text: he was denounced as "China's Khrushchev" and "a traitor, renegade, and scab". The hapless Liu was imprisoned and allowed to slowly waste away from untreated pneumonia and diabetes. He finally died in November 1969, but the outside world was not aware of this until a Hong Kong newspaper reported his death in 1974.


title: History of the People's Republic of China (1949–1976)

text: Meanwhile, the Red Guards began turning China's major population centers upside down as teachers, party officials, and anyone in power could be attacked. By the end of 1966, the army began intervening to restore order. Battles were fought, damaging cities and killing or injuring thousands. Mao then tried to restrain the army, and the Red Guards went back on the rampage. His wife proved to be one of the worst instigators, egging the Red Guards on with fiery speeches. Trains carrying weapons intended for Vietnam were looted, along with army barracks, and in some places Red Guards split into factions and fought each other in the streets with machine guns and artillery. It became so bad by August 1967 that people had to carry two or three copies of Mao's Little Red Book in public to avoid being attacked. Revolutionary committees took over the purged city governments, but they had no idea of how to govern and soon came into conflict with even more extreme youths. Books printed before 1949 were destroyed, foreigners attacked, and the British embassy in Beijing burned. Many temples and historical treasures were destroyed. Zhou Enlai ordered army units placed around some temples and other ancient structures to protect them. Even the army itself became divided, and local military chiefs gained control of some provinces where they ruled like the feudal warlords of past eras. Young people wandered through the vast countryside on foot in journeys sometimes lasting months. With China in a state of virtual anarchy in late 1967, Mao had to concede defeat. By now, the regular army began restoring order. Violence was not totally contained until late in 1968, but by then many Red Guards were banished to the countryside and labeled "anarchists" and "class enemies". Some of their ringleaders were tried and executed. The cities had no functioning governments by this time and no public services. Sick or injured people could not receive medical treatment because all the doctors had been purged, and bodies could not be buried if someone died. The streets were filled with youths who had nowhere to go.


text: Amid all this, Mao's personality cult reached enormous heights. Although he had always had one, it did not reach excessive levels until the Cultural Revolution, where all sorts of miracles were attributed to people who read his writings.


text: China became almost totally cut off from the outside world in the late 1960s and only retained diplomatic relations with a few countries. The United States was denounced for imperialism, Britain for colonialism, Japan for militarism, and the Soviet Union for revisionism. Most of the communist world was stunned and horrified by the Cultural Revolution. This led to China dividing fellow communist nations into three groups. Cuba, Romania, North Korea, and North Vietnam were classified as "mostly socialist with a few mistakes". The USSR, Mongolia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, and Yugoslavia were classified as revisionists who pursued a false socialism. China itself and Albania were seen as the only true socialist countries in the world.


text: As the Cultural Revolution spun out of control, and grew past Mao's original intentions, Mao's ability to control the situation, and in turn, his authority, dwindled. His chief lieutenants, Lin Biao and Mao's third wife Jiang Qing, had manipulated the turmoil in these areas to glorify Mao to a godlike status while ignoring some of his directives. Mao's "Little Red Book" published over 350 million copies during the era. For the first time since the Puyi Abdication had people come to hail Mao as to "Long Live for Ten Thousand Years", which ironically is an old, feudal tradition reserved for Emperors. Lin Biao, having gained Mao's trust, had his name codified into the Constitution of both the State and Party as Mao's designated successor.


text: The 9th Party Congress met in Beijing during April 1969. The effects of the Cultural Revolution were obvious, as most of the delegates who had attended the 8th Congress in 1956 were gone. Green army uniforms were in abundance, as were all sorts of Mao portraits, Little Red Books, and other paraphernalia. Economic issues were mostly ignored, and all emphasis was on glorifying Mao. Lin Biao was formally designated his successor and Liu Shaoqi expelled from the party. The Red Guards were also discredited. However, Mao stated that in a few years a new Cultural Revolution might be necessary and added "No one should think everything will be all right after one, or two, or even three Cultural Revolutions, for socialist society occupies a considerably long historical period."


text: Radical activity subsided by 1969, but the Chinese political situation began to antagonize along complex factional lines. CCP vice-chairman Lin Biao, who had ailing health and "de facto" control over the military, became increasingly at odds with Mao over the idea of power sharing. In private, he was not enthusiastic about the Cultural Revolution, calling it a "cultureless revolution" and also opposed restoring relations with the United States, which Mao and Zhou were then preparing to do. He attempted a military "coup" in September 1971, aimed at the assassination of Mao while traveling on his train. Operating out of the headquarters in Shanghai, Lin was informed of his failure after Mao's apparent diversion of routes. Lin then escaped with his wife Ye Qun and son Lin Liguo on a military jet, and was on his way to the Soviet Union, before crashing in Ondurhan in Mongolia in September 1971. Lin's death was put tightly under wraps by the Chinese government, who had in the past vociferously praised Lin. Lin's "coup" and death were both subject to widespread controversy, and historians are still unable to properly determine the ins and outs of what went on. There are theories, for example, that Mao or Premier Zhou Enlai had ordered the plane to be shot down. Lin's supporters made their way out of the country, mostly to Hong Kong. Lin's flight affected Mao deeply, and he was yet again left with the dilemma of reasserting an heir apparent. Because of his past mistakes, amongst other factors, Mao was reluctant to designate any more successors, which only clouded the political situation further. After Lin Biao's death, he and the late Liu Shaoqi were turned by the state propaganda machine into a two-headed monster that could be blamed for all of China's ills.


text: In the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, all independence of thought in China was stamped out. The major cities became grim places where everyone wore matching blue, green, white, black or gray suits. No ornamentation was allowed, and even bicycles all had to be painted black. Art and culture were reduced to Jiang Qing's handful of revolutionary plays, movies, and operas. Mao's personality cult remained prominent, although it was toned down somewhat after Lin Biao's death. In 1965, China had had a large, complex state bureaucracy, most of which had been destroyed during the chaos of 1966–1968. Only a small central core remained of the government in Beijing. Despite this, during the visit of Nixon in 1972, Mao Zedong told him "We haven't even begun to establish socialism. All we've really done so far are change a few localities in Beijing." Meanwhile, US president Richard Nixon had taken office in 1969 and announced his willingness to open relations with the People's Republic of China. His overtures were initially ignored and he was denounced in Beijing as a feudal chieftain whom the capitalist world turned to out of desperation. However, in August 1971, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger led a secret delegation to Beijing. They were not given a warm welcome and the hotel rooms they stayed in were equipped with anti-American pamphlets. However, they met Zhou Enlai, who spoke of how President Kennedy had wanted to open relations with the PRC and said "We're willing to wait. If these negotiations fail, eventually another Kennedy or Nixon will come along." He stated that the US had snubbed and isolated China for the last two decades, not the other way around, and that any initiative to establish relations would have to come from the American side.


text: Mao Zedong had apparently decided that the Soviet Union was far more of a danger than the United States. As stated above, the Cultural Revolution had caused a total breakdown in relations with Moscow. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev was referred to as "the new Hitler" and during the late '60s, both nations accused each other of neglecting their people's living standards in favor of defense spending, being a tool of American imperialism, pursuing a false form of socialism, and of trying to get the world blown up in a nuclear war. The United States was also separated from China by thousands of miles of ocean, while the Soviet Union had a very long border where they stationed troops and nuclear missiles. The 1968 Prague Spring worried China deeply, as the Soviets now claimed the right to intervene in any country that was deviating from the correct path of socialism. But the March 1969 clashes along the Manchurian border were what really drove the Chinese Communists to open ties with the US.


text: President Nixon made his historic trip to Beijing in February 1972 and met with Zhou and Mao. The trip caused some confusion in the communist world. The Soviet Union could not outright condemn it, but they clearly felt that the US and China were both plotting against them. North Korea viewed it as a victory for socialism (under the reasoning that the US had failed in its attempt to isolate China and was forced to come to terms), while North Vietnam, Albania, and Cuba felt that China had made a mistake by negotiating with the enemy. It also had a demoralizing effect on Taiwan, whose leadership had sensed the inevitable, but who were nonetheless upset at not having been consulted first. With the Nixon visit, most anti-American propaganda disappeared in China. The US was still criticized for imperialism, but not to the degree it had been before 1972. Instead, Soviet revisionism and "social imperialism" was now seen as China's main enemy.


text: In the aftermath of the Lin Biao incident, many officials criticized and dismissed during 1966-1969 were reinstated. Mao abruptly summoned a party congress in August 1973. The 10th Congress formally rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping. This move was suggested by Zhou Enlai, and Mao agreed, deciding that Deng was "70% correct, 30% wrong". Lin Biao was also posthumously expelled from the party. Mao had wanted to use this period as a time to rethink his successor. Mao's wife Jiang Qing, meanwhile, had formed an informal radical political alliance with Shanghai revolution organizer Wang Hongwen, who seems to have gained Mao's favour as a possible successor, as well as Shanghai Revolutionary Committee Chairman Zhang Chunqiao and propaganda writer Yao Wenyuan, all of whom were elevated to the Politburo by the 10th Congress. They were later dubbed the ""Gang of Four"."


text: The Gang of Four then attempted to target Zhou Enlai, who was by then ill with bladder cancer and unable to perform many of his duties. They launched the "Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius" Campaign in 1974 in an attempt to undermine the premier. However, the Chinese populace was tired of useless, destructive campaigns and treated it with apathy. A sign of growing discontent was a large wall poster erected in Guangzhou at the end of 1974 which complained that China had no rule of law and officials were not accountable for their mistakes. Three of the four authors subsequently wrote self-criticisms. One refused and was banished to the countryside for labor reform.


text: Mao's health was in sharp decline by 1973. He was slowly losing his eyesight and also experienced a variety of heart, lung, and nervous system problems, although his mind remained sharp to the end. Jiang Qing was eager to take over the country as soon as he was gone, but Mao didn't want that. He once said "My wife does not represent me, and her views are not my views."


