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Klara Hitler

Klara Hitler ( Pölzl; 12 August 1860 – 21 December 1907) was the mother of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Nazi Germany. According to the family physician, Dr. Eduard Bloch, she was a very quiet, sweet, and affectionate woman. In 1934, Hitler honored Klara by naming a street in Passau after her.

Family background and marriage
Born in the Austrian Empire village of Weitra, her father was Johann Baptist Pölzl and her mother was Johanna Hiedler. In 1876, 16-year-old Klara was hired as a household servant by her relative Alois Hitler, three years after his first marriage to Anna Glasl-Hörer. Although Alois' biological father is unknown, after his mother, Maria Schicklgruber, married Johann Georg Hiedler, Alois was officially designated as Hiedler's son. Klara's mother was Hiedler's niece, making Klara and Alois first cousins once removed.

Following the death of Alois's second wife Franziska Matzelsberger in 1884, Klara and Alois married on 7 January 1885 in a brief ceremony held early in the morning at Hitler's rented rooms on the top floor of the Pommer Inn in Braunau am Inn. Alois then went to work for the day at his job as a customs official.

Their first son, Gustav, was born four months later, on 17 May 1885. Ida followed on 23 September 1886. Both infants died of diphtheria during the winter of 1887–88. A third child, Otto, was born and died in 1892. A third son, Adolf, was born 20 April 1889.

In 1892, Klara and her family took the train to Passau, where they settled down for the next two years. Edmund was born there on 24 March 1894. Paula followed on 21 January 1896. Edmund died of measles on 28 February 1900, at the age of five. Of her six children with Alois, only Adolf and Paula survived to adulthood.

Klara's adult life was spent keeping house and raising children, for whom, according to Smith, Alois had little understanding or interest. She was very devoted to her children and, according to William Patrick Hitler, was a typical stepmother to her stepchildren, Alois, Jr. and Angela. She was a devout Roman Catholic and attended church regularly with her children.

Later life and death
When Alois died in 1903, he left a government pension. Klara sold the house in Leonding and moved with young Adolf and Paula to an apartment in Linz, where they lived frugally. In 1906, Klara Hitler discovered a lump in her breast but initially ignored it. After experiencing chest pains that were keeping her awake at night, she finally consulted the family doctor, Eduard Bloch, in January 1907. She had been busy with her household, she said, so had neglected to seek medical aid. Bloch chose not to inform Klara that she had breast cancer and left it to her son Adolf to inform her. Bloch told Adolf that his mother had a small chance of surviving and recommended that she undergo a radical mastectomy.

The Hitlers were devastated by the news. According to Bloch, Klara Hitler "accepted the verdict as I was sure she would – with fortitude. Deeply religious, she assumed that her fate was God's will. It would never occur to her to complain." She underwent the mastectomy at Sisters of St. Mercy in Linz whereupon the surgeon, Karl Urban, discovered that the cancer had already metastasized to the pleural tissue in her chest. Bloch informed Klara's children that her condition was terminal. Adolf, who had been in Vienna ostensibly to study art, moved back home to tend to his mother, as did his siblings.

By October, Klara's condition had rapidly declined, and her son Adolf begged Bloch to try a new treatment. For the next 46 days (from November to early December), Bloch performed daily treatments of iodoform, a then experimental form of chemotherapy. Klara Hitler's mastectomy incisions were reopened, and massive doses of iodoform-soaked gauze were applied directly to the tissue to "burn" the cancer cells. The treatments were incredibly painful and caused Klara's throat to paralyze, leaving her unable to swallow. The treatments proved to be futile, and Klara Hitler died at home in Linz from the toxic medical side-effects of iodoform on 21 December 1907. Klara was buried in Leonding near Linz.

Adolf, who had a close relationship with his mother, was devastated by her death and carried the grief for the rest of his life. Bloch later recalled that, "In all my career, I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler." In his autobiography Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote that he had "honoured my father but loved my mother" and said that his mother's death was a "dreadful blow". Decades later, in 1940, Hitler showed gratitude to Bloch, who was Jewish, for treating his mother, by allowing him to emigrate with his wife from Austria to the United States, a privilege allowed to few other Jews in Austria.

In 1941 and 1943, Bloch was interviewed by the Office of Strategic Services (a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency) to gain information about Hitler's childhood. He said that Hitler's most striking feature was his love for his mother:"While Hitler was not a mother's boy in the usual sense, I never witnessed a closer attachment. Their love had been mutual. Klara Hitler adored her son. She allowed him his own way whenever possible. For example, she admired his watercolor paintings and drawings and supported his artistic ambitions in opposition to his father at what cost to herself one may guess."

Bloch expressly denied the claim that Hitler's love for his mother was pathological. Bloch remembered Hitler as the "saddest man I had ever seen" when he was informed about his mother's imminent death, while Klara was viewed as a very "pious and kind" woman who "would turn in her grave if she knew what became of him."

Removal of tombstone
On 28 March 2012, the tombstone marking Alois Hitler's grave and that of his wife Klara in Town Cemetery in Leonding was removed, without ceremony, by a descendant, according to Kurt Pittertschatscher, the pastor of the parish. The descendant is said to be an elderly female relative of Alois Hitler's first wife, Anna, who has also given up any rights to the rented burial plot. It is not known what happened to the remains in the grave.

In popular culture
In the "I Ain't No Holodeck Boy" episode of the animated TV series American Dad! (season 10, episode 13, first broadcast March 23, 2014), a main plot point revolves around a video game called Nazi Natal Nightmare, in which the players try to kill Adolf while he is still unborn in Klara's womb. The short story "Genesis and Catastrophe: A True Story", written by Roald Dahl, is a fictional account of Klara immediately after giving birth to Adolf, in which she worries over her new son's health and laments the deaths of her three previous children. Although the story stays true to Klara's biography, including the names of her late children, her identity as "Frau Hitler" is not revealed for several pages, providing a macabre twist ending typical of Dahl's adult stories.

title: Klara Hitler


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User:Gary D

This user was active between May 2004 and February 2005.

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

title: User:Gary D


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China Open (snooker)

The China Open was a professional snooker tournament. It was one of a number of ranking tournaments and began in 1997. The final champion is Neil Robertson, who won the event in 2019.

History
The first international snooker tournament in China was the China International in September 1997, a non-ranking tournament for the top 16 players and local players. The following season the tournament became ranking and was held in March. Then the name of the event was changed to China Open and was held in December, so there were two events in 1999. After the 2002 tournament the event was abandoned.

The event was revived for the 2004/05 season. Local wild-card players were invited to play against the qualifiers. The three Chinese players on the tour were invited to play as wild-cards, rather than qualify the usual way. Ding Junhui was one of them, and he won the tournament, but as he entered as a wild-card, he received no prize money nor ranking points.

The last edition of the tournament in 2019 took place at the Olympic Sports Center Gymnasium, Chaoyang District, Beijing in early April, and it was usually the last ranking event before the World Championship. The 2020 edition was scheduled to take place, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused it to be cancelled: the subsequent restrictions meant it was not staged through 2021, 2022 and 2023. Despite the COVID restrictions ending in China, the tournament has not been restored to the calendar, with new events in Wuhan and Xi'an being staged in its place.

Statistics

 * Highest break: 147
 * James Wattana (1997)
 * Stephen Maguire (2008)
 * Neil Robertson (2010)
 * Judd Trump (2017)
 * Stuart Bingham (2018)
 * Ronnie O'Sullivan (2018)
 * Stuart Bingham (2019)

title: China Open (snooker)


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China International

China International may refer to:

 * China Open (snooker), a professional snooker tournament, formerly known as "China International"
 * China Power International Development, a government owned company in the People's Republic of China.
 * China Taiping Insurance Holdings, insurance conglomerate incorporated and headquartered in Hong Kong, formerly known as "China Insurance International"
 * China Review International, a journal for English-language reviews of recently published China-related books and monographs
 * China Radio International, a state-owned media in China.

title: China International


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China Open

China Open may refer to:
 * China Open (snooker), a professional snooker tournament
 * China Open (tennis), a professional tennis tournament on the ATP World Tour and WTA Tour
 * China Open (badminton), an annual badminton tournament
 * China Open (table tennis), an ITTF table tennis tournament
 * Volvo China Open, a golf tournament on the European Tour
 * Taiwan Open (golf), a defunct golf tournament on the Asian Tour and Asia Golf Circuit
 * China Open (boxing)
 * China Open (curling), a curling tournament on the World Curling Tour
 * China Open (pool)

title: China Open


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User talk:RafaelPinilla

What is Medipedia? JFW | T@lk  10:05, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Hi Rafael, I heard from User:Anthere about your plans with Medipedia. I'm concerned that you're trying to make this part of Wikimedia without actually doing simple wiki things like responding to the above request. Have you taken a look at WikiProject Clinical medicine? JFW | T@lk  10:47, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:RafaelPinilla


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Squire

In the Middle Ages, a squire was the shield- or armour-bearer of a knight.

Use of the term evolved over time. Initially, a squire served as a knight's apprentice. Later, a village leader or a lord of the manor might come to be known as a "squire", and still later, the term was applied to members of the landed gentry. In contemporary American usage, "squire" is the title given to justices of the peace or similar local dignitaries.

Squire is a shortened version of the word esquire, from the Old French escuier (modern French écuyer), itself derived from the Late Latin scutarius ("shield bearer"), in medieval or Old English  a scutifer. The Classical Latin equivalent was armiger ("arms bearer").

Knights in training
The most common definition of squire refers to the Middle Ages. A squire was typically a young boy, training to become a knight. A boy became a page at the age of 7 then a squire at age 14. Squires were the second step to becoming a knight, after having served as a page. Boys served a knight as an attendant, doing simple but important tasks such as saddling a horse or caring for the knight's weapons and armour. The squire would sometimes carry the knight's flag into battle with his master.

