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Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, ; AK PARTİ), abbreviated officially as AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democratic. It has been the ruling party of Turkey since 2002. Third-party sources often refer to the party as national conservative, social conservative, right-wing populist and as espousing neo-Ottomanism. The party is generally regarded as being right-wing on the political spectrum, although some sources have described it as far-right since 2011. It is one of the two major parties of contemporary Turkey along with the Republican People's Party (CHP).

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been chairman of the AK Party since the 2017 Party Congress. The AK Party is the largest party in the Grand National Assembly, the Turkish national legislature, with 263 out of 600 seats, having won 35.6% of votes in the 2023 Turkish parliamentary election. It forms the People's Alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The current parliamentary leader of the AK Party is.

Founded in 2001 by members of a number of parties such as FP, ANAP and DYP, the party has a strong base of support among people from the conservative tradition of Turkey, though the party strongly denies it is Islamist. The party positioned itself as pro-liberal market economy, supporting Turkish membership in the European Union. Orange is the party's main colour. Other colours include white for the logo, blue for the flag, and orange-white-blue-red for the corporate design.

The AK Party is the only party in Turkey with a significant presence in all provinces of Turkey. Since the beginning of Turkey's multiparty democracy in 1946, AK Party is the only party to win seven consecutive parliamentary elections. The AK Party has headed the national government since 2002 under Abdullah Gül (2002–2003), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2003–2014), Ahmet Davutoğlu (2014–2016), Binali Yıldırım (2016–2018) and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2018–present). The AK Party's rule has been marked with increasing authoritarianism, expansionism, censorship and banning of other political parties and dissent.

The party was an observer in the European People's Party between 2005 and 2013. After not being granted full membership in the EPP, the party became a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE) from 2013 to 2018.

AK Party has dominated Turkish politics since 2002. It is the sixth largest political party in the world by membership and the biggest in the world outside India, China and the U.S.

Formation
The AK Party was established by a wide range of politicians of various political parties and a number of new politicians in 2001. The core of the party was formed from the reformist faction of the Islamist Virtue Party, including people such as Abdullah Gül and Bülent Arınç, while a second founding group consisted of members of the social conservative Motherland Party who had been close to Turgut Özal, such as Cemil Çiçek and Abdülkadir Aksu. Historically the party was described as liberal conservative, conservative liberal, economically liberal, pro-European,  and center-right.

Some members of the True Path Party, such as Hüseyin Çelik and Köksal Toptan, joined the AK Party. Some members, such as Kürşad Tüzmen or Ertuğrul Günay, had nationalist or center-left backgrounds respectively, while representatives of the nascent, more clearly anti-capitalist 'Muslim left' current were largely excluded. In addition, a large number of people joined a political party for the first time, such as Ali Babacan, Nimet Baş, Egemen Bağış and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.

Closure cases
Controversies over whether the party remains committed to secular principles enshrined in the Turkish constitution have dominated Turkish politics since 2002. Turkey's constitution established the country as a secular state and prohibits any political parties that promote Islamism or shariah law.

Since coming to power, the party has brought about tighter regulations on abortion and higher taxes on alcohol consumption, leading to allegations that it is covertly undermining Turkish secularism. Some activists, commentators, opponents and government officials have accused the party of Islamism. The Justice and Development Party has faced two "closure cases" (attempts to officially ban the party, usually for Islamist practices) in 2002 and 2008.

Just 10 days before the national elections of 2002, Turkey's chief prosecutor, Sabih Kanadoğlu, asked the Turkish constitutional court to close the Justice and Development Party, which was leading in the polls at that time. The chief prosecutor charged the Justice and Development Party with abusing the law and justice. He based his case on the fact that the party's leader had been banned from political life for reading an Islamist poem, and thus the party had no standing in elections. The European Commission had previously criticized Turkey for banning the party's leader from participating in elections.

The party again faced a closure trial in 2008 brought about by the lifting of a long-standing university ban on headscarves. At an international press conference in Spain, Erdoğan answered a question of a journalist by saying, "What if the headscarf is a symbol? Even if it were a political symbol, does that give [one the] right to ban it? Could you bring prohibitions to symbols?" These statements led to a joint proposal of the Justice and Development Party and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party for changing the constitution and the law to lift a ban on women wearing headscarves at state universities.

Soon afterwards, Turkey's chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, asked the Constitutional Court of Turkey to close down the party on charges of violating the separation of religion and state in Turkey. The closure request failed by only one vote, as only six of the 11 judges ruled in favor, with seven required; however, 10 out of 11 judges agreed that the Justice and Development Party had become "a center for anti-secular activities", leading to a loss of 50% of the state funding for the party.

Elections
The party has won pluralities in the seven most recent legislative elections, those of 2002, 2007, 2011, June 2015, November 2015, 2018 and 2023. The party held a majority of seats for 13 years, but lost it in June 2015, only to regain it in the snap election of November 2015 but then lose it again in 2018. Its past electoral success has been mirrored in the three local elections held since the party's establishment, coming first in 2004, 2009 and 2014 respectively. However, the party lost most of Turkey's biggest cities including Istanbul and Ankara in 2019 local elections, which has been attributed to the Turkish economic crisis, accusations of authoritarianism, as well as alleged government inaction on the Syrian refugee crisis.

2002 general elections
The AK Party won a sweeping victory in the 2002 elections, which saw every party previously represented in the Grand National Assembly ejected from the chamber. In the process, it won a two-thirds majority of seats, becoming the first Turkish party in 11 years to win an outright majority. Erdoğan, as the leader of the biggest party in parliament, would have been normally given the task to form a cabinet.

However, according to the Turkish Constitution Article 109 the Prime Ministers had to be also a representative of the Turkish Parliament. Erdoğan, who was banned from holding any political office after a 1994 incident in which he read a poem deemed pro-Islamist by judges, was therefore not. As a result, Gül became prime minister.

It survived the crisis over the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite a massive back bench rebellion where over a hundred AK Party MPs joined those of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) in parliament to prevent the government from allowing the United States to launch a Northern offensive in Iraq from Turkish territory. Later, Erdoğan's ban was lifted with the help of the CHP and Erdoğan became prime minister by being elected to the parliament after a by-election in Siirt.

The AK Party has undertaken structural reforms, and during its rule Turkey has seen rapid growth and an end to its three decade long period of high inflation rates. Inflation had fallen to 8.8% by 2004.

Influential business publications such as The Economist consider the AK Party's government the most successful in Turkey in decades.

2004 local elections
In the local elections of 2004, the AK Party won 42% of the votes, making inroads against the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) on the South and West Coasts, and against the Social Democratic People's Party, which is supported by some Kurds in the South-East of Turkey.

In January 2005, the AK Party was admitted as an observer member in the European People's Party (EPP). However, it left the EPP to join the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (AECR) in 2013.

2007 elections

On 14 April 2007, an estimated 300,000 people marched in Ankara to protest the possible candidacy of Erdoğan in the 2007 presidential election, afraid that if elected as president, he would alter the secular nature of the Turkish state. Erdoğan announced on 24 April 2007 that the party had decided to nominate Abdullah Gül as the AK Party candidate in the presidential election. The protests continued over the next several weeks, with over one million reported at an 29 April rally in Istanbul, tens of thousands reported at separate protests on 4 May in Manisa and Çanakkale, and one million in İzmir on 13 May.

Early parliamentary elections were called after the failure of the parties in parliament to agree on the next Turkish president. The opposition parties boycotted the parliamentary vote and deadlocked the election process. At the same time, Erdoğan claimed the failure to elect a president was a failure of the Turkish political system and proposed to modify the constitution.

The AK Party achieved a significant victory in the rescheduled 22 July 2007 elections with 46.6% of the vote, translating into control of 341 of the 550 available parliamentary seats. Although the AK Party received significantly more votes in 2007 than in 2002, the number of parliamentary seats they controlled decreased due to the rules of the Turkish electoral system. However, they retained a comfortable ruling majority.

