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Abdelaziz Bouteflika

Abdelaziz Bouteflika (عبد العزيز بوتفليقة ; 2 March 1937 – 17 September 2021) was an Algerian politician and diplomat who served as the seventh president of Algeria from 1999 to his resignation in 2019.

Before his stint as an Algerian politician, Bouteflika served during the Algerian War as a member of the National Liberation Front. After Algeria gained its independence from France, he served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1963 until 1979. He served as President of the United Nations General Assembly during the 1974–1975 session. In 1983 he was convicted of stealing millions of dinars from Algerian embassies during his diplomatic career.

In 1999, Bouteflika was elected president of Algeria in a landslide victory. He would win re-elections in 2004, 2009, and 2014. As President, he presided over the end of the Algerian Civil War in 2002 when he took over the project of his immediate predecessor President Liamine Zéroual, and he ended emergency rule in February 2011 amidst regional unrest. Following a stroke in 2013, Bouteflika had made few public appearances throughout his fourth term, making his final appearance in 2017.

Bouteflika resigned on 2 April 2019 amid months of mass protests opposing his candidacy for a fifth term. With nearly 20 years in power, he is the longest-serving head of state of Algeria to date. Following his resignation, Bouteflika became a recluse and died at the age of 84 in 2021, over two years after his resignation. After his death it became known in a Suisse secrets data leak, that he held a Credit Suisse account which overlapped with much of his presidency.

Early life and education
Abdelaziz Bouteflika was born on 2 March 1937 in Oujda, Morocco. He was the son of Mansouria Ghezlaoui and Ahmed Bouteflika from Tlemcen, Algeria. He had three half-sisters (Fatima, Yamina, and Aïcha), as well as four brothers (Abdelghani, Mustapha, Abderahim, and Saïd) and one sister (Latifa). Saïd Bouteflika, 20 years his junior, would later be appointed special counselor to his brother in 1999. Unlike Saïd, who was raised mostly in Tlemcen, Abdelaziz grew up in Oujda, where his father had emigrated as a youngster. The son of a zaouia sheikh, he was well-versed in the Qur'an. He successively attended three schools in Oudja: Sidi Ziane, El Hoceinia, and Abdel Moumen High Schools, where he reportedly excelled academically. He was also affiliated with Qadiriyya Zaouia in Oujda. In 1956, Bouteflika went to the village of Ouled Amer near Tlemcen and subsequently joined—at the age of 19—the National Liberation Army, which was a military branch of the National Liberation Front. He received his military education at the École des Cadres in Dar El Kebdani, Morocco. In 1957–1958, he was designated a controller of Wilaya V, making reports on the conditions at the Moroccan border and in west Algeria, but later became the administrative secretary of Houari Boumédiène. He became one of his closest collaborators and a core member of his Oujda Group. In 1960, he was assigned to leading the Malian Front in the Algerian south and became known for his nom de guerre of Abdelkader al-Mali, which has survived until today. In 1962, at the arrival of independence, he aligned with Boumédienne and the border armies in support of Ahmed Ben Bella against the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic.

Career
Following independence in 1962, Bouteflika became deputy for Tlemcen in the Constituent Assembly and Minister for Youth and Sport in the government led by Ahmed Ben Bella; the following year, he was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs.

He was a prime mover in the military coup led by Houari Boumediene that overthrew Ben Bella on 19 June 1965. Bouteflika continued as Minister for Foreign Affairs until the death of President Boumédienne in 1978. He also served as president of the United Nations General Assembly in 1974 and of the seventh special session in 1975, becoming the youngest person to have done so. Algeria at this time was a leader of the Non-Aligned Nations Movement. He had discussions there with Henry Kissinger in the first talks between the United States and Algerian officials since the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

On 12 November 1974, in his capacity as president of the General Assembly, Bouteflika suspended the then Apartheid government of South Africa from participating in the 29th session of the UN. The suspension was challenged by the US, but upheld by the assembly by a vote of 91 to 22 on 13 November.

In 1981, he was charged with having stolen Algerian embassies' money between 1965 and 1979. On 8 August 1983, Bouteflika was convicted by the Court of Financial Auditors and found guilty of having fraudulently taken 60 million dinars during his diplomatic career. Bouteflika was granted amnesty by President Chadli Bendjedid, his colleagues Senouci and Boudjakdji were jailed. After the amnesty, Bouteflika was given back his diplomatic passport, a villa where he used to live but did not own, and all his debt was erased. He never paid back the money "he reserved for a new foreign affairs ministry's building".

Succession struggle, corruption and exile
Following Boumédienne's unexpected death in 1978, Bouteflika was seen as one of the two main candidates to succeed the powerful president. Bouteflika was thought to represent the party's "right wing" that was more open to economic reform and rapprochement with the West. Colonel Mohamed Salah Yahiaoui represented the "boumédiennist" left wing. In the end, the military opted for a compromise candidate, the senior army colonel Chadli Bendjedid. Bouteflika was reassigned the role of Minister of State, but successively lost power as Bendjedid's policies of "de-Boumédiennisation" marginalised the old guard.

In 1981, Bouteflika went into exile fleeing corruption charges. In 1983, he was convicted of corruption. After six years abroad, in 1989, the army brought him back to the Central Committee of the FLN, after the country had entered a troubled period of unrest and disorganised attempts at reform, with power-struggles between Bendjedid and a group of army generals paralysing decision-making.

In 1992, the reform process ended abruptly when the army took power and scrapped elections that were about to bring the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front to power. This triggered a civil war that would last throughout the 1990s. During this period, Bouteflika stayed on the sidelines, with little presence in the media and no political role. In January 1994, Bouteflika was said to have refused the Army's proposal to succeed the assassinated president, Mohamed Boudiaf; he claimed later that this was because the army would not grant him full control over the armed forces. Instead, General Liamine Zéroual became president.

First term as President, 1999–2004
In 1999, after Zéroual unexpectedly stepped down and announced early elections, Bouteflika successfully ran for president as an independent candidate, supported by the military. All other candidates withdrew from the election immediately prior to the vote, citing fraud concerns. Bouteflika subsequently organised a referendum on his policies to restore peace and security to Algeria (involving amnesties for Islamist guerrillas) and to test his support among his countrymen after the contested election. He won with 81% of the vote, but this figure was also disputed by opponents.

Foreign policy
Bouteflika presided over the Organisation of African Unity in 2000, secured the Algiers Peace Treaty between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and supported peace efforts in the African Great Lakes region. He also secured a friendship treaty with nearby Spain in 2002, and welcomed president Jacques Chirac of France on a state visit to Algiers in 2003. This was intended as a prelude to the signature of a friendship treaty.

Algeria has been particularly active in African relations, and in mending ties with the West, as well as trying to some extent to resurrect its role in the declining non-Aligned movement. However, it has played a more limited role in Arab politics, its other traditional sphere of interest. Relations with the Kingdom of Morocco remained quite tense, with diplomatic clashes on the issue of the Western Sahara, despite some expectations of a thaw in 1999, which was also the year of King Mohamed VI's accession to the throne in Morocco.

Second term as President, 2004–2009
On 8 April 2004, Bouteflika was re-elected by an unexpectedly high 85% of the vote in an election that was accepted by Western observers as a free and fair election. This was contested by his rival and former chief of staff Ali Benflis. Several newspapers alleged that the election had not been fair. Frustration was expressed over extensive state control over the broadcast media. The electoral victory was widely seen as a confirmation of Bouteflika's strengthening control over the state, cemented through forcing General Mohammed Lamari to resign as his chief of staff and replacing him "with Ahmed Salah Gaid, his close friend and ally."

Only 17% of people in Kabylia voted in 2004, which represented a significant increase over the violence-ridden legislative elections of 2002. Country-wide, the registered turnout rate was 59%.

Reconciliation plan
During the first year of his second term, Bouteflika held a referendum on his "Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation", inspired by the 1995 "Sant'Egidio Platform" document. The law born of the referendum showed that one of Bouteflika's goals in promoting this blanket amnesty plan was to help Algeria recover its image internationally and to guarantee immunity to institutional actors.

The first year of Bouteflika's second term implemented the Complementary Plan for Economic Growth Support (PCSC), which aimed for the construction of 1 million housing units, the creation of 2 million jobs, the completion of the East–west highway, the completion of the Algiers subway project, the delivery of the new Algiers airport, and other similar large scale infrastructure projects.

The PCSC totaled $60 billion of spending over the five-year period. Bouteflika also aimed to bring down the external debt from $21 billion to $12 billion in the same time. He also obtained from Parliament the reform of the law governing the oil and gas industries, despite initial opposition from the workers unions. However, Bouteflika subsequently stepped back from this position and supported amendments to the hydrocarbon law in 2006, which propose watering down some of the clauses of the 2005 legislation relating to the role of Sonatrach, the state owned oil & gas company, in new developments.

Foreign policy
During Bouteflika's second term he was sharply critical of the law—passed after the 2005 French riots—ordering French history school books to teach that French colonisation had positive effects abroad, especially in North Africa. The diplomatic crisis which ensued delayed the signing of a friendship treaty between the two countries.

Ties to Russia were strengthened and Russia agreed to forgive debts if Algeria began buying arms and gave Russian gas companies (Gazprom, Itera, and Lukoil) access to joint fossil-fuel ventures in Algeria.

In 2004 Bouteflika organised the Arab League Summit and became President of the Arab League for one year; however his calls for reform of the League did not gain sufficient support to pass during the Algiers summit. At the March 2005 meeting of Arab leaders, held in Algiers, Bouteflika spoke out strongly against Israel, "The Israelis' continuous killing and refusal of a comprehensive and lasting peace, which the Arab world is calling for, requires from us to fully support the Palestinian people." Despite criticism from the west, specifically the United States, Bouteflika insisted that Arab nations would reform at their own pace.

