title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: According to the Vesna Human Rights Centre, at least 13 people were detained, including two members of Tsikhanouskaya's initiative group and three assistants of Tsikhanouski. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus announced that investigators had opened a criminal case for violence against police officers.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Tsikhanouskaya made an official statement regarding the detention of her husband and the head of the headquarters of her initiative group in Hrodna: "I officially declare: Today, 29 May, during a picket in Hrodna in support of my candidacy for the presidency there was a "dirty" provocation against Syarhei Leanidovich Tsikhanouski, head of the headquarters of my initiative group. He was detained. I declare responsibly that the picket was legal and peaceful. In connection with this, I demand the immediate release of the head of my initiative group, otherwise, I will regard it as a violation of my constitutional rights and pressure on me as a candidate for the presidency of Belarus". She promised to submit relevant applications to the CEC and the Interior Ministry.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: The first two mass rallies after registration by the Tsikhanouskaya campaign were held on 19 July in Banhalore Square in Minsk and the city of Dzyarzhynsk with an audience of around 7,500. She was joined on stage by Babaryka's campaign manager Maryja Kalesnikava and Tsepkalo's wife Veranika as they had announced earlier that they would merge their campaigns.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Local governments cancelled several campaign events that Tsikhanouskaya had planned to hold in the run-up to the elections.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Before the 2020 presidential election, Alexander Lukashenko insisted that Belarus is not ready for a woman to be president. On 17 July 2020, the three women representing the main opposition candidates (Tsikhanouskaya, Tsepkalo's wife Veronica and Babaryka's campaign manager Maryja Kalesnikava) merged their campaigns, pitting "Female Solidarity" to fight Lukashenko.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Viktar Babaryka was detained on 18 June during the reported arrest of several hundred opposition supporters. Charges of embezzlement and fraud have been brought against Babaryka, who is currently being held in a State Security Committee detention centre in Minsk.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Valery Tsepkalo, who was not allowed to register as a candidate, and has "gone to Moscow with his children, fearing for his safety". During an interview, Tsepkalo mentioned that his friends in law enforcement agencies warned "an order had gone out for my arrest". Tsepkalo said he planned to give press conferences in Russia, Ukraine, Western Europe and the United States to expose "the true nature of the Belarusian regime." His wife, Veronika Tsepkalo, is remaining in Belarus to help the campaign of Lukashenko's main competitor in the election, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: In June, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya released a video saying that she had been threatened with arrest, and her children being taken away if she continued to campaign. She had to send her children abroad to live with their grandmother for their safety. The children of opposition candidates have been taken away before and put into state orphanages.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: According to Belarusian Electoral Code (articles 45 and 45), local authorities have to determine some outdoor sites for rallies and meetings, where mass events are possible. In Minsk, the authorities allowed six sites to be used for this purpose (none of them in the city centre) while only one site was usually allocated in each of the small towns. During the 2020 election, the authorities and confidants of Lukashenko widely used booking of these sites to prevent independent candidates to meet with people. In Pinsk (Brest region), local authorities provided only one site for meetings with candidates, and this site was booked by a confidant of Lukashenko (Tacciana Lugina, mayor of Pinsk) from 24 July to 8 August. Due to this, Tsikhanouskaya failed to visit Pinsk on 2 August. In Stolin (Brest region), the only site was booked by Lugina too from 27 July to 8 August every day from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: On 4 August, Tsikhanouskaya planned to visit Slutsk and Salihorsk (Minsk region). On 3 August, local authorities of Slutsk informed the confidant of Tsikhanouskaya that the meeting couldn't be held due to "urgent repair" of the only provided site, but they didn't provide the alternative site (as requried by law). The meeting in Salihorsk was also cancelled by the authorities at the last moment. The people who gathered in Slutsk and Salihorsk were asked to leave and those who refused were arrested. Meetings with another independent candidate Andrey Dmitriyeu in Liepiel and Polatsk (Viciebsk region) were cancelled at the last moment for similar reasons.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: On 6 August, Tsikhanouskaya was forced to cancel a previously announced rally in Minsk due to full booking at all six sites in the city that were made available by the authorities. Instead, she, with Veranika Tsepkalo and Maryja Kalesnikava, visited one of the booked sites and invited people to join them, but the policemen did not allow three of them to come in. During the event, DJs put the song "[We Want] Changes!" by Viktor Tsoi and thus supported Tsikhanouskaya. They were later sentenced to detention for 10 days.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: On 8 August, Maryja Maroz (campaign manager of Tsikhanouskaya) and Maryja Kalesnikava (see above) were arrested, but Kalesnikava was freed a few hours later.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Demonstrations in solidarity with the Belarusian opposition have been held in more than 20 countries and in more than 30 cities around the world.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: According to a poll conducted back in March–April 2020 by the Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the level of trust of current Lukashenko in the capital city of Belarus is 24%. At the same time, 11% of the poll participants trust the Central Election Commission.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: The state-affiliated analytical center "Ecoom" commissioned by the state TV channel ONT, which was criticized for its biased coverage of the election campaign , conducted a sociological survey of electoral moods and preferences of citizens. According to this data, incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko enjoyed support of 72.3% of citizens. At the same time, no more than 10% in total were ready to vote for the remaining candidates.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Opinion polling in Belarus requires a government license. Media outlets are also banned from conducting online polls regarding the election.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: According to Russian government-owned media outlet RIA Novosti, official exit polls indicated a win for Lukashenko. The below figures are widely disputed by opposition figures, including Tikhanovskaya.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe reported that it would not be monitoring the 2020 election as it had not been sent a timely invitation. It had not recognised any elections in Belarus as free and fair since 1995. Only Russia and Azerbaijan were participating as international observers during the election. On 4 August 2020, the first day of early voting in the election, the CEC reported a turnout of almost 5%. However, independent observers disputed this figure and claimed that it was inflated.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: In several polling stations, curtains were deliberately removed from the vote cabins, leaving them covered on only three sides.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: A few days prior to the election, a number of journalists and bloggers were arrested on weak and spurious charges, or were denied accreditation to cover the elections, bringing the total to over 100 arrests made since January. It was thought that the government wants to reduce external scrutiny of the election.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Honest People, an independent association in Belarus that monitors elections, reported having found 5096 violations from observers. They also questioned the election commission's reported turnout statistics. The group said that around 70 election observers were detained.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Turnout was said to be 4.98% on 4 August, 12.75% on 5 August, 22.47% on 6 August, and 32.24% on 7 August. On 9 August, turnout was reported to be 84.05% at 20:00, more than the 50% required to validate the election.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: The result of the vote, "as in previous elections, was never in any real doubt" and had a "foregone nature" according to "The New York Times", stating that Lukashenko "controls vote counting, [and abused] a vast security apparatus and a noisy state media machine unwavering in its support for him and contempt for his rivals." Tsikhanouskaya, the principal challenger, was stated to have gone into hiding in Minsk after security agents detained at least eight members of her campaign staff on the day of the election.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Once the votes have been duly counted, polling stations in Belarus write a "Protocol" (report) which sums up the election tallies. The Protocol is then displayed for passers-by.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: People took photos of the protocols, which testified that in many stations in the Minsk capital, and in foreign consulates, the support for Tsikhanouskaya was roughly equal or even several times higher than of Lukashenko.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Belarusian political scientist stated that the local protocols and final results are completely uncorrelated.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Although the Electoral Code of Belarus requires to hang out the protocols on every voting station (article 55), it was reported that some stations didn't make them public. The Central Electoral Commission of Belarus stated that no such info was known and reported that there are no specific requirements to the procedure of announcement of the local protocols. While responding to complaints, the Committee announced that it cannot publish the protocols once again, adding that they were delivered to regional committees only, which disbanded after the announcement of final results.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Although the voting papers should be kept for 6 months, a Brest-based human rights activist obtained a big bale of partially burned voting papers a few days after the election: according to him, they were to be burned in the boiler room.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: The "Voice" (, ) initiative invited Belarusian citizens to submit photographs of both sides of their voting papers, together with their voting bureau locations. The aim was to make all photographs available as a public photographic database, enabling cross-checks against the official results.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: On 15 August 2020, "Voice" claimed to have had 1,248,714 valid voting papers recorded, about 18% of the voting population. , "Voice" updated its count to 1,049,334 unique confirmed votes recorded, with 545,947 verified ballot photos.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: On 21 August 2020, a final report by the "Voice", partnering with the "Zubr" and "Honest People" platforms analyzed polling station results. For 1310 out of the total of 5767 polling stations, there were photographs of the protocols.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: The "Voice" report on the analysis of the official data, calculated that if both official results and photographs were correct, then at the polling stations where comparison was not possible (4457 out of 5847), Tsikhanouskaya would have to have had about 3% support. At the stations for which data were published, she received (according to "Voice"'s analysis of the official data) 25% of the votes overall, split into 57% in the voting areas where she led, and 20% in those where she trailed. "Voice" described these differences as "extreme anomalies".


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: After state TV revealed the results of an exit poll showing a landslide Lukashenko victory, clashes between protesters and riot police broke out in Minsk. Reports of injuries and the use of stun grenades and rubber bullets emerged.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: The main opposition candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, said in a news conference that she did not trust the exit poll, saying, "I believe my eyes, and I see that the majority is with us".