Nationally, the elections of 2007 saw a major advance for the AK Party, with the party outpolling the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party in traditional Kurdish strongholds such as Van and Mardin, as well as outpolling the secular-left CHP in traditionally secular areas such as Antalya and Artvin. Overall, the AK Party secured a plurality of votes in 68 of Turkey's 81 provinces, with its strongest vote of 71% coming from Bingöl. Its weakest vote, a mere 12%, came from Tunceli, the only Turkish province where the Alevi form a majority. Abdullah Gül was elected as the President in late August with 339 votes in the third round – the first at which a simple majority is required – after deadlock in the first two rounds, in which a two-thirds majority was needed.

2007 constitutional referendum
After the opposition parties deadlocked the 2007 presidential election by boycotting the parliament, the ruling AK Party proposed a constitutional reform package. The reform package was first vetoed by President Sezer. Then he applied to the Turkish constitutional court about the reform package, because the president is unable to veto amendments for the second time. The court did not find any problems in the package and 69% of the voters supported the constitutional changes.

The reforms consisted of:
 * electing the president by popular vote instead of by parliament;
 * reducing the presidential term from seven years to five;
 * allowing the president to stand for re-election for a second term;
 * holding general elections every four years instead of five;
 * reducing the quorum of lawmakers needed for parliamentary decisions from 367 to 184.

2009 local elections
The Turkish local elections of 2009 took place during the financial crisis of 2007–2010. After the success of the AK Party in the 2007 general elections, the party saw a decline in the local elections of 2009. In these elections the AK Party received 39% of the vote, 3% less than in the local elections of 2004. Still, the AK Party remained the dominating party in Turkey. The second party CHP received 23% of the vote and the third party MHP received 16% of the vote. The AK Party won in Turkey's largest cities: Ankara and Istanbul.

2010 constitutional referendum
Reforming the Constitution was one of the main pledges of the AK Party during the 2007 election campaign. The main opposition party CHP was not interested in altering the Constitution on a big scale, making it impossible to form a Constitutional Commission (Anayasa Uzlaşma Komisyonu). The amendments lacked the two-thirds majority needed to instantly become law, but secured 336 votes in the 550 seat parliament – enough to put the proposals to a referendum.

The reform package included a number of issues: such as the right of individuals to appeal to the highest court, the creation of the ombudsman's office, the possibility to negotiate a nationwide labour contract, positive exceptions for female citizens, the ability of civilian courts to convict members of the military, the right of civil servants to go on strike, a privacy law, and the structure of the Constitutional Court. The referendum was agreed by a majority of 58%.

2014 elections
In the presidential election of 2014, the AK Party's long time leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was elected president. In the party's first extraordinary congress, former foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was unanimously elected unopposed as party leader and took over as Prime Minister on 28 August 2014. Davutoğlu stepped down as Prime Minister on 4 May 2016 following policy disagreements with President Erdoğan. Presidential aide Cemil Ertem said to Turkish TV that the country and its economy would stabilize further "when a prime minister more closely aligned with President Erdoğan takes office".

June 2015 general election
In the general election held on 7 June, the AK Party gained 40.87% of the vote and 258 seats in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi, TBMM). Though it still remains the biggest party in Turkey, the AK Party lost its status as the majority party and the power to form a single-party government. Until then it had held this majority without interruption for 13 years since it had come to power in 2002. In this election, the AK Party was pushing to gain 330 seats in the Grand National Assembly so that it could put a series of constitutional changes to a referendum, one of them was to switch Turkey from the current parliamentary government to an American-style executive presidency government.

This pursuit met with a series of oppositions and criticism from the opposition parties and their supporters, fearing the measure would give more unchecked power to the current President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has drawn fierce criticisms both from home and abroad for his active role in the election, abandoning the traditional presidential role of maintaining a more neutral and impartial position in elections by his predecessors in the office. The result of the Kurdish issues-centered Peoples' Democratic Party, HDP, breaking through the 10% threshold to achieve 13.12% out of the total votes cast and gaining 80 seats in the Grand National Assembly in the election, which caused the AK Party to lose its parliamentary majority.

2019 local elections
In the 2019 local elections, the ruling party AK Party lost control of Istanbul and Ankara for the first time in 15 years, as well as 5 of Turkey's 6 largest cities. The loss has been widely attributed to AK Party's mismanagement of the Turkish economic crisis, rising authoritarianism as well as alleged government inaction on the Syrian refugee crisis. Soon after the elections, the Turkish government ordered a re-election in Istanbul. The decision led to a downfall on AK Party's popularity and it lost the elections again in June with an even greater margin.

The result was seen as a huge blow to Erdoğan, who had once said that if his party 'lost Istanbul, we would lose Turkey.' The opposition's landslide was characterized as the 'beginning of the end' for Erdoğan, with international commentators calling the re-run a huge government miscalculation that can lead to a potential İmamoğlu candidacy in the next scheduled presidential election. It is suspected that the scale of the government's defeat could provoke a cabinet reshuffle and early general elections, currently scheduled for June 2023.

Ideology and policies
Although the party is described as an Islamist party in some media, party officials reject those claims. According to former minister Hüseyin Çelik, "In the Western press, when the AK Party administration – the ruling party of the Turkish Republic – is being named, most of the time 'Islamic,' 'Islamist,' 'mildly Islamist,' 'Islamic-oriented,' 'Islamic-based' or 'with an Islamic agenda,' and similar language is being used. These characterizations do not reflect the truth, and they sadden us." Çelik added, "The AK Party is a conservative democratic party. The AK Party's conservatism is limited to moral and social issues." Also in a separate speech made in 2005, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stated, "We are not an Islamic party, and we also refuse labels such as Muslim-democrat." Erdogan went on to say that the AK Party's agenda is limited to "conservative democracy".

On the other hand, according to at least one observer (Mustafa Akyol), under the AK Party government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, starting in 2007, "hundreds of secularist officers and their civilian allies" were jailed, and by 2012 the "old secularist guard" in positions of authority was replaced by members/supporters of the AK Party and the Islamic Gülen movement. On 25 April 2016, the Turkish Parliament Speaker İsmail Kahraman told a conference of Islamic scholars and writers in Istanbul that "secularism would not have a place in a new constitution”, as Turkey is “a Muslim country and so we should have a religious constitution". (One of the duties of Parliament Speaker is to pen a new draft constitution for Turkey). As of 2023, some sources define the party as being "rooted in political Islam" and an "Islamist-rooted party".

In recent years, the ideology of the party has shifted more towards Turkish nationalism, causing liberals such as Ali Babacan and some conservatives such as Ahmet Davutoğlu and Abdullah Gül to leave the party. Several writers have also labelled the party as being right-wing populist since 2007.

The party's foreign policy has also been widely described as Neo-Ottomanist, an ideology that promotes renewed Turkish political engagement in the former territories of its predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire. However, the party's leadership has also rejected this label. The party's relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood has drawn allegations of Islamism.

The AK Party favors a strong centralized leadership, having long advocated for a presidential system of government and significantly reduced the number of elected local government positions in 2013.

The party was an observer in the centre-right European People's Party between 2005 and 2013 and a member of the Eurosceptic Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE) from 2013 to 2018.

European affiliation
In 2005, the party was granted observer membership in the European People's Party (EPP).

In November 2013, the party left the EPP to join the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (now European Conservatives and Reformists Party) instead. This move was attributed to the AK Party's disappointment to not to be granted full membership in the EPP, while it was admitted as a full member of the AECR. It drew criticism in both national and European discourses, as the driving force of Turkey's aspirations to become a member of the European Union decided to join a largely eurosceptic alliance, abandoning the more influential pro-European EPP, feeding suspicions that AK Party wants to join a watered down, not a closely integrated EU. The AK Party withdrew from AECR in 2018.