On 16 July 2009, President of Vietnam Nguyễn Minh Triết, met with Bouteflika on the sidelines of the 15th Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Egypt. President Triet and Bouteflika agreed that the two countries still have great potential for development of political and trade relations. Triet praised the Algerian government for creating favourable conditions for the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group to invest in oil and gas exploration and exploitation in Algeria.

In March 2016, the foreign ministers of the Arab league voted to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization, Bouteflika voted with Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq to reject the motion.

In sub-Saharan Africa, a major concern of Bouteflika's Algeria had been on-and-off Tuareg rebellions in northern Mali. Algeria has asserted itself forcefully as mediator in the conflict, perhaps underlining its growing regional influence. Compromise peace agreements were reached in 2007 and 2008, both mediated by Algiers.

Constitutional amendment for a third term
In 2006, Bouteflika appointed a new Prime Minister, Abdelaziz Belkhadem. Belkhadem then announced plans that violate the Algerian Constitution to allow the President to run for office indefinitely and increase his powers. This was widely regarded as aimed to let Bouteflika run for president for a third term. In 2008, Belkhadem was shifted out of the premiership and his predecessor Ahmed Ouyahia brought in, having also come out in favor of the constitutional amendment.

The Council of Ministers announced on 3 November 2008 that the planned constitutional revision proposal would remove the presidential term limit previously included in Article 74. The People's National Assembly endorsed the removal of the term limit on 12 November 2008; only the Rally for Culture and Democracy (RCD) voted against its removal.

Third term as President, 2009–2014
Following the constitutional amendment allowing him to run for a third term, on 12 February 2009, Bouteflika announced his independent candidacy in the 2009 presidential election. On 10 April 2009, it was announced that Bouteflika had won the election with 90.24% of the vote, on a turnout of 74%, thereby obtaining a new five-year term. Several opposition parties had boycotted the election, with the opposition Socialist Forces Front citing a "tsunami of massive fraud."

2010–2012 Algerian protests
In 2010, journalists gathered to demonstrate for press freedom and against Bouteflika's self-appointed role as editor-in-chief of Algeria's state television station. In February 2011, the government rescinded the state of emergency that had been in place since 1992 but still banned all protest gatherings and demonstrations. However, in April 2011, over 2,000 protesters defied an official ban and took to the streets of Algiers, clashing with police forces. Protesters noted that they were inspired by the recent Egyptian Revolution, and that Algeria was a police state and "corrupt to the bone".

Fourth term as President, 2014–2019
Following yet another constitutional amendment, allowing him to run for a fourth term, Bouteflika announced that he would. He met the electoral law requiring a candidate to collect over 60,000 signatures from supporters in 25 provinces. On 18 April 2014, he was re-elected with 81% of the vote, while Benflis was second placed with 12.18%. The turnout was 51.7%, down from the 75% turnout in 2009. Several opposition parties boycotted the election again, resulting in allegations of fraud.

Bouteflika cabled his congratulations to freshly-reelected Bashar al-Assad on 19 April 2014. Bouteflika was admitted to a clinic at Grenoble in France in November 2014. In November 2016, he was hospitalized in France for medical checks. On 20 February 2017, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel canceled her trip to Algeria an hour before takeoff, reportedly because Bouteflika had severe bronchitis. In June 2017, Bouteflika made a rare, and brief, appearance on Algerian state television presiding over a cabinet meeting with his new government. In a written statement, he ordered the government to reduce imports, curb spending, and be wary of foreign debt. He called for banking sector reform and more investment in renewable energy and "unconventional fossil hydrocarbons." Bouteflika was reliant on a wheelchair and had not given a speech in public since 2014 due to aphasia following his stroke. That same year, he made his final public appearance while unveiling a new metro station and the newly renovated Ketchaoua Mosque in Algiers.

During his final term as president, Bouteflika was usually not been seen in public for more than two years, and several of his close associates had not seen him for more than one year. It was alleged that he could hardly speak and communicated by letter with his ministers.

Candidacy for fifth term, protests, and resignation
On 10 February 2019, a press release signed by the long-ailing Bouteflika announcing he would seek a fifth consecutive term provoked widespread discontent. Youth protesters demanded his picture be removed from city halls in Kenchela and Annaba in the days before the national demonstrations on 22 February, organized via social media. Those in Algiers, where street protests are illegal, were the biggest in nearly 18 years. Protestors ripped down a giant poster of Bouteflika from the landmark Algiers central post office.

On 11 March 2019, after sustained protests, Bouteflika announced that he would not seek a new term. However, his withdrawal from the elections was not enough to end the protests. On 31 March 2019, Bouteflika along with the Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui who had taken office 20 days earlier, formed a 27-member cabinet with only 6 of the appointees being retained from the outgoing president administration. The next day, Bouteflika announced that he would resign by 28 April 2019. Acceding to demands by the army chief of staff, he ultimately resigned a day later, on 2 April 2019.

Following his resignation, Bouteflika resumed his reclusiveness and made no public appearances due to failing health. Bouteflika spent his final years in a medicalised state residence in Zéralda, a suburb of Algiers. He also had a private residence in El Biar.

Personal life and death
In November 2005, Bouteflika was admitted to a hospital in France, reportedly had a gastric ulcer hemorrhage, and discharged three weeks later. However, the length of time for which Bouteflika remained virtually incommunicado led to rumours that he was critically ill with stomach cancer. He checked into the hospital again in April 2006.

A leaked diplomatic cable revealed that, by the end of 2008, Bouteflika had developed stomach cancer.

In 2013, Bouteflika had a debilitating stroke. A journalist, Hichem Aboud, was pursued for "threatening national security, territorial integrity, and normal management of the Republic's institutions" and the newspapers for which he wrote were censored, because he wrote that the President had returned from Val-de-Grâce in a "comatose state" and had characterized Saïd Bouteflika as the puppet-master running the administration.

On 17 September 2021 Bouteflika died at his home in Zéralda from cardiac arrest at the age of 84. His death was announced on state television by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. He had been in failing health since he had a stroke in 2013. President Tebboune declared three days of national mourning after his death. He was buried at the El Alia Cemetery on 19 September in a subdued ceremony.

Criticism
Bouteflika's rule was marred by allegations of fraud and vote-tampering at elections from 1999 to 2019. He had already been convicted in 1983 of corruption. Per Suisse secrets he held an account, during much of his presidency with a maximum balance worth over 1.4 million Swiss francs ($1.1 million) along with other family members.

Awards

 * In 2004 he received Olympic Order presented by Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee.

title: Abdelaziz Bouteflika


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Wikipedia:List of academic studies about Wikipedia

Below is an incomplete list of academic conference presentations, peer-reviewed papers and other types of academic writing which focus on Wikipedia as their subject. Works that mention Wikipedia only in passing are unlikely to be listed.

For academic studies focusing on medical content in Wikipedia, see Academic studies of health information on Wikipedia. For academic studies about the use of Wikipedia in education, see Academic studies of Wikipedia in education.

Unpublished works of presumably academic quality are listed in a dedicated section. For non-academic research, as well as tools that may be useful in researching Wikipedia, see Researching Wikipedia. For a WikiProject focused on doing research on Wikipedia, see WikiProject Wikidemia.

For academic papers using Wikipedia as a source, see Wikipedia as an academic source, and the bibliography links listed at the bottom of this page. For teaching with Wikipedia, see Student assignments. For researching with Wikipedia, see Researching with Wikipedia. For non-academic works focused on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia in the media.

Scholarly articles
∑ 1970 items.

Reviews

 * Remy, Melanie (2002). Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Online Information Review 26(6):434. Emerald
 * Levack, Kinley (2003). If Two Heads Are Better than One, Try 7,000 with Wikipedia. Econtent Magazine 26(4):12–13, April 2003.
 * Crawford, Walt; Wikipedia and Worth. Cites & Insights, Oct 2004.
 * Crawford, Walt; Wikipedia and Worth [Revisited]. Cites & Insights, Feb 2005.
 * Denning, Peter; Jim Horning; David Parnas; and Lauren Weinstein (2005). Wikipedia risks. Communications of the ACM 48(12):152, December 2005.
 * Giles, Jim (2005). Internet encyclopaedias go head to head. Nature 438, 900-901 (15 Dec 2005)
 * Lipczynska, Sonya (2005). Power to the people: the case for Wikipedia. Reference Reviews 19(2):6–7.Emerald Ingenta (abstract)
 * Lawler, Cormac. ''A ‘resource review’ of Wikipedia. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research. 1473-3145 (Print) 1746-1405 (Online). Volume 6, Number 3/September 2006
 * Clauson, Kevin A; Hyla H Polen, Maged N Kamel Boulos & Joan H Dzenowagis (2008). Scope, Completeness, and Accuracy of Drug Information in Wikipedia. The Annals of Pharmacotherapy. Vol. 42, No. 12, pp. 1814-1821
 * Chitu Okoli, Mohamad Mehdi, Mostafa Mesgari, Finn Årup Nielsen, Arto Lanamäki (2012), The People’s Encyclopedia Under the Gaze of the Sages: A Systematic Review of Scholarly Research on Wikipedia, SSRN-id2166137, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2021326

Books and book chapters

 * See Wikipedia in books

Editorials

 * Nature editors (2005). Wiki's wild world. Nature 438, 890-890 (15 Dec 2005)
 * Logan, Darren W.; Sandal, Massimo; Gardner, Paul P.; Manske, Magnus and Bateman, Alex (2010) Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia, PLoS Computational Biology 6(9): e1000941.

