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Menippean satire

The genre of Menippean satire is a form of satire, usually in prose, that is characterized by attacking mental attitudes rather than specific individuals or entities. It has been broadly described as a mixture of allegory, picaresque narrative, and satirical commentary. Other features found in Menippean satire are different forms of parody and mythological burlesque, a critique of the myths inherited from traditional culture, a rhapsodic nature, a fragmented narrative, the combination of many different targets, and the rapid moving between styles and points of view.

The term is used by classical grammarians and by philologists mostly to refer to satires in prose (cf. the verse Satires of Juvenal and his imitators). Social types attacked and ridiculed by Menippean satires include "pedants, bigots, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi, enthusiasts, rapacious and incompetent professional men of all kinds," although they are addressed in terms of "their occupational approach to life as distinct from their social behavior ... as mouthpieces of the idea they represent". Characterization in Menippean satire is more stylized than naturalistic, and presents people as an embodiment of the ideas they represent. The term Menippean satire distinguishes it from the earlier satire pioneered by Aristophanes, which was based on personal attacks.

Origins
The form is named after the third-century-BC Greek cynic parodist and polemicist Menippus. His works, now lost, influenced the works of Lucian (2nd century AD) and Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC), the latter being the first to identify the genre by referring to his own satires as saturae menippeae; such satires are sometimes also termed Varronian satire. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, the genre itself was in existence prior to Menippus, with authors such as Antisthenes (c. 446 – c.  366 BC), Heraclides Ponticus (c.  390 BC – c.  310 BC)) and Bion of Borysthenes (c. 325 – c. 250 BC).

Classical tradition
Varro's own 150 books of Menippean satires survive only through quotations. The genre continued with Seneca the Younger, whose Apocolocyntosis, or "Pumpkinification", is the only near-complete classical Menippean satire to survive. It consisted in an irreverent parody of the deification of Emperor Claudius. The Menippean tradition is also evident in Petronius' Satyricon, especially in the banquet scene "Cena Trimalchionis", which combines epic form, tragedy, and philosophy with verse and prose. Both Satyricon and Apuleius' Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass), are Menippea "extended to the limits of the novel". The most complete picture of the genre in ancient times is to be found in the satires of Lucian. The influence of Menippean satire can be found in ancient Greek novels, in the Roman satires of Gaius Lucilius and Horace, and in early Christian literature, including the Gospels. Later examples include The Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius and The Caesars of Julian the apostate.

Characteristics
Bakhtin identifies a number of basic characteristics that distinguish Menippean satire from comparable genres in antiquity:

 * There is a significantly heightened comic element, although there are exceptions (for example in Boethius).
 * There is an extraordinary freedom of plot and philosophical invention. It is not bound by the orthodoxies of legend, or by the need for historical or everyday realism, even when its central characters are based on legendary or historical figures. It freely operates in the realm of "the fantastic".
 * The unrestrained use of the fantastic is internally motivated by a philosophical objective: a philosophical idea, embodied in a seeker of truth, is tested in extraordinary situations.
 * Fantastic and mystical elements are combined with a crude slum naturalism: the 'testing of the idea' never avoids the degenerate or grotesque side of earthly existence. The man of the idea encounters "worldly evil, depravity, baseness and vulgarity in their most extreme expression".
 * The ideas being tested are always of an "ultimate" nature. Merely intellectual or academic problems or arguments had no place: the whole man and his whole life are at stake in the process of the testing of his idea. Everywhere there is the "stripped down pro et contra of life's ultimate questions".
 * A three-planed construction—Earth, Olympus and the nether-world—is apparent. Action and dialogue frequently take place on the "threshold" between the planes.
 * An experimental fantasticality in narrative point of view appears, for example the "view from above" (kataskopia).
 * An experimentation with psychopathological states of mind – madness, split personality, unrestrained daydreaming, weird dreams, extreme passions, suicides etc. Such phenomena function in the Menippea to destabilize the unity of an individual and his fate – a unity that is always assumed in other genres such as the epic. The person discovers other possibilities than those apparently preordained in himself and his life: "he loses his finalized quality and ceases to mean only one thing; he ceases to coincide with himself". This non-finalization and non-coincidence is facilitated by a rudimentary form of "dialogic relationship to one's own self".
 * Breaches of conventional behaviour and disruptions to the customary course of events are characteristic of the Menippea. Scandals and eccentricities have the same function in 'the world' that mental disorders have in 'the individual' – they shatter the fragile unity and stability of the established order and the 'normal', expected course of events. The inappropriate, cynical word that unmasks a false idol or an empty social convention is similarly characteristic.
 * Sharp contrasts, abrupt transitions, oxymoronic combinations, counterintuitive comparisons and unexpected meetings between unrelated things are essential to the Menippea. Opposites are brought together, or united in a single character – the noble criminal, the virtuous courtesan, the emperor who becomes a slave.
 * There is often an element of social utopia, usually in the form of a dream or journey to an unknown land.
 * Widespread use of inserted genres such as novellas, letters, speeches, diatribes, soliloquys, symposia, and poetry, frequently of a parodic nature.
 * A sharp satirical focus on a wide variety of contemporary ideas and issues.

Despite the apparent heterogeneity of these characteristics, Bakhtin emphasizes the "organic unity" and the "internal integrity" of the genre. He argues that Menippean satire is the best expression and the truest reflection of the social-philosophical tendencies of the epoch in which it flowered. This was the epoch of the decline of national legend, the disintegration of associated ethical norms, and the concomitant explosion of new religious and philosophical schools vying with each other over "ultimate questions". The "epic and tragic wholeness of a man and his fate" lost its power as a social and literary ideal, and consequently social 'positions' became devalued, transformed into 'roles' played out in a theatre of the absurd. Bakhtin argues that the generic integrity of Menippean satire in its expression of a decentred reality is a quality that has enabled it to exercise an immense influence over the development of European novelistic prose.

According to Bakhtin, the cultural force that underpins the integrity and unity of Menippean satire as a genre, despite its extreme variability and the heterogeneity of its elements, is carnival. The genre epitomises the transposition of the "carnival sense of the world" into the language and forms of literature, a process Bakhtin refers to as Carnivalisation. Carnival as a social event is "syncretic pageantry of a ritualistic sort": its essential elements were common to a great diversity of times and places, and over time became deeply rooted in the individual and collective psyche. These elements revolved around the suspension of the laws, prohibitions and restrictions that governed the structure of ordinary life, and the acceptance and even celebration of everything that was hidden or repressed by that structure. The apparently heterogeneous characteristics of Menippean satire can, in essence, be traced back to the "concretely sensuous forms" worked out in the carnival tradition and the unified "carnival sense of the world" that grew out of them.

Later examples
In a series of articles, Edward Milowicki and Robert Rawdon Wilson, building upon Bakhtin's theory, have argued that Menippean is not a period-specific term, as many Classicists have claimed, but a term for discursive analysis that instructively applies to many kinds of writing from many historical periods including the modern. As a type of discourse, “Menippean” signifies a mixed, often discontinuous way of writing that draws upon distinct, multiple traditions. It is normally highly intellectual and typically embodies an idea, an ideology or a mind-set in the figure of a grotesque, even disgusting, comic character.

The form was revived during the Renaissance by Erasmus, Burton, and Laurence Sterne, while 19th-century examples include the John Buncle of Thomas Amory and The Doctor of Robert Southey. The 20th century saw renewed critical interest in the form, with Menippean satire significantly influencing postmodern literature. Among the works that contemporary scholars have identified as growing out of the Menippean tradition are:

 * Erasmus, In Praise of Folly (1509)
 * François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel (1564)
 * John Barclay, Euphormionis Satyricon (1605)
 * Joseph Hall, Mundus Alter et Idem (1605)
 * Miguel Cervantes, Novelas ejemplares (1612)
 * Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)
 * Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels (1726)
 * Voltaire, Candide (1759)
 * William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1794)
 * Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey (1818)
 * Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1836)
 * Nikolai Gogol, "Dead Souls" (1842)
 * Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (1865)
 * Fyodor Dostoevsky, Bobok (1873)
 * Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877)
 * Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (1928)
 * James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
 * Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman (1939)
 * Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (1967)
 * Martin Amis, Dead Babies (novel) (1975)
 * Terry Gilliam, Brazil (1985)
 * Dave Eggers, The Circle (2013)

According to P. Adams Sitney in "Visionary Film", Mennipea became the dominant new genre in avant-garde cinema at the turn of the century. Filmmakers he cited include Yvonne Rainer, Sidney Peterson, Michael Snow, and Hollis Frampton.

