title: Ryuichi Sakamoto

text: The music video for "Risky", written and directed by Meiert Avis, also won the first ever MTV "Breakthrough Video Award". The ground breaking video explores transhumanist philosopher FM-2030's (Persian: فریدون اسفندیاری) ideas of "Nostalgia for the Future", in the form of an imagined love affair between a robot and one of Man Ray's models in Paris in the late 1930s. Additional inspiration was drawn from Jean Baudrillard, Edvard Munch's 1894 painting "Puberty", and Roland Barthes "Death of the Author". The surrealist black and white video uses stop motion, light painting, and other retro in-camera effects techniques. Meiert Avis shot Sakamoto while at work on the score for "The Last Emperor" in London. Sakamoto also appears in the video painting words and messages to an open shutter camera. Iggy Pop, who performs the vocals on "Risky", chose not to appear in the video, allowing his performance space to be occupied by the surrealist era robot.


title: Ryuichi Sakamoto

text: Sakamoto won the Golden Pine Award (Lifetime Achievement) at the 2013 International Samobor Film Music Festival, along with Clint Eastwood and Gerald Fried.


title: Treason

text: Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state. A person who commits treason is known in law as a traitor.


title: Treason

text: Historically, in common law countries, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife or that of a master by his servant. Treason (i.e. disloyalty) against one's monarch was known as "high treason" and treason against a lesser superior was "petty treason". As jurisdictions around the world abolished petty treason, "treason" came to refer to what was historically known as high treason.


title: Treason

text: At times, the term "traitor" has been used as a political epithet, regardless of any verifiable treasonable action. In a civil war or insurrection, the winners may deem the losers to be traitors. Likewise the term "traitor" is used in heated political discussiontypically as a slur against political dissidents, or against officials in power who are perceived as failing to act in the best interest of their constituents. In certain cases, as with the "Dolchstoßlegende" (Stab-in-the-back myth), the accusation of treason towards a large group of people can be a unifying political message.


title: Treason

text: In English law, high treason was punishable by being hanged, drawn and quartered (men) or burnt at the stake (women), although beheading could be substituted by royal command (usually for royalty and nobility). Those penalties were abolished in 1814, 1790 and 1973 respectively. The penalty was used by later monarchs against people who could reasonably be called traitors. Many of them would now just be considered dissidents.


title: Treason

text: Christian theology and political thinking until after the Enlightenment considered treason and blasphemy synonymous, as it challenged both the state and the will of God. Kings were considered chosen by God, and to betray one's country was to do the work of Satan.


title: Treason

text: The words "treason" and "traitor" are derived from the Latin "tradere", "to deliver or hand over". Specifically, it is derived from the term "traditors", which refers to bishops and other Christians who turned over sacred scriptures or betrayed their fellow Christians to the Roman authorities under threat of persecution during the Diocletianic Persecution between AD 303 and 305.


title: Treason

text: Originally, the crime of treason was conceived of as being committed against the monarch; a subject failing in his duty of loyalty to the Sovereign and acting against the Sovereign was deemed to be a traitor. Queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were executed for treason for adultery against Henry VIII, although most historians regard the evidence against Anne Boleyn and her alleged lovers to be dubious. As asserted in the 18th century trial of Johann Friedrich Struensee in Denmark, a man having sexual relations with a queen can be considered guilty not only of ordinary adultery but also of treason against her husband, the king.


title: Treason

text: The English Revolution in the 17th century and the French Revolution in the 18th century introduced a radically different concept of loyalty and treason, under which Sovereignty resides with "The Nation" or "The People" - to whom also the Monarch has a duty of loyalty, and for failing which the Monarch, too, could be accused of treason. Charles I in England and Louis XVI in France were found guilty of such treason and duly executed. However, when Charles II was restored to his throne, he considered the revolutionaries who sentenced his father to death as having been traitors in the more traditional sense.


title: Treason

text: In medieval times, most treason cases were in the context of a kingdom's internal politics. Though helping a foreign monarch against one's own sovereign would also count as treason, such were only a minority among treason cases. Conversely, in modern times, "traitor" and "treason" are mainly used with reference to a person helping an enemy in time of war or conflict.


title: Treason

text: During the American Revolution, a slave named Billy was sentenced to death on charges of treason to Virginia for having joined the British in their war against the American colonists - but was eventually pardoned by Thomas Jefferson, then Governor of Virginia. Jefferson accepted the argument, put forward by Billy's well-wishers, that - not being a citizen and not enjoying any of the benefits of being one - Billy owed no loyalty to Virginia and therefore had committed no treason. This was a ground-breaking case, since in earlier similar cases slaves were found guilty of treason and executed.


title: Treason

text: Under very different circumstances, a similar defense was put forward in the case of William Joyce, nicknamed "Lord Haw-Haw", who had broadcast Nazi propaganda to the UK from Germany during the Second World War. Joyce's defence team, appointed by the court, argued that, as an American citizen and naturalised German, Joyce could not be convicted of treason against the British Crown. However, the prosecution successfully argued that, since he had lied about his nationality to obtain a British passport and voted in Britain, Joyce did owe allegiance to the king. Thus, Joyce was convicted of treason, and was eventually hanged.


title: Treason

text: After Napoleon fell from power for the first time, Marshal Michel Ney swore allegiance to the restored King Louis XVIII, but when the Emperor escaped from Elba, Ney resumed his Napoleonic allegiance, and commanded the French troops at the Battle of Waterloo. After Napoleon was defeated, dethroned, and exiled for the second time in the summer of 1815, Ney was arrested and tried for treason by the Chamber of Peers. In order to save Ney's life, his lawyer André Dupin argued that as Ney's hometown of Sarrelouis had been annexed by Prussia according to the Treaty of Paris of 1815, Ney was now a Prussian, no longer owing allegiance to the King of France and therefore not liable for treason in a French court. Ney ruined his lawyer's effort by interrupting him and stating: ""Je suis Français et je resterai Français!"" (I am French and I will remain French!). Having refused that defence, Ney was duly found guilty of treason and executed.


title: Treason

text: Until the late 19th Century, Britain - like various other countries - held to a doctrine of "perpetual allegiance to the sovereign", dating back to feudal times, under which British subjects, owing loyalty to the British Monarch, remained such even if they emigrated to another country and took its citizenship. This became a hotly debated issue in the aftermath of the 1867 Fenian Rising, when Irish-Americans who had gone to Ireland to participate in the uprising and were caught were charged with treason, as the British authorities considered them to be British subjects. This outraged many Irish-Americans, to which the British responded by pointing out that, just like British law, American law also recognized perpetual allegiance. As a result, Congress passed the Expatriation Act of 1868, which granted Americans the right to freely renounce their U.S. citizenship. Britain followed suit with a similar law, and years later, signed a treaty agreeing to treat British subjects who had become U.S. citizens as no longer holding British nationality - and thus no longer liable to a charge of treason.


title: Treason

text: Many nations' laws mention various types of treason. "Crimes Related to Insurrection" is the internal treason, and may include a coup d'état. "Crimes Related to Foreign Aggression" is the treason of cooperating with foreign aggression positively regardless of the national inside and outside. "Crimes Related to Inducement of Foreign Aggression" is the crime of communicating with aliens secretly to cause foreign aggression or menace. Depending on the country, conspiracy is added to these.


title: Treason

text: In Australia, there are federal and state laws against treason, specifically in the states of New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria. Similarly to Treason laws in the United States, citizens of Australia owe allegiance to their sovereign at the federal and state level.


title: Treason

text: The federal law defining treason in Australia is provided under section 80.1 of the Criminal Code, contained in the schedule of the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995. It defines treason as follows:


title: Treason

text: A person is not guilty of treason under paragraphs (e), (f) or (h) if their assistance or intended assistance is purely humanitarian in nature.


title: Treason

text: The maximum penalty for treason is life imprisonment. Section 80.1AC of the Act creates the related offence of treachery.


title: Treason

text: The Treason Act 1351, the Treason Act 1795 and the Treason Act 1817 form part of the law of New South Wales. The Treason Act 1795 and the Treason Act 1817 have been repealed by Section 11 of the Crimes Act 1900, except in so far as they relate to the compassing, imagining, inventing, devising, or intending death or destruction, or any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, maim, or wounding, imprisonment, or restraint of the person of the heirs and successors of King George III of the United Kingdom, and the expressing, uttering, or declaring of such compassings, imaginations, inventions, devices, or intentions, or any of them.


title: Treason

text: Section 12 of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) creates an offence which is derived from section 3 of the Treason Felony Act 1848:


title: Treason

text: Section 16 provides that nothing in Part 2 repeals or affects anything enacted by the Treason Act 1351 (25 Edw.3 c. 2). This section reproduces section 6 of the Treason Felony Act 1848.


title: Treason

text: The offence of treason was created by section 9A(1) of the Crimes Act 1958. It is punishable by a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.


title: Treason

text: In South Australia, treason is defined under Section 7 of the South Australia Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 and punished under Section 10A. Any person convicted of treason against South Australia will receive a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.


title: Treason

text: According to Brazilian law, treason is the crime of disloyalty by a citizen to the Federal Republic of Brazil, applying to combatants of the Brazilian military forces. Treason during wartime is the only crime for which a person can be sentenced to death "(see capital punishment in Brazil)".


title: Treason

text: The only military person in the history of Brazil to be convicted of treason was Carlos Lamarca, an army captain who deserted to become the leader of a communist-terrorist guerrilla against the military government.


title: Treason

text: Section 46 of the Criminal Code has two degrees of treason, called "high treason" and "treason." However, both of these belong to the historical category of high treason, as opposed to petty treason which does not exist in Canadian law. Section 46 reads as follows:


title: Treason

text: It is also illegal for a Canadian citizen or a person who owes allegiance to Her Majesty in right of Canada to do any of the above outside Canada.