Magazine articles

 * Valenza, Joyce, (2019) Isn’t it time to stop Wikipedia shaming?, School Library Journal
 * Reagle, Joseph, (2009), Wikipedia: The Happy Accident, Interactions, Volume 16, Issue 3, pp. 42-45.
 * Hardy, Mat, (2007), Wiki Goes to War, Australian Quarterly, Vol. 79, Issue 4, p. 17-22
 * Ann M. Lally, Carolyn E. Dunford, Using Wikipedia to Extend Digital Collections, D-Lib Magazine, May/June 2007
 * Meijssen, Gerard (2005): Wikipedia: Localization in a Free Content Community. In: LISA (Localization Industry Standards Association), June 2005
 * Sanger, Larry (2005): The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir. In: DiBona; Cooper & Stone (Eds.): Open Sources 2.0. O'Reilly. Online: part 1, part 2
 * Möller, Erik (2003). Tanz der Gehirne. Telepolis, May 9-30. Four parts: "Das Wiki-Prinzip", "Alle gegen Brockhaus", "Diderots Traumtagebuch", "Diesen Artikel bearbeiten". Summary and table of contents: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/fr-30.05.03-000/
 * Lanier, Jaron, (2006), DIGITAL MAOISM: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism, Edge 183 — May 30, 2006
 * Lakhani, Karim R. and Andrew P. McAfee, Case Study: Wikipedia, Harvard Business School, 30 January 2007
 * Note: This is not a peer-reviewed article. This is a call for others to write such an article.
 * Giddings, Janet M. SBL Forum Ethical Issues in Pedagogy: Wikipedia
 * Simmons, John (Editor), The Wikipedia Muhammad Cartoons Debate: A W A R O F I D E A S, Iraq Museum International
 * Simmons, John (Editor), The Wikipedia Muhammad Cartoons Debate: A W A R O F I D E A S, Iraq Museum International

Theses
This table is now found at: http://wikipapers.referata.com/wiki/List_of_doctoral_theses and similar.

Lectures

 * Jansson, Kurt (2002): "Wikipedia. Die Freie Enzyklopädie." Lecture at the 19th Chaos Communications Congress (19C3), December 27, Berlin. Online description: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Kurt_Jansson/Vortrag_auf_dem_19C3
 * Möller, Erik (2003): "Belanglose Käfer. Eine Reise in die Welt der Wikis." July 1, Merz-Akademie, Stuttgart, Germany.
 * Philippe Aigrain (2003): The Individual and the Collective in Open Information Communities at 16th BLED Electronic Commerce Conference, 9-11 June 2003. http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/aigrain3.pdf

Survey and poll results

 * Reminder: this is for academic or semi-academic surveys and polls of Wikipedia aimed at increasing our understanding of Wikipedia. For Wikipedia's own surveys used for determining consensus, policy making and dispute resolution, see Requests for comment and Straw polls.
 * See also: Category:Wikipedia surveys and polls, Centralized discussion, MediaWiki talk:Sitenotice, meta:Category:Surveys, meta:Category:Polls and meta:CentralNotice.

To do: parse and analyze this
 * Editor Survey 2011
 * Usability studies: - ongoing from Jan'2009
 * 2009 Wikimedia survey of scholarly community on Wikipedia (data set)
 * Wikimania 2009 satisfaction survey
 * Survey 2008 - the first real "census" of Wikipedians, see story in Signpost
 * 2008 Poll by Jimbo on Facebook about ads on Wikipedia
 * 2007 Hebrew Wikipedia satisfaction survey
 * Wikipedia Signpost 2007 readers survey
 * 2007 Wikimedia brand survey
 * 2006 survey on conflict and conflict resolution
 * 2006 survey on the reasons behind the success of Wikipedia
 * 2006 survey on Motivation of Contributors to Wikipedia
 * 2005 A small scale study of Wikipedia
 * 2005 German Wikipedia survey
 * 2004 French Wikipedia survey
 * 2004 Developer payment poll
 * 2003 English Wikipedia Quality Survey

Unpublished (non-thesis)

 * Assini, Pasqualino (2006). Wikipedia chapter in draft PhD thesis on Principles and Patterns of Social Knowledge Applications
 * Chen, Siyuan (2010). Hart v Finnis: How Will Positivism and Natural Law Account for the Socio-Legal Paradigm in Wikipedia?
 * Endrizzi, Laure (2006). L'édition de référence libre et collaborative : le cas de Wikipédia. http://www.inrp.fr/vst/Dossiers/Wikipedia/sommaire.htm
 * Garcia, J. M., Steinmueller W. E. (June 2003): Applying the Open Source Development Model to Knowledge Work. SPRU - Science and Technology Policy Research, INK Open Source Working Paper No. 2. http://siepr.stanford.edu/programs/OpenSoftware_David/oswp2.pdf
 * Geiger, R. Stuart & Halfaker, Aaron (2013). "When the Levee Breaks: Without Bots, What Happens to Wikipedia’s Quality Control Processes?", Working paper.
 * Hong, Seah Ru, Knowledge Contribution in Wikipedia, National University of Singapore, Thesis, http://www-appn.comp.nus.edu.sg/~seahruho/ruhongwiki.pdf
 * Reagle, Joseph M. Jr. Wikipedia's heritage: vision, pragmatics, and happenstance. http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/historical/digital-works.html
 * Stvilia, B., Twidale, M., Gasser, L., Smith, L. (2005). "Information quality discussions in Wikipedia"
 * Voss, Jakob (2006). "Collaborative thesaurus tagging the Wikipedia way".
 * Wattenberg, Martin, Viégas, Fernanda B. (2003). history flow. preliminary report http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/ Published at CHI 04, available through the ACM Digital Library.

Data sets

 * Wikimedia projects dumps
 * Data set used in the 2008 article Communications of the ACM article The Collaborative Organization of Knowledge
 * Data set for 2009 Wikimedia survey of scholarly community on Wikipedia
 * Dumps of wiki communities from WikiTeam
 * List of datasets in WikiPapers
 * Data set of offline meetups in the German-language version of Wikipedia

External bibliographies of Wikipedia research

 * Wiki Research Bibliography
 * Bibliography of Wikidata
 * Wikibibliographie Encyclen (partly French)
 * Zotero group on Wikipedia Research
 * Bibsonomy Tag "Wikipedia"
 * CiteULike Tag "Wikipedia"
 * Semantic Web-related Research using Wikipedia
 * meta:Research:Projects
 * A state of the art of the research written by a PhD student.

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


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Inverse scattering problem

In mathematics and physics, the inverse scattering problem is the problem of determining characteristics of an object, based on data of how it scatters incoming radiation or particles. It is the inverse problem to the direct scattering problem, which is to determine how radiation or particles are scattered based on the properties of the scatterer.

Soliton equations are a class of partial differential equations which can be studied and solved by a method called the inverse scattering transform, which reduces the nonlinear PDEs to a linear inverse scattering problem. The nonlinear Schrödinger equation, the Korteweg–de Vries equation and the KP equation are examples of soliton equations. In one space dimension the inverse scattering problem is equivalent to a Riemann-Hilbert problem. Inverse scattering has been applied to many problems including radiolocation, echolocation, geophysical survey, nondestructive testing, medical imaging, quantum field theory.

title: Inverse scattering problem


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Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International

The Workers International to Rebuild the Fourth International (WIRFI) is a Trotskyist international organisation. It was formed and based in the United Kingdom and originally consisted of a remnant of the Workers Revolutionary Party.

The organisation was founded in 1990 to regroup the international supporters of the Workers Revolutionary Party (Workers Press) WRP(WP), following the split of some of their supporters to join the International Workers League (Fourth International). Led by Cliff Slaughter and Dot Gibson, it initially had support in the Workers Revolutionary Party (Namibia) and a South African section which renamed itself WIRFI and took 5,481 votes in the 1994 South African general election, as well as Michel Varga's Group of Opposition and Continuity of the Fourth International.

The majority of the South African section left the international in 1996 and renamed itself the Workers International Vanguard League.

Following the WRP(WP)'s dissolution and reconstitution as the Movement for Socialism (Britain), Gibson and Bob Archer led the remainder of the international in splitting from Slaughter.

The organisation retained its British section and has the support of the WRP of Namibia and remnants of the South African group. It publishes the "Workers International Journal".

In Britain, the group's supporters were active in the Socialist Alliance and then the Democracy Platform of that grouping. By 2004 they had also become involved with the Liverpool-based Campaign for a Mass Workers Party and its offshoot, the United Socialist Party.


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Lemar Aftaab

Lemar-Aftaab is an Afghan independent weekly magazine that focuses on the culture and politics of Afghanistan. Compared to other publications in the country, Aftaab has a secular bent and has drawn criticism from conservative Islamic scholars.

In June 2003, the magazine was banned by the Afghan government because several articles on Islam were deemed to be sacrilegious. The editor of the magazine, Mir Hussein Mehdavi, was arrested by the authorities and charged with blasphemy. He was later ordered to be released but may still stand trial.

title: Lemar Aftaab


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California Bowl

The California Bowl (later the California Raisin Bowl) was a post-season college football bowl game played annually at Bulldog Stadium in Fresno, California, from 1981 to 1991. The game featured the champions of the Big West Conference (known prior to 1988 as the Pacific Coast Athletic Association) and the Mid-American Conference.

In 1988, the California Raisin Advisory Board purchased the naming rights to the bowl.

The game was dealt a severe blow in 1992 when Fresno State moved to the Western Athletic Conference. The MAC and Big West then moved their tie-ins to Las Vegas, Nevada and created the Las Vegas Bowl. The California Bowl made plans to hold the 1992 game without tie-ins, but was unable to find a new sponsor. When organizers came up short of a $1.75 million fundraising goal, the NCAA pulled the bowl's certification. It has never returned.

Game results
 * UNLV won this game, but subsequently forfeited its entire schedule due to the use of ineligible players earlier in the season.''

title: California Bowl


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Vincent d'Indy

Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy (27 March 1851 – 2 December 1931) was a French composer and teacher. His influence as a teacher, in particular, was considerable. He was a co-founder of the Schola Cantorum de Paris and also taught at the Paris Conservatoire. His students included Albéric Magnard, Albert Roussel, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Yvonne Rokseth, and Erik Satie, as well as Cole Porter.

D'Indy studied under composer César Franck, and was strongly influenced by Franck's admiration for German music. At a time when nationalist feelings were high in both countries (circa the Franco-Prussian War of 1871), this brought Franck into conflict with other musicians who wished to separate French music from German influence.

