title: The Long Riders

text: Todd McCarthy of "Variety" stated that the film "is striking in several ways, not the least of which being the casting of actor brothers as historical outlaw kin, but narrative is episodic in the extreme and disparate artistic qualities fail to completely jell into satisfactory whole. Despite interesting try, this wouldn't appear to be the film to get Westerns off the ground again."


title: The Long Riders

text: Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that "the Western will live as long as directors make Westerns as fresh and exciting as 'The Long Riders,' which tells an oft-told story uncommonly well."


title: The Long Riders

text: Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" said, "Since 'The Long Riders' various writers, which include James and Stacy Keach, who also play Jesse and Frank James, and its director Walter Hill, haven't anything new to reveal, their film by default becomes merely an excuse to restage that Northfield raid in as bloody a way as possible. This hollow and tedious outlaw saga may feature an unprecedented number of brothers—four sets, no less—in the leading roles, but it's no family film, that's for sure."


title: The Long Riders

text: Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" declared that the film "seems a flawlessly felt and visualized western, true to the subject matter and the aspirations the filmmakers probably held for it." David Ansen of "Newsweek" wrote: "the story seems more re-enacted than acted and one is finally more impressed than moved. Only David Carradine's cool, mangy macho as Cole Younger and Pamela Reed's jaundiced wit as Belle Starr cut through the tempered, elegiac surface. The screenplay (by Bill Bryden, Steven Phillip Smith, Stacy and James Keach) is basically an assemblage of bits and pieces that doesn't build toward any real emotional payoff. Yet 'The Long Riders' is still the best Western in many years — it has the laconic elegance of a ritual."


title: The Long Riders

text: Film historian Leonard Maltin described this picture as "Stylish, if extremely bloody..."All In the Family" Out West" and gave it 3 out of a possible 4 stars in his annual "Movie & Video Guide" (no longer published).


title: The Long Riders

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 81% based on , with a weighted average rating of 6.6/10.


title: The Long Riders

text: On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "Generally favorable reviews".


title: The Long Riders

text: "The Long Riders" was a box office disappointment upon its initial release. According to "Film Comment" it made $5,891,149 in the USA, in part due to "a terrible campaign that emphasized how alike all the players looked without exploiting the family theme that might have aided box office."


title: The Long Riders

text: In June 1981 James Keach wrote a letter to the "Los Angeles Times" in response to an article on the poor box office performance of Westerns. Keach claimed "The Long Riders" "wasn't a "Star Wars" at the box office" but recouped its full $9 million investment and earned United Artists a profit.


title: The Long Riders

text: Stacy Keach wrote in his memoirs that "I believe to this day that the movie made money even though the studio claimed it only broke even."


title: The Long Riders

text: In February 1982 Stacy Keach said the script was being written and that it would be a theatrical feature or a television mini series. He said when he was in Arkansas making a TV series "so many people came up to talk about "The Long Riders" which had been shown there on cable that I got enthusiastic again. I realised the Jesse James legend goes on and on. I can't wait to do the new one."


title: The Long Riders

text: In September 1982 Stacy Keach said "There's the possibility of doing something for television with it. There's a tremendous amount of history that goes on after "The Long Riders". Everybody says, "Well, Jesse's dead,' but it's our contention that he didn't die in quite the way history says he died." However, the project never came to fruition.


title: United Press International

text: United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th century. At its peak, it had more than 6,000 media subscribers. Since the first of several sales and staff cutbacks in 1982, and the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to its main U.S. rival, the Associated Press, UPI has concentrated on smaller information-market niches.


title: United Press International

text: Formally named United Press Associations for incorporation and legal purposes, but publicly known and identified as United Press or UP, the news agency was created by the 1907 uniting of three smaller news syndicates by the Midwest newspaper publisher E. W. Scripps. It was headed by Hugh Baillie (1890–1966) from 1935 to 1955. At the time of his retirement, UP had 2,900 clients in the United States, and 1,500 abroad.


title: United Press International

text: In 1958, it became United Press International after absorbing the International News Service (INS) As either UP or UPI, the agency was among the largest newswire services in the world, competing domestically for about 90 years with the Associated Press (AP) and internationally with AP, Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP).


title: United Press International

text: At its peak, UPI had more than 2,000 full-time employees; and 200 news bureaus in 92 countries; it had more than 6,000 media subscribers. With the rising popularity of television news, the business of UPI began to decline as the circulation of afternoon newspapers, its chief client category, began to fall. Its decline accelerated after the 1982 sale of UPI by the Scripps company.


title: United Press International

text: The E.W. Scripps Company controlled United Press until its absorption of William Randolph Hearst's smaller competing agency, INS, in 1958 to form UPI. With the Hearst Corporation as a minority partner, UPI continued under Scripps management until 1982.


title: United Press International

text: Since its sale in 1982, UPI has changed ownership several times and was twice in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. With each change in ownership came deeper service and staff cutbacks and changes of focus and a corresponding shrinkage of its traditional media customer base. Since the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to its one-time major rival, the AP, UPI has concentrated on smaller information market niches. It no longer services media organizations in a major way.


title: United Press International

text: In 2000, UPI was purchased by News World Communications, an international news media company founded in 1976 by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon.


title: United Press International

text: It now maintains a news website and photo service and electronically publishes several information product packages. Based mostly on aggregation from other sources on the Web and gathered by a small editorial staff and stringers, UPI's daily content consists of a newsbrief summary service called "NewsTrack," which includes general, business, sports, science, health and entertainment reports, and "Quirks in the News." It also sells a premium service, which has deeper coverage and analysis of emerging threats, the security industry, and energy resources. UPI's content is presented in text, video and photo formats, in English, Spanish, and Arabic.


title: United Press International

text: UPI's main office is in the Miami metropolitan area and it maintains office locations in five other countries and uses freelance journalists in other major cities.


title: United Press International

text: Beginning with the "Cleveland Press", publisher E. W. Scripps (1854–1926) created the first chain of newspapers in the United States. Because the then recently reorganized Associated Press refused to sell its services to several of his papers, most of them evening dailies in competition with existing AP franchise holders, in 1907 Scripps merged three smaller syndicates under his ownership or control, the Publishers Press Association, the Scripps-McRae Press Association, and the Scripps News Association, to form United Press Associations, with headquarters in New York City.


title: United Press International

text: Scripps had been a subscriber to an earlier news agency, also named United Press, that existed in the late 1800s, partly in cooperation with management of the original New York-based AP and partly in existential competition with two Chicago-based organizations also using the AP name (as detailed at Associated Press and in AP's 2007 history, "Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else", cited in Notes).


title: United Press International

text: Drawing lessons from the battles between the earlier United Press and the various AP's, Scripps required that there be no restrictions on who could buy news from his news service, and he made the new UP service available to anyone, including his competitors. Scripps also hoped to make a profit from selling that news to papers owned by others. At that time and until World War II, most newspapers relied on news agencies for stories outside their immediate geographic areas.


title: United Press International

text: Despite strong newspaper industry opposition, UP started to sell news to the new and competitive radio medium in 1935, years before competitor AP, controlled by the newspaper industry, did likewise.


title: United Press International

text: Scripps' United Press was considered "a scrappy alternative" news source to the AP. UP reporters were called "Unipressers" and were noted for their fiercely aggressive and competitive streak. Another hallmark of the company's culture was little formal training of reporters; new hires were often thrust into a "sink-or-swim" situation of reporting on an unfamiliar subject. They were weaned on UP's famous and well-documented (though frequently misappropriated and misquoted) slogan of "Get it first, but FIRST, get it RIGHT." Despite controversy, UP (and later UPI) became a common training ground for generations of journalists.


title: United Press International

text: Walter Cronkite, who started with United Press in Kansas City, gained fame for his coverage of World War II in Europe and turned down Edward R. Murrow's first offer of a CBS job to stay with UP, but who later went on to anchor the "CBS Evening News", once said, "I felt every Unipresser got up in the morning saying, 'This is the day I'm going to beat the hell out of AP.' That was part of the spirit. We knew we were undermanned. But we knew we could do a darn good job despite that, and so many times, we did."


title: United Press International

text: Despite that, like all agencies that deal with huge volumes of timely information, UP and later UPI had its share of remembered mistakes. As recounted in the various printed histories of UPI cited in Notes, the most famous one came early in its history. UP's president, Roy W. Howard, then traveling in France, telegraphed that the 1918 armistice ending World War I had been declared four days before it happened. Howard's reputation survived and he later became a Scripps partner, whose name appeared in one of the Scripps subsidiary companies, Scripps-Howard. But the mistake dogged UP/UPI for generations. Still, the agency's reporters were often able to tell stories more quickly and accurately although they were usually outnumbered by the competition. In 1950, for example, UP reported the invasion of South Korea by North Korea two hours and forty minutes before its archrival, the AP. "The New York Times" later apologized to UP for refusing to print information on the invasion until the AP had confirmed it.


title: United Press International

text: Frank Bartholomew, the last UP president to ascend to the agency's top job directly from its news, rather than sales ranks, took over in 1955, and according to his memoirs cited in Notes, was obsessed with merging UP with the International News Service, a news agency that had been founded by William Randolph Hearst in 1909 following Scripps' lead.


title: United Press International

text: Bartholomew succeeded in putting the "I" in UPI in 1958 when UP and INS merged to become United Press International The new UPI now had 6,000 employees and 5,000 subscribers, about a thousand of them newspapers.


