Narcotics Anonymous (NA), founded in 1953, describes itself as a "nonprofit fellowship or society of men and women for whom drugs had become a major problem." Narcotics Anonymous uses a 12-step model developed for people with varied substance use disorders and is the second-largest 12-step organization.

 there were more than 70,000 NA meetings in 144 countries.

Narcotics Anonymous program

Membership and organization
The third tradition of NA states that the only requirement for membership is "a desire to stop using." NA says its meetings are where members can "meet regularly to help each other stay clean." All facts and quotes presented in "The Narcotics Anonymous program" section, unless otherwise sourced, come from the Narcotics Anonymous (Basic Text). Membership in NA is free, and there are no dues or fees.

The foundation of the Narcotics Anonymous program is the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Narcotics Anonymous uses a slight variation of wording in both the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions when compared to other Twelve Step groups.

According to the Basic Text, Narcotics Anonymous "has no opinion on outside issues," including those of politics, science or medicine, and does not endorse any outside organization or institution. The fellowship does not promote itself, but rather attracts new members through public information and outreach. Individuals can also be compelled to attend by courts or rehab programs. NA groups and areas supply outside organizations with factual information regarding the NA program, and individual members may carry the NA message to hospitals and institutions, such as treatment centers and jails.

The nature of addiction
According to the philosophy of the NA program, most addicts did not realize they had a problem with drugs until they had no other choice besides ending up dead or in jail. Even if other people pointed out they may have a drug problem they were convinced otherwise. But once an addict on his or her own tries to stop and realizes they cannot, they finally see that drugs have been controlling them. Addicts "lived to use and used to live". NA helps show them a different way of life and helps them fight their disease. NA describes addiction as a progressive disease with no known cure, which affects every area of an addict's life: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. NA suggests that the disease of addiction can be arrested, and recovery is possible through the NA twelve-step program. The steps never mention drugs or drug use, rather they refer only to addiction, to indicate that addicts have a disease of which drug use is one symptom. In the NA program, all drugs are considered equal, and alcohol is also a drug. Other symptoms include obsession, compulsion, denial, and self-centeredness.

Meetings
Regular meetings, hosted by NA groups, are the basic unit of the NA fellowship. Meetings are held in a variety of places such as church meeting rooms, libraries, hospitals, community centers, parks, or any other place that can accommodate a meeting.

Members who attend the same meeting regularly to establish a recovery network and reliable routine understand this to be their "home group." Home-group members can participate in the group's business and play an important role in deciding how the group's meetings should be conducted.

Formats
There are two basic types of meetings: "open" and "closed." Anyone is welcome to attend an open meeting, while closed meetings are limited to addicts and to people who think they may have a problem with drugs.

Meeting formats vary, but often include time devoted to the reading aloud of NA literature regarding the issues involved in living life clean which is written by and for members of NA. Many meetings are conducted by the chairperson who chooses the speakers. Other meetings include an "open sharing" component, during which anyone attending has the opportunity to share. There is usually no direct feedback during the "share"; thus only one person ever speaks at any given time during this portion of the meeting. These types of meetings are sometimes described as discussion meetings. Some groups choose to host a single speaker (such meetings are usually denoted "speaker meetings") to share for the majority of the meeting time.

Other meeting formats include round-robin (sharing goes around in a circle), tag meeting (each speaker picks the next person to share), and stick meetings (each member draws a stick with a topic to share on). Some meetings focus on reading, writing, and/or sharing about one of the Twelve Steps or some other portion of NA literature. Some meetings are "common needs" (also known as special-interest) meetings, supporting a particular group of people based on gender, sexual identity, age, language, or another characteristic. These meetings are not exclusionary, as any addict is welcome at any NA meeting. NA communities will often make an effort to have a separate meeting run at the same time for members who do not identify with the common-needs meeting.

During the meeting, some groups allot time for NA-related announcements and many meetings set aside time to recognize clean-time "anniversaries" or "birthdays." Individuals are sometimes allowed to announce their clean time to the group. Key tags and medallions, which denote various amounts of clean time, are distributed to those who have achieved various milestones. In some areas, the addict who is celebrating a "clean-time anniversary" will be able to have support group members read the readings for the meeting and he or she will have a speaker carry the NA message. Then the addict celebrating will have their sponsor or a friend or family member give them a medallion at which time the friend will share some of the celebrating addict's achievements during the last year or from during the entire course of their recovery. Then the addict celebrating can share their experience, strength, and hope (ESH) with the group on how they did it.

NA states in the fifth tradition that "each group has but one primary purpose to carry the message to the addict who still suffers." Therefore, the newcomer is considered to be the most important person in any meeting. Our message is hope and the promise is freedom. The NA message, as quoted in the Basic Text, states, "an addict, any addict, can stop using drugs, lose the desire to use, and find a new way to live" (Basic Text p. 68). "NA offers one promise: freedom from active addiction" (Basic Text p. 106). According to the Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text, the "Twelve Steps" are the source of this hope and freedom when worked to the best of one's ability.

Service
NA literature suggests that service work is an essential part of a program of recovery. Service is "doing the right thing for the right reason," and is the best example of "goodwill," which is the basis for the freedom only from active addiction by the NA program. Service work is usually chairing a meeting, but may be as simple as cleaning up after the meeting, putting away chairs, or answering a phone. Additionally, there are basic, formalized service positions at the group level to help the group perform its function, such as treasurer, secretary, and Group Service Representative (GSR), who represents the group in the larger service structure.

The NA service structure operates at the area, regional, and world levels. These levels of service exist to serve the groups and are directly responsible to those groups; they do not govern. World services are accountable to its member regions, who are in turn responsible to member areas. Area service committees directly support member groups and often put on special events, such as dances and picnics. Area service committees also provide special subcommittees to serve the needs of members who may be confined in jails and institutions, and will also provide a public interface to the fellowship.

Literature
 The Basic Text called Narcotics Anonymous is divided into two books. Book one discusses the basics of the NA program and the twelve steps and traditions. Book two is composed of many personal stories.
 It Works: How and Why offers detailed discussion of the twelve steps and traditions. and is often called the "green and gold" after its cover.
 The Step Working Guides is a workbook with questions on each step and is often called the "Flat Book".
 Just For Today is a book of daily meditations with quotes from the Basic Text and other NA-approved literature including the "Information Pamphlets".
 Sponsorship is an in-depth discussion of the role of sponsorship in NA, including the personal experiences of members.
 Miracles Happen describes the early years of the NA organization. This book contains many photographs of early literature and meeting places.
 Living Clean: The Journey Continues was approved by the World Service Conference in May 2012. It contains members' experiences of staying clean and in recovery as they go through challenges in life such as illness, death, parenthood, spiritual paths, and employment.
Guiding Principles; The Spirit of Our Traditions was approved by the World Service Conference in May 2016.  The book explores the principles found in the 12 Traditions of NA and is a resource for members of NA to learn what the essence of the Traditions are, as well as understanding their application for NA groups, members, and service committees.

NA has also produced dozens of "Informational Pamphlets," or "IPs," of varying length that cover a wide range of recovery-related topics, including questionnaires for those who think they may have a drug addiction and information for those addicts trying to stay clean while still inside hospitals or institutions.

Spirituality
NA calls itself a spiritual program of recovery from the disease of addiction. The NA program places importance on developing a working relationship with a "higher power". The literature suggests that members formulate their own personal understanding of a higher power. The only suggested guidelines are that this power is "loving, caring, and greater than one's self and more powerful than the disease of addiction".

Members are given absolute freedom in coming to an understanding of a higher power that works for them. Individuals from various spiritual and religious backgrounds, as well as many atheists and agnostics, have developed a relationship with their own higher power. NA also makes frequent use of the word "God" and some members who have difficulty with this term substitute "higher power" or read it as an acronym for "Good Orderly Direction". Narcotics Anonymous is a spiritual, not religious program.

The twelve steps of the NA program are based upon spiritual principles, three of which are honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness, embodied in the first three steps. These three are hardly exhaustive.  The Basic Text of NA says, in Chapter Four, about all twelve steps, "These are the principles which made our recovery possible".  According to NA members these principles, when followed to the best of one's ability, allow for a new way of life.

NA meetings usually close with a circle of the participants, a group hug, and a prayer of some sort. Prayers used to close meetings today include the "we" version of the "Serenity Prayer" ("God, Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference."); the Third Step Prayer ("Take my will and my life. Guide me in my recovery. Show me how to live.") or the "Gratitude Prayer" ("That no addict seeking recovery need ever die. ... My Gratitude speaks when I care and when I share with others the NA way.")

Sponsorship
One addict helping another is an essential part of the NA program. It is therefore highly recommended that NA members find a sponsor. A sponsor is a member of NA who helps another member of the fellowship by sharing their experience, strength, and hope in recovery and serves as a guide through the Twelve Steps. In doing so, NA members often choose a sponsor with experience in applying the NA's Twelve Steps.

To feel most comfortable, many NA members have sponsors of the same sex although members are free to choose any other member as a sponsor. It is also suggested that one should find a sponsor who has worked all 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous.

Anonymity
"Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities." (12th Tradition, Basic Text)

Many NA members identify themselves in meetings by their first name only. The spirit of anonymity is about placing "principles before personalities" and recognizing that no individual addict is superior to another and that individual addicts do not recover without the fellowship or its spiritual principles.

The Eleventh Tradition states that NA members "need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films".

History
NA sprang from the Alcoholics Anonymous Program of the mid-1930s, and was founded by Jimmy Kinnon. Meetings first emerged in the Los Angeles area of California, United States, in the early 1950s. The NA program, officially founded in 1953, started as a small U.S. movement that has grown into the world's largest 12 step recovery program for drug addiction.

Predecessors
Alcoholics Anonymous was the first 12-step program, and through it many with drug and drinking problems found sobriety. The Fourth Tradition gives each AA group the autonomy to include or exclude non-alcoholic addicts from "closed" meetings where only those with an expressed desire to quit drinking may attend. At "open" AA meetings, non-alcoholics are welcome.

