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Ba'ath Party

The Arab Socialist Baʿth Party (also anglicized as Ba'ath in loose transcription; حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي  ) was a political party founded in Syria by Mishel ʿAflaq, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Bīṭār, and associates of Zakī al-ʾArsūzī. The party espoused Baʿathism (from Arabic بعث baʿth meaning 'resurrection'), which is an ideology mixing Arab nationalist, pan-Arab, Arab socialist, and anti-imperialist interests. Baʿthism calls for the unification of the Arab world into a single state. Its motto, "Unity, Liberty, Socialism", refers to Arab unity, and freedom from non-Arab control and interference.

The party was founded by the merger of the Arab Ba'ath Movement, led by ʿAflaq and al-Bitar, and the Arab Ba'ath, led by al-ʾArsūzī, on 7 April 1947 as the Arab Baʿth Party. The party quickly established branches in other Arab countries, although it would only hold power in Iraq and Syria. The Arab Baʿth Party merged with the Arab Socialist Movement, led by Akram al-Hawrani, in 1952 to form the Arab Socialist Baʿth Party. The newly formed party was a relative success, and it became the second-largest party in the Syrian parliament in the 1954 election. This, coupled with the increasing strength of the Syrian Communist Party, led to the establishment of the United Arab Republic (UAR), a union of Egypt and Syria, in 1958. The UAR would prove unsuccessful, and a Syrian coup in 1961 dissolved it.

Following the break-up of the UAR, the Baʿth Party was reconstituted. However, during the UAR period, military activists had established the Military Committee that took control of the Baʿath Party away from civilian hands. In the meantime, in Iraq, the local Ba'ath Party branch had taken power by orchestrating and leading the Ramadan Revolution, only to lose power a couple of months later. The Military Committee, with Aflaq's consent, took power in Syria in the 8th of March Revolution of 1963.

A power struggle quickly developed between the civilian faction led by ʿAflaq, al-Bitar, and Munīf ar-Razzāz and the Military Committee led by Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad. As relations between the two factions deteriorated, the Military Committee initiated the 1966 Syrian coup d'état, which ousted the National Command led by al-Razzāz, ʿAflaq, and their supporters. The 1966 coup split the Ba'ath Party between the Iraqi-dominated Ba'ath movement and the Syrian-dominated Ba'ath movement.

History
The party was founded on 7 April 1947 as the Arab Ba'ath Party by Michel Aflaq (an Antiochian Orthodox Christian), Salah al-Din al-Bitar (a Sunni Muslim), and the followers of Zaki al-Arsuzi (an Alawite who later became an atheist) in Damascus, Syria, leading to the establishment of the Syrian Regional Branch. Other regional branches were established throughout the Arab world in the later 1940s and early 1950s, in, among others, Iraq, Yemen and Jordan. Throughout its existence, the National Command (the body responsible for all-Arab affairs) gave most attention to Syrian affairs. The 2nd National Congress was convened in June 1954 and elected a seven-man National Command; Aflaq, Bitar, and Akram al-Hawrani were elected and represented the Syrian Regional Branch, while Abdullah Rimawi and Abdallah Na'was were elected to represent the Jordanian Branch. The 1954 congress is notable for sanctioning the merger of the Arab Socialist Movement and the Ba'ath Party, which took place in 1952.

The Syrian Regional Branch rose to prominence in the 1940s and 1950s; in the 1954 parliamentary elections the Syrian Regional Branch won 22 seats in parliament, becoming the second largest party in the country. 90 percent of Ba'ath Party members who stood for elections were elected to parliament. The failure of the traditional parties, represented by the People's Party and the National Party, strengthened the Ba'ath Party's public credibility. Through this position, the party was able to get two of its members into the cabinet; Bitar was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and Khalil Kallas became Minister of Economics. Its new, strengthened position was used successfully to garner support for Syria's merger with Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, which led to the establishment of the United Arab Republic (UAR) in 1958. On 24 June 1959, Fuad al-Rikabi, the Regional Secretary of the Iraqi Regional Branch, accused the National Command of betraying Arab nationalist principles by conspiring against the UAR. In light of these criticisms, the Ba'ath convened the 3rd National Congress, held 27 August–1 September 1959, attended by delegates from Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, South Arabia, the Gulf, "Arab South", "Arab Maghreb", Palestine, and Party student organisations in Arab and other universities. The congress is notable for endorsing the dissolution of the Syrian Regional Branch, which had been decided by Aflaq and Bitar without inner-party consultation in 1958, and for expelling Rimawi, the Regional Secretary of the Jordanian Regional Branch. Rimawi reacted to his expulsion by forming his own party, the Arab Socialist Revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which established a rival National Command to compete with the original. The National Command responded to the problems in Iraq by appointing a Temporary Regional Command on 2 February 1960, which appointed Talib El-Shibib as Regional Secretary, and on 15 June 1961 the National Command expelled Rikabi from the party.

In Iraq, the Iraqi Regional Branch had supported Abd al-Karim Qasim's seizure of power and its ensuing abolishment of the Iraqi Monarchy. The Iraqi Ba'athists supported Qasim on the grounds that they believed he would enter Iraq into the UAR, enlarging the Arab nationalist republic. However, this was proven to be a ruse, and after taking power, Qasim launched an Iraq first policy. In retaliation, the Ba'ath Party tried to assassinate Qasim in February 1959, but the operation, involving a young Saddam Hussein, failed. Qasim was overthrown in the Ramadan Revolution led by young Ba'athist officer Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr; long suspected to be supported by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), however pertinent contemporary documents relating to the CIA's operations in Iraq have remained classified by the U.S. government, although the Iraqi Ba'athists are documented to have maintained supportive relationships with U.S. officials before, during, and after the coup. The Iraqi Regional Branch, when it took power, was so riven by factionalism that its purported allies launched a counter-coup forcing them out of power in November 1963.

The 4th National Congress, held in August 1960, criticized the leadership of Aflaq and Bitar, called for the reestablishment of the Syrian Regional Branch and deemphasized the party's commitment to Arab nationalism while emphasizing more the socialist character of the party. A year later, during the UAR's nadir in Syria, the Syrian General Abd al-Karim al-Nahlawi launched a coup on 28 September 1961, which led to the reestablishment of the Syrian Arab Republic.

Rule in Syria, infighting, the 1966 coup and split: 1963–1966
The challenges of building a Ba'athist state led to considerable ideological discussion and internal struggle within the party. The Iraqi Regional Branch was increasingly dominated by self-described Marxist Ali Salih al-Sa'di. Al-Sa'di was supported in his ideological reorientation by Hammud al-Shufi, the Regional Secretary of the Syrian Regional Branch; Yasin al-Hafiz, one of the party's few ideological theorists; and by certain members of the secret Military Committee. The Marxist wing gained new ground at the 6th National Congress (held in October 1963), in which the Iraqi and Syrian regional branches called for the establishment of "socialist planning", "collective farms run by peasants", "workers' democratic control of the means of production", and other demands reflecting a certain emulation of Soviet-style socialism. Aflaq, angry at this transformation of his party, retained a nominal leadership role, but the National Command as a whole came under the control of the radicals.

In 1963, the Ba'ath Party seized power in Syria, and from then on the Ba'ath functioned as the only officially recognized Syrian political party, but factionalism and splintering within the party led to a succession of varying governments and new constitutions. On 23 February 1966, a coup d'état led by Salah Jadid, the informal head of the Military Committee, overthrew Aflaq and Bitar's cabinet. The coup sprung out of factional rivalry between Jadid's "regionalist" (qutri) camp, which promoted ambitions for a Greater Syria, and the more traditionally pan-Arab faction then in power, the "nationalist" (qawmi) faction. Jadid's supporters were considered to have been more left-wing then Aflaq and his peers. Several of Jadid's opponents managed to make their escape, and they fled to Beirut, Lebanon. Jadid moved the party in a more radical direction. Although he and his supporters had not signed onto the victorious far-left line at the 6th Party Congress, they had now moved to adopt its positions. The moderate faction, formerly led by Aflaq and al-Bitar, were purged from the party.

While it took some years, the 1966 coup resulted in the creation of two competing National Commands, one Syrian-dominated and another Iraqi-dominated. However, both in Iraq and Syria, the Regional Command became the real centre of party power, and the membership of the National Command became a largely honorary position, often the destination of figures being eased out of the leadership. One consequence of the split was that Zaki al-Arsuzi took Aflaq's place as the official father of Ba'athist thought in the pro-Syrian Ba'ath movement, while the pro-Iraqi Ba'ath movement still considered Aflaq the de jure father of Ba'athist thought.

Organization
The organizational structure of the Ba'ath Party was created at the 2nd National Congress (1954) by amending the party's Internal Regulations, which had been previously approved at the party's 1st National Congress (1947). The organizational structure ran from top to bottom, and members were forbidden to initiate contacts between groups on the same level of the organisation, i.e., all contacts had to pass through a higher command level.

National organization
The National Command was the ruling organ of the party between sessions of the National Congress and was headed by a Secretary-General. Between National Congresses, the National Command was held accountable by the National Consultative Council (Arabic: al-majlis al-istishari al-qawmi). The National Consultative Council was a forum made up of representatives from the party's regional branches. However, the number of National Consultative Council members was decided by the size of the regional branch. The National Congress elected the National Command, National Tribunal, the party's discipline body, and the Secretary-General, the party leader. The congress delegates determined the party's policies and procedures.

Before 1954, the party was ruled by the Executive Committee, but this organ, along with others, too, was replaced at the 2nd National Congress in 1954. In Ba'athist jargon, "Nation" means the Arab Nation, because of that, the National Command formed the highest policy-making and coordinating council for the Ba'ath movement throughout the Arab world. The National Command had several bureaus, similar to those of the Regional Command. National Command sessions were held monthly. Of these, the National Liaisons Office was responsible for maintaining contact with the party's Regional Branches.

