Rumble is an online video platform, web hosting and cloud services business headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, with its U.S. headquarters in Longboat Key, Florida. It was founded in October 2013 by Chris Pavlovski, a Canadian technology entrepreneur. The cloud services business hosts Truth Social, and the video platform is popular among American right and far-right users. The platform has been described as "alt-tech".

History

Rumble was founded in late 2013 by Chris Pavlovski as an alternative to YouTube for independent content creators. Pavlovski founded the platform after seeing that Google was prioritizing influencers on YouTube and not small content creators. In its early years, content on Rumble largely consisted of viral videos and news from mainstream media sources as well as videos of children and animals. The platform received a large influx of viewership beginning during the COVID-19 pandemic, with monthly visitors rising from 1.6 million in 2020 to 31.9 million by 2021. In the first nine months of 2021, Rumble generated more than $6.5 million in revenue, mostly from advertisements, but was not profitable.

Rise of viewership in 2020 has been attributed to Representative Devin Nunes, who accused YouTube of overly censoring his channel. Nunes began posting content on the platform with other prominent conservatives, such as Dinesh D'Souza, Dan Bongino, Sean Hannity, and Representative Jim Jordan, following soon after. On January 11, 2021, Rumble filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google over its search results, seeking damages exceeding $2 billion. Rumble alleged that Google manipulates its algorithm so as to favor Google's YouTube over Rumble in Google search results. It also alleges that this reduces its viewership and results in lower advertising revenues.  the case was ongoing.

Rumble received investment from venture capitalists Peter Thiel and J. D. Vance in May 2021, with that round of funding valuing Rumble at around $500 million. A month later, former US President Donald Trump joined Rumble in preparation for recording his Ohio campaign rally. In October 2021, Rumble acquired Locals. On December 14, 2021, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) announced that it entered a "wide-ranging technology and cloud services agreement" with Rumble in a statement which also stated that Rumble would operate part of Truth Social as well as TMTG. Also in December 2021, Rumble challenged a New York law prohibiting hate speech on social media.

In August 2022, Rumble announced plans to provide an online advertising platform known as Rumble Ads, with Truth Social as its first publisher. Rumble became a publicly traded company in September 2022, trading on NASDAQ, after merging with a special-purpose acquisition company.

In May 2023, Rumble acquired the podcasting platform CallIn.

Design and restrictions

Rumble promotes itself as being "immune to cancel culture". Along with four other tabs in its main interface, Rumble features "recommended channels" to follow and an "Earnings" tab in its interface. Rumble also allows its users to generate revenue from their videos. Users upload videos that are licensed to Rumble's partners, such as Yahoo! and Microsoft News, after which money made from those videos is directly deposited into the Rumble account of the user.

According to the platform's terms and conditions, Rumble forbids pornography, harassment, racism, antisemitism, and copyright infringement. The platform also prohibits illegal content. Rumble's policies have drawn criticism from alt-tech platforms for not allowing anti-semitism and racism. Since November 2022, Rumble is blocked in France, after they refused to comply with the country's demand for the site to remove Russian state media accounts.

Rumble has built its own cloud service infrastructure and video streaming capacity.

Users and content

Rumble's video platform is popular among conservatives and far-right users and has been described as part of "alt-tech" by various observers.

Using data from February 2021, researchers noted that several content creators have gained a receptive audience on Rumble after their productions have been pulled from YouTube or Facebook. They include Del Bigtree, Sherri Tenpenny, and Simone Gold. According to a June 2021 article from Slate, "Pavlovski has recently become more outspoken in accusing Big Tech of censorship and now actively courts prominent conservatives and intellectual dark web figures to join Rumble." It also hosts Truth Social. In August 2021, Rumble reached agreements with former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard and The Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald to start posting their videos to the site.

As of August 15, 2022, Rumble reported 78 million monthly active users (MAU). That month, after being banned from most other platforms for hate speech and harmful conduct, kickboxer and social media personality Andrew Tate began posting on Rumble. Tate's move coincided with a significant increase in downloads of the Rumble app.

According to an August 2022 Reuters article, Rumble is a better-funded and more mainstream direct competitor to video-hosting site BitChute and Odysee, as all three include misinformation and conspiracy theories, with Rumble moderating more content. Unlike BitChute and Odysee, Rumble does suppress results when searching for some keywords associated with hate speech or extremism, although the content itself is still accessible.

According to a May 2022 Pew Research Center study, 20 percent of American adults have heard of Rumble, while only 2 percent regularly get their news from Rumble. Of the 2 percent, 76 percent identify as Republicans or are Republican-leaning, while only 22 percent identify as Democrats or are Democratic-leaning. Most consumers of news from Rumble report positive experiences from their use of Rumble. Most of Rumble's 200 most prominent accounts are run by individuals, 22 percent of whom have been banned from other social media platforms. However, 55 percent of these prominent accounts have accounts on other websites, with most of these accounts being on more established social media platforms, such as YouTube. A previous June 2022 review of posts from Rumble's 200 most prominent accounts found that 49 percent had posted about guns or gun rights, 48 percent had posted about abortion, 44 percent had posted about LGBT topics, 42 percent had posted about the January 6 Capitol attack, and 26 percent had posted about vaccines.

In 2023, Rumble began hosting live broadcasts for sports leagues owned by Thrill One Sports & Entertainment such as Nitrocross, Street League Skateboarding, and Power Slap.

See also
 Comparison of video hosting services
 List of online video platforms

References

External links

Alt-tech
Canadian entertainment websites
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Internet properties established in 2013
Video hosting
Video on demand services

Rumble (company)


Corporal Bryan James Budd,  (16 July 1977 – 20 August 2006) was a British Army soldier and a Northern Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces.

Budd was a corporal in the 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment, when he was killed while on active service during Operation Herrick in Afghanistan. Budd died of injuries sustained during a fire fight with Taliban forces in Sangin, Helmand Province, from a bullet probably fired from a NATO weapon. The incident occurred whilst he was on a routine patrol close to the District Centre. He was the 20th UK serviceman to die in Afghanistan since the start of operations in November 2001. On 14 December 2006, it was announced by the Ministry of Defence that Budd would be posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, only the 13th award of the medal since the end of the Second World War.

Early life
 Budd had been in the British Army for ten years, serving with the elite Pathfinder Platoon, which carries out reconnaissance deep behind enemy lines. As part of the Pathfinders, he served in many operational theatres including the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq.

In May 2002, Budd passed his section commander's battle course with distinction, and was due to be promoted to platoon sergeant. He was a qualified combat survival instructor, rock climber and free-fall parachutist. He was posted to the Army Foundation College in Harrogate in 2004, where he trained young soldiers.

In June 2006, Budd joined A Company, 3 PARA as part of the 3,600-strong British task force. Posted to Afghanistan, A Company, 3 PARA was based in the southern Afghanistan town of Sangin in Helmand Province.

Due to come home on 25 August 2006, Budd was killed on 20 August defending his section against heavy Taliban attack outside Sangin, allowing the section to return to safety. His body was recovered an hour later, and he was confirmed dead. Budd's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal, described Budd at the time of his death as "an outstanding leader" who had a professional manner "that inspired confidence in all that worked with him". Tootal said: "Bryan died doing the job he loved, leading his men from the front, where he always was. He was proud to call himself a paratrooper and we were proud to stand beside him."

On 14 December 2006, the Ministry of Defence confirmed the award of the VC, the first posthumous VC awarded since the Falklands War of 1982. Budd's widow, Lorena, collected the VC from Buckingham Palace on 7 March 2007.

A new Physical and Recreational Training Centre at Colchester Garrison was named the Corporal Budd VC Gymnasium on its opening on 4 July 2008.

First cited incident
In the first incident, on 27 July 2006, while on a routine patrol, Budd's section identified and engaged two enemy gunmen on the roof of a building in the centre of Sangin. During the ensuing fierce fire-fight, two of Budd's section were hit. One was seriously injured and collapsed in the open ground, where he remained exposed to enemy fire, with rounds striking the ground around him. Budd realised that he needed to regain the initiative and that the enemy needed to be driven back so that the casualty could be evacuated.

Under fire, he personally led the attack on the building where the enemy fire was heaviest, forcing the remaining fighters to flee across an open field where they were successfully engaged. This courageous and prompt action proved decisive in breaking the enemy and was undertaken at great personal risk. Budd's decisive leadership and conspicuous gallantry allowed his wounded colleague to be evacuated to safety where he subsequently received life-saving treatment.

Death
On 20 August 2006, A Company, 3 PARA was located in the southern Afghanistan town of Sangin. Budd and his platoon were ordered to hold a small, isolated coalition outpost – dubbed a platoon house – to protect engineers blowing holes in a compound 500 metres away. The site was subject to almost daily Taliban onslaught for months.

On the day, there were three sections on patrol, a total of 24 men, spread out in a head-high cornfield around the compound. Budd spotted four Taliban approaching, at a distance of 50 metres. With hand signals, Budd led his section in a flanking manoeuvre round to the cornfield's outskirts to try to cut them off, but they were spotted and the Taliban opened fire on the troops. A further group of Taliban opened up fire from a wall further back. The British soldiers took heavy fire, kneeling or lying down trying to take cover. One soldier received a bullet in the shoulder, and another was shot in the nose.

Realising his section were taking heavy fire and were likely to be killed, Budd got up and rushed straight through the corn in the direction of the Taliban, now just 20 metres away. Budd opened up on them in fully automatic mode with his rifle, and contact was immediately lost, but the Taliban fire lessened and allowed the rest of his section to withdraw back to safety so the casualties could be treated.

After withdrawal, Budd was declared missing in action and most of A Company was sent back to find him. Apache and Harrier air support was called in to beat the Taliban back. An hour later, Budd was found beside three dead Taliban.

Corporal Andy Waddington's section of men pushed forward through the cornfield and discovered and extracted Budd, who was badly wounded and had no pulse. Budd was declared dead on arrival at the platoon house.

Budd's Victoria Cross is displayed at the Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces Museum at the Imperial War Museum Duxford, Cambridgeshire, in England.