In 1944, AA's co-founder Bill Wilson discussed a separate fellowship for drug addicts. In 1947, NARCO (also called Addicts Anonymous) met weekly at the U.S. Public Health Service's treatment center (Federal Medical Center, Lexington) inside the Lexington, Kentucky federal prison for 20 years. In 1948, a NARCO member started a short-lived fellowship also called "Narcotics Anonymous" in the New York Prison System in New York City, New York. This version of NA did not follow the 12 Traditions of NA, which resulted in problems for the fellowship and ultimately the end of that NA in the late 1940s. Jimmy K., who is credited with starting the NA as we know it today, did contact Rae Perez, a leading member of this NA fellowship. Because that fellowship did not want to follow the 12 traditions written by AA, the two NA fellowships never united.

Early history of NA
In 1953 Narcotics Anonymous, was founded in California by Jimmy Kinnon and others. Differing from its predecessors, NA formed a fellowship of mutually supporting groups. Founding members, most of whom were from AA, debated and established the 12 Traditions of the NA fellowship. On September 14, 1953, AA authorized NA the use of AA's 12 steps and traditions on the condition that they stop using the AA name, causing the organization to call itself Narcotics Anonymous.

In 1954, the first NA publication was printed, called the "Little Brown Book". It contained the 12 steps and early drafts of several pieces that would later be included in subsequent literature.

At that time, NA was not yet recognized by society at large as a positive force. The initial group had difficulty finding places that would allow them to meet and often had to meet in people's homes. The first meetings of Narcotics Anonymous were held in the basements of churches for the members' protection because at that time an old law prohibiting convicted felons from congregating was still being upheld and churches offered their basements as a sanctuary. Addicts would have to cruise around meeting places and check for surveillance, to make sure meetings would not be busted by police. It was many years before NA became recognized as a beneficial organization, although some early press accounts were very positive.

In addition, many NA groups were not following the 12 traditions very closely (which were quite new at the time). These groups were at times accepting money from outside entities, conflating AA with NA, or even adding religious elements to the meetings. For a variety of reasons, meetings began to decline in the late 1950s, and there was a four-month period in 1959 when there were no meetings held anywhere at all. Spurred into action by this, Kinnon and others dedicated themselves to restarting NA, promising to hold to the traditions more closely.

Resurgence
In late 1959, meetings began to form again and grow. The NA White Booklet was written in 1962 and became the heart of NA meetings and the basis for all subsequent NA literature. NA was called a "hip pocket program" because the entire literature could fit into a person's hip pocket. This booklet was republished in 1966 as the NA White Book and included the personal stories of many addicts.

The first NA phone line started in 1960, and the first "H&I" group was formed in 1963 (H&I stands for Hospitals and Institutions, a sub-committee of Narcotics Anonymous that carries the message into hospitals and institutions where people cannot get to an outside meeting). That year a "Parent Service Board" (later renamed the World Service Board) was formed to ensure that NA stayed healthy and followed closely to the traditions. Confusingly, in 1962, the Salvation Army started a group also called "Narcotics Anonymous" that followed a different "13-step" program, but this program soon died out. The NA program grew slowly in the 1960s. Members of the program learned what was effective and what was not. Relapse rates declined over time and friction between NA groups began to decrease.

The 1970s was a period of rapid growth in NA's history. In 1970, there were only 20 regular, weekly meetings, all of them in the United States. Within two years there were 70, including meetings in Germany, Australia, and Bermuda. By 1976, there were 200 regular meetings, including 83 in California alone, and in the early 1980s in Brazil, Canada, Colombia, India, the Republic of Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In 1980, the first London meeting opened in Millman Street, Chelsea, with around six members and a second followed months later. By 1981, there were 1,100 different meetings all over the world and in 1983 Mary Bolton founded Narcotics Anonymous in Ireland. A World Service Office was officially opened in 1977. In 1971, the first NA World Conference was held, and others have followed annually.

The development of NA literature
From the beginnings of NA, the need for official NA literature was evident. Unfortunately, the process of creating and approving official NA literature has seen some of the most contentious periods of debate within the fellowship. Although the Yellow Booklet, Little White Booklet, and Little White Book were used in the 1960s and 1970s, many people desired to have a more detailed book on recovery, paralleling the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous. Some meetings offered AA literature at meetings, while others considered writing their own books on recovery. One group even planned to print a bootlegged version of AA's Big Book with every instance of the word "alcohol" replaced with "drugs". The need for a unified text approved by the fellowship's "group conscience" was recognized, and in October 1979 the first NA World Literature Conference was held in Wichita, Kansas.

While previous literature had been written by just a few addicts (primarily by Jimmy Kinnon), the NA Basic Text was written as a massive collaboration between hundreds of people. There were a total of seven World Literature Conferences within three years, all of them open to any addict who wished to help. It was decided that the book would use the Little White Book as its outline, filling in and expanding on the subjects discussed in that text.

In November 1981, a finalized version was distributed to all of NA for approval, and the text was approved with a 2/3 majority required for passage. After passage, however, the publication was held up due to a spirited disagreement between the World Service Office and the members who wrote the book regarding a few key sentences which described the nature of the World Service Organization and other NA service entities. The book was printed in 1983 with the passages removed. A second edition that restored the passages quickly followed at the demand of the fellowship. A hasty vote which required Regional Service Representatives to respond within 60 days (even though most regions only met every 90 days) making it impossible to actually poll the NA Groups and membership again removed the sentences in a third edition.

Professional editors and writers were hired in 1986 to improve the Basic Text so that it was more consistent in tone and style. The resultant 4th edition, released in 1987, was improperly reviewed and had many problems, including 30 lines that were missing and text that was inconsistent with other NA literature. A 5th edition was released in 1988, purportedly correcting those problems.

In 2004, the WSC initiated a project to revise the Basic Text. This new edition would remove some of the personal stories from the 5th edition, and supplement the remainder of the original stories with more diverse personal stories from around the world. The first 10 chapters were to remain the same. Also, the preface would remain the same, as well as the "Symbol" page. There is a new preface but the original preface will be called "preface to the 1st edition". There were some other changes to the structure of the book, including the layout and flow of the book, while keeping the original message clear and unchanged. The task of choosing these stories was handed down from the World Service Office to regional meetings, to Area Service Committee meetings, and then to the individual home group meetings, where each member had a chance to review the new text.

When the Approval Draft came out on September 1, 2006, 7,500 copies were distributed (4,493 copies were mailed and 3,009 copies were electronic copies downloaded by members). The approximate number of input received was 350 pieces, of which 60 percent came from individuals, 17 percent came from groups, and 23 percent came from committees. More than 20 percent (161) of the personal stories submitted came from outside of the United States. Submissions were received from the following countries (although later on more personal stories were submitted and the additional statistics are unknown):

 Argentina
 Australia
 Bangladesh
 Belgium
 Brazil
 Canada
 Colombia
 Egypt
 France
 Germany
 Greece
 India
 Ireland
 Israel
 Italy
 Japan
 Mexico
 Nepal
 Netherlands
 New Zealand
 Nicaragua
 Norway
 Portugal
 Puerto Rico
 Russia
 Saudi Arabia
 Singapore
 South Africa
 Spain
 Sweden
 Switzerland
 Trinidad
 Turkey
 United Kingdom
 The United States
 Venezuela
 West Indies

The 6th edition of the NA Basic Text was approved with over forty new "personal stories" from around the world. Because of the addition of so many new stories of NA member experiences, it is larger in size than all earlier editions. After the rapid succession of five editions during the 1980s, this was the first new edition in twenty years.

On October 1, 2008, the 5th edition was replaced by the 6th edition in the Narcotics Anonymous World Services inventory at NA.org. Copies of the Basic Text are sold, or given away for free at the group's expense, at NA meetings, and are available in over 30 different languages. Millions have been sold worldwide, and have been useful to many addicts.

More recent history
The Sixth Edition Basic Text was published in 2008, and there was also a special edition released that same year known as the 25th Anniversary Commemorative (of the First Edition Basic Text) Sixth Edition Basic Text.

In 2003, NA World Services approved a new text entitled Sponsorship. This book endeavors to help people explore the concept of NA sponsorship.

In the more recent months, there has been a motion to revise the pamphlet "In Times of Illness".

A motion for a project to create a new book was put to the World Service Conference in the 2008–2010 conference cycle. The motion was carried by unanimous consent in 2010. over the next two years members of the Narcotics Anonymous fellowship took part in a collective effort to create this new book-length piece of literature. The book was to be titled  Living Clean: The Journey Continues. At the 2012 World Service Conference, a motion to approve the final draft of the book was presented to the conference for approval and once again the delegates carried the motion unanimously. Living Clean: The Journey Continues was released to the public in 2012.

Another book, Guiding Principles, was developed during this period.

Most recently in 2022, Narcotics Anonymous published the Spiritual Principal A Day book often shortened to SPAD. This book consists of a short message about a different spiritual principle for each day of the year. This is similar to another book previously published by NA called Just for Today, containing a message for thought on a recovery related topic for each day of the year.

Membership demographics
Membership in Narcotics Anonymous is voluntary; no attendance records are kept either for NA's own purposes or for others. Because of this, it is sometimes difficult to provide interested parties with comprehensive information about NA membership. There are, however, some objective measures that can be shared based on data obtained from members attending one of NA world conventions; the diversity of membership, especially ethnic background, seems to be representative of the geographic location of the survey. The following demographic information was revealed in a survey returned by almost half of the 13,000 attendees at the 2003 NA World Convention held in San Diego, California:
• Gender: 55% male, 45% female.
• Age: 3% 20 years old and under, 12% 21–30 years old, 31% 31–40 years old, 40% 41–50 years old, 13% over age 51, and 1% did not answer.
• Ethnicity: 51% Caucasian, 24% African-American, 14% Hispanic, and 11% other.
• Employment status: 72% employed full-time, 9% employed part-time, 7% unemployed, 3% retired, 3% homemakers, 5% students, and 1% did not answer.
• Continuous abstinence/recovery: The 2015 Membership Survey showed the range from less than one year up to 54 years, with a mean average of 8.32 years. The 2015 Membership Survey of 22,803 members is available on NA.org, under the "For the Public" tab.

