, as well as personal differences, led to a devastating factional struggles between the founding chairman Wong Yuk-man and his successor Andrew To, which resulted in the Wong's faction splitting from the party to form the People Power, leaving the party with only one legislator Leung Kwok-hung.
The party suffered a sharp decline in the 2012 Legislative Council election but resumed a cooperative relationship with the People Power in the issues such as filibustering in the legislature and street activisms. Facing the rise of localism, the two parties formed an electoral coalition in the 2016 Legislative Council election which received seven per cent of the vote with Leung Kwok-hung being re-elected. Leung was subsequently disqualified over his oath-taking manner in 2017, leaving the party without any elected representation.
In the massive pro-democracy protests in 2019, its party member Jimmy Sham, who was also the convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), won one of two seats for the party in the following District Council election, and also won the nomination in the 2020 pro-democracy primaries where Leung Kwok-hung failed to secure a nomination.
Party beliefs.
The LSD was considered to be the "radical wing" of the pro-democracy camp by its political beliefs and tactics. It was formed by legislators, social activists and grassroots residents. It aims to be a "clear-cut opposition party" and defend the interests of the grassroots. It opposes the wealth inequality created by collusions between the government and corporations. It positions itself as a social democratic party and believes that a just society can be achieved by redistribution of wealth, economic intervention and direct democracy.
Tactics.
Protests.
Members of the party pioneered the use of theatrics and disruptive tactics in Hong Kong. Heckling and the throwing of projectiles have since become a frequent occurrence at Legislative Council and public meetings. Their members have been ejected from LegCo meetings on numerous occasions. At a Legislative council meeting on 15 October 2008, during the Policy Address given by then Chief Executive Donald Tsang, party chairman Wong Yuk-man threw a banana at Tsang in protest at the means test of "fruit money" (Old Age Allowance) for the elderly.
At the opening of an exhibition at the Museum of History on 2 March 2011, Steve Wong Chun-kit, member of the League of Social Democrats rushed at Donald Tsang. Protesters also threw cooked rice at Tsang, as a symbol of the plight of the poor, but missed him. Tsang said his chest was hit by the protestor and had a medical check at the Queen Mary Hospital afterwards. Tsang denounced the protest, saying that violence was unacceptable in Hong Kong, where civilised behaviour and the rule of law were fundamental values. However Leung Kwok-hung said he did not see any physical contact between Tsang and protesters. Steve Wong was arrested and released on bail.
At CY Leung's first question-and-answer session as Chief Executive at the Legislative Council in Hong Kong on 16 July 2012, "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung threw an effigy of Pinocchio at CY Leung.
Leung Kwok-hung threw a cloud-shaped cushion at Financial Secretary John Tsang during his budget report in the Legislative Council on 27 February 2013 to demand for a universal retirement protection scheme.
At a political forum on 7 December 2013, one member was captured by the media throwing a Lufsig, a cuddly toy wolf at CY Leung.
Filibusters.
In May 2012, Leung Kwok-hung, the only LSD member in the Legislative Council joined a weeks-long filibuster staged by Albert Chan and Wong Yuk-man, who were LSD legislators but defected to the People Power, submitting 1306 amendments altogether to the Legislative Council (Amendment) Bill 2012, by which the government attempted to forbid resigning lawmakers from participating in by-elections as the government's response to the "Five Constituency Referendum movement" launched by the LSD in 2010. On the morning of 17 May 2012, Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, President of the Legislative Council adopt Article 92 of the Standing Order, which allows the president follow foreign parliament rules for unregulated behaviours to terminate the debate. In the end, all amendments were defeated and the Bill was passed.
In May 2013, the LSD and People Power staged a month-long filibuster by moving a total of 710 amendments on the Budget Appropriation Bill debate, to press for a universal pension scheme and a HK$10,000 cash handout to be included in John Tsang's budget. The government warned that the service would shut down if the budget bill do not pass. Jasper Tsang ordered to end the filibuster on 13 May after 55 hours spent to debate 17 of the 148 amendments. The Appropriation Bill was passed on 21 May 2013 with 684 amendments negatived.
History.
Founding and early years (2006–2010).
The LSD was founded on 1 October 2006. The two Legislative Councillors, Leung Kwok-hung, activist from the April Fifth Action Group, and Albert Chan, former Democratic Party member, were the founding members. Radio host, author and former journalism professor Wong Yuk-man became the first Chairman of the party.
In the participation in the 2007 Chief Executive Election of Alan Leong, the League of Social Democrats refused to co-operate with the Democratic Party and the Civic Party and criticised the two parties for nominating Leong as Chief Executive candidate, saying that they are not qualified as democrats. In the 2006 Election Committee election, the League was criticised by media for refusing to name a candidate in protest at the "small-circle election".
The LSD won six seats its first attempt in the election in the 2007 District Council elections. In late December 2007, the Vice-Chairman of the party, Lo Wing-lok, resigned after a controversy over the lack of documentation on the lease of the party headquarters. According to Lo, the premises belonged to an alleged triad member who claimed to be a merchant.