title: Treason

text: The penalty for high treason is life imprisonment. The penalty for treason is imprisonment up to a maximum of life, or up to 14 years for conduct under subsection (2)(b) or (e) in peacetime.


title: Treason

text: Finnish law distinguishes between two types of treasonable offences: "maanpetos", treachery in war, and "valtiopetos", an attack against the constitutional order. The terms "maanpetos" and "valtiopetos" are unofficially translated as treason and high treason, respectively. Both are punishable by imprisonment, and if aggravated, by life imprisonment.


title: Treason

text: "Maanpetos" (translates literally to "betrayal of land") consists in joining enemy armed forces, making war against Finland, or serving or collaborating with the enemy. "Maanpetos" proper can only be committed under conditions of war or the threat of war. Espionage, disclosure of a national secret, and certain other related offences are separately defined under the same rubric in the Finnish criminal code.


title: Treason

text: "Valtiopetos" (translates literally to "betrayal of state") consists in using violence or the threat of violence, or unconstitutional means, to bring about the overthrow of the Finnish constitution or to overthrow the president, cabinet or parliament or to prevent them from performing their functions.


title: Treason

text: The acts defined by articles 411-2 to 411–11 constitute treason where they are committed by a French national or a soldier in the service of France, and constitute espionage where they are committed by any other person.


title: Treason

text: Article 411-2 prohibits "handing over troops belonging to the French armed forces, or all or part of the national territory, to a foreign power, to a foreign organisation or to an organisation under foreign control, or to their agents". It is punishable by life imprisonment and a fine of €750,000. Generally parole is not available until 18 years of a life sentence have elapsed.


title: Treason

text: Articles 411–3 to 411–10 define various other crimes of collaboration with the enemy, sabotage, and the like. These are punishable with imprisonment for between seven and 30 years. Article 411-11 make it a crime to incite any of the above crimes.


title: Treason

text: Besides treason and espionage, there are many other crimes dealing with national security, insurrection, terrorism and so on. These are all to be found in Book IV of the code.


title: Treason

text: German law differentiates between two types of treason: "High treason" ("Hochverrat") and "treason" ("Landesverrat"). High treason, as defined in Section 81 of the German criminal code is defined as an attempt against the existence or the constitutional order of the Federal Republic of Germany that is carried out either with the use of violence or the threat of violence. It carries a penalty of life imprisonment or a fixed term of at least ten years. In less serious cases, the penalty is 1–10 years in prison. German criminal law also criminalises high treason against a German state. Preparation of either types of the crime is criminal and carries a penalty of up to five years.


title: Treason

text: The other type of treason, "Landesverrat" is defined in Section 94. It is roughly equivalent to espionage; more precisely, it consists of betraying a secret either directly to a foreign power, or to anyone not allowed to know of it; in the latter case, treason is only committed if the aim of the crime was explicitly to damage the Federal Republic or to favor a foreign power. The crime carries a penalty of one to fifteen years in prison. However, in especially severe cases, life imprisonment or any term of at least five years may be sentenced.


title: Treason

text: As for many crimes with substantial threats of punishment active repentance is to be considered in mitigation under §83a StGB (Section 83a, Criminal Code).


title: Treason

text: Notable cases involving "Landesverrat" are the Weltbühne trial during the Weimar Republic and the Spiegel scandal of 1962. On 30. July 2015, Germany's Public Prosecutor General Harald Range initiated criminal investigation proceedings against the German blog netzpolitik.org.


title: Treason

text: Section 2 of the Crime Ordinance provides that levying war against the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, conspiring to do so, instigating a foreigner to invade Hong Kong, or assisting any public enemy at war with the HKSAR Government, is treason, punishable with life imprisonment.


title: Treason

text: treason shall consist only in levying war against the State, or assisting any State or person or inciting or conspiring with any person to levy war against the State, or attempting by force of arms or other violent means to overthrow the organs of government established by the Constitution, or taking part or being concerned in or inciting or conspiring with any person to make or to take part or be concerned in any such attempt.


title: Treason

text: Following the enactment of the 1937 constitution, the Treason Act 1939 provided for imposition of the death penalty for treason. The Criminal Justice Act 1990 abolished the death penalty, setting the punishment for treason at life imprisonment, with parole in not less than forty years. No person has been charged under the Treason Act. Irish republican legitimatists who refuse to recognise the legitimacy of the Republic of Ireland have been charged with lesser crimes under the Offences against the State Acts 1939–1998.


title: Treason

text: The Italian law defines various types of crimes that could be generally described as treason ("tradimento"), although they are so many and so precisely defined that no one of them is simply called "tradimento" in the text of "Codice Penale" (Italian Criminal Code). The treason-type crimes are grouped as "crimes against the personhood of the State" ("Crimini contro la personalità dello Stato") in the Second Book, First Title, of the Criminal Code.


title: Treason

text: Articles 241 to 274 detail crimes against the "international personhood of the State" such as "attempt against wholeness, independence and unity of the State" (art.241), "hostilities against a foreign State bringing the Italian State in danger of war" (art.244), "bribery of a citizen by a foreigner against the national interests" (art.246), and "political or military espionage" (art.257).


title: Treason

text: Articles 276 to 292 detail crimes against the "domestic personhood of the State", ranging from "attempt on the President of the Republic" (art.271), "attempt with purposes of terrorism or of subversion" (art.280), "attempt against the Constitution" (art.283), "armed insurrection against the power of the State" (art.284), and "civil war" (art.286).


title: Treason

text: Further articles detail other crimes, especially those of conspiracy, such as "political conspiracy through association" (art.305), or "armed association: creating and participating" (art.306).


title: Treason

text: The penalties for treason-type crimes before the abolition of the monarchy in 1948 included death as maximum penalty and, for some crimes, as the only penalty possible. Nowadays the maximum penalty is life imprisonment ("ergastolo").


title: Treason

text: Japan does not technically have a law of treason. Instead it has an offence against taking part in foreign aggression against the Japanese state ("gaikan zai"; literally "crime of foreign mischief"). The law applies equally to Japanese and non-Japanese people, while treason in other countries usually applies only to their own citizens. Technically there are two laws, one for the crime of inviting foreign mischief (Japan Criminal Code section 2 clause 81) and the other for supporting foreign mischief once a foreign force has invaded Japan. "Mischief" can be anything from invasion to espionage. Before World War II, Imperial Japan had a crime similar to the English crime of high treason ("Taigyaku zai"), which applied to anyone who harmed the Japanese emperor or imperial family. This law was abolished by the American occupation force after World War II.


title: Treason

text: The application of "Crimes Related to Insurrection" to the Aum Shinrikyo cult of religious terrorists was considered.


title: Treason

text: New Zealand has treason laws that are stipulated under the Crimes Act 1961. Section 73 of the Crimes Act reads as follows:


title: Treason

text: Every one owing allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen in right of New Zealand commits treason who, within or outside New Zealand,—


title: Treason

text: The penalty is life imprisonment, except for conspiracy, for which the maximum sentence is 14 years' imprisonment. Treason was the last capital crime in New Zealand law: the death penalty for the offence was not revoked until 1989, 28 years after it was abolished for murder.


title: Treason

text: Very few people have been prosecuted for the act of treason in New Zealand, and none have been prosecuted in recent years.


title: Treason

text: Article 85 of the Constitution of Norway states that "[a]ny person who obeys an order the purpose of which is to disturb the liberty and security of the Storting <nowiki>[Parliament]</nowiki> is thereby guilty of treason against the country."


title: Treason

text: Article 275 of the Criminal Code of Russia defines treason as "espionage, disclosure of state secrets, or any other assistance rendered to a foreign State, a foreign organization, or their representatives in hostile activities to the detriment of the external security of the Russian Federation, committed by a citizen of the Russian Federation." The sentence is imprisonment for 12 to 20 years. It is not a capital offence, even though murder and some aggravated forms of attempted murder are (although Russia currently has a moratorium on the death penalty). Subsequent sections provide for further offences against state security, such as armed rebellion and forcible seizure of power.


title: Treason

text: According to Article 87 of the Criminal Code of South Korea, "a person who creates a violence for the purpose of usurping the national territory or subverting the Constitution" can be found guilty of insurrection. The punishments for insurrection are as follows:


title: Treason

text: Sweden's treason laws are divided into three parts; "Högförräderi" (High treason), "Landsförräderi" (Treason) and "Landssvek" (Treachery).


title: Treason

text: High treason means crimes committed with the intent to put the Nation, or parts thereof, under foreign rule or influence. It is governed by Brottsbalken (Criminal Code) chapter 19 paragraph 1.


title: Treason

text: A person who, with intent that the country or a part of it will, by violent or otherwise illegal means or with foreign assistance, be subjugated by a foreign power or made dependent on such a power, or that, in this way, a part of the country will be detached, undertakes an action that involves danger of this intent being realised is guilty of high treason and is sentenced to imprisonment for a fixed term of at least ten and at most eighteen years, or for life or, if the danger was minor, to imprisonment for at least four and at most ten years.


title: Treason

text: A person who, with intent that a measure or decision of the Head of State, the Government, the Riksdag or the supreme courts will be forced or impeded with foreign assistance, undertakes an action that involves danger of this is also guilty of high treason.


title: Treason

text: Treason is only applicable when the nation is at war and involves crimes committed with the intent of hindering, misguiding or betraying the defence of the Nation. It is governed by Brottsbalken chapter 22 paragraph 1.


title: Treason

text: 1. impedes, misleads or betrays others who are engaged in the country’s defence, or induces them to mutiny, disloyalty or dejection;


title: Treason

text: is, if the act is liable to result in considerable detriment to the total defence, or includes considerable assistance to the enemy, guilty of treason and is sentenced to imprisonment for a fixed term of at least four and at most ten years, or for life.


title: Treason

text: Treachery is a lesser form of Treason, where the intended effects are less severe. It is governed by Brottsbalken chapter 22 paragraph 2.