For Bakhtin, Menippean satire as a genre reached its summit in the modern era in the novels and short stories of Dostoevsky. He argues that all the characteristics of the ancient Menippea are present in Dostoevsky but in a highly developed and more complex form. This was not because Dostoevsky intentionally adopted and expanded it as a form: his writing was not in any sense a stylization of the ancient genre. Rather it was a creative renewal based in an instinctive recognition of its potential as a form through which to express the philosophical, spiritual and ideological ferment of his time. It could be said that "it was not Dostoevsky's subjective memory, but the objective memory of the very genre in which he worked, that preserved the peculiar features of the ancient menippea." The generic features of Menippean satire were the ground on which Dostoevsky was able to build a new literary genre, which Bakhtin calls Polyphony.

Frye's definition
Critic Northrop Frye said that Menippean satire moves rapidly between styles and points of view. Such satires deal less with human characters than with the single-minded mental attitudes, or "humours", that they represent: the pedant, the braggart, the bigot, the miser, the quack, the seducer, etc. Frye observed,

The novelist sees evil and folly as social diseases, but the Menippean satirist sees them as diseases of the intellect […]

He illustrated this distinction by positing Squire Western (from Tom Jones) as a character rooted in novelistic realism, but the tutors Thwackum and Square as figures of Menippean satire.

Frye found the term Menippean satire to be "cumbersome and in modern terms rather misleading", and proposed as replacement the term anatomy (taken from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy). In his theory of prose fiction it occupies the fourth place with the novel, romance and confession.

title: Menippean satire


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Gemini 2

Gemini 2 (Gemini-Titan 2; GT-2) was the second spaceflight of the American human spaceflight program Project Gemini, and was launched and recovered on January 19, 1965. Gemini 2, like Gemini 1, was an uncrewed mission intended as a test flight of the Gemini spacecraft. Unlike Gemini 1, which was placed into orbit, Gemini 2 made a suborbital flight, primarily intended to test the spacecraft's heat shield. It was launched on a Titan II GLV rocket. The spacecraft used for the Gemini 2 mission was later refurbished into the Gemini B configuration, and was subsequently launched on another suborbital flight, along with OPS 0855, as a test for the US Air Force Manned Orbital Laboratory. Gemini spacecraft no. 2 was the first craft to make more than one spaceflight since the X-15, and the only one until Space Shuttle Columbia flew its second mission in 1981; it would also be the only space capsule to be reused until Crew Dragon Endeavour was launched a second time in 2021.

GLV
The Titan II/Gemini launch vehicle was dismantled to protect it from two hurricanes in August and September 1964. The second stage of the vehicle was taken down and stored in a hangar on August 26, 1964, in preparation for Hurricane Cleo, and the entire launch vehicle was subsequently dismantled and removed from Cape Kennedy Air Force Station's Launch Complex 19 in early September before Hurricane Dora passed over Cape Kennedy on September 9. The Gemini launch vehicle was erected for the final time on 12 September 1964.

Many ground tests were carried out on the Gemini 2 and Titan rocket in November 1964. On November 24, Gemini-Titan (GT) 2 successfully completed the Wet Mock Simulated Launch, a full-scale countdown exercise which included propellant loading. Procedures for flight crew suiting and spacecraft ingress and egress were practiced during simulated launch. The prime flight crew for Gemini 3 donned pressure suits and full biomedical instrumentation, assisted by their backup crew and the space suit bioinstrumentation and aeromedical personnel who would participate in the GT-3 launch operation. As a result of this practice operation, it was established that all physical examinations, bioinstrumentation sensor attachment, and suit donning would be done in the pilot ready room at Launch Complex 16.

Gemini 2 had been scheduled for launch on December 9, 1964. On that date, the countdown reached zero and the first stage engines were ignited. The launch vehicle's Malfunction Detection System detected technical problems due to a loss of hydraulic pressure and shut down the engines about one second after ignition.

On the second launch attempt on January 19, 1965, Gemini 2 lifted off from Launch Complex 19 at Cape Kennedy at 9:03:59 a.m. EST (14:03:59.861 UTC).

Shortly after launch the Mission Control Center suffered a power outage. Control of the mission was transferred to a tracking ship. The outage was later traced to an overload of the electrical system from the network television equipment used to cover the launch.

Gemini 2 flew a ballistic suborbital arc over the Atlantic Ocean reaching a maximum altitude of 92.4 nmi. The spacecraft was run by an onboard automatic sequencer. At 6 minutes 54 seconds after launch, retrorockets were fired. The spacecraft landed 1847.9 nmi downrange from the launch pad. The flight lasted 18 minutes 16 seconds. The landing was 14 nmi short of the planned impact point, and 45 nmi from the recovery aircraft carrier, USS Lake Champlain (CV-39). The spacecraft was brought aboard the carrier at 15:52 UT (10:52 a.m. EST). Most goals were achieved, except the fuel cells had failed before liftoff and were turned off. The spacecraft cooling system temperature also was found to be too high. The Gemini 2 spacecraft was in excellent condition. Its heat shield and retrorockets functioned as expected. The Gemini 2 mission was supported by 6,562 United States Department of Defense personnel, 67 aircraft, and 16 ships.

Gemini 2 had flight instrumentation pallets installed in the crew cabin, similar to those in Gemini 1.

MOL
The Gemini 2 reentry module was refurbished and flown again on November 3, 1966, in a test flight for the United States Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory program. It was launched on a Titan IIIC rocket on a 33-minute suborbital flight from LC-40 at Cape Kennedy. It is the only Gemini spacecraft to have flown with U.S. Air Force insignia, but there is an unflown Gemini B spacecraft in USAF markings on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

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

title: Gemini 2


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Orient Watch

Orient (オリエント時計株式会社) is a Japanese watch manufacturer founded in 1950. Established as an independent company in 1950, it became a functional subsidiary of Epson in 2009 before being fully integrated into the company in 2017.

Until it was absorbed into Epson, the Orient Watch Company had primarily marketed mechanical watches (self-winding & hand-winding), but also produced quartz, light-powered (solar) and radio-controlled models. Outside of the main business, the company produced some moving parts and electronic components that were then assembled into Seiko Epson's electronic devices.

Currently, Akita Epson Corporation (formally Akita Orient Precision Instruments Co., Ltd.), a group company of Epson, manufactures all of the Orient movements in-house in Yuzawa, Akita, Japan.

History
The origin of Orient Watch Company dates back to 1901 when Shogoro Yoshida opened a wholesale shop called "Yoshida Watch Shop" in Ueno, Taito, Tokyo, Japan. Yoshida Watch Shop was successful, selling imported pocketwatches. In 1912, Yoshida expanded his business and began producing gold wristwatch cases. In 1920, Toyo Tokei Manufacturing was established, originally producing table clocks and gauges. It was not until 1934 that Toyo Tokei Manufacturing started the production of wristwatches. In 1936, the Hino factory was built in Hino, Tokyo, Japan. For several years, Toyo Tokei Manufacturing boomed at the Hino factory. However, the company shut down in 1949 in the Japanese economic devastation following World War II.