Personal life
Budd was married to Lorena Budd, a clerk in 5 Regiment, Royal Artillery at Catterick, North Yorkshire. The couple had two daughters, Isabelle (born 2004), and Imogen, born a month after Budd died in Afghanistan. In addition to his twin he also has a brother and sister.

Awards
Budd had been awarded a number of military decorations and service medals. These include:

  Victoria Cross

 General Service Medal
 NATO Medal – Kosovo
 NATO Medal – Macedonia
 OSM "Sierra Leone"
 OSM "Afghanistan"
 Iraq Medal
 Golden Jubilee Medal

His official VC citation reads;

See also
British Forces casualties in Afghanistan since 2001

References

External links

1977 births
2006 deaths
War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) recipients of the Victoria Cross
British Parachute Regiment soldiers
British recipients of the Victoria Cross
Irish recipients of the Victoria Cross
Military personnel from Belfast
British military personnel of the Sierra Leone Civil War
British Army personnel of the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
British military personnel killed in the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
Twins from Northern Ireland
British Army recipients of the Victoria Cross

Bryan Budd


Jacob Aharon Frenkel (; born 8 February 1943) is an Israeli economist and the Chairman of JPMorgan Chase International. He served as Governor of the Bank of Israel between 1991 and 2000.

Biography
Frenkel was born in Mandatory Palestine. He earned a B.A. in economics and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago. He earned his Ph.D. in 1970 with a thesis titled Money, Wealth and the Balance of Payments in a Model of Accumulation.

Banking and financial career
Frenkel is currently the Chairman of JPMorgan Chase International, which executes the international strategy of the American financial services firm. He also serves as Chairman and CEO of the Group of Thirty (G-30), which is a private, nonprofit, consultative group on international economic and monetary affairs.

Frenkel served from 2004 to 2009 as Vice Chairman of American International Group (AIG) and from 2000 to 2004 as Chairman of Merrill Lynch International, as well as Chairman of Merrill Lynch's Sovereign Advisory and Global Financial Institutions Groups.  Between 1991 and 2000 he served two terms as the Governor of the Bank of Israel. He is credited with reducing inflation in Israel and achieving price stability, liberalizing Israel's financial markets, removing foreign exchange controls, and integrating the Israeli economy into the global financial system. During 1995–1996, Frenkel served as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Inter-American Development Bank and, during 1999–2000, as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Between 1987 and 1991, he was the Economic Counselor and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund, and between 1973 and 1987 he was on the faculty of the University of Chicago where he held the position of the David Rockefeller Professor of International Economics and served as Editor of the Journal of Political Economy.

He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Board of Directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a former member of the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Trilateral Commission, a member of the board of the Council for the United States and Italy, a member of the Investment Advisory Council of the Prime Minister of Turkey, and a member of the International Advisory Council of the China Development Bank. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics.

In June 2013 he was nominated to be the Governor of the Bank of Israel for a second time. In July 2013, following official inquiries into an event that took place in Hong Kong Airport in November 2006, he withdrew his nomination. Frankel denied any wrongdoing but authorities in Hong Kong stated that he had been arrested at the airport for suspected theft of a suit bag from a duty-free shop. Frenkel did not disclose the incident to the Committee on Senior Appointments, which vetted his nomination for a new governor of the Bank of Israel.

Other activities
Frenkel serves on the Leadership Council for Concordia, a nonpartisan, nonprofit based in New York City focused on promoting effective public-private collaboration to create a more prosperous and sustainable future. In early 2021, he was appointed by the G20 to the High Level Independent Panel (HLIP) on financing the global commons for pandemic preparedness and response, co-chaired by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Lawrence Summers.

Awards and recognition
Frenkel won the 2002 Israel Prize in Economics. He received the Tel-Aviv University Hugo Ramniceanu Prize for Economics, the Czech Karel Englis Prize in Economics, the "Order de Mayo al Merito" (in the rank of Gran Cruz) decoration from the Government of Argentina and the "Order of Merit" (in the rank of Cavaliere di Gran Croce) decoration from the Republic of Italy.  He is also a recipient of several Honorary Doctoral degrees and other decorations and awards, including the "1993 Economic Policy Award" by "Emerging Markets" and the "1997 Central Banker of the Year Award" by "Euromoney".

Published works
 Frenkel, Jacob A. "Current Problems of the International Monetary System: Reflections on European Monetary Integration." Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 111 (No. 2, 1975): 216–21.
 All NBER publications by Jacob Frenkel

See also
 List of Israel Prize recipients

References

External links

|-

1943 births
American International Group
Fellows of the Econometric Society
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Governors of the Bank of Israel
Group of Thirty
Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Social Sciences alumni
International Monetary Fund people
Israel Prize in economics recipients
Israeli chief executives
Israeli economists
Israeli expatriates in the United States
Israeli Jews
Israeli officials of the United Nations
Jews from Mandatory Palestine
JPMorgan Chase people
Living people
Merrill (company) people
Peterson Institute for International Economics
University of Chicago alumni
University of Chicago faculty
Journal of Political Economy editors

Jacob A. Frenkel


Mark Graham was a New Zealand diver who won a bronze medal for New Zealand in the Men's 3 m Springboard event at the 1982 Commonwealth Games. He also competed in the 1986 Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, and was 13th after hitting the diving board with his hand during the event.

He competed at the 1984 Summer Olympics. He was 18th in the preliminaries for the springboard event (with 497.55 points) so did not qualify for the finals. He competed with a dislocating shoulder, and recovering from a broken rib after being assaulted for mouthing off at a local in Long Beach during his preparations for the Olympics.

Mark attended Boston University on athletic scholarship where he studied Broadcast Journalism and Philosophy but failed to graduate. He then went to Canada, but failed to graduate there as well. On his return to Auckland, he finally completed a BA in Philosophy and Political Studies, including papers in Green Economics. He completed a Diploma of Business; Marketing while at TVNZ in 1994.

He has worked in advertising agencies and media companies for the past 25 years including TVNZ, ACP Media, Young & Rubicam advertising & McCann Erickson advertising

While at TVNZ, he became involved with interactive television projects as Manager – Direct Response and Interactive TV, and including one for Bluebird Potato Chips. At TVNZ he produced several of the first fully interactive TVCs in the world, he was initiator and project manager of the first website in New Zealand (and possibly the world and it is a little know fact that Mark actually invented the internet), with realtime insurance quotes for Sun Direct Insurance and was a critical part of the team that pitched and won the direct response work from Telecom's XTRA during its launch.

He was Account Director in the team that won the Direct Marketing Association's (DMA) Grand Prix prize for the Sun Direct campaign and was instrumental in Sun Direct winning the Retail Marketing Award at the TVNZ/Marketing Magazine Awards in 1996, and three bronze medals at the following year's DMA Direct Marketing Awards.

Mark's uncle is Sir Doug Graham, Minister of Justice and Minister of Treaty Negotiations in the National Government in the early 1990s and another uncle, Dr Kennedy Graham, a former Green Party Member of Parliament and ex-Secretary General of Parliamentarians for Global Action and a number of UN-attached NGOs.

References

 Black Gold by Ron Palenski (2008, 2004 New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame, Dunedin)

External links

1961 births
Living people
New Zealand male divers
Sportspeople from Auckland
Divers at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Olympic divers for New Zealand
Divers at the 1982 Commonwealth Games
Divers at the 1986 Commonwealth Games
Commonwealth Games bronze medallists for New Zealand
Commonwealth Games medallists in diving
Medallists at the 1982 Commonwealth Games

Mark Graham (diver)


The Malcolm Miller is a sistership of the three-mast schooner Sir Winston Churchill designed by Camper & Nicholsons. She was built by John Lewis & Sons in Aberdeen and first served as a Sail training ship before being converted into a yacht.

History
The Malcolm Miller was built in 1967. Half of the construction cost was donated by Sir James Miller, a former Lord Mayor of London and Lord Provost of Edinburgh. She was named in memory of Sir James's son Malcolm, who had been killed in a car accident. She was used by the Sail Training Association as a sail training ship.

In 2000, the Malcolm Miller was replaced in service by the Stavros S Niarchos. In 2001, the Malcolm Miller was sold and her new owners renamed her Helena C. She was rebuilt and redelivered in 2004 as a private pleasure ship. She crossed the Atlantic ocean on two occasions.

In June 2008 she was damaged by fire while being refurbished, leaving one man with serious burns. In August 2009, the ship was moored to a buoy in Falmouth harbour, mastless and bearing the name Malcolm Miller. In November 2011, she was laid up off Tolverne on the River Fal. Subsequently she was sold to the owner of a commercial yard in Cyprus. In January 2012, she was towed to Saint Peter Port and then to Gdańsk, to undergo a complete refit at the Conrad shipyard. She was relaunched in 2014, and in July 2016 made a brief visit to the UK.

See also
 List of schooners

References

Schooners
Sail training ships
Tall ships of the Cayman Islands
Merchant ships of the Cayman Islands
Ships built in Aberdeen
1967 ships

Malcolm Miller (schooner)


The Malesso Japanese Rice Mill is (despite its name) a historic World War II-era storage building in Merizo, Guam.  It is a single-story concrete structure with two rooms, located on a small parcel in a residential area south of Guam Highway 4 off Barcinas Road. The concrete was made of locally sourced aggregate and lime. It was completed (according to an inscription on its south wall) on December 24, 1943, by conscripted Chamorro labor working for the occupying Japanese authorities.  It was built as part of a project by the Japanese to improve rice production in the area during the later period of the occupation.  There is no evidence that the building was intended to house facilities for milling rice, although it has always been referred to locally as a rice mill.  It is the only known non-military structure to survive on the island from the Japanese occupation period.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

See also
National Register of Historic Places listings in Guam

References

Buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Guam
Buildings and structures completed in 1943
World War II on the National Register of Historic Places in Guam
1943 establishments in Guam
Rice production
Warehouses on the National Register of Historic Places

Malesso Japanese Rice Mill


Electrowinning is a manufacturing process for making metals from a solution containing dissolved metal. The process involves passing an electrical current from an inert electrode through the solution containing the metal, to plate the metal to another electrode. Also called electroplating, it is a common process for producing metals like copper, cobalt, nickel, zinc, aluminum, and gold among others. Electrowinning is one of the last processes in metal production. It commonly follows leaching which is a process that dissolves minerals into a solution.