title: Treason

text: A person who commits an act referred to in Section 1 that is only liable to result in detriment to the total defence to a lesser extent, or includes more minor assistance to the enemy than is stated there, is guilty of treachery and is sentenced to imprisonment for at most six years.


title: Treason

text: Until 1973 Sweden also had another form of treason called "Krigsförräderi" (treason at war), which were acts of Treason committed by military personnel. Although Sweden had outlawed capital punishment in peace time in 1922, this type of treason carried the death penalty until 1973.


title: Treason

text: Some media reported that four teenagers (their names were not reported) were convicted of treason after they assaulted King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden by throwing a cake on his face on 6 September 2001. In reality they were however not convicted of treason but of "Högmålsbrott", translated as "Treasonable offence" in English, which in Swedish criminal law are acts with the intent to overthrow the Form of Government, or impede or hinder the Government, the Riksdag, the Supreme Court or the Head of State. The law also prohibits the use of force against the King or any member of the Royal Family. It is governed by Brottsbalken chapter 18. They were fined between 80 and 100 days' income.


title: Treason

text: There is no single crime of treason in Swiss law; instead, multiple criminal prohibitions apply. Article 265 of the Swiss Criminal Code prohibits "high treason" ("Hochverrat/haute trahison") as follows:


title: Treason

text: – removing the constitutional authorities of the state from office or making them unable to exercise their authority,


title: Treason

text: A separate crime is defined in article 267 as "diplomatic treason" ("Diplomatischer Landesverrat/Trahison diplomatique"):


title: Treason

text: 1. Whoever makes known or accessible a secret, the preservation of which is required in the interest of the Confederation, to a foreign state or its agents, (...) shall be punished with imprisonment of no less than a year.


title: Treason

text: 2. Whoever makes known or accessible a secret, the preservation of which is required in the interest of the Confederation, to the public, shall be punished with imprisonment of up to five years or a monetary penalty.


title: Treason

text: In 1950, in the context of the Cold War, the following prohibition of "foreign enterprises against the security of Switzerland" was introduced as article 266:


title: Treason

text: The criminal code also prohibits, among other acts, the suppression or falsification of legal documents or evidence relevant to the international relations of Switzerland (art. 267, imprisonment of no less than a year) and attacks against the independence of Switzerland and incitement of a war against Switzerland (art. 266, up to life imprisonment).


title: Treason

text: The Swiss military criminal code contains additional prohibitions under the general title of "treason", which also apply to civilians, or which in times of war civilians are also (or may by executive decision be made) subject to. These include espionage or transmission of secrets to a foreign power (art. 86); sabotage (art. 86a); "military treason", i.e., the disruption of activities of military significance (art. 87); acting as a franc-tireur (art. 88); disruption of military action by disseminating untrue information (art. 89); military service against Switzerland by Swiss nationals (art. 90); or giving aid to the enemy (art. 91). The penalties for these crimes vary, but include life imprisonment in some cases.


title: Treason

text: Treason "per se" is not defined in the Turkish Penal Code. However, the law defines crimes which are traditionally included in the scope of treason, such as cooperating with the enemy during wartime. Treason is punishable by imprisonment up to life.


title: Treason

text: The British law of treason is entirely statutory and has been so since the Treason Act 1351 (25 Edw. 3 St. 5 c. 2). The Act is written in Norman French, but is more commonly cited in its English translation.


title: Treason

text: The Treason Act 1351 has since been amended several times, and currently provides for four categories of treasonable offences, namely:


title: Treason

text: Another Act, the Treason Act 1702 (1 Anne stat. 2 c. 21), provides for a fifth category of treason, namely:


title: Treason

text: By virtue of the Treason Act 1708, the law of treason in Scotland is the same as the law in England, save that in Scotland the slaying of the Lords of Session and Lords of Justiciary and counterfeiting the Great Seal of Scotland remain treason under sections 11 and 12 of the Treason Act 1708 respectively. Treason is a reserved matter about which the Scottish Parliament is prohibited from legislating. Two acts of the former Parliament of Ireland passed in 1537 and 1542 create further treasons which apply in Northern Ireland.


title: Treason

text: The penalty for treason was changed from death to a maximum of imprisonment for life under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Before 1998, the death penalty was mandatory, subject to the royal prerogative of mercy. Since the abolition of the death penalty for murder in 1965 an execution for treason was unlikely to have been carried out.


title: Treason

text: Treason laws were used against Irish insurgents before Irish independence. However, members of the Provisional IRA and other militant republican groups were not prosecuted or executed for treason for levying war against the British government during the Troubles. They, along with members of loyalist paramilitary groups, were jailed for murder, violent crimes or terrorist offences. William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") was the last person to be put to death for treason, in 1946. (On the following day Theodore Schurch was executed for treachery, a similar crime, and was the last man to be executed for a crime other than murder in the UK.)


title: Treason

text: As to who can commit treason, it depends on the ancient notion of allegiance. As such, all British nationals (but not other Commonwealth citizens) owe allegiance to the King in right of the United Kingdom wherever they may be, as do Commonwealth citizens and aliens present in the United Kingdom at the time of the treasonable act (except diplomats and foreign invading forces), those who hold a British passport however obtained, and aliens who – having lived in Britain and gone abroad again – have left behind family and belongings.


title: Treason

text: The Treason Act 1695 enacted, among other things, a rule that treason could be proved only in a trial by the evidence of two witnesses to the same offence. Nearly one hundred years later this rule was incorporated into the U.S. Constitution, which requires two witnesses to the same overt act. It also provided for a three-year time limit on bringing prosecutions for treason (except for assassinating the king), another rule which has been imitated in some common law countries.


title: Treason

text: The Sedition Act 1661 made it treason to imprison, restrain or wound the king. Although this law was repealed in the United Kingdom in 1998, it still continues to apply in some Commonwealth countries.


title: Treason

text: The offense of treason exists at both federal and state levels. The federal crime is defined in the Constitution as either levying war against the United States or adhering to its enemies, and carries a sentence of death or imprisonment and fine.


title: Treason

text: In the 1790s, opposition political parties were new and not fully accepted. Government leaders often considered their opponents to be traitors. Historian Ron Chernow reports that Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and President George Washington "regarded much of the criticism fired at their administration as disloyal, even treasonous, in nature." When the undeclared Quasi-War broke out with France in 1797–98, "Hamilton increasingly mistook dissent for treason and engaged in hyperbole." Furthermore, the Jeffersonian opposition party behaved the same way. After 1801, with a peaceful transition in the political party in power, the rhetoric of "treason" against political opponents diminished.


title: Treason

text: To avoid the abuses of the English law, the scope of treason was specifically restricted in the United States Constitution. Article III, section 3 reads as follows:


title: Treason

text: The Constitution does not itself create the offense; it only restricts the definition (the first paragraph), permits the United States Congress to create the offense, and restricts any punishment for treason to only the convicted (the second paragraph). The crime is prohibited by legislation passed by Congress. Therefore, the United States Code at states:


title: Treason

text: However, Congress has passed laws creating related offenses that punish conduct that undermines the government or the national security, such as sedition in the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, or espionage and sedition in the Espionage Act of 1917, which do not require the testimony of two witnesses and have a much broader definition than Article Three treason. Some of these laws are still in effect. The well-known spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, rather than treason.


title: Treason

text: In the United States, Benedict Arnold's name is considered synonymous with treason due to his collaboration with the British during the American Revolutionary War. This, however, occurred before the Constitution was written. Arnold became a general in the British Army, which protected him.


title: Treason

text: Since the Constitution came into effect, there have been fewer than 40 federal prosecutions for treason and even fewer convictions. Several men were convicted of treason in connection with the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion but were pardoned by President George Washington.


title: Treason

text: The most famous treason trial, that of Aaron Burr in 1807, resulted in acquittal. In 1807, on a charge of treason, Burr was brought to trial before the United States Circuit Court at Richmond, Virginia. The only physical evidence presented to the grand jury was General James Wilkinson's so-called letter from Burr, which proposed the idea of stealing land in the Louisiana Purchase. The trial was presided over by Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall, acting as a circuit judge. Since no witnesses testified, Burr was acquitted in spite of the full force of Jefferson's political influence thrown against him. Immediately afterward, Burr was tried on a misdemeanor charge and was again acquitted.


title: Treason

text: During the American Civil War, treason trials were held in Indianapolis against Copperheads for conspiring with the Confederacy against the United States. In addition to treason trials, the federal government passed new laws that allowed prosecutors to try people for the charge of disloyalty.


title: Treason

text: Various legislation was passed, including the Conspiracies Act of July 31, 1861. Because the law defining treason in the constitution was so strict, new legislation was necessary to prosecute defiance of the government. Many of the people indicted on charges of conspiracy were not taken to trial, but instead were arrested and detained.


title: Treason

text: In addition to the Conspiracies Act of July 31, 1861, in 1862, the federal government went further to redefine treason in the context of the civil war. The act that was passed is entitled ""An Act to Suppress Insurrection; to punish Treason and Rebellion, to seize and confiscate the Property of Rebels, and for other purposes"." It is colloquially referred to as the "second Confiscation Act". The act essentially lessened the punishment for treason.  Rather than have death as the only possible punishment for treason, the act made it possible to give individuals lesser sentences.


title: Treason

text: After the Civil War the question was whether the United States government would make indictments for treason against leaders of the Confederate States of America, as many people demanded. Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, was indicted and held in prison for two years. The indictments were dropped on February 11, 1869, following the blanket amnesty noted below. When accepting Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, at Appomattox Courthouse, in April 1865, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assured all Confederate soldiers and officers a blanket amnesty, provided they returned to their homes and refrained from any further acts of hostility, and subsequently other Union generals issued similar terms of amnesty when accepting Confederate surrenders. All Confederate officials received a blanket amnesty issued by President Andrew Johnson on Christmas Day, 1868.