title: United Press International

text: The merger was aimed at creating a stronger competitor for the Associated Press and a stronger economic entity than either UP or INS. The newly formed United Press International (UPI) had 950 client newspapers. Fearing possible antitrust issues with the Eisenhower Administration Justice Department, Scripps and Hearst rushed the merger through with unusual speed and secrecy.


title: United Press International

text: Although all UP employees were retained, most INS employees lost their jobs with practically no warning. A relative few did join the new UPI and the columns of popular INS writers, such as Bob Considine, Louella Parsons and Ruth Montgomery, were carried by UPI.


title: United Press International

text: Rival AP was a publishers' cooperative and could assess its members to help pay the extraordinary costs of covering major news—wars, the Olympic Games, national political conventions. UPI clients, in contrast, paid a fixed annual rate; depending on individual contracts, UPI could not always ask them to help shoulder the extraordinary coverage costs. In its heyday, newspapers typically paid UPI about half what they paid AP in the same cities for the same services: At one point, for example, the "Chicago Sun-Times" paid AP $12,500 a week, but UPI only $5,000; the Wall Street Journal paid AP $36,000 a week, but UPI only $19,300. The AP, which serviced 1,243 newspapers at the time, remained UPI's main competitor. In 1959, UPI had 6,208 clients in 92 countries and territories, 234 news and picture bureaus, and an annual payroll of $34,000,000, ($ in today's dollars).


title: United Press International

text: But the UP-INS merger involved another business component that was to hurt the new UPI company badly in later years. Because INS had been a subsidiary of Hearst's King Features Syndicate and Scripps controlled several other newspaper syndicates, both companies feared possible antitrust issues. So they deliberately kept their respective syndicates out of the combined UPI company. That move cost UPI the revenues of its previous United Feature Syndicate subsidiary, which in later years made large profits on the syndication of "Peanuts" and other popular comic strips and columns.


title: United Press International

text: UPI had an advantage of independence over the AP in reporting on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Because the AP was a cooperative essentially owned by the newspapers, those in the South influenced its coverage of the racial unrest and protests, often ignoring, minimizing, or slanting the reporting. UPI did not have that sort of pressure, and management, according to UPI reporters and photographers of the day, allowed them much freedom in chronicling the events of the civil rights struggle.


title: United Press International

text: White House reporter Helen Thomas became the public face of UPI, as she was seen at televised press conferences beginning in the early 1960s. UPI famously scooped the AP in reporting the assassination of US President John Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963. UPI White House reporter Merriman Smith was an eyewitness, and he commandeered the press car's only phone to dictate the story to UPI as AP reporter Jack Bell tried—without success—to wrest the phone away so he could call his office. Smith and UPI won a Pulitzer Prize for this reporting.


title: United Press International

text: United Press had no direct wirephoto service until 1952, when it absorbed co-owned ACME Newspictures, under pressure from parent company Scripps to better compete with AP's news and photo services.


title: United Press International

text: By that time, UP was also deeply involved with the newer visual medium of television. In 1948, it entered into a partnership with 20th Century Fox subsidiary Fox Movietone News to shoot newsfilm for television stations. That service, United Press Movietone, or UPMT, was a pioneer in newsfilm syndication and numbered among its clients major US and foreign networks and local stations, including for many years the early TV operation of ABC News. In subsequent decades, it underwent several changes in partnerships and names, becoming best known as United Press International Television News (UPITN). Senior UPITN executives later helped Ted Turner create CNN, with its first two presidents, Reese Schonfeld and Burt Reinhardt, coming from UPITN ranks.


title: United Press International

text: The UPI Audio actuality service for radio stations, created in 1958 and later renamed the United Press International Radio Network, was a spinoff from the newsfilm service and eventually provided news material to more than a thousand radio stations and US and foreign networks, including NPR.


title: United Press International

text: UPI came close to equaling the size of the AP in the early 1960s, but as publishing companies began to pare their evening newspapers, it was dropped by papers that could no longer afford to subscribe to both UPI and the AP. UPI's failure to develop a television presence or subsidiary television news service has also been cited as one of the causes of its decline. By the early 1980s, the number of staffers was down to 1,800 and there were just 100 news bureaus.


title: United Press International

text: Under pressure from some of E. W. Scripps' heirs, the Scripps company, which had been underwriting UPI's expenses at a loss for at least two decades, began trying to transfer control of UPI in the early 1980s. It tried to bring in additional newspaper industry partners and when that failed, engaged in serious negotiations with British competitor Reuters, which wanted to increase its US presence. As detailed in "Down to the Wire", by Gordon and Cohen, cited in Notes, Reuters did extensive due diligence and expressed an interest in parts of the UPI service, but did not wish to maintain it in full.


title: United Press International

text: Scripps wound up giving the agency away to two inexperienced businessmen, Douglas Ruhe (son of David Ruhe, a member of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the Baháʼí Faith) and William Geissler, originally associated with two better-known partners, who soon departed. Ruhe and Geissler obtained UPI for $1. Under the terms of the purchase agreement, Scripps first injected UPI with a $5 million cash balance, in acknowledgement of the $1.0 – $1.5 million per month that UPI was already losing. Facing news industry skepticism about their background and qualifications to run an international news agency, Ruhe and Geissler watched an increase in contract cancellations. Despite serious cash flow problems, they moved UPI's headquarters from New York City to Washington, DC, incurring significant additional costs due to construction cost overruns.


title: United Press International

text: During this period, UPI's 25-year-old audio news actuality service for radio stations was renamed the United Press International Radio Network. But faced with recurring cash shortages and difficulty meeting payroll, the Ruhe-Geissler management sold UPI's foreign photo service and some rights to its US and foreign photos to the Reuters news agency. It also sold UPI's U.S. photo library, which included the archives of predecessor Scripps photo agency Acme and the pictures and negatives of International News Photos, the picture component of Hearst's INS to the Bettman Archive. Bettman was later sold to Microsoft founder Bill Gates's separate Corbis Corporation, storing them underground in Pennsylvania and digitizing them for licensing, frequently without any notation of their UPI origins. In August 2011 Corbis announced a deal with AP to distribute each other's photos to their clients, effectively combining the pre-1983 UPI library with that of its former main rival for some marketing purposes. In 2016 Corbis sold to the Visual China Group.


title: United Press International

text: UPI's remaining minority stake in UPITN was also sold and the agency was renamed Worldwide Television News (WTN). As with its photographs, UPI thereby lost all control of its newsfilm and video library, which is now held by WTN-successor Associated Press Television News, which entered the video news field long after UPI left it.


title: United Press International

text: Years of mismanagement, missed opportunities and continual wage and staff cuts followed. By 1984, UPI had descended into the first of two Chapter 11 Mario Vázquez Raña, a Mexican media magnate, with a nominal American minority partner, Houston real estate developer Joseph Russo, purchased UPI out of bankruptcy for $40 million, losing millions during his short tenure, and firing numerous high-level staff.


title: United Press International

text: In 1988, Vázquez Raña sold UPI to Infotechnology, Inc., an information technology and venture capital company and parent company of cable TV's Financial News Network, both headed by Earl Brian, who also became UPI chairman. In early 1991, Infotechnology itself filed for bankruptcy, announced layoffs at UPI and sought to terminate certain employee benefits in an attempt to keep UPI afloat. At that point, UPI was down to 585 employees. Later that year, UPI filed for bankruptcy for the second time, asking for relief from $50 million in debt so that it could be sale-able. In 1992, a group of Saudi investors, ARA Group International (AGI), bought the bankrupt UPI for $4 million.


title: United Press International

text: By 1998, UPI had fewer than 250 employees and 12 offices. Although the Saudi-based investors claimed to have poured more than $120 million into UPI, it had failed to turn a profit. The company had begun to sell Internet-adapted products to such websites as Excite and Yahoo. At that point, UPI CEO Arnaud de Borchgrave orchestrated UPI's exit from its last major media niche, the broadcast news business that United Press had initiated in the 1930s. De Borchgrave maintained that "what was brilliant pioneering work on the part of UPI prior to World War II, with radio news, is now a static quantity and so far as I'm concerned, certainly doesn't fit into my plans for the future". He sought to shift UPI's dwindling resources into Internet-based delivery of newsletter services, focusing more on technical and diplomatic specialties than on general news. The rump UPI thus sold the client list of its still-significant radio network and broadcast wire to its former rival, the AP.


title: United Press International

text: UPI was purchased in May 2000 by News World Communications, a media conglomerate founded by Unification movement founder Sun Myung Moon, which also owned "The Washington Times" and newspapers in South Korea, Japan, and South America. The next day, UPI's White House correspondent, Helen Thomas, resigned her position, after working for UPI for 57 years.


title: United Press International

text: In 2007, as part of a restructuring to keep UPI in business and profitable, management cut 11 staff from its Washington, D.C. office and no longer had a reporter in the White House press corps or a bureau covering the United Nations. UPI spokespersons and press releases said the company would be focusing instead on expanding operations in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, and reporting on security threats, intelligence and energy issues. In 2008, UPI began UPIU, a journalism mentoring platform for students and journalism schools, that allowed recent college graduates to post their work on the site but did not pay for stories.


