text:
Talk:Jewish fundamentalism/Archive 1

What is this article supposed to be about?
Uh, what is this article supposed to be about? The title is "Jewish Fundamentalism", but this article contains nothing about this subject at all. Instead, it is about Orthodox Jews who also happen to be political extremists. But most Jewish fundamentalists have no such views. By the academic definition of the term, almost all Orthodox Jews may be termed "Jewish fundamentalists", yet only a tiny percent of them have views even remotely close to what is being claimed here. Also, of those Jews who do have such views, not all of them are religious fundamentalists at all. It seems to me that someone is using this term in a perjorative way, almost as an ad homenim attack. There is little meaningful substance in this entry as of yet. RK

Ok, I have tried to add some content which actually matches the title. But could we get some references to one of the strongest claims here: Do any Jewish settler groups really lay claim to all land between the Nile and the Euphrates? Where do they say this? Sources? And who do these people represent, if anyone? Are the people making such claims representatives of most settlers? (Not that I know of!) RK

Shouldn't we make a new entry to specifically describe the Jewish setllers in the West Bank and Gaza? I would hope that such an entry would portray the full diversity of political and religious views among the settlers, and not just the views of the most radical extremists. RK

 * The term Jewish Fundamentalism is widely used in exactly the meaning that it was originally used in the article (see the several links and books or seach the web). RK as so often has his own definition of terms.

 * Jennifer, stop misleading people and stop using ad homenim attacks. I happen to own some of those sources, and they do not use the term "Jewish fundamentalism" as a synonym for the Israeli settlers movement. For instance, the book "Piety and Power" explicitly states that the vast majority of Jewish fundamentalists are not in any way related to the settler movement. Have you read this book? RK

 * Since we have independent articles on Christian, Muslim and Hindu Fundamentalism, why exclude Judaism? In particular as it is such a widely discussed topic. I also dislike RK's opinion that all intolerant views that are expressed by some Muslims must be thorougly documented in several articles because that is how they are, while intolerance by Israelis should not be given independent articles because it doesn't reflect the viewpoint of all Israelis. /J.

 * Huh? What are you talking about? I agree with you that there should be an article on this topic, and I have even have contributed to it. Further, please stop misrepresenting about my beliefs. I find it distressing that you would fabricate a position I do not have, and then attack me for this non-existent belief. Please calm down. What I actually said to you was that the title was wrong, and that we should have an article in which the title reflects the content. So how do you twist that into an excuse for personal attacks on me? RK

A general question: is there a page on Wiki that explores the differing perspectives on the Arab-Israeli conflict that exist between the United States and Europe? It is often commented on, and having got to see some news coverage from the major American networks, it is quite dramatic. Whereas Europe reports Israel's involvement in places like the West Bank as 'occupation' and is quite sympathetic to the Palestinians (or at least explores their point of view), the identical story on the major US networks is usually carried from a dramatically more pro-Israeli perspective. (Americans coming to Europe often comment on the differing news coverage also - saying that Europeans get what they say - I'm only repeating what I've heard, not expressing an opinion - is a more balanced reporting of both sides than they ever get from the major networks states-side. ) JTD 02:47 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)

What would you suggest, Robert, for the title. I might suggest that 'fundamentalism' not be capitalised. and Jay, maybe this should be a subject within the media bias article. - Steven

Israeli settlement

 * See the article Israeli settlement. RK

The following has been removed from the article. I have not heardof this before, and I was unable to verify its accuracy. "Some Jewish setters in the West Bank and Gaza believe that a large portion of the Middle East has been given to the Jewish people by God. Some lay claim to all land between the Nile in Egypt and the river Euphrates in Syria, citing Biblical references from Genesis.  People in this group interpret the concept of being God's chosen people in a way that can be described as racist. They often support ethnic cleansing of present day Israel as well as the West Bank and Gaza to rid the area of Palestinian Arabs."

I did find a version of this claim (i.e. that all Israelis wish to conquer most of the middle-east) on a number of anti-Semitic sites that promoted anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, but I have been unable to find any quotes from actual Jewish organizations or groups that actually have this as a position. At the moment, it seems to be a widely believed myth. Of course, I would believe that if you look hard enough, you will find some individual Jews who do hold such views. You will also find individual Jews who hold that they were abducted by Space Aliens, under the leadership of Elvis Presley. What I am concerned about is how representative this claim is. Do more than a handful of kooks make this claim? If not, it should not be in this entry. Do a substantial minority really hold to this view? Then it should be discussed. I just would like to see some sort of authentication. RK

Unfortunately, there are settlers in various West Bank settlements that do believe that. Yes, they are an extreme fringe, but, for example, Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, formerly the rabbi of Yamit in the Sinai and now of the Temple Institute of the Old City, wrote a book about the biblical boundaries of the land of Israel. I believe it was called Gevulot Ha-Aretz. He does have a small following, particulalry in Kiryat Arab and Kfar Tapuach, both West Bank settlements. According to how I understand him, the Jews do not have to conquer the land, but if they do come to control it, they are forbidden to give it up. This was especially relevant with regard to Lebanon after the 1982 invasion. He even produced a pamphlet about it, which I own, called Ha-Har ha-Tov ha-Zeh ve-ha-Levanon. Once again though, it is a minority fringe, though there are some rabbis who will advocate that. Another one is Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba (chief rabbi of the town and head, with Eliezer Waldman, of the yeshivah there)--but note that because of his extremist positions he was denied the job of Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. I have personally heard him state his position on it. Danny 00:17 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanks very much. I guess this is enough to warrant bringing this deleted section back into the article (unfortunately...) I am thinking about moving this text into the article on Israeli settlement, rather than keeping it here. It just seems that the great majority of those who could be considered Jewish fundamentalists don't have views which match the original content of this article, written by Jennifer.  I suspect I would get along much better with those Jews who claim that "they were abducted by Space Aliens, under the leadership of Elvis Presley" than members of the "Temple Institute". RK

It would not serve the case that "there is no pro-Israeli bias" for there to be continued designs on splitting up articles critical of Jews, while leaving a disproportionate articles critical of others. This is not to say that the accusation needs to be responded to directly - or to take a defensive stance. I throw it out as a possibility. However, from my point of view, once again, it must be stated that these are issues of arrogance, and one is never wrong to point out such arrogance. 1. -Stevert

 * Stevertigo is a bald-faced liar; His claims are pure fiction. As anyone can see for themselves, the only issue was that Jennifer mistakenly began writing about the radical wing of Israeli settlers in the wrong encyclopedia entry. RK

Firstly, it is nice to see that RK does not succumb to the temptation of ad homenim attacks. Secondly, it is in fact so that the term Jewish Fundamentalism is most commonly applied to hardline religious settlers and their likeminded co-religionists. It's an established term and thus I hold the original text was not misplaced. Still, I welcome Danny's opinion here since he has a record of balanced and knowledgable judgement on these issues. In addition, though hardline settlers are a fairly small minority, they are well organized, have some political clout in Israel and are far from irrelevant. /J.

 * Um, Jennifer, it is not an ad homenim attack to point out when Wikipedia is being vandalized by a liar. I am saddened to see that you support writing deliberate fictions, and passing them off as fact. Further, you are simply wrong on this terminology. In fact, the sources which you cited explicitly contradict you. Doesn't this bother you? RK

Sorry RK, naturally calling someone a bald-face liar isn't personal, just an unemotional statement of fact.

Regarding definition of Fundamentalist Judaism: A good source which I linked to is "For the Land and the Lord" by Ian S Lustick, Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He says about Jewish Fundamentalism: "Historically the movement is a zealous spin-off of Zionism that burst upon the Israeli scene in the triumphant days following the 1967 war" (in the preface) and in general he discusses Jewish Fundamentalism in a way similar to what I tried to do in the original article. He specifically differentiates Jewish Fundamentalism from traditionally pious people, e.g. Orthodox Jewry. Hence, so far, I am not bothered. I feel that the way you try to define the term is unconventional.

Hence, I repeat: Jewish Fundamentalism is most commonly applied to hardline religious settlers and their likeminded co-religionists. It's an established term and thus I hold the original text was not misplaced. Nevertheless, I am not a fundamentalist about this, so I will yield to good arguments. /J.

My turn. Actually, I tend to agree with Jennifer on this one. In the literature that I have seen, religious settlers in the West Bank are usually described as messianic and fundamentalist. On the other hand, fundamentalism can also be used to describe a number of different phenomena in contemporary Judaism, of which the Israeli settler movement is just one. The growth of the newly-Orthodox (the Baal teshuva) movement is another example of fundamentalism, and it is important because it is not just confined to Israel. In other words, I think RK is right too that there are other phenomenon that can also be called Jewish fundamentalist (and for this and the other articles, we need a good sociological definition of "fundie"). What does it all boil down to? I think the settlers should stay here as one very prominent group of Jewish fundamentalists, but the article should also be expanded to include other forms of Jewish fundamentalism as well (the baal teshuva movement, the rise of Shas, Habad, etc.). How's that for a compromise? Danny 04:25 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

 * A Solomonic judgment. I didn't know about Baal teshuva. /J.

"Sorry RK, naturally calling someone a bald-face liar isn't personal, just an unemotional statement of fact." - No, /J - you had it right the first time... -Stevert

title: Talk:Jewish fundamentalism/Archive 1


text:
Urban area of Copenhagen

The urban area of Copenhagen (also known as Greater Copenhagen) (Storkøbenhavn or Hovedstadsområdet), lying mostly in the Capital Region of Denmark but also in Region Zealand, consist of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg municipalities and the former Copenhagen County. In all, it consists of 18 municipalities, and except parts of Ballerup, Greve (of former Roskilde County), Ishøj, former Søllerød and former Værløse, mentioned with (the part of) their population included from 2007. Ishøj and Greve Strand are included for the first time since 1999. As of 1 January 2024, this area had a population of 1,378,649. Statistics Denmark states that the definition of the urban area is based on UN's 200m definition.