Legislation and positions
From 2002 to 2011 the party passed series of reforms to increase accessibility to healthcare and housing, distribute food subsidies, increased funding for students, improved infrastructure in poorer districts, and improved rights for religious and ethnic minorities. AK Party is also widely accredited for overcoming the 2001 economic crisis in Turkey by following International Monetary Fund guidelines, as well as successfully weathering the 2008 financial crisis. From 2002 to 2011 the Turkish economy grew on average by 7.5 percent annually, thanks to lower inflation and interest rates. The government under AK Party also backed extensive privatization programs. In fact, 88% of the privatizations in Turkey were carried out under AK Party rule. The average income in Turkey rose from $2,800 U.S. in 2001 to around $10,000 U.S. in 2011, higher than income in some of the new EU member states. Other reforms included increasing civilian representation over military in areas of national security, education and media, and grant broadcasting and increased cultural rights to Kurds. On Cyprus, AK Party supported unification of Cyprus, something deeply opposed by the Turkish military. Other AK Party reforms included lifting bans on religious and conservative dress, such as headscarves, in universities and public institutions. AK Party also ended discrimination against students from religious high schools, who previously had to meet additional criteria in areas of education and upon entry to universities. AK Party is also accredited for bringing the Turkish military under civilian rule, a paradigm shift for a country that had experienced constant military meddling for almost a century.

More recently, nationwide protests broke out against the alleged authoritarianism of the AK Party in 2013, with the party's perceived heavy-handed response receiving western condemnation and stalling the party's once championed EU accession negotiations. In addition to its alleged attempts to promote Islamism, the party is accused by some of restricting some civil liberties and internet use in Turkey, having temporarily blocked access to Twitter and YouTube in March 2014. Especially after the government corruption scandal involving several AKP ministers in 2013, the party has been increasingly accused of crony capitalism. The AK Party favors a strong centralized leadership, having long advocated for a presidential system of government and significantly reduced the number of elected local government positions in 2013.

Criticism
Critics have accused the AK Party of having a 'hidden agenda' despite their public endorsement of secularism and the party maintains informal relations and support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Both the party's domestic and foreign policy has been perceived to be Pan-Islamist or Neo-Ottoman, advocating a revival of Ottoman culture often at the expense of secular republican principles, while increasing regional presence in former Ottoman territories.

The AK Party has been criticized for supporting a wide-scale purge of thousands of academics after the failed coup attempt in 2016. Primary, lower secondary and secondary school students were forced to spend the first day of school after the failed coup d'état watching videos about the ‘triumph of democracy’ over the plotters, and listening to speeches equating the civilian counter-coup that aborted the takeover with historic Ottoman victories going back 1000 years. Campaigns have been organised to release higher education personnel and to drop charges against them for peaceful exercise of academic freedom.

Imprisonment of political activists continues, while the chair of Amnesty Turkey has been jailed for standing up to the AK Party on trumped up "terrorism charges". These charges have drawn condemnation from many western countries, including from the US State Department, the EU, as well as from international and domestic human rights organisations.

The party has also been criticized by Turkish and international LGBT rights groups including KAOS GL for homophobic statements made by some AK Party politicians and for what they argue has become a repressive climate for LGBT rights in Turkey under the AK Party. In 2002 before his election, Erdoğan said that "homosexuals must be legally protected within the framework of their rights and freedoms." In 2011, AK Party Minister for Families and Social Policy Fatma Şahin said the AK Party government would be willing to work with LGBT rights groups to advance laws protecting Turkey's gay community. However, commentators have argued the AK Party has taken an increasingly hardline stance on LGBT issues since coming to power, which has been characterized variously as part of a general trend towards authoritarianism under the AK Party or as motivated by Islamic and militant nationalist sentiments within the party. In 2012, the AK Party voted against a proposal by the BDP to include legalization of same-sex marriage in the redrafted Turkish constitution and in 2013 blocked a research motion in the parliament of Turkey on having a parliamentary debate regarding LGBT rights. During the latter debate, AK Party MP Türkan Dağoğlu stated "Homosexuality is an abnormality. Same-sex marriages may not be allowed. It would cause social deterioration"; this prompted criticism from some opposition politicians. In 2017, Erdogan stated that the principle of LGBT rights was "against the values of our nation" and in 2020 endorsed controversial anti-gay statements made by Muslim scholar Ali Erbaş which had received condemnation from some Turkish lawyers and human rights groups. In 2021, AK Party vice chairman and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu declared LGBT people to be "perverts." Turkish constitutional law experts Sule Ozsoy Boyunsuz and Serkan Koybasi have described public statements on gay people made by AK Party politicians as both constituting as hate speech and contradicting the principle of Turkey's policy of secularism. Political scientist Mine Eder has argued that Turkey has experienced a backslide on acceptance and government anti-discrimination support for homosexuals under Erdogan.

2013 corruption scandal
The 2013 corruption scandal was a criminal investigation that involved several key people in the Turkish government. All of the 52 people detained on 17 December were connected in various ways with the ruling Justice and Development Party. Prosecutors accused 14 people – including Suleyman Aslan, the director of state-owned Halkbank, Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, and several family members of cabinet ministers –  of bribery, corruption, fraud, money laundering and gold smuggling.

At the heart of the scandal was an alleged "gas for gold" scheme with Iran involving Aslan, who had US$4.5 million in cash stored in shoeboxes in his home, and Zarrab, who was involved in about US$9.6 billion of gold trading in 2012. Both men were arrested. The scheme started after Turkish government officials found a loophole in the U.S. sanctions against Iran that allowed them to access Iranian oil and gas. The Turks exported some US$13 billion of gold to Iran directly, or through the UAE, between March 2012 and July 2013. In return, the Turks received Iranian natural gas and oil. The transactions were carried out through the Turkish state-owned bank, Halkbank. In January 2013, the Obama administration decided to close this loophole but instead of immediately charging Halkbank, the U.S. government allowed its gold trading activities to continue until July 2013, because Turkey was an important ally regarding the American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War, and the U.S. had been working on a nuclear deal with Iran.

Then-Prime Minister Erdogan (now President of Turkey) was on a tour of Pakistan when the scandal broke, which analysts believe changed the response of the AK Party, or influenced those with the tapes to leak them at a time when Erdoğan was visiting an ally (Pakistan).

title: Justice and Development Party (Turkey)


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Justice and Development Party

Justice and Development Party may refer to several political parties, the best-known ones being:

 * Justice and Development Party (Morocco)
 * Justice and Development Party (Turkey)

Justice and Development Party may also refer to:

 * Justice and Development Party (Tunisia)
 * Movement for Justice and Development (Slovenia)
 * Justice and Development Party (Tanzania)
 * Justice and Development Party (Libya)
 * Movement for Justice and Development in Syria
 * Party for Justice and Development (Burundi)
 * For Justice and Development (Somalia)
 * Justice and Development Front (Algeria)
 * Law and Justice Party (Poland)

title: Justice and Development Party


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List of South Carolina state prisons

This is a list of state prisons in South Carolina. It does not include federal prisons or county jails located in the state of South Carolina.