After Toyo Tokei Manufacturing was shut down, Yoshida's wristwatch manufacturing company was reborn in 1950, founded under the name Tama Keiki Company. Tama Keiki Co. continued manufacturing watches at the Hino factory. In 1951, Tama Keiki Co. changed its name to Orient Watch Company, Limited (オリエント時計株式会社), and in the same year the first Orient Star went on sale. Orient Watch was able to expand their visibility overseas after a memorandum trade agreement with China in 1955. The Royal Orient went on sale in 1960. Other important watches in the company's history include the "Dynamic" in 1956, "Grand Prix 100" in 1964, "Fineness" (the world's thinnest automatic wristwatch with day and date calendar function for its time) in 1967, and the "Tenbeat" in 1970.

In 2003, the Orient Technical Center (OTC) was established and the assembly of luxury watches began in Ugo, Ogachi, Akita, Japan. In 2004, the high-precision caliber 88700 movement went on sale via the Royal Orient watch line. In 2005, Orient Star Retro-Future collection was launched. In 2010, Orient Watch Co. celebrated its 60th anniversary with a limited edition model. The Royal Orient line was discontinued around 2016, likely to prevent cannibalism between it and fellow Seiko group brands Grand Seiko, and Credor. To celebrate 70 years of the Orient Star line, the Orient Star skeleton watch was introduced with a silicon escapement made using Epson's MEMS technology, which has been used in high end Seiko watches since 2009.

In 2001 Seiko Epson (one of three core companies of the Seiko Group) became the majority shareholder (52%) of the company. Orient Watch became a wholly owned subsidiary of Epson in 2009. After transferring its business to Epson, the company now exists as a dormant company. Epson Sales Japan Corporation markets the Orient watches, while Akita Epson Corporation manufactures them.

title: Orient Watch


text: User talk:167.206.248.11

title: User talk:167.206.248.11


text:
Talk:GAP (computer algebra system)

Untitled
There is a also en entry on Gap (the computer algebra system) here GAP_computer_algebra_system --user:Sander123

title: Talk:GAP (computer algebra system)


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SLA Industries

SLA Industries (pronounced "slay") is a role-playing game first published in 1993 by Nightfall Games in Glasgow, Scotland. The game is set in a dystopian far-flung future in which the majority of the known universe is either owned or indirectly controlled by the eponymous corporation "SLA Industries" and incorporates themes from the cyberpunk, horror, and conspiracy genres.

The game combined concepts inspired by a range of aesthetics and ideas. Elements include: song lyrics from David Bowie and the Industrial music scene, cyberpunk fiction (including Blade Runner and Max Headroom), anime / manga (including Akira, Appleseed, Bubblegum Crisis, and Trigun), and the growing cultural obsession with the media (including 24-hour news services and the Gladiator TV Show).

Setting
SLA Industries itself is a fictional corporation run by a mysterious and seemingly immortal creature called "Mr. Slayer", whose upper management team includes two other creatures like himself, "Intruder" and "Senti". The corporation is headquartered in "Mort City", a densely populated city-sprawl larger than Eurasia and surrounded by the urban ruins of the "Cannibal Sectors". It is all located on a vast planet (also called "Mort") that had been stripped of its natural resources to the point that the ecology had been utterly destroyed. SLA Industries controlled an undefined but vast number of planets, collectively referred to as the World of Progress, and governed them in accordance with Mr. Slayer's Big Picture. The setting is bleak and surreal, with much left deliberately ill-defined in the source material.

Players take the role of freelance employees of SLA Industries, called Operatives, living in Mort City and taking care of odd jobs assigned to them by the corporation. These jobs usually involve keeping the peace—chasing serial killers, hunting monsters in the sewers, quashing riots, foiling terrorist plots, and silencing dissidents are common themes. Appearance, style and branding are emphasized in the game world as much as combat ability, due to the omnipresence of television; for ambitious Operatives public persona and TV ratings are often as important as professional abilities. A supplement, the Contract Directory, also provides the option for players to play as celebrity gladiators called Contract Killers. As a role-playing experience, the game tends to be predisposed towards splatterpunk horror, noir, dark satire, and/or gunbunny high action. However, the complexity and Byzantine politics of the setting allow for slower-paced campaigns based around subversion, inter-departmental rivalry, and cut-throat power struggles within the company.

Along with humans, playable races include the drug-addicted mutant humans called "Frothers", the stealthy feline "Wraith Raiders", the formidably violent saurian "Shaktar", and the two 'Ebb' / pseudo-magic using races: the emotionally sensitive and charismatic Ebon, and their more sadistic and violent evolution, the "Brain Wasters". There are also a variety of biogenetic vat-grown warrior races called Stormers, produced by SLA to fight in their endless wars.

Publication prior to 2nd Edition
SLA Industries was first published independently in 1993. The game was later bought by Wizards of the Coast late in 1994, after their success with Magic: The Gathering. It was later republished by Nightfall Games Ltd and distributed by Hogshead Publishing, until Hogshead Publishing closed down. Between 2003 and 2011 Cubicle 7 Entertainment produced new material, and in 2011 the license returned to Nightfall Games Ltd, who released supplements (known as Data Packets) as PDFs. In August, 2016, the Kickstarter for the SLA Industries: Cannibal Sector 1 miniatures game was launched by Daruma Productions and Nightfall Games. On 22 June 2018, Nightfall Games announced that Daruma Productions was entering the liquidation process and Nightfall would be taking over completion of the Kickstarter. Cannibal Sector 1, the last 1st Edition product was published in 2019.

Second Edition
A new Kickstarter campaign launched in September 2019, for SLA Industries 2nd Edition. It raised £90,444 from 1,281 backers. Additionally, a free Quick Start was released in August 2019 to introduce the new rules, ahead of the Kickstart campaign. The pledge fulfilment started in December 2020, and the products went on general sale in January 2021.

A second Kickstarter was announced in July 2021 for the first sourcebooks for SLA Industries 2nd Edition to start on the 24th of August 2021. The first two books announced are Threat Analysis 1: Collateral and Species Guide 1: Shaktar/Wraithen.

SLA Industries 2nd Edition won a Judges' Spotlight award in the 2021 ENnies.

A third Kickstarter was announced in June 2024 for the 2nd Threat Analysis Sourcebook: CULT and an Operative's Handbook to start on the 18th of June 2024.

Product line
2nd Edition Publications (all published by Nightfall Games)

 * "SLA Industries 2nd Edition" Core Rulebook (Jan 2021) including 5 cover variants.
 * "SLA Industries 2nd Edition GM Screen Pack", includes a GM Screen and 16 page booklet (Jan 2021).
 * "SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start", a 48-page PDF introducing the 2nd edition ruleset. The printed version was published Jan 2021.
 * "SLA Industries 2nd Edition: COLLATERAL", a 240-page sourcebook focused on gangs, Manchines and other self-generated enemies. The first of the 4Cs book (July 2023).
 * "SLA Industries 2nd Edition: CULT", a 240-page sourcebook focussed on the religious, blood and other cults of the world of progress. The second of the 4Cs book (TBC).
 * "SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Operative's Handbook", a sourcebook focussed on supplying assets for the players. (TBC).
 * "SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Shaktar/Wraithen", a 80-page sourcebook focused on the names playable species. The first of the Species Guide books (July 2023).
 * "SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Hunter Sheets Data Packet 1", a 48 page softback sourcebook (July 2023).
 * “SLASHER magazines”. A series of in-setting small magazines presenting famous and wannabe criminals. At present there is 1 magazine (July 2023).
 * “Progress Reports”. A series of PDF supplements released sporadically since June 2020. At present, there are 6 documents (Progress Reports 0-5).
 * “Progress Reports: Codified Zero to Five”. The first six progress reports printed in hardback (June 2024).
 * Conversion Documents for "Cannibal Sector One" and “Hunter Sheets 2”. PDFs to allow the use of the 1st Edition books with the 2nd edition ruleset (Jan 2021).
 * “Headshots” Image Packs. Each Headshots Image pack includes at least 10 high res JPEG images featuring character art by Dave Allsop. At present there are five packs.