In the 2008 LegCo elections, the party emerged as the sixth largest party in the legislature by gaining over 10 percent of the vote and winning total of three seats with chairman Wong Yuk-man winning a seat in the Kowloon West geographical constituency and Leung Kwok-hung and Albert Chan retained their seats respectively. The LSD fiercely criticised the other democratic parties during the campaign. In Kowloon East Andrew To Kwan-hang has accused the Democratic Party of wrongly backing the government's move to privatise the Link Reit Investment Trust, thus paving the way for hefty rent rises in public housing commercial and parking facilities. In Kowloon West, Chairman Wong Yuk-man lambasted the Civic Party's Claudia Mo Man-ching in the same way he did the candidates from the pro-Beijing, pro-government flagship party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), accusing the Civic Party of applying double standards in its fight for democracy, and being elitist.
2010 electoral reform and splits (2010–2016).
The party was member of the Alliance for Universal Suffrage which consisted of all the pro-democracy groups to strive for the 2012 universal suffrage of the Chief Executive and Legislative Council. In response to the electoral reform package proposed by the government, the party joined hand with the Civic Party to launch the "Five Constituency Referendum" by having five legislators resigning and participating in a territory-wide by-election to demand genuine universal suffrage. The claim of by-election as referendum expectedly received serve attacks from the Beijing government and the pro-Beijing camp in Hong Kong as unconstitutional. The Democratic Party refused to join the movement and sought for a less confrontational way to negotiate with Beijing. The movement was considered as failure with only 17.7 percent of the registered voters voted despite all three LSD legislators successfully returned to the LegCo. The LSD strongly criticised the Democratic Party for its move to negotiate with Beijing and voted for the reform package and attacked the Democratic Party in the following 2010 July 1 march.
The party was also heavily devastated from the intra-party struggles. The former chairman Wong Yuk-man disagreed with the policies of the incumbent chairman Andrew To including the ways of dealing with the Democratic Party. In November 2010, Wong Yuk-man's protege Edward Yum led a no-confidence motion against To which was defeated by 111 to 170 at an extraordinary general party meeting. After the failure of toppling To's chairmanship, on 24 January 2011, two of the three legislators of the party, Wong Yuk-man and Albert Chan quit the party with many party's leading figures, citing disagreement with leader Andrew To and his faction. About two hundreds of their supporters joined them, leaving the LSD in disarray. Wong and Chan formed the People Power with other defected members and radical groups which aimed at sniping Democratic Party in the upcoming 2011 District Council elections.
The party lost all its seats in the District Councils in the District Council elections in November, all four of the party's seats were swept by the pro-Beijing candidates, including that of Andrew To for Chuk Yuen North constituency. 23 other League candidates also failed to win. Two days later, Andrew To resigned as chairman, to take responsibility for the loss, but pledged not to alter the LSD's ideology for the sake of winning elections. Leung Kwok-hung replaced To as the Chairman of the LSD.
Ousted from Legislative Council and further political developments (2016–present).
In February 2016, the party selected its sixth Executive Committee and new leaders. Avery Ng succeeded Leung as the new chairman and Raphael Wong and Derek Chan Tak-cheung as vice-chairman.
In the 2016 Legislative Council election, the LSD formed an electoral alliance with another radical democrat People Power as they were facing serious challenges from the newly emerging radical localists. The alliance won two seats in total with sole League legislator Leung Kwok-hung and People Power's Ray Chan being re-elected in the New Territories East. Former LSD legislator Albert Chan failed to help LSD's Raphael Wong to be elected despite him standing as a second candidate in the New Territories West. LSD chairman Avery Ng also lost his bid in Kowloon West.
In the 2017 Chief Executive election, LSD legislator Leung Kwok-hung launched his Chief Executive bid in February 2017 through a "public nomination" mechanism, in which he would seek to secure 37,790 votes from members of the public, one per cent of the city's registered voters before he would canvass for the nominations from the Election Committee. Leung dropped out from the race on 25 February after failed to gain enough nominations from the public, secured only 20,234 nominations.
In July 2017, Leung Kwok-hung was unseated with three other pro-democracy legislators due to their manners at the oath-taking ceremony at the inaugural meeting, where Leung had used it as a platform to protest since he was first elected in 2004, which made the LSD lost its only seat in the legislature.
In 2019, in the aftermath of the massive Hong Kong pro-democracy protests two prominent members of LSD namely, political and LGBT activist Jimmy Sham and Citizens' Radio founder Tsang Kin-shing were elected in the 2019 District Council elections as part of the electoral landslide by the pro-democracy camp. In spite of this, Leung Kwok-hung was narrowly defeated in his bid to unseat incumbent lawmaker Starry Lee in the To Kwa Wan North in the Kowloon City District Council.
Arrest of Leung Kwok-hung and Jimmy Sham under national security law.
On 6 January 2021, vice-chair persons of the party Leung Kwok-hung and Jimmy Sham were arrested for violation of the national security law. They were released on bail the next day but charged with subversion on 28 February 2021. As of 12 March 2021, both Leung and Sham remain in custody after being denied bail twice and will be in prison until their next hearing on the case on 31 May 2021.


