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Iwane Matsui

Iwane Matsui (松井 石根) was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army and the commander of the expeditionary force sent to China in 1937. He was convicted of war crimes and executed by the Allies for his involvement in the Nanjing Massacre.

Born in Nagoya, Matsui chose a military career and served in combat during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). He volunteered for an overseas assignment there shortly after graduating from the Army War College in 1906. As Matsui rose through the ranks, he earned a reputation as the Japanese Army's foremost expert on China, and he was an ardent advocate of pan-Asianism. He played a key role in founding the influential Greater Asia Association.

Matsui retired from active duty in 1935 but was called back into service in August 1937 at the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War to lead the Japanese forces engaged in the Battle of Shanghai. After winning the battle Matsui succeeded in convincing Japan's high command to advance on the Chinese capital city of Nanjing. The troops under his command who captured Nanjing on December 13 were responsible for the notorious Nanjing Massacre.

Matsui finally retired from the army in 1938. Following Japan's defeat in World War II he was convicted of war crimes at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) and executed by hanging. He and other convicted war criminals were enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine in 1978, an act that has stirred controversy.

Early life and military career, 1878–1906
Iwane Matsui was born in Nagoya on July 27, 1878. He was the sixth son of Takekuni Matsui, an impoverished samurai and former retainer to the daimyō of Owari during the Tokugawa shogunate. After completing elementary school, his parents insisted that he continue his education, but Matsui worried about his father's debts and did not want to burden him financially. Though he was a short, thin, and sickly young man, Matsui opted for a career in the Army, because in Japan at that time military schools charged the lowest tuition fees.

Matsui enrolled in the Central Military Preparatory School in 1893 and in 1896 was accepted into the Imperial Japanese Army Academy. Matsui was an excellent student and graduated second in his class in November, 1897. His classmates included the future generals Jinzaburō Masaki, Nobuyuki Abe, Shigeru Honjō, and Sadao Araki.

In 1901, Matsui was admitted into the Army War College, an elite institution which accepted only about ten percent of annual applicants. Matsui was still taking classes there in February, 1904, when the College closed due to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. He was immediately sent overseas where he served in Manchuria as a company commander in a combat unit of the 6th Regiment. During the Battle of Shoushanpu, he was wounded in action and most in his company were killed. At war's end, Matsui resumed his studies at the Army War College, and graduated at the top of his class in November, 1906.

The "China expert", 1906–31
Matsui had a lifelong interest in Chinese civilization. His father was a scholar of Chinese classics and Matsui studied the Chinese language during his military education. Matsui was a fervent admirer of the recently deceased Sei Arao (1858–1896), a "continental adventurer' (tairiku rōnin) and pan-Asianist army officer from his hometown who had served in China. Arao believed that China and Japan, as the two strongest powers in Asia, had to forge a close trading and commercial partnership under Japanese hegemony to resist Western imperialism, an idea which Matsui incorporated into his own worldview. After graduating from the Army War College, Matsui immediately requested to be stationed in China. Only one other officer had made this request, since a posting in China was considered undesirable at the time. Matsui's stated ambition was to become "a second Sei Arao".

At first the Army General Staff gave Matsui an assignment in France, but in 1907 he got his wish to go to China, where he worked as an aide to the military attaché and did intelligence work. Matsui worked in China between 1907 and 1911, and then again as resident officer in Shanghai between 1915 and 1919. In 1921 Matsui was posted to Siberia as a staff officer, but returned in 1922 to China where he served until 1924 as an advisor to Zhang Zuolin in the Chinese city of Harbin and did intelligence work for Japan's Kwantung Army.

Due to his extensive experience in China Matsui became recognized as one of the most important of the Japanese Army's "China experts", and he was well known in the Army for his love of things Chinese and his hobby of writing Chinese poetry. His work took him throughout China, and he came to know many prominent Chinese soldiers and politicians. Matsui formed an especially warm friendship with Sun Yat-sen, the first president of the Republic of China. In 1907 when a young Chiang Kai-shek (then a Chinese soldier) wanted to study abroad, Matsui helped him find a place to stay in Japan.

Head of intelligence
Matsui quickly rose through the ranks and in 1923 was promoted to the rank of major general. Between 1925 and 1928 he would serve in the influential post of Chief of the Intelligence Division of the Army General Staff. He was the first "China expert" to be appointed to that position and would have a major influence determining Japan's foreign policies toward China.

As Chief of the Intelligence Division, Matsui was a strong supporter of Chiang Kai-shek, who was attempting to end the civil war in China and unify the country under his leadership. Matsui hoped that Chiang would succeed and form a strong partnership with Japan to resist both Western influence in Asia and communism. However, Matsui's tenure in office was punctuated by a series of crises. Against Matsui's advice the Japanese government sent troops to the Chinese city of Jinan in 1928 to protect Japanese property and civilians, but they ended up clashing with the Chinese Army. Matsui headed to Jinan to help settle the affair, but while he was still there Japanese army officers assassinated Zhang Zuolin, the warlord leader of Manchuria. Matsui, who had been a supporter of Zhang, immediately left for Manchuria to find out what had happened. He demanded that the officers responsible for the assassination be punished.

In December 1928 Matsui left his post as Chief of the Intelligence Division in order to make an official, year-long trip to Europe. Matsui was interested in France as well as China; he spoke fluent French and had already done work for the Japanese Army in both France and French Indochina.

Matsui's pan-Asian vision, 1931–37
Sino-Japanese relations plummeted in September 1931 when the Kwantung Army invaded Manchuria. At the time Matsui was back in Japan commanding the 11th Division, but at the end of the year he was sent to Geneva, Switzerland, to attend the World Disarmament Conference as an army plenipotentiary.

At first Matsui condemned the invasion as the work of renegade army officers, but he was equally stung by what he believed were unfair denunciations of Japan itself by Chinese delegates to the League of Nations. Matsui suspected that the Western powers and the League of Nations were deliberately attempting to provoke conflict between Japan and China. Matsui believed that the 30 million Manchurians had been relieved by the Japanese invasion and conquest, which he called 'the Empire's sympathy and good faith' and that the solution to the larger regional problem was for the nations of Asia to create their own "Asian League", which would "extend to the 400 million people of China the same help and deep sympathy that we have given Manchuria".

After returning to Japan in late 1932, Matsui abruptly appeared at the office of the Pan-Asia Study Group, a Tokyo-based think tank, and presented its members with a bold plan to expand their small organization into an international mass movement. Matsui persuaded them to adopt his ideas, and in March 1933 the study group was rechristened the Greater Asia Association (大亜細亜協会 Dai-Ajia Kyōkai), described by the historian Torsten Weber as "the single most influential organization to propagate pan-Asianism between 1933 and 1945." The goal of the Greater Asia Association was to promote "the unification, liberation, and independence of the Asian peoples", and Matsui would use the organization as a powerful vehicle to promote his "Asian League" concept both in Japan and abroad. The writings he published with the Association were widely read by Japan's political and military elites.

In August 1933 Matsui was dispatched to Taiwan to command the Taiwan Army, and then on October 20 was promoted to the rank of general, the highest rank in the Japanese Army. While in Taiwan, he took the opportunity to set up a branch of the Greater Asia Association, which declared Matsui its "honorary advisor". He then returned to Japan in August 1934 to take a seat on Japan's Supreme War Council.

Meanwhile, Sino-Japanese relations continued to deteriorate and Matsui too was gradually souring toward the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, the same government he had strongly promoted back when serving as Chief of the Intelligence Division. In the first issue of the Greater Asia Association's official bulletin, put out in 1933, Matsui denounced China's leaders for having "sold out their own country of China and betrayed Asia" due to their allegedly pro-Western attitudes. Over time he gravitated toward a group within the Army General Staff led by General Tetsuzan Nagata, which was advocating that Japan use military force to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek.

Matsui's career came to an abrupt end in August 1935 when Nagata, a member of the so-called "Control Faction", was assassinated by a member of the rival Imperial Way Faction. By this point Matsui was fed up with the ruthless factional infighting that had divided the Japanese Army, and so he decided that he would take responsibility for the scandal and resign from active duty in the Army.

A general in the reserves
Now that he was a reservist, Matsui had more time to pursue his pan-Asian project. Between October and December 1935 he toured the major cities of China and Manchukuo speaking to Chinese politicians and businessmen about pan-Asianism and setting up a new branch of the Greater Asia Association in Tianjin. Upon his return to Japan in December 1935 he became President of the Greater Asia Association. In February and March 1936, amid ongoing tension with China, Matsui made a second trip to China, this time on a government-sponsored goodwill tour. Matsui met personally with Chiang, and though he found little common ground with him, they at least were united in their anti-communism. Matsui came out of the meeting believing that joint anti-communism could be the basis for Sino-Japanese cooperation in the future. Then in December 1936, following the Xi'an Incident, Chiang agreed to join with the Chinese Communist Party to resist Japan, a move that Matsui viewed as a personal betrayal.

At war in China, 1937–38
In July 1937, following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, full-scale war broke out between Japan and China. Initially limited to northern China, the fighting spread in August to Shanghai. The Japanese government decided to send two divisions of reinforcements to drive the Chinese Army from Shanghai, which would be organized as the Shanghai Expeditionary Army (SEA). Due to a shortage of active duty generals, the Army General Staff opted to pull someone from the reserves to lead the new army and on August 15 Matsui was officially appointed commander of the SEA. The reason why Matsui was selected is not entirely clear, but his reputation as a "China expert" was likely a major factor. The historian Ikuhiko Hata argues that at the time the Army General Staff was hoping to seek a settlement with China once Shanghai had been secured for Japan, and Matsui, because of his close friendships with China's leaders, was seen as an ideal candidate to conduct the negotiations. Matsui declared that his mission would be "to make the Chinese people recognize that Japanese troops are the real friends of China", and likewise stated that "I am going to the front not to fight an enemy but in the state of mind of one who sets out to pacify his brother." However, one of his old acquaintances in the Chinese Army remarked in The New York Times, "There can be no friendship between us while there is war between China and Japan."