1st Edition Publications: The content of the majority of the following products have been (or soon will be) represented in second edition products. The main SLA Industries rulebook and the Hunter Sheets contain useable material for 2nd Edition:
 * SLA Industries Main Rulebook (ISBN 1 899749 23 3) published by Nightfall Games
 * Karma Sourcebook (ISBN 1 880992 56 6) published by Nightfall Games (Out of Print)
 * GM screen(Out of Print)
 * Hunter Sheets Issue 1 Supplement (ISBN 978 0 9555423 1 2) published by Cubicle 7 (out of Print)
 * Hunter Sheets Issue 2 Supplement (ISBN 978 0 9956497 1 2) published by Daruma Productions and Nightfall Games
 * "Gator Stormer" Data Packet, a PDF only Supplement published by Nightfall Games (no longer available).
 * "Klicks End" Data Packet, a PDF only Supplement published by Nightfall Games (no longer available).
 * "Momic 0.1" Data Packet, a PDF only Supplement published by Nightfall Games (no longer available).
 * "Dream" Data Packet, a PDF only Supplement published by Nightfall Games (no longer available).
 * "Hominid" Data Packet, a PDF only Supplement published by Nightfall Games (no longer available).
 * "Hunters Sheets: Red Alert" Data Packet, a PDF only Supplement published by Nightfall Games (no longer available).
 * "Cannibal Sector One" Supplement (352-lage full colour hardback book or pdf published by Nightfall Games). This was the last publication for 1st Edition (out of print).

The following 1st Edition books and documents are no longer considered canon and are out of print:
 * "Mort" Sourcebook (ISBN 0 9522176 6 X) published by Wizards of the Coast
 * "The Key of Delhyread" Scenario (ISBN 978 1 899749 24 9) published by Hogshead Publishing
 * "The Contract Directory" Sourcebook (ISBN 978 1 899749 29 4) published by Hogshead Publishing
 * "CS1" Sourcebook (ISBN 978 0 9555423 0 5) published by Cubicle 7
 * "Ursa Carrien" Data Packet, a PDF only Supplement published by Nightfall Games

The Writers' Bible
Nightfall Games produced the SLA Industries Writers Bible, sometimes simply referred to as The Bible or The Truth, to allow freelance writers to grasp the complicated background of the game. The terms of the associated non-disclosure agreement required that the contents of the document remain secret. Following an extended hiatus in production of official SLA Industries material, editor Tim Dedopulos released the bible to the members of the SLA Industries email discussion list in 1998. The fans' reaction to The Truth was not entirely warm, and the remaining members of Nightfall Games made it clear that further redistribution of the bible was not permitted without their explicit permission. The writers have since made it clear that the bible was not intended for mass consumption - it had not been edited to the same standard as the published material, as it was an internal document used only to keep the work of disparate authors consistent with the intentions of Nightfall Games. It has also been explained that the process of revealing The Truth was originally to have happened over the course of several publications, each one containing more elements of an increasingly refined version of the backstory. In 2005 Cubicle 7 re-released the old Writers Bible, stating that this was no longer the Truth used internally for further development of material. It is no longer accessible and not considered canon by Nightfall Games.

Reviews

 * White Wolf #44 (June, 1994)
 * Review
 * Backstab #24
 * Dosdediez (Número 3 - Mar/Abr 1994)
 * Rollespilsmagasinet Fønix (Danish) (Issue 6 - January/February 1995)
 * d8 Magazine #2
 * Casus Belli #79

title: SLA Industries


text:
User:Emu

This space intentionally left blank. Emu 16:41, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

de:Benutzer:Emu es:Usuario:Emu

title: User:Emu


text:
Octave Chanute

Octave Chanute (February 18, 1832 – November 23, 1910) was a French-American civil engineer and aviation pioneer. He advised and publicized many aviation enthusiasts, including the Wright brothers. At his death, he was hailed as the father of aviation and the initial concepts of the heavier-than-air flying machine.

Early life
Octave Chanut was born in Paris to Elise and Joseph Chanut, professor at the Collège de France. Octave and Joseph emigrated to the United States of America in 1838, when Joseph was named Vice President of Jefferson College in Louisiana. Octave attended private schools in New York. He added the "e" to his last name in his adult life. In 1857, he married Anne Riddell James, with whom he had a son and three daughters.

Railroad civil engineer
Chanute began his training as a civil engineer in 1848.

He was widely considered brilliant and innovative in the engineering profession. He designed and constructed the two biggest stockyards in the United States, Chicago Stock Yards (1865) and Kansas City Stockyards (1871). He designed and built the Hannibal Bridge with Joseph Tomlinson and George S. Morison. In 1869, this bridge established Kansas City, Missouri as the dominant city in the region, as the first bridge to cross the Missouri River there. He designed many other bridges during his railroad career, including the Illinois River rail bridge at Chillicothe, Illinois, the Genesee River Gorge rail bridge near Portageville, New York (now in Letchworth State Park), the Sibley Railroad Bridge across the Missouri River at Sibley, Missouri, the Fort Madison Toll Bridge at Fort Madison, Iowa, and the Kinzua Bridge in Pennsylvania.

Pioneer in wood preservation
Chanute established a procedure for pressure-treating wooden railroad ties with an antiseptic that increased the wood's lifespan. Establishing the first commercial plants, he convinced railroad men that it was advantageous to expend funds treating ties to extend their service life, thus reducing replacement costs. To monitor the longevity of railroad ties and other wooden items, he introduced the railroad date nail in the United States.

Chanute retired from the Erie Railway in 1883 to become an independent engineering consultant.

Aviation pioneer

Chanute became interested in aviation after watching a balloon ascend in Peoria, Illinois, in 1856. When he retired from his railroad career in 1883, he devoted some leisure time to furthering the new science of aviation. Applying his engineering background, Chanute collected all available data from flight experimenters around the world and combined it with the knowledge gathered as a civil engineer in the past. He published his findings in a series of articles in The Railroad and Engineering Journal from 1891 to 1893, which were then re-published in the influential book Progress in Flying Machines in 1894. This was the most systematic global survey of fixed-wing heavier-than-air aviation research published up to that time.

At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Chanute collaborated with Albert Zahm to organize a highly successful International Conference on Aerial Navigation.

Chanute was too old to fly, so he partnered with younger experimenters, including Augustus M. Herring and William Avery. In 1896, Chanute, Herring, and Avery tested a design based on the work of German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal, and of hang gliders of their own design. The testing was in the dunes along the shore of Lake Michigan near the town of Miller Beach, Indiana, just east of what became the city of Gary. These experiments convinced Chanute that the best way to achieve extra lift without a prohibitive increase in weight was to stack several wings, an idea proposed by the British engineer Francis Herbert Wenham in 1866 and realized in flight by Lilienthal in the 1890s. Chanute introduced the "strut-wire" braced wing structure that was used in powered biplanes of the future, not seriously challenged until the pioneering efforts of Hugo Junkers to develop all-metal cantilever airframe technology without external bracing from 1915 onward. Chanute based his "interplane strut" concept on the Pratt truss, which was familiar to him from his bridge-building work. The Wright brothers based their glider designs on the Chanute "double-decker", as they called it. A new design of a biplane glider was developed and flown in 1897.

Chanute corresponded with many aviation pioneers, including Otto Lilienthal, Louis Pierre Mouillard, Gabriel Voisin, John J. Montgomery, Louis Blériot, Ferdinand Ferber, Lawrence Hargrave, and Alberto Santos Dumont. In 1897, he started a correspondence with British aviator Percy Pilcher. Following Chanute's ideas, Pilcher built a triplane, but he was killed in a glider crash in October 1899 before he could attempt to fly it.

In 1900, Wilbur Wright read Progress in Flying Machines and contacted Chanute. Chanute helped to publicize the Wright brothers' work and provided consistent encouragement, visiting their camp near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1901, 1902, and 1903. The Wrights and Chanute exchanged hundreds of letters between 1900 and 1910.