List of municipalities
According to Danmarks Statistik, since January 1, 2007 Hovedstadsområdet (English: the Capital area) comprises the following municipalities (kommune) (population, as of 1 January 2018, mentioned if only part of the municipality belongs to the urban area) :

 * Copenhagen (a large area of western Amager is unpopulated) - 644,431
 * Frederiksberg - 104,410
 * Albertslund - 27,743
 * Ballerup - 48,295
 * Brøndby - 35,538
 * Furesø (former Farum and Værløse) - 40,911
 * Gentofte - 75,803
 * Gladsaxe - 69,484
 * Glostrup - 22,663
 * Greve Strand - 49,974
 * Herlev - 28,572
 * Hvidovre - 53,282
 * Ishøj - 22,988
 * Lyngby-Taarbæk - 55,472
 * Rødovre - 39,343
 * Rudersdal (former Birkerød and Søllerød) - 55,989
 * Taastrup - 50.686
 * Tårnby (a very large area of western Amager and the Saltholm (2 inhabitants (2020)) and Peberholm (nature habitat) islands are unpopulated) - 43,063
 * Vallensbæk - 16,280

Hovedstadsområdet vs. urban area of Copenhagen
However Hovedstadsområdet ("The Capital Area") is not a definition for the urban area of Copenhagen. The area does not follow the recommendations of the United Nations regarding urban definitions (i.e. 200 meters between buildings as the required minimum) and is used for statistic issues only. The main difference between "Hovedstadsområdet" and common urban area definition (or city limits) involves the islands of Amager, Saltholm and Peberholm, and primarily the municipality of Tårnby. Copenhagen Municipality, Tårnby Municipality and Dragør Municipality is the three Municipality's on The Island of Amager.

"Hovedstadsområdet" contains the entire Copenhagen and Tårnby municipalities, although the latter contains large areas without buildings and inhabitants. This also applies to a smaller part of Copenhagen on Amager island.

The western part of Amager is an enlargement from a shallow part of the Øresund sea, gained from the sea during the 1930s to 1950s. This extended part of Amager is split between Copenhagen and Tårnby municipalities, and is only built-up on two minor areas. It also includes along the harbour and around Bella Center (which hosted the climate meeting COP 15 in December 2009). Apart from these smaller areas and an allotment-garden cottage area, the vast majority of western Amager is unplanned, with few buildings (like a shooting range). The cause for this creation was mainly to give shelter to the southern part of Copenhagen harbour. Since the area is now filled out with big stones, sand from the sea, plaster, wastes and unknown items, building in the area is expensive. Not even agriculture is possible due to bad soil. (However the southern part of Amager has agricultural areas and even a small forest, "Kongelunden" ("King's Grove"). These areas belong to a third municipality of Amager island, Dragør.)

Some of the unused area belongs to Copenhagen Municipality, but the Dragør Municipality and Tårnby Municipality part is far larger. Also the almost unpopulated islands of "Saltholm" (3 inhabitants in 2010) and "Peberholm" (unpopulated) belongs to Tårnby, and so does the taxi and runway system of Copenhagen Airport (with three long runways). In all, most of Tårnby and a minor part of Copenhagen municipalities on Amager island cannot be regarded as an urban area. Consequently, "Hovedstadsområdet" does not equal an urban area of Copenhagen.

Neither the Danish statistic authority "Danmarks Statistik" (which presents information regarding "Hovedstadsområdet") or the Danish geographical institute "Kort og Matrikelstyrelsen" (which determines the borders of "Hovedstadsområdet") states that "Hovedstadsområdet" is an urban area of Copenhagen. For internal Danish matters this is of no importance. But when comparing Copenhagen with other cities, the unpopulated non-urban areas of Amager, Saltholm and Peberholm do make a difference in f.i. terms of population density.

, Copenhagen lacks official urban borders for comparison with other cities. "Hovedstadsområdet" is an area invented primarily for statistical matters. It is rarely used in conversation (as a defined area). Sometimes in media the word "Hovedstadsområdet" represents a metropolitan area from Køge in the south to Elsinore in the north and Roskilde in the west. For instance, a regional television channel called "Hovedstads-TV", "Kanal Hovedstaden", "Kanal København" and "TV2 Lorry" and other "Local-TV Channels" covers this larger area and so on. But even in nationwide public service television news, the word "Hovedstadsområdet" may refer to either what the Danish statistic institute defines as "Hovedstadsområdet" or the metropolitan area.

Another similar area is "Storkøbenhavn" (eng. "Greater Copenhagen"). This is used by "Vejdirektoratet" ("the road authority") only. Just "Copenhagen" may refer either to the municipality, which has quite stingy borders (and totally surrounds Frederiksberg municipality), or the entire city, which does not have defined borders.

Until the 1970s, the city region of Copenhagen (København) was stated as the three municipalities Copenhagen, Frederiksberg and Gentofte. A better description of the city core (excluding all suburbs) would be south of the Dyrehaven forest in the north, the area east of the motorway called "motorring 3" and north of the motorway across Amager island which continues towards Sweden. This area includes Copenhagen (with Frederiksberg), Gentofte, most of Gladsaxe, Rødovre, Hvidovre and a part of Tårnby municipalities This area has around 900.000 to 950.000 inhabitants.

Urban Copenhagen and this city region are statistical abstracts only and have no political and/or administrative implications.

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

title: Urban area of Copenhagen


text:
Campanulaceae

The family Campanulaceae (also bellflower family), of the order Asterales, contains nearly 2400 species in 84 genera of herbaceous plants, shrubs, and rarely small trees, often with milky sap. Among them are several familiar garden plants belonging to the genera Campanula (bellflower), Lobelia, and Platycodon (balloonflower). Campanula rapunculus (rampion or r. bellflower) and Codonopsis lanceolata are eaten as vegetables. Lobelia inflata (indian tobacco), L. siphilitica and L. tupa (devil's tobacco) and others have been used as medicinal plants. Campanula rapunculoides (creeping bellflower) may be a troublesome weed, particularly in gardens, while Legousia spp. may occur in arable fields.

Most current classifications include the segregate family Lobeliaceae in Campanulaceae as subfamily Lobelioideae. A third subfamily, Cyphioideae, includes the genus Cyphia, and sometimes also the genera Cyphocarpus, Nemacladus, Parishella and Pseudonemacladus. Alternatively, the last three genera are placed in Nemacladoideae, while Cyphocarpus is placed in its own subfamily, Cyphocarpoideae.

This family is almost cosmopolitan, occurring on all continents except Antarctica. In addition, species of the family are native to many remote oceanic islands and archipelagos. Hawaii is particularly rich, with well over 100 endemic species of Hawaiian lobelioids. Continental areas with high diversity are South Africa, California and the northern Andes.

Habitats range from extreme deserts to rainforests and lakes, from the tropics to the high Arctic (Campanula uniflora), and from sea cliffs to high alpine habitats.

Description
Although most Campanulaceae are perennial herbs (sometimes climbing, as in Codonopsis), there is also a large number of annuals e.g. species of Legousia. Isotoma hypocrateriformis is a succulent annual from Australia's dry interior. There are also biennials, e.g. the commonly cultivated ornamental Campanula medium (Canterbury bells). Many perennial campanuloids grow in rock-crevices, such as Musschia aurea (Madeira) and Petromarula pinnata (Crete). Some lobelioids also grow on rocks, e.g. the peculiar perennial stem succulent Brighamia rockii in Hawaii. Insular and tropical montane species in particular are often more or less woody and may bear the leaves in a dense rosette. When, in addition, the plant is unbranched, the result may be a palm- or treefern-like habit, as in species of the hawaiian genus Cyanea, which comprises the tallest of Campanulaceae, C. leptostegia (up to 14 m). Lysipomia are minute cushion plants of the high Andes, while gigant rosette-forming lobelias (e.g., Lobelia deckenii) are a characteristic component of the vegetation in the alpine zone on the tropical African volcanoes. In the Himalaya Campanula modesta and Cyananthus microphyllus reach even higher, probably setting the altitudinal record for the family at 4800 m. Several species are associated with freshwater, such as Lobelia dortmanna, an isoetid common in oligotrophic lakes in the boreal zone of North America and Europe, and Howellia aquatilis, an elodeid growing in ponds in SW North America.

There is usually abundant, white latex, but occasionally the exudate is clear and/or very sparse, as in Jasione.

Tubers occur in several genera, e.g. Cyphia.

Leaves are often alternate, more rarely opposite (e. g. Codonopsis) or whorled (Ostrowskia). They are simple (Petromarula one of very few exceptions) entire (repeatedly divided in spp. of Cyanea), but often with dentate margin. Stipules are absent.

Inflorescences are quite diverse, including both cymose and racemose types. In Jasione they are strongly condensed and resemble asteraceous capitula. In a few species, e. g. Cyananthus lobatus, flowers are solitary.

Flowers are bisexual (dioecious in Dialypetalum) and protandrous. Petals are fused into a corolla with 3 to 8 lobes. It may be bell- or star-shaped in subfamily Campanuloideae, while tubular and bilaterally symmetric in most Lobelioideae. Blue of various shades is the most common petal colour, but purple, red, pink, orange, yellow, white, and green also occur. The corolla may be down to 1 mm wide and long in some species of Wahlenbergia. At the other extreme, it reaches a width of 15 cm in Ostrowskia.

Stamens are equal in number to, and alternating with the petals. Anthers may be fused into a tube, as in all species of Lobelioideae and some Campanuloideae (e.g. Symphyandra)

Within the family pollen grains are often tricolporate, less commonly triporate, tricolpate, or pantoporate.

Carpel number is usually 2, 3 or 5 (8 in Ostrowskia), and corresponds to the number of stigmatic lobes.

The style is in various ways involved in the "presentation" of the pollen, as in several other families of the order Asterales. In Lobelioideae, pollen is, already in the bud stage, released into the tube formed by the anthers. During flowering, it is pushed up by the elongating style and "presented" to visiting pollinators at the apex of the tube, a mechanism described as a pollen pump. The style eventually protrudes through the anther tube, and becomes receptive to pollen. In Campanuloideae, the pollen is instead packed between hairs on the style, gradually being released as the hairs invaginate. Subsequently, the stigmatic lobes unfold, and become receptive.

Bees and birds (particularly hummingbirds and hawaiian honeycreepers) are probably the most common pollinators of Campanulaceae. A few confirmed and many probable cases of bat-pollination are known, particularly in the genus Burmeistera. Brighamia and Hippobroma have pale or white flowers with a long-tubed corolla, and are pollinated by hawkmoths. Pollination by lizards has been reported for Musschia aurea and Nesocodon mauritianus.