While sailing to Shanghai Matsui adopted a plan drawn by the Japanese Navy to divide the SEA between two landing sites north of Shanghai, Wusong and Chuanshakou, and then use the former force to attack Shanghai directly and the latter force to encircle the Chinese Army. On August 23 Matsui oversaw the landing operation from aboard his flagship the Yura. The initial landings went well, but increasingly intense fighting ensued on land and casualties mounted. Matsui had never believed that he had been given enough soldiers to handle the job and was continuously pressing the high command for more reinforcements. He himself was not able to go ashore in Shanghai until September 10, but that was the same day on which the Army General Staff informed him that three additional divisions would be deployed under his command. Still, even this infusion of new troops proved insufficient to dislodge the Chinese. He had mistakenly judged at the beginning of October that the Chinese Army was about to withdraw from Shanghai and had ordered concentrated infantry charges on the Chinese positions in the expectation that the campaign would be wrapped up before November. In fact the SEA was still battering Chinese defensive lines at Nanxiang and Suzhou Creek at that point. The turning point of the campaign did not come until November 5 when an entirely new army, the 10th Army led by Heisuke Yanagawa, landed south of Shanghai and forced the Chinese Army to make a hasty retreat. Shanghai had finally fallen by 26 November.

The fighting also took a toll on Chinese civilians, and even at the height of the battle Matsui took a special interest in the plight of Chinese refugees. In October he ordered that improvements be made to living conditions in Chinese refugee camps and later he made a large personal donation of $10,000 to the French humanitarian Father Jacquinot to help him in establishing a "safety zone" for Chinese civilians in Shanghai.

Road to Nanjing
On November 7 Matsui was appointed commander of the Central China Area Army (CCAA), a new position created to provide unified leadership to the SEA and the 10th Army. Matsui continued to command the SEA as well until Prince Asaka was appointed to take over from him on December 2. Nonetheless, the Army General Staff was keen on keeping the war as contained as possible and so at the same time that it created the CCAA it also laid down an "operation restriction line" forbidding the CCAA from leaving the vicinity of Shanghai.

However, Matsui had made it clear to his superiors even before he had left Japan in August that he was determined to capture the capital city of China, Nanjing, which lay 300 kilometers west of Shanghai. Matsui forcefully asserted that the war with China would not end until Nanjing was in their control, and he envisaged that the fall of Nanjing would result in the total collapse of Chiang Kai-shek's government. After Chiang's fall Matsui hoped to play a role in forming a new government in China which, according to his own conception, would be a democracy that would better serve the interests of both Japan and the people of China. However, the historian Tokushi Kasahara also sees personal motives behind Matsui's insistence on capturing Nanjing. Kasahara suspects that Matsui, as an aging general with a relatively undistinguished military record, desperately wanted to crown his career with one last battlefield victory like the capture of the Chinese capital.

Ultimately it was Heisuke Yanagawa's 10th Army which, on November 19, abruptly crossed the operation restriction line and began advancing on Nanjing. In response to this flagrant act of insubordination, Matsui, it is claimed, made some effort to restrain Yanagawa, but he also insisted to the high command that marching on Nanjing was the right course of action. On December 1 the Army General Staff finally came around and approved an operation against Nanjing, though by then many of Japan's units in the field were already well on their way.

Matsui had gotten his way, but he still understood that his troops were tired from the fighting in Shanghai. He therefore decided to advance slowly with the aim of securing the city within two months. Nevertheless, his subordinates refused to play along and instead raced with one another to be the first to Nanjing. Matsui revised his plans only upon discovering that his own armies were well ahead of their scheduled operational targets. It is again argued that Matsui was unable to restrain the men under his command, and that, since Matsui was an elderly general pulled from retirement, most of his younger and brasher subordinates had little respect for his orders and assumed that he would be back in the reserves and shortly out of their way. Matsui's command problems were made further complicated by the fact that, between December 5 and December 15, he was frequently bedridden due to bouts of tuberculosis, which he had first shown symptoms of on November 4. Though ill, he forced himself to press on with his duties, issuing orders from his sickbed. On December 7 he moved his command post from Shanghai to Suzhou to be closer to the frontlines, and on December 9 he ordered that a "summons to surrender" be dropped by airplane over Nanjing. Because the Chinese Army defending Nanjing did not respond, the next day Matsui approved an all-out attack on the city. The CCAA suffered significant casualties fighting along the mountainous terrain just north of the city because Matsui had forbidden his men from using artillery there to prevent any damage from coming to its two famous historical sites, Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum and Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. Although the Chinese garrison defending Nanjing collapsed under pressure of the Japanese attack within a few days, instead of formally surrendering the Chinese soldiers simply threw away their uniforms and weapons and then merged with the city's civilian population. The Japanese occupied Nanjing on the night of December 12/13. Japanese soldiers in the city then massacred prisoners of war and engaged in random acts of murder, looting, torture, and rape which are collectively known as the Nanjing Massacre.

The Nanjing Massacre
Matsui and his staff officers in the CCAA had been especially intent on ensuring that the property and citizens of third party nations were not harmed in order to avoid causing an international incident; they had foreseen the possibility that their troops might disobey orders upon entering Nanjing, as many of them were poorly disciplined reservists. To forestall this possibility, Matsui tacked a lengthy addendum entitled "Essentials for Assaulting Nanjing" onto the comprehensive operational orders that he passed down to all units on December 7. In "Essentials" Matsui instructed each of his divisions to only allow one of their regiments into the city itself in order to reduce the Japanese Army's contact with Chinese civilians, and he reminded all his subordinates that criminal acts such as looting or arson would be severely punished, though in the court martial ledger for December 20, Matsui, taking note of raping and looting incidents, wrote that 'the truth is that some such acts are unavoidable'. Ultimately, Matsui's orders were again disobeyed. Most of the buildings and civilian homes outside Nanjing had been burned down by the Chinese Army to deprive the Japanese of shelter, so Matsui's subordinate commanders decided on their own that they had no choice but to station all their men within the city itself.

Nevertheless, Matsui's instructions said nothing about treatment of Chinese POWs. Matsui inadvertently contributed to the atrocity in a major way when he demanded on December 14 that his triumphal entrance into Nanjing be scheduled for the early date of December 17. At the time his subordinates in Nanjing objected because they were still in the process of scrambling to apprehend all the former Chinese soldiers hiding in the city and had no facilities in which to hold them. Regardless, Matsui held firm, and in many cases his men responded to the conundrum by ordering that all their prisoners be executed immediately after capture. Most of the large-scale massacres that took place within Nanjing occurred in the days immediately prior to Matsui's entrance into the city.

On December 16 Matsui spent the day recovering from his malaria at the Tangshuizhen hot springs east of Nanjing, and then the next day he rode into Nanjing itself at the head of a large victory parade. It is not clear to what extent Matsui was aware of the atrocities perpetrated in Nanjing. His former Chief of Staff in the SEA later testified that Matsui had been informed of "a few cases of plunder and outrage" shortly after entering the city, and Matsui's own field diary also mentions being told that Japanese troops had committed acts of rape and looting. Matsui commented in his field diary, "The truth is that some such acts are unavoidable." When a representative from the Japanese Foreign Ministry came to investigate the matter, Matsui admitted that some crimes had occurred and he blamed his subordinate commanders for allowing too many soldiers into the city in violation of his orders. After the war, Matsui's aide-de-camp Yoshiharu Sumi claimed that not long after the capture of Nanjing Matsui caught wind of a plan by some of his subordinates to massacre Chinese POWs and upon hearing of this he immediately put a stop to it. However researchers have since discovered that Sumi's testimony contained a large number of inaccuracies.

Matsui left Nanjing on December 22 and returned to Shanghai, though reports of scandalous incidents perpetrated by Japanese soldiers in Nanjing continued to filter in to his headquarters over the following month. When Matsui returned to Nanjing on February 7, 1938, for a two-day tour he assembled his subordinates, including Prince Asaka and Heisuke Yanagawa, and harangued them for failing to prevent "a number of abominable incidents within the past 50 days".

Final days in China
The capture of Nanjing had not led to the surrender of the Nationalist Government as Matsui had predicted and the war with China continued. Undeterred, Matsui began planning out new military operations in places such as Xuzhou and Zhejiang province soon after he had returned to Shanghai. The other big task occupying his time in January and February 1938 was his plan to establish a new Chinese government in Central China. Matsui was bound and determined to press forward with his ambition to found a new regime to rival Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government, and though he did not finish the job before leaving office, the Reformed Government of the Republic of China would eventually come into being in March 1938. However, the leaders of Japan's Army General Staff showed scant interest in his plan to create a new government in China and they also repeatedly refused to approve any new military campaigns under his command. By the beginning of February Matsui was contemplating suicide to protest their lack of enthusiasm.

By then, there was already a movement within the Army General Staff to have Matsui removed from his post. Reports of the atrocities in Nanjing had reached the Japanese government and some within the Army General Staff blamed Matsui for mishandling the crisis and causing Japan international embarrassment. Some even wanted him court-martialed for negligence. Even so, the Japanese government was not planning on dismissing Matsui solely because of the Nanjing Massacre. The Foreign Ministry was displeased by anti-Western statements Matsui had made after becoming CCAA commander, including his comment that he did not recognize the neutrality of foreign concessions in Shanghai, and the Army General Staff was concerned about Matsui's severe personality conflicts with his subordinate commanders, which were interfering with the chain of command. The Army Minister Hajime Sugiyama told General Shunroku Hata that the inability of Matsui and his subordinates to coordinate and cooperate with one another was the reason he was being removed.

On February 10 Matsui received a messenger from the Army General Staff who informed him, much to Matsui's chagrin and disappointment, that he would soon be relieved of command and replaced with Shunroku Hata. Ultimately, the Army General Staff did not punish Matsui but they did shake up the whole field command in China and Matsui was just one of eighty senior officers, including Asaka and Yanagawa, who were all recalled at the same time.