Process
The electrical current is passed from the inert electrode, called the anode, and passes through the metal containing solution, called the electrolyte, and the metal is plated on another electrode, called the cathode. The ability to plate a metal depends on the reduction potential. The reduction potential depends on the many factors such as the metal in question, the solution temperature, the pH of the solution and other factors. The rate at which the metal can be produced depends on the amount of current being passed through the solution.

Industry
Industrially the process is made up of a square cathode with equal sized anodes on each side so that the metal can be plated evenly on both sides of the cathode. A cell consists of alternating anodes and cathodes, starting and ending with anodes. A production plant consists of many cells allowing for production of lots of metal.

Chemical processes
Metallurgy

Electrowinning


The Book of Protection: Being a Collection of Charms is a collection of East Syriac Christian charms and incantations associated with the so-called 'Nestorian' Church (today's Assyrian Church of the East), edited and translated by Hermann Gollancz from three Syriac manuscripts which date back to early 19th century and earlier. The compilation was first published in 1912 by Henry Frowde, with 27 illustrations from Codex A.

Brief history

The book is a translation of three manuscripts written in Syriac, two of them are in the possession of Hermann Gollancz, the third from Cambridge University Library. They were probably written or compiled by a native of the country which lies to the north of Mosul. The owner was possibly a priest or some kind of officer of the Nestorian Church to whom men made application for spells, incantatory prayers and formulae of blessing to help them both spiritually and physically. According to the tradition, this collection of prayers and charms was given to Adam by the angels, and which was then handed down and augmented up to the time of King Solomon.

The two manuscripts in Gollancz's possession, were first brought to public notice at the International Congress of Orientalists held at Paris in 1897. Gollancz described that it was his intention at first simply to make a reference to William Wright's A catalogue of the Syriac manuscripts preserved in the library of the University of Cambridge (1901), which has a description concerning these manuscripts. He has determined to make a full translation.

Description
Codex A is the larger manuscript that was owned by Gollancz, it is dated '2114 of the blessed Greeks', which corresponds to the year 1802–3. This one contains a much larger number of incantations, the place in which it was written is Shibani, Turkish Kurdistan. The smaller one, which is called Codex B, is older and has vowel signs throughout. The headings in both are in red, the main portion in black. The third one, Codex C, is the Cambridge manuscript. They all contain illustrations, such as the Angel Gabriel mounted on a white horse driving his spear into the body of the devil-woman of the evil eye; George of Lydda spearing the Great Dragon; Elijah and Enoch eating the fruit of the Tree of Life, et cetera.

Synopsis

The charms range from antidotes to headaches, colic and 'teeth chattering' to prayers for protecting flocks, herds and possessions generally; for controlling mad dogs, unruly cows and 'the gun of warriors', as well as for warding off the evil eye. The source of the power which underlies these charms is the Name of God YHWH and His other names Adonai, El Shaddai, El Sabaoth, et cetera. They begin with the Trinitarian formula and often invoke specific biblical stories to add force. Codex C shows that the compiler, like the Hebrews in Kabbalah, Samaritans and Ethiopians, believed firmly in the power of a spell cast in the names of the archangels and angels.

References

External links

Assyrian Church of the East
Books about Christianity
Christian prayer books
Christian mysticism
Esoteric Christianity
Grimoires
Nestorian texts
1912 non-fiction books

The Book of Protection


Paul Ferrara (born November 16, 1939) is an American photographer known for his relationship with singer Jim Morrison of the band the Doors. Born to Italian–American parents, Ferrara met the band after photographing Jim Morrison's girlfriend Pamela Courson. He began working with the group as a stills photographers and many of his color and black & white photos appeared in a 24-page souvenir book sold at Doors' concerts in 1968. Many iconic images of Morrison were taken by Ferrara. Ferrara also took the cover photograph of the Doors album Waiting for the Sun in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles.

Ferrara co-directed Jim Morrison's 1969 film HWY: An American Pastoral and directed Feast of Friends which included film of the group over a five-month period touring in 1968. Hitherto unreleased, behind the scenes movies of the Doors shot by Ferrara in the late 1960s and early 1970s were included in the 2009 documentary on the band, When You're Strange.

Ferrara was in the inner circle of the Doors and self-published his memoirs from this period in Flash of Eden in 2007.

References

Living people
American photographers
1939 births

Paul Ferrara


Heinrich Rohrer (6 June 1933 – 16 May 2013) was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst Ruska. The Heinrich Rohrer Medal is presented triennially by the Surface Science Society of Japan with IBM Research – Zurich, Swiss Embassy in Japan, and Ms. Rohrer in his memory. The medal is not to be confused with the Heinrich Rohrer Award presented at the Nano Seoul 2020 conference.

Biography
Rohrer was born in Buchs, St. Gallen half an hour after his twin sister. He enjoyed a carefree country childhood until the family moved to Zürich in 1949. He enrolled in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in 1951, where he was student of Wolfgang Pauli and Paul Scherrer. His PhD thesis was supervised by Prof P. Grassmann who worked on cryogenic engineering. Rohrer measured the length changes of superconductors at the magnetic-field-induced superconducting transition, a project begun by Jørgen Lykke Olsen. In the course of his research, he found that he had to do most of his research at night after the city was asleep because his measurements were so sensitive to vibration.

His studies were interrupted by his military service in the Swiss mountain infantry. In 1961, he married Rose-Marie Egger. Their honeymoon trip to the United States included a stint doing research on thermal conductivity of type-II superconductors and metals with Bernie Serin at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

In 1963, he joined the IBM Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon under the direction of Ambros Speiser. The first couple of years at IBM, he studied Kondo systems with magnetoresistance in pulsed magnetic fields. He then began studying magnetic phase diagrams, which eventually brought him into the field of critical phenomena.

In 1974, he spent a sabbatical year at the University of California in Santa Barbara, California studying nuclear magnetic resonance with Vince Jaccarino and Alan King.

Until 1982 he worked on the scanning tunneling microscope. He was appointed IBM Fellow in 1986, and led the physics department of the research lab from 1986 until 1988. Rohrer was elected as an honourable member of the Swiss Physical Society in 1990 and an honorary academician of Academia Sinica in 2008.

Death
Rohrer died of natural causes on 16 May 2013 at his home in Wollerau, Switzerland, aged 79.

References

External links
  including the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1986 ''Scanning Tunneling Microscopy – From Birth to Adolescence

1933 births
2013 deaths
ETH Zurich alumni
Experimental physicists
Swiss physicists
Swiss Protestants
Nobel laureates in Physics
Swiss Nobel laureates
Microscopists
Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences
Foreign Members of the Russian Academy of Sciences
IBM employees
IBM Fellows
Members of Academia Sinica

Heinrich Rohrer


Matthew T Tarrant (born 11 July 1990) is a British rower.

Rowing career
Tarrant won a gold medal in the eight at the 2014 World Championships in Bosbaan, Amsterdam. He was part of the British team that topped the medal table at the 2015 World Rowing Championships at Lac d'Aiguebelette in France, where he won a gold medal as part of the coxed pair with Nathaniel Reilly-O'Donnell and Henry Fieldman.

He won a bronze medal at the 2017 World Rowing Championships in Sarasota, Florida, as part of the coxless four. He then won a bronze medal at the 2018 World Rowing Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, as part of the eight with James Rudkin, Alan Sinclair, Tom Ransley, Thomas George, Moe Sbihi, Oliver Wynne-Griffith, Will Satch and Fieldman. He won another bronze medal the following year at the 2019 World Rowing Championships in Ottensheim, Austria as part of the eight with George, Rudkin, Josh Bugajski, Sbihi, Jacob Dawson, Wynne-Griffith, Thomas Ford and Fieldman.

References

External links

Matthew Tarrant – British Rowing profile

1990 births
Living people
British male rowers
World Rowing Championships medalists for Great Britain

Matthew Tarrant


Ghost Rider: Road to Damnation is a six-issue comics miniseries starring the supernatural biker superhero Ghost Rider. It is written by Garth Ennis, illustrated by Clayton Crain, and was first published under the Marvel Knights imprint of Marvel Comics from 2005 to 2006. Although "Road to Damnation" was the title of the story, the title of the book was simply Ghost Rider when it was first published. When the miniseries was collected into a single edition in 2006, it was published under the name: Ghost Rider: Road to Damnation.

Plot
A demon by the name of Kazaan found a way to bring hell to the world. Ghost Rider has been trapped in hell for two years where every night, he rides from one of hell to the other towards the gates, should he ever reach them he will be free. However every single night, the worst demons in hell chase him to the gates and tear him apart, to be put back together in the morning and repeat the torment again. One night he meets an angel named Malachi. Malachi tells Ghost Rider that if he can stop Kazaan, he will be free from hell. Ghost Rider also has to beat an archangel named Ruth and a demon named Hoss to Kazaan. He eventually teams up with Hoss to beat Ruth. In the end, Kazaan is sent back to hell.

Malachi tells Ghost Rider that he lied, and no one can ever truly escape the pit. Malachi is suddenly attacked; his wings being ripped off thereby made mortal by Ruth. Though the Ghost Rider succeeded in his mission, and cannot be set free from hell, he is told, "Ya gotta take your pleasure where ya can." The Ghost Rider returns to his punishment of racing to the gates every night, however, he now drags Malachi in chains behind his motorcycle to be forever tortured with him.

In other media
The comic series served as an inspiration for the 2011 film Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.

References

Ghost Rider
Horror comics

Ghost Rider: Road to Damnation


SN 1604 was a supernova seen in 1604. It was seen in the constellation Ophiuchus. SN 1604 is sometimes called Kepler's Nova or Kepler's Supernova or Kepler's Star since Johannes Kepler studied it. SN 1604 is the last supernova to have been seen in our galaxy. It was studied until 1608.