title: United Press International

text: United Press International conferred sports awards annually until 1996. The awards were given to basketball players, basketball coaches, football players and athletes in general. The different awards were:


title: United Press International

text: While much of normal news agency work is little publicized, many UP/UPI news staffers have gained fame, either while with the agency or in later careers. They include journalists, news executives, novelists and high government officials.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: Bernard John Ebbers (August 27, 1941 – February 2, 2020) was a Canadian businessman, the co-founder and CEO of WorldCom and a convicted fraudster. Under his management, WorldCom grew rapidly but collapsed in 2002 amid revelations of accounting irregularities, making it at the time one of the largest accounting scandals in the United States. Ebbers blamed his subordinates but was convicted of fraud and conspiracy. In December 2019, Ebbers was released from Federal Medical Center, Fort Worth, due to declining health, having served 13 years of his 25-year sentence, and he died just over a month later.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: In 2013, Portfolio.com and CNBC named Ebbers as the 5th-worst CEO in American history. In 2009, "Time" named him the 10th most corrupt CEO of all time.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: Dubbed the "Telecom Cowboy," Ebbers often wore boots and blue jeans instead of the typical corporate uniform of a suit and tie. He also lived on a farm and loved to drive a tractor.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: Ebbers was born in Edmonton, Alberta, the second of five children of Kathleen and John Ebbers, a traveling salesman. His family were devout Christians.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: When Ebbers was young, the family moved to California and later lived for a while on a mission post on a Navajo Nation Indian reservation in New Mexico before moving back to Canada when Ebbers was a teenager.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: After high school, Ebbers briefly attended the University of Alberta and Calvin College before enrolling at Mississippi College on a basketball scholarship. Between schools, he worked as a milkman and bouncer. An injury before his senior season prevented him from playing his final year and he was instead assigned to coach the junior varsity team. In 1967, he received a Bachelor's degree in physical education, with an academic minor in secondary education, from Mississippi College.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: In 1983, in a coffee shop in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he and 3 other investors formed Long Distance Discount Services, Inc. and in 1985, he was named chief executive officer. The company acquired over 60 telecommunications firms and in 1995, it changed its name to WorldCom.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: In 1996, WorldCom acquired MFS Communications (originally Metropolitan Fiber Systems) and in September 1998, it acquired MCI Communications. In July 2000, it abandoned its planned $115 billion acquisition of Sprint Corporation after U.S. and European Union antitrust regulators raised objections.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: Between September 2000 and April 2002, the board of directors of Worldcom authorized several loans and loan guarantees to Ebbers so that he would not have to sell his Worldcom shares to meet margin calls as the share price plummeted during the bursting of the dot-com bubble. By April 2002, Ebbers had lost substantial support on the board due to these loans. Additionally, a number of directors believed Ebbers had not charted a way forward after the Sprint merger collapsed. On April 26, Worldcom's board voted unanimously to demand that Ebbers resign, which he formally did on April 30, 2002. As part of his departure, his loans were consolidated into a single $408.2 million promissory note. In 2003, Ebbers defaulted on the note and Worldcom foreclosed on many of his assets.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: On June 25, 2002, WorldCom admitted to nearly $3.9 billion in accounting misstatements and on July 22, 2002, it filed for bankruptcy.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: The figure eventually grew to $11 billion. This initiated a series of investigations and legal proceedings, which focused on Ebbers, WorldCom's former CEO.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: In response to a subpoena, Ebbers appeared before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services on July 8, 2002. At these hearings, Ebbers stated "I do not believe I have anything to hide, I believe that no one will conclude that I engaged in any criminal or fraudulent conduct."


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: After making this statement, Ebbers asserted his right against self-incrimination per the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Ebbers's statement constituted testimony that could not undergo cross-examination and Ebbers was threatened with Contempt of Congress charges, although no charges were filed.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: On August 27, 2003, Attorney General of Oklahoma Drew Edmondson filed a 15-count indictment against Ebbers. The indictment charged that he violated securities laws by defrauding investors on multiple occasions between January 2001 and March 2002. On November 20, 2003, the charges by Oklahoma were dropped, with the right to refile retained, to defer to federal charges. On March 2, 2004, federal authorities indicted Ebbers with security fraud and conspiracy charges. On May 25, 2004, federal prosecutors increased the list of charges to 9 felonies: 1 count each of conspiracy and securities fraud, and 7 counts of filing false statements with securities regulators. On March 15, 2005, Ebbers was found guilty of all charges. On March 30, 2005, an agreement to extend the statute of limitations on the charges from Oklahoma was signed, allowing Oklahoma prosecutors time to see the results of federal sentencing.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: On July 13, 2005, federal judge Barbara S. Jones, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, sentenced Ebbers to 25 years in a federal prison in Louisiana. Ebbers was allowed to remain free for another year while his appeal was being considered. His conviction was upheld in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in July 2006. On September 6, 2006, the presiding judge ordered him to report to jail on September 26 to start serving his 25-year sentence. Ebbers reported to Oakdale Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale, Louisiana, on September 26, 2006, driving himself to the prison in his Mercedes-Benz vehicle. Ebbers served in the low-security portion of the complex, which typically houses non-violent offenders and is built like a school dormitory. He was granted early release after serving 12 years in December 2019, due to health problems.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: On October 11, 2002, WorldCom investors brought a class action civil lawsuit against Ebbers and other defendants, alleging injuries as a result of Ebbers's securities fraud violations. Judge Denise Cote of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered the parties in the lawsuit to negotiate. The parties agreed that Ebbers and his codefendants would distribute over $6.13 billion, plus interest, to over 830,000 individuals and institutions that had held stocks and bonds in WorldCom at the time of its collapse. Ebbers agreed to relinquish almost all of his assets, including a home in Mississippi, and his interests in a lumber company, a marina, a golf course, a hotel, and thousands of acres of forested real estate. After the settlement, Ebbers's wife was left with an estimated $50,000 in known assets. On September 21, 2005, Judge Cote approved the settlement and dismissed the lawsuit against Ebbers.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: In 1968, Ebbers married Linda Pigott and the couple raised three daughters. Ebbers filed for divorce in July 1997 and married his second wife, Kristie Webb, in the spring of 1999. She filed for divorce on April 16, 2008, less than two years after he entered prison.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: Ebbers died at his home in Brookhaven, Mississippi, on February 2, 2020, at the age of 78, just over a month after being released from prison due to health issues. His lawyers claimed that he was, by the time of his death, legally blind and suffering from dementia, anemia and significant weight loss.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: At his peak in early 1999, Ebbers was worth an estimated $1.4 billion and listed as 174th on the Forbes 400. His personal holdings included:


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: From 1993 through 1995, Ebbers served as chairman of the board of directors of the Competitive Telecommunications Association, where he pleaded with the United States Congress to improve competition with the incumbent telecommunications companies.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: In 1997, he became the chair for Mississippi College's New Dawn Campaign, a $100 million fundraising campaign to improve campus facilities.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: In July 2001, Ebbers was proposed by George W. Bush as the chair for the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: While CEO of WorldCom, he was a member of the Easthaven Baptist Church in Brookhaven, Mississippi. As a high-profile member of the congregation, Ebbers regularly taught Sunday school and attended the morning church service with his family. His faith was overt, and he often started corporate meetings with prayer.


title: Bernard Ebbers

text: When the allegations of conspiracy and fraud were first brought to light in 2002, Ebbers addressed the congregation and insisted on his innocence. "I just want you to know you aren't going to church with a crook," he said. "No one will find me to have knowingly committed fraud."


title: Level 3 Communications

text: Level 3 Communications was an American multinational telecommunications and Internet service provider company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. It ultimately became a part of CenturyLink (now Lumen Technologies), where Level 3 President and CEO Jeff Storey was installed as Chief Operating Officer, becoming CEO of CenturyLink one year later in a prearranged succession plan.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: Level 3 operated a Tier 1 network. The company provided core transport, IP, voice, video, and content delivery for medium-to-large Internet carriers in North America, Latin America, Europe, and selected cities in Asia. Level 3 was also the largest competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) and the 3rd largest provider of fiber-optic internet access (based on coverage) in the United States.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: On October 31, 2016, CenturyLink announced an agreement to acquire Level 3 Communications in a cash and stock transaction. Level 3 became part of CenturyLink on November 1, 2017.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: In 1985, Peter Kiewit Sons' Inc created a subsidiary named Kiewit Diversified Group to manage the corporation's business that was not related to construction. The division was spun off as a separate entity and changed its name to Level 3 Communications in 1998 to signify an increased focus on communication services. That same year saw it make an IPO on NASDAQ. According to Level3's own history, it continued to build its telecommunications network after going public.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: According to Level3's own history, in 2003, the company acquired Genuity, and, between 2005 and 2007, it purchased several other companies including former rivals WilTel Communications, Broadwing Corporation, Looking Glass Networks, Progress Telecom, and Telcove (formerly Adelphia Business Solutions). In 2004, Level 3 acquired ICG Communications' wholesale dial-up business for $35 million. Then, in 2006, Level 3 purchased the rest of ICG Communications for $163 million, taking over ICG's fiber network and nationwide Points of Presence (PoPs). It then integrated these companies through 2010.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: On April 11, 2011, Level 3 announced a tender offer had been made to acquire fellow Tier 1 provider Global Crossing in an all-stock transaction, which was approved by shareholders on August 5, and completed on October 4, 2011. On October 20, 2011, Level 3 Communications reduced its total shares and transferred its stock listing from NASDAQ to the larger New York Stock Exchange.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: On May 14, 2012, Level 3 was contracted by European content provider Voxility to provide 250 Gbit/s or more to Voxility's three main data centers in North America and Europe. On May 7, 2012, Level 3 was contracted by the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Information Systems Agency to provide fiber-cable operations and maintenance, and IP-based infrastructure under a ten-year, indefinite contract with a maximum value of approximately $411 million.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: On June 16, 2014, Level 3 acquired TW Telecom, a business Internet connection provider, for about $5.7 billion.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: In July 2015, Level 3 acquired Black Lotus, a provider of protection against distributed denial of service (DDoS).