Jobs
The typical jobs of a squire included:
 * Carrying the knight's armour, shield and sword
 * Maintaining the knight's equipment
 * Scrubbing armour
 * Taking care of the horse(s)
 * Replacing an injured or killed horse
 * Guarding prisoners
 * Accompanying the knight to tournaments and the battlefield
 * Dressing the knight in armour
 * Carrying the knight's flag
 * Protecting the knight
 * Ensuring an honourable burial of the knight if killed

In literature
The young King Arthur served as Sir Kay's squire in the traditional tale of the Sword in the Stone that appears in literary works, including Le Morte d'Arthur and The Once and Future King. One of the pilgrim-storytellers in The Canterbury Tales is a squire who is the son of the knight that he serves. In Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, the babbling Sancho Panza serves as squire of the deluded Don. In the children's book The Castle in the Attic by Elizabeth Winthrop, the protagonist William serves as the squire of Sir Simon, a knight from the Middle Ages who got transported to the present.

Landed gentry
In the English countryside from the Middle Ages until the early 20th century, there was often one principal family of landed gentry, owning much of the land and living in the largest house, often referred to by people lower down the social scale as the "big house". The head of this family was often the lord of the manor and called "the squire". Lords of the manor held the rank of esquire by prescription.

Squires were gentlemen, usually with a coat of arms, and were often related to peers. The squire usually lived at the village manor house and owned an estate, comprising the village, with the villagers being his tenants. If the squire owned the advowson or living (i.e. "was patron") of the parish church — and he often did — he would choose the incumbent, designated as either a rector, or if the parish had a lay rector or impropriator, who was often the squire himself, a vicar. These roles were often filled by a younger son of the squire or of another family of local gentry. Some squires also became parish incumbents themselves and were known as squarsons; a portmanteau of the words squire and parson. The squire would also have performed a number of important local duties, in particular that of Justice of the Peace or Member of Parliament.

Such was the power of the squires at this time that modern historians have created the term 'squirearchy'. Politically, during the 19th century, squires tended to be Tories, whereas the greatest landlords tended to be Whigs.

The position of squire was traditionally associated with occupation of the manor house, which would often itself confer the dignity of squire. It is unclear how widely the village squire may still be said to survive today, but where it does, the role is likely more dependent upon a recognition of lineage and long family association rather than land, which, while relevant, is nowadays likely to be considerably smaller than in former years due to high post-war death duties and the prohibitive costs associated with maintaining large country houses.

In Scotland, whilst esquire and gentleman are technically correctly used at the Court of the Lord Lyon, the title laird, in place of squire, is more common. Moreover, in Scotland, lairds append their territorial designation to their names as was traditionally done on the mainland of Europe (e.g., Donald Cameron of Lochiel). The territorial designation fell into disuse in England early on, save for peers of the realm.

In literature
The later form of squire as a gentleman appears in much of English literature, for example in the form of Squire Trelawney in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. William Makepeace Thackeray depicted a squire in Vanity Fair as a lecherous, ill-educated, badly mannered relic of an earlier age. However, he clearly shows their control of the life of the parish. Others include Squire Hamley in Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters and Squire Allworthy (based on Ralph Allen) in the novel Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, who was himself a squire and magistrate. There is also a notable squire in Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark and Charles Reade's 1856 novel It is Never Too Late to Mend, where the squire uses his authority to abuse the postal and judicial services. In the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian, Jack Aubrey's father, General Aubrey and later Jack himself, are typical squires.

Mary Ann Evans, alias George Eliot, includes Squire Cass as a character in her novel Silas Marner. One of the main characters of Anthony Trollope's Doctor Thorne, published in 1858, is Squire Francis Newbold Gresham. Sherlock Holmes' ancestors are mentioned to be country squires in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories.

England
The "Royal Esquires" of the late-medieval English Court were not young men studying for knighthood. Far more frequently, and certainly from Edward III to Henry VIII, they tended to be men of a similar age to the monarch; having his complete trust.

In the 15th-century Black Book of the Household – a set of ordinances composed for Edward IV for the "Governance and Regulation of the Royal Household" – the king had only four "Esquires for the Bodie"; these were the most senior servants in the royal household, with total access to the royal person at all hours. They were the senior staff of the privy chamber, and the closest of the king's "Affinity" (i.e., his most intimate daily companions), and were the only servants in the household who were required – not just allowed – to bear arms in the king's presence, as one of their duties was to act as bodyguards "of last resort" in the event of an immediate threat to the royal person.

In times of war when their royal master was "under arms" himself, they would also fight at his side. They oversaw his pages and the other lesser servants of the privy chamber and acted as his valet, and stood guard while he was shaved, washed or bathed. One stood behind his chair when he dined. Squires accompanied him at play, including wagering with him on the results of games (see wagers lost and won recorded in the account books of Henry VII, each page signed by the king, National Archives at Kew) and delivered confidential messages of all kinds.

Edward IV and Richard III only appointed four esquires each. Henry VII appointed four of his closest "companions of Our late Exile" within days of his victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485, and an extra five esquires by the end of his reign in 1509. His son Henry VIII retained his father's esquires of the body while dismissing others of his father's senior officers and even executing some (for example, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley), but he vastly increased the number of that select group, as he enlarged the rest of the royal household as set down in the Statutes of Eltham. The position was highly regarded, for the value of its close access to the king. At least two notable late-medieval gentlemen are recorded contemporaneously as refusing knighthood, declaring that to be an "Esquire of the Body" was a far-greater honour.

In the post-medieval world, the title of esquire came to belong to all men of the higher landed gentry; an esquire ranked socially above a gentleman but below a knight. In the modern world, the term has correspondingly often been extended (albeit only in very formal writing) to all men without any higher title. It is used post-nominally, usually in abbreviated form: "John Smith, Esq.", for example.

As an informal term

 * The term squire is sometimes used, particularly in London and its environs, by men when addressing another man. Although historically used to a man perceived as being of higher social class (similar to guvnor), its modern usage is often ironic with friendly humorous intent due to it being something of an anachronism. The original usage in conversations between people of different social classes crops up frequently in comedy sketches by Monty Python, such as: "What can I do for you, squire?".

United States
In the United States, this style is most common among lawyers, borrowing from the English tradition whereby all barristers were styled "esquires". (Solicitors were entitled only to the style "Mr".) In earlier years in the U.S., the title squire was given to a justice of the peace, for example Squire Jones. It was also used to mean justice of the peace as in the example, "He was taken before the squire." The connection to attorneys appears to have evolved from a time when squires meeting to negotiate a duel would instead resolve the dispute.

title: Squire


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User:Cky

If there's one place where I'm allowed to write in the first person, the user page has to be it. I'm taking full advantage of it. :-)

This page also serves as a bookmark list of some of my favourite Wikipedia entries.

Introduction
I'm Chris K. Jester-Young, a mid-30s software developer, generally known online as cky. I currently live in Raleigh, North Carolina.

A fair number of people ask whether my username has anything to do with their favourite band, and here I must regretfully disappoint. Back in 1998, when I started using that username, it just happened to be my initials at the time; it was many years later before I've heard of the band.

My primary interest is to bore anybody unlucky enough to read this page. :-P

Why I'm on Wikipedia
I started an account on Wikipedia because I am a stickler for spelling and, to a lesser extent, grammatical correctness. Most of my editing, therefore, will be of an editorial nature.

Shades of Chris
Below is a self-description, written mostly for self-gratification. How many other self- words can a self-centred narcissist like yours truly come up with today?

My online self
Most of my computing time is spent on the ‘art of coding’. I primarily code in Scheme, Ruby and Java, and in a distant past, C++, Perl, C, and IA-32 assembly language. I would love to learn Clojure, Haskell, Swift, and maybe Elixir soon, as well as x86-64 assembly language.

Most of my work is done on Unix-like systems, mainly Ubuntu, Debian, and macOS (and previously OpenBSD). I also use Windows 10 sometimes, but not as seriously as the Unix systems.

When not coding, I spend a large portion of my online time on Stack Overflow, Quora, Medium, Slack and IRC. I also play a lot of Minesweeper, and created my own version, EmojiSweeper (slides). Because I do a lot of typing, I decided to switch my keyboard layout to Dvorak in 2003, to see if it would make my typing more comfortable. It was a highly successful experiment, greatly reducing the frequency of painful wrists resulting from typing. I currently type at around 120 wpm.

My offline self
I'm an INFP, so I like discovering what people are about, and how to make their lives and relationships more fulfilling. I'm married to an INFJ, and we both enjoy people watching whenever we're out, and discussing how couples interact and what their likely strengths and weaknesses are, and using these data points to improve our marriage.

I used to listen to a lot of classical music, especially Bach (I find the Brandenburg Concertos ever so delightful), Beethoven, Chopin, and Schubert. These days, I listen to a lot more Taylor Swift.

Real-life Wikipedian acquaintances

 * Shannon McCracken

title: User:Cky


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Makki ki roti

Makki ki roti is a flat unleavened bread made from corn meal (maize flour), primarily eaten in Pakistan, the Jammu region, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Uttarakhand in North India and Gujarat, Maharashtra in Western India and also in Nepal. Like most rotis in the Indian subcontinent, it is baked on a tava.

Etymology
Literally, makkī kī roṭṭī means 'flatbread of maize'. The word Makki is derived from Sanskrit Markaka and Roti from Sanskrit word Rotīka. Makki ki roti is yellow in color when ready, and has much less cohesive strength, which makes it difficult to handle.

Mode of serving
Makki ki Roti is eaten in many parts of India, but has been portrayed as a centuries-old part of Punjabi cuisine.

Makki ki roti is often served with warming winter dishes based on greens (saag), such as sarson ka saag and channa ka saag. In Punjab and neighbouring area it is also eaten with Maah (Urad) daal. Dogras have folk songs that mention Makki di roti. Maize food items are also popular in Rajasthan and one of that is maize roti. In fact, maize is one of the staple diet of Bishnois of Rajasthan and Haryana. In Uttar Pradesh, maize roti is also eaten with ghee, butter, jaggery and pickles. In Gujarat, this dish is also known as "Makai No Rotlo".

title: Makki ki roti


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Dick Douglas

Richard Giles Douglas (4 January 1932 – 3 May 2014) was a Scottish politician who was a Member of Parliament (MP) elected as a Labour Co-operative candidate, but who subsequently joined the Scottish National Party (SNP).

Political career
He first stood for Parliament at South Angus in the 1964 General Election, but was beaten by the Conservative Jock Bruce-Gardyne. Next he stood unsuccessfully for Edinburgh West in the 1966 General Election, against the Conservative incumbent Anthony Stodart.

