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Baldivis, Western Australia

Baldivis is a semi-rural residential suburb 46 km south of Perth, Western Australia, and 11 km southeast of the regional centre of Rockingham. It is located within the City of Rockingham local government area.

Baldivis is home to the most Afrikaans, Māori and Shona speakers of any suburb in Australia. Housing estates in the suburb include Tuart Ridge, Settlers Hills, Settlers Townside, The Rivergums, Baldivis Central, Spires,Baldivis North, Baldivis Garden, Baldivis Parks, The Chimes, Brightwood, Evermore Heights, The Ridge, The Chase, Highbury Park, Heritage Park, The Dales, Avalon, Woodleigh Grove, Sherwood and Parkland Heights.

History
The name of Baldivis was thought up by settlers in the area who were attracted to the region by the 1920s Group Settlement Scheme. The name derives from three ships which travelled to Western Australia in 1922, all within six weeks of each other, bringing settlers under the scheme. They were named BALranald, DIogenes and the JerVIS Bay. It was the maiden voyage for all three ships and they were all built in the same shipyard in the same year.

Land parallel to the eastern side of Baldivis Road was set aside for the Baldivis Tramway between Jandakot in the north and Karnup to the south, to provide access to the Group Settlement Scheme land. Although part of the tramway was constructed, it was never constructed in Baldivis. The tramway reserve is retained for open space.

Many of the road names in Baldivis (e.g. Sixty Eight Road, Fifty Road, etc.) originate from the group numbers.

Land in the western portion of Baldivis was zoned for urban development in the 1990s, and the suburb has been progressively developed for residential use. The first residential estate to be developed was Settlers Hills, by Stockland.

Geography
The western half of Baldivis (generally west of Baldivis Road) is composed of undulating sand and limestone soil with occasional wetlands. The high point is known as Tamworth Hill, which is the site of a water reservoir. Much of this land has been developed for residential use. East of Baldivis Road the land is generally flat and comprises sand and clay soils; the exception being the sandy hill known as Dog Hill. These areas are generally used for rural purposes. The western portion of Baldivis contains tuart trees; some of the trees have been retained within the residential areas.

Transport
Baldivis is serviced by the Transperth 564 bus route, operated by Transdev WA, which operates from Warnbro Train Station. This route services the Baldivis Town Centre during business hours, travelling through Settlers Hills via Arpenteur Drive through Evermore Heights, The Ridge and Terminate in The Dales (Smirk Road). Route 567 services The Rivergums, Heritage Park, Paramount estate and brightwood estate and terminated in sixty eight road. It also connects the Baldivis community with a regular service to the Baldivis Town Centre. Both routes run 7 days a week running every 30 minutes and every 10 minutes in peak hours. Route 568 services Baldivis Central and the newly developed Town Side estate and Retirement village. Route 565 services through the newly established Baldivis Quarter.

The Kwinana Freeway runs through Baldivis, providing vehicle access to Perth and Bunbury. Safety Bay Road links Baldivis with neighbouring suburbs to the west like Rockingham and Warnbro.

The principal shared path along the Kwinana Freeway provides bicycle access to Perth. 565 Bus Routes And 564 Bus Routes are also a school bus route that operates for school Mother Teresa Catholic College during the start and end of school hours. 564,565,566 routes also operates for Ridge View Secondary College during the start and end of their school hours.

Bus

 * 564 Baldivis to Warnbro Station – serves Wattlebird Way, Ridge Boulevard, Arpenteur Drive and Safety Bay Road
 * 565 Baldivis to Warnbro Station – serves Sixty Eight Road, Smirk Road, Bramall Terrace, Nairn Drive and Safety Bay Road
 * 566 Baldivis to Warnbro Station – serves Heritage Park Drive, Highbury Boulevard, Hillsborough Avenue, Delta Road, Makybe Drive, Acrasia Road, Clyde Avenue, Norwood Avenue, Burlington Drive and Safety Bay Road
 * 567 Baldivis to Warnbro Station – serves Sixty Eight Road, Baldivis Road, Heritage Park Drive, Claret Ash Boulevard, Grandis Drive, Callistemon Gardens, Stillwater Drive and Safety Bay Road
 * 568 Baldivis to Warnbro Station – serves Sierra Parade, Desiree Drive, Linaker Street, Fairchild Drive, Nairn Drive, Fifty Road, Eighty Road, Cervantes Avenue, Birdsville Drive, Norseman Approach and Safety Bay Road
 * 569 Baldivis to Warnbro Station – serves Daintree Street, Paparone Road, Lochern Road, Key Avenue, Baldivis Road and Safety Bay Road

Facilities
Local facilities in the Baldivis area include:
 * The Fifty Road Recreation Centre and Sporting Grounds, which are home to the Baldivis Brumbies, Baldivis Scouts and the Annual Baldivis Fair.
 * The Mary Davies Library and Community Centre, which was opened in 2014 and is home to many associations, clubs, dance groups, lessons and community groups for meetings and events.
 * The Fire & Emergency Services building on Eighty Road.
 * The Tramway reserve, a protected walkway spanning the length of Baldivis.
 * The Baldivis Children's Forest.

Education
There are eleven schools in Baldivis, with more planned to open in the future:

 * Baldivis Primary School, a government school which first opened in 1924 as a "bush school", and moved to its present location in Fifty Road in 1978. The site of the original Baldivis School is marked by a plaque on a large granite rock on Doghill Road, about 2 km from the intersection with St Albans Road.
 * Tranby College, a private school operated by the Uniting Church for K-12 students which opened in 1997.
 * Settlers Primary School, a government school, opened in 2005 and situated opposite Tranby College.
 * John Calvin Primary School, situated on Mandurah Road.
 * Makybe Rise Primary School opened in 2012 on Makybe Drive in Tuart Ridge estate.
 * Baldivis Secondary College, a public high school located on Stillwater Drive educating students from year 7 to year 12 that opened in 2013
 * Mother Teresa Catholic College opened in 2014 at the corner of Sixty-Eight Road and Eighty Road. In 2018, the secondary school campus opened.
 * Tuart Rise Primary School opened in 2015 on Smirk Road in the Avalon estate.
 * Rivergums Primary School, opened in 2016 in the Rivergums housing estate, next to Baldivis Secondary College.
 * Baldivis Gardens Primary School, opened in 2017 in the northern section of Baldivis off of Kerosene Lane.
 * Ridge View Secondary College, a public high school on Sixty Eight Road which opened in 2019.
 * Sheoak Grove Primary School, a public primary school on Nyilla Approach which opened in 2020.
 * Pine View Primary School, a public primary school located in Parkland Heights which opened in 2021.

Shopping
The main shopping facilities in Baldivis are located in the area known as the Baldivis Town Centre, on Settlers Avenue, and includes the Baldivis Shopping Centre (opened in mid-2007) owned by Stockland. Extensions completed in 2015 expanded the existing Shopping Centre (which already housed a Coles) to include a Food Court/Restaurant precinct, increased car park numbers, a Kmart and a Woolworths.

In 2017, another shopping precinct, Baldivis Square, opened on Makybe Drive next to Makybe Rise Primary School. Baldivis Square includes a mix of retail, food and professional offices, anchored by an IGA. The electorate office of Reece Whitby, the local MLA for the Baldivis legislative district is located in Baldivis Square.

Sport
The Baldivis Soccer Club was formed in 2012 and are located at Baldivis South Sports Pavilion. The club has grown rapidly and now have 18 teams from the age of 6 right through all age groups senior men's/women's teams.

The Baldivis White Knights Cricket Club (WKBCC) was formed in 2001, located at Arpenteur Park in Baldivis.

The Baldivis Brumbies Football Club (BFC) was formed in 1986 and currently has 3 grounds and 40 teams.

The North Baldivis Cricket Club (NBCC) was formed in 2019.

In March 2023, the recently-completed Baldivis Sports Complex, consisting of the Baldivis Indoor Sports Complex as well as outdoor cricket fields and change rooms, was opened in the presence of the Mayor of Rockingham, Deb Hamblin, the Premier of Western Australia, Mark McGowan, and the Member of Parliament for Baldivis, Reece Whitby.

title: Baldivis, Western Australia


text:
Sanguisorba minor

Sanguisorba minor, the salad burnet, garden burnet, small burnet, burnet (also used for Sanguisorba generally), pimpernelle, Toper's plant, and burnet-bloodwort, is an edible perennial herbaceous plant in the family Rosaceae. It has ferny, toothed-leaf foliage; the unusual crimson, spherical flower clusters rise well above the leaves on thin stems. It generally grows to 25–55 cm tall (moisture-dependent; as short as 2 cm in dry areas). The large, long (sometimes 1m/3-foot), taproots store water, making it drought-tolerant.

It is evergreen to semi-evergreen; in warmer climates grows all year around, and in cold climates it stays green until heavy snow cover occurs. Plants may live over 20 years, though 7-12 is more usual; it lives longer if sometimes permitted to set seed. Burnet flowers in early summer.

Subspecies include muricata, minor, and mongolii (the last from the Mediterranean).

Occurrence
Salad burnet is native to western, central and southern Europe; northwest Africa, southwest Western Asia and Siberia. In Britain, it is not native, but has been naturalized since the 16th century. It has also naturalized in most of North America, in South America, Australia, and New Zealand. It is not generally invasive, co-existing with other plants and increasing species diversity. As of 2008 it had been reported as invasive in just one place, a pasture in Wyoming. The variables controlling salad burnet spread in North America are poorly studied.

In Europe it is found only in calcerous soils (see limestone), and is most common on chalk soils (see chalk) in England. In France, it grows on alluvial meadows, and in the south of France, on Kermes oak maquis (a Quercus coccifera shrubland ecosystem with siliceous soil) and garrigue (a shrubland ecosystem with calcareous soil). In Spain, it grows on silaceous soils.

In North America the species is probably much less diverse, due to founder effects and heavy selective breeding for forage value, including selection for cold-tolerance. It grows in a variety of soil types, generally infertile, well-drained soils, including weakly saline and weakly alkaline or acidic soils. In North America, it grows at a broad range of elevations. It is cold- and frost-tolerant, growing in USDA hardiness zones 4a-8a, but does not grow well in shade. It grows well on slopes and disturbed soil, and is sometimes used to stabilize soil. The delar cultivar widely grown in North America does not grow in damp or flooding areas, and needs over 14 in of precipitation per year.

