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Democratic Party (Hong Kong)

The Democratic Party (DP) is a liberal political party in Hong Kong. Chaired by Lo Kin-hei, it is the flagship party in the pro-democracy camp and currently has no elected representatives in the District Councils.

The party was established in 1994 in a merger of the United Democrats of Hong Kong and Meeting Point in preparation for the 1995 Legislative Council election. The party won a landslide victory, received over 40 percent of the popular vote and became the largest party in the legislature in the final years of the British colonial era. It opposes the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen protests of 1989 and called for the end of one-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP); the party has long been seen as hostile to the Beijing authorities.

Led by Martin Lee, the Democratic Party boycotted the Provisional Legislative Council (PLC) on the eve of the Hong Kong handover in 1997 in protest to Beijing's decision to dismantle the agreed transition, but reemerged as the largest party in the first SAR Legislative Council election of 1998. Due to the Beijing-installed proportional representation voting system, the Democrats embattled in bitter factional conflicts in the early post-handover era. Although the party's popularity briefly rebounded after the 2003 pro-democracy demonstration, its dominance was gradually eclipsed by the emergence of the new parties.

As a response to the electoral gains of the Civic Party and the League of Social Democrats (LSD), the Democratic Party merged with Emily Lau's The Frontier in 2008. The party made a surprising move by negotiating with the Beijing officials over the constitutional reform package in 2010. It resulted in a catastrophic split within the pro-democracy camp. Being ferociously attacked by the radical democrats, the party sharply lost support in the 2012 Legislative Council election, retaining only six seats. Afterwards, the Democrats underwent a rejuvenation process in which most veterans retired and made way for the new generation in the 2016 election.

Following the widespread anti-government movement in 2019, the party won a landslide victory in the 2019 District Council elections. After the imposition of the Hong Kong national security law in July 2020 and subsequent disqualifications of four pro-democracy camp legislators, every incumbent legislator of the party, along with the whole camp's, resigned in protest. It left the party with no representation for the first time since 1998. In January 2021, the resigned legislators were arrested under the national security law for participating in the July 2020 pro-democracy primaries. The government introduced a requirement that all district councillors had to swear an oath of allegiance to the HKSAR, upon which many pro-democracy councillors, fearful of retroactive disqualification and bankruptcy threats, chose to resign from their office.

Party beliefs
From the outset, the party supported the restoration of Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong. However, since the handover it has consistently stressed the "two systems" part of the "one country, two systems" principle. The party's stance on Hong Kong's future development differs from that of pro-Beijing parties. It believes Hong Kong must develop more democratic institutions and preserve freedoms and human rights to achieve prosperity.

The party proposed policies on various areas of governance through designated spokespersons, including:

 * Amendment of the Basic Law to achieve more democracy and safeguard freedoms, while achieving closer economic co-operation with Mainland China.
 * Protection of human rights.
 * Maintain Hong Kong's status as an international finance and trade centre and improve its economic infrastructure (concrete details not given), as well as a more flexible way to control public expenditure.
 * Better monitoring of public services and utilities (i.e. more accountability), and strengthened measures to protect the environment.
 * More resources for education, with less vague policies.
 * Reasonable (i.e. larger) share of economic achievements by the employee for the employee, and increased involvement by the Government to protect labour laws in accordance with social needs.
 * Adopt measures to regulate property prices from fluctuation, and provide adequate public housing
 * Increase spending on social welfare.

Overall, the Democratic Party advocates economic policies pretty close to liberalism in the sense of John Rawls rather than of Robert Nozick or Friedrich Hayek, in sharp contrast with the traditional radical free-market capitalist orientation typical of Hong Kong. However, this point is rarely mentioned in the speeches held by party members during their trips abroad to seek political support.

The party's position on social or cultural issues is not well-defined but verges on the moderate, partly due to some support from centrist and Catholic supporters. In a way that may seem contradictory to traditional liberal ideology, the party generally opposes the legalisation of commercial sex or gambling operations. Although there is no official stance on same-sex marriage, the Democratic Party generally support to legalise laws which would prohibit discrimination against the LGBT community, despite part of the conservative wing of the party against it.

In recent years with the emergence of the pro-Hong Kong independence tide, the Democratic Party has been criticised by pro-independence voices for its perceived pro-China position. However the party has also been accused for years by pro-Beijing media of being anti-China, as many of the party leaders including Szeto Wah, Martin Lee and Albert Ho are self-proclaimed patriots who oppose only the one-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party but not the country in general and support the Chinese democracy movement. The party has also stated that it does not support Hong Kong being separated from China.

Founding
The Democratic Party was founded with the merger of the two major pro-democracy parties at the time, the United Democrats of Hong Kong (UDHK) and the Meeting Point (MP). The Meeting Point was formed in 1983 by a group of liberal intellectuals and people from middle class in the background of the Sino-British negotiations on the sovereignty of Hong Kong after 1997. The group favoured the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China but called for a "free, democratic and autonomous Hong Kong government under Chinese sovereignty". Together with the Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood (ADPL) and the Hong Kong Affairs Society (HKAS), they were the three major pro-democracy organisations actively participated in the local and municipal elections in the 1980s.

The like-minded liberals also formed the Joint Committee on the Promotion of Democratic Government (JCPDG) and the Group of 190 to strive for the 1988 Legislative Council election and the faster democratisation the political structure towards 1997 and after 1997 during the drafting of the Hong Kong Basic Law, under the leadership of liberal drafters Martin Lee and Szeto Wah. During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the liberals stood firmly with the student protestors, formed the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China (HKASPDMC) and condemned the bloody suppression on 4 June.

In preparation for the first Legislative Council direct election in 1991, members of the three political groups and many liberal activists of the JCPDG joined together and formed the United Democrats of Hong Kong in April 1990. Chaired by the Martin Lee, the United Democrats of Hong Kong formed an alliance with Anthony Cheung Bing-leung's Meeting Point in the campaign. The liberal alliance won a landslide victory in the direct election, receiving over 52% of the vote and winning 14 of the 16 geographical constituency seats in September. The popularity of the pro-democratic alliance was principally rose from its position towards the Tiananmen Square protests and the widespread fear towards the Beijing government afterwards.

The United Democrats stood a firm anti-Beijing stances, criticising the Tiananmen crackdown and also the democratic situation. As a result, Lee and Szeto were deprived their posts in the Basic Law Drafting Committee and were accused of "treason". The United Democrats supported the last governor Chris Patten's democratic reform proposal, which allowed a much extended electorate for the first fully elected Legislative Council election in 1995 and was ferociously opposed by Beijing.

The United Democrats of Hong Kong and the Meeting Point further united by announcing the formation of the Democratic Party on 18 April 1994. They formally merged into the Democratic Party on 2 October 1994, in eve of the three-tier elections in 1994 and 1995. Martin Lee became the first Chairman of the party and Anthony Cheung and Yeung Sum became the Vice-Chairmen, elected on the first general meeting on the establishment day. The ADPL continued to keep its own identity, arguing that it represented grassroots' interest whereas the Democratic Party was more focused on the "middle class".

The founding manifesto of the Democratic Party said it would seek to further unite democratic forces, strive for a high degree of autonomy and an open, democratic government, and would promote welfare and equality in Hong Kong. The party also tried to appropriate the discourse of nationalism as it stated "We care for China and, as part of the Chinese citizenry, we have the rights and obligations to participate in and comment on the affairs of China." It also called for the condemnation of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident as well as an amendment of the Hong Kong Basic Law before 1997 to allow full election of the Chief Executive and the Legislative Council of Hong Kong.

1994/95 elections and Provisional Legislative Council (1994–1998)
The electorate base of the 1995 LegCo election was largely extended by the Governor Chris Patten's controversial electoral reform package supported by the pro-democrats. Facing the challenge from the newly formed business conservative Liberal Party and pro-Beijing loyalist Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), the Democratic Party was able to win handsome victories in the three-tier elections in 1994 and 1995. In the LegCo election in September 1995, the party secured 42% of the vote and 19 of the 60 total seats, emerging as the largest party in the Legislative Council, compared to Liberal Party's 10 seats and DAB's 6 seats. Together with the ADPL and other pro-democracy independents, the democratic coalition was able to garner one- or two-vote majorities on certain anti-government issues during the last term of the legislature.

The party's stance conflicted with the PRC government's, which, for a while, earned the party more popularity and recognition both locally and overseas. The party chairman Martin Lee became well-known internationally in the run-up to reunification as a human rights and democracy fighter, and won a number of international human rights awards.

After Patten's reform package was passed, Beijing decided that the legislature elected in 1995 could not ride the "through train" beyond the handover of Hong Kong, as the first legislature of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR). Instead, Beijing set up a highly controlled Provisional Legislative Council (PLC) in December 1996. The Democratic Party refused to join the Selection Committee as it opposed to Beijing's decision "to scrap Hong Kong's elected legislature and replace it with a hand-picked version." The party thus lost all 19 seats until the PLC was replaced by the first Legislative Council of the Hong Kong SAR in 1998.

At the midnight on 30 June just after the handover ceremony, the Democratic Party LegCo members protested against the abrupt termination of their tenure and call for the establishment of democratic government at the balcony of the Legislative Council Building, and vow to return to the legislature by means of election in 1998.

Return to Legislative Council and early crises (1998–2002)
Decided by the Provisional Legislative Council, the first-past-the-post voting system was replaced by the proportional representation system in the first LegCo election in 1998. The proportional representation gave an advantage to the weaker pro-Beijing DAB as it did not require a majority to win a seat. Thus in 1995 the Democratic Party won 12 seats in the geographical constituencies with 42.3% of the vote, but it got only 9 seat with 40.2% of the vote in 1998.

