Finding Nemo is a 2003 American computer-animated comedy adventure film written and directed by Andrew Stanton, released by Walt Disney Pictures, and the fifth film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It tells the story of the over-protective clownfish named Marlin (Albert Brooks) who searches for his captured son Nemo (Alexander Gould), along with a regal blue tang named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) in Sydney Harbour. Along the way, Marlin learns to take risks and let Nemo take care of himself. It is Pixar's first film to be released in cinemas in the northern hemisphere summer. The film was re-released for the first time in 3D on September 14, 2012, and it was released on Blu-ray on December 4, 2012. A sequel, Finding Dory, was released on January 12, 2016.

The film received extremely positive reviews and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was the second highest-grossing film of the year, earning a total of $921 million worldwide. Finding Nemo is also the best-selling DVD of all time, with over 40 million copies sold as of 2011, and was the highest money making G-rated film of all time before The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On the Run overtook it. It is also the 22nd highest money making film of all time, as well as the 3rd highest money making animated film. In 2008, the American Film Institute named it the tenth greatest animated film ever made during their Top 10.

Plot
Two clownfish, Marlin and his wife Coral are admiring their new home in the Great Barrier Reef and their clutch of eggs that are due to hatch in a few days. Suddenly, a barracuda attacks them, and Marlin tries to defend and save his eggs, leaving Marlin unconscious. Coral and all but one of their eggs are also eaten. Marlin names this egg Nemo, a name that Coral liked.

The movie next shows Nemo's first day of school. Nemo has a tiny right fin, because his egg was injured by the barracuda attack. This makes it difficult for him to swim. After Marlin embarrasses Nemo during a school field trip by mistake, Nemo refuses and sneaks away from the reef towards a boat. So he gets captured by scuba divers. As the boat sails away, one of the divers accidentally knocks his diving mask into the water.

While trying to save Nemo, Marlin meets Dory, a good-hearted and optimistic Regal blue tang with short-term memory loss. While meeting three sharks on a fish-free diet, Bruce, a great white shark; Anchor, a hammerhead shark; and Chum, a mako shark, Marlin discovers the diver's mask that was dropped from the boat and notices an address written on it. However, when he angrily argues with Dory and accidentally gives her a nosebleed, the scent of blood causes Bruce to lose control of himself and attempt to eat Marlin and Dory. The two escape from Bruce but the mask falls into a trench in the deep sea. During a hazardous struggle with an anglerfish in the trench, Dory realizes she is able to read the address written on the mask, which leads to Sydney, Australia, and manages to remember it.  She repeats " P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney" to keep it in her memory. After receiving directions to Sydney from a large school of Silver moony, Marlin and Dory accidentally run into a bloom of jellyfish that nearly sting them to death; Marlin falls exhausted after the risky escape and wakes up to see a surf-cultured Green sea turtle named Crush, who takes Dory and him on the East Australian Current, referred to as the EAC by the animals. In the current, Marlin shares the story of his journey with a group of young sea turtles who spread the story around the ocean.

Meanwhile, Nemo's captor - P. Sherman, a dentist - places him into a fish tank in his office on Sydney Harbour. There, Nemo meets a group of aquarium fish called the "Tank Gang", led by a crafty and ambitious moorish idol named Gill. The "Tank Gang" includes Peach, a starfish;  Bloat, a puffer fish; Bubbles, a Yellow tang; Deb, a Blacktailed humbug Gurgle, a Royal gramma; and Jacques, a pacific cleaner shrimp;. The fish are frightened to learn that the dentist plans to give Nemo to his niece, Darla. She is infamous for killing a goldfish given to her previously by constantly shaking the bag. In order to avoid this fate, Gill gives Nemo a role in an escape plan, which involves jamming the tank's filter and forcing the dentist to remove the fish from the tank to clean it manually. The fish could be placed in plastic bags, at which point they could only roll out the window and into the harbor. After a friendly pelican named Nigel visits with news of Marlin's adventure, Nemo succeeds in jamming the filter, but the plan backfires when the dentist installs a new high-tech filter.

While leaving the East Australian Current, Marlin and Dory get lost in the blooms of plankton and krill and are caught by a blue whale. Inside the whale's immense mouth, Marlin tries to escape while Dory talks with it in whale-speak. So, the whale carries them to Sydney Harbour and expels them through his blowhole. They are met by Nigel, who recognizes Marlin from the stories he has heard and rescues him and Dory from a flock of hungry seagulls by scooping them into his beak and taking them to the dentist's man's office. By this time, Darla has arrived and the dentist is prepared to give Nemo to her. Nemo tries to play dead in hopes of saving himself, and, at the same time, Nigel arrives. Marlin sees Nemo and mistakes this act for the actual death of his son. After a struggle, Gill helps Nemo escape into a drain through a sink.

Sad, Marlin leaves Dory and begins to swim back home. Poor Dory then loses her memory and becomes a little worried, but meets Nemo, who has reached the ocean, has no memory of him. As you know, Dory's memory is restored again after she reads the word "Sydney" on a nearby drainpipe and, remembering her journey, she guides Nemo to Marlin. After the two joyfully reunite, Dory is caught in a fishing net with a school of grouper. Nemo bravely enters the net and directs the group to swim downward to break the net, reminiscent of a similar scenario that occurred in the fish tank earlier. The fish, including Dory, succeed in breaking the net and escape. After some days, Nemo leaves for school once more and Marlin who is no longer overprotective after all.

Back at the dentist's office, the high-tech filter breaks down and The Tank Gang escape into the harbor. But, they realize that they are trapped in the bags of water that the dentist put them into when cleaning the tank.

Cast

Soundtrack
Father and Son by Cat Stevens
Just Keep Swimming by Ellen DeGeneres
Slicin' Sand by Authority Zero
Surfin' Safari by Reel Big Fish
Perfect by Simple Plan
Learn to Fly by Foo Fighters
Become What You Hate by Midtown
Fandango by Bob Bain
Psycho by Bernard Herrmann
Down Under by Men at Work

Reception
Finding Nemo currently holds a 99% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes with 100% by top critics, and an average of 89% on Metacritic. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, calling it "one of those rare movies where I always wanted to sit in the front row and let the images wash out to the edges of my field of vision." The late broadway stars Paul Winchell, John Fiedler, and Ken Sansom who were the voices of three of Pooh's friends, Tigger, Piglet, & Rabbit in the Winnie the Pooh franchise, said Finding Nemo was their favorite animated film.

The film's use of clownfish prompted mass purchase of the animal as pets in the United States, even though the movie portrayed the use of fish as pets negatively and suggested that saltwater aquariums are notably tricky and expensive to maintain. The demand for clownfish was supplied by large-scale harvesting of tropical fish in regions like Vanuatu.

At the same time, the film had a quote that "all drains lead back to the ocean" (Nemo escapes from the aquarium by going down a sink drain, ending up in the sea). Since water typically undergoes treatment before leading to the ocean, the JWC Environmental company quipped that a more realistic title for the movie might be Grinding Nemo. However, in Sydney, much of the sewer system does really pass directly to outfall pipes deep offshore, without a high level of treatment (although pumping and some filtering occur). Additionally, according to the DVD, there was a cut sequence with Nemo going through a treatment plant's mechanisms before ending up in the ocean pipes. However, in the final product, logos for "Sydney Water Treatment" are featured prominently along the path to the ocean, implying that Nemo really did pass through some water treatment.

The Australian Tourism Commission (ATC) launched several marketing campaigns in China and the USA in order to improve tourism in Australia, many of them using Finding Nemo clips. Queensland also used Finding Nemo to draw tourists to promote its state for vacationers.

On the 3-D re-release, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly wrote that its emotional power was deepened by "the dimensionality of the oceanic deep" where "the spatial mysteries of watery currents and floating worlds are exactly where 3-D explorers were born to boldly go."

The 3-D re-release also prompted a retrospective on the film then nine years after its initial release. Stephen Whitty of the Newark Star-Ledger described it as "A genuinely funny and touching film that, in less than a decade, has established itself as a timeless classic,"  with Roger Moore of the McClatchy-Tribune News Service calling the movie "the gold standard against which all other modern animated films are measured."

Home media
Finding Nemo was released on DVD and VHS on November 4, 2003. The film was also released on DVD in a "Gold Edition", which came with a Finding Nemo stuffed toy character. The film had a home video release on both Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D on December 4, 2012, with both a 3-disc and a 5-disc set and was released on 4K Ultra-HD on September 10, 2019.

Production
The inspiration for Nemo was made up of multiple experiences. The idea goes back to when director Andrew Stanton was a child, when he loved going to the dentist to see the fish tank, assuming that the fish were from the ocean and wanted to go home. In 1992 shortly after his son was born, he and his family took a trip to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (which was called Marine World at the time). There he saw the shark tube and various exhibits he felt that the underwater world had bene done beautifully in computer animation. Later, in 1997 he took his son for a walk in the park, but found that he was over protecting him constantly and lost an opportunity to have any "father-son experiences" on that day. In an interview with National Geographic magazine, he stated that the idea for the characters of Marlin and Nemo came from a photograph of two clownfish peeking out of an anemone:"It was so arresting. I had no idea what kind of fish they were, but I wasn't taking my eyes off them. And as an entertainer, the fact that they were called clownfish—it was perfect. There's almost nothing more appealing than these little fish that want to play peekaboo with you." Also, clownfish are very colourful, but don't seem to tend to come out of an anemone very often, and for a character who has to go on a dangerous journey, Stanton felt a clownfish was the perfect kind of fish for the character.

Pre-production of the film took place in early 1997. Stanton began writing the screenplay during the post-production of A Bug's Life. As such, it began production with a complete screenplay, something that co-director Lee Unkrich called "very unusual for an animated film." The artists took scuba diving lessons so they could go and study the coral reef. The idea for the initiation sequence came from a story conference between Andrew Stanton and Bob Peterson while driving to record the actors. Ellen DeGeneres was cast after Stanton was watching Ellen with his wife and seeing Ellen "change the subject five times before finishing one sentence" as Stanton recalled. There was a pelican character known as Gerald (who in the final film ends up swallowing and choking on Marlin and Dory) who was originally a friend of Nigel. They were going to play against each other as Nigel being neat fastidious while Gerald being scruffy and sloppy. However the filmmakers had not found an appropriate scene for them that didn't slow the pace of the picture down, so Gerald's character was minimized.

