Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

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Re: Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

Postby admin » Wed Aug 08, 2018 8:22 pm

Libertine
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/8/18

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Image
Marquis de Sade

Image
John Wilmot

A libertine is one devoid of most moral or sexual restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour sanctified by the larger society.[1][2] Libertinism is described as an extreme form of hedonism.[3] Libertines put value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in France and Great Britain. Notable among these were John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and the Marquis de Sade.

History of the term

The word "Libertine" was originally coined by John Calvin to negatively describe opponents of his policies in Geneva, Switzerland.[4] This group, led by Ami Perrin, argued against Calvin's "insistence that church discipline should be enforced uniformly against all members of Genevan society".[5] Perrin and his allies were elected to the town council in 1548, and "broadened their support base in Geneva by stirring up resentment among the older inhabitants against the increasing number of religious refugees who were fleeing France in even greater numbers".[5] By 1555, Calvinists were firmly in place on the Genevan town council, so the Libertines, led by Perrin, responded with an "attempted coup against the government and called for the massacre of the French. This was the last great political challenge Calvin had to face in Geneva".[5]

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the term became more associated with debauchery.[6] Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand wrote that Joseph Bonaparte "sought only life's pleasures and easy access to libertinism" while on the throne of Naples.[7]

Literature

Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons, 1782), an epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, is a trenchant description of sexual libertinism. Wayland Young argues:

...the mere analysis of libertinism... carried out by a novelist with such a prodigious command of his medium... was enough to condemn it and play a large part in its destruction.[8]


Agreeable to Calvin's emphasis on the need for uniformity of discipline in Geneva, Samuel Rutherford (Professor of Divinity in the University of St. Andrews, and Christian minister in 17th Century Scotland) offered a rigorous treatment of "Libertinism" in his polemical work "A Free Disputation against pretended Liberty of Conscience" (1649).

A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind is a poem by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester which addresses the question of the proper use of reason, and is generally assumed to be a Hobbesian critique of rationalism.[9] The narrator subordinates reason to sense.[10] It is based to some extent on Boileau's version of Juvenal's eighth or fifteenth satire, and is also indebted to Hobbes, Montaigne, Lucretius and Epicurus, as well as the general libertine tradition.[11] Confusion has arisen in its interpretation as it is ambiguous as to whether the speaker is Rochester himself, or a satirised persona.[12] It criticises the vanities and corruptions of the statesmen and politicians of the court of Charles II.[11]

The libertine novel was an 18th century literary genre of which the roots lay in the European but mainly French libertine tradition. The genre effectively ended with the French Revolution. Themes of libertine novels were anti-clericalism, anti-establishment and eroticism.

Authors include Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (Les Égarements du cœur et de l'esprit, 1736; Le Sopha, conte moral, 1742), Denis Diderot (Les bijoux indiscrets, 1748), Marquis de Sade (L'Histoire de Juliette, 1797–1801), Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons dangereuses, 1782), John Wilmot (Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, 1684).

Other famous titles are Histoire de Dom Bougre, Portier des Chartreux (1741) and Thérèse Philosophe (1748).

Precursors to the libertine writers were Théophile de Viau (1590–1626) and Charles de Saint-Evremond (1610–1703), who were inspired by Epicurus and the publication of Petronius.

Robert Darnton is a cultural historian who has covered this genre extensively.

Critics have been divided as to the literary merits of William Hazlitt's Liber Amoris, a deeply personal account of frustrated Lolita-like love that is quite unlike anything else Hazlitt ever wrote. Wardle suggests that it was compelling but marred by sickly sentimentality, and also proposes that Hazlitt might even have been anticipating some of the experiments in chronology made by later novelists.[13]

One or two positive reviews appeared, such as the one in the Globe, 7 June 1823: "The Liber Amoris is unique in the English language; and as, possibly, the first book in its fervour, its vehemency, and its careless exposure of passion and weakness—of sentiments and sensations which the common race of mankind seek most studiously to mystify or conceal—that exhibits a portion of the most distinguishing characteristics of Rousseau, it ought to be generally praised".[14] Dan Cruickshank in his book London's Sinful Secret summarized Hazlitt's infatuation stating: "Decades after her death Batsy (Careless) still haunted the imagination of the essayist William Hazlitt, a man who lodged near Covent Garden during the 1820s, where he became unpleasantly intimate with the social consequences of unconventional sexual obsession that he revealed in his Liber Amoris of 1823, in which he candidly confessed to his infatuation with his landlord's young daughter."[15]

Philosophy

During the Baroque era in France, there existed a freethinking circle of philosophers and intellectuals who were collectively known as libertinage érudit and which included Gabriel Naudé, Élie Diodati and François de La Mothe Le Vayer.[16][17] The critic Vivian de Sola Pinto linked John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester's libertinism to Hobbesian materialism.[18]

Theatre and film

• In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Ophelia refers to her brother Laertes as "a puff'd and reckless libertine" (in Act 1, Scene 3).[19]
• A play, The Libertine (1994), was written by Stephen Jeffreys, and staged by the Royal Court Theatre based on the life of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. The 2004 film The Libertine, based on Jeffreys' play, starred Johnny Depp as Rochester. Michael Nyman set to music an excerpt of Rochester's poem, "Signor Dildo" for the film.[20]
• American Musical: The Music Man by Meredith Wilson. The tune "Ya Got Trouble" decries the libertine effects on a boy by being a pool player. He references the libertine men and scarlet women heading down to the Armory to a dance.
• Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, a 1975 film.
• Caligula, a 1979 film
• Confession of a Child of the Century, a 2012 film by Sylvie Verheyde.

Notable libertines

Some notable libertines include:

• Pope Alexander VI
• GG Allin
• Tallulah Bankhead
• Ivan Barkov
• Charles Baudelaire
• Aphra Behn
• Cyrano de Bergerac
Lord Byron
• Caligula
• Graham Capill
• Giacomo Casanova
• Neal Cassady
• Charles II of England
• Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Aleister Crowley
• Lorenzo Da Ponte
• Edward VII of Great Britain
• Elagabalus
• George IV of Great Britain
• Otto Gross
• Henry IV of France
• Sebastian Horsley
• Pope John XII
• Don Juan
• Anton Szandor LaVey
• Louis XV of France
• Marilyn Manson
• Jim Morrison
• Nero
• Peter the Great
• Ami Perrin
• Arthur Rimbaud
• Marquis de Sade
• Charlie Sheen[21][22]
• Tiberius
• Paul Verlaine
• John Wilkes
• John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

See also

• Amoralism
• Antinomianism
• Bacchanalia
• Hellfire Club
• Hookup culture
• Cyrenaics
• Free love
• Hypersexuality
• Incest taboo
• LaVeyan Satanism
• Libertine novel
• Lokāyata
• Moral nihilism
• Orgy
• Polyamory
• Rake (character)
• Sodomy
• Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery
• Sodom and Gomorrah
• Sexual deviancy
• Swinging
• Taboo
• The Libertines (band)


References

1. "Libertine" at the Free Dictionary
2. "libertine" at WordNet
3. The Origins of Jewish Secularization in 18th Century Europe by Schmuel Feiner
4. Gordon, Alexander (1911). "Libertines". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 543.
5. Zophy, Johnathan W. (2003). A Short History of Renaissance and Reformation Europe: Dances Over Fire and Water (Third ed.). Prentice Hall. p. 226. ISBN 0-13-097764-0.
6. Michel Delon, ed. (2013). Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. Routledge. pp. 2362–2363. ISBN 978-1-135-96005-6.
7. Talleyrand, Charles-Maurice de (2008). "Napoleon's European Legacy, 1853". In Blaufarb, Rafe. Napoleon: Symbol for an Age, A Brief History with Documents. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's. p. 151. ISBN 978-0-312-43110-5.
8. Young, Wayland (1966). Eros Denied. New York: Grove.
9. Fisher, Nicholas (2006). "The Contemporary Reception of Rochester's A Satyr against Mankind". The Review of English Studies. 57 (229): 185–220. doi:10.1093/res/hgl035.
10. Jenkinson, Matthew (2010). Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II, 1660–1685. Boydell & Brewer. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-84383-590-5.
11. Jenkinson, Matthew (2010). Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II: 1660–1685. Boydell & Brewer. p. 99. ISBN 978-1-84383-590-5. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
12. Thormählen, Marianne (25 June 1993). Rochester. Cambridge University Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-0-521-44042-4. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
13. Wardle, pp. 363–65. Wardle was writing in 1971; twenty-first-century critics continue to be sharply divided. David Armitage has assessed the book disparagingly as "the result of a tormented mind grasping literary motifs in a desperate and increasingly unsuccessful (and self indulgent) attempt to communicate its descent into incoherence...", while Gregory Dart has acclaimed it "the most powerful account of unrequited love in English literature". To James Ley, "It is ... an unsparing account of the psychology of obsession, the way a mind in the grip of an all-consuming passion can distort reality to its own detriment". Armitage, p. 223; Dart 2012, p. 85; Ley p. 38.
14. Quoted by Jones, p. 338.
15. Dan Cruickshank, London's Sinful Secret, p.92. St. Martin's Press, New York (2009).
16. René Pintard (2000). Le Libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. Slatkine. p. 11. ISBN 978-2-05-101818-0. Retrieved 24 July 2012.
17. "Fideism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
18. "A Martyr to Sin". New York Times. September 15, 1974.
19. "Hamlet (full text)". MIT. Retrieved 2016-02-27.
20. "Signior Dildo by Lord John Wilmot - All Poetry". Oldpoetry.com. Retrieved 2011-06-12.
21. Charlie Sheen to tell Matt Lauer he's HIV+ (Philly.com)
22. Charlie Sheen’s dubious comeback: His new “philanthropic approach” doesn’t erase his abusive past (Salon Magazine)
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Re: Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

Postby admin » Wed Aug 08, 2018 8:37 pm

Hellfire Club
Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/8/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Image
Portrait of Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron le Despencer by William Hogarth from the late 1750s, parodying Renaissance images of Francis of Assisi. The Bible has been replaced by a copy of the erotic novel Elegantiae Latini sermonis, and the profile of Dashwood's friend Lord Sandwich peers from the halo.

Hellfire Club was a name for several exclusive clubs for high society rakes established in Britain and Ireland in the 18th century. The name is most commonly used to refer to Sir Francis Dashwood's Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe.[1] Such clubs were rumoured to be the meeting places of "persons of quality"[2] who wished to take part in socially perceived immoral acts, and the members were often involved in politics. Neither the activities nor membership of the club are easy to ascertain, for the clubs were rumoured to have distant ties to an elite society known only as The Order of the Second Circle.[3][4]

Second Circle (Lust)

Canto V

Dante and Virgil leave Limbo and enter the Second Circle – the first of the circles of Incontinence – where the punishments of Hell proper begin. It is described as "a part where no thing gleams".[29] They find their way hindered by the serpentine Minos, who judges all of those condemned for active, deliberately willed sin to one of the lower circles. Minos sentences each soul to its torment by wrapping his tail around himself a corresponding number of times. Virgil rebukes Minos, and he and Dante continue on.

In the second circle of Hell are those overcome by lust. These "carnal malefactors"[30] are condemned for allowing their appetites to sway their reason. These souls are buffeted back and forth by the terrible winds of a violent storm, without rest. This symbolizes the power of lust to blow needlessly and aimlessly: "as the lovers drifted into self-indulgence and were carried sway by their passions, so now they drift for ever. The bright, voluptuous sin is now seen as it is – a howling darkness of helpless discomfort."[31] Since lust involves mutual indulgence and is not, therefore, completely self-centered, Dante deems it the least heinous of the sins and its punishment is the most benign within Hell proper.[31][32] The "ruined slope"[33] in this circle is thought to be a reference to the earthquake that occurred after the death of Christ.