After the handover, the Right of Abode litigation was initiated immediately and reached its climax in the Court of Final Appeal's (CFA) decisions favouring the right of abode seekers in Ng Ka Ling and Chan Kam Nga lawsuits in January 1999. The Democratic Party supported the right of abode seekers and opposed strongly to the government's decision to refer the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) to interpret the Basic Law. Party chairman Martin Lee condemned this move as "a dagger striking at the heart of the rule of law" and in symbolic protest walked out of the Legislative Council with 18 other members, all dressed in black. However, the party appeared to suffer from popular discontent with the party's position. The party was also criticised for failing to broaden its post-1997 agenda and develop a well-defined social base.

The party also appeared to suffer from the internal dissension. In December 1998, the "Young Turks" led by Andrew To staged a successful coup d'état in the party leadership election, which promptly brought the party into a phase of factional struggle. The Young Turks formed their own list of about ten candidates to run for the Central Committee and nominated Lau Chin-shek to run for vice-chairman against the former Meeting Point chairman Anthony Cheung. Some hoped to make Lau as their factional leader, to lead the party from the Meeting Point faction's pro-middle class, pro-laissez-faire and pro-Beijing positions to a more pro-grassroots and confrontational position. Although Lau was elected vice-chairman, he resigned after the election. Lau was subsequently forced to leave the party in June 2000 after a one-year membership freeze, due to Lau's Democratic Party/Frontier dual membership.

In a general meeting in September 1999, the Young Turks also proposed to put the minimum wage legislation on the 2000 LegCo election platform of the party. The Mainstreamers which included the "triumvirate", Yeung Sum, Cheung Man-kwong and Lee Wing-tat, saw the minimum wage debate was a challenge to the party authority and decide to fight back by joining hands with the Meeting Point faction to defeat the Young Turks. Andrew To wrote a newspaper article accusing the Mainstreamers of suppressing intra-party dissent, "just like the butchers in the Tiananmen massacre." To's comment led to a backlash of opinion within the party and led to the defeat of the minimum wage motion. The debate, largely took place in the mass media, publicised the factional rivalries and created a bad image within the party.

The popular discontent and internal fragmentation appeared to have marked a turning point in the prospects of the Democratic Party and the DAB. In the 1999 District Council elections, the DAB more than doubled its representation, while Democratic Party performed less well than anticipated, winning 86 seats. In the second LegCo election in the following year, Tsang Kin-shing and Steve Chan Kwok-leung left the party and ran as independents after failing to be nominated on the candidates list by the Central Committee. The election results showed the party's share in the geographical constituencies dropped to 35%, and the party secured 9 out of the 24 directly elected seats. Its total number of seats in LegCo remained at 12.

In December 2002, Yeung Sum succeeded Martin Lee as Party chairman in the leadership change, legislator Albert Chan, belonging to the pro-grassroots relatively "radical" faction, left the party. By the end of 2002, more than 50 members of the party which had already formed a political group, Social Democratic Forum, defected to the Frontier, mostly Young Turks.

1 July 2003 march and rebound in popularity (2002–2004)
In 2002 and 2003 the party saw a rebound in popularity, largely due to the low popularity of the Tung Chee-hwa's administration, and more significantly the controversy over the Basic Law Article 23 legislation. The pro-democrats worried that the anti-subversion law would threaten the rights and freedom of the Hong Kong people and damaged the rule of law and "One Country, Two Systems." The Article 23 legislation turned into a territory-wide debate and led to a re-awakening of civil society, mobilising different sectors to join the opposition movement. The Democratic Party used many of their 94 district offices for community-level mobilisation. In the weeks before the 1 July march, the Democratic Party managed to collect phone numbers of about 40,000 supporters. The party's volunteers and staff called them one by one to call on them to join the demonstration. The demonstration resulted in a record-breaking number of people, more than 500,000 Hong Kong people joined the march. The SAR government had to back down and shelve the bill indefinitely.

In the following 2003 District Council elections in November, the pro-democracy camp turned the popular support into the demand of democratisation, universal suffrage of the Chief Executive and Legislative Council in 2007 and 2008, their primary goals for years. The Democratic Party received a great victory by claiming 95 seats out of the 120 candidates in the election.

The civil movement in 2003 also broadened the spectrum of the pro-democracy camp. A number of pro-democracy groups such as Article 45 Concern Group and individuals such as Leung Kwok-hung and Albert Cheng were elected in the 2004 LegCo election. Although the pan-democracy camp took 25 of 60 seats, the Democratic Party won only 9 seats, falling from the largest party in the Legislative Council to the third, behind DAB's 13 (including the FTU members) and pro-business Liberal Party's 10. Worried by pre-election surveys indicating that Martin Lee might be in danger, the Democratic Party sent out a last minute S.O.S. call to "save Martin Lee" who was listed second on the Democratic Party's list behind chairman Yeung Sum in the Hong Kong Island constituency. As a result, Yeung's and Lee's list absorbed too many votes at the expense of pro-democracy ally Cyd Ho losing by just 815 votes to DAB's Choy So-yuk. It caused some dissatisfaction among some supporters of the party and the camp generally. Yeung Sum announced he would not seek for re-election as chairman after the election as a result and subsequently replaced by Lee Wing-tat in the party leadership election in December.

Campaign for 2007/08 universal suffrage and merge with the Frontier (2004–2008)
Although lack of breakthrough in the legislative elections, the pan-democracy maintains its basic position of seeking universal suffrage in 2007 and 2008 for Chief Executive and Legislative Council respectively, even though the NPCSC's interpretation of the Basic Law in April 2004 rejected the demand. After Tung Chee-hwa's resigned as Chief Executive in March 2005, Party chairman Lee Wing-tat attempted to run for the post against Donald Tsang but failed to get enough nominations in the Election Committee. Donald Tsang was elected uncontestedly in the Chief Executive election.

In October 2005, Donald Tsang's administration issued a blueprint for the electoral reform. The proposal aimed to double to size of Election Committee to 1,600 and add 10 seats to the Legislative Council, half of which would be directly elected and the rest returned by District Councillors. The pro-democracy parties criticised the proposal as conservative as it did not move towards to universal suffrage. In December, the camp held a mass rally against the government's reform package and demanded a timetable and road-map to democracy be attached to the proposal. The reform package was at last vetoed by the pan-democracy camp. In December 2006, 114 of the 137 pro-democracy candidates filled by the Democratic Party and the newly established Civic Party won the Election Committee subsector elections which secured the threshold of 100 nominations to enter the next Chief Executive election.

Since early 2005, 24 members had quit the party, including district councillor Stephen Fong Chun-bong (who was forced out by the party) and Lau Tak-cheung. Twelve district councillors also left the party. Another district councillor died in a car accident. The number of district councillors decreased by 13 to 79. In March 2006, the Mainstreamer faction alleged that some senior members were involved in spying activities of China. The "suspects" were all Young Turks Reformist members including vice-chairman Chan King-ming and Gary Fan. The Young Turk members were all ousted in the following leadership election in December, with Mainstreamer Albert Ho defeating Chan King-ming as the new party chairman.

The democrats suffered a humiliating defeat in the District Council elections in November 2007. The Democratic Party took the heaviest loss of 36 seats as compared with 2003. 23 of the party's incumbent Councillors were ousted, with just over half of its candidates elected. The Democratic Party was by far outstripped by the Beijing loyalist DAB which won total of 115 seats, recapturing the loss in 2003 and also much expanding.

On 29 December 2007, the NPCSC unveiled a timetable for the universal suffrage of the Chief Executive in 2017 and for the entire Legislative Council by 2020 with a host of conditions. The NPCSC decision helped reducing the political pressure on Tsang while removing pan-democracy camp's key rallying cry in the following LegCo election, although the pro-democratic parties were still calling for the universal suffrage of the Chief Executive and Legislative Council in 2012.

In the 2008 LegCo election, the Democratic Party's share of vote further dropped to 20.6%, winning only 8 seats. The emerging pro-democratic parties professionals-formed Civic Party and left-wing League of Social Democrats (LSD) took the share of 13.7% and 10.1% and won 5 and 3 seats respectively. Facing the emerging new parties, the two old political parties the Democratic Party and the Frontier merged. At the time, the Democratic Party had 636 members, 8 legislators and 57 District Council members, while the Frontier had one legislator, Emily Lau, three District Councillors and around 110 members. In the following month, Albert Ho was re-elected chairman, and Emily Lau became a Vice-Chairman of the new combined party in the party leadership election.

2010 reform proposal breakthrough and 2012 elections (2008–2012)
In the following electoral reform for the 2012 Chief Executive and LegCo elections in 2009 and 2010, Donald Tsang proposed a reform package which had not much difference from the 2005 proposal. The pan-democracy camp were saying they were going to veto it again. The Civic Party and League of Social Democrats launched a de facto referendum by resigning and triggering territory-wide by-elections to let the voters voice out their demand on democracy. The Democratic Party refused to participate as it argued it was not an effective way. The party's heavyweight veteran Szeto Wah said the Democratic Party would not join in the resignations itself, but would support pan-democrats who stood for re-election. In December 2009, the Democratic Party members voted 229 voted against, 54 in favour and one abstention not to join the resignation plan after a four-hour debate at a general meeting.