In 1967 Douglas was a Labour councillor and the defeated candidate at a by-election in Glasgow Pollok. In the 1970 general election Douglas stood as the Labour and Co-operative candidate for Clackmannan and Eastern Stirlingshire and was elected to the House of Commons. He did not retain the seat in the February 1974 General Election, nor regain it in October 1974.

In the 1979 general election he stood as the Labour and Co-operative candidate for Dunfermline and was elected again. By the time of the 1983 General Election the constituency boundaries had been revised, so Douglas stood as the Labour and Co-operative candidate for the new Dunfermline West constituency. Douglas was elected, and won the constituency again in the 1987 General Election.

In 1990 Douglas defected from Labour to the SNP. He took this decision feeling the Labour Party was adopting too centrist a position on the political spectrum, and he was especially angry at the lack of direction in the Labour Party in their attitude to the Poll Tax. He favoured a non-payment campaign which Labour did not officially support, whilst the SNP had been quick to adopt such as policy. Douglas' defection took the number of SNP MPs from four to five through to the 1992 general election. At that election Douglas decided not to seek re-election in Dunfermline West, the seat he had represented for 13 years, but to stand against Donald Dewar (a then high-profile Scottish Labour MP) in his Glasgow Garscadden seat. He was unsuccessful, with Dewar winning his seat comfortably and Dunfermline West returning a Labour MP. Douglas did not return to front-line active politics, but remained a member of the SNP.

Death
Douglas died, aged 82, on 3 May 2014. Then Scottish first Minister, Alex Salmond paid tribute to Douglas saying he was an "extraordinary politician".

title: Dick Douglas


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Swabian League

The Swabian League (Schwäbischer Bund) was a military alliance of imperial estates – imperial cities, prelates, principalities and knights – principally in the territory of the early medieval stem duchy of Swabia established in 1488. New institutions created through imperial reform removed the need for the league, whilst the religious revolution of the Protestant Reformation divided its members, leading to the Swabian League being disbanded in 1534.

History
The Swabian League was established in 1488 at the behest of Emperor Frederick III and supported as well by Bertold, Elector of Mainz, whose conciliar rather than monarchic view of the Reich often put him at odds with Frederick's successor Maximilian. The Swabian League cooperated towards the keeping of the imperial peace and at least in the beginning curbing the expansionist Bavarian dukes from the House of Wittelsbach and the revolutionary threat from the south in the form of the Swiss. The League held regular meetings, supported tribunals and maintained a unified force of 12,000 infantrymen and 1200 cavalry.

On 14 February 1488, a new Swabian League was formed, at the Reichstag of Esslingen, not only of 22 Imperial cities but also of the Swabian knights' League of St. George's Shield, bishops, and princes (Ansbach, Baden, Bavaria, Bayreuth, Hesse, Mainz, the Electorate of the Palatinate, Trier, Tyrol, and Württemberg). The league was governed by a federal council of three colleges of princes, cities, and knights calling upon an army of 13,000 men. It aided in the rescue of the future emperor Maximilian I, son of Emperor Frederick III, held prisoner in the Low Countries, and later was his main support in southern Germany.

After the death of Eberhard of Württemberg in 1496 the League produced no single outstanding generally accepted leader, and with the peace of 1499 with the Swiss and the definitive defeat of the aggressive Wittelsbachs in 1504, the League's original purpose, maintenance of the status quo in the southwest, was accomplished. Its last major action was the occupation and annexation of the Free City of Reutlingen by duke Ulrich of Württemberg in 1519 during the interregnum that followed the death of Maximilian I. The duke was overthrown, and his territory was sold to Charles V, offsetting the costs of the campaign.

The League defeated an alliance of robber barons in the Franconian War in 1523. Next it helped to suppress the Peasants' Revolt in 1524–26, including its defeat and execution of Little Jack (Jaecklein) Rohrbach, and crushing the Black Company in its last stand at the Battle of Ingolstadt in May 1525.

The development of imperial institutions, such as the creation of the Reichskammergericht imperial court in 1495 and the development of the Reichstag, led to the league becoming increasingly unnecessary. Imperial institutions were viewed as a better system of maintaining order due to their stronger constitutional backing and sanction by the emperor, and were more popular amongst the princes for being ordered more hierarchically than the Swabian league. The Habsburgs also favoured imperial institutions over the league as imperial institutions could cover the entire empire, and did not have to be continually renewed. Additionally, the religious revolution of the Protestant Reformation divided its members, finally leading to the Swabian League being disbanded in 1534.

Members
joined by several princes of the Empire until 1489: extended after 1500 by its former opponent: In 1512 Baden and Württemberg left the league, while the Prince-Bishops of Bamberg and Eichstätt were admitted, followed by
 * AUT Tirol COA.svg Sigismund of Habsburg, Count of Tyrol and Archduke of Further Austria, followed by Archduke Maximilian I of Habsburg in 1490
 * Arms of the house of Württemberg (1495-1707).svg Eberhard V, Count of Württemberg (raised to a duke in 1495), succeeded by Duke Eberhard II in 1496
 * Coat of Arms of the Bishopric of Augsburg.svg Frederick II of Hohenzollern, Prince-Bishop of Augsburg
 * Coat of arms of Baden.svg Christopher I, Margrave of Baden
 * Brandenburg Wappen.svg George Frederick of Hohenzollern, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach
 * Brandenburg Wappen.svg Siegmund of Hohenzollern, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth
 * Mainz Arms.svg Bertold von Henneberg-Römhild, Archbishop of Mainz and Prince-elector
 * Trier Arms.svg John II of Baden, Archbishop of Trier and Prince-elector
 * Armoiries ducs en Bavière.svg Albert IV of Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria-Munich, Duke of re-united Bavaria from 1503.
 * Arms of the house of Hesse (3).svg Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse in 1519
 * Wappen Kurpfalz.svg Louis V of Wittelsbach of the Electorate of the Palatinate, Prince-elector as well as
 * Wappen Kurpfalz.svg Otto Henry and Philip of Wittelsbach, Counts Palatine of Palatinate-Neuburg and
 * CoA Würzburg Diocese.svg Conrad II von Thüngen, Prince-Bishop of Würzburg in 1523 and finally
 * Salzburg Wappen.svg Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg, Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg in 1525.

title: Swabian League


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Sylvia (singer)

Sylvia Jane Kirby (December 9, 1956 ), also known mononymously as Sylvia, is an American country music and country pop singer and songwriter. Her biggest hit (a crossover chart topper), was her single "Nobody" in 1982. It reached number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 5 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, number 9 on the Cashbox Top 100, and number 1 on the Billboard Country Singles chart. The song earned her a gold record certification and a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Her other country chart hits include "Drifter" (number one in 1981), "Fallin' in Love", "Tumbleweed" and "Snapshot". She was named Female Vocalist of the Year by the Academy of Country Music for 1982. She is also credited with making the first "concept" music video clip to air on Country Music Television (CMT), with "The Matador".

Early life
Sylvia was born in Kokomo, Indiana, United States. She began performing at age 3 when she was asked to sing at a small local church. Sylvia eventually relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, on December 26, 1975. Wishing to become a recording artist, Sylvia took a job as a secretary for producer and publisher Tom Collins, who produced records for both Barbara Mandrell and Ronnie Milsap.

Career
After auditioning for Dave & Sugar, Sylvia was signed as a solo artist by RCA Records in 1979. Her first RCA single was called "You Don't Miss a Thing". The song reached the Country Top 40. In 1980 she released another single, "It Don't Hurt to Dream". The record rose a little higher, to number 35. That same year, she finally made it to the Top 10 with "Tumbleweed". In 1981, her song "Drifter" hit number 1 on the country charts, and two other songs, "The Matador" and "Heart on the Mend" landed in the Top 10. "The Matador" was country music's first conceptual music video to air on CMT. Drifter was her 1981 RCA debut studio album, containing the hits "Tumbleweed" and "Heart On The Mend".

Chart hits in the 1980s
In 1982, from her Just Sylvia studio album, Sylvia released the single "Nobody", which reached number 1 on the country music chart, hit number 15 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, and sold more than a million copies. The song was also an Adult Contemporary hit, making the Top 5. "Nobody" became Sylvia's signature song.

"Nobody" and the album Just Sylvia were certified gold in the United States and Canada. "Nobody" was the 1982 BMI Song of the Year, awarded for receiving more radio airplay than any other single that year. In 1982, Sylvia was the Academy of Country Music's "Female Vocalist of the Year" and a Grammy nominee for "Best Female Vocalist".

In 1983, Sylvia's album Snapshot was released; its title song climbed to number 5 on the country chart and became her second-highest selling single. She had two other songs in the Top 20 that year, "I Never Quite Got Back" and "The Boy Gets Around".

In 1985, Sylvia released One Step Closer, produced by Brent Maher, who brought a more guitar-driven feel. Three singles were released: "Fallin' in Love", "Cry Just a Little Bit", and "I Love You By Heart." This was followed up by Sylvia's last top 40 country hit, "Nothin' Ventured, Nothin' Gained", from the unreleased album Knockin Around. The shelving of this album marked the end of Sylvia's tenure with RCA Records. Sylvia recorded for RCA until the end of 1987, delivering 11 Top Ten songs, and selling more than four million records.

RCA put together a Greatest Hits compilation and issued a new single titled "Straight from My Heart", written with Jimmy Fortune of the Statler Brothers. With little promotion from RCA, the single charted in the low 60s.

Later career
When her contract with RCA ended, Sylvia took a break from touring and recording to focus on developing as a songwriter. In 1988 and 1989, she guest-hosted TNN's Crook and Chase show and her own Holiday Gourmet cooking special.

Sylvia's first independent album, The Real Story, was released in 1996 on her own label, Red Pony Records. In a May 1998 People magazine review, Ralph Novak wrote, "Sylvia always sang with more intensity and resonance than most country singers... and she can still sing a story song better than almost anyone around."

In 2002, she followed with Where in the World, a set that marked the culmination of an 11-year musical collaboration with John Mock. Songwriter Craig Bickhardt contributed the song "Crazy Nightingale". Bickhardt had previously performed with Sylvia from 1984, and wrote the title cut to One Step Closer. Also in 2002, Sylvia released, A Cradle in Bethlehem, her first Christmas album.