Life
Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and Louis Diémer.

From the age of 14 d'Indy studied harmony with Albert Lavignac. When he was 16 an uncle introduced him to Berlioz's treatise on orchestration, which inspired him to become a composer. He wrote a piano quartet which he sent to César Franck, who was the teacher of a friend. Franck recognised his talent and recommended that d'Indy pursue a career as a composer.

At the age of 19, during the Franco-Prussian War, d'Indy enlisted in the National Guard, but returned to musical life as soon as the hostilities were over. He entered Franck's organ class at the Conservatoire de Paris in 1871 remaining there until 1875, when he joined the percussion section of the orchestra at the Châtelet Theatre to gain practical experience. He also served as chorus-master to the Concerts Colonne. The first of his works he heard performed was a Symphonie italienne, at an orchestral rehearsal under Jules Pasdeloup; the work was admired by Georges Bizet and Jules Massenet, with whom he had already become acquainted.

During the summer of 1873 he visited Germany, where he met Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. On 25 January 1874, his overture Les Piccolomini was performed at a Pasdeloup concert, sandwiched between works by Bach and Beethoven. Around this time he married Isabelle de Pampelonne, one of his cousins. In 1875 his symphony dedicated to János Hunyadi was performed. That same year he played a minor role – the prompter – at the premiere of Bizet's opera Carmen. In 1876 he was present at the first production of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle at Bayreuth. This made a great impression on him and he became a fervent Wagnerian.

In 1878 d'Indy's symphonic ballad La Forêt enchantée was performed. In 1882 he heard Wagner's Parsifal. In 1883 his choral work Le Chant de la cloche appeared. In 1884 his symphonic poem Saugefleurie was premiered. His piano suite ("symphonic poem for piano") called Poème des montagnes came from around this time. In 1887 appeared his Suite in D for trumpet, 2 flutes and string quartet. That same year he was involved in Lamoureux's production of Wagner's Lohengrin as choirmaster. His music drama Fervaal occupied him between 1889 and 1895. Inspired by his studies with Franck and yet dissatisfied with the standard of teaching at the Conservatoire, d'Indy, together with Charles Bordes and Alexandre Guilmant, founded the Schola Cantorum de Paris in 1894. D'Indy taught there until his death, becoming principal in 1904. Of the teaching at the Schola Cantorum, The Oxford Companion to Music says, "A solid grounding in technique was encouraged, rather than originality", and comments that few graduates could stand comparison with the best Conservatoire students. D'Indy later taught at the Conservatoire and privately, while retaining his post at the Schola Cantorum.

Among d'Indy's renowned pupils were Albéric Magnard, Albert Roussel, Joseph Canteloube (who later wrote d'Indy's biography), Celia Torra, Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud. Two atypical students were Cole Porter, who signed up for a two-year course at the Schola, but left after a few months, and Erik Satie, who studied there for three years and later wrote, "Why on earth had I gone to d'Indy? The things I had written before were so full of charm. And now? What nonsense! What dullness!" Nonetheless, according to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, d'Indy's influence as a teacher was "enormous and wide-ranging, with benefits for French music far outweighing the charges of dogmatism and political intolerance".

D'Indy played an important part in the history of the Société nationale de musique, of which his teacher, Franck, had been a founding member in 1871. Like Franck, d'Indy revered German music, and he resented the society's exclusion of non-French music and composers. He became the society's joint secretary in 1885, and succeeded in overturning its French-only rule the following year. The founders of the society, Romain Bussine and Camille Saint-Saëns resigned in protest. Franck refused the formal title of president of the society, but when he died in 1890, d'Indy took the post. His regime, however, alienated a younger generation of French composers, who, led by Maurice Ravel, founded the breakaway Société musicale indépendante in 1910, which attracted leading young composers from France and other countries. In an attempt to further a proposed merger of the two organisations during the First World War d'Indy stepped down as president of the Société nationale to make way for the more "progressive" Gabriel Fauré, but the plan came to nothing.

According to the biographer Robert Orledge, the death of d'Indy's first wife in 1905 removed the stabilising influence in the composer's life, and he became "increasingly vulnerable to politically motivated attacks on the Schola Cantorum and apprehensive of dangerously decadent trends in contemporary music in both France and Germany". His aesthetic ideas, Orledge argues, became "increasingly reactionary and dogmatic" and his political views right-wing and anti-Semitic. He joined the Ligue de la patrie française (League of the French Fatherland) during the Dreyfus affair. During the First World War d'Indy served on cultural missions to allied countries, and completed his third music drama, La Légende de Saint-Christophe, in Orledge's view "a celebration of traditional Catholic regionalism as opposed to modern liberal democracy and capitalist values". After the war he increased his activities as a conductor, giving concert tours throughout Europe and the US. 1920 he married the much younger Caroline Janson; Orledge writes that this "brought a true creative rebirth, witnessed in the serene Mediterranean-inspired compositions of his final decade".

D'Indy died on 2 December 1931 in his native Paris, aged 80, and was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery.

Works
Few of d'Indy's works are performed regularly in concert halls today. Grove comments that his famed veneration for Beethoven and Franck "has unfortunately obscured the individual character of his own compositions, particularly his fine orchestral pieces descriptive of southern France". Among his best known pieces are the Symphony on a French Mountain Air for piano and orchestra (1886), and Istar (1896), a symphonic poem in the form of a set of variations in which the theme appears only at the end. Among d'Indy's other works are more orchestral pieces, including a Symphony in B♭, a vast symphonic poem, Jour d'été à la montagne, and another, Souvenirs, written on the death of his first wife. The Times said of his music that the influence of Berlioz, Franck, and Wagner is strong in almost all his work, "that of Franck showing itself chiefly in the shapes of his tunes, that of Wagner in their development, and that of Berlioz in their orchestration".

Grove says of his chamber works: "D'Indy's somewhat academic corpus of chamber music (including three completed string quartets) is generally less interesting than his orchestral works". He also wrote piano music (including a Sonata in E minor), songs and a number of operas, including Fervaal (1897) and L'Étranger (1902). His music drama Le Légende de Saint Christophe, based on themes from Gregorian chant, was premiered at the Paris Opéra on 6 June 1920.

D'Indy helped revive a number of then largely forgotten Baroque works, for example making his own edition of Monteverdi's opera L'incoronazione di Poppea. D'Indy also contributed to the incipient revival of the works of Antonio Vivaldi, whose sonatas for cello and basso continuo (op. 14) were edited by d'Indy as cello concerti and published by Maurice Senart in 1922. His musical writings include the three-volume Cours de composition musicale as well as studies of Franck and Beethoven. The Times commented that his study of the former was "one of the most vivid and individual of modern French biographies", and the latter, published in 1912, showed "the closeness of the lifelong study which he devoted to that master".

Commemorations
The private music college École de musique Vincent-d'Indy in Montreal, Canada, is named after the composer, as is the asteroid 11530 d'Indy, discovered in 1992.

title: Vincent d'Indy


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Camellia Bowl (1961–1980)

The Camellia Bowl was an annual college football postseason game in Sacramento, California, which is nicknamed the Camellia City. It was held sixteen times at Hughes Stadium, from 1961 through 1975, and once more in 1980.

History
The Camellia Bowl was founded in March 1961, when the Sacramento City-County Chamber of Commerce voted unanimously to accept an offer from the National Association for Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) to move its championship game to the city. For the previous four years, the game had been known as the Holiday Bowl and was played in Saint Petersburg, Florida. The Camellia Bowl served as the NAIA Football National Championship game for three years.

After the transition from NAIA to NCAA affiliation, announced in January 1964, the game became one of four regional finals in the NCAA College Division. At the time, there were no playoffs at any level of NCAA football. For the smaller colleges and universities, as for the major programs, the national champion was determined by polls conducted by the leading news wire services. The intent of the bowl was to match the two best non-major teams from a region consisting of the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain states. The other three regional finals were the Tangerine (later Boardwalk), Pecan (later Pioneer), and Grantland Rice bowls.

When the College Division was subdivided into the current Division II and Division III in 1973, the NCAA made the Camellia Bowl the Division II football championship game. It served in this capacity for three seasons (1973 to 1975). After a four-year hiatus, the bowl returned in 1980 as the NCAA Division I-AA title game.

Sacramento's Camellia Bowl Association signed a two-year deal to host the Division I-AA championship, but after the 1980 game drew just 8,157 fans and lost $21,659, game organizers appealed to the NCAA to cancel the contract. The NCAA agreed, and the I-AA title game was moved to the Pioneer Bowl in Wichita Falls, Texas for 1981.

title: Camellia Bowl (1961–1980)


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COP6

COP6 may refer to:
 * United Nations Climate Change conference
 * (-)-alpha-cuprenene synthase, an enzyme

title: COP6


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Rahim Jaffer

Rahim Nizar Jaffer (رحيم جعفر; born December 15, 1971) is a former Canadian politician. He served in the House of Commons of Canada from 1997 to 2008, representing the Alberta riding of Edmonton—Strathcona as a member of the Conservative Party. He was the first Muslim elected to the Canadian Parliament. Jaffer became embroiled in a national controversy in 2010 after he appeared to receive "a break" from the justice system after being charged with drunk driving and possession of cocaine.

Early life
Jaffer is an Ismaili Muslim of Indian Gujarati descent. While young, Jaffer and his family emigrated to Canada to escape further persecution in Uganda after the government of Idi Amin confiscated their business and their home. They settled in Edmonton.

Jaffer completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Ottawa in political science and economics. He took his degree in the French language. He also served as a legislative assistant in the House of Commons. After completing his degree he returned to Edmonton, where he operated a successful coffee shop in the heart of the Old Strathcona district.

Political career
Jaffer was elected to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Edmonton—Strathcona in the federal election on June 2, 1997, at the age of 25. He won the seat as a member of the Reform Party of Canada (later the Canadian Alliance, which later merged with the Progressive Conservatives to form the Conservative Party). Jaffer was re-elected in 2000.