Instead in May 2010, the party leaders met with the officials of the Central Government's Liaison Office in Hong Kong to negotiate on the reform package, which was the first meeting between Democratic Party leaders and senior officials from the central government since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989. The central government subsequently accepted the Democratic Party's revised proposal in the run-up to the LegCo vote, which allowed the five new functional constituency members of LegCo to be elected by popular vote. However, the Democratic Party failed to get any promises on the 2017 Chief Executive and 2020 Legco elections. The Democratic Party's move significantly divided the opinion within the pan-democracy camp but the bill was ultimately passed in June 2010 with the support of the Democratic Party. After the agreement with Beijing, 30 Young Turk Reformists (comprising 4% of the membership) left the party before the December Party leadership election, accusing their leaders of betraying the people and slowing the pace towards universal suffrage. LegCo member Andrew Cheng had also quit the party earlier at the LegCo voting in June.

The party's refusal of participating the by-election and the agreement with Beijing heavily damaged the solidarity of the pan-democracy camp. The "radical" League of Social Democrats accused the Democratic Party for "selling out" Hong Kong people. During the annual 1 July march in 2010, the Democratic Party leaders were verbally attacked by other democratic protestors, who chanted "Shame on you, Democratic Party, for selling out Hong Kong people." In the following District Council elections in November 2011, the newly formed People Power headed by Wong Yuk-man, who quit as the Chairman of the League of Social Democrats early the year, launched an anti-Democratic Party campaign and filled in candidates run against the Democratic Party members. The Democratic Party was able to retain 47 seats with an increase of the vote. The People Power failed to get any seat against the Democratic Party but one seat where there were no other democratic candidates.

In the Election Committee Subsector elections in December 2011, the pan-democracy camp was able to get more than 150 seats to secure the threshold of nominating a candidate in the 2012 Chief Executive election. Democratic Party chairman Albert Ho won over Frederick Fung of ADPL in the pan-democracy primary election and stood for the camp in the election. The election was dominated by the two candidates from the pro-Beijing camp, Henry Tang and Leung Chun-ying and marked by scandals, dirty tactics and smears from both sides. Albert Ho fell behind in the opinion poll throughout the campaign partly due to the impossibility of him being elected by the Beijing-controlled Election Committee. The pan-democracy camp called for casting blank votes on the election day. During the election 1,132 votes were cast, CY Leung received 689; Henry Tang received 285, and Albert Ho received 76.

In the LegCo election in the following September, the party successfully gained two of the five seats of the territory-wide based new District Council (Second) constituency which were created by its own proposal. However, the total seats of the party dropped from 8 to only 6 seats, the worst result in the party's history. The party could only gain 13.7% of the popular vote, even less than Civic Party's 14.1% and lost all its seats in the New Territories West. Chairman Albert Ho resigned after the election outcomes were announced; vice-chairwoman Emily Lau took over as acting chairman. Lau defeated Sin Chung-kai as the first chairwoman of the party in the December party leadership election. In December 2014, Emily Lau secured her chairwomanship against three challengers in the chairperson re-election, which was the most competitive leadership election in party's history.

Umbrella movement and aftermath (2012–2019)
In March 2013, the Democrats formed the Alliance for True Democracy with other pan democratic parties for pressing the government to give out a genuinely democratic reform proposal. The party supported Benny Tai's Occupy Central with Love and Peace proposal to launch a civil disobedience movement to further pressure the Beijing government. The party took a supporting role in the 2014 Hong Kong protests with many of its party figures arrested. In June 2015, the party voted against the government's proposal.

In the 2015 District Council election, the Democrats won total number of 43 seats with several second-tier figures, including vice-chairman Lo Kin-hei and chief executive Lam Cheuk-ting, scored victories, while others like former chairman Albert Ho and vice-chairman Andrew Wan lost.

For the 2016 Legislative Council election, the party proposed an unprecedented pre-election primary to hold public debates before selecting candidates for each constituency. 14 nominations were received on 31 December 2015, in which three incumbents, chairperson Emily Lau and veterans Albert Ho and Sin Chung-kai did not seek for re-election to hasten the party's rejuvenation. They chose to stand as second candidates behind young party colleagues, Lam Cheuk-ting, Andrew Wan and Hui Chi-fung respectively to boost the chances for them to get elected. Despite the decrease in their vote share, the Democrats gained seven seats, one more than the previous election, by retaking a seat in the New Territories West. Roy Kwong, a young progressive Democrat District Councillor also received most votes of nearly 500,000 in the District Council (Second) "super seat". By taking seven seats, the Democrats retook the status of flagship pro-democracy party.

In the December leadership election, legislator Wu Chi-wai was elected new chairman uncontestedly. The Democrats supported former Financial Secretary John Tsang, making the first time a pro-democracy party to support an establishment candidate, after the pro-democrats decided not to field their candidate to boost the chance of an alternative candidate against incumbent Leung Chun-ying. The Democrats opposed former Chief Secretary for Administration Carrie Lam, the eventual winner of the election. However, the party has developed a warmer relationship with Carrie Lam government, evident in the attendance and donation of the Chief Executive to the party's 2018 anniversary dinner.

The Democrats suffered a historic loss of headcount on 12 December 2018 when 59 members, including five District Councillors from New Territories East, resigned en masse, after a row over the 2019 District Council election, accusing Legislative Councillor Lam Cheuk-ting of despicable character, his lack of political ethics and conflict of interest.

The relations between the party and Carrie Lam turned sour as the administration was embattled numerous controversies including the raising of the age threshold for the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance and the dropping of Leung Chun-ying's UGL case. Lam was not invited to the party's 24th anniversary dinner in March 2019. The relations between Lam and the party completely fell out in May 2019 over the extradition law controversy in which the Democrats strongly opposed. Party chairman Wu Chi-wai even shouted at Lam "Why don't you die? You're a waste of life, bitch!" at a LegCo meeting after Lam dismissed the opposition views as "extreme" and "unnecessary fear" and called the claims that it was a deliberate decision by the colonial government to exclude the mainland from any rendition arrangements in the 1990s as "nonsense". On 29 May, Democrat Andrew Wan moved the first motion of no confidence against Lam since she took the office on the grounds that she "blatantly lied" about the extradition bill and misled the public and the international community. The motion was defeated by the pro-Beijing majority.

Anti-extradition protest and security law (2019–)
The Democratic Party quickly warned about the possibility that the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill could be used by China to have political dissidents extradited, and was supportive to the protestors, subsequently became the largest party in the 2019 local elections. Democratic party member Lam Cheuk-ting was injured in the 2019 Yuen Long attack. In August 2020, he was arrested on charges of rioting during that attack, and again in December 2020 for allegedly disclosing the personal information of individuals connected to it.

The Hong Kong national security law was imposed by the Chinese Government in 2020, criticised as silencing the dissidents. The Party faced political pressure from the government and pro-Beijing camp. All LegCo members from the Party resigned later that year. Some party seniors, including former chairman Wu Chi-wai, ex-MP Lam Cheuk-ting, Andrew Wan, were arrested in early 2021 and remanded for collusion. Lo Kin-hei, the chairperson, along with three ex-chairs, Albert Ho, Martin Lee, Yeung Sum, each faced various charges. Majority of the district councillors resigned in July 2021 after reports of possible disqualification for not upholding the Basic Law.

The Democratic Party did not field a candidate for the 2021 legislative election, the first time since handover of Hong Kong in 1997, after a two-week application period to nominate party members ended without a candidate stepping forward. Beijing loyalists had warned the Party not to "boycott" the election. Party divisions were exposed as Fred Li, former Democratic MP, Edith Leung, vice-chairlady, and So Yat-hang, member of the Central Committee, supported non-establishment candidate without party's consent, of which the former two were expelled from the party.

Democrats re-elected Lo Kin-hei in December 2022 as chairman, days after Lo was acquitted of participating in an unlawful assembly close to the 2019 Polytechnic University siege.

The party did not run in the 2023 local elections, after its members failed to obtain enough nominations required after an overhaul of election rules. while Fred Li was not re-appointed by the government as member of the quango Travel Industry Authority. This left the Democratic Party without any elected representatives nor public office positions starting from 2024, for the first time since its formation.

Organisation
The Democratic Party is governed by a Central Committee, originally 30-member large but reduced to 10 in 2022, including one chairmanship and two vice-chairmanships elected by the party congress. All public office holders, including the members of the Legislative Council and District Councils, are eligible to vote in the party congress. The electoral method changed since 2014, the eligibility of members electing a delegate who holds one vote in the congress from 30 members each delegate to only 5 members. Candidate for the chairmanship also needs a majority to claim victory. A 14-member Executive Committee including the secretary and treasurer posts is elected by the Central Committee members. The party is currently the second largest party in the Legislative Council, having seven legislators, 37 District Councillors and around 788 members.

