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GNU TeXmacs

GNU TeXmacs is a scientific word processor and typesetting component of the GNU Project. It originated as a variant of GNU Emacs with TeX functionalities, though it shares no code with those programs, while using TeX fonts. It is written and maintained by Joris van der Hoeven and a group of developers. The program produces structured documents with a WYSIWYG user interface. New document styles can be created by the user. The editor provides high-quality typesetting algorithms and TeX and other fonts for publishing professional looking documents.

Background
As a structured WYSIWYG editor and document preparation system, TeXmacs is similar to earlier structured document editors, such as Interleaf (first release 1985), Framemaker (1986), SoftQuad Author/Editor (1988), Lilac, Grif (software) (1991), and Thot; there was also academic research into interactive editing of complex typographical constructs represented logically.

In the 2000s and 2010s, interest on interactive editing of structured text encouraged the development of programs intended for scholars in the humanities; an example of this is CWRC-Writer, a visual XML editor with "Close-to-WYSIWYG editing and enrichment of scholarly texts with meaningful visual representations of markup".

On another side of the editing and document preparation world, a program for visual interaction with structured texts written in LaTeX is LyX, which does not aim at WYSIWYG editing but at visual representation of the structure (WYSIWYM).

Features
Like in many WYSIWYG editors (such as Microsoft Word), authors manipulate a document on screen which should print to a similar-looking paper copy. The goal of TeXmacs is to provide a WYSIWYG editor that nevertheless makes it possible to write correctly structured documents with aesthetically pleasing typesetting results. TeXmacs is a front-end to LaTeX but TeXmacs documents can be converted to either TeX or LaTeX. LaTeX also can be imported (to some extent), and both import from and export to HTML, Scheme, Verbatim, and XML is provided; the HTML export is stylable with CSS (since version 1.99.14). There is a converter for MathML as well, and TeXmacs can output PDF and PostScript for printing.

TeXmacs can handle mathematical formulas, tables, images, cross-references and citations. It can be used as a front-end to a number of computer algebra systems such as Maxima, FriCAS and SageMath, and can in turn integrate some of their output into its typesetting. TeXmacs also supports a Scheme extension language called Guile for customizing the program and writing extensions.

It also features a presentation mode and a small technical drawing editor and there are plans to evolve towards a complete scientific office suite with spreadsheet capabilities. An implementation of spreadsheets is present starting from version 1.99.12; spreadsheets in TeXmacs can take advantage of plugins (for example Python or Maxima) to compute cell values.

TeXmacs currently runs on most Unix-based architectures including Linux, FreeBSD, Cygwin, Haiku and macOS. Along with the Cygwin version, a native port is available for Microsoft Windows.

The TeXmacs editor
In the TeXmacs editor structure and appearance of the document are represented at the same time; the structure is made evident to the user by surrounding logical units of the document in nested focus frames carrying color cues that are displayed according to the movement of the cursor. A detailed description of the structure in the proximity of the cursor is provided in the footer of the editor window, finely selectable with left-right arrow presses. In the editor it is possible to switch between text mode and source mode editing, and support for the composition of macros is present; the source editor is syntax-aware.

Mathematical typography
TeXmacs facilitates the inputting of mathematical formulas by mapping sequences of keyboard presses to symbols. For example, the symbol $$\Rightarrow$$ can be input by typing =>.

Some symbols have no such representation ($$\Uparrow$$ for instance). These can be input with key (e.g. for $$\Uparrow$$ the key presses are => . This keyboard-based entry differs from other formulae editors, that tend to provide point-and-click menus for this task.

Batch processing
It is possible to use TeXmacs as a batch processor (which is LaTeX's usual operation mode), using X virtual framebuffer to avoid opening unwanted windows while processing. For example, the command $ xvfb-run texmacs --convert article.tm article.pdf --quit generates a PDF file "article.pdf" from a TeXmacs document "article.tm".

The TeXmacs format
All TeXmacs documents or document fragments can be thought of as trees (the concept of tree exists as well in the SGML markup language, to which the Texmacs format is similar). For instance, the tree

represents the formula

 * $$x+y+\frac{1}{2}+\sqrt{y+z}$$

(written here with the TeX markup used by Wikipedia) and is turned by TeXmacs' own typesetting engine into a typeset formula, here inserted as an image:

 * TeXmacs tree rendered.png

TeXmacs trees are represented in TeXmacs files as strings, and in the TeXmacs editor as the typeset representation of the document together with its interactive behaviour. In the on-screen representation of the TeXmacs tree, the cursor movement represents the movement inside the tree. On disk, three representations of the TeXmacs format exist: a native representation, an XML representation and a representation with Scheme S-expressions; the Scheme representation is useful for the interfacing with Scheme programs.

Typesetting and document control
The typesetting process converts TeXmacs trees into boxes. Evaluation of TeXmacs trees proceeds by reduction of the primitives, that is by evaluation of macro applications. The typesetting primitives are designed to be very fast and are built-in into the editor; the rendering of many of the primitives can be customized through the built-in environment variables; the stylesheet language allows users to write new primitives as macros on top of the built-in primitives.

TeXmacs uses a global algorithm for "line-breaking" (similar to the TeX one) and in addition uses a global algorithm for "page-breaking"; the page-breaking algorithm takes into account floating objects (figures, table, footnotes) and multi-column content.

Document control
Documents can be controlled through a native macro system and through Guile-Scheme. It is possible to customize the editor's menus and keybindings and to act programmatically on the document tree.

TeXmacs macros
TeXmacs macros provide a means of structured input (as in TeX/LaTeX) and they are immediately typeset, at the same time maintaining editable input fields. They are written in source code, although the WYSIWYG editor can aid in their composition through the translation of visual structures into their syntax.

Document control through Scheme
Scheme is embedded in TeXmacs through GNU Guile; the editor itself can be controlled in this way: menus and keybindings can be customized. Scheme commands can be invoked interactively inside TeXmacs documents, can be invoked from the command line and from inside TeXmacs macros. TeXmacs trees can be passed to Scheme in different forms: as "passive trees" (convenient to manipulate content directly using standard Scheme routines on lists), as "active trees" (keep track of the position of the tree inside the global document tree and can be used to programmatically modify documents), and in a "hybrid" representation.

Graphics
Graphics objects are also part of the TeXmacs format and can be manipulated programmatically from Scheme. An example of TeXmacs graphics generated in a TeXmacs Scheme session is shown below together with the session which generated the image. Images generated programmatically in a Scheme session can also be edited using the internal drawing editor, as they are inserted in the document as a tree; Scheme scripts can also be executed through the  TeXmacs macro—in this case only the typeset material is available in the document and no direct editing is possible (the modifications must be made within the Scheme code).

Supported back ends
TeXmacs has back-ends supporting many technologies.

