Assassination is the willful killing, by a sudden, secret, or planned attack, of a personespecially if prominent or important. It may be prompted by grievances, notoriety, financial, military, political or other motives. Many times governments, corporations, organized crime or their agents order assassinations. Acts of assassination have been performed since ancient times. A person who carries out an assassination is called an assassin or hitman.

Etymology

The word assassin may be derived from the Arabic asasiyyin (أَسَاسِيِّين, ʾasāsiyyīn) from أَسَاس (ʾasās, "foundation, basis") + ـِيّ (-iyy), meaning "people who are faithful to the foundation [of the faith]."

Assassin is often believed to derive from the word hashshashin (),  and shares its etymological roots with hashish ( or ; from  ). It referred to a group of Nizari Ismailis known as the Order of Assassins who worked against various political targets.

Founded by Hassan-i Sabbah, the Assassins were active in the Near East from the 8th to the 14th centuries, and later expanded into a de facto state by acquiring or building many scattered strongholds. The group killed members of the Abbasid, Seljuk, Fatimid, and Christian Crusader elite for political and religious reasons.

Although it is commonly believed that Assassins were under the influence of hashish during their killings or during their indoctrination, there is debate as to whether these claims have merit, with many Eastern writers and an increasing number of Western academics coming to believe that drug-taking was not the key feature behind the name.

The earliest known use of the verb "to assassinate" in printed English was by Matthew Sutcliffe in A Briefe Replie to a Certaine Odious and Slanderous Libel, Lately Published by a Seditious Jesuite, a pamphlet printed in 1600, five years before it was used in Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1605).

Use in history

Ancient to medieval times
Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics. It dates back at least as far as recorded history.

The Egyptian pharaoh Teti, of the Old Kingdom Sixth Dynasty (23rd century BCE), is thought to be the earliest known victim of assassination, though written records are scant and thus evidence is circumstantial. Two further ancient Egyptian monarchs are more explicitly recorded to have been assassinated; Amenemhat I of the Middle Kingdom Twelfth Dynasty (20th century BCE) is recorded to have been assassinated in his bed by his palace guards for reasons unknown (as related in the Instructions of Amenemhat); meanwhile contemporary judicial records relate the assassination of New Kingdom Twentieth Dynasty monarch Ramesses III in 1155 BCE as part of a failed coup attempt. Between 550 BC and 330 BC, seven Persian kings of Achaemenid Dynasty were murdered. The Art of War, a 5th-century BC Chinese military treatise mentions tactics of Assassination and its merits.

In the Old Testament, King Joash of Judah was assassinated by his own servants; Joab assassinated Absalom, King David's son; and King Sennacherib of Assyria was assassinated by his own sons.

Chanakya (–283 BC) wrote about assassinations in detail in his political treatise Arthashastra. His student Chandragupta Maurya, the founder of the Maurya Empire, later made use of assassinations against some of his enemies.

Some famous assassination victims are Philip II of Macedon (336 BC), the father of Alexander the Great, and Roman dictator Julius Caesar (44 BC). Emperors of Rome often met their end in this way, as did many of the Muslim Shia Imams hundreds of years later. Three successive Rashidun caliphs (Umar, Uthman Ibn Affan, and Ali ibn Abi Talib) were assassinated in early civil conflicts between Muslims. The practice was also well known in ancient China, as in Jing Ke's failed assassination of Qin king Ying Zheng in 227 BC. Whilst many assassinations were performed by individuals or small groups, there were also specialized units who used a collective group of people to perform more than one assassination. The earliest were the sicarii in 6 AD, who predated the Middle Eastern Assassins and Japanese shinobis by centuries.

In the Middle Ages, regicide was rare in Western Europe, but it was a recurring theme in the Eastern Roman Empire. Strangling in the bathtub was the most commonly used method. With the Renaissance, tyrannicide—or assassination for personal or political reasons—became more common again in Western Europe.

Modern history

During the 16th and 17th centuries, international lawyers began to voice condemnation of assassinations of leaders. Balthazar Ayala has been described as "the first prominent jurist to condemn the use of assassination in foreign policy". Alberico Gentili condemned assassinations in a 1598 publication where he appealed to the self-interest of leaders: (i) assassinations had adverse short-term consequences by arousing the ire of the assassinated leader's successor, and (ii) assassinations had the adverse long-term consequences of causing disorder and chaos. Hugo Grotius's works on the law of war strictly forbade assassinations, arguing that killing was only permissible on the battlefield. In the modern world, the killing of important people began to become more than a tool in power struggles between rulers themselves and was also used for political symbolism, such as in the propaganda of the deed.

In Japan, a group of assassins called the Four Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu killed a number of people, including Ii Naosuke who was the head of administration for the Tokugawa shogunate, during the Boshin War. Most of the assassinations in Japan were committed with bladed weaponry, a trait that was carried on into modern history.  A video-record exists of the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, using a sword.

In 1895, a group of Japanese assassins killed the Korean queen (and posthumously empress) Myeongseong.

In the United States, within 100 years, four presidents—Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy—died at the hands of assassins. There have been at least 20 known attempts on U.S. presidents' lives.

In Austria, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, carried out by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist. He is blamed for igniting World War I. Reinhard Heydrich died after an attack by British-trained Czechoslovak soldiers on behalf of the Czechoslovak government in exile in Operation Anthropoid, and knowledge from decoded transmissions allowed the United States to carry out a targeted attack, killing Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto while he was travelling by plane.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Joseph Stalin's NKVD carried out numerous assassinations outside of the Soviet Union, such as the killings of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists leader Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, Fourth International secretary Rudolf Klement, Leon Trotsky, and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) leadership in Catalonia. India's "Father of the Nation", Mahatma Gandhi, was shot to death on January 30, 1948, by Nathuram Godse.

The African-American civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel (now the National Civil Rights Museum) in Memphis, Tennessee. Three years prior, another African-American civil rights activist, Malcolm X, was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965.

Cold War and beyond

Most major powers repudiated Cold War assassination tactics, but many allege that was merely a smokescreen for political benefit and that covert and illegal training of assassins continues today, with Russia, Israel, the U.S., Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and other nations accused of engaging in such operations. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the new Islamic government of Iran began an international campaign of assassination that lasted into the 1990s. At least 162 killings in 19 countries have been linked to the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The campaign came to an end after the Mykonos restaurant assassinations because a German court publicly implicated senior members of the government and issued arrest warrants for Ali Fallahian, the head of Iranian intelligence. Evidence indicates that Fallahian's personal involvement and individual responsibility for the murders were far more pervasive than his current indictment record represents.

In India, Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi (neither of whom was related to Mahatma Gandhi, who had himself been assassinated in 1948), were assassinated in 1984 and 1991 in what were linked to separatist movements in Punjab and northern Sri Lanka, respectively.

In 1994, the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira during the Rwandan Civil War sparked the Rwandan genocide.