Rate of growth
Because no attendance records are kept, it is impossible to estimate what percentages of those who come to Narcotics Anonymous remain active in NA over time. The only sure indicator of the program's success in attracting members is the rapid growth in the number of registered Narcotics Anonymous meetings in recent decades and the rapid spread of Narcotics Anonymous outside North America.
 In 1978, there were fewer than 200 registered groups in three countries.
 In 1983, more than a dozen countries had 2,966 meetings.
 In 1993, 60 countries had over 13,000 groups holding over 19,000 meetings.
 In 2002, 108 countries had 20,000 groups holding over 30,000 meetings.
 In 2005, 116 countries had over 21,500 groups holding over 33,500 weekly meetings.
 In 2007, over 25,065 groups were holding over 43,900 weekly meetings in 127 countries.
 In 2012, there were over 62,700 meetings worldwide in over 142 countries.
 In 2018, there were more than 70,000 weekly meetings in 144 countries.

Organizational structure
Members meet at NA Groups; Representatives of which participate in Area Service Committees (ASC); Several Area Service Committees form a Regional Service Committee (RSC) and the Regional Delegates (RD) make up NA World Service Committee. The foundation for this structure is the Twelve Traditions of NA and the 12 Concepts for NA Service.

NA Groups
Narcotics Anonymous is fundamentally made up of NA Groups. An NA Group is a number of NA members who meet regularly; usually at the same time and place each week. Some Groups have more frequent meetings but are considered to be part of a single Group. Groups have one primary purpose, to carry the message to the addict who still suffers. Groups are largely independent of one another and members of NA are encouraged to choose a "homegroup" to belong to, a group they attend regularly and where they will be missed if they are absent. Each Group elects any number of leaders, or "trusted servants", to serve the needs of the Group they made include a Group Secretary, a Group Treasurer, a Group Chairperson, a Group Service Representative (GSR), and an alternate GSR. This election process is carried out by the Group Conscience which is a business meeting made up of the members of the Group who strive for consensus-based decisions. With each group being autonomous, without affecting NA as a whole, the responsibilities of trusted servants vary from meeting to meeting. These responsibilities or "group policies" are contrived through the group's business meeting by inviting a Higher Power to guide each recovering person's decision, also known as a group conscience. An example of one specific trusted servant's responsibilities are, "The secretary is responsible for opening the meeting, choosing someone to chair the meeting, making sure coffee gets made, etc. He or she also arranges for purchasing supplies and keeping group records. The treasurer keeps financial records and pays the group's bills. The GSR attends the Area Service Committee meetings and represents the group to the ASC. The alternate GSR assists the GSR and prepares to replace the GSR when need be."

Area service committees
An ASC is made up of all the participating NA Groups in a given area. The Group Service Representatives (GSRs) and alternate GSRs from each Group in an Area meet regularly together for a business meeting where issues are raised and discussed to better meet the needs of the groups in the Area. Each ASC elects its own officers: the chairperson, vice-chairperson, secretary, treasurer, and regional committee members (RCMs). Frequently an ASC will have various subcommittees (such as a but not limited to Hospitals and Institutions (H&I), Public Information (PI), Activities, Website, Outreach, Policy, Literature, Literature Review, Newsletter, Recovery By Mail and Convention) which are led by subcommittee leaders that are elected by the entire ASC. In some regions, several ASCs will be grouped into a Metropolitan Service Committee at the sub-regional level; this is typical in especially large cities, like Los Angeles, that contain multiple ASCs.

Regional service committees
An RSC is composed of the regional committee members (RCMs) of all the participating ASCs in a region. It is similar in organization to an ASC but is further removed from the day-to-day activities of individual home groups. Many of the issues dealt with by RSCs are the same ones that will come before the World Service Conference, with the RSC being the best way for local groups to help craft policies that will affect NA as a whole. In some cases, only the RCMs in a region will meet to vote on issues; in other situations, all GSRs in a region will be invited to attend an RSC meeting. The RSC elects a delegate to attend the World Service Conference.

Zonal Forums
The Zonal Forums are service-oriented organizational structures designed to improve communication between RSCs. They are not decision-making entities.

Some Zonal Forums actively participate in "Fellowship Development" to help NA fellowships grow in new countries and geographic areas where NA is still forming. Zonal Forums help NA groups, areas, or regions to work together to translate literature, inform the local community about NA and create new service committees. This is achieved through annual or biannual Zonal Forum meetings together with development visits to NA groups and members in other countries. Experienced NA members hold workshops, and meetings and present material to help the newer communities.

Zonal forums also provide an important opportunity for World Services and the World Board to interact with newer and growing NA communities to better understand their needs and challenges. Zonal forums are an important part of the growth of NA in some of the most populous and remote parts of the world. Eastern Europe, central and eastern Asia, and Latin America NA communities have grown significantly through the work of Zonal Forums.

Some Zonal Forums are a service-oriented sharing session that provides the means by which NA communities in their zone can communicate, cooperate, and grow with one another. Although not a part of NA's formal decision-making system, Zonal Forums interact with World Services in many ways. Each Zonal Forum provides a biannual report on the floor of the World Service Conference and, when requested by the conference, may also answer specific questions or address the body. To improve communications, the Zonal Forums are provided with conference participant mailings and send each Zonal Forum meeting record to World Services. To more effectively serve the fellowship, World Services and the Zonal Forums maintain an ongoing partnership to plan and conduct the Worldwide Workshop system.

NA World Service Conference
The NA World Service Conference (WSC) is a bi-annual service meeting made up of the Regional Delegates of the seated Regions of the world and the members of the NA World Board. This service conference has the executive right to make decisions for the entire NA Fellowship. This includes electing members to serve on the World Board, approving all new NA Literature, service material, and making policy decisions that affect the fellowship including the organizational structure. This responsibility has been executed as recently as the late 1990s when the World Service Conference voted to re-structure the NA Service structure including the removal of the Board of Trustees, Board of Directors, and several other World Service level committees (Public Information, Hospitals & Institutions, Literature, and Translations) replacing them with a single board elected by the conference.

NA World Service Office
The WSC through the World Board is responsible for the NA World Service Office located in the Chatsworth, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. This office handles the production of all approved literature, provides resources for projects approved by the WSC, and also provides limited services to the fellowship as a whole. The office also administers the legal responsibilities of the fellowship concerning copyrights, intellectual property, and accounting. The office employs many people who carry out these functions.

Finances
Narcotics Anonymous members are not required to pay any dues or fees. NA is committed to being fully self-supporting, declining any outside contributions. Group expenses are covered entirely by voluntary contributions from its members. Groups meet costs such as meeting room rental, tea and coffee, and any literature that the group provides for free from these contributions, after which surplus funds are passed to the service structure. Group often provide some literature items such as IPs (Double sided single sheet pamphlets) and keytags/chips celebrating clean time. Area Service Committees are typically funded from Group contributions plus money raised by events such as dances and recovery events attended by members. In some countries Area committees also supply literature to the Groups. Areas pass funds on to the Regions, which can also receive contributions from Groups and also raise money through conventions attended by hundreds to thousands and tens of thousands of members. Regions also sometimes run Regional Service Offices which buy literature from the World Service Office and its branch offices for sale to Areas and Groups. Because Regional Service Offices can purchase in bulk and sell at list price sometimes this surplus exceeds the running costs of the office. Regions then pass funds to Zonal Forums and also the World Service Conference via the World Service Office according to the decision of the Region.

At the World Service level of Narcotics Anonymous expenses are met partially by the voluntary donations via the service structure and also through the sale of recovery literature. NA does not accept donations from non-members, organizations, or governments. NA recovery literature is produced by the NA World Service Office (NAWS) located in California, USA. Typically NA groups will purchase literature using group funds from local (area or regional) service offices, or direct from NAWS.

Some literature is provided to new members for free (such as the "Information Pamphlets") while other, typically book-length pieces, are sold at the purchase cost to the group. Literature is also purchased from Group contributions and made available to new members. NAWS receives 87% (2004/5) of its income from the sale of literature. Other expenses include group refreshments, meeting-place rent, etc. Financial information is publicly available on the NA website. The 2007 World Convention of NA ran at a net financial loss of $596,000.

Effectiveness
The first sophisticated outcome studies of NA were conducted in the early 1990s in London, England. The first study found a roughly linear relationship between the length of membership and abstinence with reduced anxiety and increased self-esteem While the NA sample had higher anxiety than the non-addicted comparison groups, these levels were equivalent for those with three or more years of membership, which is consistent with the hypothesis that NA membership reduces anxiety as well as substance use. This study also, contrary to the authors' expectations, found that spiritual beliefs and disease concept beliefs were not prerequisites for attendance of NA and even if these beliefs were adopted they were not found to cause external attributions for previous drug use or possible future lapse events.

A study of the early experience of new NA members in Victoria Australia in 1995 interviewed 91 members initially and 62 (68%) after 12 months and found that higher self-help participation as measured by service role involvement, step work, and stable meeting attendance, in the 12 months before the follow-up was associated with a four-fold reduction in levels of hazardous drug and alcohol use, less illicit income and sickness benefits and higher emotional support at reinterview.

One approach is to provide professional 12-step facilitation (TSF) either in an individual or group setting. TSF sessions are designed to introduce the patient to 12-step concepts and facilitate the entry of the patient into community-based 12-step programs. It must be emphasized that TSF is not NA, it is an implementation of 12-step program elements by a professional counsellor. NA recommends 12 step work with another member who has worked the steps.

One study, sponsored by NIDA, randomly assigned people using cocaine into four groups, individual drug counseling plus group drug counseling (GDC), cognitive therapy plus GDC, supportive expressive therapy plus GDC, or GDC alone. Individual drug counseling was based on the 12-step philosophy. Group drug counseling was designed to educate patients about the stages of recovery from addiction, to strongly encourage participation in 12-step programs, and to provide a supportive group atmosphere for initiating abstinence and an alternative lifestyle. Nearly 500 patients participated in the study.

The results suggested that all four treatment conditions resulted in similar reductions in cocaine use with the IDC + GDC group (TSF) more effective than the other three groups. One issue with this study is that there was significant attrition of patients, with significantly larger numbers of dropouts from the TSF groups than from the others.