 * Allendale Correctional Institution
 * Broad River Correctional Institution
 * Broad River Secure Facility
 * Camille Griffin Graham Correctional Institution
 * Evans Correctional Institution
 * Goodman Correctional Institution (capacity 350)
 * Kershaw Correctional Institution
 * Kirkland Correctional Institution
 * Leath Correctional Institution
 * Lee Correctional Institution
 * Lieber Correctional Institution
 * Livesay Correctional Institution (capacity 530)
 * MacDougall Correctional Institution (capacity 672)
 * Manning Correctional Institution (capacity 919)
 * McCormick Correctional Institution
 * Palmer Pre-Release Center (capacity 292)
 * Perry Correctional Institution (capacity 972)
 * Ridgeland Correctional Institution
 * Trenton Correctional Institution (capacity 719)
 * Turbeville Correctional Institution
 * Tyger River Correctional Institution
 * Walden Correctional Institution (capacity 694)
 * Wateree River Correctional Institution (capacity 884)

Closed

 * Campbell Pre-Release Center (closed 2014)
 * Catawba Pre-Release Center (closed 2017)
 * Coastal Pre-Release Center (closed 2015)
 * Lower Savannah Pre-Release Center (closed 2016)
 * South Carolina Penitentiary (demolished)
 * Stevenson Correctional Institution (merged with Walden 2010)
 * Watkins Pre-Release Center (closed 2012)

title: List of South Carolina state prisons


text:
Popular Unity Party

Popular Unity Party may refer to:

 * Popular Unity (Greece)
 * People's Unity Party – Socialist Party, Iceland
 * Popular Unity Party (Iraq)
 * Popular Unity Party (Portugal)
 * Popular Unity Party (Tunisia)

title: Popular Unity Party


text:
Lair

Lair may refer to:

 * Lair (novel), a 1979 novel by James Herbert
 * Lair (video game), a 2007 video game
 * The Lair, a 2007–2008 American gay-themed vampire television series
 * The Lair (2022 film), a 2022 action horror film
 * The Lair (Dreamworld), an exotic animal exhibit at the Dreamworld theme park on the Gold Coast, Australia

People

 * James William Lair (1924–2014), American intelligence officer
 * Mark Lair (born 1947), American bridge player
 * Mike Lair (1946–2017), American politician
 * Patrice Lair (born 1961), French football coach

Characters

 * Irma Lair, a fictional character in the comic book W.I.T.C.H. and animated series of the same name

United States

 * Lair, Kentucky, an unincorporated community

title: Lair


text:
User talk:Davidl9999

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

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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 ~

Dori | Talk 21:35, Dec 15, 2003 (UTC)

10 and 12 meters
I reverted your change to Shortwave bands. 10 and 12 meters are amateur radio bands, not broadcasting bands. I did change the redirect for 12 meters (as well as 17 meters and 30 meters) to point to a more specific article, WARC bands. Caerwine Caer’s whines 16:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Davidl9999


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User talk:Mdriscoll

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

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Fenny Stratford

Fenny Stratford is a constituent town of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England and in the civil parish of Bletchley and Fenny Stratford. Originally an independent town, it was included in the Milton Keynes "designated area" in 1967. From 1895 it formed an urban district with Bletchley, until 1974 when it became part of the (then) District of Milton Keynes. It is located at the southern edge of the city, just east of Bletchley and west of the A5.

Today
A mixture of old buildings and new developments, Fenny Stratford is a small town on the edge of Milton Keynes. Its market may be long gone but it hosts various shops, restaurants, pubs, newsagents, and hotels centered mainly around Aylesbury Street. There is an LGBT friendly night club on Watling Street. Fenny Stratford railway station, one of the seven railway stations that serve the Milton Keynes urban area, is served by the (Bletchley - Bedford) Marston Vale Line.

History
The town name is an Old English language word that means 'marshy ford on a Roman road'. The Roman road in this case is the Watling Street. There are traces of the Romano-British settlement Magiovinium (or Magiovintum) at Dropshot Farm, on the edge of the present day occupation. (Possibly the oldest known gold coin in Britain was found here in 1849, a gold stater of the mid-second century BCE. Although known as the "Bletchley" hoards, two coin hoards were also found at or near the site of Magiovinium, consisting of silver denarii, in 1967 and 1987. ) The town was recorded in manorial rolls in 1252 as Fenni Stratford. King JamesI awarded a market charter in 1608, making it formally a town.

Being an ancient market town, Fenny Stratford was the location of a weekly market for many years until 1665 when the town was badly hit by the bubonic plague. As a result, the main London-Chester route that ran through the town on Watling Street was diverted away from it, and the market ceased to exist. The market was never reinstated: the town was very much in ruins by the early eighteenth century, and had by this time been joined with both Bletchley and Simpson, being commonly considered a hamlet of the former.

Fenny Stratford was formerly a chapelry, in 1866 Fenny Stratford became a separate civil parish, on 1 April 1934 the parish was abolished and merged with Bletchley. In 1931 the parish had a population of 4602.

Parish church
On St Martin's Day 1724, the first stone was laid of the new parish church of Fenny Stratford, marking a fresh start in the town's history. Browne Willis, a historian of the day, had raised the funds for its construction. The Church was built on the site of the old chantry chapel of St. Margaret and St. Catherine at Fenny Stratford. He erected the church as a memorial to his grandfather Thomas Willis, a famous physician, who lived in St. Martin's Lane in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, and who died on St. Martin's day, 11 November 1675. To perpetuate his own memory, Browne Willis arranged for a sermon to be preached at St. Martin's Church on each St. Martin's Day, for which a fee was payable. During his lifetime, he also celebrated the occasion with a dinner attended by local clergy and gentry, an event which has continued to the present day.

The Fenny Poppers
The Fenny Poppers are six small ceremonial cannon which date from this time and are still fired ceremonially (with blank charges) today.

There is no record of their first use. In 1740, Browne Willis bought a house in Aylesbury Street, Fenny Stratford and the rent from this was used to pay for the sermon and gunpowder. Following his death in 1760, the traditions were carried on and later documented.

All six Poppers were re-cast by the Eagle Foundry, Northampton in 1859, after one of them burst. They are still in use today, and were recently examined and x-rayed to ensure there are no cracks. During their long history, many sites have been used for this battery. These include the Canal Wharf, land behind the Church, St, Martin's Hall, the Churchyard and now the Leon Recreation Ground, which was once part of the lands belonging to the Chantry.

The Poppers each weigh about 19 pounds (8.5 kg). The bore, 6" by 1¾" (152 mm x 44 mm) will take one ounce (28g) of gunpowder, which is plugged with well-rammed newspaper. They are fired three times on St. Martin's Day (11 November): noon, 2pm and 4pm. There is of course no connection with Remembrance Day (also 11 November). In 1901 they were fired to mark the death of Queen Victoria; the 81 salvoes were heard as far away as Olney.

On 1 January 2000, at 11am the Poppers were fired to mark the beginning of the second millennium.

At 2pm on 4 August 2000, a salute of six Poppers was fired to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Queen Mother.

At 2pm on 5 June 2012 a salute was fired to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

Invention of the Diesel Engine in Fenny Stratford
The world's first successful heavy oil engines were invented and built by Herbert Akroyd Stuart in Fenny Stratford. There is a plaque commemorating this at the westerly end of Denmark Street in Fenny Stratford opposite The Foundry public house – though the location of Akroyd Stuart's workshop is usually given as "Bletchley", which is a larger town adjoining Fenny Stratford. These engines were precursors to what is now known as the Diesel engine: Rudolf Diesel based his designs (1892) on Akroyd Stuart's proven inventions (1890) of direct (airless) fuel injection and compression ignition. An experimental model was tried out at the offices of the Fenny Stratford Times Newspaper, and the first production models were installed at the nearby Great Brickhill Waterworks where they were in operation from 1892 to 1923. (It has been argued that engines of this type might have become known as "Akroyds", had Diesel not been a rather paranoid person not prone to giving other inventors credit. )

Waterways

The Grand Union Canal runs through the southern outskirts of the town and Fenny Lock is located in Simpson Road area to the east of Watling Street. It is notable both for the manually operated swing bridge which crosses the lock and for the very small rise in the lock (around 30 cm, the shallowest on the Grand Union Canal network). This was deemed necessary by the canal engineers because the next section northwards of the canal could not be made adequately watertight at reasonable cost without it. The level persists from this lock for eleven miles, through what is now Milton Keynes, through to the next lock at Cosgrove. A little further south of the canal bridge, Watling Street crosses the river Ouzel (a tributary of the river Great Ouse: it was the marshy ford across this river that gave the town its name.