Chanute freely shared his knowledge about aviation with anyone who was interested, and expected others to do the same. He encouraged colleagues to patent their inventions. His open approach led to friction with the Wright brothers, who believed their ideas about aircraft control were unique and refused to share them. Chanute did not believe that the Wright flying machine patent, premised on wing warping, could be enforced and said so publicly, including a newspaper interview in which he said, "I admire the Wrights. I feel friendly toward them for the marvels they have achieved, but you can easily gauge how I feel concerning their attitude at present by the remark I made to Wilbur Wright recently. I told him I was sorry to see they were suing other experimenters and abstaining from entering the contests and competitions in which other men are brilliantly winning laurels. I told him that in my opinion they are wasting valuable time over lawsuits which they ought to concentrate in their work. Personally, I do not think that the courts will hold that the principle underlying the warping tips can be patented." The friendship was still impaired when Chanute died, but Wilbur Wright attended Chanute's memorial service at the family's home. Wright wrote a eulogy that was read at the Aero Club meeting in January 1911.

When the Aero Club of Illinois was founded on February 10, 1910, Chanute was its first president until his death.

Death
Chanute died on November 23, 1910, in Chicago, Illinois, after battling pneumonia. Wilbur Wright attended his funeral in his honor.

Commemoration
The town of Chanute, Kansas, is named after Chanute. Three small towns in southeast Kansas were vying for the railroad's land office and Chanute suggested that they incorporate, to make the larger town more attractive to the railroad.

The former Chanute Air Force Base near Rantoul, Illinois, was started in 1917 by the U.S. Army as Chanute Field. The base was decommissioned in 1993 and converted to peacetime endeavors. One of these endeavors was the now-closed Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum, which detailed the history of Chanute Air Force Base and of aviation in general, and included a replica of Chanute's 1896 glider. The location of the base is now the Chanute Field Historic District, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1902, the Western Society of Engineers began to present the Octave Chanute Award for papers of merit on engineering innovations. From 1939 to 2005, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics presented the Chanute Flight Award for an outstanding contribution made by a pilot or test personnel to the advancement of the art, science, and technology of aeronautics.

In 1963, Chanute was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.

In 1974, Chanute was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame.

In 1978, the U.S. Postal Service commemorated Octave Chanute with a pair of 21-cent airmail stamps.

In 1996, the National Soaring Museum honored the 100th anniversary of the glider flying experiments in the sand dunes along Lake Michigan as National Landmark of Soaring No. 8.

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, in Daytona Beach, Florida, has an off-campus residence hall, the Chanute Complex. for upper-class students.

The Gary Bathing Beach Aquatorium, in Gary, Indiana, houses a museum dedicated to both Octave Chanute and the Tuskegee Airmen. The historic bathing pavilion was designed by architect George Washington Maher.

He is represented in the Frieze of American History detail The Birth of Aviation, in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington DC.

U.S. patents

 * , Rolling Track Irons
 * , Dredging Machine (Octave Chanute & George S. Morrison)
 * , Preserving timber structure
 * , Soaring Machine
 * , Means for Aerial Flight, Chanute filed the patent on behalf of Louis Mouillard, with one-half assigned to Chanute.
 * , Soaring Machine, William Paul Butusov, Chanute collaborated and paid for the patent process and was assigned one-half.
 * , Process of Preserving Wood
 * , Means for Aerial Flight (or glider launcher).

U.K. patents

 * 13372 (flying machine, c. 1897)
 * 13373 (flying machine, c. 1897
 * 15221 (flying machine, c. 1897

Canadian patents

 * 34507, Process of Preserving Wood Artificially against Decay

title: Octave Chanute


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User talk:Seamus android

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title: User talk:Seamus android


text:
Digression

Digression (parékbasis in Greek, egressio, digressio and excursion in Latin) is a section of a composition or speech that marks a temporary shift of subject; the digression ends when the writer or speaker returns to the main topic. Digressions can be used intentionally as a stylistic or rhetorical device.

In classical rhetoric since Corax of Syracuse, especially in Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, the digression was a regular part of any oration or composition. After setting out the topic of a work and establishing the need for attention to be given, the speaker or author would digress to a seemingly disconnected subject before returning to a development of the composition's theme, a proof of its validity, and a conclusion. A schizothemia is a digression by means of a long reminiscence.

Cicero was a master of digression, particularly in his ability to shift from the specific question or issue at hand (the hypothesis) to the more general issue or question that it depended upon (the thesis). As was the case with most ancient orators, Cicero's apparent digression always turned out to bear directly upon the issue at hand. During the Second Sophistic (in Imperial Rome), the ability to guide a speech away from a stated theme and then back again with grace and skill came to be a mark of true eloquence.

Etymology
The term "digression" comes from the Latin word digressio: "a going away, departing," noun of action from past participle stem of digredi "to deviate", from dis- "apart, aside" + gradi "to step, go".

Literary use
Digressions in a literary text serve a diverse array of functions, such as a means to provide background information, a way to illustrate or emphasize a point through example or anecdote, and even a channel through which to satirize a subject.

800–500 BCE
In 800-500 BCE, Homer relies upon digression in his composition of The Iliad in order to provide his audience with a break from the primary narrative, to offer background information, and, most importantly, to enhance the story's verisimilitude. Through these digressions Homer ensures his audience's devotion to the characters and interest in the plot.

For example, in Book Eleven, Homer employs a mini-digression when Agamemnon comes upon brothers Peisandros and Hippolokhos in battle. After they come to Agamemnon as suppliants, he remembers that their father was one who denied Menelaos’ emissaries and “held out for killing [them] then and there”. This short interlude from the action provides the audience with a critical fact about the beginning of the war and the nature of the opposing parties.

18th and 19th centuries
In 18th-century literature, the digression (not to be confused with subplot) was a substantial part of satiric works. Works such as Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Diderot's Jacques le fataliste et son maître even made digressiveness itself a part of the satire. Sterne's novel, in particular, depended upon the digression, and he wrote, "Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; — they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book (Tristram Shandy) for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them." This use of digression as satire later showed up in Thomas Carlyle's work.

The digression was also used for non-satiric purposes in fiction. In Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, the author has numerous asides and digressive statements that are a side-fiction, and this sort of digression within chapters shows up later in the work of Charles Dickens, Machado de Assis, William Makepeace Thackeray, Herman Melville, Victor Hugo and others. The novels of Leo Tolstoy, J.D. Salinger, Marcel Proust, Henry Miller, Milan Kundera and Robert Musil are also full of digressions.

20th century
In late twentieth-century literature (in postmodern fiction), authors began to use digressions as a way of distancing the reader from the fiction and for creating a greater sense of play. John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman and Lawrence Norfolk's Lemprière's Dictionary both employ digressions to offer scholarly background to the fiction, while others, like Gilbert Sorrentino in Mulligan Stew, use digression to prevent the functioning of the fiction's illusions.

Real-life examples
Digression as a rhetorical device can also be found in present-day sermons: after introducing the topic, the speaker will introduce a story that seems to be unrelated, return to the original topic, and then use the story to illustrate the speaker's point.

Unintentional digressions in informal conversation and discussion are common. Speakers commonly use the phrase "But I digress..." after a digression to express the shift back to the main topic. Many examples of this use can already be found in 19th-century publications. Unless the speaker ties the "digression" back into the subject at hand, that shift in subject does not strictly constitute a rhetorical digression.

title: Digression


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Rock musical

A rock musical is a musical theatre work with rock music. The genre of rock musical may overlap somewhat with album musicals, concept albums and song cycles, as they sometimes tell a story through the rock music, and some album musicals and concept albums become rock musicals. Notable examples of rock musicals include Next to Normal, Spring Awakening, Rent, Grease, and Hair. The Who's Tommy and other rock operas are sometimes presented on stage as a musical.

History
The first musical to hint at what was to come was the final Ziegfeld Follies in 1957. This production featured one rock and roll number, "The Juvenile Delinquent", performed by fifty-year-old Billy De Wolfe. This was followed by another precursor to the rock musical, Bye Bye Birdie (1960), which included two rock and roll numbers.