text: The ideological struggle between more pragmatic, veteran party officials and the radicals re-emerged with a vengeance in late 1975. The Gang of Four sought to attack their political opponents and rid them one by one. From their failed attempts at defaming popular Premier Zhou Enlai, the Gang launched a media campaign against the emerging Deng Xiaoping, who they deemed to be a serious political challenge. In January 1976, Premier Zhou died of his cancer, prompting widespread mourning. On April 5, Beijing citizens staged a spontaneous demonstration in Tiananmen Square in Zhou's memory at the Qingming Festival, a traditional Chinese holiday to honor the dead. The real purpose of the gathering was to protest the Gang of Four's repressive policies. Police drove the crowd out of the square in an eerie precursor to the events that took place there 15 years later. The Gang of Four succeeded in convincing a gravely ill Mao that Deng Xiaoping was responsible for the incident. As a result, Deng was denounced as a capitalist roader and stripped of his position as vice premier, although he retained his party membership. He went into hiding in the city of Guangzhou, where he was sheltered by the local military commander, who did not care for either the Gang of Four or Mao's newly appointed successor Hua Guofeng . Deng knew that Mao would soon be gone, and that he only needed to wait a short while.


text: While experiencing a political storm, China was also hit with a massive natural disaster—the Tangshan earthquake, officially recorded at magnitude 7.8 on the Richter Scale, authorities refused large amounts of foreign aid. Killing over 240,000 people, the tremors of the earthquake were felt both figuratively and literally amidst Beijing's political instability. A meteorite also landed in northwestern China, and the authorities told people not to believe as in olden times that these events were omens and signs from the heavens.


text: The history of the People's Republic from 1949 to 1976 is accorded the name "Mao era"-China. A proper evaluation of the period is, in essence, an evaluation of Mao's legacy. Since Mao's death there has been generated a great deal of controversy about him amongst both historians and political analysts.


text: Mao's poor management of the food supply and overemphasis on village industry is often blamed for the millions of deaths by famine during the "Mao era". However, there were also positive changes as a result from his management. Before 1949, for instance, the illiteracy rate in Mainland China was 80%, and life expectancy was a meager 35 years. At his death, illiteracy had declined to less than 7%, and average life expectancy had increased by 30 years. In addition, China's population which had remained constant at 400,000,000 from the Opium War to the end of the Civil War, mushroomed more than 700,000,000 as of Mao's death. Under Mao's regime, some argue that China ended its "Century of Humiliation" and resumed its status as a major power on the international stage. Mao also industrialized China to a considerable extent and ensured China's sovereignty during his rule. In addition, Mao tried to abolish Confucianist and feudal norms.


text: China's economy in 1976 was three times its 1949 size (but the size of the Chinese economy in 1949 was one-tenth of the size of the economy in 1936), and whilst Mao-era China acquired some of the attributes of a superpower such as: nuclear weapons and a space programme; the nation was still quite poor and backwards compared to the Soviet Union, the United States, Japan, or Western Europe. Fairly significant economic growth in 1962-1966 was wiped out by the Cultural Revolution. Other critics of Mao fault him for not encouraging birth control and for creating an unnecessary demographic bump by encouraging the masses, "The more people, the more power", which later Chinese leaders forcibly responded to with the controversial one-child policy.


text: The ideology surrounding Mao's interpretation of Marxism–Leninism, also known as Maoism, was codified into China's Constitution as a guiding ideology. Internationally, it has influenced many communists around the world, including third world revolutionary movements such as Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Peru's Shining Path and the revolutionary movement in Nepal. In practice, "Mao Zedong Thought" is defunct inside China aside from anecdotes about the CCP's legitimacy and China's revolutionary origins. Of those that remain, Some of Mao's followers regard the Deng Xiaoping reforms to be a betrayal of Mao's legacy.


title: Central Visayas

text: Central Visayas (; ) is an administrative region in the Philippines, numerically designated as Region VII. It consists of four provinces: (Cebu, Bohol, Negros Oriental, and Siquijor) and three highly urbanized cities: Cebu City, Lapu-Lapu, and Mandaue).


title: Central Visayas

text: Major islands are the eponymous Cebu, Bohol, and Siquijor, together with the eastern part of Negros. The regional center and largest city is Cebu City. The region is dominated by the native speakers of four Visayan languages: Cebuano, Bantayanon, Boholano, and Porohanon. The land area of the region is , and with a population of 8,081,988 inhabitants, it is the second most populous region in the Visayas.


title: Central Visayas

text: On May 29, 2015, the region was redefined, when Central Visayas (Region VII) lost the province of Negros Oriental to the newly formed Negros Island Region. However, the region was dissolved, with Negros Oriental returned to Central Visayas on August 9, 2017.


title: Central Visayas

text: The name of the region was mostly chosen by American colonists to denote the centrality of the islands within the bigger Visayas area. There have been proposals to rename the current Central Visayas region, which is dominated by the Cebuano (Sugbuanon) ethnic group, to Sugbu region, the former name of the region prior to Spanish colonization in the 16th century. The name refers to the former kingdom of the region, the Rajahnate of Cebu, or Sugbu in Cebuano.


title: Central Visayas

text: Regions first came into existence on September 24, 1972, when the provinces of the Philippines were organized into 11 regions by "Presidential Decree No. 1" as part of the "Integrated Reorganization Plan" by President Ferdinand Marcos. The provinces of Cebu, Bohol, and Negros Oriental (including its then-subprovince of Siquijor) were grouped together to form the Central Visayas region.


title: Central Visayas

text: By virtue of Executive Order No. 183 issued on May 29, 2015, by President Benigno Aquino III, the province of Negros Oriental was removed from Central Visayas to form the Negros Island Region along with Negros Occidental and its provincial capital, Bacolod. But later Negros Oriental and its capital, Dumaguete City back into Central Visayas on August 9, 2017, when President Rodrigo Duterte dissolved the Negros Island Region, revoking Executive Order No. 183, s. 2015 by signing Executive Order No. 38, citing lack of funds to fully establish the NIR, according to Benjamin Diokno, then Secretary of Budget and Management.


title: Central Visayas

text: Central Visayas consists of the two major island provinces of Cebu and Bohol, as well as the smaller island of Siquijor and several outlying islands. It also includes the eastern half of the larger island of Negros. The straits of Cebu and Tañon are also part of the region as well. The region is bordered to the north by the Visayan Sea, west by the province of Negros Occidental in Western Visayas, south by the Bohol Sea, and east by the Camotes Sea and the island of Leyte in Eastern Visayas.


title: Central Visayas

text: According to the 2020 census, it had a population of 8,081,988. The population density was . The 2015 census showed an average annual population growth rate of 1.76% from 2010 to 2015, slightly higher than the national average of 1.72%.


title: Central Visayas

text: The Port of Cebu is the region's main gateway. There are also ports in Tagbilaran in Bohol, Larena in Siquijor, and Sibulan and Dumaguete, both in Negros Oriental. Inter-island shipping is served by numerous shipping lines, two of them fastcraft companies which serve all the provinces in the region.


title: Central Visayas

text: The Mactan–Cebu International Airport, located in Lapu-Lapu City, is the country's second busiest airport (after Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Metro Manila) and one of the only three airports in the Visayas serving international flights (aside from Kalibo International Airport and Iloilo International Airport). It is the primary airline hub of Cebu Pacific, and secondary hub for Philippine Airlines and its subsidiaries, with flights to locations throughout the country. It also serves international flights to other Asian and intercontinental destinations.


title: Central Visayas

text: Other airports in the region are Bohol-Panglao International Airport which serves Tagbilaran and the rest of Bohol, and Sibulan Airport which serves Dumaguete and the rest of Negros Oriental.


title: Central Visayas

text: Cebu City is the main media hub for both the region. Large media networks – ABS-CBN, GMA Network, TV5, People's Television Network, CNN Philippines, and IBC 13 – maintain their respective local stations and branches for viewership, commercial and news coverage purposes. Most of these stations broadcast local news and public affairs as well as entertainment and dramas to cater the local viewers.


title: Central Visayas

text: Aside from the 24 national daily newspapers available, Cebu City also has 20 local newspapers. Among the widely read are Sun.Star Cebu, Cebu Daily News, and The Freeman. The country's main Islamic news journal, The Voice of Islam, was founded in 1961 and published in this city.


title: Rajmohan Gandhi

text: Rajmohan Gandhi (born 7 August 1935) is an Indian biographer, historian, and research professor at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US. His paternal grandfather is Mahatma Gandhi, and his maternal grandfather is Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari. He is also a scholar in residence at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar.


title: Rajmohan Gandhi

text: Rajmohan Gandhi was born 7 August 1935 in New Delhi, to Devdas and Lakshmi Gandhi. His father was the managing editor of the "Hindustan Times". Rajmohan Gandhi attended St. Stephen's College. His maternal grandfather was C. Rajagopalachari, second Governor General of India, after Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was one of the foremost associates of Mahatma Gandhi.


title: Rajmohan Gandhi

text: Associated from 1956 with Initiatives of Change (formerly known as Moral Re-Armament), Rajmohan Gandhi has been engaged for half a century in efforts for trust-building, reconciliation and democracy and in battles against corruption and inequalities.


title: Rajmohan Gandhi

text: In the 1960s and early 1970s, Gandhi played a leading role in establishing Asia Plateau, the conference centre of Initiatives of Change in Panchgani, in the mountains of western India. Asia Plateau has been recognized in the Indian subcontinent for its ecological contribution. During the 1975–1977 Emergency in India, he was active for democratic rights personally and through his weekly journal, "Himmat", published in Bombay from 1964 to 1981.


title: Rajmohan Gandhi

text: His book, "A Tale of Two Revolts: India 1857 & the American Civil War" (New Delhi: Penguin India, December 2009), studies two 19th-century wars occurring in opposite parts of the world at almost the same time. His previous book, a biography of his grandfather Mahatma Gandhi, "Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire", received the Biennial Award from the Indian History Congress in 2007. It has since been published in several countries.


