title: Democratic Party of Albania

text: On 16 February 2019 the Albanian opposition led by Lulzim Basha protested for three years under his leadership, with the goals of removing Edi Rama from power. The opposition coalition consists of the Democratic Party (PD), the Socialist Movement for Integration, the Party for Justice, Integration and Unity, the Republican Party and other minor opposition parties. After the first protests opposition MPs decided to resign in mass from parliament, more than 40 seats were vacated. Due to the protests the opposition parties decided to boycott the local elections that were previously set to be held on 30 June 2019. Lulzim Basha formed an alliance with minority parties, forming the Democratic Party Alliance for Change ("Partia Demokratike - Aleanca për Ndryshim)." However this was not enough to deliver the Democratic Party a victory, it did however increase its seats in Parliament and the 2021 Albanian parliamentary election would be the third loss in a row for the Democratic Party. Following the election aftermath Sali Berisha had been declared Persona Non Grata by the United States. Which resulted in Lulzim Basha expelling Berisha from the parliamentary group and begun causing party internal fighting between members of Basha's faction and Berisha's faction. On 11 December at Arena Kombëtare, the Berisha faction held a "national council" to remove Basha and his members from the party leadership. More than 4,446 voted for the removal of Lulzim Basha from party leader of the Democratic Party. However, Basha did not recognize the results and the party internal feuds continued. On 6 March 2022 Partial Local elections for Specifically, Shkodër, Durrës, Dibër, Vorë, Rrogozhinë, and Lushnjë. Many supporters had left to support Sali Berisha's coalition "House of Freedom" during the party internal feuds. Which resulted in The Democratic party being placed third and second. While Sali Berisha and his coalition coming first place in Shkodër. Following the defeats in the partial local elections, Lulzim Basha stepped down which resulted in Sali Berisha and Enkelejd Alibeaj having disputes over leadership of the party. Although not just Alibeaj and Berisha, members of Berisha's factions as well began to have disputes between each other, specifically between Belind Këlliçi and Evi Kokalari. Këlliçi had accused Kokalari that she had been attacking him and claimed that "Kokalari took time to hit me with some of the accusations and slanders used by the Socialists against me." As a result Këlliçi had taken Kokalari to trial and responded to the accusations that Evi Kokalari has made against him with a defamation lawsuit, where he demands 1 million Lek in compensation. On 7 July 2022 a big protest was held in Tirana in front of the Prime Minster's Office, Sali Berisha as "defacto" Chairman of the party had called it weeks before. The protest was called under the motto and slogan "Albania in Danger" (Shqipëria në rrezik). Sali Berisha stated that the future of Albania and the Albanians was at risk and the stake of the fatherland was in their hands.


title: Democratic Party of Albania

text: The party's headquarters are located in Tirana, capital city of Albania, not too far away from the Albanian Parliament (approximately 50 meters away). The newspaper Rilindja Demokratike, the Democratic Party's main news organ, is located at the same headquarters building.


title: Democratic Party of Albania

text: After the Albanian parliament elections of 2005 the Democrats won 56 MPs. The list of the elected deputies:


title: Democratic Party of Albania

text: After the Albanian parliament elections of 2009 the Democrats won 67 MPs. The list of the elected deputies:


title: Democratic Party of Albania

text: After the Albanian parliament elections of 2013 the Democrats won 45 MPs. The list of the elected deputies:


title: Democratic Party of Albania

text: In the general elections of 2017 DP won 43 out of 140 seats in parliament coming second after only SP and being the main largest opposition party of Albania.


title: Democratic Party of Albania

text: In the Parliamentary elections of 2021 DP with the Alliance for Change won 59 out of 140 seats in parliament coming second after only SP and being the main largest opposition party of Albania.


title: Ghatak: Lethal

text: Ghatak: Lethal is an Indian 1996 Hindi-language action thriller film directed by Rajkumar Santoshi, starring Sunny Deol, Meenakshi Seshadri, and Amrish Puri, while Danny Denzongpa plays the antagonist. Marking Santoshi's third collaboration with Deol, Seshadri, and Puri after "Ghayal" (1990) and "Damini" (1993), it earned worldwide to become the fourth highest-grossing Bollywood film of the year, and won three awards including Best Supporting Actor for Puri at the 42nd Filmfare Awards, where it was also nominated for three other awards: Best Director for Santoshi, Best Actor for Deol, and Best Villain for Denzongpa. "Ghatak" is Seshadri's last film to date. The film was later remade in Telugu as "Aapthudu" starring Rajasekhar and Anjala Zaveri.


title: Ghatak: Lethal

text: Kashi (Sunny Deol) is a kind-hearted wrestler and the dutiful adopted son of Shambhu Nath (Amrish Puri) living in Banaras. Shambhu Nath, who was a freedom fighter awarded with "Tambra Patra", is an honourable and respectable man in town. Kashi comes to Mumbai with his father for his medical treatment for his throat and stays with his brother Shiv Nath (K. K. Raina). Kashi meets Gauri (Meenakshi Seshadri) and starts liking her. He learns that the colony is being terrorized by a tyrannical gangster named Katya (Danny Denzongpa) along with his other six brothers. Before Kashi's arrival, a resident named Sachdev (Om Puri) tries to initiate revolt against Katya, but gets ruthlessly killed by him, thereby making Malti (Ila Arun), wife of Sachdev, go mad. Katya and his brothers become enemies with Kashi when he beats up their goons when they were beating up Malti. Shambhu Nath is later diagnosed with throat cancer and has only a few days to live.


title: Ghatak: Lethal

text: When Kashi refuses to join Katya's gang, Katya becomes furious and humiliates Shambhu Nath before the entire colony. After a series of dramatic events, Shiv Nath is ran over to death by Jeena (Mukesh Rishi), one of Katya's brothers. Kashi then kills Antya (Deep Dhillon) and gets arrested. Meanwhile, Shambhu Nath dies of cancer. When Kashi was going to disperse his father's ashes at the Ghat with the police, the police van gets attacked by Katya's brothers and goons. Kashi kills all of them, including Katya's three brothers, and reaches Katya's home. There he kills Jeena, thereby causing only two brothers to survive, including Katya. As Katya made Kashi's father dog, he made Kashi as an ox and takes him to the colony to re-establish his supremacy. But Kashi stands up, and Katya's entire gang is then attacked by the residents. The sixth brother Bhiku (Tinu Verma), is then killed by the mob. Kashi makes Katya a dog and asks him to bark. Katya, having no choice, barks on Kashi's instructions. Kashi then kills Katya, and the colony gets freedom from his tyranny.


title: Ghatak: Lethal

text: Originally, Kamal Haasan was signed to play the lead role and the advertisement appearing in "Screen" read as "Welcome back to Hindi Screen", but Kamal withdrew from the film for unknown reasons.


title: Ghatak: Lethal

text: The music for the movie was mainly composed by R. D. Burman. The song "Koi Jaye To Le Aaye" was the only song composed by Anu Malik, and it became popular.


title: Ghatak: Lethal

text: The film was made at a budget of Rs. 62.5 million, did collections of Rs. 265 million and was declared a Blockbuster.


title: TI-class supertanker

text: The TI class of supertankers comprises the ships TI Africa, TI Asia, TI Europe and TI Oceania (all names as of July 2004), where the "TI" refers to the VLCC tanker pool operator Tankers International. The class were the first ULCCs (ultra-large crude carriers) to be built in 25 years.


title: TI-class supertanker

text: By displacement, deadweight tonnage (≈ cargo mass), and gross tonnage (a formula value based on internal volume, not mass), the TI class ships are smaller only than Pioneering Spirit.


title: TI-class supertanker

text: Compared to the TI class, the Maersk Triple E class container ships are longer and have a higher cargo volume, including above-deck containers.


title: TI-class supertanker

text: All four oil tankers were constructed for shipping company Hellespont Group by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering in Okpo, South Korea, entering service between March 2002 and April 2003. The ships were originally named "Hellespont Alhambra", "Hellespont Fairfax", "Hellespont Metropolis" and "Hellespont Tara".


title: TI-class supertanker

text: In 2004, Belgian shipowner Euronav NV and partners purchased all four ships. "Hellespont Fairfax", "Hellespont Tara", "Hellespont Alhambra" and "Hellespont Metropolis" were renamed "TI Oceania", "TI Europe", "TI Asia" and "TI Africa" respectively.


title: TI-class supertanker

text: "Hellespont Fairfax" was the subject of The Discovery Channel's television show "Superships", episode "Launching a Leviathan—"Hellespont Fairfax".


title: TI-class supertanker

text: The class, each ship powered by a single HSD-Sulzer 9RTA84T-D delivering at 76 rpm, possesses a relatively high service speed ( laden, in ballast), which increases their earning capacity. The steel scantlings are greater than the class minimum.


title: TI-class supertanker

text: These ships are wider than the new Panama Canal locks. They also cannot travel through the Suez Canal unless on a ballast voyage.


title: TI-class supertanker

text: The coatings in the ballast tanks are protected by two features, a full-time double-scrubbing system supplying drier inert gas to the ballast tanks, and also by the white painted upper hull reflecting the sun’s energy. The inert gas system also increases safety. Keeping down the cargo temperatures also minimizes hydrocarbon emissions.


title: TI-class supertanker

text: In 2009 and 2010, "TI Asia" and "TI Africa" were converted into sophisticated floating storage and offloading (FSO) vessels, moored off the coast of Qatar in the Persian Gulf at the Al Shaheen Oil Field. The extensive conversions were carried out by EuroNav and Overseas Shipholding Group at Drydocks World – Dubai.


title: TI-class supertanker

text: In 2017, "TI Europe" was chartered by Statoil and converted to an FSO vessel, moored at Port of Kuala Sungai Linggi in Malaysia. In 2019, it was announced that "TI Oceania" would be converted to an FSO vessel and moored off the coast of Singapore.