The rock musical became an important part of the musical theatre scene in the late 1960s with the hit show Hair. Styled "The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical," the anti-war free-love hippie-themed, nude-scened Hair premiered in 1967 as the first production staged at The Public Theater. It moved to Broadway in October 1968. Your Own Thing also opened in 1968 and featured a gender-switching version of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Jesus Christ Superstar, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, began as an album musical in 1970. The money made from album sales was used to fund the subsequent stage production in late 1971. This show and some other rock musicals that have no dialogue or are otherwise reminiscent of opera, with dramatic, emotional themes, are sometimes styled "rock operas". The musical Godspell (1971), had similar religious themes (albeit with a less controversial treatment) and pop/rock influences. The genre continued to develop through the 1970s with shows such as Grease and Pippin. The rock musical soon moved in other directions with shows like The Wiz, Raisin, Dreamgirls and Purlie, which were heavily influenced by R&B and soul music.

The rock musical saw a decline in popularity through the 1980s. Except for a few outposts of rock, like Little Shop of Horrors (1982) and Chess (1986), audience tastes turned to shows with European pop scores, like Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera, as well as to more nostalgic fare. However, the rock musical achieved a renaissance in the 1990s, due in no small part to the popularity of Jonathan Larson's rock musical Rent (1996). This was followed by Off-Broadway rock musicals like Bat Boy: The Musical (1997) and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1998), John Cameron Mitchell's Off-Broadway show about a transgender rocker. The end of the 1980s saw the beginning of a new form, jukebox musicals, such as Buddy – The Buddy Holly Story, Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys, which feature the songs of a popular band, performer or genre.

The rock musical has seen a resurgence since the late 1990s, with shows by composers like Elton John (Aida, 1998), as well as a number of successful jukebox musicals with rock scores. Recent major original rock musical productions include Spring Awakening (2007), Passing Strange and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (both 2008), Rock of Ages and Next to Normal (both 2009), American Idiot (2010) and Jagged Little Pill (2019).

Analysis
In 2010, critic Jon Pareles of The New York Times pointed out that all four of the musicals nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical that year could be described as rock musicals. He analyzed the history and future of rock on Broadway: "Rock’s takeover of Broadway was not the revolution that had been feared – or anticipated – ever since Hair ... Broadway held out for many years as a bastion against youth culture. ... Rock’s Broadway invasion has been, instead, a lengthy campaign of attrition, via demographics, shifting tastes and musicians’ ambitions. Every few years another production [was] touted as finally bringing full-fledged rock to musical theater: Rent, Hedwig and the Angry Inch ... Spring Awakening. Very gradually rock musicians have stopped treating Broadway as an adversary – or a punch line. And for fans it has become one more entertainment option, as prices for arena shows reach Broadway levels."

Pareles commented, "rock has been transformed from nemesis to novelty to mainstay. ... Broadway productions can’t match the visceral impact – starting with volume – of a rock concert. (They try to make up for it with enthusiasm and slicker dancing.)" Another problem for rock musicals is that rock shows "still leave theatergoers complaining that the characters are hollow. ... [However,] Broadway does provide current rock two major incentives. As the artistic unit of the album has been shattered, down to a handful of shuffled MP3’s, musical theater offers a refuge for songwriters who want to tell longer stories, the way the songwriter Stew did in his autobiographical rock musical Passing Strange." Pareles also noted, "Broadway may be the final place in America, if not the known universe, where rock still registers as rebellious. In the decorous little jewel boxes that are Broadway’s theaters, raunch seems raunchier, and rock musicals flaunt four-letter words and lascivious simulations. ... There are, of course, commercial incentives. Broadway’s unbudgingly middle-aged audience is currently a generation that grew up on rock and R&B and generally feels more comfortable taking reserved seats in small theaters than plunging into the scrum of a standing-room club audience, or dealing with a rowdy arena mob."

Pareles attributed some of the new acceptance of rock as theatre to American Idol and its ilk, noting that some of the show's stars have moved to theatre. Also, "Rock’s old protestations of authenticity (versus Broadway contrivance) have been crumbling. As if glam rock in the ’70s and music video in the ’80s weren’t obvious enough in presenting rock as theater, pop’s video-era arena spectacles use the same technology as Las Vegas revues and Broadway shows." Another driver of rock's acceptance is its own entry into middle age, Pareles said, noting that "as rock’s history stretches out ever longer ... it offers just as much room for ... the familiarity and nostalgia that keep the jukebox musicals running. Still, Pareles concluded, "the last, crucial thrill of a rock performance – the unpredictability – stays just beyond Broadway’s reach. Two nights after the official opening of American Idiot, Green Day itself played an unannounced encore. The show had poured on its razzle-dazzle. .... But Green Day set off pandemonium. ... Green Day’s members may not be able to act or execute choreography ... but they also hold rock’s wild card: the potential, realized or not, for spontaneity."

title: Rock musical


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Normal function

In axiomatic set theory, a function $f : Ord → Ord$ is called normal (or a normal function) if it is continuous (with respect to the order topology) and strictly monotonically increasing. This is equivalent to the following two conditions:

 * 1) For every limit ordinal $γ$ (i.e. $γ$ is neither zero nor a successor), it is the case that $f (γ) = sup\{f (ν) : ν < γ\}$.
 * 2) For all ordinals $α < β$, it is the case that $f (α) < f (β)$.

Examples
A simple normal function is given by $f (α) = 1 + α$ (see ordinal arithmetic). But $f (α) = α + 1$ is not normal because it is not continuous at any limit ordinal; that is, the inverse image of the one-point open set $\{λ + 1\}$ is the set $\{λ\}$, which is not open when $λ$ is a limit ordinal. If $β$ is a fixed ordinal, then the functions $f (α) = β + α$, $f (α) = β × α$ (for $β ≥ 1$), and $f (α) = β^{α}$ (for $β ≥ 2$) are all normal.

More important examples of normal functions are given by the aleph numbers $$f(\alpha) = \aleph_\alpha$$, which connect ordinal and cardinal numbers, and by the beth numbers $$f(\alpha) = \beth_\alpha$$.

Properties
If $f$ is normal, then for any ordinal $α$,

Proof: If not, choose $γ$ minimal such that $f (α) ≥ α$. Since $f$ is strictly monotonically increasing, $f (γ) < γ$, contradicting minimality of $γ$.

Furthermore, for any non-empty set $S$ of ordinals, we have

Proof: "≥" follows from the monotonicity of $f$ and the definition of the supremum. For "$f (f (γ)) < f (γ)$", set $f (sup S) = sup f (S)$ and consider three cases:
 * if $≤$, then $δ = sup S$ and $δ = 0$;
 * if $S = \{0\}$ is a successor, then there exists $s$ in $S$ with $sup f (S) = f (0)$, so that $δ = ν + 1$. Therefore, $ν < s$, which implies $δ ≤ s$;
 * if $δ$ is a nonzero limit, pick any $f (δ) ≤ f (s)$, and an $s$ in $S$ such that $f (δ) ≤ sup f (S)$ (possible since $ν < δ$). Therefore, $ν < s$ so that $δ = sup S$, yielding $f (ν) < f (s)$, as desired.

Every normal function $f$ has arbitrarily large fixed points; see the fixed-point lemma for normal functions for a proof. One can create a normal function $f (ν) < sup f (S)$, called the derivative of $f$, such that $f (δ) = sup \{f (ν) : ν < δ\} ≤ sup f (S)$ is the $α$-th fixed point of $f$. For a hierarchy of normal functions, see Veblen functions.

title: Normal function


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User:Adam Carr/Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (sometimes spelled Husayn or Hussain) (صدام حسين عبدالمجيد التكريتي in Arabic) (born April 28, 1937), was dictator of Iraq from 1979 to 2003, holding the post of President. He was deposed by the United States and its allies in the 2003 Iraq War and was captured by United States forces on December 13, 2003.

(Note that Hussein is not a surname in the Western sense. Saddam should be referred to either as Saddam Hussein or Saddam.)