title: Rajmohan Gandhi

text: In 2002, Gandhi received the Sahitya Akademi Award for "Rajaji: A Life, a Biography of Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (1878–1972)", about his maternal grandfather and a leading figure in India's independence movement, who became the first Indian Governor General, 1948–1950.


title: Rajmohan Gandhi

text: His other works include "Ghaffar Khan: Nonviolent Badshah of the Pakhtuns" (Penguin 2004); "Revenge & Reconciliation: Understanding South Asian History" (Penguin, 1999); "Patel: A Life, a Biography of Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950)", Deputy Prime Minister of India, 1947-50 (Navajivan, Ahmedabad, 1990); and "Eight Lives: A Study of the Hindu-Muslim Encounter" (SUNY, 1987). One of his earlier books, "The Good Boatman: A Portrait of Gandhi", was published in 2009 in a Chinese translation in Beijing. Most recently, Gandhi has published a book titled, "Punjab" (Aleph Book Company 2013), which is a historical account of undivided Punjab, from the death of Aurangzeb to the Partition.


title: Rajmohan Gandhi

text: Before teaching at the University of Illinois, he served as a research professor with the New Delhi think-tank, Centre for Policy Research. From 1985 to 1987, he edited the daily "Indian Express" in Madras (now Chennai). In 2004. he received the International Humanitarian Award (Human Rights) from the city of Champaign, Illinois, and in 1997, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of law from the University of Calgary, and an honorary doctorate of philosophy from Obirin University, Tokyo. He currently serves as a Jury Member for the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award and co-chair of the Centre for Dialogue & Reconciliation in Gurgaon. In 2019 he was a contributor to "A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue Between East and West ("Gingko Library).


title: Rajmohan Gandhi

text: In 1989, Gandhi unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha election from Janata Dal against Rajiv Gandhi in Amethi. He served (1990–92) in the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Indian Parliament) and led the Indian delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva in 1990. In the Indian Parliament he was the convener of the all-party joint committee of both houses addressing the condition of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.


title: Rajmohan Gandhi

text: On 21 February 2014, he joined the Aam Aadmi Party. He contested the 2014 general election from the East Delhi constituency and lost.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: Mind Games is the fourth studio album by English musician John Lennon. It was recorded at Record Plant Studios in New York in summer 1973. The album was released in the US on 29 October 1973 and in the UK on 16 November 1973. It was Lennon's first self-produced recording without help from Phil Spector. Like his previous album, the politically topical and somewhat abrasive "Some Time in New York City", "Mind Games" received mixed reviews upon release. It reached number 13 in the UK and number 9 in the US, where it was certified gold.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: The album was recorded while Lennon was having difficulties with US immigration and at the beginning of his 18-month separation from Yoko Ono. The title track was released as a single at the same time as the album. The album itself was later reissued several times throughout the 1970s and 1980s.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: By the start of 1973, John Lennon began distancing himself from the political and social issues he had embraced in the previous 18 months. It was also around this time that he and his wife, Yoko Ono, were going through marital problems. As Ono was completing her fourth album, "Feeling the Space", Lennon decided he also wanted to record a new album, and liked the studio musicians that their assistant and production coordinator May Pang had assembled for Ono's album. Shortly thereafter, he asked Pang to book them for his sessions. Wanting to produce an album that would be more accepted than his previous politically charged commercial flop "Some Time in New York City", Lennon began writing and demoing a few songs for "Mind Games" in his Greenwich Village apartment. He began composing after a period of almost a year of not writing any material.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: Amid frequent court appearances battling to stay in the United States, Lennon became stressed, a situation that was only worsened by constant surveillance by the FBI, due to his political activism. Lennon said, "I just couldn't function, you know? I was so paranoid from them tappin' the phone and followin' me." All this combined made Lennon begin to feel emotionally withdrawn. Lennon put his suffering aside to write the songs for "Mind Games", writing all the songs for it in a week.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: Under the moniker of "The Plastic U.F.Ono Band", Lennon engaged the services of session drummer Jim Keltner, guitarist David Spinozza, Gordon Edwards on bass, Arthur Jenkins on percussion, Michael Brecker on saxophone, Ken Ascher on piano and organ, and the vocal backing of a group called Something Different. Difficulties between Lennon and Ono became more and more noticeable around this time. Just as the sessions were to get under way in June at New York's Record Plant Studios, John and Yoko separated. At Ono's urging, Pang became Lennon's companion and lover in what would become an 18-month relationship later renowned as Lennon's "lost weekend".


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: "Mind Games" was recorded between July and August 1973 in Lennon's characteristic quick fashion, and was mixed over a two-week period. Lennon produced the album by himself, following his previous three-year partnership with Phil Spector. When the album was remixed in 2002, many audio anomalies hidden in the original mixing were uncovered. Some rough mixes appear on bootlegs and on 1997's "John Lennon Anthology".


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: The album continued Lennon's previous attempts to chronicle his life through his songs, the tone of which displays a range of mixed feelings. Among the sombre and melodic songs directed to Ono, "Aisumasen (I'm Sorry)" was originally titled "Call My Name", a song in which Lennon was offering to comfort someone, whereas the final version sees him asking for forgiveness. In "One Day (At a Time)", Lennon sings about his devotion to Ono. "Out the Blue" also reflects Lennon's devotion to his wife, and reflects its author's self-doubt as a result of their separation. "Out the Blue" incorporates several musical genres, starting with a gentle, melancholy acoustic guitar and moving through gospel, country and choral music portions. Another love song, "You Are Here" took its title from Lennon's one-off art exhibition at the Robert Fraser Gallery. By the time of the "Mind Games" sessions, the composition had gone through several different themes, before Lennon settled on the theme of love and peace. The original master take of "You Are Here" featured an extra verse, that was about Japan and England.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: Other songs on the album are more light-hearted and optimistic, marking the return of Lennon's humour and wit after the uncompromising doctrine espoused on "Some Time in New York City". These tracks include "Intuition", in which Lennon relates how life experience has honed his instincts and how it's good to have gotten through it. While demoing the song on piano in early 1973, with the lyrics still incomplete, he added a few lines from two previously released tracks – "How?", from "Imagine" (1971), and "God", from "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" (1970). "Only People" reflects his and Ono's personal philosophy. Lennon later said that it failed as a song, however; in an interview with "Playboy", he remarked: "It was a good lick, but I couldn't get the words to make sense."


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: Also appearing on "Mind Games" are songs that indulged Lennon's affinity for pure rock 'n' roll, such as "Tight A$", the title of which was a pun on the expressions "tight as" and "tight ass". The track is in the rockabilly style with a 1950s sound, along the lines of songs that inspired Lennon in his youth. Another rock track, "Meat City" contains lyrics more in keeping with Lennon's earlier penchant for obscure imagery over the personal. The song was a boogie piece until late in 1971, when it began to take its final form, although with improvised lyrics. By late 1972, Lennon had rewritten the words and finished developing the melody.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: The song "Mind Games", with its "love is the answer" refrain and call to "make love not war", recalls Lennon's work with the Beatles in 1967. He started writing the track during the band's "Get Back" sessions, in early 1969, with the title "Make Love, Not War". Lennon finished it after reading the book "Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space". Lennon had recorded demos of the retitled "Mind Games" on 28 and 29 December 1970, at his home studio, Ascot Sound Studios.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: "Bring on the Lucie (Freda Peeple)" dated from late 1971, having started out as little more than a chorus, after Lennon acquired a National guitar. Once he had worked on the lyrics, the song went from a simple political slogan to a full-blown statement that hints at his earlier work, such as "Imagine" and "Power to the People". "Only People" and the three-second silent "Nutopian International Anthem" were the only political tracks on the album. The latter referred to "Nutopia: The Country of Peace", a conceptual country which the Lennons had announced at a press conference in New York City on April Fool's Day 1973. "I Know (I Know)" features lyrics in which Lennon apologises for his thoughtlessness and discusses the causes of his insecurity. On some of the rough mixes available on bootlegs, the time-consuming overdubbing on the song is apparent, as Lennon gradually refined the arrangement. The final track on "Mind Games", "Meat City" contains a Lennon curse, "Fuck a pig!", sped up and backwards, while the mix used as the B-side to the "Mind Games" single gave the same treatment to the phrase "Check the album!"


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: "Rock and Roll People" was also recorded during the album's sessions and given to Johnny Winter for his "John Dawson Winter III" album. Lennon's version remained unreleased until 1986's posthumous "Menlove Ave." album.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: Tony King, vice-president of Apple Records in Los Angeles at the time, convinced Lennon to promote "Mind Games", arranging interviews for Lennon with "Billboard" and "Record World". He also persuaded Lennon to do a television commercial in which King dressed up as the Queen of the United Kingdom and waltzed with Lennon (the commercial session can be seen in the 1988 film ""). King reprised his role as the Queen for two radio spots promoting the album.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: Lennon created the "Mind Games" album cover himself, hand-cutting the photos. The front and back covers are similar; on the back sleeve Lennon is more toward the foreground, representing his symbolic walking away from Ono and her apparent mountainous influence on him.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: "Mind Games" was released on 29 October in America and 16 November in Britain, around the same time as Ono's "Feeling the Space". Apple Records issued the title track as a single, with the release dates matching those of the album in the US and UK. The single reached number 26 in the UK, and peaked at number 18 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the US. The album charted at number 13 in the UK and peaked at number 9 on "Billboard"s Top LP's listings. Although "Mind Games" sold better than "Some Time in New York City", its release "came and went with barely a ripple", according to Beatles biographer Chris Ingham. Author Peter Doggett similarly writes that the album "did nothing to alter [Lennon's] status as the least commercially successful Beatle".