Factions and Ideology
The Democratic Party is currently considered a big tent or centre to centre-left party.
 * Mainstreamers – led by the "triumvirate", Yeung Sum, Cheung Man-kwong and Lee Wing-tat and consisting of members including Albert Ho, Sin Chung-kai and In 1999, Lee asserted that the Democratic Party should strive to serve as representative of middle class interests, and take balance between parliamentary politics and street action. Yeung and Lee were the party chairmen from 2002 to 2004 and 2004 to 2006 respectively.
 * Meeting Point – consisting of former members of the Meeting Point, including Lo Chi-kin, Andrew Fung and led by the former Meeting Point chairman Anthony Cheung. The Meeting Point faction prefers a more pro-middle class, pro-market and moderate agenda. It also stresses dialogue with Beijing and Hong Kong governments over struggle, and parliamentary politics over street action. Anthony Cheung quit the party in 2004 and was appointed to the Secretary for Transport and Housing by Leung Chun-ying in 2012; Andrew Fung quit the party in 2012 in an unpleasant manner and was appointed government's information coordinator in 2013.
 * Young Turks – consisting of the relatively radical, left-wing and pro-grassroots activists and local-level party members including Steve Chan Kwok-leung, Tsang Kin-shing, Andrew Cheng, Albert Chan and Eric Wong Chung-ki. Led by Andrew To, the Young Turks believed that the party should take struggle over dialogue and mass movements over parliamentary politics as the party's strategy. They also suggested adopting more grassroots platform such as minimum wage. The Young Turks were more like a "factional clique" than an organised faction as they were a group of young politicians with poor discipline and only had some vague common ideas, without a clear leader, coherent ideologies or positions. The Young Turks attempted to challenge the party leadership by nominating Lau Chin-shek to run for vice-chairman against Anthony Cheung in the 1998 party leadership election. Lau was expelled from the party in 2000 and Andrew To, Tsang Kin-shing and Albert Chan left the party and subsequently formed the left-wing League of Social Democrats in 2006.
 * Reformists – as many original Young Turks left, a new Reformist group emerged as the main opposition faction against the Mainstreamers party leadership, which included Chan King-ming who contested for chairman in the 2004 election and 2006 election and Legislative Council member Andrew Cheng. New Territories East was the Reformists' stronghold; Chan King-ming was the Chairman of the New Territories East branch and Andrew Cheng was the legislator from the same constituency. The faction was involved in alleged spying activities of China which led to the intra-party investigation in 2006. Andrew Cheng and other Reformists quit after the party supported the controversial electoral reform package. Many of them became the backbone of the Neo Democrats formed in 2010.

Secretaries

 * Law Chi-kwong, 1994–1998
 * Cheung Yin-tung, 1998–2006
 * Peggy Ha Ving-vung, 2006–08
 * Cheung Yin-tung, 2008–14, 2016–20
 * Li Wing-shing, 2014–16

Treasurers

 * Andrew Fung Wai-kwong, 1994–2000
 * Wong Bing-kuen, 2000–02
 * Tsui Hon-kwong, 2002–06
 * Cheung Yin-tung, 2006–08
 * Tsui Hon-kwong, 2008–12
 * Stanley Ng, 2012–14
 * Ramon Yuen, 2014–18
 * Sin Chung-kai, 2018–21

Vice-secretaries

 * Mark Li Kin-yin, 2014–2016

Representatives
The Democratic Party has no elected representatives as of 2024.

title: Democratic Party (Hong Kong)


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Independent Order of Vikings

The Independent Order of Vikings is a Swedish-American fraternal organization promoting Swedish and culture and language. It was founded in Chicago the 1890s and has members throughout the United States.

Authorities differ as to the order's date of foundation. Alan Axelrod states that it was founded on June 2, 1890, in Chicago, while Alvin J. Schmidt states it was founded in 1896, at the same city.

Benefits
The group provides insurance benefits, as well as organizing events celebrating Swedish traditions and culture. These activities have included languages classes on Scandinavian languages as well as song and dance programs for traditional Scandinavian music and dance. Lodges have also sponsored bowling and golfing events.

Its charitable activities have included participating in blood drives, visiting hospitalized and sick members and sponsoring scholarships. By 1923 it operated a home for aged members.

The group provides life insurance and other financial products to its members as well as conducting social activities celebrating Scandinavian culture. By 1923 it did business in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Nebraska.

Membership
In 1923 the order was open to men of Swedish birth or descent and had 10,643 benefit members and 58 social members.

By the 1970s membership was open to Swedes, people of Swedish descent or a person married to the same. There were 10,500 members in the mid 1960s and 9,500 in 1978. There were 9,300 members in 1995.

Organization
The order is organized on a two-level structure. Local chapters are called "lodges" and the national body is the "grand lodge" which meets biennially. There were 80 lodges in the mid-1960s and 63 in 1978. The head officer is called the grand chief. In 1979, the headquarters of the group were in Chicago, Illinois, though now it appears to be based in Springfield, Illinois.

In the early 1920s the order's "Grand Lodge" was located at 80 W. Washington Street, Chicago and there were 58 subordinate lodges.

Edward Myrbeck, the founder of a Viking Club in Braintree, served as grand chief of the Independent Order of Vikings from 1963 to 1965. He was later knighted by Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden for "cultivating" relations between Sweden and the United States. Following Myrbeck's death in July 1995, the Independent Order of Vikings held a service in honor of him.

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

title: Independent Order of Vikings


text:
User talk:Tim Starling/Reddi watchlist

Not being sure i grasp the purpose of Tim Starling/Reddi watchlist, i'll simply note here that Battery, which appears on it, has changed to a disamb; from the adjacent items, i infer the most likely change in response to that would be to add or substitute Battery (electricity). --Jerzy 12:13, 2003 Dec 11 (UTC)

title: User talk:Tim Starling/Reddi watchlist


text: File:Paw.png

title: File:Paw.png


text:
Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz (12 July 1892 – 19 November 1942) was a Polish Jewish writer, fine artist, literary critic and art teacher. He is regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award. Several of Schulz's works were lost in the Holocaust, including short stories from the early 1940s and his final, unfinished novel The Messiah. Schulz was shot and killed by a Gestapo officer in 1942 while walking back home toward Drohobycz Ghetto with a loaf of bread.

Biography
Schulz was born in Drohobych, Austrian Galicia, historically part of the Kingdom of Poland before the three partitions, and today part of Ukraine. After World War One, Drohobycz became part of the Lwów Voivodeship. Bruno Schulz was the son of cloth merchant Jakub Schulz and Henrietta née Kuhmerker. At a very early age, he developed an interest in the arts. He attended Władysław Jagiełło Middle School in Drohobych from 1902 to 1910, graduating with honours. Then he studied architecture at Lviv Polytechnic. His studies were interrupted by illness in 1911 but he resumed them in 1913 after two years of convalescence. In 1917 he briefly studied architecture in Vienna. At the end of World War I, when Schulz was 26, Drohobycz became part of the newly reborn Polish Second Republic. Schulz returned to Władysław Jagiełło Middle School, teaching crafts and drawing from 1924 to 1941. His employment kept him in his hometown, although he disliked the teaching, apparently maintaining his job only because it was his sole source of income. He also amused himself by telling his students stories during classes.

Schulz developed his extraordinary imagination in a swarm of identities and nationalities: he was a Jew who thought and wrote in Polish, was fluent in German, immersed in Jewish culture, yet unfamiliar with the Yiddish language. He drew inspiration from specific local and ethnic sources, looking inward and close to home rather than to the world at large. Avoiding travel, he preferred to remain in his provincial hometown, which over the course of his life belonged to or was fought over by successive states: the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1792–1919); the short-lived West Ukrainian People's Republic (1919); the Second Polish Republic (1919–1939); the Soviet Ukraine from the invasion of Poland in 1939; and, during Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany after the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. His writings avoided explicit mention of world events of the time period.

Schulz was discouraged by influential colleagues from publishing his first short stories. However, his aspirations were refreshed when several letters that he wrote to a friend, Debora Vogel, in which he gave highly original accounts of his solitary life and the details of the lives of his family and fellow citizens, were brought to the attention of the novelist Zofia Nałkowska. She encouraged Schulz to have them published as short fiction. They were published as The Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy Cynamonowe) in 1934. In English-speaking countries, it is most often referred to as The Street of Crocodiles, a title derived from one of its chapters. The Cinnamon Shops was followed three years later by Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, (Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą). The original publications were illustrated by Schulz; in later editions of his works, however, these illustrations were often left out or poorly reproduced. In 1936 he helped his fiancée, Józefina Szelińska, translate Franz Kafka's The Trial into Polish. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award.

In 1939, after the Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland in World War II, Drohobych was occupied by the Soviet Union. At the time, Schulz was known to have been working on a novel called The Messiah, but no trace of the manuscript survived his death. When the Germans launched their Operation Barbarossa against the Soviets in 1941, they forced Schulz into the newly formed Drohobycz Ghetto along with thousands of other dispossessed Jews, most of whom perished at the Belzec extermination camp before the end of 1942. A Nazi Gestapo officer, Felix Landau, however, admired Schulz's artwork and extended him protection in exchange for painting a mural in his Drohobych residence. Shortly after completing the work in 1942, Schulz was walking home through the "Aryan quarter" with a loaf of bread, when another Gestapo officer, Karl Günther, shot him with a small pistol, killing him. This murder was in revenge for Landau's having murdered Günther's own "personal Jew," a dentist named Löw. Subsequently, Schulz's mural was painted over and forgotten – only to be rediscovered in 2001.

Writings
Schulz's body of written work is small: The Street of Crocodiles, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass and a few other compositions that the author did not add to the first edition of his short story collection. A collection of Schulz's letters was published in Polish in 1975, entitled The Book of Letters, as well as a number of critical essays that Schulz wrote for various newspapers. Several of Schulz's works have been lost, including short stories from the early 1940s that the author had sent to be published in magazines, and his final, unfinished novel, The Messiah.

From May 2024, the only surviving literary manuscript by Bruno Schulz (short story Second Autumn (Polish: Druga jesień) is presented at a permanent exhibition in the Palace of the Commonwealth in Warsaw.