Warsaw Signal

The Warsaw Signal was a newspaper edited and published in Warsaw, Illinois during the 1840s and early 1850s. For most of its history, the "Signal"'s editorial stance was one of vigorous anti-Mormonism and the advancement of the policies of the Whig Party.
Names and incarnations.
The newspaper was founded as the Western World, with its first edition published on May 13, 1840. In its May 12, 1841 edition, noting that "Western World" was a title that was "too extensive in its signification", the paper, which had been purchased by Thomas C. Sharp, changed its name to "Warsaw Signal". On January 7, 1843, the name was changed to Warsaw Message after Sharp sold the newspaper, but on February 14, 1844 the name reverted to "Warsaw Signal" when it was repurchased by Sharp. In 1850, it was purchased by James McKee who renamed it Warsaw Commercial Journal. In 1855, McKee merged the "Commercial Journal" with the "Journal of the People" to create the Warsaw Express and Journal, which published until the late 1850s. In 1975, a new paper began publishing under the name "Warsaw Signal", but its existence was short-lived.
Anti-Mormonism.
The "Signal" was vigorously anti-Mormon in its editorial stance. During the two separate periods of time when it bore the name "Warsaw Signal", the owner and editor of the newspaper was Thomas C. Sharp, a leader in opposing Joseph Smith and the Latter Day Saint presence in Illinois. Upon hearing news of the city-ordered destruction of neighboring, Mormon-critical press Nauvoo Expositor with assistance from an armed pro-Mormon mob, Sharp editorialized:
War and extermination is inevitable! Citizens ARISE, ONE and ALL!!!—Can you stand by, and suffer such INFERNAL DEVILS! To ROB men of their property and RIGHTS, without avenging them. We have no time for comment, every man will make his own. LET IT BE MADE WITH POWDER AND BALL!!!
In a June 14, 1844 extra edition, the "Signal" published the minutes of a meeting of Warsaw residents organized by Sharp whereby those in attendance condemned Smith's destruction of the printing press of the "Nauvoo Expositor" and resolved that "the Prophet [Smith] and his miscreant adherents, should ... be demanded at their [the Latter Day Saints'] hands, and if not surrendered, a war of extermination should be waged to the entire destruction, if necessary for our protection, of his adherents."
After Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed by a mob on June 27, Sharp editorialized in the July 10 edition:
Joe and Hiram [sic] Smith, at the time their lives were taken, were in the custody of the officers of the law; and it is asked by those who condemn the act, why the law was not first allowed to take its course before violence was resorted to? We answer that the course of law in the case of these wretches would have been a mere mockery; and such was the conviction of every sensible man.
After the majority of the Latter Day Saints left Illinois under the leadership of Brigham Young, the "Signal" continued to report on the Mormons and their progression west and remained editorially opposed to the presence of Latter Day Saints in Illinois and surrounding states, particularly those who chose to follow James Strang.
Mark Twain connection.
Some literary historians have suggested that Mark Twain, then known by his birth name Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was a type-setter and contributor to the "Warsaw Signal" for a few weeks in late 1855 or early 1856. In a January 1856 edition of the newspaper, an article attributed to "Thomas Jefferson Sole" entitled "Learning Grammar" appeared on the fourth page of the publication. Historians have noted that the article resembles much of Twain's later writings and that Twain would later use the pseudonyms "Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass" and "Soleather" before settling on "Mark Twain".


Otto Huseklepp

Otto Huseklepp (2 April 1892 – 31 July 1964) was a Norwegian politician for the Liberal Party.
He was born in Guddalen.
He served as a deputy representative to the Norwegian Parliament from Sogn og Fjordane during the terms 1945–1949 and 1950–1953. He was also a member of Førde municipality council.
External links.
<br>


Thor Bjarne Bore

Thor Bjarne Bore (10 January 1938 – 22 December 2019) was a Norwegian newspaper editor and politician.
He was born in Molde, and educated at the University of Oslo, graduating with the cand.mag. degree in 1961. He was the editor-in-chief of "Romsdals Budstikke" from 1966 to 1970, "Vårt Land" from 1974 to 1983 and "Stavanger Aftenblad" from 1983 to 1999. He also worked in "Vårt Land" from 1964 to 1966 and 1970 to 1974.
Bore was the chair of Norwegian Church Aid since 2000. He was also a member of Stavanger city council for the Liberal Party from 2007 to 2011. He died in 2019, aged 81.