In Israel, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995, by Yigal Amir, who opposed the Oslo Accords. In Lebanon, the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005, prompted an investigation by the United Nations. The suggestion in the resulting Mehlis report that there was involvement by Syria prompted the Cedar Revolution, which drove Syrian troops out of Lebanon.

United States government killing of citizens
In 2010, The New York Times revealed the existence of a hit list made by the Obama administration. It included at least three Americans to be killed without any kind of court oversight and no trial, against the background of the War on Terror. Officials of the government proposed who to kill and the president decided who was going to get killed. In September 2011, American citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were assassinated by the United States government with drone strikes. Two weeks later, Awlaki's 16-year-old son was also killed.

Further motivations

As a military and foreign policy doctrine

Assassination for military purposes has long been espoused: Sun Tzu, writing around 500 BC, argued in favor of using assassination in his book The Art of War. Nearly 2000 years later, in his book The Prince, Machiavelli also advises rulers to assassinate enemies whenever possible to prevent them from posing a threat. An army and even a nation might be based upon and around a particularly strong, canny, or charismatic leader, whose loss could paralyze the ability of both to make war.

For similar and additional reasons, assassination has also sometimes been used in the conduct of foreign policy. The costs and benefits of such actions are difficult to compute. It may not be clear whether the assassinated leader gets replaced with a more or less competent successor, whether the assassination provokes ire in the state in question, whether the assassination leads to souring domestic public opinion, and whether the assassination provokes condemnation from third-parties. One study found that perceptual biases held by leaders often negatively affect decision making in that area, and decisions to go forward with assassinations often reflect the vague hope that any successor might be better.

In both military and foreign policy assassinations, there is the risk that the target could be replaced by an even more competent leader, or that such a killing (or a failed attempt) will prompt the masses to contemn the killers and support the leader's cause more strongly. Faced with particularly brilliant leaders, that possibility has in various instances been risked, such as in the attempts to kill the Athenian Alcibiades during the Peloponnesian War. A number of additional examples from World War II show how assassination was used as a tool:
 The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague on May 27, 1942, by the British and Czechoslovak government-in-exile. That case illustrates the difficulty of comparing the benefits of a foreign policy goal (strengthening the legitimacy and influence of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London) against the possible costs resulting from an assassination (the Lidice massacre).
 The American interception of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's plane during World War II after his travel route had been decrypted.
 Operation Gaff was a planned British commando raid to capture or kill the German field marshal Erwin Rommel, also known as "The Desert Fox".

Use of assassination has continued in more recent conflicts:
 During the Vietnam War, the US engaged in the Phoenix Program to assassinate Viet Cong leaders and sympathizers. It killed between 6,000 and 41,000 people, with official "targets" of 1,800 per month.
 With the January 3, 2020 Baghdad International Airport airstrike, the US assassinated the commander of Iran's Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani and the commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, along with eight other high-ranking military personnel. The assassination of the military leaders was part of escalating tensions between the US and Iran and the American-led intervention in Iraq.

As a tool of insurgents
Insurgent groups have often employed assassination as a tool to further their causes. Assassinations provide several functions for such groups: the removal of specific enemies and as propaganda tools to focus the attention of media and politics on their cause.

The Irish Republican Army guerrillas in 1919 to 1921 killed many Royal Irish Constabulary Police intelligence officers during the Irish War of Independence. Michael Collins set up a special unit, the Squad, for that purpose, which had the effect of intimidating many policemen into resigning from the force. The Squad's activities peaked with the killing of 14 British agents in Dublin on Bloody Sunday in 1920.

The tactic was used again by the Provisional IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1969–1998). Assassination of unionist politicians and activists was one of a number of methods used in the Provisional IRA campaign 1969–1997. The IRA also attempted to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by bombing the Conservative Party Conference in a Brighton hotel. Loyalist paramilitaries retaliated by killing Catholics at random and assassinating Irish nationalist politicians.

Basque separatists ETA in Spain assassinated many security and political figures since the late 1960s, notably the president of the government of Spain, Luis Carrero Blanco, 1st Duke of Carrero-Blanco Grandee of Spain, in 1973. In the early 1990s, it also began to target academics, journalists and local politicians who publicly disagreed with it.

The Red Brigades in Italy carried out assassinations of political figures and, to a lesser extent, so did the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s and the 1980s.

In the Vietnam War, communist insurgents routinely assassinated government officials and individual civilians deemed to offend or rival the revolutionary movement. Such attacks, along with widespread military activity by insurgent bands, almost brought the Ngo Dinh Diem regime to collapse before the US intervened.

Psychology
A major study about assassination attempts in the US in the second half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that most prospective assassins spend copious amounts of time planning and preparing for their attempts. Assassinations are thus rarely "impulsive" actions.

However, about 25% of the actual attackers were found to be delusional, a figure that rose to 60% with "near-lethal approachers" (people apprehended before reaching their targets). That shows that while mental instability plays a role in many modern assassinations, the more delusional attackers are less likely to succeed in their attempts. The report also found that around two-thirds of attackers had previously been arrested, not necessarily for related offenses; 44% had a history of serious depression, and 39% had a history of substance abuse.

Techniques

Modern methods
With the advent of effective ranged weaponry and later firearms, the position of an assassination target was more precarious. Bodyguards were no longer enough to deter determined killers, who no longer needed to engage directly or even to subvert the guard to kill the leader in question. Moreover, the engagement of targets at greater distances dramatically increased the chances for assassins to survive since they could quickly flee the scene. The first heads of government to be assassinated with a firearm were James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, the regent of Scotland, in 1570, and William the Silent, the Prince of Orange of the Netherlands, in 1584. Gunpowder and other explosives also allowed the use of bombs or even greater concentrations of explosives for deeds requiring a larger touch.

Explosives, especially the car bomb, become far more common in modern history, with grenades and remote-triggered land mines also used, especially in the Middle East and the Balkans; the initial attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand's life was with a grenade. With heavy weapons, the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) has become a useful tool given the popularity of armored cars (discussed below), and Israeli forces have pioneered the use of aircraft-mounted missiles, as well as the innovative use of explosive devices.

A sniper with a precision rifle is often used in fictional assassinations; however, certain pragmatic difficulties attend long-range shooting, including finding a hidden shooting position with a clear line of sight, detailed advance knowledge of the intended victim's travel plans, the ability to identify the target at long range, and the ability to score a first-round lethal hit at long range, which is usually measured in hundreds of meters. A dedicated sniper rifle is also expensive, often costing thousands of dollars because of the high level of precision machining and handfinishing required to achieve extreme accuracy.

Despite their comparative disadvantages, handguns are more easily concealable and so are much more commonly used than rifles. Of the 74 principal incidents evaluated in a major study about assassination attempts in the US in the second half of the 20th century, 51% were undertaken by a handgun, 30% with a rifle or shotgun, 15% used knives, and 8% explosives (the use of multiple weapons/methods was reported in 16% of all cases).