In this circle, Dante sees Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Paris, Achilles, Tristan, and many others who were overcome by sexual love during their life. Dante comes across Francesca da Rimini, who married the deformed Giovanni Malatesta (also known as "Gianciotto") for political purposes but fell in love with his younger brother Paolo Malatesta; the two began to carry on an adulterous affair. Sometime between 1283 and 1286, Giovanni surprised them together in Francesca's bedroom and violently stabbed them both to death. Francesca explains:

Love, which in gentlest hearts will soonest bloom
seized my lover with passion for that sweet body
from which I was torn unshriven to my doom.
Love, which permits no loved one not to love,
took me so strongly with delight in him
that we are one in Hell, as we were above.
Love led us to one death. In the depths of Hell
Caïna waits for him who took our lives."
This was the piteous tale they stopped to tell.[34]


Francesca further reports that she and Paolo yielded to their love when reading the story of the adultery between Lancelot and Guinevere in the Old French romance Lancelot du Lac. Francesca says, "Galeotto fu 'l libro e chi lo scrisse."[35] The word "Galeotto" means "pander" but is also the Italian term for Gallehaut, who acted as an intermediary between Lancelot and Guinevere, encouraging them on to love. John Ciardi renders line 137 as "That book, and he who wrote it, was a pander."[36] Inspired by Dante, author Giovanni Boccaccio invoked the name Prencipe Galeotto in the alternative title to The Decameron, a 14th-century collection of novellas. The English poet John Keats, in his sonnet "On a Dream," imagines what Dante does not give us, the point of view of Paolo:

... But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where 'mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.[37]


As he did at the end of Canto III, Dante – overcome by pity and anguish – describes his swoon: "I fainted, as if I had met my death. / And then I fell as a dead body falls"[38]

-- Inferno (Dante), by Wikipedia]


The first official Hellfire Club was founded in London in 1718, by Philip, Duke of Wharton and a handful of other high society friends.[5] The most notorious club associated with the name was established in England by Sir Francis Dashwood,[6] and met irregularly from around 1749 to around 1760, and possibly up until 1766.[7] In its later years, the Hellfire was closely associated with Brooks's, established in 1764. Other clubs using the name "Hellfire Club" were set up throughout the 18th century. Most of these clubs were set up in Ireland after Wharton's had been dissolved.[8]

Duke of Wharton's club

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Philip, Duke of Wharton

Lord Wharton, made a Duke by George I,[9] was a prominent politician with two separate lives: the first a "man of letters" and the second "a drunkard, a rioter, an infidel and a rake".[10] The members of Wharton's club are largely unknown. Mark Blackett-Ord[11] assumes that members included Wharton's immediate friends: Earl of Hillsborough, cousin – the Earl of Lichfield and Sir Ed. O'Brien. Aside from these names, other members are not revealed.

At the time of the London gentlemen's club, where there was a meeting place for every interest, including poetry, philosophy and politics,[12][13] Philip, Duke of Wharton's Hell-Fire Club was, according to Blackett-Ord,[14] a satirical "gentleman's club" which was known to ridicule religion, catching onto the then-current trend in England of blasphemy.[12][15] The club was more a joke, meant to shock the outside world, than a serious attack on religion or morality. The supposed president of this club was the Devil, although the members themselves did not apparently worship demons or the Devil, but called themselves devils.[16] Wharton's club admitted men and women as equals, unlike other clubs of the time.[15] The club met on Sundays at a number of different locations around London. The Greyhound Tavern was one of the meeting places used regularly, but because women were not to be seen in taverns, the meetings were also held at members' houses and at Wharton's riding club.[5][15][17]

According to at least one source, their activities included mock religious ceremonies and partaking in meals containing dishes like "Holy Ghost Pie", "Breast of Venus", and "Devil's Loin", while drinking "Hell-fire punch".[5][18] Members of the Club supposedly came to meetings dressed as characters from the Bible.[18]

Wharton's club came to an end in 1721[15] when George I, under the influence of Wharton's political enemies (namely Robert Walpole) put forward a Bill "against 'horrid impieties'" (or immorality), aimed at the Hellfire Club.[2][19] Wharton's political opposition used his membership as a way to pit him against his political allies, thus removing him from Parliament.[19] After his Club was disbanded, Wharton became a Freemason, and in 1722 he became the Grand Master of England.[20]

Sir Francis Dashwood's clubs

Sir Francis Dashwood and the Earl of Sandwich are alleged to have been members of a Hellfire Club that met at the George and Vulture Inn throughout the 1730s.[21] Dashwood founded the Order of the Knights of St Francis in 1746, originally meeting at the George & Vulture.[22]

The club motto was Fais ce que tu voudras (Do what thou wilt), a philosophy of life associated with François Rabelais' fictional abbey at Thélème[7][23] and later used by Aleister Crowley.

Francis Dashwood was well known for his pranks: for example, while in the Royal Court in St Petersburg, he dressed up as the King of Sweden, a great enemy of Russia.
The membership of Sir Francis' club was initially limited to twelve but soon increased. Of the original twelve, some are regularly identified: Dashwood, Robert Vansittart, Thomas Potter, Francis Duffield, Edward Thompson, Paul Whitehead and John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich.[24] The list of supposed members is immense; among the more probable candidates are Benjamin Bates II, George Bubb Dodington, a fabulously corpulent man in his 60s;[25] William Hogarth, although hardly a gentleman, has been associated with the club after painting Dashwood as a Franciscan Friar[26][27] and John Wilkes, though much later, under the pseudonym John of Aylesbury.[28] Benjamin Franklin is known to have occasionally attended the club's meetings during 1758 as a non-member during his time in England. However, some authors and historians would argue Benjamin Franklin was in fact a spy. As there are no records left (having been burned in 1774[29]), many of these members are just assumed or linked by letters sent to each other.[30]

Meetings and club activities

Sir Francis's club was never originally known as a Hellfire Club; it was given this name much later.[3][4] His club in fact used a number of other names, such as the Brotherhood of St. Francis of Wycombe,[31] Order of Knights of West Wycombe, The Order of the Friars of St Francis of Wycombe[26] and later, after moving their meetings to Medmenham Abbey, they became the Monks or Friars of Medmenham.[32] The first meeting at Sir Francis's family home in West Wycombe was held on Walpurgis Night, 1752; a much larger meeting, it was something of a failure and no large-scale meetings were held there again. In 1751, Dashwood leased Medmenham Abbey[26] on the Thames from a friend, Francis Duffield.[33] On moving into the Abbey, Dashwood had numerous expensive works done on the building. It was rebuilt by the architect Nicholas Revett in the style of the 18th century Gothic revival. At this time, the motto Fais ce que tu voudras was placed above a doorway in stained glass.[7] It is thought that William Hogarth may have executed murals for this building; none, however, survives. Underneath the Abbey, Dashwood had a series of caves carved out from an existing one. It was decorated again with mythological themes, phallic symbols and other items of a sexual nature.

According to Horace Walpole, the members' "practice was rigorously pagan: Bacchus and Venus were the deities to whom they almost publicly sacrificed; and the nymphs and the hogsheads that were laid in against the festivals of this new church, sufficiently informed the neighborhood of the complexion of those hermits." Dashwood's garden at West Wycombe contained numerous statues and shrines to different gods; Daphne and Flora, Priapus and the previously mentioned Venus and Dionysus.[34]

Meetings occurred twice a month, with an AGM lasting a week or more in June or September.[35] The members addressed each other as "Brothers" and the leader, which changed regularly, as "Abbot". During meetings members supposedly wore ritual clothing: white trousers, jacket and cap, while the "Abbot" wore a red ensemble of the same style.[36] Legends of Black Masses and Satan or demon worship have subsequently become attached to the club, beginning in the late Nineteenth Century. Rumours saw female "guests" (a euphemism for prostitutes) referred to as "Nuns". Dashwood's Club meetings often included mock rituals, items of a pornographic nature, much drinking, wenching and banqueting.[37]

Decline of Dashwood's Club

The downfall of Dashwood's Club was more drawn-out and complicated. In 1762 the Earl of Bute appointed Dashwood his Chancellor of the Exchequer, despite Dashwood being widely held to be incapable of understanding "a bar bill of five figures". (Dashwood resigned the post the next year, having raised a tax on cider which caused near-riots).[38] Dashwood now sat in the House of Lords after taking up the title of Baron Le Despencer after the previous holder died.[39] Then there was the attempted arrest of John Wilkes for seditious libel against the King in the notorious issue No. 45 of his The North Briton in early 1763.[39] During a search authorised by a General warrant (possibly set up by Sandwich, who wanted to get rid of Wilkes),[40] a version of The Essay on Woman was discovered set up on the press of a printer whom Wilkes had almost certainly used. The work was almost certainly principally written by Thomas Potter, and from internal evidence can be dated to around 1755. It was scurrilous, blasphemous, libellous, and bawdy, though not pornographic -- still unquestionably illegal under the laws of the time, and the Government subsequently used it to drive Wilkes into exile. Between 1760 and 1765 Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea by Charles Johnstone was published.[41] It contained stories easily identified with Medmenham, one in which Lord Sandwich was ridiculed as having mistaken a monkey for the Devil. This book sparked the association between the Medmenham Monks and the Hellfire Club. By this time, many of the Friars were either dead or too far away for the Club to continue as it did before.[42] Medmenham was finished by 1766.

Paul Whitehead had been the Secretary and Steward of the Order at Medmenham. When he died in 1774, as his will specified, his heart was placed in an urn at West Wycombe. It was sometimes taken out to show to visitors, but was stolen in 1829.[6][26]

The West Wycombe Caves in which the Friars met are now a tourist site known as the "Hell Fire Caves".

Hellfire Clubs in contemporary life

Phoenix Society


In 1781, Dashwood's nephew Joseph Alderson (an undergraduate at Brasenose College, Oxford) founded the Phoenix Society (later known as the Phoenix Common Room), but it was only in 1786 that the small gathering of friends asserted themselves as a recognised institution.[43] The Phoenix was established in honour of Sir Francis, who died in 1781, as a symbolic rising from the ashes of Dashwood's earlier institution. To this day, the dining society abides by many of its predecessor's tenets. Its motto uno avulso non deficit alter (when one is torn away another succeeds) is from the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid and refers to the practice of establishing the continuity of the society through a process of constant renewal of its graduate and undergraduate members. The Phoenix Common Room's continuous history was reported in 1954 as a matter of note to the college.[44]

[Samutsevich Yekaterina Stanislavovna] Of course we’d heard about them.
All students of the Rodchenko school

Image

would discuss their “Feast” action
in the subway dedicated to Prigov.

Image

[Petr Verzilov, artist, “Voyna” group] Prigov was one of the most significant figures
for the “Voina,” for all of us.

Image

Image

He had this idea of doing something together
with the early “Voina,”
but a very tragic thing happened –

Image

he died several days after that.

Image

Image

[Samutsevich Yekaterina Stanislavovna] It was great that these people took the usual space
where people ride every day as a restaurant where you can
linger over drinks and food to commemorate
someone who’s just died.

Image

I liked their style,
it was obvious that they came very prepared,
they’d looked for those tables, they’d taken the measurements,

Image

They knew when it was best to enter,
what to do
if people wouldn’t do it …
I liked this thing about them. There was a lot of effort in it.

-- Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials, produced, written and directed by Evgeny Mitta


In Ireland

A number of Hellfire Clubs are still in existence in Ireland and are centred around Universities and meet secretly, for example a hellfire club for Trinity College that meets in central Dublin, there is also a Hellfire Club at Maynooth University that meets in Maynooth and one that regularly meets in Cork. These clubs carry out similar actions as the original Hellfire Clubs, including mock ceremonies and drinking alcohol.

In the United States

A BDSM club called the Hellfire existed in lower Manhattan, New York City, in the 1970s and 80s. It was used as a location for the Al Pacino movie Cruising, decorated to resemble an affiliated gay club, the Mineshaft.

In popular culture

Literature


The Hellfire Club has appeared in numerous literary works:

• Jerome K. Jerome cites it in his 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat.
• Ian Fleming in his 1955 novel Moonraker cites the "rare engravings of the Hell-Fire Club in which each figure is shown making a minute gesture of scatological or magical significance."
• In the Marvel Comics comic book series The X-Men, the Hellfire Club (1980) is an ancient club for the rich and hedonistic with Regency Era trappings that has branches all over the world, concealing the 'Inner Circle', a powerful and influential criminal organisation, that has played a prominent role in various story lines since its introduction during the Dark Phoenix Saga.
• Neil Gaiman named a debauched bar in the underworld "The Hellfire Club" in his comic book series The Sandman (1989–1996).
• The Hellfire Club and Dashwood play a role in the comic Hellblazer.
• Diana Gabaldon in her 1998 historical novella Lord John and the Hellfire Club.
• Lawrence Miles has referenced the Hellfire Club across several works. His 2002 novel The Adventuress of Henrietta Street features characters carrying on the Hellfire tradition, while the Faction Paradox audio plays, Sabbath Dei and The Year of the Cat, feature Francis Dashwood as a secondary character.
• Kage Baker in her 2007 short story "Hellfire at Twilight".
• Tom Knox in the 2009 novel The Genesis Secret.
• Jake Tapper in the 2018 political thriller The Hellfire Club.
• Hunter S. Thompson in the 1988 collection of columns Generation of Swine.