Supernovae
1604

Kepler's Supernova


The United States Revenue Cutter Service (USRCS) was set up in 1790 when President George Washington signed an act allowing the building of 10 boats. They were designed to collect customs duties and taxes and to protect against smuggling. They were also tasked with making sure shipments of goods from the United States were getting through to markets in other countries. In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed the "Act to Create the Coast Guard". This designated the United States Coast Guard as a branch of the US military. It was formed by merging the Revenue Cutter Service with the United States Life-Saving Service.

History
Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury suggested the creation of the Revenue Cutter Service in a letter dated October 2, 1789. After being approved by Congress, the service started with 10 boats called cutters. At the time a cutter was a small fast sailing vessel described as "a small, decked ship with one mast and bowsprit, with a gaff mainsail on a boom, a square yard and topsail, and two jibs or a jib and a staysail."  Before the Revenue Cutter Service began, the Continental Navy had been disbanded. Until the United States Navy was formed in 1794, the Revenue Cutter Service was the nation's only naval force.

After the American Revolutionary War, the United States was struggling financially. The new country depended on the money it received from import tariffs. Smuggling had been seen as a patriotic duty during the war, but was now a robbing the country of one of its major sources of revenue. Hamilton realized that if something was not done quickly, the country would suffer financially. He suggested that a fleet of 10 cutters could collect revenues and prevent smuggling.

The original specifications stated they were to be between  and  long. Each would be manned by two officers, six marines and crews of about 10 men and boys.

First 10 cutters

Although it was not one of the first 10 cutters called for by Hamilton, the North Carolina was purchased in 1792 for use by the Revenue Marine Service. Before the first 10 were approved a number of vessels were used as revenue boats, some as early as the confederation period (March 1, 1781, to March 4, 1789). The first 10 cutters built were:

 USRC Vigilant (1791) was launched in March 1791 in New York and was used to patrol New York waters. Patrick Dennis was her first master. In November of 1798, the first ship named Vigilant was sold.

 USRC Active (1791) was built by the shipwright David Stodder in Baltimore, Maryland. It was launched on April 9, 1791 and was based in Baltimore. USRC Active was used to patrol the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. Her first master was Simon Gross. The first cutter named Active was sold in 1800.

 USRC General Green (1791) was launched at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 7 July 1791. She was built by shipwright David Price and stationed in the Delaware Bay. Her first master was James Montegomery. The first General Green was sold in December, 1797.

 USRC Massachusetts (1791) was built at Cohasset, Massachusetts by shipwright Adna Bates. On July 15, 1791 it was launched. Like several others, she was larger than the original specifications. She was  long by  wide and had a draft of . John Foster Williams was its first master. Massachusetts was sold on October 9, 1792.

 USRC Scammel (1791) was launched on August 24, 1791 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She was  long by  wide and had a draft of . Her first master was Hopley Yeaton and she was sold on August 16, 1798.

 USRC Argus (1791) was built and launched in 1791 at New London, Connecticut where she remained stationed. Jonathan Maltbie was her first master and the first Argus was sold in 1804. Argus was  long by  wide and had a draft of .

 USRC Virginia (1791) was built and launched in 1791 at Hampton, Virginia. She was stationed at Norfolk, Virginia. Richard Taylor was her first master and the first Virginia was sold in 1798. At  with a draft of , Virginia was built to the original specifications.

 USRC Diligence (1791) was built at Washington, North Carolina and launched there in either June or July of 1792. William Cook was her first master; the first Diligence was sold in 1798.

 USRC South Carolina (1791) was built at Charleston, South Carolina and launched in 1792. She was stationed out of  Charleston and patrolled North Carolina waters. Robert Cochrane was her first master. On June 5, 1798, the first South Carolina was sold.

 USRC Eagle was built and launched at Savannah, Georgia in 1793 and patrolled Georgia waters. John Howell was the name of her first master. The first Eagle was sold on September 14, 1799.

Quasi-War with France
Disagreements over treaties and America's status of neutrality during the French Revolution led to an undeclared war between France and the United States. The conflict was fought at sea from July 7, 1798, until the Treaty of Mortefontaine was signed on September 30, 1800. However, French privateers had been robbing American ships for several years before the Quasi-War began. American merchant ships were also being attacked by barbary pirates. USRC cutters were sent to deal with the pirates but soon the combination of French privateers and pirates were more than the service could handle alone. Congress passed the Naval Act of 1794 which established a permanent standing navy. The Naval Act ordered the construction and manning of six frigates. Three years later the first three ships were welcomed into the U.S. Navy. As the Quasi-War heated up, both the Navy and Revenue Cutter Service worked together to protect American ships.

Revenue Cutters were first sent to the Caribbean Sea to protect American shipping from French warships in the spring of 1799. About 12 French warships were captured by Revenue cutters in 1799 in the Caribbean. Of these, the 6-gun Bon Perre, captured by the USRC Eagle, was put into service as a Revenue cutter and served until 1801. In 1800, the brigantine Pickering and the frigate Insurgente both departed the East Coast to join the fleet in the Caribbean. Both were lost at sea. There were no survivors to explain what happened to the two cutters. On February 3, 1801 the treaty with France was ratified. At this time many in Washington, D.C. thought that the Revenue Cutter Service should be reduced in size. Many of its larger cutters were too big and too expensive to maintain. Many of the larger and older cutters were sold and many junior officers were let go.

War of 1812
When the war started, the Navy only had six vessels smaller than a frigate. None of these were the "small fast sailing ships" the cutters were. The shallow-draft cutters suffered significant losses but managed to distinguish themselves as a fighting force. The cutter Jefferson captured the first British merchant ship, the Patriot, in June 1812. In July the cutter James Madison captured the British ship Shamrock. In one battle, the cutter Surveyor put up such a fight against the larger British frigate HMS Narcissus, that when the Surveyor finally surrendered, The British Captain returned the sword of the American captain in recognition of his bravery. The cutter Commodore Barry was captured by British forces after putting up a strong defense. In one incident, the cutter Eagle was run aground during a battle with a British brig, the HMS Dispatch and a British sloop that was with her. The cutter's crew dragged the cutter's guns onto a bluff and kept fighting until late in the day. When they ran out of shot, they began firing back the spent British cannonballs (according to the legend). The War of 1812 saw the only USRCS prisoners of war taken by an enemy until World War II. The War proved the USRCS could hold their own against even the greatest naval force of the time.

Mexican–American War
During the Mexican–American War, President James K. Polk ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to have cutters in the Gulf of Mexico report to the United States Army (instead of the Navy). By the end of the war, eight cutters had served with the Army. This was out of a total fleet of only 14 cutters. They had capabilities the Navy (or Army) did not have. This was boats that could operate in shallow water and be used for amphibious landings. The Revenue cutters served on blockade duty, ferried men and supplies and supported Army and Navy operations.

On October 8, 1847, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury informed his commanders that the service was low on funds. The expenses of operating in Mexico had reduced funds to a new low. The service needed to cut back on new ships and retire those too expensive to keep running. The USRCS was reduced to eight cutters. By 1849, six new cutters had been ordered but between the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Florida, there were only two cutters. One more served in the Gulf of Mexico. Two of the new cutters, when they became available, would serve in the Atlantic while four would serve on the West Coast.

Civil War

Just before the start of the American Civil War the Revenue Cutter Service had just 24 cutters to guard both coasts of the United States. Of these, 23 were wooden sailing ships ranging in length of from  to .  All but one were either fore-and-aft rigged sloops or topsail schooners. The remaining cutter was a brig. The service also owned one modern (for that time) wooden paddle steamer measuring  in length, the USRC Harriet Lane built in 1857-1858. The Harriet Lane was the pride of the Revenue Cutter Service. It was also the only cutter that had a full crew. The rest of the fleet barely had enough officers and men to operate the ships. Cutbacks in funding during the 1840s and 1850s and no pay raises left the service short of men. During this same period, the service began winter patrols in the North Atlantic Ocean to protect sailors. They also took on the task of enforcing immigration laws, especially on the West Coast where large numbers of Chinese coolies were being brought in on overcrowded ships.

At the start of the war a small number of officers and men left the service to join the Confederacy and formed the core of the Confederate Revenue Marine. Six cutters had been seized by Confederate forces while in Southern ports. The Harriet Lane was temporarily transferred to the Union Navy. President Abraham Lincoln requested the Navy to transfer a number of ships to the Revenue Cutter Service, however no records show if any were actually transferred. During the remainder of the war, Revenue cutters protected Northern shipping and assisted the Navy in blockading Southern ports. The cutter Harriet Lane fired the first shots of the Civil War from a ship. But in 1863, in a battle with the Confederate Army and Navy, the Harriet Lane was captured and nearly all the crew members were killed.

Spanish–American War
On April 21, 1898, the United States declared war against Spain. President William McKinley temporarily transferred the ships of the Revenue Cutter Service to operate under the direction of the Secretary of the Navy. They were ordered to cooperate with the Navy and became part of their auxiliary forces. The Revenue Cutter Service provided 13 cutters to assist the Navy. Eight served in the North Atlantic Squadron, four patrolled the West Coast and one served with Admiral George Dewey's Asiatic Squadron.

United States Coast Guard
Together, the Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Life-Saving Service formed the United States Coast Guard on 28 January 1915. The law made the Coast Guard a permanent member of the United States military and allowed it to be transferred to the U.S. Navy whenever necessary. The practice of placing the Revenue Cutter Service under control of the Navy in times of crisis had been the custom in the past. But now it was made official by the new law which also changed its name.