Fenny Stratford is bordered by North Street, Bletchley Leisure Centre, Knowles School/Leon Recreational Ground and the Fenny Allotments from the west, the Rail line, Watling street and Denbigh East from the north, Water Eaton Brook by the south and the River Ouzel and Grand Union Canal from the east.

Manor Fields
Manor Fields sports ground to the south of the town (and just across the Grand Union Canal from Bletchley's 'Trees' estate) is home to Milton Keynes Irish FC, Bletchley RUFC, the Irish Centre and other activities. The Roman town lay either side of Watling Street and thus Manor Fields lies on part of it.

title: Fenny Stratford


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Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 1870 – 16 July 1953) was a French-English writer and historian of the early 20th century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic faith had a strong effect on his works.

Belloc became a naturalised British subject in 1902 while retaining his French citizenship. While attending Oxford University, he served as President of the Oxford Union. From 1906 to 1910, he served as one of the few openly Catholic members of the British Parliament.

Belloc was a noted disputant, with a number of long-running feuds. He was also a close friend and collaborator of G. K. Chesterton. George Bernard Shaw, a friend and frequent debate opponent of both Belloc and Chesterton, dubbed the pair the "Chesterbelloc".

Belloc's writings encompassed religious poetry and comic verse for children. His widely sold Cautionary Tales for Children included "Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion" and "Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death". He wrote historical biographies and numerous travel works, including The Path to Rome (1902).

Family
Belloc was born in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France to a French father, Louis Belloc (1830–1872) and an English mother. His sister Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes also became a writer.

Belloc's mother Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829–1925) was a writer, activist and an advocate for women's equality, a co-founder of the English Woman's Journal and the Langham Place Group. As an adult, Belloc campaigned against women's suffrage as a member of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League.

Belloc's maternal grandfather was Joseph Parkes (1796–1865). Belloc's grandmother, Elizabeth Rayner Priestley (1797–1877), was born in the United States, a granddaughter of Joseph Priestley.

In 1867, Bessie Rayner Parkes married attorney Louis Belloc, son of Jean-Hilaire Belloc. In 1872, five years after they wed, Louis died but not before being wiped out financially in a stock market crash. The young widow then brought her children from France back to England.

Early life
Belloc grew up in England; his boyhood was spent in Slindon, Sussex. He wrote about his home in poems such as "West Sussex Drinking Song", "The South Country", and "Ha'nacker Mill"; after graduating from John Henry Newman's Oratory School in Edgbaston, Birmingham.

Courtship, marriage, and premature death of his wife
In September 1889, Belloc's sister Marie made the accidental acquaintance of a Catholic widow, Mrs. Ellen Hogan, who was travelling from California on a European tour with two of her children, her daughters Elizabeth and Elodie. The travellers were both devoutly Catholic and keenly interested in literature, and Marie arranged a visit with her mother, Bessie, who in turn arranged an audience with Henry Cardinal Manning. These acts of generosity cemented a strong friendship, further deepened when Marie and Bessie accompanied the Hogans on their tour of France, visiting Paris with them. Hilaire was absent touring the French provinces as a correspondent for The Pall Mall Gazette, but when the Hogans stopped back in London on their return from another European trip the following year, Belloc met Elodie for the first time, and was smitten.

Shortly after this meeting, Ellen Hogan was called back to California prematurely to take care of another of her children who was stricken with illness. She left her two daughters, who wished to remain in London, under the care of the Belloc family, and, Bessie asked her own son to squire the Hogan daughters around London. Belloc's interest in Elodie grew more fervid by the day. This was the beginning of a long, intercontinental, and star-crossed courtship, made all the more difficult by the opposition of Elodie's mother, who wished Elodie to enter the convent, and Hilaire's mother, who thought her son was too young to marry. Belloc pursued Elodie with letters, and, after her return to the United States, in 1891, he pursued her in person.

The impoverished Belloc, still only twenty years old, sold nearly everything he had to purchase a steamship ticket to New York, ostensibly to visit relatives in Philadelphia. Belloc's true reason for the trek to America became apparent when, after spending a few days in Philadelphia, he began to make his way across the American continent. Part of his journey was by train, but when the money ran out, Belloc just walked. An athletic man who hiked extensively in Britain and Europe, Belloc made his way on foot for a significant part of the 2870 miles from Philadelphia to San Francisco. While walking, he paid for lodging at remote farm houses and ranches by sketching the owners and reciting poetry.

Hilaire's first letter on his arrival in San Francisco is effervescent, happy to see Elodie and full of hopes for their future, but his manifestly zealous courtship was to go unrewarded. The joy he felt at seeing Elodie soon gave way to disappointment when the apparently insurmountable opposition of her mother to the marriage manifested itself. After a stay of only a few weeks, far shorter than the time he had spent in his journey to California, the crestfallen Belloc made his way back across the United States, after a fruitless journey of thousands of miles. His biographer Joseph Pearce compares the return to Napoleon's long, winter retreat from Moscow. When Belloc finally reached the East Coast at Montclair, New Jersey, he received a letter from Elodie on 30 April 1891, definitively rejecting him in favour of a religious vocation; the steamship trip home was tainted with despair.

The gloomy Belloc threw himself into restless activity. Determined to fulfill the obligation of military service necessary to retain his French citizenship, Belloc served his term with an artillery regiment near Toul in 1891. While he was serving in France, Elodie's mother Ellen died, removing a significant obstacle to Belloc's hopes, but, Elodie, although torn between her affection for Hilaire and her desire to serve God in the religious life, was unwilling to cross her mother's wishes so soon after her mother's untimely death and persisted in refusing Belloc's advances.

After his year of service was concluded, still pining for and writing to Elodie, he took the entrance exam to Oxford University, and matriculated to Balliol College in January 1893. Belloc later wrote in a poem:

Balliol made me, Balliol fed me, Whatever I had she gave me again; And the best of Balliol loved and led me, God be with you, Balliol men.

While at Oxford he was bestowed by his fellow students with a great honour: he was elected and served as President of the Oxford Union, the University debating society. He and another undergraduate, Anthony Henley, also achieved the record-breaking and amazing athletic feat of walking from Carfax Tower in Oxford, to Marble Arch in London, a distance of some 55 miles, more than double that of a marathon, in only 11½ hours. He was awarded a first-class honours degree in history in June 1895.

That autumn, Elodie entered religious life and joined the Sisters of Charity at Emmitsburg, Maryland, as a postulant. She left a month later, writing to Belloc that she had failed in her religious vocation. In March 1896, having secured financing as an Oxford Extension lecturer in Philadelphia, Germantown, Baltimore and New Orleans, Belloc took a steamship to New York, and started making his way to Elodie in California. He expected to receive letters from her on his journey, but received none. To his shock and dismay, when he finally arrived in California in May, he discovered Elodie was deathly ill, worn out by the stress of the previous year. Belloc, thinking that after all their suffering, he and his beloved would be denied one another by her death, also collapsed. Over the next few weeks, however, Elodie recovered and after a tumultuous, six-year courtship, Belloc and Elodie were married at St. John the Baptist Catholic church in Napa, California, on 15 June 1896. They settled initially in Oxford.

In 1906, Belloc purchased land and a house called King's Land at Shipley, West Sussex in the United Kingdom. The couple had five children before Elodie's untimely death on the Feast of the Purification, 2 February 1914, likely from cancer. She was age 45, and Belloc, at age 43, had more than 40 years of life ahead of him. He wore mourning garb for the rest of his life and kept her room as she had left it.

Nearly five years later, his son Louis was killed in 1918 while serving in the Royal Flying Corps in northern France. Belloc placed a memorial tablet at the nearby Cambrai Cathedral. It is in the same side chapel as the icon of Our Lady of Cambrai.