title: TI-class supertanker

text: Information obtained from IMO GISIS Ship and Company Particulars, MarineTraffic, Euronav and branches, and Subsidiaries of International Seaways 15 February 2020.


title: Sean Wainui

text: Sean Wainui (23 October 1995 – 18 October 2021) was a New Zealand rugby union player. He played on the wing (and occasionally centre) for provincial side Bay of Plenty, the Chiefs in Super Rugby, and for New Zealand's Māori international side the Māori All Blacks.


title: Sean Wainui

text: Wainui was a member of the Takapuna Grammar School 1st XV in 2011, 2012 and 2013. He was awarded North Harbour's 2013 Māori Colts Senior Player of the Year whilst still in school. Also an ex Takapuna Grammar Prefect and 1st XV Captain, Wainui represented New Zealand on the world stage after playing for the Champion New Zealand team in the Under 20 Rugby World Cup in Italy. The team played England for the title, winning 21–16.


title: Sean Wainui

text: Upon leaving school, Wainui was contracted by the Taranaki Rugby Football Union. In his first year out of school he was a part of Taranaki's 2014 national provincial championship squad. He was spotted by coach Colin Cooper and had signed with Taranaki at just 18-years-old after an impressive season, not only for his New Plymouth Old Boys club but for the Chiefs development side also. Wainui made his debut for Taranaki in the 2014 ITM Cup competition, coming on as a replacement against Waikato. In the following year, he recorded nine appearances, including 5 starts, and scored three tries for the province in Super Rugby matches. Overall, between 2014 and 2020, Wainui made 49 appearances for Taranaki and scored 15 tries.


title: Sean Wainui

text: In 2015 he was signed by the Super Rugby franchise the Crusaders after impressing in the centre and wing position for Taranaki. Wainui made his debut for the Crusaders in round one of the 2016 Super Rugby competition, starting in the outside centre position against the Chiefs.


title: Sean Wainui

text: Prior to the 2018 Super Rugby season, he signed with the Chiefs. By the end of the 2021 Super Rugby season, he made 44 appearances for the club and has scored 18 tries. On 12 June 2021, in a 40-7 victory over the Waratahs during Super Rugby Trans-Tasman, he became the first player in Super Rugby history to score 5 tries in a single match.


title: Sean Wainui

text: On 27 May 2021, Wainui announced on Instagram that he had signed with Bay of Plenty for the 2021 NPC.


title: Sean Wainui

text: Although the then 19-year-old Wainui had only played several matches for Taranaki, Colin Cooper, the Māori All Blacks coach, selected him for the 2015 tour to Fiji, playing against the national side, and ending against the specially made New Zealand Barbarians. Overall he was capped 10 times.


title: Sean Wainui

text: Wainui died at about 7:50 am on 18 October 2021, five days before his 26th birthday, when the car that he was driving crashed into a tree at McLaren Falls Park near Tauranga. Wainui's tangihanga was held at Te Wainui marae in Whatatutu on 24 October 2021.


title: Sean Wainui

text: Before the test match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the United States at FedExField in Washington D.C. on 24 October 2021, a moment of silence was held in memory of Wainui's death. The United States team's captain, Bryce Campbell, presented the All Blacks a white No. 11 shirt with Wainui's name.


title: Elliot Cowan

text: Elliot Aidan Cowan (born 9 July 1976) is an English actor, known for portraying Corporal Jem Poynton in "Ultimate Force", Mr Darcy in "Lost in Austen", and Ptolemy in the 2004 film "Alexander". He also starred as Lorenzo de' Medici in "Da Vinci's Demons" and Daron-Vex in "Krypton". Cowan most recently is known for playing King Henry Tudor in the STARZ series "The Spanish Princess".


title: Elliot Cowan

text: Born in London, Cowan was brought up in Colchester, Essex. He is the son of a consultant physician and a charity worker, and has a younger brother and sister.


title: Elliot Cowan

text: Cowan boarded at Uppingham School in Rutland. He later obtained a first class degree in drama at the University of Birmingham, before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, from which he graduated in July 2001. From 1994 to 1996, Cowan was a member of the National Youth Music Theatre. He plays guitar and cello, and has worked with the London Sinfonia.


title: Elliot Cowan

text: Cowan's television credits include "Judge John Deed", "Ultimate Force", "Jonathan Creek", "Poirot", "Foyle's War", "The Ruby in the Smoke", "Lost in Austen" and the television movie "The Project".


title: Elliot Cowan

text: Cowan has appeared in the films "The Golden Compass", "Happy-Go-Lucky", "The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey", "Love and Other Disasters", and "Howl". His theatre work includes productions of "The Revenger's Tragedy", "Women Beware Women", "Henry V", "The Seagull" and "Camille".


title: Elliot Cowan

text: He played Stanley Kowalski in the 2009 revival of "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Donmar Warehouse, and was a lead in "Les Blancs" at the National Theatre in 2016.


title: Elliot Cowan

text: He played "Macbeth" at the Globe Theatre from 23 April- 27 June 2010 alongside Laura Rogers as Lady Macbeth.


title: Elliot Cowan

text: He starred as Lord Goring in "An Ideal Husband" at the Vaudeville Theatre in London's West End from 4 November 2010 to 19 February 2011.


title: Elliot Cowan

text: As of 2010, he voiced Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye 007 for the Wii console, also providing his likeness.


title: Elliot Cowan

text: He lives in Dalston, London. On 7 August 2011, Elliot swam the long Lake Zurich Swim race, to raise funds for the Neonatal Unit at Guy's and St. Thomas's in memory of Alfie Blacksell.


title: Peugeot 9X8

text: The Peugeot 9X8 is a sports prototype racing car built by French car manufacturer Peugeot for the Le Mans Hypercar category in the FIA World Endurance Championship.


title: Peugeot 9X8

text: On 13 November 2019, Peugeot announced its return to the WEC and the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans for 2022 in the new Hypercar category, this debut was subsequently delayed, with Peugeot stating "Team PEUGEOT TotalEnergies’ PEUGEOT 9X8 Hybrid Hypercar will not race at the 2022 24 Hours of Le Mans and will instead make its racing debut in the FIA World Endurance Championship (FIA WEC) this summer". Instead the car made its debut at the 6 Hours of Monza on the 6th of July.


title: Peugeot 9X8

text: Succeeding the 905 and 908, the 9X8 was designed to take full advantage of the freedoms allowed by the new regulations for the Hypercar category. The first area to benefit from the new regulations is aerodynamics. Indeed, the latter allows the vehicle to have only one adjustable aerodynamic element without specifying what it should be, thus allowing Peugeot to do without the rear spoiler.


title: Peugeot 9X8

text: Regarding the engine, the 9X8 is equipped with a 680 hp (500 kW) twin-turbo 2.6L V6 mated to a 272 hp (200 kW) electric motor, all assembled in a 7-speed sequential gearbox. Peugeot explains the name "9X8" for several reasons: the 9 symbolizes the brand's high-performance models, the X represents all-wheel drive and electric drive technologies, and the 8 corresponds to the brand's contemporary models.


title: Peugeot 9X8

text: Peugeot’s on-track testing programme kicked off last December and has since visited Algarve International Circuit, Circuit Paul Ricard, MotorLand Aragón, Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours, with the 9X8 clocking up more than 10,000 kilometres over the course of 25 test days. Paul Di Resta, Loïc Duval, Mikkel Jensen, Gustavo Menezes, James Rossiter and Jean-Éric Vergne were nominated to share the driving duties and form the crews of the two-car entry in 2022 6 Hours of Monza, with the composition of each trio due to be confirmed at a later stage, following the conclusion of the car’s testing programme. The two PEUGEOT 9X8s are then set to contest the remainder of the 2022 FIA World Endurance Championship, including the 2022 6 Hours of Fuji and season finale, the 2022 8 Hours of Bahrain.


title: Peugeot 9X8

text: Results in bold indicate pole position. Results in "italics" indicate fastest lap. Results in (brackets) indicates finishing position in class, while position without brackets indicates overall finishing position


title: Sai Madhav Burra

text: Sai Madhav Burra (born 1973/1974) is an Indian screenwriter known for his work in Telugu cinema. He wrote dialogues for films such as "Krishnam Vande Jagadgurum" (2012). "Malli Malli Idi Rani Roju" (2015), "Kanche" (2015), "Gopala Gopala" (2015), "Khaidi No. 150" (2017) and "Gautamiputra Satakarni" (2017).