Fiorentine 1999
Fiorentine 1999 was a 24-month longitudinal study measuring the effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous and NA.  Like other longitudinal studies, it shows a strong correlation between 12-step attendance and being both clean from drugs and sober from alcohol: People who went to 12-step meetings in the study had about a 75% success rate.

In more detail, at the 24 month follow up, 77.7% of people who went to one or more meetings a week self-reported being clean; urinalysis was very close to that figure, showing some 76.4% of the regular attenders begin clean.  For participants who did not regularly go to meetings, the self-reported figure for being abstinent was 56% and the drug test showed 57.9% being clean. The self-reported figures for excessive alcohol use were similar: 74.8% of regular 12-step attenders self-reported being completely sober, but only 40% of people who did not go to 12-step meetings claimed to be sober.  Urinalysis showed 96.6% of people regularly going to meetings as sober, in contrast to the 88.9% of people who didn't go to meetings once a week or more whose urine sample was alcohol-free.

The report then sees if 12-steps meetings have a specific effect (in other words, if there is causation or merely correlation) by using statistical analysis to compare participants self-reported level of motivation, 12-step attendance, and successfully getting clean and sober.  The result of this observation was that "Weekly or more frequent 12-step participants are 1.59 times more likely than less-than-weekly participants to maintain abstinence after controlling for the differences in recovery motivation measured by the scale."

Controversies

The NA program attempts to avoid controversy through its application of the 12 traditions, which specify that "Narcotics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the NA name ought never be drawn into public controversy." Even so, the Basic Text points out that there are still "communication problems, differences of opinion, internal controversies, and troubles with individuals and groups outside the Fellowship", and various controversies of this type have disturbed NA throughout its history.

Internal controversies
Early in the history of NA, different groups emphasized different aspects of recovery. In particular, the make-up and process of creating an NA text was a contentious period for the fellowship. Different factions supported different versions of the Basic Text, and in the ensuing power struggle there were many accusations made and resentments cultivated. The basis of the dispute was whether the service committees were described as a part of NA, or as a separate entity, basically a tool of the NA groups with no decision-making power; instead being charged with collecting the decisions of the NA groups themselves. This dispute reached its nadir when the NA World Service Office sued an NA member in an attempt to prevent him from distributing free versions of the Basic Text.  Today there are some NA groups who use a self-produced version of the Basic Text that has come to be known as the Baby Blue which is basically the Third Edition, Revised Basic Text (except that it contains originally approved essays on the Traditions). Some Traditionalist groups use the Second Edition or Approval Draft  (both of which contain the original Traditions and are nearly identical to each other).

Approaches of other twelve-step groups
NA is unusual but not unique in its focus on the symptom/substance not being the core problem, but rather the disease of addiction, as is stated in the NA Step 1. In NA, it does not matter what substance you used, and alcohol is seen as a drug. 12-step groups differ in their approach to the treatment of addiction and recovery. Alcoholics Anonymous "is a program for alcoholics who seek freedom from alcohol" but does refer to "some AA members who have misused drugs...in such a manner as to become a threat to the achievement and maintenance of sobriety" and mentions that drugs can "create a dependence just as devastating as dependence on alcohol". Cocaine Anonymous originally formed to address the special needs of cocaine addicts, but "is not a drug specific fellowship" and "welcomes anyone with a drug or alcohol problem and offers a solution". CA's program involves abstaining from cocaine "and all other mind-altering substances", thus taking the same stance as NA pertaining to abstinence from all drugs, including alcohol and marijuana. Methadone Anonymous is similar to NA, but considers the use of methadone to be a tool of recovery and not a drug. NA has no opinion on these groups, as these are outside issues and the traditions suggest against taking a definitive stand on outside issues.

See also
 Nar-Anon, a separate organization for family members and friends of Narcotics Anonymous members

References

Further reading

External links

 na.org, the official website of Narcotics Anonymous World Services

1953 establishments in California
Addiction and substance abuse organizations
Chatsworth, Los Angeles
Non-profit organizations based in Los Angeles
Organizations established in 1953
Twelve-step programs

Narcotics Anonymous


is a Japanese computer game and manga magazine published by Kadokawa Shoten. Comp Ace began as a special edition version of another one of Kadokawa Shoten's magazines, Comptiq. The first issue was released on March 26, 2005, and was published quarterly for the first three volumes which had cover illustrations by Itaru Hinoue of Key. Volumes four through nine were published bimonthly with cover art provided by Aoi Nishimata of Navel. Volume ten was published three months after volume nine, and from ten on the magazine was published monthly, now with new cover art by Naru Nanao, Hiro Suzuhira, and illustrators from Type-Moon and August. Starting with the August 2007 issue published on June 26, 2007, Comp Ace broke off from Comptiq and became its own magazine. Its main focus is on bishōjo games and manga that are based on said games.

Serialized manga
11eyes: Tsumi to Batsu to Aganai no Shōjo
_Summer
Aiyoku no Eustia
Akaneiro ni Somaru Saka
Akira's Ambition
Alice Quartet Obbligato
Angel Magister
Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm
AR Forgotten summer
Arcana Heart
Baldr Sky
Basquash! Eclipse Stage
Battle Cinder-Ella-
Canaan
Canvas 2 ~Niji Iro no Sketch~
Cardfight!! Vanguard
Clear
Code Geass - Knightmare of Nunnally
Cross Days
Da Capo III
Dahlia in Bloom
The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor
Eve: New Generation
FairlyLife
Fantasista Doll
Fate/Extra CCC Foxtail
Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya
Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei!
Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya 3rei!!
Festa!! -Hyper Girls Pop-
Fukanzen Shinsei Kikan Iris
H2O: Footprints in the Sand
Hatsune Miku: Mikubon
Hatsuyuki Sakura
Hana no Miyako!
Hibiki's Magic
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni - Onisarashi-hen and Utsutsukowashi-hen arcs
Hoshiuta
HR
Hybrid x Heart Magias Academy Ataraxia
Idolmaster: Xenoglossia
In Search of the Lost Future
Kantai Collection: Seamine Squadron Chronicles
Kono Aozora ni Yakusoku o: Melody of the Sun and Sea
Kiddy Girl-and Pure
Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de
Little Busters!
Lucky Star
Macross Frontier
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Innocent
Mahō Shōjo Ikusei Keikaku
Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai!
Maoyū Maō Yūsha - "Kono Watashi no Mono Tonare, Yuusha Yo" "Kotowaru!"
Mashiroiro Symphony
Melty Blood
Miniten: Happy Project
Munto
Musō Tōrō
Ninja Slayer: Machine of Vengeance
Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai: Rhapsody
Over Lord
Rental Magica from Solomon
Sakura no Uta
School Days
Stellar Theater
Strike Witches
Strange and Bright Nature Deity
SweetHoneyComing
Tantei Opera Milky Holmes
Tayutama: Kiss on my Deity
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Gurren Gakuen-hen
Tick! Tack!: Never Say Goodbye
Touhou Suzunaan: Forbidden Scrollery
Tsuyokiss
Utsūtsuhi de Onikki
Valkyria Chronicles
Weiß Survive R
The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic
Yosuga no Sora
Yōjo Senki

References

External links
 Official website

2005 establishments in Japan
Kadokawa Shoten magazines
Magazines established in 2005
Magazines published in Tokyo
Monthly manga magazines published in Japan
Video game magazines published in Japan

Comp Ace


Bombardier () is a military rank that has existed since the 16th century in artillery regiments of various armies, such as in the British Army and the Prussian Army. Traditionally the bombardier tended the vents at the top of breeches, handled the final assembly of ammunition and placed the ammunition in the muzzles for the gunners to fire. It is today equivalent to the rank of corporal in other branches. The rank of lance bombardier is the artillery counterpart of lance corporal.

Commonwealth armies
Bombardier (Bdr) and  lance bombardier (LBdr or L/Bdr) are used by the British Army in the Royal Artillery and Royal Horse Artillery. The same applies to the Royal Australian Artillery, the Royal Regiment of New Zealand Artillery, the South African Army Artillery Formation and the Armed Forces of Malta. The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery uses the ranks of master bombardier and bombardier, corresponding to master corporal and corporal.

Originally, the Royal Artillery had corporals, but not lance corporals. Unlike a lance corporal, a bombardier, who was junior to a corporal, held full non-commissioned rank and not an acting appointment. The rank was equivalent to second corporal in the Royal Engineers and Army Ordnance Corps.

In 1920 corporals were abolished in the Royal Artillery; bombardiers became the equivalent and acquired the normal two chevrons.

The rank of lance bombardier originated as acting bombardier, an appointment similar to lance corporal and also indicated by a single chevron. The appointment was renamed  lance bombardier in February 1918. It became a full rank, along with lance corporal, in 1961.

See also
 British Army other ranks rank insignia
 List of comparative military ranks
 Canadian Armed Forces ranks and insignia

References

External links

Military ranks of the Commonwealth
Military ranks of Australia
Military ranks of Canada
Military ranks of the British Army
Artillery speciality
Royal Artillery
Military ranks of Germany

Bombardier (rank)


Louis Émile Clément Georges Bernanos (; 20 February 1888 – 5 July 1948) was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. A Catholic with monarchist leanings, he was critical of elitist thought and was opposed to what he identified as defeatism. He believed this had led to France's defeat and eventual occupation by Germany in 1940 during World War II. His two major novels Sous le soleil de Satan (1926) and the Journal d'un curé de campagne (1936) both revolve around a parish priest who combats evil and despair in the world. Most of his novels have been translated into English and frequently published in both Great Britain and the United States.

Life and career
Bernanos was born in Paris, into a family of craftsmen. He spent much of his childhood in the village of Fressin, Pas-de-Calais region, which became a frequent setting for his novels. He served in the First World War as a soldier, where he fought in the battles of the Somme and Verdun. He was wounded several times.

After the war, he worked in insurance before writing Sous le soleil de Satan (1926, Under the Sun of Satan).  He won the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française for The Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d'un curé de campagne), published in 1936.