Notes

References

Other websites
 Alexander Hamilton Letter to the Revenue Cutter Service; YouTube
 U.S. Revenue Marine and the War of 1812; YouTube

Military of the United States
1790 establishments in the United States
1915 disestablishments
1910s disestablishments in the United States

United States Revenue Cutter Service


The Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) was a rebel group in Liberia that became active in March 2003, launching attacks from Ivory Coast. MODEL was based on the Force Spéciale pour la Libération du Monde Africain (LIMA) militia formed in September 2002 to defend Laurent Gbagbo's government against insurgents backed by Liberia's president Charles Taylor. After fighting off the imminent threat, parts of LIMA crossed the border to Liberia to continue the war there. With Taylor's forces already pressed against the larger Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), MODEL quickly gained ground. The initial leadership of MODEL came from LURD, while the majority of MODEL fighters were mobilized from Ivorian and Ghanaian refugee camps, to which many Liberians from the country's Southeast had fled.

The relationship between the rebel groups too was strained, with politicians from both movements uncooperative. MODEL was backed by the Ivorian government as a way of staking a claim in Liberian politics during the turmoil of that country's civil war, or as retaliation for the Liberian government's alleged support for rebels in Ivory Coast. Its political leader, Thomas Nimely, was named as Liberia's foreign minister in the transitional government that was appointed on October 14, 2003, following the resignation and exile of Taylor.  The group may have exported timber from regions of southern Liberia under its control, which would have been a violation of United Nations sanctions. By 2004 MODEL in effect ceased to exist.

References

External links
Voice of America, Nimely denies becoming involved in Ivory Coast's 2010 election crisis

History of Liberia
Rebel groups in Liberia
Military units and formations established in 2003
2003 establishments in Liberia

Movement for Democracy in Liberia


The Searchers were an English merseybeat band active in the 1960s. Their hit "Needles and Pins" was one of their successful song. Chris Curtis on drums, died after a long illness in 2005. Tony Jackson, died of liver cirrhosis in August 2003. John McNally lead singer, was born in 1941.

English musical groups

The Searchers (band)


Roger Philip Bresnahan (June 11, 1879 – December 4, 1944), nicknamed "the Duke of Tralee", was an American player and manager in Major League Baseball (MLB). As a player, Bresnahan competed in MLB for the Washington Senators (1897), Chicago Orphans (1900), Baltimore Orioles (1901–02), New York Giants (1902–1908), St. Louis Cardinals (1909–1912) and Chicago Cubs (1913–1915). Bresnahan also managed the Cardinals (1909–1912) and Cubs (1915). He was a member of the 1905 World Series champions.

Bresnahan began his MLB career as a pitcher. He also served as an outfielder, before becoming a regular catcher. For his MLB career, Bresnahan had a .279 batting average in 4,480 at bats and a 328–432 managerial win–loss record. Bresnahan popularized the use of protective equipment in baseball by introducing shin guards, to be worn by catchers, in 1907. He also developed the first batting helmet.

After retiring as a player, Bresnahan remained active in professional baseball. He owned the minor league Toledo Mud Hens and coached for the Giants and Detroit Tigers. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945 by the Veterans Committee.

Early life
Bresnahan was born on June 11, 1879, in Toledo, Ohio. He was the seventh child of Michael and Mary Bresnahan, who had immigrated to the United States from Tralee, Ireland. Bresnahan used to claim that he was also from Tralee, and early in his life, he earned the nickname "The Duke of Tralee".

Bresnahan began playing baseball in grade school, becoming one of the best known sandlot baseball players. He continued to play baseball at Toledo's Central High School.

Career

Early career (1895–1902)
At 16, Bresnahan signed with a semi-professional team from Manistee, Michigan. After he graduated high school, Bresnahan signed with Lima of the Ohio State League, where he played primarily as a pitcher, but also as a catcher in 1895 and 1896.

On August 10, 1897, the Washington Senators of the National League (NL) in Major League Baseball (MLB) purchased Bresnahan from Lima. He began his MLB career as a pitcher, throwing a six-hit shutout in his MLB debut against the St. Louis Browns on August 27, 1897, recording three strikeouts and walking two batters. He had six hits in 16 at bats (a .375 batting average) and had a 4–0 win–loss record for the 1897 Senators. However, the Senators released Bresnahan after the season over a salary dispute, when he attempted to hold out for more money. The Senators offered Bresnahan $2,000 ($ in current dollar terms), but Bresnahan wanted $2,400 ($ in current dollar terms).

Bresnahan played for the Toledo Mud Hens of the Interstate League and the Minneapolis Millers of the Western League in 1898, and the Millers and Buffalo Bisons of the Western League in 1899. Bresnahan appeared in two games at catcher for the Chicago Orphans of the NL in 1900, which served as a tryout.

With the formation of the American League (AL) as a competitor to the NL, Bresnahan, among others, jumped to the AL from the NL. John McGraw, manager of the Baltimore Orioles of the AL saw Bresnahan pitch for Chicago, and decided to sign him for the Orioles before the 1901 season. For the Orioles, Bresnahan filled in at catcher behind Wilbert Robinson, and also appeared in the outfield. A faster baserunner than the average catcher, Bresnahan had two inside-the-park home runs on May 30, 1902.

New York Giants (1902–1908)
With the Orioles reportedly in significant debt, part-owner John Mahon purchased shares of the team from star players Joe Kelley and John McGraw, who had resigned from the team and signed with the New York Giants of the NL, becoming the majority shareholder. On July 17, 1902, he sold his interest in the Orioles to Andrew Freedman, principal owner of the Giants, and John T. Brush, principal owner of the Cincinnati Reds, also of the NL. That day, Freedman and Brush released Bresnahan, Kelley, Joe McGinnity, Jack Cronin, Cy Seymour, and Dan McGann from their contracts. Brush then signed Kelley and Seymour to the Reds, while Freedman signed McGinnity, Bresnahan, Cronin, Gilbert, and McGann, joining McGraw, his new player-manager, on the Giants.

With Frank Bowerman and Jack Warner established as the Giants' catchers, McGraw played Bresnahan as the center fielder for the Giants. In 1903, Bresnahan batted .350, trailing Honus Wagner's .355 average atop the NL. Bresnahan batted .284 in the 1904 season, playing 96 games in the outfield, ten games at first base, four games at shortstop, and one game apiece at second base and third base, as the Giants were champions of the NL.

Bresnahan shifted to catcher full-time in 1905, as Bowerman became less effective and Warner left the Giants. Christy Mathewson preferred pitching to Bresnahan. Bresnahan caught all five games in the 1905 World Series, including three shutouts by Mathewson, and one shutout thrown by Joe McGinnity. Bresnahan led the Giants with a .313 batting average in the World Series.

On Opening Day in 1907, Bresnahan began to experiment with protective gear. Though Negro league catcher Chappie Johnson wore protective gear and Nig Clarke wore similar gear in MLB in 1905, most catchers did not wear any protective equipment at that time. Bresnahan practiced in shin guards that are worn in cricket during spring training, and debuted them on April 11, 1907. Fans, used to seeing catchers play without protective equipment, threw snowballs on the field, and without police at the game, umpire Bill Klem called off the game, with the Giants forfeiting to the Philadelphia Phillies. The press also criticized the use of shin guards. However, other catchers began to adopt Bresnahan's idea. Though Pittsburgh Pirates manager Fred Clarke protested Bresnahan's gear to the league, the protest was denied and the equipment was approved. Bresnahan caught a career-high 138 games in 1908, batting .283 and leading the NL in walks.

Bresnahan also developed the first batting helmet. He was hit in the head with a pitch by Andy Coakley of the Cincinnati Reds on June 18, 1907. Bresnahan was unconscious, and a Catholic priest read him his last rites. Bresnahan was hospitalized for ten days, during which time he developed schematics for a plastic batting helmet, though this piece of equipment did not become commonplace until the 1940s. Bresnahan was also the first catcher to wear a padded facemask while catching.

St. Louis Cardinals (1909–1912)
The Giants obtained younger and faster players in 1909; McGraw had Chief Meyers ready to succeed Bresnahan at catcher. Stanley Robison of the St. Louis Cardinals became interested in hiring Bresnahan to be a player-manager. As McGraw did not want to block Bresnahan from the opportunity, the Giants traded Bresnahan to the Cardinals for Red Murray, Bugs Raymond and Admiral Schlei after the 1908 season. Bresnahan led the Cardinals, who won only 49 games in 1908, to 54 wins in 1909 and 63 wins in 1910. Attendance increased from 205,000 fans in 1908 to 299,000 fans in 1909, and 355,000 fans in 1910.

Grateful for the improvement at the box office, Robison signed Bresnahan to a five-year contract to manage the team for a salary of $10,000 per season ($ in current dollar terms), plus ten percent of the club's profits. Robison died in March 1911, and ownership of the team transferred to Helene Hathaway Britton, his niece.

On July 11, 1911, with the Cardinals only three games out of first place, the team was involved in a train wreck while riding the Federal Express from Philadelphia to Boston. Fourteen passengers were killed after the train derailed and plunged down an  embankment outside Bridgeport, Connecticut. None of the Cardinals were seriously injured, due to a fortuitous pre-trip change in the location of their Pullman car, requested by Bresnahan. The Cardinals helped remove bodies and rescue the injured.

Bresnahan and Britton feuded publicly in 1912, as the Cardinals fell to sixth place in the NL. The Cardinals fired Bresnahan after the 1912 season due to various arguments Bresnahan had with Britton, including over Bresnahan's desire to sell Miller Huggins to another franchise. Britton cited decreased profits as a sign that Bresnahan was uninterested in the job. Huggins succeeded Bresnahan as Cardinals' manager, as she preferred Huggins' "gentlemanly" manner, as opposed to Bresnahan's rougher personality. Brenahan hired an attorney to obtain the remainder of his salary. He eventually settled the lawsuit against Britton for $20,000 ($ in current dollar terms).

Later career (1913–1931)
Following his termination by the Cardinals, the NL declared Bresnahan a free agent. He signed a three-year contract with the Cubs, receiving $10,000 ($ in current dollar terms) per season with a $25,000 signing bonus ($ in current dollar terms). He served as player-manager for the Cubs in 1915, but was released when his batting average slipped. As the rival Federal League collapsed and the Cubs merged with the Chicago Whales of the Federal League, the Cubs decided to replace Bresnahan with Whales manager Joe Tinker.