title: Sai Madhav Burra

text: In 2018, he won Best Dialogue Award for "Gautamiputra Satakarni" at 16th Santosham Film Awards and at 49th Cinegoers Awards in 2017.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" (titled onscreen as "The Simpsons Christmas Special") is the series premiere of the American animated television series "The Simpsons". It first aired on Fox in the United States on December 17, 1989. Introducing the Simpson family into half-hour television in this episode, Bart Simpson disobediently gets a tattoo against the permission of his parents. After Marge spends all the family's holiday budget on having it removed, Homer learns that his boss is not giving employees Christmas bonuses, and takes a job as a shopping mall Santa.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: "The Simpsons" was originally intended to debut earlier in 1989 with "Some Enchanted Evening", but due to animation problems with that episode, the series debuted with this episode on December 17. "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" was written by Mimi Pond and directed by David Silverman, and was the only episode of the series to air during the 1980s. Promos for the next episode ("Bart the Genius") ran during commercial breaks for this episode.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" was viewed by approximately 13.4 million people in its original airing, and was nominated for two Emmy Awards in 1990. Since its release on home video, the episode has received positive reviews from critics.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: After attending the Springfield Elementary School Christmas pageant, the Simpsons prepare for the holiday season. Bart and Lisa write letters to Santa; Lisa asks for a pony — which Marge tries to tactfully discourage by claiming that there would not be enough room for one on Santa's sleigh — and Bart wants a tattoo, which Marge and Homer forbid him from getting. The next day, Marge takes the kids Christmas shopping at the mall. Bart goes behind their backs and sneaks away to get a tattoo that reads "Mother" on his arm, thinking that Marge will like it. Before the artist can finish the tattoo, Marge finds Bart and drags him to the dermatologist to have it removed. She is forced to spend the family's entire holiday budget on the procedure, believing that Homer's Christmas bonus will cover gift expenses.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: At the power plant, Homer's mean-spirited boss, Mr. Burns, cancels this year's employee Christmas bonus. When he learns Marge spent the family's holiday money on tattoo removal, Homer moonlights as a shopping mall Santa at the suggestion of his friend Barney Gumble. While at the mall on Christmas Eve, Bart removes Santa's beard, exposing Homer's secret. Bart apologizes for the prank and praises his father for moonlighting to give the family Christmas presents. After Homer's Santa gig pays far less than expected due to deductions for training and uniform, he and Bart receive a greyhound racing tip from Barney.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: At Springfield Downs, Homer bets all his money on a last-minute entry named Santa's Little Helper, a 99–1 long shot. The greyhound unfortunately finishes last. As Homer and Bart leave the track, they see the dog's owner yell and abandon him for losing the race. Bart pleads with Homer to keep the dog as a pet. They return home, where Homer's confession to not getting his Christmas bonus is interrupted when Bart introduces Santa's Little Helper to the others. The family is overjoyed by this gesture, and celebrates by singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" but Homer gets mad at Bart and Lisa for adding their own lyrics to the song.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening conceived of the idea for the Simpsons in the lobby of James L. Brooks' office. Brooks, the producer of the sketch comedy program "The Tracey Ullman Show", wanted to use a series of animated shorts as bumpers between sketches. He had asked Groening to pitch an idea for a series of animated shorts, which Groening initially intended to present as his "Life in Hell" series. However, when Groening realized that animating "Life in Hell" would require the rescinding of publication rights for his life's work, he chose another approach and formulated his version of a dysfunctional family.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: The Simpson family first appeared as shorts in "The Tracey Ullman Show" on April 19, 1987. Groening submitted only basic sketches to the animators and assumed that the figures would be cleaned up in production. However, the animators merely re-traced his drawings, which led to the crude appearance of the characters in the initial short episodes. In 1989, a team of production companies adapted "The Simpsons" into a half-hour series for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with the Fox network that prevented Fox from interfering with the show's content. Groening said his goal in creating the show was to offer the audience an alternative to what he called "the mainstream trash" they were watching. The half-hour series premiered on December 17, 1989, with this episode.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" is the first episode of "The Simpsons" and the Fox network was nervous about the show because they were unsure if it could sustain the audience's attention for the duration of the episode. They proposed doing three seven-minute shorts per episode and four specials until the audience adjusted, but in the end, the producers gambled by asking Fox for 13 full-length episodes. The series was originally planned to premiere earlier in the fall of 1989 with the episode "Some Enchanted Evening", but due to major problems with the animation of that episode, the series began on December 17 with this episode. "Some Enchanted Evening" instead aired as the season finale. "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", being the first to air, lacked the opening sequence which was later added in the second episode, "Bart the Genius", when Groening realized that a longer opening sequence resulted in less animation. Because "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" was the eighth episode produced, but the first one aired, it has more refined animation than the episodes following it, such as "Bart the Genius" and "Homer's Odyssey". Additionally, the characters' personalities are more developed.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: The "Santas of Many Lands" portion of the Christmas pageant is based on Groening's experience in the second grade when he did a report on Christmas in Russia. Groening also used that reference in his comic strip "Life in Hell" when he spoofed himself as a young man, being told that it is too bad his grandmother is from Russia because Christmas was against the law there. Also, Groening claims that this episode has been incorrectly credited with creating the "alternate version" of "Jingle Bells" that has become a well-known children's playground song. During Lisa's performance at the Christmas pageant, she appears to be naked from the waist down. According to David Silverman, this was an animation error and she was intended to be wearing a body stocking, but the Korean animators never colored it in.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: Mimi Pond wrote the episode, the only one she wrote for the series, while staff writer Al Jean came up with the title, which alludes to "The Christmas Song", also known as "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire." David Silverman directed this episode, while Rich Moore storyboarded it and designed Ned Flanders. Several of the scenes were laid out by Eric Stefani, brother of Gwen Stefani, the lead singer of the rock band No Doubt. In this episode, Barney Gumble has blonde hair which was the same color as his skin, but that was later dropped because of the belief that only the Simpson family should have such hair. Seymour Skinner, Milhouse Van Houten, Ralph Wiggum, Sherri and Terri, Moe Szyslak, Mr. Burns, Barney Gumble, Patty and Selma, Grampa Simpson, Ned and Todd Flanders, Santa's Little Helper, Snowball II, Dewey Largo and Lewis all make their first appearances in this episode. Snowball I is mentioned for the first time and Waylon Smithers can be heard over the speaker at the power plant, but he is not seen.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: In its original American broadcast, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" finished thirtieth place in the weekly ratings for the week of December 11–17, 1989 with a Nielsen rating of 14.5, and was viewed in approximately 13.4 million homes. It was the second-highest-rated show on Fox up to that point.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. IGN's Robert Canning in a 2008 review of the episode noted, "though not the funniest of episodes, it certainly was groundbreaking. [...] With this episode, "The Simpsons" had its premise down, and it certainly had its edge." Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood, the authors of the book "I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide", said of the episode: "pretty standard early fare, with the series not quite hitting its stride." They went on to say, "the realism of the first season is much apparent, with only the laser used to remove Bart's tattoo hinting at what the series will become."


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: In a DVD review of the first season, David B. Grelck gave the episode a rating of 3½/5 and commented: "Surprisingly, this early episode has a lot of the zest of the later shows, despite fairly odd-looking art and a very Walter Matthau voice for Homer, still has some laughs." Colin Jacobson at "DVD Movie Guide" said in a review that the episode "is good but not great early Simpsons" and further commented: "For many years I thought of 'Roasting' as a terrible episode, but it's not. While I don't feel it's anything special, it remains a fairly entertaining show that has a few entertaining moments."


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: The episode was nominated for two Emmy Awards in 1990: "Outstanding Animated Program" and "Outstanding Editing for a Miniseries or Special." Because "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" was considered a separate special, "The Simpsons" was nominated twice in the Animated Program category. This episode lost to fellow "The Simpsons" episode "Life on the Fast Lane".


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: In 2009, IGN named the episode number4 on its "Top 10 Holiday Specials" list, writing "With the off-beat sense of humor that we have learned to love from The Simpsons and a story showing the value of family on the Christmas holiday, we can't help but watch this great special every year." Al Jean, the current showrunner, selected the episode as one of five essential episodes in the show's history in 2014. In 2020, Jean acknowledged "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" as an episode many consider to be a favorite.


title: Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

text: The special was the subject of the series' first home video release, "The Simpsons Christmas Special", released on VHS in 1991. The episode was also included in "The Simpsons – Christmas" (later retitled "Christmas with The Simpsons"), a DVD compilation of the series' Christmas episodes, produced in 2003. The episode was also included on "The Simpsons" season one DVD set, which was released on September 25, 2001. Groening, Brooks, and Silverman participated in the DVD's audio commentary.


title: Infectious Grooves

text: Infectious Grooves is an American funk metal supergroup led by Suicidal Tendencies frontman Mike Muir. The current lineup also includes Suicidal Tendencies guitarist Dean Pleasants, ex-Faith No More guitarist Jim Martin, Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, and Avenged Sevenfold drummer Brooks Wackerman. To date, the project released four albums between 1991 and 2000.


title: Infectious Grooves

text: Though Muir's sense of humor was often obvious with Suicidal Tendencies, Infectious Grooves often brought out a goofier type of humor, incorporating comedy skits involving an anthropomorphic reptile named Sarsippius. A mascot costume of Sarsippius was later created and often appeared during the band's live performances.


title: Infectious Grooves

text: The Infectious Grooves were on hiatus between the release of their fourth album, 2000's "Mas Borracho" and 2007, while the band's personnel were busy with other projects. According to Muir, Infectious Grooves had been working on new material. In April 2008 the band began a one-month tour across Europe, featuring Stephen Bruner on bass, Eric Moore on drums, Dean Pleasants and Tim Stewart on guitars.


title: Infectious Grooves

text: Most of the band's original lineup reunited for the Orion Music + More festival in June 2013, with ex-Faith No More guitarist Jim Martin filling in for Adam Siegel.


title: Kantai Collection (TV series)

text: , known as for short, is a 2015 Japanese anime television series created by Diomedéa, based on the game of the same name by Kadokawa Games. The series was announced in September 2013, and aired from January to March 2015. An animated film, titled , was released on November 26, 2016. A second installment titled by ENGI premiered in November 2022.


title: Kantai Collection (TV series)

text: In a world where humanity faces the threat of the abyssal fleet which has taken over the seas, special human girls who don weaponized outfits and possess the spirit of historical naval vessels known as are the only ones capable of countering them. The "kanmusu" live together at a naval base, where they spend their everyday lives as they begin training for battle.


title: Kantai Collection (TV series)

text: The series features the destroyer Fubuki as the main character, with the storyline based on her point of view. Fubuki arrives at the naval base, where she meets other girls that she will eventually fight alongside. Despite lacking adequate combat training, she is recommended into the Third Torpedo Squadron by the admiral, and quickly finds herself sortied into battle. Upon being rescued by Akagi in a dangerous situation, Fubuki strives to do her best in order to train, with the hopes of eventually being able to fight alongside Akagi.


title: Kantai Collection (TV series)

text: The series is directed by Keizō Kusakawa, with the script written by Jukki Hanada, and features the voice cast from the original game. The show's premiere screening event took place at Shinjuku Piccadilly on December 27, 2014. The 12-episode series aired in Japan between January 8 and March 26, 2015 and was simulcast and licensed by Crunchyroll. The first Blu-ray and DVD compilation volumes were released on March 27, 2015. Funimation released the series in North America, on behalf of Crunchyroll. Madman Entertainment licensed the series in Australia and New Zealand. The opening theme song is performed by Akino from bless4, and the ending theme is by Shiena Nishizawa.