A man of Royalist leanings and a member of the Camelots du Roi (Action Française's youth organization) when he was younger, Bernanos broke with Charles Maurras and the Action Française in 1932. He initially supported Franco's coup at the outset of the Spanish Civil War. However, after he observed the conflict in Majorca and saw 'a terrorized people,' he became disgusted with the nacionales and criticized them in the book Diary of My Times (1938). He wrote, "My illusions regarding the enterprise of General Franco did not last long—two or three weeks—but while they lasted I conscientiously endeavoured to overcome the disgust which some of his men and means caused me."

With political tensions rising in Europe, Bernanos emigrated to South America with his family in 1938, settling in Brazil. He remained until 1945 in Barbacena, State of Minas Gerais, where he tried his hand at managing a farm. His three sons returned to France to fight after World War II broke out, while he fulminated at his country's 'spiritual exhaustion,' which he saw as the root of its collapse in 1940. From exile he mocked the 'ridiculous' Vichy regime and became a strong supporter of the nationalist Free French Forces led by the conservative Charles De Gaulle. After France's Liberation, De Gaulle invited Bernanos to return to his homeland, offering him a post in the government. Bernanos did return but, disappointed  to perceive no signs of spiritual renewal, he declined to play an active role in French political life.

Works and English translations
 Sous le soleil de Satan 1926.
 The Star of Satan. London: The Bodley Head, 1927 [New York: Macmillan, 1940; H. Fertig, 1975].
 Under the Sun of Satan. New York: Pantheon, 1949 [University of Nebraska Press, 2001].
Under the Sun of Satan. Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2017.
Les Ténèbres (diptyque): L'Imposture (1927) & La Joie (1928)
 Joy. New York: Pantheon Books, 1946 [London: The Bodley Head, 1948; Toronto: Thomas Nelson, 1948].
 The Impostor. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Joy. Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2020.
 Un crime 1935.
The Crime. London: Hale, 1936 [New York: E.P. Dutton, 1936].
A Crime. Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2021.
 Journal d'un curé de campagne 1936 (also issued serially 1935-36)
 The Diary of a Country Priest 1936 in Paris, France; London: The Bodley Head, 1937 [New York: Macmillan, 1948, 1962; Carroll & Graf, 1983, 2002].
 Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette 1937
 Mouchette. London: The Bodley Head, 1966 [New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966; New York Review Books, 2006].
 Les grands cimetières sous la lune 1938
 A Diary of My Times. New York: Macmillan, 1938 [London: The Bodley Head, 1945].
The Great Cemeteries under the Moon. Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2018.
 Monsieur Ouine 1943
 The Open Mind. London: The Bodley Head, 1945.
 Monsieur Ouine. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
 Dialogues des carmélites  1949.
 The Fearless Heart. Toronto: Thomas Nelson, 1952 [London: The Bodley Head, 1952].
 Un mauvais rêve (posthumously 1950)
 Night Is Darkest. London: The Bodley Head, 1953.
A Bad Dream. Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2020.
 Plea for Liberty. New York: Pantheon, 1944 [London: Dobson, 1946].
 Sanctity Will Out. London and New York: Sheed & Ward, 1947.
 Tradition of Freedom. London: Dobson, 1950 [New York: Roy, 1951].
 The Last Essays of Georges Bernanos. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1955 [Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1968].
Liberty: The Last Essays. Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2019.

Adaptations of selected works
 The Diary of a Country Priest: this was the first novel by Bernanos to be adapted as a film, called Diary of a Country Priest (1951); it was directed by Robert Bresson, and starred Claude Laydu in his debut role.
Mouchette was adapted into a film of the same name by Robert Bresson, released in 1967.
 Under the Sun of Satan: his novel was adapted as a film of the same name, produced in 1987 in France. The film won the Palme d'Or prize at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival.
 Dialogues des Carmélites: in 1947, Bernanos had been hired to write the dialogue for a film screenplay, through Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger and the scenario writer Philippe Agostini, based on the novella Die Letzte am Schafott by German novelist Gertrud von Le Fort, about the 1794 execution of the Carmelite Nuns of Compiègne. The screenplay was judged unsatisfactory at the time. Following Bernanos' death his literary executor, Albert Béguin, discovered the manuscript. To assist Bernanos' heirs, Béguin sought to have the work published, requesting permission from Baroness von Le Fort for publication. In January 1949 she agreed, gifting her portion of the royalties over to Bernanos' widow and children. However, the Baroness requested that Bernanos' play be given a different title from her novella. Béguin chose Dialogues des Carmélites, and the work was published in 1949.  It was translated into German, published there in 1951 as Die begnadete Angst (The Blessed Fear) and first staged in Zurich and Munich that year. The French stage première took place in May 1952 at the Théâtre Hébertot. The composer Francis Poulenc adapted Bernanos' work into an opera of the same name, which was first performed at La Scala Milan in 1957. A film based on Bernanos' play and starring Jeanne Moreau was released in 1960.

References

Further reading
 von Balthasar, Hans Urs (2011). Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence. Ignatius Press.
 Blumenthal, Gerda (1965). The Poetic Imagination of Georges Bernanos: An Essay in Interpretation. The Johns Hopkins Press.
 Braybrooke, Neville (1954). "Georges Bernanos," The Irish Monthly, Vol. 83, No. 969, pp. 174–179.
 Bush, William (1969). Georges Bernanos. Twayne Publishers.
 Field, Frank (1975). Three French Writers: Studies in the Rise of Communism and Fascism.
 Hebblethwaite, Peter (1965). Bernanos, an Introduction. London: Bowes and Bowes.
 Molnar, Thomas (1960). Bernanos: His Political Thought and Prophecy. New York: Sheed and Ward.
 Molnar, Thomas (1995). "The Case of Georges Bernanos," Modern Age 38 (1), pp. 61–68.
 Noth, Ernst Erich (1949). "The Prophetism of Georges Bernanos," Yale French Studies, No. 4, Literature and Ideas, pp. 105–119.
 O'Malley, Frank (1944). "The Evangelism of Georges Bernanos," The Review of Politics, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 403–421.
 Reck, Rima Drell (1965). "George Bernanos: A Novelist and His Art," The French Review, Vol. 38, No. 5, pp. 619–629.
 Speaight, Robert (1973). Georges Bernanos: A Study of the Man and the Writer. London: Collins & Harvill Press [New York: Liveright, 1974].

External links

English language biography (version in Archive.org)
The Pilgrimage of George Bernanos
Georges Bernanos (1888-1948)

1888 births
1948 deaths
Writers from Paris
20th-century French essayists
20th-century French male writers
20th-century French novelists
Christian humanists
French male essayists
French male novelists
French military personnel of World War I
French monarchists
French people of the Spanish Civil War
French Roman Catholics
Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française winners
Legion of Honour refusals
People affiliated with Action Française
Prix Femina winners
Roman Catholic writers
Christian novelists

Georges Bernanos


Edwin A. "Bud" Shrake, Jr. (September 6, 1931 – May 8, 2009) was an American journalist, sportswriter, novelist, biographer and screenwriter. He co-wrote a series of golfing advice books with golf coach Harvey Penick, including Harvey Penick's Little Red Book, a golf guide that became the best-selling sports book in publishing history. Called a "lion of Texas letters" by the Austin American-Statesman, Shrake was a member of the Texas Film Hall of Fame, and received the Lon Tinkle lifetime achievement award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the Texas Book Festival Bookend Award.

Early life
Shrake was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and attended Paschal High School where, along with Dan Jenkins, he wrote for the school newspaper the Paschal Pantherette.

He served in the Army and attended the University of Texas at Austin and Texas Christian University.

In 1951, Shrake joined Jenkins at the Fort Worth Press while he completed his degree in English and philosophy at TCU. Shrake started on the police beat for the underdog Press while Gary Cartwright covered the same beat for the mainstream Fort Worth Star-Telegram. According to Cartwright, he and Shrake usually could be found hanging out at a bar across the street from the police station; a copy boy monitoring police calls would alert them to stories. Looking back at his job interview at the Press, Shrake would write "it was a rackety, dirty city paper, with the teletypes clacking and a sense of urgency everywhere. A copy editor was eating tuna fish out of a can, and the bowling writer was drinking bourbon, and I thought, 'This is the world I want to be in.' " At the Press, he also worked under legendary sports editor Blackie Sherrod who said about Shrake, "he immediately showed talent and went on to remarkable success and acclaim far beyond the pressbox."

In 1958, Shrake moved to the Dallas Times Herald as a sportswriter, followed by a move in 1961 to the Dallas Morning News in order to write a daily sports column.

Shrake wrote about the Comanche's final battle against the United States Army in his first novel, Blood Reckoning (1962). But Not For Love, published in 1964, looked at the post-war generation.

Sports Illustrated
In 1964, Shrake moved to New York City, following Jenkins, to join the staff of Sports Illustrated, where editor André Laguerre considered him a "literary" sportswriter. Accordingly, Laguerre often allowed Shrake to write "bonus pieces"—long feature stories sometimes barely related to sports. Among the notable feature articles Shrake wrote for Sports Illustrated are "The Once Forbidding Land" (1965), a profile of life in the Texas Hill Country, and "The Tarahumaras: A Lonely Tribe of Long-Distance Runners" (1967), which he wrote after spending several weeks with the Tarahumaras in Northern Mexico.

Return to Texas
Shrake returned to Texas in 1968 and continued his association with Sports Illustrated until 1979 while also writing novels and screenplays. His 1968 book Blessed McGill, set during Reconstruction, is often cited as a classic of Texas fiction, as is his 1972 novel Strange Peaches. Strange Peaches is set in Dallas just before and after the Kennedy assassination. The novel's lead character is a TV Western star who quits his show and returns to Dallas to make a documentary. The book is based in part on Shrake's own life story: in November 1963, he was dating Jada, the star dancer at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club. Strange Peaches includes Ruby as a supporting character, and borrows the real-life moment when Shrake, standing with his camera at Main and Houston, locked eyes with Kennedy.

