text:
User talk:Acegikmo1/2004

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Tip: you can sign your name with ~

snoyes 19:58, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Jon, poker tonight? Call me. Peoplesyak 12:16, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Garbage
There is already an article at Garbage (band). When you've moved your content there, just leave a message on my talk page and I'll delete Garbage(band). --snoyes 20:36, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Dean
Unlike the other people on U.S. presidential election, 2004, Dean has encouraged his supporters to continue to vote for him (and, judging from their past activities, they will presumably purchase radio spots and such that will encourage others to vote for Dean). I suggest that this is a sufficiently-significant distinction that Dean should not be considered "withdrawn", because his strong grassroots (and promise to continue operating Dean for America) support means that there's a very real possibility that he could place high in future primaries. AaronSw 00:02, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The Requested articles
Jonathan - I noticed you've written several of the articles I've put onto the requested articles page, and I just wanted to thank you. Keep up the good work. →Raul654 00:29, Feb 26, 2004 (UTC)

 * Well, thank you for noticing. Many of your the articles you request happen to be both topics of interest to me and subjects that deserve a Wikipedia article.  So, please keep the good requests coming.

 * Acegikmo1 02:12, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)

Article Reverts
Andrew Yaksic

Hey, Jonathan... the changes I made, other people reverted, and quickly... so I'm starting to think that maybe this site just isn't worth my time. I don't see how you can be so enamored of a site so full of people like that.

 * Hi Andrew. Like User:Raul654 said on your talk page, you ought not to get discouraged because one of your articles was deleted.  Anyway, it was my fault; I shouldn't have included a link to gullible in my M&M's article.

 * I suggest you continue to make contributions (your spelling corrections on pages I've edited are very helpufl ;-). I'm sure that once you get the hang of Wikipedia and start editing it when you're not on DXM, you'll learn to love it.

 * Acegikmo1 17:40, Feb 29, 2004 (UTC)

Antebellum
Good GWTW text! Wetman 23:14, 1 Mar 2004 (UTC)

ENT, and an orphan
Thanks for your work on "List of Star Trek: Enterprise episodes". For your information: I went through and standardized all of the dates.

By the way, I noticed that nothing links to "US Constitutional right of access to DNA testing". Can you find another article to link to that? —Vespristiano 05:46, 2004 Mar 7 (UTC)

 * I see you made some links. —Vespristiano 07:51, 2004 Mar 8 (UTC)

Re:2004 Election page
I don't support it, but I won't object. Go ahead. --Jiang 01:10, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * Well, I'm just wondering what the best list for the page is. I don't think that putting Bush alone is very good, considering that minor Democratic candidates like Lyndon LaRouche are listed.  At the same time, the enitre pool of candidates should not be listed.  What resolution to this problem would you support?

 * Acegikmo1 02:13, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, Lyndon LaRouche is quite well known (judging from how complete a biography he has). But wasn't he removed from the Democratic list?

In terms of delegate count, is it unanimous for Bush? I think the criteria should be 1) has an article, 2) is linked elsewhere on WP, but again, I don't object to the shorter version you proposed on my talk page. --Jiang 21:24, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

 * Listing the candidates with articles is a good solution. I've modified the list to include just Bush, Ashby, and Wyatt.

 * Acegikmo1 21:40, Mar 8, 2004 (UTC)

TNG
I also think that a message would be a great thing to have. However, I have no idea how to go about making one, or even where to request one. -Branddobbe 07:29, Mar 9, 2004 (UTC)

Re: Album Pages and Header Names
No problem. And about the headings on my talk page, they're in Old English. -- Djinn112 19:33, Mar 14, 2004 (UTC)

New England
Ultimately WikiProject U.S. Regions will replace the current map with a new map inside an infobox. I would ask Davodd to make you a map. He has made several wonderful maps for the project and I am certain he would make one for you if you asked especially since he probably would eventually make one anyway.

I also appreciate the comments on my talk page, I will consider taking a holiday but I would appreciate it if you would voice an interest in some of my contributions so if I do leave they will have a home.

--JCarriker 04:22, Mar 17, 2004 (UTC)

 * I have decided to stay. After wrapping up a few loose ends I will take a week long vacation in early April form the Wiki.

 * --JCarriker 05:57, Mar 18, 2004 (UTC)

Re: "Timescape" and Old English
I remember the conference room and the cockpit from "Timescape", and they both looked like a Danube's, but I can't remember what the runabout looked like from outside. That would have been in 2369, so they would have probably just started coming into service, and Danubes are the only things I've heard called 'runabouts', so it probably was one. If you can remember what it looked like, this picture's of a Danube, so that should tell you if it was.

I have this Old English textbook, Robert Diamond's "Old English Grammar and Reader". I was looking through it one day, thought the language sounded pretty neat, and decided to get some use out of it on my talk page. For translating I use that for the grammar. The vocab. list in the back of that wasn't too good, though, just Old English to Modern English, no ME > OE section. So now I use this website for looking up words; it's OE > ME and vice-versa, and it has a lot more words than the book does, so it's pretty nice. -- Djinn112 00:26, Mar 21, 2004 (UTC)

 * Neither Memory Alpha nor F.S.D. have anything to say about that runabout on their Danube class pages. So, I guess either it wasn't one or there was no clear shot of the registry or name in that episode. -- Djinn112 00:44, Mar 21, 2004 (UTC)

 * Sure. I'll go put it up there now. -- Djinn112 01:24, Mar 21, 2004 (UTC)

No need to discuss that The Conservative Party (UK) vandalism revert. That change was pure vandalism, not a serious attempt to discuss the Conservative Party. "The Conservative Party is a thinktank which has had a great deal of influence on the Labour Party"? That's left labour polemic, not encyclopedia writing. john 03:52, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

LibDems page
as the wikipedia is referring to it in a UK context, then 'most left-wing of Britain's mainstream parties' is correct. Only if we were looking on a wider stage would wording such as you suggested be appropriate (if true) as then the it would be the fact that this party happens to be 'British'; in the UK all UK-wide parties are 'British'!. VampWillow 22:23, 2004 May 7 (UTC)

 * My main purpose in editing the page was to change the comparative "more" to the superlative "most", as there are three mainstream British political parties, not two. After writing this, I concluded that using "British" was more concise and less awkward than "of Britain's", so I made a change to that as well. But, what you said also makes sense, so I think that the current wording is good.

 * Cheers,

 * Acegikmo1 02:17, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

I visited Wikipedia:Facebook out of idle curiosity and there were our photos side by side at the top of the page (since both our User names begin with A). How romantic is that, I thought. So I looked at your website and journal. You're very interesting, and we seem to have a few interests in common. And I agree with you about the English. It was the only place in Europe where I didn't find anyone sexually interesting (except Indians, but that's another story). Happy editing. Adam 13:46, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

 * H'm, I hadn't seen that page before now. Hahaha, romantic indeed. I'd expect people to think me mildly insane after reading my journal, so for you to leave thinking I'm interesting is very good indeed. I've noticed we share interests from reading your user page in the past and editing articles you had worked on. As for the English, in my rather limited experience I have failed to find anyone appealing. Oh well. London's nice enough. Anyway, nice to meet you.

 * Acegikmo1 02:33, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Marshall, Texas
Would you please review the Marshall, Texas article for sps and POV, I would like to nominate it for featured articles per your and Theresa Knott's opinions.

 * -JCarriker 20:36, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm glad you find the article an interesting read. I believe Marshall is a profoundly interesting place, or as the local phrase goes: frighteningly cosmopolitan, yet delightfully banana republic. I've been reviewing the edits as you made them, and I'm very grateful. As, a member of the Harrison County Historical Museum, a fourth generation Marshallite, and other self-righteous, egocentric platitudes; I would like to consider myself an expert on Marshall. As a history major I know that is irrelevant; my sources include various literature, and a review by Jean Birmingham, (a local Eleanor Roosevelt like figure). I am quite confident in the accuracy of the vast majority of the information as I had several sources for it.

 * Once again I appreciate the hours you put into reviewing it. I will notify you when I nominate it for featured articles, or if you wish to you please do.

 * -JCarriker 03:02, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks, Jean Birimgham is an expert she's on the Historical Commission. I'm not an expert, just jibes at my own expense, (perhaps my odd sense of humor has run amuck again). I've already had several others to review it. I appreciate your suggestion though.

 * -JCarriker 03:31, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your support. I did review the article with a descendant of Confederate Soldier and a member of the NAACP since last night, so the article should be neutral.
 * --JCarriker 19:10, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

Sprechen sie deutsch?
Well I can't, but you might want to contact Kar98 |  Talk. He not only speaks German he is German. Just if your interested in talking to a WikiGerman. Also congratulations on graduating from high school, and even greater congratulations on getting into a school like McGill.

-JCarriker 02:14, May 26, 2004 (UTC)

 * LOL, alrighty then. Just as a sidenote, I do live in Marshall though. Also, I noticed a number of articles in the English section that are obviously written by non-native speakers. Very humourous :) Kar98 19:22, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

A copyright question
If it is a work of the U.S. federal government, then it is released into the public domain. I don't know whether this includes. If you are concerned about it, you can revert the page to the pre-May 11 version. The copied version needs to be NPOVed. Maximus Rex 20:36, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Post-war_Germany_vs_post-war_Japan
I made a reply at Votes_for_deletion. --Jiang 04:50, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * I responded. Please reconsider your decision unless you are prepared to completely rewrite that article. It looks quite unsalvageable to me. --Jiang 03:40, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I moved discussion over to Talk:Post-war_Germany_vs_post-war_Japan. Please look there. --Jiang 16:19, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Source of info on recent U.S. primaries
I see you've updated the page on the Democratic primaries with all the latest results, including delegate counts. Thanks! Did you find a web site with all that info, or did you have to go hunting for each state's results separately? Ever since Kerry clinched the nomination, it's been hard to find info on the rest of the primaries. Neow 18:03, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi there,

 * The most comprehensive source I could find on Democratic primary results is The Green Papers. There, state-by-state results are listed, including links to the source of the data.  Most often, this is from each official state website, but sometimes it is a media source.