 * Programming languages: CLISP, CMUCL, Python, QCL, R, Shell
 * Computer algebra systems: Axiom, Giac, Macaulay 2, Mathematica, Maxima, MuPAD, PARI/GP, Reduce, SageMath, Yacas
 * Numeric matrix systems: GNU Octave, Matlab, Scilab
 * Plotting packages: gnuplot, Graphviz, XYpic, Mathemagix
 * Other: DraTeX, Eukleides, GTybalt, Lush, Juris-M, and Zotero

Embedding editable plugin output
Plugin output can be embedded within TeXmacs documents using "executable switches"; in this way one can switch back and forth between a given input to the system and the corresponding output, which blends seamlessly in the document.

title: GNU TeXmacs


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Corinth Canal

The Corinth Canal (Διώρυγα της Κορίνθου) is an artificial canal in Greece that connects the Gulf of Corinth in the Ionian Sea with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea. It cuts through the narrow Isthmus of Corinth and separates the Peloponnese from the Greek mainland, making the peninsula an island. The canal was dug through the Isthmus at sea level and has no locks. It is 6.4 km in length and only 24.6 metres (80.7 feet) wide at sea level, making it impassable for many modern ships. It is currently of little economic importance and is mainly a tourist attraction.

The Corinth canal concept originated with Periander of Corinth in the 7th century BC. Daunted by its enormity, he chose to implement the Diolkos, a land trackway for transporting ships, instead. Construction of a canal finally began under Roman Emperor Nero in 67 AD, using Jewish prisoners captured during the First Jewish–Roman War. However, the project ceased shortly after his death. In subsequent centuries, the idea intrigued figures like Herodes Atticus in the second century and, following their conquest of the Peloponnese in 1687, the Venetians. Despite their interest, neither of them undertook the construction.

Construction finally recommenced in 1881 but was hampered by geological and financial problems that bankrupted the original builders. It was completed in 1893, but, due to the canal's narrowness, navigational problems, and periodic closures to repair landslides from its steep walls, it failed to attract the level of traffic expected by its operators.

Ancient attempts
Several rulers of antiquity dreamed of digging a cutting through the isthmus. The first to propose such an undertaking was the tyrant Periander in the 7th century BC. The project was abandoned and Periander instead constructed a simpler and less costly overland portage road, named the Diolkos or stone carriageway, along which ships could be towed from one side of the isthmus to the other. Periander's change of heart is attributed variously to the great expense of the project, a lack of labour or a fear that a canal would have robbed Corinth of its dominant role as an entrepôt for goods. Remnants of the Diolkos still exist next to the modern canal.

The Diadoch Demetrius Poliorcetes (336–283 BC) planned to construct a canal as a means to improve his communication lines, but dropped the plan after his surveyors, miscalculating the levels of the adjacent seas, feared heavy floods.

The philosopher Apollonius of Tyana prophesied that anyone who proposed to dig a Corinthian canal would be met with illness. Three Roman rulers considered the idea but all suffered violent deaths; the historians Plutarch and Suetonius both wrote that the Roman dictator Julius Caesar considered digging a canal through the isthmus but was assassinated before he could begin the project. Caligula, the third Roman Emperor, commissioned a study in 40 AD from Egyptian experts who claimed incorrectly that the Corinthian Gulf was higher than the Saronic Gulf. As a result, they concluded, if a canal were dug the island of Aegina would be inundated. Caligula's interest in the idea got no further as he too was assassinated before making any progress.

The emperor Nero was the first to attempt to construct the canal, personally breaking the ground with a pickaxe and removing the first basket-load of soil in 67 AD, but the project was abandoned when he died shortly afterwards. The Roman workforce, consisting of 6,000 Judean prisoners of war, started digging 40 to 50 m trenches from both sides, while a third group at the ridge drilled deep shafts for probing the quality of the rock (which were reused in 1881 for the same purpose). According to Suetonius, the canal was dug to a distance of four stades – approximately 700 m – or about a tenth of the total distance across the isthmus. A memorial of the attempt in the form of a relief of Hercules was left by Nero's workers and can still be seen in the canal cutting today. Other than this, as the modern canal follows the same course as Nero's, no remains have survived.

The Greek philosopher and Roman senator Herodes Atticus is known to have considered digging a canal in the 2nd century AD, but did not get a project under way. The Venetians also considered it in 1687 after their conquest of the Peloponnese but likewise did not initiate any work on the ground.

Construction of the modern canal
The idea of a canal was revived after Greece gained formal independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830. The Greek statesman Ioannis Kapodistrias asked a French engineer to assess the feasibility of the project but had to abandon it when its cost was assessed at 40 million gold francs—far too expensive for the newly independent country. Fresh impetus was given by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and, the following year, the government of Prime Minister Thrasyvoulos Zaimis passed a law authorizing the construction of a Corinth canal. French entrepreneurs were put in charge but, following the bankruptcy of the French company that had attempted to dig the Panama Canal, French banks refused to lend money, and the company went bankrupt as well. A fresh concession was granted to the Société Internationale du Canal Maritime de Corinthe in 1881, which was commissioned to construct the canal and operate it for the next 99 years. Construction was formally inaugurated on 23 April 1882 in the presence of King George I of Greece.

The company's initial capital was 30,000,000 francs (US$6.0 million in the money of the day), but after eight years of work, it ran out of money, and a bid to issue 60,000 bonds of 500 francs each flopped when less than half of the bonds were sold. The company's head, István Türr, went bankrupt, as did the company itself and a bank that had agreed to raise additional funds for the project. Construction resumed in 1890, when the project was transferred to a Greek company, and was completed on 25 July 1893 after eleven years' work.

After completion
The canal experienced financial and operational difficulties after completion. The narrowness of the canal makes navigation difficult. Its high walls funnel wind along its length, and the different times of the tides in the two gulfs cause strong tidal currents in the channel. For these reasons, many ship operators were unwilling to use the canal, and traffic was far below predictions. Annual traffic of just under 4 million net tons had been anticipated, but by 1906 traffic had reached only half a million net tons annually. By 1913, the total had risen to 1.5 million net tons, but the disruption caused by World War I resulted in a major decline in traffic.

Another persistent problem was the heavily faulted nature of the sedimentary rock, in an active seismic zone, through which the canal is cut. The canal's high limestone walls have been persistently unstable from the start. Although it was formally opened in July 1893 it was not opened to navigation until the following November, due to landslides. It was soon found that the wake from ships passing through the canal undermined the walls, causing further landslides. This required further expense in building retaining walls along the water's edge for more than half of the length of the canal, using 165,000 cubic metres of masonry. Between 1893 and 1940, it was closed for a total of four years for maintenance to stabilise the walls. In 1923 alone, 41,000 cubic metres of material fell into the canal, which took two years to clear out.