The ovary is usually inferior or, in some species, semi-inferior. Very rarely is it completely superior (e.g. Cyananthus). In Campanumoea javanica, calyx and corolla diverge from the ovary at different levels.

Berries are a common fruit-type in Lobelioideae (Burmeistera, Clermontia, Centropogon, Cyanea etc.), whilst rare in Campanuloideae (Canarina being one of few examples). Capsules, with very varying modes of dehiscence, are otherwise the predominating fruit type in the family.

Seeds are mostly small (<2 mm) and numerous.

Subfamilies and genera
The Angiosperm Phylogeny Website divides the family into five subfamilies.

Campanuloideae

 * Adenophora - Europe and Asia
 * Asyneuma - S. Europe and Asia
 * Azorina - Azores
 * Berenice - Réunion
 * Campanula - mostly N hemisphere
 * Campanulastrum Small (may be included in Campanula)
 * Canarina - Canary Islands and E Africa
 * Codonopsis - E Asia
 * Craterocapsa - South Africa
 * Cryptocodon - C Asia
 * Cyananthus - E Asia
 * Cyclocodon Griff. ex Hook.f. & Thomson
 * Cylindrocarpa - C Asia
 * Echinocodon - China
 * Edraianthus - SE Europe and W Asia
 * Favratia Feer
 * Feeria - Morocco
 * Githopsis - W N America
 * Gunillaea - Tropical Africa and Madagascar
 * Hanabusaya - Korea
 * Heterochaenia - Réunion
 * Heterocodon - SW N America
 * Himalacodon D.Y.Hong & Qiang Wang (may be included in Codonopsis)
 * Homocodon - China
 * Jasione - Europe and SW Asia
 * Kericodon Cupido
 * Legousia - Europe and N Africa
 * Merciera - South Africa
 * Michauxia - Middle East
 * Microcodon - South Africa
 * Muehlbergella Feer
 * Musschia - Madeira
 * Namacodon - SW Africa
 * Nesocodon - Mauritius
 * Ostrowskia - C Asia
 * Pankycodon D.Y.Hong & X.T.Ma (may be included in Codonopsis)
 * Peracarpa - SE Asia
 * Petromarula - Crete
 * Physoplexis - Alps
 * Phyteuma - Europe and Asia
 * Platycodon - E Asia
 * Prismatocarpus - Southern Africa
 * Pseudocodon D.Y.Hong & H.Sun (may be included in Codonopsis)
 * Rhigiophyllum - South Africa
 * Roella - South Africa
 * Rotanthella Morin (may be included in Campanula)
 * Sachokiella Kolak.
 * Sergia - C Asia
 * Siphocodon - South Africa
 * Theilera - South Africa
 * Theodorovia - C Asia
 * Trachelium - SE Europe, Middle East and C Asia
 * Treichelia - South Africa
 * Triodanis - Americas and S Europe
 * Wahlenbergia - mostly Southern hemisphere
 * Zeugandra - Iran

Lobelioideae

 * Apetahia - Society Islands
 * Brighamia - Hawaii
 * Burmeistera - N Andes and C America
 * Centropogon - Neotropics
 * Clermontia - Hawaii
 * Cyanea - Hawaii
 * Delissea - Hawaii
 * Dialypetalum - Madagascar
 * Diastatea - Neotropics
 * Dielsantha - Tropical Africa
 * Downingia - W N America and S S America
 * Grammatotheca - South Africa
 * Heterotoma - Mexico
 * Hippobroma - W Indies
 * Howellia - SW N America
 * Isotoma - Australia
 * Legenere - California
 * Lobelia, including Hypsela, Laurentia, Pratia, Trimeris - cosmopolitan
 * Lysipomia - Andes
 * Monopsis - Southern Africa
 * Palmerella - California
 * Porterella - SW N America
 * Ruthiella - New Guinea
 * Sclerotheca - Society Islands
 * Siphocampylus - Neotropics
 * Solenopsis - S Europe and N Africa
 * Trematolobelia - Hawaii
 * Unigenes - South Africa
 * Wimmerella - South Africa

Cyphioideae
 * Cyphia - Africa

Cyphocarpoideae
 * Cyphocarpus - N Chile

Nemacladoideae
 * Nemacladus, syn. Parishella - SW N America
 * Pseudonemacladus - Mexico

, Plants of the World Online includes some genera in Campanulaceae that are not included by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Website:

 * Eastwoodiella Morin
 * Hesperocodon Eddie & Cupido
 * Lithotoma E.B.Knox
 * Melanocalyx (Fed.) Morin
 * Palustricodon Morin
 * Poolea Morin
 * Protocodon Morin
 * Ravenella  Morin
 * Smithiastrum Morin
 * Wimmeranthus Rzed.

Fossil record
The earliest known occurrence of Campanulaceae pollen is from Oligocene strata. Earliest Campanulaceae macrofossils dated, are seeds of †Campanula paleopyramidalis from 17-16  million years old Miocene deposits in the Nowy Sacz, Carpathians, Poland. It is a close relative of the extant Campanula pyramidalis.

Chemical compounds
Members of subfamily Lobelioideae contain the alkaloid lobeline. The principal storage carbohydrate of Campanulaceae is inulin, a fructan also occurring in the related Asteraceae.

title: Campanulaceae


text:
Psychology of learning

The psychology of learning refers to theories and research on how individuals learn. There are many theories of learning. Some take on a more behaviorist approach which focuses on inputs and reinforcements. Other approaches, such as neuroscience and social cognition, focus more on how the brain's organization and structure influence learning. Some psychological approaches, such as social constructivism, focus more on one's interaction with the environment and with others. Other theories, such as those related to motivation, like the growth mindset, focus more on individuals' perceptions of ability.

Extensive research has looked at how individuals learn, both inside and outside the classroom.

Early approaches
Prior to the 1950s, psychological learning theory varied across countries. In Germany, gestalt psychology viewed psychological concepts holistically, such as the human mind and behavior. An emphasis was placed on trying to understand the overarching phenomenon of a psychological concept and how it connects with other ideas. This also led to a focus on problem-solving as a construct to be explored in the 1920s and 1930s.

In America, there was a strong emphasis on behaviorism, which focused on exploring observable behavior. Learning mechanisms were often tested on animals. Russia, or the Soviet Union at the time, provided a cultural-historical approach towards psychology that described learning in the context of one's environment. Learning was viewed as a phenomenon that can be directed and supported in institutions like schools. Another significant theory was Jean Piaget's constructivism, which described how learners construct knowledge by expanding and changing their ideas based on the information they receive. Sigmund Freud's work on psychoanalysis and John Dewey's theories on schooling and learning were also major influences during this time.

1950s–1960s
After World War II, two major learning theories became prominent. One was behaviorism, which stemmed from the work of B. F. Skinner and others. Skinner viewed human behavior as determined by an individual's interactions with one's environment. He argued that humans are controlled by external factors such that human learning is predicated on the environmental information one receives from one's surroundings. Starting in the 1960s, behaviorism expanded to consider more complicated forms of learning, such as Albert Bandura's concept of social learning and Dane Thomas Nissen's learning theory of culmination. These could not be explained adequately through behaviorism.

In addition, a humanistic view of psychology, led by psychologists Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow, grew. In 1951, Rogers introduced the concepts of client-based therapy and introduced related terms such as "student-centered teacher" and "significant learning". Maslow's hierarchy of needs model influenced the psychology of learning because it described how people needed to meet their basic physical, social, and mental needs before they could address other less basic needs.

1970s and beyond
During the 1970s, learning began to be viewed as an integral part of life and the world as it started to be seen as a part of personal and social enrichment. Concepts such as lifelong learning and adult education started to appear as people began to view learning as a daily process throughout life.

The Russian cultural-historical approach started to be adopted. This approach viewed learning as interacting with incentives in the environment. For instance, Ute Holzkamp-Osterkamp viewed motivation as interconnected with learning. Lev Vygotsky's zone of proximal development influenced educators to view learning activities in relation to the students' comfort zones.

Kenneth Gergen introduced the social constructionism approach, which posits that individuals construct mental structures from their social connections and environment. Hence, although learning can happen individually, it can only be evaluated in a social context. Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger, in their book Situated Learning, also stated that the environmental context influenced the learning outcomes.

Experiential learning, described by David Kolb, defines learning as an iterative process of experience, reflection, conceptualization, and experimentation. Robert Kegan established a constructive-developmental approach that expands upon Piaget's stages of child development into a lifelong process that includes adulthood. In 1991, the American psychologist Howard Gardner wrote The Unschooled Mind, which focused on three types of learning: intuitive learning, school learning, and expert learning. Intuitive learning, the most natural, occurs mostly in the preschool years; school learning is the learning children engage in during the school years, and intuitive-expert learning is the type of learning Gardner argues everyone should strive towards.

Socrates
Socrates (469-399 B.C.) introduced a method of learning known as piloting, through which one arrives at one's own answers through power of reasoning. Socrates, in dialogue with Meno, taught this method by teaching a slave boy who knew nothing about Euclidean geometry the Pythagorean theorem. He did so by asking questions or rephrasing them until the correct answer was found. Socrates strongly supported the idea that knowledge is innate and can be found from within, a concept known as anamnesis.

Hermann Ebbinghaus
Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850—1909) examined learning by studying rote memory and forgetting. With himself as his own experimental subject, he used meaningless syllables to form lists that he read several times until he could restate them with high accuracy. He also attempted to recall the same lists with delays of a few days or months and then recorded his discoveries as learning curves and forgetting curves.

Edward Thorndike
Edward Thorndike (1874–1949) presented his theory of the "Law of Effect" in 1898. According to this theory, humans and other animals learn behaviors through trial-and-error methods. Once a functioning solution is found, these behaviors are likely to be repeated during the same or similar task. It was his work on learning theory that resulted in operant conditioning within behaviorism. His theory of operant conditioning is learning from the consequences of our actions and behavior.

Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849–1936), a Russian physiologist, contributed to research on learning. Knowing that a hungry dog salivates when food is present, he trained dogs to salivate to an arbitrary external stimuli. This was done by pairing a natural stimulus (such as food) with a novel stimulus (e.g., a metronome) to provoke the desired response in dogs. That proved his thesis that he could make a dog salivate by just the presentation of the sound of a bell. Pavlov's behavioristic approach to learning became known as classical conditioning.