In 2016, the album, It's All in the Family, was released on Red Pony Records.

In 2018, Sylvia released, Second Bloom: The Hits Re-Imagined, an album of some of her hits she re-recorded with a more acoustic yet fully produced approach.

In 2022, Sylvia's newest album, Nature Child—A Dreamer's Journey, was released on February 22, 2022.

title: Sylvia (singer)


text:
Lions Book

Lions Book or Lion Books may refer to:

 * Lion Books, a 1950 Japanese manga series turned experimental anime
 * Lion Books, an imprint of the British book publishing company Lion Hudson
 * Lion Books (publisher), an imprint of the American book publishing company Martin Goodman
 * Lion (comics), a 1950 British comic book
 * Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code, a Unix kernel book by John Lions

title: Lions Book


text:
User talk:Cky

Welcome
Hello Chris, welcome to Wikipedia.

Normally when welcoming people I'd point them towards all sorts of links on how to edit pages, policies, etc, but you seem to be pretty au fais (sp?) with that already.

Having an interest in editing, have you come across yet? this expands out to:

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

By the way, I love the idea of having a stub message on your user page - if I knew anything about you, I'd happily expand it! Again, welcome! --ALargeElk 10:30, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

Hello. :-) Tenbaset 07:18, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

Yay
Thanks to User:ALargeElk for the welcome and to Shannon for the greeting! I've been doing little bits of editing on shortish articles, mostly because I haven't yet found the time to read through longer ones, but I look forward to showing the world just how fastidious I can be…yep, you heard it here first. :-) —cky 12:42, 2004 Jun 10 (UTC)

Auckland meetup
Just to let you know that a meetup is planned in Auckland for the 25th of June (see Meetup/Auckland for more details), and that you are cordially invited. GeorgeStepanek\talk 00:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
 * You may also be interested in visiting http://nz.wikimedia.org which is the wiki for the sometime soon to be formed Wikimedia New Zealand --NigelJ talk 05:01, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, both! I'm very likely to attend the meetup, and I've had a quick peek at the NZ Mediawiki site and will be interested to see discussions around this go. —cky 01:13, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Did you by any chance end up with the pen I was using in the pub? I've put an advert up for it at Wikipedia talk:Meetup/Auckland.-gadfium 08:44, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry about the late reply, and sorry, I don't have your pen. I hope you found it in the end. —cky 08:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Auckland Meetup 2 Scheduled - Feb 10 2007
You are all invited to Auckland Meetup 2 on the afternoon of Saturday February 10th 2007 at Galbraith's Ale House in Mt Eden. Please see Meetup/Auckland 2 for details. You can also bookmark Meetup/Auckland to be informed of future NZ meetups. - SimonLyall 05:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Meetup
Hey, I noticed you attended one of the previous auckland meetups, and I am notifying previous attendees we are planning another one on 11th August. See the meetup page for more information, or to say if you are coming. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:59, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Auckland Meetup 5 - 9 May 2010
You are invited to Auckland Meetup 5 on the afternoon of Sunday 9th May 2010 at Esquires Cafe, Ground Floor, Auckland Central City Library, Lorne St, Auckland. Please see Meetup/Auckland 5 for details. You can also bookmark Meetup/Auckland to be informed of future NZ meetups. - Linnah (talk) 01:04, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to an in-person meetup in Mohua / Golden Bay
Thinking about your summer break? Think about joining other Wikipedians and Wikimedians in Golden Bay / Mohua! Details are on the meetup page. There's heaps of interesting stuff to work on e.g. the oldest extant waka or New Zealand's oldest ongoing legal case. Or you may spend your time taking photos and then upload them.

Golden Bay is hard to get to and the airline flying into Tākaka uses small planes, so we are holding some seats from and to Wellington and we are offering attendees a $200 travel subsidy to help with costs.

Be in touch with Schwede66 if this event interests you and you'd like to discuss logistics.  Schwede 66  09:14, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

title: User talk:Cky


text:
Friedrich von Flotow

Friedrich Adolf Ferdinand, Freiherr von Flotow (27 April 1812 – 24 January 1883) was a German composer. He is chiefly remembered for his opera Martha, which was popular in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th.

Life
Born in Teutendorf, in Mecklenburg, into an aristocratic family, Flotow was French-trained. Although he was intended for a diplomatic career, his father acceded to his wishes and he studied at the Conservatoire de Paris under Anton Reicha. During this time came under the influence of Auber, Rossini, Meyerbeer, Donizetti, Halévy, and later Gounod and Offenbach. These influences are reflected in his operas, where a distinctive French opéra comique flavour exists.

During the 1830 revolution he returned home, writing chamber music and operetta until it was safe to return to Paris. He completed his first opera in 1835, Pierre et Cathérine, but his breakthrough came with Le naufrage de la Méduse (1839), based on the wreck of the warship Méduse. The three-act romantic opera Alessandro Stradella of 1844 is recognized as one of Flotow's finer works. Martha was first staged in Vienna at the Theater am Kärntnertor on 25 November 1847, and soon became one of the best-loved of all his operas.

In 1848 revolution again drove Flotow home. Between 1856 and 1863 he served as Intendant of the court theatre at Schwerin. From 1863 he lived in either Paris or Vienna, and he had the satisfaction of seeing his operas mounted as far away as Saint Petersburg and Turin. He died in Darmstadt.

Operas
In all, Flotow wrote about 30 operas. Many of these works were performed in different versions and under different titles, in German, French and sometimes other languages. Some survive, some are lost. All but Martha have fallen into obscurity, and even Martha is not nearly as often performed now as it was a century ago, though it is still sometimes staged, and there have been a number of attempts to revive other Flotow works (including Alessandro Stradella) during recent years.

The best-known single piece by Flotow is probably "Ach! so fromm, ach! so traut". It has been much recorded in its Italian version, "M’apparì tutt’amor".

title: Friedrich von Flotow


text:
John Lions

John Lions (19 January 1937 – 5 December 1998) was an Australian computer scientist. He is best known as the author of Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code, commonly known as the Lions Book.

Early life
Lions gained a degree with first-class honours from the University of Sydney in 1959. He applied, and received a scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge where he earned his doctorate on Control engineering in 1963. After his graduation, he worked at the consulting firm KCS Ltd in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 1967, he briefly took a position at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada before moving on to working for Burroughs in Los Angeles as a Systems Analyst.

Later life
In 1972 he moved back to Sydney, Australia and became a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). In 1980, he was promoted to Associate Professor and apart from sabbaticals in 1978, 1983 and 1989 at Bell Laboratories, he remained at the school until retiring in 1995 due to bad health.

Work

 * His most famous work, the Lions Book, was written as course notes for his operating systems course at UNSW.
 * Lions organised the Australian UNIX Users' Group and was its founding president from 1984 to 1986.
 * Lions was involved in the setting up of an annual conference for academics, the Australian Computer Science Conference and he was the editor of the Australian Computer Journal for six years and was made a fellow of the Australian Computer Society for his contribution.

Personal life
John Lions was married to Marianne and had two children, Katherine and Elizabeth.

Contribution to UNSW
This commentary is included in an unofficial history of UNSW's Computer Science & Engineering by Ken Robinson (computer scientist), their longest serving member of teaching staff.

John Lions and UNIX
Also in the early seventies, the groundbreaking creation of the UNIX operating system and the C programming language by Bell Laboratories researchers Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie inspired programmers globally including Lecturers Ken Robinson (on staff from 1972) and John Lions (on staff from 1973). In 1973, Ken Robinson recognised the UNIX OS as "too good to be true" and acquired a copy of the system from Bell Laboratories. John Lions took over the management of the installation of UNIX on the department's PDP 11/40 computer and, recognising the importance of the accessibility of this system immediately incorporated a study of UNIX in his teaching, making significant modifications to two of his courses. In addition, he wrote the ‘Source Code and Commentary on Unix Level 6’ and handed cardboard bound copies on computer printout paper to his astonished students. Containing the entire UNIX 6 operating system, the book proved an invaluable teaching resource and a technical bible for a whole generation of professionals.

Legally, the book was only supposed to be available to licensees of UNIX 6 and by the time of the release of UNIX 7 in 1979, intellectual property laws were invoked to ban its publication. One programming student recalled, ‘because we couldn’t legally discuss the book in the university’s operating systems class, several of us would meet at night in an empty classroom to discuss the book. It was the only time in my life I was an active member of an underground.’ [Mr Peter Reintjes (BE ’xx) quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, 11 December 1999].

In the early 1980s multiple copies of the Lion’s book were photocopied. (title) John Lions taught until 1991 and lived just long enough to see the ban on his book finally lifted in 1998. The importance of his work was recognised by the dedication on 26 June 2002 of the John Lions Garden outside the K17 building, with an annular placed around the largest tree bearing the inscription, ‘Lions’ books inspired a generation of operating systems designers.’ [UNSW Engineers, Issue 7, November 2002, p10.] At the same time, a Lions Chair in Computer Science was established, funded partly through the University, but largely through the tremendous efforts of former students who he motivated and inspired with his teaching and research and who acknowledge his defining influence on their professional lives.

UNSW had the first installation of UNIX in Australia, and was one of the first places to be using that system outside of the USA. The School of Computer Science and Engineering has continued to base a significant amount of its teaching on UNIX-like systems, nowadays Linux.

John Lions Chair in Computer Science
After his death, John O'Brien, Chris Maltby, Greg Rose and Steve Jenkin, former students of Lions, commenced a campaign to raise funds to create a chair in his name at UNSW, the John Lions Chair of Operating Systems. With donations from many UNSW alumni, corporations, Usenix, Linux Australia, the chair was created in 2006, becoming the first chair at UNSW funded by contributions from alumni. In 2009, Gernot Heiser became the inaugural John Lions Chair. Of the Usenix donations, US$6,000 came from the 1998 auction of the California UNIX license plate by Ted Dolotta, won by John Mashey, who had lent his copies of the Lions books (used in Bell Labs internal courses) and never gotten back. Lions had graciously replaced them with autographed copies on an earlier visit of Mashey to Sydney. They now are members of the collection at the Computer History Museum.