Zalman Abramov

Shneor Zalman Abramov (, 6 May 1908 – 5 March 1997) was an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset between 1959 and 1977. As a writer he usually signed by using the acronym S.Z. Abramov.
Biography.
Born in Minsk in the Russian Empire (today in Belarus), Abramov made aliyah to Palestine in 1920. He was educated at the Herzliya Hebrew High School in Tel Aviv, before studying at the Western Reserve University, obtaining a doctorate in jurisprudence. Whilst in the United States, he served as Vice President of the Zionist Students of America organisation between 1931 and 1933. He also later served as Chairman of the Israel-United States Friendship League from 1950 until 1964.
A member of the General Zionists, Abramov was elected to the Knesset on the party's list in 1959. He was re-elected in 1961, 1965, 1969 and 1973, during which time the General Zionists merged into the Liberal Party, then Gahal and later Likud. Between 1963 and 1972 he represented the Knesset at the European Council, and in 1970 he became chairman of the Executive Committee of the Public Council for Soviet Jewry. From 1974 until 1977 he also served as a Deputy Speaker of the Knesset.
He was considered as the major thinker and theoretician of Israeli liberalism, though his positions tended to be more moderate and progressive than those of most of the members of his own party and of other political affiliations to which he belonged. Throughout his life he remained convinced that Chaim Weizmann's vision represented the right path for Zionism. Accordingly, he believed that Israel's strength lies in its efforts to cultivate its educational institutions and research institutes, as well as in its ability to impose moral constraints upon itself by applying a broad universal perspective also when it is bound to deal with local or regional affairs.
He died in Jerusalem in 1997.