 * When possible, I use official results, and this very occasionally includes tracking them down myself. Otherwise I resort to media sources.  In any case, I appreciate that you've updated the Democratic primaries page yourself quite a few times and that you've noticed my contributions.  Thank you.

 * Acegikmo1 04:19, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * Thank you, that's a great web site. Neow 18:01, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You're up late
Why don't you join IRC? Many interesting and disturbing things go on there. :) -JCarriker 08:48, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

Yanai Shinsaku
Please answer at Votes_for_deletion/Old. Nanshu said no one knows him today...--Jiang 20:29, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

US Constitutional right of access to DNA testing
You may notice that I marked this article for deletion—my reasoning is given on the VfD page. I also deleted every reference you established to it, because even if the case (Harvey v. Horan) hadn't been overruled, your interpretation of what the case was about was overbroad and incorrect. The judgment was not guaranteeing DNA evidence per se, but rather the due process right to exculpatory evidence, which just happened for this particular convict to be in the form of DNA because this was a rape trial with biological evidence. I'd suggest that before you write any article on a court case, actually read the opinion, or at least a law review article on it written by legal professionals. It looks as if the Washington Post article was your sole source for writing it, and unfortunately you often can't rely upon the popular press for legal accuracy, nor can you with this particular article—Harvey by no means says all "felons have a constitutional right to DNA testing," nor was it the first case to find a due process violation in a particular denial of DNA testing...Harvey itself cites others. Also, always double-check to see if the case is still good law. I noticed that you wrote the article this year, but Harvey was overruled by the Fourth Circuit in 2002, removing any precedential value. One thing that was correct in the Post article is that a "district judge's decision is not binding on other courts", so there was no way, even prior to being overruled, that Harvey could have "established" a constitutional right in the sense you were proclaiming. Postdlf 8:12 25 June 2004 (UTC)
 * Hi,

 * Thanks for leaving a not about this on my talk page. I responded on the VfD page.  I also actually want to thank you for listing the page on VfD, as it forced me to do more research on the topic.  I found several reasons why the page should be kept.  For example, an en banc reconsideration of the rejection of the case concluded that inmates do have a constitutional right to conduct DNA testing on leftover evidence in an effort to prove their innocence.   Although this opinion is non-binding because of a new Virginia state law that allowed the testing, it is significant as one of several developments that occured after the case supporting the right to DNA testing.  I am concerned about the inaccuracies you pointed out in the article, and I'd like to correct them and incorporate this new information I found into the article.

 * Thanks,

 * Acegikmo1 20:02, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)

 * Please see my further comments at VfD. Thanks!  Postdlf 13:26, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for taking my comments so well. The law student in me can get a little aggressive sometimes, so I worry about being overbearing in my criticism. I'll continue to try and help in your efforts to write on this topic. Postdlf 15:40, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Great Mosque of Djenné
I have been working all month on Great Mosque of Djenné, trying to get it up to a featured worthy status. I would appreciate ti if you would review the article for accuracy and POV. Once any problems you find have been corrected I'm going to nominate it for featured status.

-JCarriker 08:29, Jun 28, 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your help at Great Mosque of Djenné! I have now nominated it for featured article status.

-JCarriker 03:03, Jun 29, 2004 (UTC)

The Hunting of the President
I'm sorry, but I haven't seen The Hunting of the President. I'd like to, though.

You and I seem to have "crossed paths" more than once on Wikipedia. It might be coincidence. Or it might not. —Vespristiano 02:02, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Re:Changing links on userpage
Some clone/fork creators decided that in addition to the articles, to clone the user namespace (presumably to avoid linking to wikipedia directly?). This results in my userpage being duplicated at places like www.smartpedia.com/smart/browse/User:Jiang and www.namweb.com.na/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=User:Jiang. If I link externally on my user page, then someone who happens to stumble on those clones might click on those links and be led to wikipedia. This is unlikely to happen though. --Jiang 02:18, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

RE PETER CARROLL:

Dear Acegikmo1, please do what you feel you must to satisfy your interest in the aforementioned page, I, having found it by chance merely thought it could do with cheering up a bit.

In fact you are probably right, but I am not Pete's biographer, I merely new him as a friend for several years. I note an interest in his group on the site and thought it might inspire someone to improve upon my efforts. I am working on other items at this time but will return to it later. Why don't you contact Pete directly and ask him about the alleged anecdotes perhaps he will confirm them for you, given a link to his site exists on the page, you may quote my name as a starting point, but I am not interested in arguing about it, as it makes a mockery of his own words. All the best: Faedra 20:51, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, your edit much improves this wanting item, prevously looking rather shoddy and like an advert. Thank you for your work, I have completed my item on Chatham Dockyard, and have changed a few small references in your item, to link to actual pages on wikipedia, I have found, removing those links that do not exist (yet)

My sisters dog has just farted, and Star trek is on in the other room, so I hope you will excuse me, but why not email Pete and ask him for the source to "views on a chaotic universe", as I only have a spliced copy found tucked away in my copy of LIBER NULL (No 25 of 400, red cover, Morton Press).

All the best Faedra

Thank you for your support
Hi Jonathan! I'm a bit late, but I'm writing to thank you for voting for me in last week's sysop poll. It is a privilege to be able to participate in this tremendous project, and your vote in my favour meant a lot to me. Thank you so much. David Cannon 10:07, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thank you.
Thanks for your meaningfully suggestions to help me improve Charles Graner and your support on it! Neutrality 00:28, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliments. I also edited on Isaac Newton and Aristotle, and want to rewrite the latter extensively, but I think I need some permission first. I think I will continue editing on Wikipedia. Brutannica 22:08, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Black as a noun
Only a Wikipedian would respond to a statement that someone finds something personally offensive by asking for a reference. ;-) But in any case, here are some I pulled up with a little Googling:
 * The American Heritage® Book of English Usage:
 * [African American] has the further advantage that, unlike black, its use as a noun in referring to a particular person or persons is unproblematic; you can say My teacher is an African American where you probably would not say My teacher is a black.

 * ibid.:
 * Like other names of social groups that are derived from adjectives (for example, black), gay may be regarded as offensive when used as a noun....

 * NewsWatch Diversity Guide:
 * Use "black" as an adjective (i.e., black people) not as a noun.

To be more specific, what is offensive is to use "black" as a noun to refer to specific people. You can say, "according to polls, most blacks in America believe...." But "all the Congressmen sat quietly during the speech, except for the blacks, who stood and exited in protest" is bad. It has a disquieting "bar the door, Martha—the blacks are coming!" flavor. That badness is magnified when one refers to a single person as a black.

You wrote:
 * Personally, I find the phrasing "She is the second black person..." to be excessivly careful, cloyingly politically correct, and awkward.

And I find "She is the second black... to hold the office" to be offensive. (One can be cloyingly politically correct?) Feel free to rewrite the intro so that black modifies something other than person— but unfortunately, if it doesn't modify either person or National Security Advisor, it will take on a different meaning.

 * An analogy would be replacing instances of "Jew" with "Jewish person" even though the former term is entirely proper.

Your analogy with Jew is irrelevant. Different words have different connotations. Even African American can be used as a noun without offense. (By the way, Condoleeza Rice is African American as well as black by the most technical definition, unlike Colin Powell.)

In any case, your edit was not minor. See Minor edit. --TreyHarris 16:15, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I now have two questions:
 * 1. Would you object to the wording, "She is the second black and first female holder of the office"?

No, that's fine.

 * 2. Why did my original edit not qualify as minor?

You deleted a word for non-grammatical reasons. You changed the meaning. A rule of thumb is that minor edits should be obviously unobjectionable. Since I objected, ipso facto, it wasn't minor. Convenient, eh? :-) --TreyHarris 03:19, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thank you.
Thanks for your support of my administrator nomination on RfA. I sincerely appreciate your support. Best wikiwishes, Neutrality 05:25, Jul 9, 2004 (UTC)

David Brock
I'm wondering why you removed the criticism section of the David Brock article. - Acegikmo1 14:57, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

First, it was heavily NPOV ("Certainly, David Brock's is one of the more controversial stories"). Second, it responded to claims not made in the piece. Third, it relied on some pretty bizarre sources ("the ever-interesting Christopher Hitchens"?). Fourth, it didn't really add much except to say "some people don't like this guy", since it didn't provide much in the way of evidence. It seemed to me to be mainly a way to sneak in some nasty personal attacks:

 * self-love, ... adored the easy money and the cheap fame ... dismally written, pick-nose, spiteful and furtive ...  glitters with malice ... dank, filthy tissue turned inside out. ... whiny, histrionic, and so factually unreliable ... a migraine trying to figure out which parts of Brock's lurid story were true, ...  oppressive a reading experience ... loathed by others as a dishonest malcontent

Harvey v. Horan
I'm very impressed by the effort that you put into this article—it's exceeded my expectations by far. I only have a few small recommendations: 1) the introductory paragraph needs to tell under what court system it was a case. Though the general rule is probably to credit it to the highest court that ended up dealing with it, because the significant opinion was the district court case, it doesn't make too much sense to just say that it was a Fourth Circuit case.  Maybe say that it was a federal court case that was resolved by the 4th in a reversal?  2) The introductory paragraph should also point out something about the case's subsequent impact, why it was significant—mention the Innocence Protection Act up there. 3) Make sure you note which district court it was heard in. 4) It would be nice if you said a little more about the Innocence Protection Act, just a sentence about what it was intended to do. I'm also not sure if you're arguing that Harvey v. Horan played a direct role in its passing, or in bringing the issue to light, or if the Act was simply a resolution of the issue in Harvey. Anyway, great job! I'm even more satisfied when a VFD recommendation becomes an impetus to genuinely make an article worthwhile than when an article gets killed. Postdlf 13:20, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

TNG Episodes
Hi Acegikmo,

Yeah, sorry if I messed that up. I'm new and when I did that edit I hadn't thouroughly researched the issue. The reason I added links to the second shows was that in another article I was writing I had to reference something that happened specifically in the 2nd episode of a two-parter. I could redo it. I'll make the changes also to the episodes page if that is policy.