John Lions Garden
In 2002, UNSW dedicated the John Lions Garden in front of the new Computer Science and Engineering building to Lions' memory.

John Lions Award for Contribution to Open Software
In 2011, The School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW initiated the John Lions Award for Contribution to Open Software. The Prize is open to high school and undergraduate university students enrolled in an Australian secondary or tertiary institution. Full-time and part-time students are eligible, as well as local and internationals students. The annual prize is valued at $1,000.

title: John Lions


text:
Casspir

The Casspir is a mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle that has been in use in South Africa since the 1980s. It is a four-wheeled, four-wheel drive vehicle, used for transport of troops. It can hold a crew of two, plus 12 additional soldiers and associated equipment. The Casspir was unique in design when launched, providing for passive mine defence. The main armoured steel body of the vehicle is raised high above the ground, so when a mine is detonated, the explosion is less likely to damage the crew compartment and kill the occupants. The cross-section of the hull is V-shaped, directing the force of the explosion outwards, further protecting the occupants.

The vehicle also offers crew protection from small arms fire. The capabilities of the Casspir were the basis of the outline capabilities required by the U.S. Marines for their Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected or MRAP vehicle project.

Design history

The name 'Casspir' is an anagram of the abbreviations of the customer, the South African Police, and the design authority, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR – Applied Chemistry Unit that later became MECHEM). Although the Casspir was deployed in townships during the apartheid era, it was initially designed specifically for conditions encountered in the South African Border War.

It was at first extensively used by the infamous "Koevoet" police counterinsurgency unit in northern Namibia during the apartheid era and later also by the South-West Africa Territorial Force's 101 Battalion and the SA Army's 5 Reconnaissance Regiment. The chief criteria for the design was good off-road mobility, armour protection against small arms fire and anti-personnel mines, and ease and speed of repair by a light workshop crew in the field after detonating an anti-tank mine. These requirements led to the distinctive V-shaped hull (for mine protection) and a wheeled chassis.

The Casspir was designed by the Defence Research Unit (DRU) of CSIR specifically to protect vehicle occupants against landmines. It is certified to protect its occupants against a triple TM-57 mine blast (equivalent to 21 kg of TNT) under a wheel, or a double blast (14 kg of TNT) under the hull. The Casspir has a V-bottomed armoured monocoque hull, designed to deflect the force of an explosion outwards, to which a leaf-spring suspension is attached.

Production history
After two years of field testing, the South African Police were eventually satisfied they had a good vehicle and in March 1980 placed an order for an initial 140 Casspirs. Some 190 Mk1 Casspirs were manufactured by Henred Fruehauf. In 1981 production was taken over by TFM, which improved the design to the Mk 2. TFM was subsequently taken over by Reumech OMC. Reumech in turn was taken over by Vickers Defence Systems of the UK and renamed Vickers OMC. When Alvis purchased Vickers Defence Systems to become Alvis Vickers, Vickers OMC became Alvis OMC. In 2004 BAE Systems acquired Alvis Vickers and Alvis OMC was renamed Land Systems OMC. Land Systems OMC was 75 per cent acquired by Denel in 2015. An estimated 2800 Casspirs of all types have been built. In 2018 the ADE 352 engines, gearboxes, shock absorbers, differentials and other parts are still being supplied by ADE (Atlantis Diesel Engineering) in South Africa as well as the later model Casspir NG2000.

The South African Police Service sold some of their surplus Casspirs to the public at a 2008 auction. A new Casspir known as Casspir NG 2000 is being manufactured by Denel Mechem. The vehicle was launched in April 2013.

Variants

 * Casspir Mk 1. It made extensive use of Mercedes-Benz truck components. First use in combat: Koevoet, South West African Police
 * Casspir Mk 2 First user: 101 Battalion, South West African Territorial Force
 * Casspir Mk 2C (I)
 * Casspir Mk 3 – 170 hp (127 kW) ADE-352T 6-cylinder turbo-diesel
 * Casspir 2000 & NG2000A (Mercedes Benz based)
 * Casspir 2000B (Powerstar – North Benz based)
 * Casspir 2000C (SINO Truck Military based)

The Casspir was built in different configurations:
 * APC – armoured personnel carrier
 * Artillery Fire Control vehicle
 * Ambulance
 * Blesbok Freighter – with drop side cargo area for up to 5 tons (160 built). Can be used as a weapon platform.
 * Duiker Tanker – 5000 litre tank (30 built); originally with 3000 litre tank
 * FISTV – Fire Support Team vehicle
 * Gemsbok Recovery vehicle – 15-ton capacity (30 built)
 * Mechem Mine clearing vehicle – uses steel wheels to detonate mines
 * MEDDS (Mechem Explosives and Drug Detection System) Mine Sensor vehicle
 * Mechem VAMMIDS (Vehicular Array Mine Detection System) Vehicle
 * Plofadder Mine clearing System – carrier of the containerised Plofadder 160AT rocket-propelled mine clearing system
 * Riot Control vehicle – Police version with larger windows to increase visibility
 * Mechem LP (Low-Profile) and short-wheelbase vehicle
 * Casspir Dumpy – A shortened version (1 m shorter) developed and purchased by the SA Army in 1982 to be evaluated against the requirements for the Buffel replacement project. Did not enter production
 * Sesspir – In 1984–85 the CSIR developed a prototype Casspir with six wheels. An additional non-driven axle was fitted in front of the front drive axle, this to be sacrificed in the event of a landmine detonation. It steered along with the regular driven front wheels and was equipped with winch cables to hoist either side of the axle clear off the ground in the event of the loss of a wheel. The theory being the vehicle would remain mobile. The idea was shelved as one of numerous problems was simply a lack of power from the engine to push the undriven axle along through bush and soft sand. Only one prototype was built.
 * Casspir NG Series or Casspir 2000 is known as the new generation hence Casspir NG 2000. Available in various models 2000, 2000A; 2000B; 2000C and a possible D model, all to house various drive trains. The NG design allow a common hull to fit various drive trains and either manual or automatic drive. The latest in the NG series is a design that is based on a monocoque design and chassis cab design, specific in the support variants. The NG2000 Series currently offer the following variants.
 * Casspir NG Troop Carrier – specific Military application
 * Casspir NG Personnel Carrier – specific for Humanitarian purposes
 * Casspir NG Security/Police special variant
 * Casspir NG Wide Body Command and Control special variant
 * Casspir NG Wide Body Ambulance special variant
 * Casspir NG Wide Body Reconnaissance special variant
 * Casspir NG Wide Body Weapons Platform Carrier special variant- to be suitable for Indirect Mortar; Anti-Tank or Anti-Aircraft
 * Casspir NG Wide Body Cargo special variant
 * Casspir NG Wide Body Fuel Carrier special variant
 * Casspir NG Wide Body Water Carrier special variant
 * Casspir NG Wide Body Recovery Light special variant
 * Casspir NG Wide Body Recovery Heavy special variant (6x6) "Eland"
 * Casspir NG Wide Body Art Light Gun Tractor special variant (6x6)
 * Casspir NG Chassis Cab Cargo special variant (4x4 & 6x6) – "Likkewaan"
 * Casspir NG Chassis Cab Water Carrier special variant (4x4 & 6x6) – "Likkewaan"
 * Casspir NG Chassis Cab Fuel Carrier special variant (4x4 & 6x6) – "Likkewaan"
 * Casspir NG Chassis Cab Hooklift special variant (6x6) – "Likkewaan"
 * Casspir NG Chassis Cab Art Gun Tractor special variant (6x6) – "Likkewaan"
 * Casspir NG Chassis Cab Tipper Truck special variant (6x4 & 6x6) – "Likkewaan"
 * Casspir NG Chassis Cab Truck Tractor special variant (6x4 & 6x6) – "Likkewaan"
 * Casspir NG Chassis Cab Recovery special variant Light, Medium and Heavy (4x4, 6x6 & 8x8) – "Likkewaan"

Operators

 * 🇦🇴 Angola: 61
 * 🇧🇯 Benin: 10
 * 🇧🇮 Burundi: 10
 * Democratic Republic of the Congo
 * 🇩🇯 Djibouti: 3
 * 🇪🇬 Egypt
 * 🇬🇭 Ghana: 4
 * 🇮🇳 India: 200+ used by Indian Army and other paramilitary forces
 * 🇮🇩 Indonesia: 2 Casspir. Used by Kopassus
 * 🇮🇶 Iraq
 * 🇲🇼 Malawi: 12
 * 🇲🇱 Mali: 29
 * 🇲🇿 Mozambique: 15
 * 🇳🇦 Namibia: 20 inherited from the South West African Territorial Force.
 * 🇳🇵 Nepal: 37
 * 🇵🇪 Peru: 20 Policía Nacional del Peru (DIROES)
 * 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia: 9
 * 🇸🇳 Senegal: 9
 * 🇸🇱 Sierra Leone: 3
 * 🇸🇴 Somalia: 9
 * 🇿🇦 South Africa: 370 in South African Army service.
 * 🇹🇿 Tanzania: 5
 * 🇺🇬 Uganda: 42
 * 🇺🇸 United States: 68

Combat history

 * Angolan Civil War
 * Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir
 * Caprivi conflict
 * Iraq War
 * Second Congo War
 * South African Border War
 * African Union Mission to Somalia

Popular culture
The Casspir has entered South African popular culture as an icon of apartheid-era state repression and is controversial for its continued deployment in South Africa for policing tasks. A beadwork Casspir, with Ndebele designs, outside the Iziko South African National Gallery was installed as a representation of this iconography of the vehicle. Created by interdisciplinary contemporary artist Ralph Ziman, the artwork is titled The Casspir Project.

A Casspir also forms part of the South Africa Apartheid Museum's exhibit on repression in the townships in the 1980s.

Casspirs were extensively used by the human characters to enter into the alien settlement zone in the 2009 movie District 9.