Serious damage was caused to the canal during World War II. On 26 April 1941, during the Battle of Greece between defending Allied troops and the invading forces of Nazi Germany, German parachutists and glider troops attempted to capture the main bridge over the canal. The bridge was defended by British and Anzac forces and had been wired for demolition. The Germans surprised the defenders with a glider-borne assault in the early morning of 26 April and captured the bridge, but the British set off the charges and destroyed the structure. Other authors maintain that German pioneers cut the detonation wires, and a lucky hit by British artillery triggered the explosion, or that they were set off by a rifle shot from one of the British sappers. The bridge was replaced by a combined rail/road bridge built in 25 days by the IV Ferrovieri Battalion of the Royal Italian Army's Ferrovieri Engineer Regiment.

Three years later, as German forces retreated from Greece, the canal was put out of action by German "scorched earth" operations. German forces used explosives to trigger landslides to block the canal, destroyed the bridges and dumped locomotives, bridge wreckage and other infrastructure into the canal to hinder repairs. The United States Army Corps of Engineers began to clear the canal in November 1947 and reopened it for shallow-draft traffic by 7 July 1948, and for all traffic by that September.

Modern use
Because the canal is difficult to navigate for large vessels, it is mostly used by smaller recreational boats. A notable exception occurred on 9 October 2019, when the cruise ship MS Braemar became the widest and longest ship to transit the canal. The canal closed at the beginning of 2021 after a landslide. It re-opened in June 2022 until October 2022. After further safety measures, the canal reopened on June 1, 2023.

Layout
The canal consists of a single channel 8 m deep, excavated at sea level (thus requiring no locks), measuring 6343 m long by 24.6 m wide at sea level and 21.3 m wide at the bottom. The rock walls, which rise 90 m above sea level, are at a near-vertical 80° angle. The canal is crossed by a railway line, a road and a motorway at a height of about 45 m. In 1988, submersible bridges were installed at sea level at each end of the canal, by the eastern harbour of Isthmia and the western harbour of Poseidonia.

Although the canal saves the 700 km journey around the Peloponnese, it is too narrow for modern ocean freighters, as it can accommodate ships only of a width up to 17.6 m and draft up to 7.3 m. In October 2019, with over 900 passengers on board, a 22.5 m wide and 195 m long Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines cruise ship successfully traversed the canal to set a new record for longest ship to pass through the canal. Ships can pass through the canal only one convoy at a time on a one-way system. Larger ships have to be towed by tugs. The canal is currently used mainly by tourist ships; around 11,000 ships per year travel through the waterway.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Corinth Canal


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Microcredit

Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady employment, and a verifiable credit history. It is designed to support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty. Many recipients are illiterate, and therefore unable to complete paperwork required to get conventional loans. As of 2009 an estimated 74 million people held microloans that totaled US$38 billion. Grameen Bank reports that repayment success rates are between 95 and 98 percent. The first economist who had invented the idea of micro loans was Jonathan Swift in the 1720’s. Microcredit is part of microfinance, which provides a wider range of financial services, especially savings accounts, to the poor. Modern microcredit is generally considered to have originated with the Grameen Bank founded in Bangladesh in 1983. Many traditional banks subsequently introduced microcredit despite initial misgivings. The United Nations declared 2005 the International Year of Microcredit. As of 2012, microcredit is widely used in developing countries and is presented as having "enormous potential as a tool for poverty alleviation." Microcredit is a tool that can possibly be helpful to reduce feminization of poverty in developing countries.

Some argue that microcredit has not had a positive impact on gender relationships, does not alleviate poverty, has led many borrowers into a debt trap and constitutes a "privatization of welfare". The first randomized evaluation of microcredit, conducted by Abhijit Banerjee and others, showed mixed results: there was no effect on household expenditure, gender equity, education or health, but the number of new businesses increased by one third compared to a control group. Some of this increase in the number of businesses can be due to 'informal intermediation' documented by Frithjof Arp and collaborators: Philanthropic, low-interest-rate microcredit fosters unintended entrepreneurship where some borrowers split loans they receive and on-lend to less-entrepreneurial borrowers.

History
Ideas relating to microcredit can be found at various times in modern history. Jonathan Swift inspired the Irish Loan Funds of the 18th and 19th centuries. John Wesley began a microcredit scheme in 1746. His journal on 17/1/1748 records:"I made a public collection toward a lending stock for the poor. Our rule is, to lend only twenty shillings at once, which is repaid weekly within three months. I began this about a year and a half ago: thirty pounds sixteen shillings were then collected; and out of this, no less than two hundred and fifty-five persons have been relieved in eighteen months."In the mid-19th century, Individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner wrote about the benefits of numerous small loans for entrepreneurial activities to the poor as a way to alleviate poverty. At about the same time, but independently to Spooner, Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen founded the first cooperative lending banks to support farmers in rural Germany.

Comilla model
In the 1950s, Akhtar Hameed Khan began distributing group-oriented credit in East Pakistan. Khan used the Comilla Model, in which credit is distributed through community-based initiatives. The project failed due to the over-involvement of the Pakistani government, and the hierarchies created within communities as certain members began to exert more control over loans than others.

Modern microcredit
The origins of microcredit in its current practical incarnation can be linked to several organizations founded in Bangladesh, especially the Grameen Bank. The Grameen Bank, which is generally considered the first modern microcredit institution, was founded in 1983 by Muhammad Yunus. Yunus began the project in a small town called Jobra, using his own money to deliver small loans at low-interest rates to the rural poor. Grameen Bank was followed by organizations such as BRAC in 1972 and ASA in 1978. Microcredit reached Latin America with the establishment in Bolivia in 1986 of PRODEM, a bank that later transformed into the for-profit BancoSol. In Chile, BancoEstado Microempresas is the primary microcredit institution. Microcredit quickly became a popular tool for economic development, with hundreds of institutions emerging throughout the third world. Though the Grameen Bank was formed initially as a non-profit organization dependent upon government subsidies, it later became a corporate entity and was renamed Grameen II in 2002. Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work providing microcredit services to the poor.

Economic principles
Microcredit organizations were initially created as alternatives to the "loan sharks" known to take advantage of clients. Indeed, many microlenders began as non-profit organizations and operated with government funds or private subsidies. By the 1980s, however, the "financial systems approach", influenced by neoliberalism and propagated by the Harvard Institute for International Development, became the dominant ideology among microcredit organizations. The neoliberal model of microcredit can also be referred to as the institutionist model, which promotes applying market solutions as a viable way to address social problems. The commercialization of microcredit officially began in 1984 with the formation of Unit Desa (BRI-UD) within the Bank Rakyat Indonesia. Unit Desa offered 'kupedes' microloans based on market interest rates.

Yunus has sharply criticized the shift in microcredit organizations from the Grameen Bank model as a non-profit bank to for-profit institutions: "I never dreamed that one day microcredit would give rise to its own breed of loan sharks ... There are always people eager to take advantage of the vulnerable. But credit programs that seek to profit from the suffering of the poor should not be described as 'microcredit,' and investors who own such programs should not be allowed to benefit from the trust and respect that microcredit banks have rightly earned."Many microcredit organizations now function as independent banks. This has led to their charging higher interest rates on loans and placing more emphasis on savings programs. Notably, Unit Desa has charged in excess of 20 percent on small business loans. The application of neoliberal economics to microcredit has generated much debate among scholars and development practitioners, with some claiming that microcredit bank directors, such as Muhammad Yunus, apply the practices of loan sharks for their personal enrichment. Indeed, the academic debate foreshadowed a Wall-street style scandal involving the Mexican microcredit organization Compartamos.