Life in retirement, 1938–46
Matsui sailed out of Shanghai on February 21, 1938, and landed back in Japan on February 23. Though the time and place of his return to Japan had been kept secret by the military, reporters quickly caught wind of his return and soon Matsui was being greeted everywhere he went by cheering crowds. Later that year Matsui bought a new home in Atami in Shizuoka Prefecture and from then until 1946 he spent his winters living in Atami and his summers living at his old house on Lake Yamanaka.

In spite of retiring from the military, Matsui hoped to get another job in China working with the Japanese-sponsored government there. Ultimately, he instead accepted the position of Cabinet Councillor, an advisory post, in June 1938. He continued to serve in this capacity until January 1940 when he resigned to protest Prime Minister Mitsumasa Yonai's opposition to an alliance with Nazi Germany.

It was also in 1940 that Matsui commissioned the construction of a statue of Kannon, the bodhisattva of mercy, and then had a special temple built in Atami to enshrine it. He named it the Koa Kannon, which means the "Pan-Asian Kannon", and he consecrated it in honor of all the Japanese and Chinese soldiers who perished during the Second Sino-Japanese War. At the time The New York Times praised Matsui's act, noting that "few Western generals have ever devoted their declining years to the memory of the men who died in their battles". Henceforth, on every single day that Matsui spent in Atami for the rest of his life he prayed in front of the Koa Kannon once early in the morning and once in the evening.

Throughout this time Matsui remained active in the pan-Asian movement. Although the Greater Asia Association was reorganized several times between 1942 and 1945, at no point did Matsui ever cease to serve as either the President or Vice President of the organization. Following Japan's entrance into World War II in December 1941, Matsui strongly advocated that Japan grant independence to the new territories it had occupied during the war and then form an alliance of Asian states to combat the Allied Powers. Between June and August 1943 Matsui undertook a tour of Asia, including China, Indochina, Singapore, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines in order to promote his ideas. Matsui met with Wang Jingwei in China and with Subhas Chandra Bose, the head of the Indian National Army, in Singapore. He also caused a diplomatic incident in Indochina, which was still nominally under French colonial rule, when he delivered a speech demanding that it be granted full independence. Matsui's efforts played a key role in the creation and consolidation of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which was the culmination of Matsui's lifelong vision of an "Asian League" united against the West.

In addition to the Greater Asia Association, Matsui also served throughout the war as President of the Association for the National Defense Concept, a virulently anti-Western and anti-Semitic organization founded in February 1942 to support the Japanese war effort. In 1945 as the Allies bore down on the Philippines Matsui declared over the radio that Japan would never withdraw from the Philippines "even though Tokyo should be reduced to ashes." Soon after he also stated his plans to speak at a lecture meeting on August 20 opposing any surrender. Nevertheless, on August 15, 1945, at his home in Atami Matsui heard Emperor Hirohito announce that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.

The Allied occupation of Japan began soon after. On November 19 the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers issued an arrest warrant for Matsui on suspicion of war crimes. Matsui was ill with pneumonia at the time and so was given until March to recover. One of Matsui's final acts before going to prison was to ask his wife to adopt their longtime maid Hisae as their daughter. He also converted from Shintoism to Buddhism and asked that his wife do the same. On March 6, 1946, he surrendered himself in to Sugamo Prison.

On trial in Tokyo, 1946–48
On April 29, 1946, Iwane Matsui became one of twenty-eight individuals formally indicted before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), a tribunal established by the Allies of World War II to try Japanese war criminals. The prosecution charged Matsui with Class A war crimes or "crimes against peace", alleging that he had participated in a conspiracy to wage aggressive war against other countries, and also with Class B/C war crimes or "conventional war crimes", alleging that he was responsible for the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 to 1938.

Matsui had told friends before going to Sugamo Prison that at the IMTFE he planned to defend not only himself but also Japan's wartime conduct as a whole. Matsui insisted that Japan had acted defensively against aggression by foreign powers and that Japan's war aims were to liberate Asia from Western imperialism. Concerning the origins of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Matsui called it "a fight between brothers within the 'Asian family and stated that the war was fought against the Chinese, not "because we hate them, but on the contrary because we love them too much. It is just the same in a family when an elder brother has taken all that he can stand from his ill-behaved younger brother and has to chastise him in order to make him behave properly."

On the matter of the Nanjing Massacre, Matsui admitted that he was aware of a few isolated crimes committed by individual soldiers, including acts of rape, looting, and murder, but he adamantly denied that any large-scale massacres had occurred in the city. Still, Matsui admitted to the IMTFE that he bore "moral responsibility" for the wrongdoing of his men. He denied that he bore "legal responsibility" because, he claimed, it was the military police of each division who were in charge of prosecuting individual criminal acts, not the army commander. However, Matsui also testified that he had urged that any offenders be sternly punished, a statement which, the prosecution quickly noted, implied that he did have some level of legal responsibility.

Ultimately the IMTFE dismissed most of the accusations laid against Matsui. Of the thirty-eight counts he was charged with, Matsui was found not guilty of thirty-seven, including all charges relating to Class A war crimes. The judges rejected Matsui's membership in the Greater Asia Association as being evidence that he was involved in the "conspiracy" to wage wars of aggression.

Nonetheless, for his role in the Nanjing Massacre, he was convicted and sentenced to death under Count 55, charging defendants with having "deliberately and recklessly disregarded their legal duty to take adequate steps to secure the observance and prevent breaches" of the laws of war. The IMTFE delivered the following verdict on November 12, 1948. "The Tribunal is satisfied that Matsui knew what was happening. He did nothing, or nothing effective to abate these horrors. He did issue orders before the capture of the city enjoining propriety of conduct upon his troops and later he issued further orders to the same purport. These orders were of no effect as is now known, and as he must have known... He was in command of the Army responsible for these happenings. He knew of them. He had the power, as he had the duty, to control his troops and to protect the unfortunate citizens of Nanking. He must be held criminally responsible for his failure to discharge this duty."Historian Yuma Totani notes that this verdict represents "one of the earliest precedents for command responsibility in the history of international law."

Shortly after hearing the verdict Matsui confided to his prison chaplain, Shinsho Hanayama, his feelings about the atrocities in Nanjing and the rebuke he delivered to his subordinates on February 7, 1938. He blamed the atrocities on the alleged moral decline of the Japanese Army since the Russo-Japanese War, and said,"The Nanjing Incident was a terrible disgrace ... Immediately after the memorial services, I assembled the higher officers and wept tears of anger before them, as Commander-in-Chief ... I told them that after all our efforts to enhance the Imperial prestige, everything had been lost in one moment through the brutalities of the soldiers. And can you imagine it, even after that, these officers laughed at me ... I am really, therefore, quite happy that I, at least, should have ended this way, in the sense that it may serve to urge self-reflection on many more members of the military of that time."On the night of December 22, 1948, Matsui met fellow condemned inmates Hideki Tojo, Akira Mutō, and Kenji Doihara at the prison chapel. As the oldest member of the group, Matsui was asked to lead them in shouting three cheers of banzai to the Emperor. Then he led the group up to the gallows where they were all hanged simultaneously shortly after midnight on the morning of December 23, 1948.

Soon after Matsui was executed, he was cremated and the US Army took away his ashes to prevent a memorial from being created. However, unbeknownst to them, some of the ashes had been hidden by the owner of the crematorium. He later brought these ashes to the shrine Matsui had founded, the Koa Kannon, and they remain there to this day. In 1978, all seven war criminals executed by the IMTFE, including Iwane Matsui, were officially enshrined in Yasukuni Shrine in a secret ceremony conducted by head priest Nagayoshi Matsudaira. This event did not become publicly known until the following year.

Assessments and perception
In Japan the majority of the historical literature on Iwane Matsui's life focuses on his role in the Nanjing Massacre. He has both sympathizers, who depict him as "the tragic general" who was unjustly executed, and detractors, who assert that he had the blood of a massacre on his hands. Among his detractors is the historian Yutaka Yoshida, who believes that Matsui made six serious mistakes which contributed to the massacre. Firstly, he insisted on advancing on Nanjing without ensuring proper logistical support which forced his men to rely on plunder. Secondly, he established no policies to protect the safety of Chinese POWs. Thirdly, he permitted an excessively large number of soldiers to enter the city of Nanjing. Fourthly, he did not cooperate sufficiently with the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone. Fifthly, he insisted that his triumphal entrance into Nanjing be held at an early date, a demand which his subordinate commanders responded to by increasing the speed and severity of their operations. Finally, he spent too much time on political maneuvering and neglected his duties as commander. The historian Keiichi Eguchi and the researcher Toshio Tanabe likewise find that Matsui bears responsibility for urging the government to march on Nanjing, which led directly to the massacre. Tanabe concurs with Yoshida that Matsui should have put in place policies to protect Chinese POWs and should not have ordered a premature triumphal entrance into the city of Nanjing.

Nevertheless, other historians like Masahiro Yamamoto have argued that the death sentence was too severe a penalty for Matsui's crime of mere negligence in failing to stop the massacre. The journalist Richard Minear also points out that Matsui's penalty was disproportionately severe compared to the other convicted defendants. Kuniaki Koiso was found guilty on four counts and Mamoru Shigemitsu was found guilty on five counts, in both cases including one count of negligence, and both were given prison sentences. Matsui, by contrast, was found guilty of only one count of negligence but was sentenced to death. The historian Tokushi Kasahara argues that the prosecution at the IMTFE did not attempt seriously to investigate all those who were involved in the Nanjing Massacre, and instead just decided to make Matsui the sole scapegoat for the whole atrocity.

Matsui has a somewhat infamous reputation in China today. The popular nonfiction author Takashi Hayasaka asserts that he often heard Matsui referred to as "the Hitler of Japan" by Chinese citizens during his travels in the city of Nanjing because of Matsui's connection to the Nanjing Massacre. However, Matsui's name was not always notorious in China for this reason. In 1945 the Chinese Communist Party denounced Matsui as a war criminal because of his propaganda work for an ultranationalist group, rather than for the Nanjing Massacre. Historian Masataka Matsuura notes that the focus within current scholarship on Matsui's role in the Nanjing Massacre has distracted from the fact that his pan-Asianism was the defining characteristic of his life.