John Broadus Watson
John Broadus Watson (1878–1958) also used this method of learning (e.g., he caused a young child, not previously afraid of furry animals, to become frightened of them) and argued that it was sufficient for the science of psychology, specifically behaviorism. Watson is often referred to as being the founder of the school of behaviorism. From 1920 to 1960, this school influenced a great deal of North American psychology.

Burrhus F. Skinner
Burrhus F. Skinner (1904-1990) developed operant conditioning, in which specific behaviors resulted from stimuli, which caused them to appear more or less frequently. By the 1920s, John B. Watson's ideas had become popular and influential in the world of psychology and classical conditioning was being explored by other behaviorists. Skinner's was one of these behaviorists. He thought that in order to understand behavior we needed to look at the causes of an action and its consequences. He called this operant conditioning. Skinner is referred to as the father of operant conditioning but his theory stems from the works presented by Edward Thorndike.

Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget is known for his theory of cognitive development that describes how children create a mental model of the world around them. His theory is important because it is one of the first theories that disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a steadfast trait. His theory sees cognitive development as something that happens because of biological maturation and one's interaction with their surrounding environment. Piaget did not want to measure a child's knowledge, like an I.Q. score, instead he focused on how children did with fundamental concepts. Piaget's theory has four stages. The sensorimotor stage which is birth to 18–24 months. The preoperational stage is toddler ages (18–24 months) to early childhood, age 7. The concrete operational stage, ages 7 to 12. Then the formal operation stage which is adolescence to adulthood. Before Piaget's theory it was believed that children were just less competent thinkers but this theory and his stages helped to show that children think in significantly differently ways than adults do.

Lev Vygotsky
Lev Vygotsky is best known for his theory in cognitive development known as social development theory. Vygotsky was developing his theories of cognitive development around the same time that Jean Piaget was developing his theories. Vygotsky believed that social interaction plays a critical role in cognitive development. He places a large emphasis on culture and how it affects cognitive development. He also sees the importance of adults in cognitive development in children. Vygotsky says that development cannot be understood without referring back to the social and also the cultural context in which it is embedded. Vygotsky claimed that learning occurs via skillful interaction in which the child is with someone who models behaviors or gives instructions for the child to follow, most likely a parent or a teacher. The child tries to understand the instructions or actions provided and then stores the information so they can use it to guide their future performances. Piaget's theory says that a child's development must follow their learning, Vygotsky disagreed with this. He believed that social learning tends to come before development.

Psychology of learning theories
Learning theories are attempts to better understand and explain learning processes. There are several different theories that account for learning.

Neuroscience
The neuroscience of learning focuses on the relationships among the central nervous system, learning, and behavior. This central nervous system (CNS) is composed of the brain and spinal cord which are responsible for controlling behavior. This differs from the autonomic nervous system which relates with more autonomous functions such as respiration and digestion. Within the CNS, there are neurons, which send messages within and from the brain to the rest of body through electrical and chemical signals. The CNS also has glial cells which assist neurons in the communication process. These neurons communicate and form connections, also called consolidation, to form a person's cognition. Hence, learning, from a neuroscience perspective, focuses on how the organization of this neural network changes through the use and reception of information.

Neuroscience has an explanation for the acquisition of memory. In the brain, there are two types of memory called working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM). WM is memory of immediate thoughts; it is a memory that collects, organizes, and retains sensory information for a short time. Information in WM needs to be repeated in order to be retained. LTM, also called permanent memory, is memory that is retained for the long-term. Hence, a concept is considered "learned" when information from WM enters and gets stored into LTM.

Neuroscience also plays a role in related areas such as motivation and self-regulation. Motivation, a psychological component related to learning, also has an explanation through neuroscience. Overall, the brain has a disposition towards rewards and outcomes related to pleasure. In fact, it bring out certain chemical and opiates that give a natural high increasing a person's motivation. Self-regulation, which plays a significant factor into learning, are also represented by the brain's synaptic connections. These particular connections between self-regulatory activities and tasks help people to regulate their learning.

Behaviorism
Behaviorism views knowledge as a collection of behavioral responses towards different stimuli in the environment. In behaviorism, learning is promoted by positive reinforcement and reiteration. Throughout the history of psychology, there have been many different behaviorist learning theories. All these theories relate stimulus with response such that a person or animal learns and changes its behavior based upon the stimulus it receives. One significant theory proposed by B.F, Skinner is operant conditioning. This theory claims that the consequences from behaviors will determine future behavior. Consequences to behavior that are positive, and therefore reinforcing, will increase the corresponding behavior. However, consequences that are punishing will decrease behavior.

In a behaviorist perspective, motivation is due to the consequences of behavior and hence completely external. If a consequence is positive, that will further increase one's motivation and eventually one's behavior. On the other hand, if a consequence is negative, one's motivation and behavior will decrease. Behaviorism exists in many current models for learning such as rewards and consequences in classrooms and other incentives like having content mastery goals. However, it does not account for all aspects of learning. Memory, for instance, is not addressed as behaviorism does not consider internal processes. Nevertheless, learning surrounding behaviorism is still very prevalent today.

Social cognitive theory
Social cognitive theory proposes that much of human learning occurs through the social environment. Many ideas surrounding social cognitive theory were proposed by Albert Bandura, a clinical psychologist. Unlike behaviorism, which argues that learning is caused through the reinforcement of actions and routines, social cognitive theory provides a cognitive component for learning. For instance, learning can occur purely through observation, where a person can gain knowledge of a concept or acquire an understanding of a rule, attitude, beliefs, without actually acting out any of these respective ideas.

Models also play a significant great role in learning according to social cognitive theory. For instance, a person can gain useful knowledge and understanding through information gained from the model. However, solely observing models does not guarantee one will master the concepts represented in the model. Instead, these models provide information about possible outcomes and inform how the observer should act. Hence, while learning can occur without actually partaking in any enactive learning (learning by doing), the social cognitive theory learning is most effective when it is done enactively and vicariously (learning through observation).

Social cognitive theory describes human behavior as agentic meaning that humans have intentions and agendas that drive their behavior. This perspective explains lot of human learning behavior such as setting goals and regulating one's thoughts, emotions, and behavior for the purpose of learning.

Information processing theories
Information processing theories focus on the ways information is collected, analyzed, and stored in the human brain. While there is no single information processing theory, there are several theories that can be categorized about information processing theory. One model, proposed by many information processing theorists, is the two-store memory model. Also called the dual memory model, the two-store memory model describes learning as storing information and knowledge from one's environment into one's short-term memory (STM) and eventually into one's long-term memory (LTM). To elaborate, information about your environment is collected through your senses. This information is then entered into your STM, also called working memory (WM). From the STM, some of this information is rehearsed and eventually encoded into the LTM where it is then stored permanently.

Alternate models have been proposed in regards to how information is processed. For instance, some argue that there is one type of memory in the brain which has different levels of processing within it. Nevertheless, the classical model poses memory as dual memory (short-term and long-term) model.

Another related theory is the dual-code theory which splits the brain processes into two systems: an imaginal system and a verbal system. The imaginal system primarily stores concrete events and objects while the verbal system stores more abstract information from language. This theory also allows for knowledge transfer within both systems as images, expressed through verbal language, can be encoded and placed into the imaginal system.

While these theories can be traced back to gestalt psychology, many of these theories were influenced by the rise of technology, neuroscience, and communications.

Constructivism
Constructivism is a philosophical perspective which argues that much of what one learns and understands about the world is constructed. Constructivists believe that knowledge is created within and reject the idea of pre-existing scientific knowledge waiting to be discovered. With that in mind, constructivists argue that learning needs to be structured so that they challenge students to make sense of new knowledge.

Theories from two major psychologists, Piaget and Vygotsky, form the foundational ideas of constructivism: cognitive constructivism and social constructivism.

Cognitive constructivism
Cognitive constructivism, stemming from Jean Piaget's theories, sees learning as adding new information to cognitive structures that are already there. Piaget's theory claim that people cognitively develop by passing through several stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

The sensorimotor stage, which occurs from birth to around age 2, is when children act spontaneously to make sense of their world. Much of these actions are sensory in nature (e.g. touching) and rooted in present action. The preoperational stage occurs between ages 2 to 7 and is categorized by children being able to reflect briefly on the past and imagine the future. However, in the preoperational stage, most of one's thinking in this stage is still grounded in one's experiences in the present. The concrete operational stage, which occurs between ages 7 to 11, is when children rapidly grow cognitively and drastically improve their basic skills and language. Here, children can demonstrate some abstract thinking although much of this thinking is still grounded by actions. The formal operational stage, which starts around age 11 and goes on to adulthood, is the last developmental stage in Piaget's theory. This stage expands upon the concrete operational stage by using higher levels of thinking such as hypothetical thinking, more developed abstract thinking, and idealistic thinking.

Throughout these motivational stages, the mechanism in which the children and people learn, is through a concept called equilibrium. This mechanism is the process where an individual is able to resolve cognitive conflicts by either applying one's beliefs to one's experiences (a process called assimilation) or by changing one's beliefs to accommodate new experiences and information when encountering new situations or concepts.

Social constructivism
Social constructivism, like its name suggests, believes that knowledge and learning is gained within social situations. Led by psychologist Lev Vygotsky, social constructivism has a more sociocultural approach. This approach argues that the social environment facilitates learning through certain tools such objects, language, and organizations. Through these tools, cognitive learning occurs when the people interact with these tools socially and internalize them.

A major concept within social constructivism is the zone of proximal development (ZPD). ZPD represents the potential amount of learning a student can have given the right environmental conditions. This model suggests that the teacher and student work together to further the student's learning. Educational examples of this include instructional scaffolding and apprenticeships where the educator takes an invested and active role in furthering the knowledge of the student.

Motivation
Various motivational theories play a role in the psychology of learning. John William Atkinson's motivation theory argues that people are motivated to achieve their best. This motivation is in part moderated by two different sources: the desire to succeed as well as the fear of failure. Another motivational theory is Allan Wigfield's and Jacquelynne Eccles's expectancy-value theory which states that motivation is moderated by one's desire for success as well as the importance of the tasks one needs to do. Self-worth theory also plays a role in learning as students and individuals are motivated to learn and achieve because of their desire to maintain their perception of being high achieving.