Thanks,

Khaldei

Links in ep titles
In stuff like that, I'd rather not have the article title bolded...it's raw info so I think it works okay. :) And thanks for the bio nod! jengod 21:31, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

Rising (Stargate Atlantis)
Unfortunately, pipes don't work in tmeplates. - UtherSRG 00:32, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Adminship?
I'd like to nominate you for adminship. I have not yet done so as I did not want to put you in the postion of rejecting it after having been nominated. You've been here a while, made many good contributions, and I think you've earned it -JCarriker 06:55, Jul 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * First off, I am honored that you consider me worthy of being an adminstrator. It is heartening that someone I consider a friend on Wikipedia would think to nominate me.  I also very much appreciate that you notified me before posting a nomination.

 * However, I must very respectfully decline the proposed nomination. My primary reason for this is that I'm going to be moving to another country and starting college in about a month, and I don't know how my ability to participate in Wikipedia is going to be affected by that.  I suspect that I'll continue to contribute as I have been, but I'd hate to accept administrator status only to realize that I don't have enough time to be a viable member of the community.  Another reason that I'd rather not accept a nomination now is that there seem to be some outstanding disputes about what administrators are and what they should be able to do.  User:Hcheney/Support, User:Hcheney/Govern, Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship, User:Sam Spade/Policy Proposals, and  Warofdreams' application to be a bureaucrat bring up some of my concerns in this respect.  I'd like these questions about administrators as well as questions about my ability to adapt to lifestyle changes as a wikipedian to be resolved before I accept a nomination.

 * I sincerely hope that my decision does not disappoint you. I am very grateful for your kind words and willingness to nominate me.

 * Acegikmo1 07:42, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * I thought you might decline because of your move to Montreal and adjustment to dorm life(?) at McGill, which is why I asked you first. I am honored that you consider me a friend, especially since most of my internet "friends" have evaporated over past year, being a from the United States internationally, Texas nationally, or East Texas at a state level are popular. Being a moderate is also not a popular decison in the current political enviroment at any level. But I won't bore you with my politcal machinations, unless of course you ask. I look forward to the possibility of nominating you in the future. Bien à toi -JCarriker 08:22, Jul 25, 2004 (UTC)

User: 198.54.202.2

 * Are you User:198.54.202.2? That user signed as you on User:Jimbo Wales/Pushing To 1.0

Yes. I realised I wasn't logged on. I think there is another way to do it .. Wizzy 09:34, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Some responses

 * 1) Are you User:202.181.207.71? That user signed as you on Talk:Annette Lu Yes I am. I was in Hong Kong at the time and was afraid the connection was too insecure for me to sign in. The browser was also sh*tty.
 * 2) Would you mind if I added the "Jiang's name" thread above to bad jokes? i dont mind.
 * 3) What do you think of Chen Shui-bian? not as bad as Dr. Blackgold Lee et al. but nevertheless a corrupt bastard
 * 4) What is your opinion of the recent edits to Responses of Germany and Japan to World War II crimes? I think some of it is unrelated to the topic and I'm thinking about doing some major edits (again). i havent been looking at it closely enough, but recent edits slant towards the Japanese POV. For example, The argument that the Emperor cannot apologize is just an opinion. it's really murky there. Please do work on it.
 * 5) Should I call you Jiang? :-) You already did.

--Jiang 06:50, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

U.S. Senate election, 2004
I have left some comments on the talk page of this article. Hope you would like it. iHoshie 06:28, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Bmills
User:Bmills DELETED his user page before he left. Upon Anthere's request, I restored it, but I blanked it to still "keep" in with his wish somewhat. WhisperToMe 18:49, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

User name...
Nice to meet you yesterday at the S & S. But I realize now I forgot to ask you... is there an explanation for the numeral 1 at the end of your username? [[User:dpbsmith|dpbsmith (talk)]] 21:15, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

-

In reply to your question... I cannot possibly answer that for you.

In high school I wrote articles for the literary magazine under my own name and the pseudonyms "Amaranath Sasesusos" and "P. Fafnir Bergberg." In the CompuServe "CB simulator" (a prehistoric chat room) (you may not even know what "CB" meant) I used to call myself "Certified". But since then I've pretty much just used boring variations of my own name. My last major identity Thing occurred when I got married and decided to use my wife's maiden name as my second middle name, thus transforming myself from Daniel P. Smith to Daniel P. B. Smith.

When I joined Wikipedia I just used the customary username I've been using in most of my email accounts for years. By the time I saw that most people were using "handles," I toyed with the idea of enjoying a midlife identity crisis but now I sort of feel that I'm known under this name.

Oh, I'm not being truthful... in the alt.quotations newsgroup a number of people play around with multiple identities--there's a woman in Australia who uses about eighteen of them, by last count--not hard to tell as she's from a very small ISP--and I started to join in that game myself. Whenever I wanted to post something particularly undignified or tasteless I would post under the name "Chunks," for example.

I've thought about doing that here, but unless I wanted to create silly or tasteless articles under one username (and then list them under Votes for Deletion and vote to delete them myself) there wouldn't be much point.

For a while I thought your username as "Acegikmol", which is pronounceable but breaks the pattern.

In your situation I'd probably stick with the same username, but that could just be a sign of middle age on my part. [[User:dpbsmith|dpbsmith (talk)]] 01:01, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Vigilance
Well my fellow Intactivists (this will appear on other talk:pages):

The circumcisiophiliacs won this round. The main problem is that they are more commited than we (they make it impossible for us to correct any of their lies and bias on præpuce and circumcision). Now, they go after our articles (maybe I should not have tried to expose them by writing about Circumfetishism).

Hugh Young wrote complaining about me creating articles about Intactivism and Genital Integrity without consulting anyone. He was right to complain; I did create such articles without consulting. Let me just point out to things though:

 * 1) 	I invited other Intactivists to join me last year to join Encyclopædia WikiPedia.Org last year (within a month of that, I gave up on editing Præpuce and Circumcision because I was so badly outnumbered, that I could not do any good).
 * 2) 	I am the only full-time Intactivist with Michael Glass and Dan Blackham dropping in every now and then.

Now that you are all temporarily here, I ask you to stay. If you would just check on our articles weekly and also præpuce, circumcision, and articles linking to them, it would truly help much. While you are at it, you can edit and start other articles. ¡Editing and starting articles is fun! Look at this cool article, which I started about Laurentia.

¡E Pluribus Unum!

¡Thanks!

Ŭalabio 00:59, 2004 Aug 6 (UTC)

Troll policy
I noticed your comments on the latest troll policy proposal. Since that was posted, however, there's been a much simplified proposal put up at Dealing_with_disruptive_or_antisocial_editors/simplified_draft.

Would you be prepared to consider changing your vote? It'd only take a couple of people doing so to send this back to the drawing board, and though I didn't write it, I think the simplified proposal would fix many of the problems with the current one. If the current one fails to pass now, then we don't have to wait two months to improve on it. Ambi 11:18, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Time zone offset keeps getting reset
I have set my time zone offset in preferences to "-04:00". However, every few weeks, it changes to "-4:00" and goes back to displaying timestamps as UTC. This is rather frustrating. Does anyone know how to fix it?

Acegikmo1 00:44, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * So it changes from -4 to -4? I don't understand...maybe I'm just that stupid. It also depends which timestamps you're talking about. The signature timestamp, for example, is always UTC. Ilyanep (Talk) 00:56, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I think he meant that the leading zero disappears. But the leading zero is automatically removed whenever you save your preferences, so that couldn't be the problem. If you don't believe me, save it with a leading zero and then immediately click the preferences link to reload the settings from the database. Perhaps this is one of those annoying transient bugs that goes away when you look at it. The obvious thing that comes to mind is that timestamps are in UTC when you are logged out, or when for some unknown reason some part of the software is treating you as logged out. -- Tim Starling 01:15, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi Acegikmo1. I moved this from the village pump in case you hadn't seen the replies yet. Angela. 23:11, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

Another substub vote
I just wanted to let people know that there's another vote on substubs going on in Template talk:Substub. I know that this is a second vote, however, apparently it was originally intended to be only a vote about whether to keep the template message, but somehow evolved into a vote on the existence of substubs themselves. I know that you already voted in favor of substubs, so I wanted to get your support on this poll too. Thanks for your support! [[User:Mike Storm|Mike ∞ Storm]] 23:33, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hanscom Air Force Base
Oh, I was so, so tempted to put a notice on this page, just to see what reaction I'd get.

Seriously, I think it is great to see someone with enough discipline to wait until they really finished writing a whole article before posting. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 01:11, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Vandalism
Thanks for your note on my talk page. There is deliberate vandalism, and there are occasional mistakes. My post was the latter because I meant to post it to the talk page, and didn't realise where it ended up until you pointed it out. (Antonio never mentioned it BTW). Mistakes are sometimes fairly obvious, especially if an editor has no previous vandalism history. But not obvious to all apparently. Cheers Moriori 20:46, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)

Image:HanscomBrown.jpg
Could you release that and any other images you've uploaded under a free license such as the GFDL or cc-by-sa? If you don't, they may have to be deleted sometime in the near future. Guanaco 21:07, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

You're welcome
No problem. I was just on my way to let you know what I did, just in case you really did mean to oppose. --Michael Snow 21:42, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject Television
Hi Acegikmo,

We talked a few weeks ago as the result of some editing I did on the X-Files article. We dicussed working on the Television WikiProject, but I said I was too busy at the time to be of any help. If you're still interested in it, I just wanted to let you know that school is over for the time being and I should have a few weeks of spare time.