Writings in English

 * The Japanese Army and the Dispute in the Far East (Geneva: Kundig, 1932)
 * An Asiatic League of Nations (Tokyo: Office of the Greater Asia Association, 1937)

title: Iwane Matsui


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.name

The domain name is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is intended for use by individuals for representation of their personal name, nicknames, screen names, pseudonyms, or other types of identification labels.

History
The top-level domain was founded by Hakon Haugnes and Geir Rasmussen and initially delegated to Global Name Registry in 2001, and become fully operational in January 2002. Verisign was the outsourced operator for .name since the .name launch in 2002 and acquired Global Name Registry in 2008.

In late September 2007, security researchers accused Global Name Registry of harboring hackers by charging fees per WHOIS lookup. The policy of selling detailed registration info about domains in name for US$2 each was criticized as hindering community efforts to locate and clean up malware-spreading hosts, zombies, and botnet control servers located in name. The registry offers unlimited lookups to approved users who sign a 10-page legal agreement.

In November 2009, internationalized domain names (IDNs) became available for second- and third-level domain names. IDNs are domain names that are represented by user applications in the native character set of a language.

Structure
When the TLD name was first launched, only third-level registrations and forwarded e-mail addresses were available. Second-level registrations became available in January 2004. The original intended structure of domain names was first.last.name, so that individuals could get a domain corresponding to their name.

The purpose of this sharing of second-level names was to ensure that the highest number of people possible could get an email address that included their last name. This sharing did not impact any other people with the same last name, and research by Global Name Registry showed that a majority of the world's population does not have an overlapping firstname–lastname combination.

Usage
Subdomains of name may be registered at the second-level (john.name) and the third-level (john.doe.name). It is also possible to register an e-mail address of the form john@doe.name. Email forwarding will be operated by Verisign. The target address can be specified by an additional EPP mapping. The second-level domain of third-level subdomains is shared, and may not be registered by individuals.

The WHOIS service for name is available at whois.nic.name. Domain name registrations are available from accredited ICANN registrars.

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

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Sugamo Prison

Sugamo Prison (Sugamo Kōchi-sho, Kyūjitai: 巢鴨拘置所, Shinjitai: 巣鴨拘置所) was a prison in Tokyo, Japan. It was located in the district of Ikebukuro, which is now part of the Toshima ward of Tokyo, Japan.

History
Sugamo Prison was originally built in 1895, using the prisons of Europe as a model. By the 1930s it became known for housing political prisoners, including many communists and other dissenters who fell foul of the Peace Preservation Laws in the 1930s and 1940s. Allied spies were also incarcerated there, including Richard Sorge who was hanged in the prison on November 7, 1944. The prison also was used to hold captured Allied officers during World War II as well as airmen.

The prison was not damaged during the bombing of Tokyo in World War II, and was taken over by the Allied occupation forces during the occupation of Japan to house suspected war criminals as they awaited trial before the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. After the conclusion of the trials, Sugamo Prison was used to incarcerate some of the convicted and was the site of the execution of seven inmates sentenced to death by hanging on December 23, 1948. The prison was also the execution site for 51 Japanese war criminals who were condemned in the Yokohama War Crimes Trials. The last 7 executions were carried out on April 7, 1950. The original compound was only 2.43 ha in size. The construction of exterior fencing expanded the facility to double the original size. After being captured and re-purposed by Allied forces, the facility was operated by the United States’ Eighth Army. Under the U.S. occupation, Sugamo Prison was administered by 400–500 soldiers. There were approximately 2500 military personnel assigned to duty at the prison, however no more than 500 at any given time. The prison was operated by occupation authorities from December 1945 through May 1952. The structure housed some 2000 Japanese war criminals during its operation.

The prisoners ate Japanese food prepared by Japanese personnel and served by the prisoners themselves. There were occasions when former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo served food to all the other class "A" prisoners. Some of the vegetables used in these meals were grown within the compound. On May 31, 1958, the last 18 Japanese war criminals still serving time in Sugamo Prison were paroled.

After the end of the occupation of Japan, Sugamo Prison passed to Japanese civilian government control. Most of the remaining war criminals were pardoned or paroled by the government. In 1962 its function as a prison ended. In 1971 the prison buildings were dismantled.

In 1978, the Sunshine 60 Building, at its completion the tallest skyscraper in Japan, was built on the former site of Sugamo Prison. All that is left to commemorate the prison is a stone on which is engraved, in Japanese, "Pray for Eternal Peace." A water drainage outlet from the prison has been preserved in the park in front of the Tokyo International University Ikebukuro Campus, which stands on part of the former prison grounds.

Notable inmates

 * Iva Toguri D'Aquino: American-Japanese suspected collaborator known as "Tokyo Rose.” Sentenced to 10 years in prison in the United States for treason, which she served in the United States. Released in 1956, and pardoned in 1977. Died in 2006.
 * Minister of Foreign Affairs Yōsuke Matsuoka: Died in prison in 1946, before he could be brought to trial.
 * Marshal Admiral Osami Nagano: Died in prison during his trial in 1947.
 * Vice Minister of Munitions Nobusuke Kishi: Ran plundering of China, planned and ran the war, key deputy to Tojo, Later Prime Minister (LDP) 1957–1960: Released after charges dropped in 1948. Died in 1987.
 * Matsutarō Shōriki, secretary of the Political Police in Tokyo, later media mogul, LDP politician, Chief of the Information Department of the Interior Ministry: Released in 1948 after charges dropped. Died in 1969.
 * Yoshio Kodama, drug trafficking operations and Intelligence agent in China, rear admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy, Yakuza head: Released in 1948 after charges dropped. Died in 1984.
 * Japanese fascist leader Ryoichi Sasakawa: Released in 1948 after charges dropped. Died in 1995.
 * Ambassador Toshio Shiratori: Died in prison in 1949.
 * General Yoshijirō Umezu: Chief of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff. Died in prison in 1949.
 * Prime Minister Kuniaki Koiso: Also an IJA general and Governor-General of Korea. Died in prison in 1950.
 * Lieutenant General Shigeru Sawada: Released in 1950. Died in 1980.
 * Minister of Foreign Affairs Mamoru Shigemitsu: Paroled in 1950, and died in 1957.
 * Lieutenant General Takaji Wachi: Paroled in 1950. Died in 1978.
 * Minister of Foreign Affairs Shigenori Tōgō: Died in prison in 1950.
 * Lieutenant General Isamu Yokoyama: Convicted of having command responsibility for vivisection and other human medical experiments performed at the Kyushu Imperial University on downed Allied airmen. Sentenced to death in 1948, but later reprieved. Died in prison in 1952.
 * Prime Minister Hiranuma Kiichirō: Paroled in 1952, and died a few months later.
 * Lieutenant General Sadae Inoue: Paroled in 1953. Died in 1961.
 * Advisor Kōichi Kido: Paroled in 1955, and died in 1977.
 * Field Marshal Shunroku Hata: Paroled in 1955, and died in 1962.
 * General Jirō Minami: Governor-General of Korea. Paroled in 1954, and died in 1955.
 * General Sadao Araki: Paroled in 1955, and died in 1966.
 * Admiral Shigetarō Shimada: Minister of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Paroled in 1955, and died in 1976.
 * Lieutenant General Teiichi Suzuki: Paroled in 1955, and died in 1989.
 * Minister of Finance Okinori Kaya: Paroled in 1955, and died in 1977.
 * Lieutenant General Hiroshi Ōshima: Paroled in 1955, and died in 1975.
 * Lieutenant General Eitaro Uchiyama: Paroled in 1958, and died in 1973.
 * General Naoki Hoshino: Paroled in 1958, and died in 1978.

Executed inmates

 * Hotsumi Ozaki: Executed for treason in 1944.
 * Richard Sorge: Soviet spy, executed by the Japanese in 1944.
 * Captain Kaichi Hirate: Permitted the mistreatment and murder of Allied POWs. Executed in 1946.
 * General Kenji Doihara: Chief of intelligence services in Manchukuo. Executed in 1948.
 * Prime Minister Kōki Hirota: Executed in 1948.
 * General Seishirō Itagaki: Japanese war minister. Executed in 1948.
 * General Heitarō Kimura: Commander of the Japanese Burma Area Army. Executed in 1948.
 * Lieutenant General Akira Mutō: Chief of staff of the Japanese Fourteenth Area Army. Executed in 1948.
 * General Hideki Tojo: Commander of Kwantung Army and later the Prime Minister. Executed in 1948.
 * Toshiaki Mukai and Tsuyoshi Noda: Perpetrators of the hundred man killing contest during the Nanjing Massacre. Extradited to China and executed in 1948.
 * Major General Yoshitaka Kawane and Colonel Kurataro Hirano: Convicted of having command responsibility in the Bataan Death March. Executed in 1949.
 * Lieutenant Sadaaki Konishi: Convicted of torturing prisoners in a prison camp in the Philippines. Executed in 1949.
 * Lieutenant General Tasuku Okada: Ordered the massacre of 38 U.S. POWs. Executed in 1949.

title: Sugamo Prison


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Westlaw

Westlaw is an online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of case law, state and federal statutes, administrative codes, newspaper and magazine articles, public records, law journals, law reviews, treatises, legal forms and other information resources.

Most legal documents on Westlaw are indexed to the West Key Number System, which is West's master classification system of U.S. law. Westlaw supports natural language and Boolean searches. Other significant Westlaw features include KeyCite, a citation checking service, which customers use to determine whether cases or statutes are still good law, and a customizable tabbed interface that lets customers bring their most-used resources to the top. Other tabs organize Westlaw content around the specific work needs of litigators, in-house corporate practitioners, and lawyers who specialize in any of over 150 legal topics. Most customers are attorneys or law students, but other individuals can also obtain accounts.