Irish republican legitimism

Irish republican legitimism denies the legitimacy of the political entities of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and posits that the pre-partition Irish Republic continues to exist. It is a more extreme form of Irish republicanism, which denotes rejection of all British rule in Ireland. The concept shapes aspects of, but is not synonymous with, abstentionism.
Historical development.
Republican legitimists adopt a traditional Irish republican analysis that views the Irish Republic as proclaimed "in arms" during the 1916 Easter Rising as the sole legitimate authority on the island of Ireland. This view is partly shared by all political parties in the present-day Republic of Ireland, who believe the secessionist and abstentionist First Dáil, which "ratified" the Republic proclaimed in 1916, is a predecessor to the current, internationally recognised, Dáil, the lower house of the Irish Parliament.
It is on the issue of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty that republican legitimism departs from mainstream constitutional understanding. It views the Anglo-Irish Treaty as incompatible with the Irish Republic and thus null and void. Although the Treaty was endorsed by the majority of TDs of the Second Dáil, republican legitimists argue that the vote was invalid as all TDs had, prior to their election, taken a solemn oath to defend the Irish Republic, and that people could not possibly express their true desires on the treaty, as the British had threatened a massive escalation, "immediate and terrible war" as they phrased it, if it was not accepted.
On the basis of these views, republican legitimism argued that:
The pro- and anti-treaty factions of Sinn Féin attempted to present a united block of candidates for the 1922 general election in the 26 counties for the Third Dáil; 58 pro-treaty Sinn Féin members were re-elected compared with 36 anti-treaty members. Of these, 17 of the 58 and 16 of the 36 were returned unopposed. Following the outbreak of the Irish Civil War, the Second Dáil was never dissolved. Led by Éamon de Valera and others, the Second Dáil TDs who had voted against the Treaty abstained from the (26 county) Provisional Parliament of the Free State and the subsequent Oireachtas of the Irish Free State. They and their opponents engaged in the Irish civil war in 1922-23.
Although de Valera had resigned as President of the Republic on 7 January 1922, and had not been re-elected on a very close Dáil vote two days later, a meeting of the IRA Army Executive at Poulatar, Ballybacon on 17 October 1922 adopted a proclamation "reinstating" de Valera as "President of the Republic" and "Chief Executive of the State". The "Emergency Government," as de Valera called it in his autobiography, was established on 25 October 1922.
Members of this Republican government were:
De Valera also appointed twelve members of the Second Dáil to act as a Council of State. They were:
This "Government of the Republic", however, was unable to assert the authority it claimed to possess. Effectively an internal government-in-exile, one of its first acts was to rescind the ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It continued to meet even after subsequent elections had been held in jurisdiction of the Free State. Styling themselves Comhairle na dTeachtaí, the members of the rump Second Dáil were joined by anti-Treaty republican TDs elected at subsequent elections. The IRA initially recognised the authority of the rump Second Dáil but increased distrust between the two bodies led the IRA to withdraw its support in 1925.
At the 1926 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Éamon de Valera (then president of the party) effectively called for the tactical abandonment of the legitimist argument by proposing that the party accept the Free State constitution and return to electoral politics contingent on the abolition of the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown. Opponents of the proposal, led by Father Michael O'Flanagan and Mary MacSwiney, defeated his motion by a vote of 223 to 218. De Valera subsequently resigned as Sinn Féin president to form a new party, Fianna Fáil, which entered the Dáil of the Irish Free State in 1927, reducing the ranks of this rump Second Dáil even further. From this point onwards, de Valera and his followers were seen as having departed from the principles of republicanism by republican legitimists, who set up Comhairle na Poblachta as a body to popularise its claims.
However, on 14 March 1929, de Valera made a remarkable statement in the Free State Parliament:
"I still hold that our right to be regarded as the legitimate Government of this country is faulty, that this house itself is faulty - you have secured a de facto position." He accused the Free State of having brought off a coup d'état in the summer of 1922 and stated:
"Those who have continued on in that organisation which we have left can claim exactly the same continuity that we claimed up to 1925. They can do it..."
1938 – Second Dáil to Army Council.
The adoption of the 1937 Constitution changed the name of the state from "Irish Free State" to "Ireland", but legitimists continued to use the obsolete "Free State" to refer derisively to the regime it considered illegitimate; a practice continued past the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 and down to the present day.
The 17 December 1938 issue of the "Wolfe Tone Weekly" carried a statement from a body calling itself the Executive Council of the Second Dáil. Above this statement was an introductory paragraph written by Seán Russell announcing that on 8 December, the anniversary of the executions of the "Four Martyrs" (Rory O'Connor, Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett and Joe McKelvey) in 1922, the group had transferred what they believed was their authority as Government of the Irish Republic to the IRA Army Council. The statement was published in both Irish and English and appeared below the banner headline "IRA take over the Government of the Republic".
The legalistic basis for this transfer of authority was a resolution of the First Dáil on 11 March 1921 in response to the arrest of many TDs during the IRA's war with British security forces. Rather than nominate substitute members, Plunkett had said "it was usual to substitute military dictatorship in countries invaded", and the Dáil decided that "when the number [of TDs] fell to five the Army [IRA] should take control" and "resolve itself into a Provisional Government".
During the period 1922-1938, all seven signatories stood for re-election in the Irish Free State, but by 1938 none were successful. Therefore, they considered that their past electoral status in 1921-22 was more important than their subsequent attempts to be elected, as the Second Dáil arose from the last election held in the whole island of Ireland. The signatories now argued that the seven general elections that the Irish Free State electorate had voted in, from 1922 to mid-1938, had all been illegitimate and unconstitutional; even though they had themselves stood as candidates and had on occasion been elected in some of them.
The text of the statement is as follows:
Henceforth, the IRA Army Council perceived itself to be the legitimate government of the Irish Republic. This allowed it to present its declaration of war on Britain in January 1939 (see S-Plan) as the act of a legitimate, "de jure" government.
1969 – Official/Provisional split.
In December 1969, the IRA General Army Convention decided to drop its policy of abstentionism. This resulted in a split in the organisation, leading to the emergence of the (then) majority Official IRA and (minority) Provisional IRA. The supporters of the latter approached Tom Maguire, the last surviving member of the 1938 seven-member rump Second Dáil, who declared that the Provisional IRA was the legitimate successor to the 1938 Army Council and, as such, was the legal embodiment of the Irish Republic.
The text of the statement is as follows:
1986 – Provisional/Continuity split.
The Provisional Movement followed this analysis until 1986, when the IRA and Sinn Féin split over the issue of abstentionism once again. As in 1970, republican legitimists approached Tom Maguire, who in two statements written in 1986 and 1987 but issued posthumously in 1994, maintained that the Army Council of the Continuity IRA was the sole legitimate successor to the 1938 Army Council.
The texts of the statements are as follows:
And:
In the years after the split, the Provisionals moved towards a complete cessation of armed struggle, while Sinn Féin entered constitutional politics. The party now contests elections to the Dáil Éireann and the Northern Ireland Assembly - "partitionist parliaments" in the legitimist view - and takes up the seats it wins. However, Sinn Féin maintains an abstentionist stance towards the Westminster Parliament.
Republican Sinn Féin uphold the abstentionist tradition to both "partitionist parliaments" plus Westminster, and view themselves as the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905.