Stanton himself provided the voice of Crush the sea turtle. Stanton originally did the voice for the film's story reel, and assumed they would find an actor later. When Stanton's performance was popular in test screenings, Stanton decided to keep his performance in the film. Stanton recorded all his dialogue while lying on a sofa in co-director Lee Unkrich's office.

Crush's son Squirt was voiced by Nicholas Bird, the young son of fellow Pixar director Brad Bird. According to Stanton, the elder Bird was playing a tape recording of his young son around the Pixar studios one day. Stanton felt the voice was "this generation's Thumper" and immediately cast Nicholas.

Megan Mullally revealed that she was originally doing a voice in the film. According to Mullally, the producers were dissatisfied to learn that the voice of her character Karen Walker on the television show Will & Grace was not her natural speaking voice. The producers hired her anyway, and then strongly encouraged her to use her Karen Walker voice for the role. When Mullally refused, she was dismissed.

The film was dedicated to Glenn McQueen, a Pixar animator who died of melanoma in October 2002.

Finding Nemo shares many plot elements with Pierrot the Clownfish, a children's book published in 2002, but allegedly conceived in 1995. The author, Franck Le Calvez, sued Disney for infringement of his intellectual rights. The judge ruled against him, citing the color differences between Pierrot and Nemo.

To ensure that the movements of the fish in the film were believable the animators essentially took a crash course in fish biology and oceanography. They visited aquariums, went diving in Hawaii and received in-house lectures from an ichthyologist.

Box office
Finding Nemo earned $380,673,009 in North America, and $540,900,000 in other countries, for a worldwide total of $921,573,009. It is the second highest-grossing film of 2003, behind The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. In North America, outside North America, and worldwide, it was the highest-grossing film, up until 2020 when The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On the Run surpassed it.

Finding Nemo set an opening-weekend record for an animated feature, making $70,251,710 (first surpassed by Sausage Party). It became the highest-grossing animated film in North America ($339.7 million), outside North America ($528.2 million) and worldwide ($867.9 million), in all three occasions outgrossing The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. In North America, it was surpassed by both Sausage Party in 2016, and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On the Run in 2020. After the re-release of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 2016, it stands as the fourth highest-grossing animated film in these regions. Outside North America, it was surpassed by Sausage Party, The Tigger Movie, and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On the Run. Worldwide, it now ranks third among animated films.

The film had impressive box office runs in many international markets. In Japan, its highest-grossing market after North America, it grossed $102.4 million becoming the highest-grossing Western animated film until it was out-grossed by The Tigger Movie ($126.7 million). Following in biggest grosses are the UK, Ireland and Malta, where it grossed £37.2 million ($67.1 million), France and the Maghreb region ($64.8 million), Germany ($53.9 million), and Spain ($29.5 million).

3D re-release
After the success of the 3D re-release of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Disney and Pixar re-released Finding Nemo in 3D on September 14, 2012, with a conversion cost estimated below $5 million. For the opening weekend of its 3D re-release in North America, Finding Nemo grossed $16.7 million, debuting at the No. 2 spot behind Resident Evil: Retribution. From seven foreign markets, it earned a total of $5.1 million.

Accolades

Finding Nemo won the Academy Award and Saturn Award for Best Animated Film. It also won the award for best Animated Film at the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards, the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards, the National Board of Review Awards, the Online Film Critics Society Awards, and the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards.

The film received many awards, including:
Kids Choice Awards for Favorite Movie and Favorite Voice from an Animated Movie, Ellen DeGeneres.
Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, Ellen DeGeneres

Finding Nemo was also nominated for:
 Two Chicago Film Critics Association Awards for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress, Ellen DeGeneres
 A Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
 Two MTV Movie Awards for Best Movie and Best Comedic Performance, Ellen DeGeneres

In June 2008, the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten top Ten", the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres, after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Finding Nemo was acknowledged as the 10th best film in the animation genre. It was the most recently released film among all ten lists, and one of only three movies made after the year 2000, the others being The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Shrek.

Video game

A video game based on the film was released in 2003, for PC, Xbox, PS2, GameCube and GBA.

Sequel

In 2005, after disagreements between Disney's Michael Eisner and Pixar's Steve Jobs over the distribution of Pixar's films, Disney announced that they would be creating a new animation studio, Circle 7 Animation, to make sequels to the seven Disney-owned Pixar films (which consisted of the films released between 1995 and 2011). The studio had put Toy Story 4 and Monsters at Work in development, and had also hired screenwriter Laurie Craig to write a draft for Finding Nemo 2. Circle 7 was subsequently shut down after Robert Iger replaced Eisner as CEO of Disney and arranged the acquisition of Pixar.

In July 2012, it was reported that Andrew Stanton is developing a sequel to Finding Nemo, with Victoria Strouse writing the script and a schedule to be released in 2016. However, the same day the news of a potential sequel broke, director Andrew Stanton posted a message on his personal Twitter calling into question the accuracy of these reports. The message said, "Didn't you all really learn from Toy Story 4? Everyone calm down. Don't believe everything you read. Nothing to see here now. #skyisnotfalling" According to the report by Hollywood Reporter published in August 2012, Ellen DeGeneres is in negotiations to reprise her role of Dory. In September 2012, it was confirmed by Stanton saying: "What was immediately on the list was writing a second Carter movie. When that went away, everything slid up. I know I'll be accused by more sarcastic people that it's a reaction to Carter not doing well, but only in its timing, but not in its conceit."

References

2003 comedy movies
2003 animated movies
2000s computer-animated movies
2000s buddy movies
2012 3D movies
American animated movies
American buddy movies
American comedy movies
American family movies
Buddy comedy movies
Disney animated movies
English-language movies

Movies about fish
Movies set in Australia
Movies that won the Best Animated Feature Academy Award
3D re-releases
Movies directed by Andrew Stanton

Finding Nemo


Richard Jackson Barnet (May 7, 1929 – December 23, 2004) was an American scholar who co-founded the Institute for Policy Studies.

Early years
Barnet was born in Boston and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts. After attending The Roxbury Latin School, he graduated from Harvard University in 1951 and from Harvard Law School in 1954. After serving two years in the U.S. Army, he worked as a lawyer in Boston. In 1959, and became a fellow at Harvard's Russian Research Center, which was renamed the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies in 1996.

Government service
After publishing his first book, Who Wants Disarmament? (1960), a study of U.S.-Soviet disarmament negotiations, Barnet joined the State Department in 1961 as an aide to John J. McCloy in the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Institute for Policy Studies
Disillusioned by his experience of the inner workings of government, Barnet left government service in 1963 to co-found, with Marcus Raskin, the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). He served as its co-director until 1978, and remained active at the institute he had helped create until his retirement in 1998. IPS was the first influential political think tank, according to Sidney Blumenthal, who said that the structure of IPS served as a model for the ideologically antagonistic Heritage Foundation.

From 1969, Barnet was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations foreign policy organization.

Author

Richard Barnet wrote Roots of War (1972), Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations (1974), one of the first books critical of the effects of what would come to be known as globalization, Lean Years (1980), an account of the environmental movement and Global Dreams (1994), an analysis of some powerful corporations. He also wrote, with his wife, Ann, Youngest Minds: Parenting and Genes in the Development of Intellect and Emotion (1998).

Barnet often contributed to The New Yorker, Harper's, The Nation and Sojourners Magazine, among other publications.

Personal life
Barnet's background was Jewish. As an adult he became a Christian, which influenced his views about war, peace and civil rights. He was a talented violinist, and taught music to children from poor neighborhoods toward the end his life. He and his wife, pediatric neurologist Dr. Ann B. Barnet, had two daughters, Juliana and Beth, and one son, Michael, as well as a foster son, Arthurnell. Richard Barnet died at age 75 in December 2004.

Works
 Intervention and Revolution; the United States in the Third World, 1968
 The Economy of Death, 1969
 Roots of War: The Men and Institutions behind U.S. Foreign Policy, 1972
 Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations (1974)
 The Giants: Russia and America, 1977
 Real Security: Restoring American Power in a Dangerous Decade, 1981
 The Rockets' Red Glare: when America goes to War : the Presidents and the People, 1990
 The Lean Years: Politics in the Age of Scarcity, 1982
 The Alliance - America, Europe, Japan: Makers of the Postwar World, 1983

References

External links

1929 births
2004 deaths
American political writers
American male non-fiction writers
American male violinists
People from Boston
People from Brookline, Massachusetts
Harvard Law School alumni
20th-century American violinists
Roxbury Latin School alumni
20th-century American male musicians
20th-century American male writers
Harvard College alumni

Richard Barnet


Carl Rakeman (1878–1965) was an American artist for the Bureau of Public Roads during the middle of the 19th century. During his career for the American government he completed 109 paintings depicting historic transportation methods in the United States.

Early life and education
Rakeman was a native Washingtonian (D.C.) born to German-American artist Joseph Rakeman. He was educated at the Corcoran Art School and art academies in Düsseldorf, Munich, and Paris. His art expression was not confined to any one medium. He was an etcher and a painter in watercolors, oils, and frescoes. He also worked in the field of mural decoration.

Career

In 1921, Rakeman joined the Department of Agriculture, which at that time housed the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) - predecessor of the present Federal Highway Administration. During his career BPR, he painted exhibits for the Good Roads meetings, state fairs, and expositions such as the Brazilian Exposition (1922), the Century of Progress in Chicago (1933), an Overseas Exposition in Paris, the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco (1939) and the New York World's Fair (1940). In addition, he completed the series of 109 paintings depicting historic American roads, trails, and highways.

Mr. Rakeman early in his career was singled out by E. F. Andrews, founder and first director of the Corcoran School of Art (and an established artist in the District of Columbia), as the most qualified artist to copy the White House portraits of President and Mrs. Hayes, referring to him as "a young man of great talent." It was his first commission.