title: Level 3 Communications

text: On October 31, 2016, CenturyLink announced its intent to acquire Level 3 in a deal valued at around $34 billion.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: On October 3, 2017, the deal was approved by the United States Department of Justice on condition of selling some of Level 3's telecom holdings in three states. The deal officially closed and Level 3 became part of CenturyLink on November 1, 2017.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: On November 1, 2017, Level 3 Communications officially merged with CenturyLink. As part of the merger, work was required to divest of 24 individual fiber optic lines spanning 30 city pairs as required by the US Department of Justice. Additionally, Level 3 was required to divest of metro Ethernet markets in Boise, Tucson, and Albuquerque to satisfy antitrust requirements. The company complied with the divestiture of those assets.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: Level 3 Communications operated a large network Internet, with infrastructure in 46 states in the continental United States, South America, Western Europe, and some cities in Asia. It uses transatlantic cables, including "Yellow" /AC-2 (on which it owned two of the four fiber pairs after Viatel's 2001 bankruptcy). Level 3 Communications has also purchased 300 Gbit/s of capacity on the Apollo (cable system).


title: Level 3 Communications

text: At the time of acquisition by CenturyLink, it was owner of AS1 (following the acquisition of Genuity, from BBN Technologies), but it used AS3356 for operations. AS3356 consistently had one of the highest ranked connectivity degrees on the Internet. It also operated the former Global Crossing network (AS3549) following the company acquisition in 2011.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: Level 3 Communications delivered Netflix and Apple music and video content over the Internet. The company ran a content delivery network which it acquired from Savvis in 2006.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: In 2006, Level 3 Communications announced with Internet2, an academic network, that they would deploy a next generation nationwide research network.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: Level 3 distributed and sold its services through a mix of six independent sales channels: large enterprise, wholesale, federal, content and media, midmarket, and indirect. All six sales channels reported to the president of sales Andrew Crouch. The top performing Level 3 indirect sales agencies in 2010 included Intelisys, Microcorp, CDW/AVANT Communications, PlanetOne, Advantage Communications Group, Telarus, and Presidio.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: On November 11, 2010 a dispute arose between Level 3 and Comcast, when Level 3 announced that they were "selected to serve as a primary content delivery network (CDN) provider for Netflix, Inc. to support the company's streaming functionality." Apparently, as a result of this distribution agreement, Comcast sought to renegotiate the peering agreement with Level 3 and sought a recurring fee for carrying the increased Level 3 internet traffic to and from Comcast broadband customers. Claims and counter-claims were made as the two companies sought to renegotiate the contract. In December 2010, the New America Foundation submitted information concerning the dispute to the FCC.


title: Level 3 Communications

text: On July 16, 2013, Level 3 Communications and Comcast seemingly ended their three-year dispute by issuing a statement that "Level 3 and Comcast have resolved their prior interconnect dispute on mutually satisfactory terms. Details will not be released." On May 21, 2015, Level 3 and Comcast announced a new multi-year bilateral agreement to "enhance their existing network capacity while extending their mutual interconnection agreements, ensuring that both maintain ample capacity to exchange Internet traffic between their networks."


title: Level 3 Communications

text: In July 2013, the NSA was accused of wiretapping large parts of data on the German Internet Exchange Point DE-CIX which was denied by Level 3, and a few months later, was accused of tapping connections between Google and Yahoo data centers.


title: Incident Command System

text: The Incident Command System (ICS) is a standardized approach to the command, control, and coordination of emergency response providing a common hierarchy within which responders from multiple agencies can be effective.


title: Incident Command System

text: ICS was initially developed to address problems of inter-agency responses to wildfires in California and Arizona but is now a component of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) in the US, where it has evolved into use in all-hazards situations, ranging from active shootings to hazmat scenes. In addition, ICS has acted as a pattern for similar approaches internationally.


title: Incident Command System

text: ICS consists of a standard management hierarchy and procedures for managing temporary incident(s) of any size. ICS procedures should be pre-established and sanctioned by participating authorities, and personnel should be well-trained prior to an incident.


title: Incident Command System

text: ICS includes procedures to select and form temporary management hierarchies to control funds, personnel, facilities, equipment, and communications. Personnel are assigned according to established standards and procedures previously sanctioned by participating authorities. ICS is a system designed to be used or applied from the time an incident occurs until the requirement for management and operations no longer exist.


title: Incident Command System

text: The ICS concept was formed in 1968 at a meeting of Fire Chiefs in Southern California. The program reflects the management hierarchy of the US Navy, and at first was used mainly to fight California wildfires. During the 1970s, ICS was fully developed during massive wildfire suppression efforts in California (FIRESCOPE) that followed a series of catastrophic wildfires, starting with the massive Laguna fire in 1970. Property damage ran into the millions, and many people died or were injured. Studies determined that response problems often related to communication and management deficiencies rather than lack of resources or failure of tactics.


title: Incident Command System

text: Emergency Managers determined that the existing management structures — frequently unique to each agency — did not scale to dealing with massive mutual aid responses involving dozens of distinct agencies and when these various agencies worked together their specific training and procedures clashed. As a result, a new command and control paradigm was collaboratively developed to provide a consistent, integrated framework for the management of all incidents from small incidents to large, multi-agency emergencies.


title: Incident Command System

text: At the beginning of this work, despite the recognition that there were incident or field level shortfalls in organization and terminology, there was no mention of the need to develop an on the ground incident management system like ICS. Most of the efforts were focused on the multiagency coordination challenges above the incident or field level. It was not until 1972 when Firefighting Resources of Southern California Organized for Potential Emergencies (FIRESCOPE) was formed that this need was recognized and the concept of ICS was first discussed. Also, ICS was originally called Field Command Operations System.


title: Incident Command System

text: ICS became a national model for command structures at a fire, crime scene or major incident. ICS was used in New York at the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. On 1 March 2004, the Department of Homeland Security, in accordance with the passage of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) calling for a standardized approach to incident management amongst all federal, state, and local agencies, developed the National Incident Management System (NIMS) which integrates ICS. Additionally, it was mandated that NIMS (and thus ICS) must be utilized to manage emergencies in order to receive federal funding.


title: Incident Command System

text: The Superfund Amendment and Re-authorization Act title III mandated that all first responders to a hazardous materials emergency must be properly trained and equipped in accordance with 29 CFR 1910.120(q). This standard represents OSHA's recognition of ICS.


title: Incident Command System

text: HSPD-5 and thus the National Incident Management System came about as a direct result of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, which created numerous All-Hazard, Mass Casualty, multi-agency incidents.


title: Incident Command System

text: In the United States, ICS has been tested by more than 30 years of emergency and non-emergency applications. All levels of government are required to maintain differing levels of ICS training and private sector organizations regularly use ICS for management of events. ICS is widespread in use from law enforcement to every-day business, as the basic goals of clear communication, accountability, and the efficient use of resources are common to incident and emergency management as well as daily operations. ICS is mandated by law for all Hazardous Materials responses nationally and for many other emergency operations in most states. In practice, virtually all EMS and disaster response agencies utilize ICS, in part after the United States Department of Homeland Security mandated the use of ICS for emergency services throughout the United States as a condition for federal preparedness funding. As part of FEMA's National Response Plan (NRP), the system was expanded and integrated into the National Incident Management System (NIMS).


title: Incident Command System

text: The United Nations recommended the use of ICS as an international standard. ICS is also used by agencies in Canada.


title: Incident Command System

text: New Zealand has implemented a similar system, known as the Coordinated Incident Management System, Australia has the Australasian Inter-Service Incident Management System and British Columbia, Canada, has BCERMS developed by the Emergency Management BC.


title: Incident Command System

text: In Brazil, ICS is also used by The Fire Department of the State of Rio de Janeiro (CBMERJ) and by the Civil Defense of the State of Rio de Janeiro in every emergency or large-scale events.


title: Incident Command System

text: Incidents are defined within ICS as unplanned situations necessitating a response. Examples of incidents may include:


title: Incident Command System

text: Events are defined within ICS as planned situations. Incident command is increasingly applied to events both in emergency management and non-emergency management settings. Examples of events may include:


title: Incident Command System

text: Each individual participating in the operation reports to only one supervisor. This eliminates the potential for individuals to receive conflicting orders from a variety of supervisors, thus increasing accountability, preventing freelancing, improving the flow of information, helping with the coordination of operational efforts, and enhancing operational safety. This concept is fundamental to the ICS chain of command structure.


title: Incident Command System

text: Individual response agencies previously developed their protocols separately, and subsequently developed their terminology separately. This can lead to confusion as a word may have a different meaning for each organization.


title: Incident Command System

text: When different organizations are required to work together, the use of common terminology is an essential element in team cohesion and communications, both internally and with other organizations responding to the incident.


title: Incident Command System

text: An incident command system promotes the use of a common terminology and has an associated glossary of terms that help bring consistency to position titles, the description of resources and how they can be organized, the type and names of incident facilities, and a host of other subjects. The use of common terminology is most evident in the titles of command roles, such as "Incident Commander", "Safety Officer" or "Operations Section Chief".