title: Treason

text: In 1949 Iva Toguri D'Aquino was convicted of treason for wartime Radio Tokyo broadcasts (under the name of "Tokyo Rose") and sentenced to ten years, of which she served six. As a result of prosecution witnesses having lied under oath, she was pardoned in 1977.


title: Treason

text: In 1952 Tomoya Kawakita, a Japanese-American dual citizen was convicted of treason and sentenced to death for having worked as an interpreter at a Japanese POW camp and having mistreated American prisoners. He was recognized by a former prisoner at a department store in 1946 after having returned to the United States. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. He was released and deported in 1963.


title: Treason

text: The Cold War saw frequent talk linking treason with support for Communist-led causes. The most memorable of these came from Senator Joseph McCarthy, who used rhetoric about the Democrats as guilty of "twenty years of treason". As chosen chair of the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, McCarthy also investigated various government agencies for Soviet spy rings; however, he acted as a political fact-finder rather than a criminal prosecutor. The Cold War period saw no prosecutions for explicit treason, but there were convictions and even executions for conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union, such as in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case.


title: Treason

text: On October 11, 2006, the United States government charged Adam Yahiye Gadahn for videos in which he appeared as a spokesman for al-Qaeda and threatened attacks on American soil. He was killed on January 19, 2015, in an unmanned aircraft (drone) strike in Waziristan, Pakistan.


title: Treason

text: Most states have treason provisions in their constitutions or statutes similar to those in the U.S. Constitution. The Extradition Clause specifically defines treason as an extraditable offense.


title: Treason

text: Thomas Jefferson in 1791 said that any Virginia official who cooperated with the federal Bank of the United States proposed by Alexander Hamilton was guilty of "treason" against the state of Virginia and should be executed. The Bank opened and no one was prosecuted.


title: Treason

text: Several persons have been prosecuted for treason on the state level. Thomas Dorr was convicted for treason against the state of Rhode Island for his part in the Dorr Rebellion, but was eventually granted amnesty. John Brown was convicted of treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia for his part in the raid on Harpers Ferry, and was hanged. The Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, was charged with treason against Missouri along with five others, at first in front of a state military court, but Smith was allowed to escape to Illinois after his case was transferred to a civilian court for trial on charges of treason and other crimes. Smith was then later imprisoned for trial on charges of treason against Illinois, but was murdered by a lynch mob while in jail awaiting trial.


title: Treason

text: The Constitution of Vietnam proclaims that treason is the most serious crime. It is further regulated in the country's 2015 Criminal Code with the 78th article:


title: Treason

text: Also, according to the Law on Amnesty amended in November 2018, it is impossible for those convicted for treason to be granted amnesty.


title: Treason

text: Early in Islamic history, the only form of treason was seen as the attempt to overthrow a just government or waging war against the State. According to Islamic tradition, the prescribed punishment ranged from imprisonment to the severing of limbs and the death penalty depending on the severity of the crime. However, even in cases of treason the repentance of a person would have to be taken into account.


title: Treason

text: Currently, the consensus among major Islamic schools is that apostasy (leaving Islam) is considered treason and that the penalty is death; this is supported not in the Quran but in hadith. This confusion between apostasy and treason almost certainly had its roots in the Ridda Wars, in which an army of rebel traitors led by the self-proclaimed prophet Musaylima attempted to destroy the caliphate of Abu Bakr.


title: Treason

text: In the 19th and early 20th century, the Iranian Cleric Sheikh Fazlollah Noori opposed the Iranian Constitutional Revolution by inciting insurrection against them through issuing fatwas and publishing pamphlets arguing that democracy would bring vice to the country. The new government executed him for treason in 1909.


title: Treason

text: In Malaysia, it is treason to commit offences against the Yang di-Pertuan Agong's person, or to wage or attempt to wage war or abet the waging of war against the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, a Ruler or Yang di-Pertua Negeri. All these offences are punishable by hanging, which derives from the English treason acts (as a former British colony, Malaysia's legal system is based on English common law).


title: Treason

text: In Bahrain, plotting to topple the regime, collaborating with a foreign hostile country and threatening the life of the Emir are defined as treason and punishable by death. The State Security Law of 1974 was used to crush dissent that could be seen as treasonous, which was criticised for permitting severe human rights violations in accordance with Article One:


title: Treason

text: In the areas controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, it is treason to give assistance to Israeli troops without the authorization of the Palestinian Authority or to sell land to Jews (irrespective of nationality) or non-Jewish Israeli citizens under the Palestinian Land Laws, as part of the PA's general policy of discouraging the expansion of Israeli settlements. Both crimes are capital offences subject to the death penalty, although the former provision has not often been enforced since the beginning of effective security cooperation between the Israel Defense Forces, Israel Police, and Palestinian National Security Forces since the mid-2000s (decade) under the leadership of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Likewise, in the Gaza Strip under the Hamas-led government, any sort of cooperation or assistance to Israeli security forces during military actions is also punishable by death.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Tristan and Iseult (also known as Tristan and Isolde and other names) is a medieval chivalric romance told in numerous variations since the 12th century. Based on a Celtic legend and possibly other sources, the tale is a tragedy about the illicit love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult. It depicts Tristan's mission to escort Iseult from Ireland to marry his uncle, King Mark of Cornwall. On the journey, Tristan and Iseult ingest a love potion, instigating a love affair between them.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The story has had a lasting impact on Western culture. Its different versions exist in many European texts in various languages from the Middle Ages. The earliest instances take two primary forms: the courtly and common branches. The former begins with the 12th-century poems of Thomas of Britain and Béroul, while the latter reflects a now-lost original version. A subsequent version emerged in the 13th century in the wake of the greatly expanded Prose "Tristan", merging Tristan's romance with the legend of King Arthur. Finally, after the revived interest in the medieval era under the influence of Romantic nationalism, the story has continued to be popular in the modern era, notably Wagner's operatic adaptation.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The story and character of Tristan vary between versions. His name also varies, although Tristan is the most common modern spelling. The earliest tradition comes from the French romances of Thomas of Britain and Béroul, two poets from the second half of the 12th century. Later traditions come from the vast Prose "Tristan" (), markedly different from the tales of Thomas and Béroul.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: After defeating the Irish knight Morholt, the young prince Tristan travels to Ireland to bring back the fair Iseult (often known as Isolde, Isolt, or Yseult) for his uncle King Mark of Cornwall to marry. Along the way, Tristan and Iseult ingest a love potion which causes them to fall madly in love. The potion's effects last a lifetime in the legend's courtly branch. However, in the common branch version, the potion's results end after three years.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: In some versions, Tristan and Iseult ingest the potion accidentally. In others, the potion's maker gives it to Iseult to share with Mark, but she gives it to Tristan instead. Although Iseult marries Mark, the spell forces her and Tristan to seek each other as lovers. The King's advisors repeatedly try to charge the pair with adultery, but the lovers use trickery to preserve their façade of innocence. In Béroul's version, the love potion eventually wears off, but the two lovers continue their adulterous relationship.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Like the Arthur–Lancelot–Guinevere love triangle in the medieval courtly love motif, Tristan, King Mark, and Iseult all love one another. Tristan honors and respects his uncle King Mark as his mentor and adopted father. Iseult is grateful for Mark's kindness to her. Mark loves Tristan as his son and Iseult as a wife. However, every night each has horrible dreams about the future. Simultaneous to the love triangle is the endangerment of a fragile kingdom and the end of the war between Ireland and Cornwall (Dumnonia).


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: King Mark eventually learns of the affair and seeks to entrap his nephew and wife. Mark acquires what seems to be proof of their guilt and resolves to punish Tristan by hanging and Iseult by burning at the stake. However, Mark changes his mind about Iseult and lodges her in a leper colony. Tristan escapes on his way to the gallows, making a miraculous leap from a chapel to rescue Iseult.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The lovers flee into the forest of Morrois and take shelter there until Mark later discovers them. They make peace with Mark after Tristan agrees to return Iseult to Mark and leave the country. Tristan then travels to Brittany, where he marries Iseult of the White Hands, daughter of Hoel of Brittany, for her name and beauty. In some versions, including Béroul and the "Folie Tristan d'Oxford", Tristan returns in disguise to woo Iseult of Ireland, but the dog, Husdent, betrays his identity.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The earliest surviving Tristan poems include references to King Arthur and his court. Mentions of Tristan and Iseult are also found in some early Arthurian texts. Writers expanded the connection between the story and the Arthurian legend over time. Shortly after the completion of the "Vulgate Cycle" (the "Lancelot-Grail" cycle) in the first half of the 13th century, two authors created the Prose "Tristan", which establishes Tristan as a Knight of the Round Table. He is one of the most outstanding members of the Round Table and participates in the Quest for the Holy Grail. He is also a former enemy turned friend of Lancelot. The Prose "Tristan" evolved into the familiar medieval tale of Tristan and Iseult that became the "Post-Vulgate Cycle". Two centuries later, it became the primary source for the seminal Arthurian compilation "Le Morte d'Arthur".


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: In the popular extended version of the Prose "Tristan" and the works derived from it, Tristan is attacked by King Mark while he plays the harp for Iseult. Mark strikes Tristan with a poisoned or cursed lance, mortally wounding him. The poetic treatments of the Tristan legend, however, offer a very different account of the hero's death. In Thomas' version, Tristan is wounded by a poisoned lance while attempting to rescue a young woman from six knights. Tristan sends his friend Kahedin to find Iseult of Ireland, the only person who can heal him. Tristan tells Kahedin to sail back with white sails if he is bringing Iseult and black sails if he is not (perhaps an echo of the Greek myth of Theseus).