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: As polling closed many internet service providers lost routing, the communication losses were widespread as police and military closed down most of Minsk.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: On the second night after the very likely falsified results were announced, protesters barricaded the area around the Rīga market. Security forces responded by tear-gassing the protesters and using flashbangs.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: After being released from a seven-hour-long detention on election night following her submission of a formal complaint to the Central Election Commission (CEC), Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was escorted by Belarusian security services to Lithuania, reportedly a condition of a deal securing the release of her campaign manager, Maria Moroz.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: On 11 August, Tsikhanouskaya released a video reading from a script following her detainment, seemingly filmed under duress and promoted on state-sponsored media, in which she called upon the people of Belarus to stop protesting and accept the victory of Lukashenko. The strong change in message and demeanor of Tsikhanouskaya post-detainment led allies to insist the video was coerced, likening it to a hostage video. She had previously sent her children abroad before the elections for their safety. On 14 August, Tikhanovskaya, now in Lithuania, published another video in which she claimed to have won the presidential election with between 60 and 70% of the vote, more than enough to defeat Lukashenko outright. She called for the creation of a transitional council of "civil society activists, respected Belarusians and professionals" to handle the transfer of power from Lukashenko. She also encouraged her supporters to sign an online petition calling for a recount of the election.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Arrests and violence against protesters, including claims of torture, increased in the week after the election resulting in calls for international sanctions against the perpetrators. On August 14, 2020, the Belarus Solidarity Foundation (BYSOL) was established. Its main aims are to support courtyard initiatives, emergency relocation, support for the families of political prisoners and helping those fired for political reasons. In 2020, BYSOL raised €2.9 million to support those fired for political reasons, striking factories, and people forced to relocate.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: On 19 August, the Belarusian Central Election Committee said that Mr Lukashenko would be inaugurated as president for a new term within the next two months.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: On 16 November 2020, "BBC" reported that more than 1,000 people were arrested during the demonstrations in Belarus, over the disputed presidential election. The police fired rubber bullets at protesters and also used tear gas to disperse the crowd.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: 29-year-old Konstantin Shishmakov, director of the Volkovysk Military History Museum named after Bagration, disappeared on 15 August. He refused to sign the protocol of the election commission, called his wife at about 5 PM local time and said: "I will not work here anymore; I am going home." But he never came home.


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: "It all started on the 9th [of August], - the father recalls. - When he was on the election commission. There was another guy with him - I do not remember his last name, I will not name it. The two of them did not sign the final protocol. According to his son, they signed for them. He called his wife and talked about it."


title: 2020 Belarusian presidential election

text: Countries and organisations have voiced their opinions with some accepting and some rejecting the election result. Many have commented about the protests with more condemning the violence.


title: Master X Master

text: Master X Master (MXM) was a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by NCsoft.


title: Master X Master

text: "MXM" was a MOBA with third-person shooter characteristics. Each player controlled two playable characters known as "Masters". There were 30 Masters . Each had unique abilities and different styles of play. The Masters were characters from previous NCsoft-published games, as well as new characters. The player could switch between two Masters throughout the game, where the unused Master could regenerate its health. There was a cooldown associated with switching, as well as death. The player in "MXM" used the WASD keys and computer mouse to move and point the character, though the game provided the option for the player to move the character solely with the mouse. Switching the Masters used the mouse wheel. Each Master had four special abilities, with one ability a more-powerful move, and each of these abilities had a cooldown. Also uncharacteristically, the game allowed player characters to jump and dodge enemy attacks. Using the mouse to aim, many of the game's abilities were based on projectiles and skill shots.


title: Master X Master

text: NCsoft planned to restrict gameplay on the large maps to the genre-standard two teams of five players, while smaller teams would have smaller maps, which would force player interaction. Both large and small maps will have three lanes with which to attack the opposing team's base. It was played in matches between two teams who each occupy their own base on the map.


title: Master X Master

text: The game had a science fiction setting. The game provided player versus environment (PvE) missions, uncharacteristic to the genre, as well as the characteristic player versus player (PvP) game mode. There were other game modes: team deathmatch, point control, AOS, and arena. The PvE mode was co-operative, meaning it allowed up to four players an action role-playing game experience: The players selected characters to play through a number of stages against computer-controlled enemies, ending each stage with a battle against a level boss. In this mode, the character progression was permanent.


title: Master X Master

text: In the "Titan" mode of gameplay, which was a variant of point control, completing an objective would allow a team to summon a temporary super-creature called a Titan to their side to attack the enemy base. "GameZone" originally reported that the objective was defeating multiple enemies, while "IGN" reported that capturing and holding control points would cause the Titan to spawn. To end a game in this mode, the team must either have the most points at the end of the timed match, or must reach a point threshold.


title: Master X Master

text: NCsoft was beta testing the game in South Korea in October 2014, and was NCsoft's first internally-developed MOBA. "Engadget" did not know of a release or localization date at that time, but also reported a month later that NCsoft planned to release a mobile version of the game.


title: Master X Master

text: In mid-2015, NCsoft planned to release the game in a beta version globally in early 2016, with a later full-release of the game the same year. The game was still in beta test only in South Korea. In January 2016, NCsoft announced the launch of the game for personal computer in the second half of 2016 for Europe and North America. NCsoft did not announce a pay model.


title: Master X Master

text: In June 2016, NCsoft provided free game keys for a brief alpha playtest on personal computer, which focused on PvP interactions and some PvE content. Both "Polygon" and "VideoGamer" cooperated with NCsoft to provide keys to their readers.


title: Master X Master

text: The game's design philosophy was based on team work. NCsoft said that the reason for the "long" deaths was to ensure players keep their teams in mind. The PvE in the game was designed to teach players their heroes. The matches were designed to last approximately ten minutes.


title: Master X Master

text: The game was compared to "Heroes of the Storm", "Smite", "Diablo", "Van Helsing", and "Torchlight". "IGN" also commented on the crowd of MOBAs with which "MXM" would need to compete, noting that "standing out" would likely be challenging. "Engadget" suggested "it might be different enough from its contemporaries to pique your interest", while "IGN" thought the publisher's experience with world-building helped to differentiate the gameplay modes.


title: Master X Master

text: "GameZone" praised the aesthetics, saying that the palette adds to the game's setting. He also praised the level design. "IGN" thought some of the characters were generic, but was impressed with the detail of the character design, and was expectant for future releases.


title: Master X Master

text: "GameZone" called the two-Master aspect the most unique aspect of the game, while "IGN" called it "an inventive system that adds a whole new layer of strategy to battle". Previewers at both "GameZone" and "IGN" thought the swapping difficult at-first but quickly adjusted. "IGN" wasn't sure how veterans of the genre would react to it.


title: Master X Master

text: "IGN" called the control scheme easy to use, "unorthodox", and "unique", which "gave the combat more of an arcade feel". The "IGN" previewer "felt like he had more opportunities to cut loose, rather than staying focused and determined at all times in other titles" due to the controls. "GameZone" thought the game was "easier to grasp than other ".


title: Master X Master

text: "IGN" thought the most interesting aspect was the player versus environment mode, which is fully fleshed out. The previewer thought this was refreshing since other genre titles overlook the character and plot.


title: Master X Master

text: "IGN" called the Titan game mode "a cool take on faction battles", which "offered the most intense and pure gameplay in MXM".


title: Philip Glenister

text: Philip Haywood Glenister (born 10 February 1963) is an English actor. He is best known for his role as DCI Gene Hunt in the BBC series "Life on Mars" (2006–2007) and its sequel "Ashes to Ashes" (2008–2010). He also played DCI William Bell in "State of Play" (2003) and Reverend Anderson in "Outcast" (2016–2018).


title: Philip Glenister

text: Glenister was born in Harrow, Middlesex, and grew up in Hatch End. He is the son of director John Glenister and Joan Glenister, and the younger brother of fellow actor Robert Glenister. He is of Welsh ancestry from his maternal side. He attended Hatch End High School, and with the encouragement of his then-sister-in-law Amanda Redman, he pursued acting and attended the Central School of Speech and Drama.


title: Philip Glenister

text: In the early 1990s, Glenister appeared in various TV series including "Minder", "The Ruth Rendell Mysteries", "Heartbeat", "The Chief", "Dressing for Breakfast" and "Silent Witness". In 1997, he appeared in "Sharpe's Justice" as Richard Sharpe's half-brother Matt Truman. He played William Dobbin in the 1998 mini-series "Vanity Fair".


title: Philip Glenister

text: From 1998 to 1999, Glenister co-starred as a mini-cab driver who aspires to be a rock star in the series "Roger Roger". He also played factory boss Mack Mackintosh in the first three series of "Clocking Off" from 2000 to 2002. In 2001, he appeared in two of the "Hornblower" TV films as Horatio's antagonist Gunner Hobbs.


title: Philip Glenister

text: Glenister played the photographer who took nude photos for a Women's Institute fundraising calendar in the 2003 feature film "Calendar Girls". Also in 2003, he appeared in the mini-series "State of Play". Glenister played the German commandant, Baron Heinrich von Rheingarten, in the 2004 mini-series "Island at War" about the Occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II.


title: Philip Glenister

text: In April 2006, Glenister read the Bedtime Story for the BBC's children's channel, CBeebies. He returned to the slot in February/March 2007.


title: Philip Glenister

text: Glenister played social reformer and estate manager Mr Carter in the 2007 BBC costume drama "Cranford", as part of a cast including Judi Dench and Francesca Annis.


title: Philip Glenister

text: Glenister is probably best known for his role as DCI Gene Hunt in "Life on Mars" (2006–07), co-starring with John Simm as Sam Tyler, and its sequel "Ashes to Ashes" (2008–10), with Keeley Hawes as Alex Drake. Glenister also worked with Simm on "State of Play" and "Clocking Off" and the 2008 crime film "Tuesday". Upon announcement of the film, Glenister joked that he and Simm were contractually obliged to work with each other once a year.


title: Philip Glenister

text: Glenister starred as demon hunter Rupert Galvin in the 2009 ITV drama "Demons". He used an American accent for the role, which received some criticism from reviewers. After the series was cancelled, he said he had problems with the role and felt that he may have been miscast.


title: Philip Glenister

text: In 2010, Glenister had a small role (credited as 'Poker Friend') in Woody Allen's "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger", and he played Charles Forestier in a 2011 feature film of Guy de Maupassant's "Bel Ami". He starred in the 2011 conspiracy thriller "Hidden" on BBC One.