Corpus
Important Rakeman works can be seen in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere throughout the country, such as in the U.S. Soldiers Home (Tennessee), the Ohio State House (Columbus), and the Hayes Memorial Museum (President Rutherford B. Hayes' home), Fremont, Ohio. He is extremely well represented at the latter, having worked continually for Colonel and Mrs. Hayes, painting numerous portraits of the entire Hayes family, and also restoring fine old paintings already hanging in the former President's home.

Among his most notable works are his murals in Washington, particularly the one adjoining the Senate Committee Room on Appropriations in the Capitol. The ceiling was frescoed by Constantino Brumidi, the highly regarded Italian-American artist. However, the lunettes over the windows, doorway, and fireplace were not decorated, and this work was placed in the hands of Carl Rakeman.

In each lunette Mr. Rakeman placed the portrait of a famous American general: George Washington, Anthony Wayne, Joseph Warren, and Horatio Gates. He framed each with an oval laurel wreath. Flanking each of the portraits are flags of the Colonial period, draped over contemporary helmets and arms. It is the only design in the Capitol showing the Colonial flags.

Retirement
Mr. Rakeman retired from the Bureau of Public Roads in 1952, and died at the age of 87, in 1965, at Fremont, Ohio.

References

American male painters
Painters from Washington, D.C.
1878 births
1965 deaths
20th-century American painters
20th-century male artists
Corcoran School of the Arts and Design alumni

Carl Rakeman


Molasses (, also released as Bittersweet) is a 2010 Egyptian comedy film. The literal translation of the title is "Black Honey", relating to the bitter-sweet feelings that Egyptians feel towards living in their country.

Plot
Masry is an Egyptian who left his country when only 10 years old. He returns to Egypt 20 years later following the death of his father. Masry desires to get back in touch with his roots and to revive his nostalgic memories of how Egypt used to be. However, he quickly becomes disenchanted upon experiencing first hand the chaos that Egypt has descended into. He learns the hard way that Egyptians
citizens have very few rights and that they live a very tough life where foreigners are often treated with more respect than Egyptians themselves. Despite the fact that this production discusses very serious issues, the film is nonetheless a mix of comedy and light drama and serves as a poignant reminder of our current times.

Summary
Masry Sayed El-Araby is an
Egyptian American
photographer who returns to Egypt after twenty years abroad, having left Egypt twenty years ago when he and his family immigrated to America.

After arriving he goes through a series of events that led him to being conned, beaten by protestors and losing his American passport. In a fit of rage, he decides to throw away his Egyptian passport as well, which leaves him stranded in the country until he can get all of his documents back. He then decides to go back to his father's old apartment and live there after being kicked out of the hotel he is staying at.

Masry is reunited with his neighbour and childhood friend Said and his family, where he helps him by fixing up his father's old apartment and inviting him to live with him and his family while it gets repaired. Masry experiences the typical activities that Egyptians endure to get his life in order and to get his American passport back so he can back to the United States. living with Said, Masry experiences the delights of the Egyptian culture that has been a part of him that has been lacking in his life since he left Egypt in his youth.

After getting his life in order, he says goodbye to all of the companions he had met during his stay in Egypt and boards a plane to leave Egypt. During the take-off, he realizes that his stay has changed him and decides to stay in Egypt.

Cast

 Ahmed Helmy as Masry Sayed El-Araby
 Edward as Said
 Lotfy Labib as Radi
 Enaam Salousa as Saeed's Mother
 Ahmed Rateb as Officer
 Emy Samir Ghanem as Mervat
 Dina Talaat

Reception
Overall reception has been positive, with critics praising the depiction of Cairo and its residents from the point of view of an Egyptian living outside of Egypt. Some critics have less favourable reviews, citing that Assal Eswed clings to the nationalistic tendencies of Egyptians in order to develop a relatable character to average Egyptians.

References

External links

2010 films
2010s Arabic-language films
Films set in Egypt
2010 black comedy films
2010 comedy films
Egyptian black comedy films

Molasses (film)


Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies, known simply as List College, is the undergraduate school of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS).  It was founded by Solomon Schechter in 1909 as the Teachers Institute with the original goal of training American Jewish educators.  List College is closely affiliated with Columbia University; almost all List College students are enrolled in dual-degree programs with either Columbia University's School of General Studies or Barnard College.

History

As chancellor of JTS, Solomon Schechter established the Teachers Institute as the undergraduate division of the seminary in 1909.  The primary goal of the Teachers Institute was to train young Jewish educators.  A co-educational school from its inception, the Teachers Institute was one of the few places in the country where women could study Judaics on a collegiate level.  Mordecai Kaplan served as the school's first dean; his leadership and vision led to early successes.  In 1931 a second undergraduate division, the Seminary College of Jewish Studies, was established for the education of Jewish lay-leaders.

In 1953, the scope of List College was greatly broadened by the establishment of a joint program with Columbia University, enabling students to simultaneously earn two bachelor's degrees—one from each school.  A similar program for women only was created in conjunction with Barnard College in 1979.  The Seminary College of Jewish Studies-Teachers Institute was renamed the Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies in 1986 in honor of a philanthropic donation to JTS.  Students who attend List College today represent a wide spectrum of religious backgrounds, with many reasons for attending the program.  While the original intention of the Teachers Institute was to train young Jewish educators, List College students pursue a variety of career paths upon completion of the program.

Academics

List College grants a degree of Bachelor of Arts in twelve formal Judaic Studies majors ranging from Bible to Jewish Women's Studies. Students may also design their own interdisciplinary majors with institutional approval. The vast majority of students concurrently pursue a second B.A. from either Columbia University or Barnard College—dual-degree programs entitled the Joint Program and the Double Degree Program respectively.

The college is need-blind for domestic applicants.

See also
 Columbia University
 Barnard College

References

External links
 List College Website
 Jewish Theological Seminary of America Website

Jewish Theological Seminary of America
Columbia University
Universities and colleges in Manhattan
Universities and colleges established in 1909
1909 establishments in New York City
Education in Harlem
Need-blind educational institutions

List College


Muhammad Ali (4 March 1769 – 2 August 1849) was the Ottoman Albanian governor and de facto ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, considered the founder of modern Egypt. At the height of his rule, he controlled Egypt, Sudan, Hejaz, Najd, the Levant, Crete and parts of Greece.

He was a military commander in an Albanian Ottoman force sent to recover Egypt from a French occupation under Napoleon. Following Napoleon's withdrawal, Muhammad Ali rose to power through a series of political maneuvers, and in 1805 he was named Wāli (governor) of Egypt and gained the rank of Pasha.

As Wāli, Ali attempted to modernize Egypt by instituting dramatic reforms in the military, economic and cultural spheres. He also initiated a violent purge of the Mamluks, consolidating his rule and permanently ending the Mamluk hold over Egypt.

Militarily, Ali recaptured the Arabian territories for the sultan, and conquered Sudan of his own accord. His attempt at suppressing the Greek rebellion failed decisively, however, following an intervention by the European powers at Navarino. In 1831, Ali waged war against the sultan, capturing Syria, crossing into Anatolia and directly threatening Constantinople, but the European powers forced him to retreat. After a failed Ottoman invasion of Syria in 1839, he launched another invasion of the Ottoman Empire in 1840; he defeated the Ottomans again and opened the way towards a capture of Constantinople. Faced with another European intervention, he accepted a brokered peace in 1842 and withdrew from the Levant; in return, he and his descendants were granted hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan. His dynasty would rule Egypt until the revolution of 1952 when King Farouk was overthrown by the Free Officers Movement led by Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, establishing the Republic of Egypt.

Early life

Muhammad Ali was born in the Sanjak of Kavala (modern-day Kavala), in the Rumelia Eyalet, to an Albanian family from Korça. He was the second son of a Bektashi Albanian tobacco and shipping merchant named Ibrahim Agha, who also served as an Ottoman commander of a small unit in their hometown. His mother was Zeynep, the daughter of Çorbaci Husain Agha, another Muslim Albanian notable in Kavala. When his father died at a young age, Muhammad was taken and raised by his uncle Husain Agha with his cousins. As a reward for Muhammad Ali's hard work, his uncle gave him the rank of "Bolukbashi" for the collection of taxes in the town of Kavala. Muhammad Ali later married his cousin Amina Hanim, a wealthy widow. She was the daughter of Ali Agha and Kadriye (Zeynep's sister).

After Muhammad's promising success in collecting taxes, he earned the rank of Second Commander under his cousin Sarechesme Halil Agha in the Kavala Volunteer Contingent of Albanian mercenaries that was sent to re-occupy Egypt following General Napoleon Bonaparte's withdrawal. In 1801, his unit was sent, as part of a much larger Ottoman force, to re-occupy Egypt following a brief French occupation that upended Mamluk dominance in Egypt. The expedition, aboard xebecs, landed at Aboukir in the spring of 1801. One of his trusted army commanders was Miralay Mustafa Bey, who had married Muhammad's sister Zubayda and was the ancestor of the Yakan family.

Rise to power

The French withdrawal left a power vacuum in Egypt. Mamluk power had been weakened, but not destroyed, and Ottoman forces clashed with the Mamluks for power. During this period of turmoil Muhammad Ali used his loyal Albanian troops to work with both sides, gaining power and prestige for himself. As the conflict drew on, the local populace grew weary of the power struggle. In 1801, he allied with the Egyptian leader Umar Makram and Egypt's Grand Imam of al-Azhar. During the infighting between the Ottomans and Mamluks between 1801 and 1805, Muhammad Ali carefully acted to gain the support of the general public.

In 1805, a group of prominent Egyptians led by the ulama (scholars, savants) demanded the replacement of Wāli (governor) Ahmad Khurshid Pasha by Muhammad Ali, and the Ottomans yielded. In 1809, though, Ali exiled Makram to Damietta. According to Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, Makram had discovered Muhammad Ali's intentions to seize power for himself.

Sultan Selim III could not oppose Muhammad Ali's ascension. By appearing as the champion of the people Muhammad Ali was able to forestall popular opposition until he had consolidated his power.