Regional organization
A "region" (quṭr), in Ba'athist parlance, is an Arab state, e.g., Syria, Iraq, or Lebanon. Use of the term region reflected the Party's refusal to acknowledge these countries as separate nation-states. The Regional Congress, which combined all the provincial branches, was the region's highest authority and elected a Regional Command, the party leadership in a specific region; the Regional Tribunal, the body responsible for discipline inspection; and a Regional Secretary, the regional party leader. The Regional Congress was made of delegates from the provincial branches; other members attended, but as observers. The Regional Congress was responsible for evaluating the party's performance since the last Regional Congress, while at the same time formulating new policies for the next period, which would last until the next Regional Congress was held. How long this period lasted was decided by the Regional Command. The Regional Command, similar to the Branch Command, operated through bureaus and met for weekly-sessions.

Below the Regional Commands were branches. The branch came above the sub-branch; it comprised at least two to five sub-branches and operated at the provincial level. The branch held a congress periodically in which it elected a Command and a Secretary (leader). The Command operated through bureaus, such as the Workers Bureau and the Bureau of the Secretariat. The sub-branch level constituted three to five sections "and was the lowest level of the party to hold a periodical Congress." Some sub-branches were independent of central authority and elected their own Command and secretaries, while other sub-branches were incorporated into the branches. In the latter case, the sub-branch secretary would be appointed by the superior branch.

A section, which comprised two to five divisions, functioned at the level of a large city quarter, a town, or a rural district. It elected its own command, composed of five members, but the sub-branch appointed the command's secretary. Beneath the section were divisions. A division comprised two to seven circles, controlled by a division commander. The lowest level was the circle. It was composed of three to seven members, constituting the basic organizational unit. Such Ba'athist groups occurred throughout the bureaucracy and the military. They functioned as the Party's watchdogs and were an effective form of covert surveillance within a public administration.

The Military Organization was made up of branches similar to those in the Ba'ath's civilian sector. However, unlike the civilian sector, the Military Organization was controlled by a separate Military Bureau and held periodical Military Congresses. The Military Organization and the Civilian Organization converged at the Regional Congress.

Membership
There existed three types of membership categories in the Ba'ath Party: Active member (Arabic: udw ämil), Apprentice Member (Arabic: udw mutadarrib) and Supporter (Arabic: firqa). An Active member had to attend all formal meetings of his party unit, was given the right to vote in party elections, and could run for party office. In the Syrian Regional Branch, a member had to spend 18 months as a Supporter to be promoted to Apprentice status, and then wait another 18 months to be promoted to Active member status.

Arab Nation
For more than 2 decades, Michel Aflaq's essay compilation titled "Fi Sabil al-Ba’ath" (translation: "The Road to Renaissance") was the primary ideological book of the Ba'ath party. The work was published by Aflaq in 1940. From its very beginning, the party was a manifestation of Arab nationalist thought, with the party describing itself as "The Party of Arab Unity". The pan-Arab tendencies of the party's predecessor, the Arab Ba'ath Movement, were strengthened in 1945–1947 by recruiting members from Zaki al-Arsuzi's Arab Ba'ath. The first article of the party's constitution stated that: "...the Arabs form one nation. This nation has the natural right to live in a single state. [As such,] the Arab fatherland constitutes an indivisible political and economic unit. No Arab can live apart from the others."

To express his heartfelt belief in Arab nationalism, Aflaq coined the term "one Arab nation with an eternal message" (ummah arabiyyah wahidah thatu risalah khalidah). Party ideology, and Ba'athism in general, was not based on concepts such as the purity of the Arab race or ethnic chauvinism, but on idealistic concepts borrowed from the enlightenment era. According to author Tabitha Petran, the basic tenet of the party's ideology was:

"...that the Arab nation is a permanent entity in history. The Arab nation is considered, philosophically speaking, not as a social and economic formation, but as a transcendent fact inspiring different forms, one of its highest contributions taking the form of Islam. It was not Islam that modeled the peoples of Arabia, the Fertile Crescent, and North Africa, equipping them with Islamic values, especially the Arabic language and the Arabic culture, but the Arab nation which created Islam. This conception of the Arab nation implicitly advantages the Arab contribution to history. On the other hand, Arab decadence can be overcome through a purifying and spiritual action, not religious but moral."

Peasant and workers
The early Ba'ath gave little attention to the problems facing the peasants and workers. As the historian Hanna Batatu notes, "Aflaq was basically urban in outlook. The peasants never constituted an object of his special concern. In his writing there is scarcely an expression of concentrated interest in the country's husbandsmen." While peasants and the issues they faced are mentioned in some of Aflaq's work, there was scarcely any depth given to them. Aflaq never expressed explicit enmity towards traditional landowners. Issues such as these would only gain prominence when Akram al-Hawrani became a leading party figure and when the "transitional Ba'athists" took power. Of the four members in the 1st Executive Committee, Wahib al-Ghanim was the only one who paid much attention to the problems of peasants and workers, as the other members (Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar and Jalil al-Sayyide) had a middle class upbringing and upheld middle class values.

The early party organization never cultivated a deep following in rural areas. In fact, at the party's founding congress, only one peasant and one worker were present among the 217 delegates. Most of the delegates were either school teacher or students attending universities. When Akram al-Hawrani's Arab Socialist Party (ASP) merged with the Ba'ath Party, the majority of ASP members of peasant origin did not join the Ba'ath Party, instead becoming personal followers of Hawrani. However, the majority of Ba'ath members were of rural upbringing. The "Transitional Ba'ath", which grew out of the dissolution of the Syrian Regional Branch (1958) and the Military Committee, was more rural in outlook, policy and ideology.

"Unity, liberty, socialism"
The slogan "Unity, liberty, socialism" is the key tenet in Ba'athist thought. Unity stood for the creation of an independent, strong Arab Nation. Liberty did not mean liberal democracy, but rather freedom from colonial oppression and freedom of speech and thought. Aflaq believed that the Ba'ath Party, at least in theory, would rule, and guide the people, in a transitional period of time without consulting the people, however he did support intra-party democracy. The last tenet, 'socialism', did not mean socialism as defined in the West, but rather a unique form of Arab socialism. According to Ba'athist thought, socialism had originated under the rule of the Prophet Muhammad. The original interpretation of Arab socialism did not answer questions regarding economic equality or how much state control was necessary, but instead focused on freeing the Arab Nation and its people from colonization and oppression in general.

Regionalists versus nationalists
After the failure of the United Arab Republic (UAR), a union of Egypt and Syria, the Ba'ath Party was divided into two main factions, the Regionalists (Qutriyyun) and the Nationalists (pan-Arab) (Qawmiyyun). When the union with Egypt collapsed, the Ba'ath Party was put in a difficult position, as the party still sought Arab unity but did not oppose the UAR's dissolution and did not want to seek another union with Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser's rule. However, being the unionist party that it was, the party's leaders could not state their position on this issue. The end result was that the pro-Arab nationalists within the Ba'ath Party became committed Nasserists, while the more moderate Arab nationalists founded the pro-Nasserite Socialist Unionists party. A third group, led by people disenchanted with both Nasser and the union period, remained in the Ba'ath Party but stopped believing in the feasibility of pan-Arabism. On 21 February 1962, the National Command issued a new policy regarding the pan-Arab project by first mentioning the successes and failures of the UAR, but ending the statement by calling for the reestablishment of the UAR as a decentralized federal union with Nasser's Egypt. Many rank-and-file members opposed this change in policy, with many members being both disenchanted with pan-Arabism and Aflaq's continued party rule.

When the Syrian Regional Branch was reestablished, the majority of its members in the provinces were of communal origins – Druze, Alawi, or Ismaili. The provincial party members had not been told of the Syrian Regional Branch's dissolution, which in fact broke the communication line with provincial branches and the National Command. While it is true that in 1962 the Regionalists supported the slogan adopted at the 5th National Congress, "the renewal of the union with Egypt while taking note of past mistakes", they treated such a slogan as a propaganda slogan rather than a feasible goal.

The "Arab road to socialism"
The disillusionment felt among party members on the pan-Arab project, led to the radicalization of the party's interpretation of socialism. Yasin al-Hafiz, a former member of the Syrian Communist Party, was an early frontrunner for the party's radicalization. While he didn't oppose the pan-Arab project, he wanted to turn the concept of Arab socialism into a scientific and revolutionary socialist ideology which adapted Marxism to local conditions. Jamal al-Atassi, who had been a moderate socialist for most of his life, called for the renunciation of Arab socialism in 1963 and the adoption of a "virtually Marxist concept of socialism" by claiming that class struggle was the moving force in society.

Hammud al-Shufi became the leader of the party's Marxist faction during his short stint as Syrian Regional Secretary, literally the head of the Syrian Regional Organization. Shufi was able, due to his position as head of the Organization Bureau of the Regional Command, to recruit several Marxist or Marxist-leaning members to the top of the Syrian Regional party hierarchy. Radical socialists led by Ali Salih al-Sadi took control of the Iraqi Regional Branch in 1963, which led to the official radicalization of the party's ideology.

The delegates at the 6th National Congress elected an Ideology Committee that was responsible for writing a charter about the party's ideology. The end result was the document Points of Departure. The document, which was approved by the 6th National Congress, relegated Arab unity to a secondary role and gave socialism prominence. Marxist concepts were used interchangeably alongside Ba'athist ones; however, the document was reluctant in explicitly admitting that certain ideas were of Marxist origins. The 6th National Congress borrowed key Marxist-Leninist tenets such as "people's democracy" and emphasized the need of a socialist vanguard in-order to:

"'play the role of mediator and leader (even if it is in power) that acts to direct the journey of the masses towards the socialist future in a scientific way and in a democratic style'."

While the Points of Departure didn't create a break with the party's traditional ideology, it criticized the party's old guard for giving Arab unity primacy over socialism and their failure to turn Ba'athism into a comprehensive theory. While the documents says Arab unity is progressive, the reason for it being important changed. The document stated: "Arab unity is an indispensable basis for the construction of a socialist economy." Aflaq also believed that Arab unity was only an intermediate goal, but it stood at the centre of classical Ba'athism. In the Points of Departure, despite not firmly stating it, the goal of creating a socialist society seemed to be both an immediate goal and the main goal of the party.