Cultivation
It is grown in containers, wildflower meadows, ornamental gardens, and kitchen gardens, usually in sunny or very slightly shady spaces with an equator-facing or west-facing aspect. In North America, it is grown on dry rangelands. It is used for grazing, erosion control, post-fire weed control, firebreaks, and landscape rehabilitation. Because it tends to stay green, it is considered fire-resistant.

Propagation
Salad burnet can carry both male and female flowers on the same plant; that is, it is monoecious.

Salad burnet generally does not flower or seed in its first year of life. Grazing can prevent flowering, and hooved animals, rabbits, hares, rodents, and grasshoppers may eat almost all of the seed in some areas, but plants can also sprout from rodents' seed caches. The seeds are surrounded by a winged hypanthium until they germinate; the reason for the wings is unknown. Apart from being carried by animals, they might be dispersed by wind and water, which might account for the wings. In the wild, seeds survive in soil for decades, and despite the soil moisture, which tends to rot them, about half will still sprout; this is the natural gemination rate in Europe. Salad burnet can spread fairly quickly by self-seeding. It can also be spread by division, and it can spread through rhizomes, but young plants are easy to pull up, thought they develop taproots fairly rapidly.

Seed is mature when hard and dark; commercially, it is harvested with a high combine harvester to selectively take the seed while leaving the herbage. Yield is 500 - 550 lb/acre when irrigated, about a third that in drier conditions. commercial seed remains viable for several years if stored cool at 12 to 15 percent moisture, and seed in a warehouse has shown no appreciable drop in viability after 25 years of storage. Germination rates actually increase over three years of storage, and commercial seed usually has over 90% field germination rates, but both seed yields and germination rates are probably elevated in domestic species due to artificial selection. North American wild rates are not known. Salad burnet establishes slowly, and so it is not grazed (nor expected to flower much) for the first year.

In the wild, seed is buried an average of 10 cm or 4 inches deep. In a greenhouse experiment, germination peaked when seeds were set 6 cm (2.5 inch) deep.

Culinary
Young burnet leaves are used as an ingredient in salads, dressings, sauces, summer drinks, and in claret. It is also used to flavour vinegar, butter, and cream cheese.

It has a flavor described as "mildly cucumber, a bit tart, a little hot" and is considered interchangeable with mint leaves in some recipes, depending on the intended effect. Typically, the youngest leaves are used, as they tend to become bitter as they age; old leaves are cut back to encourage new growth.

Salad burnet was called a favorite herb by Francis Bacon, was brought to the New World with the first English colonists, and was given special mention by Thomas Jefferson. It declined in popularity as a kitchen herb, but, is becoming more popular again, for food and as an ornamental.

Ornamental
The unusual crimson, ball-shaped blooms are carried aloft on tall, thin stems, well above the ferny, toothed-leaf foliage. The leaves are often considered more ornamental than the flowers, which are often removed to encourage more foliage growth. However, the cut flowers are used in floral arrangements.

For wild and domestic animals
The flowers provide nectar and pollen, and attract bees, butterflies, moths, and other pollinators and beneficial insects. It is classified as a moderate honeybee food in New Zealand, and as a good nectar producer in the United States.

Salad burnet is good forage for wildlife and livestock, partly because it stays green for so long. Elk, deer, antelope and birds forage on the leaves and seeds. It provides cover for small birds, and it is used by the greater sage-grouse. It is planted on rangelands in western North America, including in pinyon-juniper woodlands, ponderosa pine forests, dry quaking aspen parklands, mountain grasslands, chaparral, desert and mountain shrublands, and sagebrush steppe. After the first year, it is grazed roughly every 35 days, or whenever it is 12 in tall, until it is half that height.

Medicinally
Salad burnet has in the past been used medicinally in Europe to control bleeding.

Salad burnet has the same medicinal qualities as medicinal burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis). It was used as a tea to relieve diarrhea in the past.

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

title: Sanguisorba minor


text:
Baldivis

Baldivis may refer to:
 * Baldivis, Western Australia, a suburb of Perth
 * Electoral district of Baldivis, a state electoral district named after the suburb
 * Baldivis Secondary College
 * Baldivis Tramway, a short-lived tramway

title: Baldivis


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ZoneMinder

ZoneMinder is a free, open-source software application for monitoring via closed-circuit television - developed to run under Linux and FreeBSD and released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Users control ZoneMinder via a web-based interface. The application can use standard cameras (via a capture card, USB, FireWire etc.) or IP-based camera devices. The software allows three modes of operation:

 * monitoring (without recording)
 * recording after detected movement
 * permanent recording

The application supports multiple cameras, reviewable simultaneously. Recording starts when the application detects changes between camera frames; one can select zones within field of view that the software will ignore. ZoneMinder supports cameras compatible with ONVIF standard. However, relative difficulty of configuration is - along with limited support for other languages than English - counted among ZoneMinder's weak points. This is underlined by lack of straightforward documentation. Filip Palian reported in 2008 that ZoneMinder contained security loopholes allowing unauthorized remote control of cameras, basic authentication (for example, .htaccess on Apache) should circumvent such issues.

title: ZoneMinder


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New Formalism

New Formalism is a late 20th- and early 21st-century movement in American poetry that has promoted a return to metrical, rhymed verse and narrative poetry on the grounds that all three are necessary if American poetry is to compete with novels and regain its former popularity among the American people.

Background
The formal innovations of Modernist poetry, inspired by Walt Whitman and popularized by Ezra Pound, Edgar Lee Masters, and T.S. Eliot, led to the widespread publication of free verse during the early 20th century. By the 1920s, debates about the value of free verse versus formal poetry were filling the pages of American literary journals.

Meanwhile, many poets chose to continue working predominantly in traditional forms, such as Robert Frost, Richard Wilbur, and Anthony Hecht. Formal verse also continued being written by American poets associated with the New Criticism, including John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren and Allen Tate.

During the 1950s, the second coming of "The Free Verse Revolution" was inspired by the writings of Beat Generation poets Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Rexroth, and of Imagist poet William Carlos Williams. The Second Free Verse Revolution also introduced into American poetry, according to Frederick Feirstein and Frederick Turner, the Silent Generation's much wider, "revolt against the social conventions of Puritan America", which was reflected by the Greaser subculture of the era and the Rock and Roll music of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bill Haley, and Elvis Presley.

As a result, it became more expected for poets to experiment and, with the rise of Confessional poetry, the writing and publication of non-autobiographical and non-Left wing verse became unfashionable. As often happens in literature and the arts, however, what had begun as an anti-establishment counterculture seeking freedom from constraint hardened over time into an authoritarian literary elite which opposed innovation and expressed hostility to both older and younger poets who refused to conform to its dictates.

According to Feirstein and Turner,

"'It is hard to imagine in 1989 how narrow and doctrinaire was the world of poetry in the seventies when the poets in the movement began to mature. Both narrative and meter were considered at best out of date and at worst the instruments of bourgeois capitalism. Ignoring the strict meter and narrative impulses of blues and country and western lyrics, the high priests of the ruling ideology proclaimed that narrative and meter were elitist European importations and that the true American voice could only be heard in free verse. These views went together with a pose of the poet as resenting and rebelling against the poets cultural past and that of society at large. Although he or she invariably taught in a university, the poseurs would express profound hostility to the intellectual imagination, especially in the forms of science and technology, and a sentimental preference for nature over culture. The poseurs often would be gleefully pessimistic about the future which would seem to justify their solipsistic confessions about their darkly perceived past.'"

In an essay that he admitted was similarly intended to provoke, R.S. Gwynn wrote in similar terms about American poetry of the 1970s,

"'The tribal music of Poetryland -- the murky manifestos of Projective Verse and breath-units, the proliferation of cut-rate knock-offs of Howl and Daddy, the shamanism of the Deep Image and the multiform brain -- had begun to resemble ritualized incantations, mumbled by the multitudes of but comprehended by few, and a sense emerged that certain types of poetry had overstayed their welcome.'"

An early sign of a revival of interest in traditional poetic forms was the publication of Lewis Turco's The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics in 1968. In the early 1970s X. J. Kennedy started publishing the short-lived magazine Counter/Measures which was devoted to the use of traditional form in poetry. A few other editors around this time were sympathetic to formal poetry, but the mainstream continued to oppose rhyme and meter.

Meanwhile, aspiring Formalist poets from both the Silent and Baby Boomer Generations were still able to attend classes taught by older professors, including Yvor Winters, Robert Fitzgerald, and Elizabeth Bishop, who continued to teach both literary criticism and the craft of writing poetry in a more traditional way.

In a 2021 interview, Dana Gioia said that while New Formalism and New Narrative are the most controversial responses in American poetry to the Second Free Verse Revolution, they are only one facet of an enormous grassroots movement. Gioia elaborates,

"'If I go back to 1975 when I was leaving Harvard, I was told by the world experts in poetry that rhyme and meter were dead, narrative was dead in poetry. Poetry would become ever more complex, which meant that it could only appeal to an elite audience, and finally, that the African American voice in poetry rejected these European things and would take this experimental form. What the intellectuals in the United States did was we took poetry away from common people. We took rhyme away, we took narrative away, we took the ballad away, and the common people reinvented it. The greatest one of these was Kool Herc in the South Bronx, who invented what we now think of as rap and hip hop. Within about ten years, it went from non-existent to being the most widely purchased form of popular music. We saw in our own lifetime something akin to Homer, the reinvention of popular oral poetry. There were parallels in the revival of slam poetry, cowboy poetry, and new formalism, so at every little social group, people from the ground up reinvented poetry because the intellectuals had taken it away from them.'"

In what William Baer has seen as the beginning of New Formalism, Rachel Hadas published her first chapbook in 1975, Charles Martin published his first collection in 1978, and Timothy Steele's first book of poems appeared in 1979.