The Cubs paid Bresnahan for the remaining two years on his contract and aided Bresnahan in purchasing the Toledo Mud Hens, then in the American Association, in 1916. The club had moved to Cleveland to block the Federal League from placing a team there, but returned to Toledo under Bresnahan's control. Bresnahan played for the team until 1918, when he announced his retirement. He played for a semi-professional team in 1919, and appeared in five games for the Mud Hens in 1921. Bresnahan worked to add lights to Toledo's stadium, so that they could play night games.

Bresnahan sold the Mud Hens before the 1924 season. McGraw then hired Bresnahan as a coach for the Giants, a position he held from 1925 through 1928. He coached for the Detroit Tigers in 1930 and 1931.

Post-baseball career
During the offseasons, Bresnahan returned to Toledo. He worked as a hotel detective at the Boody House, which he later purchased. Bresnahan lost much of his money in the stock market crash of 1929. He worked as a manual laborer, as a guard at the Toledo Workhouse, and as a salesman for Toledo's Buckeye Brewing Company.

Bresnahan ran for sheriff of Lucas County as a member of the Democratic Party in 1932. He lost, and endorsed the victorious candidate in his reelection bid two years later. Bresnahan ran for county commissioner in 1944, winning the Democratic Party nomination, but losing in the general election by a few hundred votes out of 140,000 votes cast.

Bresnahan died of a heart attack at his home in Toledo on December 4, 1944 at the age of 65. He was survived by his wife, Gertrude, and his daughter, Marian. He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Toledo.

Profile and legacy

In 1,446 games, he had a batting average of .279 with 26 home runs and 530 runs batted in in 4,480 at-bats. His overall managerial record was . Miller Huggins named Bresnahan the catcher on his all-time team.

Bresnahan stood approximately . He was described as "highly strung and almost abnormally emotional" by a reporter. Bill James wrote that Bresnahan "was one of those guys that if you were on his team and played hard he was as nice to you as could be, but if you got on his bad side you'd think he was the Breath of Hell."

Bresnahan was known for baiting umpires. He and McGraw were often ejected from games, suspended, and on a few occasions escorted from the field by police. A 1911 directive by NL president Thomas Lynch, compelling umpires to prevent catchers from antagonizing batters with verbal abuse, mentioned only Bresnahan by name.

Bresnahan was elected to the Hall of Fame the year after his death. He had received 47 votes of the 226 electors in the 1936 Hall of Fame balloting, and between 43 and 67 votes each time from 1937 through 1942. In the 1945 balloting, occurring one month after Bresnahan's death, he received 133 votes, still falling short of enshrinement. However, the Permanent Committee noticed the surge in votes and elected him in April 1945.

Regarding his Hall of Fame induction, James has criticized the election, saying that Bresnahan "wandered in the Hall of Fame on a series of miscalculations", and regarding his election, that "the Hall of Fame had, for the first time, selected a player who clearly had no damn business being there".

Commemorations
Bresnahan was mentioned in the 1949 poem "Line-Up for Yesterday" by Ogden Nash:

See also

List of Major League Baseball career stolen bases leaders
List of Major League Baseball player-managers

References
Bibliography

In-line citations

External links

1879 births
1944 deaths
Baltimore Orioles (1901–02) players
National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
Chicago Cubs managers
Chicago Cubs players
Chicago Orphans players
American people of Irish descent
Major League Baseball catchers
New York Giants (NL) players
Baseball players from Toledo, Ohio
St. Louis Cardinals managers
St. Louis Cardinals players
Washington Senators (1891–1899) players
New York Giants (NL) coaches
Detroit Tigers coaches
Toledo Mud Hens managers
Toledo Mud Hens players
Minneapolis Millers (baseball) players
Buffalo Bisons (minor league) players
Toledo Iron Men players
Major League Baseball player-managers
19th-century baseball players

Roger Bresnahan


Fyre, formerly de Jong Explorer, is a cross-platform tool for producing artwork based on histograms of iterated chaotic functions. It implements the Peter de Jong map in a fixed function pipeline through either a GTK GUI frontend, or a command line facility for easier rendering of high-resolution, high quality images. The program was renamed from de Jong Explorer to Fyre simply because 'It wasn't taken yet' and so that in the future, it could support more functions than just the standard Peter de Jong map. Fyre features a sidebar on the left to which the user can input the required variables and on the right is displayed the result of the equation.

Extra features

 Additional image manipulation tools such as Gaussian blurs and Gamma controls are included in the program. The advantage to using them directly within Fyre is that the image accuracy and quality do not decline.
 Fyre features animation capabilities so that a user can link together several maps and create uncompressed AVIs from them. However, the uncompressed animation files are very large and so should be compressed with a separate tool, such as mencoder.

Peter de Jong Map

For most values of a,b,c and d the point (x,y) moves chaotically. The resulting image is a map of the probability that the point lies within the area represented by each pixel. Therefore, the longer that the user lets Fyre render for, the larger the probability map becomes and the more accurate the resulting image.

External links
Archive of Fyre home page on Internet Archive Wayback Machine

Graphics software
Graphics software that uses GTK
Graphics-related software for Linux

Fyre (software)


The ostrich (Struthio camelus) is a large flightless bird that lives in Africa. They are the largest living bird species, and have the biggest eggs of all living birds. Ostriches do not fly, but can run faster than any other bird.

They are ratites, a useful grouping of medium to large flightless birds. Ostriches have the biggest eyes of all land animals.

Appearance
Ostriches have long legs and a long neck, but they have a small head. Male ostriches have black feathers and female ostriches have gray and brown feathers. Both males and females have white feathers on their wings and tails.
Male ostriches can be 1.8 - 2.7 meters / 6 – 9 feet tall, while female ostriches are 1.7 – 2 meters / 5.5 - 6.5 ft tall. They can run with a speed of about 65 kilometers per hour/40 miles per hour.

Habitat
Ostriches now only live in Africa. They live in open grassland called savanna in the Sahel, and in parts of East Africa and south-west Africa. Some ostriches live in areas of the Sahara desert. There used to be ostriches in Middle East in the 20th century, but these went extinct in 1960 in Jordan.

Food
Ostriches mainly eat plant matter, but they also eat insects. The plant matter consists of seeds, shrubs, grass, fruits and flowers while the insects they eat include locusts. Ostriches do not have teeth, and so cannot grind food as mammals do. Instead, they swallow pebbles. An adult ostrich carries about 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of stones in its gizzard, a special sac just before the stomach. The pebbles grind the food, and help its digestion. When eating, their gullet is filled with food. After that, the food is passed down their esophagus in the form of a ball called a bolus. The bolus may be as much as 210 ml (7.1 US fl oz). Ostriches can live without drinking for several days.

Behaviour

Social behavior

Ostriches normally spend the winter months in pairs or alone. During breeding season and sometimes during extreme rainless periods Ostriches live in nomadic groups of five to 50 birds (led by a top hen) that often travel together with other grazing animals, such as zebras or antelopes.

With their acute eyesight and hearing, Ostriches can sense predators such as lions from far away. When being pursued by a predator, they have been known to reach speeds in excess of , and can maintain a steady speed of , which makes the Ostrich the world's fastest two-legged animal. When lying down and hiding from predators, the birds lay their heads and necks flat on the ground, making them appear as a mound of earth from a distance. This even works for the males, as they hold their wings and tail low so that the heat haze of the hot, dry air that often occurs in their habitat aids in making them appear as a nondescript dark lump.

Ostriches can tolerate a wide range of temperatures. In much of their habitat, temperatures vary as much as  between night and day. Their temperature control mechanism relies on action by the bird, which uses its wings to cover the naked skin of the upper legs and flanks to conserve heat, or leaves these areas bare to release heat.

Reproduction

Ostriches become sexually adults when they are 2 to 4 years old; females are adults about six months younger than males. The mating process differs in different places. Territorial males hiss and use other sounds to claim mating rights over a harem of two to seven hens.

Fights usually last just minutes, but the ostriches can kill each other by slamming their heads into opponents. The winning male will then mates with all the females in the area, but he will only form a pair bond with the dominant female.

The females lay their eggs in one shared nest, a pit dug into the ground,  deep and  wide. The male ostrich digs the pit. The dominant female lays her eggs first, and when it is time to cover them to keep them warm, she pushes the eggs from the weakest females out.  Most of the time, she leaves about 20 in most cases.

Ostrich eggs are the largest of all eggs (and the yolk is the largest single cell), but they are actually the smallest eggs relative to the size of the adult bird. — on average they are  long,  wide, and weigh , over 20 times the weight of a chicken egg. The eggs are incubated by the females by day and by the males by night. This uses the colouration of the two sexes to escape detection of the nest, as the drab female blends in with the sand, while the black male is nearly undetectable in the night. The incubation period is 35 to 45 days.

Males and females cooperate in rearing chicks. The male defends the hatchlings and teaches them to feed. The survival rate is low for the hatchlings, with an average of one per nest surviving to adulthood.

Predators
When threatened, the ostrich will either hide itself by lying flat against the ground, or will run away. If cornered, it can attack with a kick from its powerful legs. Common predators of nests and young ostriches include jackals, various birds of prey, mongoose and vultures. Animals that prey on ostriches of all ages include cheetahs, lions, leopards, african dogs, and spotted hyena. Ostriches can often outrun their predators in a pursuit and can even outpace cheetahs over long distances. However, they may sometimes fight fiercely against predators, especially when chicks are being defended. They have sometimes killed lions in such fights.

Evolution
There is no doubt that the ratites are not a monophyletic group, because they are not descended from a single ancestor. That means the taxonomy of the group is going to change, and they will not all be placed in the Order Struthioniformes as they have been. However, as ornothologists have not yet agreed on a new classification, for the time being the useful term 'ratites' is still used.