In 2001, Matthew Johnston, an aide to Jaffer, impersonated him during a radio interview that Jaffer was himself unable to attend. Jaffer subsequently apologized for the stunt in the House of Commons and was suspended from his caucus position for several months. The incident was parodied by This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Rick Mercer performed a rap based on Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady", with the lyrics "Will the real Rahim Jaffer please stand up?"

In the 2006 election, Jaffer was re-elected to serve a fourth term as the Member of Parliament for Edmonton—Strathcona. On February 8, 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper named him chair of the Conservative caucus.

Jaffer lost his seat in the 2008 election after he was defeated by New Democrat Linda Duncan. Jaffer was initially reluctant to concede defeat but finally did so on October 16 after the results were officially validated by the riding returning officer.

In 2009, Jaffer expressed interest in re-seeking the Conservative nomination for Edmonton—Strathcona at the next election. However, he declined to do so after it was claimed that he was shut out of nomination process.

Jaffer was once voted "laziest MP" in an annual survey by The Hill Times.

Personal life
On October 15, 2008, Jaffer married his former caucus colleague Helena Guergis, by then a Cabinet minister. This was her second marriage and his first.

Jaffer and Guergis became engaged in October 2007. Reportedly at the initiative of Guergis, the couple decided on the morning after the election to scrap their planned wedding date and to get married immediately. Their wedding was presided over by Ian McClelland, a former Member of Parliament and a licensed marriage commissioner, later that same day at McClelland's home. The marriage was witnessed by the couple's parliamentary colleague James Rajotte and by one of Jaffer's cousins. In December 2010, the couple had a boy.

Arrest and conviction
On September 11, 2009, Jaffer was stopped late at night by the Ontario Provincial Police while he was traveling at a rate of 93 km/h in a 50 km/h zone in Palgrave, Ontario, located close to his wife's riding. The officer noticed a smell of alcohol on Jaffer's breath, and after administering a breathalyzer test, found him to be over the Ontario legal blood-alcohol limit of .08. Jaffer's driver's licence was suspended for 90 days, and he was charged with drunk driving and possession of an undisclosed quantity of cocaine. The location of the cocaine was a source of contention between police and Jaffer. The arresting officer stated that the drugs were found in Jaffer's pants pocket, whereas Jaffer's defense team claimed it was in his suit jacket. Earlier in the evening, he had met in Toronto with Nazim Gillani, a businessman. Gillani claimed he was a banker for the Hells Angels.

Jaffer was initially scheduled to appear in court in Orangeville, Ontario on October 19, 2009. During the 2008 election, Jaffer's campaign approved radio ads accusing NDP leader Jack Layton of being soft on marijuana use. On March 9, 2010, Jaffer pleaded guilty to one charge of careless driving and was sentenced to a fine of $500. The cocaine possession and drunk driving charges were withdrawn. Justice Doug Maund told Jaffer "I’m sure you can recognize a break when you see one." The sentence and the dropping of the more serious charges triggered outrage across Canada, as well as more extensive investigation of events leading up to the incident prompting the arrest, which led to allegations Jaffer met with several escorts.

title: Rahim Jaffer


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Forza Italia

Forza Italia (FI; lit. 'Forward Italy' or 'Come on Italy' or 'Let's Go Italy')         was a centre-right liberal-conservative   political party in Italy, with Christian democratic,   liberal   (especially economic liberalism), social democratic and populist   tendencies. It was founded by Silvio Berlusconi, who served as Prime Minister of Italy four times.

The party was founded in December 1993 and won its first general election soon afterwards in March 1994. It was the main member of the Pole of Freedoms/Pole of Good Government, Pole for Freedoms and House of Freedoms coalitions. Throughout its existence, the party was characterised by a strong reliance on the personal image and charisma of its leader (it has been called a "personality party" or Berlusconi's "personal party"),   and the skillful use of media campaigns, especially via television. The party's organisation and ideology depended heavily on its leader, so much so that its appeal to voters was based on Berlusconi's personality more than on its ideology or programme.

In November 2008, the national council of the party, presided by Alfredo Biondi, voted to merge Forza Italia into The People of Freedom (PdL), Berlusconi's new political vehicle, whose official foundation took place in March 2009. A new Forza Italia was established by Berlusconi as PdL's legal successor in 2013.

Foundation (1993–1994)
Forza Italia was formed in 1993 by Silvio Berlusconi, a successful businessman and owner of four of the main private television stations in Italy, along with Antonio Martino,, Antonio Tajani, Marcello Dell'Utri, Cesare Previti and Giuliano Urbani.

Italy was shaken by a series of corruption scandals known as Tangentopoli and the subsequent police investigation, called Mani pulite. This led to the disappearance of the five parties which governed Italy from 1947: DC, PSI, PSDI, PLI and PRI (they formed a successful five-party coalition called Pentapartito from 1983 to 1991, and then governed without PRI from 1991 to 1994) and to the end of the so-called First Republic.

Forza Italia's aim was to attract moderate voters who were "disoriented, political orphans and who risked being unrepresented" (as Berlusconi described them), especially if the Democratic Party of the Left (the direct heirs of the Italian Communist Party) had been able to win the next election and enter in government for the first time since 1947.

The establishment of Forza Italia was supported in terms of finance, personnel and logistics by Berlusconi's Fininvest corporation: The area managers of its advertisement branch Publitalia '80 (managed by Dell'Utri) organised the selection of FI candidates, its marketing network staffed the opinion research centre Diakron that surveyed the "market potential" of the new party and the financial intermediaries of Fininvest subsidiary Programma Italia encouraged the launch of Forza Italia clubs. The new party's campaigning was strongly dependent on Fininvest's TV stations and PR resources. This earned Forza Italia labels like "virtual", "plastic" or "business-firm party". In her 2001 study of the party, political scientist Emanuela Poli described Forza Italia as "a mere diversification of Fininvest in the political market". The case of Forza Italia was unprecedented as never before had a large political party been launched by a business corporation. Only slowly it transformed into a mass-membership organisation. It took four years until the first party congress was held. To extend its representation in different regions, FI often recruited established politicians of the "old" parties, mainly DC and PSI, who defected to the new party, bringing their local clientele with them.

FI's political programme was strongly influenced by the manifesto "In Search of Good Government" (Alla ricerca del buongoverno) authored in late 1993 by Giuliano Urbani who was then a political science professor at Milan's private Bocconi University and an occasional collaborator of Fininvest. It denounced corruption, dominance of political parties and remnants of communism as Italy's ills, while advocating market economy, the assertion of civil society and more efficient politics as the solutions. In a couple of months Forza Italia became one of the leading Italian parties, achieving a large consensus through an accurate strategy of communication and pounding electoral spots aired by the Mediaset TV channels.

A short stint in power (1994–1995)
A few months after its creation, Forza Italia came to national power after the 1994 general election as the head of a political coalition called Pole of Freedoms/Pole of Good Government, composed of Lega Nord, National Alliance, Christian Democratic Centre and Union of the Centre.

Silvio Berlusconi was sworn in May 1994 as Prime Minister of Italy in a government in which the most important cabinet posts were held by fellow Forza Italia members: Antonio Martino was Foreign Minister, Cesare Previti Defence Minister, Alfredo Biondi Justice Minister and Giulio Tremonti (at the time an independent member of Parliament) Finance Minister.

In the 1994 European Parliament election held in June, Forza Italia was placed first nationally, with 30.6% of the vote, electing 27 MEPs. The party did not join an existing group in the European Parliament, instead forming the new group Forza Europa, composed entirely of Forza Italia MEPs.

The first Berlusconi-led government had a short life and fell in December, when Lega Nord left the coalition, after disagreements over pension reform and the first avviso di garanzia (preliminary notice of an investigation) for Berlusconi, passed by Milan prosecutors. Forza Italia's leader was replaced as Prime Minister by Lamberto Dini, an independent politician who had been the administration's Treasury Minister. No members of Forza Italia joined the new government and the party leader was relegated to opposition. However, the party obtained substantial successes in the 1995 Italian regional elections, both in the North (winning in Piedmont, Lombardy and Veneto) and the South (Campania, Apulia and Calabria).

Five years of opposition (1996–2001)
In 1996 the Pole for Freedoms coalition led by Forza Italia lost that year's general election and began what Berlusconi called "the crossing of the desert", something that could have proved fatal for such a young and unstructured party. Between 1996 and 1998, the party started to strengthen its organisation under Claudio Scajola, a former Christian Democrat who served as national coordinator of Forza Italia from 1996 to 2001.

In December 1999, Forza Italia gained full membership in the European People's Party, of which Antonio Tajani, the party leader of Forza Italia in the European Parliament, became a Vice President. In the same year, the party scored well (25.2% of votes) in the European Parliament election of 1999.

In the Italian regional elections of 2000, the Pole for Freedoms, with the support of Lega Nord, won in eight out of fifteen regions (all the most populous ones, except for Campania), while three members of Forza Italia were re-elected as presidents of the Region in Piedmont (Enzo Ghigo), Lombardy (Roberto Formigoni), and Veneto (Giancarlo Galan), together with three more elected for the first time in Liguria (Sandro Biasotti), Apulia (Raffaele Fitto) and Calabria (Giuseppe Chiaravalloti).

The party regained power in the general election of 2001, gaining 29.4% of the votes with Giorgio La Malfa's tiny Italian Republican Party, in a new coalition called House of Freedoms (CdL) and composed mainly of the National Alliance, Lega Nord, Christian Democratic Centre and United Christian Democrats (the last two parties merged in 2002 to form the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats, UDC).