English translations
The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass were featured in Penguin's series "Writers from the Other Europe" from the 1970s. Philip Roth was the general editor, and the series included authors such as Danilo Kiš, Tadeusz Borowski, Jiří Weil, and Milan Kundera.

An edition of Schulz's stories was published in 1957, leading to French, German, and later English translations. The first English translations were The Street of Crocodiles, New York: Walker and Company, 1963 (translation by Celina Wieniewska of Sklepy Cynamonowe (Cinnamon Shops) and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass New York: Penguin, 1979, (translation by Celina Wieniewska of Sanatorium Pod Klepsydrą, with an introduction by John Updike) ISBN 0-14-005272-0. The two were later combined into one collection, published as The Complete Fiction of Bruno Schulz. New York: Walker and Company, 1989 ISBN 0-8027-1091-3

Madeline G. Levine translated Schulz's fiction as Collected Stories for Northwestern University Press (2018), which won the Found in Translation Award in 2019.

In 2020, Sublunary Editions published Frank Garrett's translation of Undula, an early story by Schulz which appeared in Dawn: The Journal of Petroleum Officials in Boryslav under the pseudonym Marceli Weron.

Stanley Bill's translation of 13 of Schulz's stories (including Undula) was published under the title Nocturnal Apparitions: Essential Stories in 2022.

Adaptations
Schulz's work has provided the basis for two films. Wojciech Has' The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973) draws from a dozen of his stories and recreates the dreamlike quality of his writings. A 21-minute stop-motion animated 1986 film, Street of Crocodiles, by the Quay Brothers, was inspired by Schulz's writing.

In 1992, an experimental theatre piece based on The Street of Crocodiles was conceived and directed by Simon McBurney and produced by Theatre de Complicite in collaboration with the National Theatre in London. A highly complex interweaving of image, movement, text, puppetry, object manipulation, naturalistic and stylised performance underscored by music from Alfred Schnittke, Vladimir Martynov drew on Schulz's stories, his letters and biography. It received six Olivier Award nominations (1992) after its initial run and was revived four times in London in the years that followed influencing a whole generation of British theatre makers. It subsequently played to audiences and festivals all over the world such as Quebec (Prix du Festival 1994), Moscow, Munich (teatre der Welt 1994), Vilnius and many other countries. It was last revived in 1998 when it played in New York (Lincoln Center Festival) and other cities in the United States, Tokyo and Australia before returning the London to play an 8-week sell out season at the Queens Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. It has been published by Methuen, a UK publishing house, in a collection of plays by Complicite.

In 2006, as part of a site-specific series in a historic Minneapolis office building, Skewed Visions created the multimedia performance/installation The Hidden Room. Combining aspects of Schulz's life with his writings and drawings, the piece depicted the complex stories of his life through movement, imagery and highly stylized manipulation of objects and puppets.

In 2007, physical theatre company Double Edge Theatre premiered a piece called Republic of Dreams, based on the life and works of Bruno Schulz. In 2008, a play based on Cinnamon Shops, directed by Frank Soehnle and performed by the Puppet Theater from Białystok, was performed at the Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków. A performance based on the writings and art of Bruno Schulz, called "From A Dream to A Dream", was created collaboratively by Hand2Mouth Theatre (Portland, Oregon) and Teatr Stacja Szamocin (Szamocin, Poland) under the direction of Luba Zarembinska between 2006–2008. The production premiered in Portland in 2008.

Literary references and biography
Cynthia Ozick's 1987 novel, The Messiah of Stockholm, makes reference to Schulz's work. The story is of a Swedish man who's convinced that he is the son of Schulz, and comes into possession of what he believes to be a manuscript of Schulz's final project, The Messiah. Schulz's character appears again in Israeli novelist David Grossman's 1989 novel See Under: Love. In a chapter entitled "Bruno," the narrator imagines Schulz embarking on a phantasmagoric sea voyage rather than remaining in Drohobych to be killed. That entire novel has been described by Grossman as a tribute to Schulz.

In the last chapter of Roberto Bolaño's 1996 novel Distant Star, the narrator, Arturo B, reads from a book titled The Complete Works of Bruno Schulz in a bar while waiting to confirm the identity of a Nazi-like character, Carlos Wieder, for a detective. When Wieder appears in the bar, the words of Schulz's stories '...had taken on a monstrous character that was almost intolerable' for Arturo B.

Polish writer and critic Jerzy Ficowski spent sixty years researching and uncovering the writings and drawings of Schulz. His study, Regions of the Great Heresy, was published in an English translation in 2003, containing two additional chapters to the Polish edition; one on Schulz's lost work, Messiah, the other on the rediscovery of Schulz's murals.

China Miéville's 2009 novel The City & the City begins with an epigraph from John Curran Davis's translation of Schulz's The Cinnamon Shops: "Deep inside the town there open up, so to speak, double streets, doppelgänger streets, mendacious and delusive streets". In addition to directly alluding to the dual nature of the cities in Miéville's novel, the epigraph also hints at the political implications of the book, since Schulz himself was murdered for appearing in the "wrong" quarter of the city.

In 2010 Jonathan Safran Foer "wrote" his Tree of Codes by cutting into the pages of an English language edition of Schulz' The Street of Crocodiles thus creating a new text. In 2011, the Austrian Rock and Roll Band "Nebenjob" published the song "Wer erschoss Bruno Schulz?" ("who shot Bruno Schulz?"), a homage on the poet and accusation of the murderer, written by T.G. Huemer (see 'references' below). Schulz and The Street of Crocodiles are mentioned several times in 2005 novel The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, with a version of Schulz (having survived the Holocaust) playing a supporting role.

Mural controversy
In February 2001, Benjamin Geissler, a German documentary filmmaker, discovered the mural that Schulz had created for Landau. Polish conservation workers, who had begun the meticulous task of restoration, informed Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust remembrance authority, of the findings. In May of that year representatives of Yad Vashem went to Drohobych to examine the mural. They removed five fragments of it and transported them to Jerusalem.

International controversy ensued. Yad Vashem said that parts of the mural were legally purchased, but the owner of the property said that no such agreement was made, and Yad Vashem did not obtain permission from the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture despite legal requirements. The fragments left in place by Yad Vashem have since been restored and, after touring Polish museums, are now part of the collection at the Bruno Schulz Museum in Drohobych.

This gesture by Yad Vashem instigated public outrage in Poland and Ukraine, where Schulz is a beloved figure.

The issue reached a settlement in 2008 when Israel recognized the works as "the property and cultural wealth" of Ukraine, and Ukraine's Drohobychyna Museum agreed to let Yad Vashem keep them as a long-term loan. In February 2009, Yad Vashem opened its display of the murals to the public.

title: Bruno Schulz


text:
Gayageum

The gayageum or kayagum is a traditional Korean musical instrument. It is a plucked zither with 12 strings, though some more recent variants have 18, 21 or 25 strings. It is probably the best known traditional Korean musical instrument. It is based on the Chinese guzheng and is similar to the Japanese koto, Mongolian yatga, Vietnamese đàn tranh, Sundanese kacapi and Kazakh jetigen.

Pungryu gayageum (beopgeum, jeongak gayageum)
According to the Samguksagi (1146), a history of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, the gayageum was developed around the sixth century in the Gaya confederacy by King Gasil (also known as Haji of Daegaya) after he observed an old Chinese instrument Guzheng. He ordered a musician named Wu Ruk to compose music that could be played on the instrument. The original name was gayago(or gayatgo) and later gayageum. The gayageum was then further improved by Wu Ruk during the reign of Jinheung in the Shilla dynasty. The ancient gayageum of King Gasil was called by several names, including beopgeum (law-zither, 법금), pungnyu (elegance, 풍류), or jeong-ak (right music, 정악) gayageum. It is normally associated with accompaniment for court music, chamber music, and lyric songs. This type of gayageum has a wider spacing between the strings and plays slower-tempo music such as Yeongsan hoesang and Mit-doduri.

Sanjo gayageum
The sanjo gayageum is believed to have evolved in the 19th century with the emergence of sanjo music, which in Korean literally means "scattered melodies", a musical form that involves fast tempos and some improvisation. The sanjo gayageum version of the instrument has closer string spacing and a shorter length to let musicians play the faster passages required for sanjo. The sanjo gayageum is now the most widespread form of gayageum. All traditional gayageum use silk strings, though since the late 20th century, some musicians use nylon.

Modern gayageum
Modern versions of the gayageum with more strings often use nylon-wrapped steel strings, similar to those used for the Chinese guzheng. Brass strings have also been introduced to produce a louder sound, which is preferred for accompanying dance. To play modern music, gayageum with a greater number of strings have been developed, increasing the instrument's range. Gayageum are available with 13, 17, 18, 21, 22, or 25 strings, though instruments with more strings are available custom-made. The 21-string gayageum is normally found in North Korea.

Playing method
The gayageum is traditionally played when sitting on the floor with crossed legs, the head of the instrument resting on the right knee and the tail resting on the floor. When played whilst seated on a chair or stool, the tail end is usually placed on a special fold-out stand, similar to a camp-stool, or another chair/stool. For modern gayageum, they may be placed on a special stand with the player seated on a chair behind the instrument. The people of North Korea usually play whilst seated on a chair, but they do not use a stand of the tail end. Instead, the gayageum has detachable legs that are fixed into the end to raise the tail high enough.

The gayageum is played with both right and left hands. The right hand plucks and flicks the strings close to the bridge of the gayageum, whilst the left hand pushes the strings on the left side of the bridges to raise the pitch and adds vibrato and other ornamentation.