History
Westlaw was created in 1975 by West Publishing, a company whose headquarters have been in Eagan, Minnesota, since 1992; West was acquired by the Thomson Corporation in 1996. Several of Thomson's law-related businesses outside the United States have their own Westlaw sites, and Westlaw's foreign content is available online. For instance, Westlaw Canada from Carswell includes the Canadian Abridgment and KeyCite Canada, and Westlaw UK provides information from Sweet & Maxwell and independent law reports, case analysis and case status icons. More recently, Westlaw China was introduced, with laws and regulations, cases, digests, and status icons (similar to KeyCite flags), for the law of the People's Republic of China. Westlaw Ireland (IE) was established in 2002, covering information found in Round Hall publications as well as legislation, books, cases, current awareness and full-text articles from many of the country's notable legal journals. Westlaw is used in over 68 countries.

Westlaw is descended from QUIC/LAW, a Canadian computer-assisted legal research project operated by Queen's University from 1968 to 1973. The original name stood for "Queen's University Investigation of Computers and Law." It was directed by Hugh Lawford and Richard von Briesen, and the original code was based on an internal IBM text search project called INFORM/360. The IBM code turned out to be incomplete and required substantial modifications. In 1973, the project was commercialized in the form of a new company called QL Systems and a new product name, QL/SEARCH. In 1976, QL Systems licensed the QL/SEARCH software to West Publishing as the original foundation for what would become Westlaw.

West's chief competitor in the legal information retrieval market is LexisNexis. (Ironically, Lawford and von Briesen sold what by then was called QuickLaw to LexisNexis in 2002. ) Both Westlaw and LexisNexis started in the 1970s as dial-up services with dedicated terminals. The earliest versions used acoustic couplers or key phones; then smaller terminals with internal modems. Westlaw's terminal was known as WALT, for West Automatic Law Terminal.

Around 1989, both started offering programs for personal computers that emulated the terminals, and when Internet access became available, an Internet address (such as westlaw.com) became an alternative that could be selected within the "Communications Setup" option in the client program, instead of a dial-up number. West's program was known as Westmate. It was based on Borland C++ around 1997, and then changed to a program compiled on a Microsoft platform that incorporated portions of Internet Explorer. This was the first program to incorporate HTML; prior to that, Westmate had "jumps" indicated by triangles instead of "links." Shortly after that, both publishers started developing web browser interfaces, with Westlaw's being notable for the use of "web dialogs", emulating the piling of open books on a table. Westmate was discontinued on June 30, 2007.

West introduced WestlawNext on February 8, 2010. The main advances are that a user can start a search without first selecting a database, which is helpful because WestLaw has over 40,000 databases, and the search screen allows one to click checkboxes to select the jurisdiction and nature of material wanted. A new search algorithm, referred to as WestSearch, executes a federated search across multiple content types. Users can either enter descriptive terms or Boolean connectors and select a jurisdiction. Documents are ranked by relevance. WestlawNext also supports retrieving documents by citation, party name or KeyCite reference. An overview page enables users to see the top results per content type, or to view all results for a particular content type. Filters can also be applied to refine the result list even further. On the results page, users can also see links to related secondary sources relevant to their research. WestlawNext also provides folders for storing portions of the research selected by the user.

The classic Westlaw.com platform was retired in August 2015. WestlawNext was renamed "Thomson Reuters Westlaw", effective in February 2016.

KeyCite
KeyCite is a case citator used in United States legal research that provides a list of all the authorities citing a particular case, statute, or other legal authority.

Verification of citations is necessary, because lawyers must determine whether a case has been reversed, overruled, or modified by a subsequent case before citing it in court. Further, when interpreting a statute it is necessary to examine previous judicial interpretations. The United States judiciary operates under the principle of stare decisis – a system of legal precedents – to ensure the courts deliver consistent rulings on similar legal issues, regardless of the political or social status of the parties involved. As such, legal professionals must be certain that the legal citations they use to reinforce their arguments are accurate and still "good law."

KeyCite leverages Westlaw technologies, West's attorney-authored case law headnotes and the West Key Number System to determine and immediately alert legal professionals that case law they are reviewing has been either overturned, or may have history that deems the precedential value of the opinion invalid.

KeyCite was introduced to Westlaw in 1997 and was the first citator to seriously challenge Shepard's Citations, on which American legal professionals had relied for generations. Shepard's had become such a necessary part of American legal research that the process of citation checking is still informally referred to as "Shepardizing."

In 2004, KeyCite was the most-used citation checking service in an annual survey of law firm technology use conducted by the American Bar Association.

Associated software and websites
WestCheck is software that extracts citations from a word processing document and submits them to KeyCite or to Westlaw for retrieval of full text documents. The software consists of a standalone program and word processor add-in, either of which may be used, and a web site with the same functionality.

West also provides BriefTools, which replaces West CiteLink, and provides citation checking and file retrieval services within a word processing document. Another version only inserts Westlaw links into documents.

West CiteAdvisor formats citations and creates a table of authorities. Like WestCheck, it is available online at citeadvisor.westlaw.com, or as software for a word processor.

Westlaw CourtExpress allows searching of court docket information.

Westlaw Watch allows users to manage periodic monitoring of news and other databases for topics of interest.

Westlaw WebPlus provides a web search engine with a focus on legal information sites.

The Westlaw Litigator website provides access to legal calendaring and other litigation related applications.

Westlaw Today curates legal news and email alerts written by attorneys and Reuters reporters.

Key Number System
The West Key Number System is a master classification system of U.S. law, and is claimed to be "the only recognized legal taxonomy." The West Key Number System was created by West Publishing Company and can be described as a highly detailed index of over 110,000 legal topics and sub-topics. The index serves as the backbone for legal information published by West, which appears in the company's print publications, and now on Westlaw.

The West Education Network (TWEN)
TWEN is Westlaw's online courseware that is specifically tailored for law schools. It is used as an online extension of the classroom. Teachers use it to post syllabi, PowerPoint presentations, class materials and announcements. TWEN is also used for emailing, forum posting, live chats, polling, linking to CALI Lessons and posting/submitting assignments. (In terms of this range of functionality, TWEN is similar to other educational systems such as Blackboard, marketed by Blackboard Inc.).

Law school professors occasionally use it for their classes, and it is used by librarians and career services offices. Students can also create and manage their own courses for law reviews, journals and any student organization.

Identity theft controversy
In February 2005, after the ChoicePoint identity theft incidents became public, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) publicized the fact that Westlaw has a database containing a large amount of private information on practically all living Americans. Besides widely available information such as addresses and phone numbers, Westlaw also includes Social Security numbers (SSNs), previous addresses, dates of birth, and other information lawyers use to do background checks on behalf of their clients. While there is no known case of identity theft involving Westlaw, the company responded to the controversy by announcing it had eliminated access to full SSNs for 85 percent of its clients who previously could retrieve this information, mostly lawyers and government agencies.

Legal disputes
In the mid-1980s, Westlaw sued LexisNexis over copyright infringement. LexisNexis's "star pagination" system, a feature that let users of either research system find the printed page of a case without looking to the actual book, was found to infringe West's copyrights by the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. After Lexis' appeals were turned down by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, the company entered into an agreement to pay West $50,000 per year to license West's pagination and text corrections. No other publisher was offered similar terms, and the terms of the agreement were kept secret until they came out during discovery in the Matthew Bender / HyperLaw v. West lawsuit.

In the mid-1990s, Alan Sugarman, who runs HyperLaw, sued West. The District Court in New York and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that West did not have copyright on the corrections it made on opinions or on the internal pagination.

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Colossi of Memnon

The Colossi of Memnon (el-Colossat or es-Salamat) are two massive stone statues of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III, which stand at the front of the ruined Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III, the largest temple in the Theban Necropolis. They have stood since 1350 BC, and were well known to ancient Greeks and Romans, as well as early modern travelers and Egyptologists. The statues contain 107 Roman-era inscriptions in Greek and Latin, dated to between AD 20 and 250; many of these inscriptions on the northernmost statue make reference to the Greek mythological king Memnon, whom the statue was then – erroneously – thought to represent.

Scholars have debated how the identification of the northern colossus as "Memnon" is connected to the Greek name for the entire Theban Necropolis as the Memnonium.

Description
The twin statues depict Amenhotep III (fl. 14th century BC) in a seated position, his hands resting on his knees and his gaze facing eastwards (actually ESE in modern bearings) towards the river. Two shorter figures are carved into the front throne alongside his legs: these are his wife Tiye and mother Mutemwiya. The side panels depict the Nile god Hapi. The statues are made from blocks of quartzite sandstone which was quarried at el-Gabal el-Ahmar (near modern-day Cairo) and transported 675 km overland to Thebes (Luxor). The stones are believed to be too heavy to have been transported upstream on the Nile. The blocks used by later Roman engineers to reconstruct the northern colossus may have come from Edfu (north of Aswan). Including the stone platforms on which they stand – themselves about 4 m – the colossi reach 18 m in height and weigh an estimated 720 tons each. The two figures are about 15 m apart.

Both statues are quite damaged, with the features above the waist virtually unrecognizable. The southern statue comprises a single piece of stone, but the northern figure has a large extensive crack in the lower half and above the waist consists of 5 tiers of stone. These upper levels consist of a different type of sandstone, and are the result of a later reconstruction attempt, which William de Wiveleslie Abney attributed to Septimius Severus. It is believed that originally the two statues were identical to each other, although inscriptions and minor art may have varied.

The original function of the Colossi was to stand guard at the entrance to Amenhotep's memorial temple (or mortuary temple): a massive construct built during the pharaoh's lifetime, where he was worshipped as a god-on-earth both before and after his departure from this world. In its day, this temple complex was the largest and most opulent in Ancient Egypt. Covering a total of 35 ha, even later rivals such as Ramesses II's Ramesseum or Ramesses III's Medinet Habu were unable to match it in area; even the Temple of Karnak, as it stood in Amenhotep's time, was smaller.

With the exception of the Colossi, however, very little remains today of Amenhotep's temple. It stood on the edge of the Nile floodplain, and successive annual inundations gnawed away at its foundations – a 1840s lithograph by David Roberts shows the Colossi surrounded by water – and it was not unknown for later rulers to dismantle, purloin, and reuse portions of their predecessors' monuments.