Community Democrats of Ireland

The Community Democrats of Ireland were a minor political party in Ireland, formed in 1979. It was founded with the express purpose of contesting European Parliament elections in Ireland, of which the 1979 European Parliament elections were the first-ever held in Ireland. Promoted as an explicitly Liberal party, it was also promoted as the Irish affiliate of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party, then known as the Federation of Liberal and Democrat Parties in Europe.
Candidates.
The party touted that it was approaching a number of non-affiliated politicians in Ireland to run under its banner, such as Seán Dublin Bay Rockall Loftus, Rita Childers and Noel Browne. However ultimately none of these figures committed to running the party by the day of elections, damaging the party's credibility. Seán Dublin Bay Rockall Loftus's flirtation with the Community Democrats of Ireland caused much consternation with another political group he was already affiliated with; the "Community Group" who contested local elections in Dublin as Independents but who worked together as an organisation. The Community Group accused Loftus of breaking their constitution by joining the CDI. It was perhaps this rocking of the boat that quickly saw Loftus back away from the CDI. While he did contest both the local and European elections that year, he contested both under the banner of an being Independent.
The expectation of the Community Democrats of securing Noel Browne to their party might have been misplaced given that Browne was in the midst of getting his own new political party, the Socialist Labour Party, up and running.
Television coverage.
The party asked to be given an equal amount of air time as other parties on Ireland's national broadcaster RTÉ, but RTÉ turned this down, much to their chagrin. RTÉ stated that as the party had not achieved a reasonable threshold of the vote in a general or local election, they could not reasonably expect to be platformed. The CDI retorted that as this was their first-ever election they could not reasonably be expected to have past results by which to be judged by. The Community Democrats of Ireland sought an injunction against RTÉ but this did not lead anywhere either. However, the decision by RTÉ to exclude the Community Democrats did raise questions in Irish society about what the criteria for receiving air time should be and if there was bias against newly founded parties.
Party values.
A flavour of the values of the party might be extrapolated from the background of CDI Candidate Christoper Morris; Morris noted in campaign literature that he was a Member of Executive Committee of Irish Family Planning Association and chairman of that group when a case was brought against it by IFPA for publishing a booklet on contraception, as well as a Founder member of Family Services Ltd., who pioneered a nationwide distribution of contraceptives through the post. He also noted he been apart of a previous attempt to launch a Liberal Party in Ireland in the 1960s, and that he was a Humanist and former President of the Irish Humanist Association. Finally, he also mentioned being a member of the council of the Irish Association of Civil Liberties and chairman of its sub-committee for reform of Divorce law.
At the polls.
Three candidates did stand for the party on election day; Michael B Crowe in Munster where he received 2,268 first preference votes, Kevin Clear in Dublin where he received 915 first preference votes and Christopher Morris in Connacht–Ulster where he received 447 votes.
Michael B Crowe was their most successful candidate despite the fact that one week before election day he declared that he was done campaigning as upon speaking to the electorate door to door, he said he came to realise the electorate "knew absolutely nothing" about the EEC or how it operated, and that people should no longer bother to vote for him. Crowe has been a former Limerick City Councillor and had the highest-profile of those who ran for the party on the day.
Following the 1979 European elections, the CDI did not contest any further elections.


Battle of Allenstein

The Battle of Allenstein (or "Olsztyn"), also known as the Battle of Jonkowo (or "Jankowo, Inkowo, Jonkendorf") was a military engagement during the early stages of the 1807 Fourth Coalition Napoleonic campaign in Poland. While the battle resulted in a French field victory and allowed for a successful pursuit of the Russian army, it failed to produce the decisive engagement that Napoleon was seeking.
Context.
After crushing the Prussian forces in 1806, Napoleon and his Grande Armée advanced east into the Polish provinces of Prussia, with the aim of bringing the Russian there army to give decisive battle. However, the arrival of winter led the Emperor to order his army to winter quarters, thinking that the Russians will do the same. In order to exploit this misapprehension, the Russian commander, Levin August, Count von Bennigsen decided to take the initiative and, towards the end of January set his troops in motion to attack the weak French left, crush it and fall behind the French army.
Quite fortuitously, the French of Michel Ney's Corps, who had disobeyed orders and overextended his foraging array, encountered the Russian advance guard. Thus Napoleon was able to read into Bennigsen's intentions and set up what was supposed to be the decisive manoeuvre of the campaign. Ordering his left wing to fall back in order to pull in the Russian army westwards, the Emperor directed the bulk of his forces northwards, towards Allenstein, in a bid to outflank the unsuspecting enemy and fall behind it with superior forces.
As chance would have it, the Russians intercepted a crucial dispatch, in which the Chief of Staff, Louis Alexandre Berthier, was explaining the entire plan to the commander of the left wing corps, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. This allowed Bennigsen to realize the mortal danger in which his army lay and begin a precipitated retreat northeast.
Battle.
Meanwhile, oblivious of the Russian retreat, the French pursued their intended manoeuvre, pushing their advance guard, elements of the Reserve Cavalry Corps of Joachim Murat, supported by Jean-de-Dieu Soult's Corps, towards the Alle river.
On February 3, these troops arrived at Allenstein and the Inkowo plateau, where they discovered a portion of the retreating Russian army. Seeing an opportunity for a major battle, Napoleon ordered four more army corps to march to the battlefield. He detailed Murat to delay his attack in order to wait for reinforcements and, as soon as these reached the battlefield, attack the Russians frontally using Louis-Vincent-Joseph Le Blond de Saint-Hilaire's division, while Soult would march to flank the enemy.
On the Russian side, General Nikolay Kamensky was forced to accept battle rather than retreat, in order to protect the strategic Liebstadt road and the bridges over the Alle in Bergfriede, which were key for the successful retreat of the rest of the army. He was helped in his task by the fact the French only attacked towards 15:00 hours, a delay caused by Napoleon's orders to Murat. When the French eventually attacked, the Russians were prepared and used their fifteen cannon and musketry to inflict heavy losses to the advancing enemy. Nevertheless, the Russian tactical disposition, defending a defilé rather than occupying high ground, soon forced them to give ground under the pressure.
Towards the end of the afternoon, Soult, with the 24th Light and 4th Line regiments began his flanking attack and, after some ferocious combat, pushed the Russians beyond the Alle, capturing an intact Bergfriede bridge. With night falling and his position completely compromised, Bennigsen decided to hasten his retreat and ordered Kamensky to extricate his force and withdraw to Deppen. Both sides suffered relatively high losses, with the Russians forced to abandon six cannon and three hundred prisoners on the field of battle.
Result.
Despite this tactical success, Napoleon failed to bring the Russians to give decisive battle, requiring a further exhausting wintertime pursuit. Nevertheless, the French did capture the intact strategic bridges over the Alle, which the Russians omitted to blow up.
French pursuit resumed the next day, resulting the capture of sixteen cannon, while the day after Soult captured no less than 1200 prisoners. A series of skirmishes led to the Battle of Hoff on February 6, followed by the Battle of Eylau, one of the bloodiest engagements of the entire Napoleonic Wars.


Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions

The Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) is a pro-democracy labour and political group in the Hong Kong. It was established on 29 July 1990. It has 160,000 members in 61 affiliates (mainly trade unions in various sectors) and has representation in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo) to challenge government policies and push for legal protection of worker and trade union rights. It is one of the two most influential labour groups in Hong Kong. (The other is the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions.)
Beliefs.
The principles put forward by the HKCTU are "Solidarity, Rice Bowl, Justice and Democracy". The group focuses on the rights and interests of workers, and the development of a democratic political system in Hong Kong. It calls for the right to collective bargaining and protection against dismissals for involvement in trade union activities.
Besides calling for universal suffrage of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong and LegCo, the group also supports the pro-democracy movement in mainland China, including the struggle for independent trade unions. It participates in a number of human rights and labour rights networks to oppose the suppression of labour movements in mainland China.
History.
The HKCTU emerged from the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC), a church-sponsored labour organisation largely involved in the grassroots movements in the 1970s and 1980s. The Confederation was established in 1990 under the leadership of independent labour leader Lau Chin-shek. It was largely as a coalition of the independent and politically unaffiliated union organisations, most of which were new white-collar unions organising the civil service and professional or service employees in the public and subvented sectors, including the Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union and the Hong Kong Social Workers General Union.
The HKCTU has inherited the vanguard image and the more liberal sector in the territory's pluralistic union movement. It became a partner and an ally of the pro-democracy camp and the Democratic Party, in which Lau was the founding member. Lau Chin-shek won a seat in the 1991 LegCo direct election and Lee Cheuk-yan, the general secretary of the HKCTU, also won a seat in the 1995 LegCo election.
Days before transfer of sovereignty in 1997, with the support of the pro-democracy camp, the HKCTU successfully established statutory rights of collective bargaining of labour unions, which mandate employers to negotiate with labour unions on issues such as salaries, welfare and working hours, by introducing the Employee's Rights to Representation, Consultation and Collective Bargaining Bill as Lee Cheuk-yan's private member's bill. But the laws were soon abolished by the pro-Beijing appointed Provisional Legislative Council shortly after the transfer of sovereignty.
Members of HKCTU were involved in organising a number of local protests, including the pivotal 2003 July 1 march to oppose the enactment of anti-sedition laws under Article 23 of the Basic Law (organised by the Civil Human Rights Front of which HKCTU is a member), and other protests to struggle for labour rights and democracy in Hong Kong and in mainland China.
In the 1998 LegCo election, the group was represented by Lau Chin-shek (also a member of Democratic Party and The Frontier) and Lee Cheuk-yan (also a member of The Frontier) in the legislative council (LegCo). In 2012, the HKCTU co-founded the Labour Party.