title: Incident Command System

text: Incidents are managed by aiming towards specific objectives. Objectives are ranked by priority; should be as specific as possible; must be attainable; and if possible given a working time-frame. Objectives are accomplished by first outlining strategies (general plans of action), then determining appropriate tactics (how the strategy will be executed) for the chosen strategy.


title: Incident Command System

text: Incident Command structure is organized in such a way as to expand and contract as needed by the incident scope, resources and hazards. Command is established in a top-down fashion, with the most important and authoritative positions established first. For example, Incident Command is established by the first arriving unit.


title: Incident Command System

text: Only positions that are required at the time should be established. In most cases, very few positions within the command structure will need to be activated. For example, a single fire truck at a dumpster fire will have the officer filling the role of IC, with no other roles required. As more trucks get added to a larger incident, more roles will be delegated to other officers and the Incident Commander (IC) role will probably be handed to a more-senior officer.


title: Incident Command System

text: Only in the largest and most complex operations would the full ICS organization be staffed. Conversely, as an incident scales down, roles will be merged back up the tree until there is just the IC role remaining.


title: Incident Command System

text: To limit the number of responsibilities and resources being managed by any individual, the ICS requires that any single person's span of control should be between three and seven individuals, with five being ideal. In other words, one manager should have no more than seven people working under them at any given time. If more than seven resources are being managed by an individual, then that individual is being overloaded and the command structure needs to be expanded by delegating responsibilities (e.g. by defining new sections, divisions, or task forces). If fewer than three, then the position's authority can probably be absorbed by the next highest rung in the chain of command.


title: Incident Command System

text: One of the benefits of the ICS is that it allows a way to coordinate a set of organizations who may otherwise work together sporadically. While much training material emphasizes the hierarchical aspects of the ICS, it can also be seen as an inter-organizational network of responders. These network qualities allow the ICS flexibility and expertise of a range of organizations. But the network aspects of the ICS also create management challenges. One study of ICS after-action reports found that ICS tended to enjoy higher coordination when there was strong pre-existing trust and working relationships between members, but struggled when authority of the ICS was contested and when the networks of responders was highly diverse. Coordination on any incident or event is facilitated with the implementation of the following concepts:


title: Incident Command System

text: "Incident action plans" (IAPs) ensures cohesion amongst anyone involved toward strictly set goals. These goals are set for specific operational periods. They provide supervisors with direct action plans to communicate incident objectives to both operational and support personnel. They include measurable, strategic objectives set for achievement within a time frame (also known as an operational period) which is usually 12 hours but can be any length of time. Hazardous material incidents (hazmat) must be written, and are prepared by the planning section, but other incident reports can be both verbal and/or written.


title: Incident Command System

text: The consolidated IAP is a very important component of the ICS that reduces freelancing and ensures a coordinated response. At the simplest level, all incident action plans must have four elements:


title: Incident Command System

text: The content of the IAP is organized by a number of standardized ICS forms that allow for accurate and precise documentation of an incident.


title: Incident Command System

text: "Comprehensive resource management" is a key management principle that implies that all assets and personnel during an event need to be tracked and accounted for. It can also include processes for reimbursement for resources, as appropriate. Resource management includes processes for:


title: Incident Command System

text: Comprehensive resource management ensures that visibility is maintained over all resources so they can be moved quickly to support the preparation and response to an incident, and ensuring a graceful demobilization. It also applies to the classification of resources by type and kind, and the categorization of resources by their status.


title: Incident Command System

text: T-Cards (ICS 219, Resource Status Card) are most commonly used to track these resources. The cards are placed in T-Card racks located at an Incident Command Post for easy updating and visual tracking of resource status.


title: Incident Command System

text: Developing an integrated voice and data communications system, including equipment, systems, and protocols, must occur prior to an incident.


title: Incident Command System

text: At the ICS 200 level, the function of Information and Intelligence is added to the standard ICS staff as an option. This role is unique in ICS as it can be arranged in multiple ways based on the judgement of the Incident Commander and needs of the incident. The three possible arrangements are:


title: Incident Command System

text: At the ICS 300 level, the focus is on entry-level management of small-scale, all-hazards incidents with emphasis on the scalability of ICS. It acts as an introduction to the utilization of more than one agency and the possibility of numerous operational periods. It also involves an introduction to the emergency operations center.


title: Incident Command System

text: At the ICS 400 level, the focus is on large, complex incidents. Topics covered include the characteristics of incident complexity, the approaches to dividing an incident into manageable components, the establishment of an "area command", and the multi-agency coordination system (MACS).


title: Incident Command System

text: ICS is organized by levels, with the supervisor of each level holding a unique title (e.g. only a person in charge of a section is labeled "chief"; a "director" is exclusively the person in charge of a branch). Levels (supervising person's title) are:


title: Incident Command System

text: ICS uses a standard set of facility nomenclature. ICS facilities include: pre-designated incident facilities: Response operations can form a complex structure that must be held together by response personnel working at different and often widely separate incident facilities. These facilities can include:


title: Incident Command System

text: Each facility has unique location, space, equipment, materials, and supplies requirements that are often difficult to address, particularly at the outset of response operations. For this reason, responders should identify, pre-designate and pre-plan the layout of these facilities, whenever possible.


title: Incident Command System

text: On large or multi-level incidents, higher-level support facilities may be activated. These could include:


title: Incident Command System

text: The importance of access to computer systems is becoming more common within the advancements to technology and to support the standardised approach to incident and emergency response. Commonly referred to within the Command and Control structure within United States Army, computers and computer-based systems allow responders to interface with each other to have access to the latest information for decision making. See Incident Command Post (ICP) for more information.


title: Incident Command System

text: The "type" of resource describes the size or capability of a resource. For instance, a 50 kW (for a generator) or a 3-ton (for a truck). Types are designed to be categorized as "Type 1" through "Type 5" formally, but in live incidents more specific information may be used.


title: Incident Command System

text: The "kind" of resource describes what the resource is. For instance, generator or a truck. The "type" of resource describes a performance capability for a kind of resource for instance,


title: Incident Command System

text: In both type and kind, the objective must be included in the resource request. This is done to widen the potential resource response. As an example, a resource request for a "small aircraft for aerial reconnaissance of a search and rescue scene" may be satisfied by a National Guard OH-58 Kiowa helicopter (type & kind: rotary-wing aircraft, Type II/III) or by a Civil Air Patrol Cessna 182 (type & kind: fixed-wing aircraft, Type I). In this example, requesting only a fixed-wing or a rotary-wing, or requesting by type may prevent the other resource's availability from being known.


title: Incident Command System

text: A role of responsibility can be transferred during an incident for several reasons: As the incident grows a more qualified person is required to take over as Incident Commander to handle the ever-growing needs of the incident, or in reverse where as an incident reduces in size command can be passed down to a less qualified person (but still qualified to run the now-smaller incident) to free up highly qualified resources for other tasks or incidents. Other reasons to transfer command include jurisdictional change if the incident moves locations or area of responsibility, or normal turnover of personnel due to extended incidents. The transfer of command process always includes a transfer of command briefing, which may be oral, written, or a combination of both.


title: Duane Jones

text: Duane L. Jones (April 11, 1937July 22, 1988) was an American actor and theatre director, best known for his lead role as Ben in the 1968 horror film "Night of the Living Dead". He was later director of the Maguire Theater at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, and the artistic director of the Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art in Manhattan.


title: Duane Jones

text: Jones was born in New York City to Mildred Jones (née Gordon). He had a sister, Marva (later Marva Brooks), and a brother, Henry. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.A. and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, before training as an actor in New York City. He later completed an M.A. in Communications at New York University in between shooting "Night of the Living Dead".


title: Duane Jones

text: Prior to becoming an actor, Jones was a Phelps-Stokes exchange scholar in Niger and taught literature at Long Island University. He created English-language training programs for the Peace Corps and helped design Harlem Preparatory School, where he headed the English department.


title: Duane Jones

text: His role in the 1968 film "Night of the Living Dead" marked the first time an African-American actor was cast as the star and hero of a horror film, and one of the first times in American cinema where an important role was given to a black actor when the script did not explicitly call for one. While some saw the casting as significant, director George A. Romero stated that "Jones was the best actor we met to play Ben."


title: Duane Jones

text: He continued working in film after "Night of the Living Dead" in "Ganja & Hess" (1973), "Losing Ground" (1982), and "Beat Street" (1984), among others. Despite his other film roles, Jones worried that people only recognized him as Ben.


title: Duane Jones

text: From 1972 to 1976, Jones oversaw the literature department at Antioch College. He was subsequently executive director of the Black Theater Alliance, a federation of theater companies, from 1976 through 1981 and continued working as a theater actor and director, until his death in 1988. As executive director of the Richard Allen Center for Culture and Art (RACCA), he promoted African-American theater. He also taught acting styles at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. After leaving the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he taught a select group of students privately in Manhattan, by invitation only. His hand-selected students were of diverse ethnic backgrounds. The students were picked from his Acting Styles classes at American Academy of Dramatic Arts.


title: Duane Jones

text: Jones died of cardiopulmonary arrest at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, Long Island, New York, on July 22, 1988, aged 51. He was cremated and his ashes given to his family.


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. For example, something that is "long" entails that it is not "short". It is referred to as a 'binary' relationship because there are two members in a set of opposites. The relationship between opposites is known as opposition. A member of a pair of opposites can generally be determined by the question "What is the opposite of  X ?"