The concept of Arab socialism, accused of being narrow-minded and nationalistic, was replaced with the "Arab road to socialism" concept. The Points of Departure criticized the classical Ba'athist view regarding private ownership. Classical Ba'athists supported private ownership as a way to recruit into the party many petty bourgeois elements. The document called for nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy, the slow incorporation of the petty bourgeoisie into the socialist economy and the elimination of the national bourgeoisie and its allied classes. To safeguard the party from evolving into one supporting state capitalism, the socialist economy would be controlled by a vanguard party together with popular participation from the toiler masses. Major policies in the "Arab road to socialism" included:

"The nationalization of the major branches of the economy with the participation of the toiling masses in the management of the economy, and for the creation of collective farms to effect the revolution necessary for the peasants...the Congress stipulated that the changes be directed by a 'revolutionary vanguard', the final aim being to establish a 'popular democracy' that was to guarantee freedom to the classes which constitute the true people and ensure the country's rapid development. This regime was to center on the party, leading the popular organizations and councils and operating according to the principle of 'democratic centralism'"

Stance on religion
Militant secularism was emphasized in the "Declaration of Principles" manifesto published by the Ba'ath party in 1960; which declared that the party's "educational policy" was to build a "new generation of Arabs that believe in the unity of the nation and the eternity of its mission". The manifesto also stated that this envisaged Ba'athist generation would be "committed to scientific thought freed from the shackles of superstition and backward customs" and replace religion with Arab nationalism as their belief system.

Neo-Ba'ath: 1964–1966
Neo-Ba'athism refers to the dramatic changes that manifested in Ba'athist ideology from 1960 to 1964, and the Military Committee's takeover of the Syrian Regional Branch and the National Command in the period 1964 to 1966. The 6th National Congress signified the takeover of the party by an anti-militarist left, which opposed both the traditional leaders in the National Command and the pragmatists in the Military Committee. When the anti-military left called for popular democracy, no involvement of the military in national politics and popular struggle, the Military Committee became concerned. In 1965, Ba'athist President Amin al-Hafiz imposed the socialist policies adopted in the 6th National Congress; fully nationalizing Syrian industry and vast segments of the private sector, and establishing a centralized command economy.

By 1965 the anti-military leftists began to “spread rumors about the rightist character of the military junta [Military Committee] within the party and their subversive efforts to engulf it. There was not a single officer in the party who was not accused of conspiracy and reactionary tendencies.” In collaboration with the National Command, the Military Committee succeeded in expelling the anti-military left from the party at the 7th National Congress. The Military Committee, which now controlled the Syrian Regional Branch, took control of the Ba'ath Party in the coup of 1966. The military committee accused the Old Guard of diluting socialist ideology and casting aside “collective leadership”. According to Middle East expert Avraham Ben-Tzur, “the [neo-]Ba'th in its latest variant is a bureaucratic apparatus headed by the military, whose daily life and routine are shaped by the rigid military oppression on the home front, and [Soviet aid among others] military aid.”

Iraq
Fuad al-Rikabi founded the Iraqi Regional Branch in 1951 or 1952. There are those who trace the branch's founding to Abd ar Rahman ad Damin and Abd al Khaliq al Khudayri in 1947, after their return from the 1st National Congress, which was held in Syria. Another version is that the branch was established in 1948 by Rikabi and Sa'dun Hamadi, a Shia Muslim. However, Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi contend that the Regional Branch was established in the 1940s, but that it received official recognition as a Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party in 1952 by the National Command. What is certain is that Rikabi was elected the Regional Branch's first Regional Secretary in 1952.

The party initially consisted of a majority of Shia Muslims, as Rikabi recruited supporters mainly from his friends and family, but slowly became Sunni dominated. The Regional Branch, and other parties of pan-Arab inclination, had difficulties in recruiting Shia members. Most Shi'ites considered pan-Arab ideology as a Sunni project, since the majority of Arabs are Sunnis.

At the time of 14 July Revolution in 1958, which overthrew the Hashemite monarchy, the Regional Branch had 300 members. The Iraqi Regional Branch supported Abd al-Karim Qasim's rule on the grounds that he would seek Iraq's entry into the United Arab Republic. Of the 16-members of Qasim's cabinet, 12 of them were Regional Branch members. After taking power, Qasim changed his position on the UAR, reverting to the old "Iraq first policy". This turn displeased the Regional Branch and other Arab nationalists groups. Due to his policy reversal, the Regional Branch gathered a group, led by Saddam Hussein, which tried but failed to assassinate Qasim.

The Regional Branch seized power in the Ramadan Revolution. The coup was led by leading Regional Branch member Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. The plotters appointed Abdul Salam Arif, a Nasserite, to the Presidency while al-Bakr was appointed the country's Prime Minister. However, real power was in the hands of Ali Salih al-Sadi, the branch's Regional Secretary. After taking power, the Regional Branch through its militia, the National Guard, initiated what Iraqi expert Con Coughlin referred to as an "orgy of violence" against communist and left-wing elements. These repressive measures coupled with factionalism within the Regional Branch led to the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état by President Arif and his Nasserite supporters. Iraq expert Malik Mufti believes Aflaq may have supported Arif's coup because it weakened al-Sadi's position within the party and strengthened his own. The coup forced the branch to go underground. Due to the coup, several leading Ba'athist were jailed, such as al-Bakr and Saddam. Despite this, the Regional Branch elected al-Bakr as Regional Secretary in 1964.

Jordan
Following the party's establishment in Syria, Ba'athist ideas spread throughout the Arab world. In Jordan Ba'athist thought first spread to the East Bank in the late-1940s, most notably at universities. While the Regional Branch was not formed until 1951, several meetings took place at the universities where students and professors alike would discuss the Ba'athist thought. Despite the ideology being very popular, it took time before the actual Regional Branch was established. A group of teachers established the Regional Branch in the city by Al-Karak. At the very beginning, the clinic owned by Abd al-Rahman Shuqyar was used as the branch's meeting place. Bahjat Abu Gharbiyah became the Regional Branch's first member in the West Bank, and was thus resigned the responsibility of building the party's organization in the area the branch secretary in the West Bank, and was thus responsible in that area. In the West Bank, the branch was most active in the cities of Jerusalem and Ramallah.

The 1st Regional Congress was held in 1951 in the home of Abdullah Rimawi. The congress mapped out the "future course of the party". The next year, the 2nd Regional Congress was held, this time in Abdallah Na'was' home. It elected a Regional Command and appointed Rimawi as the branch's Regional Secretary. Shugyar, Gharbiyah and Na'was agreed to serve in the Regional Branch's Central Committee. Rimawi and Na'was, his deputy, would prove effective leaders. Shortly after the 2nd Regional Congress, the branch launched a successful recruitment campaign in Jordanian and Palestinian neighbourhoods and cities. On 28 August 1956 the branch was legalized by a High Court.

Both Rimawi and Na'was were elected to Parliament in the 1950 and 1951 elections as independents (the branch was not a legal party at the time). In the 1951 election, the branch managed to elect three members to parliament. Rimawi was able to retain his seat in parliament until the 1956 election. None of these elections can be considered democratic. Shuqyar, during the 1951 elections, was imprisoned by the authorities because his views were deemed to radical. Less than a month before the election day, the British Embassy in Amman had estimated that Shuqyar would gain an easy victory. However, because of the undemocratic nature of the election, Shuqyar was not elected. As voting patterns would prove, voters who voted for Ba'athist candidates lived in Irbid and Amman on the East Bank, and Jerusalem and Nablus on the West Bank.

Shuqyar during a government-imposed exile to Southern Jordan, used his spare time reading Marxist and Leninist literature. While he never became a communist, Shuqyar began to support communist concepts. On his return from exile he tried to persuade the Regional Branch to join in an electoral front with the Jordanian Communist Party. However, the Regional Branch leaders Rimawi, Na'was, Gharbiyah and Munif al-Razzaz opposed such an idea, and because of it, Shuqyar left the Ba'ath Party.

Rimawi and Na'was were elected to the National Command at the 2nd National Congress (held in 1952). At the 6th and 7th National Congress, the Regional Branch elected Razzaz to the National Command.

Lebanon
The Lebanese Regional Branch was formed in 1949–1950. During the existence of the UAR, the Regional Branch was split into two factions, those supporting Nasser and those opposing him. However, in April 1960, the UAR denied the Regional Branch organ As Sahafäh access into the UAR-ruled Syria.

The Regional Branch was strongest in the city of Tripoli. In the 1960 elections, Abd al-Majid al-Rafei was just a few votes short of being elected to parliament. However, a persistent problem for him during his election campaign was the vocal criticism of him and the Regional Branch by the Lebanese Communist Party. In Tripoli the Communists supported the candidacy of Rashid Karami, to ensure themselves of a Regional Branch victory. On 17 July 1961 a group of rival Ba'athists led by Rimawi opened fire on several of the Regional Branch's members.

During the UAR years, the same factional lines that developed in the Syrian Regional Branch came to the Lebanese Regional Branch. At the 4th National Congress (held in Lebanon), which was mainly attended by delegates representing Lebanon, several resolutions with a pronounced anti-Nasser tone were approved. At the same time, criticism of Aflaq and Bitar was severe, both their leadership records and their ideology were criticized. A resolution was approved, which stated that the party leaders (Aflaq and al-Bitar among others) had too hastily entered into a union with Egypt, had wrongly dissolved the Syrian Regional Branch in 1958, and had given pan-Arabism primacy when socialism was more important. The resolution also affirmed the need to use a more Marxist lens rather than a Ba'athist one to analyze the current situation, and the need for the party to strengthen their positions among the workers, peasants, artisans, and shopkeepers. Because of the position of the Lebanese Regional Branch, Aflaq at the 5th National Congress invited enough Iraqi Regional Branch delegates to neutralize the Lebanese delegates. However, at the same time, the Lebanese Regional Branch opposed Hawrani and his faction. At the 6th National Congress, the Lebanese Regional Branch elected Jubrän Majdalani and Khalid al-Ali to the National Command.