Television

• The Avengers episode "A Touch of Brimstone" (1966) had Steed and Mrs. Peel infiltrate a modern incarnation of the club whose pranks were expanding to destroy the government.
• The Blackadder the Third episode Ink & Incapability (1987) begins with a scene in which the Prince Regent mentions having drunk at the Naughty Hellfire Club the previous night.
• The Hellfire Club makes an appearance in "Deliverance", a 2014 episode of the TV show Sleepy Hollow.
• In the Gotham episode "The Blind Fortune Teller" (2015), the Hellfire Club is said to be a "Satanist cult that committed a string of ritual murders."
• The Hellfire Club is investigated on Season 6, Episode 8 of "Ghost Adventures", a television show on the Travel channel that investigates paranormal hotspots.

Other

The 1960 film The Hellfire Club starring Keith Michell and Peter Cushing depicts Dashwood's organisation.
• Hellfire Club, released on April 6, 2004, is the sixth album by German power metal band Edguy.[45]
• The 2001 audio play Minuet in Hell features the Hellfire Club led by a descendant of Sir Francis Dashwood.
• The 2004 visual novel Animamundi: Dark Alchemist contains scenes where a character named Francis Dashwood brings the protagonist to the Hellfire Club.
In the 2011 movie X-Men: First Class, The Hellfire Club is infiltrated by CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) suspecting communist activity. Inside, she discovers powerful generals with evil mutants pulling the strings.

See also

• The Beggar's Benison
• Montpelier Hill
• Hellfire Caves, the still-existing underground network of caves and tunnels in the chalk hills above West Wycombe, in which meetings of Dashwood's club took place.

Notes

1. Hellfire Holidays: Damnation, Members Only, Tonyperrottet.com 2009-12-15, accessed 2009-12-18
2. Ashe p.48
3. b Blackett-Ord p. 46
4. Ashe p. 111
5. Blackett-Ord p. 44
6. "Paul Whitehead". The Twickenham Museum. "The Monks of Medmenham Abbey" (the Hell-Fire Club, founded by Sir Francis Dashwood) of which he became the secretary and steward
7. Ashe
8. Ashe p. 60
9. Ashe p. 52
10. Blackett-Ord p.70
11. p. 44[incomplete short citation]
12. Blackett-Ord p. 43
13. Ashe p. 46
14. p. 43[incomplete short citation]
15. Ashe p. 48
16. Blackett-Ord p. 44-6
17. Willens
18. Ashe p. 49
19. Blackett-Ord p. 70
20. Ashe p. 62
21. Ashe, Geoffrey (2000). The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing. p. 65. ISBN 9780750924023.
22. Mike Howard. "The Hellfire Club". Archived from the original on 2009-10-10. Retrieved 2010-01-10.
23. Alamantra
24. Ashe p. 115
25. Ashe p. 113
26. Simon, Robin (2008-11-03). "High politics and Hellfire: William Hogarth's portrait of Francis Dashwood". Gresham College. Retrieved 2010-01-11. Infamous rake (and Chancellor of the Exchequer), Sir Francis Dashwood was the founder of the Hellfire Club
27. Coppens
28. Ashe p. 120
29. City of Blood, Cities of the Underworld - History Channel 2 (H2), 2008
30. Ashe p. 121
31. Ashe p.111
32. Ashe p. 112
33. Ashe p.118
34. Ashe p. 114
35. Ashe p. 125
36. Ashe p 125
37. Ashe p. 133
38. Ashe p. 155
39. Ashe p. 157
40. Ashe p. 158
41. Ashe p. 177
42. Ashe p. 167
43. See also A Century of the Phoenix Common Room, Brasenose College, Oxford, 1786-1886, records edited by F. Madan, Oxford, 1888.
44. 'Brasenose College', A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 3: The University of Oxford (1954), pp. 207-219. British-history.ac.uk
45. "Edguy- Hellfire Club". Encyclopaedia Metallum. Retrieved 20 February 2014.

References

• Alamantra, Frater. "Looking into the Word" in Ashé Journal, Vol 3, Issue 1, Spring 2004. Retrieved 24 March 2009.
• Ashe, Geoffrey. The Hell-Fire Clubs: A History of Anti-Morality. Great Britain: Sutton Publishing, 2005.
• Blackett-Ord, Mark (1982). The Hell-Fire Duke. Windsor Forest, Berks.: The Kensal Press.
• Thomas, Will. The Hellfire Conspiracy. Touchstone, 2007. ISBN 0-7432-9640-0.
• Suster, Gerald. The Hell-Fire Friars. London: Robson, 2000.
• Willens, Daniel. "Sex, Politics, and Religion in Eighteenth-Century England" in Gnosis, Summer 1992.

External links

• The Hellfire Club Archives at Blather.net
• Secrets of the Hellfire Club
• The Hell-Fire Clubs
• History of the Hell-Fire Club
• The Lives & Times of the Hellfire Club
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Re: Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

Postby admin » Wed Aug 08, 2018 8:48 pm

Bacchanalia
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/8/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Don't use for a peasant
A gentleman's judgement;
We are not white-handed
And tender-skinned creatures,
But men rough and lusty
In work and in play.
"The heart of each peasant
Is black as a storm-cloud,
Its thunder should peal
And its blood rain in torrents;
But all ends in drink—
For after one cupful
The soul of the peasant
Is kindly and smiling;
But don't let that hurt you!
Look round and be joyful!
Hey, fellows! Hey, maidens!
You know how to foot it!
Their bones may be aching,
Their limbs have grown weary,
But youth's joy and daring
Is not quite extinguished,
It lives in them yet!"
The peasant is standing
On top of a hillock,
And stamping his feet,
And after being silent
A moment, and gazing
With glee at the masses
Of holiday people,
He roars to them hoarsely.
"Hey you, peasant kingdom!
You, hatless and drunken!
More racket! More noise!"
"Come, what's your name, uncle?"
"To write in the note-book?
Why not? Write it down:
'In Barefoot the village
Lives old Jacob Naked,
He'll work till he's taken,
He drinks till he's crazed.'"

-- Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?, by Nicholas Nekrasov




Image
The Feast of the Gods, by Bernard Ryckere




The Bacchanalia were Roman festivals of Bacchus, based on various ecstatic elements of the Greek Dionysia. They seem to have been popular, and well-organised, throughout the central and southern Italian peninsula. They were almost certainly associated with Rome's native cult of Liber, and probably arrived in Rome itself around 200 BC, but like all mystery religions of the ancient world, very little is known of their rites.

[Titus Livius] Livy, writing some 200 years after the event, offers a scandalised, extremely colourful account of the Bacchanalia. Modern scholarship takes a skeptical approach to his allegations of frenzied rites, sexually violent initiations of both sexes, all ages and all social classes, and the cult as a murderous instrument of conspiracy against the state. Livy claims that seven thousand cult leaders and followers were arrested, and that most were executed.

15. When the magistrates had been dispatched to these posts, the consuls mounted the Rostra and called an informal meeting1 of the people, and, when the consul had finished the regular formula of prayer which magistrates are accustomed to pronounce before they address the people, he thus began: [2] "Never for any assembly, citizens, has this formal prayer to the gods been not only so suitable but even so necessary, a prayer which reminds us that these are the gods whom our forefathers had appointed to be worshipped, to be venerated, to receive our prayers, not those gods [3??] who would drive our enthralled minds with vile and alien rites, as by the scourges of the Furies, to every crime and every lust. [4] For my part, I do not discover what I should refrain from telling or how far I should speak out. If you are left ignorant of anything, I fear that I shall2 leave room for carelessness; if I lay bare everything, that I shall scatter abroad an excess of terror. [5] Whatever I shall have said, be sure that my words are less than the dreadfulness and the gravity of the situation: to take sufficient precautions will be our task. [6] As to the Bacchanalia, I am assured that you have learned that they have long been celebrated all over Italy and now even within the City in many places, and that you have learned this not only from rumour but also from their din and cries at night, which echo throughout the City, but I feel sure that you do not know what this thing is: [7] some believe that it is a form of worship of the gods, others that it is an allowable play and pastime, and, whatever it is, that it concerns only a few. [8] As regards their number, if I shall say that there are many thousands of them, it cannot but be that you are terrified, unless I shall at once add to that who and of what sort they are. [9] First, then, a great part of them are women, and they are the source of this mischief; then there are men very like the women, debauched and debauchers, fanatical, with senses dulled by wakefulness, wine, noise and shouts at night. [10] The conspiracy thus far has no strength, but it has an immense source of strength in that they grow more numerous day by day. [11] Your ancestors did not wish that even you should assemble casually and without reason, except when the standard was displayed on the citadel and the army was assembled for an election,3 or the tribunes had announced a meeting of the plebeians,4 or some of the magistrates had called you to an informal gathering; and wherever there was a crowd collected they thought that there should also be a legal leader of the crowd. Of what sort do you5 think are, first, gatherings held by night, second, meetings of men and women in common?6 If you knew at what ages males were initiated, you would feel not only pity for them but also [13] shame. Do you think, citizens, that youths initiated by this oath should be made soldiers? That arms should be entrusted to men mustered from this foul [14] shrine? Will men debased by their own debauchery and that of others fight to the death on behalf of the chastity of your wives and children?

1 Cf. XXXI. vii. 1 and the note. This meeting was called simply to hear the news about the conspiracy and the measures taken to suppress it.
2 B.C. 186
3 For the military character of the comitia centuriata, of which the speaker is thinking, cf. XXXI. v. 9 and the note.
4 In the concilium plebis; Livy generally seems not to distinguish between this and the comitia tributa, but the problem is too complicated for discussion here.
5 B.C. 186
6 One thinks of the caustic remarks of Cato on the participation of women in public affairs (XXXIV. ii. [12] —iv. passim).

-- The History of Rome, Book 39, by Titus Livius (Livy)


Senatorial legislation to reform the Bacchanalia in 186 BC attempted to control their size, organisation, and priesthoods, under threat of the death penalty. This may have been motivated less by the kind of lurid and dramatic rumours that Livy describes than by the senate's determination to assert its civil and religious authority over Rome and her allies, after the prolonged social, political and military crisis of the Second Punic War. The reformed Bacchanalia rites may have been merged with the Liberalia festival. Bacchus, Liber and Dionysus became virtually interchangeable from the late Republican era onward, and their mystery cults persisted well into the Roman Imperial era.

Background and development

See also: Bacchus, Liber, Dionysia, and Dionysian Mysteries


The Bacchanalia were Roman festivals of Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god of wine, freedom, intoxication and ecstasy. They were based on the Greek Dionysia and the Dionysian mysteries, and probably arrived in Rome c. 200 BC via the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and from Etruria, Rome's northern neighbour. Like all mystery cults, the Bacchanalia were held in strict privacy, and initiates were bound to secrecy; what little is known of the cult and its rites derives from Greek and Roman literature, plays, statuary and paintings.[1]

Livy, the principal Roman literary source on the early Bacchanalia, as he reports a major political incident involving one form of the cult, names Paculla Annia, a Campanian priestess of Bacchus, as the founder of a private, unofficial Bacchanalia cult in Rome, based at the grove of Stimula, where the western slope of the Aventine Hill descends to the Tiber. The Aventine was an ethnically mixed district, strongly identified with Rome's plebeian class and the ingress of new and foreign cults.[2] The wine and fertility god Liber Pater ("The Free Father"), divine patron of plebeian rights, freedoms and augury, had a long-established official cult in the nearby temple he shared with Ceres and Libera.[3] Most Roman sources describe him as Rome's equivalent to Dionysus and Bacchus, both of whom were sometimes titled eleutherios (liberator).[4]

Livy claims the earliest version as open to women only, and held on three days of the year, in daylight; while in nearby Etruria, north of Rome, a "Greek of humble origin, versed in sacrifices and soothsaying" had established a nocturnal version, added wine and feasting to the mix, and thus acquired an enthusiastic following of women and men;[5] Livy says that Paculla Annia corrupted Rome's unofficial but morally acceptable Bacchic cult by introducing the Etruscan version, with five, always nocturnal cult meetings a month, open to all social classes, ages and sexes—starting with her own sons; the new celebrations and initiations featured wine-fueled violence and violent sexual promiscuity, in which the screams of the abused were drowned out by the din of drums and cymbals. Those who resisted or betrayed the cult were disposed of. Under cover of religion, priests and acolytes broke civil, moral and religious laws with impunity. Livy also claims that while the cult held particular appeal to those of uneducated and fickle mind (levitas animi), such as the young, plebeians, women and "men most like women", most of the city's population was involved, and even Rome's highest class was not immune. An ex-initiate and prostitute named Hispala Faecenia, fearing the cult's vengeance for her betrayal but more fearful for her young, upper class client and protegé, told all to the consul Postumius, who presented it to a shocked Roman senate as a dire national emergency. Once investigations were complete, the senate rewarded and protected informants, and suppressed the cult "throughout Italy"—or rather, forced its reformation, in the course of which seven thousand persons were arrested, most of whom were executed.[6][7]

Reform

Image
Bacchanal on a Roman sarcophagus of 210-220 AD

Legislation of 186 survives in the form of an inscription. Known as the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, it brought the Bacchanalia under control of the senate, and thus of the Roman pontifices. The existing cult chapters and colleges were dismantled. Congregations of mixed gender were permitted, but were limited to no more than two men and three women, and any Bacchanalia gathering must seek prior permission from the Senate. Men were forbidden Bacchus' priesthood.