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: Jon Landau of "Rolling Stone" magazine assessed the songs on "Mind Games" as "his worst writing yet" and considered that Lennon was "helplessly trying to impose his own gargantuan ego upon an audience ... [that] is waiting hopefully for him to chart a new course". While finding the music "listenable", Landau identified the album's lyrics as "misguided in so underrating his audience's intelligence" and added: "But then, perhaps Lennon's didacticism, preaching and banality are part of the mind game of the album's title..." More impressed, "Melody Maker"s Ray Coleman found that "The raw nerves of a Lennon battered by America's curious logic and sheer hard-heartedness seem to have spurred him to write incisively..." Coleman concluded of "Mind Games": "Musically or melodically this may not be a stand-out album, but if you warm to the rasping voice of Lennon and, like me, regard him as the true fulcrum of much of what came from his old group, then like any new Lennon album, it will be enjoyable and even important." In "Creem" magazine, Robert Christgau described the album as "a step in the right direction... but only a step. It sounds like out-takes from "Imagine", which may not seem so bad but means that Lennon is falling back on ideas (intellectual and musical) that have lost their freshness for him: Still, the single works, and let's hope he keeps right on stepping."


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: Writing in their 1975 book "", "NME" journalists Roy Carr and Tony Tyler opined that "Mind Games" "bears all the hallmarks of being made without any definite objective in mind – other than to redeem the unpleasantness of "Some Time In New York City"". While noting the singer's attempts to re-create "the lyricism and melodic inventiveness" of "Imagine", Carr and Tyler continued: "The reason the total album is not more effective can be laid at the door of Lennon's personal situation, and on his tendency to "react" to events, instead of "initiating" them." In "The Beatles Apart" (1981), Bob Woffinden considered that, aside from the "excellent" title track and "Bring on the Lucie", "Mind Games" "consisted of so-so songs that hardly lodged in the memory", and that "The best one can say of the album is that it's exceptionally well produced."


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: In a more recent review, for AllMusic, critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes that "confusion... lies at the heart of the album. Lennon doesn't know which way to go, so he tries everything." Erlewine adds: "While the best numbers are among Lennon's finest, there's only a handful of them, and the remainder of the record is simply pleasant."


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: Lennon himself later said: "The Mind Games single is fine, but there's just no energy to sustain through the album and there's no clarity of vision. That cover says more than the record to me."


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: The album was reissued in the US on Capitol Records in 1978 and 1980, with the latter being a budget reissue. In the UK, the album was reissued on EMI's budget label, Music for Pleasure (MFP), on 28 November 1980, featuring a different album cover. After Lennon's death in December 1980, the album, along with seven other Lennon albums, was reissued by EMI as part of a box set, which was released in the UK on 15 June 1981. It was first issued on CD on 3 August 1987, this time on the Parlophone label, and several months later on 22 March 1988 in the US on the Capitol label.


title: Mind Games (John Lennon album)

text: In 2002, a remixing of "Mind Games" for its remastered reissue, containing three previously unreleased demo recordings, was overseen by Allan Rouse, which was released on 21 October 2002 in the UK, and almost a month later in the US, on 5 November 2002. It was reissued again by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab in 2004 on CD and LP. In 2010, the original mix was remastered as part of the re-release of Lennon's entire catalogue, the album was available separately or as part of the "John Lennon Signature Box".


title: Powdery mildew

text: Powdery mildew is a fungal disease that affects a wide range of plants. Powdery mildew diseases are caused by many different species of ascomycete fungi in the order Erysiphales. Powdery mildew is one of the easier plant diseases to identify, as its symptoms are quite distinctive. Infected plants display white powdery spots on the leaves and stems. The lower leaves are the most affected, but the mildew can appear on any above-ground part of the plant. As the disease progresses, the spots get larger and denser as large numbers of asexual spores are formed, and the mildew may spread up and down the length of the plant.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Powdery mildew grows well in environments with high humidity and moderate temperatures. Greenhouses provide an ideal moist, temperate environment for the spread of the disease. This causes harm to agricultural and horticultural practices where powdery mildew may thrive in a greenhouse setting. In an agricultural or horticultural setting, the pathogen can be controlled using chemical methods, bio organic methods, and genetic resistance. It is important to be aware of powdery mildew and its management as the resulting disease can significantly reduce important crop yields.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Powdery mildew fungi can only reproduce on their living cell host and reproduce both sexually and asexually. Sexual reproduction is via chasmothecia (formerly cleistothecium), a type of ascocarp where the genetic material recombines. Powdery mildew fungi must be adapted to their hosts to be able to infect them. Within each ascocarp are several asci.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Under optimal conditions, ascospores mature and are released to initiate new infections. Conditions necessary for spore maturation differ among species. Asexual reproduction is where the mother fungi and offspring are genetically identical. Powder mildew fungi offspring of wheat and barley species are more successful from asexual reproduction compared to sexual reproduction counterparts.


title: Powdery mildew

text: The overwintering survival structure produced by the powdery mildew fungi is called the chasmothecia. This is a round, dark, hard resting structure. Because of these characteristics, spores are able to survive throughout the winter and be released in the spring for new infection.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Powdery mildew does not need a vector to spread. Spores are usually carried by air currents from a proliferation site to a new infection site.


title: Powdery mildew

text: In an agricultural setting, the pathogen can be controlled using chemical methods, genetic resistance, and careful farming methods.


title: Powdery mildew

text: You can look for powdery mildew resistant varieties in seed catalogs and alternate between resistance varieties and not. This rotation of sunflower varieties prevents pathogen resistance.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Standard fungicides are an effective way to manage powdery mildew disease on plants. Spray programs of conventional fungicides are advised to begin when powdery mildew symptoms and signs are first noticed. Conventional fungicides should be applied on a regular basis for best results against the disease.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Control is possible with triadimefon and propiconazole. It is also possible with hexaconazole, myclobutanil, and penconazole.


title: Powdery mildew

text: The most effective non-conventional methods of chemical control against powdery mildew are milk, natural sulfur (S), potassium bicarbonate, metal salts, and oils.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Metal salt fungicides should be applied on a regular basis up until harvest of the host. Sulfur must be applied before the disease has emerged since it prevents fungi spores from germinating. Copper sulfate is an effective fungicide allowed in organic farming, but can cause harm to the host plant. Addition of lime hampers this effect.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Neem oil effectively manages powdery mildew on many plants by interfering with the fungus' metabolism and terminating spore production. Sulfur and Fish Oil + Sesame Oil is a mixture effective against powdery mildew.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Milk has long been popular with home gardeners and small-scale organic growers as a treatment for powdery mildew. Milk is diluted with water (typically 1:10) and sprayed on susceptible plants at the first sign of infection, or as a preventative measure, with repeated weekly application often controlling or eliminating the disease. Studies have shown milk's effectiveness as comparable to some conventional fungicides, and better than benomyl and fenarimol at higher concentrations. Milk has proven effective in treating powdery mildew of summer squash, pumpkins, grapes, and roses. The exact mechanism of action is unknown, but one known effect is that ferroglobulin, a protein in whey, produces oxygen radicals when exposed to sunlight, and contact with these radicals is damaging to the fungus.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Dilute sprays containing sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and vegetable or mineral oils in water are often recommended for controlling powdery mildew, but such mixtures have limited and inconsistent efficacy. While sodium bicarbonate has been shown to reduce to growth of mildews in lab tests, sprays containing only baking soda and water are not effective in controlling fungal diseases on infected plants, and high concentrations of sodium are harmful to plants.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Another non-conventional chemical treatment involves treating with a solution of calcium silicate. Silicon helps the plant cells defend against fungal attack by degrading haustoria and by producing callose and papilla. With silicon treatment, epidermal cells of wheat are less susceptible to powdery mildew.


title: Powdery mildew

text: The Pm3 allele is an effective genetic resistance strategy that protects host species against powdery mildew fungus.


title: Powdery mildew

text: In 2014, researchers Yanpeng Wang et al. have reported that they were able to induce resistance in hexaploid bread wheat to powdery mildew via targeted mutations with the use of CRISPR and TALENS gene-editing technology.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Sunflower powdery mildew is a disease caused by the pathogens "Golovinomyces cichoracearum", "Podosphaera xanthii", and "Leviellula taurica". The symptoms caused by "L. taurica" differ from the other pathogen symptoms. Green-yellow spots appear on upper leaf surface.


title: Powdery mildew

text: "Blumeria graminis" f. sp. "tritici", causes powdery mildew of wheat, whereas f. sp. "hordei" causes powdery mildew of barley.


title: Powdery mildew

text: The fungus causing powdery mildew of onions is "Leveillula taurica" (also known by its anamorph name, "Oidiopsis taurica"). It also infects the artichoke.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Multiple species of fungus can cause powdery mildew of cucurbits: cucumbers, squashes (including pumpkins), luffas, melons, and watermelons.


title: Powdery mildew

text: "Podosphaera xanthii" (a.k.a. "Sphaerotheca fuliginea") is the most commonly reported cause on cucurbits. "Erysiphe cichoracearum" was formerly reported to be the primary causal organism throughout most of the world.


title: Powdery mildew

text: Since 1925, commercial "Cucumis melo" (cantaloup and muskmelon) production has been engaged in a biological "arms race" against cucurbit powdery mildew (CPM) caused by the fungus "Podosphaera xanthii", with new cultivars of melons being developed for resistance to successively arising races of the fungus, identified simply as race 1, race 2, etc. (seven in total by 2004), for races found around the world, and race N1 through N4 for some divergent races native to Japan. Various subraces have been identified, and given names such as race 2U.S., race 3.5, and race 4.5. A new race S was discovered in 2003, and a specific melon cultivar ("C. melo" var. "acidulus" 'PI 313970') found resistant to it, then used for backcrossing to increase resistance in other cultivars. Such modern selective breeding of plants for phytopathological resistance to particular fungal races involves a great deal of genetic research; this PI 313970 versus race S case involved multi-stage hybridization to propagate a recessive gene, "pm-S" in successive generations, and how this may affect other recessive and codominant genes for resistance to other races of "P. xanthii" "remains to be determined".