Goal theory is another related theory. Learners usually have two types of goals: learning mastery goals (e.g. learning a new concept) and performance goals (e.g. being first place). This theory suggests that mastery goals are more effective than performance goals as a motivator. This is because performance goals may cause people to do more social comparison, such as comparing oneself to others, which may ineffectively raise motivation. Mindsets related to learning also play into motivation. Psychologist Carol Dweck distinguished differences between the growth mindset, the idea that ability is malleable, and the fixed mindset, the idea that ability is fixed. People who incorporate a growth mindset on a certain task tend to have higher motivation.

Attribution theory, which discusses how people perceive and attribute a certain behavior or outcome to a certain characteristic, also relates to motivation and learning. According to Bernie Weiner's attribution model, students attribute their academic achievement based on effort, ability, and luck. The way an individual attributes his or her academic performance will determine that person's level of motivation.

Theories related to control also have a major impact to learning. When people begin to perceive that their performance outcomes are not related to their own effort, this can severely limit motivation. At the most extreme, this can lead to learned helplessness which is when a person is experiencing a negative cycle where one's negative beliefs interactions with one's academic failures and motivation.

Various types of motivation also play a role particularly intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is an inherent type of motivation that one engages as an end to itself. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is a motivation that is provided externally such as external awards or punishments. Research has shown that incentives which reward task engagement lowers intrinsic motivation as it is much like controlling behavior. However, rewards related to one's performance are more effective which can help further one's skill, motivation, and self-efficacy.

title: Psychology of learning


text:
Category:Oldsmobile vehicles

This category contains automobiles sold under the Oldsmobile marque by General Motors Corporation.

title: Category:Oldsmobile vehicles


text:
House of Kawānanakoa

The House of Kawānanakoa, or the Kawānanakoa Dynasty, are descendants to the throne of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.

Origins
A collateral branch of the reigning House of Kalākaua (from Kauaʻi island) and descendants of chiefs of areas such as Waimea on Hawaiʻi island, the dynastic line was established by Prince David Kawānanakoa who was declared an heir to King David Kalākaua. He was the son of High Chief David Kahalepouli Piʻikoi and High Chiefess Victoria Kinoiki Kekaulike. Kawānanakoa was engaged to Princess Victoria Kaʻiulani on February 3, 1898, who would have become a monarch in her own right upon the death of Queen Liliʻuokalani had she not predeceased her.

David Kawānanakoa's paternal ancestry comes from a cadet branch of the Kauaʻi royal family. His paternal grandmother High Chiefess Kekahili was a half-sister of High Chief Caesar Kapaʻakea, the father of Kalākaua, both being children of the Chiefess Kamokuiki. This made her an aunt of King Kalākaua and Queen Liliʻuokalani, which makes the Kawānanakoas the closest surviving collateral relatives of the formerly reigning Kalākaua house. The said grandmother descended, besides from the ancient line of chiefs of Kauaʻi, also from the chief of Kaʻū, a great-uncle of King Kamehameha I.

However, the higher ranking ancestry of David Kawānanakoa actually is that through his mother. His maternal grandmother High Chiefess Kekaulike Kinoiki was the daughter of the last king of Kauaʻi and Niʻihau Kaumualiʻi. She was the granddaughter of Kaneoneo, who attempted to take Oʻahu back from Kahekili II in rebellion. She descended from the lines of high chiefs of Niʻihau, Koloa, Oʻahu, Kauaʻi and Maui. His maternal grandfather High Chief Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole was a descendant of several chiefly lines of the districts of the island of Hawaiʻi (such as Waimea, Kona and Hilo) and descended directly from the chief of Waimea.

The House of Kawānanakoa survives today and in 1998 were believed to be heirs to the throne by a number of genealogists. Members of the family are sometimes called prince and princess, as a matter of tradition and respect of their status as aliʻi or chiefs of native Hawaiians, being lines of ancient ancestry.

The House of Kawānanakoa in contemporary Hawaiian politics is closely aligned with the Hawaii Republican Party, a political party it helped organize since the creation of the Territory of Hawaiʻi. Its matriarch, Abigail Kawānanakoa, became a national party leader in the early years of the twentieth century.

title: House of Kawānanakoa


text:
Muhammad VI

Muhammad VI may refer to:
 * Muhammad Imaaduddeen VI (1868–1932), sultan of the Maldives from 1893 to 1902
 * Mehmed VI (1861–1926), sultan of Ottoman Empire, from 1918 to 1922
 * Mohammed VI of Morocco (born 1963), King of Morocco since 1999

title: Muhammad VI


text:
Russell Means

Russell Charles Means (November 10, 1939 – October 22, 2012) was an Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of American Indians and all oppressed First Nation Americans, libertarian political activist, actor, musician and writer. He became a prominent member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) after joining the organization in 1968 and helped organize notable events that attracted national and international media coverage.

Means was active in international issues of indigenous peoples, including working with groups in Central and South America and with the United Nations for recognition of their rights. He was active in politics at his native Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and at the state and national level.

Beginning an acting career in 1992, he appeared on numerous television series and in several films, including The Last of the Mohicans and Pocahontas and released his own music CD. Means published his autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread in 1995.

Early life
Means was born on November 10, 1939, in Porcupine, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, to Theodora Louise Feather and Walter "Hank" Means. His mother was a Yankton Dakota from Greenwood, South Dakota and his father, an Oglala Lakota. Russell had three biological brothers, Dace, and twins William and Theodore.

He was given the name Waŋblí Ohítika by his mother, which means 'Brave Eagle' in the Lakota language.

In 1942, the Means family resettled in the San Francisco Bay Area, seeking to escape the poverty and problems of the reservation. His father worked at the shipyard in Vallejo. Means grew up in the Bay Area, graduating in 1958 from San Leandro High School in San Leandro, California. He attended four colleges but did not graduate from any of them. In his 1995 autobiography, Means recounted a harsh childhood; his father was alcoholic and he himself fell into years of "truancy, crime and drugs" before finding purpose in the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

His father died in 1967 and, in his twenties, Means lived in several Indian reservations throughout the United States while searching for work. While at the Rosebud Indian Reservation in south-central South Dakota, he developed severe vertigo. Physicians at the reservation clinic believed that he had been brought in inebriated. After they refused to examine him for several days, Means was finally diagnosed with a concussion due to a presumed fight in a saloon. A visiting specialist later discovered that the reservation doctors had overlooked a common ear infection, which cost Means the hearing in one ear.

After recovering from the infection, Means worked for a year in the Office of Economic Opportunity, where he came to know several legal activists who were managing legal action on behalf of the Lakota people. After a dispute with his supervisor, Means left Rosebud for Cleveland, Ohio. In Cleveland, he worked with Native American community leaders against the backdrop of the American Civil Rights Movement.

Involvement with the American Indian Movement
In 1968, Means joined the American Indian Movement (AIM), where he rose to become a prominent leader. In 1970, Means was appointed AIM's first national director, and the organization began a period of increasing protests and activism.

Activism
Means participated in the 1969 Alcatraz occupation. He had been there once before, to occupy it for 24 hours under the lead of his father, Walter "Hank" Means, and a few other Lakota men in March 1964. (Means' father died in January 1967).

On Thanksgiving Day 1970, Means and other AIM activists staged their first protest in Boston: they seized the Mayflower II, a replica ship of the Mayflower, to protest the Puritans' and United States' mistreatment of Native Americans. In 1971 Means was one of the leaders of AIM's takeover of Mount Rushmore, a federal monument. Rushmore is within the Black Hills, an area sacred to the Lakota tribe.

In November 1972, he participated in AIM's occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) headquarters in Washington, D.C., to protest abuses. Many records were taken or destroyed, and more than $2 million in damage was done to the building.

In 1973, Dennis Banks and Carter Camp led AIM's occupation of Wounded Knee, which became the group's best-known action. Means appeared as a spokesman and prominent leader. The armed standoff of more than 300 Lakota and AIM activists with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and state law enforcement lasted for 71 days. Frank Clearwater, a visiting Cherokee activist from North Carolina, and Lawrence "Buddy" Lamont, an Oglala Lakota activist from Pine Ridge Reservation, were killed in April. African-American activist Ray Robinson disappeared and is assumed to be buried in the hills.

Native American politics
In 1974, Means resigned from AIM to run for the presidency of his native Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) against the incumbent Richard Wilson. The official vote count showed Wilson winning by more than 200 votes. Residents complained of intimidation by Wilson's private militia. The report of a government investigation confirmed problems in the election, but in a related court challenge to the results of the election, a federal court upheld the results.

In the late 1970s, Means turned to an international forum on issues of rights for indigenous peoples. He worked with Jimmie Durham, who established the offices of the International Indian Treaty Council to work with the United Nations in 1977. At the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, he assisted in the organization of community institutions, such as the KILI radio station and the Porcupine Health Clinic in Porcupine, South Dakota.

Means also traveled to Germany, traveled behind the Iron Curtain to meet with East German AIM supporters, and he traveled to Switzerland to take part in the Geneva human rights conference.

Means and Ojibwe Dennis Banks were by the mid-1970s the best known Native Americans since Lakota war leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who led the attack that defeated the forces of General Custer at The Battle of Little Big Horn, also known as The Battle of the Greasy Grass.

Splits in AIM
In the 1980s, AIM divided into several competing factions, in part over differences among members regarding support for the indigenous peoples in Nicaragua. Means supported the Miskito group MISURASATA (later known as YATAMA), which was allied with the Contras. He traveled to Nicaragua in 1985 and 1986 on fact-finding tours. He came to believe that the Miskito as a people were being targeted for elimination. Some AIM members supported the Sandinistas of the national government, although they had forced removal of thousands of Miskito from their traditional territory.

On January 8, 1988, Means held a press conference to announce his retirement from AIM, saying it had achieved its goals. That January, the "AIM Grand Governing Council", headed by the Bellecourt brothers, released a press release noting this was the sixth resignation by Means since 1974, and asking the press to "never again report either that he is a founder of the American Indian Movement, or [that] he is a leader of the American Indian Movement". The "AIM Grand Governing Council" noted there were many open issues and legislation regarding Native Americans for which they were continuing to work.