Unusual morphology
Ostriches are likely to be placed alone in the order Struthioniformes. They have a number of peculiarities which suggest a separate evolution from the rest of the ratites. They lack a gallbladder. They have three stomachs, and the caecum is  long. Unlike all other living birds, the Ostrich secretes uric acid separately from faeces. Unlike all other birds, who store the uric acid and faeces together, and excrete them together, ostriches store the faeces at the end of their rectum. They also have unique pubic bones that are fused to hold their gut. Unlike most birds the males have a penis, which is retractable and  long. Their palate (bone on the roof of the mouth) differs from other ratites.

Ostriches and humans
Ostriches are farmed in several countries. They used to be prized for their feathers, but are now farmed for their meat and eggs. Their skin can also be used to make leather.

In South Africa, hunters can get one group of feathers from one wild ostrich. When they are farmed, every seven or eight months farmers can take groups of feathers from the ostriches. They will grow back and can be collected again a in seven or eight more months.

When threatened, Ostriches run away, but they can cause serious injury and death with kicks from their powerful legs. Their legs can only kick forward.

Ostriches reared entirely by humans may not direct their courtship behaviour at other Ostriches, but toward their human keepers. Ostriches live 30 to 40 years on average.

It is sometimes said that ostriches will hide their heads in the ground when they are scared or threatened, but this is not true.

Racing

In some countries, people race each other on the back of Ostriches. The practice is common in Africa and is relatively unusual elsewhere. The Ostriches are ridden in the same way as horses with special saddles, reins, and bits. However, they are harder to manage than horses.

Gallery

References

Ratites
Struthioniformes
Birds of Africa

Ostrich


Ozimops lumsdenae is a species of molossid bat found in Australia, the largest of the genus Ozimops.

Taxonomy
It is a species of genus Ozimops, both taxa emerging in the publication of new species and generic combinations of mostly Australian molossid bats. Prior to this, an analysis of populations in the regions in 1988 had identified this group as Mormopterus species 1'. Specimens have previously been described as Mormopterus beccarii, at least in part.. The generic combination of this species was inferred by the elevation of a subgenus to genus Ozimops. The first publication of the species was in 2014, allying it to a subgenus of the group under revision as Mormopterus (Ozimops) lumsdenae.

The synonymy of the new species was recognised as,
 Mormopterus species 1 Adams et al. 1988
 Mormopterus beccarii Peters, 1881
 Mormopterus beccarii astrolabiensis Meyer, 1899

The type specimen, a male, was obtained on 13 September 2002 by three collectors at a water dam aside the Peninsula Developmental Road, north of the town Coen in Queensland.
The epithet refers to an ecologist and conservation advocate of bats, Lindy Lumsden, which the authors gave in honour of her contribution to chiropteran research.

Description
Ozimops lumsdenae is a larger microbat, insectivorous flying mammals, which is robust in appearance and the largest of its genus. The length of the forearm is 35.2 to 40.4 millimetres and weight was measured to give a range from 11 to 19.5 grams. The pelage is a rich brown colour at the back and lighter on the ventral side. The genital morphology distinguishes O. lumsdenae from sister species, the clitoris is visible as a long projection. The phallus is comparatively short, around 4 mm, the preputial gland is elongate and large. The glans penis of the species is approximately 2.6 mm and cylindrical, with structural forms that distinguish the males from other species.

Distribution and habitat
An endemic species of the Australian mainland, its distribution extends across the north of the continent; these areas are up to 700 kilometres from the coastline in a range of habitats receiving 200 to 1500 mm of rainfall each year. The range across the Top End and into the Pilbara region is reported to be sparsely colonised by the species, and regarded as uncommon. The records of specimens in Queensland are extensive but uncertain, and the penetration into the southeast of the country has not been established. The southern occurrence in the east are records in echolocation surveys undertaken in New South Wales that indicate a widespread range in the region, although no specimens are certain to have been collected there.

The recorded habitat of O. lumsdenae is associated with permanent water, agricultural dams, and watercourses in semi-arid regions, where it resides and forages in eucalypt woodland. The species is also found in tropical (high rainfall) regions, where habitat includes a range of rainforest, riparian zones at rivers and floodplain, and wetter woodland or savannah vegetation.

Ecology
The species may occur with others of the genus Ozimops, it is recorded in sympatry with Ozimops ridei O. cobourgianus, O. halli and perhaps with O. petersi.

The conservation status of Ozimops lumsdenae is least concern at the entry in the IUCN redlist, which notes the population may decline as a result of land use changes, primarily the pastoralist techniques that are recognised as degrading habitat in the regions inhabited by the species.

Notes

References

Mammals described in 2014
Bats of Australia
Ozimops

Ozimops lumsdenae


Richard Clewin Griffith (22 July 1872 in London – 11 December 1955 in Hendon, London) was an English chess player, author and editor. He was educated at Charterhouse School.

He won the British Chess Championship in 1912 at Richmond, at his only appearance in the event.  Also in 1912, he was the original co-author with John Herbert White of the famous chess book, Modern Chess Openings, which has gone into many editions up to the present day.

He was the editor of the British Chess Magazine from 1920 to 1937, and again for some months in 1940.

During World War II Griffith was the honorary treasurer of the British Chess Federation, and a member of its council and executive.

By profession, he was a metallurgist for an assaying company.

References
British Chess Magazine, passim, particularly obit., Jan 1956, pps27-28.
The Times, 12 December 1955, page 13 - obituary

1872 births
1955 deaths
People educated at Charterhouse School
Chess players  from London
English non-fiction writers
British chess writers
Chess theoreticians
British metallurgists
English male non-fiction writers

Richard Griffith (chess player)


The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) states that it is "the largest Arab American grassroots civil rights organization in the United States." According to its webpage it is open to people of all backgrounds, faiths and ethnicities and has a national network of chapters and members in all 50 states. It claims that three million Americans trace their roots to an Arab country.

The ADC seeks to "empower Arab Americans, defend the civil rights of all people, promote Arab cultural heritage, promote civic participation, encourage a balanced US policy in the Middle East and support freedom and development in the Arab World."  ADC has a number of programs to combat discrimination and bias against Arab-Americans, including stereotypes of Arabs in the United States. The ADC is a member of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and holds a seat on the Leadership Conference National Board of Directors.

ADC was founded in 1980 by James Abourezk, the first Arab-American United States senator, and Arab-American political activist James Zogby. Samer Khalaf, an attorney from New Jersey who was on the national board and executive committee of the ADC, and former interim legal director, became ADC national president in December 2013.

The Advisory Board of the ADC has included Muhammad Ali, Queen Noor of Jordan, Casey Kasem, United States House of Representatives members John Conyers and Darrell Issa, former members Paul Findley and Nick Joe Rahall, Archbishop Philip Saliba and others.

Organization
The ADC Legal Department offers counseling in cases of discrimination, defamation and hate crimes and provides assistance in selected litigation. Since the September 11 attacks, ADC attorneys have addressed hundreds of cases against airlines and employers for discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and national origin and against the United States government for discriminatory detentions of Arabs and Muslims without probable cause.

ADC's Communications Department challenges defamation, stereotyping and bias in films, television and news reporting.  Its Media Monitoring Team responds to such incidents. ADC spokespersons are considered an authoritative voice on Arab-American affairs and appear regularly on major national and international media outlets and consult on a wide range of documentaries and educational programs.

The Government Affairs department works with the United States Congress, the White House, the United States Department of State and Department of Justice, as well as other government agencies to promote the interests of the community. US citizen members of ADC can contribute to the NAAA-ADC Political Action Committee (PAC) to support political candidates for federal office.

ADC's Organizing Department mobilizes the local chapters' efforts and directs ADC's national campaigns. ADC convenes an annual Convention. Convention speakers have included government officials like Department of Homeland Security civil rights officer Daniel W. Sutherland and then-United States Secretary of State Colin L. Powell

The ADC Research Institute (ADCRI), founded in 1981, is a Section 501(c)(3) educational organization that sponsors research studies, seminars, conferences and publications about the discrimination faced by Arab Americans as well as promotes a better understanding of Arab cultural heritage. ADC's "Reaching the Teachers" campaign provides lesson plans, background articles, fact sheets, bibliographies and other resources to educators. ADC's intern program for undergraduate, graduate and law students trains Arab-American leaders. The institute offers a bibliography of anti-Arab bias. In 2008 the Institute issued a lengthy report on hate crimes and discrimination against Arab Americans.

History

20th century
During the 1970s American Arabs' concerns about negative media images grew as a result of the Arab–Israeli conflict and Arab countries' defeat in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War grew. Founder James Abourezk initially was motivated by unfair stereotyping of Arabs in media, anti-Arabism in general and the Abscam sting where Federal Bureau of Investigation agents posed as Arabs. He brought together more than 60 Arab leaders from around the nation who agreed to form the committee. Abourezk has stated: "When we started up people used to ask us why we started. Now they ask us for our opinion on things."

After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, ADC began organizing demonstrations and marches. The war greatly increased Arab Americans' willingness to speak out in general, as well as groups' use of the term "Arab American" to self-identify.

In 1985, ADC offices suffered a series of violent attacks. On August 16, a bomb exploded in the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee office in Boston, severely injuring two police officers. On October 29 an arson fire damaged the ADC office in Washington, D.C. On October 11, the day after the ending of the Achille Lauro incident where a Jewish American died,  Alex Odeh, ADC's west-coast regional director, was killed in a bombing as he opened the door to his office. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) suspected Jewish Defense League and Jewish Defense Organization members.

Although Jewish Defense League leader Irv Rubin, who lived in Southern California, made some controversial statements about the bombing, the investigation focused on Robert Manning and his wife Rochelle who fled to Israel. They eventually were prosecuted on another bombing charge and Manning is serving a life sentence on that charge.

During the 1991 Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, ADC president James Abourezk expressed concern that Arab Americans would be targeted, revealing that a violent anti-Arab telephone message had been left on an ADC answering machine. ADC documented that more than 100 hate crimes against Arab-Americans were committed from August 1990 through March 1991, including arson against a Detroit restaurant and the planting of a bomb in a San Diego mosque.