A Casspir is seen in the music video for the song "Dirty Harry" by Gorillaz.

title: Casspir


text:
Interahamwe

The Interahamwe ( or ) is a Hutu paramilitary organization active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND according to its French name), the then-ruling party of Rwanda, and enjoyed the backing of the Hutu Power government. The Interahamwe, led by Robert Kajuga, were the main perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, during which an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi, Twa, and moderate Hutus were killed from April to July 1994, and the term "Interahamwe" was widened to mean any civilian militias or bands killing Tutsi.

The Interahamwe were driven out of Rwanda after Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) victory in the Rwandan Civil War in July 1994, and are considered a terrorist organisation by many African and Western governments. The Interahamwe and splinter groups such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) continue to wage an insurgency against Rwanda from neighboring countries, where they are also involved in local conflicts and terrorism.

Etymology
The name Interahamwe can be translated as "those who work together" or loosely as "those who fight together" in Kinyarwanda. Work was used as slang in racist radio broadcasts during the genocide—"working" meant using machetes to kill. The name Interahamwe can be broken up as follows: intera is derived from the verb gutera, meaning "to work"; hamwe means "together" and is related to the word rimwe for "one".

English speakers usually pronounce it as, though it is pronounced in Kinyarwanda. However, when speaking English, Rwandans will sometimes pronounce it in the English manner. The difference can be observed by listening to Paul Rusesabagina in the Return to Rwanda feature of a Hotel Rwanda DVD, and to the translator for a survivor of the Nyarubuye massacre in "Frontline" Ghosts of Rwanda.

Organization and history
Robert Kajuga, a partial Tutsi (unusual for this group), was the president of the Interahamwe. The vice president of Interahamwe was Georges Rutaganda. The Interahamwe was formed from groups of young people of the MRND party. They carried out the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis in 1994.

The radio station RTLM, founded by Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and his wife, was popular amongst the Interahamwe for its decidedly pro-Hutu agenda, among other things. From October 1993 to late 1994, it was used as an outlet for extremists to release ethnocentric and xenophobic propaganda targeted at the Tutsis, moderate Hutus and Belgians. Often it encouraged the ongoing acts of genocide by promoting fear among the Hutus that the Tutsis would massacre them, and broadcasting the positions of Tutsis hiding or attempting to flee.

Following the invasion of the Rwandan capital Kigali by the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), many Rwandan civilians and members of the Interahamwe fled to neighbouring countries, most notably to what at the time was Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo, and Tanzania. Sudan welcomed former Interahamwe to Juba, and in March 1998, Colonel Tharcisse Renzaho, the former prefect of Kigali, and Colonel Aloys Ntiwiragabo, the former Rwandan Presidential Guard commander, arrived in Juba from Nairobi to organize them. It has been nearly impossible to bring the Interahamwe to justice because they did not wear uniforms or have a clearly organized group of followers. They were the neighbours, friends and co-workers of Tutsis. Throughout the war, members of the Interahamwe moved into camps of refugees and the internally displaced. There the victims were mixed in with the enemy making it difficult to prosecute members of the Interahamwe. But the Gacaca court was put in place to at least attempt to get the killers in jail. It has seen criticism from many different sources for being flawed with the judges having inadequate training and many different parties in the court system being corrupt. This problem has led to many innocent people being put in jail and has caused the prisons to become overcrowded.

During the war, millions of Rwandan Hutu refugees fled to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), along with many members of the Interahamwe, Presidential Guard and the Rwandan Government Forces (RGF). Following the recruitment of significant numbers of Congolese Hutu the organisation took the name Armée de Libération du Rwanda (ALiR). With the Kagame regime still in power, members still take part in border raids from the refugee camps.

After the Rwandan genocide
In 1999, Interahamwe attacked and kidnapped a group of 14 tourists in Bwindi National Park, Uganda. Eight of the tourists were killed. The story was featured on National Geographic, Locked Up Abroad: Uganda.

Prosecution
Leaders of the Interahamwe have been primarily prosecuted through the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. The tribunal has convicted at least 41 persons, often with life sentences, including former interim Prime Minister Jean Kambanda and Georges Rutaganda. Fugitives have been captured and prosecuted in other countries, including Jean-Marie Vianney Mudahinyuka (a.k.a. "Zuzu"), an Interahamwe leader found hiding in Chicago, Illinois in January 2011.

title: Interahamwe


text:
The Dark Sides

The Dark Sides is a compilation of King Diamond songs, released on 1 November 1988 through Roadrunner Records. This album contains five tracks (and an outro), released on previous albums, but are mostly unrelated in their stories (as King's albums were concept albums).

Controversy
The album cover featured King Diamond with face paint that resembled KISS bassist Gene Simmons' "Demon". Simmons claimed that King's face paint was copyright infringement and sued him. The lawsuit was eventually dropped when King changed his design.

Track listing

 * 1) "Halloween" – 4:14 (previously released on Fatal Portrait)
 * 2) "Them" – 1:58 (instrumental track, previously released on Them)
 * 3) "No Presents for Christmas" – 4:21 (previously released as the A-side of No Presents for Christmas single; later as a bonus track on the 2007 remastered version of Fatal Portrait)
 * 4) "Shrine" – 4:23 (previously released as the b-side of The Family Ghost single; later as a bonus track on the 2007 remastered version of Abigail)
 * 5) "The Lake" – 4:13 (previously released as a b-side of Halloween single and as a bonus track on CD versions of Fatal Portrait)
 * 6) "Phone Call" – 1:38 (previously released on CD versions of Them)

Personnel

 * King Diamond – vocals
 * Andy LaRocque – guitars
 * Michael Denner – guitars
 * Pete Blakk – guitars
 * Timi Hansen – bass
 * Hal Patino – bass
 * Mikkey Dee – drums

title: The Dark Sides


text:
Christopher Tilley

Chris Y. Tilley [1955-2024] was a British archaeologist known for his contributions to postprocessualist archaeological theory. He retired as Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at University College London in 2022.

Tilley obtained his PhD in Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, where he was a student of Ian Hodder. In the early 1980s, Hodder and his students at Cambridge first developed postprocessualism, an approach to archaeology stressing the importance of interpretation and subjectivity, strongly influenced by the Neo-Marxist Frankfurt School. Tilley and his early collaborator Daniel Miller were amongst the most strongly relativist of first wave postprocessualist archaeologists, and was particularly critical of what he saw as the negative political implications of positivist processual archaeology. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Tilley moved away from the structuralist approach pursued by Hodder and, along with Michael Shanks and Peter Ucko, advocated a position of strong relativism. For Shanks and Tilley, academic interpretations of the archaeological record have no more legitimacy than any other, and they view claims to the contrary as elitist attempts to control the past, asserting that "there is no way of choosing between alternative pasts except on essentially political grounds."

In a 1989 paper of his published in the academic journal Antiquity, Tilley openly criticised the aims of rescue excavation, arguing that it was simply designed to collect "more and more information about the past", most of which would remain unpublished and of no use to either archaeologists or the public. As he related, "The number of pieces of information we collect about the past may increase incrementally – our understanding does not." Instead he argued that the archaeological community in the western nations should cease their constant accumulation of new data from rescue digs and instead focus on producing interpretive frameworks with which to interpret it, and also on publishing the backlog of data produced from decades of excavation.

Tilley is credited with introducing phenomenology into archaeology with his 1994 work A Phenomenology of Landscape. Phenomenology in archaeology entails the 'intuitive' study of material things, especially landscapes, in terms of their meanings to people in the past, and has been influential in both Britain and the United States. In the late 1990s, Tilley worked with Barbara Bender and Sue Hamilton to investigate the Bronze Age landscapes of Leskernick on Bodmin Moor, with a number of UCL students.

Selected publications

 * Tilley, Christopher (1990). Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-17285-7
 * Tilley, Christopher (1991). Material Culture and Text: The Art of Ambiguity. London: Routledge.
 * Bender, Barbara; Hamilton, Sue, and Tilley, Christopher. (1997). Leskernick: Stone worlds, alternative narratives, nested landscapes. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 63: 147-178.
 * Bender, Barbara; Hamilton, Sue, and Tilley, Christopher. (1999). Bronze Age stone worlds of Bodmin Moor: excavating Leskernick. Archaeology International 3: 13–17.
 * Bender, Barbara; Hamilton, Sue, and Tilley, Christopher (2003). Art and re-presentation of the past. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6(1): 35-62.
 * Available as an open access download from UCL Press.
 * Available as an open access download from UCL Press.
 * Available as an open access download from UCL Press.
 * Available as an open access download from UCL Press.
 * Available as an open access download from UCL Press.
 * Available as an open access download from UCL Press.
 * Available as an open access download from UCL Press.

title: Christopher Tilley


text:
The Night Watch

Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, also known as The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, but commonly referred to as The Night Watch (De Nachtwacht), is a 1642 painting by Rembrandt van Rijn. It is in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum but is prominently displayed in the Rijksmuseum as the best-known painting in its collection. The Night Watch is one of the most famous Dutch Golden Age paintings. Rembrandt's large painting (363 x) is famed for transforming a group portrait of a civic guard company into a compelling drama energized by light and shadow (tenebrism). The title is a misnomer; the painting does not depict a nocturnal scene.

The Night Watch was completed in 1642 at the peak of the Dutch Golden Age. It depicts the eponymous company moving out, led by Captain Frans Banninck Cocq (dressed in black, with a red sash) and his lieutenant, Willem van Ruytenburch (dressed in yellow, with a white sash). Behind them, the company's colors are carried by the ensign, Jan Visscher Cornelissen. Rembrandt incorporated the traditional emblem of the arquebusiers in the figure of the young girl who carries a dead chicken on her belt, referencing the clauweniers (arquebusiers) and a type of drinking horn used at group banquets.

Commission
The painting was commissioned around 1639 by Captain Banninck Cocq and seventeen members of his Kloveniers (civic militia guards). Eighteen names appear on a shield, painted circa 1715, in the center-right background, as the hired drummer was added to the painting for free. A total of 34 characters appear in the painting. Rembrandt was paid 1,600 guilders for the painting (each person paid one hundred), a large sum at the time. This was one of a series of seven similar paintings of the militiamen (Schuttersstuk) commissioned during that time from various artists.

The painting was commissioned to hang in the banquet hall of the newly built Kloveniersdoelen (Musketeers' Meeting Hall) in Amsterdam. Some have suggested that the occasion for Rembrandt's commission and the series of other commissions given to other artists was the visit of the French queen, Marie de' Medici, in 1638. Even though she was escaping from her exile from France ordered by her son Louis XIII, the queen's arrival was met with great pageantry.