In 1969, Shrake wrote what is perhaps his best-known article, "Land of the Permanent Wave", about a trip to the Big Thicket in East Texas, where he encounters environmental destruction, as well as xenophobia, bigotry and a sense of living in the past, exemplified by the permanent wave hairstyle still popular among women there. He intended the article for publication in Sports Illustrated, but it was rejected, possibly because an East Texas lumber company was a stockholder. It was instead published in the February 1970 issue of Harper's Magazine. Harper's editor Willie Morris later called it one of the two best pieces Morris ever published during his tenure at the magazine. Morris wrote that Shrake's story "struck a chord in me that I have never quite forgotten, having to do with how clean, funny, and lambent prose caught the mood of that moment in the country and mirrored with great felicity what we were trying to do at Harper's. To me few finer magazine essays have ever been written."

Shrake's acidic look at his home state continued in Peter Arbiter (1973), a retelling of Petronius' Satyricon that compares oil-boom Texas to Rome's decadence. In 1976 Shrake and Jenkins published Limo, a satiric look at network television executives struggling to produce "Just Up The Street," a reality show showing four families live for three hours in prime-time.

Mad Dog Inc.
During the 60s and 70s, Shrake, Jenkins, Cartwright (who would go on to write for Texas Monthly), Billy Lee Brammer (The Gay Place), Larry L. King ("The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"), Peter Gent (North Dallas Forty) and Texas journalist/professor Jay Milner were part of a "ragtag assemblage" of Texas writers known as Mad Dog Inc.  Jenkins would describe Shrake as "an easy writer, a fast writer, a creative writer." "We were into smoking and drinking and hanging out, like most writers in the old days," Jenkins said. "I think journalism was a stopover for him. But he was awfully good at it." Cartwright would later say that "[w]e were fairly wild, untamed, uncontrolled boys." Shrake and Cartwright eventually incorporated a company named Mad Dog Productions. According to Shrake's archives, the company's motto was "doing indefinable services to mankind" (, and its only documented service was giving $1,000 to the Armadillo World Headquarters in 1970 to help it financially. Mad Dogs Shrake and Cartwright often subjected unsuspecting strangers to the antics of the Flying Punzars, an alleged circus act; they occasionally were joined in these antics by musician Jerry Jeff Walker.

Other Mad Dog antics included games of "naked bridge" at Dan and June Jenkins' house in Fort Worth; a pissing contest between Shrake, Don Meredith, and George Plimpton held on the balcony of Shrake's third-floor apartment in New York; and a multi-day bender in Austin that saw Cartwright drop out after about 27 hours, Hunter S. Thompson folding some 10–12 hours later, and Shrake and Walker being still on the town on the morning of the fourth day. Shrake's Mad Dog adventures while on the Sports Illustrated staff include the time he hired Frank Sinatra to go to Europe to photograph a heavyweight boxing match — Sinatra received press credentials but missed his flight; the time he was saved from a mob by Mohammed Ali; the time a London soccer team elected him honorary captain after winning an important contest — Shrake led celebrating team members and supporters on a midnight parade; and the time he selected the Houston Oilers' draft picks, choosing André Laguerre (his boss at Sports Illustrated) with the 25th pick.

Screenplay writing
Shrake's screenplays include the thriller Nightwing (1979), Tom Horn (a Steve McQueen Western written in collaboration with Thomas McGuane; 1980), Kid Blue (an "acid Western" vehicle for Dennis Hopper; 1973) and Songwriter (1984), which starred Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Rip Torn. Shrake's play "Pancho Villa's Wedding Day" (1983) started as a movie project with Hopper that never found funding. Nelson, Kristofferson and Torn would be reunited in two made-for-TV movies written by Shrake and Cartwright, "Pair of Aces" (1990) and "Another Pair of Aces" (1991). Shrake played a bit role in the latter; he had appeared in a "small, but significant" role as "Sodbuster Two" in "Lonesome Dove".

Later novels and biographies
Shrake began to write celebrity as-told-to biographies in the 1980s, beginning with his friend Willie Nelson, which was followed by a biography of Barry Switzer and four books with Penick. Shrake smoked, drank and used drugs until the mid-1980s, when a doctor told him he might live a year if he didn't stop. He quit in one day, and then wrote Night Never Falls just to see if he could do it without cigarettes and booze. Night Never Falls was published in 1987, and became his favorite of his novels. It featured foreign correspondent Harry Sparrow (a stand-in for Shrake) trapped with the French in Dien Bien Phu and was the only one of Shrake's novels not set in Texas.

The success of Harvey Penick's Little Red Book in 1992, and its sequels, left him financially stable, enabling him to pursue his fiction writing. Shrake returned to the Comanche, the subject of his first novel, in The Borderland: A Novel of Texas (2000). His 2001 Billy Boy is a coming-of-age story set in Fort Worth that features John L. Bredemus as a guardian angel, golf champ Ben Hogan, and several rounds at Colonial Country Club. Shrake's 10th novel, Custer's Brother's Horse (2007), is set in Texas in 1865 right after the Civil War ends.

Shrake's 2006 play The Friend of Carlos Monzon is based on the time he was briefly held in an Argentine prison during the 1970s while on assignment for Sports Illustrated.

Critical reception
Blessed McGill, Strange Peaches  and But Not for Love are ranked by literary scholars as among the best ever written about Texas." George Plimpton called Blessed McGill "[a]n absolutely first-rate account of the rambunctious life and times of the Reconstruction years in Texas—an enthralling era of derring-do which finds its perfect chronicler in Mr. Shrake." United Press International's review of Strange Peaches stated that it was "not only one of the best-written American novels since World War II, it entertains…a great book, not just for critics, but for readers." Screenwriter and photographer Bill Wittliff said that Shrake "was one of those who took the raw material of our history and was making real literature of it. He was one of the greats with Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy. We were fortunate indeed to have his voice." McMurtry himself said in 1981 that "Shrake has always been an intriguing talent, far superior to his drinking buddies." University of Texas professor Don Graham, a leading critic of Texas literature, has said that whenever anyone asks him what Dallas was like about the time of the Kennedy assassination, he sends them to Strange Peaches.

In 2008, the University of Texas Press published Land of the Permanent Wave: An Edwin "Bud" Shrake Reader, an anthology named after Shrake's Harper's Magazine piece.

Shrake's personal papers and literary archive, dating to 1936, are stored at the Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University-San Marcos; a portion of the archive had been held by the Austin History Center

Personal life
Shrake was twice married to and twice divorced from Joyce Shrake, with whom he had two sons, Ben Shrake of Fort Worth and Alan Shrake of Los Angeles. His marriage to Doatsy Shrake also ended in divorce. His survivors also include his brother, Bruce, of Houston, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Shrake was Texas Governor Ann Richards' companion for 17 years, until her death in 2006. ("We always said we'd get married when we were older," Shrake said in 2007.) As the "first gentleman of Texas," he escorted Richards to her inaugural ball and to other social events, and organized card games inside the Texas governor's mansion. Shrake was raised in Fort Worth's Travis Avenue Baptist Church, but that did not stop him from obtaining ordination by the Universal Life Church and officiating at the wedding of friends such as Cartwright.

Illness and death
Shrake suffered from both prostate cancer and lung cancer in his final years. At a Southwestern Writers Collection event in 2008, Shrake urged friends to heed Johnny Mercer's lyrics: "You've got to accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative. Latch on the affirmative. Don't mess with Mister In-Between." Despite his advanced lung cancer, Shrake made an appearance on April 8, 2009 at a special screening of Songwriter in Austin. He was roughly 100 pages into a new novel when he died.

Shrake died at St. David's Hospital in Austin, of complications from lung cancer. The staff at the Austin Country Club lowered its club flag to half staff in recognition of Shrake's death. At Shrake's funeral, Ray Benson sang Willie Nelson's "I Still Can't Believe You're Gone" while Nelson sang "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground" and Cartwright called Shrake "my friend, compadre and mentor for 50 years. Every success I enjoyed owed directly or indirectly to Bud Shrake." At the graveside service, Jerry Jeff Walker played two songs: Charles John Quarto and Shake Russell's "Dare of an Angel" and the Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn standard "My Buddy." Shrake's hearse bore the Mad Dog Productions sign in the back window.

Shrake is buried next to Ann Richards in the Texas State Cemetery.

Bibliography

Fiction
Blood Reckoning (1962)
But Not For Love (1964)
Blessed McGill (1968)
Strange Peaches (1972)
Peter Arbiter (1973)
Limo (1976, with Dan Jenkins)
Night Never Falls (1987)
The Borderland: A Novel of Texas (2000)
Billy Boy (2001)
Custer's Brother's Horse (2007)
Hollywood Mad Dogs (2020, posthumously)

Nonfiction
Willie: An Autobiography (1988)
Bootlegger's Boy (1990)
Harvey Penick's Little Red Book [with Harvey Penick] (1992)
And If You Play Golf, You're My Friend [with Harvey Penick] (1993)
For All Who Love the Game: Lessons and Teachings for Women [with Harvey Penick] (1995)
The Game for a Lifetime: More Lessons and Teachings [with Harvey Penick] (1996)
The Wisdom of Harvey Penick [with Harvey Penick] (1997)

Anthology
Land of the Permanent Wave: An Edwin "Bud" Shrake Reader [Steven L. Davis, editor] (2008)

Filmography
 J. W. Coop (1972) (writer) (as Edwin Shrake)
 Kid Blue (1973) (written by) (as Edwin Shrake)
 Nightwing (1979) (screenplay)
 Tom Horn (1980) (screenplay)
 Songwriter (1984) (writer)
 Pair of Aces (1990) (TV) (co-written with Gary Cartwright)
 Another Pair of Aces: Three of a Kind (1991) (TV) (co-written with Gary Cartwright)

References

Further reading
 Steven L. Davis Texas Literary Outlaws: Six Writers in the Sixties and Beyond, publisher: Texas Christian University Press, 2004, Hardcover: 512 pages,
 Bud Shrake, Steven L. Davis (editor), Land of the Permanent Wave: An Edwin "Bud" Shrake Reader, publisher: University of Texas Press (Southwestern Writers Collection Series, Wittliff Collections at Texas State University-San Marcos), 2008, Hardcover, 343 pages,

External links
 Edwin "Bud" Shrake Papers at the Southwestern Writers Collection, the Whittliff Collections, Texas State University-San Marcos.