If you'd like to see what we can make of the project, I'll be glad to help where I can (I'm still pretty new at all this, so I'm not sure how much I will actually be able to contribute).

Let me know,

Clueless 09:02, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

List of number one singles (UK)
Just wanted to say thanks for dealing with the formatting on this page. So... thanks. Bonalaw 16:23, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Tuvix
Sorry for my delay in replying to your query about Tuvix. My focus for writing that article was the character rather than the episode. I'm going to carefully read the Tuvix article and the Riddles article to sort out exactly what belongs in each article. I think the Tuvix article needs to address how the experience affected Tuvok and Neelix afterwards, but at the same time the article should not retread too much of what is said in the Riddles article. But I'm going to hold off on any edits until after a careful reading. ShutterBugTrekker 21:42, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

One other thing: exactly where is that Riddles article? I tried Riddles (Star Trek) and nothing. ShutterBugTrekker 21:45, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hi
Hi Jonathan - hope you're settling in well in Canada! Did you get my e-mail? - MPF 22:15, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks very much for your support of my adminship nomination. J OHN C OLLISON | (Ludraman) 00:13, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Canadian elections
A fair number of the Canadian election articles are found at XXXX Canadian election. See Category:Category:Canadian federal elections. I personally hate the Canadian federal election, XXXX format it is ungrammatical, needlessly long, and almost all the links point to the other style. - SimonP 19:56, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Etc.
Hello,

I've seen your recent contriubtions to starship classes and other Star Trek-related articles. They are quite good. Perhaps you could cite your source for data on the starship classes in the references sections. In any case, nice work. Please continue to contribute. Have you thought of creating a username?

Acegikmo1 07:51, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

-

Greetings! You posted the preceeding note earlier. Thanks for the compliment! I'm not wholly familiar with the Wiki user interface, not even sure if I'm leaving this in the right place!, and I sometimes make editions when a thought arises (rare indeed!), but I do indeed have a user name and generally use it [E Pluribus Anthony].

My editions to the Star Trek--and other pages--are often to clean up alot of the grammatically incorrect text I find. I also find inconsistencies in some of the information ... particularly with much of the information on Wiki sites that are maintained by who I can only characterise as zealots.

As references, I generally use any and all mentions I can find (show, print, online) that are generally canon. For instance, the breadth and length of the Sovereign class are actually derived from measurements (in feet) on scale drawings produced by Paramount. Weapons counts? Usually by careful visual inspection. Furthermore, sometimes I take a very logical leap in making an edition. For instance, a Danube class starship is 'colloquially' but not necessarily known in canon as a 'Runabout' type; it is practically a type of scout, primarily because this is the smallest sort of starship available (in TNG Tech Manual) and it is similar in size and function to the ship Data piloted in 'Star Trek: Erection' (appropriate spelling) which is referred to as a scout, et al. As such, it is often unwieldly to list such reference sources and rationale, but I can gladly provide them.

As well, I tend to remove information that is utter supposition and non-canon; for example, I removed mention somewhere that the Titan (Riker's new command) is assumed to be a Prometheus class ship because there is NO authoritative mention of this assumption anywhere (as it can possibly be a new ship, old ship, or a good ship...) and especially not in 'Star Trek: Emesis' (appropriate spelling!). This certitude may also lead to errors, but I think these are rare and I'll gladly accept such feedback. I do strive for accuracy or at least for things that make sense.

On a similar note, I made editions to the Sovereign class page that were later changed by another user: namely, that it is a heavy cruiser and not an explorer. The 'editor' claims that Rick Sternbach himself (a co-creator of the Enterprise-E) wrote that it was a heavy cruiser in a BBS way-back-when, and even edited the article again and placed this comment in the body of the article (which is bad form), which seems to tell me that ego is also involved. I cannot find this posting but cannot currently contradict it. Thus, I've retained that edition for now, and I think out of compromise someone else actually wrote in 'Explorer/heavy cruiser'; however, I am e-mailing Mr. S. to get the last word. Fundamentally, NO mention of the Sovereign's type has ever been mentioned (that I know of) and this is all supposition, but again these are conflicting rationales. Moreover, Wikipedia is not a forum for such b-tching and I can imagine said editor including a nastygram in the future if such a 'correction' was made on this article.

I am quite the military and aviation buff (with a plethora of other interests); for example, I have the 99th edition of Jane's All The World's Ships. Making editions and additions to articles of real devices are far easier, since--for instance--the US government is far more authoritative about weapons like a certain sort of ICBM than Paramount or even some fans are about a Sovereign class ...? ! :) So, I only hope that the sci-fi ship specs which appear can be as consistent and accurate as those for some bits of real hardware.

Enough said. :) I hope you found this informative.  Drop me a line; take care! E Pluribus Anthony 18:14, 17 Sep 2004

Admin nomination
Thanks for your kind words on my nomination for administrator. Since there is great opposition, I've asked for it to be withdrawn but am no less grateful. Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 18:40, Sep 22, 2004 (UTC)

Witch-hunt
Your summary on my Requests_for_comment/Xed is appreciated. I have taken the liberty of putting in an endorsement list and adding your name to it--Xed 08:41, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Circumcision
It seems the article on circumcision and related articles like genital modification and mutilation bring out the crazies on both sides of the issue. While I battled some anti-circumcision crazies in April, it seems there are now some pro-circumcision crazies on the loose. Good luck to you, and may the force (of NPOV) be with you. Illegitimati non carborundum. Nohat 05:45, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The Smiths
Thanks *blush*. I'm adding more content as we speak and I have slightly reformatted your entries on Hatful of Hollow and Meat Is Murder; hope you don't mind. Cwoyte 11:19, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

From 23skidoo
Thanks for the kind words re my contributions to the Star Trek sections. I only recently discovered Wikipedia and it's been fun adding to the different articles. Cheers! 23skidoo 02:26, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Adminship
Thanks mate, I appreciate the vote of confidence! - Ta bu shi da yu 09:53, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

RfA
My removal of the anon comment, stricly speaking, was aganist the rules. I removed it primary because it constituted a personal attack and may have seemed like I made the comment. But of course, if you object, I have no problem with keeping it in. Warmest regards, [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (hopefully!)]] 23:08, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

My nomination for adminship
Thank you for supporting my nomination for adminship. I will do my best to serve Wikipedia. --Slowking Man 00:05, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

Nacho king Vfd
I have rewritten this article. Will you please review it, I am having difficulty initaiting a discussion about the article on its Vfd page. Please also review the page history to see how it has progressed. Thanks Jon, - Jay/JCarriker 23:40, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC) P.S. your page is 48 kb long you can archive it by cutting text form here and pasting it at User talk:Acegikmo1/archive1, or another page of your choosing.

X-Files
Hi, just wanted to say thanks for your message - I've added the credit, its from my own site actually. - daydream_believer2

Adminship
Thannks for your support on RFA, Ac. J OHN C OLLISON [ Ludraman] 15:46, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thank You Friend
I want to thank you for your support in my Adminship nomination. I know that I'm not going to make it, but that's life. I want you to know that you can count on me as your Wikipedian friend.

Tony the Marine

Loooong talk pages :P
Meetup/Boston says you must be free the weekend of the 20th :) +sj +  21:17, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Adminship and long talk page
So now that it's November and you've had time to adjust to new college life, may I nominate you for adminship?

Also, in case you missed it, your talk page actually shouldn't be this long; a recent edit doubled the page, duplicating all talk that was already on the page (this is a fairly common MediaWiki bug).

—Lowellian (talk)  17:36, Nov 7, 2004 (UTC)

Admin vote
Thank you for supporting me in the admin vote. I sincerely appreciate it! Plus, it's really nice to meet another Queen fan.

Thanks again, ClockworkTroll 06:24, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A quick note to say thanks

I just wanted to drop you a quick note to thank you again for your support in my request for adminship. It was certainly a wild ride, and I really appreciate you taking some time out to contribute. ClockworkSoul 16:07, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Guanaco
I noticed your note on Guanaco's RFA (Guanaco has made some mistakes, but he's open to discussion and acts in good faith.)

I'm just curious as to where he's been open to discussion. I'm pretty forgiving with these things, so if he actually has been, I might change my vote.

But I've got to say - I don't think I've ever seen him be open to discussion. I've seen him do plenty of controversial and dubious things, and as far as I've seen, if he's ever questioned about them, he's either curt, rude or doesn't respond at all. Ambi 03:18, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Adminship
Salve, Acegikmo1! Back in September I was a candidate for adminship, but I withdrew and since then, I've been working away and have now decided to try again, nominating myself. Though you voted to oppose at that time, you seemed receptive to a future candidacy and, therefore, I'd appreciate your vote on the new candidacy at Requests for adminship/PedanticallySpeaking2. Ave atque vale! PedanticallySpeaking 19:13, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

RFA thanks
Salve, Acegikmo1! I wanted to drop you a line to thank you for your support in my successful RFA candidacy. It was very gratifying to see the kind remarks posted by yourself and others. Ave! PedanticallySpeaking 17:20, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Wishing you the best
Just dropping you a note wishing you a very Happy Holiday and that this New Year may bring you and your loved ones happiness and lots of joy. Your friend in Wikipedia Tony the Marine

Southpaw Grammar
Thanks for your recent compliments on the article; while I was glad someone liked it, before reading your user page I did not realise they were from such an illustrious Wikipedia contributor. There has been a lot of rubbish said about that album and I hope I got across what it seems Morrissey was trying to do. Edit away if I've included to much waffle about critical reaction/ subjective lyrical interpretations/ whatever SilhouetteSaloon 16:22, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Supersonic
Hi. You put this on a page I just finished - —(& m dash ;). I see them all over, just out of interest, what do they mean?