title: Powdery mildew

text: A 2004 literature review regarding powdery mildew races that parasitize various cucurbit plants concluded that "race identification is important for basic research and is especially important for the commercial seed industry, which requires accuracy in declaring the type and level of resistance ... in its products". However, identifying specific races was seen as having little utility in horticulture for choosing specific cultivars, because of the rapidity with which the local pathogen population can change geographically, seasonally, and by host plant.


title: Powdery mildew

text: At least three other Erysiphaceae fungi can cause powdery mildew in cucurbits: The most frequent, after "P. xanthii", is "Erysiphe cichoracearum", the former primary causal organism throughout most of the world. "Podosphaera fusca" is another, sometimes considered synonymous with "P. xanthii". Cucumbers in greenhouse environments have also been reported to be susceptible to "Leveillula taurica".


title: Powdery mildew

text: "Podosphaera aphanis" is the cause of powdery mildew in strawberries and other Rosaceae like "Geum rivale" (the water avens)


title: Powdery mildew

text: "Sawadaea tulasnei" is a fungus that causes powdery mildew on tree leaves. This fungus attacks the leaves of the "Acer platanoides" (Norway maple) in North America, Great Britain, and Ireland, "Acer palmatum" (also known as the Japanese maple or smooth Japanese maple).


title: Powdery mildew

text: Caused by several fungi including "Golovinomyces ambrosiae" (syn. "G. spadiceus") and "Podosphaera macularis". See also .


title: Powdery mildew

text: In the family Sphaeropsidaceae of the Sphaeropsidales fungi, species of the genus "Cicinnobolus" are hyperparasites of powdery mildew.


title: Powdery mildew

text: "Ampelomyces quisqualis" is an anamorphic fungus that is a hyperparasite of powdery mildews. This parasitism reduces growth and may eventually kill the mildew. Research on biological control of powdery mildews (especially in high-value crops such as grapes) has been ongoing since the 1970s, resulting in the development of fungicides which contain "A. quisqualis" as the active ingredient.


Various entities present a National Football League Rookie of the Year Award each season to the top rookie(s) in the National Football League (NFL). The NFL considers the (rookie) of the year awards by the Associated Press (AP) to be its official honor. The AP awards and Pepsi's rookie of the year award are presented each year at the NFL Honors.


title: National Football League Rookie of the Year Award

text: Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Year is an award given to the best performing rookie player in the National Football League (NFL). It was first awarded in 2002 and is sponsored by Pepsi. Winners are chosen among five finalists tallied from total votes given to Pepsi NFL Rookie of the Week winners by an online vote on the NFL's official website. The award is sometimes named after other varieties of Pepsi, such as Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Zero.


text: The Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA) Rookie of the Year awards have been given annually to an offensive and defensive rookie in the NFL since 1969, except in 1985. In 2013, PFWA began selecting an overall NFL rookie of the year in addition to its offensive and defensive honors. The winners are chosen by "Pro Football Weekly" writers/editors and PFWA members.


text: The "Sporting News" NFL Rookie of the Year award is chosen annually by NFL players, coaches, and executives. There were 617 voters in 2010, 632 voters in 2011, and over 800 voters in 2012.


text: United Press International (UPI) awarded an annual NFL Rookie of the Year award from 1955 to 1959 and two annual awards from 1960 to 1996. From 1960 to 1969 the awards went to a rookie from the NFL and American Football League (AFL), and after the AFL–NFL merger in 1970, the awards went to a rookie from the National Football Conference (NFC) and American Football Conference (AFC).


text: The NEA NFL Rookie of the Year award was founded in 1964 by the Newspaper Enterprise Association and was created by Murray Olderman, the senior sports editor for the NEA. From 1971 through 1976 winners for both the American Football Conference and National Football Conference were chosen, except in 1974. The award was discontinued after the 1996 season. Winners were awarded the Bert Bell Memorial Trophy in honor of former NFL commissioner Bert Bell.


title: Dinar

text: The dinar () is the principal currency unit in several countries near the Mediterranean Sea, and its historical use is even more widespread.


title: Dinar

text: The modern dinar's historical antecedents are the gold dinar and the silver dirham, the main coin of the medieval Islamic empires, first issued in AH 77 (696–697 CE) by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan. The word "dinar" derives from the Latin ""dēnārius"," a silver coin of ancient Rome, which was first minted about c.211 BCE.


title: Dinar

text: The English word "dinar" is the transliteration of the Arabic دينار ("dīnār"), which was borrowed via the Syriac "dīnarā", itself from the Latin "dēnārius".


title: Dinar

text: The Kushan Empire introduced a gold coin known as the "dīnāra" into India in the 1st century AD; the Gupta Empire and its successors up to the 6th century adopted the coin. The modern gold dinar is a projected bullion gold coin, not issued as official currency by any state.


title: Dinar

text: The 8th century English king Offa of Mercia minted copies of Abbasid dinars struck in 774 by Caliph Al-Mansur with "Offa Rex" centred on the reverse. The moneyer visibly had no understanding of Arabic as the Arabic text contains many errors. Such coins may have been produced for trade with Islamic Spain. These coins are called a Mancus, which is also derived from the Arabic language.


title: Mark L. Walberg

text: Mark L. Walberg (born August 31, 1962) is an American actor, television personality, and game show host best known for hosting "Antiques Roadshow", "Temptation Island", and the game shows "Russian Roulette" on GSN and "The Moment of Truth" on Fox.


title: Mark L. Walberg

text: From September 1995 to May 1996, Walberg hosted his own American syndicated tabloid talk show, "The Mark Walberg Show".


title: Mark L. Walberg

text: Walberg is on the board of directors of Goodwill Southern California and the board of managers of the Hollywood/Wilshire YMCA. He plays on the World Poker Tour in the Hollywood Home Games for the Goodwill Industries of Southern California.


title: Mark L. Walberg

text: On the series finale episode (and also as an April Fools Day episode, as in which he is also a contestant in "Lingo", playing for charity) on April 1, 2003, Walberg hosted "Friend or Foe?". His other game shows included "Russian Roulette", also on Game Show Network, who also appeared as an audience member in the April fools episode as a cameo, and the PAX-TV game show "On the Cover".


title: Mark L. Walberg

text: He was slated to host a game show adaptation of the popular board game "" beginning in fall 2008. Although he hosted the pilot, he was unable to get out of his Fox contract and was replaced by Christopher Knight when the series debuted.


title: Mark L. Walberg

text: Walberg was the host of two television shows. In 2006, he joined the long-running PBS series, "Antiques Roadshow". While staying with the show through many changes in formatting, he left the show after season 23 in 2019. "The Game Plane", the first game show which is shot on an airplane in flight, debuted on Discovery Family channel in 2014.


title: Bill Clinton sexual assault and misconduct allegations

text: Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001), has been publicly accused of sexual assault and/or sexual misconduct by several women: Juanita Broaddrick accused Clinton of raping her in 1978; Leslie Millwee accused Clinton of sexually assaulting her in 1980; Paula Jones accused Clinton of exposing himself to her in 1991 as well as sexually harassing her; and Kathleen Willey accused Clinton of groping her without her consent in 1993. The Jones allegations became public in 1994, during Clinton's first term as president, while Willey's and Broaddrick's accusations became public in 1999, toward the end of Clinton's second term. Millwee made her accusations in 2016.


text: Clinton has denied all four accusations and responded by casting doubt on the credibility of the accusers. In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases in 2017 and the many other such cases that emerged in the aftermath, the allegations against Clinton received renewed attention.


text: In a 1999 episode of "Dateline NBC", former Bill Clinton campaign volunteer Juanita Broaddrick alleged that, in the late 1970s, Clinton raped her in her hotel room. According to Broaddrick, she agreed to meet with Clinton for coffee in the lobby of her hotel, but Clinton asked if they could go to her room to avoid a crowd of reporters; she agreed. Broaddrick stated that once Clinton had isolated her in her hotel room, he raped her. Broaddrick stated Clinton injured her lip by biting it during the assault. In 1999, Clinton denied Broaddrick's allegations through his lawyer.


text: Supporters of Clinton have questioned her account by noting that, when Broaddrick testified about her alleged encounter with Clinton under oath, she denied having been raped by him. In her NBC interview alleging rape, Broaddrick said that she had only denied being raped under oath to protect her privacy. Supporters of Clinton have also noted that she continued to support him, and appear at public events on his behalf, weeks after the alleged rape, and that Broaddrick said that she couldn't remember the day or month the alleged incident occurred. Broaddrick has stated that in 1978 she revealed the alleged assault to five intimates, and that they advised her not to cause trouble for herself by going public.


text: In October 2016, Leslie Millwee accused Bill Clinton of sexually assaulting her three times in 1980. Millwee was then an employee at a now-defunct Arkansas based television station, and Clinton was then governor of Arkansas. Millwee told "Breitbart News" that on each of the three occasions, Clinton came up behind her and fondled her breasts, and on the second occasion, he rubbed his crotch against her and came to orgasm.


text: According to Paula Jones' account, on May 8, 1991, she was escorted to Clinton's hotel room in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he propositioned and exposed himself to her. She claimed she kept quiet about the incident until 1994, when a David Brock story in the "American Spectator" magazine printed an account. In 1994, Jones and her attorneys, Joseph Cammarata and Gilbert Davis, filed a federal lawsuit against Clinton alleging sexual harassment. In the discovery stage of the suit, Jones' lawyers had the opportunity to question Clinton under oath about his sexual history; in the course of this testimony, Clinton denied having had a sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, a denial that, after his affair with Lewinsky was subsequently exposed, eventually led to his impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice.


text: Several witnesses disputed Jones' account, including her sister and brother-in-law. These witnesses contended that she had described her encounter with Clinton as "happy" and "gentle". In addition, Jones had claimed to friends that Clinton had a particular deformity on his penis, a claim that was revealed to be false by investigators.


text: However, legal analyst Stuart Taylor Jr. wrote a 15,000 word piece in the November 1996 issue of The American Lawyer defending the merits of the case, which included a large number of contemporaneous witnesses to whom Jones had confided at that time, and asking why the national media had not treated her accusations more seriously. Taylor's article led to numerous media organizations revisiting the case, and indicating that it indeed had merit.