Rise to power
Saddam Hussein was born in the village of Al-Awja, in the Tikrit district of Iraq, to a family of sheep-herders. His mother tried to abort her pregnancy but failed and named her newborn "Saddam" which means "one who confronts" in Arabic. He never knew his father, Hussein 'Abd al-Majid, who died or disappeared before Saddam was born. His mother, Subha Tulfah al-Mussallat, remarried, and Saddam gained three half-brothers through this marriage. His stepfather, Ibrahim al-Hassan, treated Saddam harshly, and forced young Saddam to steal for him.

At the age of 10, Saddam moved to Baghdad to live with his uncle, Khairallah Tulfah, a devout Sunni. He attended secondary school in Baghdad and at age 20 joined the Ba'ath Party, a radical pan-Arabist party in 1957. A year later in 1958, army officers led by General Abdul Karim Qassim overthrew King Faisal. The Ba’athists opposed the new regime, and in 1959, Saddam was involved in the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Qassim. Saddam was shot in the leg, but managed to flee to Syria, from where he later moved to Egypt. He was sentenced to death, in absentia. In exile Saddam attended the University of Cairo law school.

Army officers, including some aligned with the Ba’ath party, came to power in Iraq in a military coup in 1963. Saddam returned to Iraq, but was imprisoned in 1964 when an anti-Ba’athist group led by Abdul Rahman Arif took power. He escaped from jail in 1967 and became one of the leading members of the Ba’ath Party. In July 1968 a second coup brought the Ba'athists back to power, led by General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. Saddam became vice-chairman of the Revolution Command Council and Vice President of Iraq. The Ba'athist regime promoted a form of economic modernization based on the state-dominated model of the Soviet Union under Stalin, along with the creation of a highly centralised and authoritarian political system. In 1972 the oil industry, Iraq’s only significant export industry, was nationalised. Although the productivity of the oil industry steadily declined under state ownership, in the 1970s the regime was able to use its revenues to fund economic development, the mechanization of agriculture and the expansion of education.

In 1973 Saddam was appointed a general in the Iraqi armed forces. He rapidly became the strongman of the regime, and was the ‘‘de facto’’ ruler of Iraq some years before he formally came to power in 1979. He made a state visit to France in 1976, cementing close ties with French political and business circles that stood him in good stead in the 1990s, when France replaced the Soviet Union as the principal protector of his regime. In July 1979 Saddam forced the ailing Hassan al-Bakr to resign, and replaced him as President.

Saddam as secular ruler
One of Saddam’s first acts as President was to convene an assembly of Ba'ath party leaders and have one of them read out the names of members that Saddam thought could oppose him. These members were labelled "disloyal" and taken from the room one-by-one to face a firing squad. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty. The room erupted in applause and shouting in support of Saddam. In this as in other aspects of his regime, Saddam was modelling his behaviour on that of Stalin.

Saddam saw himself as a social revolutionary and a moderniser, again following the model of Stalin. To the consternation of Islamic conservatives, his regime gave women added freedoms and offered them high level government and industry jobs. Saddam also created a western-style legal system, making Iraq the only country in the Persian Gulf region not ruled according to Islamic law. Saddam abolished the Sharia-law courts except for personal injury claims. These reforms were later offset by increasing corruption and repression; Saddam and his relatives and cronies were always above the law, and resorted increasingly to arbitrary violence to intimidate and divide their opposition.

Domestic conflict impeded Saddam’s modernizing projects. Iraqi society is divided along lines of language, religion and ethnicity; Saddam’s regime rested on the support of the 20% minority of Sunni Muslims, continuing a pattern that dates back at least to the British mandate authority's reliance on them as administrators. The Shi’a majority were always hostile to the Ba’athist regime and constant vigilance was required to keep them subordinated, particularly after the Shi’a-led Iranian Revolution in 1979. Likewise, the Kurds in the north (who are Sunni Muslims but not Arabs) were also permanently hostile to the Ba’athist’s Arabising tendencies. Saddam had no choice but to rule as a dictator, because the Ba’athists could not have retained power any other way. At the core of Saddam’s regime was a retinue of close relatives and old cronies called the “Tikrit mafia.”

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union and nearly complete disenchantment with the state-socialist model, Iraq was a Soviet ally and to some extent a Soviet satellite. The Soviets equipped Iraq’s armed forces and funded various development projects, and Iraq ran up a huge debt which declining oil revenues made increasingly difficult to service.

Saddam as Islamist ruler
In the later years of his rule, however, Saddam abandoned the Soviet model along with most of his progressive and secularist pretensions. The Iraqi Ba’ath was originally a pan-Arabist party (and to an extent a pan-Arab one, through its affiliation with the Ba’ath of Syria) and Saddam continued to publicly espouse the Ba’athist vision of the Arab world uniting to serve the common interests of the Arab peoples.

But he increasingly portrayed himself as a devout Muslim, in an effort to co-opt the conservative religious segments of society. Some elements of Sharia law were re-introduced (such as the 2001 edict imposing the death penalty for homosexuality and other sexual offences), and the ritual phrase "Allah akbar" (“God is great”), in Saddam’s handwriting, was added to the national flag.

He also justified Iraqi patriotism, in the form of claiming a unique role of Iraq in the history of the Arab world. As president, Saddam made frequent references to the Abbasid period, when Baghdad was the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Arab world. He also promoted Iraq’s pre-Islamic role as the ancient cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadnezzar and Hammurabi. He devoted resources to archaeological explorations. In effect, Saddam sought to combine pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism, by promoting the vision of an Arab world united and led by Iraq.

His propaganda reflected his efforts to appeal to the various elements in Iraqi society. He appeared in the costumes of the Bedouin, the traditional clothes of the Iraqi peasant, and even Kurdish clothing, but also appeared in Western suits, projecting the image of an urbane and modern leader. Sometimes he would be portrayed as a dedicated Muslim, wearing full headdress and robe, praying toward Mecca; at other times, he would be shown wearing a western business suit and sunglasses, brandishing a rifle over his head.

The Iran-Iraq war

The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran threatened to arouse the Shi’a majority against Saddam’s regime. The pretext for the bloody, protracted Iran-Iraq War was a territorial dispute, but most attribute the war as an attempt by Saddam, supported by both the United States and the Soviet Union, to have Iraq form a bulwark against the expansionism of radical Iranian-style revolution. During the war Saddam received international condemnation after he ordered the use of chemical weapons on Iranian troops. The war ended in a bloody stalemate with no gain to either side. The people of Iran and Iraq both lost heavily, with a total death toll of about 1.7 million. Both economies were left in ruins.

Iraq has since its founding had to deal with Kurdish separatists in the northern part of the country. Saddam Hussein's answer to Kurdish rebels included the systematic use of chemical weapons on Kurdish troops and population centers. The worst such single incident occurred on March 16, 1988 when Iraqi troops, on orders from Saddam to stop a Kurdish uprising, attacked the Kurdish town of Halabjah with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents, killing 5,000 people, mostly women and children. Also, according to anti-Saddam opposition groups, around 100,000 other Kurds have been exiled since 1991.

The Gulf War
Iraq has no significant source of income apart from oil, and the Iraqi oil industry has produced steadily less revenue since its nationalisation in 1972, despite the great increase in world oil prices since 1974. Iraq had to resort to borrowing from other Arab states, including Kuwait, particularly during the 1980s during the war with Iran. After the war, Saddam attempted to renege on these debts, claiming that since the war had been fought for the benefit of the other Arab states, all debts should be forgiven. Kuwait, however, did not forgive its debt. This, together with disputes over oil drilling issues along the Iraq-Kuwait border, provoked Saddam to revive its dormant claim to sovereignty over Kuwait. (Before 1918 Kuwait had been part of the Ottoman province of Basra, and therefore in a sense part of Iraq, but Iraq had recognised Kuwait's independence in 1961.)