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Iseult agrees to return to Tristan with Kahedin, but Tristan's jealous wife, Iseult of the White Hands, lies to Tristan about the color of the sails. Tristan dies of grief, thinking Iseult has betrayed him, and Iseult dies over his corpse. The short version of the Prose "Tristan" and some later works also use the traditional account of Tristan's death as found in the poetic versions.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: French sources, such as the ones chosen in the English translation by Hilaire Belloc in 1903, state that a bramble briar grows out of Tristan's grave, growing so thickly that it forms a bower and roots itself into Iseult's grave. King Mark tries to have the branches cut three separate times, and each time the branches grow back and intertwine. Later versions embellish the story with the briar above Tristan's grave intertwining and a rose tree from Iseult's grave. Other variants replace the intertwining trees with hazel and honeysuckle.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Later versions state that the lovers had several children, including a son and a daughter named after themselves. The children have adventures of their own. In the 14th-century French romance "Ysaÿe le Triste" ("Ysaÿe the Sad"), the eponymous hero is the son of Tristan and Iseult. He becomes involved with the fairy king Oberon and marries a girl named Martha, who bears him a son named Mark. Spanish "Tristan el Joven" also included Tristan's son, referred to as Tristan of Leonis.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: There are several theories about the tale's origins, although historians disagree over which is the most accurate.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The mid-6th century "Drustanus Stone" in southeast Cornwall close to Castle Dore has an inscription referring to "Drustan", son of Cunomorus (Mark). However, not all historians agree that the Drustan referred to is the archetype of Tristan. The inscription is heavily eroded, but the earliest records of the stone, dating to the 16th century, all agree on some variation of CIRVIVS / CIRUSIUS as the name inscribed. It was first read as a variation of DRUSTANUS in the late 19th century. The optimistic reading corresponds to the 19th-century revival of medieval romance. A 2014 study using 3D scanning supported the initial "CI" reading rather than the backward-facing "D."


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: There are references to March ap Meichion (Mark) and Trystan in the "Welsh Triads", some gnomic poetry, the "Mabinogion" stories, and the 11th-century hagiography of Illtud. A character called Drystan appears as one of King Arthur's advisers at the end of "The Dream of Rhonabwy", an early 13th-century tale in the Middle Welsh prose collection known as the "Mabinogion". Iseult is a member of Arthur's court in "Culhwch and Olwen," an earlier "Mabinogion" tale.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Scholars have given much attention to possible Irish antecedents to the Tristan legend. An ill-fated love triangle is featured in several Irish works, most notably in "Tóraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne" ("The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne"). In this literary work, the aging Fionn mac Cumhaill is to marry the young princess, Gráinne. At the betrothal ceremony, she falls in love with Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, one of Fionn's most trusted warriors. Gráinne gives a sleeping potion to all present but Diarmuid Ua Duibhne, and she convinces him to elope with her. Fianna pursues the fugitive lovers across Ireland.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Another Irish analog is "Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin", preserved in the 14th-century "Yellow Book of Lecan". In this tale, Cano is an exiled Scottish king who accepts the hospitality of King Marcan of Ui Maile. His young wife, Credd, drugs all present and convinces Cano to be her lover. They try to keep a tryst while at Marcan's court, but they are frustrated by courtiers. In the end, Credd kills herself, and Cano dies of grief.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The Ulster Cycle includes the text "Clann Uisnigh" or "Deirdre of the Sorrows" in which Naoise mac Usnech falls for Deirdre. However, King Conchobar mac Nessa imprisons her due to a prophecy that Ulster will plunge into civil war due to men fighting for her beauty. Conchobar agrees to marry Deirdre to avert war and avenges Clann Uisnigh. The death of Naoise and his kin leads many Ulstermen to defect to Connacht, including Conchobar's stepfather and trusted ally, Fergus mac Róich. This eventually results in the Irish epic tale "Táin Bó Cúailnge".


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Some scholars suggest that the 11th-century Persian story "Vis and Rāmin" is the model for the Tristan legend because the similarities are too significant to be coincidental. The evidence for the Persian origin of Tristan and Iseult is very circumstantial. Some suggest the Persian story traveled to the West with story-telling exchanges in a Syrian court during the crusades. Others believe the story came West with minstrels who had free access to both Crusader and Saracen camps in the Holy Land.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Some scholars believe Ovid's "Pyramus and Thisbe" and the story of Ariadne at Naxos may have contributed to the development of the Tristan legend. The sequence in which Tristan and Iseult die and become interwoven trees also parallels Ovid's love story of Baucis and Philemon, where two lovers transform after death into two trees sprouting from the same trunk. However, this also occurs in the saga of Deirdre of the Sorrows, making the link more tenuous. Moreover, this theory ignores the lost oral traditions of pre-literate societies, relying only on written records that were damaged during the development of modern nation-states such as England and France, especially during the dissolution of the monasteries.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The earliest representation of the common branch is Béroul's "Le Roman de Tristan" ("The Romance of Tristan"). The first part dates between 1150 and 1170, and the second one dates between 1181 and 1190. The common branch is so named because it represents an earlier non-chivalric, non-courtly tradition of story-telling, making it more reflective of the Dark Ages than the refined High Middle Ages. In this respect, the works in this branch are similar to Layamon's "Brut" and the "Perlesvaus".


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Beroul's version is the oldest known version of the Tristan romances., but knowledge of his work is limited. A few substantial fragments of his original version were discovered in the 19th century, with the rest reconstructed from later versions. It is commonly considered the closest presentation of all the raw events in the romance, with no explanation or modifications. As a result, Beroul's version is an archetype for later "common branch" editions. A more substantial illustration of the common branch is the German version by Eilhart von Oberge. Eilhart was popular but paled in comparison with the later Gottfried.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: One aspect of the common branch that differentiates from the courtly branch is the depiction of the lovers' time in exile from Mark's court. While the courtly branch describes Tristan and Iseult as sheltering in a "Cave of Lovers" and living in happy seclusion, the common branches emphasize the extreme suffering that Tristan and Iseult endure. In the common branch, exile is a proper punishment that highlights the couple's departure from courtly norms and emphasizes the impossibility of their romance.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: French medievalist Joseph Bédier thought all the Tristan legends could be traced to a single original: a Cornish or Breton poem. He dubbed this hypothetical original the "Ur-Tristan." Bédier wrote "Romance of Tristan and Iseult" to reconstruct what this source might have been like, incorporating material from other versions to make a cohesive whole. An English translation of Bédier's "Roman de Tristan et Iseut" (1900) by Edward J. Gallagher was published in 2013 by Hackett Publishing Company. A translation by Hilaire Belloc, first published in 1913, was published as a Caedmon Audio recording read by Claire Bloom in 1958 and republished in 2005.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The earliest representation of what scholars name the "courtly" branch of the Tristan legend is in the work of Thomas of Britain, dating from 1173. Unfortunately, only ten fragments of his "Tristan" poem survived, compiled from six manuscripts. Of these six manuscripts, the ones in Turin and Strasbourg are now lost, leaving two in Oxford, one in Cambridge, and one in Carlisle. In his text, Thomas names another trouvère who also sang of Tristan, though no manuscripts of this earlier version have been discovered. There is also a passage describing Iseult writing a short lai out of grief. This information sheds light on the development of an unrelated legend concerning the death of a prominent troubadour and the composition of lais by noblewomen of the 12th century.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The essential text for knowledge of the courtly branch of the Tristan legend is the abridged translation of Thomas made by Brother Robert at the request of King Haakon Haakonson of Norway in 1227. King Haakon had wanted to promote Angevin-Norman culture at his court, so he commissioned the translation of several French Arthurian works. The Nordic version presents a complete, direct narrative of the events in Thomas' "Tristan" with the omission of his numerous interpretive diversions. It is the only complete representative of the courtly branch in its formative period.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Chronologically preceding the work of Brother Robert is the "Tristan and Isolt" of Gottfried von Strassburg, written circa 1211–1215. The poem was Gottfried's only known work and was left incomplete due to his death, with the retelling reaching halfway through the main plot. Authors such as Heinrich von Freiberg and Ulrich von Türheim completed the poem at a later time, but with the common branch of the legend as the source.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: A contemporary of Béroul and Thomas of Britain, Marie de France presented a Tristan episode in her lais, "Chevrefoil". The title refers to the symbiosis of the honeysuckle and hazelnut tree, which die when separated, similar to Tristan and Iseult. It concerns another of Tristan's clandestine returns to Cornwall, with the banished hero signaling his presence to Iseult with an inscribed hazelnut tree branch placed on a road she was to travel. This episode is similar to a version of the courtly branch when Tristan places wood shavings in a stream as a signal for Iseult to meet in the garden of Mark's palace.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: There are also two 12th-century "Folies Tristan", Old French poems known as the Berne ("Folie Tristan de Berne") and the Oxford ("Folie Tristan d'Oxford") versions, which tell of Tristan's return to Marc's court under the guise of a madman. Besides their importance as episodic additions to the Tristan story and masterpieces of narrative structure, these relatively short poems significantly restored Béroul's and Thomas' incomplete texts.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Chrétien de Troyes claimed to have written a Tristan story, though it has never been found. Chrétien mentioned this in the introduction to his "Cligès", a romance that is anti-"Tristan" with a happy ending. Some scholars speculate his "Tristan" was ill-received, prompting Chrétien to write "Cligès—"a story with no Celtic antecedent—to make amends.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: After Béroul and Thomas, the most noteworthy development in French Tristania is a complex grouping of texts known as the Prose "Tristan". Extremely popular in the 13th and 14th centuries, these lengthy narratives vary in detail. Modern editions run twelve volumes for the extended version that includes Tristan's participation in the Quest for the Holy Grail. The shorter version without the grail quest consists of five books. The Prose "Tristan" significantly influenced later medieval literature and inspired parts of the "Post-Vulgate Cycle" and the "Roman de Palamedes".