Oh, cheers. Nice to know I'm appreciated.--Crestville 14:36, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Acegikmo1/2004


text:
Talk:Wounded Knee Massacre

Is the statement that " the massacre was part of the larger genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas" appropriate?
There was a recently added edit to the front summarized section of this article included " the massacre was part of the larger genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas." Originally, the cited source was an official PRC URL.

This additional statement in the summary section appears to lack an appropriate reliable source and questions about neutral point of view. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KVJackson (talk • contribs) 17:10, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

 * My question is this: Who is currently arguing that the "Indian Wars" were not a prima facie genocide? jengod (talk) 17:47, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the term "genocide" was used in the lead section but information & references to back that term up do not appear within the main body of the article text. I wouldn't say that a genocide did not happen, just that the concept & term along with references from reliable sources need to appear within the main body for the term to appear within the lead section. As MOS:LEAD says (bolding mine):
 * In Wikipedia, the lead section is an introduction to an article and a summary of its most important contents.
 * Shearonink (talk) 18:03, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I fully concur with Shearonink's point.
 * I also note that jengod has not provided an appropriate reliable citation or source for the assertion. Even with that, the assertion of genocide may be legally disputed. Are there any USG official acknowledging genocide?
 * The May 1922 report "Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report" probably is closest: "This report confirms that the United States directly targeted American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children in the pursuit of a policy of cultural assimilation that coincided with Indian territorial dispossession." However, the word genocide does not (yet) appear.
 * The determination of whether a historical event should or should not be considered a genocide can be a matter of scholarly and legal debate. KVJackson (talk) 20:40, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't have the bandwidth to relitigate American history on this page, but my take is that the whole thing easily meets the 1948 UN description of genocide:
 * killing members of the group ✔
 * causing them serious bodily or mental harm ✔
 * imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group ✔
 * preventing births ✔
 * forcibly transferring children out of the group ✔
 * The justice.gov definition of genocide is "violent attacks with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group" is a fine summary of the Wounded Knee Massacre, the Sand Creek Massacre, the Camp Grant Massacre, 1862 Dakota executions, the Marias Massacre, ad infinitum.
 * Extrajudicial colonizer massacres are terrible enough but when it is the United States Army pulling the trigger, you're automatically in capital-G Genocide territory. I don't have time right now to create a section of this article affirmatively proving Your Favorite All-American Pioneers and Very Brave Boys in Blue Were like Actual Real Live Genocidaires so that it can then be responsibly referenced in the lede but until the mindset of the U.S. moves out of its fugue state of denial I suppose this perspective can be considered a Non-Neutral Point of View.
 * I'm ranting like a loon when you all have been eminently civil but the whole question of "was it genocidal?" just makes me do the LeBron GIF face.
 * We're all just trying to do the right thing. Thank you for all your work here, and thank you for your patience with my high-pitched noises and gesturing.
 * jengod (talk) 21:24, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I am no longer shocked by the intellectual incompetence of Wikipedia editors. Don't quit the day job. 212.129.80.155 (talk) 06:54, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes absolutely it’s appropriate and a statement in fact. 2600:1700:E1C1:3890:414F:D1A7:7CE4:866A (talk) 22:47, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Turning hawk seems made up
simple as that. 2604:3D09:D78:1000:C00E:C617:8861:85EF (talk) 00:48, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * How about reading the cited New York Times reference. Simple as that. Shearonink (talk) 02:30, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Not true
The depiction of the events is completely subjective and not even accurate. Pay attention Wikipedia, someone needs to fix this. 2603:6011:AD3F:A70E:5108:4655:F2B4:3EFB (talk) 20:35, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Wounded Knee Massacre


text:
Khaki election

In Westminster systems of government, a khaki election is any national election which is heavily influenced by wartime or postwar sentiment. In the British general election of 1900, the Conservative Party government of Lord Salisbury was returned to office, defeating a disunited Liberal Party. The reason for this name is that the election was held in the midst of the Second Boer War and khaki was the colour of the relatively new military uniform of the British Army that had been universally adopted in that war.

The term was later used to describe two later elections like the 1918 general election, fought at the end of World War I, which resulted in a huge victory for David Lloyd George's wartime coalition government and the 1945 general election, held after the end of World War II in Europe and in the closing days of the Pacific War, where Labour Party leader Clement Attlee won by a landslide. Another such case is the 1983 general election in which the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher was elected into office despite its previous unpopularity, which was linked to the economic situation. The Falklands War, along with a divided opposition, ensured the next Conservative term in office.

The term is also applied to the 1917 Canadian federal election, which was held during World War I. By allowing servicemen and women related to servicemen to vote, Sir Robert Borden's Unionist Party won a majority.

The term also has currency in Australia. In 2015, the Labor Party Opposition accused the Coalition Federal Government of attempting to manufacture a khaki election by emphasising terror and military action in response to the 2014 rise of violent Islamic extremism from the Islamic State terrorist group.

title: Khaki election


text:
Sghair Ould M'Bareck

Sghair Ould M'Bareck (اسغير ولد امبارك; born 1954 ) is a Mauritanian politician. He was the 9th Prime Minister of Mauritania from July 6, 2003, when he was appointed by President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya following an attempted coup in the previous month, until August 7, 2005, when he resigned following a successful coup against Maaouya. Sghair is a Haratin.

Biography
Sghair, who was born in Néma, entered the government as Minister of National Education in April 1992. In 1993 he became Minister of Rural Development and the Environment, and in late 1995 he became Minister of Health and Social Affairs. He was Minister of National Education again from 1997 to 1998, then Minister of Trade, the Craft Industry and Tourism from 1998 to 1999. He became Minister of Equipment and Transport in late 1999, Minister of National Education again in 2000, and Minister of Justice in November 2001.

He was then appointed as Prime Minister in July 2003. He replaced Cheikh El Avia Ould Mohamed Khouna, who came from the same part of eastern Mauritania as many of the accused 2003 coup plotters.

President Maaouya was deposed in a military coup on August 3, 2005. Although the coup leaders requested on the following day that Sghair and other Government ministers remain in their posts, on August 7 he and his government resigned and the coup leaders named a new Prime minister, Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar, who had previously held that office from 1992 to 1996.

As of 2009, Sghair holds the post of Mediator of the Republic. He was one of four candidates standing in the June 2009 presidential election. He met with Interim President Ba Mamadou M'Bare in late April to submit a request for a two-month leave of absence in order to concentrate on his presidential candidacy.

title: Sghair Ould M'Bareck


text:
Think Tank (Blur album)

Think Tank is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Blur, released on 5 May 2003. Continuing the jam-based studio constructions of the group's previous album, 13 (1999), the album expanded on the use of sampled rhythm loops and brooding, heavy electronic sounds. There are also heavy influences from dance music, hip hop, dub, jazz, and African music, an indication of songwriter Damon Albarn's expanding musical interests.

Recording sessions started in November 2001, taking place in London, Morocco and Devon, and finished a year later. The album's primary producer was Ben Hillier with additional production by Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim), and William Orbit. At the start of the sessions, guitarist Graham Coxon had been in rehab for alcoholism, so was not present. Initially unaware of how long Coxon would be in rehab for, Albarn, James and Rowntree decided to start work in the studio without Coxon.

After he re-joined, relationships between him and the other members became strained. After initial recording sessions, Coxon left, leaving little of his presence on the finished album. This is the only Blur album to not feature Coxon as a full-time member; he reunited with Damon Albarn in 2008, resulting in Blur starting to play live again in 2009, and returned to the band for their next album The Magic Whip (2015).

Think Tank is a loose concept album, which Albarn has stated is about "love and politics". Albarn, a pacifist, had spoken out against the invasion of Afghanistan and, after Western nations threatened to invade Iraq, took part in the widespread protests against the war. Anti-war themes are recurrent in the album as well as in associated artwork and promotional videos.

After leaking onto the internet in March, Think Tank was released on 5 May 2003 and entered the UK Albums Chart at number one, making it Blur's fifth consecutive studio album to reach the top spot. The album was later certified Gold. Think Tank also reached the top 20 in many other countries, including Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Norway and Japan. It was their highest charting album in the United States at the time, reaching number 56 on the Billboard 200. The album produced three singles, which charted at number 5, number 18 and number 22 respectively on the UK Singles Chart. After the album was released, Blur announced a world tour with Simon Tong filling in for Coxon.

Background
Although Blur had been associated with the Britpop movement, they had experimented with different musical styles more recently, beginning with Blur (1997) which had been influenced by indie rock bands under the suggestion of guitarist Graham Coxon. Since the mid to late 1990s, Blur's members had been working on other projects as well as Blur: Albarn had co-created Gorillaz, a virtual band, in 1998 with comic artist Jamie Hewlett whom Albarn had met through Coxon. Gorillaz' 2001 debut was financially successful and received critical acclaim. Since composing the Blur song, "You're So Great", Coxon had started a solo career and as of 2001 had released three solo albums. The members' differing musical interests had alienated some of the band members, with Coxon explaining, "we're all very concerned for each other and we do genuinely like each other an awful lot. Because we're into so much different stuff, it becomes daunting." Nevertheless, Coxon, along with Alex James and Dave Rowntree were keen for a new album, whilst Albarn was more reluctant.