title: Philip Glenister

text: In 2011, Glenister reunited with John Simm once more in the Sky TV mini-series "Mad Dogs" about a group of old friends whose holiday in Majorca takes an unexpected turn. After a successful reception, the cast returned for a second run of the series in 2012. The show ran for two more seasons after that in 2013. Those two seasons consisted of four and two episodes respectively. Glenister played Captain Smollett in Sky1's adaptation of "Treasure Island", broadcast at Christmas 2012. Glenister also appeared in the 2012 premiere of the play "This House".


title: Philip Glenister

text: In 2013, Glenister starred in the final episode of "Agatha Christie's Poirot", starring David Suchet, entitled "Curtain". He also played the role of Mr Trevor Gunn, a lothario PE teacher in David Walliams' BBC One comedy series "Big School".


title: Philip Glenister

text: In 2014, Glenister had a leading role in the Kudos-produced BBC drama, "From There to Here", which focuses on the aftermath of the IRA bombing of Manchester in 1996. The show featured his "Life on Mars" co-star Liz White as his love interest.


title: Philip Glenister

text: That same year, he presented the Channel 4 series "For The Love Of Cars" with fellow classic car enthusiast Ant Anstead. The two friends were set the challenge of restoring classic cars including a Mini Cooper, Land Rover, DeLorean, MG T-type, Ford Escort and a Triumph Stag. The first series ended after six episodes, in which all six classic cars were sold at a London auction, with the second series being aired in 2015.


title: Philip Glenister

text: In 2016, Glenister had a leading role in Robert Kirkman's TV adaptation of "Outcast", where he played Reverend Anderson, and used an American accent. The show ran for 2 series on Cinemax, before it was cancelled in 2017.


title: Philip Glenister

text: In 2017, Glenister starred in an episode of "Inside No. 9" called "The Bill". He also worked with his "Clocking Off" co-star, Lesley Sharp in "Living the Dream". This show was about a British family that moved to America. It ran for 2 series before being cancelled in 2019. That year, Glenister presented the true-crime show, "What the Killer Did Next" on "Crime & Investigation".


title: Philip Glenister

text: Glenister appeared in Julian Fellowes' 2020 television adaptation "Belgravia", based on Fellowes' novel of the same name. It aired on ITV in the UK and Epix in the USA.


title: Philip Glenister

text: A book by Glenister on 1970s and 1980s culture, "Things Ain't What They Used to Be", was published in October 2008.


title: Philip Glenister

text: Glenister is patron of the charity Momentum in Kingston upon Thames, which aims to help children and the families of children undergoing treatment for cancer in Surrey.


title: Philip Glenister

text: Glenister has been married to actress Beth Goddard since 2006. Together, they have two daughters named Millie and Charlotte.


title: Philip Glenister

text: Glenister is a supporter of non-league football team Wealdstone FC. He is also known to be a fan of Arsenal FC.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. (stylized as "DICK'S Sporting Goods") is an American sporting goods retail company, based in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. The company was established by Richard "Dick" Stack in 1948, and has approximately 854 stores and 50,100 employees. Dick's is America's largest sporting goods retailer, and it is listed on the "Fortune" 500.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Dick's is the largest sporting goods retail company in the United States, with approximately 854 stores, as of 2020. The public company is based in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh, and has approximately 50,100 employees, as of March 2020. The company's subsidiaries include Field & Stream, Golf Galaxy, and Public Lands, and, previously, Chelsea Collective and True Runner. In 2017, there were 690 Dick's stores, close to 100 Golf Galaxy locations, and approximately 30 Field & Stream stores. The company launched Team Sports HQ, a collection of digital products, following the acquisitions of Affinity Sports, Blue Sombrero, and GameChanger.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Edward W. Stack serves as executive chairman. Lauren Hobart is president and chief executive officer of the company and Lee Belitsky is chief financial officer, as of 2018. Hobart succeeded Edward W. Stack as CEO on February 1, 2021, becoming the company's first female CEO.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Richard "Dick" Stack started the company as a fishing tackle store in Binghamton, New York, in 1948. He began with a $300 loan from his grandmother.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Edward W. Stack and his siblings purchased Dick's from their father in the early 1980s, when the company had two locations in Upstate New York. Stack established a board of directors, opened additional stores, and relocated the company's headquarters to Pittsburgh in 1994. He became chairman and chief executive officer following his father's retirement in 1984, and led the company during its initial public offering in 2002.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Dick's operated primarily throughout the Eastern United States, up to 2009, and has since expanded to the Pacific Northwest and West Coast. There were more than 357 Dick's stores in 38 states, as of mid 2008.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: In 2012, the company opened three True Runner stores targeting runners in Boston, the St. Louis suburb Brentwood, and Pittsburgh's Shadyside neighborhood. The stores closed in early 2017.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Dick's launched the women's athleisure, fitness, and lifestyle store Chelsea Collective in 2015, opening two stores in Pittsburgh and Tysons, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C. metro area. The shops closed in 2017.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: The company launched Dick's Team Sports HQ in early 2016, offering youth sports teams websites, uniforms, and sponsorship options.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Dick's opened its first Field & Stream store in Cranberry Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, in 2013. Thirty-five Field & Stream stores are open across the country, as of 2018. Jason Aldean became the Field & Stream brand's first spokesperson in August 2016.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February 2018, Dick's stopped selling assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and increased the minimum age for purchasing guns to 21. Dick's-branded stores had suspended assault-style weapon sales following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, but the guns were still available for purchase at Field & Stream locations. Dick's has never carried bump stocks.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: The company currently operates five distribution centers. The most recent, in Conklin in Southern Tier, New York opened in January 2018, and was further expanded to fulfill online sales a few months later.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: In 2019, Dick's launched its private-label clothing line called DSG. The company's other brands include the women's line Calia, and their menswear brand VRST.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Dick's opened its first "House of Sport" concept stores in Victor, New York and Knoxville, Tennessee in 2021. The stores are larger than Dick's flagship locations, sell higher-end gear and include features such as an outdoor turf field and track, climbing wall, batting cages, and a digital golf range. Dick's also launched Public Lands in 2021, a chain of stores that focuses on outdoor recreation including camping, hiking, and biking.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Dick's acquired Galyan's in July 2004. The company agreed to purchase Golf Galaxy for $225 million in November 2006. Dick's confirmed plans to close Golf Galaxy's headquarters in Eden Prairie, Minnesota in mid 2008.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Dick's purchased the San Diego-based sports management technology company Affinity Sports for an undisclosed amount in mid 2016. In September, Dick's acquired Sports Authority's brand name and intellectual property. There were 450 Sports Authority locations at the time.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Dick's acquired Golfsmith, the largest golf retailer in the United States, at a bankruptcy auction in October 2016. Dick's bid approximately $70 million for all of Golfsmith's intellectual property and inventory. The company planned to retain around 30 of Golfsmith's more than 100 locations, as well as 500 employees. Dick's rebranded 36–38 Golfsmith stores in 16 U.S. states as Golf Galaxy in 2017. This increased the number of Golf Galaxy stores to 98, located in 33 states.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: The company signed a 20-year naming rights agreement for Dick's Sporting Goods Park, a soccer-specific stadium for the Colorado Rapids team in Commerce City, Colorado, in 2006. Dick's has sponsored the Pittsburgh Penguins and the team's home arena, PPG Paints Arena (formerly Consol Energy Center).


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Sporting events sponsored by Dick's have included the Dick's Sporting Goods Open and the Pittsburgh Marathon. Dick's began sponsoring ESPN's college football kickoff week in 2009.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: In 2015, the company sponsored Olympic and Paralympic athletes and hopefuls, and became the "official sporting goods retailer" for Team USA for the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. Dick's and Team USA established the Ambassador Program and Contender's Program in partnership with the United States Olympic Committee, employing Olympians and prospective Olympic athletes. Dick's employed approximately 200 Team USA athletes competing in 35 different Olympic and Paralympic sports, as of March–July 2016. The athletes worked in 89 stores in 32 states.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: In 2017, Dick's entered a multiyear partnership with the United States Youth Soccer Association to provide team management technology and sponsor the US Youth Soccer National Championships.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: Since September of 2021, Dick’s has been in a multi-year agreement to be the official retail partner of the WNBA.


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: In 2014, the Dick's Sporting Goods Foundation committed up to $2 million annually to fund youth sports via its Sports Matter program. More than 145 million USD has been pledged for youth sports initiatives, benefiting hundreds of thousands of athletes, as of December 2020. The organization also launched an awareness campaign with Jon Gruden and Michael B. Jordan serving as spokespeople, and worked with director Judd Ehrlich to release "We Could Be King", a documentary film about two Philadelphia high school football teams forced to merge due to lack of funding. Following Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma (2017), the foundation donated $2 million to youth sports facilities and program in affected areas, including $120,000 for Houston's reVision soccer team, composed of immigrants from Africa. Dick's later featured the team in a documentary-style advertisement called "reVision FC: A Holiday Assist".