Frederick Feirstein and Frederick Turner, on the other hand, first became aware that New Formalism existed during a 1981 conversation with Dick Allen at the "Minetta Tavern" in Greenwich Village. Turner had just published the provocative essay "Mighty Poets in Their Misery Dead: A Polemic on the Contemporary Poetry Scene" in Missouri Review and had immediately heard from many fellow Formalist poets. Meanwhile, Feirstein was already corresponding with West Coast Formalist poets, including Charles Martin and Dana Gioia. Turner and Feirstein later recalled, "We began to see ourselves as a distinct movement of many people. We saw each other's work begin to appear consistently in the literary journals."

Other literary scholars, including Robert McPhillips and Gerry Cambridge, date the beginning of New Formalism from the publication of Diane Wakoski's 1986 polemic essay "The New Conservatism in American Poetry" and the irate defenses that same essay provoked from Robert Mezey, Lewis Turco, David Radavich, Brian Richards, and Dana Gioia.

Early history
One of the first rumbles of the conflict that was to provide the impetus to create New Formalism as a specific movement, came with the publication in 1977 of an issue of the Mississippi Review called 'Freedom and Form: American Poets Respond'. The late 1970s saw the publication of a few collections by poets working in traditional forms, including Comforting the Wilderness (1977) by Robert B. Shaw, Room for Error (1978) by Charles Martin, and Timothy Steele's Uncertainties and Rest (1979). In 1980 Mark Jarman and Robert McDowell started the small magazine The Reaper to promote narrative and formal poetry. In 1981 Jane Greer launched Plains Poetry Journal, which published new work in traditional forms. In 1984 McDowell started Story Line Press which has since published some New Formalist poets. The Reaper ran for ten years. Frederick Feirstein's Expansive Poetry (1989) gathered various essays on the New Formalism and the related movement New Narrative, under the umbrella term 'Expansive Poetry'.

From 1983 the onset of "neoformalism" was noted in the annual poetry roundups in the yearbooks of The Dictionary of Literary Biography, and through the mid-1980s heated debates on the topic of formalism were carried on in several journals. 1986 saw the publication of Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate: A Novel in Verse and the anthology Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms.

The Poetry Wars
As the pioneers of the movement were joined in print by a growing number other young formalist poets, the dispute that had begun in the 1920s and 1950s reignited and would later be dubbed the Poetry Wars by literary critics and historians. This time, however, Free Verse poets, many of whom were English professors and veterans of the 1960s Counterculture, found themselves in the ironic position of being The Establishment.

The term 'New Formalism' was first used by Ariel Dawson in the article "The Yuppie Poet" in the May 1985 issue of the AWP Newsletter, which was a polemic against returning to traditional poetic forms. Dawson's article accused the New Formalist poets not only of social conservatism, but also of yuppie capitalism, consumerism, and greed; an allegation that would be repeated many times in the future.

Meanwhile, Frederick Turner and psychologist and neuroscientist Ernst Pöppel of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, West Germany, made a scientific breakthrough by proving, "that regular rhythm actually induces the brain to release pleasure-creating endorphins" and, in 1985, they published their findings in the award-winning essay The Neural Lyre: Poetic Meter, the Brain, and Time in the magazine Poetry.

In 1986, Diane Wakoski, a deep image poet, literary critic, and professor at Michigan State University, published the essay The New Conservatism in American Poetry. The essay was provoked when Wakoski attended a Modern Language Association conference in which old Formalist John Hollander spoke critically, according to Robert McPhillips, of college and university, "creative writing programs and the general slackness of most free verse."

In a critique which Robert McPhillips has called, "less aesthetic than it is political", Wakoski recalled about Hollander's remarks, "I thought that I heard the Devil speaking to me." Hollander was, Wakoski alleged, "a man full of spite, from lack of recognition and thinly disguised anger... who was frustrated and petty from that frustration," as he was, "denouncing the free verse revolution, denouncing the poetry which is the fulfillment of the Whitman heritage, making defensive jokes about the ill-educated, slovenly writers of poetry who have been teaching college poetry classes for the past decade, allowing their students to write drivel and go out into the world, illiterate of poetry." Wakoski then turned her attack against the younger poets, whom she called, "really the spokesmen for the new conservatism," which she called an unfortunate continuation of the legacies of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost.

According to Gerry Cambridge, "This attack generated five responses, from Robert Mezey, Lewis Turco, David Radavich, Brian Richards, and Dana Gioia. Most of them denied any necessary link between aesthetic and politics, in particular between form and conservatism, citing Ezra Pound as an example of a Fascist who wrote free verse. They also criticized as a kind of cultural fascism Wakoski's intolerance of literary pluralism, paradoxically in the guise of a democratic Whitmanism that declared form to be un-American. Gioia compared her tone and content to 'the quest for pure Germanic culture led by the late Joseph Goebbels.' He entertainingly suggested 'the radical notion' that whatever poetry was written by Americans constituted American poetry. Wakoski's polemic and these responses were the first public controversy about the young movement."

Despite more recent arguments against political stereotyping by Progressive New Formalist poets, such as Paul Lake in the 1988 essay, Towards a Liberal Poetics and by A.E. Stallings in the 2010 essay Afro-Formalism, as Dana Gioia wrote in 1987, "for many writers the discussion between formal and free-verse has become an encoded political debate."

Therefore, the Poetry Wars continued and poets who wrote free verse and Confessional poetry were alleged to be social progressives, anti-racists, and as New Left socialists. New Formalist and New Narrative poets, on the other hand, were stereotyped as old money White Anglo-Saxon Protestant preppies and as Anglophiles filled with hatred of the American Revolution and nostalgia for the British Empire. American poetry in traditional verse forms was, according to polemicists defending "The Free Verse Revolution", reactionary, Eurocentric, un-American, white supremacist, and even fascist.

For female New Formalists, The Poetry Wars meant accusations of betraying their gender and the cause of feminism; as Annie Finch wrote in 1994 in the Introduction to A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women, "Readers who have been following the discussion of the 'New Formalism' over the last decade may not expect to find such a diversity of writers and themes in a book of formal poems; the poems collected here contradict the popular assumption that formal poetics correspond to reactionary politics and elitist aesthetics. The passion for form unites these many and diverse poets."

Similar accusations were unleashed against minority New Formalists and, in an essay of her own, Dominican-American poet and novelist Julia Alvarez defended her decision to write in languages and verse forms introduced to the New World by English and Spanish colonialists, while simultaneously subverting them by using those languages and verse forms to, "say what's important to me as a woman and as a Latina."

Later history
In 1990 William Baer started The Formalist and the first issue contained poems by, among others, Howard Nemerov, Richard Wilbur, and Donald Justice. The magazine ran twice a year for fifteen years, with the fall/winter 2004 issue being the last. The Formalist was succeeded by Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry, which is published biannually by the University of Evansville.

Since 1995, West Chester University has held an annual poetry conference with a special focus on formal poetry and New Formalism. Despite his original reluctance, the involvement of Richard Wilbur as the keynote speaker at the first conference in 1995 was a major reason for both its success and subsequent continuation. Richard Wilbur also continued to attend the Conference and teach classes there on the poets craft until well into his nineties. Every year the Robert Fitzgerald Prosody Award is awarded as part of the West Chester Poetry Conference.

Dominican-American poet Rhina Espaillat, who attended the first West Chester Poetry Conference as a student, has used her subsequent position as a teacher at the Conference to introduce her students to verse forms from Spanish and Latin American poetry, including the décima and the ovillejo. This has led to those verse forms being introduced into English-language poetry by Espaillat's students.

Dick Davis, a Persophile, University-trained Iranologist, and award-winning translator of Persian poetry, and Agha Shahid Ali, a Qizilbash Kashmiri Shiite Muslim and composer of Ghazals in American English, are also considered to be New Formalists.

Within New Formalism there are also several living authors of Christian poetry. They include Dana Gioia, Frederick Turner, David Middleton, and James Matthew Wilson.

Modern Christian poetry may be found in anthologies and in several Christian magazines such as Commonweal, Christian Century and Sojourners. Poetry by a new generation of Catholic poets appears in St. Austin Review, Dappled Things, The Lamp, and First Things.

Legacy
During the early 21st century, poems in traditional forms were once again being published more widely, and the new formalist movement was winding down.

In 2001 the American poet Leo Yankevich founded The New Formalist, which published among others the poets Jared Carter and Keith Holyoak.

Meanwhile, the movement was still not without its detractors. In the November/December 2003 issue of P. N. Review, N. S. Thompson wrote: "While movements do need a certain amount of bombast to fuel interest, they have to be backed up by a certain artistic success. In hindsight, the movement seems to be less of a poetic revolution and more a marketing campaign."

Since then, the effects of new formalism have been observed in the broader domain of general poetry; a survey of successive editions of various general anthologies showed an increase in the number of villanelles included in the post-mid-'80s editions. The publication of books concerned with poetic form has also increased. Lewis Turco's Book of Forms from 1968 was revised and reissued in 1986 under the title 'New Book of Forms. Alfred Corn's The Poem's Heartbeat, Mary Oliver's Rules of the Dance, and Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled are other examples of this trend. The widely used anthology An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art (University of Michigan Press, 2002), edited by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes, defines formalist poetry as a form on a par with experimental, free verse, and even prose poetry.

In a 2010 essay, Philhellene poet A.E. Stallings, whose poetry has been favorably compared with that of both Richard Wilbur and Edna St. Vincent Millay, expressed regret that the writing of formal verse in American poetry remained, "an oddly politicized choice". Stallings added that female and minority New Formalists continued to be, "criticized", as part of what she dubbed, "that false dichotomy of free verse = democracy and empowerment and progress whereas formal verse = oppression and elitism and kowtowing to dead white males."

Later in that same essay, however, Stallings described listening to African-American poet Erica Dawson, "who has something like rock star status in the formal world", as Dawson described how, "A decade ago she was told at a recitation contest that 'form was dead' but now she has served as judge at that same contest. She exuded confidence and vindication, taking on the canon in her own terms."