1931 births
2009 deaths
20th-century American novelists
21st-century American novelists
American male novelists
American sportswriters
American male screenwriters
Texas Christian University alumni
Writers from Fort Worth, Texas
Novelists from Texas
The Dallas Morning News people
20th-century American biographers
21st-century American biographers
Journalists from Texas
20th-century American male writers
21st-century American male writers
Screenwriters from Texas
20th-century American screenwriters
20th-century American journalists
American male journalists
American male biographers

Bud Shrake


Batasuna (formerly Herri Batasuna) was a political party in Spain. Herri Batasuna was founded after the fall of the Franco regime, in 1978. In 2001, the party changed its name into Batasuna. In 2003, the party was outlawed in Spain, but it continues to be a political party in France. The party was suspected to have close ties with ETA. The party was active in the Basque Country,  and Navarre. It wanted to form an independent state of the Basque country. The region where Basque is spoken is split between the Basque country, Navarre in Spain and the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in France. The area is known as Euskal Herria (literally,: Basque country).

Spain, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Union see Batasuna as the political wing of ETA.

Because it was outlawed, the party has had different names, such as Euskal Herritarrok, Sozialista Abertzaleak, Ezker Abertzaleak and AUB, Aukera Guztiak.

Bastasina sees itself as a nationalist, left-wing party.  It is also called socialist (with Marxist and Libertarian tendencies). Other ideas of the party include to fight for feminism, and to be seen as envirnomentalist. Batasuna is the only party in the did not condemn the violent attacks carried out by ETA. According to Batasuna, it is sterile and hypocritical to condemn only one form of violemce; by the same token, the violence of Spain should be condemned, which oppresses the Basque people. According to the Spanish state, there were no violations of human rights after the fall of the Franco regime, and the use of violence for political reasons is inacceptable.

Batasuna has run in elections in the French part of the Basque country, in Ustaritz, about 12 km from Bayonne.

The party dissolved in January 2013.

References

Political parties in Spain
Political parties in France
Nationalist organizations in Europe
2013 disestablishments in Europe
1978 establishments in Europe
1970s establishments in Spain

Batasuna


The Arab League was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan (renamed Jordan after independence in 1946), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Yemen joined  on 5 May 1945. Since its formation the Arab League has promoted the Palestinian Arab cause in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, including by imposing the Arab League boycott of Israel. The Arab League opposed the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947. On 15 May 1948, the then seven Arab League members coordinated an invasion of what was by then the former British Mandate, marking the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

In 1964, the Arab League created the Palestine Liberation Organization to operate within the territory of Israel. During the Six-Day War, the Arab League was instrumental in the oil embargo, which lasted until the Khartoum Resolution in September 1967. The League members also agreed to continue the state of belligerency with Israel and not to negotiate a settlement to the conflict. The signing of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty was condemned, and Egypt was suspended from the Arab League in 1979, which lasted until 1989. The Arab League on 15 November 1988 recognized the proclamation of the State of Palestine. The Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel signed the Oslo Accords in 1993 which led to the setting up of the Palestinian National Authority. The Arab League has not made any official statements either supporting the establishment of the Palestinian Authority or condemning it. In October 1994, Jordan signed the Israel–Jordan peace treaty with Israel, and it was not ostracized by the Arab League, as Egypt had been in 1979. In 2002, the Arab League endorsed a Saudi Arabian Arab Peace Initiative which called for full withdrawal by Israel "to the 1967 borders" in return for fully normalized relations.

1945–48
At the end of World War II in 1945, the Palestinian Arabs were leaderless. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, had been in exile since 1937, and spent the war years in occupied Europe, actively collaborating with Nazi leadership. His relative Jamal al-Husayni was interned in Southern Rhodesia during the war. As the war ended, Amin al-Husayni escaped to Egypt, and moved to Lebanon in 1959; he died in Beirut on 4 July 1974.

In November 1945 the Arab League re-established the Arab Higher Committee as the supreme executive body of Palestinian Arabs in the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine. The committee was immediately recognised by the then six Arab League countries; the Mandate government recognised the new Committee two months later. However, the Committee fell apart due to infighting, and in June 1946 the Arab League imposed upon the Palestinians the Arab Higher Executive, renamed as "Arab Higher Committee" in 1947, with Amin al-Husayni (then living in Egypt) as its chairman and Jamal al-Husayni as vice-chairman.

On 2 December 1945 the Arab League Council formally declared a boycott of any Jewish-owned business operating in Mandatory Palestine: "Jewish products and manufactured [goods] in Palestine shall be [considered] undesirable in the Arab countries; to permit them to enter the Arab countries would lead to the realization of the Zionist political objectives.

1948–49
According to an interview in an 11 October 1947 article of Akhbar al-Yom, the Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha reportedly said: "I personally wish that the Jews do not drive us to this war, as this will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades". The second part of this sentence, without the caveat that he hoped to avoid war and incorrectly dated to 15 May 1948 (the day after the Israeli Declaration of Independence), became known as the Azzam Pasha quotation, after it was widely disseminated in English as anti-Arab propaganda.

The Arab League bitterly opposed any attempts to establish a Jewish state and worked strenuously to defeat any partition of Palestine. When the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was adopted in resolution 181(II) by the General Assembly on 29 November 1947, it was unanimously rejected by the Arab League and by all its members and by leaders of the Arab community, including the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee.

On Friday, 14 May 1948, a day before the British Mandate over Palestine expired (the next day being Shabbat), the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved a proclamation declaring the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. The next day the seven Arab League members, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, coordinated a march with their forces into what the previous day had been the area of the British Mandate, marking the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In the introduction to the cablegram from the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States to the UN Secretary-General on 15 May 1948, the Arab League gave reasons for the intervention of the Arab States:

On the occasion of the intervention of Arab States in Palestine to restore law and order and to prevent disturbances prevailing in Palestine from spreading into their territories and to check further bloodshed.

Clause 10 of the Cablegram said:-
10. Now that the Mandate over Palestine has come to an end, leaving no legally constituted authority behind in order to administer law and order in the country and afford the necessary and adequate protection to life and property, the Arab States declare as follows:
(a) The right to set up a Government in Palestine pertains to its inhabitants under the principles of self-determination recognized by the Covenant of the League of Nations as well as the United Nations Charter.
(b) Peace and order have been completely upset in Palestine, and, in consequence of Jewish aggression, approximately over a quarter of a million of the Arab population have been compelled to leave their homes and emigrate to neighbouring Arab countries.
(c) The Mandatory has already announced that on the termination of the Mandate it will no longer be responsible for the maintenance of law and order in Palestine except in the camps and areas actually occupied by its forces, and only to the extent necessary for the security of those forces and their withdrawal.

The Cablegram also declared -
The Arab States recognize that the independence and sovereignty of Palestine which was so far subject to the British Mandate has now, with the termination of the Mandate, become established in fact, and maintain that the lawful inhabitants of Palestine are alone competent and entitled to set up an administration in Palestine for the discharge of all governmental functions without any external interference. As soon as that stage is reached the intervention of the Arab States, which is confined to the restoration of peace and establishment of law and order, shall be put an end to, and the sovereign State of Palestine will be competent in co-operation with the other States members of the Arab League, to take every step for the promotion of the welfare and security of its peoples and territory.

Six days after the invasion, Azzam told reporters:
"We are fighting for an Arab Palestine. Whatever the outcome the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like. In areas where they predominate they will have complete autonomy."

However, despite the rhetoric Arab leaders were disunited. The Egyptians knew of Abdullah's agreement with Meir and were determined to thwart Transjordan's territorial ambitions,  "thus the Arab war plan changed in conception and essence from a united effort to conquer parts of the nascent Jewish state and perhaps destroy it, into a multilateral land grab focusing on the Arab areas of the country."

An Egyptian Ministerial order dated 1 June 1948 declared that all laws in force during the Mandate would continue to be in force in the Gaza Strip. On 8 July 1948, the Arab League decided to set up a temporary civil administration in Palestine, to be directly responsible to the Arab League. This plan was strongly opposed by King Abdullah I of Transjordan, and received only half-hearted support from the Arab Higher Committee. The new administration was never properly established. Another order issued on 8 August 1948 vested an Egyptian Administrator-General with the powers of the High Commissioner.

The Egyptian government, suspicious of King Abdullah's intentions and growing power in Palestine, put a proposal to the Arab League meeting that opened in Alexandria on 6 September 1948. The plan would turn the temporary civil administration, which had been agreed to in July, into an Arab government with a seat in Gaza for the whole of Palestine. The formal announcement of the Arab League's decision to form the All-Palestine Government was issued on 20 September. The All-Palestine Government was established in Gaza on 22 September 1948 and was recognised by all Arab League countries except Jordan; and on 30 September a rival First Palestinian Congress was convened in Amman and promptly denounced the Gaza "government".

"A key feature of the Arabs' plans was the complete marginalization of the Palestinians... This aptly reflected the political reality: The military defeats of April–May had rendered them insignificant. The Arab League through the first half of 1948 had consistently rejected Husseini's appeals to establish a government-in-exile... Under strong pressure from Egypt, which feared complete Hashemite control over the Palestinians, the League Political Committee in mid-September authorized the establishment of a Palestinian 'government.'"

1949–1967
As a result of 1949 Armistice Agreements, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem were ruled by Jordan, while the Gaza Strip was occupied by Egypt until the 1967 Six-Day War.  During the first few months of 1950, Israel and Jordan came very close to creating a separate "five-year non-aggression agreement". However, on 13 April 1950, Arab League members signed an agreement on Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation, which committed the signatories to coordination of military defense measures, and "the Arab League resolved to expel any Arab state which reached a separate economic, political or military agreement with Israel." Under pressure from the Arab League, the agreement between Israel and Jordan never came to pass. Jordan formally annexing the West Bank on 24 April 1950. King Abdallah was assassinated on 20 July 1951.

In 1959, without reference to the Arab League that had created it, Gamal Abdel Nasser officially dissolved the All-Palestine Government by decree, arguing that the All-Palestine Government had failed to successfully advance the Palestinian cause. The Gaza Strip became directly administered by Egypt. At that time, Amin al-Husayni moved from Egypt to Lebanon.