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The earliest complete source of Tristan's story in English was "Sir Tristrem", a romantic poem in the courtly style with 3,344 lines. It is part of the Auchinleck manuscript at the National Library of Scotland. As with many medieval English adaptations of French Arthuriana, the poem's artistic achievement is average. However, some critics have tried to rehabilitate it, claiming it is a parody. Its first editor, Walter Scott, provided a sixty-line ending to the story that was included in every subsequent edition.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Thomas Malory's "The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones" is the only other medieval handling of the Tristan legend in English. Malory provided a shortened translation of the French Prose "Tristan", including in his compilation "Le Morte d'Arthur". In Malory's version, Tristram is the son of the King of Lyonesse. Since the Winchester Manuscript surfaced in 1934, there has been much scholarly debate on whether the Tristan narrative, like all the episodes in "Le Morte d'Arthur," was intended to be an independent piece or part of a more extensive work.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: A short Tristan narrative, perhaps related to the Béroul text, exists in six Welsh manuscripts dating from the late 16th to the mid-17th century.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: In Italy, many "cantari" or oral poems performed in the public square about Tristan or referencing him. These poems include "Cantari di Tristano", "Due Tristani" "Quando Tristano e Lancielotto combattiero al petrone di Merlino", "Ultime Imprese e Morte Tristano", and "Vendetta che fe Messer Lanzelloto de la Morte di Messer Tristano", among others.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: There are also four versions of the Prose "Tristan" in medieval Italy, named after the place of composition or library where they are housed: "Tristano Panciaticchiano" (Panciatichi family library), "Tristano Riccardiano" (Biblioteca Riccardiana), and "Tristano Veneto" (Venetian). The exception to this is "La Tavola Ritonda", a 15th-century Italian rewrite of the Prose "Tristan".


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: In the first third of the 14th century, Arcipreste de Hita wrote his version of the Tristan story, "Carta Enviada por Hiseo la Brunda a Tristán". "Respuesta de Tristán" is a unique 15th-century romance written as imaginary letters between the two lovers. "Libro del muy esforzado caballero Don Tristán de Leonís y de sus grandes hechos en armas", a Spanish reworking of the Prose "Tristan" that was first published in Valladolid in 1501.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The popularity of Brother Robert's version spawned a parody, "Saga Af Tristram ok Ísodd" and the poem "Tristrams kvæði". Two poems with Arthurian content have been preserved in the collection of Old Norse prose translations of Marie de France's lais "Strengleikar" (Stringed Instruments). One of these is "Chevrefoil", translated as "Geitarlauf". The Austrian National Library in Vienna is in possession of a 158-line fragment of a Dutch version of Thomas' "Tristan".


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: A 13th-century verse romance based on the German Tristan poems by Gottfried, Heinrich, and Eilhart was written in Czech. It is the only known verse representative of the Tristan story in Slavic languages.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The Old Belarusian prose "Povest o Tryshchane" from the 1560s represents the furthest Eastern advance of the legend. Some scholars believe it to be the last medieval Tristan or Arthurian text period. Its lineage goes back to the "Tristano Veneto". At that time, the Republic of Venice controlled large parts of the Serbo-Croatian language area, encouraging a more active literary and cultural life than most of the Balkans. The manuscript of the "Povest" states it was translated from a lost Serbian intermediary. Scholars assume the legend traveled from Venice through its Balkan colonies, finally reaching the last outpost in this Slavic language.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Various art forms from the medieval era represented Tristan's story, from ivory mirror cases to the 13th-century Sicilian Tristan Quilt. In addition, many literary versions are illuminated with miniatures. The legend also became a popular subject for Romanticist painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: In English, the Tristan story generally suffered the same fate as the Matter of Britain. However, after being ignored for about three centuries, a renaissance of original Arthurian literature took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Revival material includes Alfred Tennyson's "The Last Tournament" which is part of one of his "Idylls of the King", Matthew Arnold's 1852 "Tristram and Iseult," and Algernon Charles Swinburne's 1882 epic poem "Tristram of Lyonesse". Other compilers wrote Tristan's texts as prose novels or short stories.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: By the 19th century, the Tristan legend spread across the Nordic world, from Denmark to the Faroe Islands. However, these stories diverged from their medieval precursors. For instance, in one Danish ballad, Tristan and Iseult are brother and sister. In two popular Danish chapbooks of the late 18th century, "Tristans Saga ok Inionu" and "En Tragoedisk Historie om den ædle og Tappre Tistrand", Iseult is a princess of India. The popularity of these chapbooks inspired Icelandic poets Sigurður Breiðfjörð and Níels Jónsson to write rímur, long verse narratives inspired by the Tristan legend.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Cornish writer Arthur Quiller-Couch started writing "Castle Dor", a retelling of the Tristan and Iseult myth in modern circumstances. He designated an innkeeper as King Mark, his wife as Iseult, and a Breton onion-seller as Tristan. The plot was set in Troy, the fictional name of his hometown of Fowey. The book was left unfinished at Quiller-Couch's death in 1944 and was completed in 1962 by Daphne du Maurier.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Rosemary Sutcliff wrote two novels based on the story of Tristan and Iseult. The first, "Tristan and Iseult", is a 1971 retelling of the story for young adults, set in Cornwall in the southern peninsula of Britain. The story appears again as a chapter of Sutcliff's 1981 Arthurian novel, "The Sword and the Circle". Thomas Berger retold the story of Tristan and Isolde in his 1978 interpretation of the Arthurian legend, "". Dee Morrison Meaney told the tale from Iseult's perspective in the 1985 novel "Iseult", focusing on the magical side of the story and how the arrival of the Saxons ended the druidic tradition and magical creatures.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Diana L. Paxson's 1988 novel "The White Raven" told the legend of Tristan and Iseult (named in the book as Drustan and Esseilte) from the perspective of Iseult's handmaiden Brangien (Branwen), who was mentioned in various of the medieval stories. Joseph Bédier's "Romance of Tristan and Iseult" is quoted as a source by John Updike in the afterword to his 1994 novel "Brazil" about the lovers Tristão and Isabel. Bernard Cornwell included a historical interpretation of the legend as a side story in "Enemy of God: A Novel of Arthur", a 1996 entry in "The Warlord Chronicles" series. Rosalind Miles wrote a trilogy about Tristan and Isolde: "The Queen of the Western Isle" (2002), "The Maid of the White Hands" (2003), and "The Lady of the Sea" (2004). Nancy McKenzie wrote "Prince of Dreams: A Tale of Tristan and Essylte" as part of her Arthurian series in 2003. In Bengali literature, Sunil Gangopadhyay depicts the story in the novel "Sonali Dukkho". In Harry Turtledove's alternate history "Ruled Britannia", Christopher Marlowe writes a play called "Yseult and Tristan" to compete with his friend William Shakespeare's immensely popular "Hamlet".


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: In 1832, Gaetano Donizetti referenced this story in his opera "L'elisir d'amore (The Elixir of Love" or "The Love Potion)" in Milan. The character Adina sings the story to the ensemble, inspiring Nemorino to ask the charlatan Dulcamara for the magic elixir.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Premiering in 1865, Richard Wagner's influential opera "Tristan und Isolde" depicts Tristan as a doomed romantic figure, while Isolde fulfills Wagner's quintessential feminine role as the redeeming woman. Swiss composer Frank Martin wrote the chamber opera "Le Vin Herbé" between 1938 and 1940 after being influenced by Wagner.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Thomas Hardy published his one-act play "The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall at Tintagel in Lyonnesse" in 1923. Rutland Boughton's 1924 opera "The Queen of Cornwall" was based on Thomas Hardy's play.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Twentieth-century composers have often used the legend with Wagnerian overtones in their compositions. For instance, Hans Werner Henze's orchestral composition "Tristan" borrowed freely from the Wagnerian version and other retellings of the legend.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: English composer Rutland Boughton composed the music drama "The Queen of Cornwall", inspired by Hardy's play. Its first performance was at the Glastonbury Festival in 1924. Feeling that Hardy's play offered too much-unrelieved grimness, Broughton received permission to import a handful of lyrics from Hardy's early poetical works. In 2010, it was recorded on the Dutton Epoch label with Ronald Corp conducted the New London Orchestra and members of the London Chorus, including soloists Neal Davies (King Mark), Heather Shipp (Queen Iseult), Jacques Imbrailo (Sir Tristam), and Joan Rodgers (Iseult of Brittany).


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: Olivier Messiaen built his 1948 symphony "Turangalîla-Symphonie" around the story. German power metal band Blind Guardian have a song inspired by Tristan and Iseult's story, "The Maiden and the Minstrel Knight", in their 2002 album "A Night at the Opera". English singer and songwriter Patrick Wolf featured a song about the Tristan and Iseult legend, "Tristan", in his 2005 album "Wind in the Wires". American indie rock band Tarkio has a song entitled "Tristan and Iseult" in their album "Sea Songs for Landlocked Sailers".