In a 2022 interview with St. Austin Review co-editor Joseph Pearce, Polish journalist Anna Szyda from the literary magazine Magna Polonia explained that the nihilism of modern American poetry is widely noticed and commented upon in the Third Polish Republic as reflecting, "the deleterious influence of the contemporary civilisation on the American soul." In response, StAR co-editor Joseph Pearce described "the neo-formalist revival" inspired by the late Richard Wilbur and how it has been reflected in recent verse by the Catholic poets whom he and Robert Asch publish in StAR. Pearce said that the Catholic faith and optimism of the younger generation of Catholic poets made him feel hope for the future.

In a 2016 interview with John Cusatis, Dana Gioia explained, "Literary movements are always temporary. They last a decade or so, and then they die or merge into the mainstream. The best New Formalist poets gradually became mainstream figures. There was no climax to the so-called Poetry Wars, only slow assimilation and change. Free and formal verse gradually ceased to be considered polar opposites. Form became one of the available styles of contemporary practice. Today one finds poems in rhyme and meter in most literary magazines. New Formalism became so successful that it no longer needed to exist."

New Formalist canon
The 2004 West Chester Conference had a by-invitation-only critical seminar on 'Defining the Canon of New Formalism', in which the following anthologies were discussed:
 * Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism edited by Mark Jarman and David Mason, 1996.
 * The Direction of Poetry: An Anthology of Rhymed and Metered Verse Written in the English Language since 1975, edited by Robert Richman
 * A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women, edited by Annie Finch, 1993

title: New Formalism


text:
John Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne

John Ulick Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne, (9 November 1924 – 23 September 2005), professionally known as John Brabourne, was a British peer, television producer and Oscar-nominated film producer. Married to the elder daughter of 1st Earl Mountbatten, Brabourne was a survivor of the bombing which killed his father-in-law, mother and son.

Biography
Brabourne was born in 1924, the second son of Michael Knatchbull, 5th Baron Brabourne, and his wife, Lady Doreen Browne. He was educated at Eton College and Brasenose College, Oxford. He was barely 14 when his father died in February 1939 and his elder brother, Norton, inherited the Barony.

War and inheritance
The Second World War broke out just as Brabourne was finishing school, and he enlisted in the armed forces. He served in the Coldstream Guards, rising to the rank of captain. He fought in France from 1944 onwards. In 1943, his elder brother, Norton Knatchbull, a lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, was wounded and captured in Italy. While being transported to Germany as a POW, he tried to escape, but was captured and executed by the SS on 15 September 1943. Since he died childless, his barony passed to John, who became the 7th Lord Brabourne.

Marriage
At the end of the war, Brabourne returned to England and settled in the family seat, Mersham in Kent. On 26 October 1946, at Romsey Abbey in Hampshire, at the age of 21, he married Patricia Mountbatten, elder daughter of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Viscount Mountbatten, later 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Brabourne's best man at the wedding was Squadron Leader Charles Harris-St. John.

Lady Brabourne was to inherit her father's peerages in due course. This would make Lord and Lady Brabourne among the few married couples to each hold peerages in their own right. Also, Lady Brabourne was related to the British royal family, and her aunt Louise Mountbatten was at that time the Crown Princess (later Queen) of Sweden. In February 1947, only months after the wedding, Brabourne's father-in-law was appointed Viceroy of India. The newly-wed couple spent several months in India, residing with her parents in the viceregal palace. In November the same year, Lady Brabourne's first cousin Philip, Duke of Edinburgh wed Princess Elizabeth, future Queen of the United Kingdom.

Lord and Lady Brabourne had eight children:
 * Norton Louis Philip Knatchbull, Lord Romsey – later the 8th Baron Brabourne (born 8 October 1947), married Penelope Eastwood and has issue. 3rd Earl Mountbatten of Burma from 13 June 2017.
 * Michael-John Ulick Knatchbull (born 24 May 1950)
 * Anthony Knatchbull (born/died 6 April 1952)
 * Lady Joanna Edwina Doreen Knatchbull (born 5 March 1955), married Baron Hubert Pernot du Breuil and later Azriel Zuckerman, and had issue by both.
 * Lady Amanda Patricia Victoria Knatchbull – later Lady Amanda Ellingworth (born 26 June 1957), married Charles Ellingworth and had three sons.
 * Philip Wyndham Ashley Knatchbull (born 2 December 1961)
 * Nicholas Timothy Charles Knatchbull (18 November 1964 – 27 August 1979), killed at the age of 14 by an IRA bomb.
 * Timothy Knatchbull (born 18 November 1964), twin with his brother Nicholas.

Career and service
In the late 1940s, shortly after leaving the army, Brabourne began working as an assistant production manager for certain television productions, mostly based on war-related themes. He graduated to the role of production manager by the early 1950s, and finally became a producer in his own right in 1958, with Harry Black a romantic story set in India, with war as the distant context. This was followed by Sink the Bismarck! (1960). War, Empire and India were recurrent themes in his work, and A Passage to India (1984) is among his films. His other motion pictures include Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Death on the Nile (1978), and Little Dorrit (1988).

In 1970, he founded Mersham Productions, a production house named after his family seat in Kent, which produced many of his works thereafter. He served as a director of Thames Television (later chairman) and Euston Films from 1978 to 1995, and a director of Thorn EMI from 1981 to 1986.

John Brabourne received two Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, as producer of Romeo and Juliet (1968) and A Passage to India. In 1979, Brabourne was invested as a Fellow of the British Film Institute. In 1993, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1990 when he was surprised by Michael Aspel at the Old Brewery venue in London.

Despite an active career, Brabourne was also a country gentleman, and took his local responsibilities seriously. He served as a governor of various schools, including Norton Knatchbull School (founded by an ancestor c. 1630 AD) from 1947 to 2000; Wye College in Kent from 1955 to 2000, and Gordonstoun School from 1964 to 1994. He also served as Pro-Chancellor of the University of Kent from 1993 to 1999.

The IRA bombing
On 27 August 1979, while the family was on holiday in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, Lord Brabourne's father-in-law, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, took a number of family members out lobstering on his motorboat, Shadow V, in Donegal Bay. Having planned to murder Mountbatten, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) placed a bomb inside the boat on the night of the 26th. Mountbatten and several members of the party were killed the next morning when the bomb was triggered by an IRA observer onshore who was armed with a radio detonator. The dead included Brabourne's 83-year-old mother, the Dowager Baroness Brabourne; one of his twin 14-year-old sons, Nicholas Knatchbull; and a local boy, 15-year-old Paul Maxwell from County Fermanagh who had been hired for the summer as Mountbatten's boat boy. Brabourne, his wife Patricia, and their other twin son Timothy were severely injured, but survived the attack.

Lord Brabourne died in 2005 at his home in Kent at the age of 80. Patricia Brabourne died in June 2017.

title: John Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne


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Fourtet

Fourtet may refer to

 * Clos Fourtet, a Bordeaux Saint-Émilion wine producer
 * Four Tet, the stage name of electronic musician Kieran Hebden

title: Fourtet


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Akhtar Abdur Rahman

Akhtar Abdur Rahman (11 June 1924 – 17 August 1988), was a Pakistan Army general who served as the 5th Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee from 1987 until his death in 1988. He previously served as the 7th Director-General of Inter-Services Intelligence from 1979 to 1987. During both Indo Pak wars of 1965 and 1971, he oversaw action with his own unit 45 Field Regiment Artillery (Fateh Qasar-i- Hind 1971) in Sundra and Hussainiwala sectors respectively.

As the DG ISI, General Akhtar collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency and masterminded the resistance network of the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, eventually managing to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Due to his close friendship with President of Pakistan General Zia-ul-Haq, General Akhtar was widely considered to be the second most powerful man in the country during General Zia's eleven-year military dictatorship. He died in a plane crash which also killed General Zia and the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Lewis Raphel. After his death, his sons, Humayun Akhtar Khan and Haroon Akhtar Khan, became politicians and were eventually elected as the Members of Parliament and headed the key ministerial portfolios several times.

Early life and education
Akhtar Abdur Rahman was born on 11 June 1924 in Peshawar, to a Kakazai Pashtun family. Akhtar's father, Abdur Rahman Khan, was a doctor at a government hospital over here. He lost his father at the tender age of four and was raised by his mother, after the family moved to East Punjab in British India. He studied at the Bishop Cotton School, Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, India, before enrolling himself in the Government College University (Faisalabad) in 1941, subsequently earning a bachelor's degree in Science and Statistics in 1945, followed by a Master of Science in Economics in 1947.

Rising through the ranks
General Akhtar Abdur Rahman joined the British Indian Army in 1946, before becoming Captain in the Pakistan Army three years later. After witnessing traumatic events during the partition, Abdur Rahman was appointed as an instructor at the Artillery School in Nowshera. Later, he was selected for an infantry training course with the British Army, and was sent on deputation to complete a course in the United Kingdom. Upon returning to Pakistan, he was promoted to the rank of a major and posted as a military adviser to the East-Pakistan Army from April 1954 to October 1954. He was later transferred back to General combatant headquarters (GHQ) as a staff officer, a position he held from April 1956 to February 1957. He actively participated in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 and was appointed at IV Corps as an operational field officer. In the 1965 war, he gallantly defended the Lahore sector, which led to him being promoted to lieutenant-colonel, but he remained second-in-command of the artillery regiment in Lahore. After cease fire in September 1965, newly promoted Lt Colonel Akhtar commanded his unit 45 Field Regiment Artillery and moved it to Pakistani occupied territory of war in Sundra Sector where his unit 45 Field Artillery remained deployed till February 1966. After the war, he was promoted to the rank of colonel, while being stationed with the IV Corps. Later, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier and transferred to the northern areas of the country, where he commanded an infantry brigade in Azad Kashmir.