Five years in government (2001–2006)
In June 2001, after the huge success in May elections, Silvio Berlusconi was returned head of the Italian government, the longest-serving cabinet in the history of the Italian republic. Again all key ministerial posts were given to Forza Italia members: Interior (Claudio Scajola 2001–2002, Giuseppe Pisanu 2002–2006), Defence (Antonio Martino 2001–2006), Finance (Giulio Tremonti, 2001–2004 and 2005–2006), Industry (Antonio Marzano 2001–2005, Claudio Scajola 2005–2006) and Foreign Affairs (Franco Frattini, 2002–2004). Additionally, National Alliance leader Gianfranco Fini was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister from 2004 to 2006, while Roberto Castelli, senior figure of Lega Nord was Justice Minister from 2001 to 2006.

In 2004 European elections, Forza Italia was second place nationally, receiving 20.1% of the vote and returning 16 MEPs.

In national office, the government's popularity kept declining steadily year after year. Regional elections in April 2005 were a serious blow for the party, which however remained strong in the northern regions, such as Lombardy and Veneto, and somewhere in the South, where Sicily was a stronghold. After this disappointing electoral performance the cabinet was reshuffled, due to the insistence of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats's leaders, and Berlusconi formed his third cabinet.

During his five years in office, Berlusconi government passed a series of reforms: a pension system reform, a labour market reform, a judiciary reform and a constitutional reform – the latter rejected by a referendum in June 2006. In foreign policy he shifted the country's position to more closeness to the United States, while in economic policy he was not able to deliver the tax cuts he had openly promised throughout all 2001 electoral campaign.

Toward The People of Freedom (2006–2009)
In the 2006 general election the party was present with a slightly different logo, with the words "Berlusconi President" (Berlusconi Presidente). It was the only party to use the word "President" in its logo. In the election for the Chamber of Deputies, FI scored 23.7% and 137 seats, in those for the Senate 24.0%, without counting Trentino-Alto Adige, whose seats were contested on first-past-the-post basis and which is a left-wing stronghold, due to its alliance with the autonomist South Tyrolean People's Party). The incumbent Berlusconi-led government narrowly lost to The Union coalition, which returned Romano Prodi as Prime Minister, relegating Forza Italia and its House of Freedoms allies to opposition.

On 31 July 2007 Berlusconi's protegee and possible successor Michela Vittoria Brambilla registered the name and the logo of the "Freedom Party" (Partito della Libertà) apparently with Berlusconi's backing. On 18 November, after Forza Italia claimed to have collected the signatures of more than 7 million Italians (including Umberto Bossi) against Romano Prodi's second government to ask the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano to call a fresh election, Berlusconi announced that Forza Italia would have soon merged or transformed into The People of Freedom (PdL) party.

After the sudden fall of the Prodi II Cabinet on 24 January 2008, the break-up of The Union coalition and the subsequent political crisis paving the way towards a new general election, Berlusconi hinted on 25 January that Forza Italia would have probably contested its final election and the new party would have been officially founded after that election. In an atmosphere of reconciliation with Gianfranco Fini, Berlusconi also stated that the new party could have seen the participation of other parties. Finally, on 8 February, Berlusconi and Fini agreed to form a joint list under the banner of "The People of Freedom", allied with Lega Nord. In the 2008 general election the PdL won 37.4% and a majority in both chambers, thanks to the alliance with Lega Nord (8.3%). Soon after the election Berlusconi formed his fourth government.

On 21 November 2008 the national council of the party, presided over by Alfredo Biondi and attended by Berlusconi himself, officially decided the dissolution of Forza Italia into The People of Freedom (PdL), whose official foundation took place on 27 March 2009.

Revival (2013)
In June 2013 Berlusconi announced the upcoming revival of Forza Italia, and the transformation of the People of Freedom into a centre-right coalition. The modern-day Forza Italia was launched on 18 September 2013 and the PdL was dissolved into the new party on 16 November 2013.

Ideology
Forza Italia was a centre-right party, formed mainly by former members of Christian Democracy, the Italian Socialist Party and the Italian Liberal Party. The ideology of the party ranged from libertarianism to social democracy (often referred to as "liberal socialism" in Italy), including elements of the Catholic social teaching and the social market economy. The party was a member of the European People's Party (EPP) and presented itself as the party of renewal and modernization. The core values of Forza Italia were "freedom" and the "centrality of the individual". From a comparative perspective the ideology of Forza Italia has been characterized as liberal conservative,  or conservative liberal,  national conservative, and liberal.

Alessandro Campi has written that "the political culture of Forza Italia – a curious and, on many respects, untold mixture of 'liberalism' and 'democratic populism' – deserves to be described as an 'anti-ideological ideology', ... as a synthesis or fusion of very diverse political families and traditions (from liberal Catholicism to social conservatism, from reformist socialism to economic liberalism), kept together by the mobilizing appeal to 'freedom'." Chiara Moroni, who explains Forza Italia's ideology as a mixture of liberal, Christian-democratic and social-democratic values (united in the concept of "popular liberalism" in party documents), wrote that "Berlusconi offered to voters liberal values through a populist style" and that "Forza Italia has made the liberal political ideal popular" among voters, so that "it was spread and shared by broad and heterogenous sectors of the Italian population".

The electoral base of Forza Italia was highly heterogeneous and the ideological differences among its voters are explained also by its different regional constituencies; while voters from the North tended to support the original libertarian line of the party, voters from the South tended to be more statist. Both its Northern strongholds (Lombardy and Veneto) and its Southern strongholds (Sicily and Apulia) were once dominated by the Christian Democracy party; while in the South most leading members of Forza Italia are former Christian Democrats, the party was highly influenced also by liberals in the North.

Forza Italia claimed to be a fresh new party, with no ties with the last governments of the so-called First Republic, and at the same time to be the heir of the best political traditions of Italy: Christian Democrat Alcide De Gasperi, Social Democrat Giuseppe Saragat, Liberal Luigi Einaudi and Republican Ugo La Malfa were considered as party icons.

The "Secular Creed", that was also the preamble to the party's constitution, described the party in this way: "Forza Italia is a liberal party although not an elitist one, indeed a popular liberal-democratic party; it is a Catholic party although not a confessional one; it is a secular party, although not an intolerant and secularist one; it is a national party, although not a centralist one."

Forza Italia presented itself as a bridge between Catholics and non-Catholics, who have been previously divided in the political system of the First Republic, and "the union of three political-cultural areas: that of liberal and popular Catholicism, that of secular, liberal and republican humanism and that of liberal socialism". In a speech during a party congress in 1998, Berlusconi himself proclaimed: "our liberal vision of the State is perfectly in agreement with the Catholic social teaching".

The "Secular Creed" of the party explains that FI was a party that primarily underlined freedom and the centrality of the individual, which are basic principles of both liberalism and the Catholic social teaching, often connected in party official documents: "We believe in freedom, in all its several and vital forms: in the freedom of thought, in the freedom of expression, in religious freedom, of every religion, in the freedom of association. ... Freedom is not graciously conceded by the State, because it comes before it. It is a natural right, which belongs to us as we are human beings and it itself rather lays the foundations of the State. ... We believe that the State should be at the service of citizens, and not citizens at the service of the State. We believe that the State should be the servant of the citizen and not the citizen the servant of the State. The citizen is sovereign. For this, we believe concretely in the individual ... . We believe in the values of our Christian tradition, in the life values which cannot be renounced, in common good, in freedom of education and learning, in peace, in solidarity, in justice, in tolerance ...."

In 2008 Berlusconi stated that: "We want a social market economy. A democracy cannot afford citizens in poor conditions. With our book on welfare we tackle the needs of the weakest families. It is decidedly a left-wing policy. This government which centrist, liberal, with Catholics and reformists, intends to advance with policies that the left-wing promises by word of mouth."

Sandro Bondi, a leading member of the party, wrote: "Forza Italia considers liberal classics as Croce, Sturzo, Hayek and Einaudi as reference authors. In particular, it hark back to the social market economy of Röpke, which was conceived in reference to the traditional social teaching of the Church. Forza Italia has imparted a deep cultural innovation, combining the language of the Church tradition with the liberal and reformist thought."

The party included also non-Catholic members, but they were a minority, and it was less secular in its policies than Christian Democratic Union of Germany. The party usually gave to its members freedom of conscience on moral issues (and hence a free vote), as in the case of the referendum on stem-cell research, but leading members of the party, including Silvio Berlusconi, Giulio Tremonti and Marcello Pera (who is himself non-Catholic, although friend of Pope Benedict XVI), spoke in favour of "abstention" (as asked by the Catholic Church, to not surpass the 50% of turnout needed for making the referendum legally binding). While Pera campaigned hard for the success of the boycott along with most FI members, both Berlusconi and Tremonti explicitly said that "abstention" was their personal opinion, not the official one of the party.

The political scientist Giovanni Orsina has defined Berlusconism, as he terms the ideology of Forza Italia and its leader, as an "emulsion of populism and liberalism", more specifically right-liberalism. According to him, in the initial phase, both elements were represented about equally, only after 2000 pro-market liberal positions had receded in favour of more socially conservative ones. As the main ideologic themes of Berlusconism, Orsina identified the myth of the "good" civil society (as opposed to the state apparatus), a "friendly, minimal state" (providing services to citizens rather than regulating their lives), "hypopolitics" (i.e. the containment of political conflicts, after the hyper-politisation of Italian society during the "First Republic") and the identification of a "new virtuous elite". The concepts of a good civil society and hypopolitics were both liberal and populist; while the minimal state was a mainly liberal idea and the new virtuous elite a chiefly populist one. According to Orsina, Berlusconism sanctified "the people" that embodied all virtues while being "betrayed" by the (old) elites, a typical element of populist ideologies. However, Berlusconi viewed "the people" as a pluralistic and diverse collection of individuals, not an ethnically, historically and culturally homogeneous unit.