In early 1990 Saddam ordered troops to the Iraq-Kuwait border, creating alarm over the prospect of an invasion. April Glaspie, the United States ambassador to Iraq, met with Hussein in an emergency meeting, where Hussein stated his intention to continue talks. Glaspie indicated that the United States did not favour either Iraq or Kuwait’s position in their dispites: Saddam may have interpreted this as meaning that the United States would not object if Iraq annexed Kuwait, though that was certainly not the American position. Iraq and Kuwait met for a final negotiation session, which failed. In August 1990 Saddam then sent his troops into Kuwait.

The United Nations Security Council gave Iraq a deadline to leave Kuwait. Saddam ignored the deadline, and the United States and a group of allies it had hastily rounded up, including Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, evicted Saddam’s army from Kuwait in January 1991. (see Gulf War). By the end of the war Iraq had lost an estimated 20,000 troops and had been expelled from Kuwait. Some sources estimate Iraqi losses at more than 100,000.

After the war, popular uprisings erupted in the Kurdish north and Shi’a southern and central parts of the Iraq. These uprisings were swiftly and ruthlessly repressed and thousands of Iraqis were killed. The United States, which had urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam, did nothing to assist the rebellions – apparently because Turkey, an American ally, opposed any prospect of Kurdish independence, and because the Saudis and other conservative Arab states feared an Iran-style Shi’a revolution.

Between wars
Saddam, having survived the immediate crisis in the wake of defeat, was left firmly in control of Iraq, although the country never recovered either economically or military from the Gulf War. As part of the ceasefire agreement, Iraq entered into a number of agreements, such as paying reparations to Kuwait, returning stolen property and releasing all prisoners, which were only partly complied with. Iraq also agreed to co-operate with the United Nations in verifying the abolition of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. This condition was never met voluntarily, and even under duress of sanctions it was only partly complied with. Western intelligence agencies remained convinced that Iraq still possessed stocks of these weapons, and was seeking to develop new ones. It now appears more likely that Iraq was playing a game of bluff, hoping to convince the Western powers and the other Arab states that Iraq was still a power to be reckoned with. If so, this bluff proved to be Saddam’s undoing.

Because of Iraq’s failure to comply with United Nations requirements, a trade embargo was placed on it, blocking Iraqi oil exports. This caused immense hardship in Iraq and virtually destroyed the Iraqi economy and state infrastructure. Only smuggling across the Syrian border, humanitarian aid and limited amounts of income from the United Nations oil-for-food program kept Iraq from starvation. Nevertheless, Saddam’s bellicose and triumphalist rhetoric was unabated. Domestic repression inside Iraq grew worse, and Saddam’s sons, Uday Hussein and Qusay Hussein, became increasingly powerful and carried out a private reign of terror. Saddam continued to loom large in American consciousness as a major threat to Western allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel, to Western oil supplies from the Gulf states, and to Middle East stability generally.

Nevertheless the Clinton administration (1993-2001) was content to maintain sanctions and make occasional air strikes when Iraq violated the no-fly-zones or other restrictions, in the hope that Saddam would either be forced eventually to comply or would be overthrown by his many political enemies. Even the administration of George W. Bush (beginning in January 2001) seemed initially willing to continue this strategy, despite Bush’s campaign rhetoric about getting rid of Saddam. What changed the equation was the terrorist attacks of September 2001, which led the administration to the belief that a hostile regime in Iraq, possibly possessing weapons of mass destruction and possibly sponsoring international terrorism, was no longer acceptable in the context of the war against terrorism which began on September 11. The increasingly influential neo-conservative faction in the administration also argued that the overthrow of Iraq could lead to the establishment of democracy throughout the Middle East.

During 2002 Saddam played an increasingly dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the United States and its principal ally, Britain, hoping that a show of minimal compliance with United Nations resolutions on disarmament, such as the reintroduction of inspectors, would appease the Coalition powers. Saddam also evidently believed that France or Russia would veto any Security Council resolution authorising the use of force to overthrow his regime. Saddam did not reckon with the possibility that the United States would be willing to act without further Security Council approval, in defiance of majority world opinion. Up to the last he appeared to believe that the Coalition powers were bluffing. But they were not, and in March 2003 the Coalition launched Operation Iraqi Freedom with the explicit aim of removing him from power.

The Iraqi government and military collapsed within three weeks of the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The United States made at least two attempts to kill Saddam with targeted air strikes, but both narrowly failed to hit their target. By the beginning of April Coalition forces occupied much of Iraq. The resistance of the much-weakened Iraqi Army quickly crumbled, and it appeared that Saddam had lost control of Iraq. He was last seen in a video which purported to show him in the Baghdad suburbs surrounded by supporters. It is still not known if this video was authentic. When Baghdad fell to the Coalition on 9 April, Saddam was nowhere to be found.

Pursuit and capture

Saddam's whereabouts remained in question in the weeks following the fall of Baghdad and the conclusion of the major fighting in the war. Various sightings of Saddam were reported in the weeks following the war but none was authenticated. A series of audio tapes claiming to be from Saddam were released at various times, although the authenticity of these tapes remains uncertain.

Although Saddam was placed at the top of the U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis, extensive efforts to find him had little effect, although many of the other leaders of the Iraqi regime were arrested. His sons and political heirs, Uday and Qusay, were killed in July 2003 in an engagement with U.S. forces after a tip-off from an Iraqi informant.

On December 14, 2003, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) of Iran first reported that Saddam Hussein had been arrested, citing Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani. These reports were soon confirmed by other members of the Governing Council, by U.S. military sources, and by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a press conference in Baghdad, shortly afterwards, the U.S. Civil Administrator Paul Bremer formally announced the capture of Saddam by saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!" He was captured at approximately 8:30 PM Iraqi time on December 13, in an underground "spider hole" at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr near his home town Tikrit, in what was called Operation Red Dawn. Bremer presented video footage of Saddam in custody, and said that DNA testing to confirm his identity beyond doubt was in progress.

Saddam was shown with a full beard and hair longer and curlier than his familiar appearance, which a barber later restored. His identity was later reportedly confirmed by DNA testing. He was described as being in good health and as "talkative and co-operative". Bremer said that Saddam would be tried, but that the details of his trial have not yet been determined. Members of the Governing Council who spoke with Saddam after his capture reported that he was unrepentant, claiming to have been a "firm but just ruler". Later it emerged that the tip-off which led to his capture came from a detainee under interrogation.

Personal
Saddam has been married three times. His first marriage to his first cousin Sajida Talfah, a former teacher, occurred in 1963. This union with the eldest daughter of Khairallah Talfah, the uncle who raised Saddam, produced two sons, (Uday Saddam Hussein and Qusay Hussein) and three daughters, Rana, Raghad and Hala. Sajida was put under house arrest in early 1997, along with daughters Raghad and Rana, because of suspicions of their involvement in an attempted assassination on Uday in December 12, 1996. General Adnan Khairallah Tuffah, who was Sajida's brother and Saddam Hussein's boyhood friend, was allegedly executed because of his growing popularity.

Saddam Hussein also married two other women: Samira Shahbandar, whom he married in 1986 after forcing her husband to divorce her (she is rumoured to be his favourite wife), and Nidal al-Hamdani, the general manager of the Solar Energy Research Center in the Council of Scientific Research, whose husband apparently was also persuaded to divorce his wife. There apparently have been no political issues from these latter two marriages. Saddam has a son, Ali, by Samira.

In August 1995, Rana and her husband Hussein Kamel Majid and Raghad and her husband, Saddam Kamel Majid, defected to Jordan, taking their children with them. They returned to Iraq when they received assurances that Saddam Hussein would pardon them. Within three days of their return in February 1996, both were executed. Raghad and Rana are said to be estranged from their father, refusing to speak to him for several years. The Majid brothers were cousins of Saddam Hussein.

Saddam's daughter Hala is married to Jamal Mustafa, the deputy head of Iraq's Tribal Affairs Office. Neither has been known to be involved in politics. Another cousin was Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali", who was accused of ordering the use of poison gas to slaughter Kurds in 1988. Ali is now in US custody.

title: User:Adam Carr/Saddam Hussein