title: Kantai Collection (TV series)

text: On January 4, 2019, it was announced that a new anime television series is in production. ENGI will animate the new season, with Ultra Super Pictures handling production. The season, subtitled , is directed by Kazuya Miura, with scripts written by Kensuke Tanaka, the game's original writer, character designs handled by Chika Nomi, and music composed by Kaori Ohkoshi. It premiered on November 4, 2022, and will run for eight episodes.


title: Kantai Collection (TV series)

text: The first volume of the anime ranked second place within Oricon's weekly anime Blu-ray sales charts during its first week of release, selling 16,789 units and trailing behind the limited edition Blu-ray boxset of ""; the same volume also placed third within the anime DVD sales charts, with 3,184 units sold.


title: Kantai Collection (TV series)

text: Jonathan Gad of "Vice" said that the "Kantai Collection" anime television series is historically revisionist, criticising the show's depiction of the Japanese protagonists being victorious in the Battle of Midway.


title: Rakesh Bedi

text: Rakesh Bedi is an Indian film, stage and television actor. He is known for his comic roles in films such as "Mera Damaad" and "Chashme Buddoor" (1981). He has also appeared in television shows like "Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi" (1984), "Shrimaan Shrimati" (1994-1997), "Yes Boss" (1999–2009) and Bechara Big B (2005).


title: Rakesh Bedi

text: Bedi completed his studies in Delhi. His father Madan Gopal Bedi used to work with Indian Airlines. While Bedi was in school, he used to participate in Mono Acting competitions. Bedi has also worked with the New Delhi theatre group Pierrot's Troupe and studied acting at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune.


title: Rakesh Bedi

text: Bedi started his film career as a supporting actor in the 1979 film "Hamare Tumhare", starring Sanjeev Kumar, and then went on to act in over 150 films and several TV serials. Some of his most memorable roles were in the 1981 film "Chashme Buddoor" with Farooq Shaikh and "Ravi Baswani" "and Ek Duuje Ke Liye" directed by K. Balachander and in the TV sitcoms "Shrimaan Shrimati" (1995), "Yes Boss" (1999-2009) as Mohan Srivastava, his one of best role and he is much appreciated for this and "Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi" (1984), written by Sharad Joshi and directed by Kundan Shah.


title: Rakesh Bedi

text: He hosted "Science with BrainCafé", a science show on ZeeQ, and continues doing theatre in Mumbai. Notably, he played 24 different characters in Vijay Tendulkar's popular one-man play "Massage". In 2012, he appeared on his first television drama daily soap, "Shubh Vivah". Since 2015, he appears on television show Bhabi Ji Ghar Par Hai!.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint is the northernmost neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, in the U.S. state of New York. It is bordered on the southwest by Williamsburg at Bushwick Inlet Park and McCarren Park; on the southeast by the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway and East Williamsburg; on the north by Newtown Creek and the neighborhood of Long Island City in Queens; and on the west by the East River. The neighborhood has a large Polish immigrant and Polish-American community, containing many Polish restaurants, markets, and businesses, and it is often referred to as Little Poland.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Originally farmland – many of the farm owners' family names, such as Meserole (Messerole) and Calyer, are current street names – the residential core of Greenpoint was built on parcels divided during the Industrial Revolution and late 19th century, with rope factories and lumber yards lining the East River to the west, while the northeastern section along the Newtown Creek through East Williamsburg became an industrial maritime area.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint has long held a reputation of being a working class and immigrant neighborhood, and it initially attracted families and workers with its abundance of factory jobs, heavy industry and manufacturing, shipbuilding, and longshoreman or dock work. Since the early 2000s, a building boom in the neighborhood has made the neighborhood increasingly a center of nightlife and gentrification, and a 2005 rezoning enabled the construction of high density residential buildings on the East River waterfront. There have also been efforts to reclaim the rezoned East River waterfront for recreational use and also to extend a continuous promenade into the Newtown Creek area.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint is part of Brooklyn Community District 1, and its primary ZIP Code is 11222. It is patrolled by the 94th Precinct of the New York City Police Department.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: At the time of European settlement in New York, Greenpoint was inhabited by the Keskachauge (Keshaechqueren) Indians, a sub-tribe of the Lenape. Contemporary accounts describe the area as remarkably verdant and beautiful, with Jack pine and oak forest, meadows, fresh water creeks and briny marshes. Water fowl and fish were abundant. European settlers originally used the "Greenpoint" name to refer to a small bluff of land jutting into the East River at what is now the westernmost end of Freeman Street, but eventually it came to describe the whole peninsula.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: In 1638, the Dutch West India Company negotiated the right to settle Brooklyn from the Lenape. The first recorded European settler of what is now Greenpoint was Dirck Volckertsen (Batavianized from "Holgerssøn"), a Norwegian immigrant who in 1645 built a -story farmhouse there with the help of two Dutch carpenters. It was built in the contemporary Dutch style just west of what is now the intersection of Calyer Street and Franklin Street. There he planted orchards and raised crops, sheep and cattle. He was called Dirck de Noorman by the Dutch colonists of the region, "Noorman" being the Dutch word for "Norseman" or "Northman." The creek that ran by his farmhouse became known as Norman Kill (Creek); it ran into a large salt marsh and was later filled in.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Volckertsen received title to the land after prevailing in court one year earlier over a Jan De Pree, who had a rival claim. He initially commuted to his farm by boat and may not have moved into the house full time until after 1655, when the small nearby settlement of Boswyck was established, on the charter of which Volckertsen was listed along with 22 other families. Volckertsen's wife, Christine Vigne, was a Walloon. Volckertsen had had periodic conflicts with the Keshaechqueren, who killed two of his sons-in-law and tortured a third in separate incidents throughout the 1650s. Starting in the early 1650s, he began selling and leasing his property to Dutch colonists, among them Jacob Haie (Hay) in 1653, who built a home in northern Greenpoint that was burned down by Indians two years later. Jan Meserole established a farm in 1663; his farmhouse at what is now 723 Manhattan Avenue stood until 1919 and last served as a Young Women’s Hebrew Association.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The Hay property and other holdings came into the possession of Pieter Praa, a captain in the local militia, who established a farm near present day Freeman Street and McGuinness Boulevard, and went on to own most of Greenpoint. Volckertsen died in about 1678 and his grandsons sold the remainder of the homestead to Pieter Praa when their father died in 1718; the name of Norman Avenue remains as testimony to Volckertsen's legacy. Praa had no male heirs when he died in 1740, but the farming families of his various daughters formed the core of Greenpoint for the next hundred years or so. By the time of the American Revolutionary War, Greenpoint's population was entirely five related families:


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The British Army had an encampment in Greenpoint during the American Revolution, which caused considerable hardship for the families; Abraham Meserole's son was imprisoned on suspicion of revolutionary sympathies.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, the farms were quite isolated from the rest of Brooklyn, connected only to one another by farm lanes and to the rest of Bushwick Township by a single road, Wood Point Road (now Bushwick Avenue). The families used long boats to travel to Manhattan to sell their farm produce. Little historical information exists about this period of Greenpoint's history other than the personal papers and recorded oral history of these five families.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint first began to change significantly when entrepreneur Neziah Bliss married into the Meserole family in the early 1830s after purchasing land from them. He eventually bought out most of the land in Greenpoint. In 1834 he had the area surveyed, and in 1839 opened a public turnpike along what is now Franklin Street. He established regular ferry service to Manhattan around 1850. All of these initiatives contributed to the rapid and radical transformation of Greenpoint, which was annexed to the City of Brooklyn in 1855.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: In the years that followed Greenpoint established itself as a manufacturing district. Its largest industries were shipbuilding, porcelain and pottery, and glassworks, but the area had other industrial concerns such as brass and iron foundries; breweries; drug plants; book, furniture, box, and boiler makers; sugar refineries; and machine shops. Germans and Irish arrived in the mid-19th century and large numbers of Poles began arriving before the turn of the century. The homes built for the merchants and the buildings erected for their workers sprang up along streets that lead down to the waterfront. Today, this area is on the National Register of Historic Places as the Greenpoint Historic District.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint's East River waterfront holds the maritime history of the community. The buildings that formerly manufactured the ropes for the shipbuilding industry are still there. Long a site of shipbuilding, the neighborhood's dockyards were used to build the USS "Monitor"—the Union's first ironclad fighting ship built during the American Civil War. It was launched on Bushwick Creek. The "Monitor", together with seven other ironclads, was built at the Continental Ironworks in Greenpoint. In 1866, the largest wooden ship ever built up to that time, "The Great Republic", was built along Newtown Creek. Glass-making was also a large industry in Greenpoint, and by the 1880s the neighborhood housed 18 of the 20 glass makers in the city of Brooklyn, as well as all of the porcelain and pottery manufacturers in the city.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Charles Pratt's Astral Oil Works also opened on the Greenpoint waterfront in the 1860s. Pratt sold his interest to John D. Rockefeller's recently formed Standard Oil Trust in 1874. By 1875 Greenpoint had some 50 refineries. The Astral Apartments were built as housing for workers at Astral Oil in 1886.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: An American manufacturer of porcelain wares who operated between 1862 to 1922, the Union Porcelain Works, had their factory located at 300 Eckford Street in Greenpoint. According to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report the company was "one of the most famous in the country, both for its innovative approach to the manufacture of porcelain and for the quality of its products which was highly regarded on both sides of the Atlantic" and was "a major force in shaping an American stylistic tradition for ceramics and porcelain".