In the case of state-sponsored assassination, poisoning can be more easily denied. Georgi Markov, a dissident from Bulgaria, was assassinated by ricin poisoning. A tiny pellet containing the poison was injected into his leg through a specially designed umbrella. Widespread allegations involving the Bulgarian government and the KGB have not led to any legal results. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was learned that the KGB had developed an umbrella that could inject ricin pellets into a victim, and two former KGB agents who defected stated that the agency assisted in the murder. The CIA made several attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro; many of the schemes involving poisoning his cigars. In the late 1950s, the KGB assassin Bohdan Stashynsky killed Ukrainian nationalist leaders Lev Rebet and Stepan Bandera with a spray gun that fired a jet of poison gas from a crushed cyanide ampule, making their deaths look like heart attacks. A 2006 case in the UK concerned the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko who was given a lethal dose of radioactive polonium-210, possibly passed to him in aerosol form sprayed directly onto his food.

Targeted killing

Targeted killing is the intentional killing by a government or its agents of a civilian or "unlawful combatant" who is not in the government's custody.  The target is a person asserted to be taking part in an armed conflict or terrorism, by bearing arms or otherwise, who has thereby lost the immunity from being targeted that he would otherwise have under the Third Geneva Convention. It is a different term and concept from that of "targeted violence", as used by specialists who study violence.

On the other hand, Gary D. Solis, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, in his 2010 book The Law of Armed Conflict: International Humanitarian Law in War,  wrote, "Assassinations and targeted killings are very different acts." The use of the term "assassination" is opposed, as it denotes murder (unlawful killing), but the terrorists are targeted in self-defense, which is thus viewed as a killing but not a crime (justifiable homicide). Abraham D. Sofaer, former federal judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, wrote on the subject:

When people call a targeted killing an "assassination", they are attempting to preclude debate on the merits of the action. Assassination is widely defined as murder, and is for that reason prohibited in the United States ... U.S. officials may not kill people merely because their policies are seen as detrimental to our interests... But killings in self-defense are no more "assassinations" in international affairs than they are murders when undertaken by our police forces against domestic killers. Targeted killings in self-defense have been authoritatively determined by the federal government to fall outside the assassination prohibition.

Author and former U.S. Army Captain Matthew J. Morgan argued that "there is a major difference between assassination and targeted killing... targeted killing [is] not synonymous with assassination. Assassination... constitutes an illegal killing." Similarly, Amos Guiora, a professor of law at the University of Utah, wrote, "Targeted killing is... not an assassination." Steve David, professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University, wrote, "There are strong reasons to believe that the Israeli policy of targeted killing is not the same as assassination." Syracuse Law William Banks and GW Law Peter Raven-Hansen wrote, "Targeted killing of terrorists is... not unlawful and would not constitute assassination." Rory Miller writes: "Targeted killing... is not 'assassination. Eric Patterson and Teresa Casale wrote, "Perhaps most important is the legal distinction between targeted killing and assassination."

On the other hand, the American Civil Liberties Union also states on its website, "A program of targeted killing far from any battlefield, without charge or trial, violates the constitutional guarantee of due process. It also violates international law, under which lethal force may be used outside armed conflict zones only as a last resort to prevent imminent threats, when non-lethal means are not available. Targeting people who are suspected of terrorism for execution, far from any war zone, turns the whole world into a battlefield."

Yael Stein, the research director of B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, also stated in her article "By Any Name Illegal and Immoral: Response to 'Israel's Policy of Targeted Killing:

The argument that this policy affords the public a sense of revenge and retribution could serve to justify acts both illegal and immoral. Clearly, lawbreakers ought to be punished. Yet, no matter how horrific their deeds, as the targeting of Israeli civilians indeed is, they should be punished according to the law. David's arguments could, in principle, justify the abolition of formal legal systems altogether.

Targeted killing has become a frequent tactic of the United States and Israel in their fight against terrorism. The tactic can raise complex questions and lead to contentious disputes as to the legal basis for its application, who qualifies as an appropriate "hit list" target, and what circumstances must exist before the tactic may be used. Opinions range from people considering it a legal form of self-defense that decreases terrorism to people calling it an extrajudicial killing that lacks due process and leads to further violence. Methods used have included firing Hellfire missiles from Predator or Reaper drones (unmanned, remote-controlled planes), detonating a cell phone bomb, and long-range sniper shooting. Countries such as the US (in Pakistan and Yemen) and Israel (in the West Bank and Gaza) have used targeted killing to eliminate members of groups such as Al-Qaeda and Hamas. In early 2010, with President Obama's approval, Anwar al-Awlaki became the first US citizen to be publicly approved for targeted killing by the Central Intelligence Agency. Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in September 2011.

United Nations investigator Ben Emmerson said that US drone strikes may have violated international humanitarian law. The Intercept reported, "Between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes [in northeastern Afghanistan] killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets."

Countermeasures

Early forms

One of the earliest forms of defense against assassins was employing bodyguards, who act as a shield for the potential target; keep a lookout for potential attackers, sometimes in advance, such as on a parade route; and putting themselves in harm's way, both by simple presence, showing that physical force is available to protect the target, and by shielding the target if any attack occurs. To neutralize an attacker, bodyguards are typically armed as much as legal and practical concerns permit.

Notable examples of bodyguards include the Roman Praetorian Guard or the Ottoman Janissaries, but in both cases, the protectors sometimes became assassins themselves, exploiting their power to make the head of state a virtual hostage or killing the very leaders whom they were supposed to protect. The loyalty of individual bodyguards is an important question as well, especially for leaders who oversee states with strong ethnic or religious divisions. Failure to realize such divided loyalties allowed the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

The bodyguard function was often executed by the leader's most loyal warriors, and it was extremely effective throughout most of early human history, which led assassins to attempt stealthy means, such as poison, whose risk was reduced by having another person taste the leader's food first.

Modern strategies

With the advent of gunpowder, ranged assassination via bombs or firearms became possible. One of the first reactions was simply to increase the guard, creating what at times might seem a small army trailing every leader. Another was to begin clearing large areas whenever a leader was present to the point that entire sections of a city might be shut down.

As the 20th century dawned, the prevalence and capability of assassins grew quickly, as did measures to protect against them. For the first time, armored cars or limousines were put into service for safer transport, with modern versions virtually invulnerable to small arms fire, smaller bombs and mines. Bulletproof vests also began to be used, but since they were of limited utility, restricting movement and leaving the head unprotected, they tended to be worn only during high-profile public events, if at all.

Access to famous people also became more and more restricted; potential visitors would be forced through numerous different checks before being granted access to the official in question, and as communication became better and information technology more prevalent, it has become all but impossible for a would-be killer to get close enough to the personage at work or in private life to effect an attempt on their life, especially with the common use of metal and bomb detectors.