In 1993, the organization divided officially into two main factions: "AIM Grand Governing Council", based in Minnesota, which copyrighted the name "American Indian movement"; and American Indian Movement Confederation of Autonomous Chapters, based in Colorado and allied with Means and Ward Churchill.

Anna Mae Aquash
On November 3, 1999, Means and Robert Pictou-Branscombe, a maternal cousin of Aquash from Canada, held a press conference in Denver at the Federal Building to discuss the slow progress of the government's investigation into Aquash's murder. It had been under investigation both by the Denver police, as Aquash had been kidnapped from there, and by the FBI, as she had been taken across state lines and killed on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Both Branscombe and Means accused Vernon Bellecourt, a high-ranking leader of AIM, of having ordered her execution. Means said that Clyde Bellecourt, a founder of AIM, had ensured that it was carried out at the Pine Ridge Reservation. Means said that an AIM tribunal had banned the Bellecourt brothers but tried to keep the reason for the dissension internal to protect AIM.

The Associated Press (AP) reporter Robert Weller noted that this was the first time that an AIM leader active at the time of Aquash's death had publicly implicated AIM in her murder. There had long been rumors. Means and Branscombe accused three indigenous people: Arlo Looking Cloud, Theda Nelson Clarke and John Graham, of having been directly involved in the kidnapping and murder of Aquash. The two men were indicted in 2003 and convicted in separate trials in 2004 and 2010, respectively. By then in a nursing home, Clarke was not indicted.

As of 2004, Means' website stated that he was a board member of the Colorado AIM chapter, which is affiliated with the AIM Confederation of Autonomous Chapters.

Other political involvement
Since the late 1970s, Means often supported libertarian political causes, in contrast with several other AIM leaders. In 1983 he agreed to become running mate to Larry Flynt in his unsuccessful run for U.S. President. In 1987, Means ran for nomination of President of the United States under the Libertarian Party, and attracted considerable support within the party, finishing 2nd (31.4%) at the 1987 Libertarian National Convention. He lost the nomination to Congressman Ron Paul.

In 2001, Means began an independent candidacy for Governor of New Mexico. His campaign failed to satisfy procedural requirements and he was not selected for the ballot. In the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, Means supported independent Ralph Nader.

Nearly thirty years after his first candidacy, Means ran for president of the Oglala Sioux in 2004 with the help of Twila Lebeaux, losing to Cecilia Fire Thunder, the first woman elected president of the tribe. She also defeated the incumbent John Yellow Bird Steele.

Since the late 20th century, there has been a debate in the United States over the appropriate term for the indigenous peoples of North America. Some want to be called Native American; others prefer American Indian. Means said that he preferred "American Indian", arguing that it derives not from explorers' confusion of the people with those of India, but from the Italian expression in Dio, meaning "in God". In addition, Means noted that since treaties and other legal documents in relation to the United States government use "Indian", continuing use of the term could help today's American Indian people forestall any attempts by others to use legal loopholes in the struggle over land and treaty rights.

In 2007, Means and 80 other protesters were arrested in Denver during a parade for Columbus Day which they stated was a "celebration of genocide".

Following the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in September 2007, a group of American Indian activists presented a letter to the U.S. State Department, indicating they were withdrawing from all treaties with the U.S. Government on December 20. Means announced the withdrawal by a small group of Lakota people. That same month, they began contacting foreign governments to solicit support for energy projects on the territory. Means and a delegation of activists declared the Republic of Lakotah a sovereign nation, with property rights over thousands of square miles in South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. Means said that his group does not "represent collaborators, the Vichy Indians and those tribal governments set up by the United States of America".

On January 8, 2008, tribal leaders in the northern Great Plains, Rodney Bordeaux of the 25,000-member Rosebud Sioux Tribe, and Joseph Brings Plenty of the 8,500-member Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, said that Means and the group of his fellow activists would not speak for their members or for any elected Lakota tribal government. While acknowledging that Means has accurately portrayed the federal government's broken promises to and treaties with America's indigenous peoples, they opposed his plan to renounce treaties with the United States and proclaim independence. They said the issue instead was to enforce existing treaties.

Means was critical of Obama receiving the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and also when Al Gore and Henry Kissinger received their Nobel Peace Prizes. He also criticized the U.S. interventionist foreign policy, the War in Afghanistan, and referred to Obama's presidency as "Bush's third term."

In January 2012, Means announced his endorsement of Republican Ron Paul in his bid for president.

Acting
From 1992 to 2004, Means appeared as an actor in numerous films and television movies, first as the chief Chingachgook in The Last of the Mohicans. He appeared as Arrowhead in the made-for-TV movie The Pathfinder (1996), his second appearance in a movie adapted from a novel by James Fenimore Cooper. He appeared in Natural Born Killers (1994), as Jim Thorpe in Windrunner (1994), as Sitting Bull in Buffalo Girls (1995), and had a cameo in the miniseries Into the West (2005).

He was a voice actor in Disney's third highest-selling feature film Pocahontas (1995) and its sequel Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998), playing the title character's father, Chief Powhatan. Means was a guest actor in the 1997 Duckman episode "Role With It", in which Duckman takes his family on an educational trip to a "genuine Indian reservation" – which turns out to be a casino. Means appeared as Billy Twofeathers in Thomas & the Magic Railroad (2000).

Means starred in Pathfinder, a 2003 movie about Vikings battling Native Americans in the New World. Means co-starred in Rez Bomb from director Steven Lewis Simpson, the first feature he acted in on his native Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He appeared alongside Tamara Feldman, Trent Ford, and Chris Robinson. Means was also a prominent contributor to Steven Lewis Simpson's feature documentary about Pine Ridge Indian Reservations, A Thunder-Being Nation.

In 2004, Means made a guest appearance on the HBO program Curb Your Enthusiasm. Means played Wandering Bear, an American Indian with skills in landscaping and herbal medicine.

Writing
In 1995, Means published an autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread, written with Marvin J. Wolf. He recounted his own family's problems: his alcoholic father, and his own "fall into truancy, crime and drugs" before he discovered the American Indian Movement. The book drew criticism from a number of reviewers. While Patricia Holt, book editor for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote of the book, "It's American history – warts, wounds and all." In another review, writer Mari Wadsworth of the Tucson Weekly wrote: "Critical readers do well to remain skeptical of any individual, however charismatic, who claims to be the voice of authority and authenticity for any population, let alone one as diverse as the native tribes of the Americas. But whatever conclusions one makes of Means' actions and intentions, his unremitting presence and undaunted outspokenness opened a dialogue that changed the course of American history."

Music, art, and media
Russell Means recorded a CD entitled Electric Warrior with Sound of America Records, in 1993. Songs include "Une Gente Indio", "Hey You, Hey Indian", "Wounded Knee Set Us Free", and "Indian Cars Go Far". This was followed in 2007 with his The Radical album, which included the controversial song "Waco: The White Man's Wounded Knee". In 2013, he was recognized by the Native American Music Awards with a Hall of Fame award.

Means was an avid painter, with showings at various galleries around the country and the world.

The American pop artist Andy Warhol painted 18 individual portraits of Russell Means in his 1976 American Indian Series. The Dayton Art Institute holds one of the Warhol portraits in its collection.

Means appeared as a character in the adventure video game Under a Killing Moon, by Access Software, in 1994.

Means is the focus of the 2014 documentary Conspiracy To Be Free by director Colter Johnson.

In 2016 the artist Magneto Dayo and The Lakota Medicine Men did a tribute song dedicated to Russell Means and Richard Oakes called "The Journey" on the album Royalty of the UnderWorld.

In 1999, Russell taped six community television half-hour programs in Santa Monica, under the title of "The Russell Means Show" produced by Helene E. Hagan  (Adelphia Coimmnications). As Host for the series, he interviewed guests Sacheen Littlefeather, Greg Sarris, Kateri Walker and Redbone. The last two programs were Commentaries on Colonialism and Consumerism. The series has been archived at the Oglala Lakota College Library.

In addition, Helene E. Hagan has authored two books about Russell Means : "Russell Means:  The European Ancestry of a Militant Indian" (Xliibris, 2018) and "Wakinyan Zi Tiosppaye:  The Case of Yellow Thunder Camp" (XLibris, 2022).

Personal life
Means was married five times; the first four marriages ended in divorce. He was married to his fifth wife, Pearl Means, until his death. His wife Pearl died ten years later in May 2022, at the age of 62. He had a total of ten children: seven biological children and three adopted children, who were "adopted in the Lakota way", including Tatanka Means who is also an actor.

As "a grandfather with twenty-two grandchildren", Russell Means divided his time "between Chinle, Navajo Nation, Arizona, and Porcupine, South Dakota."

Illness and death
In August 2011, Means was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. His doctors told him his condition was inoperable. He told the Associated Press that he was rejecting "mainstream medical treatments in favor of traditional American Indian remedies and alternative treatments away from his home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation". In late September, Means reported that through tomotherapy, the tumor had diminished greatly. Later, he said that his tumor was "95% gone." On December 5 of that year, Means stated that he "beat cancer", and that he had beat "the death penalty."

The following year, however, his health continued to decline and he died on October 22, 2012, at age 72. A family statement said, "Our dad and husband now walks among our ancestors."

ABC News said Means "spent a lifetime as a modern American Indian warrior ..., railed against broken treaties, fought for the return of stolen land and even took up arms against the federal government ... , called national attention to the plight of impoverished tribes and often lamented the waning of Indian culture." Among the tributes was one writer's belief that "his face should have been on Mt. Rushmore." The New York Times said Means "became as well-known a Native American as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse."

Means was cremated and his ashes were sprinkled throughout the Black Hills.

Legal issues
On December 29, 1997, Means, then 58, was arrested for assault and battery of his 56-year-old father-in-law Leon Grant, a member of the Diné (Navajo) Nation. AIM Grand Governing Council issued a press release to reiterate its separation from Means.