text: In April 1998, the case was dismissed by judge Susan Webber Wright as lacking legal merit. However, Jones appealed Webber Wright's ruling, and her suit gained traction following Clinton's admission to having an affair with Monica Lewinsky in August 1998. This admission indicated that Clinton may have lied under oath when he testified in the Jones case that he had never had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.


text: On appeal, in the midst of his trial for impeachment based on his testimony in the Jones case, Clinton was faced with the prospect of having to go under oath again and testify more about his sexual history. Instead, Clinton agreed to an out-of-court settlement, paying Jones and her lawyers $850,000 to drop the suit; the vast majority of this money was used to pay Jones' legal fees. Clinton's lawyer said that the president made the settlement only so he could end the lawsuit for good and move on with his life.


text: In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged Clinton groped her without consent in the White House Oval Office in 1993. Kenneth Starr granted her immunity for her testimony in his separate inquiry.


text: Linda Tripp, the Clinton Administration staffer who secretly taped her phone conversations with Monica Lewinsky in order to expose the latter's affair with the president, testified under oath that Willey's sexual contact with President Clinton in 1993 was consensual, that Willey had been flirting with the president, and that Willey was happy and excited following her 1993 encounter with Clinton. Six other friends of Willey confirmed Tripp's account in sworn testimony, stating that Willey had sought a sexual relationship with the president. Ken Starr, who had deposed Willey in the course of investigating Clinton's sexual history, determined that she had lied under oath repeatedly to his investigators. Starr and his team therefore concluded that there was insufficient evidence to pursue her allegations further. In 2007, Willey published a book about her experiences with the Clintons.


text: In April 1998, "Inside Edition" reported that Cristy Zercher, a former flight attendant, had accused Clinton of groping and fondling her on a 1992 campaign flight while his wife Hillary was sleeping nearby. A release announcing the results of Zercher's polygraph test stated that she had negative ratings for truthfulness on four questions asked the week prior.


text: In 1999, Eileen Wellstone reiterated to reporters that she had accused Clinton of sexually assaulting her in 1969, when they were students at Oxford. Wellstone filed a complaint with the university, but no charges were brought against Clinton.


text: A campaign staffer, Sandra Allen James, accused Clinton of sexually assaulting her in his hotel room in 1991. She claimed that he exposed himself to her and forced her to conduct oral sex on him while they were sitting on the couch.


text: A former professor from the University of Arkansas claimed Clinton had groped a female student and tried to trap her in his office when he was a professor. This would later be backed up by a piece written by Daniel Harris and Teresa Hampton, which alleged that students at the university confirmed that Clinton had tried to force himself on them when he was a professor.


text: Karen Hinton, who served in the Clinton administration under the HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, told journalist Michael Isikoff that Clinton had harassed her at a fundraiser in 1984. Hinton claimed that Clinton had been staring at her and that he wrote down his hotel room number and a question mark on a napkin and gave it to her, which she said made her feel humiliated. Her allegations were published in Isikoff's book "Uncovering Clinton".


text: In November 2017, sources within the Democratic Party told author and former foreign editor of "Newsweek" Edward Klein that Clinton was being accused of sexual assault by 4 women. The plaintiffs alleged that the assaults took place shortly after the end of his presidency in the early 2000s, while they were in their late teens. A member of Clinton's legal team confirmed the existence of new allegations against Clinton.


text: Charges of sexual misconduct on Bill Clinton's part resurfaced during the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. When a lewd recording of Hillary's opponent Donald Trump discussing the ability to grope women when in power was released during the campaign, Broaddrick, Willey, and Jones reemerged as critics of Hillary Clinton, accusing her of enabling her husband's alleged sexual assaults on them. Two days after the release of the recording, they appeared as guests at the second 2016 presidential debate and referenced Bill Clinton in pre-debate statements.


text: Broaddrick's allegations resurfaced early in the campaign. In various media interviews, Broaddrick stated that Bill Clinton raped her and that Hillary Clinton knew about it and tried to threaten Broaddrick into remaining silent. She said that she started giving some interviews in 2015 because she was angered by the hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton's statement that victims of sexual assault should be believed.


text: Clinton has adamantly denied all four accusations. Through his representatives, Clinton has responded to the allegations by casting doubt on the credibility of the accusers, saying that (in the case of Broaddrick and Willey) they previously testified under oath that Clinton never made unwanted advances. Several witnesses close to Willey and Jones have stated that the two women described their encounter with Clinton as consensual. Clinton has admitted extramarital relationships with Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers, both of which have generally been accepted as consensual.


text: When asked in 2018 whether he would have approached the sexual misconduct allegations differently in the wake of the Me Too movement, Clinton said that he would not. When he was asked if he owed Monica Lewinsky a personal apology, Clinton said that he did not.


text: Hillary Clinton has largely remained silent on the topic of the allegations against Bill. In her 2017 memoir "What Happened", Clinton noted that Donald Trump "brought to our second debate three women who had accused my husband of bad acts decades ago", and wrote: "there were times that I was deeply unsure about whether our marriage could or should survive. But on those days, I asked myself the questions that mattered most to me: Do I still love him? And can I still be in this marriage without becoming unrecognizable to myself — twisted by anger, resentment, or remoteness? The answers were always yes. So I kept going."


text: In a 1998 op-ed for "The New York Times" titled "Feminists and the Clinton Question", feminist icon Gloria Steinem was critical of the response to the allegations against Clinton, writing:


text: On the topic of the accusation by Willey against Clinton, Steinem wrote: "He is accused of having made a gross, dumb and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took <nowiki>"</nowiki>no<nowiki>"</nowiki> for an answer", and wrote on the accusation by Jones: "As with the allegations in Ms. Willey's case, Mr. Clinton seems to have made a clumsy sexual pass, then accepted rejection."


text: Steinem's article received some criticism from the media when it was published, including from the "New York Times" itself. Conservative commentator Ann Coulter derided Steinem's understanding of sexual assault as "the boss gets one free grope." Caitlin Flanagan, writing for "The Atlantic" in 2017, described the article as "notorious" and that it "must surely stand as one of the most regretted public actions of [Steinem's] life", saying that the article "slut-shamed, victim-blamed, and age-shamed; it urged compassion for and gratitude to the man the women accused". Flanagan added: "Moreover … it characterized contemporary feminism as a weaponized auxiliary of the Democratic Party."


text: In 2016, on the U.S. television program "The View", co-host Joy Behar referred to Bill Clinton's accusers as "tramps". Behar apologized for the sexual slur shortly afterwards.


text: By late 2017, the allegations against Clinton and his standing within the Democratic Party were being reconsidered. This was prompted as a result of the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations, which quickly triggered the Weinstein effect and the Me Too movement, with liberals and feminists reconsidering their lack of support for the alleging women at the time. Michelle Goldberg wrote that Broaddrick's allegations meant that "Bill Clinton no longer has a place in decent society."


text: Sitting U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who had succeeded Hillary Clinton in the Senate, went so far as to say Clinton should have resigned the presidency over his misconduct. A HuffPost/YouGov survey found that 53 percent of people who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election believed that the accusations against Bill Clinton were credible, while 83 percent of Trump voters found the accusations credible.


text: Some commentators have characterized Clinton's affair with Lewinsky, who was at the time a White House intern, as sexual misconduct because of the vast power imbalance between a president and an intern; Lewinsky was 22 at the time and described the relationship as completely consensual. In 2018, Lewinsky herself began to question her long-standing view that her relationship with Clinton had been consensual, characterizing the relationship as a "gross abuse of power" wherein the power differential between the two was so great that "consent might well be rendered moot." In October 2018, Hillary Clinton stated in an interview on "CBS News Sunday Morning" that Bill's affair with Lewinsky did not constitute an abuse of power because Lewinsky "was an adult".


text: During the 2018 Congressional elections, "The New York Times" alleged that having no Democratic candidate for office asking Clinton to campaign with them was a change that attributed to the revised understanding of the Lewinsky scandal. However, former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile previously urged Clinton in November 2017 to campaign during the 2018 midterm elections, in spite of Kirsten Gillibrand's recent criticism of the Lewinsky scandal.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: Shallow Grave is a 1994 British black comedy crime film directed by Danny Boyle, in his feature directorial debut, and starring Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston, and Kerry Fox. Its plot follows a group of flatmates in Edinburgh who set off a chain of events after dismembering and burying a mysterious new tenant who died and left behind a large sum of money. The film was written by John Hodge, marking his first screenplay.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: The production was funded by Channel 4 Television and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, and the film was distributed by Rank Film Distributors in the UK, while Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International distributed the film in other countries.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: Chartered accountant David Stephens (Eccleston), delivers a monologue to camera about friendship. He shares a flat in Edinburgh with physician Juliet Miller (Fox) and journalist Alex Law (McGregor). Needing a new flatmate, they interview several applicants in a calculatedly cruel manner, amusing themselves at the applicants' expense before finally offering the room to a mysterious man named Hugo (Keith Allen). Shortly after Hugo moves in, the trio finds him dead from an apparent drug overdose in his room, with a large suitcase full of money. They agree to conceal Hugo's death, keep the money for themselves and bury the body in the woods after removing the hands and feet to prevent identification. They draw lots, and David is given the gruesome task of dismembering the corpse, while Juliet disposes of the hands and feet in her hospital's incinerator.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: Unknown to them, Hugo is being sought by a pair of violent men, who are torturing and murdering informants as they follow Hugo's trail. The flat below theirs is broken into, making them anxious. The police, who also notice the intrusion, are surprised when the three deny that they ever had a fourth flatmate. While Juliet and Alex spend part of the money to "feel better", David's fears turn into full-blown paranoia. He hides the suitcase of money in the attic and begins living there, drilling holes in the attic floor to watch the living space below. The relationship between the three becomes increasingly strained and distrustful.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: The men trailing Hugo break into the flat, coercing Alex and Juliet to reveal where the money is. As the men enter the dark attic, David kills both of them with a hammer and returns to the woods to dispose of the bodies. Alex and Juliet become worried about his mental state, and David becomes worried that the two are conspiring against him. With police closing in, Juliet seduces David into getting her the money needed to secretly buy a plane ticket to Rio de Janeiro. Matters come to a head after the three bodies are discovered in the woods, and Alex is sent by his editor to cover the story. Alex returns to find Juliet and David have reached an understanding about their shared plans, which excludes him. Fearing for his life, Alex tries to secretly phone investigators, but he is interrupted by David and Juliet. The confrontation quickly escalates into a violent three-way fight. David reveals that he knows Juliet's secret plan to betray them and punches her, prompting Alex to attack him. During the battle, David stabs Alex in the shoulder, but Juliet kills David before he can finish the job.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: With David dead, Juliet betrays Alex and tells him that he can't come with her. She then forces the knife deeper into Alex's shoulder, pinning him to the floor, before fleeing to the airport with the suitcase of money. At the airport, she discovers that she has been tricked and cries hysterically: the suitcase is not filled with money, but with hundreds of headline clippings about the triple grave taken from Alex's newspaper. Devastated, with no possessions except her plane ticket, and knowing that she will soon be wanted for murder, Juliet boards the plane.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: The police arrive at the flat to find Alex still skewered to the floor and grinning. The camera pans down, following the trajectory of the knife and through the floor of the flat, to reveal that Alex had hidden the missing bundles of cash under the floorboards.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: David finishes the monologue that began the film (which is now revealed to be occurring after he was dead), before a sheet is drawn over his face and his body is slid into a drawer in the morgue.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: In addition, the film's screenwriter, John Hodge, appears in the role of Detective Constable Mitchell, whose main duty appears to be writing: "Make a note of that, Mitchell. ... Write it down."