In 1971 Indo Pak War, just before his promotion to a Major General, he again saw his own 45 Field Regiment Artillery in action at Hussainiwala Sector where 45 Field displayed tremendous valour in achieveing a bold victory over Qasar-i-Hind Citadel. His unit 45 Field Regiment Artillery was later awarded battle honor of 'Fateh Qasar -i- Hind 1971' by Army Headquarters, as he was instrumental in capturing the Indian fortress of Qaiser-e-Hind. Later he was promoted to the two-star general rank of a major-general, and served as the general officer commanding (GOC) of the 12th Infantry Division stationed in Murree. As the GOC of the 12th Infantry Division, General Akhtar was considered very close to Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and personally received him whenever he visited the command office of the 12th Division. He did not take part in the 1977 military coup and privately opposed the martial law to remove the Prime minister Bhutto. Six months after the military coup of 1977, he was appointed as the adjutant general at the General Headquarters, which would last two years. During this time, General Akhtar became aware of a conspiracy in which Lieutenant-General Faiz Ali Chishti of X Corps, a close associate of General Zia-ul-Haq, secretly became rebellious and conspired to stage a military coup in the country. As early as of 1979, Akhtar received a call from General Chishti and met him at his office in Chaklala Military District (CMD). At this meeting, General Chishti informed him of the conspiracy that aimed to topple General Zia-ul-Haq and sought his assistance. According to the News International's intelligence unit, Chishti was under the impression that since Akhtar had not been promoted, he would accept this invitation; especially when he was promised that after the coup worked out successfully, he would not only be promoted but would also become one of the pillars of the new regime. After returning to the GHQ, General Akhtar contacted General Zia-ul-Haq and foiled the plot against Zia. In June 1979 after the counter-coup had been foiled, President General Zia-ul-Haq awarded General Akhtar a promotion to Lieutenant General and appointed him Director General of the ISI.

Soviet–Afghan War
When the Soviet Union deployed its 40th Army in Afghanistan, Pakistan's top military base led by Akhtar, believed that Pakistan would be the Soviet Union's next target. They felt that because of Pakistan's strategic location and given the fact that it had warm water ports in the Arabian Sea, it was a prime target for future invasion. Considering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan threatened Pakistan's national security, Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, the ISI, headed by General Akhtar, started providing financial, military, and strategic assistance to the Afghan Mujahideen. The ISI received billions of dollars in military assistance from the CIA and Saudi Arabia, to train and command the Afghan rebels in a bid to defeat the Soviets. This covert operation was known as Operation Cyclone, and was executed with the CIA, providing the money and weapons, the ISI training, commanding the Afghan Mujahideen groups, and the Mujahideen conducting guerrilla warfare, ultimately leading to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. During this time, General Akhtar developed a highly effective working relationship with key figures in the United States including CIA Director William Casey and Congressman Charlie Wilson.

While he was still DG ISI, General Akhtar's influence on Pakistan's atomic weapons program grew and he worked tirelessly to collect colleagues around him who were equally dynamic and determined to make the ISI an organization that would influence the domestic and external policies of the country. It was under him that the ISI became recognized as one of the most powerful spy agencies in the world. In 1987, at the pinnacle of his career after having achieved remarkable success in the Afghan war and protecting Pakistan's Nuclear Program, General Akhtar was promoted to the four-star rank and was appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, the highest ranking four-star rank in the Pakistan Armed Forces.

Death and investigation
On 17 August 1988, General Akhtar Abdur Rahman died in a plane crash along with several other high-profile generals including Zia-ul-Haq, the sixth and current president of Pakistan at the time, and the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Lewis Raphel. General Akhtar had accompanied Zia to Bahawalpur in his C-130B Hercules presidential aircraft jet, to witness a US M1 Abrams tank demonstration. After the generals witnessed the demonstration, it was time to leave. The aircraft departed from Bahawalpur Airport and was expected to reach Islamabad International Airport after a few hours. Takeoff was smooth, but shortly after, about $2 1/2$ minutes into the flight, the control tower lost contact with the aircraft. Witnesses who saw the plane in the air claimed that it was flying erratically and that it nosedived and exploded on impact, killing all 31 passengers on board. Shortly after the plane crash, the senate chairman, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, became president and announced General Zia's death on radio and TV. [113] There is speculation that various state intelligence agencies including the American CIA, the Soviet KGB, the Indian RAW, the Israeli MOSSAD and the Afghan KHAD (in retaliation of Pakistani support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan), or an alliance of the four intelligence agencies along with the dissident groups in the Pakistan Army, were involved in the incident.

Not long after, a board of inquiry was set up to investigate. It concluded 'the most probable cause of the crash was a criminal act of sabotage perpetrated in the aircraft'. It also suggested that poisonous gases were released that incapacitated the passengers and crew, which explains why no Mayday signal was given.[116] There was also speculations about other facts involving the details of the investigation. Although a flight recorder (black box) was installed in the aircraft, it was not located after the crash. To this day, the cause of the plane crash remains unknown and has given a rise to many conspiracy theories.

Personal life
General Akhtar married Rashida Akhtar Khan in 1951 and had four children: Akbar Akhtar Khan (born 1953), Humayun Akhtar Khan (born 1955), Haroon Akhtar Khan (born 1957), and Ghazi Akhtar Khan (born 1959).

Corruption charges
In one of the New York Times investigations, General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, as the head of Pakistani intelligence agency, helped funnel billions of dollars in cash and other aid from the United States and other countries for the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan, to support their fight against the Soviet Union. The same report mentioned that a Credit Suisse account was opened in 1985, in the name of three of General Abdur Rahman's sons. Years later, the account would grow to hold $3.7 million, as what the leaked records show. According to the paper, two of the general's sons, Akbar Akhtar Khan, the oldest of General Akhtar's children, and Haroon Akhtar Khan, did not respond to the requests for comment on the reporting project. In a text message, Ghazi Akhtar Khan, the youngest of the Akhtar brothers, said the information about the accounts was "not correct," adding, "The content is conjectural." The claims remain unproven.

Books mentioning General Akhtar

 * Fateh by Haroon-ur-Rasheed
 * Silent soldier by Mohammad Yousaf
 * The Bear Trap by Mohammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin
 * Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile
 * Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
 * A Case of Exploding Mango's Mohammad Hanif
 * Profiles of Intelligence by Brigadier Syed A. I. Tirmizi

title: Akhtar Abdur Rahman


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User:MarkKB

MarkKB is the user name of Mark Kéy-Balchin, a user of Wikipedia.

Userbox Overload

MarkKB's userpage has waaaaay too many userboxes on it. Be careful on what you spend the next 5 minutes on.

About
OK, so enough of this third-person stuff! Hi, my name is MarkKB, I'm 21 years old and was born on July 28, 1991 in Auckland, New Zealand. I'm a avid fan of many Disney Channel, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon television series, such as Lilo & Stitch: The Series, Kim Possible, DuckTales, The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, ChalkZone, Four Eyes and Friendship Is Magic, as well as sci-fi shows such as Star Trek, Stargate and the like. I am also a regular at TV.com, FanFiction.Net and deviantART.com.

For more about me, check out my userboxes. Whew, there's a lot of them...

Wikipediholic Score
I scored 102 in the "Are You A Wikipediholic Test"! Yay...

Articles created in Wikipedia
My first article was Chris Sanders (under 203.109.252.196, I was anonymous at the time), who is the director of Lilo & Stitch and the voice of Stitch. Doctor Hämsterviel, which was eventually renamed Dr. Jacques von Hämsterviel by me, was my second article, and the first I created under MarkKB. Though technically not articles, Template: Lilo & Stitch and Template:KimPossible were also created by me in order to link related articles.

I also created the article for Drymaplaneta semivitta, the Gisborne cockroach, after having found one in my house and doing some research on the species.

Links
MarkKB's Web - The website of Mark Kéy-Balchin.

Yet Another Lilo & Stitch Fansite - A website devoted to Lilo & Stitch.

title: User:MarkKB


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Focal point (game theory)

In game theory, a focal point (or Schelling point) is a solution that people tend to choose by default in the absence of communication in order to avoid coordination failure. The concept was introduced by the American economist Thomas Schelling in his book The Strategy of Conflict (1960). Schelling states that "[p]eople can often concert their intentions or expectations with others if each knows that the other is trying to do the same" in a cooperative situation (p. 57), so their action would converge on a focal point which has some kind of prominence compared with the environment. However, the conspicuousness of the focal point depends on time, place and people themselves. It may not be a definite solution.

Existence
The existence of the focal point is first demonstrated by Schelling with a series of questions. Here is one example: to determine the time and place to meet a stranger in New York City, but without being able to communicate in person beforehand. In this coordination game, any place and time in the city could be an equilibrium solution. Schelling asked a group of students this question, and found the most common answer was "noon at (the information booth at) Grand Central Terminal". There is nothing that makes Grand Central Terminal a location with a higher payoff because people could just as easily meet at another public location, such as a bar or a library, but its tradition as a meeting place raises its salience and therefore makes it a natural "focal point". Later, Schelling's informal experiments have been replicated under controlled conditions with monetary incentives by Judith Mehta.

The existence of focal points can help explain the use of social norms, including traditional gender roles, in order to ensure coordination, and why changing said norms can be difficult.

Theories
Although the concept of a focal point has been widely accepted in game theory, it is still unclear how a focal point forms. The researchers have proposed theories from two aspects.

The level-n theory
Stahl and Wilson argue that a focal point is formed because players would try to predict how other players act. They model the level of "rational expectation" players by their ability to A level-0 player will choose actions regardless of the actions of other players. A level-1 player believes that all other players are level-0 types. A level-n player estimates that all other players are level-0, 1, 2, ..., n-1 types. Based on experimental data, most of the players only use one model to predict the behavior of all the other players. Although the hierarchy of types could be indefinite, the benefits of higher levels would decrease substantially while incurring a much greater cost. Because of the limit of players' expectation level and players' priors, it is possible to reach an equilibrium in games without communication.
 * 1) form priors (models) about the behavior of other players;
 * 2) choose the best responses given these priors.

The cognitive hierarchy theory
The cognitive hierarchy (CH) theory is a derivation of level-n theory. A level-n player from the CH model would assume that their strategy is the most sophisticated and that the levels 0, 1, 2, ..., n-1 on which their opponents play follow a normalized Poisson distribution. This model works well in multi-player games where the players need to estimate a number in a given range, such as the Guess 2/3 of the average game. A player would be able to determine the value which they should play based on the assumed distribution of lower-level players described by the Poisson distribution. Another example of a game involving CH theory is the Keynesian beauty contest.