Film

 * The Last of the Mohicans (1992) – Chingachgook
 * Windrunner (1994) – Wa Tho Huck / Jim Thorpe / Country Ghost
 * Wagons East (1994) – Chief
 * Natural Born Killers (1994) – Old Indian
 * PahaSapa... The Struggle for the Black Hills (1994) – Himself
 * Buffalo Girls (1995, TV Mini-Series) – Sitting Bull
 * Pocahontas (1995) – Chief Powhatan (voice)
 * The Pathfinder (1996, TV Movie) – Arrowhead
 * The Song of Hiawatha (1997) – Mudjekeewis
 * Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998) – Chief Powhatan
 * Black Cat Run (1998, TV Movie) – Ten Reed
 * A League of Old Men (1998) – Imber
 * Wind River (2000) – Washakie
 * Thomas and the Magic Railroad (2000) – Billy Twofeathers
 * Cowboy Up (2001) – Joe
 * 29 Palms (2002) – The Chief
 * Black Cloud (2004) – Bud
 * The Last Shot (2004) – Himself
 * Pathfinder (2007) – Pathfinder
 * Unearthed (2007) – Grandpa
 * Intervention (2007)
 * Rez Bomb (2008) – Dodds
 * Reel Injun (2009, Documentary) – Himself
 * Tiger Eyes (2012) – Willie Ortiz
 * Days and Nights (2013) – Big Jim (final film role)

Television

 * Walker, Texas Ranger – Episode: "Plague" – Luther Iron Shirt (1996)
 * The West – documentary TV series – Episodes: "The People" and "Fight No More Forever" (Voice) (1996)
 * Touched by an Angel – Episode : "Written in Dust" – Edison (1996)
 * Remember WENN – Episode: "And How!" – Joseph Greyhawk (1997)
 * Duckman – Episode: "Role With It" – Thomas (1997)
 * Liberty's Kids – Episodes: "The New Frontier" and "Bostonians" (2002)
 * The Profiler – Episode: "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" – Uncle Joe (1997)
 * Nash Bridges – Episodes: "Downtime" and "Lady Killer" – Dexter Birdsong (1998)
 * Black Cat Run (TV movie) – Ten Reed (1998)
 * Family Law – Episode: "Americans" - James Saginaw (2001)
 * Curb Your Enthusiasm - Season 4 – Episode 8 – Wandering Bear (2004)
 * Into the West – TV Mini-Series – 3 episodes – Older Running Fox (2005)
 * American Experience – TV Series documentary – Episode: "We Shall Remain: Part V – Wounded Knee" – Himself (2009)
 * Banshee (TV series) – Benjamin Longshadow (4 episodes) (2013)

Other Appearances

 * The Making of 'Pocahontas': A Legend Comes to Life – TV Movie documentary - Himself (Voice of 'Chief Powhatan') (1995)
 * Images of Indians: How Hollywood Stereotyped the Native American – TV Movie documentary – Himself (2003)
 * Looks Twice – Short – (2005)
 * Wounded Heart: Pine Ridge and the Sioux – Video documentary – Himself / narrator (2006)
 * Turok - Son of Stone Video  (2008)
 * Questions for Crazy Horse – Documentary – Himself (2010)
 * The Sasquatch and The Girl – Short (2010)

title: Russell Means


text:
SMI

SMI may refer to:

Business

 * Service Measurement Index, for IT services
 * Swiss Market Index, of the stock market

Companies

 * SensoMotoric Instruments, provider of eye tracking hard- and software
 * Shepardson Microsystems, Atari 8-bit and Apple II software company
 * SMI, brand of Silicon Motion ICs
 * Speedway Motorsports (formerly Speedway Motorsports, Inc.), owner and operator of auto racing racetracks and related companies
 * Shanghai Municipal Investment Group, China
 * Sony Music India, Hindi music and film production company owned by Sony Music Entertainment

Computing

 * .smi, file extension for SAMI files
 * Scalable Memory Interconnect interface in Intel Xeon E7 processors
 * .smi, self mounting image file extension
 * Structure of Management Information, in SNMP
 * .smi, file extension for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
 * SMI, system management interrupt for System Management Mode
 * Serial Management Interface, to configure an Ethernet PHY

Physics

 * Vertico SMI or Vertico Spatially Modulated Illumination, a fast microscope

Medical

 * Serious mental illness

Other uses

 * Sustainable Minerals Institute, Australia
 * Sergeant major instructor in the British Army
 * Shape Modeling International, annual scientific symposium
 * Sports Management International, a fictional sports agency in the film Jerry Maguire
 * St. Michael's Institution, a school in Malaysia
 * Storage Management Initiative - Specification (SMI-S), a data storage standard
 * Samos International Airport, Greece, IATA code
 * Support for Mortgage Interest, a UK welfare benefit
 * Social media intelligence
 * Soil moisture index

title: SMI


text:
Mohammed al-Qahtani

Mohammed Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani (محمد ماني احمد القحطاني; sometimes transliterated as al-Kahtani; born November 19, 1975) is a Saudi citizen who was detained as an al-Qaeda operative for 20 years in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba. Qahtani allegedly tried to enter the United States to take part in the September 11 attacks as the 20th hijacker and was due to be onboard United Airlines Flight 93 along with the four other hijackers. He was refused entry due to suspicions that he was trying to illegally immigrate. He was later captured in Afghanistan in the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001.

After military commissions were authorized by Congress, in February 2008, Qahtani was charged on numerous counts. In May, the charges were dropped without prejudice. New charges were filed against him in November 2008 and dropped in January 2009, as evidence had been obtained through torture and was inadmissible in court. This was the first time an official of the Bush administration had admitted any torture of detainees at Guantanamo.

In a Washington Post interview in January 2009, Susan Crawford of the Department of Defense said "we tortured Qahtani", saying that the U.S. government had so abused Qahtani through isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity and exposure to cold that he was in a "life-threatening condition".

On March 6, 2022, Qahtani was airlifted from Guantanamo Bay by the U.S. military and flown back to Saudi Arabia to a mental health treatment facility after 20 years in American custody. His release was announced by the U.S. Department of Defense the next day.

Early life
Mohammed al-Qahtani was born on 19 November 1975 in Kharj, Saudi Arabia. He is a Saudi national from a large Sunni family. His father served as a police officer for 28 years. His mother remained at home to raise their twelve children. He has seven brothers and four sisters.

Denied entry by US immigration
On August 3, 2001, Qahtani at the age of 25 flew into Orlando, Florida, from Dubai. He was questioned by immigration agent José Meléndez-Pérez, who was dubious that he could support himself with only $2,800 cash to his name, and suspicious that he intended to become an illegal immigrant, as he was using a one-way ticket. He was sent back to Dubai, and subsequently returned to Saudi Arabia.

Transfer to Guantanamo
Captured in the Battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, Qahtani was shipped by the Americans with other detainees in June 2002 to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp set up five months prior at the United States Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He continued giving a false name, and insisted he had been in the area solely to pursue an interest in falconry.

After ten months, U.S. Border and Immigration Authorities took a fingerprint sample and discovered that he was the same person who had tried to enter the United States just before the September 11 attacks. Seizing the airport's CCTV surveillance recordings, the FBI claimed they were able to identify the car of Mohamed Atta at the airport, believed to be there to pick up Qahtani. Another military account stated that Qahtani was identified as someone who had previously been turned away due to visa problems – by fingerprints "taken in Southwest Asia".

At that time, the military invited FBI interrogators to interview Qahtani. By the fall of 2002, they were frustrated by his resistance. DOD interrogators talked of using different techniques, based on a class they attended.

Shortly after September 26, 2002, top administration political appointees: David Addington, the VP's chief of staff; Alberto Gonzales, then White House Counsel; John A. Rizzo of the CIA; William Haynes II, General Counsel of DOD; his legal assistant, Jack Goldsmith; and two Justice Department lawyers, Alice S. Fisher and Patrick F. Philbin, flew to Camp Delta to view Qahtani and talk with his interrogators. They were trying to develop ways to break down detainee resistance and had come up with a list of potential techniques to be used.

Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, the top legal adviser at Guantanamo, suggested to her command in Defense that acting with "pure intent" was important, and they might seek immunity from "command authorities" prior to using such harsh interrogation techniques. (In August 2002, the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, had provided legal opinions (later called the Torture Memos) to the CIA that narrowly defined torture and authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, since commonly defined as torture).

The political appointees went on to Charleston, South Carolina to view Jose Padilla, and finally to Norfolk, Virginia to view Yaser Esam Hamdi. These men were United States citizens. Like the foreign detainees in Guantanamo, they were held in solitary confinement, where most human contact was with their interrogators, according to a theory about how to develop dependence among prisoners, for long-term gathering of intelligence by interrogators. At this time, none of the detainees, including the American citizens, had access to counsel or federal courts.

Qahtani had initially been interrogated by FBI agents, who used standard techniques based in police work. On December 2, 2002, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld authorized in writing the use of 17 enhanced interrogation techniques to be used against Qahtani (see next section). After details of Qahtani's status were leaked in 2004, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a press release stating that Qahtani had admitted:
 * He had been sent to the US by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the lead architect of the 9/11 attack;
 * He had met Osama bin Laden on several occasions;
 * He had terrorist training at two al-Qaeda camps;
 * He had been in contact with many senior al-Qaeda leaders.

Al-Qahtani is also said to have informed interrogators that he had received operational training in covert communications from Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, whom he identified as a courier for Osama bin Laden. This was an early lead at a time when the hunt for bin Laden by other means had ground to a halt, but, as the national security expert Peter Bergen has noted, it had to be combined with another eight years of work, relying on a wide variety of techniques of intelligence-gathering, to culminate in the US government's 2011 raid on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and killing of the al-Qaeda leader.

Documented abuses while in Guantanamo
At Guantánamo, Mohammed al-Qahtani was subjected to a regime of 17 aggressive interrogation techniques, known as the "First Special Interrogation Plan", authorized in writing by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on December 2, 2002, and implemented under the supervision and guidance of Secretary Rumsfeld and the commander of Guantánamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller. After complaints from military investigators, the list of approved techniques was reduced.

The special interrogation plan and techniques were not revealed until 2008 in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee during its investigation of detainee treatment, and were reported by the FBI Inspector General, Glenn Fine. The authorized techniques were related to those described in the three August 2002 legal opinions, later known as the Torture Memos, drafted by John Yoo and signed by Jay S. Bybee of the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, issued to the CIA.

Under these coercive techniques, Qahtani gave additional information, including naming 30 other prisoners as working directly for bin Laden. The military used this information as justification to hold the men as enemy combatants. But, because the material was extracted under torture, it was later considered inadmissible in court. Qahtani later recanted this testimony, saying he had given the names of other detainees only to stop the abuse.