It is thought the painting was completed in a lean-to in Rembrandt's garden as it is too large to fit into his Amsterdam studio.

Location and alterations

The Night Watch first hung in the Groote Zaal (Great Hall) of Amsterdam's Kloveniersdoelen. This structure currently houses the Doelen Hotel. In 1715, the painting was moved to the Amsterdam Town Hall, for which it was trimmed on all four sides. This was done, presumably, to fit the painting between two columns and was a common practice before the 19th century. This alteration resulted in the loss of two characters on the left side of the painting, the top of the arch, the balustrade, and the edge of the step. The missing portions have not been found; Taco Dibbits, director of the Rijksmuseum, has some hope that possibly at least the left-hand side might not have been destroyed as it contained three figures, and at the time the painting was trimmed Rembrandt paintings were already expensive.

A 17th-century copy of the painting by Gerrit Lundens (1622–1683), on loan from the National Gallery, London, to the Rijkmuseum, shows the original composition.

When Napoleon occupied the Netherlands, the Town Hall became the Palace on the Dam and the magistrates moved the painting to the Trippenhuis of the family Trip. Napoleon ordered it returned, but after the occupation ended in 1813, the painting again moved to the Trippenhuis, which now housed the Dutch Academy of Sciences. It remained there until it moved to the new Rijksmuseum when its building was finished in 1885.

The painting was removed from the Rijksmuseum in September 1939, at the onset of World War II. The canvas was detached from its frame and rolled around a cylinder. The rolled painting was stored for four years in a special safe that was built to protect many works of art in the caves of Maastricht, Netherlands. After the end of the war, the canvas was re-mounted, restored, and returned to the Rijksmuseum.

On 11 December 2003, The Night Watch was moved to a temporary location, due to a major refurbishment of the Rijksmuseum. The painting was detached from its frame, wrapped in stain-free paper, put into a wooden frame which was put into two sleeves, driven on a cart to its new destination, hoisted, and brought into its new home through a special slit.

While the refurbishment took place, The Night Watch could be viewed in its temporary location in the Philipsvleugel of the Rijksmuseum. When the refurbishment was finished in April 2013, the painting was returned to its original place in the Nachtwachtzaal (Room of the Night Watch).

In 2021, the painting was exhibited from June to September with the trimmed-off sections recreated using convolutional neural networks, an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm, based on the copy by Lundens. The recreation corrected for perspective (Lundens must have been sitting on the left side of the painting when he made his copy), and used colors and brush-strokes as used by Rembrandt. The trimming of the painting put the lieutenants in the center, but the original placed them off-center, marching towards an empty space now reinstated, creating a dynamic of the troops marching towards the left of the painting. The cutdown painting by Rembrandt with the AI recreation of the missing portions attached was placed on exhibition for three months. The augmented painting will not be on permanent display so as not to "trick" viewers into thinking they were seeing the full original; the augmentations are a scientific, rather than an artist's, interpretation.

Vandalism and restoration

For much of its existence, the painting was coated with a dark varnish, which gave the incorrect impression that it depicted a night scene, leading to the name by which it is now commonly known. On 13 January 1911, a jobless shoemaker and former Navy chef attempted to slash the painting with a shoemaker's knife protesting his inability to find work. However, the thick coating of varnish protected the painting from any damage at that time. The varnish was removed only in the 1940s.

On 14 September 1975, the work was attacked with a bread knife by an unemployed school teacher, Wilhelmus de Rijk, resulting in several large zig-zagged slashes up to 30 cm long. De Rijk, who suffered from mental illness, claimed he "did it for the Lord" and that he "was ordered to do it". The painting was successfully restored after four years, but some evidence of the damage is still visible up close. De Rijk died by suicide in April 1976, before he could have been charged.

On 6 April 1990, an escaped psychiatric patient sprayed acid onto the painting with a concealed pump bottle. Security guards intervened, stopping the man and quickly spraying water onto the canvas. Ultimately, the acid only penetrated the varnish layer of the painting, and it was fully restored.

In July 2019, a long and complex restoration effort began. The restoration took place in public, in a specially made glass enclosure built and placed in the Rijksmuseum and was livestreamed. The plan was to move the 337 kg painting into the enclosure starting when the museum closed for the day on 9 July, then to map the painting "layer by layer and pigment by pigment", and plan conservation work according to what was found. Taco Dibbits, the Rijksmuseum's general director, said that despite working there for 17 years, he had never seen the top of the painting; "We know so little on how [Rembrandt] worked on making The Night Watch."

New LED illumination
On 26 October 2011, the Rijksmuseum unveiled new, sustainable LED lighting for The Night Watch. With new technology, it is the first time LED lighting has been able to render the fine nuances of the painting's complex color palette.

The new illumination uses LED lights with a color temperature of 3,200 kelvin, similar to warm-white light sources such as tungsten halogen. It has a color rendering index of over 90, which makes it suitable for the illumination of artifacts such as The Night Watch. Using the new LED lighting, the museum saves 80% on energy and offers the painting a safer environment because of the absence of UV radiation and heat.

Gigapixel photograph
On 13 May 2020, the Rijksmuseum published a 44.8 gigapixel image of The Night Watch made from 528 different still photographs. "The 24 rows of 22 pictures were stitched together digitally with the aid of neural networks", the museum said. It was primarily created for scientists to view the painting remotely, and to track how ageing affects the painting. The photograph can be viewed online and zoomed into the fine detail.

Cultural legacy

 * Maurice Merleau-Ponty refers to this work in his 1961 essay "Eye and Mind". He writes that "[t]he spatiality of the captain lies at the meeting of two lines of sight that are incompossible with one another. Everyone with eyes has at some time or other witnessed this play of shadows, or something like it, and has been made by it to see a space and the things included therein."
 * The work has inspired musical works in both the classical and rock traditions, including the second movement of Gustav Mahler's 7th Symphony and Ayreon's "The Shooting Company of Captain Frans B. Cocq" from Universal Migrator Part 1: The Dream Sequencer. In King Crimson's song "The Night Watch", from the band's 1974 album Starless and Bible Black, lyricist Richard Palmer-James muses on the painting to capture a key period in Dutch history, when, after a long period of "Spanish Wars", the merchants and other members of the bourgeoisie can turn their lives inward and focus on the tangible results of their lives’ efforts. The song adopts a number of perspectives, including the primary subjects, the artist himself, and a modern viewer of the painting, and paints a portrait of the emergence of the modern upper-middle class and the consumerist culture.
 * Alexander Korda's 1936 biographical film Rembrandt depicts the painting, shown in error in its truncated form, as a failure at its completion, perceived as lampooning its outraged subjects.
 * In Jean-Luc Godard's 1982 film Passion, The Night Watch is reenacted with live actors in an opening shot. Godard explicitly compares his film to Rembrandt's painting, describing them both as "full of holes and badly-filled spaces". He instructs the viewer not to focus on the overall composition, but to approach his film as one would a Rembrandt and "focus on the faces".
 * The Night Watch is a major plot device in the eponymous 1995 film, Night Watch, which focuses on the painting's theft.
 * The Night Watch is parodied on the British cover of Terry Pratchett's 2002 book by the same name. The cover illustrator, Paul Kidby, pays tribute to his predecessor Josh Kirby   by placing him in the picture, in the position where Rembrandt is said to have painted himself. A copy of the original painting appears on the back cover of the book.
 * The Night Watch is the subject of a 2007 film by director Peter Greenaway called Nightwatching, in which the film posits a conspiracy within the musketeer regiment of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, and suggests that Rembrandt may have immortalized a conspiracy theory using subtle allegory in his group portrait of the regiment, subverting what was to have been a highly prestigious commission for both painter and subject. His 2008 film Rembrandt's J'Accuse is a sequel or follow-on, and covers the same idea, using extremely detailed analysis of the compositional elements in the painting; in this Greenaway describes The Night Watch as (currently) the fourth most famous painting in the Western world, after the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
 * In 2006. The Night Watch inspired the literary work A Ronda da Noite by the famous Portuguese writer Agustina Bessa Luís.
 * On The Amazing Race 21, a task in Amsterdam had teams re-create The Night Watch using live actors.
 * The painting appears in episode 3 of season 2 of Netflix's Sense8.
 * The painting appeared in episode 5 of the acclaimed 2016 South Korean television series Goblin as an art collection of the character Goblin / Kim Shin (Gong Yoo).
 * The painting appeared in the 2022 videogame Horizon Forbidden West by Guerrilla Games in the art vault of Tilda van der Meer.

Other representations

 * Russian artist Alexander Taratynov created a bronze-cast representation of the famous painting that was displayed in Amsterdam's Rembrandtplein from 2006 to 2009. After displays in other locations, the sculptures returned in 2012 and are now permanently installed in front of Louis Royer's 1852 cast iron statue of Rembrandt.
 * The only full-sized replica in the Western world is displayed by the Canajoharie Library & Art Gallery, in Canajoharie, New York, donated to the library in the early 20th century by the library's founder, Bartlett Arkell.
 * The Rijksmuseum's flashmob 'Our Heroes are Back' recreated The Night Watch in an unsuspecting shopping mall in Breda, Netherlands – published on 1 April 2013 on YouTube.
 * The Night Watch is also replicated in Delft blue at Royal Delft in the Netherlands. This version consists of 480 tiles. Two painters of the manufacture worked simultaneously from the left and right end of the frame, and they met at the center to complete the grand piece. After finishing, both painters recognized that they had a more difficult job as they only used black, to paint The Night Watch. They used the traditional cobalt oxide color adding water to make the lighter shades. Once it was fired at 1,200 degrees Celsius, the black material turns into blue. It seems that this version of The Night Watch, was bought by an unknown buyer and then given to the museum on loan to display to the public.
 * In 2007, Austrian artist Matthias Laurenz Gräff, a distant descendant of Banninck Cocq and De Graeff family, used Rembrandt's Night Watch painting of Frans Banninck Cocq in his painting "Ahnenfolge" (Ancestral Succession/Ancestry) as part of his diploma series and thesis "Weltaußenschau-Weltinnenschau".

title: The Night Watch


text:
Night Watch (Discworld)

Night Watch is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the 29th book in his Discworld series, and the sixth starring the City Watch, published in 2002. The protagonist of the novel is Sir Samuel Vimes, commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. A five-part radio adaptation of the novel was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Night Watch placed second in the annual Locus Poll for best fantasy novel.