At the 7th National Congress, the National Command in collaboration with the Military Committee removed leftists, such as those found in the Lebanese Regional Branch, from leadership positions, and expelled them from the party in the most severe cases. The Lebanese Regional Branch managed to elect three members to the National Command at the 7th National Congress; Majdalani, al-Ali and Abd al-Majid Rafi.

Libya
The Regional Branch was founded in the 1950s by Amr Taher Deghayes. Ba'athism was a major political force in Libya following the establishment of the United Arab Republic. Many intellectuals were attracted to Ba'athist ideology during the later years of the Kingdom of Libya. However, with help from Nasserist propaganda, several Ba'athists changed affiliation and became Nasserists instead. The growth of these pan-Arab ideologies concerned the government, which led to the incarceration of several Nasserist and Ba'athist military officers in the early sixties. The Ba'athist were accused of working to overthrow "the political, economic and social system" of the Kingdom; the sentences ranged from everything to eight months to two years. By 1964, the Libyan Regional Branch had only managed to establish one-level below the Regional Command, the branch-level. Syrian specialist John Devlin estimated that the Libyan Regional Branch had been 50 and 150 members in 1964.

Syria
Syrian politics took a dramatic turn in 1954 when the military government of Adib Shishakli was overthrown and the democratic system restored. The Ba'ath, now a large and popular organisation, won 15 out of 142 parliamentary seats in the Syrian election that year, becoming the second-largest party in parliament. Aside from the Syrian Communist Party (SCP), the Ba'ath Party was the only party able to organise mass protests among workers. The party was supported by the intelligentsia due to their pro-Egyptian and anti-imperialist stance along with their advocation of social reform.

The Ba'ath faced considerable competition from ideological competitors, notably the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), which supported the establishment of a Greater Syria. The Ba'ath Party's main adversary was the SCP, whose support for class struggle and internationalism was anathema to the Ba'ath. In addition to parliamentary-level competition, all these parties (as well as Islamists) competed in street-level activity and sought to recruit support among the military.

By the end of 1957, the SCP was able to weaken the Ba'ath Party to such an extent that the Ba'ath Party drafted a bill in December that called for a union with Egypt, a move that proved to be very popular. The Ba'ath leadership dissolved the party in 1958, gambling that the illegalisation of certain parties would hurt the SCP more than it would the Ba'ath.

A military coup in Damascus in 1961 brought the UAR to an end. Sixteen prominent politicians signed a statement supporting the coup, among them al-Hawrani and Salah al-Din al-Bitar (who later retracted his signature). Following the UAR's dissolution, the Ba'ath Party was reestablished at the 1962 congress. The Military Committee did not show itself to the civilian wing of the party at this congress. During the congress, Aflaq and the Military Committee, through Muhammad Umran, made contact for the first time; the committee asked for permission to initiate a coup d'état; Aflaq supported the conspiracy.

Following the success of the Ramadan Revolution, led by the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi Regional Branch, the Military Committee hastily convened to hatch a coup against Nazim al-Kudsi's presidency. The 8 March Revolution proved successful, and a Ba'athist government in Syria was established. The plotters first order was to establish the National Council for the Revolutionary Command (NCRC), consisting entirely of Ba'athists and Nasserists, and controlled by military personnel rather than civilians from the very beginning.

While the Ba'ath Party had attained power, there was significant infighting. The Military Committee, which was itself a tiny minority of the already small Ba'ath Party membership, ruled by force. The Ba'ath Party lacked a popular base, as it had only 2,500 members by mid-1963. Even if membership expanded, the authoritarian rule it had introduced would only increase.

The civilian wing was plagued by infighting between the radical socialist and moderate faction, while the military stood more unified. Whatever the case, the Syrian Regional Command slowly amassed its powers by weakening the National Command. This all came to a head in the 1966 Syrian coup d'état.

Others
Following the Ba'ath Party's founding, regional branches were established in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Not long after it established branches in North Yemen and South Yemen. In Tunisia, a Regional Branch was established in the 1950s, but was forced underground for much of its existence. The Saudi Regional Branches elected Ali Ghannäm to represent them at the 7th National Command. While its currently unknown which side the Saudi Ba'ath took after the 1966 split, it published a newspaper, Sawt al-Tal‘iyya, from 1973 to 1980. It was an ardent critic of the Saudi royal family and American imperialism. The majority of its members were Shia Muslims. In late 1963, Ba'ath cells were being established in Sudan, and there were even rumours that a Ba'ath cell had been established in Egypt. A regional Ba'ath Party branch was established in Algeria in 1988 after the one-party system ended.

title: Ba'ath Party


text:
Talk:Television (band)

Citation needed for "seminal influence on punk rock." Seriously?!?
Television was OBVIOUSLY a seminal influence on punk rock. They convinced CBGBs to try hosting punk at the very beginning of the movement - they even built the stage themselves. How would punk have evolved without CBs? Not to mention they were part of the scene with The Ramones, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Dead Boys, Blondie, New York Dolls... and the list goes on and on. How many punk bands have to have worked with them... how many have to cite them as an influence... before we just accept the OBVIOUS fact that they were undoubtedly a "seminal influence on punk rock?"

Not to mention the fact that a "citation" "proving" this notion is impossible to produce. What do you want, some critic's opinion? As if that is "proof." Or should we cite the obvious contributions/peer testimonies? That would just be laying the foundation for the case that they were an essential part of the scene. Basically, to put this "citation needed" garbage is to prove your silliness by denying a completely legitimate statement while simultaneously trying to justify your nitpicking with an erroneous, unfair demand for some "citation."

So... let's cut the crap and remove that "citation needed" nonsense.

What's next? "Chuck berry is widely considered a pioneer in the genesis of rock 'n roll" *CITATION NEEDED

Ridiculous... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.29.93.53 (talk) 19:13, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Not Wave
Television was never a new wave band. The word new wave emerged end of 1979-begin 1980. The band was contemporary of the Sex Pistols and Patti Smith. It was considered punk by the press and the business. (Well everything new was punk at those time, even Blondie was punk).

The band got its start in the famous club The CBGB's which was built in the shady block in New York. The band in the beginning... sucked. But after they started doing more gigs, they released such memroble hits as "Marquee Moon".

 * There is a great discussion about the origins of the term "new wave" in Bernard Gendron's book Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club. In it, he explains the origins of new wave, which appeared in the NYC press in the mid-1970s to describe The Ramones, Television, etc. Basically, Gendron went back and read ALL of the newspapers, magazines, and zines from the period and traces the evolution of the terms "new wave" and "punk." It is really interesting, and totally convincing.Cpomeara 01:53, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

 * Just to reiterate that the phrase "new wave" was used to label the CBGB bands (incl. Television) in 1977/78. See Gendron, B. 271-273. I can see an argument to be made that today (21st century) "new wave" refers to a different set of bands in many listeners' minds, in which case I will concede the point. But I haven't seen that point made, yet.--Cpomeara 22:45, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
 * you just made it —Preceding unsigned comment added by Petchboo (talk • contribs) 15:41, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Followers
I removed the Followers heading, because all it included was Sonic Youth, Strokes, and Franz Ferdinand, which was so limited as to give a pretty inaccurate (NPOV) view of their influence. Especially since it is so heavily weighted to the last 4 years. I began to put together a longer list (below), but it seems to combine bands influenced by Television (which should be a VERY long list) and bands that came out of the same scene. Anyway, since a good list of "followers" should be really long, I'm not sure it's useful for a Encyclopedia article.

--Cpomeara 19:42, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * A list like this is not allowed according to WikiProject Music, see standard #7. If there are similar bands, explain in what way they are similar in a prose format. Tuf-Kat 23:53, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

 * Thank you! That's very helpful. --Cpomeara

2006 Tour?
Can anyone find a source for that little tidbit on the bottom about a tour for June of 2006? I can't find anything about a new Television tour myself, besides a show at the North by Northeast Festival in Toronto, so I wonder if it shouldn't just be removed until further notice.--Spaceboy9911 04:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Peter Laughner
Peter Laughner's audition is referred to in conjunction with Richard Lloyd joining in 1973; when in fact Laughner auditioned when Lloyd was considering leaving in 1975. I'm going to relocate that reference to a more chronologically appropriate location. Anazgnos 22:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Quicksilver
I'm removing the following section:
 * "A major influence on Television's guitar work seems to be the band Quicksilver Messenger Service. For instance, listen to the Television's song "The Dream's Dream" on their album Adventure, and then that find the main guitar lick comes from a song on Quicksilver Messenger Service's live "Happy Trails" album (the lick is similar to the main lick in QMS's own song "The Fool" on their self-titled album. Also see the song Too Long/It's Been Too Long on their debut self-titled album, from which most of the main riff of the song Marquee Moon can be considered to be derived)."

It's a little too-much-info for such a minor reference, cites no references, and is a little too informal in tone. I'm replacing it with a shorter reference to QMS within a restructured "influences" paragraph. Anazgnos 22:40, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

 * True dat. Particularly since I've never heard Verlaine actually mention Quicksilver in any interview. Furthermore, everybody knows that the main riff of "Marquee Moon" is from Gene Clark's "Is Yours, Is Mine" (1967). - Maggie --64.229.64.62 03:16, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Quicksilver Messenger Service/Television comparions by critic Lester Bangs, among others
In response to the edit:

"(cur) (last) 15:38, 1 August 2006 64.229.186.171 (Talk) (deleted speculative reference to quicksilver, which I've never heard cited by Verlaine)"

First of all, Verlaine has mentioned Quicksilver (see below). Secondly, this editor obviously overlooks the fact that there is another guitarist in the band, Richard Lloyd. Verlaine was not the only nor by any means the "main" guitar player in Television. Third, the editor then put into the Wikipedia article other influences posited by critics, so that fact that a posited influence was "never cited by Tom Verlaine" is obviously not a necessary nor a useful nor a sensible reason to delete references to posited influences, especially when influences are posited by credible and knowledgeable critics like Lester Bangs and Rolling Stone Magazine among many others, see below:

Who is a more authoritative, insightful, far-reaching, and respected rock critic than Lester Bangs?

http://www.monoculartimes.co.uk/monomusic/freejazzpunkrock_2.shtml:

or http://www.notbored.org/bangs.html

Lester Bangs:

"Almost certainly the most interesting experiments at what I like to think of as the real fusion music have occurred in New York City. A lot of people credit the late Television and their leader Tom Verlaine in this department, although for my money Verlaine's guitar playing always sounded more like John Cipollina of old San Francisco acid-hippie band Quicksilver Messenger Service than anybody else."