Members
Most members of the party were former Christian Democrats (DC): Giuseppe Pisanu (former member of the leftist faction of DC and Minister of Interior), Roberto Formigoni (President of Lombardy), Claudio Scajola (former Minister of the Interior and of Industry), Enrico La Loggia, Renato Schifani, Guido Crosetto, Raffaele Fitto, Giuseppe Gargani, Alfredo Antoniozzi, Giorgio Carollo, Giuseppe Castiglione, Francesco Giro, Luigi Grillo, Maurizio Lupi, Mario Mantovani, Mario Mauro, Osvaldo Napoli, Antonio Palmieri, Angelo Sanza, Riccardo Ventre and Marcello Vernola are only some remarkable examples.

Several members were former Socialists (PSI), as Giulio Tremonti (vice-president of the party and former Minister of Economy), Franco Frattini (Vice President of the European Commission), Fabrizio Cicchitto (national deputy-coordinator of the party), Renato Brunetta, Francesco Musotto, Amalia Sartori, Paolo Guzzanti and Margherita Boniver. Berlusconi himself was a close friend of Bettino Craxi, leader of the PSI, in spite of his own Christian Democratic and Liberal background (Berlusconi was a DC activist in occasion of the 1948 general election).

Many were former Liberals (PLI), Republicans (PRI) and Social Democrats (PSDI): Alfredo Biondi (president of Forza Italia's national council) and Raffaele Costa, both former PLI leaders, and former PSDI leader Carlo Vizzini were later MPs for Forza Italia. Also Antonio Martino and Giancarlo Galan were formers Liberals, Jas Gawronski was a leading Republican, while Marcello Pera has a Socialist and Radical background.

Even some former Communists were leading members of the party, such as national party coordinator Sandro Bondi and Ferdinando Adornato.

Factions
Members of Forza Italia were divided in factions, which were sometimes mutable and formed over the most important political issues, despite previous party allegiances; however, it is possible to distinguish some patterns. The party was divided over ethical (between social conservatives and progressives), economic (between social democrats and some Christian democrats on one side and liberals on the other one), and institutional issues.

Regarding the latter issue, generally speaking, northern party members were staunch proposers of political and fiscal federalism, and autonomy for the Regions (in some parts of Veneto and Lombardy, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish a member of FI from a member of the LN), while those coming from the South were more cold on the issue. Also some former Liberals, due to their role of unifiers of Italy in the 19th century, were more centralist.

A scheme of the internal factions within Forza Italia could be this:
 * Liberals. Supporters of free markets, deregulation, economic freedoms, civil rights and, in general, personal responsibility and freedom. This group was basically formed by two wings: classical liberals (former members of the Italian Liberal Party, most of them organised in Popular Liberalism, as Alfredo Biondi, Raffaele Costa, Egidio Sterpa and Enrico Nan); former Socialists, as Renato Brunetta and Paolo Guzzanti; others like Stefania Prestigiacomo and Simone Baldelli) and libertarians, as Antonio Martino (ex-PLI), Dario Rivolta, Benedetto Della Vedova (ex-Radical) and his Liberal Reformers. The latter were more staunchly pro-United States than the former and supported the idea of transforming Italy into a federal State.
 * Liberal-centrists. They were more moderate than Martino and Della Vedova on economic issues, and more socially conservative on ethical issues, although not being totally sided with the Catholic Church. To this broad group belonged people of various origin: former Socialists (as Giulio Tremonti, Franco Frattini, Giampiero Cantoni, Amalia Sartori and Jole Santelli), former Republicans (as Luigi Casero, Denis Verdini and Donato Bruno), former Liberals (as Giancarlo Galan, Giuseppe Vegas and Paolo Romani), some former liberal Christian Democrats (Giuseppe Cossiga and Basilio Germanà) and many others (as Giorgio Jannone, Antonio Leone, Gianfranco Micciché and Aldo Brancher). They were strong in Northern Italy and strong supporters of political and fiscal federalism.
 * Christian democrats. They believed in the social market economy model and were supporters of Catholic stances over ethical issues. Most former members of Christian Democracy were identifiable with this tendency (from Roberto Formigoni to Giuseppe Pisanu, from Claudio Scajola to Enrico La Loggia, from Guido Crosetto to Angelo Sanza, from Maurizio Lupi to Giuseppe Gargani, from Antonio Palmieri to Mario Mantovani), but also ex-Communists, such as Sandro Bondi and Fernando Adornato, and an ex-Socialist as Gianni Baget Bozzo, a Catholic priest who was in charge of cultural formation, fitted the category, along with former Liberals, as Isabella Bertolini. Some were more socially conservative than others (for example Formigoni and theoconservatives like Marcello Pera) and many of them were close to Giulio Tremonti, indeed this group and that described before were very close on most political issues, so that the two factions were often undistinguishable. They are probably the most europeanist wing of the party, along with former Socialists, but many of them were also the most atlanticists within it, as Adornato and Pera. In 2007 Adornato, Pisanu and Formigoni launched a faction named Liberal-Popular Union, but, the faction soon was disbanded as Adornato left Forza Italia to join UDC. Formigoni had also his own group, Network Italy, mainly composed of Catholics active in Communion and Liberation, to which group both Crosetto and Fitto showed closeness.
 * Social democrats. The most progressive wing of the party, especially about ethical issues. They were basically former Socialists, as Fabrizio Cicchitto, Francesco Colucci, Maurizio Sacconi, Margherita Boniver, Giorgio Stracquadanio, Chiara Moroni and Stefania Craxi, or former Social Democrats, as Carlo Vizzini, Nicola Cosentino and Paolo Russo. They considered themselves the true heirs of Pietro Nenni, Giuseppe Saragat and Bettino Craxi, continued to declare themselves 'Socialists' and were sided with Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right because they saw the Italian centre-left as too hegemonised by the Democrats of the Left, heir of the Italian Communist Party, which was the harshest rival of the Italian Socialists from the Fifties to the Nineties. Forza Italia's social democrats were organised into four sub-factions: We Blue Reformers, Free Foundation, Young Italy and the Clubs of Reformist Initiative.

Christian democrats and liberal-centrists were undoubtedly the strongest factions within the party, but all four were mainstream for a special issue: for example liberals and liberal-centrists were highly influential over economic policy, Christian democrats led the party over ethical issues (although there was a substantial minority promoting a more progressive outlook), while social democrats had their say in defining the party's policy over labour market reform and, moreover, it is thanks to this group (and to those around Tremonti, he himself a former Socialist) that constitutional reform was at the top of Forza Italia's political agenda. It is difficult to say to what faction Berlusconi was closer, what is sure is that his political record was a synthesis of all the political tendencies within the party.

Internal structure
Before being merged into the PdL, Forza Italia had a president (currently Silvio Berlusconi), two vice-presidents (Giulio Tremonti and Roberto Formigoni), a presidential committee (presided by Claudio Scajola) and a national council (presided by Alfredo Biondi).

The president was the party's leader, but a national coordinator was in charge of internal organisation and day-to-day political activity, similarly to the secretary-general in many European parties. Moreover, the party had thematic departments and regional, provincial or metropolitan coordination boards plus many affiliate clubs (Club Azzurro) all over Italy.

FI is considered a prototypical example of the business-firm party, in that it was strongly centered on Berlusconi, who had created the party to further his own private interests.

It has been claimed that Forza Italia had no internal democracy because there was no way of changing the leader of the party from below (although the party's constitution makes it possible). Key posts in the party structure were appointed by Berlusconi or by his delegates. Forza Italia's organisation was based on the idea of a "party of the elected people", giving more importance to the whole electorate than to party's members.

Party national-level conventions did not have normally elections to choose the party leadership (although the national congress elected some members of the national council), and they seemed to be more like events arranged for propaganda purposes. However, Berlusconi was highly popular among his party fellows, and it was unlikely he could have been overthrown if such an election had occurred.

Within the party there was a long debate over organisation. The original idea was the so-called "light party" (partito leggero), intended to be different from Italian traditional, bureaucratic and self-referential, party machines. This was the line of the early founders of the party, notably Marcello Dell'Utri and Antonio Martino. However Claudio Scajola and most former Christian Democrats supported a more capillary-based organisation, to make participate as much people as possible, and a more collegial, participative and democratic decision-making process.

In a 1999 study, political scientists Jonathan Hopkin and Caterina Paolucci likened the organisational model of the party to that of a business firm, describing it as having "a lightweight organisation with the sole basic function of mobilising short-term support at election time". Several other authors have adopted this comparison,   and have labeled Berlusconi as a "political entrepreneur".

Given the perceived use of government responsibility to advance Berlusconi's personal and Fininvest's business interests during the period of Forza Italia-led government, the political scientist Patrick McCarthy in 1995 proposed to describe Forza Italia as a "clan" rather than a reform-minded political party. In 2004, ten years after the emergence of the party and during its second term in government, Mark Donovan summarised that this still might be an accurate description. He asserted that the party (and the centre-right camp) was only coherent and disciplined when it came to questions that strongly concerned Berlusconi, while he allowed great liberties to the diverse factions in other issues that did not concern his personal interests.

Distinctive traits
From its inception, Forza Italia used unconventional means in regards to European politics. Forza Italia’s methods more closely resembled the American model, and utilized methods such as: stickering, SMS messaging, and mass-mailing of campaign material. This additionally included the widespread distribution of Berlusconi‘s biography, which was titled "An Italian Story" (Una storia italiana).

The party was heavily dependent on the image surrounding Berlusconi's personality. The party's anthem was sung in karaoke fashion at American-style conventions. There was nominally no internal opposition (although some critical voices raised up, such as those of Senators Paolo Guzzanti and Raffaele Iannuzzi). The party used TV advertising extensively, although this was slightly restricted following 2000 by a law passed by the centre-left majority of the time.

European affiliation
Following its first European election in 1994, Forza Italia MEPs formed their own political group in the European Parliament called Forza Europa. In 1995, Forza Europa merged with the European Democratic Alliance to form the Union for Europe group alongside the Rally for the Republic of France and Fianna Fáil of Ireland. Following an abandoned attempt to form a European political party with Rally for the Republic in 1997, on 10 June 1998 Forza Italia was accepted into the Group of the European People's Party. In December 1999 Forza Italia was finally granted full membership of the European People's Party (EPP).