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: The term antonym (and the related antonymy) is commonly taken to be synonymous with opposite, but antonym also has other more restricted meanings. Graded (or gradable) antonyms are word pairs whose meanings are opposite and which lie on a continuous spectrum (hot, cold). Complementary antonyms are word pairs whose meanings are opposite but whose meanings do not lie on a continuous spectrum ("push", "pull"). Relational antonyms are word pairs where opposite makes sense only in the context of the relationship between the two meanings ("teacher", "pupil"). These more restricted meanings may not apply in all scholarly contexts, with Lyons (1968, 1977) defining antonym to mean gradable antonyms, and Crystal (2003) warning that antonymy and antonym should be regarded with care.


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: Opposition is a semantic relation in which one word has a sense or meaning that negates or is, in the sense of scale, distant from a related word. Other words are capable of being opposed, but the language in question has an accidental gap in its lexicon. For example, the word "devout" lacks a lexical opposite, but it is fairly easy to conceptualize a parameter of devoutness where "devout" lies at the positive pole with a missing member at the negative pole. Opposites of such words can nevertheless sometimes be formed with the prefixes "un-" or "non-", with varying degrees of naturalness. For example, the word "undevout" appears in Webster's dictionary of 1828, while the pattern of "non-person" could conceivably be extended to "non-platypus". Conversely, some words appear to be a prefixed form of an opposite, but the opposite term does not exist, such as "inept," which appears to be "in-" + *"ept;" such a word is known as an unpaired word.


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: Opposites may be viewed as a special type of incompatibility. Words that are incompatible create the following type of entailment (where "X" is a given word and "Y" is a different word incompatible with word X):


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: This incompatibility is also found in the opposite pairs "fast : slow" and "stationary : moving", as can be seen below:


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: Some planned languages abundantly use such devices to reduce vocabulary multiplication. Esperanto has "mal-" (compare "bona" = "good" and "malbona" = "bad"), Damin has "kuri-" ("tjitjuu" "small", "kuritjitjuu" "large") and Newspeak has "un-" (as in "ungood", "bad").


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: An antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings. Each word in the pair is the antithesis of the other. A word may have more than one antonym. There are three categories of antonyms identified by the nature of the relationship between the opposed meanings. Where the two words have definitions that lie on a continuous spectrum of meaning, they are gradable antonyms. Where the meanings do not lie on a continuous spectrum and the words have no other lexical relationship, they are complementary antonyms. Where the two meanings are opposite only within the context of their relationship, they are relational antonyms.


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: A gradable antonym is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings where the two meanings lie on a continuous spectrum. Temperature is such a continuous spectrum so "hot" and "cold", two meanings on opposite ends of the spectrum, are gradable antonyms. Other examples include: "heavy" : "light", "fat" : "skinny", "dark" : "light", "young" : "old", "early" : "late", "empty" : "full", "dull" : "interesting".


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: A complementary antonym, sometimes called a binary or contradictory antonym (Aarts, Chalker & Weiner 2014), is one of a pair of words with opposite meanings, where the two meanings do not lie on a continuous spectrum. There is no continuous spectrum between "odd" and "even" but they are opposite in meaning and are therefore complementary antonyms. Other examples include: "mortal" : "immortal", "exit" : "entrance", "exhale" : "inhale", "occupied" : "vacant".


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: A relational antonym is one of a pair of words that refer to a relationship from opposite points of view. There is no lexical opposite of "teacher", but "teacher" and "pupil" are opposite within the context of their relationship. This makes them relational antonyms. Other examples include: "husband" : "wife", "doctor" : "patient", "predator" : "prey", "teach" : "learn", "servant" : "master", "come" : "go", "parent" : "child".


title: Opposite (semantics)

text: An auto-antonym is a word that can have opposite meanings in different contexts or under separate definitions:


title: Political views and activism of Rage Against the Machine

text: The political views and activism of Rage Against the Machine are central in the band's music and public image. Rage Against the Machine is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1991. The band's line-up consists of vocalist Zack de la Rocha, bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commerford, guitarist Tom Morello and drummer Brad Wilk. Critics have noted Rage Against the Machine for its "fiercely polemical music, which brewed sloganeering left wing rants against corporate America, cultural imperialism, and government oppression into a Molotov cocktail of punk, hip-hop, and thrash."


text: Integral to their identity as a band, Rage Against the Machine often voiced strong criticism of the domestic and foreign policies of the US government. The band and its individual members participated in political protests and other activism throughout its existence, and the band saw its music primarily as a means of spreading ideas. De la Rocha explained that "I'm interested in spreading those ideas through art, because music has the power to cross borders, to break military sieges and to establish real dialogue."


text: The band are vocal supporters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), especially De la Rocha, who has taken several trips to the Mexican state of Chiapas to aid their efforts. The flag of the EZLN serves as the primary recurring theme in the band's visual art. Morello described the EZLN as "a guerrilla army who represent the poor indigenous communities in southern Mexico who, for hundreds of years, have been trodden upon and sort of cast aside and which really are the lowest form on the economic-social ladder in Mexico. In 1994, on New Years Day, there was an uprising there and they were led by the very charismatic Subcomandante Marcos which is a group which is tremendously supportive of the "most objectively poor and continues to fight for dignity, for all people in Mexico." An interviewer was once told by De la Rocha, "Our purpose in sympathizing with the Zapatistas is to help spark [real] dialogue."


text: De la Rocha has been particularly outspoken on the cause of the EZLN. He explained the importance of the cause to him personally.


text: The EZLN and De la Rocha's experiences with them inspired the songs "People of the Sun", "Wind Below" and "Without a Face" from "Evil Empire", and "War Within a Breath" from "The Battle Of Los Angeles".


text: The EZLN flag has been used as a stage backdrop at all of the band's shows since their reunion in April 2007.


text: Zack de la Rocha asked their record label, Epic Records, for $30,000 to donate to the EZLN. It is not known if they complied.


text: On April 10, 1996, the band was scheduled to perform two songs on the NBC comedy variety show "Saturday Night Live". The show was hosted that night by Republican ex-presidential candidate and multi-millionaire Steve Forbes. According to Tom Morello, "RATM wanted to stand in sharp juxtaposition to a billionaire telling jokes and promoting his flat tax by making our own statement."


text: To this end, producer Brendan O'Brien suspended two upside-down American flags from their amplifiers. Seconds before they took the stage to perform "Bulls on Parade", SNL and NBC sent stagehands in to pull the flags down. The inverted flags, says Morello, represented:


text: The band's first attempt to hang the flags during a pre-telecast rehearsal on Thursday was stopped by "SNL"s producers, who "demanded that we take the flags down", according to Morello. "They said the sponsors would be upset, and that because Steve Forbes was on, they had to run a 'tighter' show." "SNL" also told the band it would mute objectionable lyrics in "Bullet in the Head" (which was supposed to be RATM's second song), and insisted that the song be bleeped in the studio because Forbes had friends and family there.


text: On the night of the show, following the removal of the flags during the first performance, the band was approached by "SNL" and NBC officials and ordered to immediately leave the building. Upon hearing this, RATM bassist Commerford reportedly stormed Forbes' dressing room, throwing shreds from one of the torn down flags.


text: Morello noted that members of the "Saturday Night Live" cast and crew, whom he declined to name, "[e]xpressed solidarity with our actions, and a sense of shame that their show had censored the performance".


text: "Radio Free Los Angeles" was a radio show held by the band on January 20, 1997, the night of Bill Clinton's second inauguration as President. The show comprised segments and interviews featuring Michael Moore, teen rights activist Emily Hodgson, Leonard Peltier, Chuck D, Mumia Abu-Jamal, UNITE, Noam Chomsky, Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, and Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas. These were intercut with musical performances by Morello, De la Rocha, Flea and Stephen Perkins playing different versions of Rage songs, as well as Beck and Cypress Hill playing their own songs. The band organized and played the show in response to the re-election of Clinton:


text: The two-hour show was syndicated by over 50 commercial U.S. radio stations and streamed live from the band's website. Transcripts of the interviews are freely available online.


text: On January 26, 2000, filming of the music video for "Sleep Now in the Fire" caused the doors of the New York Stock Exchange to be closed and the band to be escorted from the site by security. Directed by Michael Moore, the video was shot on the steps of Federal Hall National Memorial, across from the NYSE in downtown Manhattan. The band invited fans to join them in the shoot and approximately 300 showed up. After the breakdown of the shoot, the band members, along with many of their fans, stormed the doors of the NYSE. De la Rocha was shoved away from the entrance after briefly entering through a side door. They then succeeded in forcing the NYSE to lock its doors during the middle of the trading day.


text: After the incident, Morello was quoted saying, "Our protest stopped trading at the stock exchange for the last two hours of the day. I guess we stopped downsizing for at least a couple of hours."


text: Footage of enthusiastic Wall Street employees headbanging to the music, police attempting to take Tim Commerford's bass as he refused to quit playing, and the emergency doors of the New York Stock exchange closing were all used in the final video. "We decided to shoot this video in the belly of the beast", said Moore, who was arrested during the shooting of the video: despite having a federal permit for the location, they did not have a sound permit. Only Moore was arrested in relation to the incident.


text: The video was nominated at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards for Best Rock Video. After losing the award to Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff", bassist Tim Commerford climbed up the fake palm tree behind the podium and refused to come down. He then began shaking the set, which appeared as though it might collapse. Commerford was eventually coaxed down and was ultimately arrested after a brief scuffle. Tim's actions are widely believed to be the impetus for singer Zack de la Rocha's exit and the end of Rage.