Political career
At Oxford University, Belloc served as president of the Oxford Union. He went into politics after he became a naturalised British subject. A great disappointment in his life was his failure to gain a fellowship of All Souls College, Oxford in 1895. This failure may have been caused in part by his producing a small statue of the Virgin Mary and placing it before him on the table during the interview for the fellowship.

From 1906 to 1910, Belloc was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Salford South. During one campaign speech, he was asked by a heckler if he was a "papist". He responded: "Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative."The crowd cheered and Belloc won the election, despite his Catholic faith. He retained his seat in the first 1910 election but did not stand in December 1910.

Belloc's only period of steady employment after that was from 1914 to 1920 as editor of Land and Water. Otherwise, he lived by his writing and was often financially insecure.

In controversy and debate
Belloc first came to public attention shortly after arriving at Balliol College, Oxford as a recent French army veteran. Attending his first debate of the Oxford Union Debating Society, he saw that the affirmative position was wretchedly and half-heartedly defended. As the debate drew to its conclusion and the division of the house was called, he rose from his seat in the audience, and delivered a vigorous, impromptu defence of the proposition. Belloc won that debate from the audience, as the division of the house then showed, and his reputation as a debater was established. He was later elected president of the Union. He held his own in debates there with F. E. Smith and John Buchan, the latter a friend.

In the 1920s, Belloc attacked H. G. Wells's The Outline of History. Belloc criticised what he termed Wells‘s secular bias and his belief in evolution by means of natural selection, a theory that Belloc asserted had been completely discredited. Wells remarked that "Debating Mr. Belloc is like arguing with a hailstorm". Belloc's review of Outline of History observed that Wells's book was a powerful and well-written volume "up until the appearance of Man, that is, somewhere around page seven". Wells responded with the small book Mr. Belloc Objects. Not to be outdone, Belloc followed with Mr. Belloc Still Objects.

G. G. Coulton wrote Mr. Belloc on Medieval History in a 1920 article. After a long-simmering feud, Belloc replied with a booklet, The Case of Dr. Coulton, in 1938.

Belloc's style during later life fulfilled the nickname he received in childhood, Old Thunder. Belloc's friend Lord Sheffield described his provocative personality in a preface to The Cruise of the Nona.

Later years
In 1937, Belloc was invited to be a visiting professor at Fordham University in New York City by university president Robert Gannon. Belloc delivered a series of lectures at Fordham which he completed in May of that year. The experience ended up leaving him physically exhausted, and he considered stopping the lectures early.

On 2 April 1941, Belloc's son Peter Gilbert Marie Sebastian Belloc died at the age of 36 of pneumonia. He fell ill while on active service with the 5th Battalion, Royal Marines in Scotland. He is buried in West Grinstead at Our Lady of Consolation and St. Francis churchyard.

Death and legacy
In 1941, Belloc suffered a stroke and never recovered from its effects. In the same year, he also suffered burns and shock after falling on his fireplace. He died on 16 July 1953 at Mount Alvernia Nursing Home in Guildford, Surrey.

Belloc was buried at the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Francis at West Grinstead, where he had regularly attended Mass as a parishioner. His estate was probated at £7,451. At his funeral Mass, homilist Monsignor Ronald Knox said "No man of his time fought so hard for the good things". Boys from the Choir and Sacristy of Worth Preparatory School sang and served at the Mass.

Recent biographies of Belloc have been written by A. N. Wilson and Joseph Pearce. Jesuit political philosopher James Schall's Remembering Belloc was published by St. Augustine Press in September 2013. A memoir of Belloc was written by Henry Edward George Rope.

Hobbies
During his later years, Belloc sailed when he could afford to do so and became a well-known yachtsman. He won many races and was on the French sailing team.

In the early 1930s, he was given an old pilot cutter named Jersey. He sailed this for some years around the coasts of England, with the help of younger men. One sailor, Dermod MacCarthy, wrote a book about it, called Sailing with Mr Belloc.

Writing
Belloc wrote more than 150 books, the subjects ranging from warfare to poetry to the many current topics of his day. He has been called one of the Big Four of Edwardian Letters, along with H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and G. K. Chesterton, all of whom debated with each other into the 1930s. Belloc was closely associated with Chesterton, and Shaw coined the term "Chesterbelloc" for their partnership. Belloc was co-editor with Cecil Chesterton of the literary periodical the Eye-Witness.

Asked once why he wrote so much, Belloc responded: "Because my children are howling for pearls and caviar." Belloc observed that "The first job of letters is to get a canon", that is, to identify those works a writer sees as exemplary of the best of prose and verse. For his own prose style, he said he aspired to be as clear and concise as "Mary had a little lamb."

Essays and travel writing
In 1902, Belloc published The Path to Rome, an account of a walking pilgrimage from Central France across the Alps to Rome. The Path to Rome contains descriptions of the people and places he encountered, his drawings in pencil and in ink of the route, humour, poesy. In 1909, Belloc published The Pyrenees, providing many details of that region. As an essayist he was one of a small group (with Chesterton, E. V. Lucas and Robert Lynd) of popular writers.

During World War I, Belloc was perceived by soldiers as a "kept correspondent" for the Entente leadership. The Wipers Times mocked him as "Belary Helloc," a satirical persona who advanced foolish suggestions for winning the war.

Poetry
His Cautionary Tales for Children, humorous poems with an implausible moral, illustrated by Basil Temple Blackwood (signing as "B.T.B.") and later by Edward Gorey, are the most widely known of his writings. Supposedly for children, they, like Lewis Carroll's works, are more to adult and satirical tastes: "Henry King, Who chewed bits of string and was early cut off in dreadful agonies". A similar poem tells the story of "Rebecca, who slammed doors for fun and perished miserably".

The tale of "Matilda who told lies and was burned to death" was adapted into the play Matilda Liar! by Debbie Isitt. Quentin Blake, the illustrator, described Belloc as at one and the same time the overbearing adult and mischievous child. Roald Dahl was a follower. But Belloc has broader if sourer scope. For example, with Lord Lundy (who was "far too freely moved to Tears"): It happened to Lord Lundy then as happens to so many men about the age of 26 they shoved him into politics ...

leading up to "we had intended you to be the next Prime Minister but three...

instead, Lundy is condemned to the ultimate political wilderness: ...The stocks were sold; the Press was squared: The Middle Class was quite prepared. But as it is! . . . My language fails! Go out and govern New South Wales!"

The Aged Patriot groaned and died: And gracious! how Lord Lundy cried!

Of more weight is Belloc's Sonnets and Verse, a volume that deploys the same singing and rhyming techniques of his children's verses. Belloc's poetry is often religious, often romantic; throughout The Path to Rome he writes in spontaneous song.

History, politics, and economics
Three of his best-known non-fiction works are The Servile State (1912), Europe and the Faith (1920) and The Jews (1922).

From an early age Belloc knew Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, who was responsible for the conversion of his mother to Catholicism. In The Cruise of the "Nona" (1925), he mentions a "profound thing" that Manning said to him when he was just twenty years old: "All human conflict is ultimately theological." What Manning meant, Belloc said, is "that all wars and revolutions, and all decisive struggles between parties of men arise from a difference in moral and transcendental doctrine." Belloc adds that he never met any man, "arguing for what should be among men, but took for granted as he argued that the doctrine he consciously or unconsciously accepted was or should be a similar foundation for all mankind. Hence battle." Manning's involvement in the London Dock Strike of 1889 made a major impression on Belloc and his view of politics, according to biographer Robert Speaight. He became a trenchant critic both of capitalism and of many aspects of socialism.