Despite their official suppression, illicit Bacchanals persisted covertly for many years, particularly in Southern Italy, their likely place of origin.[8][9] The reformed, officially approved Bacchic cults would have borne little resemblance to the earlier crowded, ecstatic and uninhibited Bacchanalia. Similar attrition may have been imposed on Liber's cults; his perceived or actual association with the Bacchanalia may be the reason that his Liberalia ludi of 17 March were temporarily moved to Ceres' Cerealia of 12–19 April. They were restored when the ferocity of reaction eased, but in approved, much modified form.[10]

Interpretations

apologist: One who makes an apology. One who speaks or writes in defense of a faith, a cause, or an institution.


Livy's account of the Bacchanalia has been described as "tendentious to say the least".[11] As a political and social conservative, he had a deep mistrust of mystery religions, and probably understood any form of Bacchanalia as a sign of Roman degeneracy.[12] Though most of his dramatis personae are known historical figures, their speeches are implausibly circumstantial, and his characters, tropes and plot developments draw more from Roman satyr plays than from the Bacchanalia themselves.[13] Paculla Annia is unlikely to have introduced all the changes he attributes to her.[14][15][16]

For Livy, the cult's greatest offences arose from indiscriminate mixing of freeborn Romans of both sexes and all ages at night, a time when passions are easily aroused, especially given wine and unrestricted opportunity. Women at these gatherings, he says, outnumbered men; and his account has the consul Postumius stress the overwhelmingly female nature and organisation of the cult. Yet the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus itself allows women to outnumber men, by three to two, at any permitted gathering; and it expressly forbids Bacchic priesthoods to men.[17] Livy's own narrative names all but one of the offending cult leaders as male, which seems to eliminate any perceived "conspiracy of women".[18] Gender seems to have motivated the Senate's response no more than any other cause.[19]

Livy's insistently negative account of the cult's Greek origins and low moral character—not even Bacchus is exempt from this judgment—may have sought to justify its suppression as a sudden "infiltration of too many Greek elements into Roman worship".[20] The cult had, however, been active in Rome for many years before its supposedly abrupt discovery, and Bacchic and Dionysiac cults had been part of life in Roman and allied, Greek-speaking Italy for many decades. Greek cults and Greek influences had been part of Rome's religious life since the 5th century BC, and Rome's acquisition of foreign cults—Greek or otherwise—through alliance, treaty, capture or conquest was a cornerstone of its foreign policy, and an essential feature of its eventual hegemony. While the pace of such introductions had gathered rapidly during the 3rd century, contemporary evidence of the Bacchanalia reform betrays no anti-Greek or anti-foreign policy or sentiment.[21]

Gruen interprets the Senatus consultum as a piece of realpolitik, a display of the Roman senate's authority to its Italian allies after the Second Punic War, and a reminder to any Roman politician, populist and would-be generalissimo that the Senate's collective authority trumped all personal ambition.[22] Nevertheless, the extent and ferocity of the official response to the Bacchanalia was probably unprecedented, and betrays some form of moral panic on the part of Roman authorities; Burkert finds "nothing comparable in religious history before the persecutions of Christians".[23][24]

Modern usage

In modern usage, bacchanalia can mean any uninhibited or drunken revelry. The bacchanal in art describes any small group of revellers, often including satyrs and perhaps Bacchus or Silenus, usually in a landscape setting. The subject was popular from the Renaissance onwards, and usually included a large degree of nudity among the figures.

Image
Nicolas Poussin, Bacchanal before a Statue of Pan, 1631 - 1633

Image
Lovis Corinth, Bacchanalia, 1898

Image
A. Meyer, frieze in Seefeld (Zürich), 1900

See also

• Anthesteria
• Ganachakra
• Maenads, female worshippers of Dionysus
• Saturnalia, a Roman festivity
• Thriambus, a hymn sung in processions in honour of Dionysus

References

1. One of the earliest sources is Greek playwright Euripides's The Bacchae, which won the Athenian Dionysia competition in 405 BC.
2. "No other location approaches [its] concentration of foreign cults": see Eric M. Orlin, "Foreign Cults in Republican Rome: Rethinking the Pomerial Rule", Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 47 (2002), pp. 4-5.
3. Only official introductions, controlled by Rome's ruling elite, conferred legitimacy on foreign cults in Rome; see Sarolta A. Takács, "Politics and Religion in the Bacchanalian Affair of 186 B.C.E" in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 100, (2000), p. 302.
4. Robert Rouselle, Liber-Dionysus in Early Roman Drama, The Classical Journal, 82, 3 (1987), p. 193.
5. Sarolta A. Takács, Politics and Religion in the Bacchanalian Affair of 186 B.C.E., Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 100, (2000), p.305: the "Greek of humble origin" (Graecus ignobilis, in Livy, 39.8.3) may be understood as an ethnically Greek, itinerant priest of Dionysus.
6. Overview in Erich S. Gruen, "The Bacchanalia affair", in Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy, University of California Press, 1996, p. 34 ff.[1]
7. For Livy's account, see Livy, The History of Rome, Vol 5, Book 39, IX.Modern scholarly sources offer various estimates on the number executed.
8. See Sarolta A. Takács, Politics and Religion in the Bacchanalian Affair of 186 B.C.E., Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 100, (2000), p.301. [2]
9. Beard, M., Price, S., North, J., Religions of Rome: Volume 1, a History, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 93–96.
10. T.P. Wiseman, Remus: a Roman myth, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.133.
11. Eric M. Orlin, "Foreign Cults in Republican Rome: Rethinking the Pomerial Rule", Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 47 (2002), p. 2.
12. Walsh, P. G., "Making a Drama out of a Crisis: Livy on the Bacchanalia", Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol. 43, No. 2, Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association, 1996, p. 190. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/gr/43.2.188
13. The plots and stock characters of Greek-based Satyr plays would have been familiar to Roman audiences from around the 3rd century BC, as they certainly were in Livy's day, 200 years on. See Robert Rouselle, Liber-Dionysus in Early Roman Drama, The Classical Journal, 82, 3 (1987), p. 191.[3]
14. Eric M. Orlin, "Foreign Cults in Republican Rome: Rethinking the Pomerial Rule", Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 47 (2002), University of Michigan Press, p. 2.
15. For the changes attributed to Paculla Annia as unlikely, see Erich S. Gruen, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy, University of California Press, 1996, pp 48–54: Hispala Faecina is the standard "golden-hearted prostitute" whose courage and loyalty outweigh her low origin and profession, and her fear of reprisal, see Victoria Emma Pagán, Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History, University of Texas Press, 2004, pp. 61–65.
16. ..."the Bacchic passages in the Roman drama, taken over from their Greek models, presented a pejorative image of the Bacchic cult which predisposed the Romans towards persecution before the consul denounced the cult in 186." Robert Rouselle, Liber-Dionysus in Early Roman Drama, The Classical Journal, 82, 3 (1987), p. 193.
17. cf later descriptions of Liber's "aged priestesses" who offer sacrifice at the Liberalia festival.
18. Gruen, E. Studies in Greek culture and Roman policy, University of California Press, 1996, Ch. 2.
19. Schultz, C., Women's religious activity in the Roman Republic, UNC Press Books, 2006, p. 93.
20. Orlin, Eric (2007). In Rüpke, J, ed. A Companion to Roman Religion. Blackwell publishing. p. 64. ISBN 978-1-4051-2943-5.
21. Eric Orlin, "Urban Religion in the Middle and Late Republic", in Jorge Rüpke (editor), A Companion to Roman Religion, Blackwell, 2007, pp. 59–61.
22. ^Erich S. Gruen, Studies in Greek culture and Roman policy, University of California Press, 1996, Ch. 2.
23. Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Religions, Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 52.
24. During the Punic crisis, some foreign cults and oracles had been repressed by Rome, but on much smaller scale and not outside Rome itself. See Erich S. Gruen, Studies in Greek culture and Roman policy, BRILL, 1990, pp.34-78: on precedents see p.41 ff.[4]

External links

• Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus in Latin at The Latin Library
• Senatus Consultum de Bacchaniabus in English, at forumromanum.org
• Description of the Bacchanalia and the Senate's ruling, from Fordham
• Matthias Riedl, "The Containment of Dionysos: Religion and Politics in the Bacchanalia Affair of 186 BCE,"International Political Anthropology 5 (2012) No. 2, pp. 113–133.
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Re: Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

Postby admin » Wed Aug 08, 2018 9:16 pm

Liberalia
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/8/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


The Liberalia (17 March) is the festival of Liber Pater and his consort Libera.[1] The Romans celebrated Liberalia with sacrifices, processions, ribald and gauche songs, and masks which were hung on trees.

This feast celebrates the maturation of young boys to manhood. Roman boys, usually at age 15 or 16, would remove the bulla praetexta, a hollow charm of gold or leather, which parents placed about the necks of children to ward off evil spirits. At the Liberalia ceremony the young men might place the bulla on an altar (with a lock of hair or the stubble of his first shave placed inside) and dedicate it to the Lares, who were gods of the household and family. Mothers often retrieved the discarded bulla praetexta and kept it out of superstition. If the son ever achieved a public triumph, the mother could display the bulla to ward off any evil that might be wished upon the son by envious people. The young men discarded the toga praetexta, which was probably derived from Etruscan dress and was decorated with a broad purple border and worn with the bulla, by boys and girls. The boys donned the clothing of adulthood, the pure white toga virilis, or "man's gown". The garment identified him as a citizen of Rome, making him an eligible voter.

The celebration on March 17 was meant to honor Liber Pater, an ancient god of fertility and wine (like Bacchus, the Roman version of the Greek god Dionysus). Liber Pater is also a vegetation god, responsible for protecting seed. Liber, again like Dionysus, had female priests although Liber's priests were older women. Wearing wreaths of ivy, the priestesses made special cakes, or libia, of oil and honey which passing devotees would have them sacrifice on their behalf. Over time this feast evolved and included the goddess Libera, Liber Pater's consort, and the feast divided so that Liber governed the male seed and Libera the female. Ovid in his almanac entry for the festival identifies Libera as the celestial manifestation of Ariadne.[2]

[Samutsevich Yekaterina Stanislavovna] Of course we’d heard about them.
All students of the Rodchenko school

Image

would discuss their “Feast” action
in the subway dedicated to Prigov.

Image

[Petr Verzilov, artist, “Voyna” group] Prigov was one of the most significant figures
for the “Voina,” for all of us.

Image

[Samutsevich Yekaterina Stanislavovna] It was great that these people took the usual space
where people ride every day as a restaurant where you can
linger over drinks and food to commemorate
someone who’s just died.

Image

I liked their style,
it was obvious that they came very prepared,
they’d looked for those tables, they’d taken the measurements,

Image

They knew when it was best to enter,
what to do
if people wouldn’t do it …
I liked this thing about them. There was a lot of effort in it.

-- Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials, produced, written and directed by Evgeny Mitta


This ancient Italian ceremony was a "country" or rustic ceremony. The processional featured a large phallus which the devotees carried throughout the countryside to bring the blessing of fertility to the land and the people. The procession and the phallus were meant also to protect the crops from evil. At the end of the procession, a virtuous and respected matron placed a wreath upon the phallus.

In another recent stunt, the group hung a drawing of a huge phallus on a St. Petersburg drawbridge, the agency reports in the same article.[/size][/b]

Image


-- Western media concealing facts about female rock band’s desecration of Russian cathedral, by Matthew Hoffman


Related to the celebration of the Liberalia is the Procession of the Argei, celebrated on March 16 and 17. The Argei were 27 sacred shrines created by the Numina (very powerful ancient gods who are divine beings without form or face) and found throughout the regions of Rome. However, modern scholars have not discovered their meaning or use.

[Anatoly Osmolovsky, Artist] Another thing one can say about Pussy Riot

Image

is animation or objectification of Malevich’s paintings.