Tunings and modes
The gayageum can be tuned to a variety of pitches depending on use, though no standard exists as to what exact pitches they should be tuned. They include:
 * E♭, F, A♭, B♭, E♭, F, A♭, B♭, c, e♭, f, a♭
 * E♭, F, A♭, B♭, E♭, E♭, A♭, B♭, d♭, e♭, f, a♭
 * E♭, A♭, B♭, E♭, F, A♭, B♭, c, e♭, f, a♭, b♭
 * G, C, D, G, A, C, D, E, G, A, c, d

When noted in staff notation, however, the pitch series is usually transposed as the following, regardless of the actual pitches tuned on the strings: This is to avoid switching between the bass and treble clefs to make reading the music easier.
 * D, G, A, D, E, G, A, B, d, e, g, a

Traditionally, three modes are used:
 * 羽調 (우조): G key
 * 平調 (평조): C key
 * 界面調 (계면조): B♭ key

Construction
The beobgeum gayageum is 160 cm long by 30 cm wide by 10 cm deep. Its body is made of a single piece of paulownia wood. The resonator chamber is hollowed out of the piece of paulownia.

The sanjo gayageum is about 142 cm long by 23 cm wide by 10 cm deep. The soundboard is made of paulownia, but the sides and back are of a harder wood such as chestnut or walnut.

On the soundboard, anjok (movable bridges) support the strings. These bridges move to adjust the tuning and intonation. The strings enter the top of the body from tolgwae (string pegs) beneath. At the other end, the strings wind around loops at the end of thick cords, which pass over the nut then looped through holes at the bottom of the instrument and secured, and then the cords are all tied in a decorative coil.

The left hand presses the strings to raise the pitch, and finger movements perform various movements such as shaking, bending, and vibrating the strings. The right hand plucks or strums the strings. The gayageum's tone is soft, delicate, and subtle. Legend says the instrument was first made by King Gasil in the Kaya Kingdom around the sixth century, and was further developed by a musician named Ureuk in the time of King of Jinhung in the Silla dynasty.

According to some evidence, however, it dates to a much earlier time than the Silla dynasty. Recent archaeological excavations in the Kwangsan areas in Jeolla-namdo Province revealed fragments of a gayageum from around the first century BCE.

The gayageum is employed in different types of music, leading to variations of the instrument, including the following:
 * Pungryu gayageum is the original form, with more widely spaced strings for slower-tempo works.
 * Sanjo gayageum is a smaller, modern version with more closely spaced strings to accommodate rapid playing.
 * Modern gayageum instruments broaden the body and add more strings to increase the pitch range to accommodate contemporary music.

Sanjo and folk
The six or more schools of the gayageum sanjo include Seong Geum Yeon, Kim Juk Pa, Kim Yoon Deok, Kang Tae Hong, Kim Byeong Ho, and Choi Ok Sam schools.

Contemporary
Contemporary music composers have been creating modern music for the gayageum. Hwang Byung Ki composed "Forest" as a first modern gayageum piece, Sungcheon Lee created 21-string gayageum and new pieces. Beomhoon Park composed the gayageum concerto "New Sanjo" (새산조) for 25-string gayageum, and following generation's composers and western musicians have been composing modern music for it.

Listening

 * Sanjo audio from Robert Garfias' site
 * sanjo gayageum (arirang by beginner) audio from Naver's blog
 * Fusion korean traditional musics-group Queen

Video

 * Sanjo videos from Robert Garfias' site
 * Grace Jong Eun Lee, Kayagum Composer and Soloist, from the Korea Society

title: Gayageum


text: File:Valhalla.png

title: File:Valhalla.png


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Beilen

Beilen is a town in the Dutch province of Drenthe. It is a part of the municipality of Midden-Drenthe, and lies about 16 km south of Assen. The old Reformed church is the only remaining truly old building; a large fire destroyed a major part of Beilen in 1820.

Beilen has a railway station - Beilen railway station.

The biggest employers in Beilen are the former DOMO milk powder factory and the psychiatric hospital GGZ Drenthe. The village is also home to a large distribution centre for the Jumbo supermarket chain. Beilen is also visited by many tourists, as it is located between many forests and National Reserves. Each August the so-called "Wende-aovends" take place in Beilen, featuring activities for children in the shopping center and showcases by local artists at night.

Until 1998, Beilen was a separate municipality.

Education
There are four primary schools: Beatrix, GA de Ridder, De Eshorst, and Harm Smeenge. There are two secondary schools: Dr. Nassau College and CS Vincent van Gogh.

title: Beilen


text:
Talk:Barry Minkow

Unclear, uninformative and unhelpful article
I came across this page today and having read it have no idea what it is about. Its a really weak article Cxk271 (talk) 16:08, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Fraud Discovery Institute
The article references Fraud Discovery Institute as an unquestioned real world company. I find it somewhat disturbing that there is no information available from the FDI about their management or board or funding or legal situation or trading address. There is not really any information available that allows a visitor to make any sort of judgement on whether this is in fact a real company. Even for the three listed 'staff' there is no contact information and it is not easy to confirm that they are who they claim to be. While I'm not suggesting the company is a scam, it would seem to be incumbent upon Minkow to be whiter than white in this matter and to disclose more full information including checkable facts about the company. I have emailed the address listed on the site and asked for more information. This is relevant to the Wikipedia article as it relies heavily on the existence and success of FDI as supporting evidence of the article.

Scheme
Was this really a pyramid scheme, or was it a Ponzi scheme? -Anthropos 12:44, 11 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Though Zzzz Best had some elements of a pyramid scheme, it was more of a Ponzi scheme than anything else. The key element in the whole affair was Minkow's willingness from the very beginning to build his business on less than the complete truth - and that fact was eventually discovered and given the light of day, as these acts must.  --avnative 12:29, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

I really would appreciate it if you would take the Churches name off your Page, Yes Nu- Way Christian Ministies.

Please refer to Recent Developements

Interstate Appraisal Services
The article is unclear as to origin of Interstate Appraisal Services. It says Minkow met Padgett who was already working there but then later says the company was formed to support ZZZZ Best's fraud. Thepedestrian 20:28, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

 * Both statements were true. Padgett was Interstate Appraisal Services - its only person performing its work - and the name Interstate Appraisal Services (Padgett) became a company to support Zzzz Best's fraud.  For more, you may obtain Minkow's autobiography on the subject:  Clean Sweep: The Inside Story of of the Zzzz Best Scam. . .One of Wall Street's Biggest Frauds  ISBN 0785279164, which is a fascinating read.  --avnative 12:29, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

Allegedly?
I'm taking out the term "allegedly" in the introductory section. There's no credible allegations referenced or sourced, and until they are, Mr. Minkow deserves to have the benefit of the doubt. . . especially when he is under the oversight of a church board of directors or equivalant. These folks I'm sure know of Minkow's past, and if there was a problem with his ethical behavior - especially as it relates to financial fraud - he'd be out of there in a heartbeat. Let's cite sources before we start doubting everyone and anyone who has an article on Wikipedia. Thanks. --avnative 16:12, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

 * Minkow's congregation and Elder Board are very aware of his past. It is almost a weekly part of his sermons and each visitor that has returned for the third time is invited to his home and given a copy of his first book. --Aaronkaiser 17:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Nu Way
Please refer to recent developements for comments.

Pastor Cooper

 * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It is aiming to document what happened. You can contribute to Wikipedia by ensuring that the resultant references are based on a Neutral Point of View. The issue will however not be removed from Wikipedia if it is significant. Ansell 10:41, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

 * A suggestion -- maybe we should create an article for Pastor Cooper. It could contain some details of his investment scheme, consent decree, and his defense. These details are not appropriate on the Barry Minkow page, but they would be appropriate on the man's own page. Is he notable, other than having been busted by Minkow? Uucp 12:05, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

 * "Nu-Way was founded in 1993 and holds services for about 200 members in San Diego and Temecula, according its Web site."

Usana?
This page needs some discussion (at least a link) to Usana. jhawkinson (talk) 05:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

 * I've been updating several direct selling companies, and ran across Minkow and this article on a few of them, Usana included. The recent press on Lennar and him going back to jail is certainly a strong case for that addition to the article.  But, I also think there has been enough press on Usana for a section on that as well.  There has been some journalism over at Deep Capture on Minkow's participation in the Usana report.  Deep Capture appears to pass the WP:RS test upon reading their About page here.   Leef5  TALK |  CONTRIBS 18:58, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Pastor Cooper
Someone have mashed a bio on Pastor Cooper into this article. It doesn't belong in an article on Minkow so I've removed it from two sections! 87.54.40.66 (talk) 12:30, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Removed material
I have removed material from that does not comply with our policy on the biographies of living persons. Biographical material must always be referenced from reliable sources, especially negative material. Negative material that does not comply with that must be immediately removed. Note that the removal does not imply that the information is either true or false.