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The petroleum industry continued to expand, despite the occasional catastrophe. On September 13, 1919, the Standard Oil refinery caught fire and soon spread flaming liquids into neighboring oil works and Newtown Creek.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: In 1933 Greenpoint gained access to the New York City Subway, with the opening of the IND Crosstown Line (currently serving the ), running under Manhattan Avenue from Nassau Avenue to Queens. In 1937 the line was extended to Downtown Brooklyn, providing direct access from Greenpoint to points south.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The manufacturing industry of Greenpoint declined after World War II. Eberhard Faber's pencil factory, once the largest manufacturer of lead pencils in the United States, operated on West Street from 1872 until 1956. The company's former buildings were designated a historic district by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2007.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint community residents and activists have periodically banded together, sometimes with the aid of their local representatives, to fight highly polluting facilities and practices in the neighborhood. Such organization led the city to close the huge Greenpoint incinerator in 1994, which was out of compliance with all city, state and federal regulations. In the late-1980s, after an increasing series of highly odorous releases from the Sewage Treatment Plant which served a good portion of Lower Manhattan, a local group formed calling itself GASP (Greenpointers Against Smell Pollution) that compelled the city to control the outflows and to plan a vastly expanded facility that took 20 years to build. The mid 1980s saw a great increase in the number of trucks driving through the neighborhood with municipal waste, often toxic waste, to be held at "transfer stations."


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: During the 1950 Greenpoint oil spill, at the time the largest oil spill in United States history, of oil spilled into Newtown Creek. Oil is believed to have been seeping into the groundwater since then. Groundwater in this area is not used as drinking water, as all of New York City's drinking water presently comes from upstate reservoirs. However, local activists have been campaigning ever since to clean up the spill. On October 20, 2005, residents near the oil recovery operation, which is located in the predominantly commercial/industrial eastern section of Greenpoint near the East Williamsburg Industrial Park, filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, BP and Chevron Corporation in Brooklyn State Supreme Court, alleging they have suffered adverse health consequences. ExxonMobil, which has been slowly removing oil from its former facilities in the area, have denied liability for the oil leaking into Newtown Creek and suggested fault lies instead with Chevron. The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) "Newtown Creek/Greenpoint Oil Spill Study Brooklyn, New York" states that vapor concentrations in "some commercial establishments" were found "above the Upper Explosive Limit"; i.e. there was so much vapor that no explosion could ignite. The same EPA study said, "A review of the data collected by the NYSDEC shows that, in general, chemicals were detected at all locations in each home, but not in a pattern that would typically represent a vapor intrusion phenomenon."


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: On May 11, 2005, New York City's Department of City Planning approved a rezoning of 175 blocks in Greenpoint and Williamsburg. According to the project's Environmental Impact Statement, the rezoning is expected to bring approximately 16,700 new residents to the neighborhood by 2013 in 7,300 new units of housing. of new retail space are projected, along with a corresponding loss of just over of existing industrial capacity. The rezoning also includes a waterfront park. Included in its requirements are provisions for a promenade along the East River, built piecemeal by the developers of existing waterfront lots. An inclusionary housing plan was included in the resolution and provides height bonuses along the waterfront and in Northside Williamsburg for developers providing apartments at rates considered affordable for low-income households (below 80% of the area's median income); on the waterfront, these bonuses could allow for up to seven-story height increases.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The rezoning was a dramatic change in scale to a previously low-slung, industrial neighborhood. The proposed changes were the subject of much debate, including a letter written by activist Jane Jacobs to mayor Michael Bloomberg criticizing the proposed development.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Other organizations, including the city government and various advocacy groups such as the Manhattan Institute, argued that residential construction in underused manufacturing zones is essential to meet growing housing demand. Rezoning promised double-digit percentage growth in the number of housing units, leading these groups to claim that it would help to alleviate the city's housing shortage and possibly slow rent increases. Critics argued that the existing community's character would be changed as existing residents were forced to move, and, further, that public transportation and public safety infrastructure would be unable to accommodate the projected 40,000 new residents.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: A boom in construction followed the rezoning, leading to complaints from neighborhood residents and their elected representatives. The zoning plan was modified on March 2, 2006, to include anti-harassment provisions for tenants and add height limits in portions of upland Williamsburg. Neighborhood organizations made differing opinions known: the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Association for Parks and Planning expressed approval of the proposal (with reservations), but many neighborhood residents and members of Community Board 1 continue to voice their objections. One of the largest developments to be built after the rezoning was Greenpoint Landing, which includes ten residential towers containing 5,500 units, a public elementary and middle school, and of parkland. Greenpoint Landing began construction in 2015 and is expected to be completed before 2027. By spring 2017, one building had opened.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint's population is largely working class and multi-generational; it is common to find three generations of family members living in the community. The neighborhood is sometimes referred to as "Little Poland" due to its large population of Polish immigrants and Polish-Americans, reportedly the second largest concentration in the United States after Chicago. Although Polish immigrants and people of Polish descent are present in force, there is a significant Latino population living mostly north of Greenpoint Avenue, and Greenpoint has a significant number of South Asian and North African residents.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Greenpoint was 34,719, a decrease of 3,102 (8.2%) from the 37,821 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of .


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 76.9% (26,691) White and 14.7% (5,099) Hispanic or Latino. Other ethnicities include 1.2% (433) African American, 0.1% (48) Native American, 4.9% (1,689) Asian, 0.0% (10) Pacific Islander, 0.5% (161) from other races, and 1.7% (588) from two or more races.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The entirety of Community Board 1, which comprises Greenpoint and Williamsburg, had 199,190 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 81.1 years. This is about the same as the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are middle-aged adults and youth: 23% are between the ages of 0–17, 41% between 25–44, and 17% between 45–64. The ratio of college-aged and elderly residents was lower, at 10% and 9% respectively.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: As of 2016, the median household income in Community Board 1 was $76,608. In 2018, an estimated 17% of Greenpoint and Williamsburg residents lived in poverty, compared to 21% in all of Brooklyn and 20% in all of New York City. Less than one in fifteen residents (6%) were unemployed, compared to 9% in the rest of both Brooklyn and New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 48% in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, higher than the citywide and boroughwide rates of 52% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, , Greenpoint and Williamsburg are considered to be gentrifying.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: As according to the 2020 census data from New York City Department of City Planning, there were between 20,000 to 29,999 White residents and between 5,000 to 9,999 Hispanic residents, meanwhile each the Asian and Black populations were each under 5000 residents.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Politically, Greenpoint is in New York's 12th congressional district. It is in the New York State Senate's 18th and 26th districts, the New York State Assembly's 50th districts, and the New York City Council's 33rd district.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint is patrolled by the 94th Precinct of the NYPD, located at 100 Meserole Avenue. The 94th Precinct ranked 50th safest out of 69 patrol areas for per-capita crime in 2010. , with a non-fatal assault rate of 34 per 100,000 people, Greenpoint and Williamsburg's rate of violent crimes per capita is less than that of the city as a whole. The incarceration rate of 305 per 100,000 people is lower than that of the city as a whole.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The 94th Precinct has a lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 72.9% between 1990 and 2018. The precinct reported 1 murder, 6 rapes, 63 robberies, 115 felony assaults, 141 burglaries, 535 grand larcenies, and 62 grand larcenies auto in 2018.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) operates two fire stations in Greenpoint. Engine Co. 238/Ladder Co. 106 is located at 205 Greenpoint Avenue and serves most of the neighborhood. The southern part of Greenpoint is served by Engine Co. 229/Ladder Co. 146, located at 75 Richardson Street.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: , preterm births and births to teenage mothers are less common in Greenpoint and Williamsburg than in other places citywide. In Greenpoint and Williamsburg, there were 54 preterm births per 1,000 live births (the lowest in the city, compared to 87 per 1,000 citywide), and 16.0 births to teenage mothers per 1,000 live births (compared to 19.3 per 1,000 citywide). Greenpoint and Williamsburg has a relatively low population of residents who are uninsured, or who receive healthcare through Medicaid. In 2018, this population of uninsured residents was estimated to be 7%, which is lower than the citywide rate of 12%.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, in Greenpoint and Williamsburg is , higher than the citywide and boroughwide averages. Seventeen percent of Greenpoint and Williamsburg residents are smokers, which is slightly higher than the city average of 14% of residents being smokers. In Greenpoint and Williamsburg, 23% of residents are obese, 11% are diabetic, and 25% have high blood pressure—compared to the citywide averages of 24%, 11%, and 28% respectively. In addition, 23% of children are obese, compared to the citywide average of 20%.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Ninety-one percent of residents eat some fruits and vegetables every day, which is greater than the city's average of 87%. In 2018, 79% of residents described their health as "good," "very good," or "excellent," more than the city's average of 78%. For every supermarket in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, there are 25 bodegas.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: There are medical clinics in the Greenpoint area, though no hospitals are located in the neighborhood. The nearest large hospitals are Woodhull Medical Center in Bedford–Stuyvesant and Mount Sinai Queens in Astoria, Queens.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint is covered by ZIP Code 11222. The United States Postal Service operates the Greenpoint Station post office at 66 Meserole Avenue.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint and Williamsburg generally has a higher ratio of college-educated residents than the rest of the city . Half of the population (50%) has a college education or higher, 17% have less than a high school education and 33% are high school graduates or have some college education. By contrast, 40% of Brooklynites and 38% of city residents have a college education or higher. The percentage of Greenpoint and Williamsburg students excelling in reading and math has been increasing, with reading achievement rising from 35 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2011, and math achievement rising from 29 percent to 50 percent within the same time period.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint and Williamsburg's rate of elementary school student absenteeism is slightly higher than the rest of New York City. In Greenpoint and Williamsburg, 21% of elementary school students missed twenty or more days per school year, compared to the citywide average of 20% of students. Additionally, 77% of high school students in Greenpoint and Williamsburg graduate on time, higher than the citywide average of 75% of students.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL)'s Greenpoint branch is located at 107 Norman Avenue near Leonard Street. The site originally housed a Carnegie library that opened in 1906, but it was replaced in the 1970s. The library closed in mid-2017 for a two-year renovation, which would necessitate the replacement of the existing building with a new facility called the Greenpoint Library & Environmental Education Center. The renovation of the Greenpoint branch was originally supposed to be completed in late 2018, but was delayed because of safety violations during construction.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint is served by the Greenpoint Avenue and Nassau Avenue stations on the IND Crosstown Line () of the New York City Subway. It is served by the New York City Bus routes.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: In June 2011, NY Waterway started service to points along the East River. On May 1, 2017, that route became part of the NYC Ferry's East River route, which runs between Pier 11/Wall Street in Manhattan's Financial District and the East 34th Street Ferry Landing in Murray Hill, Manhattan, with five intermediate stops in Brooklyn and Queens. Greenpoint is served by the East River Ferry's India Street stop, which is temporarily closed.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: There are plans to build the Brooklyn–Queens Connector (BQX), a light rail system that would run along the waterfront from Red Hook through Greenpoint to Astoria in Queens. However, the system is projected to cost $2.7 billion, and the projected opening has been delayed until at least 2029.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: When Neziah Bliss created Greenpoint, he named the east-west streets in alphabetical order from north to south. Originally, these streets were simply given lettered names such as "A Street" and "B Street", but in the mid-19th century, the streets were given longer names. This system persists today with a few exceptions: Ash, Box, Clay, Dupont, Eagle, Freeman, Green, Huron, India, Java, Kent, Greenpoint (Avenue), Milton, Noble, Oak, Calyer, and Quay Streets. Greenpoint Avenue was formerly named Lincoln Street. There would have been a street starting with the letter "P" between Oak and Quay Streets, but it was named Calyer Street early in Greenpoint's history, after the patriarch of a nearby family.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Parks include McCarren Park (formerly known as Greenpoint Park), the neighborhood's largest green space, and the smaller McGolrick Park (formerly known as Winthrop Park), which contains both the landmarked Shelter Pavilion (1910) and an allegorical monument to the ironclad ship USS "Monitor" (1938). On the East River, WNYC Transmitter Park opened in 2012 on the site of a former radio transmission antenna. A small playground called "Right Angle Park" is located at Commercial, Dupont, and Franklin Streets, so named because the park is located on a city block that is shaped like a right triangle.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: The Greenpoint Historic District is roughly bounded by Kent, Calyer, Noble, and Franklin Streets, Clifford Place, Lorimer Street and Manhattan Avenue.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Of architectural interest in Greenpoint are: the Episcopal Church of the Ascension (1853), the oldest church in Greenpoint on Kent Street; the Astral Apartments (1885) on Franklin Street; the Saint Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church (1875) on Manhattan Avenue; the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory on Greenpoint Avenue at Franklin Street; the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration of Our Lord (1921) on North 12th Street; PS 34, the Oliver H. Perry School (1867) on Norman Avenue (the oldest continuously operating public school building in New York City); the Capital One (formerly Green Point) Savings Bank (1908); the Saint Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church (1896) on Humboldt Street, which serves as a Catholic shrine for the Polish community; and the synagogue building of Congregation Ahavas Israel (1903) on Noble Street (the sanctuary, with stained glass windows and a Torah ark with turn of the century wood carvings, is currently open only during services on Saturday mornings).