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The story has also been adapted into film many times. The earliest is probably the 1909 French silent film "Tristan et Yseult". Another French film of the same name was released two years later and offered a unique addition to the story: Tristan's jealous slave Rosen tricks the lovers into drinking the love potion, then denounces them to Mark. Mark pities the two lovers, but they commit double suicide anyway. There is also a French silent film version from 1920 closely following the legend.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: One of the most celebrated and controversial Tristan films was 1943's "L'Éternel Retour" ("The Eternal Return"), directed by Jean Delannoy with a screenplay by Jean Cocteau. It is a contemporary retelling of the story with a man named Patrice in the role of Tristan, who fetches a wife for his friend Marke. However, an evil dwarf tricks them into drinking a love potion, and the familiar plot ensues. The film was made in France during the Vichy regime under German domination. Elements of the movie reflect National Socialist ideology, with the beautiful blonde hero and heroine offset by the Untermensch dwarf. The dwarf has a more prominent role than in most interpretations of the legend; its conniving rains havoc on the lovers, much like the Jews of Nazi stereotypes.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The 1970 Spanish film "Tristana" is only tangentially related to the story. The role of Tristan is assumed by the female character Tristana, who cares for her aging uncle, Don Lope. However, she wishes to marry Horacio. The 1981 Irish film "Lovespell" features Nicholas Clay as Tristan and Kate Mulgrew as Iseult. Coincidentally, Clay went on to play Lancelot in John Boorman's epic "Excalibur". The German film "Fire and Sword" ("Feuer und Schwert – Die Legende von Tristan und Isolde") premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981 and was released in 1982. The film starred Christoph Waltz as Tristan and was regarded as accurate to the story, though it removed the Iseult of Brittany's subplot.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: French director François Truffaut adapted the subject to modern times for his 1981 film "La Femme d'à côté" ("The Woman Next Door"), while 1988's "In the Shadow of the Raven" transported the characters to medieval Iceland. In the latter, Trausti and Isolde are warriors from rival tribes who come into conflict when Trausti kills the leader of Isolde's tribe. However, a local bishop makes peace between the two and arranges for their marriage. Bollywood director Subhash Ghai transferred the story to modern India and the United States in his 1997 musical "Pardes".


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: The legend received a high-budget treatment with 2006's "Tristan & Isolde", produced by Tony Scott and Ridley Scott, written by Dean Georgaris, directed by Kevin Reynolds, and starring James Franco and Sophia Myles. In this version, Tristan is a Cornish warrior raised from a young age by Lord Marke after being orphaned when his parents are killed. In a fight with the Irish, Tristan defeats Morholt, the Irish King's second, but is poisoned during the battle, which dulls his senses. Believing Tristan is dead, his companions send him off in a boat meant to cremate a dead body. Meanwhile, Isolde leaves her home over an unwilling betrothal to Morholt and finds Tristan on the Irish coast.


title: Tristan and Iseult

text: An animated TV series, "Tristán & Isolda: La Leyenda Olvidada," aired in Spain and France in 1998. The 2002 French animated phil "Tristan et Iseut" is a redacted version of the traditional tale aimed at a family audience.


title: Level 16

text: Level 16 is a 2018 science fiction horror by filmmaker Danishka Esterhazy. It follows a group of girls who live at a "school" which educates them about how to be perfect young women for families that they are told will eventually adopt them. Two girls work together to uncover the truth about their captivity.


title: Level 16

text: The plot and overall premise of the film shows many similarities to the 2005 film "The Island" and Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel "Never Let Me Go".


title: Level 16

text: In an isolated, windowless boarding school run with military precision, girls live on numbered levels and are taught to follow the "feminine virtues" of obedience and cleanliness and avoid "vices" like anger and curiosity. The girls are told that the school protects them from the toxic outside air and that their lessons prepare them for adoption by members of high society, who will only want the girls if they are "clean." Breaking the rules results in being taken downstairs for punishment, which the girls universally fear. Two best friends, Sophia and Vivien, line up with the other girls on Level 10 to wash their faces in front of a camera in an allotted, regimented time. Vivien steps out of line to help Sophia, who dropped her jar of face cream, and in doing so exceeds her time limit. The guards arrive and Vivien is dragged away for punishment, screaming in terror.


title: Level 16

text: Years later, Vivien is moved to Level 16 (the final level) and reunited with Sophia for the first time since Level 10. Sophia warns her not to take the daily vitamins, which are actually powerful sedatives. That night, while pretending to sleep, Vivien and another girl, Olivia, are carried to a lounge. The facility manager, Miss Brixil, presents the sleeping girls to an aging couple, who choose Olivia and make plans to purchase her. Once the girls are returned to the dormitory, Vivien manages to escape into the hall, but finds that the outer door requires key card access. Throughout the night, several other girls are taken to the lounge and subsequently returned. Miss Brixil, talking to an unseen person on the phone, expresses concern about the behavior of a guard, Alex, warning that he should not be allowed around the girls unsupervised.


title: Level 16

text: The girls meet the facility’s doctor, Dr. Miro, who informs them that there has been a fever going around some of the other halls and gives them a 'vaccine.' The injection gives them painful rashes and causes one girl to have a seizure. Miro initially acts kind towards Vivien, but when she attempts to share her concerns with him, he realizes she has been skipping her vitamins and injects her with a 'concentrated' dose. Sophia informs Vivien that Alex, the guard Miss Brixil was concerned about, secretly visits the dormitory and "touches" the girls while they sleep. She plans to wait until Alex comes to the dormitory, restrain him, and steal his key card. Shortly afterwards, Ava reports Vivien for unclean behavior and Vivien is locked in a box for the night. That night, Sophia attacks Alex when he comes to the dormitory and steals his key card, but she is captured before she is able to free Vivien.


title: Level 16

text: Miss Brixil and Miro inform the girls that they were unable to find the key card Sophia stole and ask where she hid it. When they cannot produce it, Rita is taken downstairs for punishment with a warning to the group that another girl will be punished each day until the card is found. Alone, Miss Brixil and Miro discuss the school’s dwindling funds and the pressure being put on them (ostensibly by powerful criminals) to produce results. During the night, Vivien finds that Sophia hid the key card behind her headboard and escapes, heading downstairs to rescue her. She frees Sophia, and they enter a crude operating room full of corpses, where they find the missing Rita, dead and with her skin removed. Vivien insists they leave immediately, but Sophia refuses to go without the other girls. While Sophia goes to get them, Vivien finds a video in the lounge revealing that the facility is actually a rejuvenation clinic run by Miro – the girls are raised in a sterile environment so that their skin can eventually be transplanted onto rich buyers.


title: Level 16

text: Sophia tries to warn the other girls about their situation, but they are initially suspicious of her. Vivien brings Miss Brixil to the rest of the group, where she reveals that Sophia is telling the truth. After locking Miss Brixil in the box, they lead the girls out of the facility, closely pursued by the guards. During a fight, Sophia is injured, but the two narrowly escape by hiding in a shed behind a security door. When the guards are unable to open the door, Miro arrives and attempts to manipulate Vivien into coming outside and helping him round up the other girls, revealing that their birth parents sold them to the facility as babies. Vivien, aware that Miro only cares about her appearance, cuts her face with the scalpel while Miro watches, distraught. Soon afterwards, henchmen lead Miro away to see their boss, the mastermind of the operation. A gunshot is heard; Miro has presumably been killed for losing control of the clinic. An exhausted Sophia and Vivien fall asleep inside the shed. They awaken the next morning to the door being broken down by Belarusian police and emergency service workers, who have already found the other girls. Sophia and Vivien are led to safety and hold hands while they experience rain and sunlight for the first time in their lives.


title: Level 16

text: Filming took place in a former police station in Toronto that was built in the 1930s. Esterhazy was given complete freedom to use and adjust the building in any way she saw fit, and used this to create a "very real and gritty" set.


title: Level 16

text: The role of Doctor Miro was portrayed by Peter Outerbridge, an actor who director Danishka Esterhazy had admired for years. Sara Canning, a friend of Esterhazy who played the lead part on her first feature film Black Field, was cast as Brixil in a role that was specifically written for her by Esterhazy. Katie Douglas, who was cast as Vivien, was a young emerging actress who impressed upon her first audition. Of Douglas's performances, Esterhazy said "Every day on set she would surprise me — in the very best way."


title: Immortality

text: Some scientists, futurists, and philosophers have theorized about the immortality of the human body, with some suggesting that human immortality may be achievable in the first few decades of the 21st century with the help of certain technologies such as mind uploading (digital immortality). Other advocates believe that life extension is a more achievable goal in the short term, with immortality awaiting further research breakthroughs. The absence of aging would provide humans with biological immortality, but not invulnerability to death by disease or injury. Whether the process of internal immortality is delivered within the upcoming years depends chiefly on research (and in neuron research in the case of internal immortality through an immortalized cell line) in the former view and perhaps is an awaited goal in the latter case.


title: Immortality

text: What form an unending human life would take, or whether an immaterial soul exists and possesses immortality, has been a major point of focus of religion, as well as the subject of speculation and debate. In religious contexts, immortality is often stated to be one of the promises of divinities to human beings who perform virtue or follow divine law.


title: Immortality

text: Life extension technologies promise a path to complete rejuvenation. Cryonics holds out the hope that the dead can be revived in the future, following sufficient medical advancements. While, as shown with creatures such as hydra and Planarian worms, it is indeed possible for a creature to be biologically immortal, it is not known if it will be possible for humans in the near-future.


title: Immortality

text: Immortality in religion refers usually to either the belief in physical immortality or a more spiritual "afterlife". In traditions such as ancient Egyptian beliefs, Mesopotamian beliefs and ancient Greek beliefs, the immortal gods consequently were considered to have physical bodies. In Mesopotamian and Greek religion, the gods also made certain men and women physically immortal, whereas in Christianity, many believe that all true believers will be resurrected to physical immortality. Similar beliefs that physical immortality is possible are held by Rastafarians or Rebirthers.


title: Immortality

text: Physical immortality is a state of life that allows a person to avoid death and maintain conscious thought. It can mean the unending existence of a person from a physical source other than organic life, such as a computer.


title: Immortality

text: Pursuit of physical immortality before the advent of modern science included alchemists seeking to create the Philosopher's Stone, and various cultures' legends such as the Fountain of Youth or the Peaches of Immortality inspiring attempts at discovering elixirs of life.


title: Immortality

text: Modern scientific trends, such as cryonics, digital immortality, breakthroughs in rejuvenation, or predictions of an impending technological singularity, to achieve genuine human physical immortality, must still overcome all causes of death to succeed:


title: Immortality

text: There are three main causes of death: aging, disease, and injury Such issues can be resolved with the solutions provided in research to any end providing such alternate theories at present that require unification.