Even so, the numbers indicate that ethical microlending and investor profit can go hand-in-hand. In the 1990s a rural finance minister in Indonesia showed how Unit Desa could lower its rates by about 8% while still bringing attractive returns to investors.

Group lending
Though lending to groups has long been a key part of microcredit, microcredit initially began with the principle of lending to individuals. Despite the use of solidarity circles in 1970s Jobra, Grameen Bank and other early microcredit institutions initially focused on individual lending. (A solidarity circle is a group of borrowers that provide mutual encouragement, information, and assistance in times of need, though loans remain the responsibility of individuals. ) Indeed, Muhammad Yunus propagated the notion that every person has the potential to become an entrepreneur. Yunus saw poverty eradication as being in the hands of the individual. Because of this, he promoted private ownership, and consequently, neoliberalism. The use of group-lending was motivated by economics of scale, as the costs associated with monitoring loans and enforcing repayment are significantly lower when credit is distributed to groups rather than individuals. Many times the loan to one participant in group-lending depends upon the successful repayment from another member, thus transferring repayment responsibility off of microcredit institutions to loan recipients.

Lending to women
Lending to women has become an important principle in microcredit, with banks and NGOs such as BancoSol, WWB, and Pro Mujer catering to women exclusively. Pro Mujer also implemented a new strategy to combine microcredits with health-care services, since the health of their clients is crucial to the success of microcredits. Though Grameen Bank initially tried to lend to both men and women at equal rates, women presently make up ninety-five percent of the bank's clients. Women continue to make up seventy-five percent of all microcredit recipients worldwide. Exclusive lending to women began in the 1980s when Grameen Bank found that women have higher repayment rates, and tend to accept smaller loans than men.

Bangladesh
Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is the oldest and probably best-known microfinance institution in the world. Grameen Bank launched their US operations in New York in April 2008. Bank of America has announced plans to award more than $3.7 million in grants to nonprofits to use in backing microloan programs. The Accion U.S. Network, the US subsidiary of the better-known Accion International, has provided over $450 million in microloans since 1991, with an over 90% repayment rate. One research study of the Grameen model shows that poorer individuals are safer borrowers because they place more value on the relationship with the bank. Even so, efforts to replicate Grameen-style solidarity lending in developed countries have generally not succeeded. For example, the Calmeadow Foundation tested an analogous peer-lending model in three locations in Canada during the 1990s. It concluded that a variety of factors—including difficulties in reaching the target market, the high risk profile of clients, their general distaste for the joint liability requirement, and high overhead costs—made solidarity lending unviable without subsidies. Microcredits have also been introduced in Israel, Russia, Ukraine and other nations where micro-loans help small business entrepreneurs overcome cultural barriers in the mainstream business society. The Israel Free Loan Association (IFLA) has lent more than $100 million in the past two decades to Israeli citizens of all backgrounds.

India
In India, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) finances more than 500 banks that on-lend funds to self-help groups (SHGs). SHGs comprise twenty or fewer members, of whom the majority are women from the poorest castes and tribes. Members save small amounts of money, as little as a few rupees a month in a group fund. Members may borrow from the group fund for a variety of purposes ranging from household emergencies to school fees. As SHGs prove capable of managing their funds well, they may borrow from a local bank to invest in small business or farm activities. Banks typically lend up to four rupees for every rupee in the group fund. In Asia borrowers generally pay interest rates that range from 30% to 70% without commission and fees. Nearly 1.4 million SHGs comprising approximately 20 million women now borrow from banks, which makes the Indian SHG-Bank Linkage model the largest microfinance program in the world. Similar programs are evolving in Africa and Southeast Asia with the assistance of organizations like IFAD, Opportunity International, Catholic Relief Services, Compassion International, CARE, APMAS, Oxfam, Tearfund and World Vision.

United States
In the United States, microcredit has generally been defined as loans of less than $50,000 to people—mostly entrepreneurs—who cannot, for various reasons, borrow from a bank. Most nonprofit microlenders include services like financial literacy training and business plan consultations, which contribute to the expense of providing such loans but also, those groups say, to the success of their borrowers. One such organization in the United States, the Accion U.S. Network is a nonprofit microfinance organization headquartered in New York, New York. It is the largest and only nationwide nonprofit microfinance network in the US. The Accion U.S. Network is part of Accion International, a US-based nonprofit organization operating globally, with the mission of giving people the financial tools they need to create or grow healthy businesses. The domestic Accion programs started in Brooklyn, New York, and grew from there to become the first nationwide network microlender. US microcredit programs have helped many poor but ambitious borrowers to improve their lot. The Aspen Institute's study of 405 microentrepreneurs indicates that more than half of the loan recipients escaped poverty within five years. On average, their household assets grew by nearly $16,000 during that period; the group's reliance on public assistance dropped by more than 60%. Several corporate sponsors including Citi Foundation and Capital One launched Grameen America in New York. Since then the financial outfit—not bank—has been serving the poor, mainly women, throughout four of the city's five boroughs (Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens) as well as Omaha, Nebraska and Indianapolis, Indiana. In four years, Grameen America has facilitated loans to over 9,000 borrowers valued over $35 million. It has had, as Grameen CEO Stephen Vogel notes, "a 99 percent repayment rate".

Peer-to-peer lending over the Web
The principles of microcredit have also been applied in attempting to address several non-poverty-related issues. Among these, multiple Internet-based organizations have developed platforms that facilitate a modified form of peer-to-peer lending where a loan is not made in the form of a single, direct loan, but as the aggregation of a number of smaller loans—often at a negligible interest rate.

Examples of platforms that connect lenders to micro-entrepreneurs via Internet are Kiva, Zidisha, and the Microloan Foundation. Another internet-based microlender, United Prosperity (now defunct), uses a variation on the usual microlending model; with United Prosperity the micro-lender provides a guarantee to a local bank which then lends back double that amount to the micro-entrepreneur. United Prosperity claims this provides both greater leverage and allows the micro-entrepreneur to develop a credit history with their local bank for future loans. In 2009, the US-based nonprofit Zidisha became the first peer-to-peer microlending platform to link lenders and borrowers directly across international borders without local intermediaries. From 2008 through 2014, Vittana allowed peer-to-peer lending for student loans in developing countries.

Impact of microcredit
The impact of microcredit is a subject of some controversy. Proponents state that it reduces poverty through higher employment and higher incomes. This is expected to lead to improved nutrition and improved education of the borrowers' children. Some argue that microcredit empowers women. In the US, UK and Canada, it is argued that microcredit helps recipients to graduate from welfare programs.