Most modern assassinations have been committed either during a public performance or during transport, both because of weaker security and security lapses, such as with U.S. President John F. Kennedy and former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, or as part of a coup d'état in which security is either overwhelmed or completely removed, such as with Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

The methods used for protection by famous people have sometimes evoked negative reactions by the public, with some resenting the separation from their officials or major figures. One example might be traveling in a car protected by a bubble of clear bulletproof glass, such as the MRAP-like Popemobile of Pope John Paul II, built following an attempt at his life. Politicians often resent the need for separation and sometimes send their bodyguards away from them for personal or publicity reasons. US President William McKinley did so at the public reception in which he was assassinated.

Other potential targets go into seclusion and are rarely heard from or seen in public, such as writer Salman Rushdie. A related form of protection is the use of body doubles, people with similar builds to those they are expected to impersonate. These people are then made up and, in some cases, undergo plastic surgery to look like the target, with the body double then taking the place of the person in high-risk situations. According to Joe R. Reeder, Under Secretary of the Army from 1993 to 1997, Fidel Castro used body doubles.

US Secret Service protective agents receive training in the psychology of assassins.

See also

 Assassinations in fiction
 Contract killing
 History of assassination
 Hitman
 List of assassinated and executed heads of state and government
 List of assassinations
 List of assassinations by firearm
 List of people who survived assassination attempts
 List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots
 Special Activities Center of the Central Intelligence Agency

Notes and references

Further reading
 Ayton, Mel.  Plotting to Kill the President: Assassination Attempts from Washington to Hoover (Potomac Books, 2017), United States

  Review The Daily Telegraph, April 3, 2010.

External links

 Notorious Assassinations – slideshow by Life magazine
 CNN. "U.S. policy on assassinations"  from CNN.com/Law Center, November 4, 2002. See also Ford's 1976 executive order. However, Executive Order 12333, which prohibited the CIA from assassinations, was relaxed by the George W. Bush administration.
  (PDF)
 Is the CIA Assassination Order of a US Citizen Legal? – video by Democracy Now!

Attacks by method
Killings by type

Assassination


Manonichthys splendens, common name splendid dottyback, is a species of marine ray-finned fish in the family Pseudochromidae, the dottybacks. It occurs in the Indo-West Pacific and occasionally makes its way into the aquarium trade. It grows to a size of 13 cm in length.

Gallery

References

External links

splendens

Manonichthys splendens


Michelangelo Signorile (; born December 19, 1960) is an American journalist, author and talk radio host. His radio program is aired each weekday across the United States and Canada on Sirius XM Radio and globally online. Signorile was editor-at-large for HuffPost from 2011 until 2019. Signorile is a political liberal, and covers a wide variety of political and cultural issues.

Signorile is noted for his various books and articles on gay and lesbian politics, and is an outspoken supporter of gay rights. Signorile's seminal 1993 book Queer in America: Sex, The Media, and the Closets of Power explored the negative effects of the LGBT closet, and provided one of the first intellectual justifications for the practice of outing public officials, influencing the debate and treatment of the issue among journalists from that point on. In 1992 Newsweek listed him as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite," and he is included as #100 in the 2002 book, The Gay 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Gay Men and Lesbians, Past and Present.

In August 2011, Signorile was inducted into the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association LGBT Journalist Hall of Fame. In November 2012, Signorile was included in the Out magazine annual Out 100. In April 2015, Signorile's fifth book, It's Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia and Winning True Equality, was published.

Early years
Signorile was born in Brooklyn, New York, and spent his early childhood in the 1960s and 1970s in Brooklyn and Staten Island. He attended the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, where he majored in journalism. It was in those years that he came to realize his own homosexuality, but remained closeted to many friends and to family.

In the mid-1980s, shortly after graduating from college, Signorile moved to Manhattan. Among his first jobs, he worked for an entertainment public relations firm that specialized in "column-planting", a term for getting clients into New York City's gossip columns, such as Page Six in the New York Post and Liz Smith, then at the New York Daily News. This required collecting and trading in gossip, often about celebrities' private lives. Later, he became a gossip columnist himself. It was in that world, as Signorile describes in his book Queer in America, where he saw a double standard regarding how the media glamorized heterosexuality among celebrities while covering up homosexuality. But Signorile was not political at the time. He was somewhat open about his own homosexuality by that time, but he had not looked at it in the broader context of politics and culture in America. His political awakening came as the AIDS epidemic expanded in the late 1980s and more friends were getting sick and dying.

Activism
In his book Queer in America and in numerous articles and interviews, Signorile has discussed how he began to see that many in the media, among his circles as well, were either sensationalizing AIDS in the 1980s or running away from it. He also began to believe the government was negligent in the face of the epidemic.

Signorile became a gay activist in 1988, after attending a meeting of the controversial grass roots protest group, ACT UP, in New York. Within days of the meeting he was arrested at a protest at St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church at the Citigroup Center, where the Vatican's envoy and the author of much of the Vatican's recent positions against homosexuality, gay rights and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was to give a major speech. (Ratzinger would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI, succeeding Pope John Paul II upon his death in April 2005.) Signorile has explained that he went to the event solely to watch the protesters who were planning on standing up among the attendees and letting their voices be heard. But he became filled with rage while hearing Ratzinger speak, thinking about the homophobia he'd experienced as a child and the Catholic Church's decrees. (He was raised as a Roman Catholic.) "Suddenly," Signorile wrote in Queer in America about the protest, "I jumped up on one of the marble platforms, and looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted, 'He is no man of God!' The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued: 'He is no man of God. He is the devil!'" Signorile was pulled down, handcuffed, and carted off by the police.

Signorile soon became the chair of the media committee of ACT UP, organizing publicity for major, theatrical AIDS activist protests of the time, and taking on the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, New York's City Hall and other government agencies in the media, criticizing them for what AIDS activists saw as their foot-dragging while people were dying. Though controversial, ACT UP and its tactics have been credited with bringing more attention to AIDS among politicians and the media, and speeding the development and approval of HIV drugs in the 1990s. Signorile also was a co-founding member, along with three other ACT UP members, of the in-your-face activist group Queer Nation.

In May 2017, Signorile was criticized for an article that appeared on the Huffington Post. In the piece, he attacked Donald Trump and the Republican legislators supporting his agenda, stating that no Republican congressman "should be able to sit down for a nice, quiet lunch or dinner in a Washington, DC, eatery or even in their own homes", and "should be hounded by protestors everywhere, especially in public ― in restaurants, in shopping centers, in their districts, and yes, on the public property outside their homes and apartments".

The outing controversy
Signorile has been considered a pioneer of outing (though he believes the discussion has often been distorted by the media, and he opposes using a violent, active verb to define the phenomenon).  Signorile has argued in favor of outing from a journalistic perspective, calling for the "equalization" of reporting on gay and straight public figures. He has argued that the homosexuality of public figures—and only public figures—should be reported on when relevant. Signorile was a co-founding editor of the gay magazine OutWeek, which launched in June 1989, and which was quickly at the center of heated debates inside and outside the gay community, including controversies over outing. Signorile became the features editor at OutWeek, and eventually stopped working within ACT UP and Queer Nation, though, like most of the staff of OutWeek, he maintained deep ties to both groups.