Image

Image

Image

Image

-- Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials, produced, written and directed by Evgeny Mitta


In the argei celebration, 30 figures also called Argei were fashioned from rushes into shapes resembling men; later in the year they were tossed into the river(s).
The origin of this celebration is not certain, but many scholars feel that it may have been a ritualistic offering meant to appease and praise the Numa and that the 30 argei probably represented the thirty elder Roman curiae, or possibly represented the 30 Latin townships. Other ancient scholars wrote that the use of the bull-rush icons was meant to deter celebrants from human sacrifice, which was done to honor Saturn. Some historical documents indicate that the argei (the sacred places) took their names from the chieftains who came with Hercules, the Argive, to Rome and then occupied the Capitoline (Saturnian) Hill. There is no way at present to verify this information, but it does coincide with the belief that Rome was founded by the Pelasgians and the name Argos is linked to that group.

While Liberalia is a relatively unknown event in modern times, references to Liberalia and the Roman goddess Libera are still found today online and in astrology.

References

1. T.P. Wiseman, Remus: a Roman myth, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p.133.
2. Fasti 3.459-516.

External links

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/G ... bulla.html The bulla praetexta]
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Re: Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

Postby admin » Wed Aug 08, 2018 11:12 pm

An Essay on Woman, in Three Epistles [Member of the Hellfire Club
by John Wilkes

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


Epistle I.

AWAKE! my C …. have all things beside,
To low ambition, and to Scottish pride:
Let us (since life can little more supply,
Than, just to fight a duel … and to die)
Expatiate, freely, upon Woman-kind;
And trace, the mighty errors of her mind;
Mark where her thousand weeds, promiscuous, shoot;
And, fearless, cultivate forbidden fruit:
Together, let us trace this ample field;
Try, what the open, what the covert yield;
The artful tricks, and pretty flights explore,
Of ev’ry coy, and every willing whore:
Eye, all her walks; shoot folly, as it flies;
Notice her actions, as to fight they rise:
Blame, where we must; but laugh, where e’er we can;
And shew, that Woman is the Foe of Man.
Of God above, or Woman here low,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of her, what see we but her station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Through worlds unnumber’d though the God be known,
Woman’s acknowled’d only in our own.
Woman, presumptuous! would the reason find;
Why she is form’d so little, and so blind?
But let her first the harder reason guess,
Why she is form’d no blinder, and no less?
Ask of her mother, Earth, why oaks are made
Taller, or stronger, than the weeds they shade?
Woman respecting, what most wrong we call.
May, must be right, as relative to all.
That woman’s helpless, say not … heaven in fault;
Say rather … she’s as perfect as she aught:
Her knowledge, measured to her state and place,
Her time, a moment; and a point, her space.
Heav’n from us all conceals the book of fate,
Or who would wed the woman he must hate?
The girl thy passion dooms a lawful prey,
Had she thy reason, would she sing, and play?
Pleas’d to the last, she yields her virgin charms,
And hugs her dear destroyer in her arms.
Oh! blindness to the future, not to see
Her two worst enemies are, love and thee;
From whom to endless ruin she is sent,
Her fatal passion is her punishment,
Hope springs eternal in the female breast,
Women ne’er are, but always to be blest:
The girls uneasy and confin’d, will run
From dear mamma to us, to be undone.
Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor’d mind,
With European taste all unrefin’d.
Who never saw or masquerade or play,
Nor shone at court on George’s natal day;
Yet simple nature to her hope has given,
In her dear tawny Lord, an humbler heav’n:
To be, contents her natural desire,
She asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire;
But thinks, she has all blessings in her eye,
Her dusky lover in her company.
Go! wiser thou, and in thy nervous lines,
Where all the strength of composition shines,
Call imperfections to the face of day,
And d…. the needy players who work for pay:
Say, here they rant, and there too much they whine,
Heed not their fears, thy business is … to dine.
Ask, for what end the sparkling brilliants shine?
The woman … ever modest … cries, for mine;
For me the artist tries his utmost power,
And forms, from gems, the artificial flower;
Annual, for me, returning winter comes;
For me prepares ridottos, masks, and drums;
For me, joy gushes from a thousand springs;
And forty-shilling actors soar to Kings;
Chairmen to waft me, boys to light me rise,
And all the pit is wounded by my eyes.
But errs not nature from her kind intent,
When female minds, on mischief ever bent,
Delight to torture where they ought to please.
And yield their own to blast another’s ease?
“No, (tis reply’d) the females have no flaws.
“And too woman, act by gen’ral laws;
“Without exception do what ills they can;
“Their only aim to hurt, to injure mann.”
If the great end be human happiness,
And woman deviates … shall man to less?
As much that end a constant course requires,
Of showers and sunshine, as of their desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As woman, ever temperate, calm, and wise.
If plagues and earthquakes heav’ns design fulfill,
Why should not man o’er woman have his will?
Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were you a mitre’d priest, and I a peer;
But trust me, C …, those, who better know,
Have long determin’d it shall not be so.
Thus all subsists by politics and strife,
And passions are the elements of life.
The gen’ral order, since the whole began,
Is not in woman, but is kept in man.
What would these girls? now upwards will they soar,
And little less than angels, would be more;
Now look around, and just as griev’d appear,
They are not mothers in their fifteenth year:
Made for their use, all creatures will they call;
Say, what their use, had they the powers of all?
Kind to the sex, in rich profusion kind,
Shape, beauty, wit, dame Nature as assign’d;
Shall she then only, whom a wit we call,
Be pleas’d with nothing, if not bless’d with all?
A woman’s bliss, could pride that blessing find,
Is, not to think or act beyond her kind.
No powers of body or of soul to share,
But what her nature and her state can bear,
Why have no women microscopic eyes?
For this plain reason … women are not flies.
Say, what their use, were finer optics giv’n,
To inspect a mite, not comprehend a heav’n?
Cease then, nor rudely let us seem to blame;
Our proper bliss is centred in the dame:
Let us submit, in this our humble sphere,
Content to be as blest as we can bear:
Safe in the hands of one all-charming wife,
Calm let us tread the rugged path of life;
And, spite of truth, in fair conviction’s spite,
Still let us say, and swear, that WOMAN’S RIGHT.

Epistle II.

Know then thyself, and make the Sex thy care,
The proper study of Mankind’s the FAIR;
Plac’d in that state – which all who know thee, know
A Politician, Poet, Parson, Beau;
Created half to rise, and half to fall,
Great son of Homer – doating on a doll;
Truth’s friend so fond of female falsehood grown,
The glory, jest, and riddle of the town
Go, wond’rous creature, as Apollo leads,
And mark the Path majestic Milton treads;
The little versifiers teach to write,
Than to thy bottle and thy w… at night.
The wond’ring actors, when of late they saw
A grave Divine explain theatric law,
Admir’d the wisdom of the rev’rend cowl,
And shew’d a C…., as we shew an owl.
Has he who wrote the Rosciad e’er inclin’d
Ten days together to one female mind?
Then might thy friend be constant to his W….,
And PRIVILEGE be pleaded then no more.
Woman to man still yields (and where’s the harm?)
Who keeps her close while she has power to charm;
Then yields her to his fellow-brutes a prey:
And where’s the fault, my friend, in us, or they?
Two principles in human nature reign,
Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain:
Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
And reason yields to its supreme control:
Great strength the moving principal requires,
Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires;
Sedate and quiet sense and reason lie;
We yield to passion, and from reason fly.
We seize immediate good by present sense,
And leave to fate and change the consequence;
Thicker than arguments temptations throng,
More pow’rful these, though those are ne’er so strong.
Self-love and reason to one end aspire,
Pain, our aversion, pleasure our desire;
But greedy still our object to devour,
We crop, without remorse, the fairest flow’r:
Pleasure, with us, is always understood,
Howe’er obtain’d, our best and greatest good.
Passions, like elements, though born to fight,
By female pow’r subdu’d, are alter’d quite;
These ‘tis enough to temper and employ,
While what affords most pleasure, can destroy.
All spread their charms, but charm not all alike;
On different senses different objects strike;
Hence different ladies, more or less inflame;
Or different pow’rs sometimes attend the same;
And calling up each passion of the breast,
Each lady, in her turn, subdues the rest.
As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,
Imbibes the flame which ends not but with death;
The flame, that must subdue the fair at length,
Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strengths
So cast and mingled too in Woman’s frame,
Her mind’s disease, her ruling passion came.
Imagination plies her dangerous art,
And pours it all upon the peccant part:
Nature it’s mother, habit is it’s nurse,
Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse.
We wretched subjects to the female sway,
The tyrant, Woman, one and all, obey;
Who, bent to govern by her own wife rules,
Will, if she finds not, aim to make us fools;
Teach us to mourn our fate, but not to mend;
A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend!
Proud of her easy conquest all along,
She still allays our passions, weak or strong.
Virtuous and vicious every man must be;
Women are neither in a small degree;
The rogue and fool, by fits, is fair and wife,
Women are always what they most despise:
‘Tis but by parts Man follows good or ill;
Woman’s sole sovereign is her own dear will,
While ev’ry man pursues a different goal,
Womans whole aim’s unlimited control,
The faults of men, and their defects of mind,
Afford the highest joy to womankind.
See some peculiar whim each man attend;
See every Woman lab’ring to one end:
See some fit passion ev’ry man employ;
Empire alone affords the Woman joy.
Behold the Girl, by Nature’s kindly law,
Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw;
Some other bauble gives her youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite.
Dress, dancing, balls, amuse her riper age,
And drams and opiates are the toys of age;
Pleas’d with this bauble still, as that before,
‘Till tir’d, she sleeps … and life’s poor play is o’er.

Epistle III.

Oh Happiness! to which we all spire,
Wing’d with strong hope, and borne by full desire,
Oh Ease! for which in want, in wealth we sigh,
That Ease for which we labour and we die.
Why should the Female ever have the power,
To tyrannize o’er Man, and to devour?
Why should the wife, the learned, and the fool,
The brave, the rich …. submit to Woman’s rule?
As of the learn’d the cause, the learn’d are blind,
This bids us seek, that shun all Womankind;
Some place the bliss in serving one alone,
Some by a single passion are undone.
Some, sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain.
Some, swell’d to Gods … confess all pleasure vain;
Some hold the maxim others wrong would call,
To try all Women … and to doubt them all.
Oh, Sons of Men! attempt no more to rise,
But own the wond’rous force of Woman’s eyes;
Who, big with laughter, your vain toil surveys,
And shews her power a thousand diff’rent ways.
Know all the happiness we hope to find,
Depends upon the will of Womankind.
Nothing so true as Pope, long since, let fall,
“Most Women have no characters at all”;
How many pictures of one nymph we view!
All bow unlike each other … all bow true!
See Sin in state majestically drunk;
Proud as a Peeress, prouder as a punk;
Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside,
A teeming mistress, but a barren bride;
In whose mad brain the mix’d ideas roll,
Of Tallboy’s breeches, and of Caesar’s soul.
Who, spite of delicacy, stoops at once,
And makes her hearty meal upon a dunce.
In Men we various ruling passions find,
In Women … two alone divide the mind;
Those only fixed, they, first or last, obey,
The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.

FINIS.
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Re: Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

Postby admin » Wed Aug 08, 2018 11:38 pm

Liberalia: A Rite of Passage
by Shawn T. Norris
July 20, 2015

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The Liberalia is the festival of Liber Pater and his consort Libera. Held 3 days after the Ides of March (17 March), the Romans celebrated Liberalia with sacrifices, processions, ribaldry and gauche songs, and masks which were hung on trees.

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Liberalia Feast

This feast celebrates the passage of young boys into Roman manhood. Roman boys, usually at age 14, would give up the bulla praetexta, a hollow charm of gold or leather, which parents placed about the necks of children to ward off evil spirits.

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bulla praetexta

Priests and aged priestesses, adorned with garlands of ivy, carried through the city wine, honey, cakes (libia), and sweet-meats, together with an altar with a handle (ansata ara). In the middle of the ansata ara there was a small fire-pan (foculus), in which from time to time sacrifices were burnt.

The fathers of the young men took them to the city’s Forum and presented them as adults and Citizens. This was in the days when male rites of passage were encouraged.

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To the Forum

An infans (infant) was incapable of doing any legal act. An impubes (under-age), who had passed the limits of infantia (childhood), could do any legal act with the Auctoritas (Authority) of his tutor.

Without such Auctoritas the boy could only do those acts which were for his benefit. With the attainment of pubertas, a person obtained the full power of his property, and the Tutela ceased. The now Roman Citizen could also dispose of his property by will, and he could contract marriage.

At the Liberalia ceremony the young men might place the bulla on an altar. Along with the bulla might be a lock of hair or the stubble from the boy’s first shave which would then be dedicated to the Lares, who were gods of the household and family.

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Liberalia

Mothers often retrieved the discarded bulla praetexta and kept it out of superstition. If the son ever achieved a Triumphus, the mother could display the bulla to ward off any evil that might be wished upon the son by envious people.