The team reasoning
Bacharach argued that people could find a focal point because they act as members of a team instead of individuals in a cooperative game. With the identity changed, the player follows the prescription of an imaginary group leader to maximize the group interest.

Schelling's questions
Here is a subset of the questions raised by Schelling to prove the existence of a focal point.

 * 1) Head-tail game: Name "heads" or "tails". If the two players name the same, they win an award, otherwise, they get nothing.
 * 2) Letter order game: Give an order to letters A, B, and C. If the three players give the same order, they win an award, otherwise they get nothing.
 * 3) Split money game: Two players share $100. They first write down their individual claims on a sheet of paper. If their claims add to $100 or less, both of them will get exactly what they claimed, but if the sum is higher than $100 they get nothing.

The results of the informal experiments are
 * 1) For the two players, A and B, in head-tail game. 16 out of 22 A and 15 out of 22 B chose "heads".
 * 2) For the three players, A, B, and C, in letter order game. 9 out of 12 A, 10 out of 12 B, and 14 out of 16 C wrote "ABC".
 * 3) For the players to claim part of the $100. 36 out of 40 chose $50. 2 of the remainder chose $49 and $49.99.

These games suggest that focal points have some saliency. These characteristics make them preferable choices to people. Furthermore, people would assume each other has also noticed the saliency and make the same decision.

In coordination game
In a simple example, two people unable to communicate with each other are each shown a panel of four squares and asked to select one; if and only if they both select the same one, they will each receive a prize. Three of the squares are blue and one is red. Assuming they each know nothing about the other player, but that they each do want to win the prize, then they will, reasonably, both choose the red square.

The red square is not in a sense a better square; they could win by both choosing any square and in this sense, all squares are technically a Nash equilibrium. The red square is the "right" square to select only if a player can be sure that the other player has selected it, but by hypothesis neither can. However, it is the most salient and notable square, so—lacking any other one—most people will choose it, and this will in fact (often) work.

Collision game
Focal points can also have real-life applications. For example, imagine two bicycles headed towards each other and in danger of crashing. Avoiding collision becomes a coordination game where each player's winning choice depends on the other player's choice. Each player, in this case, has the choice to go straight, swerve to the left or swerve to the right. Both players want to avoid crashing, but neither knows what the other will do. In this case, the decision to swerve right can serve as a focal point which leads to the winning right-right outcome. It seems a natural focal point in places using right-hand traffic.

This idea of anti-coordination game is also apparent in the game of chicken, which involves two cars racing toward each other on a collision course and in which the driver who first decides to swerve is seen as a coward, while no driver swerving results in a fatal collision for both.

“Guess 2/3 of the average” game
The Guess 2/3 of the average game shows the level-n theory in practice. In this game, players are tasked with guessing an integer from 0 to 100 inclusive which they believe is closest to 2/3 of the average of all players’ guesses. A Nash equilibrium can be found by thinking through each level: As N grows, 2/3 of the average will trend towards zero. At this point, the only Nash equilibrium is for all players to guess 0
 * Level 0: The average can be in [0, 100]
 * Level 1: The average can be in [0, 67], which is 2/3 of the maximum average of level 0
 * Level 2: The average can be in [0, 45], which is 2/3 of the maximum average of level 1
 * Level N: Assuming all other players reason similarly, 2/3 of the maximum average will never be higher than

Adding repetition to the game introduces a focal point at the Nash equilibrium solution of 0. This was shown by Camerer as, “[when] the game is played multiple times with the same group, the average moves close to 0.” Introducing the iterative aspect to the game forces all players onto higher levels of thinking which allows them all to play guesses trending towards 0.

title: Focal point (game theory)


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Talk:Mikhail Khodorkovsky/Archive 1

I think this article is very interesting and pretty exhaustive in its level of detail. Not wanting to completely blanche it of its character, I do have one or two problems with it: in the section that essentially says, 'well, what goes around comes around' it says that the 'redistribution' going on is 'strictly within the law'. From what I can gather from following this story that is a pretty contentious comment. In fact hasn't Khodorkovsky's entire defence rested on the fact that the case against him is essentially illegal? I also have a problem with the word 'redistribution' as it implies that somehow the destruction of Yukos will result in more people benefitting, or even owning a stake in it. Although, on the acquisition of the subsidiary Yukansneftgas the state effectively renationalised a large slice of the oil industry I think it important to emphasise that if any 'redistribution' is going, on rightly or wrongly, it is not going to 'the people'. Basically, in my mind, 'redistribution' is a word loaded with a socialist history, and I don't think the destruction of Yukos was done in the name of socialism. Anyway I am new to Wikipedia, impressed with it and wanted to test my thoughts on the 'talk' section, before launching into anything so bold as 'editing'.

I removed some of the arrest details; they were more tabloid than encylopedic. I hope you understand. As a rule, it is best to stick with the essential facts. Hope you agree with this. Looks like a fascinating story; I wonder how it will further unfold. -- Viajero 09:29, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You're right, I totally agree. It flows much better with the changes, definitely. All your changes have been terrific. I initially left out all of the details of the arrest but they seem to have become important to the public perception of the events so I gave it a go. Karl Marx 13:06, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi again,

A couple of minor comments. Be careful of comments like this:
 * and prosecuting Russia's most prominent and successful oligarch is helpful to his political career and intended candidacy for the Duma.

It is speculative and not entirely neutral (I tweaked it). In a news article, it is ok, but not in an encyclopedia.

Also, dates usually don't have to be linked; only the most important (ie, DOB). See Make only links relevant to the context.

Nice article; keep up the good work! -- Viajero 13:44, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Khodorkovsky: BLKSM??
Graf 4: What is "BLKSM"?? The initial reference was to Communist Youth League. That was changed to Komsomol, and now it is an abbreviation that is not widely known. Could this be changed to something recognizable, or could a first reference be placed higher in the article? --Tim
 * The correct abbreviation is "VLKSM". This is the same as "Komsomol", which is the title of an article. Andres 00:06, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

90 m barrels?
No well in the world produces 90m barrels of oil per day. The whole world production is 80m barrels a day. Correct it please.

Vladimir Putin agreement with oligarchs
First, I must say great job on this article. It is a prime example of great work on wikipedia and I think it would be nominated as a featured article. But I see one possible problem currently that may need some tweaking throughout the article.

''Russian president Vladimir Putin had made a tacit agreement with the oligarchs soon after he was elected in 2000 that he would not touch the huge wealth they had gained in crony dealings with state officials in the 1990s. In return, they were told to pay taxes and keep out of politics.''

This statement seems logical and while I agree with it so, is there any actual way to prove this? If not, maybe the entry should be revised for a more neutral tone. Thoughts? --Dejitarob 20:44, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Guesswork removed
The disputed piece removed:

 * ''Russian president Vladimir Putin had made a tacit agreement with the oligarchs soon after he was elected in 2000 that he would not touch the huge wealth they had gained in crony dealings with state officials in the 1990s. In return, they were told to pay taxes and keep out of politics.

Most of the oligarchs have chosen to keep low profiles — but not Khodorkovsky.''

It is hardly believable that this kind of deal was officially announced. Hence it is guesswork, even if correct. If it is an opinion of a serious political observer, please quote. Mikkalai 16:51, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This opinion is widely - if tacitly - shared within academic circles analysing the former Soviet Union -- it is based on the fact that a meeting between the Oligarchs and Putin DID take place in 2000: http://www.fas.org/news/russia/2000/000728-rus1.htm

However, this opinion IS pure speculation and should be considered educated guesswork. The article should include a reference of this kind, however.

Further, this opinion is also widely believed among Russians outside Russia (I do not know about Russians in Russia). There is a danger of sliding into conspiracy theories with this, which should be avoided. Considering the role of the oligarchs prior to the ascent of Putin, and their initial support of Putin, followed by Putin's crackdown on some - but not all - of these, there appears to be merit in the claim, paritucalarly since the only oligarchs Putin cracked down on were those who had become involved in politics.

--62.153.157.219 09:27, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

"Developed world"
Hi, I read this very interesting topic, however in the "Foreign business partners complain" paragraph, you mention that certain behaviours would not be accepted in the "developed world". I would rather it be compared to the "western world" since I believe Russia to be well developed although a bit rusty and heavy.

prison sentence
I updated the prison sentence from seven to nine years according to a Spiegel online article (sorry it's german). If there are conflicting reports please state the source. Cheers --Jpkoester1 21:03, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

NPOV dispute from anonymous user
As to the obvious, which is that the article as found was a typical up-to-the-line and sometimes-well-across piece of Khodorkovsky propaganda, and which truly needed a needle to pop that odious balloon, the reaction time proved it's pop was heard by the watchdogs. No surprise there. That you think your particular obfuscations and smokescreens (or do you prefer, "maskirovka") are effective with the masses, of course, you are partly correct... at least those Western masses who never set foot in country. EASY to fool them.