Critics say that microcredit, if not carefully directed, may not increase incomes, and may drive poor households into a debt trap. They add that the money from loans may be used for durable consumer goods or consumption instead of being used for productive investments, that it may fail to empower women, and that it may not improve health or education.

The available evidence indicates that in many cases microcredit has facilitated the creation and the growth of businesses. It has often generated self-employment, but it has not necessarily increased incomes after interest payments. In some cases it has driven borrowers into debt traps. Some studies suggest that microcredit has not generally empowered women. Microcredit has achieved much less than what its proponents said it would achieve, but its negative impacts have not been as drastic as some critics have argued. Microcredit is just one factor influencing the success of a small businesses, whose success is influenced to a much larger extent by how much an economy or a particular market grows.

Unintended consequences of microfinance include informal intermediation: some entrepreneurial borrowers may become informal intermediaries between microfinance initiatives and poorer micro-entrepreneurs. Those who more easily qualify for microfinance may split loans into smaller credit to even poorer borrowers. Informal intermediation ranges from casual intermediaries at the good or benign end of the spectrum to loan sharks at the professional and sometimes criminal end of the spectrum.

Improvement
Many scholars and practitioners suggest an integrated package of services ("a credit-plus" approach) rather than just providing credits. When access to credit is combined with savings facilities, non-productive loan facilities, insurance, enterprise development (production-oriented and management training, marketing support) and welfare-related services (literacy and health services, gender and social awareness training), the adverse effects discussed above can be diminished. Some argue that more experienced entrepreneurs who are getting loans should be qualified for bigger loans to ensure the success of the program.

One of the principal challenges of microcredit is providing small loans at an affordable cost. The global average interest and fee rate is estimated at 37%, with rates reaching as high as 70% in some markets. The reason for the high interest rates is not primarily cost of capital. Indeed, the local microfinance organizations that receive zero-interest loan capital from the online microlending platform Kiva charge average interest and fee rates of 35.21%. Rather, the principal reason for the high cost of microcredit loans is the high transaction cost of traditional microfinance operations relative to loan size. Microcredit practitioners have long argued that such high interest rates are simply unavoidable. The result is that the traditional approach to microcredit has made only limited progress in resolving the problem it purports to address: that the world's poorest people pay the world's highest cost for small business growth capital. The high costs of traditional microcredit loans limit their effectiveness as a poverty-fighting tool. Borrowers who do not manage to earn a rate of return at least equal to the interest rate may actually end up poorer as a result of accepting the loans. According to a recent survey of microfinance borrowers in Ghana published by the Center for Financial Inclusion, more than one-third of borrowers surveyed reported struggling to repay their loans. In recent years, microcredit providers have shifted their focus from the objective of increasing the volume of lending capital available, to address the challenge of providing microfinance loans more affordably. Analyst David Roodman contends that in mature markets, the average interest and fee rates charged by microfinance institutions tend to fall over time.

Professor Dean Karlan from Yale University advocates also giving the poor access to savings accounts.

title: Microcredit


text:
The Usual Suspects

The Usual Suspects is a 1995 crime thriller film directed by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie. It stars Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Kevin Pollak, Chazz Palminteri, Pete Postlethwaite, and Kevin Spacey.

The plot follows the interrogation of Roger "Verbal" Kint, a small-time con man, who is one of only two survivors of a massacre and fire on a ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles. Through flashback and narration, Kint tells an interrogator a convoluted story of events that led him and his criminal companions to the boat, and of a mysterious crime lord—known as Keyser Söze—who controlled them. The film was shot on a $6 million budget and began as a title taken from a column in Spy magazine called The Usual Suspects, after one of Claude Rains' most memorable lines in the classic film Casablanca, and Singer thought that it would make a good title for a film.

The film was shown out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and then initially released in a few theaters. It received favorable reviews and was eventually given a wider release. The praise went towards the mystery elements, the screenplay, the plot twist and Spacey's performance. McQuarrie won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. The Writers Guild of America ranked the film as having the 35th greatest screenplay of all time.

Plot
Career criminal Dean Keaton lies badly wounded on a ship docked in San Pedro Bay. He is confronted by a mysterious figure he calls "Keyser," who shoots him dead and sets fire to the ship. The next day, the police recover 27 bodies and only two survivors: Arkosh Kovash ("Ákos Kovács"), a Hungarian mobster hospitalized with severe burns, and Roger "Verbal" Kint, a physically disabled con artist. U.S. Customs agent Dave Kujan flies to Los Angeles from New York City to interrogate Verbal. The men are left alone in a borrowed office belonging to LAPD police sergeant Jeff Rabin while FBI agent Jack Baer visits a hospitalized Kovács. The events that led Keaton, Verbal, and their associates onto the ship are then described by Verbal via flashback.

Six weeks earlier in New York City, Keaton and Verbal are arrested alongside fellow criminals Michael McManus, Fred Fenster, and Todd Hockney and placed in a police lineup as suspects in a truck hijacking that none of them admits to participating in. Believing the police were unfairly harassing them, McManus proposes they pull a heist to get revenge on the NYPD. Trying to go straight, Keaton initially refuses but eventually agrees to help rob a jewel smuggler being escorted by corrupt cops, netting millions in emeralds and getting over fifty cops arrested after leaking their activities to the press. They then go to California to fence the jewels through a man named Redfoot, who connects them with another jewel heist, but it goes badly and the contents are instead revealed to be China White (synthetic heroin). The men learn that the job was arranged by a lawyer named Kobayashi, who says he arranged for their arrests in New York and that his employer, mysterious Turkish crime lord Keyser Söze, from whom each of the men has unwittingly stolen, has ordered them to raid a ship holding Argentinian drug dealers and destroy $91 million worth of cocaine being sold on board. The cash brought for the exchange will be their reward.

During Kujan's interrogation, he learns that there was no cocaine on the ship, and Söze was seen onboard. At the hospital, Baer learns that Kovács has seen Söze and has a sketch artist begin making a picture. Verbal then tells Kujan a legend about Söze: he was a small-time drug runner who murdered his own family when they were being held hostage by Hungarian mobsters, then massacred the mobsters and their families before disappearing, and from then on conducted business only indirectly through underlings who are mostly unfamiliar with their true employer. Söze thus became a fearsome urban legend, "a spook story that criminals tell their kids at night."

Concluding his story, Verbal reveals that Fenster was killed after trying to flee; the men then threatened Kobayashi, only to accept the assignment when he threatened their loved ones. The men attacked the ship during the night, killing several Argentinian and Hungarian gangsters before discovering that there was no cocaine. An unseen assailant killed Hockney, McManus, Keaton, and a prisoner in one of the ship's cabins. The mysterious figure then set fire to the ship as Verbal looked on from a hiding place on the dock.