Or what magazine in its history can be argued to be a better long-term source of rock history than Rolling Stone?

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6598703/128_marquee_moon

"When the members of Television materialized in New York, at the dawn of punk, they played an incongruous, soaring amalgam of genres: the noirish howl of the Velvet Underground, brainy art rock, the double-helix guitar sculpture of Quicksilver Messenger Service. As exhilarating in its ambitions as the Ramones' debut was in its sim-plicity, Marquee Moon still amazes. "Friction," "Venus" and the mighty title track are jagged, desperate and beautiful all at once. As for punk credentials, don't forget the cryptic electricity and strangled existentialism of guitarist Tom Verlaine's voice and songwriting."

and

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/tomverlaine/albums/album/116684/review/5945813/dreamtime

"In the gripping instrumental "The Blue Robe," Tom Verlaine applies free-jazz daring to exotic modal inventions in a manner reminiscent of the Quicksilver Messenger Service's John Cipollina or Roger McGuinn's twelve-string expansions in the Byrds' "Eight Miles High."

-

Other comparisions:

Detroit Metro Times by Fred Mills 10/22/2003

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=5534

"Indeed. Moon was an economy-minded rock muso’s delight, a combined assault of edgy, riff-fueled aggression ("See No Evil," "Friction") and dramatic, modal-tinged jamming (the title track). It featured death-defying Verlaine-Lloyd fretboard duels that eschewed standard-issue Anglo ejaculatory guitar solos in favor of esoteric yelps, glurps and improbable harmonic detours. Played out atop the Ficca/Smith rhythm section (itself an unlikely blend of discoish precision and jazz-cat extrapolation), the overall effect was akin to cueing up, simultaneously, a stack of Quicksilver Messenger Service, Velvet Underground and John Coltrane albums."

by Nick Yarn http://www.geocities.com/mjareviews/television.html

"Pretty much everything that makes Television interesting is here - the interplay between the two guitarists are at a high (not to mention the fantastic solos, whose structure is often reminiscent of psychedelic acts like the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service, as some have cited)"

---

http://starling.rinet.ru/music/tvc.htm

"Michael and Priscilla Bloom  (04.02.2001)

Both guitarists were tremendous soloists. Lloyd was responsible for the solos in "See No Evil," "Elevation," and "Guiding Light," as well as that first turbulent solo in Marquee Moon itself. I think you've also misconstrued how some of the rhythm guitar parts work: in "See No Evil," the "doubletracked" lick is in fact just one guitar playing double stops, two notes at once, while the other guitar (presumably Verlaine, since he also had to sing at the same time) is just playing a power chord. Your comparing their guitar interplay to the Dead is reasonable, but I would also encourage you to go back and listen to Quicksilver Messenger Service with Marquee Moon in mind, both for the snarling quality both bands expressed and their flamenco-like note choice."

--

http://minitru.wordpress.com/2006/06/

"Last Monday, in the midst of a stunning Tom Verlaine performance, I flashed back to the decade I mentioned earlier, his music suddenly indistinguishable from the kind of thing I heard Quicksilver Messenger Service playing at the Forest Park Pavilion in St Louis, date forgotten"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B000002UTX

QMS Maiden Voyage, October 11, 2005 Reviewer: Mark Champion "autumnfair" (San Antonio, TX United States) - See all my reviews Quicksilver's debut manages to transcend its time more effectively than many of its contemporaries. Playing at this point in their career largely electric folk-influenced psychedelia ('It's Been Too Long'; 'Light Your Windows'; 'Pride Of Man'), the Messenger Service was also never afraid to experiment with a nudge and a wink: the instrumental 'Gold And Silver' takes Brubeck's 'Take Five' and electrically expands it. Every track here is a gem, and if Dino Valenti was unable to physically participate (he was, like, temporarily in jail), Duncan, Cippolina and the rest of the gang paid tribute in his 'Dino's Song'. And Television's Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd must have been listening very closely to 'The Fool' - - the band stretches out a bit and the guitar interplay between Cippolina and Duncan sounds suspiciously, and retroactively, familiar. Start here and go forward, it gets even better. --

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Marquee-Moon-Remastered-Expanded-Television/dp/B0000AI45P

Incredible rock n' roll alchemy, 26 April 2005 Reviewer: "dion7t4" - See all my reviews

I don't know what ideas were tumbling through the minds of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd between Television's formation and the release of this masterpiece, but they somehow contrived a musical formula that sounds fresh on every listen. I first bought a copy of Marquee Moon in 1993 at the age of eighteen, and at thirty I still can't tire of hearing it. The brilliant guitar interplay, updating Quicksilver Messenger Service for the frenetic New Wave crowd, the machine-tight rhythm section, simultaneously funky and militaristic and Tom Verlaine's ghoulish whine and obtuse lyrics all conspire to keep your ears pricked up for the album's duration.

--

Though Tom Verlaine himself seems annoyed at the comparision. NOTE that he doesn't say he listened to them or doesn't deny being influenced by them (see QMS's the Fool) And what about Richard Lloyd, the other Television guitarist?

http://www.marquee.demon.co.uk/bomb.htm

"Tom Verlaine: That's pretty ironic, because I didn't like any San Francisco bands when I was growing up. After our first record came out, everybody was saying, "Oh, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Raga Rock..." It's just the twangy guitars. We sound more like the Ventures, in a psychedelic way."

 * Great, cool, awesome, you proved it. In the context of a paragraph discussing the band's myriad influences, however, the current mention is a tad bit of overkill, and sort of over-referenced compared to everything else.  I'm gonna trim it, and it seems more apropos to simply note the existence of comparisons to QMS in the context of Verlaine's denial of interest in the SF groups.   If you'd like to spin that section off into a seperate article discussing the links between Television and Quicksilver, feel free. Anazgnos 17:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Great, cool, awesome, you edited my edits in an inaccurate way based on the citations I linked to. The first three reviews above I cited above, by Lester Bangs and other Rolling Stone editors, specifically compare Television to the music of Quicksilver Messenger service, not to other San Fransisco bands.  In fact, I don't see comparisons in any of the reviews the text of which I added above...just Quicksilver Messenger Service.  The only comparison to other SF bands is by Tom Wizon in the http://www.marquee.demon.co.uk/bomb.htm article.  I've changed the body of the article back to reflect the direct comparisons to Quicksilver Messenger Service that I cited in the article, and kept in the part about Tom Verlaine citing Ventures as a more apt comparison.  I think this is a good compromise, no?  Tom Verlaine mentioned "everybody" comparing Television to Quicksilver Messenger Service, and I think that is a very interesting aspect to the band's history whether a band member agrees with it or not--I think including this info gives context to the band's reception and perception of the origins of the band's sound.  I don't think trimming this accomplishes much, as I think it enhances the context of understanding about the band's history and its reception by critics and the general public.

Post punk was before punk?
On the Television (band) article it says they started post punk, but Richard Hell's article talks about how the Voidoids were an early punk band... several years after Television. How is that possible?
 * Changed it to just "punk rock". Freshacconci 11:26, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

"Post Punk" is one of those annoying terms, probably coined by Rolling Stone or Creem magazine to try to cubby-hole artists. Television was playing Max's and CBGB before the term "punk rock" even existed. Proclivities (talk) 13:18, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, "punk" was used as a musical term as early as 1970 to describe garage bands, The Stooges and The Velvet Underground. What post-punk actually is, is really up in the air. Post what, exactly? The original 60s punk? US punk from the mid-70s? Or the later British punk? All we can go by is published sources. If critics have described Television as post-punk, then so they are.  freshacconci  talk talk  21:02, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

 * do we actually have a cite for calling them 'post punk' or 'New Wave'? It seems odd that a band best known for being a early 'Punk' band would be considered a 'post punk' band without having changed their sound. I also don't recall anyone considering them a 'new wave' band. harlock_jds (talk) 20:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I've never seen The Velvet Underground described as "punk" until well after they had disbanded; they were usually described as "avant garde" or "art rock". There likely was a description of The Stooges as "punk", but the common usage of the term was not applied until the late 1970's. My problem is with the acceptance that a term applied by one, or even many critics, labeling a genre, makes it so. I suppose part of a critic's job is to create labels for artists, but that lends itself to a sort of oligarchy. Once a critic applies the prefix "post" to an existing genre, it's always seemed (to me) that they're too lazy or uninformed to come up with a better description. I apologize for spouting. Thanks. Proclivities (talk) 04:39, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

RE: "The group's debut album, Marquee Moon, is often considered one of the defining releases of the post-punk era." Umm... how can an album recorded in 1976 and released in '77 be considered "POST-punk"? While it's true that the group, Suicide, used the term "punk" several years earlier, no one was calling that scene "punk" until the magazine came out, after the Ramone's songs that used the term. Television were part of the NYC scene around CBGB's from 1974, with the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith,et al. Like Television, many of the early "punk" bands would hardly be considered "punk" by today's standards. "Post-punk" was later, as the name indicates, and in the U.S. is typified by the No New York compilation. These bands are more associated with the Mudd Club in Tribeca. To call Television "post-punk" is simply ahistorical, based in ignorance of history. I would correct the main article, myself, but my Wiki skills are lacking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.130.216.156 (talk) 22:51, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Wikinews to interview Richard Hell
Wikinews is to interview Richard Hell about his life, music, career and future. If you have a serious question for Hell, please leave it on my talk page under the title "Richard Hell interview". This message will be struck out once I am no longer accepting questions. -- David  Shankbone  00:53, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

debut single
why doesn't little johnny jewel have a page? - 188.222.41.105 (talk) 18:18, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Television (band)


text:
Matt Damon

Matthew Paige Damon (born October 8, 1970) is an American actor, film producer, and screenwriter. He was ranked among Forbes' most bankable stars in 2007, and in 2010 was one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. He has received various awards and nominations, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for three British Academy Film Awards and seven Primetime Emmy Awards.