With others (G. K. Chesterton, Cecil Chesterton, Arthur Penty) Belloc envisioned the socioeconomic system of distributism, which advocates for a market economy with state regulation favoring cooperatives and small to medium enterprises against the concentrated economic power of large firms, finance-owned trusts, and monopolies. In The Servile State, written after his party-political career, and in other works, he criticised the modern economic order and parliamentary system, advocating distributism in opposition to both capitalism and socialism. Belloc made the historical argument that distributism was not a fresh perspective or program of economics but rather a return to the economics of widely distributed property that prevailed in Europe for the thousand years when it was Catholic. He called for the dissolution of Parliament and its replacement with committees of representatives for the various sectors of society, similar to medieval guilds, an idea that was also popular among fascists under the name of corporatism.

He contributed an article on "Land-Tenure in the Christian Era" to the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Belloc held republican views, but became increasingly sympathetic to monarchism as he grew older. In his youth, he had initially been loyal to the French idea of republicanism, seeing it as a patriotic duty. Michael Hennessy, Chairman of the Hilaire Belloc Society, wrote that "In some respects, Belloc remained a republican until his death, but increasingly realized that there were not enough republicans to make a republic function effectively. Belloc thus felt that monarchy was the most practicable, superior form of government." Belloc explores some of these ideas in his work Monarchy: A Study of Louis XIV. Within it, Belloc also wrote that democracy "is possible only in small states, and even these must enjoy exceptional defences, moral or material, if they are to survive."

With these linked themes in the background, he wrote a long series of contentious biographies of historical figures, including Oliver Cromwell, James II, and Napoleon. They show him as an ardent proponent of orthodox Catholicism and a critic of many elements of the modern world.

Outside academe, Belloc was impatient with what he considered axe-grinding histories, especially what he called "official history." Joseph Pearce notes also Belloc's attack on the secularism of H. G. Wells's popular Outline of History:

"Belloc objected to his adversary's tacitly anti-Christian stance, epitomized by the fact that Wells had devoted more space in his 'history' to the Persian campaign against the Greeks than he had given to the figure of Christ."

He wrote also substantial amounts of military history. He also contributed to the 1931 alternative history collection If It Had Happened Otherwise edited by Sir John Squire.

Reprints
Ignatius Press of California and IHS Press of Virginia have reissued Belloc. TAN Books of Charlotte, North Carolina, publishes a number of Belloc's works, particularly his historical writings. in 2023, Os Justi Press republished The Cruise of the Nona, in an entirely new edition which included a preface by Joseph Pearce, author of the biography Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc.

Religion
One of Belloc's more famous statements was "the faith is Europe and Europe is the faith"; those views were expressed in many of his works from the period 1920 to 1940. These are still cited as exemplary of Catholic apologetics. They have also been criticised, for instance by comparison with the work of Christopher Dawson during the same period.

As a young man, Belloc moved away from Catholicism. However, he later stated that a spiritual event, which he never discussed publicly, prompted his return to it. Belloc alludes to this return to Catholicism in a passage in The Cruise of the Nona.

According to his biographer A. N. Wilson (Hilaire Belloc, Hamish Hamilton), Belloc never wholly apostatised from the faith (ibid p. 105). The momentous event is fully described by Belloc in The Path to Rome (pp. 158–61). It took place in the French village of Undervelier at the time of Vespers. Belloc said of it, "not without tears", "I considered the nature of Belief" and "it is a good thing not to have to return to the Faith". (See Hilaire Belloc by Wilson at pp. 105–06.) Belloc believed that the Catholic Church provided hearth and home for the human spirit. More humorously, his tribute to Catholic culture can be understood from his well-known saying, "Wherever the Catholic sun does shine, there's always laughter and good red wine."

Belloc had a disparaging view of the Church of England, and used sharp words to describe heretics, such as, "Heretics all, whoever you may be/ In Tarbes or Nimes or over the sea/ You never shall have good words from me/ Caritas non-conturbat me". Indeed, in his "Song of the Pelagian Heresy" he described how the Bishop of Auxerre, "with his stout Episcopal staff/ So thoroughly thwacked and banged/ The heretics all, both short and tall/ They rather had been hanged".

Belloc sent his son Louis to Downside School (1911–1915). Louis's biography and death in August 1918 is recorded in "Downside and the War".

On Islam
Belloc's 1937 book The Crusades: the World's Debate, he wrote "The story must not be neglected by any modern, who may think in error that the East has finally fallen before the West, that Islam is now enslaved – to our political and economic power at any rate if not to our philosophy. It is not so. Islam essentially survives, and Islam would not have survived had the Crusade made good its hold upon the essential point of Damascus. Islam survives. Its religion is intact; therefore its material strength may return. Our religion is in peril, and who can be confident in the continued skill, let alone the continued obedience, of those who make and work our machines? ... There is with us a complete chaos in religious doctrine...We worship ourselves, we worship the nation; or we worship (some few of us) a particular economic arrangement believed to be the satisfaction of social justice...Islam has not suffered this spiritual decline; and in the contrast between [our religious chaos and Islam's] religious certitudes still strong throughout the Mohammedan world lies our peril."

In The Great Heresies (1938), Belloc argued that although "Muslim culture happens to have fallen back in material applications; there is no reason whatever why it should not learn its new lesson and become our equal in all those temporal things which now alone give us our superiority over it—whereas in Faith we have fallen inferior to it."

Belloc continued:

"It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable, that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent."

"There is no reason why its recent inferiority in mechanical construction, whether military or civilian, should continue indefinitely. Even a slight accession of material power would make the further control of Islam by an alien culture difficult. A little more and there will cease that which our time has taken for granted, the physical domination of Islam by the disintegrated Christendom we know."

Belloc considered that Islam was permanently intent on destroying the Christian faith, as well as the West, which Christendom had built. In The Great Heresies, Belloc grouped the Protestant Reformation together with Islam as one of the major heresies threatening the "Universal Church".

Accusations of antisemitism
Belloc's writings were at times supportive of anti-Semitism and other times condemnatory of it.

Belloc took a leading role in denouncing the Marconi scandal of 1912. Belloc emphasized that key players in both the government and the Marconi corporation had been Jewish. American historian Todd Endelman identifies Catholic writers as central critics. In his opinion:"The most virulent attacks in the Marconi affair were launched by Hilaire Belloc and the brothers Cecil and G. K. Chesterton, whose hostility to Jews was linked to their opposition to liberalism, their backward-looking Catholicism, and the nostalgia for a medieval Catholic Europe that they imagined was ordered, harmonious, and homogeneous. The Jew baiting at the time of the Boer War and the Marconi scandal was linked to a broader protest, mounted in the main by the Radical wing of the Liberal Party, against the growing visibility of successful businessmen in national life and their challenges to what were seen as traditional English values."A. N. Wilson's biography expresses the belief that Belloc tended to allude to Jews negatively in conversation, sometimes obsessively. Anthony Powell mentions in his review of that biography that in his view Belloc was thoroughly anti-Semitic, at all but a personal level.

In The Cruise of the Nona, Belloc reflected equivocally on the Dreyfus Affair after thirty years. Norman Rose's book The Cliveden Set (2000) asserts that Belloc 'was moved by a deep vein of hysterical anti-semitism'."In his 1922 book, The Jews, Belloc argued that 'the continued presence of the Jewish nation intermixed with other nations alien to it presents a permanent problem of the gravest character', and that the 'Catholic Church is the conservator of an age-long European tradition, and that tradition will never compromise with the fiction that a Jew can be other than a Jew. Wherever the Catholic Church has power, and in proportion to its power, the Jewish problem will be recognized to the full.'"Robert Speaight cited a letter by Belloc in which he condemned Nesta Webster because of her accusations against "the Jews". In February 1924, Belloc wrote to an American Jewish friend regarding an anti-Semitic book by Webster. Webster had rejected Christianity, studied Eastern religions, accepted the supposed Hindu concept of the equality of all religions and was fascinated by theories of reincarnation and ancestral memory. Speaight also points out that when faced with anti-Semitism in practice—as at elitist country clubs in the United States before World War II—he voiced his disapproval. Belloc also condemned Nazi anti-Semitism in The Catholic and the War (1940).