Signorile saw his role at OutWeek as one of taking on the media and the entertainment industry. From the start of the magazine he wrote a weekly column called "Gossip Watch," which was just that—a watch of the gossip columns. He began writing about the media's double standard in reporting on gay and straight public figures, and how he believed it made gays invisible in the midst of the health crisis. Among those whom Signorile outed at that time included Hollywood producer David Geffen (who has long since acknowledged that he is gay). Geffen, as a record producer, was promoting Guns N' Roses, a rock group which had been attacked for antigay lyrics ("...faggots...spread some fuckin' disease") and other performers, such as comedian Andrew Dice Clay, whose comedy routines in the late 1980s were seen by many as homophobic and misogynistic. Clay had said in a 1984 stand-up act that in Hollywood they have "herpes, AIDS and fag-itis." Clay has also mocked pleas for AIDS funding ("get a job, buttfucka"), and used antigay slurs; "they don't know if they want to be called gays, homosexuals, fairies," he has said.  "I call them cocksuckers."  Signorile saw it as relevant to discuss Geffen's closeted homosexuality in that context. Signorile also outed the gossip columnist Liz Smith (who also eventually acknowledged her bisexuality), whom he maintained helped celebrities and others to present themselves as heterosexual when they were in fact gay.

The  media and celebrity culture that Signorile vilified took notice of his work. The chic fashion industry bible, W magazine, put OutWeek on the "In" list, calling it a "must-read" because of its mix of "culture, politics and vicious gossip" (Queer in America, p. 73), and Signorile would eventually be profiled in New York Magazine and in The New York Times. Signorile was both praised and attacked for his column. He was called "one of the greater contemporary gay heroes," while his work was also called "revolting, infantile, cheap name-calling" (Johansson & Percy, p. 183). New York Post columnist Amy Pagnozzi compared him to the right-wing, anti-communist 1950s senator, Joseph McCarthy, in a column headlined "Magazine Drags Gays Out of the Closet" (Queer in America, p. 73). It was Time that coined the term "outing" at that time, something Signorile has always contended was a biased term. He saw what he was doing as simply "reporting."

The outing controversy became much larger in March 1990, when Signorile wrote a cover story for OutWeek revealing the homosexuality of the publishing tycoon Malcolm Forbes within weeks of his death, headlined "The Other Side of Malcolm Forbes." In a subsequent article in The Village Voice, Signorile charged a media cover-up of his Forbes story, claiming that various news outlets were going to report on it, but later decided against it. Eventually, over a period of months, the story was reported in several news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, but The New York Times still refused to name Forbes, only referring to him as "a recently deceased businessman" who was outed. (It wasn't until five years later, during coverage of Forbes' son Steve's run for the Republican nomination for president in 1996, that the Times reported on Malcolm Forbes' gay life.)

OutWeek folded in June 1991. Signorile joined The Advocate with a cover story several months later that put him at the center of a firestorm over gays in the military as well as outing: he outed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Pete Williams  (Williams has since gone on to become a television journalist for NBC News). The outing caused Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to call the gay ban "an old chestnut"  during an interview with Sam Donaldson on ABC, while then presidential candidate Bill Clinton, citing the outing, promised at a gay fundraiser to overturn the ban if he were elected president.

Gay culture debates
Signorile wrote columns and feature stories for The Advocate for several years, including the groundbreaking two-part cover story "Out at The New York Times"—in which the paper's gay and lesbian staffers, its top editors and its then-new publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., spoke for the first time, to Signorile, about years of homophobia at the paper of record and how they were charting a new course. In 1994, Signorile left the Advocate for the then new glossy, Out magazine, which was founded by his friend and OutWeek colleague Michael Goff and former OutWeek editor Sarah Pettit. In 1995 Signorile published his second book, Outing Yourself, a 14-step program for coming out as gay or lesbian.

At that time, as an Out magazine columnist and editor-at-large, Signorile soon was at the center of often-heated debates among gay activists, sexual liberationists and HIV prevention experts about gay male sexual culture and the prevalence of unsafe sex and HIV transmission. Signorile wrote a column for Out that sparked much discussion, titled "Unsafe Like Me," in which he addressed the issue by admitting to have slipped up himself, having had an incident of unprotected sex, and discussed what may have led someone like him—a prominent AIDS activist, immersed in the issues of prevention—to have such a lapse. The column was adapted to the op-ed page of The New York Times and inspired a CBS "60 Minutes" treatment of the issue in which Signorile was profiled. Signorile followed up that column with several others that focused on what he saw as some unhealthy aspects of gay culture that contributed to low self-esteem and risk-taking. This eventually grew into his 1997 bestseller Life Outside: The Signorile Report on Gay Men: Sex, Drugs, Muscles and the Passages of Life, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. The columns and the book created controversy among some activists; Signorile was criticized by the group Sex Panic! which believed that he and other writers had inspired government crack-downs on gay sex through their writings. Many other commentators and activists disagreed with Signorile's critics, and fierce debates broke out in both gay and mainstream media. Signorile also inspired much discussion and debate with pieces in Out on anti-abortion gays, animals rights vs. medical research, gay marriage and high-profile antigay hate crimes.

In  August 1998, Signorile left Out magazine abruptly in a disagreement with the new editor James Collard. Former Out editor and co-founder, the late Sarah Pettit, a long-time colleague of Signorile's who was also an editor at OutWeek, had been ousted from Out that year in a shake up (Michael Goff had been pushed out earlier) in which she had charged sex discrimination.  The new editor, from the UK, had been a promoter of the "post-gay" sensibility, which seemed to eschew activism. According to Signorile, speaking to gay journalist Rex Wockner, Collard wanted him to tone down his writing. "We had a heated discussion and he insulted my sensibilities and it made me so angry I threw water in his face," Signorile told Wockner. "They did not want me to write biting commentary and opinion. They wanted me to do more feature-driven work and I refused to do that because my column in Out has always been a space where I could do commentary, political analysis, features, whatever I wanted. I think it's important to have commentary and solidly researched journalism in the same forum."