Don Higginbotham

Don Higginbotham (May 22, 1931 – June 22, 2008) was an American historian and Dowd Professor of History and Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A leading scholar of George Washington, he was a pioneering practitioner of the “new” military history and an expert on colonial and revolutionary America and the early national United States. He served twice (1975–76 and 1998–99) as visiting professor of history at the United States Military Academy.
Background.
A native of Malden, Missouri, Higginbotham attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he received his A.B. and M.A. degrees. He enrolled as a doctoral student at the University of Nebraska but in 1955 followed Professor John R. Alden, his adviser, to Duke University. In 1958, upon the completion of his dissertation on Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, Duke awarded him his Ph.D. He taught at Longwood College, the College of William and Mary, and Louisiana State University prior to joining the faculty at Chapel Hill where, for 41 years, he taught undergraduate and graduate students.
Achievements.
Higginbotham spent five years at the helm of UNC’s history department and served as president of the Southern Historical Association (1990–1991) and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (1992–1993). He published numerous essays in collected volumes as well as articles in journals such as the "William and Mary Quarterly", the "American Historical Review", the "Journal of Military History", the "Journal of Southern History", and the "Journal of the Early Republic". He authored or edited many books, including "Daniel Morgan, Revolutionary Rifleman" (1961); "The Atlas of the American Revolution" (1974); "The Papers of James Iredell" (2 vols., 1976); "Reconsiderations on the Revolutionary War" (1978); "George Washington and the American Military Tradition" (1985); "War and Society in Revolutionary America: The Wider Dimensions of Conflict" (1988); "George Washington Reconsidered" (2001); "George Washington: Uniting a Nation" (2002); and "Revolution in America: Considerations and Comparisons" (2005). His 1971 book, "The War of American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice", was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and remains the standard account of the war and its effects on society. At the time of his death he remained at work on a book manuscript tentatively titled "George Washington, Revolutionary"—a study of Washington’s leadership as Continental Army commander-in-chief, head of the Constitutional Convention, and first U.S. president.


Swaminathan Aiyar

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar (born 12 October 1938) is an Indian economist, journalist, and columnist. He is consulting editor for the "Economic Times" and writes regularly for the "Economic Times" and "The Times of India". He is also a Research Fellow at the Cato Institute. He is the elder brother of Mani Shankar Aiyar, who is a senior Congress leader.
Early life.
Aiyar was born to V. Shankar Aiyar, a chartered accountant, and Bhagyalakshmi Shankar. He is the older brother of, Mani Shankar Aiyar a politician who has served as Minister for Panchayati Raj in the Indian government.
An alumnus of Welham Boys' School, The Doon School, and St Stephen's College, University of Delhi, he earned a master's degree in economics from Magdalen College, Oxford.
Career.
He is a research fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington D.C., and an occasional consultant to the World Bank.
He previously served as editor of "The Economic Times" (1992–94), "The Financial Express" (1988–90) and "Eastern Economist" (1980–82).
Aiyar writes a weekly column titled "Swaminomics" in the "Times of India", where he discusses economic and political issues pertaining to India and the world. Aiyar has prepared several reports and papers for the World Bank. In 1976–85 and 1990–98, he was also the India correspondent of "The Economist".
He has written two books: "Towards Globalisation" (1992) and "Swaminomics: Escape from the Benevolent Zookeepers" (2008).
He is currently consulting editor of "The Economic Times", India's leading financial daily that is part of Bennett, Coleman & Co, the same company that owns "The Times of India".
Personal life.
Aiyar has three children: Pallavi Aiyar, Shekhar Aiyar, and Rustam Aiyar from his previous marriage with Gitanjali Aiyar. He is an atheist.


War Office (Lebanon, Connecticut)

The War Office, also once known as the Capt. Joseph Trumble Store and Office, is a historic commercial building on the Lebanon Green in Lebanon, Connecticut. Built about 1732 as a commercial building, it is most significant as the place from which Governor Jonathan Trumbull conducted military business during the American Revolutionary War. It is now part of the museum property managed by the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution that also includes the Trumbull House and the Wadsworth Stables. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
Description and history.
The War Office is located facing Lebanon's elongated village green, on the west side of West Town Street north of the Governor Jonathan Trumbull House, a National Historic Landmark. It is a 1-1/2 story wood frame structure, with a gambrel roof, central brick chimney and clapboarded exterior. Its main facade has the main entrance on the left side, and two sash windows irregularly spaced. The side elevations have single windows on both the ground floor and attic levels. The interior is plainly finished, and houses museum exhibits.
The building was built c. 1732 by Captain Joseph Trumbull as a place from which to conduct his merchant business. The building is most significant for its use during the American Revolutionary War. It served as the war office of Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull, with more than 1,000 councils of war taking place there. Visitors to the office included George Washington, Rochambeau, Lauzun, Lafayette, Admiral de Ternay, Generals Henry Knox, John Sullivan, and Israel Putnam, as well as political leaders Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay. The Lebanon Green was also where cavalry of the French Army wintered in 1780-81, before joining the rest of their army for the march to Yorktown, Virginia in 1781. The War Office was, like the Trumbull House, moved a short distance in 1824. Abandoned and in deteriorating condition, it was given to the Connecticut chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution in 1891, and has served as a museum since.