At the Cairo Summit of 1964, the Arab League initiated the creation of an organisation representing the Palestinian people. The first Palestinian National Council convened in East Jerusalem on 29 May 1964. The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded during this meeting on 2 June 1964. The area of activity for the PLO was clearly within the then borders of the State of Israel: the Palestinian National Charter of 1964 stated:

This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area.

According to Yaacov Lozowick, "It was not the Palestinians themselves who decided to create the PLO after their defeat in 1948; the Arab League set it up in 1964 to attack Israel. For years, Palestinian independence was off the Arab agenda; now it was back. Inventing the PLO was a prelude to war, not a result of it; the goal was to destroy Israel, not to rectify the misfortune of the Palestinians, which still could have been done by the Arab states irrespective of Israel."

1967–2000
On 1 September 1967, in the wake of the Six-Day War, eight leaders of Arab countries issued the Khartoum Resolution. Paragraph 3 of the resolution became known as the Three Nos: "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it."

President Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel and the Egypt–Israel peace treaty were each condemned in the Arab World, and Egypt was suspended from the Arab League in 1979 after signing a peace treaty with Israel and the League's headquarters was moved from Cairo. Egypt was readmitted in 1989.

On 15 November 1988, the Palestinian National Council unilaterally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Palestine, which the Arab League immediately recognized. At the time, the PLO was based in Tunis and did not have control over any part of Palestine. On 13 September 1993, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel signed the Oslo Accords which led to the setting up of the Palestinian National Authority. The Accords made no reference to the declaration of 1988 of Palestinian statehood, and marked the first political agreement between Palestinian Arab leaders and Israel. The Arab League has not made any official statements either supporting the establishment of the Palestinian Authority or condemning it. In October 1994, Jordan signed the Israel–Jordan peace treaty with Israel, and it was not ostracized by the Arab League, as Egypt had been in 1979.

After 2000
In 2002, Saudi Arabia proposed the Arab Peace Initiative in The New York Times, which was endorsed unanimously at a summit meeting of the Arab League in Beirut. The plan is based on UN Security Council Resolution 242 and Resolution 338, but makes more demands, essentially calling for full withdrawal by Israel "to the 1967 borders" (i.e., the 1949 Armistice line) in return for fully normalized relations with the whole Arab world.

In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres stated: "... the Saudi step is an important one, but it is liable to founder if terrorism is not stopped. ... It is ... clear that the details of every peace plan must be discussed directly between Israel and the Palestinians, and to make this possible, the Palestinian Authority must put an end to terror, the horrifying expression of which we witnessed just last night in Netanya", referring to the Netanya suicide attack.

The Arab League has since re-endorsed the Initiative on several occasions, including at the Riyadh Summit in March 2007. On 25 July 2007, the Jordanian foreign minister Abdul Ilah Khatib and Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit—appointed by the Arab League as its representatives—met with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, foreign minister Tzipi Livni, and defense minister Ehud Barak in Jerusalem. This was the first time that an Israeli government received an official delegation from the Arab League.

As of 2021, only six of the twenty-two members of the Arab League have recognized Israel: Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and  Morocco. Relations with Israel have deteriorated, especially after the last Gaza War, where Mauritania had suspended its relations with Israel.

See also
 Arab League boycott of Israel
 Palestinian refugees and Jewish refugees
 Suez Crisis
 1970 Black September in Jordan and Civil War in Lebanon
 Yom Kippur War
 1982 Lebanon War
 Gulf War
 2003 invasion of Iraq
 2006 Lebanon War

Arab–Israeli peace diplomacy and treaties
 Paris Peace Conference, 1919
 Faisal–Weizmann Agreement
 1949 Armistice Agreements
 Camp David Accords
 Madrid Conference of 1991
 Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace
 Oslo Accords
 2000 Camp David Summit
 Israeli–Palestinian peace process
 Arab–Israeli peace projects
 List of Middle East peace proposals
 International law and the Arab–Israeli conflict

References

Further reading

Arab League
Arab–Israeli conflict
Foreign relations of the Arab League
Foreign relations of Israel

Arab League and the Arab–Israeli conflict


A volcanic plug is a landform created when volcanic magma hardens inside a vent on an active volcano. They are sometimes called volcanic necks or puys. The plug is revealed when surrounding land is eroded.

As it forms, a plug may cause an extreme build-up of pressure if gas-charged magma is trapped beneath it. This sometimes leads to an explosive eruption. But if the explosion does not occur, then the volcano becomes a solid block made of hard material.

The plug is usually harder than the surrounding rock. Glacial erosion can lead to exposure of the plug on one side, while a long slope of material remains on the lee side. Such landforms are called crag and tail. If a plug is preserved, erosion may remove the surrounding rock while the erosion-resistant plug remains. This is what produces the distinctive upstanding landform.

Related pages
Intrusion

References

Volcanoes

Volcanic plug


An appendage is a part of animals attached the main body. Many arthropods have appendages on each, or most, of their segments. Millipedes, for example, have many segments, and almost all carry two legs. Insects have exactly six legs, two on each segment of the thorax. Antennae (feelers) attached to their heads are another type of appendage.

Wings, parts of the tail, legs, some mouthparts, external sex organs can all be described as appendages.

Appendages may be uniramous, as in insects and centipedes, where each appendage comprises a single series of segments, or it may be biramous, as in many crustaceans, where each appendage branches into two sections.

All arthropod appendages are variations of the same basic structure (homologous). Which structure is produced is controlled by homeobox genes. Changes to these genes have allowed scientists to produce animals (such as Drosophila melanogaster) with modified appendages, such as legs instead of antennae.

Animal anatomy
Developmental biology

Appendage


Jonathan Nott (born Solihull, England in 1963) is an English conductor.  He was a choral scholar at the University of Cambridge, and also studied singing and flute in Manchester and conducting in London.

In 1988 he started his career as conductor. He  became music director at the Lucerne Theatre, and principal conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra from 1997 to 2002.  He made recordings of works by György Ligeti with the Berlin Philharmonic.  Nott often conducts the Ensemble InterContemporain (EIC).  Since 2000 he has been conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra.

1963 births
British conductors
Living people
People from Solihull

Jonathan Nott


Karditsa is a Greek city. It is in the center of Greece in the district of Thessaly. It had 35,971 people according to the 2001 census. Karditsa is build on the large plain which is named Thessaly plain. It is the second largest plain in Greece. So it is an agricultural city. Near Karditsa is the city of Trikala. The west of Karditsa is the Agrafa range. Agrafa is a part of Pindus range.

Cities in Greece

Karditsa


Nautiloids are a large and varied group of marine cephalopods (Mollusca) in the subclass Nautiloidea. They began in the later Cambrian. Nautilus is the only surviving genus.

Nautiloids flourished during the early Palaeozoic era, when they were the main predatory animals. They developed an extraordinary range of shell shapes and forms. Some 2,500 species of fossil nautiloids are known, though only a few species survive today.

Taxonomic relationships
Nautiloids are among the group of animals known as cephalopods. The cephalopods are an advanced class of molluscs. The cephalopods also include ammonoids, Belemnites and modern coleoids such as octopus and squid.

Traditionally, the most common classification of the cephalopods has been a three-fold division into the nautiloids, ammonoids, and coleoids.  This article is about nautiloids in that broad sense, sometimes called Nautiloidea sensu lato.

Cladistically speaking, nautiloids are a paraphyletic group united by shared primitive (basal) features not found in derived cephalopods. In other words, they are a evolutionary grade that is thought to have given rise to both ammonoids and coleoids. They are defined by the exclusion of both those descendent groups.  Both ammonoids and coleoids probably descended from  bactritids, which in turn arose from straight-shelled orthocerid nautiloids.

The ammonoids (a group which includes the ammonites and the goniatites) are extinct cousins of the nautiloids which evolved early in the Devonian, some 400 million years ago.

References

Cephalopods

Nautiloid


Catherine of Valois (27 October 1401 – 3 January 1437) was the queen of Henry V of England and the mother of Henry VI of England.  She was the daughter of King Charles VI of France and his wife Isabelle of Bavaria.

Catherine had a secret relationship with Owen Tudor.  Through this she became the grandmother of Henry VII of England.

In May 1420, a peace treaty was made between England and France.  Charles made Henry of England his heir. Catherine and Henry were married at the Parish Church of St John or at Troyes Cathedral on 2 June 1420. Catherine went to England with her new husband.  She was crowned queen in Westminster Abbey on 23 February 1421.

Catherine gave birth to Prince Henry on 6 December 1421 at Windsor. The boy and his father would never see each other. During the siege of Meaux, Henry V had a fatal illness (dysentery) and died on 31 August 1422, just before his 35th birthday. Catherine was not quite 21 and was left a widow and Dowager Queen of England. Charles VI then died.  This made the young Henry VI king of England and English-occupied northern France.

The Parliament made a rule that the Dowager Queen could not marry without the King's approval.  If the Queen remarried without the king's consent, the husband would lose his lands and possessions, although any children of the marriage would still be members of the royal family.  Parliament also said the king could only give permission when reached his majority age. At the time the bill was written, the king was only six years old.

Catherine entered into a relationship with Owen Tudor of Wales. It is unclear if they were ever married.  Owen and Catherine had at least six children.  Edmund, Jasper and Owen were all born away from court. They had two daughters, Tacinda, who married Reginald Grey, 7th Baron Grey de Wilton and Margaret who became a nun.

Catherine died on 3 January 1437, shortly after childbirth, in London.

In historical fiction
Catherine of Valois is the subject of Rosemary Hawley Jarman's novel "Crown in Candlelight" (1978)
In the book, "The Queen's Secret" by Jean Plaidy, Catherine is the title character.
William Shakespeare's play Henry V depicts Catherine of Valois' marriage to Henry V of England after the Battle of Agincourt.
Dedwydd Jones' novel, published in 2002, "The Lily and the Dragon" , tells the story of Owain Tudor and Catherine of Valois.
Vanora Bennett's novel "Blood Royal" (2009) is based on the life of Catherine of Valois.

References

People buried in Westminster Abbey
Kings and Queens consort of England
1401 births
1437 deaths

Catherine of Valois