Blur's prior album, 13, had made heavy use of experimental and electronic music with the guidance of producer William Orbit. Despite the success of the album and its associated singles, the overall sound of the album had been deemed as "deliberately uncommercial" compared to their previous efforts. Despite the broader musical landscaping which Blur were engaging in, Albarn said in a January 2001 interview that he wanted to make a more accessible album again, stating "I'm trying to go back to the kind of songwriting aesthetic I had on (hit album) Parklife. They won't be arranged in the same way at all – they'll just be songs that are accessible to the public." He also explained his reasoning for this approach, stating that "it's too complicated being anything other than mainstream with Blur. That's where it belongs. We still feel that the mainstream in Britain is not represented well enough by intelligent musicians."

After the September 11 attacks, a series of controversial military campaigns were launched, known as the War on Terror. In November 2001, shortly after the Invasion of Afghanistan, the MTV Europe Music Awards were held in Frankfurt, where Gorillaz won an award for Best Dance Act. As Albarn and Hewlett walked onto stage to make a speech, Albarn sported a T-shirt with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament logo on it. In Albarn's speech, he said "So, fuck the music. Listen. See this symbol here, [pointing to the t-shirt] this the symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Bombing one of the poorest countries in the world is wrong. You've got a voice and you have got to do what you can about it, alright?"

In 2002, Iraq was under threat of invasion from western nations. Opposition from the public led to protests being organised by a number of organisations. Albarn, who has described himself as being anti-war, spoke out against the invasion, citing the lack of democratic process as an issue. Anti-war views had been shared with Albarn's parents and grandparents. His grandfather, Edward Albarn, had died after going on a hunger strike the previous year. Albarn has labelled his grandfather, father, and himself as conscientious objectors.

Albarn teamed up with Robert "3D" Del Naja of Massive Attack and various campaigns to raise awareness of the potential dangers of the UK's involvement in the war. Albarn was due to speak in Hyde Park on the rally in March 2003 when a million people took to the streets of London in protest at the imminent war. In the event, he was too emotional to deliver his speech.

Recording

Recording sessions for Think Tank started in November 2001 at Albarn's 13 Studio in London. Albarn, James and Rowntree had come to the studio along with Ben Hillier, who explained that "there was tension to begin with. Alex had made some belittling comment about Gorillaz in the press, but there was a 'fuck you' and a 'fuck you' and it was all mates again but for the fact that Graham was missing". During 2001, Coxon had been battling alcoholism and depression, and was unable to attend the initial recording session due to being in rehabilitation. Despite Coxon's absence, the rest of the band decided to start recording without him.

By January 2002, the rest of the band were mainly recording demos that Albarn had started on a four-track and subsequently transferred into Logic with 13's in-house engineers Tom Girling, Jason Cox and assistant, James Dring. Coxon rejoined the rest of the band for recording sessions in February and May 2002, with the foreknowledge that it would be "tense in the studio". Coxon spent, what he described as "awkward afternoons", contributing on the track "Battery in Your Leg", and non-album B-sides "The Outsider", "Morricone" and "Some Glad Morning".

It was clear that during Coxon's departure, the sound and musical direction was not to Coxon's taste, and he no longer had a justifiable place in the band. Additionally, Coxon was advised by health professionals to avoid touring, which would naturally leave him in a more vulnerable position mentally. This was not received well with the band, or their record label, due to touring being a major part of promoting and selling a record.

In what has been described as "miscommunication", Blur's manager was directed to tell Coxon to not return to the studio for an indefinite time, prompting Coxon to leave the band after these few recording sessions. The remaining members of Blur decided to carry on recording alone, Albarn stating that "the spirit of Blur was more important than the individuals".

In June, the band went back into the studio, doing "tracking, overdubs and reworking what we'd already done, and all the time new songs would be popping up – I think we had 28 of them at one point." Albarn desired to have multiple producers involved in the album, wanting to get a "name producer" involved. Albarn had previously been in talks with Norman Cook, commonly known as Fatboy Slim, to be involved on the record, although he originally wanted to contribute "just feedback and nothing else". Albarn eventually invited him to try and work with the band. Hillier and the band also spent time working with other producers, including the Dust Brothers, whilst the Neptunes were also reported to be involved at one point.

In August, the remaining members of Blur, along with Hillier, travelled to Morocco. James released a statement on the band's website saying "I suppose the idea at the bottom of this is to escape from whatever ghetto we're in and free ourselves by going somewhere new and exciting." The band settled at Marrakesh where they equipped an old barn with a studio. Albarn claimed that most of the album's lyrics were written "under a cypress tree in Morocco". The sessions in Marrakesh produced "Crazy Beat", "Gene by Gene", and "Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club". The vocal sessions took place at this time. While in Morocco, Albarn wrote a song about Cook and his partner, Zoë Ball, who were having troubles with their relationship. The song started out as a jam session, eventually evolving into "Put It Back Together", which ended up on Fatboy Slim's fourth studio album, Palookaville, which was released in October 2004. After the band came back from Morocco, the remaining sessions took place in a barn on National Trust land in Devon.

William Orbit, who was the main producer on 13 was also involved in the album's production, with Hillier stating that "we sent a couple of tunes to William to work on in his studio, working round the clock in a computer environment the way he does. He's a nutter and works all night. That was quite an interesting juxtaposition, us doing office hours then going to see William after work, just as he was getting up!" Of Orbit's productions, "Sweet Song" ended up on the album. Coxon's absence also bolstered the role of Alex James and Dave Rowntree who provided backing vocals throughout the album. Rowntree also played the electric guitar on "On the Way to the Club" and provided a rap on a demo version of "Sweet Song". A Moroccan orchestra is featured on the lead single, "Out of Time".

Musical style
Despite Albarn stating that he originally wanted to return to their more commercial sound, Think Tank continues the jam-based studio constructions of previous album 13. The album expanded on the use of sampled rhythm loops and brooding, heavy electronic sounds. Almost entirely written by Albarn, Think Tank placed more emphasis on lush backing vocals, simple acoustic guitar, drums, bass guitar, and a variety of other instruments.

"We knew we had to come back with the best thing we'd ever done," observed James. "I think it is. It's next level shit!"

Like many of Blur's previous albums, Think Tank is a loose concept album. Albarn has stated that it is an album about "love and politics", stating that "[Unease] forces people to value what they've got. And that, hopefully, will pay dividends and help change the world to a better place. Hopefully. Touch wood." Albarn also stated that the album is about "what are you supposed to do as an artist other than express what is going on around you." Some of the songs are concerned with a sense of paranoia and alienation in British club culture. Damon also cited punk rock music, particularly the Clash, as an inspiration.

The album's opening track, "Ambulance", starts off with a complex drum beat. Sam Bloch of Stylus Magazine praised the song's intro, describing the beat as "an offbeat rhythmic synapse that nearly collapses into itself [...] Heavy electronic drums. A flash. A kick. At first, it's really hard to believe that this is a song, functioning on its own. The beat needs crutches to stand upright." Devon Powers of PopMatters wrote that "the first bars [...] are stricken with throbbing beats that sound simultaneously futuristic and primitive." Bloch went on to write: "as a low, thunderous bass enters [the listener's] speakers, the whole thing slowly grows. Distinctive African percussion is leisurely incorporated into the bass overtone—it's the darkness in a thunderstorm, the pure, simple fury that comes before a glorious lightning streak."

At 0:52 Albarn's lead vocals come in, repeating the lyrics "I ain't got nothin' to be scared of" in a "gauzy" falsetto. This is accompanied by a "languid" bass groove and backing vocals described by Bloch as "gospel-twinged", as well as a baritone sax line described by Powers as "[cutting] underneath the back-up singers, at an angle—so quirky it feels like Morphine could have played it." As Albarn delivers the next line (cause I love you"), a synthesizer kicks in, described by stylus as "illustrious", "otherworldly" and "flooding the song's deathly stomp. But within this death there is love. Albarn makes this clear in the structure of this song." In Albarn's next vocal lines, he drops out of falsetto into "his low swinging monotone". Powers stated that he "croons, carelessly, almost as if he's freestyling. Things change again. They keep changing." Powers speculated that the song was about love but said "it's also a fitting introduction to a record that's such an extreme departure from their past work, and so drastically left field from the garage and post-punk and easily accessible poprock currently drenching the airwaves".

In an XFM radio interview, Albarn spoke on the composition of the track, stating, "I try to do a lot of stuff once I've got the melody and the chord structure. I try to just sing it in one go without thinking about it too much. It comes out a sort of partially formed song and sometimes you're lucky and it comes out almost kind of sort of perfect and sometimes it's just a mess." He stated that this was a case of the former. James said that "Ambulance" was "the first song that I thought, right this is Blur again. Like I'm in the right place again. I suppose the lyrics have something to do with that, you know, having nothing to be scared of anymore."

Greenwald claimed that "Out of Time" was "the album's highlight". Describing the song as "failure-soaked" and "heart-stoppingly lovely", Greenwald went on to say that it "perfectly captures the jumble of beauty and dread that defines life under orange alert. "Are we out of time?" Albarn asks, desperate for one last peace march or one last snog." Powers described the song as "a much more straightforward, apace ballad [compared to the previous song]. Dominant in the track are Albarn's unadulterated vocals and steady, simplistic drums, but beyond that are ethereal, hard-to-identify noises. In the middle of the track, an Andalucian string group rears its head, as does a tambourine."

"Crazy Beat" was compared to "Song 2" from the band's self-titled album. XFM described the song as "Fatboy Slim meets Middle Eastern Punk rock ... energetic, punked-out rocker. But as much as this song might appeal to the neo-DIY set—complete with its jumpy chorus and lively melody—Blur are anything but. If there's one thing Blur are known for, it's lots and lots and lots of production. Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim), builds this number with tons of sound, so there's always another active level to uncover." According to Albarn, the song "started off in such a different way. The nearest thing I could compare it to is a really bad version of Daft Punk. So, we got sick of it and then put in that descending guitar line over it to rough it up a bit." He also stated "It had this sort of mad vocoder-ish vocal and the melody was over a real sort of skanky groove and just this almost descending semi tonal guitar. The melody worked over it and it was amazing coz it shouldn't have worked, another little magic moment for us."