title: Dick's Sporting Goods

text: In 2019, the Dick's Sporting Goods Foundation launched a campaign to improve access to sports for one million kids by 2024.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson; 22 February 1950 – 14 March 2020) was a singer-songwriter, musician, poet, performance artist, visual artist, and occultist who rose to notoriety as the founder of the COUM Transmissions artistic collective and lead vocalist of seminal industrial band Throbbing Gristle. P-Orridge was also a founding member of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth occult group, and fronted the experimental pop rock band Psychic TV.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Born in Manchester, P-Orridge developed an early interest in art, occultism, and the avant-garde while at Solihull School. After dropping out of studies at the University of Hull, P-Orridge moved into a counter-cultural commune in London and adopted "Genesis P-Orridge" as their pseudonym. On returning to Hull, P-Orridge founded COUM Transmissions with Cosey Fanni Tutti, and in 1973 they relocated to London. COUM's confrontational performance work, dealing with such subjects as sex work, pornography, serial killers, and occultism, represented a concerted attempt to challenge societal norms and attracted the attention of the national press. COUM's 1976 "Prostitution" show at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts was particularly vilified by tabloids, gaining them the moniker of the "wreckers of civilisation." P-Orridge's band, Throbbing Gristle, grew out of COUM, and were active from 1975 to 1981 as pioneers in the industrial music genre. In 1981, P-Orridge co-founded Psychic TV, an experimental band that from 1988 onward came under the increasing influence of acid house.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In 1981, P-Orridge co-founded Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, an informal occult order influenced by chaos magic and experimental music. P-Orridge was often seen as the group's leader, but rejected that position, and left the group in 1991. Amid the Satanic ritual abuse hysteria, a 1992 Channel 4 documentary accused P-Orridge of sexually abusing children, resulting in a police investigation. P-Orridge was subsequently cleared and Channel 4 retracted their allegation. As a result of the incident, P-Orridge left the United Kingdom for the United States and settled in New York City. There, P-Orridge married Jacqueline Breyer, later known as Lady Jaye, in 1995, and together they embarked on the Pandrogeny Project, an attempt to unite as a "pandrogyne", or single entity, through the use of surgical body modification to physically resemble one another. P-Orridge continued with this project of body modification after Lady Jaye's 2007 death. Although involved in reunions of both Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV in the 2000s, P-Orridge retired from music to focus on other artistic mediums in 2009.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: P-Orridge was credited on over 200 releases during their lifetime. They were cited as an icon within the avant-garde art scene, accrued a cult following, and had been given the moniker of the "Godparent of Industrial Music". P-Orridge used gender-neutral pronouns.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Genesis P-Orridge was born Neil Andrew Megson on 22 February 1950 in Victoria Park, Manchester, to Ronald and Muriel Megson. Ronald was a travelling salesman who had worked in repertory theatre and who played the drums in local jazz and dance bands. Muriel was from Salford and had first met Ronald after he returned to England after being injured with the British Army at the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940. As a child, P-Orridge had a good relationship with their parents, who did not interfere with their artistic interests.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Due to Ronald's job, the family moved to Essex, where P-Orridge attended Staples Road Infant School in Loughton, and for a time lived in a caravan near to Epping Forest while the family house was being completed. The family then moved from Essex to Cheshire, where P-Orridge attended Gatley Primary School. Passing the 11-plus exam, P-Orridge won a scholarship to attend Stockport Grammar School, doing so between 1961 and 1964.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: After their father became the Midlands area manager of a cleaning and maintenance business, P-Orridge was sent to the privately run Solihull School in Warwickshire between 1964 and 1968; a period they would refer to as "basically four years of being mentally and physically tortured", but also a time when they developed an interest in art, occultism and the avant-garde. At age fifteen, P-Orridge became a fan of "The Hundred Headless Woman," a book that contained surrealist collages by various artists, including Max Ernst. The book became an early source of inspiration, and it was at that time that they took on the name "P-Orridge."


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Unpopular with other pupils, P-Orridge was bullied at the school, finding comfort in the art department at lunch-time and in the evenings. They befriended Ian "Spydeee" Evetts, Barry "Little Baz" Hermon and Paul Wolfson, three fellow pupils who shared their interest in art, literature, and poetry. They regularly discussed books and music, developing an interest in the writings of Aleister Crowley, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and the music of Frank Zappa, the Fugs and the Velvet Underground. P-Orridge became interested in occultism, and has also asserted that their grandmother was a medium.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In 1967, P-Orridge founded their first collective, Worm, with school friends Pingle Wad (Peter Winstanley), Spydeee Gasmantell (Ian Evetts) and P-Orridge's girlfriend Jane Ray. Worm was influenced by AMM and John Cage's 1961 book "". In 1966, P-Orridge, Evetts, Hermon, Wolfson, and Winstanley began production of an underground magazine, entitled "Conscience". Forbidden from selling it on school grounds, they sold copies outside the school gates. Included in "Conscience" were various articles criticising the school's administration, leading to proposed changes regarding such issues as school uniforms and prefects (known as benchers) privileges. That same year, influenced by newspaper accounts of "Swinging London", P-Orridge organised the first happening at the school, doing so under the auspices of organising a school dance.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Brought up in the Anglican denomination of Christianity, P-Orridge became secretary of the school sixth form's Christian Discussion Circle, in this position inviting members of other ideological positions – including a Marxist from the British Communist Party – to speak to the group. Aged 18, P-Orridge began helping to run the local Sunday school classes, but came to reject organised Christianity. Afflicted with asthma throughout childhood, P-Orridge had to take cortisone and prednisone steroids to control the attacks. The latter of these drugs caused their adrenal glands to atrophy as a side-effect, and so the doctor advised P-Orridge to stop taking them. As a result, aged 17, P-Orridge suffered from a serious blackout; while in hospital recovering they decided to devote their life to art and writing.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: With Hermon and Wolfson, P-Orridge founded a group called the Knights of the Pentecostal Flame. The Knights undertook a happening on 1 June 1968 which they titled "Beautiful Litter". Taking place in Mell Square, Solihull, it involved the three students handing out cards to passersby that had a series of words written onto them; "fleece", "rainbow", "silken", "white", "flower" and "dewdrops". Ensuring that the local "Solihull News" was informed of the event, P-Orridge told reporters that the Knights wanted to ignite "an artistic revolution in Solihull, by making people aware of the life around them, its essential beauty and tranquillity." In mid-1968, Worm recorded their first and only album, entitled "Early Worm", in P-Orridge's parents' attic in Solihull. It was pressed onto vinyl in November at Deroy Sound Services in Manchester, but only one copy was ever produced. A second album, "Catching the Bird", was recorded but never pressed.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In September 1968, P-Orridge began studying for a degree in Social Administration and Philosophy at the University of Hull. Hull was chosen in an attempt to study at "the most ordinary non-elitist, working-class, red brick university", but P-Orridge disliked the course and unsuccessfully tried to transfer to study English. With a group of friends, P-Orridge founded a 'free-form' student magazine entitled "Worm" which waived all editorial control, publishing everything placed into the magazine's pigeonhole, including instructions on how to build a molotov cocktail. Three issues were published between 1968 and 1970 before the Hull Student's Union banned the publication, considering it legally obscene and fearing prosecution. Developing a keen interest in poetry, P-Orridge won the 1969 Hull University Needler Poetry Competition, judged by Compton lecturer Richard Murphy and the poet Philip Larkin, who was then librarian at the university. P-Orridge became involved in radical student politics through their friendship with Tom Fawthrop, a member of the Radical Student Alliance who had led a student occupation of the university's administrative buildings as a part of the worldwide student protests of 1968. In 1969, P-Orridge attempted to reconstruct the occupation for a film, in the hopes that it would itself become a genuine protest occupation, but this venture failed due to a lack of participants.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In 1969, P-Orridge dropped out of university and moved to London, and joined the Transmedia Explorations commune, who were then living in a large run-down house in Islington Park Street. The group, initiated by the artist David Medalla and initially named the Exploding Galaxy, had been at the forefront of the London hippy scene since 1967, but had partially disbanded after a series of police raids and a damaging court case. Moving into their commune, P-Orridge was particularly influenced by one of the founding members of the group, Gerald Fitzgerald, a kinetic artist, and would recognise Fitzgerald's formative influence in P-Orridge's later work. The commune members adhered to a strict regime with the intention of deconditioning its members out of their routines and conventional behaviour; they were forbidden from sleeping in the same place on consecutive nights, food was cooked at irregular times of the day and all clothing was kept in a communal chest, with its members wearing something different on each day. P-Orridge stayed there for three months, until late October 1969. They left after becoming angered that the commune's leaders were given more rights than the other members and believing that the group ignored the counter-cultural use of music, something they took a great interest in. Julie Wilson later stated that although P-Orridge's time at the Transmedia Explorations commune had been brief, "the experiences (they) had there proved to be seminal" to their artistic development.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Leaving London, P-Orridge hitch-hiked across Britain before settling down in a new home in Shrewsbury. Here, they volunteered as an office clerk in Ronald Megson's new business. On one family trip to Wales, P-Orridge was sitting in the back of the car, then "became disembodied and heard voices and saw the COUM symbol and heard the words 'COUM Transmissions. Returning home that evening, P-Orridge filled three notebooks with artistic thoughts and ideas, influenced by the time spent at Transmedia Explorations.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In November 1969, P-Orridge returned to Hull to meet up with friend John Shapeero, who partnered with P-Orridge to turn COUM Transmissions into an avant-garde artistic and musical troupe. They initially debated as to how to define "COUM", later deciding that like the name "dada" it should remain open to interpretation. P-Orridge designed a logo for the group, consisting of a semi-erect penis formed out of the word COUM with a drip of semen coming out of the end, while the motto "Your Local Dirty Banned" (a pun on "band") was emblazoned underneath. Another logo designed by P-Orridge consisted of a hand-drawn seal accompanied by the statement "COUM guarantee disappointment"; from their early foundation, the group made use of wordplay in their artworks and adverts.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: COUM's earliest public events were impromptu musical gigs performed at various pubs around Hull; titles for these events included "Thee Fabulous Mutations", "Space Between the Violins", "Dead Violins and Degradation", and "Clockwork Hot Spoiled Acid Test". The latter combined the names of Anthony Burgess' dystopian science-fiction novel "A Clockwork Orange" (1962) with Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" (1968), a work of literary journalism devoted to the Merry Pranksters, a US communal counter-cultural group who advocated the use of psychedelic drugs. COUM's music was anarchic and improvised, making use of such instruments as broken violins, prepared pianos, guitars, bongos and talking drums. As time went on, they added further theatrics to their performances, in one instance making the audience crawl through a polythene tunnel to enter the venue.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In December 1969, P-Orridge and Shapiro moved out of their flat and into a former fruit warehouse in Hull's docking area, overlooking the Humber. Named the Ho-Ho Funhouse by P-Orridge, the warehouse became the communal home to an assortment of counter-cultural figures, including artists, musicians, fashion designers and underground magazine producers. At Christmas 1969, a woman named Christine Carol Newby moved into the Funhouse after being thrown out of her home by her father. Having earlier befriended them at an acid test party, Newby became P-Orridge's roommate at the Funhouse, first taking the name Cosmosis, but latterly adopting the stage name Cosey Fanni Tutti after the title of Amadeus Mozart's 1790 opera "Così fan tutte". Joining COUM, Tutti initially helped in building props and designing costumes, and was there when the group began including performance art and more theatrical happenings in its music events; Evetts, aka Spydeee Gasmantell, after being expelled from Solihull School joined COUM. The three of them lived in a derelict Georgian warehouse in Prince Street, Hull. An example performance involved the group turning up to play a gig but intentionally not bringing any instruments, something P-Orridge considered "much more theatrical, farcical and light-hearted" than their earlier performances.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: On 5 January 1971, P-Orridge underwent a legal name change to Genesis P-Orridge by deed poll, combining the adopted nickname Genesis with an altered spelling of "porridge", the foodstuff which they had lived off as a student. The new name was intentionally un-glamorous, and they hoped that it would trigger a personal "genius factor". In February, COUM caught the attention of "The Yorkshire Post", which featured an article on them that led to further media attention from national newspapers. They also featured in an article in "Torch", the publication of the University of Hull's student union, entitled "God Sucks Mary's Hairy Nipple"; the article's author, Haydn Robb (nowadays known as Haydn Nobb), subsequently joined COUM, as did maths lecturer Tim Poston. In April 1971, COUM, consisting of P-Orridge and Gasmantell, broadcast their first live radio session, for the "On Cue" programme for Radio Humberside. Following up the press attention they received, they performed further happenings, including their first street action, "Absolute Everywhere", which brought problems with the police.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: After performing another set, "Riot Control", at Hull's Gondola Club, the premises were raided by police and closed soon after; most local clubs blamed COUM and unofficially banned them. COUM drew up a petition to gain support for the group, attaining a booking at the local Brickhouse; their first performance in which the audience applauded and called for an encore. The petition had contained their phallic logo, and the police charged P-Orridge and Robb with publishing an obscene advert, although the charges were later dropped. As they gained coverage in the music press, interest in the band grew, and they supported Hawkwind at St. George's Hall in Bradford in October 1971, where they performed a piece called "Edna and the Great Surfers", where they led the crowd in shouting "Off, Off, Off". The following month, the band attracted the interest of music journalist John Peel, who publicly remarked that "[s]ome might say that Coum were madmen but constant exposure to mankind forces me to believe that we need more madmen like them."