The radio years
Several months after leaving Out, Signorile joined The Advocate once again, in December 1998,  as a columnist and editor-at-large; his first article was a cover piece taking on the notion of a "post-gay' society as espoused by Out editor Collard. (Within a year after Collard took the post and six months after Signorile left Out, Collard left Out amid reports of a drop in circulation and negative response of a focus group to the magazine.) In 2000, Signorile left The Advocate again, and became a columnist for global Internet site Gay.com, which had just merged with the pioneering LGBT site PlanetOut.com. Signorile traveled around the U.S. and around the world, writing online columns. He covered the controversy surrounding the Millennium March on Washington for LGBT Rights, which divided many in the community regarding its time and purpose and at which a theft occurred at the festival. Signorile reported from Australia and New Zealand, where his partner had taken a position as a professor, and reported on World Pride in Rome in 2000, where activists butted heads with the Vatican, which tried to get the event canceled. During that time Signorile also pioneered Internet radio, webcasting a weekly show on GAYBC.com beginning in 2000, covering the global LGBT community. In an interview, he has described a machine called a "vector" that he would plug into a phone outlet and which allowed him to webcast live via Gaybc's studios in Seattle.(Media Bistro Q & A with Signorile 2002)

In April 2003, Signorile began hosting  a radio program, The Michelangelo Signorile Show, on Sirius XM Radio's OutQ each weekday 2 to 6 p.m. Eastern Time. OutQ, as the only 24/7 LGBT radio channel, broke new ground and Signorile's interviews and monologues often made news . After a little over 10 years, on July 23, 2013, he moved to the newly launched SiriusXM Progress (channel 127) from 3 to 6 p.m. Eastern Time. The show airs on satellite radio across North America and is streamed worldwide on the Internet and to the Android, BlackBerry, and iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) handheld devices to over 25 million Sirius XM subscribers. Signorile interviews politicians, activists, journalists, authors and other public figures, analyzes news and cultural events, and takes calls from listeners from coast-to-coast. Signorile's show is one of the highest rated programs on the Sirius XM network with an average daily listenership of more than 8.5 million households.
Often, Signorile brings on those who are on America's right-wing or are opponents of gay rights, with whom he engages in energetic debates. He is also editor-at-large for The Huffington Post Queer Voices where he blogs opinion pieces and interviews public figures.

Signorile has been an editor-at-large and columnist for The Advocate, and an editor-at-large and a columnist for Out magazine. He has written for many newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times, and has appeared on many American television news programs, including Larry King Live, Today and Good Morning America. His magazine articles, newspaper columns and website, which "offers his always-intriguing take on the state of gay rights and other political and cultural topics", champion the cause of gay rights. In particular, Signorile has advocated that gay Americans come out, and has talked about the deleterious effects of the closet both on the closeted individual and on society as a whole. Signorile has been a long-time champion of the right to same-sex marriage. Signorile and much of his work over the years were featured prominently in the film Outrage, directed by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick and which focused on closeted antigay politicians, making a case for why media should report on their sexual orientation.

Books
Queer In America () 1993.
Outing Yourself () 1995.
Life Outside () 1997. (Nominated Lambda Literary Award, Gay Men's Studies)
Hitting Hard () 2005.
"It's Not Over" () 2015. (Finalists for the Publishing Triangle's Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction)

Notes

References
 Gross, Larry. Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing. University of Minnesota Press, 1993
Johansson, Warren & Percy, William A. Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence . Harrington Park Press, 1994.
Signorile, Michelangelo (1993). Queer In America: Sex, Media, and the Closets of Power. .
Gross, Larry & Woods, James (1999) "The Columbia Reader on Lesbians & Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics "
 Media Bistro Q & A with Signorile 2002
The Ethics of Outing by Gabriel Rotello
Signorile and Ratzinger, Advocate.com 2005
Salon Media Circus, Liquid Lunch Salon.com 1998
Rex Wockner's "Quote UnQuote" 1998
 Sarah Pettit, 36, NY Times Obituary 2003
Signorile's Advocate piece, "Out at the New York Times," reprinted in The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gays in Media, Society and Politics 1999, Larry Gross and James Woods
Bumiller, Elisabeth 1996, New York Times article on Malcolm Forbes, citing that the multimillionaire was indeed gay
 The Advocate. "The Top 15 Gay(ish) Blogs." June 9, 2009. (accessed June 14, 2009).

External links

The Fales Library Guide to the Michelangelo Signorile Papers

1960 births
American non-fiction writers
American people of Italian descent
American public relations people
American talk radio hosts
American gay writers
American LGBT broadcasters
American LGBT journalists
American LGBT rights activists
LGBT Roman Catholics
LGBT people from New York (state)
Living people
New York Press people
Syracuse University alumni

Michelangelo Signorile


Siebe Gorman & Co Ltd v Barclays Bank Ltd [1979] 2 Lloyd's Rep 142 is a UK insolvency law case, concerning the definition of a floating charge. It was an influential decision for many years, but is now outdated as authority in light of the House of Lords decision in Re Spectrum Plus Ltd.

Facts
Siebe Gorman, a diving equipment company, granted a debenture in favour of Barclays Bank to secure a loan. The document was expressed to create a 'first fixed charge' over all present and future book debts. It required Siebe Gorman to pay the proceeds of its book debts into a Barclays Bank account, and prohibited Siebe Gorman from creating any other charges on those book debts, or assigning the book debts to anyone else. So there was a prohibition on dealing with the book debts before collection of them. Barclays also had the right to obtain absolute control by giving notice, but that right was never exercised.

Judgment

Slade J held that it was a fixed charge. The restrictions on Siebe Gorman's power gave the bank enough control to be inconsistent with being a floating charge.

Authority

Although the case remained good law for many years, it was doubted by the Privy Council in , and then formally overruled by the House of Lords in .

See also

UK company law
Floating charge
Voidable floating charge

Notes

References

United Kingdom insolvency case law
High Court of Justice cases
1979 in United Kingdom case law
Barclays litigation


Thomas Fleming, Earl of Wigtown (died c. 1382) was the second person to hold the title earl of Wigtown. He was the grandson of the previous earl, Sir Malcolm Fleming, through the latter's only son John (d. 1351). His mother was a woman named Marjorie.

Thomas had been the heir to the earldom since the death of his father in 1351. During King David II of Scotland's captivity in England, Thomas was frequently used as a hostage, and spent many years in captivity, especially after the Treaty of Berwick in 1357. Thomas subsequently had grave financial problems, probably due to the ransom he had to pay the English crown to be released.

In 1367, Thomas was regranted the earldom, but was stripped of the rights of regality enjoyed by his grandfather. Thomas sold the earldom to Archibald the Grim, Lord of Galloway and Earl of Douglas in 1372. The recreation of the Lordship of Galloway for Archibald the Grim in 1369 had posed some conceptual problems for the earldom, as it fell within the old territories of the lordship. The Douglases were, moreover, much more successful than the Flemings at crushing resistance to the Bruce dynasty in the south-west.

Thomas thus had the unusual fortune of being demoted from the rank of a magnate to that of a baron. Thomas subsequently seems to have given away just about all of his remaining lands. He died without issue in or before 1382.

References
Oram, Richard D., 'Fleming, Malcolm, first earl of Wigtown (d. in or before 1363)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 14 Nov 2006
Paul, James Balfour, The Scots Peerage, Vol. VIII, (Edinburgh, 1911)

14th-century births
1380s deaths
Earls of Wigtown
History of Galloway
Fleming, Thomas
14th-century Scottish earls

Thomas Fleming, Earl of Wigtown


Karelia () is a historical province of Finland, consisting of the modern-day regions of South Karelia and North Karelia. Historical Karelia also extends to the regions of Kymenlaakso (east of the River Kymi), Northern Savonia (Kaavi, Rautavaara and Säyneinen) and Southern Savonia (Mäntyharju).