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: Shooting for "Shallow Grave" lasted for thirty days. The tight budgetary restraints during filming meant many of the props had to be auctioned off for them to afford sufficient film stock.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: Boyle claimed that Christopher Eccleston was so afraid of getting locked in a real-life mortuary for a scene, he had to ask a crew member to stand in the shadows and comfort the nervous actor.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: Danny Boyle said in his commentary on the 2009 Special Edition DVD and 2012 Blu-ray that Alex is not meant to be dead, so the line of Alex saying hello to the detective was added in post-production to clarify this.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: The crew shot predominantly in Glasgow rather than Edinburgh, which is where the story is set, since the Glasgow Film Fund gave them a £150,000 (£ today) grant.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: The film was the most commercially successful British film of 1995 wth a gross of £5.2 milion. The film was a success in Europe, but grossed a total of just $2,834,250 in the United States. It led to Boyle's internationally successful production, "Trainspotting", two years later. "Shallow Grave" earned Boyle the Best Newcomer Award from the 1996 London Film Critics Circle and, together with "Trainspotting", led to critical commentary that Boyle had revitalised British cinema in the early 1990s.


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: Caroline Westbrook of Empire magazine gave it 5 out of 5 and wrote: "This, the debut feature from acclaimed TV director Danny Boyle, is the best British thriller for years, a chilling and claustrophobic heart-stopper centring on a moral dilemma destined to fuel many a dinner party conversation." Quentin Curtis of The Independent on Sunday wrote: "What makes the film fascinating, and exciting, is its marriage of British setting and American, B-movie format."


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: Derek Elley of Variety magazine called it "a tar-black comedy that zings along on a wave of visual and scripting inventiveness."


title: Shallow Grave (1994 film)

text: Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 2 out of 4, and wrote "All of the materials are in place [...] But somehow they never come together." Janet Maslin of The New York Times was critical of the film and said "misanthropy overwhelms his film in ways that prove more sour than droll, despite the presence of skillful actors and a bizarrely enveloping plot."


title: Calibre (film)

text: Calibre is a 2018 British thriller film written and directed by Matt Palmer. After a debut at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, it was released on 29 June 2018 on Netflix. It also had a limited release in select Curzon Cinemas in the UK from 21 October to 16 November 2018. The film is set in Scotland and concerns incidents on a hunting trip to the remote Scottish Highlands, and stars Jack Lowden and Martin McCann.


title: Calibre (film)

text: An aggressive Edinburgh businessman, Marcus, takes his boarding-school friend, Vaughn, whose fiancée is newly pregnant, on a weekend hunting in the Scottish Highlands. Vaughn has never hunted before. They spend the evening at a village pub, where they meet Logan, a community leader who bemoans the village's weak economy; and two young women, Kara and Iona. After dancing and drinking, Marcus leaves with Kara, despite being warned to stay away. Vaughn and Iona nearly kiss but Vaughn mentions his pregnant fiancée, so they have another drink instead.


title: Calibre (film)

text: Early next morning, Marcus rouses a hungover Vaughn for their hunt. On the way, Vaughn deduces Marcus has used cocaine and chastises him. Vaughn realises he has forgotten ammunition for his rifle, so Marcus lets him borrow one of his guns, despite this violating the strict firearm laws. On the hunt, the pair happen upon a deer in a clearing, and Vaughn aims at a doe’s head; but it suddenly turns, causing Vaughn to shoot and kill a boy, unseen behind the deer. The boy's father arrives and, in a fit of grief, picks up Vaughn's gun and points it at him; but Marcus shoots the man. Vaughn wants to tell the police about the incident but Marcus convinces him they will be arrested as murderers. Marcus hides the bodies and they drive off, hoping to claim that they were hunting in another area. However, Marcus is told by a petrol station owner that Logan said no other hunters are around and convinces a traumatised Vaughn they can only protect themselves by returning after nightfall and burying the bodies.


title: Calibre (film)

text: They return to the village and are invited to dinner by Logan and his cousin Al; Logan asks if Marcus can help him find investors who might revitalise the community. At night, they bury the bodies. Marcus recovers the bullets, using a knife to dig Vaughn's bullet out of the boy's skull, over Vaughn's objections. They return just before dawn but are spotted by the B&B owner's young son.


title: Calibre (film)

text: The next day, their departure is thwarted when Brian, another of Logan's brothers, slashes their tires and attacks Marcus for sleeping with Kara and giving her cocaine. At the garage, the mechanic tells Marcus the repairs will take a day. They return to the pub to hire a taxi, but find the driver drunk. On Logan's orders, Brian offers an aggressive and insincere apology, while complaining that the locals are beholden to "city twats" because they might bring in money. While Marcus is in the toilet, Vaughn speaks to Al and Iona and realizes the deceased were Logan's nephew and brother-in-law. Al's suspicions are raised when Marcus, upon returning, asks about "them" despite having only heard that Logan's nephew was missing.


title: Calibre (film)

text: Logan asks them to help with the search, which they accept for fear of arousing suspicion. A dog leads the party to the bodies. While the group digs them up, Marcus and Vaughn attempt to flee, but their fuel tank is ruptured by a bullet from Brian. Fleeing on foot, Vaughn stumbles and is injured by the dog, which Marcus stabs to death. As the group closes in, Marcus leaves Vaughn. Brian savagely beats Vaughn before being pulled off by Logan; the rest pursue Marcus.


title: Calibre (film)

text: Logan and Brian take Vaughn to a farm, where he confesses. Brian wants to kill them but Logan, realizing their deaths would be punished, insists on involving the police instead. Brian objects, claiming there is insufficient evidence and Vaughn will change his story to protect himself. As Brian moves to kill Vaughn, they hear the group has caught Marcus. Vaughn is locked in a guarded barn.


title: Calibre (film)

text: The next morning, Logan gives Vaughn an ultimatum: he must kill Marcus, or Brian will kill them both. Vaughn refuses, even after being reminded of his fiancée and unborn child, and breaks down in tears. Eventually, at gunpoint, he kills Marcus. The locals hide Marcus's jeep and, before Vaughn's fiancée arrives, Logan instructs him to tell the police that Marcus drove north.


title: Calibre (film)

text: Months later, an unnerved Vaughn wakes up to his crying child. He cradles him, but has a haunted look.


title: Calibre (film)

text: In May 2018, it was reported that "Calibre" had been picked up by Netflix for distribution and would first world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.


title: Calibre (film)

text: "Calibre" premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 22 June 2018. The film was released worldwide on 29 June 2018 by Netflix. It also had a limited release in select Curzon Cinemas in the UK from 21 October to 16 November 2018.


title: Calibre (film)

text: "Calibre" has received positive reviews. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . Metacritic gives the film a weighted average rating of 76 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Calibre (film)

text: Guy Lodge of "Variety" called the film "a sensationally well-executed nerve-mangler", and gave high praise to "the level of craft and confidence on display in all aspects of "Calibre", from [Matt] Palmer’s clean, lean scripting to Márk Györi’s baleful, autumn-chill camerawork to a lead performance of through-the-wringer commitment by rising Scots star Jack Lowden." Neil Young of "The Hollywood Reporter" noted that "a mature social concern about the plight of remote, economically marginal but tightly knit communities, gives "Calibre" a pungent, intriguing layer of ambiguity that only sharpens the acute pain of the awful events so skillfully depicted. Both Ken Loach and Wes Craven would surely approve." Catherine Renton of "The Edinburgh Reporter" concluded a very positive review of the film by claiming "I was exhausted but exhilarated after a taut 100 minutes of drama, and I can't wait to do it all again..."