Sussex
Belloc grew up in Slindon and spent most of his life in West Sussex. He always wrote of Sussex as if it were the crown of England and the western Sussex Downs the jewel in that crown. He loved Sussex as the place where he was brought up, considering it his earthly "spiritual home".

Belloc wrote several works about Sussex including Ha'nacker Mill, The South Country, the travel guide Sussex (1906) and The County of Sussex (1936). One of his best-known works relating to Sussex is The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), in which the four characters, each aspects of Belloc's personality, travel on a pilgrimage across the county from Robertsbridge to Harting. The work has influenced others including musician Bob Copper, who retraced Belloc's steps in the 1980s.

Belloc was also a lover of Sussex songs and wrote lyrics for some songs which have since been put to music. Belloc is remembered in an annual celebration in Sussex, known as Belloc Night, that takes place on the writer's birthday, 27 July, in the manner of Burns Night in Scotland. The celebration includes reading from Belloc's work and partaking of a bread and cheese supper with pickles.

In the media

 * Stephen Fry has recorded an audio collection of Belloc's children's poetry.
 * The composer Peter Warlock set many of Belloc's poems to music.
 * Peter Ustinov recorded Belloc's The Cautionary Tales in 1968 for the Musical Heritage Society (MHC 9249M).
 * A well-known parody of Belloc by Sir John Squire, intended as a tribute, is Mr. Belloc's Fancy.
 * Syd Barrett used Cautionary Tales as the basis for the song "Matilda Mother" from the 1967 album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
 * King's Mill, Shipley, once owned by Belloc, was used in the British TV drama Jonathan Creek.
 * On the second episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, in the sketch "The Mouse Problem", a list of famous people who secretly were mice is concluded with "and, of course, Hilaire Belloc".

title: Hilaire Belloc


text:
Seattle Center

Seattle Center is an entertainment, education, tourism and performing arts center located in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. Constructed for the 1962 World's Fair, Seattle Center's landmark feature is the 605 ft Space Needle, an official city landmark and globally recognized symbol of Seattle's skyline. Other notable attractions include the Pacific Science Center, Climate Pledge Arena, and Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP), as well as McCaw Hall, which hosts both the Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet. The Seattle Center Monorail provides regular public transit service between Seattle Center and Westlake Center in Downtown Seattle, and is itself considered a tourist attraction.

History

In 1886, Seattle founder David Denny donated the tract of land that would eventually host Seattle Center, stipulating that it be of "public use forever". Plans for the land took shape in 1928, when mayor Bertha Knight Landes dedicated the newly-constructed arena and auditorium on the site as the Civic Center complex. In 1958, the Civic Auditorium was chosen as the future location of the World's Fair, and demolition work began following a countdown ceremony initiated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In 1961, Japanese architects Hideki Shimizu and Kazuyuki Matsushita were chosen to design the International Fountain, and a contract with Alweg Rapid Transit Systems was signed for the construction of the monorail. On April 21, 1962, President John F. Kennedy officially opened the World's Fair; the six-month event was attended by, among others, astronaut John Glenn, politician Robert F. Kennedy, and singer Elvis Presley, who arrived in September 1962 to shoot the film It Happened at the World's Fair. Following the conclusion of the event, ownership of the complex was returned to the City of Seattle, which has since maintained it as a hub for the city's performing arts and sporting events.

Attractions
Several buildings and pieces of artwork at Seattle Center have Japanese influences. These include the Pacific Science Center, designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, the "Seattle Mural" by artist Paul Horiuchi, and the Kobe Bell, a gift to Seattle from its sister city of Kobe, Japan.

Landmarks

 * The Space Needle, an official city landmark, featuring an observation deck and formerly a revolving restaurant. At the time of its completion in 1961, the Space Needle was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.
 * International Fountain, located in the center of the complex. Designed by Japanese architects Kazuyuki Matsushita and Hideki Shimizu, the fountain was built as a modernist water sculpture and renovated extensively in 1995. With over 20 spouts, the fountain rotates through programmed cycles of water patterns, accompanied by recorded music from around the world. The music is changed twice a month; it is chosen to complement the water patterns and events programming at the center.
 * John T. Williams totem pole—A 34-foot (10 m) totem pole commemorating John T. Williams.
 * Kobe Bell, an official city landmark
 * Mural Ampitheatre, featuring a mosaic mural by artist Paul Horiuchi; the Horiuchi Mural, also created for the World's Fair, is an official city landmark.
 * Artists At Play playground
 * Howard S. Wright Memorial Fountain
 * Seattle Center Monorail, which runs between the Seattle Center and Westlake Center

Museums

 * Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP, formerly EMP Museum)
 * Chihuly Garden and Glass
 * Pacific Science Center, located in the former United States Science Pavilion building designed by Minoru Yamasaki
 * Seattle Children's Museum, located in the Armory

Performing arts

 * Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, home of the Seattle Opera and Pacific Northwest Ballet, whose ballet school is adjacent at the Phelps Center. This is the third performance space on this site, the second being the Opera House built at the time of the World's Fair.
 * Seattle Repertory Theatre, home of the Bagley Wright Theatre, the Leo Kreielsheimer Theatre, and the PONCHO Forum
 * Center Theatre, home of the Seattle Shakespeare Company and Book-It Repertory Theatre
 * Theatre Puget Sound
 * The Center School
 * Cornish Playhouse (originally Seattle Center Playhouse, later renamed Intiman Playhouse when Intiman Theatre was primary tenant), home of productions of the Cornish College of the Arts
 * Seattle Children's Theatre at the Charlotte Martin Theatre
 * The Vera Project (or VERA)
 * Mercer Arena, formerly a sports, concert, and opera venue before sitting vacant for several years. It was demolished and the site is being redeveloped as the future home of Seattle Opera.

Venues

 * Seattle Center Armory (known as Center House from the early 1970s until 2012, and the Food Circus from 1962 to the early 1970s), including Center Theatre, the home of Seattle Shakespeare Company and Book-It Repertory Theatre, as well as the Seattle Children's Museum, The Center High School and the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. Before the 1962 World's Fair, the building was an armory. Seattle Center Armory is an official city landmark.
 * A piece of the Berlin Wall is in the food atrium.
 * Exhibition Hall, a space for trade shows, receptions, exhibits, and special events
 * Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center is one of the largest rental venues on the grounds and the first City of Seattle building to achieve LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. The large, flexible space can accommodate a wide range of commercial, charity and community events.
 * The Northwest Rooms, once a small conference center, now houses SIFF Film Center, The VERA Project, and KEXP-FM.
 * IMAX Theater at Pacific Science Center
 * Seattle Laser Dome

Athletics

 * Climate Pledge Arena is the current home of the Seattle University Redhawks men's basketball team, the WNBA's Seattle Storm and the NHL's Seattle Kraken. It was the home of the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics, now the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Seattle Thunderbirds (Western Hockey League) ice hockey. Originally opened as the Seattle Center Coliseum in 1962, it was renovated in 1995 as KeyArena and rebuilt in 2020-2021 as Climate Pledge Arena. The arena hosts over 100 events per year and was the region's top live concert touring venue in 2016 (according to Venues Today magazine)
 * Memorial Stadium, a high school football and soccer stadium which predates the World's Fair. It was the home of the NWSL's Seattle Reign FC from 2014 to 2018.

Festivals
Seattle Center hosts many cultural, music and arts festivals. Major attractions include:
 * Bumbershoot
 * Northwest Folklife
 * Festál (year-long series of 24 world cultural events)
 * PrideFest
 * Bite of Seattle
 * Winterfest

title: Seattle Center