Powers claimed that "the best moments of this album are those when vintage Blur styles are evoked with new expertise. The meandering "Good Song" is a beautiful case in point. Acoustic guitar picking is matched with temperate drums and a sweet, steady bass countermelody. Albarn's singing is mostly in his mid-range, falling out as easily as breath. Signature background vocal harmonies are there to brighten up the track, but their muted nature doesn't descend into campiness. What's also new is the expert use of electronic noises and drumbeats to fatten the sound." Albarn said "well, that was originally called 'De La Soul' on our huge list of songs, half finished ideas. It was called 'De La Soul you know, right until the end. And I just always thought it was a good song and just called it 'Good Song'. I love that, I love the sort of intimacy of it and I just think everyone really played gently on it, the melodies. It was a good melody."

"On the Way to the Club" was described by Albarn as "a hangover song which we sort of write from time to time." Albarn also said that "it's definitely got a very individual sound. Someone said that it's a sort of revived Screamadelica. Yeah, it's kind of the good intentions of which you participate in revelry and then actually the reality of it."

"Brothers and Sisters" was one of the last additions to the album. "It was a kind of track that took quite a different direction for most of its life", said Rowntree. "...And then right at the end we switched about and took it in a different direction, it wasn't quite so dark." "It sounded more like The Velvet Underground when we started", claimed Albarn. "It was too overtly about one thing. It was too druggy, in a way, which is a kind of weird thing, 'cause the song is all about drugs so I think we just pushed ourselves a bit more with it and gave it a lot more space – countered by the list and the list was kind of sort of inspired by the life of JFK and his need to have 28 drugs everyday of his Presidency just to keep him functioning."

Albarn described "Caravan" as "a kind of song that you could play anywhere. And I mean I remember we just finished it and when everyone left to go back to London, I went down to Mali for a couple of days 'cause Honest Jon's [were] still working with musicians and stuff. I was sitting in a mango grove with a wild turkey and had a little CD player and I put it on there. It was just nice seeing everyone sitting around getting stoned to it. It was nice, 'cause the guitar is very, much inspired by Afel; a great Malian tradition of blues guitar." "I think this one's about the sun going down, for me", James claimed. "That was like a perfect studio moment; sitting on top of a strange barn in the Moroccan desert listening to Damon do a vocal and it a was a perfectly still time of day and the sun was perfectly red and there was just an immense sense of calm and this music."

Albarn claimed that "Sweet Song" was inspired by Coxon. Explaining the habit of putting 'song' in the title, Albarn stated that it was "another African thing that I've picked up. They do call things like 'Tree Song'. You know what I mean; they give it something quite simple. It's not, it doesn't have an agenda so much, it's offered out as a nice bit of music to everyone and that's something that has changed massively in my life, I don't see the ownership of things quite so strongly anymore."

There is a hidden track, "Me, White Noise" in the pregap before track 1 on some CD copies. The song guest features Phil Daniels, who previously appeared on "Parklife", on vocals. Japanese versions of the album feature the song at track 30, after silent tracks at index points 15–29. On the Blur 21 edition, the hidden track is placed after a few minutes of silence at the end of the last track.

The case contains a Parental Advisory logo in some regions, because "Brothers and Sisters" contains many drug references. Also, the hidden track "Me, White Noise" is one of the few Blur songs to contain an expletive.

Artwork and packaging
The album cover was stenciled by the graffiti artist Banksy. Despite Banksy stating that he normally avoids commercial work, he later defended his decision to do the cover, saying: "I've done a few things to pay the bills, and I did the Blur album. It was a good record and [the commission was] quite a lot of money. I think that's a really important distinction to make. If it's something you actually believe in, doing something commercial doesn't turn it to shit just because it's commercial. Otherwise you've got to be a socialist rejecting capitalism altogether, because the idea that you can marry a quality product with a quality visual and be a part of that even though it's capitalistic is sometimes a contradiction you can't live with. But sometimes it's pretty symbiotic, like the Blur situation." The album's cover art sold at auction in 2007 for £75,000. The fold out booklet of the album features the text "Celebrity Harvest", which was the working name for a proposed, but ultimately unmade Gorillaz film.

Release
Prior to the album's official release, it was leaked onto the internet. Rowntree said "I'd rather it gushed" and "I'm rabidly pro the internet and as many people hearing our albums as possible. If it hadn't been leaked by someone we probably would've leaked it ourselves". Albarn speculated that the leak helped the reception of their live shows, due to the songs' lyrics being more familiar to the audience.

Commercial performance
The album debuted in the US at number 56 with first-week sales of 20,000, becoming the highest peak of any Blur album in the US at that time. It has sold 94,000 copies in the US as of April 2015.

In the UK, the album debuted at the top spot, becoming their fifth consecutive number one album. The album remained in the top 10 for three weeks and the top 75 for a total of eight weeks, lacking the longevity and sales success of their previous releases.

Critical reception
Think Tank received mostly positive reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 83, which indicates "universal acclaim", based on 26 reviews. Drowned in Sound writer Andrew Future deemed the album "a genuine pleasure to behold" and whilst stating that previous albums Blur and 13 were "full of jump-start arrangements and fractured experimentalism", he described Think Tank as being "lush in melody, flowing in windswept electronica with a myriad of bombastic orchestral backing one minute, before retracting into cocoons of melancholic and clustered acoustics the next." Playlouder called the album "an extraordinary record that pushes boundaries and sets new standards." "The beat-driven tracks," observed Steve Lowe in Q, "veer towards the arty, white-boy-with-beatbox line of Talking Heads and The Clash (actually, the low-slung hip-pop of 'Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club' even recalls Big Audio Dynamite). Only the trudging, tedious six-minute squib 'Jets' really needs taking back to the shops." However, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that the album "is the sound of Albarn run amuck, a (perhaps inevitable) development that even voracious Blur supporters secretly feared could ruin the band — and it has." He also described Think Tank as a "lousy album" on which the few strong tracks are "severely hurt by Coxon's absence".

Albarn became critical of the record over time. In 2015 he said: "It's... got some real stinkers on it – there's some bollocks on there."

Accolades
Blur received a number of awards and nominations for Think Tank. At the 2003 Q Awards, Think Tank won the award for Best Album. This was the third time the band had received this award, previously winning in 1994 and 1995 for Parklife and The Great Escape respectively. Blur also received nomination for Best Act in the World Today and, along with Ben Hillier, were nominated in the Best Producer category. The album also won in the Best Album category at the South Bank Show Awards in 2004 and was nominated in a similarly titled category at the Danish Music Awards the same year. Think Tank was nominated for Best British Album at the 2004 Brit Awards. The promo videos for "Out of Time" and "Good Song" also won several awards.

At the end of the year, The Observer listed Think Tank as the best album of 2003, Miranda Sawyer writing that, "Think Tank is the band's first warm album. They have hopped genres in the past, from baggy to mod to pop to grunge to art-rock, but the sound has always stayed urban, Western, cool. Think Tank is none of these things. It's all over the place, and that place is foreign. Odd noises, strange instruments, keening vocals; its tunes wind themselves around your heart like drifting smoke. They waft in from faraway lands; trail and trickle their scent across your life. It is the most peculiar stuff that stays with you; "Ambulance"'s slurred symphony; "Caravan"'s star-speckled wonder."

Tour
After the album's release, Blur went on a world tour with former The Verve's guitarist and keyboardist Simon Tong filling in for Coxon on guitar, in both new and old songs. However, Albarn later said that he felt the live shows were "rubbish" and bassist Alex James admitted that touring was not the same without Coxon.

Since Blur's reunion with Coxon in 2009, the album has largely been absent from Blur's setlists, with the exception of "Out of Time" (in a new arrangement with additional guitar parts by Coxon) and occasional performances of "Battery in Your Leg" in 2009 and "Caravan" in 2015.

Track listing
All lyrics by Damon Albarn. All music by Damon Albarn/Alex James/Dave Rowntree except where noted.

 * Notes

Blur

 * Damon Albarn – lead and backing vocals, guitars, keyboards, producer
 * Alex James – bass guitar, backing vocals, production
 * Dave Rowntree – drums, drum programming, backing vocals, guitar on "On the Way to the Club", production

Additional musicians and production

 * Paul Wood - bongos
 * Bezzari Ahmed – rabab
 * Moullaoud My Ali – oud
 * Mohamed Azeddine – oud
 * Norman Cook – producer (Track 3 & 12)
 * Jason Cox – production assistance, engineer
 * Graham Coxon – guitars on "Battery in Your Leg"
 * Phil Daniels – backing vocals on "Me, White Noise"
 * James Dring – engineer, additional drum programming
 * Ben Hillier – producer, engineer, percussion
 * Gueddam Jamal – cello, violin
 * Abdellah Kekhari – violin
 * Ait Ramdan El Mostafa – kanoun
 * Desyud Mustafa – orchestral arrangement
 * El Farani Mustapha – tere
 * Dalal Mohamed Najib – darbouka
 * Hijaoui Rachid – violin
 * M. Rabet Mohamid Rachid – violin
 * Mike Smith – saxophone
 * Kassimi Jamal Youssef – oud
 * William Orbit – producer (Track 10)

title: Think Tank (Blur album)


text:
User talk:Elianettee

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Tip: you can sign your name with ~

snoyes 20:04, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:Elianettee


text:
Talk:Mikulás Dzurinda

Mikulas Dzurinda needs to be either be a redirect or content merging once copyvio issue sorted out Secretlondon 20:04, Dec 9, 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mikulás Dzurinda


text:
Patrick Leclercq

Patrick André Leclercq (born 2 August 1938) was the Minister of State of Monaco. He was chosen by Rainier III, Prince of Monaco in December 1999, to replace Michel Lévêque, who retired a few days later. He had previously served as France's consul / ambassador to Spain, Egypt (Jordan ), Montreal (Canada), as well as in the Foreign Ministry.