The young men discarded the Etruscan-derived toga praetexta, which was decorated with a broad purple border and worn by boys and girls. The boys then donned the clothing of adulthood, the pure white toga virilis (Man’s Gown). The garment identified him as a citizen of Rome, making him an eligible voter.

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toga virilis

Over time this feast evolved and included more the goddess Libera, and the feast divided so that Liber governed the male seed and Libera the female. Ovid in his almanac entry for the festival identifies Libera as the celestial manifestation of Ariadne.

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bacchae team

This ancient ceremony was a country or rustic ceremony. The processional featured a large phallus which the devotees carried throughout the countryside to bring the blessing of fertility to the land and the people. The procession and the phallus were meant also to protect the crops from evil.

At the end of the procession, a virtuous and respected matron placed a wreath upon the phallus.

While Liberalia is a relatively unknown event in the modern time, references to Liberalia and the Roman goddess Libera are still found today online and in astrology.

It seems that Liberalia would be similar to the Jewish tradition of Bar and Bat Mitzvah, or the Latin American Quinceañera.

All across the world rites of passage, for young men or women, are quite important. It’s not really how it is celebrated simply that it is indeed celebrated.

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dionysus pillar_hires

Liberalia may not have been the biggest of Roman parties, but it was definitely one that was to be enjoyed by Rome’s newest Citizens.

We hope you enjoyed this little party and look forward to having you back again soon. Till next time, Don’t Stop Rome-ing!

_______________

References:

T.P. Wiseman, Remus: a Roman myth, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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Re: Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

Postby admin » Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:34 am

Accusing your enemy of that which you are guilty – The CIA and the “fake news” conspiracy.
by Sean Stinson
The AIM Network: The Australian Independent Media Network
December 27, 2016

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“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” – William Casey, CIA Director, 1981


In 1933, Joseph Goebbels, following closely the recommendations of Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, created some of the most effective propaganda the world has ever seen. Bernays’ prescription demanded the complete domination of communications media to stamp out any opposing view, the participation of artisans, celebrities, academic authorities and community leaders to influence popular opinion at a group level, and a Freudian appeal to base instincts – the need for food and shelter, community and leadership, and the influence of entertainment and fashion – to promote conformity among the German populace.

By now we are all familiar with the idea of German propaganda. In the West it is known by a more polite euphemism, public relations. PR is a lucrative business, with scores of non-government organisations competing for their share of generous funding. Once the province of legacy media such as Voice Of America, Radio Liberty, Radio Free Iraq, Radio Free Afghanistan, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television and Radio/TV Marti, today it comprises think tanks, print media, arts and entertainment, the humanitarian-industrial complex, as well as new technology platforms such as Google, Facebook and Wikipedia, and a plethora of so-called independent media outlets and ‘fact checking’ sites and apps.

The emergence of strategic communications as a soft power option combines psychological operations, propaganda and public affairs under a single umbrella. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), working in cooperation with George Soros’ [False Flag Factories] Open Societies, currently has a budget of US$40m to provide aid to so called ‘independent media organisations’ in 30 countries, including trouble spots such as Syria and Ukraine. The National Endowment for Democracy, set up by former CIA director William Casey under the Reagan Administration to help finance “perception management”, also receives tens of millions in federal funding, as do various “humanitarian NGOs” such as Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, and AVAAZ, who control Syria’s White Helmets.


Douglas Valentine, author of The Phoenix Program describes the CIA as “the organized crime branch of the US government, [which] functions like the Mafia through its old boy network of complicit media hacks.” “When it comes to the CIA and the press,” he writes, “one hand washes the other. To have access to informed officials, reporters frequently suppress or distort stories. In return, CIA officials leak stories to reporters to whom they owe favors.”

Less talked about is the agency’s relationship with Madison Avenue and Hollywood. From Animal Farm to Three Days of the Condor, from the thinly veiled torture advertisement Zero Dark Thirty to glamorised fictions like JJ Abrams abysmal Alias, it has often sought to influence popular opinion and whitewash its own reputation through popular media. Orwell’s Ministry of Truth is all around us, even if most of us fail to see it in a present day context. For a better understanding of how we have been bamboozled however, we need only look into the recent past.



The Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the CIA, was responsible for running psychological operations in the European theatre during WWII. Its network of journalists, editors, book publishers and stringers was carried over to the new agency under the oversight of Frank Wisner in 1948. The 1975 Church Committee congressional hearing revealed that the CIA maintained a network of several hundred individuals around the world who provided intelligence to the agency and sought to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda, while domestically it spent the equivalent of $1bn a year in today’s money in under-the-table bribes to major American news outlets to act as government gatekeepers. Chief among these were the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, Newsweek, the New York Herald Tribune, and Time Magazine. In his autobiography, convicted Watergate co-conspirator and former CIA officer E Howard Hunt also identifies ABC, NBC, the Associated Press, UPI, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, and Scripps-Howard as key players.

The close relationship between the CIA and the news media is examined in detail in former Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein’s 1977 Rolling Stone cover story entitled The CIA and the Media – How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up. Of particular interest is the close relationship between then NYT director Arthur Hays Sulzberger and CIA director Allen Dulles. While many of the CIA’s relationships with the press were informal, Sulzberger actually signed secrecy agreements with the agency. Given this history it is little wonder that there has never been an article in the Times questioning the Warren Report and clandestine operations such as Mockingbird, Gladio and Condor, or casting doubt on the official story of 9/11.

While maintaining the appearance of objectivity, news outlets such as Washington Post and the New York Times have been crucial in establishing consensus where military intervention has been desired. The Post was the first to report that Iraq was hiding WMD in 2002-2003, a claim which has since been revealed as a complete fabrication. The previous Iraq war as it happens was also based on a lie, specifically the testimony of a young woman who went only by the name Nayira, who claimed she had been a volunteer at Kuwait’s al-Adan hospital and had seen Iraqi troops pull babies from incubators, leaving them to die on the floor. It was later revealed that Nayira was the daughter of a Kuwaiti official who had been coached in her lines by New York PR firm Hill & Knowlton. Sadly, the story was swallowed hook line and sinker by the corporate press, resulting in the massacre of 130,000 retreating Iraqi soldiers by US and British forces on the infamous Highway of Death.

Recent history is full of examples of such official conspiracies, from the Gulf of Tonkin to the USS Liberty, from CIA black sites to mass surveillance. Indeed the very term “conspiracy theory” was first adopted by the CIA to discredit public skepticism around the obvious cover up of the Kennedy assassination by the Warren Commission. Today, as “official versions” lose traction with an increasingly cynical public, the intelligence community are becoming more desperate in their attempts to discredit truth seekers. Most recently, and quite ironically, any dissent from official US government positions as reported by its corporate media gatekeepers has been labelled as “fake news” or “weaponised information”.

Just as they did with the Warren Commission, the intelligence community are now using a pejorative label to discredit anyone who dares challenge their crimes and cover-ups. As part of a broader psychological operation aimed at silencing dissident voices, US Congress and the European Parliament are introducing bills to combat, among other things, “Russian propaganda”.
At the same time newly formed anonymous group PropOrNot has recently published a McCarthyist black list of 200 ‘fake news’ websites including many well established and reputable journals such as WikiLeaks, CounterPunch, Truth-Out, Truth-dig, Consortium News, South Front, Black Agenda Report, Films For Action, New Eastern Outlook, Global Research and others. At a time when doublethink, cognitive dissonance, conformity, and groupthink have replaced healthy skepticism, this move toward internet censorship sets a dangerous and sinister precedent.

Despite almost complete control of mainstream media, evidence which disproves and discredits official conspiracies is plentiful. Anyone who has seen the Zapruda film knows that Kennedy was not shot from behind, disproving the lone gunman theory. And yet the crime was covered up in plain view, and those responsible never prosecuted. Similarly the collapse of WTC 7 into a pile of fine dust puts the lie to the argument that 9/11 was anything but a planned demolition using explosives. Despite the refusal of many to accept proven facts surrounding the events of 9/11, it is inarguable that these attacks were used as a pretext to launch a war which has upturned the Muslim world and justifiably set entire populations against the West; which has created more acts of terror than it ever purported to avenge; and from which nobody has benefited except arms manufacturers and oil companies.

And now the same intelligence community have the unmitigated gall to tell us that Vladimir Putin sought to influence the outcome of the US presidential election through a network of dissident news sites and that this has the potential to undermine faith in democracy in the West. If this claim is not ridiculous enough, we’re also invited to believe that Putin is actively promoting white supremacist neo-nazis in Hungary and France. Need we be reminded how well things worked out for Russia the last time white supremacists came to power in Europe?

So the agency which has a proven record of lying about just about everything now wants to censor our newsfeeds to keep us safe from false and misleading information. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. As best as one can make out, the authority to label as “fake news” anything which doesn’t fit the approved mainstream narrative seems to derive from the moral right to be obeyed – the “because I said so” argument, or the “argument from authority”. The whole thing would be hilarious if it wasn’t so dangerous. The argument from authority can be easily countered with sound reasoning based on agreed facts, but what happens in a post-fact internet space where truth is defined as anything which suits the purposes of US government, NATO and other Western interests, and everything else is picked up by our spam filters?

Obviously any determination as to what is fake or real must be based in methodology rather than ideology. The “because I said so” argument may work on small children, but it rather begs the question – official news channels are eminently qualified to report the news, in virtue of being official news channels! Fortunately it is possible to assess factual claims based on a number of criteria other than questioning the authority of the source (attacking the messenger.) Does it match with our own observations? Is it consistent with other known facts? Can it be independently verified? Is it simply an opinion or editorial piece masquerading as news? Arguments of the form “small government is good for the economy” are obviously not based in observable fact and therefore cannot be proven or disproven. Arguments such as “Regime barrel bombs kill dozens in Aleppo hospital strike”, on the other hand, are ‘factual’ claims which require serious interrogation and critical thinking, faculties which have fallen conspicuously out of fashion among modern consumers of mass media.
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Re: Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

Postby admin » Thu Aug 09, 2018 8:51 pm

‘In the Politburo, they were ready to betray, besmirch, and defile’ Now you can watch a previously never-before-seen interview with Boris Yeltsin from June 1990
by Medusa Project
February 6, 2018

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Alexander Cheparukhin, a music promoter and the founder of Greenwave Music (which has organized performances in Russia by Michael Nyman, Kraftwerk, Kronos Quartet, and others), recently shared a previously unreleased video interview from June 1990 with Boris Yeltsin in honor of what would have been the late president’s 87th birthday. An environmental activist at the time, Cheparukhin spoke to Yeltsin aboard a train car headed from Moscow to Riga. Austrian journalist Werner Kreutler was along for the ride. Just days earlier, Yeltsin had been elected to serve as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Meduza summarizes this new footage of Boris Yeltsin.

On Facebook, Alexander Cheparukhin described the interview in detail, writing about his ecological projects from the Perestroika period, which allowed him to start traveling abroad. During that time, he was also involved with a group that assisted sick children, and part of his work included bringing children with leukemia from Minsk to Europe for treatment. This is how he met the Austrian journalist Werner Kreutler. They began reporting on politics together and both became Boris Yeltsin “fanatics.”

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[Petr Verzilov, artist, “Voyna” group] [Alyokhina Maria Vladimorivna] worked in different volunteer organizations, she worked with child patients, she’d go to orphanages, hospitals. Masha is a real big-time humanitarian.

-- Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials, produced, written and directed by Evgeny Mitta


Pussy Riot Theatre

In December 2016, Maria Alyokhina and music producer Alexander Cheparukhin started a new project – Pussy Riot Theatre with Riot Days - a play based on Alyokhina's book Riot Days (published in UK in Summer 2017). There are 4 people on stage: 2 women and 2 men. Maria Alyokhina herself, Kyril Masheka - her main stage partner plus Nastya and Max of the music duo AWOTT (Asian Women On The Telephone). The project is produced by Alexander Cheparukhin and directed by Yury Muravitsky - one of the leading Russian theatre directors.

-- by Kulturfabrik


[Alyokhina Maria Vladimorivna] has been involved in environmental activism with Greenpeace Russia, opposing development projects in the Khimki Forest, and was a volunteer at the Children's Psychiatric Hospital in Moscow.

-- Maria Alyokhina, by Wikipedia


As Cheparukhin puts it, he was shocked by the “persecution of Yeltsin” in the late 1980s, when he was removed from his position as the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, following harsh criticism from the party leadership. “This was a personal tragedy for me. Before this, the country’s movement towards freedom seemed irreversible,” remembers Cheparukhin. He and Kreutler dreamed of interviewing Yeltsin in order to tell his story to the West, but Yeltsin refused to speak with journalists.