Damon began his acting career in the film Mystic Pizza (1988). He gained prominence in 1997 when he and Ben Affleck wrote and starred in Good Will Hunting, which won them the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Screenplay. He established himself as a leading man by starring as Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Jason Bourne in the Bourne franchise (2002–2007; 2016), and con man Linus Caldwell in the Ocean's trilogy (2001–2007). Damon's other notable roles have been in Saving Private Ryan (1998), Syriana (2005), The Departed (2006), The Informant! (2009), Invictus (2009), True Grit (2010), Contagion (2011), Ford v Ferrari (2019), Stillwater (2021), The Last Duel (2021), Air (2023), and Oppenheimer (2023), the last of which is his highest-grossing feature. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for playing an astronaut stranded on Mars in The Martian (2015).

On television, Damon portrayed Scott Thorson in the HBO biopic Behind the Candelabra (2013), for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. He appeared on 30 Rock in 2011 and Saturday Night Live in 2019. He also produced the reality series Project Greenlight (2001–2015) as well as the film Manchester by the Sea (2016). Damon has performed voice-over work in both animated and documentary films as well as established two production companies with Affleck, Artists Equity, and the former, Pearl Street Films. He has been involved in charitable work with organizations including the One Campaign, H2O Africa Foundation, Feeding America, and Water.org.

Early life and education
Damon was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 8, 1970, the second son of Kent Telfer Damon (1942–2017), a stockbroker, and Nancy Carlsson-Paige (b. 1946), an early childhood education professor at Lesley University. His father had English and Scottish ancestry, while his mother is of Finnish and Swedish descent; her family surname had been changed from Pajari to Paige. Damon and his family moved to Newton for two years. His parents divorced when he was two years old, and he and his brother returned with their mother to Cambridge, where they lived in a six-family communal house. His brother, Kyle, is a sculptor and artist. Damon has said that, as a teenager, he had felt lonely, as if he did not belong, and that his mother's by-the-book approach to child-rearing had made it hard for him to define his own identity.

Damon attended Cambridge Alternative School and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, and was a good student. He acted in several high-school theater productions, and has credited his drama teacher, Gerry Speca, as having had an important artistic influence on him, although noting wryly that Speca had given Ben Affleck (Damon’s close friend and schoolmate) the "biggest roles and longest speeches". He attended Harvard University as a member of the class of 1992, residing in Lowell House, but left before receiving his degree to take a lead role in the film Geronimo: An American Legend. While at Harvard, as an exercise for an English class, Damon wrote an essay in the form of a film treatment which was later developed into the screenplay Good Will Hunting (for which he received an Academy Award). At Harvard, Damon was a member of the Delphic Club, one of the university’s elite Final Clubs. In 2013, he was awarded the Harvard Arts Medal.

1988–1999: Early work and breakthrough
Damon entered Harvard in 1988, where he appeared in student theater plays, such as Burn This and A... My Name is Alice. Later, he made his film debut at the age of 18, with a single line of dialogue in the romantic comedy Mystic Pizza. As a student at Harvard, he acted in small roles such as in the TNT original film Rising Son and the ensemble prep-school drama School Ties. He left the school in 1992, a semester (12 credits) shy of completing his Bachelor of Arts in English to feature in Geronimo: An American Legend in Los Angeles, erroneously expecting the movie to become a big success. Damon next appeared as an opiate-addicted soldier in 1996's Courage Under Fire, for which he lost 40 lb in 100 days on a self-prescribed diet and fitness regimen. Courage Under Fire gained him critical notice, when The Washington Post labeled his performance "impressive".

During the early 1990s, Damon and Affleck wrote Good Will Hunting (1997), a screenplay about a young mathematics genius, an extension of a screenplay he wrote for an assignment at Harvard, having integrated advice from director Rob Reiner, screenwriter William Goldman, and writer/director Kevin Smith. He asked Affleck to perform the scenes with him in front of the class and, when Damon later moved into Affleck's Los Angeles apartment, they began working on the script more seriously. The film, which they wrote mainly during improvisation sessions, was set partly in their hometown of Cambridge, and drew from their own experiences. They sold the screenplay to Castle Rock in 1994, but after a conflict with the company, they convinced Miramax to purchase the script. The film received critical praise; Quentin Curtis of The Daily Telegraph found "real wit and vigour, and some depth" in their writing and Emanuel Levy of Variety wrote that Damon "gives a charismatic performance in a demanding role that's bound to catapult him to stardom. Perfectly cast, he makes the aching, step-by-step transformation of Will realistic and credible." It received nine Academy Awards nominations, including Best Actor for Damon; he and Affleck won the Oscar and Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. He and Affleck were each paid salaries of $600,000, while the film grossed over $225 million at the worldwide box office. The two later parodied their roles from the film in Kevin Smith's 2001 movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Speaking of his "overnight success" through Good Will Hunting, Damon said by that time he had been working in the cinema for 11 years, but still found the change "nearly indescribable—going from total obscurity to walking down a street in New York and having everybody turn and look". Before the film, Damon played the lead in the critically acclaimed drama The Rainmaker (1997), where he was recognized by the Los Angeles Times as "a talented young actor on the brink of stardom." For the role, Damon regained most of the weight he had lost for Courage Under Fire. After meeting Damon on the set of Good Will Hunting, director Steven Spielberg cast him in the brief title role in the 1998 World War II film Saving Private Ryan. He co-starred with Edward Norton in the 1998 poker film Rounders, where he plays a reformed gambler in law school who must return to playing high-stakes poker to help a friend pay off loan sharks. Despite meager earnings at the box-office, it is considered one of the best poker movies of all time.

Damon then portrayed antihero Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), a role for which he lost 25 lb. Damon said that he wanted to display his character's humanity and honesty on screen despite his criminal actions. An adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel of same name, the film costarred Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Cate Blanchett, and received praise from critics. "Damon outstandingly conveys his character's slide from innocent enthusiasm into cold calculation", according to Variety magazine. In Dogma (1999), he played a fallen angel who discusses pop culture as intellectual subject matter with Affleck's character. The film received generally positive reviews, but proved controversial among religious groups who deemed it blasphemous.

2000–2008: Worldwide recognition
In 2000, Damon, Affleck, and producers Chris Moore and Sean Bailey founded the production company LivePlanet to create the Emmy-nominated documentary series Project Greenlight, which aimed to find and fund worthwhile film projects from novice filmmakers. Among the company's projects was the short-lived mystery-hybrid series Push, Nevada.

Damon's attempts at leading characters in romantic dramas such as 2000's All the Pretty Horses and The Legend of Bagger Vance were commercially and critically unsuccessful. Variety said of his work in All the Pretty Horses: "[Damon] just doesn't quite seem like a young man who's spent his life amidst the dust and dung of a Texas cattle ranch. Nor does he strike any sparks with [Penelope] Cruz." He was similarly deemed "uncomfortable being the center" of Robert Redford's The Legend of Bagger Vance by Peter Rainer of New York magazine.

During this period, Damon joined two lucrative film series—Ocean's Trilogy (2001–2007) and Bourne (2002–2016)—and produced the television series Project Greenlight (2001–2005, 2015). He co-starred as thief Linus Caldwell in the former's first installment, Steven Soderbergh's 2001 ensemble film Ocean's Eleven, a remake of the Rat Pack's Ocean's 11 (1960). The role was originally meant for Mark Wahlberg, who refused it in favor of other projects. The film grossed $450 million on a budget of $83 million. Damon, alongside Affleck and others, produced the documentary series Project Greenlight, aired on HBO and later Bravo, which helped newcomers develop their first film. The series was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Program in 2002, 2004, and 2005. Damon later said that he and Affleck felt proud that the show helped launch the careers of several directors; Damon later served as the executive producer of a number of projects directed by the winners of the show.

Damon began 2002 with writing and starring in Gerry, a drama about two friends who forget to bring water and food when they go hiking in a desert. The reviews for the film were generally positive, but it was a box-office failure. He then played amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne in Doug Liman's action thriller The Bourne Identity (2002). Liman considered several actors for the role before he cast Damon. Damon insisted on performing many of the stunts himself, undergoing three months of extensive training in stunt work, the use of weapons, boxing, and eskrima. Damon said that before The Bourne Identity he was jobless for six months, and many of his films during that period under-performed at the box-office. He doubted the film's financial prospects, but it proved a commercial success. Reviews for the film were also positive; Roger Ebert praised it for its ability to absorb the viewer in its "spycraft" and "Damon's ability to be focused and sincere". For his role, Entertainment Weekly named Damon among "the decade's best mixer of brawn and brains."

Damon voiced the role of Spirit in the animated film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) and later played a conjoined twin in Stuck on You (2003), which received a mixed critical reception. His major releases in 2004 included starring roles in the sequels The Bourne Supremacy and Ocean's Twelve. Both films earned more than $280 million at the box-office. In a review for The Bourne Supremacy, BBC's Nev Pierce called the film "a brisk, engrossing and intelligent thriller", adding, "Damon is one hell of an action hero. He does a lot with very little, imbuing his limited dialogue with both rage and sorrow, looking harder and more haunted as the picture progresses". For the film, he earned an Empire Award for Best Actor; the award's presenter Empire attributed Damon's win to his "astute, underplayed performance, through which he totally eschews movie star vanity". He played a fictionalized version of Wilhelm Grimm alongside Heath Ledger in Terry Gilliam's fantasy adventure The Brothers Grimm (2005), which was a critically panned commercial failure; The Washington Post concluded, "Damon, constantly flashing his newscaster's teeth and flaunting a fake, 'Masterpiece Theatre' dialect, comes across like someone who got lost on the way to an audition for a high school production of The Pirates of Penzance."