text: RATM played a free concert at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in protest of the two-party system. The band had been considering playing a protest concert there since April that year. Although they were at first required by the City of Los Angeles to perform in a small venue at a considerable distance, early in August a United States district court judge ruled that the City's request was too restrictive and the City subsequently allowed the protests and concert to be held at a site across from the DNC. In response, the Los Angeles Police Department increased security measures, including a 12 ft fence and patrolling by a minimum of 2,000 officers wearing riot gear, as well as additional horses, motorcycles, squad cars and police helicopters. A police spokesperson said they were "gravely concerned because of security reasons".


text: During the concert, De la Rocha said to the crowd, "brothers and sisters, our democracy has been hijacked", and later also shouted "we have a right to oppose these motherfuckers!" After the performance, a small group of attendees congregated at the point in the protest area closest to the DNC, facing the police officers, throwing rocks, and possibly engaging in more violent activity, such as throwing glass, concrete and water bottles filled with "noxious agents", spraying ammonia on police and slingshotting rocks and steel balls. The police soon declared the gathering an unlawful assembly, turned off the electrical supply, interrupting performing band Ozomatli, and informed the protestors that they had 15 minutes to disperse on pain of arrest. Some of the protestors remained, including two young men who climbed the fence and waved black flags, and were subsequently sprayed in the face with pepper spray. Police then forcibly dispersed the crowd, using tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets. At least six people were arrested in the incident.


text: The police faced severe and broad criticism for their reaction, with an American Civil Liberties Union spokesperson saying that it was "nothing less than an orchestrated police riot". Several primary witnesses reported unnecessarily violent actions and police abuses, including firing on reporters and people obeying police commands. Police responded that their response was "outstanding" and "clearly disciplined". De la Rocha said of the incident, "I don't care what fucking television stations said, [that] the violence was caused by the people at the concert; those motherfuckers unloaded on this crowd. And I think it's ridiculous considering, you know, none of us had rubber bullets, none of us had M16s, none of us had billy clubs, none of us had face shields."


text: Footage of the protest and ensuing violence, along with an MTV News report on the incident, was included in the "Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium" DVD.


text: On September 2, 2008, during the Republican National Convention, Rage Against the Machine was scheduled to play a free show in protest of what De la Rocha called the power abusing party in St. Paul, Minnesota on the State Capital lawn for Ripple Effect. Tom Morello was asked by SuicideGirls to report what happened there. He said:


text: On September 3, 2008, the band played a concert in Minneapolis at the Target Center, on the second day of the Republican National Convention. The band surprised the crowd when they silently stood on stage while wearing orange Guantanamo Bay-like prisoner suits with black hoods over their heads. They opened up with "Bombtrack". An impromptu demonstration spilled out into the streets afterwards. 102 people were arrested as riot police ended the gathering.


text: At the Coachella 2007 performance, De la Rocha made an impassioned speech during "Wake Up", citing a statement by Noam Chomsky regarding the Nuremberg Trials and subsequent actions by US presidents, as follows:


text: A clip of De la Rocha's speech found its way to the Fox News program "Hannity & Colmes". An on-screen headline read, "Rock group Rage Against the Machine says Bush admin should be shot". Ann Coulter, a right-wing commentator and a guest on the show, stated, "They're losers, their fans are losers, and there's a lot of violence coming from the left wing."


text: On July 28 and 29, Rage co-headlined the hip hop festival Rock the Bells. On July 28, they made a speech during their performance of "Wake Up" just as they had done at Coachella. During this, De La Rocha made another statement, defending the band from Fox News who he claimed had misquoted him:


text: Subsequently, De la Rocha added Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister who supported George Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq, to the list of those who ought to be tried and hanged at the Reading Festival on August 22, 2008. The Reading and Leeds Festivals organizer announced after the 2008 festival that De la Rocha had requested Friday and Saturday slots specifically so he could be back in the US for the Democratic and Republican conventions taking place in the week of the 25th.


text: In October 2009, Rage Against the Machine, along with members of Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and The Roots joined a campaign to close Guantanamo Prison, calling also for the declassification of military records regarding the use of music in torture. Based on reports that songs by Rage and Nine Inch Nails were used in torture at the controversial facility, the group is filing for further declassification under the Freedom of Information Act.


text: On October 9, 2010, RATM made its first gig in Brazil and played at the music festival SWU Music & Arts in Itu. Despite sound problems and some flaws in the organization of the event, the first show on Brazilian soil had a major impact and has received good reviews. Tom Morello wore the cap of the Landless Workers' Movement (known in Brazil simply as "MST") during the performance of the song "Wake Up" and the band dedicated "People of the Sun" to that social movement. According to the Brazilian Independent Media Center and other alternative media news websites, the TV channel Multishow, which had announced that would broadcast the full concert, censored the broadcast cutting it short after only 35 minutes of its onset, at the exact moment when the guitarist Tom Morello put on a cap of the "MST". Instead of RATM's performance, the channel aired the erotic television show "Sexytime" that was expected to air 1 hour 25 minutes later.


text: The channel claimed that the broadcast was interrupted due to technical problems after the public invaded the restricted area of the shooting crew; it has been difficult to confirm which version is true. However, it is undisputed that the praise singer Zack de la Rocha made of the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement was omitted from the Multishow Channel broadcast, and censorship has occurred at least in this respect. On October 10 Tom Morello stated on his Twitter account: "I understand the network cut away when I put on the PST hat. That means we're winning." And then corrected: "Of course that's MST, not PST. PST stands for Post São Paulo Triatholon."


text: During the band's Public Service Announcement Tour in 2022, the band announced they would donate $475,000 in ticket sale revenue to reproductive rights organisations in Wisconsin and Illinois, and screened statements saying "abort the Supreme Court" at their concerts, following the overturning of "Roe v. Wade" that restricted access to abortion in the United States.


text: The band advocates for the release of convicted political prisoner, former Black Panther and life imprisonment inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, for whom they wrote and recorded the track "Voice of the Voiceless" for their 1999 album "The Battle of Los Angeles". The band performed at a benefit concert, and all the proceeds were donated to the International Concerned Family And Friends Of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and De la Rocha spoke before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in support of Abu-Jamal. The band also raised funds and awareness for political activist and convicted double-murderer Leonard Peltier, and documented his case in the video for "Freedom".


text: At a 1993 Lollapalooza appearance in Philadelphia, the band stood onstage naked for 15 minutes with duct tape on their mouths and the letters "PMRC" painted on their chests in protest against censorship by the Parents Music Resource Center. Refusing to play, they stood in silence with the sound emitted being only audio feedback from Morello and Commerford's guitars. The band later played a free show for disappointed fans. Tom Morello was arrested for civil disobedience in October 1997 during a union protest by garment workers and their supporters against the use of sweatshop labor by Guess? Billboards subsequently appeared in Las Vegas and New York featuring a photograph of the band with the caption "Rage Against Sweatshops: We Don't Wear Guess – A Message from Rage Against the Machine and UNITE (Union of Needletrades Industrial and Textile Employees). Injustice. Don't buy it."


text: Some other controversial stands taken include that of the music video for the song "Bombtrack", in which RATM expresses support for the Peruvian revolutionary organization Shining Path and their incarcerated leader Abimael Guzmán, sentenced for the 1983 Lucanamarca massacre and the Tarata bombing. Over its career, the band played benefit concerts for organizations such as Rock for Choice, the Anti-Nazi League, the United Farm Workers, children's care organization Para Los Niños and UNITE. 1994 saw the band organizing Latinpalooza, a joint benefit concert for the Leonard Peltier Defense Fund, and Para Los Niños. The band also raised funds for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the National Commission for Democracy in Mexico, Women Alive, and played at the Tibetan Freedom Concert on more than one occasion. Album liner notes contained promotional material for AK Press, Amnesty International, the Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru, the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic, Indymedia, Mass Mic, Parents for Rock and Rap, the Popular Resource Center, RE: GENERATION, Refuse and Resist, Revolution Books, the "Rock & Rap Confidential", and Voices in the Wilderness. When the band headlined Reading Festival on August 22, 2008, Getafe Electric Festival on May 30, 2008, and the Pinkpop Festival on June 1, 2008, they came on stage to the sound of a prison klaxon, dressed in orange prison jumpsuits with black sacks over their heads, presumably in reference to the conditions of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. They remained silent onstage for around a minute until being led to their instruments and performing their opening song, "Bombtrack", still in the prison outfits.


text: In June 2010, frontman Zack de la Rocha stepped up his campaign to compel the state of Arizona to repeal its controversial immigration law by encouraging artists to boycott performing in the state. In addition, he has said they "are going to be organizing a series of concerts that are respectful of the nature of the boycott in its attempts to isolate the Arizona government but not isolate the people." Rage Against the Machine performed in Los Angeles for the first time in 10 years on July 23, 2010, to protest the Arizona immigration law.


text: Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for Vice President in the 2012 election has said that he likes Ludwig van Beethoven, Rage Against the Machine and Led Zeppelin. Tom Morello, the lead guitarist of Rage Against The Machine, wrote an op-ed in "Rolling Stone" stating that "Paul Ryan's love for Rage Against The Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades" and "You see, the super rich must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while millions of children in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night".


title: Jinnah (film)

text: Jinnah is a 1998 PakistaniBritish epic biographical film which follows the life of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It was directed by Jamil Dehlavi, and written by Akbar S. Ahmed and Jamil Dehlavi. It stars Christopher Lee in the lead role as Jinnah.