After Yeltsin was elected chairman of Soviet Russia’s Supreme Council in late May of 1990, Cheparukhin tried once again. Through a friend named Valentin Yumashev, the journalist who co-authored Yeltsin’s autobiography, “Confessions on a Given Topic” (translated into English as “Boris Yeltsin: Against the Grain”), Cheparukhin learned that Yeltsin would soon take a train from Moscow to Riga. He also found out that Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin’s bodyguard, could help arrange an interview. Cheparukhin and Kreutler managed to board the train illegally — literally jumping onto a railcar step as the train departed. They explained the situation to Korzhakov and just “five minutes later” they were sitting with Yeltsin and filming an interview.

“The Austrian newspaper Kurier did an entire spread on the interview and our reporting. Nearly every publication around the world reprinted the story. This was Yeltsin’s first interview in years,” Cheparukhin recalls. In the interview, Yeltsin talked about upcoming reforms, the rejection of an “all-union bureaucracy” (which he called a “dismantling” of the whole administrative command system), and the creation of a committee for public safety to replace the KGB. “Not ‘national’ but public. And it won’t have the functions currently performed by the KGB that scare most of our people,” Yeltsin explained.

Cheparukhin also asked Yeltsin an emotional, “personal” question about his experience at the Communist Party Central Committee’s October 1987 plenum, where he spoke out publicly against the party’s leadership and was promptly condemned for doing so.

“For me, those two and half years were the hardest of my life. The hardest. I spent a lot of that time feeling sick and enormously anxious,” Yeltsin said. “It was so hard because, when I joined the party, I too believed in its ideals. I joined with the complete certainty that I was really going to participate in our country’s spiritual and humanistic rebirth. After working in the Politburo for two years, however, I realized that many of these people aren’t the brains, the honor, or the conscience of the party or our people. And they aren’t our country’s great intellectuals, either. The people there were ready to betray, besmirch, and defile for the sake of their jobs and for the sake of their career prospects.”

The journalists also asked Yeltsin why it would be another year before Russia would elect its first president. He answered: “We need to draft a new constitution, and all Russia’s peoples need to prepare for free, direct elections by secret ballots. That’s the whole point.”
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Re: Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

Postby admin » Thu Aug 09, 2018 9:09 pm

Appeal of the Initiators of "The Green Wave" of Voluntary Ecological Action*
by Alexander Cheparukhin, Chairman
Cambridge University Press
March 12, 1988
© Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1988

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


To live in harmony with Nature and with each other has always been, and remains, the eternal aspiration of Mankind. Today this aspiration is clouded by the threat of nuclear war and global ecological catastrophe, while the destruction of Nature and of cultural values is evoking ever-greater protest. Now the time has come for concrete, constructive action.

We, representatives of the Association of Soviet Esperanto-speakers, of the Union of Soviet Societies of Friendship and Cultural Ties with Foreign Countries, of the Association "Ecology & Peace,", of the Soviet Peace Committee, of the Soviet YCL, of the Geographical and Philosophical Societies of the USSR, of the All-Russian Society for Protecting Nature, of the Youth Environmental Council of Moscow State University, and of the Moscow Society of Explorers of Nature, propose to hold annually henceforth an International Green Wave of Voluntary Ecological Action -- beginning in April in honour of the first flight of Man into Space when, through the eyes of Yuri Gagarin, people saw for the first time our Planet as their common and only home, and ending on World Environment Day (5 June).

The ecological actions entitled "The Waves of Peace" provided the model for "The Green Wave." Social organizations of the USSR and other countries, and the inhabitants of many towns and villages, took part in them. On that day of 10 October 1986, in a park in Moscow, the First International Ecological Subbotnik took place. Several thousand volunteers came to help in the park, tidying the area, planting trees, taking part in ecological discussions, and unanimously adopting an appeal to save the Losiny Ostrov area.

We call upon all, to whom the fates of peace and Nature are dear, to restart "The Green Wave" as early as possible in April of each year. Look for like-minded people and a situation that requires your remedial efforts. It may be a major feature such as a national park, a limited one such as a grove of trees or a stream, or no more than a bush in a courtyard -- any part of living Nature that needs your care.

We hope to hear soon of the good deeds of The Green Wave. Let us do all we possibly can, so that in the coming years our movement may become a truly global one, actively backing-up our slogan of "acting locally but thinking globally." For the smallest unit of Nature is still a part of our life-supporting Biosphere, and consequently may be important.

ALEXANDER CHEPARUKHIN, Chairman
Moscow State University Youth Council on Nature Protection and of the Greenwave Youth Ecology Club
Moscow State University
Leninsky Gori
119899 Moscow, USSR.

_______________

Note:

* Edited version of a handwritten petition handed to us by a courageous young man who mounted the platform at the end of the Vernadsky Commemoration "Round Table" in the Culture-Hall of Moscow State University on the evening of 12 March 1988, which was the 125th Annivarsary of V.I. Vernadsky Foundation -- see also the account on page 177 of our Summer issue and the illustrated report on pp. 187-9 of the same, preceding issue. -- Ed.

Image

Alexander Cheparukhin is a music producer and promoter. Founder and director of GreenWave Music - Moscow based company, which is a combination of a record label, artist management and show/festival production. Manager and record producer of internationally acclaimed quartet Huun-Huur-Tu from the Republic of Tuva. Founder and artistic director of the number of musical festivals including “Creation of Peace” (Kazan, Tatarstan, since 2008, about 200 000 – 250 000 visitors every year), “Movement Fest” (Perm region), “Music of Freedom” (Perm), “Gogolfest” (Perm), Sayan Ring (South Siberia), Viva Cuba! (Moscow). Mr. Cheparukhin produced many shows and festival programs in more than 40 countries, including United Kingdom (where he co-produced East Winds Series of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and X-Bloc Reunion in London (festival of new music of ex-USSR and Eastern Europe). Organiser of the Russian and ex-USSR tours of many international artists, including John Fogerty, Brian Wilson, Patti Smith, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Kraftwerk, Kronos Quartet, John McLaughlin, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass, John Zorn, Manu Chao, Gogol Bordello, Buena Vista Social Club, Public Image Ltd etc.

-- by Greenwavemusic.ru
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Re: Act & Punishment: The Pussy Riot Trials

Postby admin » Thu Aug 09, 2018 9:27 pm

History of Esperanto
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/9/18

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.


L. L. Zamenhof developed Esperanto in the 1870s and 80s and published the first publication about it, Unua Libro, in 1887. The number of Esperanto speakers has grown gradually since then, although it has not had much support from governments and international organizations and has sometimes been outlawed or otherwise suppressed.

Standardized Yiddish

Around 1880, while in Moscow and approximately simultaneously with working on Esperanto, Zamenhof made an aborted attempt to standardize Yiddish, based on his native Bialystok (Northeastern) dialect, as a unifying language for the Jews of the Russian Empire. He even used a Latin alphabet, with the letters ć, h́, ś, ź (the same as in early drafts of Esperanto, later ĉ, ĥ, ŝ, ĵ) and ě for schwa. However, he concluded there was no future for such a project, and abandoned it, dedicating himself to Esperanto as a unifying language for all humankind.[1] Paul Wexler proposed that Esperanto was not an arbitrary pastiche of major European languages but a Latinate relexification of Yiddish, a native language of its founder.[2] This model is generally unsupported by mainstream linguists.[3]

Development of the language before publication

Zamenhof would later say that he had dreamed of a world language since he was a child. At first he considered a revival of Latin, but after learning it in school he decided it was too complicated to be a common means of international communication. When he learned English, he realised that verb conjugations were unnecessary, and that grammatical systems could be much simpler than he had expected. He still had the problem of memorising a large vocabulary, until he noticed two Russian signs labelled Швейцарская (švejtsarskaja, a porter's lodge – from швейцар švejtsar, a porter) and Кондитерская (konditerskaja, a confectioner's shop – from кондитер konditer, a confectioner). He then realised that a judicious use of affixes could greatly decrease the number of root words needed for communication. He chose to take his vocabulary from Romance and Germanic, the languages that were most widely taught in schools around the world and would therefore be recognisable to the largest number of people.

Zamenhof taught an early version of the language to his high-school classmates. Then, for several years, he worked on translations and poetry to refine his creation. In 1895 he wrote, "I worked for six years perfecting and testing the language, even though it had seemed to me in 1878 that it was already completely ready." When he was ready to publish, the Czarist censors would not allow it. Stymied, he spent his time in translating works such as the Bible and Shakespeare. This enforced delay led to continued improvement. In July 1887 he published his Unua Libro (First Book), a basic introduction to the language. This was essentially the language spoken today.

Unua Libro to Declaration of Boulogne (1887–1905)

Unua Libro was published in 1887. At first the movement grew most in the Russian empire and eastern Europe, but soon spread to western Europe and beyond: to Argentina in 1889; to Canada in 1901; to Algeria, Chile, Japan, Mexico, and Peru in 1903; to Tunisia in 1904; and to Australia, the United States, Guinea, Indochina, New Zealand, Tonkin, and Uruguay in 1905.

In its first years Esperanto was used mainly in publications by Zamenhof and early adopters like Antoni Grabowski, in extensive correspondence (mostly now lost), in the magazine La Esperantisto, published from 1889 to 1895 and only occasionally in personal encounters.

In 1894, under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, the publisher of the magazine La Esperantisto, and some other leading users, Zamenhof reluctantly put forward a radical reform to be voted on by readers. He proposed the reduction of the alphabet to 22 letters (by eliminating the accented letters and most of their sounds), the change of the plural to -i, the use of a positional accusative instead of the ending -n, the removal of the distinction between adjectives and adverbs, the reduction of the number of participles from six to two, and the replacement of the table of correlatives with more Latinate words or phrases. These reforms were overwhelmingly rejected, but some were picked up in subsequent reforms (such as Ido) and criticisms of the language. In the following decade Esperanto spread into western Europe, especially France. By 1905 there were already 27 magazines being published (Auld 1988).

A small international conference was held in 1904, leading to the first world congress in August 1905 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. There were 688 Esperanto speakers present from 20 nationalities. At this congress, Zamenhof officially resigned his leadership of the Esperanto movement, as he did not want personal prejudice against himself (or anti-Semitism) to hinder the progress of the language. He proposed a declaration on founding principles of the Esperanto movement, which the attendees of the congress endorsed.

Declaration of Boulogne to present (1905–present)

World congresses have been held every year since 1905, except during the two World Wars.

The autonomous territory of Neutral Moresnet, between Belgium and Germany, had a sizable proportion of Esperanto-speakers among its small and multiethnic population. There was a proposal to make Esperanto its official language.

In the early 1920s, a great opportunity seemed to arise for Esperanto when the Iranian delegation to the League of Nations proposed that it be adopted for use in international relations, following a report by Nitobe Inazō, an official delegate of League of Nations during the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in Prague.[4] Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux did not like how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat. However, two years later the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula. Many people see the 1920s as the heyday of the Esperanto movement.

In 1941, the Soviet Union started performing mass arrests, deportations, and killings of many Esperantists and their relatives for fear of an anti-nationalistic movement, but it was interrupted by the Nazi invasion.[5]

Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf[6] that it was created as a universal language to unite the Jewish diaspora. The creation of a Jew-free National German Esperanto League was not enough to placate the Nazis. The teaching of Esperanto was not allowed in German prisoner-of-war camps during World War II. Esperantists sometimes were able to get around the ban by convincing guards that they were teaching Italian, the language of Germany's closest ally.

In the early years of the Soviet Union, Esperanto was given a measure of government support, and an officially recognized Soviet Esperanto Association came into being.[7] However, in 1937, Stalin reversed this policy. He denounced Esperanto as "the language of spies" and had Esperantists exiled or executed. The use of Esperanto was effectively banned until 1956.[7] While Esperanto itself was not enough cause for execution, its use was extended among Jews or trade unionists and encouraged contacts with foreigners.

Fascist Italy, on the other hand, made some efforts of promoting tourism in Italy through Esperanto leaflets and appreciated the similarities of Italian and Esperanto.

Portugal's right-wing governments cracked down on the language from 1936 until the Carnation Revolution of 1974. After the Spanish Civil War, Francoist Spain cracked down on the Anarchists and Catalan nationalists among whom the speaking of Esperanto had been quite widespread; but in the 1950s, the Esperanto movement was tolerated again,[8] with Francisco Franco accepting the honorary patronage of the Madrid World Esperanto Congress.

The Cold War, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, put a damper on the Esperanto movement as well, as there were fears on both sides that Esperanto could be used for enemy propaganda. However, the language experienced something of a renaissance in the 1970s and spread to new parts of the world, such as its veritable explosion in popularity in Iran in 1975. By 1991 there were enough African Esperantists to warrant a pan-African congress. The language continues to spread, although it is not officially recognised by any country, and is part of the state educational curriculum of only a few.