Later in 2005, he appeared as an energy analyst in the geopolitical thriller Syriana alongside George Clooney and Jeffrey Wright. The film focuses on petroleum politics and the global influence of the oil industry. Damon says starring in the film broadened his understanding of the oil industry and that he hoped the people would talk about the film afterward. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone was mainly impressed with Clooney's acting, but also found Damon's performance "whiplash". In 2006, Damon joined Robert De Niro in The Good Shepherd as a career CIA agent, and played an undercover mobster working for the Massachusetts State Police in Martin Scorsese's The Departed, a remake of the Hong Kong police thriller Infernal Affairs. Assessing his work in the two films, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that Damon has the unique "ability to recede into a film while also being fully present, a recessed intensity, that distinguishes how he holds the screen." The Departed received critical acclaim and won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

According to Forbes in August 2007, Damon was the most bankable star of the actors reviewed, his last three films at that time averaged US$29 at the box office for every dollar he earned. Two of his major releases in 2007 were the films Ocean's Thirteen and The Bourne Ultimatum, which were the third installments of their respective film series. Both films earned more than $300 million at the box-office. Damon had an uncredited cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth (2007) and another cameo in the 2008 Che Guevara biopic Che. While he was working on the Bourne films, Damon declined an offer from James Cameron to star in his upcoming film Avatar, as he did not want to break his Bourne contract. Cameron offered Damon 10% of the profits for the film, which went on to become the most successful of all time. Damon said later: "I will go down in history… you will never meet an actor who turned down more money."

2009–2019: Established actor

He made a guest appearance in 2009 on the sixth-season finale of Entourage as himself, where he tries to pressure Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) into donating to his real foundation ONEXONE. His next role was Steven Soderbergh's dark comedy The Informant! (2009), in which his Golden Globe-nominated work was described by Entertainment Weekly as such: "The star – who has quietly and steadily turned into a great Everyman actor – is in nimble control as he reveals his character's deep crazies." Also in 2009, Damon portrayed South Africa national rugby union team captain François Pienaar in the Clint Eastwood-directed film Invictus, which is based on the 2008 John Carlin book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Changed a Nation and features Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Invictus earned Damon an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The New Republic observed that he brought "it off with low-key charm and integrity." Damon also lent his voice to the English version of the animated film Ponyo, which was released in the United States in August 2009.

In March 2010, Damon and Ben Affleck collaborated once again to create another production company titled Pearl Street Films, a Warner Bros.-based production company. That year, he reunited with director Paul Greengrass, who directed him in the Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum, for the action thriller Green Zone, which flopped commercially and received a score of 53% on Rotten Tomatoes and ambivalent reception from critics. He appeared as a guest star in an episode of Arthur, titled "The Making of Arthur", as himself. During season 5 of 30 Rock, he appeared as a guest star in the role of Liz Lemon's boyfriend in the episodes "I Do Do", "The Fabian Strategy", "Live Show", and "Double-edged Sword". Damon's 2010 projects included Clint Eastwood's Hereafter and the Coen brothers' remake of the 1969 John Wayne-starring Western True Grit. He also narrated Inside Job, a documentary film about the effects of financial deregulation in the 2007–2008 financial crisis.

In 2010, he was one of the highest-grossing actors of all time, ranking 37th.

In 2011, he starred in The Adjustment Bureau, Contagion, and We Bought a Zoo. That same year, the documentary which he narrated, American Teacher, opened in New York before national screening. Also in 2011, he voiced a krill named Bill in the animated film Happy Feet Two. In January 2012, Damon signed a multiyear deal to be the voice of TD Ameritrade advertisements, replacing Sam Waterston as the discount brokerage's spokesman. Damon donated all fees from the advertisements to charity. In April 2012, Damon filmed Promised Land, directed by Gus Van Sant, which Damon co-wrote with John Krasinski. Damon's next film with frequent collaborator Steven Soderbergh was Behind the Candelabra, a drama about the life of pianist/entertainer Liberace (played by Michael Douglas) with Damon playing Liberace's longtime partner Scott Thorson. The film premiered on HBO on May 26, 2013.

Damon starred in the science fiction film Elysium (2013), where he played former car-thief-turned-factory-worker Max DeCosta. He also appeared in the science fiction movie The Zero Theorem in 2013, directed by Terry Gilliam. That same year, Damon appeared in a 20-second advertisement for Nespresso, directed by Grant Heslov, with whom he worked on The Monuments Men. The deal earned him $3 million. Damon also provided voice-over for United Airlines' resurrected "Fly the Friendly Skies" advertisement campaign in 2013. In 2014, he starred in George Clooney's The Monuments Men, and played the minor role of scientist Dr. Mann in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. That same year, Damon appeared as a celebrity correspondent for Years of Living Dangerously.

In 2015, Damon portrayed the main character, astronaut Mark Watney, in Ridley Scott's The Martian, based on Andy Weir's bestselling novel of the same name, a role that earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and his second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Having not returned for the fourth film in the Bourne film series, Damon reprised his role in 2016's Jason Bourne, reuniting with Paul Greengrass. In 2017, Damon played the lead role in Zhang Yimou's The Great Wall, a hit internationally and a disappointment at the domestic box office. The film, and Damon's casting, were not well received by critics. Later in 2017, he starred in two satires, George Clooney's 1950s-set Suburbicon, which was released in October, and Alexander Payne's comedy Downsizing, which was released in December. In September 2018, he portrayed jurist Brett Kavanaugh on the late night sketch series Saturday Night Live. In 2019, Damon portrayed Carroll Shelby in the action biographical drama Ford v Ferrari, directed by James Mangold.

2021–present: Continued positive critical reception
, the films in which he had appeared had collectively earned over $3.88 billion at the North American box office.

In 2021, Damon starred in Tom McCarthy's crime drama Stillwater, playing an unemployed oil rig worker from Oklahoma who sets out with a French woman to prove his convicted daughter's innocence. The film had its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. IndieWire praised Damon's performance as "graced with a quiet softness that offsets the sheer volume of the character he's playing". That same year saw the release of the historical drama The Last Duel, which he starred in and co-wrote alongside Ben Affleck. The film, set in medieval France and based on the book of the same name, focuses on the true story of a knight, Jean de Carrouges, portrayed by Damon, who challenges his former friend to a judicial duel after he's accused of raping his wife. It premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival and earned positive reviews while being a financial failure at the box office.

In 2023, Damon starred as Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro in Air, a drama film about the launch of Air Jordan, co-starring and directed by Affleck. It marked the first release from Affleck and Damon's independent production company, Artists Equity, which they had formed in 2022. He also reunited with Christopher Nolan in the biographical film Oppenheimer, playing Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project. The film was a critical and commercial success.

Activism

Damon, alongside George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, David Pressman, and Jerry Weintraub, is one of the founders of Not On Our Watch Project, an organization that focuses global attention and resources to stop and prevent mass atrocities such as in Darfur. Damon supports One Campaign, which is aimed at fighting AIDS and poverty in Third World countries. He has appeared in their print and television advertising. He is an ambassador for ONEXONE, a nonprofit foundation committed to supporting, preserving, and improving the lives of children at home in Canada, the United States, and around the world.

Damon is a spokesperson for Feeding America, a hunger-relief organization, and a member of their Entertainment Council, participating in their Ad Council public service announcements. He is a board member of Tonic Mailstopper (formerly GreenDimes), a company that attempts to halt junk mail delivered to American homes each day. Damon was the founder of the H2O Africa Foundation, the charitable arm of the Running the Sahara expedition, which merged with WaterPartners to create Water.org in July 2009. Water.org has partnered with corporate sponsors to promote awareness and raise funds to support its mission of bringing safe, clean, cost-effective drinking water and sanitation to developing countries. In this context, Damon has been the face of advertising campaigns to promote Water.org in conjunction with products from major sponsors.

In October 2011, Water.org received an $8 million grant from the PepsiCo Foundation to scale up WaterCredit, which provides microloans to families throughout India. Damon has been part of promoting those efforts, tying in with the Aquafina and Ethos Water brands of bottled water owned by PepsiCo and Starbucks. Since 2015, Damon has promoted Anheuser-Busch InBev's Stella Artois beer brand as a Water.org partner, including the sale of limited-edition "blue chalice" glasses imprinted with an embellished blue version of the brand's logo. In a television advertisement made for broadcast during the 2018 Super Bowl of the United States' National Football League (NFL), he promoted Water.org and Stella Artois's role in supporting its work.

In October 2021, he announced a new partnership with the cryptocurrency trading platform Crypto.com, under which Crypto.com was to make a $1 million donation to Water.org. In the announcement, Damon said, "Crypto.com gave us this great donation, which is amazing. The money that I make for the commercials to promote them, I give 100% of that to Water.org as well. So, it's millions of dollars coming in to us." Damon's Crypto.com commercial started rolling out in cinemas late in 2021, and then on television in January 2022, mainly during sports programming such as NFL games. Once it was broadcast widely on television, it sparked much criticism, as did its accompanying "making of" featurette. In The Independent, Nathan Place wrote, "Twitter is cringing after a TV commercial starring Matt Damon compared trading cryptocurrency to mankind's greatest achievements. In the ad, which aired during Sunday night’s NFL games, Mr Damon makes an abstract plug for crypto.com – a platform for exchanging digital currencies like Bitcoin – while striding past images of explorers and astronauts. The New Zealand Herald published an article by Lexie Cartwright summing up viewer reaction: "Matt Damon's new commercial plugging cryptocurrency has been absolutely savaged on social media, with viewers dubbing it 'insulting' and 'disgusting'." The story included a series of tweets, among them one by Carole Cadwalladr of The Observer in which she wrote, "There isn't enough yuck in the world to describe Matt Damon advertising a Ponzi scheme and comparing it to the moon landings." Jody Rosen in the New York Times said that "There is something unseemly, to put it mildly, about the famous and fabulously wealthy urging crypto on their fans" and "The bleakness of that pitch is startling."