Kujan deduces that Keaton must be Söze, as the prisoner killed on the ship was Arturo Marquez, a smuggler who escaped prosecution by claiming that he could identify Söze. Marquez was represented by lawyer Edie Finneran, Keaton's girlfriend, who was recently murdered. Kujan claims that the Argentinians took Marquez to sell him to Söze's Hungarian rivals. Keaton then used the assault so that he could kill Marquez personally and fake his own death. Verbal finally confesses that Keaton had been behind everything, but refuses to testify in court. Verbal's bail is posted, and he is released.

Moments later, Kujan realizes Verbal seemingly fabricated his entire story, improvising on the spot by piecing together details from random items in Rabin's cluttered office. Verbal walks outside, gradually losing his limp and flexing his supposedly disabled hand. As Kujan pursues Verbal, a fax arrives at the police station with the artist's facial composite of Söze. The picture resembles Verbal, revealing that he was Söze the entire time. Söze enters a car driven by "Kobayashi" and leaves, moments before Kujan arrives on the scene. A voiceover from Söze is then heard from when he spoke to Kujan earlier, saying "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist, and like that ... he's gone."

Cast
Singer and McQuarrie sent the screenplay for the film to Spacey without telling him which role was written for him. Spacey called Singer and told them that he was interested in the roles of Keaton and Kujan but was also intrigued by Kint who, as it turned out, was the role McQuarrie wrote with Spacey in mind. Kevin Spacey met Byrne at a party and asked him to do the film. He read the screenplay and turned it down, thinking that the filmmakers could not pull it off. Byrne met screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie and Singer and was impressed by the latter's vision for the film. However, Byrne was also dealing with some personal problems at the time and backed out for 24 hours until the filmmakers agreed to shoot the film in Los Angeles, where Byrne lived, and make it in five weeks. Singer had always wanted Palminteri for the film, but he was always unavailable. The role was offered to Christopher Walken and Robert De Niro, both of whom turned it down. The filmmakers even had Al Pacino come in and read for the part, but he decided not to do it because he had just played a cop in Heat. Pacino would later say it was the one film he has regretted turning down the most. Palminteri became available, but only for a week. When he signed on, this persuaded the film's financial backers to support the film fully because he was a sufficiently high-profile star, thanks to the recent releases of A Bronx Tale and Bullets Over Broadway. Baldwin was tired of doing independent films where his expectations were not met; when he met with director Bryan Singer, he went into a 15-minute tirade telling him what it was like to work with him. After Baldwin was finished, Singer told him exactly what he expected and wanted, which impressed Baldwin. Spacey suggested del Toro for the role. The character was originally written with a Harry Dean Stanton-type actor in mind. Del Toro met with Singer and the film's casting director and told them that he did not want to audition because he did not feel comfortable doing them. After reading the script, del Toro realized that his character's only purpose was to be killed to demonstrate Söze's power, and did not have any meaningful impact on the story. As a result, del Toro developed Fenster's unique, garbled speech pattern to make him more memorable as a character. He met with Singer about doing the film, but when he heard that two other actors were auditioning for the role, he came back, auditioned, and got the part.
 * Kevin Spacey as Roger "Verbal" Kint:
 * Gabriel Byrne as Dean Keaton:
 * Chazz Palminteri as Agent Dave Kujan:
 * Stephen Baldwin as Michael McManus:
 * Benicio del Toro as Fred Fenster:
 * Kevin Pollak as Todd Hockney:
 * Pete Postlethwaite as Kobayashi
 * Suzy Amis as Edie Finneran
 * Giancarlo Esposito as FBI Agent Jack Baer
 * Dan Hedaya as Sergeant Jeff Rabin
 * Cástulo Guerra as Arturo Marquez
 * Morgan Hunter as Ákos Kovács
 * Peter Greene as Redfoot (uncredited)
 * Scott B. Morgan as Keyser Söze (in flashbacks) (uncredited)

Origins
Bryan Singer met Kevin Spacey at a party after a screening of Singer's first film, Public Access, at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. Spacey had been encouraged by a number of people he knew who had seen it, and was so impressed that he told Singer and his screenwriting partner Christopher McQuarrie, that he wanted to be in whatever film they did next. Singer read a column in Spy magazine called "The Usual Suspects" after Claude Rains' line in Casablanca. Singer thought that it would be a good title for a film. When asked by a reporter at Sundance what their next film was about, McQuarrie replied, "I guess it's about a bunch of criminals who meet in a police line-up," which incidentally was the first visual idea that he and Singer had for the poster: "five guys who meet in a line-up," Singer remembers. The director also envisioned a tagline for the poster, "All of you can go to Hell." Singer then asked the question, "What would possibly bring these five felons together in one line-up?" McQuarrie revamped an idea from one of his own unpublished screenplays — the story of a man who murders his own family and disappears. The writer mixed this with the idea of a team of criminals.

Söze's character is based on John List, a New Jersey accountant who murdered his family in 1971 and then disappeared for almost two decades, assuming a new identity before he was ultimately apprehended. McQuarrie based the name of Keyser Söze on one of his previous supervisors, Kayser Sume, at a Los Angeles law firm where he worked, but decided to change the last name because he thought that his former boss would object to how it was used. He found the word söze in his roommate's English-to-Turkish dictionary, which translates as "talk too much". All the characters' names are taken from staff members of the law firm at the time of his employment. McQuarrie had also worked for a detective agency, and this influenced the depiction of criminals and law enforcement officials in the script.

Singer described the film as Double Indemnity meets Rashomon, and said that it was made "so you can go back and see all sorts of things you didn't realize were there the first time. You can get it a second time in a way you never could have the first time around." He also compared the film's structure to Citizen Kane (which also contained an interrogator and a subject who is telling a story) and the criminal caper The Anderson Tapes.

Pre-production
McQuarrie wrote nine drafts of his screenplay over five months, until Singer felt that it was ready to shop around to the studios. None were interested except for a European financing company. McQuarrie and Singer had a difficult time getting the film made because of the non-linear story, the large amount of dialogue and the lack of cast attached to the project. Financiers wanted established stars, and offers for the small role of Redfoot (the Los Angeles fence who hooks up the five protagonists with Kobayashi) went out to Christopher Walken, Tommy Lee Jones, Jeff Bridges, Charlie Sheen, James Spader, Al Pacino, and Johnny Cash. However, the European money allowed the film's producers to make offers to actors and assemble a cast. They were able to offer the actors only salaries that were well below their usual pay, but they agreed because of the quality of McQuarrie's script and the chance to work with one another. That money fell through, and Singer used the script and the cast to attract PolyGram to pick up the film negative.

About casting, Singer said, "You pick people not for what they are, but what you imagine they can turn into." To research his role, Spacey met doctors and experts on cerebral palsy and talked with Singer about how it would fit dramatically in the film. They decided that it would affect only one side of his body. According to Byrne, the cast bonded quickly during rehearsals. Del Toro worked with Alan Shaterian to develop Fenster's distinctive, almost unintelligible speech patterns. According to the actor, the source of his character's unusual speech patterns came from the realization that "the purpose of my character was to die." Del Toro told Singer, "It really doesn't matter what I say, so I can go really far out with this and really make it uncomprehensible."