Roman era inscriptions
The statues contain 107 Roman-era inscriptions in Greek and Latin, dated between 20-250CE; these inscriptions allowed modern travellers to connect the statues to the classical Greek and Latin literature. Many of the inscriptions include the name "Memnon".

They were first studied in detail by Jean-Antoine Letronne in his 1831 La statue vocale de Memnon considérée dans ses rapports avec l'Égypte et la Grèce and then catalogued in the second volume (1848) of his Recueil des inscriptions grecques et latines de l'Égypte.

Earthquakes
Soon after its construction the temple was destroyed by an earthquake, recently dated by the Armenian Institute of Seismology to around 1200 BC, which left only the two huge colossi at the entrance still standing. These were further destroyed by an earthquake in 27 BC, after which they were partly reconstructed by the Roman authorities.

The 1200 BC earthquake also opened numerous chasms in the ground which meant that many statues were buried, some in pristine condition. These have been the subject of extensive restoration and excavation conducted by the Armenian/German archaeologist Hourig Sourouzian, who has revealed that the complex consisted of three pylons, each fronted by colossal statues, while at the far end a rectangular Temple complex consisted of a peristyle court surrounded by columns. So far four of the statues have been re-erected, with eight waiting to be re-erected, while some 200 statues or pieces of statues are in the Luxor Museum, some on display, others in store awaiting conservation.

Name
The modern Arabic name is Kom el-Hatan, but it is generally known by the Roman name as the Temple of Memnon. Memnon was a hero of the Trojan War, a King of Ethiopia who led his armies from Africa into Asia Minor to help defend the beleaguered city but was ultimately slain by Achilles. Memnon (whose name means or  ) was said to be the son of Eos, the goddess of dawn. He was associated with colossi built several centuries earlier, because of the reported cry at dawn of the northern statue (see below), which became known as the Colossus of Memnon. Eventually, the entire Theban Necropolis became generally referred to as the Memnonium making him "Ruler of the west" as in the case of the god Osiris who was called chief of the west.

in the 19th century, William de Wiveleslie Abney noted that "(t)he Arabs called these statues 'Shama' and 'Tama', and when speaking of them together gave them the appelation of Sanamât, or the idols."

Sounds
In 27 BCE, a large earthquake reportedly shattered the northern colossus, collapsing it from the waist up and cracking the lower half. Following its rupture, the remaining lower half of this statue was then reputed to "sing" on various occasions – always within an hour or two of sunrise, usually right at dawn. The sound was most often reported in February or March, but this is probably more a reflection of the tourist season rather than any actual pattern.

The earliest report in literature is that of the Greek historian and geographer Strabo, who said that he heard the sound during a visit in 20 BCE, by which time it apparently was already well-known. The description varied; Strabo said it sounded "like a blow", Pausanias compared it to "the string of a lyre" breaking, but it also was described as the striking of brass or whistling. Other ancient sources include Pliny (not from personal experience, but he collected other reports), Pausanias, Tacitus, Philostratus and Juvenal. In addition, the base of the statue is inscribed with about 90 surviving inscriptions of contemporary tourists reporting whether they had heard the sound or not.

The legend of the "Vocal Memnon", the luck that hearing it was reputed to bring, and the reputation of the statue's oracular powers became known outside of Egypt, and a constant stream of visitors, including several Roman emperors, came to marvel at the statues. The last recorded reliable mention of the sound dates from 196. Sometime later in the Roman era, the upper tiers of sandstone were added (the original remains of the top half have never been found); the date of this reconstruction is unknown, but local tradition places it circa 199, and attributes it to the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus in an attempt to curry favour with the oracle (it is known that he visited the statue, but did not hear the sound).

Various explanations have been offered for the phenomenon; these are of two types: natural or man-made. Strabo himself apparently was too far away to be able to determine its nature: he reported that he could not determine if it came from the pedestal, the shattered upper area, or "the people standing around at the base". If natural, the sound was probably caused by rising temperatures and the evaporation of dew inside the porous rock.

Similar sounds, although much rarer, have been heard from some of the other Egyptian monuments (Karnak is the usual location for more modern reports). Perhaps the most convincing argument against it being the result of human agents is that it did cease, probably due to the added weight of the reconstructed upper tiers.

A few mentions of the sound in the early modern era (late 18th and early 19th centuries) seem to be hoaxes, either by the writers or perhaps by locals perpetuating the phenomenon.

The "Vocal Memnon" features prominently in one scene of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt.

They also show up in Oscar Wilde's fairy tale "The Happy Prince."

They are referenced in Thomas Pynchon's novel V. (1963) as part of a series of "well-kept secrets" including the fact that statues talk.

title: Colossi of Memnon


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Iosif Shklovsky

Iosif Samuilovich Shklovsky (Ио́сиф Самуи́лович Шкло́вский; sometimes transliterated Josif, Josif, Shklovskii, Shklovskij) (1 July 1916 – 3 March 1985) was a Soviet astronomer and astrophysicist. He is remembered for work in theoretical astrophysics and other topics, as well as for his 1962 book on extraterrestrial life, the revised and expanded version of which was co-authored by American astronomer Carl Sagan in 1966 as Intelligent Life in the Universe.

He won the Lenin Prize in 1960 and the Bruce Medal in 1972. Asteroid 2849 Shklovskij and the crater Shklovsky (on the Martian moon Phobos) are named in his honor. He was a Corresponding Member of Soviet Academy of Sciences since 1966.

Early life
Shklovsky was born in Hlukhiv, a city in the Ukrainian part of the Russian Empire, into a poor Ukrainian Jewish family. After graduating from the seven-year secondary school, he worked as a foreman on building Baikal Amur Mainline. In 1933 Shklovsky entered the Physico-Mathematical Faculty of the Moscow State University.

There he studied until 1938, when he took a Postgraduate Course at the Astrophysics Department of the Sternberg State Astronomical Institute and remained working in the Institute until the end of his life. He died in Moscow, aged 68.

Research
He specialized in theoretical astrophysics and radio astronomy, as well as the Sun's corona, supernovae, and cosmic rays and their origins. He showed, in 1946, that the radio-wave radiation from the Sun emanates from the ionized layers of its corona, and he developed a mathematical method for discriminating between thermal and nonthermal radio waves in the Milky Way. He is noted especially for his suggestion that the radiation from the Crab Nebula is due to synchrotron radiation, in which unusually energetic electrons twist through magnetic fields at speeds close to that of light. Shklovsky proposed that cosmic rays from supernova explosions within 300 light years of the sun could have been responsible for some of the mass extinctions of life on earth.

In 1959, Shklovsky examined the orbital motion of Mars's inner satellite Phobos. He concluded that its orbit was decaying, and noted that if this decay was attributed to friction with the Martian atmosphere, then the satellite must have an exceptionally low density. In this context, he voiced a suggestion that Phobos might be hollow, and possibly of artificial origin. This interpretation has since been refuted by more detailed study, but the apparent suggestion of extraterrestrial involvement caught the public imagination, though there is some disagreement as to how seriously Shklovsky intended the idea to be taken. However, Shklovsky and Carl Sagan argued for serious consideration of "paleocontact" with extraterrestrials in the early historical era, and for examination of myths and religious lore for evidence of such contact.

His 1962 book, Вселенная, жизнь, разум (Universe, Life, Intelligence), was expanded upon and re-issued in 1966 with American astronomer Carl Sagan as co-author under the title Intelligent Life in the Universe (1966). This was the first comprehensive discussion of this field. Discussing the biological as well as astronomical issues of the subject, its unique format, alternating paragraphs written by Shklovsky and Sagan, demonstrated the deep mutual regard between the two and allowed them to express their views without compromise.

In 1967, before the discovery of pulsars, Shklovsky examined the X-ray and optical observations of Scorpius X-1 and correctly concluded that the radiation comes from an accreting neutron star.

Quotes
In the September 1965 issue of Soviet Life, he made the following statement regarding prospects for the future of humanity:

 * Profound crises lie in wait for a developing civilization and one of them may well prove fatal. We are already familiar with several such critical (situations):
 * (a) Self-destruction as a result of a thermonuclear catastrophe or some other discovery which may have unpredictable and uncontrollable consequences.
 * (b) Genetic danger.
 * (c) Overproduction of information.
 * (d) Restricted capacity of the individual's brain which can lead to excessive specialization, with consequent dangers of degeneration.
 * (e) A crisis precipitated by the creation of artificial intelligent beings.

Personal life
His memoir, Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon: Tales of a Soviet Scientist, was published posthumously in 1991 by W.W. Norton & Co.

In "Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon", Shklovsky recalled his visit to Philip Morrison, who in 1959 had co-authored with Cornell University colleague Giuseppe Cocconi the paper in Nature magazine which marks the beginning of the modern search for extraterrestrial life, and their discussion of such issues. Bitter over Soviet anti-semitism, of the five pioneer investigators of the field, Cocconi, Morrison, Cornell University's Frank Drake (of the 1961 Project Ozma and the Drake equation), Sagan, and Shklovsky, Shklovsky was quite aware of sharing his Jewish identity with Sagan. Indeed, Sagan's Jewish heritage was also Ukrainian Jewish.

He was known for his sharp wit and extreme likability. Colleagues in the astronomy department at the University of California, Berkeley, remember fondly his visit there in the 1970s. Well known for his Intelligent Life in the Universe, he was asked by a graduate student if UFO sightings are as common in the Soviet Union as in the United States. "No," he replied. "In this area the Americans are far more advanced than us."

title: Iosif Shklovsky


text:
Catherine Gordon

Catherine or Katherine Gordon may refer to:

 * Lady Catherine Gordon (c. 1474–1537), Scottish noblewoman who became a lady-in-waiting in England
 * Catherine Gordon (c. 1725–1779), daughter of William Gordon, 2nd Earl of Aberdeen
 * Catherine Gordon (fl. 1770–1811), mother of the poet George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, usually known as Lord Byron
 * Katherine C. Gordon (1917–2011), American astronomer
 * Katherine L. Gordon, Canadian poet
 * Cathy Gordon Brown (born 1965), American politician

title: Catherine Gordon


text:
Xylokastro

Xylokastro (Ξυλόκαστρο) is a seaside town and a former municipality in Corinthia in the Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Xylokastro-Evrostina, of which it is a unit or component. The municipal unit has an area of 310.252 km2.