Plot summary
On the morning of the 30th anniversary of the Glorious Revolution of the Twenty-Fifth of May (and as such the anniversary of the death of John Keel, Vimes' hero and former mentor), Sam Vimes — whose wife is in labour with their first child — is caught in a storm while pursuing Carcer, a notorious criminal who has murdered several watchmen, to the roof of the Unseen University's Library. He awakens to find that he has somehow been sent back in time.

Vimes's first idea is to ask the wizards at the Unseen University to send him home, but before he can act on this, he is arrested for breaking curfew by a younger version of himself. Incarcerated in a cell next to his is Carcer, who after being released joins the Cable Street Particulars (otherwise known as the Unmentionables), the secret police carrying out the paranoid whims of the Patrician of the time, Homicidal Lord Winder.

When he is taken to be interrogated by the captain, time is frozen by Lu-Tze, who tells Vimes what has happened and that he must assume the identity of Sergeant-At-Arms John Keel, who was to have arrived that day but was murdered by Carcer. It is stated that the event which caused Vimes and Carcer to be sent into the past was a major temporal shattering. Vimes then returns to the office, time restarts and he convinces the captain that he is Keel.

Young Vimes believes Vimes to be Keel, allowing Vimes to teach Young Vimes the lessons for which Vimes idolized Keel. The novel climaxes in the Revolution. Vimes, taking command of the watchmen, successfully avoids the major bloodshed erupting all over the city and manages to keep his part of it relatively peaceful. After dealing with the Unmentionables' headquarters he has his haphazard forces barricade a few streets to keep people safe from the fighting between rebels and soldiers. However, the barricades are gradually pushed forward during the night (by Fred Colon and several other simple-minded watchmen) to encompass the surrounding streets until Vimes finds himself in control of a quarter of the city containing most of its food supplies, dubbed "The Glorious People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road", with a still alive Reg Shoe as one of the leading figures.

The ruler, Lord Winder, is effectively assassinated by the young Assassin's Guild student Havelock Vetinari, and the new Patrician Lord Snapcase calls for a complete amnesty. However, he sees Keel as a threat and sends Carcer to lead a death squad of Unmentionables, watchmen and the palace guard to murder Keel. Several policemen (the ones who died when the barricade fell in the original timeline) are killed in the battle, as is Reg Shoe; Vimes manages to fight off the attack until he can grab Carcer, at which point they are returned to the future and Keel's body is placed in the timeline Vimes has just left, to tie things up, as in the "real" history, Keel died in that fight.

Vimes' son is born, with the help of Doctor "Mossy" Lawn, whom Vimes met while in the past, and Vimes finally arrests Carcer, promising him a fair trial before he is hanged. A subsequent conversation with Lord Vetinari reveals that the Patrician alone knows Vimes took Keel's place, also that he fought alongside Keel's men against Carcer's death squad. He proposes that the old Watch House at Treacle Mine Road (where Keel was sergeant, and which was destroyed by the dragon in Guards! Guards!) be rebuilt, as Vimes outright refuses a monument commemorating the Twenty-Fifth of May.

Characters

 * Carcer
 * Sergeant Fred Colon
 * Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler
 * Dr. Lawn
 * Lu-Tze (Sweeper)
 * Corporal Nobby Nobbs
 * Lady Sybil Ramkin
 * Reg Shoe
 * Mr Slant
 * Havelock Vetinari
 * Sir Samuel Vimes

Background and publication
Night Watch is the twenty-ninth novel in the comic fantasy Discworld series, written by Terry Pratchett, and the sixth to focus on the character of Sam Vimes. Pratchett felt the book was closer to Discworld novels like The Fifth Elephant more so than the first book, The Colour of Magic, believing the series had "evolved", attributing the series' success to its ability to change. Pratchett called the humour in the book "the humour that comes out of bad situations", comparing it to the humour of M*A*S*H. The contents of the book, such as the secret police and the torture chamber, meant that an abundance of gags would seem wrong.

Pratchett commented:
 * "The point was, if I had filled the torture chamber with the comfy chair and soft cushions from Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch for a laugh, that would have been an obscenity."

Paul Kidby illustrated the cover of British edition, with Night Watch being the first main-sequence Discworld novel not to have a cover by the recently deceased Josh Kirby. Kidby had previously worked on Discworld in The Last Hero, The Pratchett Portfolio and Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, establishing "[his] own 'look for the series. Kidby chose to parody Rembrandt's painting Night Watch, an idea he'd had since first reading Guards! Guards!, and talked with Pratchett about what characters to include. Kidby pays tribute to the late artist by placing him in the picture, in the position where Rembrandt is said to have painted himself. At the time, Kidby recalls being criticised for making the cover "too brown".

Reception
The book received critical acclaim. Robert Hanks of The Independent drew attention to a "slight softening of the funny bone" and a "hardening of the issues" in the later Discworld books, commenting on a lesser amount of jokes per page in Night Watch. He criticised the book's slow start, but called the book intriguing for its "Chestertonian common-sense morality" and drew comparison to the book's events to the Bloody Sunday. The New York Times's Therese Littleton praised the book as "transcend[ing] standard genre fare with its sheer schoolboy humour and characters who reject their own stereotypes".

Night Watch won the 2003 Prometheus Award, and came runner-up in the Locus Poll for best fantasy novel. On the suggestion of the book having "darker" themes, Pratchett responded:

Adaptation
A five-part radio adaptation of the novel was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from February 27, 2008 that featured Philip Jackson as Sam Vimes and Carl Prekopp as young Sam.

title: Night Watch (Discworld)


text:
John Robertson (Glasgow MP)

John Webster Robertson (born 17 April 1952) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow North West from 2000 to 2015. Until 2010, he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Yvette Cooper.

Early life
He was born in Anniesland, and was educated at Knightswood Primary School from 1957 to 1964, then Knightswood Secondary School in 1964, before going to Shawlands Senior Secondary from 1964 to 1969. He then began work at the GPO in July 1969, and as part of his work training had further education at Langside College for periods between 1969 and 1985, and at Stow College between 1971 and 1987. He left school and started work for the GPO (P.O., then British Telecom, then BT) on 14 July 1969 as a TTA (Trainee Technician Apprentice), and three years later became a Technician 2A when his initial apprenticeship ended. Robertson then trained for a further two years and became a Technical Officer. In December 1991, he was promoted to management where he stayed until he was given Voluntary Release in September 2000.

Parliamentary career
Robertson joined the Labour Party in 1984, and was first elected to parliament in 2000 at a by-election on 23 November following the death of Donald Dewar, the First Minister of Scotland. He was re-elected at the 2001 election, and after constituency boundaries were redrawn for the 2005 election, he was returned for the larger constituency of Glasgow North West.

Robertson rebelled against his party's Government on three occasions, most notably on a rebel Amendment vote (Division No. 117) prior to the main Declaration of War – Iraq vote (Division No.118). This Amendment said: This House "believes that the case for war against Iraq has not yet been established, especially given the absence of specific United Nations authorisation; but, in the event that hostilities do commence, pledges its total support for the British forces". However, just 45 minutes later he backed the Government on the main vote authorising "all means necessary to ensure the disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", in effect supporting the 2003 Iraq war. He later referred to these events in his September 2013 newsletter published online, in which claimed that he was "one of the 'rebels' who voted against the Iraq War in 2003." During the campaign for the 2015 general election, he participated in a hustings meeting in the Drumchapel district of his Glasgow North West constituency. In response to a question from a member of the public, he repeatedly denied that he had voted for the Iraq War. The SNP candidate, Carol Monaghan, again asserted that Robertson had voted for the Iraq War, to which he responded "not true". These denials led to heated arguments with members of the public who accused him of being a liar. Robertson was defeated by Monaghan at the subsequent election.

The other occasions on which he rebelled against his party were on the declassification of cannabis from a class B to class C drug, something which he has subsequently spoken out on, and over the increase of the number of MSPs at the Scottish Parliament during the Scotland Parliament Bill.

He was Chair All Party Parliamentary Nuclear Energy Group and Chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Communications (apComms) and a member of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee and the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Nuclear Energy Group, Chair of All Party Parliamentary Music Groups, Chair All Party Parliamentary Group on Nigeria and Angola.

In November 2008, Robertson was one of 18 MPs who signed a Commons motion backing a Team GB football team at the 2012 Olympics, saying football "should not be any different from other competing sports and our young talent should be allowed to show their skills on the world stage". The football governing bodies of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are all opposed to a Great Britain team, fearing it would stop them competing as individual nations in future tournaments.

He is a "strong advocate for the place of nuclear power as part of a balanced energy mix in the UK", saying that it provides "not only the cheapest low-carbon energy and therefore a significant opportunity to meet carbon emissions targets, but also with much greater energy security".

Alternative medicine
He is a supporter of homeopathy, having signed an early day motion in support of its continued funding on the National Health Service sponsored by Conservative MP David Tredinnick.

Legislation
Robertson managed to change the law for blind people when he managed to get the Government to accept the amendment he tabled to the Welfare Reform Bill. It changed the rules from 1992 which restricted the higher rate of mobility allowance to people who were physically unable to walk, which meant that a blind person who could walk was denied this extra support for getting around. Under the old rules, discrimination occurred against people with a sensual disability, in favour of a physical disability, when it should have been looking at mobility.

Personal life
Robertson married his wife Eleanor in 1973; they have three daughters: Wendy, Jennifer, and Laura.

MPs' expenses scandal
Robertson was asked to pay back £2975 for excessive expenses claims. This included some £1750 in petty cash. John Robertson claimed £101,577.31 office running costs for 2013–14 and a further £33,861 'other costs' Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority expenses 2013–14 John Robertson employed his daughter, Laura Robertson, as Secretary/Caseworker as detailed in the Register of Members' Financial Interests

title: John Robertson (Glasgow MP)