Filming
The budget was set at $5.5 million, and the film was shot in 35 days in Los Angeles, San Pedro and New York City. Spacey said that they shot the interrogation scenes with Palminteri over a span of five to six days. These scenes were also shot before the rest of the film. The police lineup scene ran into scheduling conflicts because the actors kept blowing their lines. Screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie would feed the actors questions off-camera and they improvised their lines. When Stephen Baldwin gave his answer, he made the other actors break character. Byrne remembers that they were often laughing between takes and "when they said, 'Action!', we'd barely be able to keep it together." Spacey also said that the hardest part was not laughing through takes, with Baldwin and Pollak being the worst culprits. Their goal was to get the usually serious Byrne to crack up. They spent all morning trying unsuccessfully to film the scene. At lunch, a frustrated Singer angrily scolded the five actors, but, when they resumed, the cast continued to laugh through each take. Byrne remembers, "Finally, Bryan just used one of the takes where we couldn't stay serious." Singer and editor John Ottman used a combination of takes and kept the humor in to show the characters bonding with one another.

While Del Toro told Singer how he was going to portray Fenster, he did not tell his cast members, and in their first scene together none of them understood what Del Toro was saying. Byrne confronted Singer and the director told him that for the lockup scene, "If you don't understand what he's saying maybe it's time we let the audience know that they don't need to know what he's saying." This led to the inclusion of Kevin Pollak's improvised line, "What did you say?"

The stolen emeralds were real gemstones on loan for the film.

Singer spent an 18-hour day shooting the underground parking garage robbery. According to Byrne, by the next day Singer still did not have all of the footage that he wanted, and refused to stop filming in spite of the bonding company's threat to shut down the production.

In the scene in which the crew meets Redfoot after the botched drug deal, Redfoot flicks his cigarette at McManus' face. The scene was originally to have Redfoot flick the cigarette at McManus's chest, but the actor missed and hit Baldwin's face by accident. Baldwin's reaction is genuine.

Despite enclosed practical locations and a short shooting schedule, cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel "developed a way of shooting dialogue scenes with a combination of slow, creeping zooms and dolly moves that ended in tight close-ups," to add subtle energy to scenes. "This style combined dolly movement with "imperceptible zooms" so that you'd always have a sense of motion in a limited space."

In December 2017, amid several sexual misconduct allegations against Spacey, Byrne said that, at one point during shooting, production was shut down for two days because Spacey made unwanted sexual advances toward a younger actor. Singer, who has himself been accused of sexual misconduct against minors, has denied that Spacey behaved inappropriately on the set of the film. However, Kevin Pollak, in a 2018 episode of his podcast Kevin Pollak's Chat Show, told another version of the story involving Spacey engaging in sexual acts with Singer's young French boyfriend with only several days left in the production, which disrupted filming and led to a bitter ruination of their relationship.

Post-production
During the editing phase, Singer thought that they had completed the film two weeks early, but woke up one morning and realized that they needed that time to put together a sequence that convinced the audience that Dean Keaton was Söze — and then do the same for Verbal Kint because the film did not have "the punch that Chris had written so beautifully." According to Ottman, he assembled the footage as a montage but it still did not work until he added an overlapping voice-over montage featuring key dialogue from several characters and had it relate to the images. Early on, executives at Gramercy had problems pronouncing the name Keyser Söze and were worried that audiences would have the same problem. The studio decided to promote the character's name. Two weeks before the film debuted in theaters, "Who is Keyser Söze?" posters appeared at bus stops, and TV spots told people how to say the character's name.

Singer wanted the music for the boat heist to resemble Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. The ending's music was based on a k.d. lang song.

Release
Gramercy ran a pre-release promotion and advertising campaign before The Usual Suspects opened in the summer of 1995. Word of mouth marketing was used to advertise the film, and buses and billboards were plastered with the simple question, "Who is Keyser Söze?"

The film was shown out of competition at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and was well received by audiences and critics. The film was then given an exclusive run in Los Angeles, where it took a combined $83,513, and New York City, where it made $132,294 on three screens in its opening weekend. The film was then released in 42 theaters where it earned $645,363 on its opening weekend. It averaged a strong $4,181 per screen at 517 theaters and the following week added 300 locations. It eventually made $23.3 million in the United States and Canada. It grossed $43.6 million internationally for a worldwide total of $66.9 million.

Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has received a rating of 87%, based on 83 reviews, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The site's consensus reads, "Expertly shot and edited, The Usual Suspects gives the audience a simple plot and then piles on layers of deceit, twists, and violence before pulling out the rug from underneath." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 77 out of 100, based on 22 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Roger Ebert, in a review for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film one and a half stars out of four, writing that it was confusing and uninteresting: "To the degree that I do understand, I don't care." He also included the film in his "most hated films" list. USA Today rated the film two and a half stars out of four, calling it "one of the most densely plotted mysteries in memory—though paradoxically, four-fifths of it is way too easy to predict."

Rolling Stone praised Spacey, saying his "balls-out brilliant performance is Oscar bait all the way." In his review for The Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, "Ultimately, The Usual Suspects may be too clever for its own good. The twist at the end is a corker, but crucial questions remain unanswered. What's interesting, though, is how little this intrudes on our enjoyment. After the movie you're still trying to connect the dots and make it all fit—and these days, how often can we say that?"

In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised the performances of the cast: "Mr. Singer has assembled a fine ensemble cast of actors who can parry such lines, and whose performances mesh effortlessly despite their exaggerated differences in demeanor ... Without the violence or obvious bravado of Reservoir Dogs, these performers still create strong and fascinatingly ambiguous characters." The Independent praised the film's ending: "The film's coup de grace is as elegant as it is unexpected. The whole movie plays back in your mind in perfect clarity—and turns out to be a completely different movie to the one you've been watching (rather better, in fact)."

Accolades
At the 68th Academy Awards, Kevin Spacey won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Christopher McQuarrie won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In his acceptance speech, Spacey said, "Well, whoever Keyser Söze is, I can tell you he's gonna get gloriously drunk tonight."

Legacy
On June 17, 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "AFI's 10 Top 10"—the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. The Usual Suspects was acknowledged as the tenth-best mystery film. Verbal Kint was voted the #48 villain in "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains" in June 2003.

Entertainment Weekly cited the film as one of the "13 must-see heist movies". Empire ranked Keyser Söze #69 in their "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" poll. In August 2016, James Charisma of Paste ranked The Usual Suspects among Kevin Spacey's greatest film performances.

In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay #35 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.

Remake
In India, a critically panned Hindi-language adaptation of The Usual Suspects, titled Chocolate, was released in 2005.

title: The Usual Suspects


text:
Independent Irish Party

The Independent Irish Party (IIP) was the designation chosen by the 48 Members of the United Kingdom Parliament returned from Ireland with the endorsement of the Tenant Right League in the 1852 general election. The League had secured their promise to offer an independent opposition (refusing all government favour and office) to the dominant landlord interest, and to advance an agrarian reform programme popularly summarised as the "three F's": fair rent, fixed tenure and free sale.