Please do not reinsert this material unless you can provide reliable citations, and can ensure it is written in a neutral tone. Please review the relevant policies before editing in this regard. Editors should note that failure to follow this policy may result in the removal of editing privileges.--Scott Mac (Doc) 20:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

 * I removed the YouTube interview external link. Per WP:YT it is rare for a YouTube link to abide by the external links guidelines and each should be examined on a case-by-case basis. I consider that unnecessary because this is a BLP.  momoricks   (make my day)  05:39, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

MinkowBeneathTheIceberg.com
If there are any inaccuracies within the website MinkowBeneathTheIceberg.com (listed within the Further Reading section) that are a matter of verifiable fact (not opinion), please forward them to MarketWave@cox.net (the author) and they will be promptly corrected. Simply disagreeing with my observations and opinions, or not liking the numerous verified and sourced facts I have presented, is not a valid reason to refer to them as a "lie" and have the reference removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwave (talk • contribs) 22:12, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Whatever the merits of that website, it doesn't appear that it passes Wikipedia's particular rules applicable to biographies of living persons, in particular WP:BLPSPS ("Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject") and WP:BLPEL ("Questionable or self-published sources should not be included in the "Further reading" or "External links" sections of BLPs").--Arxiloxos (talk) 22:32, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Inaccuracies are too numerous to list. The bias of the writer is obvious, and it makes this piece unsuitable for inclusion. Furthermore, it is self-published.

I have read both of these rules and do not see how this website applies. Virtually all of the extensively footnoted sources are third party, including various professional news sources and several biographical books, some written by Minkow himself. There seems to be no issue with the listing of the 60 Minutes segment on Minkow. How are my company's sources any less reliable - or any less third party - that CBS's? The only way this makes sense is if the rule prohibits the author of the material from posting it himself (i.e. the 60 Minute link would be in violation of someone from CBS added it). If this is the case, then would I be correct in that any other person, among the 7 billion on the planet, can reference our Minkow material within the Further Reading section, but just not me?

I would like to become more active as a Wikipedia editor and sincerely desire to better understand the rules here. But this one has me baffled. Can you please tell me more about why this material is violative of Wiki policy? Thanks. Mwave (talk) 02:29, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
 * CBS is a reliable source. As best I can determine, MinkowBeneathTheIceberg.com doesn't qualify. --Arxiloxos (talk) 04:39, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

This is becoming more and more nonsensical. I asked you to please explain your reasoning for applying WP:BLP and WP:BLPSPS as it relates to "self published" sources, and instead you completely ignore my question and now declare my organization to be an unreliable source. Does the subjective option of a single Wiki editor, based on his or her personal awareness of a source, or lack of such, really get to make such a call? What do you base your personal assessment of reliability and unreliability on, exactly? My company, MarketWave, Inc. has been exposing fraud for over 21 years. The CBS segment, which you have declared "reliable" in this context, presented Minkow as a reformed, born again fraud buster. My allegedly unreliable organization has been trying to expose Minkow's true nature for almost five years before he was sent back to prison. Furthermore, "Minkow: Beneath The Iceberg" has been publicly available for vetting for over a year now and not one single error has been found within it. I would argue this is the most extensively research, fact checked, and sourced documents related to Minkow ever created. I am trying to be open minded and understanding here. All I am asking for is a reasonable explanation for your position. I don't think that is an unreasonable request.Mwave (talk) 19:33, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
 * This isn't about my evaluation of your website's accuracy, but rather about the rules Wikipedia uses for deciding what kinds of sources are allowed to be cited in articles and as external links. Wikipedia's rules are especially stringent when applied to biographies of living persons.  You asked why CBS can be cited, and I pointed you to the page Identifying reliable sources, which explains the criteria under which sources are evaluated for their reliability. I do suggest that you have a look at that page.
 * I appreciate your good faith in maintaining this discussion in a constructive manner. Decisions on Wikipedia are made by consensus, so I've posted a note at the external links noticeboard asking for perspectives on this from other editors. --Arxiloxos (talk) 01:48, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Barry Minkow


text:
William Hamilton (geologist)

William John Hamilton (5 July 1805 – 27 June 1867) was a British geologist who served as a Conservative Member of Parliament.

Early life
Hamilton was born in Wishaw, Lanarkshire on 5 July 1805. He was the eldest son of William Richard Hamilton, FRS, and the former Julia Udny. His younger brothers were Alexander Edmund Hamilton (who drowned in India in 1827), Capt. Henry George Hamilton of the Royal Navy (father of Adm. Sir Frederick Hamilton), Charles Anthony Hamilton (who worked in the Privy Council office), Arthur Richard Hamilton, and Gen. Frederick William Hamilton.

His paternal grandfather was Anthony Hamilton, the Archdeacon of Colchester. His maternal grandparents were John Udny, British Counsul at Venice and Leghorn, and Selina Shore Clevland (a daughter of John Clevland MP). His uncle, Lt.-Col. John Robert Fullerton Udny inherited Udny Castle in Aberdeen from his uncle, Robert Udny, the prominent merchant and art collector.

He was educated at Charterhouse School and the University of Göttingen.

Career
He became a fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1831. In 1835 he made a geological tour of the Levant with Hugh Edwin Strickland, continuing on his own through Armenia and across Asia Minor. This journey was described in Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus, and Armenia (1842). Hamilton was the first known person to have successfully climbed Mount Erciyes.

He was a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Newport, Isle of Wight, from 1841 to 1847.

Hamilton was president of the Royal Geographical Society for 1848–1849 and of the Geological Society between 1854 and 1866. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1855. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1862.

He made excursions in France and Belgium and wrote on the rocks and minerals of Tuscany, the agate quarries of Oberstein, and on the geology of the Mayence basin and the Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) district.

Personal life
On 26 April 1832, Hamilton married Martin Trotter, a daughter of John Trotter. Before her death in March 1833, they had a son:

 * Robert William Hamilton (1833–1883), who married Charlotte Maria Palmer, a daughter of Lt.-Col. George Palmer.

On 26 July 1838, he married the Hon. Margaret Frances Florence Dillon, a daughter of Henry Augustus Dillon-Lee, 13th Viscount Dillon, and Henrietta Browne (sister to Dominick Browne, 1st Baron Oranmore and Browne). They had six children:

 * Margaret Wilhelmina Hamilton (d. 1915), who married Louis Eric Ames, son Henry Ames of Linden.
 * Florence Selina Hamilton (d. 1904), who married Sir Thomas Villiers Lister, son of Thomas Henry Lister, in 1877.
 * Victoria Henrietta Hamilton (d. 1917), who married of James Graham Goodenough (parents of Adm. Sir William Edmund Goodenough).
 * Alexander Charles Hamilton (1840–1920), who successfully claimed the title of 10th Lord Belhaven and Stenton.
 * Constantine Henry Hamilton (1843–1885), a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Artillery who died unmarried.
 * Archibald William Hamilton (1847–1886), who married Elizabeth Ann Billyard, daughter of W. Billyard, in 1869.

Hamilton died in London in 1867, his wife survived him.

Descendants
As his son Alexander died without surviving male issue, his grandson Robert Hamilton-Udny (son of his youngest son Archibald), inherited the title of 10th Lord Belhaven and Stenton.

title: William Hamilton (geologist)


text:
Talk:Pasteurization

Flash Pasteurization
The article on Flash pasteurization describes the method as using temperatures between 71.5-74ºC and durations between 15 and 30 seconds. But the widley-used HTST method described in this article uses a temperature in that range (72ºC) and a time of 15 seconds. This article also claims the following:
 * A newer method called flash pasteurization involves shorter exposure to higher temperatures, and is claimed to be better for preserving color and taste in some products.

I assume the comparison ("shorter") is to HTST, in which case there seems to be inconsistency between the articles.

POV
I second the problems with the raw milk section. It is far POV, makes unsubstantiated claims, and uses poor language for an encyclopedia. I'm looking at the end of the first Raw Milk section in particular. Some sources that would be useful in fixing the entire article are cdc.gov and fda.gov. I'm not sure who should be quoted as pro-Raw milk; maybe there is a lobby. Any claim made by either group ideally should be met by a counter-claim if it's disputed.

Article lacks basic info. Too much info about milk.
Pasteurization is a process that finds applications in not only food preparation, but also mushroom cultivation, Horticulture, and biology (and possibly elsewhere.) Pasteurization is often applied because some beneficial micro-organisms can survive this process, as opposed to sterilization which basically kills everything. Of course it is also used to sanitize substances that cannot be heated beyond certain temperatures, cannot be autoclaved, or cannot be treated with chemicals.I believe, though I am not sure, that pasteurization can be used on dry solids. Never the less, pasteurization IS used on wet solids, for example wet soil, wet grains, wet vermiculite etc. -Matt Munson Oct 13 2007

Raw Vs Pasteurized: Not that big of a difference?
I think this whole debate about raw vs pasteurized is being debated by people from two extremes, whereas a well informed person would probably be somewhere in the middle. On the one hand science acknowledges the existence of beneficial bacteria. Everyone has them growing in their stomach, even before they are born. In fact, humans are a construct of many different organisms including fungi and bacteria. Science also acknowledges the fact that by eating certain foods that contain these beneficial bacteria, we can improve our over all health. However, I do not know how much of these bacteria we miss out on, if any, due to the pasteurization of milk. Other foods, such as yogurt are already known to contain high concentrations of these beneficial bacteria.On the other hand, the only two purposes I know of for the pasteurization of milk are to preserve it as long as possible and to make sure that no harmful organisms are present. Clearly preserving milk is a benefit to society, as it decreases waste, thereby increasing the efficiency of our production. Eliminating pathogenic bacteria would at first seem like only a good thing. However, there is scientific evidence, that being exposed to more pathogens in your life, especialy during developmental stages, will increase the strength of your immune system. In other words, someone who is almost never exposed to pathogens will have almost no defense against them. Clearly, individuals with depressed immune systems (babies, AIDS patients etc.) should only drink pasteurized milk. For the rest of us, there is no reason why we cant make an informed decision about what we put in our bodies. Although if raw milk where to be made available from major distributors, it would surely cost much more than pasteurized milk, due to the shorter expiry time, little consumer demand (less people buy so it would have to cost more to get a profit) and high tech facilities that would probably be needed to keep the milk from being exposed to too many pathogens... Just some food for though, for anybody that can actually write well enough and has the time enough to research this well enough, to actualy edit the entry. - Matt Munson oct 13 2007

Figure: General overview of the pasteurization process
The text in that figure is incomprehensible 162.246.139.210 (talk) 19:45, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Pasteurization


text:
Battle of Lost River

The Battle of Lost River in November 1872 was the first battle in the Modoc War in the northwestern United States. The skirmish, which was fought near the Lost River along the California–Oregon border, was the result of an attempt by the U.S. 1st Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army to force a band of the Modoc tribe to relocate back to the Klamath Reservation, which they had left in objection of its conditions.