 * I have removed everything, you won the argument by example, that is not good, but it worked anyway, emotional distress is natural.
 * You had one valid point, so did I - look at this banner.
 * Gnomz007 18:56, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * I know you have read my apology - my heart was in it, I should not have used those words, but if I had half an IQ point more, I should not have wrote you in the first place, personal attacks are inapropriate, replying them is wrong, in some sense I did both, I quit, I know I'm a loose cannon, from now on no politics, I've had just two articles, and I've had enough.Gnomz007 20:13, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

support of the un-neutrality of the article
Here are some fact for you propaganda loving monkeys to make things closer to truth :)

Step 1 - 1963 Khodorkovsky was born from Moisey Khodorkovkoy, in an average Russian familiy. Step 2 - 1987 Khodorkovsky organizes center Minatep Step 3 - 1995 Dec. Khodorkovoy recieves 78% of Ukus. 2nd largest in Russia and 4th largest in the world Oil company. Step 4 - at present: It's a fact that about 900 000 people are incarcerated in Russia. But for some reason only one of them excites the world opinions. The nine hundred thousand first. Say, The Colonel GRU. Anatoly Kvachkov is sitting in jail accused of assassination attempt on Chubais, awaiting his verdict. What happened, how it happened? No one cares. But Khodorkovky! Now that’s a “much” different subject matter. Because of him, there has already been talk of excluding Russia from the big 8. It's quite interesting. What exactly do people see so much better from across the ocean? Where does Bush get his vivid notions? Even Yuliya Timoshenko announced that she it's impossible for her to comment on the trials verdict. What's really nice, is that Khodorkovky's best friend and business partner Leonid Nevzlin has not forgotten about him. From a safe place in Israel he speaks serenely at a press conference: "This is not the end. This is a beginning. And we didn't lose the whole fight. The loss was that of a battle on the enemy territory" Well then, the fight is going on the territory of the enemy. So, but what about the Russian oil? Why not harvest your oil on the friendly territory of the Palestinian Autonomy? Right after the publication of the verdict, many prognosis' came about. Such as that first meaningless and then merciless revolts of enraged with the act of stomping the democracy citizenry followed by a collapse of the mighty Russian economy. Instead... a paradox! According to WCIOM (http://www.wciom.ru/?pt=46&article=1321), here is how Russian people reacted to the 10 year verdict. 28% found the question hard to answer 26% consider it a fair punishment for his actions 25% haven't followed the trial 11% consider it to be too soft 8% too strict and only 4% consider the oligarch innocent. Khodorkovky considered himself innocent. What is interesting is that only 3% consider themselves innocent in Russian jails. The rest 97% are obviously serving their sentences for absolutely nothing. So of those, there are about a million in Russia, including the freshly incarcerated oligarchs. During the trial of the Yukos, Russian oil companies have increased their tax payments minimum by three or four times. While Khodorkovky resided in jail, the number of Russian billionaires has increased from 15 to 27. And so on. (c)Goblin

What was the Political Party he funded?
Was it a specific one?

-G —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.117.158.83 (talk) 14:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Jewish Russian
Jewish, Christian, or Muslim doesn't matter what ever belief Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky practices or whatever ethinicity he belongs to; first and foremost thing is he is a human! This helpless person; is a victim of a powerful system and is being crushed slowly and systematically. I'm sure he should have influence and contacts with outside world. They should lobby and get him out. I wish if I was an influencial person and in a position to help him. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abakhi (talk • contribs)

Well it may be one of the reason for his presecution; please bare in mind; it is not the only reason; look at the wider picture. I'm sure there are his well wishers in and around russia; who could do something to get him out by negotiating with the Russian authority.

 * Yes, but Khodorkovsky's ethnicity is considered by some to be an important factor in his persecution. Hence, it's important. -- Chodorkovskiy  (talk)  16:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I removed this phrase from the header. First, I don't consider it appropriate to mention ethnicity in the header, and second www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/053105NYTimes_Khod.shtml this site states Khodorkovsky had mentioned privately to Jewish leaders on several occasions that he did not consider himself Jewish. Arniep 23:36, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

--Bobby Fisher doesn't consider himself Jewish either, doesn't mean he's not--

 * I suggest Khodorkovsky's ethnicity be made into a separate section. --Chodorkovskiy 09:29, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Frankly, it is not a matter of personal opinion if you are a jew or not, it is genetics. Because of your parentage you are bound to their national plight. Khodorkovskij was targeted in no small part because of the lenght of his nose, since Russia is extremely antisemitic, the infamous "Zion Protocol" book, from which Adolf learned, was fabricated by the tzarist secret service. Then consider the "doctors trial" around the time of Stalin's death or the massive internation of the soviet jewry in the siberian "Birobidjan" territory in the 1960-70s.

 * Mr. Khod could have earned 25000 billion rubles via trickery, make dirty jokes about Putin on the stage daily, etc. and still he wouldn't have been prosecuted at all as a blood-russian. It was his jewry that ultimately made him a target. Therefore it should be featured prominently in the article head, so everbody can read we have a victim of racism here!!!!!

 * Remember Putin spent lotsa time in Germany as a KGB agent and learned ample antisemitic rhetoric. Russia keeps it population dumb with huge amounts of vodka and anti-jewish propaganda, so they do not revolt against tyranny.

 * I hate Israel because of what they do to the palestinian people, but if Mossad had the guts to send in an airborne commando and get Mr. Khod out of the Gulag my opinion of them would be vastly enhanced. It would be 10x simpler than Entebbe rescue, for example. 213.178.107.18 09:01, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Fascinating. Regardless of the context though, I agree: Khodorkovsy's persecution is blamed by some on him being Jewish. That is definetly worth mentioning. --Chodorkovskiy 18:15, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Those accusations of anti-semitism are indeed fascinating, given the fact that the oligarch who "replaced" Khodorovskij, Abramovich, is also Jewish (some say even more so). No reason to censor his ethnic background, but neither is there any reason why it should be in the header. Nothing suggests that it played an especially important role in his life. -- H eptor  talk 23:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Please, please, please let's not get into politics! Especially seeing the level of awareness here... No, it doesn't have to be in the header, but it does have to be in the article. See my original suggestion: an Ethnicity section, where all this Jewishness and claims of anti-Semitic persecution would go.--Chodorkovskiy 06:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Surely, if any notable person or organization claimed that the persecution was motivated by anti-semitism, it should be mentioned in the article. But it would also be reasonable to mention that many other oligarchs are also Jewish. -- H eptor  talk 23:01, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Considering Khodorkovsky has said he does not consider himself Jewish there does not need to be a "special section" or any mentioning that other oligarchs may have Jewish parents, grandparents or whatever. Arniep 23:31, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

How about placing the claims of anti-Semitism in the "Viewpoint of supporters" section and the other oligarchs' Jewish descent in the "Viewpoint of critics" one? Hey, I know we can't please everyone, but Wikipedia should contain all the information on the matter - and we all know the above mentioned claims are out there. --Chodorkovskiy 09:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

That sounds good, if you have a good source claiming that some or all supporters of Khodorovskij believe that persecution has anti-semitic grounds, include it. Of course, I presume you understand that the those supporters or supporter have to be notable somehow, not just some yahoo screaming from top of a building. Otherwise, anyone can call himself supporter of someone, and have his opinion mentioned here. To give an example: "Suporters of George W Bush claim that the real reason why the Democrats are mocking the President is that he put two black persons in his Goverment." -- H eptor  talk 20:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Alright, here's what I came up with (taken from www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=324066&contrassID=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y Haaretz.com):

 * "Aleksandr Osovtsov, former vice president of the Jewish Congress in Russia says the anti-Semitism in the affair is clear. The same team from the Prosecutor General's Office that in its day forced Gusinsky to leave Russia is active now and by chance or not, Gusinsky was one of the financial supporters of the Jewish Congress and Khodorkovsky is also among its supporters."

 * As for the rest of the oligarchs being Jewish, I could only find yahoos screaming about it... Sorry, maybe you'll have better luck. --Chodorkovskiy 07:39, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

 * I didn't say all oligarchs are Jewish, I would like to meet those yahoos claiming that! But Roman Abramovich is, read the article about him (or take the hint, "Abram"ovich :p ). As far as I know he largely took over the political influence of Khodorovskij, while Putin also made his point on who is really in charge. So I hope you understand why I am so reluctant about claims that his persecution was anti-semitcially motivated. But, this former vice persident of Jewish congress seems to have insinuated otherwise, so per Wikipedia policy this is relevant material. -- H eptor  talk 03:43, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, many Russian oligarchs are Jewish. Yes, it can be verified using Wikipedia. However, doing so qualifies as original research. I know what you meant. The thing is, I couldn't find a serious source saying what you just said. I understand that your claim is also legitimate, I just couldn't find a source for it. We find that - we can start adding the whole thing to the article.--Chodorkovskiy 07:11, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

 * It seems noone before you actually found it necessary to ask for sources that Roman Abramovich is a jew, but here is one source: www.israelnewsagency.com/jewisrael194800.html. On the bottom of the page, there is a nice list of prominent jews. -- H eptor  talk 13:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Dude, calm down - I'm not arguing with you about Khodorkovsky or Abramovitch. It's about the article having credibility. This is what I had in mind:

 * "Some believe Khodorkovsky's persecution is motivated by anti-Semitism (Khodorkovsky is Jewish), and that it is only one of many steps to clearing Russian economy from Jews (starting with Gusinskiy and Berezovsky). Others point out that a large number of Jewish oligarchs are still doing very well in Russia.

 * We already found "some". Now we need the "others". --Chodorkovskiy 14:20, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

 * I am calm; you really need to find those "others", or evidence that such opinion is held by a "significant minority", read Neutral_point_of_view -- H eptor  talk 18:20, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Sorry if I sounded condescending. Anyway... I though you wanted the "lots of Jewish oligarchs" part. I really don't know just how popular that POV is. All my relevant google search came up with were the National Vanguard ("Russia's Jewish power baron under siege") and the Islamic Radio ("Russia is ready to smash Zionist state"). So I say again: if you want the counter-arguments to claims of anti-Semitism presented - please provide a source. If not, we can still say that this belief is not shared by the official leadership of Russia's two major Jewish organizations (www.jig.ru/peredovica/002.html source):

 * "Some believe Khodorkovsky's persecution is motivated by anti-Semitism (Khodorkovsky is Jewish, although he does not follow Judaism), and that it is only one of many steps to clearing Russian economy from Jews, with Gusinskiy and Berezovsky being the previous victims of this policy. This view is not shared by the heads of the Federation of Russian Jews and the Russian Jewish Congress, who both defended Khodorkovsky's arrest."

 * In fact, that's what I think should be added to the "viewpoint of supporters" section. Feel free to present a version of your own, or make suggestions about this one.

Ah, no, I didn't want to put up that Russia is really ruled by Jews or something, that was a bad misunderstanding. RadioIslam is by the way a known Islamistic hatred propaganda channel, EU even have them on some list over racist media. That Putin made Abramovich Governer of Chukotka is a fact, sources are readily available.

Mentioning that the view is not shared by the heads of the Federation of Russian Jews constitutes enough ballance to that opinion.