Geographic features include a long 2 km beach and semi-arid forest on varied terrain, scattered with early churches and evidence of early settlements and religious sites. It has narrowly separated upper and lower coastal roads and forms a medium-sized touristic village on the Gulf of Corinth.

Subdivisions
The municipal unit Xylokastro is subdivided into the following communities (constituent villages in brackets):

 * Ano Trikala (Ano Trikala, Zireia)
 * Dendro
 * Geliniatika (Geliniatika, Spartinaaika)
 * Kamari (Kamari, Kariotika)
 * Karya (Karya, Kariotika)
 * Kato Loutro (Kato Loutro, Ano Loutro)
 * Kato Synoikia Trikalon
 * Korfiotissa
 * Lagkadaiika (Lagkadaiika, Amfithea)
 * Manna
 * Melissi
 * Mesi Synoikia Trikalon
 * Nees Vrysoules
 * Panariti
 * Pellini
 * Pitsa (Ano Pitsa, Kato Pitsa)
 * Rethi
 * Riza (Riza, Valtos, Georgantaiika, Sigeritsa, Chartsianika)
 * Sofiana
 * Stylia
 * Sykia
 * Thalero
 * Throfari
 * Xanthochori
 * Xylokastro (Xylokastro, Mertikaiika)
 * Zemeno

Geography
Xylokastro is situated on the coast of the Gulf of Corinth, 30 km northwest of Corinth, near the mouth of the river Trikalitikos. Apart from the narrow strip of land along the coast, where the town Xylokastro lies, the municipal unit is mountainous. The Greek National Road 8a (Corinth - Patras) passes through the town. The Xylokastro railway station is served by trains between Kiato and Aigio.

History
The town took its name from a wooden castle (ξύλινο κάστρο), probably built in the 13th century. It was also known as Solo Castro. The village Stylia was known as Viladusa by the Venetians in the 18th century.

People

 * Vlassis Bonatsos (1949 - October 14, 2004 in Athens, Greece), a Greek actor
 * Panagis Tsaldaris (1932 - November 3, 1933 in Athens, Greece, former prime minister
 * Sotiris Krokidas (1922 - September 17, 1922 14 November in Athens. Greece former prime minister

title: Xylokastro


text:
Manitoba Liberal Party

The Manitoba Liberal Party (Parti libéral du Manitoba) is a political party in Manitoba, Canada. Its roots can be traced to the late 19th century, following the province's creation in 1870.

Origins and early development (to 1883)
Originally, there were no official political parties in Manitoba, although many leading politicians were affiliated with parties that existed at the national level. In Manitoba's first Legislative Assembly (1871–1874), the leader of the opposition was Edward Hay, a Liberal who represented the interests of recent anglophone immigrants from Ontario. Not a party leader as such, he was still a leading voice for the newly transplanted "Ontario Grit" tradition. In 1874, Hay served as Minister of Public Works in the government of Marc-Amable Girard, which included both Conservatives and Liberals.

During the 1870s, a Liberal network began to emerge in the city of Winnipeg. One of the key figures in this network was William Luxton, owner of the Manitoba Free Press newspaper and himself a member of the Manitoba legislature on two occasions. Luxton was not initially supportive of Premier Robert A. Davis (1874–1878), but endorsed the Davis ministry after he brought John Norquay into cabinet (Davis' early supporters were primarily from the francophone community, and Norquay's presence gave the ministry greater credibility among the anglophone population). Luxton subsequently supported Davis and Norquay against Conservative Orangeman Thomas Scott, a leader of the local opposition (not to be confused with the figure executed by Louis Riel in 1870).

Although the Davis administration was on favourable terms with federal Liberal Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie (1873–1878), his successor Norquay was more closely aligned with the federal Conservatives. This was partly a matter of necessity. As a small province, Manitoba needed to be on favourable terms with whatever party was in power at the federal level. As such, when John A. Macdonald's Conservatives were returned to power in 1878, the local balance of power began to shift. Luxton's Liberal network supported Norquay against Scott in 1878 and 1879, but was subsequently marginalized by the Norquay government. In 1882, Norquay forged a new alliance with the province's Conservatives.

Leadership of Thomas Greenway (1883–1904)
In 1882, Thomas Greenway formed a new organization known as the Provincial Rights Party, which called for greater provincial control over resources and the railway.

Based in the province's rural areas, this group soon surpassed the Winnipeg Liberals as the dominant opposition to Norquay. After the election of 1883, Greenway united the opposition MLAs into the Manitoba Liberals (which were soon recognized as a de facto political party). For the next 21 years, Greenway's control over the party would be unchallenged.

Following the 1888 general election, Greenway's Liberals took power and formed Manitoba's first declared partisan government. As premier, Greenway ended federal disallowance of Manitoba railway legislation and the Canadian Pacific Railway's monopoly, bringing the Northern Pacific into the province to induce competition in freight rates.

The Greenway government's most notable feat in office was curtailing the rights of Manitoba's French Canadian population. Manitoba had been founded as a bilingual province, but Greenway's government provoked the Manitoba Schools Question, ending the educational rights of (predominantly French) Catholics, and making the public school system entirely English and Protestant. English became the province's sole official language.

Greenway was able to win large majorities in 1892 and 1896, based largely on single-issue populism relating to the schools question. After this was resolved in 1897, his government became increasingly directionless.

In 1899, the Liberals were defeated by the Hugh John Macdonald-led Manitoba Conservative Party.

The Liberals were unable to regain their previous support base in the decade that followed. Greenway continued to lead the party through a disastrous 1903 campaign, winning only 9 seats. He resigned in 1904 to run for federal office as MP for Lisgar.

Early 20th century
Charles Mickle was chosen parliamentary leader on December 5, 1904, and led the party until a provincial convention was held in late March 1906. That convention acclaimed Edward Brown as the party's new leader. Brown failed to win a seat in the 1907 election, however, and resigned shortly thereafter. Mickle again became the party's legislative leader, and served as leader of the opposition until leaving politics in 1909.

Tobias Norris became Liberal leader in 1910. When the Tories under Rodmond Roblin resigned amid scandal in 1915, Norris became the province's premier, and retained the position until 1922. The Norris Liberals introduced temperance laws, suffrage for women, workers compensation, compulsory education, and minimum wage, as well as the establishment of a public-nursing system, rural farm credit, regulation of industrial conditions, and a mother's allowance for widowed dependent mothers.

The Norris administration's relationship with the Liberal Party of Canada under Wilfrid Laurier was often antagonistic. Norris withdrew funding for French-language education in 1916, at a time when the federal Liberals were attempting to regain the support of Quebec nationalists. The Manitoba Liberals also supported Robert Borden's Union government in the election of 1917 (see Conscription Crisis of 1917), and were not reconciled with the "Laurier Liberals" until 1922. Even then, they refused to officially re-align themselves with the federal party.

The Liberals were swept from power in 1922 by the United Farmers of Manitoba, who were also known as the Progressive Party. Norris continued to lead the party through most of the 1920s, but was replaced by Hugh Robson before the 1927 election (which was again won by the Progressives). Robson, in turn, resigned on January 3, 1930. He was replaced as parliamentary leader by James Breakey. In 1931, Murdoch Mackay was selected as the party's official leader.

Liberal-Progressive Party: Merger with the Progressives
Pressured by William Lyon Mackenzie King, Mackay brought the Liberals into a coalition with Premier John Bracken's Progressives before the 1932 election. The national Progressive Party had been largely absorbed into the Liberal Party of Canada by this time, and King believed that it was foolish to divide the resources of the parties within Manitoba. He was especially concerned that the Conservatives could recapture the provincial government if the Liberals and Progressives were not united.

For the election of 1932, the provincial government referred to itself as "Liberal-Progressive" (effectively a fusion of the parties, albeit one dominated by Progressives). A small group of Liberals, led by St. Boniface mayor David Campbell, opposed the merger and ran as "Continuing Liberals". They were resoundingly defeated. After the election, the Liberals of Manitoba were absorbed into the Progressive Party. Two non-coalition Liberals were elected in 1936, but they were not intended to represent a rival party.

Despite being dominated by Progressives, the merged party soon became popularly known as the "Liberal Party of Manitoba". The federal Progressive Party had long since disappeared, and the "Progressive" name had little continued meaning in Manitoba politics.

1940s and 1950s
In 1940, Bracken's Liberal-Progressives forged an even broader coalition, bringing the Conservatives, Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and Social Credit in a "non-partisan" government. This coalition governed the province until 1950, although the CCF left in 1943.

The Liberal-Progressive governments were cautious and moderate. Bracken's government undertook few major initiatives, and was unfriendly to labour issues even during its alliance with the CCF. Following World War II, the government of Stuart Garson (who replaced Bracken as premier in January 1943) led a program of rapid rural electrification, but was otherwise as cautious as Bracken's. Garson left provincial politics in 1948 to join the federal Liberal Cabinet of Louis St. Laurent.

The government of Garson's successor, Douglas Lloyd Campbell, was socially conservative and generally opposed to state intervention of any sort. The educational system remained primitive (it was dominated by one-room schoolhouses well into the 1950s), and no significant steps were taken on language or labour issues. The province did modernize its liquor laws during this period, however. Despite its Liberal-Progressive label, Campbell's government was one of the most right-wing provincial governments in Canada. It had somewhat frosty relations with the federal Liberals in the 1950s despite Garson being an influential cabinet minister.

The Liberal-Progressives lost their majority in the 1958 provincial election by the Progressive Conservatives under Dufferin Roblin. Campbell initially hoped to stay in office with a minority government supported by the CCF, but this was brought to nothing, and the CCF threw its support to a PC minority government. However, the Manitoba PCs were dominated by Red Tories, and Roblin's government was actually well to the left of Campbell's government.