In the subsequent war, Captain Jack of the Modoc and 53 warriors held off more than 1000 U.S. soldiers for 7 months in the area of the present-day Lava Beds National Monument. Part of this was named Captain Jack's Stronghold in his honor.

Description
In the 1860s, the Modoc had been removed from their traditional home near the Lost River in California to the newly established Klamath Reservation in Oregon. The more numerous Klamath were traditional enemies, and the peoples had conflicts on the reservation.

In 1872, Kintpuash (Captain Jack) led his band of about 100 Modoc back to their traditional home on Lost River. White settlers had moved into the area during their absence and complained to the government about the returning Modoc, asking that the Indians be forced back to the reservation. On November 27, Bureau of Indian Affairs Superintendent T. B. Odeneal requested Major John Green, commanding officer at Fort Klamath, to furnish sufficient troops to compel Captain Jack to return to the reservation. On November 28, Captain James Jackson, commanding 40 troops, left Fort Klamath for Captain Jack's camp. Reinforced by citizens from Linkville (now Klamath Falls, Oregon), the troops reached Jack's camp on the Lost River about a mile above Emigrant Crossing (now Stone Bridge, Oregon) on November 29.

Wishing to avoid conflict, Captain Jack agreed to go to the reservation. The situation became tense when Captain Jackson demanded he and his warriors disarm. Captain Jack had never fought the army, and was alarmed at this command, but finally agreed to put down his weapons.

The rest of the Modoc were following his lead, when warrior Scarfaced Charley and an unidentified army sergeant reportedly got into a verbal argument, pulled their revolvers, and shot at each other, both missing. The Modoc scrambled to regain their weapons, and fought a short battle before fleeing toward the border with California. After driving the Modoc from camp, Captain Jackson ordered his troops to retreat to await reinforcements. The casualties in this short battle included one U.S. soldier killed and seven wounded, and two Modoc killed and three wounded.

On their way to the Lava Beds south of Tule Lake, a small band of Modoc under the leadership of Hooker Jim killed 18 settlers on the afternoon of November 29 and morning of November 30. This attack added to calls for the US Army troops to be reinforced and the Modoc suppressed.

title: Battle of Lost River


text:
Fălticeni

Fălticeni (Foltischeni; Falticsén; פלטיצ'ן פאלטישאן) is a town in Suceava County, northeastern Romania. It is situated in the historical region of Western Moldavia. According to the 2021 census, Fălticeni is the third largest urban settlement in the county. It was declared a municipality in 1995, along with two other cities in Suceava County: Rădăuți and Câmpulung Moldovenesc.

Fălticeni covers an area of 28.76 km2, of which 25% are orchards and lakes, and it administers two villages: Șoldănești and Țarna Mare. It was the capital of former Baia County (1929–1950). The town is known for the high number of Romanian writers, artists, and scientists who were born, lived, studied, or have created here.

Geography
Fălticeni is located in the southern part of Suceava County, 25 km away from Suceava, the county seat. The European route E85 crosses the city. Fălticeni is connected to the Romanian national railway system, through Dolhasca train station (24 km away). The city of Roman is 80 km to the south, on the E85 road.

Town council
The town's current local council has the following political composition, according to the results of the 2020 Romanian local elections:

History
The earliest written mention of the village Folticeni is from March 1490, and the second from March 1554, when Moldavian Prince Alexandru Lăpuşneanu awarded the estate and the village bearing the aforesaid name to Moldovița Monastery.

Fălticeni was first mentioned as an urban settlement in August 1780 as Târgul Șoldănești (Șoldănești Market), after the name of a local boyar's estate, in a document issued by the chancellery of Prince Constantin Moruzi. In March 1826, an edict issued by Prince Ioan Sturdza changed the name of the town to Fălticeni.

Fălticeni was bombed by the Bolsheviks during World War I.

Before World War I, Fălticeni was the capital of the Romanian Old Kingdom’s Suceava County. After the Union of Bukovina with Romania and an administrative reform from 1925, Fălticeni became the capital of Baia County, remaining as such until 1950. Since the revival of counties in 1968, the city has been part of Suceava County.

In 1921 the Faltishan (Yiddish for Fălticeni) Hasidic dynasty was founded in Fălticeni, by Rabbi Eluzar Twersky, a scion of the Skver Hasidic sect, and part of the prestigious royal Hasidic Twersky family. Today they are Jewish communities in Brooklyn, New York carrying on the name Faltishan, led by Rabbi Twersky's descendants.

Demographics
Fălticeni reached its peak population in 1992, when almost 33,000 people were living within the city limits. As of 2016, the town of Fălticeni was the third largest urban settlement in Suceava County, after the county capital, Suceava, and the town of Rădăuți.

According to the 2011 census data, 24,619 inhabitants lived in Fălticeni, a decrease from the figure recorded at the 2002 census, when the city had a population of 29,787 inhabitants. In 2011, of the city total population, 98.15% were ethnic Romanians, 0.76% Roma, 0.75% Russians (including Lipovans), 0.07% Hungarians, 0.04% Germans (Regat Germans) , 0.02% Ukrainians, and 0.01% Poles.

Culture
There are four museums in Fălticeni. Ion Irimescu Art Museum (Muzeul de Artă "Ion Irimescu") houses the largest collection of works of art by a single artist, Ion Irimescu, one of Romania's greatest sculptors and sketchers, as well as a member of the Romanian Academy. The museum building is a historic monument, dating from the middle of the 19th century and had various destinations until 1974, when it was given to the art museum. In 1974 Ion Irimescu took the initiative to establish the museum, at first as a department of the Town Museum and made some donations. Later the value of the collection grew, currently being the richest author collection, and in 1991 an independent museum emerged. It comprises the most representative works by the sculptor Ion Irimescu: 313 sculptures and 1000 drawings: portraits, compositions, monument project carried out in the rondebosse or alterorelief technique, in gypsum, wood, terracotta, marble, bronze works of graphics especially donated to the museum by the author. The museum also includes the artist's personal library (1500 volumes).

Mihai Băcescu Water Museum (Muzeul Apelor "Mihai Băcescu") was founded in 1982 by the Romanian zoologist Mihai Băcescu, who was also a member of the Romanian Academy. This museum of natural sciences represents the enhancement and the development of the first museum established in Fălticeni, in 1914, by the professor Vasile Ciurea.

Fălticeni is the hometown of the Lovinescu family, which gave Romania four of its most distinguished men of letters of the 20th century: literary critic Eugen Lovinescu, playwright Horia Lovinescu, esoterist Vasile Lovinescu and novelist Anton Holban. The Lovinescu family contributed to founding a memorial museum in Fălticeni, House of Notable People (Galeria Oamenilor de Seamă). The museum was opened in 1972 and represents a synthesis of the city's cultural and intellectual life.

Classics of Romanian literature, such as Ion Creangă, Mihail Sadoveanu, Vasile Alecsandri, or Nicolae Labiș, at some point in their life linked their name with that of the city by both studying and living in Fălticeni. Mihail Sadoveanu Memorial House (Casa memorială "Mihail Sadoveanu") is a museum founded in 1987 in Fălticeni, in the house where Mihail Sadoveanu lived and created between 1909 and 1918.

Economy
The main industries of the city are chemical manufacture, hand-made glass, manufacturing soft drinks, clothing, and wood products. Also the fishing industry is one of the oldest base industry in the city. Most of these industries have died down after the Communist era.

Natives
Not born in Fălticeni, but artistically active there was also:
 * Costin Anton - painter
 * Ionuț Atodiresei - kickboxer
 * Adrian Avrămia - footballer
 * Aurel Băeșu - painter
 * J. J. Benjamin - historian and traveler
 * Grigore Vasiliu Birlic - actor
 * Jules Cazaban - actor, director
 * Ion Dragoslav - writer
 * Nicu Gane - writer, politician
 * Arthur Gorovei - writer, folklorist, ethnographer
 * Ștefan S. Gorovei - historian
 * Sofia Ionescu - neurosurgeon
 * Ion Irimescu - sculptor, sketcher
 * Alexandru Lambrior - folklorist
 * Dimitrie Leonida - engineer, scientist
 * Eugen Lovinescu - literary historian, literary critic, novelist
 * Vasile Lovinescu - esoterist
 * Vasile Maftei - footballer
 * Maria Olaru - gymnast
 * Mayer Schorr - hazzan
 * Constantin Schumacher - footballer
 * Gilles Ségal - actor, playwright
 * Rabbi Mordechai Stein - Faltishaner Rabbe
 * Teodor Tatos - painter, writer, lawyer
 * Reuven Rubin - painter

title: Fălticeni