Karelia may also refer to the region as a whole, including the portion of Karelia within Russia. The term "Finnish Karelia" refers specifically to the historical Finnish province, while East Karelia or "Russian Karelia" refers to the portion of Karelia within Russia. Finland ceded a portion of Finnish Karelia to the Soviet Union after the Winter War of 1939–40. More than 400,000 evacuees from the ceded territories re-settled in various parts of Finland. Finnish Karelians include the present-day inhabitants of South Karelia and North Karelia, as well as the still-surviving evacuees from the ceded territories.

Finnish Karelia historically came under western influence, religiously and politically, and was separate from East Karelia, which was dominated by the Novgorod Republic and its many successor states from the Middle Ages onwards.

History

First indications of human settlement in Karelia are from the Mesolithic period. The oldest find from the area is the over 9000 years old Antrea Net which is a fishing net of willow bast. The number of finds from the area is lower towards the end of the Stone Age. Archeological finds from Karelia are relatively rare between the years 400–800. From the Merovingian period onwards finds from Karelia display a distinct features of West Finnish influences which has been interpreted to result at least partly from a colonisation. The mixing of western Finnish settlers with the local population led to the creation of the Karelian ethnic group.

Archeological evidence indicates that Karelian inhabitation was highest along the western shore of Lake Ladoga and the Karelian Isthmus, with multiple cemeteries and other archeological discoveries dating from AD 600 to AD 800. In South Karelia, the number of archeological discoveries from this time period is lower, though permanent inhabitation was nonetheless present. Lappee, South Karelia has been continuously inhabited for approximately 2,000 years. In North Karelia, only one archeological discovery from this time period has been found, dating to the eighth century. The considerably higher number of archeological discoveries in these regions from AD 800 to AD 1050 indicates that the Karelian population grew and expanded rapidly during this time.

At least 50 sites of Iron Age settlements and 40 hillforts are known from Karelia. According to archeological record and historical data most of the hillforts in Karelia were erected between 1100 and 1323. Particular Karelian culture including axes, brooches and ornamental culture flourished approximately between the years 1000–1400.

The River Kymi formed a boundary between the eastern and western cultural spheres by the beginning of the Bronze Age at the latest and is also said to be the boundary between the Tavastians and the Karelians during the Middle Ages. The 15th and 16th centuries saw the River Kymi become a more official border between the Tavastians and the Karelians, with Naulasaari (located in Mäntyharju) serving as the meeting point of the borders between the Häme Finns, Savonians, and Karelians.

During the 12th and 13th century, Karelians fought against Swedes and other Finnic tribes situated in western Finland, such as Tavastians and Finns proper. Karelians were listed as Novgorodian allies in the mid-12th century in Russian Chronicles. Historical records describe Karelians pillaging Sigtuna in Sweden in 1187 and making another expedition in 1257 which lead Pope Alexander IV to call out a crusade against Karelians at the request of Valdemar, the king of Sweden. The Third Swedish crusade, led by the marshal Torgils Knutsson took place between 1293 and 1295. As a result of the crusade the western parts of Karelia fell under Swedish rule and the building of the Castle of Viborg on the site of a destroyed Karelian fort started. According to the Eric Chronicles invading Swedes conquered 14 hundreds from Karelians during the crusade.

Hostilities between Novgorod and the kingdom of Sweden continued in 1300 when a Swedish force attacked the mouth of the River Neva and built a fort near the current location of Saint Petersburg. The fort was destroyed the following year by the Novgorodians. Indecisive fighting in 1321 and 1322 led to negotiations and peace by the Treaty of Nöteborg which for the first time decided the border between Sweden and Novgorod. Sweden got territory around Viborg, the western Karelian Isthmus and South Karelia; and Novgorod got the eastern Karelian Isthmus, Ingria, Ladoga Karelia, North Karelia and East Karelia.

In 1617, Sweden seized Kexholm County (eastern Karelian Isthmus, Ladoga Karelia, and North Karelia) from Russia. In 1634 Savonia and old Swedish Karelia were incorporated in the Viborg and Nyslott County. After the Treaty of Nystad in 1721 eastern parts of the Viborg and Nyslott County and the Kexholm County were ceded to Russia. The rest of these counties were incorporated into the Kymmenegård and Nyslott County. The southeastern part of this county was also ceded to Russia in the Treaty of Åbo of 1743. After the conquest in 1809 of the rest of Finland, Russia's 18th century gains, called "Old Finland", were in 1812 joined to the Grand Duchy of Finland as a gesture of good will (see Viipuri Province).

A large part of Finnish Karelia was ceded by Finland to the Soviet Union in 1940 after the Soviet aggression known as the Winter War, when the new border was established close to that of 1721. During the Continuation War of 1941–44, most of the ceded area was liberated by Finnish troops, but in 1944 was occupied again by the Red Army. After the war, the remains of the Province of Viipuri were made into the Province of Kymi. In 1997 the province was incorporated within the province of Southern Finland. The Karelian question refers to the debate regarding the return of the ceded territory to Finland.

Western Karelia, as a historical Province of Sweden, was religiously and politically distinct from the eastern parts that were under the Russian Orthodox Church.

Regions within Finnish Karelia

Some notable regions within the Region of Finnish Karelia are:

Viipuri Province (1812–1944)

Kymenlaakso (1917–)

South Karelia (1917–)

North Karelia (1917–)

Culture

The inhabitants of Karelian provinces historically belonging to Finland are known as Karelians. Confusingly, the same name is used also of a closely related but distinct ethnic group living mostly in East Karelia, earlier also in some of the territories Finland ceded to the Soviet Union in 1944.

The traditional culture of "Ladoga-Karelia", or Finnish Karelia according to the pre-Winter War borders, was by and large similar to that of Eastern Karelia, or Russian Karelia. Karelians live, and did even more so before Stalinism and the Great Purges, also in vast areas east of Finland (in Eastern Karelia, not marked on the map above), where folklore, language and architecture during the 19th century was in the center of the Finns' interest (see Karelianism), representing a "purer" Finnish culture than that of Southern and Western Finland, which had been for thousands of years in more contact with (or "contaminated by") Germanic and Scandinavian culture, of which the Kalevala and Finnish Art Nouveau are expressions.

People
 Martti Ahtisaari
 Anna Easteden
 Simo Häyhä, sniper during the Winter War.
 Ansa Ikonen
 Aarne Juutilainen
 Eino Luukkanen
 Veijo Meri
 Masa Niemi
 Aaro Pajari
 Lauri Törni, born in Viipuri, Törni was a soldier and winner of the Mannerheim Cross during the Continuation War, who later served with the German and American armies.
 Riitta Uosukainen
 Tatu Vanhanen
 Johannes Virolainen

See also List of Karelians

Names
Other than Finns, the historical province of Karelia also had Russian speakers living on the territory. The Russian name for the province is Карелия.