title: Jinnah (film)

text: To make this film, Shashi Kapoor wanted to invest $1 million. Shashi Kapoor was the victim of controversy from India and Pakistan for acting in the film. It was showed in Mill Valley Film Festival on 15 October 1999. The director of the film accused Akbar Ahmed of embezzling money from the film. Former Channel 4 executive Farrukh Dhondy also helped write the screenplay for the film for £12,000.


title: Jinnah (film)

text: The guide takes Jinnah to 1947 where, at the Cromwell Conference with Lord Mountbatten, Jinnah demanded a homeland for Indian Muslims. After World War II, the British Imperial Government intends to withdraw and grant independence to the subcontinent. This would mean a Hindu-dominated state. Religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims were increasing after the Second World War.


title: Jinnah (film)

text: Flashbacks resume when the Guide recounts the marital life of Jinnah, when he fell in love and married a Parsi named Rattanbai Petit, later known against the will of her parents, mainly on grounds of religion and the difference in their ages. In 1922, Jinnah faces political isolation as he devoted every spare moment to be the voice of moderation in a nation torn by Hindu-Muslim antipathy. That created tension between Rattanbai and Jinnah. She finally leaves him with their daughter in September 1922, and they eventually separate in 1927. Rattanbai died of cancer on 18 February 1929. The death of Rattanbai had a huge impact on Jinnah's life and his fight for Pakistan. He went back to British India in order to start a political journey of the two-nation theory. In 1940, the Muslim League annual conference is held from 22 to 24 March. Jinnah addresses thousands of Muslims and gives them the assurance of the birth of Pakistan.


title: Jinnah (film)

text: The Guide questions Jinnah as to who he loves the most apart from Ruttie and Fatima. He then mentioned his daughter, who married a Parsi boy without his permission.


title: Jinnah (film)

text: While he was addressing a Muslim League conference in 1947, Muslims fanatics attacked the conference and argued that if Pakistan is to be a Muslim state, it cannot give equal rights to women and non-Muslims. Jinnah replies that Islam doesn't need fanatics but people with vision who can build the country. However, the partition of India was carried out, and the Guide and Jinnah saw the massacre of Muslims in migration done by Hindus and Sikhs. Jinnah is sworn in as the first Governor-General of Pakistan and announces Liaquat Ali Khan as the first Prime Minister of Pakistan. Jinnah then says goodbye to his daughter. Dina promises that she will visit him but she tell that her home is now in Bombay with her husband and child.


title: Jinnah (film)

text: After independence and the end of British rule, Pakistan stands as a new nation and sanctuary for the Muslims of the subcontinent. Jinnah is given the title of "Quaid-e-Azam" of Pakistan. Jinnah waits for the first train carrying Muslims who left India for Pakistan, but when the train arrives, they are all found dead save for one infant child. Fatimah and Lady Edwina Mountbatten visit refugees and Lady Mountbatten learns the importance of independence. Mountbatten betrays Jinnah as the Hindu Maharaja of Kashmir, Sir Hari Singh, stalls his decision on which nation to join. With the population in revolt in October 1947, aided by Pakistani irregulars, the Maharaja accedes to India; Indian troops are airlifted in. Jinnah objects to that and orders that Pakistani troops move into Kashmir, which leads to a war between India and Pakistan then and afterward from time to time in the Kashmir conflict.


title: Jinnah (film)

text: The film jumps into a final fictional scene of Lord Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (last Viceroy of India) in a Heavenly Court. Jinnah is fighting a case against him over his betrayal. The film ends with Jinnah and his angel judge traveling back in time to the scene of Muslim refugees. Jinnah expresses his sorrow over the plight of the refugees during the division of Punjab. They chant "Pakistan Zindabad" in response, which ends the film.


title: Jinnah (film)

text: It received an overwhelmingly positive response in Pakistan. Christopher Lee spoke highly of the film, calling his performance in it the best of his career as well as stressing the importance of the film.


title: Jinnah (film)

text: However, the casting of Christopher Lee in lead role led to a large amount of media controversy in Pakistan because of his previous roles in horror films and vampire films as Count Dracula, with Lee having received death threats which required personal bodyguards during filming. BBC News reported that the threats were due to his previous film roles and not that he was a European playing an Asian. Some critics even demanded a ban on the film.


title: La maja desnuda

text: The Naked Maja or The Nude Maja ( ) is an oil on canvas painting made around 1797–1800 by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, and is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. It portrays a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows, and was probably commissioned by Manuel de Godoy, to hang in his private collection in a separate cabinet reserved for nude paintings. Goya created a pendant of the same woman identically posed, but clothed, known today as "La maja vestida" ("The Clothed Maja"), also in the Prado, and usually hung next to "La maja desnuda". The subject is identified as a maja or fashionable lower-class Madrid woman, based on her costume in "La maja vestida".


title: La maja desnuda

text: The painting is renowned for the straightforward and unashamed gaze of the model towards the viewer. It has also been cited as among the earliest Western artwork to depict a nude woman's pubic hair without obvious negative connotations (such as in images of prostitutes). With this work Goya not only upset the ecclesiastical authorities, but also titillated the public and extended the artistic horizon of the day. It has been in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1901.


title: La maja desnuda

text: Although the two versions of the Maja are the same size, the sitter in the clothed version occupies a slightly larger proportion of the pictorial space; according to art historian Janis Tomlinson she seems almost to "press boldly against the confines of her frame", making her more brazen in comparison to the comparatively "timid" nude portrait.


title: La maja desnuda

text: The painting carries many of the traditions of depictions of the nude in Spanish art, but marks a clear break in significant ways, especially in her bold gaze. Further, the accompanying pendant showing a woman in contemporary dress makes it clear that the focus of the work is not of a mythological subject, as in Velázquez's "Rokeby Venus", but in fact of a nude Spanish woman. More obviously, while Velázquez painted his Venus revealing only her back, Goya's portrait is a full frontal view. Goya's figuration is short and angular, while Velázquez's is elongated and curved, and his figure placed on richly coloured satin, which starkly contrasts to the bare white cloths Goya's maja rests on.


title: La maja desnuda

text: The identity of the model and why the paintings were created are today unknown. Both paintings are first recorded in an inventory of "unpopular and unsuccessful art" by Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy, Duke of Alcúdia in 1800, when they were hung in a private room reserved for nude paintings, alongside such works as Velázquez's "Rokeby Venus". Godoy retained the picture for six years before it was discovered by investigators for the Spanish Inquisition in 1808, along with his other "questionable pictures". Godoy and the curator of his collection, Don Francisco de Garivay, were brought before a tribunal and forced to reveal the artists behind the confiscated art works which were "so indecent and prejudicial to the public good."


title: La maja desnuda

text: The controversy was populist and driven by a political motive, following a mob gathering demanding Godoy's removal as Prime Minister. In the fallout, Goya was named and summoned on a charge of moral depravity. As Godoy had only been found in possession of the painting, Goya was asked to identify why "he did them", and also "at whose request, and what attention guided him." His answers do not survive, but it is known that the Director of Confiscations accepted that Goya had followed and emulated Titian's "Danaë" series and Velázquez's "Rokeby Venus"; two painters, and their works, admired by the court and church, including their nudes, and the Inquisition had previously found nothing objectionable in the "Rokeby Venus".


title: La maja desnuda

text: Goya escaped prosecution when the tribunal accepted that he was following in a tradition, and emulating a Velázquez painting which had been favoured by Philip IV of Spain. The earlier picture of Venus had been similarly kept out of view by that art-loving king in a private room, "the room where His Majesty retires after eating." In fact, the Inquisition by 1808 was nearing the end of its influence, and while it could draw attention to "dangerous" forms of expression, be they books, plays, or paintings, it was usually unable to fully suppress them.


title: La maja desnuda

text: "La maja desnuda" has always hung alongside, above, or before its companion. They were twice in the collection of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, also in Madrid, being "sequestered" by the Inquisition between 1814 and 1836 before being returned. They have been in the Prado since 1901.


title: La maja desnuda

text: It is not known if the two works were intended to be hung together. One early account gives the "Clothed Maja" placed in front of the current work; the pull of a cord revealed the nude version. Today they are hung side by side, although others have suggested that they were intended to be spaced apart, and seen in succession.


title: La maja desnuda

text: It has been conjectured that the woman depicted was Prime Minister Godoy's young mistress Pepita Tudó. It has also been suggested that the woman was María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo, 13th Duchess of Alba, with whom Goya is rumored to have been romantically involved and whose portrait he painted twice (in 1795 and 1797). However, many scholars have rejected this possibility, including Australian art critic Robert Hughes in his 2003 biography "Goya". Many agree that Pepita Tudó is a more likely candidate. Others believe that the woman is a composite of several different models.


title: La maja desnuda

text: The work has inspired other artists. Jeffrey Meyers, in his book "Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt", opines that Manet's "Olympia" "boldly alluded to another masterpiece, Goya's "Naked Maja"."


title: La maja desnuda

text: Two sets of stamps depicting "La maja desnuda" in commemoration of Goya's work were privately produced in 1930 and later approved by the Spanish Postal Authority.


title: La maja desnuda

text: The novel "The Naked Maja" (by Samuel Edwards, 1959) is based on Goya's affairs with the Duchess. Later that same year, an Italian-French-American co-production film based on this novel (sharing the same name) was made by S.G.C., Titanus Films, and United Artists.


title: La maja desnuda

text: The painting figures into the plot of film "Toto in Madrid", an Italian comedy film from 1959, directed by Steno, written by Vittorio Metz, starring Totò and Louis de Funès.