Popular support
The electoral results of FI in general (Chamber of Deputies) and European Parliament elections since 1994 are shown in the chart below.

The electoral results of Forza Italia in the 10 most populated regions of Italy are shown in the table below.

Leadership

 * President: Silvio Berlusconi (1994–2009)
 * Vice President: Giulio Tremonti (2004–2009), Roberto Formigoni (2008–2009)
 * Spokesperson: Antonio Tajani (1994–1996), Paolo Bonaiuti (1996–2001), Sandro Bondi (2001–2004), Elisabetta Gardini (2004–2008), Daniele Capezzone (2008–2009)
 * President of the President's Committee: Claudio Scajola (2004–2009)
 * Vice President of the President's Committee: Carlo Vizzini (2005–2009)
 * President of the National Council: Alfredo Biondi (2004–2009)
 * Coordinator: Domenico Mennitti (1994), Luigi Caligaris (1994), Cesare Previti (1994–1996), Claudio Scajola (1996–2001), Roberto Antonione (2001–2003), Claudio Scajola (2003), Sandro Bondi (2003–2008), Denis Verdini (2008–2009)
 * Deputy-Coordinator: Giuliano Urbani / Mario Valducci (1995–1996), Fabrizio Cicchitto (2003–2009), Gianfranco Micciché (2004–2009), Renato Brunetta (2007–2009), Gian Carlo Abelli (2008–2009)
 * Treasurer: Mario Valducci (1994–1995), Domenico Lo Jucco (1995–1997), Giovanni Dell'Elce (1997–2003), Rocco Crimi (2003–2009)
 * Party Leader in the Chamber of Deputies: Raffaele Della Valle (1994), Vittorio Dotti (1994–1996), Giuseppe Pisanu (1996–2001), Elio Vito (2001–2008), Fabrizio Cicchitto (leader of PdL's group, 2008–2009)
 * Party Leader in the Senate: Enrico La Loggia (1994–2001), Renato Schifani (2001–2008), Gaetano Quagliariello (deputy leader of PdL's group, 2008–2009)
 * Party Leader in the European Parliament: Giancarlo Ligabue (1994–1997), Claudio Azzolini (1997–1999), Antonio Tajani (1999–2009)

title: Forza Italia


text:
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, or Pearls Before Swine, Kurt Vonnegut's fifth novel, was published in 1965 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston and as a Dell mass-market paperback in 1970. A piece of postmodern satire, it gave context to Vonnegut's following novel, Slaughterhouse-Five and shared in its success.

Themes and intertextuality
Vonnegut's fifth novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, followed a series with science-fictional subjects. This one, though it features science-fictional writing, is a postmodernist satire based on a humanistic premise. The thesis there is so blatant that the notice in The New York Times opens with the opinion that it "really requires the services of a social historian rather than a book reviewer". One of its targets is the economic inequality resulting from what the book describes as the "savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system". At the center of the story is the conscience-stricken multi-millionaire Eliot Rosewater, who moves the Rosewater Foundation that he heads to the former family home in Rosewater, Indiana, "where he attempts to dispense unlimited amounts of love and limited sums of money to anyone who will come to his office."

The science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout, who makes his appearance at the end of the novel and is referenced by Eliot Rosewater earlier on, defines the problem that Eliot is trying to address as "How to love people who have no use". Those whom Eliot tries to assist are life's terminal losers, unhinged by their lack of comprehension of the indifferent system that has produced them. "It is in fact the thoroughly sane for whom Vonnegut reserves his disdain", according to one commentator. Another sums up Vonnegut's intention as to expose "Lust for money by despicable people whose only comic attribute is the glee with which the author has created petty indignities for them to suffer".

Several more of Vonnegut's continuing themes come together, some for the first time, in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. The character Eliot Rosewater, the novel's focus, reappears incidentally in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Breakfast of Champions (1973). The description of the fire-bombing of Dresden, which Eliot hallucinates as affecting Indianapolis in chapter 13, remains a master theme from now on in Vonnegut's writing and is central to Slaughterhouse-Five. Equally a matter of history is the pornographic photograph of a woman attempting sex with a pony, given passing mention in chapter 11 of the novel and reappearing in Slaughterhouse-Five. The celebrated trial of French photographer André Lefèvre for selling just such postcards took place in 1841.

The writer Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut's foil and fictional alter-ego, appears in person for the first time in this novel as taking part in the panel that coaches Eliot back to sanity at the end. There are also summaries of five Trout novels, which are mentioned as part of Eliot's reading. One of these is about aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, which plays a role in many Vonnegut novels. And the name Diana Moon Glampers, one of Eliot's main clients, is that of the Handicapper General in Vonnegut's earlier dystopic story "Harrison Bergeron" (1961), but otherwise she is totally different from the character in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

In chapter 11, the young lawyer Norman Mushari visits the Rumfoord Mansion in Newport and speaks to Lance Rumfoord. Members of that family figure in many other Vonnegut short stories and novels, notably in the earlier The Sirens of Titan (1959). Norman Mushari Jr., the presumed son of Norman Mushari, is found in Vonnegut's later Slapstick (1976) where, in similar fashion, he persuades his client to seek restitution from her family for mistreatment. Both Musharis are motivated by the large cut of the profits to be gained by helping people inherit their wealth.

Plot
The Rosewater Foundation was founded by United States Senator Lister Ames Rosewater of Indiana to help Rosewater descendants avoid paying taxes on the family estate in Rosewater County. It is operated by a large legal firm in New York and provides an annual pension of $3.5 million to Eliot, the senator's son.

Eliot, a World War II veteran, alcoholic, and volunteer firefighter, has developed a social conscience and sets out across America to visit various small towns before he lands in Rosewater County. Eliot does his best to help the people there, having an office in the county seat where he gets phone calls from any of the ineffectual townsfolk needing his help or reassurance, much to the displeasure of his father. Meanwhile, the only other branch of the Rosewater family is a distant cousin named Fred Rosewater living in Rhode Island, a depressed life insurance salesman who contemplates suicide every day. Fred is visited by Norman Mushari, defecting from the Rosewater Corporation's legal team. Mushari persuades Fred that, if he can prove Eliot is insane, he can give him control of the family fortune by causing the money to pass to Fred, Eliot's closest oldest male relative.

After his father advises him of the scheme, Eliot suffers a nervous breakdown and is confined to a mental institution for a year. He suffers a bout of amnesia, recovers and is informed of the present situation, including the fact that he is set to appear the following day in court to defend himself at a proceeding intended to prove his insanity. He learns that the people of Rosewater now hate him and many of them falsely claim that Eliot fathered their children and are asking for money. Eliot devises a way out of his predicament: he writes Fred a $100,000 check, and then orders his lawyer to draw up legal papers acknowledging that he is the father of all of his alleged children in Rosewater, thereby creating a county full of heirs with a greater claim on the fortune than Fred. This will foil Mushari's plot and ensure that the Rosewater family fortune will be distributed among the people of the county.

Etymology and symbolism
The name Eliot Rosewater suggests a yoking together of opposites. "Eliot" connects the young altruist to T. S. Eliot and his depiction of modern life as a spiritual wasteland devoid of love but surfeited with lust. "Rosewater" can be seen as a combination of the names of the liberal Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the conservative Barry Goldwater. "It becomes apparent that Vonnegut was very much aware of the 1964 US presidential election while writing this novel."

"A Sum of Money is the leading character in this tale about people", and "has a sterilizing effect on everyone it touches in the novel." Money is clearly a dehumanizing force for Vonnegut, as is the class system that begat families like the Rosewaters and the Rockefellers. "The American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun", Vonnegut remarks.

Musical adaptation
In 1979, the novel was adapted into a stage musical with a book and lyrics by Howard Ashman, music by Alan Menken, and additional lyrics by Dennis Green. The musical opened at Off-Broadway's Entermedia Theatre on October 14, 1979, and ran for 49 performances.

In July 2016, the New York City Centers Encores! Off-Center concert did a revival of the show. The cast album of this revival was released on July 28, 2017, by Ghostlight Records.

title: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater


text:
Free Software Song

The Free Software Song is a filk song by Richard M. Stallman about free software. The song is set to the melody of the Bulgarian "Sadi Moma".

A version of this song is also performed by a band (the GNU/Stallmans) during the credits of the documentary Revolution OS. In 1998, Matt Loper recorded a techno version of the song. Jono Bacon also recorded a heavy metal version of the song, and the band Fenster recorded a rhythmic version. In addition, there is a Spanish pop punk version recorded by ALEC,  and a Rick Astley mashup, "Never Gonna Give GNU Up".

A version is used in the free software karaoke video game Sinatra.

Lyrics

 * Join us now and share the software;
 * You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
 * Join us now and share the software;
 * You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.

 * Hoarders can get piles of money,
 * That is true, hackers, that is true.
 * But they cannot help their neighbors;
 * That's not good, hackers, that's not good.

 * When we have enough free software
 * At our call, hackers, at our call,
 * We'll kick out those dirty licenses
 * Ever more, hackers, ever more.

 * Join us now and share the software;
 * You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
 * Join us now and share the software;
 * You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.

The lyrics have been placed in the public domain.

title: Free Software Song


text:
LFI

LFI may refer to:

Organizations

 * Labour Friends of Israel, a lobby group within the British Labour Party
 * League for the Fourth International, a Trotskyist international organisation
 * Lycée Français d'Irlande, French international school in Dublin, Ireland
 * La France Insoumise, a French political party

Other uses

 * Limited Feedback Interaction, a recording technique used primarily in the creation of improvised music
 * Local File Inclusion, a type of vulnerability most often found on websites
 * Logkiy Frontovoi Istrebitel ("Light Frontline Fighter"), a fifth-generation Russian fighter aircraft project
 * LFI, IATA airport code for Langley Air Force Base in Virginia
 * Learning From Incidents

title: LFI


text:
User:Tranquileye

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

title: User:Tranquileye