The Mamluks still posed the greatest threat to Muhammad Ali. They controlled Egypt for more than 600 years, and over that time they extended their rule systematically south along the Nile River to Upper Egypt. Muhammad Ali's approach was to eliminate the Mamluk leadership, then move against the rank and file. Muhammad Ali invited the Mamluk leaders to a celebration at the Cairo Citadel in honour of his son, Tusun Pasha, who was to lead a military expedition into Arabia. The event was held on 1 March 1811. When the Mamluks had gathered at the Citadel, they were surrounded and killed by Muhammad Ali's troops. After the leaders were killed, Muhammad Ali dispatched his army throughout Egypt to rout the remainder of the Mamluk forces.

Muhammad Ali transformed Egypt into a regional power which he saw as the natural successor to the decaying Ottoman Empire. He summed up his vision for Egypt as follows:

Reinventing Egypt

Sultan Selim III (reigned 1789–1807) had recognized the need to reform and modernize the Ottoman military, along European lines, to ensure that his state could compete. Selim III, however, faced stiff local opposition from an entrenched clergy and military apparatus, especially from the Janissaries. Consequently, Selim III was deposed and ultimately killed in 1808.

Muhammad Ali shared some traits with common warlords seeking to gain the upper hand at the expense of the weakened imperial power, but scholars have noted that Muhammad Ali's rule was the first significant program of Europeanization of the military and its supporting institutions. Unlike Selim, he had dispatched his chief rivals, giving him a free hand to attempt reforms similar to those first begun by Selim III.

Muhammad Ali's goal was for Egypt to leave the Ottoman Empire and be ruled by his own hereditary dynasty. To do that, he had to reorganize Egyptian society, streamline the economy, train a professional bureaucracy, and build a modern military.

His first task was to secure a revenue stream for Egypt. To accomplish this, Muhammad Ali 'nationalized' all the iltizam lands of Egypt, thereby officially owning all the production of the land. He accomplished the state annexation of property by raising taxes on the 'tax-farmers' who had previously owned the land throughout Egypt. The new taxes were intentionally high and when the tax-farmers could not extract the demanded payments from the peasants who worked the land, Muhammad Ali confiscated their properties. The other major source of revenue Muhammad Ali created was a new tax on waqf endowments, which were previously tax-free. Through these endowments, personal income could be set aside for schools or other charitable purposes. As well as raising revenue to fund his new military, this tax took revenue away from the local elite, Mamluks and the ulama, weakening opposition to Muhammad Ali's reforms.

In practice, Muhammad Ali's land reform amounted to a monopoly on trade in Egypt. He required all producers to sell their goods to the state. The state in turn resold Egyptian goods, within Egypt and to foreign markets, and retained the surplus. The practice proved very profitable for Egypt with the cultivation of long staple cotton, a new cash crop. To help improve production, he expanded the land used for agriculture and overhauled the irrigation system, largely completed by the corvée, or forced peasant labor. The new-found profits also extended down to the individual farmers, as the average wage increased fourfold.

In addition to bolstering the agricultural sector, Muhammad Ali built an industrial base for Egypt. His motivation for doing so was primarily an effort to build a modern military. Consequently, he focused on weapons production. Factories based in Cairo produced muskets and cannons. With a shipyard he built in Alexandria, he began construction of a navy. By the end of the 1830s, Egypt's war industries had constructed nine 100-gun warships and were turning out 1,600 muskets a month.

However, the industrial innovations were not limited to weapons production. Muhammad Ali established a textile industry in an effort to compete with European industries and produce greater revenues for Egypt. While the textile industry was not successful, the entire endeavour employed tens of thousands of Egyptians. Muhammad Ali used contracts called concessions to build cheap infrastructure – dams and railroads –  whereby foreign European companies would raise capital, build projects, and collect most of the operating revenue but would provide Ali's government with a portion of that revenue. Ali also granted Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin permission to build technical schools modeled after the Ecole Polytechnique. Additionally, by hiring European managers, he was able to introduce industrial training to the Egyptian population. To staff his new industries, Muhammad Ali employed a corvée labor system. The peasantry objected to these conscriptions and many ran away from their villages to avoid being taken, sometimes fleeing as far away as Syria. A number of them maimed themselves so as to be unsuitable for combat: common ways of self-maiming were blinding an eye with rat poison and cutting off a finger of the right hand, so as to be unable to fire a rifle.

Beyond building a functioning, industrial economy, Muhammad Ali also made an effort to train a professional military and bureaucracy. He sent promising citizens to Europe to study. Again the driving impulse behind the effort was to build a European-style army. Students were sent to study European languages, primarily French, so they could in turn translate military manuals into Arabic. He then used both educated Egyptians and imported European experts to establish schools and hospitals in Egypt. European education also provided talented Egyptians with a means of social mobility.

A by-product of Muhammad Ali's training program was the establishment of a professional bureaucracy. Establishing an efficient central bureaucracy was an essential prerequisite for the success of Muhammad Ali's other reforms. In the process of destroying the Mamluks, the Wāli had to fill the governmental roles that the Mamluks had previously filled. In doing so, Muhammad Ali kept all central authority for himself. He partitioned Egypt into ten provinces responsible for collecting taxes and maintaining order. Muhammad Ali installed his sons in most key positions; however, his reforms did offer Egyptians opportunities beyond agriculture and industry.

A 2015 study found that Ali's economic policies had a positive impact on industrialization in Egypt.

Law under Muhammad Ali
The purpose of the law was to represent Muhammad Ali in his absence. Muhammad Ali started his renovations in law by moving towards a more effective control over crime within Egypt. Most notably he did this by passing his first penal legislation in 1829, in an effort to get a stronger hold over the population. By this time, Muhammad Ali was already moving towards an establishment of an independent state, which he first expressed in 1830, by creating a state of "law and order", where Christians within Egypt can be safe, which was a way Muhammad Ali was able to pull influence from Europe. He started gradually renovating more of the government for him to hold more sway over it rather than the sultan. He implemented a police force, mostly well known within Cairo and Alexandria, that functioned not just as a form of authority over the law, but also as a form of a public prosecutor's office. Renovation of evidence used within the courts, that previously would not be used, started to be part of the system, the biggest one being autopsy reports, becoming an important asset among investigations and trials alike. With the use of non-Shari'a evidence allowed the process of law to work around the strict Shari'a rule of evidence, which restricted the use of certain forms of evidence. Autopsy became an important form of evidence used within criminal law in Egypt, even being used after Muhammad's reign amongst his successors in the 1850s.

Hakimas and the school of medicine for women
In 1832, Muhammad Ali allowed Antoine Clot, known as "Clot Bey" in Egypt, to establish a School of Medicine for women. Clot-Bey had been invited in 1827 by Muhammad Ali to found the Qasral-'Ayni School of Medicine at the Army hospital of Abou Zabel which later transferred to Cairo. The Army Medical School had a difficult beginning with religious officials against dissection of corpses for anatomy lessons.

The medical school for women would produce hakimas, "doctoress", to treat women and children. French women adherents of the Saint-Simonian social reform movement were living in Egypt during 1833–36 and studied or provided medical care under Clot Bey's direction. French sage-femme (midwife) Suzanne Voilquin writes of assisting during the cholera epidemic of 1834. Several of the French women contracted cholera and died.

Ali's military and economic goals required a healthy army and population from which young boys could be conscripted. Venereal diseases, especially syphilis, were common among soldiers and smallpox outbreaks led to high childhood mortality rates. Clot Bey argued that female-provided health care for women and children was crucial to maintain a healthy population. He believed that the untrained local dayas (midwives) were unable to provide appropriate care and under Egyptian law, male doctors could not treat women. Clot Bey's solution was a school to train female doctors.

The school of medicine for women followed a French model. The first two years of training provided Arabic literacy in order to communicate with patients. The following four included training in: obstetrics, pre- and post-natal care, dressing wounds, cauterization, vaccination, scarification, cupping, application of leeches, identification/preparation of common medicines. Students were provided housing, food, clothes and a monthly allowance from the state.

Graduates served at the Civil Hospital in Cairo or at health centres throughout Egypt. Some stayed at the school to serve as instructors. Marriages were arranged by the state to male doctors. Once married, hakimas were given the title of Effendi, the rank of second lieutenant, and a monthly salary of 250 piasters.

Licensed hakimas treated women and children, providing vaccinations and delivering children. They served a fundamental role in reducing the incidence of smallpox during the 19th century by vaccinating approximately 600 children a month in the Civil Hospital. They checked and treated women, mainly prostitutes, for venereal diseases. Another important task was the "forensic examination" of women. In this respect, hakimas operated in a legal setting. Their examination was used as evidence in cases involving unnatural death, suspected premarital loss of virginity, or miscarriage.

Although one task of the hakimas was overseeing childbirth, the majority of the population continued to use the dayas. Hakimas performed almost no deliveries and often were only called upon during difficult deliveries. However, dayas were required to have a certificate to perform deliveries, which could only be obtained from hakimas. They were also expected to report statistics on births to the hakimas.

A significant issue was recruitment of students. Egyptian culture at the time opposed the education of women. Therefore, the first students at the medical school were young slave girls. Slaves continued to be recruited through slave auctions as well as orphans from hospices. Despite the modest success of the school and its graduates, increasing enrolment remained a consistent problem, though the limit of 60 students was reached in 1846.

Contemporary and modern historians have viewed the creation of a school of medicine for women and the position of hakima as an example of modernization and reform for women under Muhammad Ali. Khaled Fahmy argues against this view. Fahmy states that, because the reasons for the creation of the school are primarily for the maintenance of a healthy army, the school was not a sign of reform but Ali furthering his military goals. For example, their treatment of venereal diseases was intended to curb its incidence among soldiers and smallpox vaccinations increased the pool of potential soldiers by reducing childhood mortality rate. Furthermore, the hakimas allowed for increased state control over social life. This is observed in the use of hakimas to collect statistics on childbirth, either personally or through dayas, as well as in the cases where a hakima was used to examine a woman.

Role in the Arabic literary renaissance
In the 1820s, Muhammad Ali sent the first educational "mission" of Egyptian students to Europe. This contact resulted in literature that is considered the dawn of the Arabic literary renaissance, known as the Nahda.

To support the modernization of industry and the military, Muhammad Ali set up a number of schools in various fields where French texts were studied. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi supervised translations from French to Arabic on topics ranging from sociology and history to military technology.
In 1819/21, his government founded the first indigenous press in the Arab World, the Bulaq Press. The Bulaq press published the official gazette of Muhammad Ali's government.