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: A commercial building called Keramos Hall, on Manhattan Avenue, was restored and won a Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award from the New York Landmarks Conservancy in 2013. The conservancy wrote: "Picturesque features had been hidden under asbestos shingles for decades, but when owners discovered a vintage photograph, they began putting funds aside for this work. Now, the revelation of the Stick Style façade, Italianate roof tower, and Swiss Chalet brackets stops passersby in their tracks." The Kickstarter headquarters, located in Greenpoint, is housed in the former Eberhart Faber Pencil Factory on Kent Street, which was renovated in 2013–2014. The restoration received a Moses Preservation Award as well as a MASterworks Award from the Municipal Art Society.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: St. Cecilia's Roman Catholic Church and School, on Monitor Street between Richardson and Herbert Streets, has served the community since 1871. The school, which dates to 1906, was closed in June 2008. The current church building dates to 1891.


title: Greenpoint, Brooklyn

text: Greenpoint is a popular filming location for New York TV and film productions due to its varied architecture, waterfront access, mixed zoning and relatively low street traffic, and because it is also the primary home of two of New York's film and TV stage companies, Broadway Stages, and CineMagic Studios. Several TV shows house their permanent soundstages in the neighborhood's industrial area between Greenpoint Avenue and Norman Avenue east of McGuinness Boulevard.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The Isaaq genocide (, ), or Hargeisa holocaust, was the systematic, state-sponsored genocide of Isaaq civilians between 1987 and 1989 by the Somali Democratic Republic under the dictatorship of Siad Barre during the Somaliland War of Independence. The number of civilian deaths in this massacre is estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000, according to various sources, whilst local reports estimate the total civilian deaths to be upwards of 200,000 Isaaq civilians. The genocide also included the levelling and complete destruction of the second and third largest cities in the Somali Republic, Hargeisa (which was 90 percent destroyed) and Burao (70 percent destroyed), respectively, and had caused up to 500,000 Somalis (primarily of the Isaaq clan) to flee their land and cross the border to Hartasheikh in Ethiopia as refugees in what was described as "one of the fastest and largest forced movements of people recorded in Africa", which resulted in the creation of the world's largest refugee camp then (1988), with another 400,000 being displaced. The scale of destruction led to Hargeisa being known as the 'Dresden of Africa'. The killings happened during the Somali Civil War and have been referred to as a "forgotten genocide".


title: Isaaq genocide

text: In the countryside, the persecution of Isaaq included the creation of a mechanised section of the Somali Armed Forces called "Dabar Goynta Isaaqa" (The Isaaq Exterminators) consisting entirely of non-Isaaqs (mainly Ogaden); this unit conducted a "systematic pattern of attacks against unarmed, civilian villages, watering points and grazing areas of northern Somalia [Somaliland], killing many of their residents and forcing survivors to flee for safety to remote areas". This resulted in entire villages being depopulated and towns getting plundered. Rape was also used as a weapon against Isaaqs. Human Rights Watch states that this unit, along with other branches of the military, were responsible for terrorising Isaaq nomads in the countryside. "Dabar Goynta Isaaqa" would later turn into a system of governance where local officials would put the most hard-line policies into effect against the local Isaaq population. The Somali government also planted one million land mines within Isaaq territory.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: In 2001, the United Nations commissioned an investigation on past human rights violations in Somalia, specifically to find out if "crimes of international jurisdiction (i.e. war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide) had been perpetrated during the country's civil war". The investigation was commissioned jointly by the United Nations Co-ordination Unit (UNCU) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The investigation concluded with a report confirming the crime of genocide to have taken place against the Isaaqs in Somalia. United Nations investigator Chris Mburu stated:Based on the totality of evidence collected in Somaliland and elsewhere both during and after his mission, the consultant firmly believes that the crime of genocide was conceived, planned and perpetrated by the Somali Government against the Isaaq people of northern Somalia between 1987 and 1989.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The first Somali state to be granted its independence from colonial powers was Somaliland, a former British protectorate that gained independence on 26 June 1960. The rest of what came to be known as Somali Republic was under Italian rule under the title Trust Territory of Somaliland (also known as "Somalia Italiana"). Shortly after Somaliland gained independence, it was to form a hasty union with its southern neighbour to create the Somali Republic. Henceforth British Somaliland was referred to as the northern (or north western) region of the Somali Republic, whilst the former Italian colonial state was referred to as the south.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: Within British Somaliland the Isaaq constituted the majority group within the protectorate with Dir and Harti groups also having sizeable populations to the west and east of Isaaq respectively.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The union of the two states proved problematic early on when in a referendum held on 20 June 1961 to approve the provisional constitution that would govern the two ex-colonial territories was rejected by half of the population in the State of Somaliland (the north-west of nascent Somali Republic), the major cities of the former British protectorate voted against the ratification of the constitution – Hargeisa (72%), Berbera (69%), Burao (66%) and Erigavo (69%) – all returned negative votes. This was in contrast to the south (ex-Italian colony) which returned a strong support for the constitution (and four times the expected vote numbers in the south, indicating electoral fraud, an example of this is a small southern village called Wanla Weyn registered a yes vote higher than the 100,000 votes counted in all of the north), this was major signal of discontent coming from the north only a year after forming the union. Another example of the simmering discontent in the north was a coup attempt by northern officers that was thwarted in 1961.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The northern dissatisfaction with the constitution and terms of unification was a subject that the successive civilian governments continued to ignore. The northerners, especially the majority Isaaq, believed that the unified state would be divided federally (north and south) and that they would receive a fair share of representation post unification. The south proceeded to dominate all of the important posts of the new state, this included the President, Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs posts all given to politicians hailing from the south. The political marginalisation that majority of northerners felt was further exacerbated by economic deprivation, the north received just under 7 percent of nationally disbursed development assistance by the late 1970s, as more than 95% of all development projects and scholarships were distributed in the south. One example is cited by Hassan Megag Samater, the former director in charge of the Ministry of Education in Somaliland, he states that he had handed his post in 1966 with the northern region having "several hundred schools at all levels, from elementary schools to college. By the last year of the Barre regime, there was not a single school functioning at full strength."