Patrick André Leclercq was born in Lille, attended the prestigious Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris earning his Baccalauréat, graduated from Sciences Po and the École nationale d'administration (ENA).

He was due to formally step down on 1 May 2005 and to be replaced by Jean-Paul Proust, but Proust's inauguration was deferred for a few weeks owing to the death of ruling Prince Rainier.

He was subsequently appointed to the board of the Monegasque company Société des Bains de Mer, and he holds the Order of Saint-Charles.

Foreign honours

 * 🇲🇨 Monaco
 * MCO Order of Saint-Charles - Grand Officer BAR.svg Grand Officer of the Order of Saint-Charles (18 November 2002)

title: Patrick Leclercq


text:
Idrissa Seck

Idrissa Seck (born 9 August 1959 ) is a Senegalese politician who was Prime Minister of Senegal from November 2002 to July 2004. He was a leading member of the Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) and was considered a protégé of President Abdoulaye Wade, but he subsequently went into opposition and was a candidate in the February 2007 presidential election, coming second place with about 15% of the vote.

Biography
He was born in Thiès and studied in Paris as well as at Princeton University. He joined the PDS when he was 15 years old and was Wade's campaign director in the 1988 Senegalese presidential election.

Seck served as Minister of Trade, Crafts, and Industrialization as an opposition member of Abdou Diouf's government. He became deputy leader of the PDS in 1998, replacing Ousmane Ngom. After Wade took office in April 2000, he appointed Seck as Minister of State and Director of the Cabinet. The PDS was restructured after this election; Seck's position of Executive Secretary was eliminated and he instead became Deputy National Secretary. He also became Mayor of Thiès.

Seck was appointed as prime minister by Wade on November 4, 2002, replacing Mame Madior Boye; this was the first time that Wade had appointed a prime minister from the PDS since he took office as president. Seck served as Prime Minister until July 21, 2004, when he was dismissed by Wade.

Seck was detained in July 2005 for alleged corruption in connection with a road project in Thiès, and he was additionally charged with threatening state security. In a decision made on August 4 and announced on August 6, he was expelled from the PDS by its steering committee, along with three of his supporters: Papa Diouf, Awa Gueye Kebe, and Oumar Sarr. He never faced trial; on January 27, 2006, the charge of threatening state security was dismissed, and in early February the corruption charges were also partially dismissed and he was released from prison. On April 4, 2006, he announced his intention to run for president in 2007.

On September 24, 2006, Seck announced the formation of a new party, Rewmi (Wolof for "the country" ). On January 22, 2007, Wade said that Seck had agreed to return to the PDS. Seck confirmed this on February 1, but said that he would still run for president.

According to final results released after the presidential election, which was held on February 25, 2007, Seck took second place with 14.92% of the vote, falling far behind Wade, who won a majority in the first round. He won one of the country's 34 departments, that of Thiès. Following the election, Wade announced that several opposition leaders would face prosecution for corruption, including Seck. Wade said that Seck had stolen 40 billion CFA francs and deposited the money abroad; he also said that Seck would not be his successor. Subsequently, after the final results were released on March 11, Seck congratulated Wade on his victory; he was the only major opposition leader to do so.

Seck's Rewmi party participated in a boycott of the June 2007 parliamentary election, announced in early April. Seck said that Wade had broken off dialogue with the opposition and that it would reconsider the boycott if he engaged in dialogue.

After the election, a rapprochement between Wade and Seck and their respective parties began, and Seck sought to return to the PDS. On August 13, 2007, Wade said that the PDS steering committee would have to decide whether or not to readmit Seck and his supporters into the party. Seck and Wade met for several hours on January 12, 2009, and afterwards Seck announced that the two had resolved their "misunderstandings" and had reconciled.

Following the March 2009 local election in Thiès, Seck was again elected as Mayor of Thiès on April 21, 2009. He received 64 out of 69 votes from the municipal councillors.

Education
Idrissa Seck was born in Thiès on August 9, 1959 to Assane Seck and Fatou Seck, born Diop.

After studying at the Koranic school, Idrissa Seck joined the Randoulène Sud 2 school in Thiès where he completed his primary cycle and then the Collège Saint-Gabriel de Thiès for his secondary cycle, which was completed by the baccalaureate in 1981.

A scholarship holder, he joined the preparatory class at the École des hautes études commerciales de Paris (HEC) of the Marcelin-Berthelot high school in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés in France and then in 1983, Sciences Po, in the "Economy and Finance" section.

In 1989, he benefited from Princeton University's Parvin Fellowship program. In Princeton, he was a student at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Professional career
Idrissa Seck is the founder of the consulting firm GDP INITIATIVES (Global Development for Peace) and ÉPI SA (Epistemon International), an education and health institution.

2024
In April 2023, Idrissa Seck announced his candidacy for the presidential election of 2024 (en). He asserted that the incumbent president, Macky Sall, should uphold the will of people and the constitution by not running a third term. In support of rule of law and a strong democracy, Seck has also stated he supports opposition politician Ousmane Sonko's right to stand as a candidate.

2019
Idrissa Seck ran for a third time in the 2019 presidential election. He led the "Idy 2019" coalition[25]. His rivals included incumbent president Macky Sall, Ousmane Sonko, Madické Niang and Issa Sall. With the exile of Karim Wade and the imprisonment of Khalifa Sall, Seck emerged as the main opposition candidate against the incumbent Macky Sall who won the election in the first round with 58.26% of the vote. Idrissa Seck came in second with 899,556 votes, or 20.51%. Also winning the departments of Thiès and Mbacké.

2012
The 2012 presidential election took place in a highly tense political context. Idrissa Seck, denounced then President Wade's third term candidacy and ran under the banner of his political party Rewmi. At the end of the first round, Idrissa Seck obtained only 7% of the vote. The second round pitted incumbent President Abdoulaye Wade against Macky Sall. Intent on defending Senegal against then President Wade from running a third term, Idrissa Seck, presented a united front with all M23 candidates, to support Macky Sall's candidacy. Sall was elected with 65.8% of the vote, marking the second democratic changeover in the fledgling democratic nation of Senegal.

2007
On April 4, 2006, Seck announced his candidacy in the 2007 presidential election, against President Wade. He is the leader of the Rewmi party.

Seck finished second with 14.86% of the vote, in the first round, behind Abdoulaye Wade (55.90%).

2020: President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council
On November 1, 2020, Idrissa Seck was appointed President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council by President Macky Sall. His appointment marked a warming of relations with President Sall. He explained that he was "responding positively to the President's call" for a "union" to face up to the "challenges of the moment", and mentioned the economic and social crises arising from Covid 19, as well as insecurity in the West African sub-region. Two members of Idrissa Seck's Rewmi party, joined the government as Minister of the Digital Economy and Telecommunications and Minister of Livestock and Animal Production respectively. Idrissa Seck resigned as President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council on April 24, 2023, after declaring himself a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

2020: COVID-19 response
On March 24, 2020, Macky Sall launched a wide-ranging consultation of all the country's political forces with a view to achieving national unity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Idrissa Seck interested in maintaining the health and well-being of the people of Senegal fully endorsed Sall's initiative to create an emergency plan called Force Covid-19.

2013-2019: Leader of Rewmi
Following the 2012 elections, Idrissa Seck's Rewmi party, supported Macky Sall in the second round of elections and joined the presidential ranks as part of the Benno Bokk Yakaar (BBY) coalition. In 2013, following numerous disagreements with Macky Sall, Rewmi splintered and left the presidential movement.

2002: Prime Minister of the Republic of Senegal
His tenure as Prime Minister is best summed up by the strong economic growth experienced, with record GDP growth rates of 6.68% and 5.87% in 2003 and 2004.

2000: Minister of State, Chief of Staff of the President of the Republic
In 2000, Idrissa Seck was, as in 1988, Director of Abdoulaye Wade’s presidential campaign. Wade won the election and Seck was appointed Minister of State, Chief of Staff of the President of the Republic. He held this position until November 3, 2002 when he was appointed Prime Minister.

1995: Minister of Trade, Crafts and Industrialization
He entered the Thiam 3 Government of National Unity on behalf of the PDS as Minister of Trade, Crafts and Industrialization.

1988: Abdoulaye Wade presidential campaign
In 1988, then 29 years old, Idrissa Seck was appointed Campaign Director to Abdoulaye Wade, the Presidential Candidate of the Senegalese Democratic Party[8].

Political imprisonment
On July 23, 2005, Idrissa Seck, was placed in police custody and charged with « undermining state security » for unmentioned acts and incarcerated in the central prison of Dakar. Prime Minister Macky Sall made public the report of the State General Inspectorate which alleged Idrissa Seck, exceeded the budget of a construction site in Thiès and awarded a contract without having the right to do so.

On July 31, 2005, the parliamentary majority voted to indict Seck, as well as that of the Minister of Housing, Salif Bâ, before the High Court of Justice for « serious irregularities in the process of concluding public contracts ». The indictment obtained 69 votes out of 120 with 35 deputies voting against. The result of the vote was contested by some who maintained that the resolution did not obtain the number of votes necessary for its adoption (it would have taken at least 72 votes, i.e. the three-fifths required by Article 101 of the Constitution instead of the 69 obtained).

In 2006, the indictment against Idrissa Seck was reversed and after 199 days in prison, he was discreetly released on February 7.

title: Idrissa Seck