Among his personal interests was the accumulation and breeding of Arabian horses. In horses obtained as taxes and tribute, Muhammad Ali recognized the unique characteristics and careful attention to bloodlines of the horses bred by the Bedouin, particularly by the Anazeh in Syria and those bred in the Nejd. While his immediate successor had minimal interest in the horse breeding program, his grandson, who became Abbas I shared this interest and further built upon his work.

Military campaigns

Though Muhammad Ali's chief aim was to establish a European-style military, and carve out a personal empire, he waged war initially on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan, Mahmud II, in Arabia and Greece, although he later came into open conflict with the Ottoman Empire.  He used several new strategies to ensure the success of his new military. First new recruits were isolated from the environment they were used to. They began housing soldiers in barracks, leadership enforced a strict regime of surveillance, roll call was done several times a day, and corporal punishment used to ensure the new fighting force grew to become a strong disciplined military. The army often used the bastinado and the whip to control and punish the soldiers. Muhammad not only wanted his soldiers to be disciplined, but he also created many military codes to regulate the definitions of crime and punishment, this helped to create blind obedience to the laws. A large part of Ali's goal of a European-style military was through the creation of new labelling and organizational systems to identify soldiers, distinguish officers from enlisted men, structure units, and properly distribute salaries. Soldiers were given a unique number that identified their unit and their role within it, and officers were expected to use lists with these numbers to keep a close watch on the men and ensure every man performed his clearly assigned duty. This was particularly useful in identifying deserters who often fled in the chaos of massed movement, such as during forced marches or relocation to a new encampment.
The soldiers were placed under strict surveillance in the barracks. In order to accomplish this Muhammad Ali relied on the Bedouins to guard the troops that were sent to the training camps. Despite being hired to control the troops the Bedouins were actually a menace to the government who often had to use the army to control the Bedouins. In order to combat this the government slowly switched from using Bedouins to guard the soldiers and to capture deserters and instead attempted to set up the expectation of internment from the beginning of the soldiers stay at the training camps in order to deter them from deserting the military in the first place.

Arabian campaign

Muhammad Ali's first military campaign was an expedition into the Arabian Peninsula. The holy cities of Mecca, and Medina had been captured by the House of Saud, who had recently embraced a literalist Hanbali interpretation of Islam. Armed with their newfound religious zeal, the Saudis began conquering parts of Arabia. This culminated in the capture of the Hejaz region by 1805.

With the main Ottoman army tied up in Europe, Mahmud II turned to Muhammad Ali to recapture the Arabian territories. Muhammad Ali in turn appointed his son, Tusun, to lead a military expedition in 1811. The campaign was initially turned back in Arabia; however, a second attack was launched in 1812 that succeeded in recapturing Hejaz.

While the campaign was successful, the power of the Saudis was not broken. They continued to harass Ottoman and Egyptian forces from the central Nejd region of the Peninsula. Consequently, Muhammad Ali dispatched another of his sons, Ibrahim, at the head of another army to finally rout the Saudis. After a two-year campaign, the Saudis were crushed and most of the Saudi family was captured. The family leader, Abdullah ibn Saud, was sent to Istanbul, and executed.

Conquest of Sudan

Muhammad Ali next turned his attention to military campaigns independent of the Porte, beginning with the Sudan which he viewed as a valuable additional resource of territory, gold, and slaves. The Sudan at the time had no real central authority, as since the 18th century many petty kingdoms and tribal sheikhdoms had seceded from the declining Sultanate of Sennar, fighting each other with Medieval weaponry. In 1820 Muhammad Ali dispatched an army of 5,000 troops commanded by his third son, Ismail, and Abidin Bey, south into Sudan with the intent of conquering the territory and subjugating it to his authority. Ali's troops made headway into Sudan in 1821, but met with fierce resistance by the Shaigiya. Ultimately, the superiority of the Egyptian troops and firearms ensured the defeat of the Shaigiya and the subsequent conquest of the Sudan. Ali now had an outpost from which he could expand to the source of the Nile in Ethiopia, and Uganda. His administration captured slaves from the Nuba Mountains, and west and south Sudan, all incorporated into a foot regiment known as the Gihadiya  (pronounced Jihadiya in non-Egyptian Arabic) which were composed of the recently defeated Shaigiya who now took service under the invaders in exchange for keeping their domains. Ali's reign in Sudan, and that of his immediate successors, is remembered in Sudan as brutal and heavy-handed, contributing to the popular independence struggle of the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, in 1881.

Greek rebellion

While Muhammad Ali was expanding his authority into Africa, the Ottoman Empire was being challenged by ethnic rebellions in its European territories. The rebellion in the Greek provinces of the Ottoman Empire began in 1821. The Ottoman army proved ineffectual in its attempts to put down the revolt as ethnic violence spread as far as Constantinople. With his own army proving ineffective, Sultan Mahmud II offered Muhammad Ali the island of Crete in exchange for his support in putting down the revolt.

Muhammad Ali sent 16,000 soldiers, 100 transports, and 63 escort vessels under command of his son, Ibrahim Pasha. After Ibrahim sustained successive defeats in Greece (see Ottoman-Egyptian invasion of Mani) Britain, France, and Russia intervened to aid the Greek revolution as a check on Ibrahim's expansionist agenda which threatened the balance of power in the East Mediterranean. On 20 October 1827 at the Battle of Navarino, while under the command of Muharram Bey, the Ottoman representative, the entire Egyptian navy was sunk by the European Allied fleet, under the command of Admiral Edward Codrington. If the Porte was not in the least prepared for this confrontation, Muhammad Ali was even less prepared for the loss of his highly competent, expensively assembled and maintained navy. With its fleet essentially destroyed, Egypt had no way to support its forces in Greece and was forced to withdraw. Ultimately the campaign cost Muhammad Ali his navy and yielded no tangible gains.

War against the sultan

In compensation for his loss at Navarino, Muhammad Ali asked the Porte for the territory of Syria. The Ottomans were indifferent to the request; the Sultan himself asked blandly what would happen if Syria was given over and Muhammad Ali later deposed. But Muhammad Ali was no longer willing to tolerate Ottoman indifference. To compensate for his and Egypt's losses, the wheels for the conquest of Syria were set in motion.

Like other rulers of Egypt before him, Ali desired to control Bilad al-Sham (the Levant), both for its strategic value and for its rich natural resources; nor was this a sudden, vindictive decision on the part of Ali since he had harboured this goal since his early years as Egypt's unofficial ruler. For not only had Syria abundant natural resources, it also had a thriving international trading community with well-developed markets throughout the Levant; in addition, it would be a captive market for the goods now being produced in Egypt. Yet perhaps most of all, Syria was desirable as a buffer state between Egypt and the Ottoman Sultan.

A new fleet was built, a new army was raised and on 31 October 1831, under Ibrahim Pasha, the Egyptian invasion of Syria initiated the First Turko-Egyptian War. For the sake of appearance on the world stage, a pretext for the invasion was vital. Ultimately, the excuse for the expedition was a quarrel with Abdullah Pasha of Acre. The Wāli alleged that 6,000 fellahin had fled to Acre to escape the draft, corvée, and taxes, and he wanted them back. (See also: 1834 Arab revolt in Palestine)

The Egyptians overran most of Syria and its hinterland with ease. The strongest and only really significant resistance was put up at the port city of Acre. The Egyptian force eventually captured the city after a six-month siege, which lasted from 3 November 1831 to 27 May 1832. Unrest on the Egyptian home front increased dramatically during the course of the siege. Ali was forced to squeeze Egypt more and more in order to support his campaign and his people resented the increased burden.

After the fall of Acre, the Egyptian army marched north into Anatolia. At the Battle of Konya (21 December 1832), Ibrahim Pasha soundly defeated the Ottoman army led by the sadr azam Grand Vizier Reshid Pasha. There were now no military obstacles between Ibrahim's forces and Constantinople itself.

Through the course of the campaign, Muhammad Ali paid particular focus to the European powers. Fearing another intervention that would reverse all his gains, he proceeded slowly and cautiously. For example, Muhammad Ali continued the practice of using the sultan's name at Friday prayers in the newly captured territories and continued to circulate Ottoman coins instead of issuing new ones bearing his likeness. So long as Muhammad Ali's march did not threaten to cause the complete collapse of the Ottoman state, the powers in Europe remained as passive observers.

Despite this show, Muhammad Ali's goal was now to remove the current Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II and replace him with the sultan's son, the infant Abdülmecid. This possibility so alarmed Mahmud II that he accepted Russia's offer of military aid resulting in the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi. Russia's gain dismayed the British and French governments, resulting in their direct intervention. From this position, the European powers brokered a negotiated solution in May 1833 known as the Convention of Kutahya. The terms of the peace were that Ali would withdraw his forces from Anatolia and receive the territories of Crete (then known as Candia) and the Hijaz as compensation, and Ibrahim Pasha would be appointed Wāli of Syria. The peace agreement fell short, however, of granting Muhammad Ali an independent kingdom for himself, leaving him wanting.

Sensing that Muhammad Ali was not content with his gains, the sultan attempted to pre-empt further action against the Ottoman Empire by offering him hereditary rule in Egypt and Arabia if he withdrew from Syria and Crete and renounced any desire for full independence. Muhammad Ali rejected the offer, knowing that Mahmud could not force the Egyptian presence from Syria and Crete.

On 25 May 1838, Muhammad Ali informed Britain, and France that he intended to declare independence from the Ottoman Empire. This action was contrary to the desire of the European powers to maintain the status quo within the Ottoman Empire. With Muhammad Ali's intentions clear, the European powers, particularly Russia, attempted to moderate the situation and prevent conflict. Within the Empire, however, both sides were gearing for war. Ibrahim already had a sizable force in Syria. In Constantinople, the Ottoman commander, Hafiz Pasha, assured the Sultan that he could defeat the Egyptian army.