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Gaining an Experimental Arts Grant from the publicly funded Yorkshire Arts Association, COUM described themselves as performance artists, being inspired by the Dadaists and emphasising the amateur quality of their work. They entered the National Rock/Folk Contest at Hull's New Grange Club with a set titled "This Machine Kills Music", and organised events for Hull City Council's celebrations to mark the UK's entry into the European Economic Community in 1973. They had also worked on solo projects, generating controversy in the local press over a conceptual artwork the artist entered at a local exhibition. Taking an increasing interest in infantilism, P-Orridge founded the fictitious L'ecole de l'art infantile and co-organised the "Baby's Coumpetition" at Oxford University's 1973 May Festival, also producing material as the fictitious Ministry of Antisocial Insecurity, a parody of the Ministry of Social Security. Meanwhile, P-Orridge created the character of Alien Brain, and in July 1972, performed as the character at an event entitled the "World Premiere of the Alien Brain", at Hull Arts Centre. COUM also began publishing books; in 1972, they brought out the first volume of "The Million and One Names of COUM", part of a proposed project to release 1001 slogans (such as "A thousand and one ways to COUM" and "COUM are Fab and Kinky"), while in 1973 P-Orridge published "Copyright Breeches", which explored an ongoing personal fascination with the copyright symbol and its implications for art and society.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Following continual police harassment, P-Orridge and Tutti relocated to London, moving into a squat and obtaining a basement studio in Hackney which they named the "Death Factory". After a brief correspondence, P-Orridge met American novelist and poet William S. Burroughs. Brion Gysin would become a major influence upon P-Orridge's ideas and works and was the latter's primary tutor in spiritual magic. 1973 saw COUM take part in the "Fluxshoe" retrospective that toured Britain exhibiting the work of the Fluxus artists; it was organised by David Mayor, who befriended P-Orridge. At that year's Edinburgh Festival, P-Orridge undertook a Marcel Duchamp-inspired performance art piece, "Art Vandals", at the Richard Demarco Gallery, engaging guests in unconventional conversation, and spilling their food and drink on the floor. Exhibiting alongside the Viennese Actionists, P-Orridge came under increasing influence from these Austrian performance artists, adopting their emphasis on using shock tactics to combat conventional morality. P-Orrdige's first film, "Wundatrek Tours", was released in September 1973, and documented a day out to Brighton. Throughout the year the artist sent personally designed postcards to mail-art shows across the world.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In January 1974, COUM returned their attention to music, collaborating with the Canadian artist Clive Robertson to produce "Marcel Duchamp's Next Work", which they premiered at an arts festival in the Zwarte Zaal Royal Conservatory of Ghent in Ghent, Belgium. COUM's next major work was "Couming of Age", performed in March 1974 at the Oval House in Kennington, South London. After the show, they were approached by an audience member, Peter Christopherson, who shared many of their interests; P-Orridge and Tutti nicknamed him "Sleazy" because of the former's particular interest in the sexual aspects of COUM's work. Christopherson began to aid them using their skills as a photographer and graphic designer, and would first perform with them in their March 1975 work "Couming of Youth". In May 1974, COUM issued a manifesto published on an A3 double-sided sheet titled "Decoumpositions and Events".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In April 1974, the Arts Council of Great Britain gave COUM the first half of a £1,500 grant. The money stabilised the group, which now included P-Orridge and Tutti as directors, John Gunni Busck as technical director, and Lelli Maull as musical director. During that year, they made use of various artist-run venues in London, most notably the Art Meeting Place (AMP) in Covent Garden, where they regularly performed during 1974. A number of these works entailed P-Orridge and Tutti exploring the gender balance, including concepts of gender confusion. In one performance at the AWB, which was titled "Filth", P-Orridge and Tutti performed sexual acts using a double-ended dildo. COUM were frustrated with the restrictions imposed on them by the Arts Council as a prerequisite for receiving funding; rather than performing at Council-accredited venues, they wanted to perform more spontaneously. In August 1974 they carried out a spontaneous unauthorised piece of performance art in Brook Green, Hammersmith; during the performance, police arrived and put a stop to the event, deeming it obscene.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In September 1974, COUM were invited to attend the Stadfest in Rottweil, West Germany, and they proceeded with a travel grant from the British Council. There, they published two performance art actions in the street, earning them praise from Bridget Riley and Ernst Jandl, both of whom were present. The acclaim that COUM received at Rottweil established the group's reputation as "one of the most innovative performance art groups then on the London art scene", convincing the Arts Council and British Council to take them more seriously and offer them greater support.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In February 1975, P-Orridge gained their first full-time job, working as an assistant editor at St. James Press, in which they helped to compile the "Contemporary Artists" reference book. The work meant that they had less time to devote to COUM but gained a wide range of contacts in the art world. During that year, COUM embarked on a series of five performance pieces which it termed "Omissions"; these were performed across Europe. In March 1975, COUM performed "Couming of Youth" at the Melkweg in Amsterdam. Adopting a more violent stance than their previous work – in this reflecting an influence from the Viennese Actionists – the performance involved self-mutilation, Cosey inserting lighted candles into her vagina, P-Orridge being crucified and whipped, and P-Orridge and Cosey having sexual intercourse. At Southampton's Nuffield Festival in July 1975, COUM performed "Studio of Lust", where P-Orridge publicly masturbated and all of the members undressed and adopted sexual poses.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: COUM were introduced to Chris Carter in 1975 through their mutual friend John Lacey. Lacey believed that Carter would be interested in COUM as a result of his particular interest in the experimental use of light and sound. Together, Carter, Christopherson, Cosey and P-Orridge founded a musical band, Throbbing Gristle, on 3 September 1975; they had deliberately chosen that date for it was the 36th anniversary of the United Kingdom joining the Second World War. The term "throbbing gristle" was deliberately chosen for it was a Yorkshire slang term for an erect penis. Throbbing Gristle, or TG as it was widely known, was aimed at a wider audience than COUM, thereby aiming to work within popular culture rather than the elite realm of the art scene. COUM and TG were largely treated as distinct entities; the music press ignored COUM and saw TG as experimental art rock, while the arts press ignored TG, viewing COUM as performance artists. Despite their intention of operating within the realms of popular culture, TG never had chart success, and remained a cult band; their audience was far larger than COUM.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: COUM continued to operate alongside TG, and in October 1975 they performed "Jusquà la balle crystal" at the Ninth Paris Biennale at the Musée d'art modern. The prestige of being invited to such an event led to the Arts Council awarding them a grant for £1,600, although only the first half of this was ever paid out. COUM's mail art had taken on an increasingly pornographic dimension, and in November 1975 the police charged P-Orridge with distributing obscene material via in the postal system under the 1953 Post Office Act; this trial was set for February 1976.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: They were prosecuted in 1975 for making collages combining postcards of Queen Elizabeth with soft-core porn, but the jail term and fines were suspended on condition they did not continue.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Their "Prostitution" show, in 1976 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London, included displays of Tutti's pornographic images from magazines as well as erotic nude photographs; the show featured a stripper, used tampons in glass, and transvestite guards. Prostitutes, punks, and people in costumes were among those hired to mingle with the gallery audience. The show caused debate in Parliament about the public funding of such events. In the House of Commons, Scottish Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Fairbairn demanded an explanation from Arts Minister Harold Lever and proclaimed P-Orridge and Tutti as "wreckers of civilisation". Fleet Street was not slow to pick up the story. The reviews were cut up, framed, and put on display for the remainder of the exhibition. This was also reported in newspapers, so cut-ups about the cut-ups were also put on display. COUM was found so offensive that it lost its government grant, and went on to become the private company Industrial Records. Toward the end of COUM, performances would often consist of only P-Orridge, Cosey and Sleazy, the core group who went on to form Throbbing Gristle.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Throbbing Gristle was formed in late 1975 as a four-piece band, consisting of P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson and Chris Carter. The name "Throbbing Gristle" was adopted after a Northern English slang term for an erect penis. P-Orridge's involvement in Throbbing Gristle led to the artist being regularly cited as the "Godfather of Industrial Music", or in some later sources, "godparent".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: The first Throbbing Gristle performance was held at the Air Gallery in London in July 1976. At that point, Throbbing Gristle's headquarters was located at 10 Martello Street, Hackney, East London, the address of an artist collective. P-Orridge and Tutti's living and work space was the postal address of Industrial Records (IR). Throbbing Gristle released "Discipline" in 1980. TG came to be identified as the founders of industrial music, although at the same time the academic Drew Daniel asserted that as a result of its eclecticism, their music resists clear analysis.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Throbbing Gristle's best-selling single was "Zyklon B Zombie" (1978) with Francky Vincent, the title being a reference to the Zyklon B poison gas used at Auschwitz extermination camp. With their album "20 Jazz Funk Greats" they attempted to move away from their industrial sound, and produced songs in a variety of different musical genres. P-Orridge received a number of threatening phone calls, proceeding to record them and use them as a backing track for the TG song "Death Threats".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: The final IR release was called "Nothing Here Now But the Recordings", a best-of album taken from the archives of William S. Burroughs, who provided P-Orridge and Christopherson with access to his reel-to-reel tape archive.