The unity of the grouping was compromised by the priority the majority gave to repealing the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, legislation passed by the Liberal government of Lord John Russell to hamper the restoration in the United Kingdom of a Catholic episcopate, and their independence by the defection of two their leading members to a new Whig-Peelite government.

After further defections, thirteen independents survived the elections in 1857, but then split 1859 on the question of supporting a new Liberal ministry which, in 1860, made the first halting attempt to regulate Irish land tenure.

Formation and early disunity
The Tenant Right League joined tenant rights associations in largely Presbyterian districts in Ulster with tenant protection societies (often guided by local Catholic clergy) in the south. It was formed in 1850 at a tenant right convention called in Dublin by Charles Gavan Duffy, editor of the revived Young Irelander weekly The Nation; James MacKnight editor of the Londonderry Sentinel; Frederick Lucas, founder of the international Catholic weekly, The Tablet; and John Gray, owner of the leading nationalist paper, the Freeman's Journal. Against the background of the distress caused by the Great Famine and by a fall in agricultural prices, Duffy believed that the demand for tenant rights could serve as the basis for a new all-Ireland movement and for a (potentially abstentionist) national party.

The Westminster elections of July 1852 returned 48 MPs, including Duffy from New Ross, pledged to the tenant cause. But what Duffy had projected as a "League of North and South" failed to deliver in Ulster. William Kirk from the border town of Newry was province's only tenant-right representative. In Monaghan, the Rev. David Bell was to find that of his 100 Presbyterian congregants who had signed the requisition asking John Gray to stand in their constituency only 11 voted for him. In County Down, William Sharman Crawford, who as MP for Rochdale in England had been the author of a tenant right bill, had his meetings broken up by Orange vigilantes.

An early difficulty in appealing to Protestant tenants and voters in the north was the declared intention of many League-endorsed candidates to repeal the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851. Together with the presence among them of so many sitting Repeal Association MPs, their determination to remove the Act's restrictions on a restored Catholic Church hierarchy heightened the suspicion that the League was being used for political purposes beyond its declared agenda. In this, the prominent County Down tenant-righter, Julius McCullagh, argued the 1851 Act worked its purpose: to "afresh old grudges and differences - to divide a people now happily uniting". It was the case as well that landowners in the north threatened to withdraw their consent for the existing Ulster Custom if their Conservative nominees were not elected.

In November 1852, Lord Derby's short-lived Conservative ministry introduced a land bill to compensate Irish tenants on eviction for improvements they had made to the land. The Tenant Compensation Bill passed in the House of Commons in 1853 and 1854, but failed in the House of Lords. The bills had little impressed the League and its MPs as landlords would have been left free to pass on the costs of compensation through their still unrestricted freedom to raise rents.

Holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, the Independent Irish MPs voted to bring down the government. But in the process two of the leading members, John Sadlier and William Keogh, broke their pledges of independent opposition and accepted positions in a new Whig-Peelite ministry of Lord Aberdeen. Twenty others followed as reliable supporters. While Aberdeen opposed to the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, his government gave no undertakings in regard to tenant-right policy Significantly in a League debate in February 1853 MacKnight, wary of any sign of Irish separatism, did not support Duffy in condemning these desertions. Rather, he protested the increasingly strident nationalism of southern League spokesman.

Split and dissolution
The Catholic Primate, Archbishop Paul Cullen, who had been sceptical of the independent opposition policy from the outset, sought to rein in clerical support for the remaining IIP in the constituencies. This was accompanied by the defection from the League of the Catholic Defence Association (to their detractors, "the Pope's Brass Band"). Lucas's decision to take a complaint against Cullen to Rome further alienated clerical support.

To Duffy the cause of the Irish tenants, and indeed of Ireland generally, seemed more hopeless than ever. In 1855 he published a farewell address to his constituency, declaring that he had resolved to retire from parliament, as it was no longer possible to accomplish the task for which he had solicited their votes. To John Dillon he wrote that an Ireland where McKeogh typified patriotism and Cullen the church was an Ireland in which he could no longer live. In 1856 Duffy and his family emigrated to Australia.

In the 1857 general election, with a recovery in agricultural prices blunting the enthusiasm of farmers for agitation, those presenting themselves as Independent Irish managed to hold on to 13 seats. One seat was won in the north on a platform of the three F's. Samuel MacCurdy Greer was returned for Londonderry City. But Greer identified with the pro-Union British Radicals not with the IIP. The Independent Irish MPs had been under the notional leadership of George Henry Moore. Within the Catholic Church, Moore had retained sufficient support from Cullen's rival, Archbishop John MacHale of Tuam, for his reelection in 1857 to overturned in the House of Commons on the grounds of "obtrusive" and "unseemly" clerical influence.

The IIP never developed the organisation and leadership to get out their full vote in the Commons or to collect, when the opportunity arose, the support of other MPs. In a vote of confidence in the Lord Derby's second Conservative government on 31 March 1859 the rump of the party split seven against six on whether join Whig and Radical factions in bringing in a new Liberal ministry under Lord Palmerston. This marked the end of any pretence to coherence, although as a faction in Irish politics the Independent Oppositionists endured until 1874.

In the Landlord and Tenant Law Amendment (Ireland) Act 1860 the new Palmerston government did no more than confirm contract law as the basis for tenancies. Legislation of the three F's awaited the Land War of the 1880s, agitation conducted by the new Irish National Land League in alliance with the home-rule Irish Parliamentary Party.

Legacy
Historian F. S. L. Lyons concludes that when, in 1858, the Conservatives returned to office with a stable majority, "the hollowness of the independent party's pledge" was exposed. The "temptation to trade Irish votes for Irish concessions" proved in the end "irresistible". Nothing had been achieved, a failure, he argues, that "killed for nearly a generation any belief in the value of parliamentary pressure".

In the Long Depression of the 1870s there was an intensified Land War. From 1879 it was organised by the direct-action Irish National Land League, led by the southern Protestant Charles Stewart Parnell, but from which tenant-righters in the north stood largely aloof. In 1880, Parnell began to coin electoral gains from the struggle. Sixty-four Home Rulers were elected, twenty-seven of whom were his supporters. In the 1885 election, with the size of the Irish electorate tripled by the Representation of the People Act 1884, Parnell marshalled an Irish Parliamentary Party of 85 Members. But the Independent Irish Party was "in no way an ancestor". Parnell's policy was explicitly, and to mind of many British parliamentarians, cynically, of trading, Irish votes for Irish concessions backed, when these were not forthcoming, of obstructionism.

Prominent parliamentary members

 * Charles Gavan Duffy, August 1850 - November 1855
 * William Keogh, July 1852 – December 1852
 * George Henry Moore, October 1855 – April 1857
 * John Maguire, April 1857 – June 1859
 * John Sadleir, July 1852 - December 1852

title: Independent Irish Party