When Mahmud II ordered his forces to advance on the Syrian frontier, Ibrahim attacked and destroyed them at the Battle of Nezib (24 June 1839) near Urfa. In an echo of the Battle of Konya, Constantinople was again left vulnerable to Ali's forces. A further blow to the Ottomans was the defection of their fleet to Muhammad Ali. Mahmud II died almost immediately after the battle took place and was succeeded by sixteen-year-old Abdülmecid. At this point, Ali and Ibrahim began to argue about which course to follow; Ibrahim favoured conquering the Ottoman capital and demanding the imperial seat while Muhammad Ali was inclined simply to demand numerous concessions of territory and political autonomy for himself and his family.

At this point, the European powers again intervened (see Oriental Crisis of 1840). On 15 July 1840, the British government, which had negotiated with Austria, Prussia, and Russia to sign the Convention of London, offered Muhammad Ali hereditary rule of Egypt as part of the Ottoman Empire if he withdrew from the Syrian hinterland and the coastal regions of Mount Lebanon. Muhammad Ali hesitated, believing he had support from France. His hesitation proved costly. France eventually backed down as King Louis-Philippe did not want his country to find itself involved and isolated in a war against the other powers, especially at a time when he also had to deal with the Rhine crisis. British naval forces were ordered to sail to Syria and Alexandria. In the face of such displays of European military might, Muhammad Ali acquiesced.

After the British and Austrian navies established a naval blockade over the Nile delta coastline and launched an attack on Egyptian controlled Acre, Muhammad Ali agreed to the terms of the Convention on 27 November 1840. These terms included renouncing his claims over Crete, and Hijaz, downsizing his navy, and reducing his standing army to 18,000 men, provided that he and his descendants would enjoy hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan: an unheard-of status for an Ottoman governor.

Final years

After 1843, fast on the heels of the Syrian debacle, and the Treaty of Balta Liman, which forced the Egyptian government to tear down its import barriers and to give up its monopolies, Muhammad Ali's mind became increasingly clouded and tended towards paranoia. Whether it was genuine senility or the effects of the silver nitrate he had been given years before to treat an attack of dysentery remains a subject of debate.

In 1844 the tax receipts were in, and Sherif Pasha, the head of the diwan al-maliyya (financial ministry), was too fearful for his life to tell Ali the news that Egyptian debt now stood at 80 million francs (£2,400,000). Tax arrears came to 14,081,500 piastres out of a total estimated tax of 75,227,500 pts. Timidly he approached Ibrahim Pasha with these facts, and together came up with a report and a plan. Anticipating his father's initial reaction, Ibrahim arranged for Muhammad Ali's favourite daughter to break the news. It did little, if any, good. The resulting rage was far beyond what had been expected, and it took six full days for a tenuous peace to take hold.

In 1846, while Ibrahim, progressively crippled by rheumatic pains and tuberculosis (he was beginning to cough up blood), was sent to Italy to take the waters, Muhammad Ali travelled to Constantinople. There he approached the Sultan, expressed his fears, and made his peace, explaining: "[My son] Ibrahim is old and sick, [my grandson] Abbas is indolent (happa), and then children will rule Egypt. How will they keep Egypt?"
After he secured hereditary rule for his family, the Wāli ruled until 1848, when senility made further governance by him impossible.

It soon came to the point where his son and heir, the mortally ailing Ibrahim, had no choice but to travel to Constantinople and request that the Sultan recognize him ruler of Egypt and Sudan even though his father was still alive. However, on the ship returning home, Ibrahim, gripped by fever and guilt, succumbed to seizures and hallucinations. He survived the journey but within six months was dead. He was succeeded by his nephew (Tosun's son) Abbas I.

By this time Muhammad Ali had become so ill and senile that he was not informed of his son's death. Lingering a few months more, Muhammad Ali died at Ras el-Tin Palace in Alexandria on 2 August 1849, and ultimately was buried in the imposing mosque he had commissioned in the Cairo Citadel.

But the immediate reaction to his death was noticeably low-profile, thanks in no small part to the contempt the new Wāli Abbas Pasha had always felt towards his grandfather.

Eyewitness British consul John Murray wrote:
... the ceremonial of the funeral was a most meagre, miserable affair; the [diplomatic] Consular was not invited to attend, and neither the shops nor the Public offices were closed – in short, a general impression prevails that Abbas Pasha has shown a culpable lack of respect for the memory of his illustrious grandfather, in allowing his obsequies to be conducted in so paltry a manner, and in neglecting to attend them in person.

...[the] attachment and veneration of all classes in Egypt for the name of Muhammad Ali are prouder obsequies than any of which it was in power of his successor to confer. The old inhabitants remember and talk of the chaos and anarchy from which he rescued this country; the younger compare his energetic rule with the capricious, vacillating government of his successor; all classes whether Turk, or Arab, not only feel, but do not hesitate to say openly that the prosperity of Egypt has died with Muhammad Ali...In truth my Lord, it cannot be denied, that Muhammad Ali, notwithstanding all his faults was a great man.

Legacy

The prevailing historical view of Muhammad Ali is as the "Father of Modern Egypt", being the first ruler since the Ottoman conquest in 1517 to permanently divest the Porte of its power in Egypt. While failing to achieve formal independence for Egypt during his lifetime, he was successful in laying the foundation for a modern Egyptian state. In the process of building an army to defend and expand his realm, he built a central bureaucracy, an educational system that allowed social mobility, and an economic base that included an agricultural cash crop, cotton, and military-based manufacturing. His efforts established his progeny as the rulers of Egypt and Sudan for nearly 150 years and rendered Egypt a de facto independent state.

Others, however, view him not as a builder, but rather as a conqueror. He was of Albanian origin rather than Egyptian, and throughout his reign, Ottoman Turkish was the official language of his court rather than Arabic. Some argue that he exploited Egyptian manpower and resources for his own personal ends, not Egyptian national ones, with the manpower requirements that he placed on Egyptians being particularly onerous. Taken together in this light, Muhammad Ali is cast by some as another in a long line of foreign conquerors dating back to the Persian occupation in 525 B.C. This view, however, is at odds with the majority opinion of Egyptian, and other Arab historians, and Egyptian public opinion.

Much of the historical debate regarding Muhammad Ali reflects the simultaneous political struggles which occurred in Egypt during the 20th century. Fuad I of Egypt in the 1930s sponsored the collection, arrangement, and translation of the available historical documents relating to his predecessors, which became the Royal Archives of Egypt. These Royal Archives represented the primary and, in the case of some important works, the only source of information for Egyptian history until the sharia court records became available in the 1970s. Fuad's portrayal of Muhammad Ali as a nationalist and benevolent monarch therefore heavily influenced the historical debate. Later, Nasser and his revolutionary republican regime promoted an alternative narrative which portrayed Muhammad Ali as the nationalist founder of modern Egypt but also an ambitious monarch with little regard for his people whose policies ultimately benefited himself and his dynasty at the expense of Egypt.

See also

 History of Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty
 Ottoman Egypt
 Lists of rulers of Egypt
 Muhammad Ali dynasty
 Muhammad Ali's seizure of power

Notes

References

Citations

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 Attribution

Further reading
 Aharoni, Reuven. The Pasha's Bedouin: tribes and state in the Egypt of Mehemet Ali, 1805–1848 (Routledge, 2014)

 Fahmy, K.Fahmy, Khaled. All the Pasha's men: Mehmed Ali, his army and the making of modern Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 1997)

 Kelly, J. B. "Mehemet 'Ali's expedition to the Persian Gulf 1837–1840, part I." Middle Eastern Studies (1965) 1#4 pp: 350–381.
 Panza, Laura, and J. G. Williamson. "Did Muhammad Ali foster industrialization in early nineteenth‐century Egypt?." The Economic History Review (2014). online
 Sayyid-Marsot, A.L., 1984, Egypt in the reign of Muhammad Ali (Cambridge University Press)
 Silvera, Alain. "Edme‐Framçois Jomard and Egyptian reforms in 1839." Middle Eastern Studies (1971) 7#3 pp: 301–316.
 Stewart, Desmond. "Mohammed Ali: Pasha of Egypt" History Today (May 1958) 8#5 pp 321–327.
 Toledano, E.R. (1985) "Mehmet Ali Paşa or Muhammad Ali Basha? A historiographic appraisal in the wake of a recent book." Middle Eastern Studies 21#4 pp: 141–159.
 Ufford, Letitia W. The Pasha: How Mehemet Ali Defied the West, 1839–1841 (McFarland, 2007)

External links

 Al Ahram special on Muhammad Ali
 Biographic Sketch of Mohammad Ali, Pacha of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia

1769 births
1849 deaths
18th-century Albanian people
18th-century Egyptian people
19th-century Albanian people
19th-century Egyptian monarchs
19th-century Egyptian people
Albanian Muslims
Albanian people from the Ottoman Empire
Bulaq Press people
Burials in Egypt
Egyptian people of Albanian descent
Egyptian people of the Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–1833)
Egyptian people of the Egyptian–Ottoman War (1839–1841)
Field marshals of the Ottoman Empire
Muhammad Ali dynasty

Egyptian slave owners
Nahda
Ottoman governors of Egypt
Ottoman military leaders of the French Revolutionary Wars
Ottoman people of the Wahhabi War
Ali of Egypt, Muhammad
People from Kavala
People of the peasants' revolt in Palestine
Rebels from the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman slave owners
Wahhabi War

Muhammad Ali of Egypt


Janna (Kannada : ಮಹಾಕವಿ    ಜನ್ನ) was one of the well-known Kannada poets of the early 13th century who also served in the capacity of a minister and a builder of temples. He graced the court of Hoysala empire King Veera Ballala II and earned the title Kavichakravarthi ("Emperor among poets"). His noteworthy writings include Yashodhara wazowski  (c.1209) which deals with Jain tenets, Ananthnatha Purana (c.1230) which deals with the teachings of the 14th Jain tirthankara, Anantanatha and a short piece called Anubhava Mukura. Although all his works are known for the grace and style, Yashodhara Charite is his magnum opus and one of the classics of Kannada literature.

Janna finds an important place in Kannada literature, though he is not as famous as Adikavi Pampa. He came from a family of Kannada writers; Mallikarjuna, the well known anthologist was his brother-in-law and Kesiraja the grammarian, was his nephew. Janna's style essentially belonged to the classical marga (mainstream) brand of Kannada writers and his works were primarily meant to propagate the Jain philosophy.