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: The final Throbbing Gristle live event, "Mission of Dead Souls", occurred in May 1981 at the Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco. Shortly after the San Francisco event, P-Orridge and Paula Brooking were married.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: During this period, P-Orridge befriended an English musician named David Bunting; P-Orridge already knew another man named David, so coined the moniker David Tibet, which Bunting adopted as a stage name. Through an introduction provided by Burroughs, P-Orridge met Brion Gysin in Paris, probably in 1980, coming to be deeply influenced by Gysin's cut-up method; P-Orridge understood this to be a revolutionary method of escaping current patterns of thought and developing something new.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Following the break-up of Throbbing Gristle, in 1981 P-Orridge founded a band with Peter Christopherson and Alex Fergusson that they named Psychic TV. Involved in video art, they also performed psychedelic, punk, electronic and experimental music. The decision to name the band "Psychic TV" stemmed from P-Orridge's belief that while mainstream television was a form of mass indoctrination and mind control, it could be used as an "esoterrorist" form of magick to combat the establishment's control. Historian Dave Evans described Psychic TV as "a band dedicated to musical eclecticism and magical experiment, their performances being in part ritual (ab)use of sound samples, the creation of 'auditory magical sigils' and the destruction of consensus language in order to find meaning".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: The band's first song, "Just Drifting", was based on a poem by P-Orridge. For their first album, "Force the Hand of Chance" (1982), P-Orridge used a kangling, or Tibetan trumpet made out of a human thigh-bone; the instrument had been introduced to P-Orridge by David Tibet, and attracted attention to their music. P-Orridge had become acquainted with Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan and ideologue of LaVeyan Satanism, with LaVey making an appearance on the Psychic TV song "Joy", in which he recites the Lord's Prayer backwards. From 1988, the band came under the increasing influence of the acid house genre of dance music, and were responsible for helping the popularisation of acid house music in Europe.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Psychic TV made its debut in 1982 at an event organised by P-Orridge, David Dawson, and Roger Ely, called "The Final Academy". It was a 4-day multimedia celebratory rally held in Manchester and at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, South London. It brought performers and audience together with literature, performance, film and music. PTV, Cabaret Voltaire, 23 Skidoo, Z'EV, John Giorno, William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Terry Wilson, Jeff Nuttall, and the Last Few Days participated to honour the cut-up techniques and theories of William S. Burroughs, Ian Sommerville, Antony Balch and Gysin. Video projection and early sampling were used here, as well as whispered utterances by P-Orridge reprocessed as a soundtrack to Gysin's Dreammachine by the Hafler Trio. In the mid-1980s, Psychic TV aimed to release a live album on the 23rd of each month for 23 months in recognition of the 23 enigma. The group didn't reach its goal but still managed fourteen albums in eighteen months, thus earning them an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records. Following the culmination of Psychic TV but before embarking on Thee Majesty, P-Orridge and several Psychic TV musicians formed Splinter Test, a name adopted from one of P-Orridge's essays on sampling.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In 1981, P-Orridge also founded a loosely organised network of occultists named Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), with the aid of John Balance, Tibet, and a number of members of the Process Church of the Final Judgement, a group which had exerted an influence on P-Orridge's occult thought. TOPY was conceived not as an occult order of teaching, but a forum to facilitate discussions on occult ideas by like-minded people, and from its beginnings was understood by its founders to be a successor to the late 19th and early 20th century Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), especially as the latter had been run under Crowley's leadership. Evans described TOPY as "a 'fusion' organisation, creating a crossover of punk/experimental music with chaos magical thinking and practice", making particular use of the sigilisation practices of occult artist Austin Osman Spare. Journalist Gavin Baddeley described TOPY as "perhaps the most influential new occult order of the 1980s". P-Orridge had never wanted to be seen as the leader of an occult order, although many of those involved in TOPY were frustrated that outsiders regularly described P-Orridge as the group's leader. Accordingly, P-Orridge separated from TOPY in 1991, although it continued as a fan community after the departure.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Having been encouraged by groups involved in propagating the moral panic about alleged Satanic ritual abuse, the Channel 4 1992 documentary show "Dispatches" claimed to have discovered videotapes depicting P-Orridge sexually abusing children in a ritual setting. Police from the Obscene Publications Squad subsequently raided P-Orridge's home, and confiscated several tonnes of art work. At the time, P-Orridge was in Thailand undertaking famine relief work; fearing arrest and loss of child custody upon return to the UK, P-Orridge stayed out of the country for several years, settling in the United States. P-Orridge believed that the negative press and police attention were the result of a campaign organised by a Christian group. It was subsequently revealed that the footage obtained did not depict child abuse. Instead, it was a video artwork titled "First Transmissions" that had been made in the early 1980s, partially funded by Channel 4 itself; the footage depicted sex-magic rites between adults, bloodletting performances, and scenes of the filmmaker Derek Jarman reading passages from the work of Geoffrey Chaucer. Embarrassed by these revelations, Channel 4 retracted its initial accusations.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In 2016, the film director Jacqueline Castel began work on the feature-length documentary titled "A Message from the Temple", about Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth and P-Orridge.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: At 45 years of age P-Orridge met Lady Jaye (née Jacqueline Breyer) in a BDSM dungeon in New York City and would eventually marry for a second time. Jaye worked as a nurse during the daytime, providing care for children with terminal illnesses and disabilities. In the evenings, Lady Jaye worked as a dominatrix at the dungeon, and Genesis was a visiting customer. The night they met, the two visited Paddles, an underground BDSM club in Manhattan. The two became a couple from that point forward.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In January 1993, P-Orridge and Jaye moved to Ridgewood, Queens, in New York City. Here, they embarked on the "Pandrogeny Project"; influenced by the cut-up technique, the duo underwent body modification to resemble one another, thus coming to identify themselves as a single pandrogynous being named "Breyer P-Orridge". In doing so, the pair spent $200,000 on surgical alteration, receiving breast implants, cheek and chin implants, lip plumping, eye and nose jobs, tattooing, and hormone therapy, while also adopting gender neutral and alternating pronouns. With this project, P-Orridge's intent was to express a belief that the self is pure consciousness trapped within the DNA-governed body. The couple adopted the term "pandrogyne" because – in their words – "we wanted a word without any history or any connections with things – a word with its own story and its own information".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: During this era, a book was published of P-Orridge's writings, poems, and observations, called "Ooh, You Are Awful ... But I Like You!". In the mid-1990s, P-Orridge collaborated with different people in music, including Pigface, Skinny Puppy, and Download. P-Orridge also performed with Nik Turner and other former members of Hawkwind.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In June 1998, P-Orridge won a $1.5 million lawsuit against producer Rick Rubin and his American Recordings label for injuries sustained while trying to escape a fire at Rubin's home in April 1995. According to P-Orridge's attorney, David D. Stein, P-Orridge was staying at Rubin's home, as a guest of Love and Rockets, when the fire broke out. P-Orridge tried to escape the house by crawling through a second-storey window and fell onto concrete stairs. P-Orridge suffered a broken wrist, broken ribs, and a pulmonary embolism, as well as a shattered left elbow that, according to Stein, prevented P-Orridge from playing bass or keyboards. They remained in hospital for a total of ten days. The jury found that the liability for the fire rested with Rubin and American Recordings, and awarded P-Orridge US$1,572,000 in compensation.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In 1999, P-Orridge performed with the briefly reunited late-1980s version of Psychic TV for an event at London's Royal Festival Hall, called "Time's Up". The MC for the event, via pre-recorded video, was Quentin Crisp, it was recorded and released as a DVD. "Time's Up" is also the title of the first CD by Thee Majesty, P-Orridge's spoken-word project with "noise" guitarist, Bryin Dall.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In December 2003, P-Orridge, using the alias "Djinn", unveiled PTV3, a new act drawing upon the early "Hyperdelic" work of Psychic TV with media theorist Douglas Rushkoff among its members. On 16 May 2004, all four former members of Throbbing Gristle performed at the London Astoria for the first time in 23 years.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: P-Orridge appeared in the 1998 film and 2000 book versions of "Modulations", as well as appearing in the 1999 film "Better Living Through Circuitry", the 2004 film "DiG!", Bruce LaBruce's 2004 film "The Raspberry Reich", the 2006 documentary "", in Nik Sheehan's 2007 feature documentary on the Dreamachine entitled "FLicKeR", the 2010 documentary "", and the 2011 film "The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In January 2006, the new PTV album was announced on P-Orridge's website. "Hell Is Invisible... Heaven Is Her/e" was recorded in NYC and features Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers) guesting on some tracks. To inaugurate the release of "Hell Is Invisible ... Heaven Is Her/e", PTV3 hosted a five night residency in September 2006 at Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. "Mr. Alien Brain Vs. the Skinwalkers" was released on Sweet Nothing Records on 8 December 2008.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: On 9 October 2007, Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge died. The cause of death was heart arrhythmia, a heart condition that was possibly related to stomach cancer. Psychic TV cancelled its North American tour dates in the aftermath of Lady Jaye's death. A memorial was held at the Participant Inc. Gallery in New York City on 8 March 2008 . As of January 2013, P-Orridge's official website said:


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Thus, P-Orridge continued the Pandrogyne Project, having further surgical operations to alter their body and using "we" when in reference to themselves; to a reporter P-Orridge admitted that without Lady Jaye:


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: From this point, P-Orridge began referring to themselves in the plural in order to keep Breyer's memory alive.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In 2013, Dale Eisinger of "Complex" ranked the Pandrogeny project the greatest work of performance art ever.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In September 2009, a retrospective of P-Orridge's collages, entitled "30 Years of Being Cut Up", opened at Invisible-Exports.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: On 4 November 2009 it was announced that P-Orridge would retire from touring in any and all bands (including Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV) to concentrate on art, writing and music. In June 2010, P-Orridge sold the Ridgewood property, holding a garage sale in the basement of a local art gallery to sell off a range of personal items, in addition to an array of dildos. This accomplished, P-Orridge moved to a one-bedroom apartment in New York's Lower East Side, and continued producing art in this home.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: P-Orridge visited Australia for the first (and only) time in 2012, performing two live shows with Psychic TV; one as part of the Adelaide Festival, and another secret show in Melbourne following a screening of the documentary film "The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye". P-Orridge returned to regular touring with Psychic TV in 2016, in support of the release of their album "Alienist". The tour lasted from mid-September to early December, with concerts in Greece, Israel, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In August 2015, P-Orridge gained publicity for an interview critical of Caitlyn Jenner's self-description as a "spokesperson" for the transgender community, stating that Jenner was "clueless" and did not know what life was like for the majority of transgender people around the world. In mid-2016, P-Orridge's artwork was the subject of an exhibition, "Try to Altar Everything", at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. The exhibition contained paintings, sculptures, and installations inspired by the Hindu mythology that P-Orridge had encountered in Kathmandu. In June 2016, P-Orridge was featured as a model in a campaign by the designer Marc Jacobs, who described P-Orridge as "a sort of come-to-life definition of realness and authenticity".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: P-Orridge was diagnosed with chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia in October 2017, and died in New York City on 14 March 2020, aged 70. P-Orridge's memoir, "Nonbinary," was published a year later, in June 2021, a project P-Orridge had been working on in collaboration with writer Tim Mohr for several years, according to the "New York Times".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Influenced by concepts from both Western esotericism and contemporary Paganism, P-Orridge's work is designed to confront the audience with ways of thinking alien to the mainstream values of Western society. The religious studies scholar Christopher Partridge characterised P-Orridge's work as being a "confluence of pornography, violence, death, degradation, the confrontation of taboo subjects, noise and Paganism", deliberately courting controversy and expressing an anti-establishment stance. Partridge suggested that this intent to shock emerged both out of a serious attempt to highlight the mechanisms of social control in Western society and also out of "a juvenile delight gained from extreme behaviour and the offence caused".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: P-Orridge's work was particularly influenced by the early 20th-century English artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare, who shared their disdain for mainstream morality and fascination with sexuality and the human body. P-Orridge adopted Spare's views on sigils, coming to see their own work as a form of sigil magic. Spare's sigilisation process entailed writing down one's desires, before crossing out any letters that are repeated and then combining the remaining letters into an abstract design, or sigil; the magician must then focus on that sigil and mentally absorb it, and – according to Spare's claims – psychic energies operating on the subconscious ensure that the original desire is manifested in reality. P-Orridge adopted this theory, believing that their work operates according to its principles.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: A further element of P-Orridge's work is their common use of idiosyncratic grammar and spelling, such as "Thee" in place of "the", "ov" in place of "of" and (especially in early writings) "butter" in place of "but". The purpose of this is to challenge thought and established ways of reading.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: P-Orridge had two daughters, Caresse and Genesse, with former wife Paula P-Orridge (born Paula Brooking). An interview with Genesis and Paula P-Orridge appeared in the book "RE/Search: Modern Primitives" in 1989, and the Icelandic publication "Eintak" in 1994.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: On a religious or spiritual level, Christopher Partridge described P-Orridge as representing "a particularly interesting, influential and subversive example of contemporary paganism". Asserting that their "industrial paganism" was different from most forms of contemporary paganism, Partridge described it as "confrontational, subversive, experimental and, to a large extent, dystopian", with it serving as "an ideological tool" with which to analyse society "from its underbelly; an immersion in the dark side; the subversion of Christian hegemony, conservative politics and what nowadays might be described as neoliberalism". P-Orridge was devoted to the deity Eshu Elegguá, an entity from the Afro-Caribbean syncretic religion of Santería. P-Orridge also stated disbelief in the literal existence of gods, deeming such entities to instead be "early attempts at psychology, trying to understand the light and dark side of human nature".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: P-Orridge vociferously criticised contemporary Christianity, describing it as "an incredibly sick social pseudo-religion", and arguing that it was based upon the tenet of "Be good now, agree, or else we will punish you forever and ever when you're dead. And we may punish you while you're alive ..." P-Orridge maintained that such an attitude was established in Christianity by St. Paul and the early Roman Catholic Church, and that it differed from the "ecstatic mysticism of the original Christianity, the Gnostic Christianity".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In her memoir, "Art Sex Music", bandmate and former significant other Cosey Fanni Tutti claimed P-Orridge had been abusive during their relationship. P-Orridge denied the allegations.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: According to "New York" magazine, P-Orridge became "an icon of the London avant-garde" in 1976. Writing for "The New Yorker" in 2016, the reporter Hermione Hoby described P-Orridge as a "cult figure" considered to be "a treasure of the avant-garde by global art institutions".


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: The quote that P-Orridge attributed to their mentor, "I feel your pain, I feel your shame, but you're not to blame", was used as the catchphrase for the Shirley Ghostman psychic clairvoyant character by comedian Marc Wootton.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: P-Orridge's ironic cult of TOPY has been criticized as being a front for abuses of power and developing an actual cult of personality.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: Musician Electrosexual and Syrian German industrial/techno artist Hanin Elias, founding member of Atari Teenage Riot, recorded a cover version of "Hot on the Heels of Love" with all proceeds from the sales of both the CD and digital versions going to aid Genesis P-Orridge and their battle against leukemia.


title: Genesis P-Orridge

text: In 2021, Polish writer Jacek Szafranowicz wrote an eulogy of P-Orridge, describing their passing as a "huge loss", also citing them as an important influence on his approach to writing.


title: ASCOD

text: The ASCOD (Austrian Spanish Cooperation Development) armoured fighting vehicle family is the product of a cooperation agreement between Austrian Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG and Spanish General Dynamics Santa Bárbara Sistemas (both companies are now divisions of a unit of General Dynamics). The ASCOD family includes the LT 105, a light tank equipped with a 105 mm gun, a surface-to-air missile (SAM) launcher, an anti-tank missile launcher, mortar carrier, R&R vehicle, Command & Control vehicle, ambulance, artillery observer, and the AIFV model. In Spanish service, the vehicle is called "Pizarro", while the Austrian version is called "Ulan".


title: ASCOD

text: The ASCOD was designed to replace the older light armoured fighting vehicles of the Austrian and Spanish armies, such as the M113 armored personnel carrier and the Saurer APC. The Ulan, the Austrian version of the Pizarro, would provide a flexible complement to their heavy Leopard 2A4. The Ulan would allow the Austrian army to deploy rapidly and effectively over longer distances, especially for foreseeable future operations—such as troubled spots for UN operations.


title: ASCOD

text: In 1982, Steyr-Daimler-Puch Spezialfahrzeug initiated the conception phase for the development of a new infantry fighting vehicle. This was followed by initial talks with the militaries of Greece, Norway and Switzerland to find the desired requirements for a new IFV. The decision to develop a new IFV was made following the Bundesheer announcement of the military requirement for the "Kampfschützenpanzer 90" (combat infantry fighting vehicle 90) in 1985. Based on this, Steyr-Daimler-Puch Spezialfahrzeug started the conception of the vehicle; however, it was clear that Austria would not order new IFVs in the next years and that the development costs exceeded Steyr's budget. Therefore, in 1988, a cooperation with the Spanish company Empresa National Santa Barbara S. A. was signed, which resulted in the development being renamed to ASCOD (Austrian Spanish Cooperative Development). Following this, the development of the ASCOD was started. The hulls were manufactured in Spain, while the ASCOD turrets (based on the SP-30 turret design used on the scout version of the Pandur) were made by Steyr in Austria. The first prototype was presented in 1991 in Sevilla and tested by 1992 with production being possible only four years later.