Manitoba Liberal Party: Declining popularity (1960s–1970s)
Gildas Molgat, a protégé of Campbell, became party leader in 1961. Earlier that year, the party had formally renamed itself as simply the "Manitoba Liberal Party," over only scattered objections from Progressive diehards. Molgat prevented the Liberals from falling to third-party status during the 1960s, but never posed a serious threat to Roblin's government.

Robert Bend, a former minister under Campbell, came out of retirement to lead the party in 1969. However, Bend's rural populism did not play well with urban voters. Under his leadership, the party adopted a "cowboy"/"rodeo" theme for the campaign, which made it look and sound dated. The election that followed was an unmitigated disaster; the party dropped to only five seats, the fewest it had ever won. Bend himself was unsuccessful in his bid to succeed Campbell in his own riding. A succession of leaders, including Israel Asper (1970–1975), Charles Huband (1975–1978), and Doug Lauchlan (1980–1982) were unable to prevent the party's decline.

Well into the 1970s, the party was considered very right-wing for its time, despite the Liberal label. This was especially true under Asper's leadership; during his tenure as party leader Asper supported laissez-faire economics and an end to the welfare state—putting it to the right of the Tories. The party largely distanced itself from its right-wing past in the mid-1970s. By this time, however, the province was polarized between the Tories and the New Democratic Party of Manitoba (NDP, successor to the Manitoba CCF), and the Liberals were unable to present themselves as a viable alternative. The party bottomed out in the 1981 election, when it was completely shut out of the legislature for the first time ever.

1980s–1990
In 1984, the party chose Sharon Carstairs as its new leader. She was elected to the assembly in the 1986 election, and in the 1988 election, led the party to 20 seats—its best showing since 1953—and official opposition status. This was precipitated by the unpopularity of Howard Pawley's New Democratic government, which allowed the Liberals to win the support of many centre-left voters.

The Liberals' resurgence sparked hopes that they could win the next election. This proved to be a temporary recovery. The NDP revived under Gary Doer, and the Liberals slipped back into third place in the 1990 election with only seven seats, against 20 for the NDP and 30 for the Conservatives. Many in the party felt Carstairs had squandered their best chance of winning government in three decades.

Further decline (1993–2013)
Carstairs was replaced as leader by Paul Edwards in 1993. By the time the 1995 election was called, the party had managed to recover to a strong second-place position in the polls. They ran a poor campaign, however, and were again overtaken by the NDP well before election day. Despite having almost 24% of popular support, the Liberals won only three seats and lost official party status. Edwards, who was defeated in his own riding, stepped down as party leader in 1996.

The leadership convention of 1996 exposed deep divisions in the party, as Ginny Hasselfield defeated Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) Kevin Lamoureux by only 21 votes. Two of the party's three MLAs (Lamoureux and Gary Kowalski) subsequently sat as "Independent Liberals", and there were threats of legal action between Hasselfield and Lamoureux. The party was only reunited when Hasselfield resigned in 1998, replaced by former federal Member of Parliament (MP) Jon Gerrard.

Liberal Party support fell by 10% in the election of 1999, which allowed Gary Doer's New Democrats to regain centre-left support and win government. Gerrard became the party's only MLA, winning election in the upscale riding of River Heights, Carstairs' old riding. The party failed to recover much of its support base in the 2003 election, although Lamoureux was able to regain his seat in north Winnipeg to become the party's second MLA.

Despite Lamoureux's re-election, the Liberal popular vote fell in 2003 even through the party managed to field a full slate of candidates (they were 7 shy in 1999). The Liberals did have more second-place finishes than in the previous election, which appeared to be a sign of a rebound. If the party had any momentum to build upon, it was negated by a weak campaign in the 2007 provincial election. Gerrard and Lamoureux were both re-elected, but the party's popular support declined to just above 12%. They also had fewer second-place finishes than they had in 1999.

Rebuilding the party (2010s–present)
The 2011 provincial election resulted in Jon Gerrard being the only Liberal MLA being elected. He subsequently announced his intention to resign as party leader after serving in the position for 15 years.

On October 26, 2013, the Manitoba Liberal Party held a leadership convention in Winnipeg. The contested nomination saw three individuals put their name forward: Bob Axworthy (younger brother of Lloyd Axworthy, former MP, federal Minister of various portfolios, and MLA), Rana Bokhari, and Dougald Lamont. Bokhari was elected leader of the party with 431 ballots cast.

In preparation of the 2016 Manitoba general election, the Liberals nominated candidates. The party initially had high hopes for the election after a strong showing by the federal Liberals in the 2015 federal election, in which they took all but one seat in Winnipeg. By the time of the writ, Elections Manitoba disqualified four candidates due to improper paperwork and a fifth for being an enumerator while collecting signatures for her candidacy. The Liberals found their pre-writ polling of approximately 25% fall to 14% on Election Day. On May 7, 2016, Bokhari announced that she would not lead the party into the next election but would remain on as leader until her successor was chosen. Judy Klassen served as the interim leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party until June 13, 2017, when she stepped down to become a leadership candidate. Dougald Lamont was elected Manitoba Liberal leader at the October 21, 2017 Liberal leadership election, defeating MLA Cindy Lamoureux on the second ballot by eight votes.

On July 17, 2018, Lamont won a by-election in St. Boniface that gave the Liberals official party status for the first time in 23 years. The vote followed the resignation of former NDP Premier Greg Selinger.

Lamont led the Manitoba Liberals into the 2019 provincial election with four MLAs. He was one of three Liberal MLAs returned, being re-elected in St. Boniface, while Gerrard was re-elected in River Heights, and Cindy Lamoureux won in Tyndall Park.

Lamont remained the Liberal leader into the 2023 provincial election. Gerrard and Lamont lost their seats to New Democrats Mike Moroz and Robert Loiselle respectively, though Lamoureux improved her vote percentage by a small margin. Lamont would resign as leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party that evening. Gerrard's defeat in River Heights would mark the first time a New Democrat held the seat, the first time since 1999 that a Liberal would not, and only the second time since 1986 that a Liberal would not hold the seat after PC MLA Mike Radcliffe held the seat from 1995 to 1999.

On October 17, 2023, Cindy Lamoureux was appointed as the interim party leader.

Party leaders
Liberal Party leaders

 * 1) Thomas Greenway, 1882–1904
 * 2) Charles Mickle, December 5, 1904 – March 28, 1906 (parliamentary leader)
 * 3) Edward Brown, March 28, 1906 – 1908
 * 4) Charles Mickle, January 1908 – 1910 (parliamentary leader)
 * 5) Tobias Norris, 1910 – March 20, 1927
 * 6) Hugh Robson, March 20, 1927 – January 3, 1930
 * 7) James Breakey, January 3, 1930 – June 26, 1931 (parliamentary leader)
 * 8) Murdoch Mackay, June 26, 1931 – 1932

"Continuing Liberal" leaders

 * 1) David Campbell, 1932

Liberal-Progressive Party leaders

 * 1) John Bracken, 1932 – January 1943
 * 2) Stuart Garson, January 1943 – November 1948
 * 3) Douglas Campbell, November 1948 – April 19, 1961

Liberal Party leaders (renewal)

(Note: Stan Roberts served as the party's acting leader from 1969 to 1970, after Robert Bend was defeated in the province's 1969 election. Although Lloyd Axworthy was the party's only MLA from 1977 to 1979, he was never party leader. Likewise Jon Gerrard remained the party's only MLA between 2013 and 2016 after relinquishing the party leadership in 2013.)
 * 1) Gildas Molgat, April 20, 1961 – May 10, 1969
 * 2) Robert Bend, May 10, 1969 – June 25, 1969
 * 3) Stan Roberts (interim), June 25, 1969 – October 31, 1970
 * 4) Israel Asper, October 31, 1970 – February 22, 1975
 * 5) Charles Huband, February 22, 1975 – 1978
 * 6) Vacant 1978 - November 30, 1980 (Senator Gildas Molgat was party president)
 * 7) Lloyd Axworthy 1977 – 1979 (parliamentary leader)
 * 8) June Westbury 1979 – 1980 (parliamentary leader)
 * 9) Doug Lauchlan, November 30, 1980 – 1982
 * 10) Vacant 1982 - March 4, 1984 (Senator Gildas Molgat was party president)
 * 11) Sharon Carstairs, March 4, 1984 – June 4, 1993
 * 12) Paul Edwards, June 4, 1993 – October 19, 1996
 * 13) Ginny Hasselfield, October 19, 1996 – October 17, 1998
 * 14) Jon Gerrard, October 17, 1998 – October 26, 2013
 * 15) Rana Bokhari, October 26, 2013 – September 24, 2016
 * 16) Paul Hesse (acting), September 24, 2016 – October 21, 2016
 * 17) Jon Gerrard, September 24, 2016 – October 21, 2016 (parliamentary leader)
 * 18) Judy Klassen (interim), October 21, 2016 – June 13, 2017 (resigned to run for leader)
 * 19) Paul Brault (acting), June 13, 2017 – October 21, 2017
 * 20) Jon Gerrard, June 13, 2017 – October 21, 2017
 * 21) Dougald Lamont October 21, 2017 – October 3, 2023
 * 22) Cindy Lamoureux (interim), October 17, 2023 – present

Election results

 * 1Liberals for alliance with the governing Progressive Party to run joint Liberal-Progressive candidates. The parties merge and become the Liberal-Progressive Party.
 * 2Liberal-Progressive Party renames itself the Liberal Party of Manitoba.

title: Manitoba Liberal Party


text:
Omer

Omer may refer to:

 * Omer (unit), an ancient unit of measure used in the era of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem
 * The Counting of the Omer (sefirat ha'omer), a 49 day period in the Jewish calendar

People

 * A variant spelling of the given name Omar (includes a list of Omers)
 * Mordechai Omer (1940–2011), Israeli art historian and museum administrator

Places

 * Omer, Israel, a town near Beersheba
 * Omer, Michigan, United States, the smallest city in Michigan

Other uses

 * Omer (submarine), the fastest human-powered submarine at the International Submarine Races
 * Omer, a Hebrew name

title: Omer