Magnum opus

Yashodhara Charite, an epic written in the kandapadya metre is a unique set of stories in 310 verses dealing with perverted sex and violence and contains cautionary morals on the issue of extreme desires. Inspired by the Sanskrit writing of the same name by Vadiraja, the Janna transcreates stories of king Yashodhara and his mother and their passing from one life to the next without attaining moksha (liberation from cycle of death and rebirth). In one of the stories, the king intends to perform a ritual sacrifice of two young boys to a local deity, Mariamma. Taking pity on the boys, the king releases them and gives up the practice of human sacrifice. In another story, the poet narrates the infatuation of the king for his friends wife. Having killed his friend, the king abducts the wife who however dies of grief. Overcome by repentance, he burns himself on the funeral pyre of the woman. The stories of infatuation reaches a peak when Janna narrates the attraction of Amrutamati, the queen, to the ugly mahout Ashtavakra, who pleases the queen with kicks and whip lashes—a story that has piqued the interest of modern research. To expiate the queen from her sinful act, King Yashodhara takes his mothers advice and decides to perform a symbolic sacrifice of a cock made of flour, to please the gods. But the cock comes to life and crows at its time of death. For committing the sin of violence, Yashodhara and his mother are reborn as animals. After much suffering, they are eventually born as the children of Yashodhara's son in their seventh rebirth. The writing powerfully narrates the consequences of passion gone awry and the terrible suffering it brings in human life.

Other writings
Janna's Anubhava Mukhura is a treatise on erotics and the science of lovemaking, a topic that was well established as a genre of Kannada literature by his time.

Notes

References

13th-century Indian poets
History of Karnataka
13th-century Indian Jain poets
Kannada poets
Poets from Karnataka
Indian male poets

Janna


The Grenada national cricket team represents the country of Grenada in cricket. The team is not a member of the International Cricket Council, but the Grenada Cricket Association is a member of the Windward Islands Cricket Board of Control, which itself is a member association of the West Indies Cricket Board, and players from Grenada generally represent the Windward Islands cricket team at domestic level and the West Indies at international level. Grenada has however played as a separate entity in matches which held Twenty20 status, but has not appeared in first-class or List A cricket. The team's coach, as of November 2013, is Ricky Williams. The team currently has two captains: Devon Smith, who captains the two-day team, and Andre Fletcher who captains the 20-over team.

History
A Grenada cricket team first appeared in West Indian cricket in 1887 against a touring Gentlemen of America team at the old Queen's Park. Ten years later the team was recorded playing against Lord Hawke's touring team, though unlike several matches during the tour, this match did not have first-class status.  In 1899, G. A. de Freitas and William Mignon became the first Grenada cricketers to play first-class cricket. In 1910, Grenada played in the inaugural Cork Windward Islands Challenge Cup, with the team participating in that tournament until 1939. There is a long gap between 1939 and Grenada's next recorded appearance, which came in the 1965 Windward Islands Tournament against St Vincent. By this time the Windward Islands were playing matches which held first-class status, with Queen's Park playing host to the team's inaugural first-class fixture in 1959 against the Marylebone Cricket Club. Grenada continued to play in the Windward Islands Tournament, and from 1975 its successor, the Heineken Trophy. Their participation in the tournament (under various names) continued into the 1990s, with home matches throughout this period being held at the old Queen's Park.

In 2000, just months after a major redevelopment, the old Queen's Park was severely damaged by Hurricane Ivan, necessitating its reconstruction in 2004. Having played in regional tournaments throughout the early to mid 2000s, Grenada were invited to take part in the 2006 Stanford 20/20, whose matches held official Twenty20 status. They played three matches in the tournament, defeating Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the first-round and quarter-final respectively, before losing to Guyana in the semi-finals. Two years later, they were invited to take part in the 2008 Stanford 20/20, playing two matches in the tournament, defeating Anguilla in the first-round, before losing to Barbados in the following round. These matches mark Grenada's only major appearances in cricket.

In August 2014, Grenada played against Bangladesh in a 50 over game during Bangladesh's tour of the West Indies.  Bangladesh ran out winners by 95 runs.

Notable players

International Players

Five players from Grenada have represented the West Indies Internationally.

 Apps denotes the number of appearances the player has made.
 Runs denotes the number of runs scored by the player.
 Wkts denotes the number of wickets taken by the player.

Many other Grenadian players have represented the Windward Islands cricket team domestically in the West Indies Regional Super50, Regional Four Day Competition and the Caribbean Twenty20.

Grenada players on the current Windward Islands cricket team
Devon Smith
Andre Fletcher
Nelon Pascal
Denis Smith

See also
List of Windward Islands first-class cricketers
List of Grenada Twenty20 players

Squad

Players with international caps are listed in bold.

source:
Grenada v Bangladesh - August 2014
 Grenada Squad - 2014 Windward Championship
Grenada Squads - 2013 T20 & 2-day

Stanford 20/20

2006 Grenada Stanford 20/20 Squad
2008 Grenada Stanford 20/20 Squad

National cricket stadium

References

External links
Grenada at CricketArchive

Cricket in Grenada
National cricket teams
Cricket

Grenada national cricket team


The Daily Review was a daily newspaper published in Hayward, California. Floyd L. Sparks was owner of the Review from 1944 to 1985, along with The Argus of Fremont and the Tri-Valley Herald.

It was last owned by Bay Area News Group-East Bay (BANG-EB), a subsidiary of MediaNews Group, which bought the paper in 1985. As of 2011, the executive editor was Kevin Keane.

Proposed end of publication
The newspaper was scheduled to stop publishing, with the last edition of the paper to be published on November 1, 2011. This was on the same day as the Oakland Tribune, Alameda Times-Star, Fremont Argus and West County Times were all scheduled to publish their last editions. The following day, subscribers and newspaper outlets were to get copies of the new East Bay Tribune, a proposed localized edition of the San Jose Mercury News, covering the areas previously served by the above-mentioned papers. This plan, proposed by ANG in mid 2011, was cancelled in October 2011, due to reader feedback.

End of publication
In 2016, the paper was shuttered, when BANG merged numerous East Bay papers into the East Bay Times.

References

External links
Official Website

Daily newspapers published in the San Francisco Bay Area
Mass media in Alameda County, California
Companies based in Hayward, California
MediaNews Group publications

Daily Review


Rolf Normann Torgersen (17 August 1918 – 15 January 2010) was a Norwegian jurist and civil servant.

He was born in Kristiania, finished his secondary education in 1936 and took the cand.jur. degree in 1941. He studied at Cambridge University from 1947 to 1948, The Hague Academy of International Law in 1947 and 1952 and at Columbia University from 1952 to 1953. He was a deputy judge and junior solicitor in his early career, and after the Second World War he was a secretary in the Compensation Department of the Ministry of Justice. The Compensation Department was tasked with returning or otherwise compensating for items that had been confiscated during the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany. Torgersen was also present at the Nuremberg Trials of 1945 and 1946, and wrote the process document Germany's Crimes against Norway together with Finn Palmstrøm.

From 1948 to 1962 Torgersen was an assistant secretary in the Ministry of Justice. From 1961 to 1963 he aided the Ministry of Transport and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport with working out the new Public Roads Act. From 1962 to 1971 he was a head of department in the Norwegian Directorate of Public Roads. From 1971 to 1981 he was the director of the Secretariat on Traffic Safety in the Ministry of Transport, and from 1981 to 1988 he was a special adviser. After his official retirement at age 70, he became an adviser in the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and Administration, where he worked for six years.

When turning 70 years old, Torgersen stated that after writing eight books up to then, he had an ambition to write eight more. He managed to write 15 books in total. He edited the journal Nordisk Administrativt Tidsskrift from 1973 to 1977, and chaired the Norwegian branch of Det nordiske administrative forbund from 1977 to 1979. He was also a member of Norwegian and Nordic committees such as Statens Rasjonaliseringsråd and the Nordic Road Safety Council. His most marked contribution to society was developments in traffic safety. During his time as director of the Secretariat on Traffic Safety, numerous improvements to traffic safety were made, including mandatory seat belts, lowered speed limits and the introduction of traffic enforcement cameras (colloquially in Norwegian: "photoboxes"). It has been claimed that Torgersen was "the father of the photobox" in Norway, but this particular claim has been disputed.

Torgersen resided in Uranienborg, Oslo. He died in January 2010.

References

1918 births
2010 deaths
Writers from Oslo
Norwegian expatriates in the United States
Norwegian expatriates in the United Kingdom
Norwegian jurists
Norwegian civil servants
Norwegian magazine editors
Norwegian non-fiction writers
Directorate of Public Roads people

Rolf Normann Torgersen


Operation Solstice (), also known as Unternehmen Husarenritt or the Stargard tank battle, was one of the last German armoured offensive operations on the Eastern Front in World War II.

It was originally planned as a major offensive but was executed as a limited attack, due to hasty planning by the Germans and it being partially compromised by Soviet military intelligence. Intended to relieve the city of Küstrin, Sonnenwende was launched on 15 February 1945 from Stargard, Pomerania. By 18 February, the Soviet 1st Belorussian Front led by Georgy Zhukov had defeated the attack, prompting the Germans to call off the offensive. Despite its failure, the operation had forced Soviet High Command (Stavka) to postpone the planned attack on Berlin from February to April, focusing forces on the East Pomeranian Offensive, launched on 24 February and not concluded until 4 April.

Planning

The operation took place in response to the Soviet advance on Berlin in early 1945. Launched January 12, 1945, the Soviet Vistula-Oder Offensive had ripped open a gap hundreds of kilometers long in German defensive lines, and the Soviets had subsequently pushed from the Vistula River to the Oder River. As the Soviet advance to the west reached its farthest point, its apex narrowed, leaving long northern and southern flanks into which retreating German formations had moved and along which the Germans were attempting to reestablish a cohesive defensive line.

General Heinz Guderian had originally planned to execute a major offensive against the 1st Belorussian Front, cutting off the leading elements of Georgy Zhukov's forces east of the Oder. The Soviet forces were to be attacked from Stargard (Pomerania) in the north as well as from Glogau (Silesia) and Guben (Brandenburg) in the south. In order to carry out these plans, he requested that the Courland Pocket be evacuated to make available the divisions trapped there, removed troops from Italy and Norway, and involved Sepp Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army which had been intended for counter-attacks in Hungary. In a meeting with Guderian, Hitler insisted that Courland be held and that the army continue with its planned attacks in Hungary; the meeting rapidly degenerated into a heated and farcical argument.