It was not until February 2008 that Qahtani was first charged before a military commission, and the prosecution dropped the charges in May of that year. He was charged again in November 2008, but on January 14, 2009, Susan J. Crawford, a senior Pentagon official of the Bush administration, stated that she would not proceed with his prosecution. She said that Qahtani's "treatment met the legal definition of torture.... The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive". As convening authority of the military commissions, Crawford was responsible for overseeing the Guantanamo military commissions. Her statement was the first time any top official of the Bush administration had said there was torture of detainees at Guantanamo.

Gitanjali Gutierrez, a defense lawyer for al-Qahtani who works for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, has said she thought Qahtani's torture constituted a war crime.

Interrogation log
On March 3, 2006, Time magazine published the secret log of 49 days of the 20-hour-per-day interrogation of Qahtani at Guantanamo Bay detention camp from late November 2002 to early January 2003. This had been leaked to the press. The log described Qahtani being forcibly administered intravenous fluids, drugs, and enemas, in order to keep his body functioning well enough for the interrogations to continue. The log, titled SECRET ORCON INTERROGATION LOG DETAINEE 063, offers a daily, detailed account of the enhanced interrogation techniques used from November 23, 2002, to January 11, 2003.

These included the following:
 * Forced to submit to an enema
 * Beatings
 * Placed in stress positions for long periods of time in order to induce severe pain
 * Threats made against his family, including female members
 * Forced nudity, including in the presence of female personnel
 * Placed in tight restraints for many months on end, day and night
 * Lowering the temperature in the room, then throwing water on the detainee's face
 * Restraint on a swivel chair for long periods
 * Various humiliations, such as training the detainee to act as a dog, dance lessons, and forcing him to watch puppet shows depicting sexual acts between him and Osama bin Laden at his mock birthday party
 * Deprivation of sleep for long periods
 * Loud music and white noise played to prevent the detainee from sleeping
 * Forcing the detainee to pray to bin Laden
 * Various interrogation techniques described as "pride-and-ego down", "circumstantial evidence", "fear-up", or "Al Qaeda falling apart"
 * Threats of extraordinary rendition to countries that torture
 * Strip searches
 * Body searches
 * Prohibiting detainee from praying for prolonged times and during Ramadan
 * Threatening to desecrate the Koran in front of him
 * Forced to pick up trash with his hands cuffed, while being called "a pig"
 * Exposure to low temperatures for prolonged times
 * Forcible administration of IVs by medical staff during interrogation, which were described by Qahtani as "repetitive stabs" each day
 * Repeatedly screened a video of September 11 attacks
 * Pictures of 9/11 victims taped to his body
 * Forced to stand for U.S. national anthem and listen to interrogators and guards sing "God Bless America"

The interrogation log does not record Qahtani admitting to being a member of al-Qaeda. The entry for January 1, 2003, relates that Qahtani blames Osama bin Laden for deceiving the 19 9/11 hijackers ("his friends"):

"2A0780 asked how one man, Bin Laden, convince [sic] 19 young men to kill themselves, (detainee was starting to fade he was going in and out of sleep.) The question was repeated, detainee stated that they were tricked, that he distorted the picture if [sic] front of them, 2A0780 asked detainee if this made him mad, detainee stated yes, (detainee did not realize that 2A780  [sic] had not started putting detainee into the picture) 2A0780 asked detainee if he was mad that his friends had been tricked, detainee said yes. 2A0780 asked detainee if his friends knew about the plan, detainee said no, 2A0780 asked if detainee knew about the plan, detainee stated that he didn't know. 2A0780 asked detainee if it made him mad that he killed his friends, detainee stated yes. 2A0780 asked detainee if he was glad that he didn't die on the plane, detainee stated yes.  2A0780 asked detainee if his parents were happy that he didn't die detainee stated yes. 2A0780 stated 'he killed your friends' detainee stated yes."

When asked about his greatest sins in his life, Qahtani responded that he had not taken care of his parents properly, had not finished college, and had not been able to repay $20,000 he had borrowed from his aunt.

Recanting
On March 3, 2006, Qahtani's lawyer Gitanjali Gutierrez said that her client had recanted the accusations he had made against fellow detainees during earlier periods of interrogation under torture. He had told his lawyer that he was forced to falsely confess and name names, in order to get his "enhanced interrogation" to end. He had accused 30 other detainees of being former bodyguards of Osama bin Laden.

Given the circumstances of how Qahtani's confessions were obtained, lawyers for the other detainees argued that his testimony should not be used by the military as justification to detain their clients. They used this argument in their petitions for habeas corpus challenges for their clients. The government argued that, under the Detainee Treatment Act (2005), detainees could not use the federal courts for habeas corpus except on appeal.

In its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), the Supreme Court ruled that the Detainee Treatment Act and the military commissions as established by the Department of Defense were unconstitutional for depriving detainees of habeas corpus and rights of due process, and that the military commissions had not been authorized by Congress.

Military Commissions Act of 2006
In the fall of 2006, Congress quickly passed and the President signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It responded to the Court's concerns but mandated the restriction of detainees to the military commission system.

On February 9, 2008, the New York Times reported that the Office of Military Commissions was close to laying charges against six of the high-value detainees at Guantanamo, including Qahtani. He was believed to have been the planned 20th hijacker for the 9/11 attacks.

Qahtani and the other five were charged on February 11, 2008, with war crimes and murder, and faced the death penalty if convicted. Gitanjali Gutierrez, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), was representing Qahtani. Attorneys at CCR denounced the systematic use of torture against detainees and challenged the validity of the military commission. They said that evidence in Qahtani's death penalty case was obtained by torture.

In their February 2008 press release, CCR said that "the military commissions at Guantanamo allow secret evidence, hearsay evidence, and evidence obtained through torture. They are unlawful, unconstitutional, and a perversion of justice."

Suicide attempt
According to his lawyer, in early April 2008, al-Qahtani tried to kill himself after learning that he faced charges that could carry the death penalty. He cut himself at least three times, causing "profuse bleeding" that needed hospital treatment.

Charges dropped
On May 11, 2008, the government charges against al-Qahtani were dropped. Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that it was possible for the charges to be re-instated, at a later date, because they had been dropped "without prejudice".

New charges announced
On November 18, 2008, Chief Prosecutor Lawrence Morris announced that he was filing new charges against Qahtani. When announcing the new charges, Morris stated that the new charges were based on "independent and reliable evidence". He stated: "His conduct is significant enough that he falls into the category of people who ought to be held accountable by being brought to trial."

Crawford orders charges dropped
Susan Crawford, the senior official in charge of the Office of Military Commissions, had the final authority over whether charges were laid. On January 14, 2009, after a change in administrations, Crawford ruled that the prosecution would not proceed against Qahtani because he had been subjected to interrogation techniques in Guantanamo that rose to the level of torture. Bryan Whitman, a DOD spokesman, said that the techniques were legal at the time they were applied, according to Department of Justice legal opinions.

Qahtani's habeas case reinstated
Mohammed al-Qahtani's habeas corpus case was reinstated in July 2008 after the Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush, stating that Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus and the right to petition federal courts.

Joint Review Task Force
When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, he made a number of promises about the future of Guantanamo. He promised the use of torture would cease at the camp. He promised to institute a new review system, convening a task force to review material on detainees that was made up of officials from six agencies, whereas the OARDEC reviews were conducted entirely by the Department of Defense. Reporting back a year later, the Joint Review Task Force recommended release and repatriation of 53 detainees. It classified other individuals as too dangerous to be transferred from Guantanamo, although there was insufficient evidence to charge them with crimes. On April 9, 2013, that document was made public after a Freedom of Information Act request. Some 71 detainees were determined to be eligible for a Periodic Review Board assessment, similar to a parole board, to determine if they could be released. Mohammed al Qahtani was one of the 71 individuals deemed too innocent to charge, but too dangerous to release. Obama promised that those deemed too innocent to charge, but too dangerous to release would start to receive reviews from a Periodic Review Board. Qahtani was recommended for transfer to Saudi Arabia on June 9, 2021.

Qahtani's 2014 federal appeals court order
On 2 September 2014, a judicial panel for the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York stated that pictures and videos of Qahtani, taken while in detention, should remain classified. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented Mohammed al-Qahtani for this federal lawsuit, had sought to disclose these audiovisual materials under the Freedom of Information Act. The judges decided that the release of these pictures and videos "could logically and plausibly harm national security because these images are uniquely susceptible to use by anti-American extremists as propaganda to incite violence against United States interests domestically and abroad". On March 9, 2015, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in his case.

Representation in popular culture
In a review of the drama film Zero Dark Thirty (2012) about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Peter Bergen, a national security analyst, compared the character of Ammar and the issue of torture to the treatment of Qahtani in detention. In a controversial passage, Ammar is interrogated under torture in the film and gives up the name of a bin Laden courier. Bergen notes that although Qahtani gave a name under alleged torture, it took another eight years, with US analysts using every form of intelligence-gathering from high technology to 'people on the ground,' for the government to locate and kill Osama bin Laden. Other sources later suggested the character of Ammar was based on Ammar al-Baluchi.

In the television documentary series The Path to 9/11, al-Qahtani is portrayed by Elie Gemael, who portrayed 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta in Zero Hour.

title: Mohammed al-Qahtani


text:
Category:Opel vehicles

This category contains Opel automobiles.

title: Category:Opel vehicles


text:
The Mahdi

The Mahdi is a 1981 thriller novel by Philip Nicholson, writing as A. J. Quinnell. The book was published in 1981 by Macmillan in the UK then in January 1982 by William Morrow & Co in the US and deals with political power struggles over a presumed Muslim prophet.

Synopsis
The Mahdi follows several characters as they attempt to find a way to negate the threat of Muslim fundamentalism to the Western World's oil supply. Pritchard, a slick triple agent, has been tapped to help solve the problem. He proposes that they find the Mahdi, a prophet that has been prophesied to follow Muhammad, and attempt to control him, as control over the Mahdi would give them control over the Muslim world.

Reception
Reception to The Mahdi was mixed, with many reviewers criticizing the book's implausibility. The New York Times gave The Mahdi an overall positive review, calling the plot "elegant" while stating that the lack of a defined villain makes it seem as if there were "less at stake here than there ought to be".

title: The Mahdi