title: Immortality

text: Aubrey de Grey, a leading researcher in the field, defines aging as "a collection of cumulative changes to the molecular and cellular structure of an adult organism, which result in essential metabolic processes, but which also, once they progress far enough, increasingly disrupt metabolism, resulting in pathology and death." The current causes of aging in humans are cell loss (without replacement), DNA damage, oncogenic nuclear mutations and epimutations, cell senescence, mitochondrial mutations, lysosomal aggregates, extracellular aggregates, random extracellular cross-linking, immune system decline, and endocrine changes. Eliminating aging would require finding a solution to each of these causes, a program de Grey calls engineered negligible senescence. There is also a huge body of knowledge indicating that change is characterized by the loss of molecular fidelity.


title: Immortality

text: Disease is theoretically surmountable by technology. In short, it is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism, something the body shouldn't typically have to deal with its natural make up. Human understanding of genetics is leading to cures and treatments for a myriad of previously incurable diseases. The mechanisms by which other diseases do damage are becoming better understood. Sophisticated methods of detecting diseases early are being developed. Preventative medicine is becoming better understood. Neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's may soon be curable with the use of stem cells. Breakthroughs in cell biology and telomere research are leading to treatments for cancer. Vaccines are being researched for AIDS and tuberculosis. Genes associated with type 1 diabetes and certain types of cancer have been discovered, allowing for new therapies to be developed. Artificial devices attached directly to the nervous system may restore sight to the blind. Drugs are being developed to treat a myriad of other diseases and ailments.


title: Immortality

text: Physical trauma would remain as a threat to perpetual physical life, as an otherwise immortal person would still be subject to unforeseen accidents or catastrophes. The speed and quality of paramedic response remains a determining factor in surviving severe trauma. A body that could automatically repair itself from severe trauma, such as speculated uses for nanotechnology, would mitigate this factor. The brain cannot be risked to trauma if a continuous physical life is to be maintained. This aversion to trauma risk to the brain would naturally result in significant behavioral changes that would render physical immortality undesirable for some people.


title: Immortality

text: Organisms otherwise unaffected by these causes of death would still face the problem of obtaining sustenance (whether from currently available agricultural processes or from hypothetical future technological processes) in the face of changing availability of suitable resources as environmental conditions change. After avoiding aging, disease, and trauma, death through resource limitation is still possible, such as hypoxia or starvation.


title: Immortality

text: If there is no limitation on the degree of gradual mitigation of risk then it is possible that the cumulative probability of death over an infinite horizon is less than certainty, even when the risk of fatal trauma in any finite period is greater than zero. Mathematically, this is an aspect of achieving ‘actuarial escape velocity’.


title: Immortality

text: Biological immortality is an absence of aging. Specifically it is the absence of a sustained increase in rate of mortality as a function of chronological age. A cell or organism that does not experience aging, or ceases to age at some point, is biologically immortal.


title: Immortality

text: Biologists have chosen the word "immortal" to designate cells that are not limited by the Hayflick limit, where cells no longer divide because of DNA damage or shortened telomeres. The first and still most widely used immortal cell line is HeLa, developed from cells taken from the malignant cervical tumor of Henrietta Lacks without her consent in 1951. Prior to the 1961 work of Leonard Hayflick, there was the erroneous belief fostered by Alexis Carrel that all normal somatic cells are immortal. By preventing cells from reaching senescence one can achieve biological immortality; telomeres, a "cap" at the end of DNA, are thought to be the cause of cell aging. Every time a cell divides the telomere becomes a bit shorter; when it is finally worn down, the cell is unable to split and dies. Telomerase is an enzyme which rebuilds the telomeres in stem cells and cancer cells, allowing them to replicate an infinite number of times. No definitive work has yet demonstrated that telomerase can be used in human somatic cells to prevent healthy tissues from aging. On the other hand, scientists hope to be able to grow organs with the help of stem cells, allowing organ transplants without the risk of rejection, another step in extending human life expectancy. These technologies are the subject of ongoing research, and are not yet realized.


title: Immortality

text: Life defined as biologically immortal is still susceptible to causes of death besides aging, including disease and trauma, as defined above. Notable immortal species include:


title: Immortality

text: As the existence of biologically immortal species demonstrates, there is no thermodynamic necessity for senescence: a defining feature of life is that it takes in free energy from the environment and unloads its entropy as waste. Living systems can even build themselves up from seed, and routinely repair themselves. Aging is therefore presumed to be a byproduct of evolution, but why mortality should be selected for remains a subject of research and debate. Programmed cell death and the telomere "end replication problem" are found even in the earliest and simplest of organisms. This may be a tradeoff between selecting for cancer and selecting for aging.


title: Immortality

text: Individual organisms ordinarily age and die, while the germlines which connect successive generations are potentially immortal. The basis for this difference is a fundamental problem in biology. The Russian biologist and historian Zhores A. Medvedev considered that the accuracy of genome replicative and other synthetic systems alone cannot explain the immortality of germ lines. Rather Medvedev thought that known features of the biochemistry and genetics of sexual reproduction indicate the presence of unique information maintenance and restoration processes at the different stages of gametogenesis. In particular, Medvedev considered that the most important opportunities for information maintenance of germ cells are created by recombination during meiosis and DNA repair; he saw these as processes within the germ cells that were capable of restoring the integrity of DNA and chromosomes from the types of damage that cause irreversible aging in somatic cells.


title: Immortality

text: Some scientists believe that boosting the amount or proportion of telomerase in the body, a naturally forming enzyme that helps maintain the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, could prevent cells from dying and so may ultimately lead to extended, healthier lifespans. A team of researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Centre (Madrid) tested the hypothesis on mice. It was found that those mice which were "genetically engineered to produce 10 times the normal levels of telomerase lived 50% longer than normal mice".


title: Immortality

text: In normal circumstances, without the presence of telomerase, if a cell divides repeatedly, at some point all the progeny will reach their Hayflick limit. With the presence of telomerase, each dividing cell can replace the lost bit of DNA, and any single cell can then divide unbounded. While this unbounded growth property has excited many researchers, caution is warranted in exploiting this property, as exactly this same unbounded growth is a crucial step in enabling cancerous growth. If an organism can replicate its body cells faster, then it would theoretically stop aging.


title: Immortality

text: Embryonic stem cells express telomerase, which allows them to divide repeatedly and form the individual. In adults, telomerase is highly expressed in cells that need to divide regularly (e.g., in the immune system), whereas most somatic cells express it only at very low levels in a cell-cycle dependent manner.


title: Immortality

text: Technological immortality is the prospect for much longer life spans made possible by scientific advances in a variety of fields: nanotechnology, emergency room procedures, genetics, biological engineering, regenerative medicine, microbiology, and others. Contemporary life spans in the advanced industrial societies are already markedly longer than those of the past because of better nutrition, availability of health care, standard of living and bio-medical scientific advances. Technological immortality predicts further progress for the same reasons over the near term. An important aspect of current scientific thinking about immortality is that some combination of human cloning, cryonics or nanotechnology will play an essential role in extreme life extension. Robert Freitas, a nanorobotics theorist, suggests tiny medical nanorobots could be created to go through human bloodstreams, find dangerous things like cancer cells and bacteria, and destroy them. Freitas anticipates that gene-therapies and nanotechnology will eventually make the human body effectively self-sustainable and capable of living indefinitely in empty space, short of severe brain trauma. This supports the theory that we will be able to continually create biological or synthetic replacement parts to replace damaged or dying ones. Future advances in nanomedicine could give rise to life extension through the repair of many processes thought to be responsible for aging. K. Eric Drexler, one of the founders of nanotechnology, postulated cell repair devices, including ones operating within cells and using as yet hypothetical biological machines, in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. Raymond Kurzweil, a futurist and transhumanist, stated in his book "The Singularity Is Near" that he believes that advanced medical nanorobotics could completely remedy the effects of aging by 2030. According to Richard Feynman, it was his former graduate student and collaborator Albert Hibbs who originally suggested to him (circa 1959) the idea of a "medical" use for Feynman's theoretical micromachines (see biological machine). Hibbs suggested that certain repair machines might one day be reduced in size to the point that it would, in theory, be possible to (as Feynman put it) "swallow the doctor". The idea was incorporated into Feynman's 1959 essay "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom."


title: Immortality

text: Cryonics, the practice of preserving organisms (either intact specimens or only their brains) for possible future revival by storing them at cryogenic temperatures where metabolism and decay are almost completely stopped, can be used to 'pause' for those who believe that life extension technologies will not develop sufficiently within their lifetime. Ideally, cryonics would allow clinically dead people to be brought back in the future after cures to the patients' diseases have been discovered and aging is reversible. Modern cryonics procedures use a process called vitrification which creates a glass-like state rather than freezing as the body is brought to low temperatures. This process reduces the risk of ice crystals damaging the cell-structure, which would be especially detrimental to cell structures in the brain, as their minute adjustment evokes the individual's mind.


title: Immortality

text: One idea that has been advanced involves uploading an individual's habits and memories via direct mind-computer interface. The individual's memory may be loaded to a computer or to a new organic body. Extropian futurists like Moravec and Kurzweil have proposed that, thanks to exponentially growing computing power, it will someday be possible to upload human consciousness onto a computer system, and exist indefinitely in a virtual environment.


title: Immortality

text: This could be accomplished via advanced cybernetics, where computer hardware would initially be installed in the brain to help sort memory or accelerate thought processes. Components would be added gradually until the person's entire brain functions were handled by artificial devices, avoiding sharp transitions that would lead to issues of identity, thus running the risk of the person to be declared dead and thus not be a legitimate owner of his or her property. After this point, the human body could be treated as an optional accessory and the program implementing the person could be transferred to any sufficiently powerful computer.


title: Immortality

text: Another possible mechanism for mind upload is to perform a detailed scan of an individual's original, organic brain and simulate the entire structure in a computer. What level of detail such scans and simulations would need to achieve to emulate awareness, and whether the scanning process would destroy the brain, is still to be determined.