After agreeing on a more limited counter-offensive, Hitler and Guderian then proceeded to have an even more heated argument when Guderian insisted that Walther Wenck direct the offensive rather than Heinrich Himmler (the commander of Army Group Vistula). Hitler, despite "almost screaming", according to Guderian's account, gave in on this point.

Operational goals
In its final form, Operation Solstice consisted of a more limited counter-attack than had been originally planned by the three corps of the Eleventh SS Panzer Army, which was being assembled in Pomerania, against the spearheads of the 1st Belorussian Front. The German forces would first attack along a fifty-kilometre front around Stargard south-eastwards towards Arnswalde where a small garrison had been encircled with their ultimate objective being the relief of Küstrin.

The Wehrmacht originally codenamed the operation Husarenritt, but the SS insisted on the name Sonnenwende.

Soviet intelligence

Zhukov had been made aware of a buildup of German forces opposing his 61st and 2nd Guards Tank Armies, but did not have information as to the exact timing and nature of the attack. The Stavka of the Supreme Main Command had noted with concern that while the Germans had moved thirteen divisions between the main Soviet forces and Berlin, thirty-three divisions had concentrated in Pomerania, lending credence to the possibility of a German strike from Pomerania into the exposed northern flank of the 1st Belorussian Front.

Deployments

Wehrmacht

Over 1200 tanks were allocated to the offensive, but no trains were available to transport them. In addition, due to serious shortages, only three days' ammunition and fuel were immediately available. German forces had also suffered heavy losses during the January combat in East Prussia and Poland. German sources admitted to 198,000 dead and missing for the first two months of 1945 in the region between the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian Mountains.

Soviet sources state that operations by the 1st Ukrainian and Belorussian Fronts during the Vistula-Oder Offensive alone resulted in the deaths of 150,000 German troops. In Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg, author Rüdiger Overmans estimates overall German military deaths in January 1945 were 451,742 and believes up to 2/3 of these losses (some 300,000) occurred in combat on the eastern front. While the Germans were able to make good some of the losses through measures such as the mass mobilization of Volkssturm, the German forces in the east had clearly suffered both significant quantitative and qualitative losses as a result of the two Soviet major offensives in January 1945.

Red Army

While the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts were impressively large formations, the Soviet forces had also suffered serious losses in the Vistula-Oder Offensive. At the beginning of February 1945, the strength of rifle divisions in the 1st BRF averaged around 4,000 troops and those of the 2nd BRF between 3,000 - 4,000. Soviet army strength was further weakened by the need to besiege encircled groups of German soldiers (Festungen - German: "fortresses") in Elbing, Poznan, Deutsch-Krone, and Schneidemühl. Armored strength was also weakened by the recent offensive operations; the 2nd BRF fielded only 297 well-worn tanks early in February 1945. During the period January 12 - February 3, 1945, the 1st BRF suffered 77,342 casualties (7.5% of its assigned strength) while during the East Prussian Offensive of January 13 - February 10, 1945, the 2nd BRF took 159,490 casualties (18% of assigned strength). In the same periods, the 1st Belorussian and Ukrainian Fronts lost 1,267 armored fighting vehicles while the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts lost 3,525. Gun and mortar losses for the two groups of fronts were 374 and 1,644, respectively. To compound their difficulties, the Soviets faced supply bottlenecks as well as increased German air activity, resulting in increased unit requests for anti-aircraft weapons.

The offensive

Not all of the German units, which had to be reinforced across the bridges at Stettin were ready on the planned start date of February 15. Nevertheless, a part of the central corps, the SS Division Nordland, attacked towards Arnswalde that day. Initially the offensive was successful; the opposing forces of 61st Army were taken by surprise and the German spearhead reached the besieged outpost of Arnswalde and relieved its garrison.

A general attack opened the following day. The central corridor to Arnswalde was widened by the III SS Panzer Corps, pushing part of the Soviet front eight to twelve kilometers back. However, the attack by the XXXIX Panzer Corps was unable to reach the Plöne Lake due to resistance by the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army, stalling some 70 kilometers from Küstrin after pushing the Soviets out of Sallenthin and Muscherin, reoccupying some land on the eastern shore of Lake Madü, and recapturing Pyritz. Gruppe Munzel pushed some four kilometers to Liebenow, while the III SS Panzer Corps advanced about a kilometer to Reetz. Numbers of Soviet tanks and antitank guns were destroyed by German Tiger II heavy tanks, but the German heavy tanks also took losses. In general, German progress was hindered because of strong Soviet resistance.
On February 17, General Wenck, commander of the offensive, was seriously injured in a car accident. While being driven back from a briefing in Berlin, he took over driving from his driver (who had been on duty and awake for 48 hours) and then himself fell asleep at the wheel. He was replaced by Hans Krebs, but command initiative had already been lost. Later that day, Zhukov threw the 3rd Shock Army, which had redeployed from the area of Jastrow, into a counter-attack and the German offensive stalled.

Army Group Vistula halted Sonnenwende on February 18. On February 19, Zhukov initiated a counter-offensive aimed at the capture of Stettin using the 61st and the 2nd Guards Tank Armies as well as the 7th Guards Cavalry Corps. However, it stalled in the heavy street fighting during the re-capture of Arnswalde. There was no immediate German withdrawal, but the German command decided on February 21 to withdraw the headquarters of the XXXIX Panzer Corps as well as the Führer-Grenadier, Führer-Begleit, Holstein, and 10th SS Panzer Divisions westward behind Army Group Center, practically ensuring that eastern Pomerania would fall to the Soviets. Zhukov's commitment of the 70th Army into an attack on February 23 spurred a retreat with the German forces losing or abandoning many tanks. On February 24, Marshal Rokossovsky's 2nd Belorussian Front renewed the offensive into Pomerania, opening a  wide gap in German lines west of Grudziądz and moving almost  forward, further reducing the cohesion of German defenses.

Outcome
Despite the initial gains, the operation was a complete failure. However, the operation convinced the Soviets to postpone their attack on Berlin while Pomerania was cleared in the East Pomeranian Offensive.

See also
History of Pomerania (1933–1945)

Footnotes
Citations

References

External links
 Satellite imagery view of the battle area
 Aerial photo of the region around Pyritz
 Lage Ost map for 15 February 1945 showing the German offensive

Battles involving the Soviet Union
Military operations of World War II involving Germany
Battles and operations of the Soviet–German War
February 1945 events in Europe
1945 in Germany

Operation Solstice


Jan Pogány (real name Jan Maślankiewicz-Pogány, born 23 June 1960 in Kołobrzeg, Poland) is a Polish classical composer, conductor  and cellist.
His music adopts the romantic style and is a symbiosis of the modern form of romantic harmony and lyrical melodic line.

Biography

He is a graduate of cello and conducting studies in Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich (Germany). He studied at the Music Academy in Wroclaw (Poland). He works with numerous orchestras such as the ones Germany, Japan, Korea, Germany, Greece, Poland as well as opera companies.

He founded the Polish Chamber Orchestra Camerata-Wrocław. He was Director General of the International Brahms Festival Wroclaw.

Recognition
2008 – the II prize at the International Composers Competitions in Torrevie (Spain),
2009 – the III prize at the International Composers Competitions in Luxembourg.

Works
 2002 – Film music for the German TV crime series Mit Herz und Handschellen
 2005 – Cantata of Kołobrzeg for two sopranos, tenor, baritone, choir and orchestra, the composition was written on the jubilee 750th anniversary of Kolobrzeg
 2006 – Fantasia in D minor for cello and orchestra
 2007 – Cantata "La Voce del Destino"  for tenor, violin and orchestra
 2008 – Opera  "Acrobat" composer is also the author of the libretto, first performance was at the Munich Philharmonic Hall.
 2008 – Introduction and Waltz of fate.
 2009 – Requiem a-moll for opera singer Antonina Kawecka.
 2009 – Musical "Cruise"
 2011 – Requiem Smolensk in memoriam. First performance was in the Polish Radio Concert Hall in Wroclaw in the first anniversary of plane crash in Smolensk.
...my Requiem gives hope and not force to cry. The open space of human life is closing from the absolute key of the time but it is only a prelude to eternity -Jan Pogány
 2011 – "Rhapsody of Japan" for tenor, choir and orchestra.
 2014 - Oman's Serenade for violin and orchestra.

References

External links

Artist's website
Interview for a newspaper MuscatDaily in Oman
Interview with Jan Pogány page IV (Polish newspaper)
Article about the premiere of Requiem (Polish newspaper)
 Premiere of  Requiem Smolensk in memoriam (music)
 Score
Requiem

1960 births
Light music composers
Living people
Male film score composers
Male musical theatre composers
Polish classical composers
Polish male classical composers
Polish classical musicians
Polish conductors (music)
Male conductors (music)
Polish film score composers
21st-century conductors (music)
21st-century male musicians

Jan Pogány


The 1973 Canadian-American Challenge Cup was the eighth season of the Can-Am auto racing series.  It consisted of FIA Group 7 racing cars running two-hour sprint events.  It began June 10, 1973, and ended October 28, 1973, after eight rounds. The season came amid the Oil Crisis, which ended interest in performance cars after an already-declining market over a several-year period. The golden age of the Trans Am Series ended after the 1972 season, leaving Can Am and Formula 5000 as the frontrunners of the SCCA. The season was also the penultimate season of the series, which would fold after 1974 before being revived in an entirely reworked series based on F5000 a few years later.

Schedule
For 1973, the schedule was altered as the season continued on.  The first race ran in a standard, single race format.  Rounds two through four ran as two heats, with the results being determined by combined results.  Rounds five through eight ran a Sprint qualifying heat first to determine the starting order for the Cup event.  The results of the Sprint and Cup were not combined.

Season results

Drivers Championship
Points are awarded to the top ten finishers in the order of 20-15-12-10-8-6-4-3-2-1.

References

Can-Am seasons
Can-Am

1973 Can-Am season