Public image
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel has a running gag on his ABC television show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where he apologizes for not being able to interview Damon at the end of each show. It culminated in a planned skit on September 12, 2006, when Damon stormed off after having his interview cut short. Damon appeared in several of E! Entertainment's top ten Jimmy Kimmel Live! spoofs. On January 24, 2013, Damon took over his show and mentioned the long-standing feud and having been bumped from years of shows. It involved celebrities who were previously involved in the "feud", including Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, and Sarah Silverman.

Personal life

Damon met his Argentine wife, Luciana Bozán, while filming Stuck on You in Miami in April 2003. They became engaged in September 2005 and married in a private civil ceremony at the Manhattan Marriage Bureau on December 9, 2005. They have three daughters together born in June 2006, August 2008, and October 2010. He also has a stepdaughter Alexia Barroso (born 1998) from Bozán's previous marriage, and considers her to be his own.

The couple has lived in Miami and New York City; and since 2012, they have lived in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Los Angeles. In 2018, Damon bought a luxury penthouse in New York City's Brooklyn Heights neighborhood for $16.5 million.

He is a fan of the Boston Red Sox. After the team won the 2007 World Series, he narrated the commemorative DVD release of the event. He has competed in several World Series of Poker (WSOP) events, including the 2010 World Series of Poker main event. He was eliminated from the 1998 WSOP by poker professional Doyle Brunson.

Political and social views
While discussing the Iraq War on Hardball with Chris Matthews in December 2006, Damon expressed concern about inequities across socioeconomic classes with regard to who is tasked with the responsibility of fighting wars.

Damon is a supporter of the Democratic Party, and has made several critical attacks on Republican Party figures. However, he also expressed disappointment over the policies of President Barack Obama. He had a working relationship with the Obama administration, primarily due to his friendship with Jason Furman, his former Harvard roommate who became Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to Obama. In 2012, Damon joined Ben Affleck and John Krasinski in hosting a fundraiser for Democratic Senate nominee Elizabeth Warren. Damon endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

In October and December 2017, Damon made headlines when he made a series of comments regarding the Me Too movement against sexual harassment and misconduct. On October 10, Sharon Waxman, a former reporter for The New York Times, mentioned that Damon and Russell Crowe had made direct phone calls to her to vouch for the head of Miramax Italy, Fabrizio Lombardo. In her report, she suspected Lombardo of facilitating incidents of Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct in Europe. However, Damon clarified later that the calls were solely to reassure her of Lombardo's professional qualifications in the film industry. Waxman endorsed Damon's statement on Twitter hours later. Also during this time, Damon said that he had heard a story from Ben Affleck that Gwyneth Paltrow, a co-worker on a feature film of his, had been harassed by Weinstein in 1996, but thought "she had handled it" because they continued to work together, and Weinstein "treated her incredibly respectfully".

In another series of interviews during December 2017, Damon advocated for a "spectrum of behavior" analysis   of sexual misconduct cases, noting that some are more serious than others. The comment caused offense to prominent members of the Me Too movement and the public for being "tone-deaf in understand[ing] what abuse is like". On January 17, 2018, Damon apologized on The Today Show for his social commentary, stating that he "should get in the back seat and close [his] mouth for a while".

In March 2018, Damon and Affleck announced they would adopt the inclusion rider agreement in all their future production deals through their company Pearl Street Films.

In August 2021, Damon sparked controversy after stating in an interview with The Sunday Times that he had only "months ago" stopped using the word "fag", saying that it "was commonly used when I was a kid, with a different application." This had come after an incident in which his daughter left the table due to his usage of the word and "wrote a very long, beautiful treatise on how that word is dangerous." He denied ever using the six-letter word "faggot" in his personal life, and, in regard to the word "fag": "I explained that that word was used constantly and casually and was even a line of dialogue in a movie of mine as recently as 2003... To my admiration and pride, she was extremely articulate about the extent to which that word would have been painful to someone in the LGBTQ+ community regardless of how culturally normalized it was. I not only agreed with her but thrilled at her passion, values and desire for social justice."

Awards and honors
Aside from awards he has garnered for his role as an actor and producer, Damon became the 2,343rd person to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on July 25, 2007. He reacted to the award by stating: "A few times in my life, I've had these experiences that are just kind of too big to process and this looks like it's going to be one of those times."

title: Matt Damon


text:
Talk:List of therapies

Essay-like text
The text added by User:Simionwsimion on [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_therapies&diff=prev&oldid=696626305 24 December 2015] and then again on [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_therapies&diff=prev&oldid=696729617 25 December 2015] is not appropriate for this page for the following reasons: Biogeographist (talk) 12:30, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) The text reads like a personal essay, which is against Wikipedia style; see WP:NOT.
 * 2) The text discusses psychotherapy and this page is not specifically about psychotherapy but rather about therapy in general; as the page says: "This is a list of types of medical therapy, including forms of traditional medicine, alternative medicine, and quackery. For psychotherapies and other behavioral and psychological intervention methods, see list of psychotherapies."
 * 3) This page is a stand-alone list, designed to be a concise list of topics, and a large quantity of prose in the lead section is not necessary; see WP:SAL. Of course, the text added by User:Simionwsimion is neither necessary nor appropriate, because it is off-topic, as explained in number 2 above.

title: Talk:List of therapies


text:
List of Albanian-language poets

This is a list of poets who have written in the Albanian language.

17th century

 * Llukë Bogdani (–1687)
 * Nezim Frakulla (1680–1760)
 * Muçi Zade (18th Century)

18th century

 * Zenel Bastari (18th Century)
 * Constantine of Berat (1745–1825)
 * Haxhi Ymer Kashari (18th Century)
 * Hasan Zyko Kamberi (18th Century)
 * Etëhem Bey Mollaj (1783–1846)
 * Nasibi Tahir Babai (–1835)
 * Sulejman Naibi (–1771)
 * Tahir Efendi Jakova (1770–1835)
 * Giulio Variboba (1725–1788)
 * Demir Vlonjati (1780–1845)

19th century

 * Asdreni (1872–1947)
 * Thoma Avrami (1869–1943)
 * Josif Bageri (1870–1916)
 * Çajupi (1866–1930)
 * Qamil Çami (1875–1933)
 * Spiro Dine (1846–1922)
 * Abedin Dino (1843–1906)
 * Prend Doçi (1846–1917)
 * Gjergj Fishta (1871–1940)
 * Dalip Frashëri (19th Century)
 * Mid’hat Frashëri (1880–1949)
 * Naim Frashëri (1846–1900)
 * Shahin Frashëri (19th Century)
 * Loni Logori (1871–1929)
 * Ndre Mjeda (1866–1937)
 * Fan Noli (1882–1965)
 * Bernardin Palaj (1894–1947)
 * Vaso Pasha (1825–1892)
 * Girolamo de Rada (1814–1903)
 * Francesco Antonio Santori (1819–1894)
 * Giuseppe Schirò (1865–1927)
 * Filip Shiroka (1859–1935)
 * Kristo Sulidhi (1858–1938)
 * Murad Toptani (1867–1918)

20th century

 * Dritëro Agolli (1931–2017)
 * Mimoza Ahmeti (born 1963)
 * Sadri Ahmeti (1939–2010)
 * Valdete Antoni (born 1953)
 * Fatos Arapi (1930–2018)
 * Lindita Arapi (born 1972)
 * Besim Bokshi (1930–2014)
 * Flora Brovina (born 1949)
 * Ibrahim Dalliu (1878–1952)
 * Mirko Gashi (1939–1995)
 * Ndoc Gjetja (1944–2010)
 * Julia Gjika (born 1949)
 * Milto S. Gurra (1884–1972)
 * Anton Harapi (1888–1946)
 * Ervin Hatibi (born 1974)
 * Irhan Jubica (born 1973)
 * Ismail Kadare (1936–2024)
 * Karmel Kandreva (1931–1982)
 * Veli Karahoda (born 1968)
 * Teodor Keko (1958–2002)
 * Ernest Koliqi (1903–1975)
 * Mark Krasniqi (1920–2015)
 * Irma Kurti (born 1966)
 * Natasha Lako (born 1948)
 * Luljeta Lleshanaku (born 1968)
 * Sejfulla Malëshova (1900–1971)
 * Migjeni (1911–1938)
 * Betim Muço (1947–2015)
 * Faruk Myrtaj (born 1955)
 * Havzi Nela (1934–1988)
 * Dhimitër Pasko (1907–1967)
 * Arshi Pipa (1920–1997)
 * Lasgush Poradeci (1899–1987)
 * Vinçens Prennushi (1885–1949)
 * Leon Qafzezi (born 1953)
 * Kadrush Radogoshi (born 1948)
 * Nijazi Ramadani (born 1964)
 * Giuseppe Schirò Di Maggio (born 1944)
 * Dhimitër Shuteriqi (1915–2003)
 * Drago Siliqi (1930–1963)
 * Llazar Siliqi (1924–2001)
 * Risto Siliqi (1882–1936)
 * Nokë Sinishtaj (born 1944)
 * Xhevahir Spahiu (born 1945)
 * Iliriana Sulkuqi (born 1951)
 * Edi Shukriu (born 1950)
 * Skënder Temali (born 1946)
 * Bilal Xhaferri (1935–1986)
 * Mihal Zallari (1894–1976)
 * Adem Zaplluzha (1943–2020)

21st century

 * Ndriçim Ademaj (born 1991)
 * Majlinda Nana Rama (born 1980)
 * Mark Lucgjonaj (born 1986)

title: List of Albanian-language poets