title: Isaaq genocide

text: In October 1969 the military seized power in a coup following the assassination of President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke and the ensuing political parliamentary debate on succession which ended in a deadlock. The army banned political parties, suspended the constitution and closed the National Assembly, General Siad Barre was chosen as the head of state and presided over the Supreme Revolutionary Council. The new regime outlawed political dissent and employed a heavy handed approach in managing the state. The United Nations Development Programme stated that "the 21-year regime of Siyad Barre had one of the worst human rights records in Africa." The new regime became a client state of the Soviet Union and on the first anniversary of the coup officially adopted scientific socialism as its core ideology.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: Successive Somali governments had continually supported the cause of Somali irredentism and the concept of 'Greater Somalia', a powerful sentiment many Somalis carried, as a core goal of the state. This particularly had strong support from the Isaaq clan who notably sent many volunteers, especially in 1976 as they joined WSLF guerrilla insurgencies and sent many volunteers a year before the war took place. Another factor behind the strong support from the Isaaq was the fact that the border that was drawn between Ethiopia and Somalia cut off important grazing grounds for Isaaq tribesmen. Barre along with the Supreme Revolutionary Council, to entrench their rule and in an attempt to regain the Somali Region of Ethiopia, launched a war against Ethiopia in 1977, this war was referred to in Somalia as 'The War for Western Somalia'. The Soviet Union, which at the time was allied to both Somalia and Ethiopia turned against Barre, and (with their allies) provided enough support to the Ethiopian army to defeat the Somali forces and force a withdrawal from the Somali region of Ethiopia.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: All of Somalia felt the impact of the Ogaden War defeat, however the northern region (where Isaaqs live) experienced the majority of the physical and human destruction due to its geographical proximity to the fighting. Somalia's defeat in the Ethio-Somali War caused an influx of Ethiopian refugees (mostly ethnic Somalis and some Oromo) across the border to Somalia. By 1979, official figures reported 1.3 million refugees in Somalia, more than half of them were settled in Isaaq lands in the north. This has caused great deal of burden on both the local Isaaqs and state apparatus, especially coming off a costly war with Ethiopia, Somali studies scholar I. M. Lewis noted that "the stark fact remained that the economy of the country simply did not possess the resources to absorb so many uprooted people."


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The presence of such a large number of refugees, especially when Somalia's total population at the time was 4.1 million (UN estimates) meant that virtually one out of every four people in Somalia was a refugee. The Barre regime exploited the presence of such a large number of refugees as means of seeking foreign aid, as well as a vehicle to displacing those deemed hostile to the state, notably the Isaaqs, Human Rights Watch noted that: "Northerners [Isaaqs] were dismissed from and not allowed to work in government offices dealing with refugee affairs, so that they would not discover the truth about the government's policies. Instead refugees, registered with UNHCR were given jobs in the offices dealing with refugee matters."As the state became increasingly reliant on international aid, aid resources allocated for the refugees caused further resentment from the local Isaaq residents, especially as they felt no effort was made on the government's part to compensate them for bearing the burden of the war. Furthermore, Barre heavily favoured the Ogaden refugees, who belonged to the same clan (Darod) as him. Due to these ties, the Ogaden refugees enjoyed preferential access to "social services, business licenses and even government posts."


title: Isaaq genocide

text: As expressed animosity and discontent in the north grew, Barre armed the Ogaden refugees, and in doing so created an irregular army operating inside Isaaq territories. The regime's use of armed refugees against local Isaaq populations in the north is also referenced in an Africa Watch report: "[M]any Ogadeni refugees were recruited into the WSLF. The WSLF was ostensibly being trained to fight Ethiopia to regain the Ogaden [Western Somalia], but, in fact, terrorized the Isaak [Isaaq] civilian population living in the border region, which came to fear them more than the Ethiopian army. Killings, rape and looting became common."Barre was essentially ensuring the loyalty of the Ogaden refugees through continued preferential treatment and protection at the expense of the local Isaaq who were not only bypassed for economic, social and political advancement but also forcefully suppressed by both the Somali Armed Forces and the Ogaden refugee militias.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The settlement of Ogaden refugees in Isaaq territory, and the arming of these groups (which effectively created a foreign army in the north), further antagonised local Isaaq population. The armed Ogaden refugees, together with members of the Marehan and Dhulbahanta soldiers (who were provoked and encouraged by the Barre regime) started a campaign of terror against the local Isaaqs as they raped women, murdered unarmed civilians, and prevented families from conducting proper burials. Barre ignored Isaaq complaints throughout the 1980s, this along with Barre's repression of criticism or discussions of the widespread atrocities in the north had the effect of turning the long-standing Isaaq disaffection into open opposition.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The government started a program of creating paramilitary groups among the Ogaden refugees as well as conscripting them into the national army, it also encouraged the creation of armed militia groups among members of the Darod (the clan of Siad Barre). The Somali Army managed the training of both groups, and costs incurred including any expenditure for their arms and equipment, radio communications and fuel came from the army's budget.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: One of the militias formed by the Ogaden refugees was the WSLF, officially created to fight Ethiopia and "reclaim ethnic Somali territory" in Ethiopia but it was used primarily against local Isaaq civilians and nomads. A Human Rights Watch's Africa Watch report states "The WSLF was ostensibly being trained to fight Ethiopia to regain the Ogaden, but, in fact, terrorized the Isaak civilian population living in the border region, which came to fear them more than the Ethiopian army. Killing, rape and looting became common."


title: Isaaq genocide

text: As for the looting, the Ogaden refugees from Ethiopia ransacked homes that were vacated by Isaaq civilians out of clan hatred. The Isaaqs entrepreneurial disposition was also a factor of the large-scale looting, which the Ogadenis saw as 'undeserved':


title: Isaaq genocide

text: In northern Somalia, the Isaaq clans confronted a massive influx of Ogadeni refugees from eastern Ethiopia whom Siyad encouraged to loot property, attack people, and destabilize cities. An instrument of oppression, the Ogadenis and the regular Somali army were viewed as alien forces sent to oppress the Isaaq. Clan animosity intersected with class hatred as rural Ogadeni clansmen harassed Isaaq entrepreneurs with a visceral hatred, convinced that their wealth and urban commodities were undeserved. The Isaaq tell hilarious, but pathetic stories about Ogadenis who stole modern household appliances from homes in Hargeisa, Borama and Burao, then retreated with their “trophies” to use them in the remote pasture lands devoid of electricity.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: As the WSLF, supported by the Barre regime, continued to attack and commit atrocities against the Isaaq, a delegation was sent to meet President Barre in 1979 to request making a stop to WSLF abuses. In spite of promises made to the Isaaq elders the violence against civilians and nomads by WSLF continued.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The continued abuse of WSLF and the government's indifference to the suffering of Isaaq civilians and nomads prompted many Isaaq army officers to desert the army with a view to creating their own armed movement to fight Ethiopia, one that would also intimidate the WSLF and discourage further violence against Isaaq civilians. Their new movement, supported and financed by Isaaqs, was named "Afraad" (the fourth unit) and became operational in 1979. The Isaaq movement of Afraad immediately came into conflict with the Ogaden clan's faction of WSLF in the form of a number of bloody encounters between the two groups. Afraad's objective was to push the WSLF out of their strongholds (Isaaq territory) whereas the WSLF responded by retaliating further against Isaaq civilians living in the border region.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The situation was further exacerbated by the appointment of Mohamed Hashi Gani, a cousin of President Siad Barre and fellow Marehan Darod, as the military commander of the northern regions with headquarters in Hargeisa in 1980. Gani's rule was especially harsh against Isaaq, he removed them from all key economic positions, seized their properties and placed the northern regions under emergency laws. He also ordered the transfer of Afraad away from the border region, giving the WSLF complete control of the border region, thus leaving Isaaq nomads in the area without any protection against WSLF violence.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: A United Nations inspection team that visited the area in 1988 reported that the Ethiopian refugees (Ogaden) were carrying weapons supplied by the Somali Army. The UN team reported that, with the Somali Army's encouragement, the Ogadeni refugees carried out extensive looting in several northern towns.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: By early 1978 the Barre regime had full control of the Somali state's economic apparatus, including large amounts of foreign aid which were deployed "using selective redistribution to ensure loyalty to the regime". The Barre regime's oppressive policies against the Isaaq continued when in 1981, the Barre regime declared economic warfare on Somalis from the northwest and specifically the Isaaq. This was a major cause of the eventual fall of the Barre regime in 1991. It led a group of Isaaq businesspeople, students, former civil servants and former politicians who lived in the United Kingdom to found the Somali National Movement (SNM) in London in April 1981. Initially, the aim of the various groups that merged to create the SNM was not to create an armed liberation front, but rather these groups formed as a direct response to the harsh policies enacted by the Barre regime against the Isaaqs. However, the official position changed following the meeting of the newly formed SNM Congress in October 1981 to one of liberation "with the expressed aim of ridding Somalia of Barre and instituting a democratic government in Somalia that would be inclusive of and based on the clan system". Ideologically, the SNM was a Western-leaning movement and was described as "one of the most democratic movements in the Horn of Africa".