Evolution of the language

The Declaration of Boulogne [1] (1905) limited changes to Esperanto. That declaration stated, among other things, that the basis of the language should remain the Fundamento de Esperanto ("Foundation of Esperanto", a group of early works by Zamenhof), which is to be binding forever: nobody has the right to make changes to it. The declaration also permits new concepts to be expressed as the speaker sees fit, but it recommends doing so in accordance with the original style.

Many Esperantists believe this declaration stabilising the language is a major reason why the Esperanto speaker community grew beyond the levels attained by other constructed languages and has developed a flourishing culture. Other constructed languages have been hindered from developing a stable speaking community by continual tinkering. Also, many developers of constructed languages have been possessive of their creation and have worked to prevent others from contributing to the language. One such ultimately disastrous case was Schleyer's Volapük. In contrast, Zamenhof declared that "Esperanto belongs to the Esperantists", and moved to the background once the language was published, allowing others to share in the early development of the language.

The grammatical description in the earliest books was somewhat vague, so a consensus on usage (influenced by Zamenhof's answers to some questions) developed over time within boundaries set by the initial outline (Auld 1988). Even before the Declaration of Boulogne, the language was remarkably stable; only one set of lexical changes were made in the first year after publication, namely changing "when", "then", "never", "sometimes", "always" from kian, tian, nenian, ian, ĉian to kiam, tiam, neniam etc., to avoid confusion with the accusative forms of kia "what sort of", tia "that sort of", etc. Thus Esperanto achieved a stability of structure and grammar similar to that which natural languages enjoy by virtue of their native speakers and established bodies of literature. One could learn Esperanto without having it move from underfoot. Changes could and did occur in the language, but only by acquiring widespread popular support; there was no central authority making arbitrary changes, as happened with Volapük and some other languages.

Modern Esperanto usage may in fact depart from that originally described in the Fundamento, though the differences are largely semantic (involving changed meaning of words) rather than grammatical or phonological. The translation given for "I like this one", in the sample phrases in the main Esperanto article, offers a significant example. According to the Fundamento, Mi ŝatas ĉi tiun would in fact have meant "I esteem this one". The traditional usage is Tiu ĉi plaĉas al mi (literally, "this one is pleasing to me"), which reflects the phrasing of most European languages (French celui-ci me plaît, Spanish éste me gusta, Russian это мне нравится [eto mnye nravitsya], German Das gefällt mir, Italian mi piace). However, the original Ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi continues to be commonly used.

For later changes to the language, see Modern evolution of Esperanto.

Dialects, reform projects and derived languages

Esperanto has not fragmented into regional dialects through natural language use. This may be because it is the language of daily communication for only a small minority of its speakers. However at least three other factors work against dialects, namely the centripetal force of the Fundamento, the unifying influence of the Plena Vortaro and its successors, which exemplified usage from the works of Zamenhof and leading writers, and the transnational ambitions of the speech community itself. Slang and jargon have developed to some extent, but such features interfere with universal communication – the whole point of Esperanto – and so have generally been avoided.

However, in the early twentieth century numerous reform projects were proposed. Almost all of these Esperantidos were stillborn, but the very first, Ido ("Offspring"), had significant success for several years. Ido was proposed by the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language in Paris in October 1907. Its main reforms were in bringing the alphabet, semantics, and some grammatical features into closer alignment with the Romance languages, as well as removal of adjectival agreement and the accusative case except when necessary. At first, a number of leading Esperantists put their support behind the Ido project, but the movement stagnated and declined, first with the accidental death of one of its main proponents and later as people proposed further changes, and the number of current speakers is estimated at between 250 and 5000. However, Ido has proven to be a rich source of Esperanto vocabulary.

Some more focused reform projects, affecting only a particular feature of the language, have gained a few adherents. One of these is riism, which modifies the language to incorporate non-sexist language and gender-neutral pronouns. However, most of these projects are specific to individual nationalities (riism from English speakers, for example), and the only changes that have gained acceptance in the Esperanto community have been the minor and gradual bottom-up reforms discussed in the last section.

Esperanto is credited with influencing or inspiring several later competing language projects, such as Occidental (1922) and Novial (1928). These always lagged far behind Esperanto in their popularity. By contrast, Interlingua (1951) has greatly surpassed Ido in terms of popularity. It shows little or no Esperanto influence, however.[9]

Timeline of Esperanto

• 1859: L. L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, is born in Białystok, Russia (now Poland).
• 1873: The Zamenhof family moves to Warsaw.
• 1878: Zamenhof celebrates the completion of his universal language project, Lingwe Uniwersala, with high school friends.
• 1879: Zamenhof attends medical school in Moscow. His father burns his language project while he's away. Meanwhile Schleyer publishes a sketch of Volapük, the first constructed international auxiliary language to acquire a number of speakers. Many Volapük clubs will later switch to Esperanto.
• 1881: Zamenhof returns to Warsaw to continue medical school, and starts to recreate his project.
• 1887: Zamenhof marries. In July, with his wife's financial help, he publishes Unua Libro, the first publication introducing Esperanto, in Russian. Polish, German, and French translations are published later that year.
• 1888: Leo Tolstoy becomes an early supporter. Zamenhof publishes Dua Libro, as well as the first English-language edition of Unua Libro, which proved to be filled with errors.
• 1889: The second English-language edition of Unua Libro is published in January, translated by Richard H. Geoghegan, and becomes the standard English translation. Henry Phillips, Jr., of the American Philosophical Society, also translates Unua Libro into English. The first volume of La Esperantisto is published in September. The language begins to be called Esperanto.
• 1894: Zamenhof, reacting to pressure, puts a radical reform to a vote, but it is overwhelmingly rejected. That version of Esperanto is often referred to as Esperanto 1894.
• 1895: La Esperantisto ceases publication. Lingvo Internacia begins publication in December.
• 1901: Zamenhof publishes his ideas on a universal religion, based on the philosophy of Hillel the Elder.
• 1905: Fundamento de Esperanto is published in the spring. The first World Esperanto Congress is held in Boulogne-sur-Mer, with 688 participants and conducted entirely in Esperanto. The Declaration of Boulogne is drafted and ratified at the congress.
• 1906: The second World Esperanto Congress is held in Geneva, Switzerland, drawing 1200 participants. La Revuo begins publication.
• 1907: Twelve members of the British parliament nominate Zamenhof for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Ĉekbanko Esperantista (Esperantist Checking Bank) is founded in London, using the spesmilo, an auxiliary Esperanto currency based on the gold standard. A committee organised by Louis Couturat in Paris proposes the Ido reform project, which provides significant competition for Esperanto until the First World War.
• 1908: The Universal Esperanto Association is founded by Hector Hodler, a 19-year-old Swiss Esperantist.
• 1909: The International Association of Esperantist Railway Workers is founded in Barcelona.
• 1910s: Esperanto is taught in state schools in the Republic of China, Samos, and Macedonia.
• 1910: 42 members of the French parliament nominate Zamenhof for the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 1914: Lingvo Internacia and La Revuo cease publication.
• 1917: Zamenhof dies during World War I.
• 1920: The first Esperanto magazine for the blind, Aŭroro, begins publishing in then-Czechoslovakia. It's still in print today.
• 1921: The French Academy of the Sciences recommends using Esperanto for international scientific communication.
• 1922: Esperanto is banned from French schools. The French delegate to the League of Nations vetoes the use of Esperanto as its working language, leaving English and French.
• 1924: The League of Nations recommends that member states implement Esperanto as an auxiliary language.
• 1920s: Offices of the Brazilian Ministry of Education use Esperanto for their international correspondence. Lu Xun, the founder of modern Chinese literature, becomes a supporter of Esperanto. Montagu C. Butler is the first to raise Esperanto-speaking children.
• 1933/34: Reorganisation of the international (neutral) Esperanto movement, under the name UEA.
• 1934: Encyclopedia of Esperanto first published in Budapest.
• 1935: Kalocsay and Waringhien publish the influential Plena Gramatiko de Esperanto (Complete Grammar of Esperanto).
• 1936: All Esperanto organisations in Nazi Germany prohibited.
• 1937: Leaders of the Esperanto organisation in the Soviet Union arrested; Esperanto activities made impossible.
• 1938: The World Esperanto Youth Organisation TEJO is founded.
• 1939–1945: In World War II many countries are occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union, where Esperanto organisations often were prohibited or Esperanto activities were limited in other ways.
• 1948: The railway workers' association is refounded as IFEF, the Internacia Fervojista Esperanto-Federacio (International Railway Workers' Esperanto Federation) to foster the use of Esperanto in the administration of the railroads of the world (so far, of Eurasia).
• 1954: UNESCO establishes consultative relations with the Universal Esperanto Association.
• 1966: The precursor to Pasporta Servo is launched in Argentina. Pasporta Servois a global network of Esperanto speakers who host Esperantists traveling through their countries.
• 1967: István Nemere founds the Renkontiĝo de Esperanto-Familioj, the first organisation for Esperanto-speaking families.
• 1975: The Esperanto movement spreads to Iran, with three thousand learning the language in Tehran.
• 1980: The Internacia Junulara Kongreso (International Youth Congress) in Rauma, Finland ratify the Manifesto of Rauma, articulating the view of many in the Esperanto movement that Esperanto is a goal in itself.
• 1985: UNESCO encourages UN member states to add Esperanto to their school curricula.
• 1987: 6000 Esperantists attend the 72nd World Esperanto Congress in Warsaw, marking Esperanto's centennial.
• 1991: The first pan-African Esperanto Conference is held in Lomé, Togo.
• 1992: PEN International accepts an Esperanto section.
• 1999: The Esperanto poet William Auld is nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
• 2001: The Vikipedio project (Esperanto Wikipedia) is launched, resulting in the first general encyclopedia written in a constructed language. It is now one of the most popular websites in Esperanto.
• 2004: The Europe–Democracy–Esperanto party (E°D°E°) contests the European Parliament elections in France, on a platform of making Esperanto the second language of all EU member states, taking 0.15% of the vote.
• 2007: Israel issues a stamp to commemorate 120 years of Esperanto (1887–2007). An image of Zamenhof is designed in a text describing his life, reproduced from the Wikipedia article on Esperanto. The corner of the tab shows the flag of the Esperanto movement.
• 2009: The Senate of Brazil passed a bill which would make Esperanto an optional part of the curriculum in its state schools. As of 2010 the bill has not yet been passed by the Chamber of Deputies.[10][11][12]
• 2015: The 100th World Esperanto Congress is held in Lille, France. Duolingolaunches its Esperanto program.
• 2017: Amikumu is officially launched, connecting Esperantists with other local Esperantists everywhere.

References

1. Christer Kiselman, "Esperanto: Its origins and early history", in Andrzej Pelczar, ed., 2008, Prace Komisji Spraw Europejskich PAU, vol. II, pp. 39–56, Krakaw.
2. Wexler, Paul (2002). Two-tiered Relexification in Yiddish: Jews, Sorbs, Khazars, and the Kiev-Polessian Dialect. De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 9783110898736.
3. Bernard Spolsky,The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History, Cambridge University Press, 2014 pp.157,180ff. p.183
4. http://www.esperanto.ie/en/zaft/zaft_2.html
5. Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto, 1887-2007. Mondial. p. 162. ISBN 978-1-59569-090-6.
6. Adolf Hitler (1941). "Mein Kampf (Reynal And Hitchcock English edition)". Volume 1, Chapter XI, page 423. Retrieved 2009-12-23.
7. Donald J. Harlow, The Esperanto Book, chapter 7 Archived 1 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine.
8. La utilización del esperanto durante la Guerra Civil Española, Toño del Barrio and Ulrich Lins. Paper for the International Congress on the Spanish Civil War, (Madrid, 27–29 November 2006).
9. Malmkjaer, Kirsten (2004-01-08). Linguistics Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 113. ISBN 9781134596997.
10. PLS 27/08 (Senate).
11. PL-6162/2009 (Chamber of Deputies).
12. Entidades manifestam apoio à proposta de incluir ensino de Esperanto na grade de disciplinas da rede pública (Portuguese) Agência Senado

Bibliography

• Gobbo, Federico, Is It Possible for All People to Speak the Same Language? The Story of Ludwik Zamenhof and Esperanto (PDF).
• Auld, William. La Fenomeno Esperanto. Rotterdam: UEA, 1988.
• Lins, Ulrich. La Danĝera Lingvo. Gerlingen, Germany: Bleicher Eldonejo, 1988. (Also available in Polish [2])
• Privat, Edmond. The Life of Zamenhof. Bailieboro, Ontario: Esperanto Press, 1980.
• Zamenhof, L. L. Letero al N. Borovko. 1895.[3]
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