The question is: is it a viewpoint held by a significant minority? This is actually the treshold for adding it into Wikipedia: Neutral_point_of_view. Can you name a few prominent adherents? Did Khodorovskij himself claim that? Really, this is nothing personal, if there is a significant number of people who believe that Khodorovskij's persecution was influenced by anti-semitism, this should be mentioned. -- H eptor  talk 20:42, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=407&issue_id=3218&article_id=2369187 here's something interesting:

 * "Khodorkovsky's ethnic background (his father is Jewish) has not been discussed in the public press, although the ADL found that it featured in about half the Russian Internet chat rooms devoted to Yukos."

 * Is that significant? Seriously, is it?--Chodorkovskiy 12:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

 * I think it is, quite strange that his ethnical background has not been discussed in public press. When Jo Benkow had position as the speaker of parliarment in Norway, his Jewish background was duely mentioned in Norwegian press. All the racist hatred groups have went wild on this naturally, claiming that this was the next step in the Jewish takeover plan or something similar.

 * H eptor  talk 13:54, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

 * I see. Guess it's inevitable in this day and age. Alright then. So what do you think of the final version?

 * "Some believe Khodorkovsky's persecution is motivated by anti-Semitism (his father is Jewish), and that it is only one of many steps to clearing Russian economy from Jews. Gusinskiy and Berezovsky are thought to be previous victims of this alleged policy. This view is not shared by the heads of the Federation of Russian Jews and the Russian Jewish Congress, who both defended Khodorkovsky's arrest." --Chodorkovskiy 18:34, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

 * What about this:

 * "Because Khodorkovsky's father is Jewish, some concerns have been raised that his persecution is motivated by anti-Semitism, and that it is only one of many steps to clearing Russian economy from Jews. This concern is not shared by the heads of the Federation of Russian Jews and the Russian Jewish Congress, who both defended Khodorkovsky's arrest. Gusinskiy and Berezovsky, who too have Jewish roots, have also been persecuted. Other Russian Jewish oligarchs have not been persecuted; Roman Abramovich was appointed by Vladimir Putin for the second term as Governer of Chukotka. Abramovich was elected Governer of Chukotka in 1999, but suggested that he would not run for the second term. However, when the Russian Constitution was changed so that Governers were appointed directly by the President, he was put in the office never the less."

 * This I believe doesn't say anything not supported by sources. -- H eptor  talk 20:20, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Strike the "However" from the last sentence, put the phrase about Gusinsky and Berezovsky before the one describing the Jewish organizations' reaction, and we have a new paragraph. Also, it's pretty big and presents both sides evenly, so it doesn't really qualify as "viewpoint of supporters". You sure you don't want to make it into some sort of an "alleged anti-Semitic persecution" section? Either way, go ahead and put it in the article. Nice working with you. --Chodorkovskiy 20:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I do see that anti-semitism was actually alleged by anyone; Aleksandr Osovtsov isformer, and even vice, which means he doesn't speak on behalf of the Jewish Congress. And I agree, this is not a viewpoint of supporters any more. So, I understand we have following paragraph:

 * "Because Khodorkovsky's father is Jewish, some concerns have been raised that his persecution is motivated by anti-Semitism, and that it is only one of many steps to clearing Russian economy from Jews. Gusinskiy and Berezovsky, who too have Jewish roots, have also been persecuted. This concern is not shared by the heads of the Federation of Russian Jews and the Russian Jewish Congress, who both defended Khodorkovsky's arrest. Other Russian Jewish oligarchs have not been persecuted; Roman Abramovich was appointed by Vladimir Putin for the second term as Governer of Chukotka. Abramovich was elected Governer of Chukotka in 1999, but suggested that he would not run for the second term. When the Russian Constitution was changed so that Governers were appointed directly by the President, he was put in the office never the less."

Good :)

H eptor  talk 21:28, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

 * In case you're waiting to see if I have any objections - no. As far as I can tell, it's flawless. I think it belongs between the "impact of arrest" and "viewpoint of supporters" sections. "Alleged anti-Semitism" maybe? Like I said, you can put it in the article. --Chodorkovskiy 19:21, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Nah, I waited because I'm lazy, and hoped you'd do it :) I placed it in the "impact of arrest" section.-- H eptor  talk 22:14, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I decided to let you do the editing because you wrote the final version. I kind of saw it as a privilege, not a choir. Regardless, the article is much better now! --Chodorkovskiy 10:45, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

It might be noteworthy that Khodorovsky is only half Jewish, and as far as traditional Judaism is concerned--the wrong half...His father....shouldn't that be mentioned somewhere.... --Shigaon

Spam Alert
I have just received an email referencing this article; emails of this nature are associated with fraud.

Dear friend, I am Mr. Alexander Gedike a personal treasurer to Mikhail Khodorkovsky the Richest man in Russia and owner of the following companies: Chairman/CEO: YUKOS OIL (Russian's Largest Oil Company), Chairman/CEO: Menatep SBP Bank (A well reputable financial institution with its Branches all over the world). SOURCE OF FUNDS: I have a profiling amount in an excess of US$35,000,000 which I seek your  Partnership in accommodating for me. You will be rewarded with 10% of the  total sum for your partnership. Can you be my partner on this? INTRODUCTION OF MYSELF: As a personal treasurer to him, authority was handed over to me to transfer some money to an American oil merchant for his last oil deal with my boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Already the funds have left the shore of Russia to a European private Bank where the final crediting is expected to be carried out. While I was on the process, My Boss got arrested for his Involvement in politics by financing the leading and opposing political parties (the Union of Right Forces, Led by Boris Nemtsov, and Yabloko, a liberal/social democratic party Led by Gregor Yavlinsky) which poses a treat to President Vladimir Putin's Second Tenure as Russian president. You can catch more of the story on this website: newsfromrussia.com/main/2003/11/13/51215.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky YOUR ROLE: All I need from you is to stand as the beneficiary of the above quoted Sum and I will re-profile the funds with your name, which will enable the European bank transfer the sum to you with the aid of a Security firm in London. The transaction has to be concluded before Mikhail Khodorkovsky is out on bail. As Soon as I confirm your readiness to conclude the transaction with me, I will provide you with the details. Please respond to my private email: alex771gedike@walla.com Thank you very much Regards Alexander Gedike (Mr.)

--Phil 15:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

 * So? Wikipedia seems to be popular in Nigeria, which is great. No reason for pasting it here though.--84.188.161.247 10:04, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

 * So that people who are directed to this article will know it's a scam (and yes, a few people are still fooled or the scammers wouldn't still be doing it). In fact, I think it would be a good idea to put a message in the main article about it.

 * Color me unenthusiastic. This sort of thing is not really our responsibility. --Trovatore 19:52, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Nigerian scam is continues using Khodorkovsky's name and his famous oil millions, I think it makes him popular in some way as phishing fraught person. We should note it in some way or another. --SecVortex 19:07, 5 Oct 2006 (UTC)

Alleged beatings
MarcMontoni, what is the source for your edit claiming that Khodorkovsky was repeatedly beaten by FSB officers upon arrest? Really Spooky 00:12, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

neutrality
some of this article seems to use what can only be described as prejudicial language...reads a bit more like an editorial than an enyclopedia article. At least a few phrases do. Like the bit about favorable media, etc.Novium 21:02, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * the bit about the means having never been fully explained should be cited or else remove

theft
Trying to associate Khordokvsky's prision to his jewish heritage is an offense to the jewish people and an apology to crime, even if the arrest was political motivated. Like the "italian" mob, the "irish" mob, and so on, there's also a "jewish" mob, but of course that doesn't mean that all jews are mobsters. Those guys stole assets that belonged to the Russian People, paying much, much less that they were worth to get them, beeing financed by outsiders who wanted to take advantage of the caos Russia was (and may be still) in. They were obviously robbers, bandits, mobsters - Just That. --Dfv10 04:42, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Khodorkovsky is a jew,
And as you can see by taking a look on other famous jews articles, it is written on their biography that they are jews (e.g. Albert Einstein, Franz Kafka, Natalie Portman). Judaism is not just his religion, he was born to the jewish people! The fact that he doesn't consider himself as a jewish doesn't make him a non-jewish person. He can't change his genetics. His religion is not Jewish, but he was born to the Jewish people, and he has their genetics, so that makes him a Russian Jew. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.69.68.234 (talk) 22:54, 8 January 2007 (UTC).
 * OK, enough from you. You are scary.  Being a Jew can be a choice (Sammy Davis, Jr.) and there is no genetic link shared between all Jews.  So please, shut up.  Moomot 19:22, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * why does his religion matter? Do Jews have different genetics that non-Jews? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.250.8.220 (talk) 23:34, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. And Russians have different genetics than non-Russians, Hispanics have different genetics than non-Hispanics, etc.  98.211.105.148 (talk) 12:46, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Jewish is both a religion and an ethnicity. Khodorkovsky might reject the Jewish religion, but he cannot somehow lose his Jewish ethnicity. I'm pretty certain that was the point being made. marnues 00:03, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Cheney Link
This is very important! Khodorkovsky met with Cheney and big oil to discuss selling a share of Yukos to big oil, in order to make sure that his company was not going to be taken over by the government, and he would not face charges, and would be protected. That was one of the major reasons for his arrest. Putin did not want American companies to enter the oil market in Russia as major players and it was in national interest to him to keep them out. Also, there was a meeting between the big money makers in Russia who have owned these oil companies, and all agreed that they will start to pay taxes and then all will be forgiven. This meeting is not a myth and happened. Everyone at the meeting agreed. There was some tension at Lukoil, but otherwise everyone started to pay, except for our dear poor prosecuted friend Khodorkovsky, who continued his illegal ways. Putin was not too happy, and as a result of his arrest, I believe the figures were somthing like 80 billion of taxes from business, went up to around 220 billion in tax revenues following his arrest. It worked! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gutsalo (talk • contribs) 06:15, 18 February 2007 (UTC).

Restored deleted material
Resored material removed from article without discussion by Sovietsky pioneer Cheers, :) Dlohcierekim  14:25, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Article requires serious help
I almost think the article should be rewritten from scratch. There are huge swaths of unsourced text. This bio deservers much better it seems, but maybe its just me as usual :) Very interesting "story" but needs help. I could try I guess? Anyways, --Tom 15:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mikhail Khodorkovsky/Archive 1