Heraldry

The arms is crowned by a ducal coronet, though by Finnish tradition this more resembles a Swedish count's coronet. The symbolism of the coat of arms is supposed to represent how the region was fought over by Sweden and Russia for centuries. Blazon: "Gules, in center chief a crown or above two duelling arms, the dexter armored holding a sword and the sinister chain-mail armored with a scimitar, all argent except for hafts and gauntlet joint or".

References

External links

 Saimaa Canal links two Karelias  – ThisisFINLAND
 Maps of Karelia – Heninen
 Flag – Flags of the World
 The Karelians
 ProKarelia
 Genocide in Soviet Karelia: Stalin's Terror and the Finns of Soviet Karelia
 Visitkarelia.fi – Information about travel, tourism and other fields in North Karelia
 Pielis.ru – travel information about North Karelia region and City of Joensuu

Finland
Historical provinces of Finland
Winter War

Karelia (historical province of Finland)


An action for money had and received to the plaintiff's use is the name for a common law claim derived from the form of action known as indebitatus assumpsit. The action enabled one person to recover money which has been received by another: for example, where a plaintiff paid money to the defendant while labouring under a mistake of fact or where there was a total failure of consideration. The action was a personal action only available in respect of money, rather than other benefits. Where the benefit received by the defendant was services or goods, the appropriate action was a quantum meruit or a quantum valebant, respectively.

The action for money had and received formed a part of the law of quasi-contract. Although the forms of action were abolished in the mid-19th century, reference continues to be made to the action in modern pleading. The terminology of "quasi-contract" has been replaced by the more modern terminology of unjust enrichment in most common law jurisdictions.

Case law
Moses v Macferlan (1760) 2 Bur 1005; 97 Eng. Rep. 676 (King's Bench, England)
Bingham v. Cabot, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 19 (1795) (Supreme Court of the United States)
Kershaw v Kirkpatrick [1878] UKPC 4 (Privy Council, from Canada)
Sinclair v Brougham [1914] AC 398 (House of Lords, England)
Jackson v Horizon Holidays Ltd [1975] 1 WLR 1468 (Court of Appeal of England and Wales)
Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale Ltd [1991] 2 AC 548 (House of Lords, England)
The Mikhail Lermontov [1990] 1 Lloyd's Rep 579 (High Court of Australia)
Westdeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale v Islington LBC [1996] UKHL 12 (House of Lords, England)
Philip Collins Ltd v Davis [2000] 3 All ER 808 (High Court, England)

See also

Law of Restitution

Notes

English trusts law
Unjust enrichment

Money had and received


The history of bus transport in Hong Kong started in 1920 when the first bus route started providing service.

During and after WWII
While there was the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, the Japanese government had tried to turn bus service to the status before the war. However, it wasn't successful since there has run out of petrol.

After WWII, the bus companies temporarily used vans to carry the passages. They used back buses after about 100 buses were bought from the UK.

B
Bus transport in Asia

History of bus transport in Hong Kong


Agave syrup, also known as maguey syrup or agave nectar, is a sweetener commercially produced from several species of agave, including Agave tequilana (blue agave) and Agave salmiana. Blue-agave syrup contains 56% fructose as a sugar providing sweetening properties.

Production
To produce agave syrup from the Agave americana and A. tequilana plants, the leaves are cut off the plant after it has been growing for seven to fourteen years. The juice is then extracted from the core of the agave, called the piña. The juice is filtered, then heated to break the complex components (the polysaccharides) into simple sugars. The main polysaccharide is called fructan, a polymer of fructose molecules. This filtered juice is then concentrated to a syrupy liquid, slightly thinner than honey. Its color varies from light to dark amber, depending on the degree of processing.

Agave salmiana is processed differently from Agave tequiliana. As the plant develops, it starts to grow a stalk called a quiote. The stalk is cut off before it fully grows, creating a hole in the center of the plant that fills with a liquid called aguamiel. The liquid is collected daily. The liquid is then heated, breaking down its complex components into fructose, glucose, and sucrose, and preventing it from fermenting into pulque.

An alternative method used to process the agave juice without heat is described in a United States patent for a process that uses enzymes derived from the mold Aspergillus niger to convert the inulin-rich extract into fructose. In slightly greater detail, the polyfructose extract obtained from the mashed agave pulp is hydrolyzed via a chemical process patented in 1998, with inulin enzymes (obtained from Aspergillus niger), to produce a hydrolyzed fructose extract. Concentrating the fructose yields the familiar syrup. Agave syrup (nectar) is listed on the inventory of foods generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Composition
The carbohydrate composition in agave syrup depends on the species from which the syrup was made. In A. tequilana (blue agave), the syrup contains some 56% to 60% fructose, 20% glucose, and trace amounts of sucrose, whereas in A. salmiana, sucrose is the main sugar. Fructose molecules in A. tequilana syrup chain together to create fructans and fructooligosaccharides, which have sweetening effects.

Culinary use
Blue-agave syrup is 1.4 to 1.6 times as sweet as sugar, and may be substituted for sugar in recipes. Because it comes from a plant, it is widely utilized as an alternative to honey for those following a vegan lifestyle, and is often added to some breakfast cereals as a binding agent. The specific strain known as blue agave syrup is not recommended for people with fructose intolerance.

Agave syrups are sold in light, amber, dark, and raw varieties. Light agave syrup has a mild and almost neutral flavor, and is therefore sometimes used in delicate-tasting dishes and beverages. Amber agave syrup has a medium-intensity caramel flavor, and is used in dishes and drinks with stronger flavors. Dark agave syrup has even stronger caramel notes and imparts a distinct flavor to dishes, being used in some desserts, poultry, meat, and seafood dishes. Both amber and dark agave syrups are sometimes used "straight out of the bottle" as a topping for pancakes, waffles, and French toast. The dark version is unfiltered and therefore contains a higher concentration of the agave plant's minerals.

Nutrition

In a 100-gram reference amount, blue-agave syrup supplies  of food energy and is a moderate source of vitamin C and several B vitamins (table). It is composed of 76% carbohydrates, 23% water, 0.4% fat, and  negligible protein.

Having fructose as its primary sugar, blue-agave syrup (56% fructose) is similar in fructose content to high-fructose corn syrup (55% fructose content), the most common sweetener used in US manufactured beverages. In a tablespoon amount (about 25 ml or 25 grams), blue-agave syrup supplies , an amount similar to the value per tablespoon for high-fructose corn syrup ().

Glycemic index
Blue-agave syrup has a relatively high sweetness factor because it is composed of 56% fructose, having an effect on blood sugar comparable to fructose itself, as measured by its low glycemic index (GI) of between 11 and 19.

See also
List of syrups
Mezcal
Tequila

References

Agave
Mexican cuisine
Syrup

Agave syrup