title: ASCOD

text: Following the numerous changed requirements during the ASCOD's conception and development phase, the weight increased from the original 18.8 t to 25.2 t and finally 29.0 tonnes. The first prototype was trialed in Norway in 1993/94; however, Norway decided against buying the ASCOD and preferred the Swedish CV9030 instead. Following these trials, a slightly updated third prototype was built, which essentially equals the version finally offered as ASCOD to Austria, Spain and other countries. In 1994, Spain decided to order four pre-series vehicles after successful trials of the prototype. In 1996, Spain ordered 144 vehicles with the designation "Pizarro". Due to financial reasons, Austria's order for the first 112 ASCOD vehicles did not happen until May 1999. The designation "Ulan" is used for the ASCOD in Austrian service. Four pre-series Ulan were given to the Austrian Bundesheer in April 2001 for the final qualification. The official handover happened in May 2001. In 2002, 28 Ulans were delivered, the next batch of 36 was delivered in 2003 and in 2004 the order was finished. In contrast to the original prototypes, the "Ulan" was completely manufactured in Austria.


title: ASCOD

text: The ASCOD was a very modern solution to bringing both Austrian and Spanish armour up to date. To put this into perspective, the Pizarro project was a part of the greater Project CORAZA (Project Armour), which was to replace Spain's M113 APCs, M60A3s, and M110 artillery pieces. By 2005, the Austrian army was equipped with 112 Ulan vehicles and Spain with 144 (123 IFV and 21 C2V).


title: ASCOD

text: In 2004, the Spanish Ministry of Defence ordered another 212 Pizarros (170 IFV, 5 C2V, 28 Artillery observation, 8 recovery, 1 Engineering vehicle) for €707.5 million Euros, with up to 356 units total planned. By 2010 the cost of this second batch had increased to €845m.


title: ASCOD

text: The improved ASCOD 2 vehicle was chosen by the UK MoD in March 2010 as the common base platform for the "Scout Specialist Vehicle", which was later renamed Ajax. This selection was the result of the UK's Specialist Vehicle Programme. Around 300 British engineers at General Dynamics UK's Oakdale facility began developing the Ajax from the ASCOD 2 after being awarded the contract in 2010.


title: ASCOD

text: The ASCOD 2 Scout SV will serve as the replacement for CVR(T) family vehicles, including the FV107 Scimitar, the FV103 Spartan and the FV106 Samson armoured recovery vehicle.


title: ASCOD

text: General Dynamics offered the ASCOD 2 in an APC configuration to the competition for the Danish M113 replacement. The ASCOD 2 was not chosen, as the Danish army preferred a wheeled option with the Piranha 5.


title: ASCOD

text: ASCOD entered service with the Spanish and Austrian armies in 2002. The British Army is to receive its first ASCOD SV in 2020.


title: ASCOD

text: Despite being part of ISAF, Spain did not deploy the Pizarro IFV due to lacking a mine-protection kit.


title: ASCOD

text: The main version of the ASCOD is the tracked infantry fighting vehicle. It follows a conventional layout with a front-mounted engine and a rear compartment for the dismounts. The driver's seat is located at the left hull front, whereas the commander and gunner sit in the slightly off-center-mounted two-man turret. The rear compartment also has two hatches on the roof. The Ulan can carry eight dismounts, whereas the Pizarro only carries seven.


title: ASCOD

text: The ASCOD mounts a 30 mm Mauser MK-30/2 autocannon in a fully traversable electro-mechanical turret. The dual belt-fed 30 mm cannon, electrical stabilized on two planes, is able to fire at a rate of up to 770 rounds per minute and accurately engage targets on the move. As secondary armament, the ASCOD carries a 7.62 mm machine gun; the Spanish Pizarro is fitted with an MG-3 machine gun, whereas the Ulan is fitted with an FN MAG. The Ulan carries 200 rounds of 30 mm and 600 rounds of 7.62 mm rounds in the turret, a further 205 rounds for the 30 mm gun and up to 1,290 for the 7.62 mm machine gun are stored inside the hull. The Pizarro only carries 300 rounds of main gun ammunition.


title: ASCOD

text: This armament is comparable to that of the M2 Bradley and the CV90, and performed well in a Norwegian vehicles trial, although it ultimately lost to the Swedish CV90.


title: ASCOD

text: The Ulan is fitted with a digital fire control system built by Kollsman, which uses some components of the Kürassier A2's fire control system. The gunner's sight is manufactured by Elbit and provides 8X magnification in the day channel. The integrated thermal imager has 2.8X and 8.4X magnification, which can be accessed by both the gunner and the commander. The commander has a fixed daysight with 8X magnification. The Pizarro uses the Mk-10 fire control system from Indra, which has a full solution digital ballistic computer, day channel, thermal channel and laser rangefinder. Future versions of the Mk-10 will be fitted with a new VC2 thermal imager.


title: ASCOD

text: The ASCOD is constructed of several rolled steel armour plates. The armour provides protection against 14.5 mm armour-piercing ammunition fired from distances of 500 meters or more along the frontal 60° arc, with all around protection against 7.62 mm ammunition. Furthermore, the turret is fitted with two banks of 76 mm Wegmann multi-purpose grenade launchers, which can fire smoke grenades for self-protection as well as high-explosive grenades with fragmentation warhead to a maximum range of .


title: ASCOD

text: The Pizarro is additionally fitted with limited amounts of SABBLIR explosive reactive armour along the frontal arc and might be upgraded with more later. The SABBLIR reactive armour increases protection against shaped charge warheads as used on rocket-propelled grenades. The Ulan has been fitted with MEXAS composite armour, which increases ballistic protection against up to 30 mm APFSDS rounds fired from a 1,000 m range over the forward 30° arc, and all round protection against 14.5 mm armour piercing incendiary (API) rounds from a range of 500 m. The Ulan is also fitted with spall-liners in order to decrease casualties in case of armour penetration.


title: ASCOD

text: In terms of mobility, the Spanish Pizarro is fitted with a MTU SV-183 TE22 engine, while the Austrian Ulan includes a MTU 8V-199-TE20 engine. The smaller Spanish engine gives it a power-to-weight ratio of 21, and the larger engine one of 25, offering both vehicles excellent mobility. Both versions use a Renk HSWL 106C hydro-mechanical transmission, and suspension based on torsion bar and rotary dampers; designed and manufactured by ""Piedrafita"". The ASCOD uses Diehl type 129 tracks. The Pizarro can go a maximum speed of 70 km/h, and a maximum reverse speed of 35 km/h.


title: ASCOD

text: The ASCOD has a ground-clearance of . The Ulan can accelerate from 0 to in 14 seconds. It can cross ditches, climb walls and ford through deep rivers. It is able to drive at 75% gradient and 40% side slope.


title: ASCOD

text: The ASCOD chassis has been used for a number of vehicles in Spanish service and numerous private ventures developed for the export market. Aside from the IFV version, the ASCOD has been offered as light tank and scout vehicle. The ASCOD Direct Fire light tank can mount a number of different commercial turrets with 105 or 120 mm tank guns. It is expected to weigh about 30 tonnes.


title: ASCOD

text: Steyr-Daimler-Puch Spezialfahrzeuge has developed an improved version called Ulan 2; this, however, was never ordered by the Austrian government.


title: ASCOD

text: An improved version of the ASCOD, called ASCOD 2, has been developed by General Dynamics and was presented in 2004. The ASCOD 2 uses the more powerful MTU 8V 199T21 engine, which provides an output of , together with a Renk HSWL 256 B transmission and Diehl 1028 tracks. It has an increased gross vehicle weight of 38 tons, with a growth potential to 42 tons. The ASCOD 2 has been presented as an IFV (with the SP-30 turret of the original ASCOD), as APC with raised roof and armed with an M2 machine gun (in a BAE Lemur remote weapon station) and as specialized APC for urban combat (designated ASCOD PSO).


title: ASCOD

text: In June 2008, GDELS, in conjunction with KMW, announced Donar, a medium-weight 155 mm self-propelled artillery system based on the KMW Artillery Gun Module (AGM) autonomous artillery system integrated with the ASCOD 2 chassis. A prototype has begun mobility and firing trials in Germany.


title: ASCOD

text: In March 2010, the UK MoD announced that ASCOD 2 will be used as the base for the Scout Specialist Vehicle of the FRES program, which later was renamed to "Ajax".


title: ASCOD

text: During Eurosatory 2018, General Dynamics European Land Systems presented a new variant of the ASCOD 2. The ASCOD medium main battle tank (MMBT), with a gross vehicle weight of 42 tonnes, is fitted with the Italian Leonardo Defence Systems HITFACT 120mm turret. This is also armed with a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun, a 7.62mm pintle-mounted gun and a 12.7mm remote weapon station on the roof. The 120mm smoothbore gun is coupled to a computerised fire control system, with the commander and gunner having stabilised day/thermal sights incorporating a laser rangefinder.


title: ASCOD

text: The ASCOD vehicle was chosen by the UK MoD as the common base platform on which the Ajax would be developed. This selection was the result of the UK's Specialist Vehicle Programme. Around 300 British engineers at General Dynamics UK's Oakdale facility began developing the Scout from the ASCOD after being awarded the contract in 2010.


title: ASCOD

text: These vehicles are the replacements for the CVR(T) family vehicles: FV107 Scimitar (armoured reconnaissance), FV103 Spartan (specialist personnel carrier) and FV106 Samson (recovery vehicle).


title: ASCOD

text: Recce Block 2 is expected to include ambulance, engineer reconnaissance and command & control replacements for the CVR(T) FV104 Samaritan (armoured ambulance) and FV105 Sultan (command vehicle).


title: ASCOD

text: The Sabrah Light Tank's tracked version is a new variant developed and offered by Elbit Systems for the Philippine Army's Light Tank Acquisition Project. It uses the ASCOD 2 platform with a new turret armed with 105 mm gun developed by Elbit in partnership with Denel Land Systems. The Notice of Award (NOA) for the project was issued to Elbit Systems Land by the Department of National Defense in September 2020.


title: ASCOD

text: ASCOD Ulan is built by Steyr-Daimler-Puch Spezialfahrzeuge. It includes a more powerful 530 kW engine, and a different fire control system built by Kollsman.


title: P. Chidambaram

text: Palaniappan Chidambaram (born 16 September 1945) is an Indian politician and lawyer who currently serves as Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha. He served as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs from 2017 to 2018.