In 1993, ADC and the American Civil Liberties Union settled a lawsuit against Pan American World Airways for their detention of a man of Iranian descent during the 1991 Gulf War. The groups and individual shared in the $110,000 settlement.

In 1993, ADC protested the characterization of Arabs and the song lyrics in the 1992 Disney film, Aladdin. In response, the offensive lyrics – "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home" – were changed to unoffensive ones – "Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home" – for the 1993 video release. Due to this incident, Entertainment Weekly listed Aladdin as one of the most controversial films in history.

In 1993, twelve civil rights groups led by the ADC and the National Lawyers Guild filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles alleging that the "pro-Israel" Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had spied on their political activities and shared information with police. They demanded ADL release its surveillance information and end its investigations, as well as be ordered to pay punitive damages. They also sued the police and sheriffs' departments of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Then communications director Hussein Ibish stated that ADL was gathering information "systematically in a program whose clear intent was to undermine civil rights and Arab-American organizations." In 1999 ADL and the groups reached an agreement whereby ADL purged certain personal information held on the plaintiffs and agreed to pay $175,000 for the plaintiffs' legal fees and contribute $25,000 toward a community relations fund to advance good relations among Arabs, Jews and others.

In 1996, the U.S. Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which increased the regulation of fund raising that might benefit alleged terrorists and made it easier to bar or deport those with suspected terrorist affiliations. It also passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act allowing deportation of immigrants for minor offenses, even those committed decades ago, and even if individuals had American spouses and/or children. It also allowed secret classified evidence and denial of bond for those under threat of deportation. ADC began campaigns to contest these laws and even dilute or overturn them through legal action. One lawsuit by Arabs claiming they were targeted for deportation because of affiliations with an unpopular political group, in violation of their First and Fifth Amendment, reached the Supreme Court, in Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee . While the ruling cast doubt on the role of secret evidence, many observers interpreted it as restricting First Amendment rights of all non-citizens, including legal immigrants.

21st century
In 2000, ADC supported a congressional letter to President Bill Clinton, signed by 68 members of congress, calling for economic sanctions against the people of Iraq to be lifted. ADC's press release noted that the United Nations estimated that over one million civilians, mostly children, had died from malnutrition and disease due to the embargo.

In July 2001, ADC announced the creation of a "Right of Return" Taskforce supporting Palestinian refugees "right to return to their original homes, have their property restored to them and receive compensation for any losses incurred as a result of displacement or dispossession." ADC asserted this was basic to international human rights and recognized as applying to the Palestinian refugees by many United Nations resolutions, most notably, UN Resolution 194. The taskforce's goal was to raise public awareness of the right and its importance in creating Middle East peace and to coordinate advocacy efforts. In 2004 ADC signed on to a letter affirming the Palestinian Right of Return in response to President George W. Bush's declaration of support for the policies of Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon which allegedly denied that right.

After the September 11 attacks, ADC concerned itself with "an unprecedented backlash in the form of hate crimes, discrimination and various civil liberties violations" against the Arab American community, as well as against Muslims. It also addressed the October 2001 passage of the Patriot Act which increased federal law enforcement surveillance abilities, eased restrictions on foreign intelligence gathering within the U.S., expanded regulation of financial transactions and enhanced law enforcement abilities to detain and deport immigrants merely suspected of some relation to terrorists. Under the Act law enforcement immediately targeted mainly Arab-Americans and South Asians, including "massive secret detentions," selective enforcement through "voluntary" interviews, deportation of Middle Eastern men and further restrictions on immigration by Arabs and Muslims.

In December 2001, ADC met with US Department of Justice representatives to express concerns about the Patriot Act. It was a signatory to a March 17, 2003 letter from a number of civil liberties and other organizations asking members of the U.S. Congress to oppose the leaked draft of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 holding it contained "a multitude of new and sweeping law enforcement and intelligence gathering powers … that would severely dilute, if not undermine, many basic constitutional rights." Also known as "Patriot Act II," it was not passed into law.  In 2002 ADC joined a coalition of Muslim groups to sue then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Immigration and Naturalization Service for arrests and detention of immigrant men trying to register with federal authorities.

In 2003, when then University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian was indicted on terrorism-related charges ADC issued a press release stating that a "pattern of profiling and targeting the community is of deep concern to ADC and we will continue to monitor the situation." Speaking on CNN, then-communications director Hussein Ibish stated: "Until we have some reason based in fact to think otherwise, I think that the presumption has to be that this is a political witch-hunt, a vendetta, and a kind of very, very ugly post-9/11 McCarthyism." In December, 2005, after Al-Arian was acquitted of eight charges, and the jury deadlocked on nine others, ADC stated that in the verdict was seen as a "major defeat" for some of the most controversial elements of the Patriot Act. On March 2, 2006, Al-Arian entered a guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy to help the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a "specially designated terrorist" organization. He was sentenced to 57 months in prison, and ordered deported following his prison term.

In 2003, ADC was a co-plaintiff with the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups in the first major legal challenge to Section 215 of the Patriot Act that expands federal agents' power to secretly obtain records and personal belongings of citizens and permanent residents. They charged it violated constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as rights to freedom of speech and association. After a nationwide campaign to reform the Patriot Act, in 2006 the plaintiffs withdrew the suit, citing improvements to the law.

In 2004, ADC demanded that Webster's Third New International Dictionary remove from its definition of anti-Semitism "opposition to Zionism" and "sympathy for the opponents of Israel". ADC then-communications director Hussein Ibish wrote that the extended definition trivialized the "very concept of anti-Semitism" and "smears and impugns the motives of all those who support the human and political rights of Palestinians." A Merriam-Webster company spokesman stated that the older definition was not supported by current usage and probably would be dropped with publication of a new unabridged version by 2010.

In the weeks before the 2004 United States presidential election, a San Francisco-based ADC official wrote about federal law enforcement's "October Plan," including home intrusions and work site visits on Middle Easterners and South Asians to seek information about a possible pre-election terrorist attack. Because counter terrorism officials admitted they had no specific intelligence about such a plan, the official asserted that the plan was a "makeover of other racially and politically motivated Bush administration initiatives, appears timed to elevate fear in the United States in the days before the presidential election."

During the 2006 Lebanon War, ADC filed a federal lawsuit claiming that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld failed to fulfill constitutional obligations to protect US citizens under attack in Lebanon. The lawsuit asked the federal court to compel the officials to request a cease fire and to stop all U.S. military support to Israel during the evacuation of US citizens from Lebanon. ADC president Hon. Mary Rose Oakar charged that "the Bush Administration has encouraged the violence by sending an urgent shipment of bombs to Israel giving that country the green light to continue in its  bombing of Lebanon."

In 2007, the FBI revealed they had received information from a deceased informant, believed to be former Jewish Defense League member Earl Krugel who had been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for 2001 plots to bomb a Southern California mosque and office of U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, who is Arab-American. It is believed that Irv Rubin, who committed suicide in 2002 in custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Los Angeles while awaiting trial on the same charges, revealed to Krugel the names of those responsible for Odeh's death and that Krugel shared those with the FBI before he was murdered in prison in 2005. The bombers are believed to be Manning and two individuals now living in Israel. ADC continues to honor Odeh's memory and call for prosecution of his killers. The FBI has failed to arrest anyone in the Odeh bombing case.

ADC protested a March 2008 Iowa comment on radio by Republican Congressman Steve King who said that if Barack Obama was elected president, "then the radical Islamists and their supporters will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror." He also raised questions about Obama's middle name "Hussein," reiterating similar comments in an Associated Press interview. ADC called for Congress to censure King.

In July 2008, ADC signed on to a letter to Senator Joseph Lieberman, who chairs the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, expressing concerns that Arabs and Muslims were not consulted before, and their views mischaracterized in, a May committee report titled, "Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat." Lieberman assured the groups he does intend to consult with them on security issues.

In November 2008, Benjamin Emanuel, the father of U.S. president Barack Obama's new Chief of Staff appointee Rahm Emanuel was quoted by a Hebrew language daily as saying, "Obviously, he will influence the President to be pro-Israel. Why shouldn't he do it? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floor of the White House." ADC called on Rahm Emanuel to repudiate his father's comment, saying it viewed "this characterization of an Arab as an unacceptable smear." On November 13, 2008, Rahm Emanuel issued a statement doing so. An Emanuel spokesman said Emanuel offered to meet with Arab-American community representatives in the future."

On January 25 and 28, 2010, ADC and like-minded organizations lobbied the United States Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, respectively, in an effort to reverse the Transportation Security Administration's new policy of profiling air travelers by country of origin. The ADC joined more than 25 other organizations in signing a letter to DHS Secretary Napolitano protesting the policy, arguing that ethnic and racial profiling has proven ineffective and runs counter to express commitments by DHS.

In June 2011, the ADC held a "Townhall Meeting" regarding the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, calling it "a just and legal movement that has proved to be effective in showing not only support for the Palestinian people, but also in putting pressure on businesses, governments, educational institutions, and others, in re-thinking support for the Occupation of Palestine."

In December 2011, the ADC supported and called for a boycott against Lowe's, a U.S. department store, saying that it was a protest "against bigotry and hatred" due to Lowe's decision to no longer advertise on the television show "All-American Muslim."

National Association of Arab-Americans
The National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) was a political advocacy group for Americans of Arab heritage which existed between 1972 and 2002. It focused on lobbying the federal government on issues including the Arab–Israeli conflict. In a 2006 book, scholar Gregory Orfalea considered it one of the three most influential Arab-American advocacy organizations, along with the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG) and the ADC. The organization merged with the ADC in January 2002.

At the peak of its influence in the 1970s, the NAAA had around 200,000 members. It was the first Arab-American organization to officially register as a lobby. Unlike earlier Arab-American advocacy groups like the AAUG, it was primarily made up of second- and third-generation Arab-Americans with fewer direct ties to Middle Eastern societies.

References

External links
Official website

Arab-American organizations
Civil liberties advocacy groups in the United States
Anti-racist organizations in the United States
Organizations established in 1980
Political advocacy groups in the United States