title: Isaaq genocide

text: A Human Rights Watch testimony before the United States Congress' Africa Subcommittee on 14 July 1988 stated that the actions of the Barre government have "created a level of violence unprecedented in scope and duration in Somalia". The testimony of Aryeh Neier (co-founder of HRW) explains the context in which the SNM was formed:Since 1981, with the formation of the SNM, northern Somalia has seen the worst atrocities. Serious human right violations, including extra-judicial executions of unarmed civilians, detentions without trial, unfair trials, torture, rape, looting and extortion, have been a prominent feature of life in the towns and countryside in the northern region since 1981. In order to deprive the SNM of a civilian base of support in their area of operation, those living in rural areas between Hargeisa and the Ethiopian border have suffered particularly brutal treatment. A scorched earth policy that involved the burning of farms, the killing of livestock, the destruction of water-storage tanks and the deliberate poisoning of wells, has been pursued actively by the military. The principal towns have been subjected to a curfew for several years; arbitrary restrictions on the extension of the curfew have facilitated extortion by soldiers and curfew patrols. Internal travel is controlled through military checkpoints ... The existence of the SNM has provided a pretext for President Barre and his military deputies in the north to wage a war against peaceful citizens and to enable them to consolidate their control of the country by terrorizing anyone who is suspected of not being wholeheartedly pro-government. Years of sustained state violence have created a serious level of political unrest in the region. The atmosphere of lawlessness has enabled soldiers to harass civilians for the purposes of extortion. Many Somalis have reported that military and security officers only respond to inquiries by detainees' relatives with promises to secure their release in exchange for cash payments. Civilians living in Buroa and Hargeisa have frequently been forbidden to hold funerals for relatives shot dead by the military and curfew patrols until they have paid a ransom. Rape, of young and older women, is routine. They will only be released from detention centers, even after being raped, if the family pays a ransom. No soldier or member of the security forces has ever been disciplined or prosecuted for abuses, which highlights the general lack of accountability. By 1982 the SNM transferred their headquarters to Dire Dawa in Ethiopia, as both Somalia and Ethiopia at the time offered safe havens of operation for resistance groups against each other. From there the SNM successfully launched a guerrilla war against the Barre regime through incursions and hit and run operations on army positions within Isaaq territories before returning to Ethiopia. The SNM continued this pattern of attacks from 1982 and throughout the 1980s, at a time the Ogaden Somalis (some of whom were recruited refugees) made up the bulk of Barre's armed forces accused of committing acts of genocide against the Isaaq people of the north. It was clear then that the Barre regime had labelled the entire Isaaq population as enemy of the state. In order to weaken support for the SNM within the Isaaqs, the government enacted a policy of systematic use of large-scale violence against the local Isaaq population. A report by Africa Watch stated that the policy was "the outcome of a specific conception of how the war against the insurgents should be fought," with the logic being to "punish civilians for their presumed support for the SNM attacks and to discourage them from further assistance".


title: Isaaq genocide

text: In addition to state-sponsored violence, other means of crushing the Isaaq uprising included the government's continuation of its policy of political repression and harsh economic measures, this included withholding international food aid donations to the Isaaq. This was especially harsh as food aid accounted for nearly half of all food consumption in Somalia in the 1980s.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: In January 1986, Barre's son-in-law and viceroy in the north General Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan, who was Barre's bodyguard before he married his daughter reportedly told Isaaq nomads at a waterhole "if you Isaaqs resist, we will destroy your towns, and you will inherit only ashes".


title: Isaaq genocide

text: General Morgan (later to be known as the Butcher of Hargeisa) was also responsible for the policy letter written to his father-in-law during his time as the military governor of the north, this letter came to be known as 'The Letter of Death', in which he "proposed the foundations for a scorched-earth policy to get rid of 'anti-Somali germs'".


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The policy letter (also known as the Morgan Report) was officially a top secret report to the president on "implemented and recommended measures" for a "final solution" to Somalia's "Isaaq problem". Morgan writes that the Isaaq people must be "subjected to a campaign of obliteration" in order to prevent the Isaaq from "rais[ing] their heads again". He continued: "Today, we possess the right remedy for the virus in the [body of the] Somali State." Some of the "remedies" he discussed included: "Balancing the well-to-do to eliminate the concentration of wealth [in the hands of Isaaq]." In addition, he called for "the reconstruction of the Local Council [in Isaaq settlements] in such a way as to balance its present membership which is exclusively from a particular people [the Isaaq]; as well as the dilution of the school population with an infusion of [Ogaden] children from the Refugee Camps in the vicinity of Hargeisa".


title: Isaaq genocide

text: More extreme recommendations included: "Rendering uninhabitable the territory between the army and the enemy, which can be done by destroying the water tanks and the villages lying across the territory used by them for infiltration"; and "removing from the membership of the armed forces and civil service all those who are open to suspicion of aiding the enemy – especially those holding sensitive posts".


title: Isaaq genocide

text: In discussing the unusually frank tone of the report, Hassan Abdi Madar states:"The report is addressed to the President of the SDR, the Minister of Defence, and Minister of Interior. The latter, Major-General Ahmed Suleiman Abdalla is also a son-in-law of the President, and Third Deputy Prime Minister. Since President Barre is also the Minister of Defence -- the previous holder of that portfolio, General Mohammad Ali Samatar, having been promoted Prime Minister on January 30, 1987 -- the report is seemingly confined to family members. This would explain its extreme frankness in specifying certain clans as targets for implemented and recommended punitive action."Other aims of the policy included arming other clans in the region and encouraging them to fight the dominant Isaaq: "Since it has become evident that the Isaaq were, by act and intent, with the SNM; and since we could not see them giving up the line they have pursued so deceptively for some time; and in order to forestall them; we arranged for the other inhabitants of the North continuous meetings and a mobilization campaign designed to rouse them to action and to raise their level of awareness. This was intended to strengthen their unity and to surround Somali unity with a defensive wall. Among those inhabitants are: the Awdal people, the various sections of Western Somalis [including Ogaden refugees], the Las Qorey people, and the Daami people, etc. There is no doubt that the unity of these people will restore the balance of the scales which are now tipped in favour of the Isaaq. If they attack their tasks energetically, their unity will also undoubtedly humble those who arrogantly maintain that they own the North when the reality is otherwise."


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The system of indiscriminate killings employed by the government following SNM offensives had a galvanising effect on opposition to the government among both Isaaq nomads and city-dwellers. The military was operating under the assumption that if the SNM was active in a particular area, local residents must be supporters of the rebels. According to Human Rights Watch's Africa Watch, hundreds of Isaaqs have been executed and subjected to other reprisals on the basis of such suspicions.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: These killings started after the SNM escalated its incursions into the Isaaq majority cities in the north. On every encounter between the SNM and government forces, "the army would conduct a sweep of the area where the incident occurred. Massacres followed, as did the killing of livestock, the use of landmines to blow up reservoirs, the burning of huts, arrests and detentions. The entire population in the area was regarded as 'the enemy'."


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The following are a selection of the numerous episodes of extrajudicial executions of Isaaq civilians collected by Human Rights Watch's Africa Watch:


title: Isaaq genocide

text: During the ongoing conflict between the forces of the Somali National Movement and the Somali Army, the Somali government's genocidal campaign against the Isaaq took place between May 1988 and March 1989. According to Alex de Waal, Jens Meierhenrich and Bridget Conley-Zilkic:


title: Isaaq genocide

text: In 1987, Siad Barre, the president of Somalia, frustrated by lack of success of the army against insurgents from the Somali National Movement in the north of country, offered the Ethiopian government a deal in which they stop sheltering and giving support to the SNM in return for Somalia giving up its territorial claim over Ethiopia's Somali Region. Ethiopia was in agreement and a deal was signed on 3 April 1988 that included a clause confirming agreement not to assist rebel organisations based in each other's territories. The SNM felt the pressure to cease their activities on the Ethiopia-Somalia border, and decided to attack the northern territories of Somalia to take control of the major cities in the north. The brutal nature of the Siad Barre government response was unprecedented, and led to what Robin Cohen described as one of the "worst civil wars in Africa".


title: Isaaq genocide

text: Barre's response to the SNM attacks was of unparalleled brutality, with explicit aims of handling the "Isaaq problem", he ordered "the shelling and aerial bombardment of the major cities in the northwest and the systematic destruction of Isaaq dwellings, settlements and water points". The Siad Barre regime targeted civilian members of the Isaaq group specifically, especially in the cities of Hargeisa and Burco and to that end employed the use of indiscriminate artillery shelling and aerial bombardment against civilian populations belonging to the Isaaq clan.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: Bruce Jentleson, former director of the Sanford School of Public Policy describes the massacre of Isaaq civilians as follows:The use of large-scale aerial bombardment was unprecedented in the history of African civil unrest. The brutal response of the Siad Barre government did not stop there, in discussing the systematic way in which the government targeted Isaaq people with aim to inflict as much loss in property and life, Waldron and Hasci published the following account:


title: Isaaq genocide

text: Within the first three months of the conflict, Isaaqs fled their cities on such a large scale that cities of the north became devoid of their population. Civilian Isaaqs were "killed, imprisoned under severe conditions, forced to flee across the border, or became displaced in the far-off countryside".


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The Siad Barre government adopted a policy that "any able-bodied Isaaq who could help the SNM had to be killed. Those who could be of financial help or influence to the SNM, because of social status, were to be put in prison." Though this policy did not exclude children or the elderly, the result was that "more than 90% of the people killed were between the ages of 15-35 years."


title: Isaaq genocide

text: Somali historian Mohamed Haji Ingiriis refers to "the state-sponsored genocidal campaigns leveled at the Isaaq clan-group", which he notes is "popularly known in public discourses as the 'Hargeisa Holocaust'" as a "forgotten genocide".


title: Isaaq genocide

text: A number of genocide scholars (including Israel Charny, Gregory Stanton, Deborah Mayersen, and Adam Jones) as well as international media outlets, such as "The Guardian", "The Washington Post" and Al Jazeera among others, have referred to the case as one of genocide.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: The Somali National Movement attacked and captured the city of Burao (then the third largest city in the country) on Friday 27 May. They captured the town in two hours and immediately took over the military compound at the airport (where the largest number of soldiers were stationed), the Burao central police station and the prison, where they freed political prisoners (including schoolchildren) from the city's main jail. The government forces retreated, regrouped at Goon-Ad just outside the city, and in the late afternoon, entered the centre of town. According to reports by Human Rights Watch's Africa Watch, the soldiers, upon entering the city, went on a rampage on 27 and 28 May. This included "dragging men out of their houses and shooting them at point blank range" and summary killing of civilians, the report also noted that "civilians of all ages who had gathered in the centre of town, or those standing outside their homes watching the events were killed on the spot. Among the victims were many students." There was also widespread looting by the soldiers, and some people were reportedly killed as a result.


title: Isaaq genocide

text: Following the first two days of the conflict, angered by the extent to which Isaaqs welcomed the SNM incursion, and frustrated by their inability to contain the SNM advance, the military started attacking the civilian population without restraint "as if it was the enemy". The military used "heavy artillery and tanks, causing severe damage, both to civilians and to property. Bazookas, machine guns, hand grenades and other weapons of mass destruction were also directed against civilian targets in Hargeisa which had also been attacked as well as in Burao."