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour, Isolabella and Leri (, 10 August 1810 – 6 June 1861), generally known as Cavour ( , ), was an Italian politician, businessman, economist and noble, and a leading figure in the movement towards Italian unification. He was one of the leaders of the Historical Right and prime minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont–Sardinia, a position he maintained (except for a six-month resignation) throughout the Second Italian War of Independence and Giuseppe Garibaldi's campaigns to unite Italy. After the declaration of a united Kingdom of Italy, Cavour took office as the first prime minister of Italy; he died after only three months in office and did not live to see the Roman Question solved through the complete unification of the country after the Capture of Rome in 1870.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Cavour put forth several economic reforms in his native region of Piedmont, at that time part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, in his earlier years and founded the political newspaper "Il Risorgimento". After being elected to the Chamber of Deputies, he quickly rose in rank through the Piedmontese government, coming to dominate the Chamber of Deputies through a union of centre-left and centre-right politicians. After a large rail system expansion program, Cavour became prime minister in 1852. As prime minister, Cavour successfully negotiated Piedmont's way through the Crimean War, the Second Italian War of Independence, and Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand, managing to maneuver Piedmont diplomatically to become a new great power in Europe, controlling a nearly united Italy that was five times as large as Piedmont had been before he came to power. Cavour was a Freemason of the Italian Symbolic Rite.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: English historian Denis Mack Smith says Cavour was the most successful parliamentarian in Italian history, but he was not especially democratic. Cavour was often dictatorial, ignored his ministerial colleagues and parliament, and interfered in parliamentary elections. He also practiced "trasformismo" and other policies which were carried over into post-Risorgimento Italy.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Cavour was born in Turin during Napoleonic rule, into a family which had acquired estates during the French occupation. He was the second of two sons of Michele Giuseppe Francesco Antonio Benso, 4th Marquess of Cavour and Count of Isolabella and Leri, Lord of Corveglia, Dusino, Mondonio, Ottiglio and Ponticelli, Co-Lord of Castagnole, Cellarengo and Menabi, Cereaglio, Chieri, San Salvatore Monferrato, Santena and Valfenera, 1st Baron of the French Empire (1781–1850) and his wife (1805) Adélaïde (Adèle) Suzanne, Marchioness of Sellon (1780–1846), herself of French origin. His godparents were Napoleon's sister Pauline, and her husband, Prince Camillo Borghese, after whom Camillo was named.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Camillo and his older brother Gustavo were initially educated at home. He was sent to the Turin Military Academy when he was only ten years old. In July 1824 he was named a page to Charles Albert, the king of Piedmont (1831–1849). Cavour frequently ran afoul of the authorities in the academy, as he was too headstrong to deal with the rigid military discipline. He was once forced to live three days on bread and water because he had been caught with books that the academy had banned. He was found to be apt at the mathematical disciplines, and was therefore enlisted in the Engineer Corps in the Piedmontese-Sardinian army in 1827. While in the army, he studied the English language as well as the works of Jeremy Bentham and Benjamin Constant, developing liberal tendencies which made him suspect to police forces at the time. He resigned his commission in the army in November 1831, both because of boredom with military life and because of his dislike of the reactionary policies of King Charles Albert. He administered the family estate at Grinzane, some forty kilometers outside the capital, serving as mayor there from 1832 to the revolutionary upheaval of 1848.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Cavour then lived for a time in Switzerland, with his relatives in Geneva. He then traveled to Paris where he was impressed by parliamentary debates, especially those of François Guizot and Adolphe Thiers, confirming his devotion to a political career. He next went to London, where he was much more disappointed by British politics, and toured the country, visiting Oxford, Liverpool, Birmingham, Chester, Nottingham, and Manchester. A quick tour through the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland (the German part and the Lake Geneva area) eventually landed him back in Turin.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Cavour believed that economic progress had to precede political change, and stressed the advantages of railroad construction in the peninsula. He was a strong supporter of transportation by steam engine, sponsoring the building of many railroads and canals. Between 1838 and 1842 Cavour began several initiatives in attempts to solve economic problems in his area. He experimented with different agricultural techniques on his estate, such as growing sugar beets, and was one of the first Italian landowners to use chemical fertilizers. He also founded the Piedmontese Agricultural Society. In his spare time, he again traveled extensively, mostly in France and the United Kingdom.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: The first apparently liberal moves of Pope Pope Pius IX and the Revolutions of 1848 spawned a new movement of Italian liberalism, allowing Cavour to enter the political arena, no longer in fear of the police. He then gave a speech in front of numerous journalists in favor of a constitution for Piedmont, which was eventually granted. Cavour, unlike several other political thinkers, was not at first offered a position in the new Chamber of Deputies, as he was still a somewhat suspicious character to the nation.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Cavour never planned for the establishment of a united country, and even later during his Premiership his objective was to expand Piedmont with the annexation of Lombardy and Venetia, rather than a unified Italy. For example, during the conservative period, he gained a reputation as a non-revolutionary progressive. He was a poor public speaker. Cavour then lost the next election, while the Piedmontese army was destroyed at the Battle of Novara, leading Charles Albert to abdicate, passing the throne to his son, Victor Emmanuel II.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Cavour was then brought back into Parliament by the voters, where he was much more successful. His knowledge of European markets and modern economics earned him the positions of Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Commerce, and Minister of the Navy in 1850. Cavour soon came to dominate the cabinet of Prime Minister Massimo d'Azeglio. Cavour united the Right Center and the Left Center in the chamber to show dominance there as well. In 1851, Cavour gained a Cabinet promotion to Minister of Finance by working against his colleague from inside the Cabinet in a somewhat disreputable takeover, although this was to Piedmont's advantage because of his many economic reforms. It allowed Cavour to begin his railway expansion program, giving Piedmont 800 kilometres of track by the year 1860, one third of the railways in Italy at the time. He took the lead in legislation weakening the powers of the Church to own land, control the schools and supervise marriage laws. When the bishops protested, they were punished or exiled, making Cavour the hero of liberal anticlerical elements across Italy.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Cavour formed a coalition with Urbano Rattazzi known as the "Connubio" ("marriage"), uniting the moderate men of the Right and of the Left, and brought about the fall of the d'Azeglio cabinet in November 1852. The King reluctantly accepted Cavour as prime minister, the most conservative possible choice, but their relationship was never an easy one.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Cavour was generally liberal and believed in free trade, freedom of opinion, and secular rule, but he was an enemy of republicans and revolutionaries, whom he feared as disorganized radicals who would upset the social order. Cavour dominated debate in Parliament but is criticized for the controversial methods he used while Prime Minister, including excessive use of emergency powers, employing friends, bribing some newspapers while suppressing others, and rigging elections, though these were fairly common practices for the time. The national debt soared by a factor of six because of his heavy spending on modernizing projects, especially railways, and building up the army and the Royal Sardinian Navy. When he became Prime Minister Piedmont had just suffered a major defeat by Austria, but when he died, Victor Emmanuel II ruled a state five times as large, which dominated Italy and ranked among Europe's great powers.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: The allied powers of Britain and France asked Piedmont to enter the Crimean War, partially to encourage Austria to enter, which it would not do unless it was certain that Piedmontese troops were not available to attack Austrian positions in Italy. Cavour, who hoped that the allies would support Piedmont's expansion in Italy, agreed as soon as his colleagues' support would allow and entered the war on 10 January 1855. This was too late to truly distinguish themselves militarily, but the 18,000 man contingent earned Piedmont a position at the Congress of Paris that ended the war.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: In January 1858, the Italian Felice Orsini's attempted assassination of Napoleon III paradoxically opened an avenue of diplomacy between France and Piedmont. While in jail awaiting trial, Orsini wrote a public letter to the Emperor of the French, ending with, "Remember that, so long as Italy is not independent, the peace of Europe and Your Majesty is but an empty dream... Set my country free, and the blessings of twenty-five million people will follow you everywhere and forever." Orsini was still executed, but Napoleon III began to explore the possibility of joint operation with Piedmont against Austria. Cavour and Napoleon met in July 1858 at Plombières-les-Bains, and the two agreed that Piedmont would attempt to provoke war with the Duchy of Modena, obliging Austria to enter, and France would then aid Piedmont. In return, Cavour reluctantly agreed to cede Savoy (the seat of the Piedmontese royal family) and the County of Nice to France, and also arranged a royal marriage between Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy and Prince Napoléon Bonaparte, surprisingly without Victor Emmanuel's consent.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: In the same year, Cavour sent his cousin, the famous beauty, photographic artist, and secret agent Virginia Oldoïni, to further the interests of Italian unification with the emperor by whatever means possible, and by all accounts she succeeded, famously becoming the mistress of Napoleon.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: Both France and Piedmont began to prepare for war, but diplomatic support diminished rapidly. Napoleon III quickly soured on the plot, and Britain, Prussia, and Russia proposed an international congress, with one likely goal the disarmament of Piedmont. Piedmont was saved by Austria's sending an ultimatum on 23 April, demanding that Piedmont disarm itself, thus casting Austria as an aggressor. France mobilised and slowly began to enter Italy, but Piedmont needed to defend itself for a short period. Fortunately, rainstorms and Austrian indecision under Ferencz Graf Gyulai gave time for France to arrive in force.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: The battles of Magenta and Solferino left Franco-Piedmontese forces in control of Lombardy, but the Austrians remained confident of defending their "fortress quadrilateral" area, with four fortresses in Verona, Legnago, Peschiera, and Mantua. These defenses, the horrors of the Battle of Solferino, the possibility of Prussian entry into the war, and the potential for an over-strong Piedmontese state convinced Napoleon to sign a separate peace with Austria in the Treaty of Villafranca on 11 July 1859, ending the Second Italian War of Independence. Victor Emmanuel accepted the peace, but Cavour was so infuriated after reading the terms of the treaty that he tendered his resignation. He soon regained his optimism, however, as several of the terms, such as the restoration to power of the rulers of Tuscany and Modena, and the establishment of an Italian Confederation including Austria, were not actually carried out.


title: Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

text: General La Marmora succeeded to Cavour's post and insisted on following the treaty terms, even sending a letter to Tuscany asking that they restore their Grand Duke. Bettino Ricasoli, virtual dictator of Tuscany at the time, wrote about this appeal to his brother, saying: "Tell General La Marmora that I have torn his letter into a thousand pieces." France continued direct talks with Piedmont on the destiny of the central Italian states, all of whose autocrats supported unification with Piedmont but were restrained by the treaty, which called for the restoration of their old governments.